#I'm not late as long as its still June right? ^^;;

[kaenith]

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 Happy Pride 🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

Available as prints, stickers, and more on Redbubble and TeePublic!

[himewonu]

99.9% NOT FOR SALE ౨ৎ jeon wonwoo

౨ৎ you envision your future as a single woman, maybe wonwoo could change your mind if you take a chance on him!

starring wonwoo x gn! reader genre fluff, humour, inspired by the take a chance on me scene from mamma mia (but specifically the actual musical where they're preparing for the wedding) contains kissing (not really), a very cliche scene at the end, reader is a lone wolf ahh word count 0.6k

from rhin, guys i watched the live production of this musical and i must say, it was a magical experience (rosie & bill were my fave, i love how the actors portrayed them !!) anyways i wrote this bc my cousin is getting married this late june so congrats to her and her fiance <3 Umm also can someone help me what to wear to her bridal shower party, the theme is tropical😥

you and wonwoo are decorating the arbour for the wedding, the final piece for the wedding. everyone that helped set up the venue had already left since they finished their job. it’s only the two of you by the altar.

you finish your part of placing flowers on the side and step back to watch wonwoo place flowers on the top of the arbour. you sit down by one of the chairs close to the altar.

the wedding is happening this afternoon, and the bride happens to be your best friend since high school. coincidentally, wonwoo is best friends with the groom. you knew each other since high school as well due to the fact that the couple were high school sweethearts.

neither of you were close with each other back then, but you would talk to him from time to time, usually about the couple or homework—since you shared the same english class with him for two years straight.

as you watched him place small bouquets one by one, you felt like opening up to him about your thoughts of the wedding. “you know i can’t imagine myself walking down the aisle.”

wonwoo turns his head to glance at you, picking up the silk fabric on the ground to hang on the arbour. “what makes you say that?”

“it’s just not for me. marriage, children, all those responsibilities. i’m a writer; i made up my mind a long time ago. and besides, i don’t think there’s anyone out there who would even want me.”

wonwoo stops placing the fabric and puts his full attention on you; his curiosity piques after hearing that. “well, if you ever change your mind, i’d like to be the first option,” he hints, coming closer to you to sit on the chair next to yours.

“i wouldn’t mind being your husband, i'm still single,” he casually drops, leaving your cheeks burning.

“that’s very flattering, won, but we’re writers,” you dodge, gazing around the venue except at the man next to you.

“and what’s that supposed to mean?”

“well, writers are meant to be alone, right?”

“not all writers. some write for each other.” his words make you whip your head to look at him. you two lock eyes, slowly moving closer to him.

he cups your cheek, and just as you two were leaning in for a kiss, a thud from the altar interrupts the intimate moment. you turn to check the arbour; one of the flower bouquets fell from the top.

“oh well, i guess we’re not done yet,” you joke, heading over to the arbour. you grab the bouquet from the ground and pull a chair close to the arbour. as you stand on the seat on your tippy toes, you’re trying to place the bouquet in its original.

“careful, you might fall,” wonwoo warns, holding the chair you’re standing on. “here let me do it.”

“no i can do it on my own,” you protest as he holds his hand out. right as you tried slapping it away with one hand, you accidentally stepped down and slipped on the surface, causing you to fall behind.

wonwoo catches you from your back before you can fall off the chair, and for a moment, you share that same eye contact you had earlier—the one leading to an almost kiss.

“ahem,” a voice interrupts you two again, making you turn your heads to look. it’s seungkwan holding a clipboard, glaring at you two. “whatever is going on between you, i don’t care. the wedding is starting in an hour, and guests will be arriving soon. we don’t have time for being in love. only the groom and bride can.”

you comply and jump out of wonwoo's arms. he quickly places the last bouquet and secures it with the silk fabric. “so we’re going to talk about this later?” he asks, coming towards you again.

“definitely,” you grin, pecking him on the cheek before running off to follow an angry seungkwan up the aisle.

svt masterlist .ᐟ

[whumpsday]

Recovery Time

@medwhumpmay Day 29

Medwhump May Masterlist

content: implied torture, pet whump, intimate whumper, timeskip, recovery, comfort

yes i'm still finishing up medwhump may in late june. shhh

-

“Alright, alright, done for now,” Whumper announced.

Whumpee collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. He crawled into Whumper’s lap, trembling all over, and Whumper’s hands were gentle now, unlike just a moment ago.

“There, there,” she cooed.

He couldn’t find the will to fight it anymore, not like he had in the beginning. The ‘aftercare’ was the only comfort left in his life with Whumper. He needed it like he needed air. For just this short time, he had a guarantee he wouldn’t be hurt. For a small window, he had affection, gauze tenderly wound over his wounds. He could just breathe, even if every ragged breath shuddered through a bruised-up body.

“Tired?” Whumper asked, nonchalant. She pet him like a dog as he laid his head in her lap.

“Yes,” Whumpee murmured.

A small laugh. “You’re so cute like this.”

Whumpee whined, tensing up at the comment. It was never a good sign when Whumper said things like that. There were a lot worse states she found him even cuter in.

“Shh, shh.” Whumper patted him on the shoulder. “It’s over, remember? Over for now. Just rest. No need to get yourself all worked up.”

He didn’t know what came over him. Truly, he didn’t. But “Thank you” were the words he found tumbling out of his mouth. They were gone before he could really think about it, and he didn’t have half the energy to try and correct it.

“Oh, so sweet!” Whumper gushed. “You’re really finding your place here after all.”

-

“Whumpee?” Caretaker poked their head through the door, a plate of pizza in hand and a can of soda tucked under their arm. “Just… checking in. You doing okay? You haven’t come out in a really long time. I brought you some dinner? Plus there’s garlic knots if you want.”

Whumpee hesitantly crawled out from under the bed–mostly out, at least. One foot still under, ready to slip back at any moment, every muscle tensed. “Thank you,” he whispered. People liked it when he said thank you. That was normal, even, both with Whumper and out in the world. Couldn’t go wrong.

But Caretaker didn’t look like they liked it. The concern on their face barely wavered. “You’re, uh, welcome,” they said anyway, setting the dinner on the nightstand. “Is there anything else I can do for you? Seriously, dude. Say the word. I know it’s not easy with all that happened to you, but I really, really want you to feel safe here.”

He couldn’t stop himself. Whumpee burst into tears, right there on the floor.

“Hey, hey, hey, man,” Caretaker knelt down beside him. They reached out a hand to pat him on the back, then seemingly decided against it, letting it fall. “It’s okay. Let it all out. I’m here if you wanna talk.”

Whumpee sniffled. “You said I could ask if there’s anything you can do?” He cringed. “It’s really embarrassing.”

“Pssh, nothing’s embarrassing. Try me,” Caretaker encouraged. “No judgment. You know me. I’m your best friend.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say it. It was too much, too other, and the words caught in his throat. Caretaker wouldn’t understand.

Instead, he just crawled into their lap, resting his head there as he cried.

Caretaker took the cue. They knew him well, even like this. Their arms wrapped around to hold him, like they knew without even being told.

“Can you tell me about how it’s over and stuff?” Whumpee mumbled, his face splotchy with tears.

“Yeah, of course. I’ve got you.” Caretaker’s voice was soft. “It’s over, Whumpee. It’s really, really over. You’re safe, and you’re gonna be safe forever. You’re home.”

And for the first time since he last saw her, Whumpee relaxed.

-

Oneshots taglist:

@icyheart-and-friends

@kira-the-whump-enthusiast

@whuarri

@reborrowing

@paperprinxe

@what-if-i-just-did

Everything taglist:

@lilac-and-lemon-whumps

@t0rture-me

@whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump

@whumpshaped

@pigeonwhumps

@the-scrapegoat

@whumpycries

@lonesome--hunter

@whumpy-wyrms

@all-hail-pigeons

@wolfeyedwitch

@starfields08000

@jumpywhumpywriter

@scoundrelwithboba

[unexaltedonewhoisnotking]

Seeing as we have a bit over a month until the fight begins this year I think it’s time to release this from the drafts so I don’t have to copy paste the full thing lol…

So you want to know how ArtFight works

Well, here you go. This is more or less a copy of a post I was using a lot last year as well, just slightly updated. It's a little long so I'm keeping most of it under the read more

What even is it:

ArtFight is basically an annual art trading event in July, focused around players' original characters (fandom-based or otherwise) - although it might be more accurate to say art gifting, as you aren't necessarily organising individual trades where you make arts for User X and User X has already agreed to make art for you.

ArtFight includes most forms of visual art (no music or writing), both digital and traditional, but of course most people like to draw so you might see me refer to drawing in the rest of this post out of habit, even though it isn't limited to that. There are two teams, and when you submit art you earn points for your team! There isn't really a prize, just bragging rights I guess.

Where and when it’s hosted:

ArtFight is hosted on its own website: https://artfight.net

You’ll have to upload your characters there in order for them to be attacked - if you don’t have a character on the site, you can’t be attacked, but you can still attack others. A few people choose to remove or hide all of their characters specifically so they only give attacks instead of getting.

Technically you can upload a ‘character’ that is just a link to something like Toyhouse where you’ve got other characters hosted, instead of putting that information specifically on ArtFight, although there are some people who are less inclined to attack characters that require them to go off-site for information.

You can upload characters and edit their profiles, and bookmark other people's characters that you might want to attack later, at any point during the year, but the event itself is only open in July (specifically, noon on July 1st MST until noon on August 1st MST) - so that month is the only time you can submit attacks.

How to join:

First of all, make an account on the site!

Second, even in July, you can’t play (ie, submit/receive attacks) until you get on a team. That means that if you decide not to participate one year, nobody can attack your OCs against your will either, since by not choosing a team you simply won’t have made yourself available as a target.

How do you get a team, then:

Well, you can’t yet.

You’ll notice that if you make an account right now your username is greyish-brown, indicating that you aren’t on a team. A lot of users currently have purple or teal names, which represent the teams from last year (Stardust and Seafoam, respectively). Don’t worry, you aren’t being held back from anything - those team colours don’t mean anything for this year! The themes for the year should be announced in June and then team picking will become available.

What if you’re late to join the fight:

No worries! On my first year I only heard about it a couple days into the fight and thought I was too late to start… and then I realised halfway through the month that I was not, in fact, too late. You can make an account and join a team right up to the last day of the fight, so don’t feel scared of a late start! You won’t be prohibited from joining and you can still probably get a lot done. There’s no minimum number of attacks required, unless it’s just a goal you set for yourself.

The only thing about joining late is you’ll have missed out on the ‘early bird’ team picking - you’ll just be randomly assigned to a team instead of getting to choose. That said you’ve got two chances each year to ‘reroll’ if you prefer the other team. Personally, so far I’ve been excited to get randomly assigned (well, except last year. I saw purple and I wanted purple lol).

What the team themes do:

…nothing  really, they’re just for fun. Each year the theme changes and like I said above, we’re still a while away from hearing what they’ll be for this year.

You aren’t required to make your OCs or profile or anything match the theme, although some people do like to just for fun. One type of OC you might see is the ‘ArtFight sona’, which is, y’know, a sona inspired by your team for that year, uploaded as a character to be attacked.

Submitting a character:

At the top of the site there’s a button that says ‘Submit’, and then gives the option of ‘Submit a Character’. That button’s available year-round, during and outside of the fight.

ArtFight’s a bit finicky about image sizes, which can be annoying when uploading characters. When you’re uploading a character initially you can only add one image, but if you then go to edit the character you can add more images, up to 6 total. There is a description space for each character you upload where you can write information about their lore, design notes, etc, so you don’t need to squish all of that into images.

Like I said up above you can technically link off site instead of writing a profile for a character on the site. You can also put multiple characters in one slot on ArtFight, if you consider them a package deal.

Personal opinions/advice for uploading characters

You don’t necessarily need a full reference sheet, but at least having a fullbody artwork makes it a lot easier for people attacking. There are some people who won’t attack without a reference sheet, and others who won’t attack unless you have some non-ref sheet artwork to show your ‘investment’ in your own character, but honestly most people are just there to have fun and won’t mind as long as they have an idea of how to represent your OC - honestly, just put what you want to and what you think is worthwhile, the people with 'rules' about this stuff all have different rules and you don't have to abide by them.

Make sure to use the tagging system! A character can have up to 10 tags which make it easier for people to find them - it's not required, but it helps a lot. Some good things to include would be like genre/aesthetic - ‘fantasy’, ‘steampunk’, ‘superhero’ ‘modern’ - and, in the case of fan OCs, the original media. Tag if they’re a human or another species, and tag if they’re anthro or feral for furry characters. And if they have some distinct feature or motif tag that too! Maybe tag a distinct theme colour if they have one. You might not be able to fit everything in that tag limit, but those are ideas.

I’ve seen someone ask how many characters is a good number to have. Honestly, the answer will vary. You can have up to 100 at a time on the site but some people use that ‘link to Toyhouse or somewhere else’ idea to functionally add more. Personally, I’d say it’s just nice to give people some options when they want to attack you, so at least two or three… past that put as many as you like. But also, if you just have one blorbo you really want art of, there's nothing wrong with only uploading that one guy - and there are even a few users who only want to attack others for nothing in return, so they don't upload any characters

You can re-order your characters in the ‘manage characters’ page. A lot of people make sure that the characters they’d prefer to get art of are at the start of their list, and of course it’s handy to group characters from the same setting together.

You can also set your character ‘permissions’, which are your rules or preferences about attacks you receive - you have global permissions that apply to all of your characters by default, and character-specific permissions that note unique rules or exceptions you’d like other users to keep in mind when creating art for you. Common things to mention in permissions might be if you’re okay with being included in “mass attacks” (I’ll get to those later), if you’re okay with artistic nudity for your characters, if you like their outfits to be changed, etc

Submitting an attack

An ‘attack’ is an art piece of another user’s character or characters - making attacks is how you earn points for your team. Again, use that ‘Submit’ button at the top of the page, and then choose ‘Submit an Attack’… Bear in mind that this option is only there during the Fight and only if you’re on a team!

Each character on the site has an ID code, which you’ll paste in when submitting an attack, to indicate what character it depicts. Then you’ll have to rate your attack in a few categories: Basically, you’ll give yourself points. When submitting an attack you’ll have to rate it in a few categories: how much of the character is visible? Did you use clean linework? Is it fully coloured and shaded? Is there a background? All of this works into the score that the site will display. The site has guidelines for attack rating with examples, but they change a little from year to year so you’d be better off looking for those than me trying to explain it here.

Friendly fire:

You usually attack the opposite team… but you can also attack people on your own team. It’s just worth fewer points - 20% of an equivalent attack on the other team, specifically.

Revenge:

When submitting an attack, if the recipient is somebody who already attacked you this year, you’ll see an option to mark the attack as revenge. It doesn’t impact the points, but it means that the two attacks will have a link to each other at the bottom of their pages.

Users can create revenge chains by repeatedly revenging each other. Some people make it a goal to create a long chain, others would rather leave it at one and done so they can focus on other people as well. There’s no obligation to take revenge, so don’t feel pressured.

Revenging is fun, but I’d recommend against saying that you will always do it. If you wind up getting burnt out or just get more attacks than you can deal with you might wind up breaking that promise.

Mass attacks:

Mass attacks are attacks that feature multiple characters - of course, more characters means more points! You can include your own characters in these, too.

Unlike revenge, mass attack isn’t an ‘official’ term and there isn’t anything to select when submitting an attack that will label it as a mass attack. You’d just keep adding more characters to the attack by the same method as normal - put in their ID and mark fullbody, halfbody or simple shaped for each one.

For a mass attack you designate one person as the main recipient; they’ll be the only person who can officially revenge it, although the others might still decide to attack you back as thanks.

If the main recipient is on the opposite team, you’ll get full points for the attack, regardless of the teams of the other characters in it. And likewise if the main recipient is on your team you’ll still only earn 20% regardless of the other characters.

There’s an upper limit of 100 characters per attack.

Finding characters to attack:

The first place to look is that ‘Browse’ button up at the top of the site. That can take you to a random character’s profile, or a random user’s profile. You can see all the most recently uploaded characters. And best of all, you can search for characters by their tags, like I mentioned.

Last year, Artfight changed the tag search slightly. It used to be that it would display a 48 randomly-selected characters from the tag, but nowadays the selection will be a group that were uploaded around a similar time to each other (what time will still be random with each time you search), which means that it might not display as many characters as it otherwise could. Keep retrying the search to see if anything new comes up!

And honestly, just trawling through the site, from the profile of someone who was included in a mass attack with you to an attack they made on someone else to a user that person was attacked by... something is bound to catch your eye

[thewadapan]

So why did Transformers One bomb?

Look, I'm just going to say it right off the bat: no, Transformers One is not the best Transformers movie of all time. I am (gritting my teeth) very happy for every single Transformers fan except me, who all seem to have liked it, and most of whom seem to have loved it. I agree that, as a production, it meets some baseline level of technical competence. It's a perfectly fine movie.

It's also the worst-performing Transformers movie Paramount has ever made.

Hopefully, now that its theatrical run has unceremoniously ended, people aren't going to try to rip me to shreds for theoretically threatening this multi-million-dollar film's box office revenue some miniscule amount by sharing a few teensy weensy complaints with my fifty followers.

Because I do just have a few little nitpicks, which I've tried my best to communicate, over the next 17,000 words of this post.

If you're not a Transformers fan, sorry, this essay is mostly written with the assumption that you've seen Transformers One. However, it might still be of some interest as a window into the current state of the franchise. I've written a basic plot summary of the movie to bring you up to speed, in that case. Because Transformers One purports to be the perfect introduction to the story, no homework needed, I've also done you the courtesy of elucidating background context as needed—think of this less as a review, and more as a history lesson, or maybe a "lore explained" YouTube video. After all, that's pretty much all that Transformers One is.

(And if farcically long posts aren't really your thing, you might prefer to listen to the special episode of Our Worlds are in Danger where my pals and I chatted about the film. Many of the hottest takes and silliest bits in this essay are shamelessly stolen from Jo and Umar.)

We've been waiting for Transformers One for a very long time. It's the first animated Transformers film to get a theatrical release since The Transformers: The Movie came out in 1986. It first entered development around a decade ago. Many fandom members I know online got to see it as far back as June. Its US premiere was in September; those of us in the UK had to wait a full extra month before seeing it, for no clear reason. This is a film which purports to show, in broad strokes, for the first time on the big screen, the origin of the Transformers: where they come from, who they are, and why they're fighting.

By the end of its runtime, Transformers One does not actually answer these questions. Don't get me wrong, it takes great pains trying to answer a lot of different, related questions—just ones which nobody was really asking in the first place: What does the word "Autobots" mean, if not "automobile robots"? What does the word "Decepticons" mean, if they're not actually deceitful? Why is he called "Optimus Prime"? Why is he called "Megatron"? If they were friends, why did they fall out? Why does Starscream sound Like That? Where does Energon come from? If "Prime" is a title, what were the other Primes like? How do Transformers transform?

Writer Eric Pearson, coming onto the project as an outsider to Transformers, describes having to go to Hasbro to ask these kinds of questions:

they had a script that outlined the story that they wanted to tell. I knew Optimus Prime and Megatron and I knew Bumblebee as well, or B. I had to ask about some of the other deeper ones, the mythology, “what exactly is the Matrix of Leadership?” Stuff like that.

