#class 11 snapshots answers

[solvednotes]

Class XI English Snapshots: Chapter List & NCERT Solutions

Welcome to the comprehensive resource for Class XI English Snapshots NCERT Solutions, important questions, and chapter summaries. This page serves as a master list of all chapters included in the Class 11 Snapshots textbook, featuring direct links to detailed notes, NCERT answer solutions, summary guides, and exam-oriented study material for each chapter. Whether you’re searching for Class XI…

[tanya382sharma]

NCERT Solutions for Class 11 English | Complete Chapter-wise Solutions

Explore detailed NCERT Solutions for Class 11 English, covering every chapter in both Hornbill and Snapshots textbooks. Designed to help you excel in exams with easy-to-understand explanations, critical questions, and answers. Get the best guidance to improve your literature and grammar skills with these comprehensive solutions.

[sagarrachnagrp]

Together with CBSE Question Bank Class 11 English Core for 2024-25 exams

Section-wise Reading Material provided in Best CBSE Question Bank Class 11 2024, assures better understanding. Short & Long Answer Type Questions of Hornbill and Snapshots, the NCERT textbooks. Unsolved & Solved Practice Papers provided in Best CBSE Question Bank for Class 11 2024 English for full syllabus practice. Together with series of best reference books 2025 are available on our official website.

[thanksjro]

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

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

So.

This is a little different than what I usually do.

Clearly.

God, how did we even get here?

Oh, I remember.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

Haha, I doubt it.

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

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

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

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

For loving his child.

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

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

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

No. Not at all, actually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s just a shame that I don’t care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As if women are property to be owned.

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

We’re 17.5 minutes into this film.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t be fucking serious.

ANYWAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which made me groan aloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Sheeran does not survive this experience.

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

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

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

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

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

So they try it again.

This time it works, sort of.

At the very least, he’s left now.

Tail fell off, though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judy doesn’t count.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For about 20 seconds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ratchet’s fine, by the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We still have another hour of this movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nope, that doesn’t happen either.

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

Repeatedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being advocated for by Optimus Goddamn Prime.

We still have another 50 minutes of this movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, right, because ~girl~.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y’know.

Like a vast, predatory bird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feminist icon Megatron?

Feminist icon Megatron.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congrats on your first murder, Sam.

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

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

In tow.

In tow-

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

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

Then Bumblebee talks and he’s fucKING BRITISH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s where they leave us.

IT TOOK THREE PEOPLE TO WRITE THIS SCHLOCK.

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

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

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

What a mess.

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

COMING SOON:

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

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

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

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

[books-letstalkaboutem]

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Quotes that I Loved

This is just a list of quotes or excerpts that I highlighted while reading the book- literally all of them and there are a lot. I’m going to go ahead and say spoilers below just because there are so many quotes and while I don’t think the quotes actually spoil anything, I don’t want to accidentally spoil something for someone.

Some of the quotes might seem a little weird out of context but these are quotes that hit close to home, made me say “Hell, yeah, Addie!!!", quotes that made me laugh, and then basically all of the other quotes that I loved while reading.

I know that I didn't completely fall in love with this book like so many other people did, but it was still so beautifully written and there were so many amazing quotes in this book.

And just a heads up, I read this on my kindle, just in case the page numbers I list don’t match with your copy of the book.

Spoilers Below:

Quotes that Hit Close to Home

“Three and twenty, a third of a life already buried.” Page 39

“The day passes like a sentence. The sun falls like a scythe.” Page 41

“[...] and when she dies it will be as though she never lived.” Page 42

“I am so tired of not having choices, so scared of the years rushing past beneath my feet. I do not want to die as I’ve lived, which is no life at all. I—” Page 46

“[...] she swears sometimes her memory runs forward as well as back, unspooling to show the roads she’ll never get to travel. But that way lies madness, and she has learned not to follow.” Page 61

“His parents meant well, of course, but they always told him things like Cheer up, or It will get better, or worse, It’s not that bad, which is easy to say when you’ve never had a day of rain.” Page 97

“But then a night would go long, and a day would start late, and now he feels like there’s no time at all. Like he is always late for something.” Page 119

““I see someone who cares,” she says slowly. “Perhaps too much. Who feels too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.”” Page 140

““Life is so brief, and every night in Rennes I’d go to bed, and lie awake, and think, there is another day behind me, and who knows how few ahead.”” Page 167

““I mean feeling like it’s surging by so fast, and you try to reach out and grab it, you try to hold on, but it just keeps rushing away. And every second, there’s a little less time, and a little less air, and sometimes when I’m sitting still, I start to think about it, and when I think about it, I can’t breathe. I have to get up. I have to move.”” Page 177

““Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”” Page 179

“It was such a lovely jar she had kept them in. But the glass is cracking now. The water leaking through.” Page 215

“Moments of joy register as brief, but ecstatic. Moments of pain stretch long and unbearably loud.” Page 225

“[...] you’ve never felt called to any one thing. There is no violent push in one direction, but a softer nudge a hundred different ways, and now all of them feel out of reach. Page 226

“[...] in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.” Page 226

“He lets it ring, holds his breath until it stops. He tells himself that if they call again, he’ll answer. If they call again, he’ll tell them he is not okay. But the phone doesn’t ring a second time.” Page 229

“He misses the structure, misses the path, misses the purpose. And maybe it wasn’t a perfect fit, but nothing is.” Page 257

“That he’d blinked and somehow years had gone by, and everyone else had carved their trenches, paved their paths, and he was still standing in a field, uncertain where to dig.” Page 283

“And those first two years, he was happy. He had Bea, and Robbie, and all he had to do was learn. Build a foundation. It was the house, the one that he was supposed to build on top of that smooth surface, that was the problem. It was just so … permanent.” 283

“Choosing a class became choosing a discipline, and choosing a discipline became choosing a career, and choosing a career became choosing a life, and how was anyone supposed to do that, when you only had one?” Page 283

““The vexing thing about time,” he says, “is that it’s never enough. Perhaps a decade too short, perhaps a moment. But a life always ends too soon.”” Page 333

“He is all restless energy, and urgent need, and there isn’t enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be. That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.” Page 421

“The world is wide, and he’s seen so little of it with his own eyes. He wants to travel, to take photos, listen to other people’s stories, maybe make some of his own. After all, life seems very long sometimes, but he knows it will go so fast, and he doesn’t want to miss a moment.” Page 438

Quotes that Made Me Laugh

“Henry loves his sister, he does. But Muriel’s always been like strong perfume. Better in small doses. And at a distance.” Page 120

““Sorry, Book,” she mutters, lifting the cat gingerly onto the back of the old chair, where he does his best impression of an inconvenienced bread loaf.” Page 248

““It’s Halloween!” defends Robbie. “It’s the twenty-third,” says Henry, but Robbie treats holidays the way he treats birthdays, stretching them from days into weeks, and sometimes into seasons.” Page 274

Quotes that made me say “Hell, yeah, Addie!!!”

“If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.” Page 31

“[...]from this moment forward, her life will be her own.” Page 48

“There is a defiance in being a dreamer.” Page 117

““It has only been two years,” she says. “Think of all the time I have, and all the things I’ll see.”” Page 132

“It will take time, but time is the one thing Addie has plenty of. So she opens her eyes, and starts again.” Page 192

“But then Addie straightens, lifts her chin, smiles with an almost defiant kind of joy. “But isn’t it wonderful,” she says, “to be an idea?”” Page 261

Quotes that I Love

“[...] never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” Page 7

“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?” Page 15

“The things that last, even when memories don’t.” Page 16

“As if you couldn’t like one place and want to see another.” Page 23

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.” Page 35

“The kind of place where time slips and blurs, where a month, a year, a life can go missing.” Page 39

“[...] attraction can look an awful lot like recognition in the wrong light.” Page 56

“The rise isn’t worth the fall.” Page 56

“Being trapped, buried alive, these are the things that scare you when you cannot die.” Page 57

“Funny, how some people take an age to warm, and others simply walk into every room as if it’s home.” Page 58

“Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vécu. Already seen. Already known. Already lived.” Page 66

“[...]a lifetime of knowing brushed away like a tear.” Page 73

“[...] and it is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten. To remember when no one else does.” Page 77

“[...] ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.” Page 77

““These days, everyone’s looking down,” muses Sam. “It’s nice to see someone looking up.”” Page 101

“Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered?” Page 103

“If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?” Page 103

“Dreamer is too soft a word. It conjures thoughts of silken sleep, of lazy days in fields of tall grass, of charcoal smudges on soft parchment.” Page 11

“She considers the cut of their clothes, the absence of bone stays or bustled skirts, and thinks, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, how much simpler it would be to be a man, how easily they move through the world, and at such little cost.” Page 129

““I remember you.”” Page 135

“The darkness claimed he’d given her freedom, but really, there is no such thing for a woman, not in a world where they are bound up inside their clothes, and sealed inside their homes, a world where only men are given leave to roam.” Page 163

“She watches these men and wonders anew at how open the world is to them, how easy the thresholds.” Page 165

““I think there are many ways to matter.”” Page 179

“But ideas are so much wilder than memories, so much faster to take root.”” Page 210

“He is full of roots, while she has only branches.” Page 212

“Easy to stay on the path when the road is straight and the steps are numbered.” Page 229

“Outside the window, the day just carries on as if nothing’s changed, but it feels like everything has, because Addie LaRue is immortal, and Henry Strauss is damned.” Page 235

“[...]I didn’t want to live forever. I just wanted to live.”” Page 236

““There’s this family photo,” he says, “not the one in the hall, this other one, from back when I was six or seven. That day was awful. Muriel put gum in David’s book and I had a cold, and my parents were fighting right up until the flash went off. And in the photo, we all look so … happy. I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”” Page 239

“God, it feels good to be wanted.” Page 256

“[...] And ideas are wilder than memories. They’re like weeds, always finding their way up.”” Page 261

“Homesick—Henry knows that one is supposed to mean sick for home, not from it, but it still feels right.” Page 262

“Dressing up, he thinks, is just like watching cartoons, something you enjoyed as a kid, before it passes through the no man’s land of teen angst, the ironic age of early twenties. And then somehow, miraculously, it crosses back into the realm of the genuine, the nostalgic. A place reserved for wonder.” Page 274

“Bea always says returning to campus is like coming home. But it doesn’t feel that way to Henry. Then again, he never felt at home at home, only a vague sense of dread, the eggshell-laden walk of someone constantly in danger of disappointing.” 282

“He doesn’t know what he believes, hasn’t for a long time, but it’s hard to entirely discount the presence of a higher power when he recently sold his soul to a lower one.” Page 284

““You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”” Page 290

“He has asked the wrong god for the wrong thing, and now he is enough because he is nothing. He is perfect, because he isn’t there.” Page 290

“A life reduced to a block of stone, a patch of grass.” Page 299

“The present folding on top of the past instead of erasing it, replacing it.” Page 306

“She knows the paint will fade, rinsed off by a puddle, or simply wiped away by time, but that’s how memories are supposed to work. There—and then, little by little, gone.” Page 307

“Without the bells, the organ, the bodies crowding in for services, the church feels abandoned. Less a house of worship and more a tomb.” Page 311

“God is so large, why build walls to hold Him in?” Page 311

“Once you know about a thing, you start to see it everywhere. Someone says the words purple elephant, and all of a sudden, you catch sight of them in shop windows and on T-shirts, stuffed animals and billboards, and you wonder how you never noticed.” Page 314

“There is a freedom, after all, in being forgotten.” 325

“Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps—perhaps—they are in reach.” Page 327

“They’ve been lucky, so lucky, but the trouble with luck is that it always ends.” 329

““You said it yourself, Luc. Ideas are wilder than memories. And I can be wild. I can be stubborn as the weeds, and you will not root me out. And I think you are glad of it. I think that’s why you’ve come, because you are lonely, too.”” Page 332

“She closes her eyes, reminds herself there are many ways to leave a mark, reminds herself that pictures lie.” Page 337

“She may not feel the years weakening her bones, her body going brittle with age, but the weariness is a physical thing, like rot, inside her soul. There are days when she mourns the prospect of another year, another decade, another century. There are nights when she cannot sleep, moments when she lies awake and dreams of dying. But then she wakes, and sees the pink and orange dawn against the clouds, or hears the lament of a lone fiddle, the music and the melody, and remembers there is such beauty in the world. And she does not want to miss it— any of it.” Page 342

“Luc’s smile darkens. “Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because vision weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades.” He leans close, twists a lock of her hair around one finger. “Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”” Page 351

“It is a sign, when even gods and devils dread a fight.” Page 367

“And this, he decides, is what a good-bye should be. Not a period, but an ellipsis, a statement trailing off, until someone is there to pick it up. It is a door left open. It is drifting off to sleep.” Page 419

[life-gave-me-oranges]

important

All cbse india students

remember ranga's marriage chapter???????????

yes. its shit. so i wrote this email and sent it to like 6 ids i found.