See, Hasbro does in fact have the answers written down somewhere. The story as I understand it goes something like this. During the wild west of the '80s and '90s, Transformers "canon" was largely a by-the-seat-of-your-pants consensus-based affair between the freelance writers and copywriters the toy company would bring on to advertise their toys. That changed around the turn of the millennium, when late later-CEO Brian Goldner saw how Hasbro's licensed IP lines (such as Star Wars) were more financially successful and realised they could make more money by aggressively promoting their own in-house IP, which they didn't have to pay licensing fees for. (For the curious, a similar thought process at rival toy company Lego was what led to their creation of BIONICLE.)

The guy basically singlehandedly managing the Transformers brand at the time, Aaron Archer, eventually set to reconciling all the self-contradictory lore surrounding Transformers, an endeavour which dovetailed into the creation of the HasLab internal think-tank (best known for Battleship, the 2012 store-brand Michael Bay knockoff which was a failure critically and commercially but not in my heart) and ultimately the creation of the so-called "Binder of Revelation", an internal story bible which cost over $250,000 to produce and has strongly influenced nigh on every piece of Transformers media released since, but which we hadn't actually seen until it got leaked a week ago. As it turns out, the document itself (compiled mostly by marketers and toy designers) is patently useless to any writer: it's a typo-ridden internally-inconsistent wishy-washy mess that mostly describes the characters in terms of a made-up form of Transformers astrology that has otherwise never seen the light of day.

So although the Binder is the baseline story bible for most modern Transformers media, its influence isn't direct per se; it's more accurate to describe it as being an elaborate game of telephone between high-profile cartoons, comics, and other internal documents, with the Binder itself apparently just sitting in a drawer somewhere at Hasbro; Eric Pearson says that he never received a "binder", with the "script" he mentions either being the earlier draft from Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari (the guys who originally pitched the story), or some other unseen internal document. Director Josh Cooley, however, definitely seems to have been physically handed the Binder or its mass-market adaptation:

I knew that there was a lot of origin to be told, and when I first started, [Hasbro] gave me the Transformers Bible. I could not believe how big it was. I was like, "This is way more than I ever anticipated."

When trailers first dropped for Transformers One, a lot of my friends who are savvy were immediately like: "Oh, this is a weirdly faithful adaptation of the Binder of Revelation, huh."

I. The One True Origin of the Transformers

Half of the people reading this are Transformers fans, and half of you literally could not give less of a shit about Transformers, so if you're in the 'former group (so to speak), you'll just have to bear with me while I bring the rest of us up to speed.

Before the Transformers' civil war begins, Cybertron is being oppressed by the Quintessons. The Quintessons are a race of five-faced aliens (as in, not Transformers), who execute everyone they come across, first introduced in The Transformers: The Movie, presiding over a kangaroo court on a castaway world. In the followup cartoon five-parter "Five Faces of Darkness", writer Flint Dille established that, gasp, they were actually the original creators of the Transformers! But basically nobody else at the time was particularly compelled by this idea, it seems, with most fans preferring the more mythological origin story conceived by Bri'ish writer Simon Furman for the Marvel comics. I think people kind of just didn't like to think of the Transformers as being robots—mass-produced, a fabrication, programmed—as opposed to an alien race of thinking, feeling beings like us. But because the cartoon was important to many kids, a lot of early-2000s media tried to reconcile the cartoon and comic origin stories by stating that the Quintessons didn't actually create the Transformers; rather, they simply colonised the planet early in its history and pretended to be the Transformers' creators, until the truth came out and they got kicked offworld. This is how the Binder of Revelation ultimately paid lip service to the Quintessons. In Transformers One, the Quintessons are just sort of here, they're these evil aliens secretly skimming Energon from its miners, they don't speak English (or whichever language the film was dubbed into in your market region), they're just these nasty societal parasites.

Energon is Transformers fuel. In the original cartoon, it was these glowing pink cubes the Decepticons were always trying to produce using harebrained Saturday-morning-cartoon energy-stealing devices. There was a Cold War going on, America had just been through an "energy crisis", maybe you're old enough to remember any of that. Transformers are these big, complicated machines, so I guess the idea is they need this hyper-compressed superfuel to run off, and their homeworld has run out. By the time of the Binder of Revelation, the concept had been telephoned to the point where Energon is like the lifeblood of Primus or some shit.

Primus is the Transformers God—but not the kind of God you have "faith" in, rather this actual guy whose existence is objectively known in various ways. He transforms into a planet, that's kind of cool, right? Where does Primus come from? Look, it doesn't matter, he's like, the God of Creation, he was there at the start of time. He created all of the Transformers. All the other species in the galaxy, though, they evolved naturally thanks to "science". Actually wait, didn't that Quintus Prime guy go around the universe seeding all the planets with different kinds of Cybertronian life? That's why they're called Quintessons. See, now you know. Who's Quintus Prime?

Okay, so the Thirteen Original Transformers, or the Primes, are the thirteen original Transformers created by Primus. Most of them correspond to different kinds of Transformer: Nexus Prime is the god of Transformers who can combine, Onyx Prime is the god of Transformers who turn into animals, Micronus Prime is the god of Transformers who are small, and Solus Prime is the god of Transformers who are women. You might remember the Primes from Revenge of the Fallen, although there were only seven of them there for whatever reason.

Honestly, The Fallen was the only one who mattered for a long time. The whole reason there's thirteen of them is because thirteen is kind of an unlucky number, right? Twelve would've been fine. But throw in a thirteenth guy, and he betrays everyone, he's this fucked up evil guy. In the Binder of Revelation, though, the Thirteenth Prime is his own special guy shrouded in mystery, because they kind of liked the idea that Optimus Prime would secretly turn out to have been the Thirteenth Prime all along, and he just forgot or something, because that means he has the divine right of Primes. In IDW's 2010s comic-book reboot, the Thirteenth Prime was called "The Arisen"—in reference to that one line in The Transformers: The Movie, "Arise, Rodimus Prime!" (this margin is too narrow to explain who Rodimus Prime is). Towards the end of his run, writer John Barber did some actually interesting stuff with the concept, playing with the ambiguity over whether-or-not Optimus Prime was actually the chosen one.

All of Optimus Prime's immediate predecessors as Autobot leaders, Sentinel Prime, Zeta Prime, the lineage seen in "Five Faces of Darkness"... they're all false Primes. They're Primes in name only. In fact, IDW had a whole procession of these cartoonishly evil dictators thanks to a few continuity errors leading to the addition of a couple of extra narratively-redundant fuckers. Transformers One tries to simplify it slightly by just saying that Zeta Prime was one of the Primes for real—occupying that thirteenth "free space"—and it was just Sentinel Prime who was only a normal Transformer pretending to be a Prime, then Optimus Prime who's a real boy.

But if he's not a Prime from the start, Optimus Prime needs another name in the meantime. In the '80s cartoon episode "War Dawn", before he was called Optimus Prime, he was called "Orion Pax". Have you noticed that Optimus Prime is kind of an odd-one-out amongst all the straightup-English-word names like "Bumblebee" and "Ratchet" and "Jazz"? That's because his name was one of a tiny handful from very early in the franchise's development, before writer Bob Budiansky came onboard and came up with identities for the vast majority of the toys. Practically everyone Bob Budiansky named is called like, "Bolts" or some shit, long before the characters even know of Earth, which has always just been a contrivance of the setting you're not supposed to think about.

Presumably to create a parallel with Orion Pax's transformation into Optimus Prime, someone at Hasbro in the 2010s came up with a new name for the bot who would become Megatron: "D-16". In real-world terms, this was nothing more than a dorky reference to the Megatron toy's original Japanese release being number 16 in the line ("D" stands for "Destron", which is what they call Decepticons in Japan). But in-universe, the name "D-16" was drawn from the sector of the mine where he worked. I don't get the impression it was originally intended to be part of a broader pattern.

Which is why I'm baffled as to what the hell the reasoning was behind Bumblebee's pre-Earth name, "B-127". There's this bizarre situation in the Bumblebee film, where the name "B-127" first cropped up, where literally every other bot gets a normal cool name with personality like "Cliffjumper" or "Dropkick" except for Bumblebee, who is stuck with this clunky sci-fi name until he makes friends with a human teenager on Earth and she gives him the name Bumblebee. I guess I don't find it confusing that the writers would (correctly) realise it's a bit weird for Bumblebee to be called Bumblebee on an alien planet where bumblebees don't exist. What I find confusing is that they didn't extend that logic to any other character.

So despite everything else in the franchise's direction pointing away from "robot" and towards "alien", Transformers One ends up with this ridiculous situation where two of the most important guys are, for practically the whole movie, simply referred to as "Dee" and "Bee", I guess because the writers correctly realised the numbers sound fucking stupid.

And if you squint, "Elita-1" sorta fits this naming scheme. But the great irony of it is that the very same cartoon episode which coined "Orion Pax" simultaneously established that Elita-1 also used to go by a different name: "Ariel"! Like the Little Mermaid. Y'know, because an "aerial" is a type of electrical component- oh, forget it.

By the time the script made it into Eric Pearson's hands, it's obvious that he simply was not thinking about it that deeply. He describes the genesis of a scene where Bumblebee introduces his imaginary friends, "A-atron, EP 5-0-8, and Steve." A-atron was impov'd by Keegan-Michael Key as a reference to one of his own skits on Key & Peele. Steve ("He's foreign.") was literally just because Pearson thought it would be funny. It's true that Steve is an inherently funny name, and I guess if you're struggling to come up with jokes of your own, it can be handy to fall back on something which is inherently funny.

And again, our silly answers to these silly questions beget yet more questions. If he started out as "D-16", then where did the name "Megatron" come from? And if all the Primes have epic made-up fantasy names, then surely that one guy can't just be called "The Fallen", right? That's not a name, that's an epithet. Unfortunately, someone at Hasbro had the bright idea to answer both these questions at once: The Fallen's real name was "Megatronus". Later, for consistency, they threw on the title, and we get "Megatronus Prime", which sounds like what a thirteen-year-old on deviantART in 2014 would call their Steven Universe fusion of Megatron and Optimus Prime. So you see, Megatron actually named himself after Megatronus Prime, famously the most evil of the Primes. In Transformers One, this is changed slightly so Megatronus is merely the strongest of the Primes, as part of its overall effort to make Megatron not look completely insane.

Which, it must be said, is a tall order. Better stories have tried and failed. Back in 2007, Scottish writer Eric Holmes came up with Megatron Origin, a perfectly-fine comic miniseries which drew heavily from the miners' strikes that took place in the UK from 1984-1985, coinciding with the inception of the Transformers franchise. In that comic, Megatron is a lowly miner who, through a series of chance events, winds up at the head of a dangerous political revolutionary movement.

For some reason—I guess because nobody had ever tried to make Megatron anything other than a bloodthirsty cackling madman before—this take on Megatron as a guy who rose up against a corrupt system became the defining interpretation of the character, copy/pasted pretty much wholesale into the Binder of Revelation. Orion Pax also opposes the system, and bonds with Megatron over it, but they disagree on how to fix it: Pax believes in peaceful reform, Megatron just loves to kill. In Transformers One, the problem everyone has with Megatron is basically "whoa, this guy's a little TOO angry!" and there's a point towards the end of the film where Megatron suddenly starts jonesing to kill literally anyone who stands in his way, because he's irrationally angry.

The core problem here—and it's kind of the Magneto problem, the Killmonger problem, whatever better-known example you care to insert here—is that these guys all fundamentally exist just to be a big villain who loves to kill people and who ultimately gets defeated, but the kids who grew up on this stuff in the '80s are now adults who are no longer satisfied with cardboard cutout villains. People like a complex villain, they like a villain who has a point. They like to root for both sides. And in fact, it's easier to sell more toys to people who are rooting for both sides, if your villain is just another kind of hero. But you don't really need to take the same effort with the good guys: they're good by design, righteous by nature. They don't need to stand for something, they just need to stand against the guy whose whole thing is that he loves to kill people.

But again, we're starting from a place where the evil faction—who half the planet will ultimately align themselves with—are literally called "Decepticons". It's a name you'd only ever call yourself ironically, maybe reclaiming it from your enemies. In this film, there's some tortured logic that implies they're called Decepticons because they were deceived by Sentinel Prime. Like if you met a gang of guys who call themselves "The Robbers", but it turns out to be because they got robbed one time, and they actually have zero intention of stealing from anyone.

The Autobots are easier, of course. "Auto" is a prefix that just means, like, the self, or whatever. And the most agreeably American ideal of all is selfishness the power of the individual, the freedom to seize one's own destiny. Prime's original '80s motto, "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings," is bastardised in Transformers One into the slightly less rolls-out-off-the-tongue "Freedom and autonomy are the rights of all sentient beings," because (I can only assume) they forgot to work the word "autonomy" earlier into the script. If they ever greenlit Transformers Three, I suppose the motto would have ended up as something like "Freedom, autonomy, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope are the rights of all sentient beings." Even though bodily autonomy is one of the most salient motifs present in the film—all but referred to by name—I suppose the filmmakers were worried that you might think, when Prime says "freedom", that he actually means something completely different. So now you see! "Autobots" is actually the descriptive name of a political movement which believes in obviously good things. Like "Moms for Liberty".

Okay, so the cannier among you have probably spotted the mean rhetorical trick I'm pulling with this encyclopedia-entry-ass introduction. By sarcastically relitigating all the storytelling choices I dislike from the last 20 years of Transformers lore, I can build up a negative association with Transformers One without even reviewing the movie itself! On a subtextual level, I'm deliberately misattributing these bad ideas to the filmmakers, conveniently ignoring the mountains of evidence to suggest that they were just trying to make the best of whatever Hasbro handed them from on high. If anything—you might think—the filmmakers deserve even more credit, for spinning this shite into something even remotely good on the big screen.

Like, you'd be wrong, but I can see why you might think that.

II. The Spider-Verse of Transformers

Okay, I can see that I've spat in your soup. I'm sorry. There are lots of good bits in Transformers One. I can even think of one or two of them off the top of my head, without really racking my brains.

Maybe halfway through the film, there is one specific moment where the story suddenly promises to get good. You can pinpoint it down to the word, down to the frame even. Our heroes have just discovered that their planet's leader, Sentinel Prime, is a complete fraud who's been secretly exploiting them ever since they were born—and worse, castrated them by removing their transformation cogs. They are all very cross about this. Orion Pax expresses that he wants to come up with a plan to expose Sentinel Prime. Megatron is too angry to listen. Orion Pax asks, "Don't you want to stop him?" And Megatron replies, "No, I want to KILL him!" And there's like, a little tint of red creeping into the glow of his eyes.

Whoa. Chills. Up to this point in the film, Megatron has been kind of surly at times, but he's otherwise a generic kids' movie protagonist. He's often chipper. He makes quips. He has this banter with Orion Pax where he's always complaining. It's literally that one "Optimist Prime"/"Negatron" comic, committed to film. Like I'm not even being facetious, one of the film's few obligatory "emotional moments" has Elita-1 sit Orion Pax down and say, "You know what I love about you? You always see the bright side. Like you're some kind of OPTIMIST or something." And then later completely unrelatedly God gives him the mandate of heaven and says "ARISE, OPTIMUS PRIME!" Y'see, as originally conceived, "Optimus" is the word "Optimum" if it was a name, which is why people sometimes localise his name as "Best #1". But it's genuinely kind of cute to reverse-engineer the etymology as coming from "optimist", I guess. Like, it's stupid, but it's cute.

Argh, I got distracted with naming minutia again! Entirely my bad. That's the last time, I promise. Where was I? Right, we'd just found out that Megatron is kind of scary. Brian Tyree Henry's line delivery as he growls "KILL" is his crowning achievement in this film.

Where Optimus Prime's character arc in this movie sees him change from a funny, rebellious spirit to a complete personality vacuum, Megatron's character arc is kind of the opposite. When we're first introduced to him, it's weirdly hard to get a handle on who he is. He's a fanboy for Megatronus, the strongest and most morally-unremarkable of the Primes. He looks up to Sentinel Prime. He likes sports. He doesn't like breaking the rules. In fact, we get the sense that, were it not for his friendship with Orion Pax, he would be literally indistinguishable from the legion of silent crowd-filling background characters he works with. But the moment he starts to become Megatron, it's like everything starts to click. Gears catch, where once they ground and idled. There is something in this guy that was made to fight, made to kill, made to rule. It's sick.

And the underlying tension in his friendship with Optimus suddenly snaps into focus. Megatron is mad at Sentinel Prime, but Sentinel Prime isn't there, he's somewhere else, far below... and he can't help but turn that anger on the next closest thing to an authority figure he has in his life, which is his peer-pressuring bestie, Orion Pax. There is a part of Megatron that wishes he'd never learned the truth, and he blames Orion Pax for his cursed knowledge, for constantly leading them into predicaments on his stupid flights of fancy. Now that he knows, he can't go back to how he was. He can't stop thinking about it.

I'll be honest, it rules. Obviously it rules. It's complicated and toxic and darker than this movie was marketed to be. In interview, Josh Cooley describes the draft of the script he was presented with when he joined the project as having been far more jokey, light-hearted, glib—and it seems we can credit him for saying "Look, this ain't right, the minute the credits roll these guys are going to be at civil war for millions of years."

So, they started talking about it in — what did you say, 2015? I came on board in 2020, and when I came on board there was the first draft of the script. So I don't think they'd been working on it that entire time, but they'd been thinking about it, for sure. And the script that I read was a little more comical? But it was clear that that wasn't the right tone for this film specifically, because we know there's gonna be a war, civil war on Cybertron, you can't have everybody making jokes and then all of a sudden there's a war. So, um, the stakes were really important for this film. And because our characters at the beginning are a little naive, and just on the younger side, not as experienced, it allowed more freedom for them to be a little looser and have fun really getting to know these characters. But once they realize something's going on and things are getting real, it needs to get real.

Cooley also describes his "in" on the film as being the brotherly relationship between Optimus Prime and Megatron (they're not literally brothers in this film, though they have been in the past), which perhaps explains why Megatron and Optimus Prime get to be characters, instead of just like, guys who are there.

That was always the goal from the beginning and what got me on board. It was this relationship between these two characters that was very human and brotherly. I thought about my relationship with my brother and how I could bring that in. It’s not like we’re enemies, but we grew up together and then went down our different paths, but we’re still brotherly. I became a writer-director and live in a fantasy land, and he became a homicide detective who deals with reality, so we’re two very different mindsets. I have always been fascinated by the idea of two people who come from the same place but end up in different ones. From the very beginning, I was like, ‘That’s something I can relate to.’

Anyway, things I liked, what else. There's that joke at the very start, after the excruciating lore powerpoint, where Orion Pax does a fake-out like he's going to transform, the music briefly swells, and then it just cuts to him legging it down the corridor. In a similar vein, I liked the idea behind the Iacon 5000, where Orion Pax has them run in the race. I felt like the execution of the race left a bit to be desired—the only other participant who matters is Darkwing—but it's still honestly the best big action setpiece in the film. There's also that bit at the end where Megatron and Optimus Prime are both changing into their final forms simultaneously, and it's basically a Homestuck Flash (what would that be, "[S] OPTIMUS PRIME. ARISE."?), so obviously I liked that. Oh, and I really liked the environment design where the planet's landscape is constantly transforming, that's brand-new, someone had an Idea there, and it creates visual interest during the initial Energon-mining scene... even if I wished it had actually paid off in a more meaningful way than "the planet's crust opens as Prime falls to get the Matrix"—like, someone really should've gotten eaten by the planet, that's a cracking Disney death scene and they left it on the table! I also liked getting to see my blorbo, Vector Prime, on the big screen.