I WANT YOU ALL TO SEND IT TOO. ASK YOUR FRIENDS ASK EVERYONE.

pleaseeeeeeeeee guys lets spam the ncert mail. i dunno if they read them or not. but at least we can try.

below is the email

Greetings

To whom this now concerns, I write this email to bring to your attention, an extremely problematic chapter in then English Coursebook for 11th standard recommended by CBSE.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I firmly believe that child marriage in India is illegal according to the prohibition of child marriage act of 2006. Should you further require information about this act, I would recommend you to visit this page and learn about the topic. Coming back to the purpose of this email, I must object upon the chapter 3, Ranga's Marriage by Masti Venkatesha Iyengar in Snapshot (supplementary reader in English) for class 11th. The chapter narrates a tale of an 11-year-old girl ending up marrying an adult. Now, if I must boldly state this, I will, that we consider an 11-year-old girl to be, all over the world, a minor. A minor is someone below the age of 18, and someone who should not get married. Also, a minor is not ready, physically or mentally, to bear children or support a family. I will not attach any sources for my previous statements, but should you require any, please ask me in your answer. I would me more than grateful to provide you with multiple sources. Along with child marriage, the chapter poses some other issues as well and I would consider it rather absurd. Having read hundreds of classical short stories, I will go as far as to say, that this chapter is not up to the mark. It also contains the action of mentally manipulating someone, namely Ranga, into committing a morally evil crime. Having read it twice now, I have not once have come upon something that explains that this story is set when crimes like child marriage and other older traditions were considered holy and important. The chapter clearly promotes pedophilia, sexism, patriarchal beliefs and provocativeness, none of which are fit for the modern world. I am not afraid to say that this chapters pollutes the mind of anyone who reads it, and along with that, it poisons the book, Snapshot, which could have been a collection of decent and enjoyable stories. Looking online for answers to various question given in the chapter, I found multiple answers stating 'In the end, Ranga agrees to marry Ratna (the minor) and started a family with her. Thus, the chapter had a happy ending.' To my limited knowledge, I do not see in any way how marrying an 11-year-old leads to a happy ending. Upon further research, I discovered this story has been in NCERT curriculum for over 10 years now. If this story has caused a reader to learn bad morals because of this story, I would have no one left to blame other than you. I also found articles regarding the absurdity of this chapter and a petition to remove it from the curriculum. Thus, I can firmly say that I am not the only one to be disturbed by this chapter in my textbook. I look forward to a solution from you regarding how we can avoid such mistakes in the future. Awaiting you reply, Thousands of students of CBSE Board who have had the misfortune to read this chapter.

[cherryeol04]

The Firsts

Summary: No one ever told him that living was going to be so difficult. That there would emotions get couldn’t label and distinguish. He’s just a young boy trying to navigate through life and its unexpected ups and downs.

Genre: Humor, Fluff, smut(?)

Pairings: Oc x Felix, Oc x Changbin, Changbin x Oc x Felix

Warnings: poly relationship, angst in some part, excessive fighting about the MCU.

Parts: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14 / Part 15 / Part 16 / Part 17

A/N: This story has a theme of Firsts. First love, first kiss and many other firsts. Each part can be read on their own and are meant to stand as oneshots. It’s basically a collection of oneshots (little snapshots into my Oc’s life. 😁)

Aiden eyed Changbin hard as the other fiddled with his laptop. The two boys sat in Changbin’s room on a particularly hot summer afternoon. It was the kind of hot that the simple thought of breathing exhausted them, which wouldn’t have been a bad thing had they been at Aiden’s house. His mother always insisted on running the air conditioning during the summertime to keep everyone sane - he sadly couldn’t say the same thing for Changbin’s mom, who insisted they just open the window and let the fresh air in. 

They had toyed with the idea of going somewhere to escape the heat, but anytime either of them thought about walking outside in the sweltering heat they decided against the idea. That’s when Changbin got an oh so great idea, one that Aiden was questioning the sanity of. “How do you even know what sites to go to? Did you like, google it?” He asked, eyes locked on the screen as Changbin pulled up a porn site. Images of naked men and women danced on the screen - most advertisements but the middle portion was dedicated strictly for the videos uploaded to the site. Aiden honestly wasn’t sure if he was turned on or repulsed by some of the lewd positions these men and women were in. 

“Yeah.” Changbin answered, startling Aiden out of his internal debate of if he was going to throw up or not at the site of a woman spread eagle in the thumbnail of a video while Changbin scrolled through. “Haven’t you watched porn before?” 

“I’m a good Christian boy.” Aiden huffed with a smirk, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t partake in them sins of the flesh.” The forced exhale of laughter from Changbin had Aiden pouting. 

“Right. This coming from the guy who is making it a habit of waking me up in the middle of the night to tell me about his sexual dreams with Felix. Yeah, good Christian boy my ass.” He retorted and sighed. 

“Shut up! Okay listen, I’ve never thought of doing that okay?” Aiden whined, cheeks flushing with embarrassment because really, he felt like he was a weird kid. He was sure there were plenty of young men who spent their time watching porn and getting off. It was natural, or at least he assumed. 

“Wait.” Changbin shifted beside Aiden on his spot on the bed, eyes staring intently at him and Aiden actually shivered under the gaze - eyes adverting away. “So how do you know you’re gay?” He asked. It was a stupid question, but Aiden would be lying if he said he hadn’t questioned himself about that before. He had researched “how do you know if you’re gay” with safe search on. Maybe that’s what has kept him from seeing porn until now. 

“I mean, I like Felix and I have dreams about him. Doesn’t that make me gay?” Aiden asked confused, though he still refused to look at Changbin. 

“Yeah, but have you ever touched a dick before?” Changbin grunted when Aiden smacked his arm, their eyes locking once more as Aiden frowned.  “I’ve never seen porn before, but I know how to  jack off, idiot.” 

“Yeah, but have you touched someone else’s dick before?” The question had Aiden falling silent as he contemplated if it really mattered if he had touched another guy’s dick or not. Weren’t they all the same? Wasn’t it all the same? Was jacking off not considered a sign of knowing if he was gay?

“No?” He hadn’t meant to sound so unsure because the answer was a definitive no, he had touched no other dicks but his own. And yet he couldn’t help but feel shy and embarrassed for having that answer, a similar feeling he got when he was called to answer a question in class and was wrong. “Have you?”

“No. But I’m not the gay one.” Changbin shot back and Aiden groaned, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth. He looked towards the screen again and sighed. “So you’ve never watched porn and never touched another dick? Wow, you’re just an unconfirmed gay virgin.” Changbin teaser, a light laugh leaving him, but when Aiden didn’t laugh with him and avoided eye contact, he stopped and his smile fell. 

“Aiden? Hey, you know it’s okay right? I’m just teasing.”

“I know!” Aiden said quickly, but his insides were swimming with such a mixture of emotions that he wasn’t entirely sure what he felt most, embarrassment, self-pity, arousal even? It was very confusing for him. He jerked when he felt a hand touching his shoulder and he shyly lifted his gaze to meet Changbin’s. 