I think, as a Transformers fan who's had to sit through a lot of really quite sexist, racist, and plain bad films, you're well within your rights to come out of this one ready to give it a fucking Oscar. You should be ecstatic! It has none of those pesky humans clogging up the frame. It has plenty of robot action. It has jokes which- well I struggle to call many of them "funny", but they're at least trying to be funny in a different way to Michael Bay's films. The film is obviously a massive love letter to... honestly every part of Transformers except the live-action movies. It is an incredibly faithful and earnest adaptation of all the lore and iconography that has randomly accumulated the way it has over the last forty years of bullshit.

My main point of contention, then, is with the overriding sentiment I'm seeing from pretty much everyone else in the fandom: that this is not just the best Transformers movie, but that it's a great animated movie period, that it does for Transformers what Into the Spider-Verse did for Spider-Man, what The Last Wish did for Puss in Boots, and what Mutant Mayhem did for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That, in effect, this film will make you "get it". That it's better-looking, better-written, and more meaningful than a silly toy commercial has any right to be.

I think you can definitely see some loose influence from Spider-Verse in the overall look of the film—particularly in its color grading, and in the design of its main setting, the underground city of Iacon, where the upside-down skyscrapers hanging from the ceiling evoke the iconic "falling upwards" shot from Spider-Verse. Like The Last Wish, it's an animated franchise film that spent much longer than you'd think in development, only for the release of Into the Spider-Verse to have an immediate impact on its visual style... without actually affecting the basic story to the same extent. Both Transformers One and The Last Wish, in many ways, feel like stories concocted using an older formula; in particular, Transformers One bears startling similarities to a similar toy-franchise-prequel, BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui, which was released twenty years ago! By contrast, Mutant Mayhem—which had a much shorter development period—is a direct reaction to Spider-Verse in both aesthetic and narrative, and it has a much more distinctive creative direction as a result.

If you look at how all these titles have performed in cinemas, I think you can make a pretty strong case that audiences are perfectly willing to go out and see this kind of flick. A glance at Wikipedia tells me that Mutant Mayhem, The Bad Guys, and The Last Wish grossed double, triple, and quadruple their budgets respectively. In terms of the pre-existing cultural cachet they were banking on, we're talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a children's book series I'd never heard of, and fucking Puss in Boots. You cannot tell me that Transformers, as a brand, is on the same level as any of these properties. Meanwhile, Transformers One hardly broke even, while The Wild Robot—another DreamWorks film based on a children's book I've never heard of, which it ended up competing with in theatres—grosses three times its budget. My friends who've seen The Wild Robot say it made them cry.

Face it: Transformers One has not lit the world on fire. I've seen a lot of people cope with this by suggesting that it's to do with the film's staggered release, or even by claiming that the film's marketing was somehow misleading. I'll be honest, upon seeing it, it did not strike me as being at all dissimilar to the trailers. You can maybe say that the trailers undersold the depth of Orion Pax's and Megatron's relationship—which is its best aspect—but honestly, I think if they'd taken a lot of those scenes out of context and put them in early teasers, audiences would've laughed it out of theatres. Like, c'mon, it's toy robots, stop pretending it's Shakespeare. And otherwise, what you see is what you get; it's exactly what it says on the tin.

I wonder how many Transformers fans, on some level, have noticed that even when we're supposedly "eating good", and watching "peak cinema", our films just aren't as good as everyone else's. They're something you'll enjoy if you're already highly predisposed to enjoy them. But otherwise, they're not turning heads. They're not as funny, or as heartfelt, or as complex, or as exciting, or as charming, or as memorable, or as beautiful as these other films. Unlike with Spider-Verse, there's no word-of-mouth amongst normal people to say that this is a film worth seeing.

What I perceive in studios hoping to recreate the flash-in-the-pan success of Spider-Verse is a misunderstanding of what made people go crazy for that movie in the first place. Yes, it changed our conception of what an 3D-animated film could look like. Yes, the multiverse is very cool and all that. Yes, it had a huge IP attached to it. But on a more fundamental level, that movie has a fantastic story underpinning it. The script is razor-sharp. The story is beautifully complex. The vision of New York City it presents is a living, breathing place, populated by real people. It has the kind of craft to it that can only come from truly obsessive creators cultivating an absolutely miserable professional environment for a legion of passionate animators.

In interview, Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura actually spoke surprisingly candidly about his view on crunch:

I probably shouldn't answer this question, because I'm not exactly PC on my answer. I think the nature of filmmaking is, we're really lucky to work in a business that's about passion. Passion doesn't fit really well into a timeline, so inevitably you come to a crunch time. It's just true in the live action, it's true in every movie, and authors always tell me that about when they're writing their books — it's the same thing happens to them! There's something about the creative process that's not — it's unruly. So, I think if you're enjoying it, you need to recognize that. Like, you know, I don't wanna abuse anybody, and y'know — if you get into that period where people have to really work too hard, you gotta help them in that situation, then. 'Cause it's gonna come. It does on every movie. I've never seen it not come, no matter how well you plan, et cetera. 'Cause it's not a science what we're doing at all, and there's all these discoveries that happen near the end, which makes you go "oh, let's do some more, come on!". We discovered that on this movie, where we're calling ILM going "we've got a few ideas, you know, do you have enough man-hours?". [...] Like, you gotta be conscious of it — in live-action, for instance, there are some studios that are so cheap that when you're on — sort of medium location-distance and you're shooting 'til midnight, they don't pay for a hotel room. It's like, well, no-no-no, you pay for a hotel room. You protect the people.

According to everyone who worked on Transformers One, everyone who worked on Transformers One was very passionate about it. But there are parts of this film where I think you can say, pretty objectively, that it's falling short of its intended effect. So I guess maybe they weren't that passionate. I'm not saying that to be mean! It's just... isn't that better than the alternative—that this was the best they could do?

III. I did not care for The Godfather

At one point in the film, the gang's magic map leads them to a scary cave, which looks like this:

Bumblebee fills the dead air by saying, "A cave, with teeth. Nothing scary about that!" The joke here is that this is a cave that looks like a mouth. But as depicted, it's a cave that looks like a mouth that doesn't look like a cave! I get that this is an alien planet, but stalactites don't grow that way on Earth, so when you see the cave onscreen, your gut reaction isn't "oh my, what a frightening cave!". No, this is a cave that makes you say, "that's not a cave, that's some kind of alien monster".

(It's not like "cave turns out to be a monster" would in any way be a fresh twist. In BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui, there's a bit where a character swims into a scary cave, and it turns out to be the mouth of a massive sea serpent. In The Empire Strikes Back, the Millennium Falcon briefly hides in an asteroid tunnel which turns out to be a giant space worm. So I'm definitely not saying Transformers One would've been a better film if it had used this stock trope.)

Then once the heroes go inside, we're whisked off to an entirely different set of concept artwork, for this lush organic underground paradise. There's no danger there. The cave itself is reduced to a strange little footnote. Maybe it's only in the story because a concept artist drew it before they'd worked out the finer points of the narrative, and Keegan-Michael Key just ended up ad-libbing the "teeth!" line when he was told to vamp for a few seconds. Or maybe the teeth gag was fully written into the script from the start, and the environment artists just interpreted it way too literally.

Like, I'm sorry, I don't mean to start off on the wrong foot here by harping on about the cave thing—it's not a perfect example anyway—but to me it's a microcosm for my frustration towards what I perceive to be a lack of creative vision in this film. So much of the film feels like it's not there to be entertaining, or meaningful, or narratively load-bearing... it's just obligatory, something they threw in for the sake of having anything at all. It's colors and sounds. When you see the spiky shape onscreen, you think, "ooh, this film was pretty bouba earlier, but now it's more kiki!" They get the comedian to improvise a few one-liners while the characters walk from place to place. And it's like, yes, this is a film for children. Of course the heroes have an adventure map with a big red X on it. In many respects this is a glorified episode of Pocoyo, or the modern equivalent, which I guess is "Baby Shark | Animal Songs For Children".

Nowhere is this sense of "we are obliged to put this in the movie" felt more strongly than in its supporting cast. When you look closely, you notice that Bumblebee and Elita-1—placed prominently in the film's marketing and being technically present for much of its runtime—don't actually do anything of narrative significance. They don't make choices that impact the story; they're just there, and it would not take much rewriting to excise them entirely, so it's just Orion Pax and Megatron on their little adventure. In fact, I'll just come out and say it: I think Transformers One would have been a better movie if Bumblebee and Elita-1 were not in it.

It helps that, from a Doylist perspective, the motivations for their inclusion are perfectly transparent. Firstly, think of the merchandise! Secondly, in Bumblebee's case, it's fucking Bumblebee, he's the whole reason half the kids will be watching, you can't not have him in there. Whenever Bumblebee's not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking, "where's Bumblebee?" Also, I think the creative team felt that they could use Bumblebee tactically to balance some of the darkness in the story.

In the G1 cartoon, Bumblebee just has the default Autobot personality—good-natured, a little sarcastic—with the dial turned a little more towards friendliness. There's this iconic anecdote from the production that cartoon, where writer David Wise found himself in exactly the same situation Transformers writers are finding themselves in forty years later: he was told to write a story about something called "Vector Sigma", and he had no fucking clue what Vector Sigma was supposed to be. So he asked story editor Bryce Malek, who also had no fucking idea. Malek in turn asked Hasbro, and was told that Vector Sigma was "the computer that gave all the Transformers personalities". Upon hearing this, Malek said, "Well, it didn't do a very good job, did it!" Vector Sigma, in case you missed it, does actually appear in Transformers One, as the polygonal shape that transitions into the Matrix of Leadership in the opening powerpoint; I guess they're one and the same now. Some things never change: in Michael Bay's Transformers movies, there is again just a single default personality that every single Autobot shares, a braggadacious action-hero facade over genuine bloodthirst. Who can forget that iconic moment in Revenge of the Fallen where Bumblebee rips out Ravage's spine in grisly slow-mo?

Aside from the fact that he's small and yellow, Bumblebee in Transformers One bears very little resemblance to any incarnation of the character kids might be accustomed to. Instead, he occupies a stock comic-relief archetype, he's a zany guy who goes "Well, that just happened!" If anything, his one joke in the third act—wanton murder—reads like it could maybe be a reference to his many Mortal Kombat fatalities in Bay's films. Beginning in 2007's Transformers Animated, Bumblebee has sometimes possessed deployable "stingers" that flip out from his hands, as a fun action feature for toys. Clearly someone on Transformers One saw this and thought it was the funniest fucking thing that Bumblebee has "knife hands", because the character spends the third act of the movie just shouting "knife hands!" and cutting people in half like a medieval terror.

(In the UK, Bumblebee's lines were re-recorded at the last minute so he says "sword hands" instead. This is because in the UK, we generally aren't able to kill each other using guns, so it's knives that are the big armed-violence boogeyman. Everyone's always talking about how all the kids have knives. And look, I'm not someone to indulge in moral panic, but genuinely, when I look at Bumblebee chasing around people with knives, saying, "I'm gonna cut these guys, watch!", I'm like... what the fuck were they thinking when they wrote that?)

Frankly, whatever is going on with Bumblebee is just an entirely different movie to everything else that's happening. When Bee shanks his twelfth nameless lackey in a row, the movie's like, awww, you're sweet! But when Megatron tries to kill the one (1) evil dictator who's just fucking branded him, who's still lying to his face while his people continue to die to the guy's fuckin' honor guard, Optimus Prime is like, HELLO, HUMAN RESOURCES?

Bumblebee is solely here to be funny, but there's a point in the film where it needs to become a war story, and the best they can think to do with Bumblebee is to have him kill people but in like, a funny way.

As for Elita-1... look, to put it very bluntly, she is in this movie to be a woman. Transformers has had a long, long forty-year history of boys'-club exclusionism, if not outright misogyny, and each new series usually has a token female character, as a kind of fig-leaf for the fact that really, the only fucking thing Hasbro cares about is that the boys are buying the toys. Beginning in the 1986 movie, it was Arcee who got to be "the pink one" for many years of fiction—but not toys, y'see, when parents want to buy something for their beloved young lad, they don't buy "the pink one", no sir. In the 2010s, wow-cool-OC Windblade took over for a stint as leading lady, decked out in a commercially-non-threatening red color scheme. Recently, though, it's been Elita-1—Optimus Prime's girlfriend from the original '80s cartoon—who's been the go-to female character, and she's increasingly allowed to be pink.

There is a lot of love for these characters amongst creatives and fans alike, and especially in the last decade, female Transformers have been both more numerous and better-written than ever. Unfortunately Transformers One, which depicts Elita-1 as an arms-crossing career-obsessed buzzkill, whose arc sees her learn her place in deference to a less-competent man... well let's just say it struck me as a significant step back in this regard.

There's this great interview with Scarlett Johansson, voice of Elita-1, where she's trying to describe what makes her character interesting, and it's like she's drawing blood from a stone. She's like, "yeah, so Elita-1, I would say, she's on her own journey, because at the start of the film it's sort of like she's working at a big company, you know, and she wants to get a promotion, but then later on she learns that she can't, y'know, get a promotion". Look, it's not that Scarlett Johansson does a bad job—in fact, considering the material she's working with, she practically carries Elita-1 entirely on the back of her performance—it's just that I can't shake the impression that the filmmakers would rather pay Scarlett Johansson god knows how many thousands of dollars than try to think of a second actress that they know of.

As I've already complained, Transformers One has a pretty thin cast, but it effectively only has two other female characters who do anything. Airachnid is a secondary antagonist, Sentinel Prime's spymaster/enforcer, and it's clear that some concept artist really fucking popped off when designing her. She has eyes in the back of her head, and it's ten times creepier than that makes it sound. Her spiderlegs also create some visual interest during fight scenes. As a character, Airachnid has zero internality and is not interesting, but she is cool, so you'll get no complaints from me there.

The film's other other female character is Chromia, who wins the Iacon 5000 race at the last moment. She really comes out of nowhere to clinch it. It's funny, because the leaderboards show this one guy, Mirage, hovering near the top of the rankings for almost the whole sequence. And Chromia's character model really looks suspiciously like Mirage's. In fact, there's a different character who stands around in the background a couple of times who looks much more like Chromia. Funnily enough, that background character is even called Chromia in concept art! So if you connect the dots, it really seems that the "Chromia" who is the best racer on Cybertron was originally meant to be Mirage, a guy, until they switched the character's gender at the very last minute, and didn't bother changing the leaderboards to match.

There are two possible explanations for this. The first is that Mirage was the dark horse of Rise of the Beasts, and for some reason they felt like his depiction in Transformers One would've gotten in the way of their plans for the character somehow. It's plausible, I guess. The second, infinitely funnier option, is that at some point someone working on the movie realised that they only put two women in the film, scrambled to look through the feature to find a suitable character to gender-swap, only to discover to their horror that they'd forgotten to put in any characters whatsoever. Fuck it, the racer guy! He can be a girl. Diversity win, the fastest class traitor on Cybertron... is a woman!

In case you were wondering about the Transformers One toyline leaderboards, by my count, Orion Pax has ten new transforming toys currently announced or in stores, Bumblebee and Megatron have six each, Sentinel Prime has four, Alpha Trion has two, Elita-1 has two, Airachnid has one, Starscream has one, Wheeljack has one, and the Quintesson High Commander has one. In fact, one of Elita-1's toys—the collector-oriented high-quality Studio Series release—isn't scheduled for release until some undetermined point later next year, and she was entirely absent from leaked lists of upcoming releases, which to me smacks of "we realised last-minute that it would look really really bad if we didn't bother to release a good toy of the one woman in the film". Oh, and obviously, Chromia has no toys—but there is an "Iacon Race" three-pack consisting of Megatron, Orion Pax... and Mirage. Go figure.

The thing is, all of the stuff I'm grousing about here is pretty much standard fare for kids' films targeted more at boys. Hell, even The Lego Movie—which is basically the gold standard of toy commercials—gave supporting protagonist Wyldstyle a pretty similar arc to the one Elita-1 gets here, which was probably the weakest element of that film. Evidently conscious of this, Lord & Miller redeemed themselves by devoting the entirety of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part to deconstructing common narratives surrounding gender roles. I guess I just wish the young girls who presumably comprise some portion of Transformers One theatergoers could actually get anything out of Elita-1 as a character. Ah, what do I know, maybe it's still considered countercultural simply to depict a woman punching people.

Still, to give credit where it's due: Transformers One doesn't remotely touch the gender-essentialism prevalent in the Binder of Revelation, treating female Transformers no differently to their male counterparts in lore terms. Solus Prime is, it seems, just a Prime who happened to be a woman, rather than the mythological Eve after whom all women are patterned. There's a scene where our heroes are gifted the Transformation Cogs of the fallen Primes, and the Primes named thankfully bear no particular relation to the characters; in other words, Elita-1 isn't given Solus Prime's cog. As Alpha Trion puts it: "What defines a Transformer is not the cog in his chest, but the spark that resides in their core." Dude really remembered nonbinary people exist halfway through that sentence huh.

(Actually, the bigger mistake would've been with Megatron: if he was given Megatronus Prime's cog from the start, then this would've created the unfortunate implication that his descent into evil was only the result of Megatronus Prime's fucked up and evil cog, rather than a choice Megatron made of his own free will. The film instead has it the other way around: Megatron's radicalisation into a "might makes right" philosophy is what causes him to covet Megatronus Prime's transformation cog, to steal that power from Sentinel Prime, who stole the cogs of both Megatronus and Megatron in the first place. That's cool! This does create a bit of unfortunate narrative dissonance with Alpha Trion's words, alas, as it does seem like Megatronus Prime's cog really is more powerful than the others, because it gives both Sentinel Prime and Megatron a powerup.)

There's just something that I find so dreadfully mercenary about this movie's cast—honestly, everyone except Orion Pax, Megatron, and maybe Sentinel Prime. Take Darkwing, for example. Bro was clearly designed from the ground up to fill this stock character role of "bully who pushes our guys around and later gets his comeuppance". For a more interesting take on that exact same archetype, look no further than Todd Sureblade from Nimona, a bigoted knight who gets a whole damn character arc in the background, which directly complements that film's main themes.

Again, I'm not playing some kind of guessing game here, the authorial evidence is right there: Darkwing didn't even have a name until Hasbro designer Mark Maher was shown a picture of the character and asked, "If this was a Decepticon flyer, who would it be?" This is actually par for the course with ILM; most of their concept art is labelled with very basic descriptions, with the exact trademarks being picked in conjunction with Hasbro at a later point. Darkwing just stands out in Transformers One because he's the only recurring speaking character who's an OC in all but name (unless you count Bumblebee), he's the one guy who's been invented from scratch with total creative freedom, and he's boring as sin. It's like the filmmakers just couldn't conceive of a children's movie without that stock character—and they clearly had no idea what to do with him once they'd invented him, because he disappears entirely from the film at the start of the third act, when Orion Pax throws him into an arcade cabinet, which they have in the mines on Cybertron for some reason.

In a film with as painfully few named speaking characters as Transformers One, there's really no excuse for having this kind of one-dimensionality in their portrayals. Genuinely, I ask—who are Orion Pax and Megatron fighting to liberate? Jazz, one of the biggest personalities from the original G1 cartoon, who gets all of two boilerplate lines here? Cooley seems to think so:

As you’re designing them the background characters are almost like Lego pieces where you put different heads on different bodies just to fill in a crowd. But some of them would be brought forward and be painted specific colors so that it represents a character that I didn’t know was such a big deal. But there was stuff—like Jazz, for example, has a pretty big role. It was important to have a relationship with a character that we know gets to be saved.