“Do you wanna, touch mine?” 

The question had Aiden sputtering in shock, eyes wide and cheeks now a darker shade of red than it had been before. “Do what? No! That would be so weird!” He exclaimed. “We’re like best friends.”

“Yeah, and best friends help each other out.” Changbin shrugged. “You know, gotta make sure you’re actually gay before your embarrass yourself in front of Felix.”  Aiden whined at that, but Changbin had a point. It couldn’t hurt, right? After all, Changbin was offering. 

“You’re sure it’s okay?” 

“Yeah, let me just find something that’ll get you off and -“

“What about you? I thought you weren’t gay?” Aiden questioned. 

“Hmmm.” Changbin hummed in thought. “I’m an equal opportunistic person. It’s fine.” He waved his hand at Aiden, his other hand gliding across the trackpad of the laptop to find the ‘gay’ section of the website. He scrolled for a bit after finding it and ended up choosing a video that looked pretty amateurish but the two guys were pretty young and twinkish. Given Aiden’s current crush, he figured these guys would be his type. 

Aiden wasn’t entirely too sure about this half baked plan, yet there was something exciting about it. He wasn’t sure what it was, but the idea of actually touching another dick was appealing if the surge of arousal that ran down his spine was anything to go by. Sitting back against the headboard, his eyes stared at the video that was slowly buffering while Changbin fought to close the six pop-ups about meeting hot singles in their area. 

Grumbling to himself, Changbin finally got the pop-ups closed and the video began playing - volume set low though he swore it was extremely loud. Perhaps it was because they were trying to watch porn in the middle of the day, and Changbin’s mother was out in the backyard tending to her garden. It was risky but thrilling and that alone had him half hard. But he was still hesitant, not sure if he should just whip his dick out now and start touching it. While he wasn’t a stranger to touching himself, it was different when someone else was in the room with him - almost embarrassing. 

Changbin settled next to him, his hand rested on his abdomen and looking so very comfortable and not at all fazed by this situation.  Aiden almost envied how calm and collected he seemed to be and decided that maybe he would just imitate the other; settling himself in the same position as Changbin, eyes moving to focus back on the laptop where the lewd, slurping sounds were spilling from. 

Five minutes or maybe it was 3 hours - Aiden couldn’t be sure - passed, and the video only seemed like it was halfway done. The two men had only recently just started fucking and by now Aiden knew of two different positions you could have sex in. He was learning a lot, but at some point, he had stopped analyzing and started feeling. Feeling how hard he was, how heady the moans from the strangers on the screen sent weird yet pleasant sparks of white-hot something through him. It was a sensation he hadn’t experienced before but he liked it, he liked it a lot. His hand slowly slipped from its resting place on his stomach and casually slid down to the front of his sweats - tented from his straining erection, a small wet spot forming. 

His pinkie was the first to graze it, touch light and airy. He inhaled harshly because fuck if that didn’t feel good. His cock twitched, throbbed and Aiden wanted nothing more than to wrap his hand around it and start stroking. But he stopped himself, unsure if he should because Changbin was still there. And even though he offered to let Aiden touch his dick, he hadn’t uttered a single word since the start of the video. Biting his lower lip, Aiden decided to take a quick peek at Changbin, eyes shifting to the other male and widening at the sight. 

“Hey! You said I could touch it.” He all but whined out, Changbin’s hand stilling over his hard member, head-turning to face him. His cheeks were flushed a bright red, lips parted as soft pants left them. 

“Sorry?” He muttered out breathlessly, a smirk playing across his lips. “You didn’t seem to be interested in doing much. You haven’t even touched yourself.” Changbin noticed and Aiden didn’t know what was hotter, how deep Changbin’s voice sounded when he was horny or the fact the other had actually been watching and waiting for him to start touching himself. Maybe both were equally hot? His cock seemed to think so as it gave another twitch at the thought, a reminder that it was still hard and needed attention. 

“Oh.” It was a pathetic response and Aiden lowered his head in slight shame. The laughter that Changbin let out only added to the shame and embarrassment that he felt and briefly he thought that maybe this was a mistake. He wasn’t given the chance to even suggest that maybe they should stop when he felt fingers close around his wrist with gentle pressure. The movement was hesitant, Changbin giving him the chance to pull his hand away. Aiden let his hand be guided, though, watching with a curious gaze and excitement building up inside him as his hand was placed over the straining erection of his best friend. It was instinct that his fingers curled and closed around it and Aiden marveled at the feeling. 

It was different. He couldn’t explain why or how, but feeling Changbin hot and heavy in his hand was so different than feeling himself in his hand. He really it. Aiden moved his hand, angle awkward as he did his best to stroke the other - going slow at first as he watched Changbin’s expression for confirmation of how he was feeling. His lips were parted, soft moans leaving him as his hand fell from Aiden’s wrist, letting the other do what he wanted. 

“I-Is this okay?” Soft, meek, Aiden would have been embarrassed for just how damn shy and unsure he sounded at that moment, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was more worried about making Changbin feel good.

“Harder.” Aiden’s hands faltered for a moment, brows furrowing at the words. He found Changbin’s hand resting over his, fingers pressing into Aiden’s to tighten his grip and - oh. “Fuck.”

Who would have figured such a simple word could cause such a burning desire to bubble up in Aiden’s chest, a moan tumbling from his lips. Shit, how embarrassing. Was he supposed to be getting off on the sounds of Changbin? Wasn’t that weird? There were so many questions racing through his mind, but he had to push them to the back and focus. Focus on the hot cock twitching in his hand, precum beading up at the slit. He thought about tasting it but decided against it. That would surely be too weird for friends to do. 

His hand worked over Changbin at a steady and even pace. On each upstroke, he would give a little squeeze just under the head, an action he found that Changbin seemed to like as his head fell back against the headboard with a loud thunk - more sinful moans falling filling the air. 

“Binnie,” he brought his bottom lip between his teeth once more as he watched the way Changbin’s back arched, hips jerking up into his hand, driving his cock faster into his fist. “Changbinnie~” he tried again, successfully getting the other’s attention this time.  Dark eyes clouded with lust locked with his and Aiden gasped sharply, lips pressing together to suppress a moan because fuck if that look wasn’t hot. 

“What is it?” Aiden stuttered, stumbling over his words as he tried to tell Changbin that he wanted to be touched too, but the words simply wouldn’t come out. The corner of Changbin’s lip curled upwards and Aiden pouted, whining in frustration. 

“Me too.” He sounded like a child, wanting to be included and Changbin could only chuckle as he shifted on the bed - weight resting more on his left side as he reached over and ghosted his fingers over Aiden’s crotch, pulling a loud gasp from the other. 