To me, the idea that casual cinemagoers would be invested in any of the Transformers as characters is laughable. Michael Bay's characters are famous for being hateful non-entities. In terms of the films, Jazz is best remembered for dying at the end of the first one, seventeen years ago; he looks completely different here. The one breakout character in recent years—Mirage, as played by Pete Davidson in Rise of the Beasts—was, as I've already mentioned, written out so that the movie could reach its girl quota... not that he would've had any lines anyway.

And I just don't buy the idea that the complete dearth of compelling characterisation in this film is just an unfortunate side-effect of its clipped one-hour-thirty runtime—that, given even half an hour longer, the film would suddenly be crowded with rich portrayals of all your Transformers faves. Bumblebee and Elita-1, ostensibly two of the most important characters in the film, are not in this movie because the movie is interested in telling their stories. They are in this movie for the sake of being in this movie. It insists upon itself.

IV. No politics means no politics

In fact, putting aside merchandising considerations, Elita-1 and Bumblebee serve one very specific purpose in narrative terms. The trait Optimus Prime and Megatron have always had in common is that they are both leaders—and what is a leader, without anyone to lead? Without Bumblebee and Elita-1, you'd have this farcical situation where the only person Optimus Prime ever gets to boss around is Megatron, until the very end of the movie when God makes him king of all Cybertron. The High Guard, Starscream's gang of exiles, serve a similar narrative purpose for Megatron; they're a ready-made army who've just been sitting around waiting for him to show up and take charge.

Towards the end, the movie does actually take care to show both Orion Pax and Megatron rallying groups of Cybertronians: in Pax's case, he reveals the truth to his legion of interchangable miner friends, while Megatron riles up the High Guard mob. Again, there's a bit of that narrative sleight-of-hand, a bit of a thematic cop-out, where the question of "how do Optimus Prime and Megatron come to be leaders of their factions?" is answered only in the most literal possible interpretation. Yes, we technically see the exact chain of events that lead to this point—but both characters are portrayed as born leaders. We don't see them grow into the role, except physically. The moment Megatron decides he wants to rule, he's able to take charge. Likewise, Optimus Prime just gets divinely appointed by God. At a key point, Megatron loudly declares "I will never trust a so-called leader ever again", and the movie plays a fucking scare chord like this is supposed to be ominous. Like, oh no! Optimus Prime is a leader! And they're friends! Whatever will Megatron do when he finds out his friend, Optimus Prime, is a leader?

I don't think the movie has given any real thought to what a leader actually is. It seems to take a stance that power cannot be taken, i.e. through violent action, as Sentinel Prime and Megatron do. That one scene with Elita-1 suggests the most important trait for a leader to have, above and beyond any particular competency, is simply hope and optimism. What I just can't wrap my head around is the fact that the counterpoint the movie presents to Megatron, in the form of Orion Pax becoming Optimus Prime, does not support a belief in collective action or basic democracy—rather, it's a boring sword-in-the-stone divine-right-of-kings fantasy.

Except I do have a theory for why the film is like this. Let's look again at that interview with Eric Pearson, who came onboard in the "late middle" of production:

One of the first things that I did was a big pass on Sentinel Prime. I just felt like he was too obviously telegraphing his wickedness in previous versions, and I felt like, “No, he’s a carnival barker.” He’s got to be a big salesman. He’s a bullshitter, honestly is what he is.

(Honestly, if this is Sentinel after a "big pass" to make his villainy more of a twist, I shudder to think what the earlier drafts were like.)

Now, let's see how WIRED introduces their interview with Josh Cooley, titled "Transformers One Isn't as Silly as It Looks":

He liked the script, which traces how Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) went from friends to enemies. But as the world went into lockdown as Covid-19 spread, Cooley found his story changing, if only slightly. Trump was still in office when Cooley started working on the film, and he was having meetings with the producers and they’d “start these meetings off on Zoom just going, like, ‘Holy crap what is going on in this world?’” he says. Ultimately, the infighting they were seeing between Democrats and Republicans in the same family became an undercurrent in the film’s friends-to-enemies storyline, “because that’s what Transformers is.”

So it's like, oh, this is a 2016 election thing. This is just that one election that broke everyone's brains. Of course this movie about a made-up political struggle on an alien planet being developed from 2015-2020 wouldn't be like, hey, you know what might fix our society's problems, is if we had an election. Of course the main villain is a "big salesman" "bullshitter" who says things like "The truth is what I make it!". Wow, guys, your film is so-o-o politically-conscious, and very pretty.

The fantasy is more or less that Donald Trump's army of reactionaries is marching on Washington to seize power through violent means, and on the way he drops Joe Biden into the Grand Canyon, but just before Joe hits the ground a giant fucking bald eagle swoops in to catch him and squawks, "God finds you worthy! Arise, President Biden!"

In our escapist little morality play, our best friend slash allegorical dad gets made king of the planet, and we all get jobs in the government. As in, one of the funniest lines in the movie is straightup Bumblebee exulting, "This is the greatest day of my life. I get to work for the government!" When Prime met Bumblebee—an hour ago—the dude was talking to imaginary friends, and honestly the only fucking skill he's demonstrated since then is cold-blooded murder. We have this dissonance in the storytelling, where it's mostly a story about four friends going on an adventure (are they even friends? Most of them hate each other!), but it's also a founding-fathers political origin story, which means there comes a point where our hero just suddenly starts bossing his friends around in a deep voice, and they're like, "Yes, sir!" It creates this unhinged situation where the "good" faction on Cybertron is ruled by the biblical chosen one and his nepotism buddies.

Per that quote from WIRED (or are they just putting words in Cooley's mouth? I can't help but notice they don't give an exact quote!), the film is ultimately sympathetic to the bad guys (the Republicans, I guess). It deliberately suggests that there is really nothing that should divide the Autobots and the Decepticons: their political goals, it claims, are identical, and they only disagree on the means by which to achieve them. The Decepticons, who are angry and hateful, have simply been misled by a power-hungry liar with charisma—first Sentinel, then Megatron—and so the tragedy is that they are artificially pushed into conflict with their fellow men, when really they should be uniting to stand against their common enemy, the foreigner illuminati trying to steal Cybertron's wealth.

Now, I know I've just handed you a get-out-of-jail-free card. My political allegory here is chock full of holes. What, are Sentinel Prime and Megatron both Donald Trump? Get a grip. Obviously any real-world commentary in Transformers One was only intended in the loosest sense imaginable: things like, "people should be free to change into whatever they want!" I'm being unfair, I'm reading too much into it, this is a cartoon movie for children, and if I want politics, I should start reading some fucking books. Also, come to mention it, my whole argument about that cave earlier really didn't hold water, and- I know, alright? I know.

V. Place / Place, Cybertron

I'm not mad at this toy commercial because its politics don't quite align with mine. I'm not mad at it for having a boring-ass supporting cast. I'm not mad at it for reheating a bunch of half-baked lore I didn't care for from the early 2010s. I've actually spent a lot of time mad about Transformers media that I've thought was bad. There's Transformers: Armada, where the English translators are fully asleep at the wheel and render even the most basic cartoon plots incomprehensible though constant mistranslations. There's Transformers: Micromasters, where two white guys wrote a downtrodden race of tiny Cybertronians who greet each other like "Wattup, my micro!". There's the recent series of Transformers: EarthSpark, where there's an episode that I can only describe as "the Wonka Experience but it's an episode of a children's cartoon", with a plotline that mostly revolves around our child heroes straightup robbing a Onceler-looking businessman of his most valuable possession. There's Transformers: Age of Extinction, with that one scene, and also the rest of that movie. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most Transformers fiction is some combination of bad, offensive, and offensively bad.

So even though I've just spent thousands of words whinging and moaning about how I didn't like Transformers One, the truth is that I had a perfectly nice time at the cinema. I got to go see it with five of my pals who love Transformers just as much as I do, and we had a blast. It is easily in the top 50% of all Transformers fiction.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I guess I've always given a lot of thought to what Transformers looks like from the outside. Maybe it's that I'm compelled to spend so much time and money on it, that it somehow compels me to vomit up these kinds of essays, and all I want is to be able to make it make sense to anyone in my life. It would be so, so nice if I could just sit down in the cinema with a friend or family member for a couple of hours, and at the end of it, they'd be able to walk out and say, "Okay, I guess I see what you get out of it." Rise of the Beasts was kind of that movie for me, but Rise of the Beasts is also the seventh instalment in a blockbuster franchise. It kind of takes for granted everything about Transformers.

It doesn't answer, "what the fuck is a Transformer anyway?"

For many years now, fans have noticed a marked aversion to using the word "transform" as a verb, or even as a noun. Optimus Prime no longer says, "Autobots, transform and roll out!", he just says, "Roll out!". Transformers no longer transform, they "convert". In fact, Transformers are no longer Transformers at all: they are "Transformers bots", the italics here serving to distinguish a registered trademark. This is because the worms in suits at Hasbro are worried that, if they continue to use the word "transform" by its dictionary definition—that is, to change—then rival toy companies will be able to make the case that anything that transforms can legally be described as a Transformer. It will become a generic trademark, like Velcro, or Band-Aid, or Dumpster.

Yet in Transformers One, "Transformers" is not just the noun by which the characters are referred to—rather, it's used in a descriptive sense to specifically mean "Cybertronians who can transform"! Characters are constantly talking about whether they can or can't transform. Prime gets to say his catchphrase in full. It's a miracle. Not only that, characters even get to say the word "kill" instead of "defeat" or "destroy".

Transformers One has a level of unrestricted creative freedom not seen since the 1986 animated film. This is a film unconstrained by location shooting, or licensing deals, or uncooperative actors; through the magic of CGI, for every single frame of its one-hour-thirty runtime, the filmmakers can put literally whatever they want on the screen. They were given the assignment, "Make an animated prequel set on Cybertron telling the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron", handed an estimated $147 million and a blank page, and told to go nuts. Like those born with transformation cogs, Transformers One had the power to become anything it wanted to be.

The 1986 animated film took that carte blanche to do whatever the fuck it wanted, and basically singlehandedly defined the direction of the franchise ever since. On a lore level, in terms of tone, I would say that Transformers owes practically everything to The Transformers: The Movie. Cartoons, comics, films, and video games have adapted every single one of its scenes countless times over. I'm not necessarily saying that it's a good film, or even that it's a particularly original film—much of it is ripped off from Star Wars—just that it took the franchise somewhere it hadn't gone before. It was looking to the future. As in, literally, it was set in 2005, at the time two decades into the future.

What gets me down about Transformers One is that—like most major franchise media released since The Force Awakens—all it can do is think about the past. Swathes of it are devoted to painstakingly recreating or setting up the various bits of iconography which have arbitrarily come to define the franchise. Even when it appears to be taking things in a new direction, it's not long before it course-corrects back into familiar territory: Steve Buscemi invents a surprisingly fresh take on Starscream's voice, and then Megatron half-strangles him to death, saddling him with a post-produced rasp to emulate Chris Latta's iconic performance from forty years ago.

The very title of the film, Transformers One, is an allusion to the line, "Till all are one," which originates in The Transformers: The Movie. In an early script for that '80s feature, it was actually "Till all life sparks are one", referring to a literal metaphysical process in that draft whereby one Transformer's life force could be passed on to another, presumably with the belief that they would all eventually be merged into a single afterlife. In the finalized story, it's just this kind of mystical phrase vaguely evoking concepts of togetherness and unity.

Transformers One brushes up against the phrase a couple of times. Alpha Trion almost says it at one point, when passing on his dead siblings' transformation cogs: "They were one. You are one. All are one!" Whatever that means. Later, Orion Pax starts a chant amongst the miners: "Together as one!" And finally, at the very end of the movie, during his obligatory film-ending monologue, Optimus Prime again goes: "And now, we stand here together... as one." (Half of Cybertron has just been banished to the surface forever.) "[...] Here, all are truly... Autobots." (Again, half of Cybertron- Optimus, what the fuck are you talking about?) Regardless, this is inexplicably the one instance where the movie doesn't twist itself up into knots trying to nail the exact phrasing.

Actually, there is one other sideways reference like this I can think of. Early in the film, Orion Pax is chatting up Elita, and he remarks, "Feel like I have enough power in my to drill down and touch Primus himself." To which Elita replies, "You don't have the touch or the power." This is kind of a nonsensical retort unless you know that in the 1986 movie, one of the most iconic songs on the soundtrack was "The Touch" by Stan Bush, which had the chorus line: "You got the touch! You got the power!" It's a banger. Anyway, remember when I said Darkwing gets chucked through an arcade cabinet? Well, here's Cooley revealing why that arcade cabinet is in the film:

I actually wrote [that exchange between Orion Pax and Elita] because I love that song. [...] And we had this one version where D-16 and Orion were playing a video game, like a stand-up old arcade game—it was inspired to look like that, but a Cybertonian version of that. They’re playing that together like friends and the song, like the 8-bit song that’s playing is ["The Touch"]. But that scene got nixed. And so I wanted to work it in there somewhere. And I just felt like a natural place for it. But that was one where I’m like, "I just love that song and those lyrics and that’s Transformers to me so I want to get that in there."

(I've had to amend that quote to fill in the blanks where the article has redacted "spoilers" for the movie. Spoiler culture is an absolute pox, I swear. Can't have the audiences knowing about one (1) mid joke in advance—the movie barely has enough jokes to fill a "Transformers One Funny Moments" compilation as it is!)

This actually isn't the first time Hasbro has "nixed" a reference to "The Touch" in major Transformers media. In the Transformers: Cyberverse episode "The Alliance", a character references "The Touch" right before a training montage which is clearly supposed to have the track playing, except instead it's been replaced by a generic rock instrumental, presumably because they couldn't afford the license. And in Daniel Warren Johnson's Eisner-award-winning bestselling comic run, there's one panel where he clearly wanted to include the song's lyrics as a sound effect, but wasn't allowed, so the final sound effect famously reads "YOU KNOW THE SONG". But that's a random episode of a bargain-bin cartoon, and an indie-darling comic series—not a $147 million blockbuster. You really have to wonder if it came down to money, or if it was something else. God knows Transformers One would not actually be improved for having a chiptune remix of "The Touch" in it, anyway.

The most egregious misplaced bit of fanwank in the film isn't even in dialogue. In the 1986 film, there's this one iconic moment when Optimus Prime arrives at the besieged Autobot City, drives through a crowd of Decepticons in truck mode, then fires some afterburners, launching his cab up into the air, where he transforms mid-leap, drawing his blaster to shoot a couple of Decepticons before hitting the ground. It's a fantastic bit of original animation. It's the Akira slide of Transformers. And, surprise surprise, it crops up in Transformers One. In the climactic final fight, Orion Pax shows up to save Megatron, and he does the thing.

But the problem is... he's not in truck mode! The film just cuts to him standing there in the middle of some anonymous mooks, then he does a standing jump into the air, the movie momentarily goes into extreme slow-mo like he's doing a fucking quick-time event, then he shoots a couple of guys and drops to the ground. There's no momentum. It exists purely to create that simulacrum, to take the single most iconic frame from that bit of 1986 animation, and stretch that one frame into infinity. The context is discarded, irrelevant. All that matters is that brief moment of recognition: "I know what that iiis!" God knows Transformers One has precious little in the way of impactful fight animation of its own; the choreography is stiff and uninspired, while the shots themselves are nauseatingly cluttered. Often, the best it can do is pilfer from older, better stories.

"Did you clap at any of the new moments and memorable characters?" "Were there any?"

Look, I get it. Transformers One is a prequel. By definition, it can't change the future. It has to play with the characters that are already in the toybox. But I do think it had this really special opportunity: to show theatregoers where the Transformers come from. To show us Cybertron not as a distant star or a barren scrapyard, but as a living, thriving alien world, unlike Earth, something special and worth protecting in its own right. Something new and memorable. In Rise of the Beasts—probably the best Transformers movie by default—when Optimus Prime is at his lowest, he wants nothing more to return home... but home is something we've only ever seen as a cold dystopia, ruled by Decepticons. The version of Transformers One I had hoped to see was one that would have imbued Optimus' homesickness with greater meaning. I wanted to feel his loss, and to hope that one day the war will end, and Cybertron can be restored.

I think Transformers One sincerely tries to achieve this effect. The concept artists have clearly put a great deal of time and thought into Cybertron as an environment. When the artbook comes out, I'm keen to see how much stuff didn't make it into the finished film. You have to assume most of it got cut, because there's next to nothing left!

At the end of the film, battle lines are drawn, the civil war is about to start... but strangely, the movie's setting does not convey the sense that anything beautiful is being lost. Nobody is unwillingly turned to violence, innocence-lost; they're all too eager to get to killing, friggin' Bumblebee is gleeful about it. There's no beautiful, iconic landmark, which gets tragically destroyed, like in some kind of Transformers 9/11—"What have we done! Where will this war take us!". There's no part of Cybertron's natural ecological environment to be ruined by the war, because the surface world is already turbofucked by the Quintessons to begin with. No, rather, we have the total opposite: Optimus Prime finding the Matrix (which was just, like, hanging out in the core of Cybertron or whatever) actually restores Energon to the planet, removing the unnatural scarcity which was the entire impetus behind the film's dystopia. He made Cybertron great again. So again, Transformers One fails to answer one of the most fundamental questions one might expect of a Transformers prequel: "When did things on Cybertron get so bad?" The movie ends with the planet in better shape to how it started!

The big original idea that Transformers One has is that Cybertron, the planet itself, should be in a constant state of transformation. I've already talked about the beautiful shapeshifting landscapes, but it's also the moving buildings, the complicated mechanisms, the roads and rails that magically lay themselves between the vehicles and their destinations. I've already mentioned how odd I find it that none of these environmental transformations have any significance to the story; the closest it comes to some sort of payoff is when Orion Pax falls into the hole that makes you king.

What I find most perplexing are the deer. When the gang makes it to the surface, the idea is to show the natural beauty of the surface, which the cogless have been denied their whole lives. The mountains glisten as they move. Nebulae glow in the night sky. The surface is blanketed in organic (?) plantlife, like a watering can forgotten in a garden. And, most strikingly, there are deer: mechanical animals, just like those found on Earth, being hunted for sport by the evil Quintessons. When the cruisers near, their glowing horns turn red with alarm, and they prance around in fear.

I'm reminded of a brief gag from the third season of Transformers: Cyberverse—one of very few shows to have devoted any serious effort to Cybertronian worldbuilding—in the episode "Thunderhowl". Bumblebee and Chromia stumble across a "singlehorn" (read: unicorn), and when it senses danger, it neighs, transforms into a rocket, and blasts out of frame. And apart from being really cute and funny, it's like, oh, of course that's what animals are like on Cybertron! Everything on this planet transforms. Why not the animals?

For whatever reason, the deer in Transformers One are like the one thing that don't transform. Why the hell not? If Cyberverse could find the budget for its split-second sight gag, surely this blockbuster could, I don't know, have them turn into dirt bikes with antler-handlebars. That would've been something, right? If not, then at least could we maybe see some other animals on Cybertron, to really get across that alien biodiversity? Of course not. See, the deer exist to communicate one very specific story beat: a single moment of trepidation, where the heroes know there's danger nearby, but they don't know what. And all you need for that is a single kind of prey animal, with some kind of warning light to let you know, hey, there's danger! Once this purpose is fulfilled, the deer have no further significance to the story.

We need only look to BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui to see this exact same beat play out with a modicum of competence and creative flair. Also in the second act—in fact, at practically the exact same timestamp—our heroes, the Toa, have a run-in with the bad guys, and they're nearly captured... but then there's this sudden rumble of danger approaching, we don't know what. It turns out to be a herd of giant Kikanalo! They send the bad guys packing, except they nearly trample our heroes too! But then, Toa Nokama's mask begins to glow, and she discovers that her mask grants her the ability to talk to animals. They learn some vital information from the Kikanalo, and are able to ride the creatures for the next stage of their adventure. Finally, when they can go no further, the Kikanalo cave in the passage behind the heroes to ensure they won't be pursued. Holy shit, that's like, five different story beats with just that one type of creature!

It's not just that Transformers One struggles with that kind of basic narrative flow, where a single element serves multiple purposes. It's that often, it wastes precious time creating redundant setups to achieve the same effect twice.

For example, Megatronus Prime's face happens to look exactly like (what we know will be) the Decepticon insignia. At the beginning of the movie, Orion Pax mollifies Megatron by giving him a rare decal of Megatronus Prime's face. Traditionally, Megatron wears his insignia in the middle of his chest—but in this film, nearly every character has a big hole in the middle of their chest, where their missing transformation cog should go. So Megatron sticks the decal on his shoulder instead.

Later, he gets a cog, and the hole in his chest is filled. When Sentinel Prime captures Megatron, he notices the Megatronus sticker, and rips it off. Then, he re-applies it on Megatron's chest—purely so it's in the "right" place for the iconography. And then, he uses his gun to crudely brand Megatron with a tracing of Megatronus' face, inadvertently creating the Decepticon symbol. Finally, in a post-credits scene, Megatron has fashioned a proper Decepticon brand with which to brand himself and his followers. So in effect, there are four separate moments where Megatron gets the symbol! Orion sticking it on his shoulder, Sentinel moving it to his chest, Sentinel mutilating him, and finally Megatron branding himself. You can make an argument that the symbol starts out meaning one thing, but ends up meaning another thing, which has a kind of tragic significance—but I think you would struggle to distinguish subtle shades of meaning from all four of these brandings. Considering the movie only has an hour and a half to work with, I find this lack of narrative economy to be honestly embarrassing.

(My friend Jo also points out what a misstep it is to just have Megatronus Prime's face perfectly resemble the Decepticon symbol from the start. Had it been a looser, more stylised—that is to say, original—design, the moment where Sentinel Prime roughly carves it into Megatron's chest could be a shocking reveal, as the basic outlines are abstracted and simplified. Gasp, that's the origin of the Decepticon symbol! Instead, from the very moment that sticker first shows up, it's like... oh, well, there it is I guess.)

In a similar vein, both Optimus Prime and Megatron undergo two different transformations at different points in the movie: first, when Alpha Trion gives them transformation cogs, and second, when respectively they obtain the Matrix of Leadership/Megatronus' cog. The gun that sprouts from Megatron's arm in his intermediary form bears a much closer to resemblance to his iconic "fusion cannon" than the triple-barrelled cannon he ends up with in his final form. Again, in such a short film, can we really say whatever subtlety this brings to Megatron's arc is worth all this fanfare? Now, Redditors ask: "What is the EXACT moment D-16 became Megatron?"

In fact, probably the only point of criticism I've seen levied at Transformer One from within the Transformers fandom at large is that Megatron's arc is maybe a little "rushed". He starts out being best bros forever with Orion Pax, and by the end of the film, he's ready to drop the guy into a bottomless pit. The film takes a lot of time to justify his anger at Sentinel Prime, but the deterioration of his friendship with Orion goes much more unspoken, and is framed more as a point of irrationality: psychologically, Megatron comes to conflate his bossy friend with his oppressive ruler. I liked this, personally. I liked that it's as if a switch gets flipped in Megatron's head. But you do just kind of have to buy into it. The film itself does not put in the work to really sell you on the friendship souring, because again, it's too busy fucking around with two (2) magical girl transformation sequences for each of them.

Everything in the film is like this. They go into the cave and meet Alpha Trion, then leave the cave so they can watch a FMV cutscene with Sentinel Prime and the Quintessons, who've coincidentally arrived at that exact moment, basically just to rehash what they've just been told... and then they go back into the cave so Alpha Trion can resume his infodump, and then they end up clashing with Sentinel Prime's forces once that's done. At the beginning of the movie, they're at the very bottom in the mines, then they get banished to an even lower level, then they banish themselves all the way up to the surface, then they return to Iacon, and then Megatron gets banished to the surface again so he can be mesmerized by the beauty of the world and/or get gunched by Quintessons depending on what the film wanted me to take away from this. Compare to Minecraft but I survive in PARKOUR CIVILIZATION [FULL MOVIE], where the theme of class struggle is pretty efficiently depicted in the vertically-stratified setting.

I just find it so wasteful. Outside of the one scene where they're introduced, the Quintessons—ostensibly the true architects of Cybertron's oppressive status quo—may as well not exist. If not for Orion Pax addressing his closing remarks to the Quintessons, almost as an afterthought, I'd assume the film wants us to forget about them entirely, as it knows full well that its paltry runtime does not give it time for a second action-climax against the aliens. Even as sequel bait, it feels halfhearted at best; Josh Cooley is clearly already bored of Transformers, and seems unlikely to come back for another round unless the money is really really good (which *glances at the box office* it's not). So what the fuck are the Quintessons here for? Was the idea that Sentinel might just have pulled off his coup singlehandedly really so hard to stomach? Could the conspiracy not have been simplified to just involve Sentinel and his Transformer cronies? Hang on, are all the Transformers seen at the start of the film in on it, or just some of them? How's it decided who keeps their cogs and who doesn't?

VI. Into nothing

Why does this movie, where the main selling point is ostensibly that we're getting to see Transformers civilization for the first time, mostly focus on all these guys who can't fucking transform? Surely the entire thing that makes the setting fun is the Zootopia angle of, look, they're all different animals! Or the Elemental angle of, look, they're all different elements! Or the Emoji Movie angle of, look, they're all different emoji! Or the Cars angle of, look, they're all different cars! This is a Transformers film which features several significant sequences involving these cool trains, and there is absolutely zero indication that these trains are themselves Transformers. This is a Transformers film which extensively focuses on miners, and none of them transform into mining vehicles; they're holding, friggin', space jackhammers. Even the premise of "isn't it sad that these ones can't transform" is kind of undercut by the fact that all the miners get to wear fucking jetpacks, which is a frankly much cooler and more effective method of locomotion than driving.

I'm just sick of Transformers stories having zero interest in the basic premise of Transformers, which is to say, they transform into something. I also think this is the biggest dissonance between casual audiences, who think "oh yeah, Optimus Prime, that guy who turns into a truck", and Transformers fans, who think, "oh yeah, Optimus Prime, the messiah or something". Normal people love to know what the Transformers turn into. They ask, "Wait, is there a Transformer that turns into [insert silly vehicle here]?" Of course people are interested in that angle! Vehicles are such a huge part of our daily lives—honestly, for those of us living in cities, more so than animals, the classical elements, or emoji—but the closest Transformers One comes to engaging with this lens is that aforementioned Iacon 5000 race sequence. By and large, it presents a world which is made for standing up and walking around. And personally I do think that's an insane approach to take?

Is the excuse that cars can't emote? Nonsense. If you've ever seen a traffic jam, you'll know that cars can sure as hell emote. Pixar, where Josh Cooley cut his teeth, famously spent a lot of time working out how to put a facial expression on a car. No, the problem dates back to the very start of the franchise.

In the 1980s, two main people were responsible for writing the comic stories: American writer Bob Budiansky, and British writer Simon Furman. Budiansky approached the premise of the franchise from an external, human perspective, writing about culture clash, and taking delight in the Transformers' mechanical alien nature as "robots in disguise". Meanwhile, Furman wrote the Transformers as giant people: he focused on their own internal conflicts and motivations, and the grand history of their war. Pretty much every Transformers story ever told can be boiled down to one of these schools of thought: Budianskian, or Furmanist.

Budiansky quit the comic after fifty issues, allowing Furman to take the reigns as sole writer, and Furman basically got the final word on what the Transformers are. They did not evolve from naturally-occurring gears, levers and pulleys. They were not designed by a supercomputer, or built by an alien race. They are the chosen sons of God. The Thirteen are, of course, an invention of Furman's. And Transformers One is perhaps the most Furmanist story ever told. It's the culmination of years and years of lore building up, ossifying into something you can no longer describe as the history of a universe—no, this is a mythology. It's the most perfect form of brand alignment imaginable: this is not an origin story, this is the origin story. It's been the origin story for a better part of the decade—and now that everyone's seen it in theatres, it will be the origin story forever.

It's not just the fiction, either, by the way. These days, if you go into the store to buy a Transformers toy, chances are it'll turn into some misshapen made-up futuristic concept car with unpainted windows and wheels that don't even roll—and that's terrible.

There's truly a lot to hate about Michael Bay's Transformers films, but with each new entry that's released following his departure from the franchise, I feel like I only find myself appreciating them more. In the 2007 Transformers movie, we see the Transformers crash-landing on Earth in their "protoforms", and their movements are animated like they're shy, like they're naked until they scan an Earth vehicle and adopt a disguise. The visual impact of Megatron, meanwhile, is that he doesn't adopt a disguise in that movie: he's a horrible metal skeleton that turns into a jet made of knives. It's weird and alien and it rules.

In the 1980s Transformers cartoon, and in the last-minute Cybertron-set prologue added to Bumblebee, and now in Transformers One, the Transformers look basically the same on Cybertron as they eventually do upon their arrival to Earth. Optimus Prime turns, unmistakably, into a truck. He has windows on his chest, and smokestacks on his arms. He doesn't have these features because he disguises himself as an Earth truck. He has those details because that's just what Optimus Prime looks like. They're his "essential brand elements", or "trademark details", which "identify the must-have elements in character design to be carried across all creative expressions". Prime may take any form he wishes, so long as it looks exactly like himself. A mask of my own face—I'd wear that.

What I find fucked up about the reception towards Transformers One is that a lot of people seemed very invested in its success—and not its popular success, certainly not its artistic success, but rather its commercial success. They wanted this to be the first film to make one bumblebillion dollars. They wanted Hasbro to line its fucking pockets and make movies like this forever. So if you express any kind of negativity towards this film online, which might theoretically affect some other person's decision of whether or not to go and see it, which might theoretically affect the profit it makes at the cinema, which might theoretically affect the future of the franchise in some unknown way, then you're some sort of fandom traitor who oughta be executed.

If you're so worried about the future of the franchise, the fandom really isn't where you should be looking. Like, c'mon, the Transformers fandom has been good as gold, we buy so many toys. Meanwhile, Hasbro just got finished laying off around 100 employees with no warning to make their books look a bit better. Transformers designer John Warden—who'd worked at Hasbro for 25 years, is widely credited with inventing the modern paradigm of Transformers toylines, and ultimately became the creative director of both Transformers and G.I. Joe—was on assignment to a convention in the UK with the rest of the Transformers team when he heard the news. Suffice to say, he did not end up making a public appearance at the convention. With his work's health insurance snatched away without notice, he's had to resort to crowdfunding to pay his family's medical bills. As a well-known figure in the toy industry, he will presumably find a new job and land on his feet, but the same cannot be said for all 99 of the remaining employees we're told have been unceremoniously dumped.

The Binder of Revelation, which has been something of a holy grail of behind-the-scenes material for over a decade, has finally been leaked—presumably by one of these guys, presumably out of spite.

Now, I'm not going to pretend to have been paying particularly close attention to Hasbro's financials, but from where I'm sitting, it sure seems that ever since the sudden death of then-CEO Brian Goldner in 2021—credited for saving the company in 2000, and overseeing the explosive growth of its intellectual property ever since then—his replacement, Chris P. Cocks (or "Crispy Cocks", as we're all now calling him), has been dead set on gutting the company for all it's worth. The Power Rangers franchise, which the company acquired for $522 million in 2018, is dead in the water, with huge quantities of physical assets being flogged at auction for quick cash. In 2019, they acquired the entertainment company eOne for $4.0 billion, and now they're selling off the whole shebang (except the cash-printing Peppa Pig franchise) for just $500 million. I guess maybe they just fucked it big style?

Because now, Crispy Cocks has proudly announced that Hasbro is going to stop financing movies altogether.

I'm sure that in the wake of this announcement, many of those aforementioned fandom pundits will be drawing a correlation between this announcement, and the box-office figures for Transformers One, and the fact that you personally failed to convince your Mom to go see it with you or whatever. "Ah, you see! They didn't make enough of their money back, and now they're consolidating. Simple economic cause and effect. Market forces." And look, I'm not going to sit here and claim these things are wholly unrelated. Of course they're very related. But I am going to make the case that, in truth, nobody at Hasbro really cared how Transformers One did. Unless it turned out to be some pie-in-the-sky runaway hit, I don't think the future of the Transformers film franchise would've been particularly different if only the film had done better.

With Paramount, Hasbro has been making these movies and having them underperform ever since 2017's The Last Knight—which apparently lost Paramount $100 million—and that's because at the end of the day, what they're most interested in isn't making movies. It's making toy commercials. And on that level, the Transformers films have clearly been a success so far.

Now, Crispy Cocks' skinsuit fashions itself as a gamer, so he can personify Hasbro's hardcore pivot towards digital and tabletop gaming. While we await the release of the assuredly-dogshit, assuredly-hell-to-have-worked-on, assuredly-never-coming-out Transformers: Reactivate, the brand has been whored out to a procession of mobile games you've never heard of, glorified gambling machines designed to hack the monkey part of your brain with bright colors and Things You Recognize. The exact content of these games is irrelevant; all that matters is the announcement, on every single pop culture news outlet simultaneously (naturally—they're all owned by the same company, talk about Monopoly), of New Collaboration Between Transformers And Goon Warriors Free To Download Now. Your daily, weekly, bi-annual reminder to think about that thing you can buy.

That's all any of this stuff is.

All these words spilled about what a good movie Transformers One is, and how bad it is, and why the marketing failed it, and what the next one might be like, and- none of it mattered! It does not matter. From the beginning, this movie was always going to be too preoccupied with its own mercenary interests to be something anyone would ever be able to seriously talk about as a work of art, even corporate art. The actual content of the movie is irrelevant; I've spent very little of this review talking about it, because there's nothing there to talk about. It is the mere fact of the movie's existence that serves its purpose. Like the Optimus Prime Fortnite skin, it's enough for it to occupy our attention.

Maybe that's why they staggered the film's release date: because some marketing exec watched the rough cut and realised, if everyone saw it at once, we'd be done talking about it within a fortnight. And in ten years' time, after it has been paraded around whichever streaming services survive 'til then, and nearly every last cent of revenue has been squeezed out of it, the kids will be able to watch it on YouTube with ad breaks, and decide what they want for Christmas.

To the Transformers fans reading this, I am begging you, unless you happen to own shares in Hasbro for some fucking reason, to disabuse yourself of the feeling that you owe any kind of loyalty to a toy franchise. It shouldn't matter to you one jot how Transformers One did in theatres. The people who actually make the product you care about, the friendly faces paraded before you on livestreams and press tours, don't see this money anyway—they too are merely assets, who can be fired and replaced with cheaper, inferior equivalents.

I'm sure many of you will have, from the very start, seen this review for the foolish endeavour it is. I've wasted all this time criticising Transformers One for its lack of artistic vision, when the truth is, Transformers One is playing an entirely different game. Like the Disney Channel running "Fishy Facts!" segments to subliminally get kids interested in fish a full year and a half before the release of Finding Nemo, this is not a product—it's an ad for a product.

...

Okay I'll be honest, I don't entirely love where this review has ended up. It ends on kind of a "bummer note", I guess you could say. Flashing back to sections I. and II., I feel like things started out so fun. We had that whole bit at the start where I was telling you about the Transformers, remember that? We learned so much together. And there were even a few moments where I was able to express some kind of sincere joy and appreciation over this thing that I supposedly adore so much. Sure, I did a lot of complaining, but it was fun complaining, right? It had like, a sarcastic edge to it, sort of.

What happened? Why am I suddenly talking like I want to cut someone's head off? As I grow more bitter, I type this essay with increasing difficulty. The massive gun that's sprouted from my forearm keeps colliding with my monitor.

Hasbro descends from on high to reward @TFHypeGuy, a grown-ass adult who has spent untold unpaid hours fearlessly replying to every single viral tweet to tell people to go see the film, somehow netting himself 80,000 followers in the process, with a crate of toys, which was probably his end goal from the start. He and I duel. We trade blow after blow. Finally, he clobbers me with a Walmart-exclusive light-up Ultimate Energon Optimus Prime figure. "It didn't have to end this way," he says. Then he banishes me to the surface world to think on my sins.

VII. The Wrong Trousers 👖 | Train Chase Scene 🚂 | Wallace & Gromit

When Eric Pearson came onto the project,

It was late middle of the game. They had a script that had the outline of the story, which is still very much the structural bones of the story now. But what I found interesting about animation is there are certain things that were far along in the process. The train escape to the surface was very far along, so that was just kind of locked. Maybe you could change a line here or there. Meanwhile, the opening, the whole first 10 minutes, was all storyboards and sketches, which changed a bunch of times.

And I do think that's a really difficult position for a scriptwriter to be in. Sure, the parts of the screenplay I feel able to attribute to Pearson, I wasn't particularly impressed by. But I think this anecdote goes to show how unnatural the constraints can be on a story like this. When you think of like, a scene that's key to Transformers One, you're probably imagining something like the Megatron/Optimus fight, or the scene in the mine—not the train scene, which is basically a bit of arbitrary connective tissue bridging the two main locations in the film.

Josh Cooley, the film's director, the face of the film on the press circuit from a creative standpoint, came onboard after five years of previous development work was already done. Writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, who originally pitched the film and presumably wrote the early drafts of the story, might have already left the project by that point. Aaron Archer and Rik Alvarez, the creative forces behind the Binder of Revelation, left Hasbro years before the film was even pitched. It's no wonder to me that the final result feels incoherent, disjointed, and oddly stilted. It's certainly no wonder that nobody at Hasbro today really seems to care about the film; it's not their baby. If any of the people credited with bringing the project to completion had been given full creative freedom to make whatever Transformers movie they wanted, it would've looked completely different.

Luckily, there are still plenty of areas of the franchise where creators have just been allowed to go ham. Over in Japan, TRIGGER has taken a modest budget for a music-video and produced one of the most visually-striking bits of animation in the franchise, a true love-letter to all the weird parts of its forty-year history. And in America, comic creator Daniel Warren Johnson is halfway through his Eisner-winning new run on the title, which is the kind of thing I would basically recommend to anyone without caveats as being a phenomenal story, period. If that comic can be said to be an advert for anything, it's for Skybound's other, nowhere-near-as-good comic series, or for the unofficial unlicensed copyright-infringing Magic Square Optimus Prime toy Daniel Warren Johnson apparently used as reference the whole time.

I dunno, maybe Hasbro stepping back from financing these films is a good thing, in the long run. Maybe we can do without Transformers movies for a while. And however many years down the line, maybe Paramount or some other studio will put together a new team of talent, and they'll get to do whatever it is they want. And maybe the movie they make will be the one that knocks everyone's socks off.

Truly, I don't know where the road leads from here. It hasn't been built yet. It could turn out to go anywhere.

If you made it this far, I hope some of what I've said has been entertaining or interesting. Thanks for reading!

Time to for me to come clean. There is one other reason why I've waited so long to release this review... and that's because I have a special announcement to make. Last month I set myself a little challenge: to write something that's at least as long as this review, but which isn't another negative-nancy tirade. It's a story.

The working title is "Ice Road Transformers". It's like an episode of that one reality TV show about Canadians driving trucks across frozen lakes—except the truck is Optimus Prime.