“I barely touched you.”

“Felt good anyway.” Aiden whispered, eyes closing and head-turning away from embarrassment. Changbin laughed lightly, head shaking at the comment. Aiden was truly something else. His hand cupped Aiden, fingers closing around him lightly, stroking slowly. Aiden’s hips jerked up at the touch, loud whimpers and moans leaving him. 

“Be quiet, don’t want my mom to hear.” Changbin scolded lightly, receiving a whine in protest, yet Aiden bit his bottom lip to try and stifle the noises that wanted to spill from him. The pleasure he felt was different. It was stronger, heightened and he could only imagine it was like that because someone else was touching him. It was exhilarating. 

“Binnie.” Aiden breathed, breath hitching as he jerked his hips up again, his cock sliding against the loose fist around his still covered cock. “Please.” He practically begged. Changbin grunted and tightened his grip, but his hand was slow - almost lazy - as he mimicked the pace Aiden had slowed to on his own dick. 

“This better?” 

“No.” It sounded almost like a growl, Aiden’s brows furrowed together in frustration because it certainly wasn’t better. Sure Changbin was stroking him but it wasn’t nearly as fast as Aiden wanted. It was like a small sizzle of fire just under his skin and he needed some winds to fan the flames and make him burn. 

“Maybe you should start moving your hand then.” Changbin quipped, smirk dancing on his lips as Aiden finally turned his head back and stared at Changbin. 

“You’re the worst.” He whispered with a pout and Changbin snorted. 

“Hey, I wanna get off too. So start stroking.” Aiden rolled his eyes, but his grip tightened around Changbin and he started stroking him once more. His mind was focused once more on how Changbin felt in his hand, and the lewd moans he was pulling from the other, so loud against his ear. And he was the one that supposed to be quiet? “Fuck, just like that.” Hot and heavy - breathless - the words were whispered, Changbin’s lips grazing against his ear as he shifted closer to him. The hand left him, and Aiden was close to sobbing and begging for more that it was actually humiliating. But he wanted it so badly. He needed Changbin’s hand on him. 

Thankfully, before any words could leave his lips, Changbin’s hand slipped under the hem of his sweatpants and underwear. The second skin met skin, Aiden could swear he saw heaven because fuck if that didn’t feel amazing. “Binnie.” Aiden whimpered pathetically, his voice nearly inaudible over the loud hiss Changbin let out as Aiden squeezed him just a little too hard. Panting harshly, Changbin gripped Aiden and stroked him quickly, chuckling as Aiden jerked and trembled under his touch. His thumb grazed over the head, smearing each bead of precum that bubbles up.

Aiden groaned as he lowered his head to rest on Changbin’s shoulder, eyes screwed shut as he basked in the pleasure the other was causing. Briefly, he released Changbin’s cock long enough to shift himself into a more comfortable position facing the other. Reaching back down, he grabbed Changbin again and started stroking him - mimicking the way Changbin’s fingers moved over his cock. His movements were quick and not nearly as clean as Changbin’s but it seemed to be enough. Breaths mixed and mingled, moans lingering in the silent room as the two boys worked to get each other off. 

It was embarrassing how quickly Aiden reached his end, the heat in his gut coiling tighter and tighter. “Changbin.” He breathed out, wiggling against the other to grip the other’s wrist with his free hand and failing. “Stop, gonna cum.” Even with the warning, Changbin didn’t seem to have any intention of stopping. It only seemed to spur him on more as he stroked his cock faster. He was twitching and leaking heavily in Changbin’s grasp. “Chang-“

“Cum.” The demand whispered so hotly in his ear had Aiden tensing, his body reacting on its own. Needy whines and choked gasps fell past parted lips as Aiden’s head fell back onto the pillows behind him as he came into Changbin’s hand. It was intense, an orgasm that Aiden didn’t think it was possible he could have. He certainly couldn’t get himself off this well. 

“Fuck, shit.” He gasped out, muscles slowly relaxing as the last wave of ecstasy washed over him. The soft hum from Changbin captured Aiden’s attention and he reminded of what he should have been doing. He started moving his still hand once more, finding the movement slicker and as he looked down he realized Changbin already came - his cock softening in his hand, so he released him. He was at a loss for words now, both of them quiet save for their pants as they rode down their highs. 

Silently, Changbin reached over Aiden and grabbed a few tissues from his bedside table. Cleaning up their messes took a bit of time and in the end, Aiden was sure there was probably some cum that got on the comforter. “So, have fun?” Changbin asked as he tossed the wads of tissues into the trash can.

“Yeah.” Aiden swallowed thickly, tongue swiping against his dry lips in an effort to revitalize them. “That was mind-blowing.” He said and laughed lightly. 

“You think that was mind-blowing? Wait till you actually have sex.” Changbin snorted as he settled back down in his bed, laptop long-forgotten near the end.  “You’ve had sex?” Aiden asked in shock, eyes wide. How could his best friend not tell him something that important?

“No, I’m just saying.” Changbin said quickly. “I hear it’s supposed to be really good.”

“Oh.” Aiden wasn’t at all convinced, but he would let it go for now. 

“So, can you say with 100% conviction that you’re gay?” Changbin asked, reminding Aiden of the whole point of them even jerking each other off. 

“Oh! Yeah.” He said, a goofy smile spreading over his lips. “Dicks are fucking amazing.”

“Are they now?” 

“Completely. I wonder if Felix has a nice dick?” Aiden contemplated, crying out when Changbin shoved him roughly off his bed. “Dude!”

“I just got you off and you’re talking about another man. Not in my bed!” 

Groaning, Aiden sat up and leaned against the side of the bed. He stuck his tongue out at Changbin, laughing. 

“Whatever. Wanna shower?” He asked and Changbin nodded. “Cool, but no butt stuff!” Aiden said as he climbed to his feet, grinning. 

“I swear to god, I’m going to drown you under the showerhead.” Changbin threatened halfheartedly, pulling another laugh from Aiden as the male walked naked from his room. 

“You know you love me!” 

Yeah, maybe he did.

[blubberquark]

Why Puzzle Platformers?

Why are there so many puzzle platformers? Was everybody simply copying Braid, hoping for the same level of success? And more importantly, now that Braid has been out for over a decade, why are people still making them?

If you make games, you already know why there are so many puzzle platformers, but I haven’t found a comprehensive answer to this question anywhere I can conveniently link to.

There are different ways to read that question:

Why are people adding puzzles to platformer games?

Why are there so many commercial indie puzzle platformers?

Why weren’t the same puzzles presented in an abstract, more puzzle-focused way?

Why are people adding puzzles to platformer games?