Early reviews say it's good! It'll be going through several rounds of revisions, to turn it into a well-oiled machine, hopefully in time for a seasonally-appropriate wide release in February. I'm very excited for you to be able to read it. You can follow me here or on Bluesky to be the first to find out when it's ready!

I'd like to thank my friends Jo and Umar for their work interviewing Cooley and di Bonaventura during the film's press circuit, along with Viv, Callum, and Omar for allowing me to enjoy this film much more than I otherwise might have. I wouldn't have been able to express many of my feelings about this movie nearly so cogently if not for the conversations I had with them. Additional thanks go to Chris McFeely, as his Transformers: The Basics videos (linked throughout this essay) refreshed my memory on a lot of the Aligned stuff, sparing me from having to read The Covenant of Primus again.

[biancasaidstfu]

You know what's nice Bianca with everything going on these days? I don't bother anymore. Like I just had this big grand revelation that you know, Nicola and Luke had plenty of times and chances to end this charade for so long, to clear the air and make it publicly known that they are only friends and its impossible for them to more than friends but all we got from them are this mixed signals god knows if we are deciphering them right.

The whole major point here is that, if only Nicola and Luke are JUST besties, and if its still the case to this day (still is, I'm talking about if they cross the border and made it into horizon called lovers) we would already have clear clarification from them. S3 ended last year, the 90 days ended also last year, s3 is a biiiiig success so there's no point in them to continue the silence about the speculation of nature of their relationship.

All we got from them is this big major signs, a lot of implied actions and comments that will made you say, aha they are in romantic relationship. And the ultimate silence from Luke and Antonja after Sorrento then they resurface this January.

Then Jake and Nicola too. They only popped out last August.

And then up to this day, we are being shoved off the Jake and Antonia narrative as if that route is much easier doing than giving us a clear statement. Yet nope, they still doing this. And not a single word from both Nicola and Luke even if they are spotted multiple times with adjacents. Not even a direct confirmation that oh well yes we with other people so you guys got it all wrong.

From last year we all get this feeling of them being in a relationship, both of them did nothing to stop it and they only fuelled the speculation of them dating. Most of their moments together is REALLY UNHINGED and then I keep on coming back to Nicola's TIME interview. Its all about her, her career, her life, she's talking about her major accomplishments, in short its all about her. But you know what she did? She only mentioned TWO important men in her life, her late father and LUKE. That alone says so much about Luke's importance on Nicola's life. I wasn't expecting her to even mention Luke in that important highlight of her career, or maybe I was but only a brief mentioned since he was her costar in bridgerton and obviously BTON is going to be mentioned but the most insane thing Nicola did here is she said this, "A lot of people wants me to marry Luke." See? We don't even need to create things to fuel their romance rumours, they are doing it themselves 😭

Like Nicola, absolutely dropped that marriage with Luke comment and I'm not complaining 🤣

I think my point here is that, if they are just only friends, then we wouldn't got this confusing narratives and things about adjacents being shoved at us after months of silence since June 13. Its giving planned and strategic to me. And the fact that even during WT, they cannot even bring themselves to answer the question of them only being friends and nothing more.

It made me realize that something happened in the middle of this, and if we are seeing how messy it is outside, then imagine it behind the scenes.

Their continuous interactions with adjacents is giving more PR and performative. Rather than convincing the public that they are really only friends, I think they only are giving us more and more insight going on behind the scenes. If that is how they looked like public (Luke and Antonia) then I pray for both of their sanity and resilience to continue appearing forced interaction in public. Us fans don't have to clock it, because GA is doing it for us. Their last pap photos got GA it calling PR.

And with Nicola and Jake, its true that we are getting that Jake narrative because of her sightings with JD. But you know the deal here? All of those never came from her. Like mostly came from her friends, the pictures, and from nosy fans. Honest to god, these two almost made me convince me that they are couple, but their consistent public appearances is made me realize that, a deal is made between the two. Publicity. And its working with JD. His repeated sightings with Nicola is giving him the exposure he needs for his career boosts.

Because if they are in a relationship, then Nicola is doing the bare minimum to acknowledge that JD is her bf. And yet, those bare minimum is screaming we are only friends and supporting only bestie here vibes. So I don't have to think any further about the happenings to be honest.

Not to mention, JD's friend group calling him twink. My god, google exists and its so easy to search for its definition. Its real offensive to call someone like that if they are a straight male. 🤷‍♂️

So if they only are friends here, Nicola and Luke then we shouldn't have gotten to this point where they felt the need to keep pushing Antonia and Jake into us. Because it looks to me like they are convincing themselves (Nic and Luke) that we are nothing but just friends. So rest assured that there is FEELINGS between those two. And things wouldn't get this serious if nothing is going in behind the scenes, like Antonia just popped out again after silence, then Jake narrative too. I can only think of legal obligation at this point because there's no way an adult like Luke is going to appear consistently with Antonia like he would rather disappear from Earth than to be with her. He looks so detach when he was with her. If law is involved, I can imagine Luke going through with this.

Same with Nic, all she did is honestly giving a friend a help, exposure vibes. Its honestly working. And I imagine too there is an legal agreement behind this.

So if I am right about this then we would consistently see confusion around nicluke lore if law is now involved with them. Give it until June 13, and atleast beyond that we might get a little sneak peek of what's happening.

Because there's no way they let all these things to be messy and not say a single word about it. They are all silent for a reason. The question we all should be asking instead of wondering about Nic and Jake's nature of relationship, same with Luke and Antonia when its getting clearer as day about them, is why are they all silent?

If nothing really is going with Nicola and Luke, then there's no need to remain this lipped tight.

Sorry Bianca, I mean I just wanna share my epiphany and I never realize this rant of mine is this long 😭

No notes.

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - In Which None of You Should be Surprised by a MAJOR Upset in the Standings

Sorry this is so late. I had a pretty epic series of delays landing me at NRT for like 18 hours or something ridiculous. To be fair there are much worse airports to be stranded at.

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

June 2024 Week 4

Ongoing Series - Thai

The Rebound (Weds Gaga) ep 1 of 12 - Fuck all ya'all if you thought I had taste. MeenPing are topping this damn list because... have you any idea how LONG I have been waiting for a real sports centered BL starring at least one boy who actually played the flipping sport? My whole damn life. You ready for me to go into euphoric splooges all over your screens? I don't think you are. SUFFER! And now some splooging:

It’s off to a great start. Thank you, Rebound, for being exactly what I wanted. By which I mean Meen has his shirt off literally in the first two minutes of the show. Also it’s a bit of a childhood sweethearts reunion romance. There’s nothing wrong with this beginning. Fantastic. For a change, I even enjoy the intro music. Golf is directing MeenPing this time, so maybe something magical will happen. Frank is aging so pretty!!! How nice for all of us. Even the bb play is good. It’s a proper sports BL. I’m so damn happy right now. 

Wandee Goodday (Sat YT) ep 9 of 12 - I’m so tired of Ter, but everything else was lovely. Also they are SUCH boyfriends. 

Sunset X Vibes (Sat iQIYI) ep 3 of 12 - They are so cute in these roles. I don’t know why, I just like their vibe better here than in the previous show. (And I really enjoyed Big Dragon at the start.) This show is a lot more classic romance and kind of pat because of that. I do hope the ingénue character gets some kind of additional development and talent. But even if it stays mundane, these two have the chemistry to carry it. So I suspect I’ll keep enjoying it regardless. I am mildly intrigued by the spice of the PNR element, so I hope they run with that a bit more. I suspect they will have to, to extend the plot for 12 eps.

My Stand-In (Fri iQIYI) ep 10 of 12 - Ah Ming... famous last words. This one just makes me sigh a lot and whimper sadly. I don’t know where they’re going with this plot or how they’re gonna resolve it. Joe finally being the asshole Ming deserves is a lot of fun though (double entendre intended). I’m scared but it did make me cry... a lot. (That's fine, I'm a sap.)  

Imma say this because no one else has. Wardrobe is unilaterally terrible in this show. I mean Thailand is notoriously bad in general but this show, nash.

We Are Cute (Weds iQIYI) ep 13 of 16 - They are so fucking adorable. And so flirty! Also a crying kiss? My favorite! Chain’s little moment of "Cupid shoot thyself" was epic. ("Physician heal thyself" but for the BL world?) Honestly, I could watch a whole show about these two...

The Trainee (Sun YouTube) ep 1 of 12 - How does Gun still look like he’s just out of high school? Madness. Does the set for the print shop that he’s working in at the beginning remind anybody else of Mork’s dad’s place in ‘Cause He’s My Boy? I swear GMMTV has about 3 sets they rotate through.

To be brutally honest, I was not looking forward to the show at all. No idea why. OffGun aren’t my most favorite OG pair, but I respect them for their longevity, optics, acting shops, and enduring brand. Maybe I just needed more of a gap from Cooking Crush?

Whatever, I was absolutely riveted by this first episode. I’m enjoying The Trainee a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

My Love Mix-Up Th (Fri YT) ep 4 of 12 - This version did the "clear up of the inciting miscommunication" in such a sweet achey way. Frankly that "ache of first love" really plays to G4's strengths as a pair. This was a good ep and I’m now starting to enjoy this one for its own sake and get some distance from the JBL version. It's just there is A LOT of good stuff coming out of Thailand right now.

Love Sea (Sun iQIYI) ep 3 of 10 - I was inspired to write a Shakespearean style sonnet in this week's trash watch. Mame seems to believe that no character can have depth without suffering. And I found this episode both boring and rushed at the same time. Trash watch here. (This week's trash watch also VERY delayed.)

Knock Knock Boys (Thurs Gaga) ep 6 of 12 - It’s eminently missable... so I missed it this week in order to get this weekly update out. Next week will be a two in one. 

Only Boo! (Sun YT) ep 12fin - Okay, that’s it, I guess?

Summary:

An idol romance about a sunshine boy who dances good and wants to be a star and a reserved food stand vendor. Other side of the tracks, grumpy/sunshine pair who fall in love but, of course, to be an idol baby boy can't date. It wasn’t particularly bad, it wasn’t particularly good either. 7/10

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

I Hear the Sunspot AKA Hidamari ga Kikoeru (Japan Weds Gaga) Ep 1 of 10 - A new series adaptation of beloved yaoi I Hear the Sunspot (first adaptation was feature film Silhouette of Your Voice 2017).

I expected the soundscapes in this one to be fantastic, but I didn’t expect the filming to be something special too. But it really is. I’m not gonna lie, I'm nervous about this show because I love the manga and was disappointed by the film, but we were off to a really good start. First names already? So cute. I love them.

Takara's Treasure AKA Takara No Vidro (Japan Mon Gaga) ep 1 of 10 - Shy awkward Taishin goes to a Tokyo university in order to reunite with Takara, a stranger who consoled him over the loss of a parrot the year prior. He finally gets a chance to express his gratitude but is given the cold shoulder. (My thoughts this weekend's round up)

I can't believe Japan is holding it down for the non Thai BL. I mean to say.... JAPAN!!! What alt reality are we living in? It being Japan, I'm scared of the ending.

It's airing but...

Blue Boys is still going on and I'm still enjoying it (despite the cheating) but I don't know when it drops or where it's going, so I will report in at the end. When they tell me it's ended.

The Last Time (Thai Fri YT?) - Convoluted story of loss and possible reincarnation or something. Can't find it.

OMG Vampire (Thai Sun ???) 10 eps - I've put the search on hold for and y'all can let me know if it's worth tracking down once it ends?

In case you missed it

The Time of Fever AKA Unintentional Love Story 2 (Korea movie) trailer released to Korean theaters 5/25. HoTae & DongHee, side couple from Unintentional Love Story are back! Same actors, same character names. I love them. Devastated this hasn't had international distribution. I demand you tell me the moment you find it!

Next Week Looks Like This:

NO IMG - we half way through this week already - sorry.

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

July Releases to Come

7/5 This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans (Thai iQIYI) - trailer here, The PittBabe team behind a new restaurant set BL full of hidden agendas and starring my new favorites SailubPon. Delightful!

7/10 Century of Love (Thai Gaga) 10 eps - trailer here, DaouOffroad are back, this time as fated mates in a quasi historical paranormal moment. San has spent many lifetimes waiting for his lost beloved, to reincarnate from her death a century ago. But if he fails to find her within this century's time window, he will succumb to a tragic death. And this time she's a boy. Very much Director Who Buys Me Dinner meets First Love Again, hopefully better than both. I love this pair and think they can handle the premise, it's whether the storytelling is up to the challenge. I'm curious to see but I have reservations.

7/26 4 Minutes (Thai Netflix or iQIYI?) - Great is a university student from Faculty of Business and the son of a wealthy business owner. Out of the blue, he gains the supernatural power to see four minutes into the future.

7/29 Battle of the Writers (Thai ????) - trailer here, TutorYim return and while I adore them, I really hope this is better than Middleman's Love. Won't be hard. However: that premise! Ugh. Something something authors fighting - save me. Why don't writers understand that nothing is more boring than writers?

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Defining @heretherebedork 's favorite endearment of "tiny idiot."

I love him. I also love what a class act they both were about this turn down. Thailand shows Korea how to handle a love triangle by NOT HAVING ONE.

Both We Are.

We stand a lap sit on this blog, but I think this is my first lap spin! I adored it! (Sunset X Vibes)

It's fun to watch them follow the original narrative but with these cute little Thai twists. Sometimes these are shifted for language reasons, sometimes for cultural, and sometimes I think just to draw a clear distinction from the JBL. I'm not mad about any of it. (My Love Mix Up)

Not just for you, honey. Truer words were never spoken. Yak is the biggest green flag ever to walk BL's verdant earth.

Linguistic corner!

I love this way of putting the translation. Usually, in Thai, the phrase used means "he's my happiness" (sounds like: kwamsook). To use sabai is different. Sabai more ubiquitous (sabai is one of the most commonly used phrases in Thailand) but also so different from the usual phrase we hear in ThBL at this moment. Thus, this execution is special, particularly from a doctor. I'm not quite sure how to put it but sabai can also be translated as feeling well, as in, not ill. So there is a way of looking at Wandee saying Yak is both his peace of mind and good for his health and well being.

(Last week)

Streaming services are listed by how I (usually) watch, which is with a USA based IP, and often offset by a day because time zones are a pain.

The tag BLigade: @doorajar @solitaryandwandering @my-rose-tinted-glasses @babymbbatinygirl @babymbbatinygirl @isisanna-blog @mmastertheone @pickletrip @aliceisathome @urikawa-miyuki @tokillamonger @sunflower-positiiivity @rocketturtle4 @blglplus @anythinggoesintheshire @everlightly @renafire @mestizashinrin @bl-bam-beyond @small-dark-and-delicious @saezurumurmurs

Sigh, Tumblr in it's infinite wisdom doesn't like too many tags.

There's these tricks, remember.

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

Jbl drought is officially over, with announcements falling out of the sky one after the other. I'm in bl heaven. Warmer weather is here and I cannot believe June starts tomorrow. Pride is upon us. As usual, spoilers and opinions below, read at your own risk.

QL - Currently Watching

🇰🇷 Ball Boy Tactics [4/8] - I love Kwon Jungwoo. His facial expressions are so good, and of course Jiwoo is such a cutie. I did not see this show coming, and I'm loving it. I need all the episodes now!

🇹🇭 Boys in Love [9/12] - I need more of the teachers. The kids are cute but I'm wondering when the real conflict will come because it seems too calm right now. Mon's mum is a bit overbearing but her intentions seem good.

🇯🇵 Even Though We're Adults [5/12] - I'm enjoying the weirdness. The tone of this show is so different, and I have absolutely no clue where this is going but I'm enjoying the ride. The characters keep doing exactly the opposite of what I'm expecting but it's not boring.

🇹🇼 Fight For You [11/12] - So probably no side couple, I'm okay with that. One more time, a bl grandma saving the day. I can't believe we'll have a full episode of boyfriend era, although this is Taiwan, so either some random act of violence or a wedding. My money is on the second.

🇯🇵I Became the Main Role of a BL Drama S2 [1/6] - Chaos is back and with even more chaotic energy. I missed Akafuji's insane internal monologue so much. This is gonna be fun.

🇹🇭 Knock Out [6/12] - It's getting a bit repetitive and honestly kinda boring. The episodes are too long without much of a reason for it. I hate the pseudo triangle but at least there's no doubt about who Keen likes. I wanna more about Mawin and Ait, I like their dynamic but really wish I knew how it all started.

🇹🇭 My Sweetheart Jom [3½/12] - I feel asleep during episode 4 and haven't gone back. which is not a good sign. I might catch up at some point but I'm in no hurry.

🇹🇭Reset [3/10] - I still think this was a second reset, and in the first it was Thada remembered but now Armin is the one who does. The chemistry is on point and Pond is doing amazing.

🇨🇳 Revenged Love [4/24] - Unhinged, everything and everyone. The tone swings wildly, but it's so fun. I love the snakes.

🇹🇭 Suntiny [2/10] - I still can't believe I'm watching a bl where the entire set up is about erectile dysfunction. But hey, it's not boring. And I'm loving seeing a new side of Max and I can't wait to see Earth. There's something definitely deeper here and I'm wondering if they'll explore it well.

🇰🇷 Sweetheart Service [6/12] - The parents scene was a riot. They are delightful and I really don't miss the sides when they don't show.

🇹🇭 Sweet Tooth, Good Dentist [10/11] - I don't even know what to say anymore. Individual scenes are good, and Mark is trying his hardest, but the show just never found its footing and now it's too late. I feel like this was a wasted opportunity for Mark.

🇹🇭 The Bangkok Boy [8/12] - Damn that was a lot for one episode. The paint scene was really well done. The desperation, the red paint, the cuts with the fighting scene, it all spells doom. This show keeps surprising me every week. And we got a new player in town right when two bodies hit the ground. This is not looking good for any of my guys.

🇹🇭 The Ex-Morning [4/10] - I still like it a lot but...

🇹🇭 The Next Prince [7/12] - Well this is getting a bit boring now. They get separated by force, and then they get put back together. Khanin is happy, Khanin is in danger, we have to lock up Charan. I'm a bit annoyed by this. But no one does repressed yearning like Zee. It's incredible to watch. I really like Ava, so I'm happy we got more of her, but I also wanted more of the other couples. Oh well, I guess I'll wait another week.

QL - Finished

🇰🇷 Business as Usual - Final Thoughts.

🇹🇭 My Golden Blood - Warning. I didn't like it. The ending felt very anticlimactic. We got way too much of the main couple. Nakan's death landed with zero impact because we barely knew anything about him. He'd mention this grand past love a couple of times, so I was expecting at least some kind of flashback. Instead we got nothing, and his death just fell completely flat. His whole character could've been so much more interesting if we'd gotten any real insight into who he was. Tonkla not coming back is a betrayal I won't soon forget. And honestly, all of this could've been avoided if they'd just bothered to discuss turning Tong earlier in the story. The main love story felt like it existed purely because the script demanded it, there was no real foundation, so I felt absolutely nothing.

🇰🇷 Something's Not Right - I have no words. What a complete waste of time. My ending.

🇹🇭 Top Form - This show isn't perfect and has some script hiccups, but it's still a really good time. Honestly, Boom is half the reason I enjoyed it - he's absolutely fantastic, though I wish his character wasn't constantly in tears. The guy cannot catch a break! But he's just so damn charming. The intimate scenes are actually well done too, good editing and they feel like they serve the story. It had some interesting commentary about the industry, although I think that storyline got a bit messy toward the end. I'd definitely recommend it, just with a few caveats.