When it comes to jam games or small shareware projects, we should first ask “Why platformers, puzzle or not?” Part of the answer is probably “because platformers are easy to make with GameMaker“. Another part of the answer is “Because in a platformer, the player character interacts with the level, items, and NPCs, but these do not, for the most part, interact with each other, which makes a platformer comparably easy to implement (compared to an RTS game) and design (compared to RPG games), and platformers don’t need many extradiegetic UI elements.“

But beyond that, when you can add other mechanics to games, why puzzles?

The two obvious candidates to add to games are combat/stealth, and puzzles.

You can could also add multiple-choice dialogue, inventory, RPG elements (quests, skill points, classes), or procedural generation to any sidescrolling game, but none of these cannot carry a game on their own when you tack them on to a platformer. If the dialogue is actually substantial enough to carry a game on its own, the 2D platforming may stick out as “tacked-on” instead.

Strategy or economy (building, trading, tactics and management) are better served by a mouse-based UI. Dialogue-heavy or text-based games usually don’t have platforming sections, but platformer games can have some dialogue. In both cases, the pacing and movement of a platformer undercuts these game mechanics, and a different UI would be a better fit.

You can give your platformer a theme like horror, romance, science fiction, or medieval fantasy.

Puzzles are something you can add into a platformer game, either in between difficult platforming sections, or in combination with them. You can even alternate between stealth/combat and puzzles. Puzzles can be easy or difficult, and you can use them to break up levels or slow down the pace of an action platformer, or centre your whole game around them.

It takes some skill to design a puzzle mechanic that stands on its own, but it’s much easier to design an simple and easy one-off puzzle that you can throw into a platformer level. Easy puzzles are easy to balance: They have a binary win condition and an intended solution, but often no explicit failure state.

If adding another mechanic to a platformer makes it a puzzle platformer, is Speer a puzzle platformer? Is Super Meat Boy a puzzle platformer because you sometimes have to push buttons and the levels are self-contained? Is Outer Bounds a puzzle platformer? It’s not a bright line, but many action games that are lumped with “puzzle platformers” are still about jumping and running, but with a move set that isn’t 100% copied from Mario Bros.

If the main appeal of a game lies in the platforming, then as long as it’s solvable and doesn’t get in the way, it’s a good puzzle. Puzzles in platforming games can present their own platforming challenges, and rely on a slightly different kind of platforming execution skill, instead of puzzle-solving as a core aesthetic and source of difficulty. Players can be forced to traverse the same terrain back and forth along different paths. This can squeeze more gameplay out of fewer designed levels. Combined with traditional platforming obstacles like enemies to avoid, spike pits, moving platforms, one-way platforms, this can lead to more varied and difficult platforming challenges. Instead of getting in the way or breaking up the platforming bits, puzzle mechanics can go hand-in-hand with the platforming, without presenting a challenge in terms of puzzle solving, but only in terms of executing the solution.

Why are there so many commercial indie puzzle platformers?

For commercial games, the answer is more complicated. Maybe the premise of the question is not even true. Trine, Fez, Limbo, and And Yet It Moves all can in one way or another be described as “puzzle platformers”, but no two of them are in the same genre. If you cast a wider net, you get games like Mushroom 11, Owlboy, The Cave, Starseed Pilgrim, and Gunpoint.

Like “Action Adventure”, the phrase “puzzle platformer” has become a catch-all term for sidescroller games that aren’t punishingly difficult.

Of course, many commercial long-form games are classical puzzle platformers. Braid, Vessel, Closure, The Swapper, and Snapshot. These games are about puzzles, not about platforming.

Many smaller games like WarpSwap, ElecHead, Ministry of Synthesis, or LegBreaker are just exploring one puzzle mechanic to exhaustion in a series of one-room puzzles. Larger or long-form games often expand their repertoire of mechanics to create puzzles based on different mechanics held together by common themes or a story, or they focus more on platforming.

Why weren’t the same puzzles presented in an abstract, more puzzle-focused way?

Simple Controls and User Interface

If you see a puzzle platformer, you don’t need to figure out the controls or UI first, you can just pick up the controller and start running around. In their simplest form, the controls for a puzzle platformer are four directional buttons plus one for jumping and one for interacting the with puzzle mechanic, but more complex controls schemes are common.

The controls make writing a puzzle platformer for a game jam much easier than a mouse-driven puzzle game: You just need to check six keyboard buttons. If you are making a big commercial title, ease of implementation in terms of programming is not really a factor: After a day or two at most you’ll have implemented whatever mouse picking, widgets and UI elements you need. What’s much more time consuming is figuring out where to put the buttons so they don’t obscure the scene, or how to communicate which objects are clickable. Getting user interfaces right requires playtesting and iteration. A puzzle platformer might only need a context-based prompt that says “press X to interact“ or “walk into a boulder to push it“.

Game Feel, Embodiment and Characterisation

Another benefit of puzzle platformers over abstract puzzle presentation is game feel. The player controls the player character, and feels like a the player character existing inside the space of the level, increasing immersion compared to the feeling of a person sitting at a computer thinking about a crossword puzzle.

Many big-name 2D puzzle platformers like Braid and Snapshot have a rather zoomed-in view that focuses the level player character and the immediate surroundings, instead of showing the whole level. This allows the game to present important characters, items or places in great detail, and lets the camera pan to frame the most important parts of a scene. Animated movement in a two-dimensional space can give weight and character to the player character, and connect the gameplay to a story. NPCs can live inside a level, next to their home, their things, and their friends.

Imagine the same thing in a tower defence, or a racing game: You’re walking around in a level, and suddenly you meet an NPC, you’re having a conversation, and then you go on your merry way. Characters and environmental storytelling are not unique to platformers, but it’s more difficult to pull off in a game without a player character existing in the world with the NPCs. Puzzle platformers keep all options open.

Of course, this is not the only way to connect characterisation and puzzle gameplay, and it can be done in abstract games. Just in the most recent Ludum Dare, I played the game Interstellar Connection, a puzzle game with a rather abstract, disembodied presentation, in which the characterisation was delivered through dialogue. (I should briefly remark on two aspects of Interstellar Connection here, even though it has very little to do with the rest of this post. First, the game is at its heart a bunch of mazes that can be solved by backtracking. Every puzzle is equivalent to a maze graph, but the presentation makes use of a quirk of human cognition to prevent you from seeing the solution the way you would see the solution in a small maze. Second, I don’t think this mechanic can support a long-form game. If it weren’t for Ludum Dare, this would have been a forgettable minigame, not the main meat of the game, motivated and contextualised by the plot.)

Characters living inside a world could also be achieved with isometric graphics, first- or third-person 3D, or in a text-based game, but they don’t work well in self-contained or grid-based puzzle levels. We’ll get back to other aspects of more open level design later.