QL - Dropped / On Hold Dropped - 🇹🇭 Eye Contact | 🇹🇭Loy Kaew First Love

Non QL - Finished

🇰🇷 Resident Playbook

Upcoming - June 02/06- 🇹🇭 Reset MDL | Trailer 05/06- 🇰🇷 Ball Boy Tactics MDL | Trailer 13/06 - 🇯🇵 I Became the Lead in a BL Drama 2 MDL 16/06 - 🇨🇳 Revenged Love Trailer 17/06 - 🇹🇭 Suntiny MDL | Trailer 20/06 - 🇯🇵Depth of Field MDL | Trailer 20/06- 🇹🇭 Memoir of Rati MDL | Trailer 25/06- 🇹🇭 Whale Store xoxo [GL] MDL 26/06- 🇯🇵 Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko! S2 [GL] MDL | Trailer 27/06 - 🇹🇼 The Promise of the Soul MDL

That's all for now. Will update if there are more announcements. My inbox is always open. Happy watching!💜

[nobigsecrets]

So I had this idea to write a 5 times at Pride fic for Tommy during June, but due to not enough time I never got past the first time Tommy runs into a pride parade. Maybe I'll write the other installments later but since today is the last day of pride month, I'm gonna post what I have:

words: 1,315 rating: t tw: homophobia & homophobic slurs

1. On accident

Tommy is 14 when he runs into his first ever pride parade--completely by accident.

He's been allowed to navigate the streets of downtown LA on his own--well, together with his cousin Joey, who is 15, and with strict orders to meet his parents back at the parking lot at 3 pm sharp.

Tommy has been to LA before, a couple of times with his parents and once with Joey and his mom, and he knows his way around. Plus, usually, he's pretty good at orientating himself in unknown terrain. So of course he had turned down his mother's suggestion to take the paper map they use to keep in the car.

"Just in case," she had said and Tommy had stubbornly crossed his arms and for once, his father had been on his side.

"Leave the boys alone, Annie. They're old enough." His dad had taken the old, dogeared map out of his mother's hands and stuffed it back into its compartment in the passenger door.

It's 2:40 now and Tommy thinks he should have listened to his mom. Not only are the bustling big city streets much more of a challenge than Tommy likes to admit but on top of that, countless streets seem to be closed off today for some kind of event. They run into yet another dead end and Tommy's slowly getting antsy. He knows they'll both be in trouble if they're not back in time. Joey looks up from riffling through his stack of newly purchased CDs just long enough to shrug at him, being no help at all.

Tommy knows they have to cross Hollywood Blvd at some point to get back to the parking lot and for lack of better options he simply keeps walking. There must be a usable crosswalk eventually. Joey keeps trotting along, eyes fixed on changing CDs in his discman.

That's how he misses what Tommy's gaze gets stuck on a few minutes later. There are two men walking in front of them. And the weird thing is, these two men... are holding hands? Tommy looks until he realizes he's staring, then looks away. Looks back, almost convinced he just hallucinated, but nope.

Two men holding hands.

Two grown-up, normal looking men. Holding hands.

Right in front of him.

Something funny tingles in his belly. He didn't know men would do that. It's just a simple gesture, sure, but Tommy has never seen two men touching each other on purpose. Not without the intention of wanting to hit and hurt each other at least.

Of course Tommy knows gay people exist. He'd just always assumed it was all about sex. That men could be gentle and affectionate with each other, that's new. And it's... almost a relief. It feels right, to him. Almost as if he could... relate to it. He knows it's wrong. He knows being gay is wrong. But he still keeps on watching, drinks in how close to each other these two men are walking, hands clasped tight, arms brushing against each other every now and then, how they talk and laugh and--

"Eww, gross!" Joey's voice startles Tommy out of his observations and he stops dead in his tracks so abruptly that Joey almost runs into him.

"Huh?" he says, a sinking feeling in his stomach. "What?"

Joey rolls his eyes at him. "Didn't you see those two dudes? Holding hands? Fucking disgusting!"

"Didn't see them," Tommy lies, quickly averting his gaze and pretending to look around for these two offensive men. A hot wave of shame rushes through him and he's not sure if it is because of the blatant lie or because of his lack of disgust.

"Nevermind," Joey says and then, apparently having finally realized what time it is, "C'mon, let's get going or we'll be late." It's Tommy's turn to roll his eyes as he lets Joey take the lead and follows along.

If Tommy thought the streets were bustling before, now they're getting downright crowded and soon they're effectively slowed down to a crawl. Where the heck do all these people come from? Why do so many of them carry flags and placards and self-painted signs?

"GAY RIGHTS," Tommy reads on one of them and oh! Oh no.

The sinking feeling in his stomach is back, only much worse.

Joey must have noticed the signs and flags, too, because he turns around in the same moment Tommy reaches out to tug at the sleeve of his t-shirt.

"It's the fag parade!" There's clear loathing in Joey's voice and a sneer on his face that makes him look like a carbon-copy of his father. It leaves no doubt where he picked up that line.

"Yikes," Tommy says, with more wit and flourish than he thought he could muster.

It works and it makes Joey laugh and he claps Tommy on the shoulder. "Let's get out of here."

It's easier said than done and they slowly fight their way through the masses. People have gathered at the barriers that the police set up along the closed off street and more people are still streaming in. Tommy remembers seeing something on the news the other day, about the Christopher Street Day Parade in New York. He figures this must be the LA equivalent.

There are more gay couples holding hands. There are men walking arm in arm and men hugging each other closely. There are men in heavy biker boots and leather pants and leather jackets and leather caps. There are men kissing and there are women kissing other women, all in public and broad daylight. There are men wearing nothing but tiny shorts and men wearing weird harnesses and men dressed like women.

It's a whole different world and there's an odd vibe coming from it, like it wants to lure Tommy in and he wishes he could just stand there and look and look some more and carefully dissect it all.

Joey drags him along, unknowing and unforgiving. His hand is like a vice around Tommy's forearm, and he looks back every couple of feet to make sure they don't get separated on top of it all.

"Look at you two sweethearts," someone calls out to them, evidently mistaking them for holding hands, too. "Ah, young love," someone else joins in, "so sweet, so brave!" And then a third person, suggestive and it sounds more encouraging than offensive, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, boys!"

Immediately, Tommy feels Joey's grip on his arm loosen. His stomach sinks to his feet and he feels frozen like a deer in headlights, almost afraid to look up, irrationally thinking Joey might blame him for the callout.

But Joey doesn't know what Tommy's been thinking. And right now, he's too busy staring daggers at the crowd of celebrating, happy people, trying to find the person who he feels insulted him.

Tommy doesn't dare look at the crowd, too afraid his face might give something away. He hates how not disgusted he is. Is disgusted by not being disgusted because he knows it's wrong. He knows being gay is wrong. He's starting to suspect something about himself might be wrong, too.

Eventually, Joey seems to realize that he can't start a fight right here, right now. So he gives another tug to Tommy's arm before he lets go of him, and starts moving again. Tommy has a hard time keeping up.

--

They're late by almost an hour.

Tommy can't tell if his dad is more furious about their delay or about the parade. But he actually laughs when Joey calls it fag parade again and then Joey gets an approving nod at every insult he throws around during the ride back.

What Tommy gets are dubious looks every now and then via the rear view mirror.

Tommy's mom stays silent.

It doesn't bode well for the rest of the weekend.

[mayrose713]

Beautifully Cruel World- Updates Info

It’s been so long since I last posted I’ve actually had a few of you private message me to check in which I greatly appreciate by the way. Updates will come as I can get them written, I’ve had major writers block. I know where I want to go with this story its just getting there that takes time. I've still got a bit to go for it though so don't worry it wont be ending anytime soon. I mean we've only gotten 3/8 pack mates claims so far.

June Life update

For anyone wanting to know what has happened since February, here you go.

So first off I was saving up for my trip for the Stray Kids Concerts in Arlington for the beginning of June so I was working my ass off. Especially after they announced the 2nd day and I impulse bought day 2 tickets even though I was already going to day one. And I also bought all 8 of the Skzoo teddy bears. So I was being very financially irresponsible back in February but it all made me happy and that's what matters right?

Anyways, the concerts was amazing. Had field tickets for both days. Day 2 tickets were way better than day 1 but I had a great time both days. I made friends (possibly some of you), got a bit sunburned standing in line for 3 hours at the merch presale. I have so many pictures and honestly it’s hard to believe it’s already over. I had been waiting so long for it and those few days went by in a blink of an eye. Idk what to do with my life anymore.

I’ve gotten all 8 of my Skzoo teddy bears and oh my god they are so much bigger than I thought they were when I bought them. I love them though. It was a shock when I got home from work one day to see 8 large boxes on my front porch.

Update on my great-grandma. She is doing so much better. Has been home for a bit now and even had a great 93rd birthday. I’m gonna try to make it back to my home state this summer when the rest of my moms family is gonna be away at a family reunion so I can see her as well as my older brother, my best friend and my dog. At this point I only try to go back if I know for a fact my mom’s parents are in a completely different state.

With how much I was working I'm trying to take some time off this summer. I have an extra day off a week, plus a long weekend for my birthday in July and if i do go to my home state for a week I'm gonna try my damn hardest to write while I'm there because that week I was in Arlington I wrote like 3 sentences and that was it. I've also gotten my work schedule changed a bit since I'm helping a lot with taking care of my younger siblings so I'm not working so late much anymore which I'm hoping might help with me getting writing in too. And I've got a new manager at work who is so understanding with everything in my life, and he is also a stray kids fan. So he's been so helpful with me.

Thank you everyone who has come along on this journey with me so far and is still here reading and welcome anyone new, I hope you enjoy my story. I'm hoping to give you guys a new BCW chapter soon.

[mariacallous]

Cecile Richards, a prominent advocate for women's rights and other progressive causes, died Monday. In a statement, her family confirmed her death, saying she passed away at home, "surrounded by family and her ever-loyal dog, Ollie."

"Our hearts are broken today but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives," the statement said.

Richards was best known for her work leading Planned Parenthood through a particularly challenging time which included threats to its funding and the first election of Donald Trump to the presidency.

During more than a decade at the helm of Planned Parenthood, Richards was often called upon to defend the reproductive health organization against attacks from political opponents.She and her movement faced mounting challenges after Trump, who ran for President in 2016 on a promise to overturn the landmark abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade, was first elected.

At the Women's March in Washington the day after Trump's inauguration in 2017, Richards addressed thousands of marchers and promised to fight his policies.

"Today we're here to deliver a message: we're not gonna take this lying down, and we will not go back," Richards told the crowd.

The next year, Richards announced she was leaving Planned Parenthood. After leaving the organization, Richards focused her efforts on leading Supermajority, a group she'd co-founded to mobilize female voters.

In the years to come, the Trump administration would take steps designed to reduce access to abortion, including cutting off funds for groups that make abortion referrals, like Planned Parenthood, through an overhaul of the Title X family planning program.

Over the course of his first term, Trump named three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, who, in June of 2022, would ultimately vote to overturn decades of abortion-rights precedent.

Despite setbacks for the abortion rights movement and a diagnosis of brain cancer, Richards embodied an "indefatigable" determination, says former Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis.

"Her belief [was] you can't give up before you even start, and that it's always worth a fight," Davis said.

Davis worked closely with Richards during a high-profile battle to defeat an anti-abortion bill in Texas in 2013. Now a senior advisor to Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, the group's political arm in Texas, Davis says Richards still inspires her to keep fighting.

"You want to give in to the weariness and give in to just giving up," Davis said. "When I'm tempted to feel that way, I think about Cecile, and I know a lot of people do."

Richards herself drew inspiration from the legacy of her mother, the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who was known for her sharp wit and down-to-earth demeanor.

During a hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2015, a male lawmaker asked her if she expected the committee "to be easier on you because you're a woman?"

"Absolutely not," Richards responded. "That's not how my mama raised me."

The hearing stemmed from the release of secretly-recorded videos by the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group that accused Planned Parenthood of selling fetal body parts. Planned Parenthood said the sting videos were edited to be deliberately misleading.

Dr. Colleen McNicholas, Chief Medical Officer at Planned Parenthood Great Rivers in the St. Louis area, knew Richards for more than a decade through their advocacy for abortion rights.

"I think she really changed the way that the movement engaged publicly; she was a very visible and bold presence," McNicholas says. "She wasn't afraid to take questions, to say the word 'abortion.'"

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat with a long history of advocacy for reproductive rights, credits Richards with an instrumental role in making sure the Affordable Care Act, which passed under President Barack Obama, included contraceptive coverage.

Murray says despite the setbacks the movement has faced in recent years, she sees Richards as an example of continuing to fight.

"I would take what Cecile has done in her lifetime and use it as a charge to all of us now: you move forward, you fight for what you believe in, you have the courage to stand up and say what is right," Murray says. "You take those setbacks, learn from them, and move forward, and she's always done that."

In an Instagram post in January 2024, months after her cancer diagnosis, Richards described going through a whirlwind of treatments, time with family, and focusing on what was most important — including her continued activism.

"After all," Richards wrote, "as my mother used to say: 'Why should your life be just about you?'"

As her health continued to decline, Richards addressed the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

She spoke of the joy of recently becoming a grandmother, and the challenges many women have faced since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

"One day, our children and grandchildren may ask us, 'When it was all on the line, what did you do?' And the only acceptable answer is, everything we could," Richards said.

In November 2024, President Joe Biden honored Cecile Richards with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during a private ceremony at the White House. In a statement, Biden praised Richards for her "absolute courage and conviction" and "an inspiring legacy that endures in her incredible family, the countless lives she has made better, and a Nation seeking the light of equality, justice, and freedom."

[dysfunctional-doodle]

I'm basing this to what I've seen of! (And my personal renditions!!)

Now, onto Mikey Headcanons!

MICHEALANGELO HEADCANONS!

1987's Mikey

He has one of those long sausage pillows that he often uses to cuddle up like it's one of his brothers.

That pillow was gifted by Donatello!

Usually, he's pretty still when he sleeps and barely moves, until of course he has a dream / nightmare.

He sleeps pretty early / late, but that just depends on how the day went for him.

He cannot sleep without some sort of light on. He doesn't know why, he just needs it.

2003's Mikey

More often than not, he sleeps with an arm above his head because the lights at the sewer are really blinding.

He absolutely gets flashed when he doesn't do this and this leads to him scrambling off his bed when he gets woken up by one of his brothers.

Always the last one to fall asleep, his system would not let up the first few nights at the cave unless he knew his brothers were safe.

Night terrors are frequent, and usually he goes to Leo about them. But, when he doesn't want to bother any of his brothers, he stays up.

Future (Where he lost his part of his arm)

He often has his nub near him because he would wake up due to the phantom pain.

He holds the nub with his other hand when the pain starts to hurt even more than usual.

2007's Mikey!

He asked Donnie for a pair of headphones that he could use when he needs background noise to sleep.

Usually, he has a hand draped over dramatically on his chest like a frail victorian child.

He opts to sleeping on his back even more because of his shell.

He's much more sensitive to loud noise when it stems from his own family, so hence the headphones.

Always the first to fall asleep, he's always exhausted when it comes to his job and he's gotten used to the habit of being lulled to sleep.

2012's Mikey

Sprawled out like a spider when he sleeps and that depends on whether he's sleeping on his back or front. Usually he's on his back most of the time.

His hands flail around and can and most definitely will hit you when you're next to him.

Somehow, his body has a mind of its own and he ends up on positions he never thought was possible.

He falls asleep on his back and ends up on his front all. the. TIME

He randomly gets zapped with his electrical powers when the friction gets too much. Even though it doesn't hurt, he wakes up almost immediately.

He's mostly in the middle when it comes to falling asleep.

2014-2016's Mikey! (BAYVERSE)

You'd think he'd have at least a normal sleeping position because of large his shell is. You'd be so darn wrong. He's over here acting all victorian princess when he sleeps, full on clutching the pearls he doesn't HAVE.

He's a pretty light sleeper and more often than not cannot for the life of him fall asleep fast enough than he is to stay awake.

He's so still you can mistake him for a doll.

The hashi night terrors are frequent and he often dreams about them.

Sleep doesn't come easy for the dude and he really liked being sung to as a kid.

2018's Mikey

He sleeps on his front with his arms supporting his head. It helps when his shell becomes unbearably heavy.

Sometimes he moves his arms to reposition the position he's in right now.

He doesn't usually have seizures but his pain gives him enough to jolt him awake and cause him problems. He waits it out.

Sleep doesn't come easy anymore because he's terrified his powers will amp up when he sleeps for long periods of time causing his body to decay.

He liked to doodle and draw before he sleeps just so he can keep his mind occupied.

He absolutely glows when he sleeps, or mostly his arms do.

He talks in his sleep about anything honestly.

He has had frequent night terrors about the krang and he's still shaken up about that.

2023's Mikey

He sleeps with his a stuff toy boar, who he named to be June.

He sleeps on his side, because it's much more comfortable.

He doesn't stay up that late because he has school in the morning.

When he does, he's usually having doubts about himself and his intellects, or he's finishing up school work.

He doesn't sleep in his own bed and prefers to sleep with one of his brothers or in the living room.

He has night terrors about the super fly incident.

He has weaker bones so his joints hurt more which leads them to sometimed spasm and lock, causing him to cramp.

Absolutely loves to be hummed to sleep, he likes listening to music while he sleeps because it helps him cslm down.

Usually, before he sleeps he has a skin care routine consisting of 12 steps.

After the series he's been much more hesitant around robots (they're absolutely cool in his opinion, but he doesn't like them as much when the robots tried to kill him.

He's dyslexic and he has had a harder tome spelling and reading words.

My gosh this is a lot, if you can't tell (you probably can) Mutant Mayhem Mikey's my favorite!

Now mostly all of them are my own take but hey, I had fun!!

Yes!!!!!!!

My thoughts, in order:

87 Mikey: yes, he loves hugging anything really at night. It makes him much more comfortable to have that pressure, the dude even spreads the love in his sleep! You can tell if he’s having a bad dream by how tight he grips the item in question. At the start of their mutation, he would hug tattered bundles of blankets instead, until Splinter first noticed and picked out a softer item from a donations box. He’s like one of those dogs who’s insanely gentle with their toys all the time lol

2003 Mikey:

I have always been a strong preacher in the fact he has ADHD, and often has a really impressive imagination because of this. He definitely, in my opinion, has maladaptive daydreaming disorder, hence why he has his own comics and he has long moments where he’s imagining himself as the Turtle Titan whilst he just stands staring at a wall. This is also not a good thing as his vivid imagination paired with his trauma makes really bad night terrors, though you would never know. Seriously. In my opinion, before season 4, Mikey doesn’t ever tell anyone. That speech he makes in season 4 about the family roles? He fights to remain in his own ‘role’ no matter what, but Leo gets a little sharper, a little wiser after his own struggle in season 4. They bond over midnight tea and quiet admissions in the dark about their pressure to conform to family roles. They have their own little private time where they break down these walls, just between them, because they both just get it.

2007: I love this idea of sensory issues. This makes his work as a party mascot even more painful for him because it’s so loud. The fake head helps muffle it, but it’s still overwhelming as heck. He takes comfort in cramming himself in small spaces like cupboards. I don’t know if any of y’all have seen A Christmas Story, but it’s like that scene where the mum opens the cupboard and the youngest son is just sat in there for no reason and hands her a pan before she doesn’t question it and shuts the door again lol. God I love that movie.

2012 Mikey: Yes. Just yes. He’s the kid that you never want to sleep next to on a camping trip because he will end up beating the shit out of you in the night with how much he moves. Also, he sleepwalks sometimes. Eyes open. Terrifying.

Bayverse: you genuinely think he’s dead with how still he sleeps vs what he’s like during the day. April literally did think something was wrong the first time she saw him slumped over the couch. Also, he’s one of those people that kinda just falls asleep anywhere sometimes in strange positions. He’s once fallen asleep standing up.

2018: I hc he does have seizures, which I’m writing a fic on soon, and he hates waking up suddenly because he can get triggered into one. You have to take it slow when you wake him.

TOTTMNT Mikey: if you’ve read Too Many Turtles you know I am FEASTING on the hc that Mikey struggles in classes. I hc him as autistic due to the concept art indicating so with the stickers on his nunchucks, and because he’s bad at understanding tone he has problems talking to other kids despite wanting to be social. Kids that pick on him aren’t seen that way to him, which makes him more of a target, and overall he struggles to follow conversation ‘naturally’, scattering across topics and saying things randomly as an impulse that he doesn’t understand doesn’t fit with the current mood. Poor guy is very friendly and wants to socialise but struggles to. I love the idea he goes to bed early unless he has a sudden fixation on something or an anxiety, in which he finds it super hard to turn off his phone and go to bed, always doing “one last google search” which takes him to 4am.

[riizetarot]

update on seunghan's return

will seunghan be a part of riize's may comeback?

the seven of swords calls attention to deceit, lying, and betrayal. we saw this card come out in the last timing update, along with the emperor. it sucks that things have taken a turn in this way, but i still believe that things will be righted and that there will be consequences for sm's actions. for the sake of this question though, it's a "no".

was he supposed to return in this next comeback? did the company change its mind on it?

yes. the six of cups has come out multiple times in the past in relation to seunghan and riize, the card of reconnection and nostalgia. we were supposed to get our rii7e... but it looks like management made its final decision after flip flopping these past several months.

what happened that the trajectory changed?

the last time the high priestess came out in my reading, it symbolized the female leadership that had a heavy hand in making the decision for seunghan to return to the group or not. with the eight of wands and eight of swords, i'm getting such a clear message about this. leadership succumbed to fear. this decision to exclude seunghan was seemingly made hastily, possibly last minute, due to them thinking there was no other choice. what's worse is that those limitations were self-imposed. the eight of swords specifically talks about someone who needs to get out of the victim mentality and embrace new perspectives. it looks like leadership were on the right track but weren't able to in the end.

will seunghan ever return to riize? when could that be?

i'll be honest, and i'm sure you're feeling the same way. this reading is upsetting. so much so that i had to step away to make sure i finished it when i was neutral again. but as discouraging as this may be, the cards haven't led me astray yet, so i'm choosing to believe this. i hope you can too. the chariot is a resounding "yes". it's the card of overcoming obstacles and pushing forward to victory. the three of cups indicates a timeline somewhere in late june to early july.

you might be wondering, why then? i wondered too. then it hit me. would it be due to ot7 continuing the boycott?

the strength card. another resounding "yes", the card that symbolizes resilience and courage, especially in challenging times. boycotting is no small feat. it can feel unrewarding. alienating. it's emotionally and therefore physically taxing. no doubt there will be times you want to give up, but i promise it can be worthwhile. seunghan can still come back, as long as we stay strong. we've done it once before. who's to say we can't do it again?

final message of this reading:

this card came out while i was shuffling, before i asked the last question about the boycott. i didn't understand why at first and for what part of the reading it fit until i remembered the meaning of the card. i'll copy the excerpt from this deck's booklet. "the seven of wands reveals that you are now in a position in which you may have to defend yourself or others. you've reached a certain level of success so others may try to knock you down. you must stand up for yourself and protect what you've worked so hard for." personally, i told myself i'd throw in the towel if seunghan didn't return this spring. it's been so draining. but i don't think this is over yet. it really, really doesn't feel like it is. let's keep going.

[vitaminseetarot]

PAC: Random Messages You May Need 🌈🎆⛅

Sup, y'all. I'm finally back for another pick a card reading. I really apologize if folks have not heard from me over the past month, I meant to get this reading (among other things) out a while ago. I have not been able to touch tarot for the past few weeks. Life has been… topsy turvy, to say the least. Heh heh. [sweating profusely]

I meant to have another game out and to have paid readings available by now--that is still part of the plan. What was meant for June will be in July. So this blog might go from 0 to 100 mph real soon, to move along with plans as intended!

I was loosely inspired by the Baker pride flag from 1978 for this group selection. These piles are pretty nondescript: each one contains a random message that may resonate with you. Pick based on whichever color of the Prism Oracle speaks to you most, and feel free to choose more than one. Take only what resonates.

Pile 1 - Strength (Red) Pile 2 - Happiness (Orange) Pile 3 - Illumination (Yellow) Pile 4 - Movement (Green) Pile 5 - Flow (Turquoise) Pile 6 - Trust (Blue) Pile 7 - Intuition (Violet) Pile 8 - Love (Pink)

Pile 1 - Strength (Red)

10 of Swords, Insight

You've been asked by the universe to put up with a lot, especially recently. You're reaching a finish line of a very long and brutal marathon. There have been too many times where you questioned whether or not to throw in the towel. If you have, you may also have questioned whether or not it was the correct choice. Sometimes, things don't work out, and it's better to move on. It can be difficult to hold everything up when one thing after another seems to fall apart at the seams, but either way you're being reminded of the light at the end of this long and turbulent tunnel.

Collect yourself, pick up what pieces you can. Time has shifted everything, but the essentials still stand. Gather the wisdom you have learned from this ordeal. There is still beauty to be found in the decay, glittering gems in the rough.

Maybe you don't want to get stronger. Healing may feel like a better option than grinding for difficult experience points. Give yourself the rest and repair you need. Let go of only that which is keeping you from starting again, but you don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. You've gained so much wisdom and strength, this trial wasn't without gain. Treasure it and begin anew.

Pile 2 - Happiness (Orange)

2 of Swords, Clarity

Whatever answers you seek are coming to you. Or perhaps they've already arrived; open your eyes and see for yourself. You may be wondering which path will satisfy you more. The process of reconciling this could take forever unless you lean on your gut here. This can't be decided based on intellect alone, for you could get stuck mulling it over for days. Imagining all the different possible outcomes could be taxing for your brain, so narrow it down. Eliminate the weakest links and home in on what excites you. It should feel like an "aha, yes!"

If you cannot see the answer right away, go within to the realm of imagination. Feel your way through. Visualize not just with sight but with yearning. Does the light of the sun make you feel hopeful? Does the cool rain make you feel relaxed? Would an art class expand your capacity to imagine many things, or would taking a science class?

The X mark in 2 of Swords is like a railroad crossing sign. Redirect that train of thought into brighter and more positive avenues of expression. Say "what if" as if you can't wait for something to happen. "What if I saw a shooting star tonight? What if my cute neighbor asked me out?" Let the future shine its beacon for you. It will all make sense in due time.

Pile 3 - Illumination (Yellow)

Ace of Cups, Reconciliation

Have you been staying up way too late trying to figure everything out? Please give yourself a brain curfew: no problem solving or saving the day after 10 pm! I'm getting that you may tend to ruminate on the same strong emotions. For some I'm getting that there is a crush here. There's inconsistent text messaging. I know it's easy to get too nervous about their reply, but try to wait until at least the next day to hear back. They may need time to formulate their words right. They may not even see your message straight away. Take it all in stride and sleep on it; if they want to reach out to you, then they eventually will.

For others in this pile, you may be going through a rough patch with another person right now and could be wondering how things will pan out. Give them time to respond, they could still be processing it. Stay on the more positive end of things with the idea that things will work themselves out. I feel like if you can manage this in a relaxed and non hurried way, the knot will untangle easily. The coffee in the Ace of Cups is very hot, so give it a chance to cool.

There is opportunity in your near future to make up for something that went awry due to a miscommunication error. You may get a chance to make up for a test, appointment, or an interview. You will receive grace for any mishaps. Remember that tomorrow won't necessarily be the same as today, so cherish both the good you have now along with the good that soon awaits you.

Pile 4 - Movement (Green)

IX Hermit, Devotion

Looks like things are progressing faster than you even thought they would. You may be blinking your eyes in partial disbelief: could this ball really be rolling? Indeed, thanks to your efforts, goals are being met and results are more evident by the day. You eschewed a lot of distractions to make this work, so give yourself a pat on the back for the level of commitment you put into it. Some of you in this pile may have just graduated, if so then congratulations! But try not to get too comfortable with your laurels, for you have a long road ahead of you in whatever you do next. This one completion is the start of many.

Does that thrill you? If so, wonderful! On the other hand, some of you may be feeling uncertain about continuing. You may be reviewing your options to see if this really is worth pursuing. Something that requires a lot of dedication and focus on it to the exclusion of all else… yeah, I can see how that can get tiring after a long time. There are folks who can get their Master's right after their Bachelor's, or have another child right after the first, but people can also happily move on to what feels more right for them instead.

It's okay to stop and assess your tracks if necessary. Taking time off is not the same as quitting. It's not losing motivation, it's recovering it. This is your passion and your discipline, not anyone else's. If you need to give other parts of your life more room to breathe, then do so with the confidence that your great work will wait for you.

Pile 5 - Flow (Turquoise)

4 of Wands, Hospitality

Have you been stuck with something for a while? There's a strong sense of a blockage that is being eroded away over time. This process can be sped up by allowing the ice to thaw a little more. "Break the ice." You may be wanting to open up and spend more quality time with other people but don't know how. Or you could be faced with meeting new people and being nervous about interacting with them. Even more so if they're roommates. A few people in this pile could be moving or have just moved. This is a chance to ease up and get to know new people.

This blockage could be a result of the past and of anxiety. The sound of a turning doorknob just jumpscared me as I typed the last sentence. You may benefit from learning about social anxiety and how to manage it. It's not an overnight job for you to fix this, though, but to just be aware of it and not allow it to get in the way of positive change in your life.

If you're struggling to figure out how to deal with meeting new people, I would suggest looking up videos or how-tos on social interaction, especially if a certain etiquette is required for an event. Learn about conversation starters and fun things you could do together like hosting a game night. Practice makes perfect, and over time the blockage will melt into the stream.

Pile 6 - Trust (Blue)

3 of Swords, Conversion

You have a very soft and tender outlook on life, which makes it all the more painful when reality doesn't conform to such a compassionate vision. It doesn't always try to respond to vulnerability in appropriate ways. Much of the time, this isn't from natural events as much as it stems from the ways in which people can treat one another cruelly. You've had some toxic people in your life who have put you through the wringer and attempted to squeeze every ounce of kindness they could from you. Making light of this pain to them only resulted in further deflection and antagonism on their part. The only outcome was to salvage whatever you could and pray for the best.

It is not your job to change their closed minded perspectives. They're on their own, here. Do not concern yourself with their messy inner world and lose any more of your energy. Also, do not attempt to regain what energy has been lost through bargaining either, as much as it hurts to press onward without looking back. You will recover, but you have to move on first and prioritize what you deeply care about most (you included).

There will come a time when your heart will be healed so you can see the brighter side of human connection again. All the beauty that your gentle soul is seeking is still there, shrouded by layers of protective petals that will one day bloom again and your life will truly flourish. For now, this is a time to give yourself all the comfort you can.

Pile 7 - Intuition (Violet)

XII Hanged Man, Spring

I get the feeling that you've been waiting quite a while for some good results to come in. This could either be from something that you started back in the spring, or are waiting to see results which may come around springtime. It is a season of flowers, so you may be waiting for this thing to blossom--that is, to be fully presentable to the public in some way. To have something to show for the time you put in. Like "hey, this is what I've been working on, this came from the seeds I planted." It could be growing in a direction unlike what you're used to, leaving you wondering how it could succeed in such unusual and burdensome conditions.

Lean on your inner guidance when it comes to the right timing. I don't believe that you're currently in a space where you need to push so hard for the best results. You can let things move at their own pace. Over tending to anything can end up in just as much trouble as neglect. There's only so much you can do before you have to let the flower do the growing and blooming for itself.

It's not always easy to sit in the place of uncertainty with the idea that doing more will provide more. But sometimes less is more. What you're creating is coming to fruition and may even turn out better than you expected. Trust in both the knowledge you've earned over time from learning lessons, as well as your natural intuition, to help you decide when it's time to take action.

Pile 8 - Love (Pink)

7 of Swords, Gossip

Let your heart lead the way here, not your worries over what others will think. Sure, you may end up with some people talking about you, but opportunities will keep passing by if you wait for everyone else to catch up to you. Leaning too much on everyone else's perspectives will only distort the vision you have for your own life journey. We all have unique journeys to go on, but unconditional kindness remains at the center of the Love card, the one thing that brings us together. Following life from a heart centered place may result in having others glance over and whisper, but that shouldn't distract you.

There is a rather delicate message here about dealing with friendships, colleagues, or possibly even family. You may have a tricky situation between several other people right now who have beef not with you but with each other. They may be coming to you to air their grievances and ask for advice.

If you care about both of these people, then it's best to approach this issue as diplomatically and impartially as possible and avoid feeding into the conflict. What would an enlightened mindset do in this situation? How would you want the other person to behave if they were in your shoes? Come from a place of pure compassion. They may choose to make amends or not, it's up to them. If their butting heads is bringing you down, it's always okay to step back and take a break. You are not responsible for what's going on in their heart, only your own, so protect yours well.

This reading has not been evaluated by the FDA to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure any disease or infection. Please ask your physician before going online.

2024, @VitaminseeTarot ™

[rallamajoop]

More random details from the depths of RE8

With the excuse of trying some shiny new mods, I've been replaying RE8 lately for the umpteenth time. Given the number of hours I've already poured into this game, you'd really think there'd be nothing left to find by this stage ‒ yet here I am, finding still more details I'd somehow missed the first half-dozen times through.

For one, there's the fact you can actually find Eva's grave in the graveyard outside the church. As the only photo we ever see of her shows her as a baby, I'd assumed she was still a baby when she died, but turns out, she was ten years old.

"Eva, June 1909 ‒ August 1919

May you slumber for only a short while"

As expected, her death of the Spanish flu took place in 1919. There's some semi-legible text on the stone, but it doesn't match the caption ‒ it's just the same generic filler text you'll find on half the gravestone assets in this game.

For another, there's Rose's baby monitor. I'd noticed Ethan turning the thing on when he puts her to bed, and even found the assets for its screen ‒ but since I'd never found the monitor itself, I assumed they must be unused.

Until this playthrough, when suddenly I'm just like, oh, there it is, sitting right on the table. You can even interact with it!

How did I miss this so many times? It is pretty easy to overlook, given you'll trigger the cutscene with Mia if you go much closer to the kitchen, but I'm still surprised I never spotted it before. (And you do have to wonder if there was ever any plan for it to show a glimpse of something more sinister than just a still-image of Rose sleeping.)

In other minor details, there's the bit where Ethan arrives on the outskirts of the village at 8AM. You can hear a clock striking 8 times as you get your first view of area.

Granted, this is not going to excite anyone who hasn't spent as long as I have putting together an hour-by-hour timeline of everything that happens in this game, but I still do love that they give you enough detail that that's even possible ‒ and this new timestamp fits right into that timeline. (And why yes I have just gone back and updated that post, what do you take me for?)

Speaking of assets I thought were unused, you know that hidden room under the castle you can't get into until later, where you have to solve a puzzle that involves setting a moroaica on fire? Have you ever looked closely at the tapestries decorating this place? Because I found them in the game files ages ago, and have been trying to figure out if they're actually in the game ever since.

Because seriously, look at these things!

Yes, that is a indeed a man with a sword and spear, wearing a hoplite helmet and sandals and nothing else. And the women seeing him from the front seem to be having a whole range of reactions to all that, er, weaponry being brandished their way. Isn't fine art wonderful?

Another asset I'd innocently assumed was unused is this wonderful bit of bullshit which was labeled simply 'antibow'. It wasn't until I took a long look at it that I realised what they meant was more like 'anti-B.O.W.', as in Bio-Organic-Weapon.

Yes, that is indeed a knife taped to some kind of grenade. Sure is one high-tech outfit we're working with here!

Only now do I spot that this is actually the bomb Chris chucks at the Megamycete in the cavern. It doesn't even come with the knife already attached, he just kind of sticks the knife onto the bomb and presumably straps some tape around them while the camera cuts away.

I still have so much more to share from my ongoing free-camera adventures, but I think we'll leave this one there for today.

[sil-writes-fiction-too]

Lucifer Drabble

Lucifer x GN!Reader

Genre: fluff, suggestive

CW: slight suggestive themes at the end if you squint-

A/N: helloooo I am not dead, surprise! After June of Doom I wanted to take a little break, enjoy the Summer holidays and focus a little more on my studies... then I ended up in the ER and my focus kinda went out the window! :D Now, my exams aren't over, and as a matter of fact I have one next Monday, but!! I kinda still wanted to keep the writing part of my brain noodle exercised, and if I don't distract myself from all the shit I just went through I will go crazy, so here I come with a very short, very self-indulgent drabble! Eeeenjoy!

“Come to my room right now. Don't make me wait.”

That's all he wrote to you, and you didn't really question it. You just got up and walked down the hallway to his room. You know Lucifer, and you know what he wants. Right from the get-go this morning you knew it was going to be a long and stressful day for him. It is not unlikely for Lucifer to request your company at the end of days such as this and honestly? You welcome it.

You were unable to spend any time with him lately, and it was really starting to get to you, so going to see him sounds like a great idea right now.

You knock at his door with no hesitation, and, like other times before, it opens on its own, letting classical music pour out of the room. Lucifer is sitting on the sofa with a tea tray on the coffee table, his coat abandoned on a chair and his shirt slightly unbuttoned. Ah, so it is the kind of day that requires the full treatment, huh?

You walk over to him and plop down in the spot next to him, even though you know that that's not nearly close enough for him and that soon you'll probably find yourself in his lap.

“Long day?” You offer with a smile, and Lucifer wraps his arm around you and, of course, pulls you closer with a tired sigh

“You have no idea.”

You settle into his side with a sympathetic smile and place your head against his shoulder.

“Anything I can do?”

He squeezes you a little closer still, as if he was trying to merge your souls together. “Let's just stay like this for a while.” You nod and say nothing else, nuzzling your cheek against him as you slowly relax.

You stay like that,basking in each other's presence for a little, but after a while you decide to start talking to tell him about you week, careful not to drown out the sound of the music coming from his record player. He doesn't say much, merely humming here and there while he runs his gloved fingers through your hair.

You don't know when, but at some point you switch positions, and find Lucifer's head in your lap as you run your fingers through his hair. Despite his silence, you know he appreciates the tender gesture. At some point, though, you realize that the music has stopped, and you throw a glance towards the record player. It is completely turned off, so you come to the conclusion that Lucifer must've stopped it with magic.

“Ah, I'm sorry. I've been prattling on for too long, haven't I? You wanted to enjoy your music in peace.” You say apologetically, smiling down at him.

“Don't be ridiculous.” He grabs your wrist and gently brings your hand to his lips. “I merely decided to turn off the record player so that I could listen to you better. Your voice is my favorite sound, I thought you would know that by now.” He gives you a self-satisfied smirk when he sees your cheeks turn red at his simple words. You are just so adorable sometimes. What is he supposed to do with you?

“As a matter of fact-” he sits up and leans over you, caging you against the sofa with his arms “-I think I want to hear more from you...” He drawls in a low purr before leaning down to lavish your neck with kisses and little bites.