Puzzle Design

In a puzzle platformer, you have a player character, and you can have different kinds of obstacles, like pits filled with spikes, ledges, and doors. In a top-down platformer, you can of course also have doors, but you won’t have the same dynamics of gravity with falling down, of dropping things. It’s easier to get down from a ledge, or to drop something than to lift it.

With a visible and embodied player character instead of an abstract cursor, every puzzle can be complicated by combining manipulation of the puzzle environment with traversal of the level:

The level has an “obvious” solution, but the real challenge is navigating the environment to get there.

The challenge is to manipulate the environment to open a path for the player to jump to the right place to implement the solution.

The level has a “red herring” solution that solves the main puzzle but leaves the player trapped behind an obstacle, unable to progress without undoing it.

Level Design, Progression

Multiple puzzles can be placed in the same platformer “level” or “room“. In a “pure” puzzle game, puzzles are self-contained, with a beginning and an end, a starting state and an explicit solution condition. In a platformer, the goal can be implicit: You want to go from left to right and traverse the obstacles.

If a puzzle has an obvious missing piece, it can be a prompt for the player to explore the surrounding areas, to look for a tool, or for a certain puzzle piece that is exactly shaped like the gap that needs to be filled in the puzzle.

Strange Keyworld is a puzzle platformer, almost a puzzle metroidvania. Every so often, instead of reasoning through the puzzle that is currently shown on the screen, you need to explore the adjacent rooms to find another piece and bring it over. Although the puzzles in Strange Keyworld are mostly self-contained, they are still embedded in the larger world.

Most levels in Braid are bigger than one screen, and they have more than one puzzle. Often the first order of business is to get your bearings and explore. Then you learn to traverse the level to get everywhere, identify and separate the different puzzles, and only then can you think about solving all the puzzles by manipulating time and level state to get everywhere.

An interesting twist on this happens in Recursed: Levels are always on one screen, 20x15 tiles... but you need to explore inside all the chests to see what the level actually looks like!

Of course, you could have the same kind of dynamic in an abstractly presented puzzle with a mouse-based UI, where you can zoom in and out, drag the viewport around, or enter doors (and Recursed-style chests) by double-clicking. Then you’d lose the sense of exploration and progression, and the challenge of traversing the space via platforming. Exploring a large level would be easy, but tedious. You would need to program (as the developer) and then learn (as the payer) a new user interface, or you can just move a player character in a world. This ties back into the very first point: Platformers don’t need many extradiegetic UI elements.

tl;dr “Puzzle Platformers” are actually a bunch of genres in a trenchcoat. Character-focused 2D side-scrolling graphics are compatible with many different mechanics and game designs. Character-focused 2D platforming can counterbalance the abstractness of puzzle games.

[purplesurveys]

895

“AGE”, Alternate Sounds

1. Did you wear a corsage or a boutonniere to prom? I’ve blocked out nearly every memory from my own prom so I can’t give an answer for that. Mike did get me a corsage when he asked me to go to his high school’s ball. I still actually have the corsage (or what’s left of it lol) in one of my drawers. Idk, I think it’s a cute high school thing to keep around.

2. When’s the last time you made a collage? I was a freshman in high school, most likely. That was around the time the app PicCollage got really popular so everyone loved making collages from there for a while.

3. Do you own any camouflage patterned clothing? I used to have baggy pants with that pattern, but I’ve thrown them out.

4. Do you know how to give a good massage? No. I can’t even accept massages; I’m way too ticklish.

5. Do you have a garage? We have a carport instead of a garage.

6. Have you ever made a montage of something before? Yes. It was a surprise I made for Gab’s birthday this year; I gathered all her college friends in a group chat and asked them to submit videos of themselves greeting her a happy birthday, and I also allowed them the option to submit photos that they have with her because I’m sure she’s had loads of snapshots with them.

7. Last mirage you’ve seen? My...car? HAHAHA uhm I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. That doesn’t happen a lot here, if at all.

8. Have you ever tried to sabotage anyone before? I don’t think so. I can be mean, but I don’t do premeditated shit like that.

9. Would you ever participate in a menage a trois? Why or why not? No. Not my thing.

1. How many pieces does your luggage set have? I just have one large luggage. I haven’t had such an expansive trip in that I had needed more than one. 

2. Last time you sent someone a message? Last night before going to bed.

3. Where did you wear your last bandage? Bottom of my right index finger. I got a paper cut.

4. Do you live in a village? Yeah, we call them villages or subdivisions here. They’re gated communities exclusive to the people living in it.

5. Does your town have a sewage problem? I’ve never heard of any, no. 

6. Do you like to eat cabbage? Sure. My favorite way to eat it is as kimchi.

7. Do you have a lot of emotional baggage? I’d say it’s heavy, but it’s not a lot. Most of it just stems from my life at home especially when I was younger.

8. How often do you take out the garbage? My parents never assign it to us kids actually. They’d rather do it.

9.  Were you an average student? In high school I was average in that I never really made a mark or made an effort to stand out in the crowd, but academically I was above-average. 

10. Last time there was a power outage? Months ago. I can no longer remember exactly when but we definitely had one in 2019, I think.

11. Where would you like to go on your next voyage? I wanna start close to home and go to either Thailand, Vietnam, or South Korea before venturing out into other continents.

12. Do you think that you could manage living alone? Not yet. I want to learn how to make enough meals to be able to sustain myself first and I also have to know how bank accounts and credit cards work lol

13. How much courage do you have? Differs everyday.

14. Last thing you own that got damaged? My charger. I’ve been using a spare one ever since though, so I’m good.

15. Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a hostage situation? No. That’s a fear of mine.

16. Are you a savage? In slang terms I can definitely be sharp with my words and comebacks. But when it comes to its traditional meaning, I wouldn’t describe myself as that at all.

17. Last dosage of medication you took? I’m not sure. I just drink one tablet of it whenever I get a headache.

18. Would you like to live in a cottage? It would be nice to try for at least a couple of days, just to see what it’d be like. It’s not my type of scenery or environment though so I wouldn’t want to live there permanently. I feel like I’d feel too lonely or too suffocated eventually.

19. Would you know how to forage in the wilderness in order to survive? No.

20.  Do you have to lick your postage stamps, or do they just stick onto the envelope? I’ve never had to use postage stamps.

21. Who would you like to pay homage to? Nacho. If I ever get tattoos I’d want one of them to be a plate of nachos to constantly remind me of him. Or a tattoo of the moon because one of his favorite songs before he passed was Buwan (’moon’ in Filipino).

22. Are you into bondage? I’m into it but tbh we’ve yet to try it out.

23. Have you ever traced your family lineage? I have an uncle who has as he’s into that kind of stuff and technically does it for a living. I learned from him that pre-colonially, we come from the datu lineage of our home province, and that made us part of the principalia class during the Spanish regime. I want to be proud of my family’s history so much but it just meant that we were complicit in the Spanish’s crimes against the Filipinos, so it’s not a family fact that I show off.

24. Last time you went to a rummage sale? Have you ever had a rummage sale? High school, probably. We haven’t had our own.

25. Have you ever felt taken advantage of? Of course.

26. What’s one thing you hope you could salvage from a fire? My dogs.

27. Do you like autumn foliage? I find them very beautiful but unfortunately we can’t have that here.

28. What do you use as a means of storage solutions? I just like squishing things in my various drawers hahaha. Idk I’m moving out in the next few years; I don’t see the need to spice up my room or DIY it at this point.

29. Do you prefer Polish, German, or Italian sausage? Not a fan of sausage to begin with, so I’m unfamiliar with all of these.

30.  Last reading passage you read? A few pages from Little Women.

31.  What is your car’s gas mileage? I think it’s a little over 30,000 km.

[a-zebra-is-a-striped-horse]

[a-ratt]

How do you write your stories. I know it sounds like a broad question, but I have been inspired to write because you make it so fun! The problem is... well I have a lot of problems. For example how to start a chapter and/or outline, making dialogue correctly, how not to make the plot/chapter feel rushed, etc... Do you have links, process, or tutorials on how to write and get started and all that good stuff? Thanks in advance!

Well, my dear anon, I do love talking about writing. So, for starters, I should probably explain that I’m an English-Creative Writing Major in uni, so I’m going all in with my writing. Besides that, though, I usually start with an outline.

Idk how most people write their outlines, but I usually use “Blake Snyder’s Beatsheet”. It’s basically a list of “story beats” that help plan out the plot of whatever story I’m writing. It’s actually a screenwriting strategy I started using to plot out novel writing. Here’s the list:

1.) Opening Image: 2.) Theme Stated: 3.) Set-up: 4.) Catalyst: 5.) Debate: 6.) Break into Two: 7.) B-Story: 8.) Fun and Games: 9.) Midpoint: 10.) Bad Guys Close In: 11.) All Is Lost: 12.) Dark Night of the Soul: 13.) Break into Three: 14.) Finale: 15.) Final Image:

Basically, 1.) through 6.) make up the First Act. 7.) through 13.) make up the second act. 14.) and 15.) are essentially the third act.

So, 1.) through 6.) are all about the setup. The Opening Image is the first impression you’re giving your readers. It’s a tiny snapshot of what they should be expecting. Theme Stated is generally a moment where the story’s theme/message is given to the protagonist in some way/shape/form. The Set-Up is all about world building. This is where you’ve gotta give us the rundown on the protagonist’s “normal world”, what a day in their normal life is like. The Catalyst is where the fun starts. This is Luke Skywalker getting the message from Princess Leia. Where Frodo Baggins is given the One Ring. When Tony Stark gets blown up. And the moment where Ant-Man comes back from the Quantum Realm 5 years after Infinity War. This is essentially the moment where the conflict is started because the protagonist is pushed into the adventure. (Make sure they have a personal stake in it, though.) The Debate is a small moment where the protagonist, or just characters in general, argue about ‘going on this adventure’, about leaving their normal world. The Break Into Two is my favorite moment in Act I. This is when the protagonist chooses (and they usually must choose) to leave their normal world and embark on the adventure. Bilbo Baggins leaves the Shire. Frodo Baggins leaves the Shire. Luke Skywalker joins Ben Kenobi and leaves his homestead. Tony Stark builds his Mk. I Iron Man suit and fights his way to freedom. The Avengers plan how to time travel to collect the Infinity Stones.

7.) to 13.) is the longest act, Act II. This is the introduction of the B-Story to the Break Into Three. It encapsulates the Fun and Games, all the trials and obstacles the protagonist will have to face.

The B-Story is the subplot you want to implement into the story. This can be a lot of things and can be multiple things. Sometimes it’s a romance, or a learning curve, or a friendship. The Fun and Games, like I said above, is the trials and obstacles the protagonist must overcome. Essentially, in screenwriting, it’s everything you want to put in a movie trailer that’ll draw audiences in. In storywriting, I make up this part of the story as everything I want to happen along the way. The small adventures and little moments I can have fun with before I need to head back to the main story/conflict. The Midpoint is where everything changes. It’s either a “False Victory” or “False Defeat”, mirrored by the All Is Lost beat. An example of this is in Avengers: Infinity War, when Thor enters the Battle of Wakanda, but then Thanos breaks free from the Guardians, Iron Man, and Spider-Man’s trap later. There is a ‘peak’, where it seems like “Hell yeah, we’re going to win”, but then they start losing and losing and losing. The next beat is Bad Guys Close In, which is all about the bad guys closing in. Either the enemy literally shows up. fights them, and wins, or the good guys start fighting amongst themselves. All Is Lost follows up as the moment when the heroes lose. They fail. Often, there’s “a Scent of Death”, which can be an actual character death or someone coming close to death. This is Ben Kenobi getting cut down by Darth Vader. Gandalf getting pulled into the abyss by the Balrog. Thanos confessing that he murdered Gamora for the Soul Stone. Black Widow sacrificing herself to get the Soul Stone. Right after this is the Dark Night of the Soul, which is where the heroes are depressed. They’re at the bottom of the pit. They don’t know what to do with themselves. The mood is usually: It’s over, they’re done. No take backs. No do-overs. We. Lost. Everyone’s defeated and they don’t know what to do next. Following is the Break Into Three, where the heroes find their resolve, get back up, and forge ahead to the final confrontation. A few perfect examples of this is when: the Avengers ruminate over Black Widow’s sacrifice, reaffirm their mission, and then reverse the Snap. Luke Skywalker gets inside the X-Wing to go fight the Death Star. And when Peter Parker tells Happy Hogan that’s he’s going to kick Mysterio’s ass. Finally, we reach the Finale, where it all ends. This is the final confrontation. Thanos attacks the New Avengers Facility. The Rebel Alliance attacks the Death Star. And Ladybug and Chat Noir face Stoneheart one last time. The Finale isn’t bogged down by one fight, though, as Avengers: Endgame shows us. You can stretch it out a bit, play with the audience’s emotions. While Nebula and Gamora help Hawkeye, and Ant-Man saves Hulk, Rocket, and Rhodey, the Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor face down Thanos in a 3v1. It’s an epic battle and it feels like the end, but then the rest of the Avengers show up and we get the biggest battle in the entire story. This is the final battle.Then, there’s the Final Image. This mirrors the Opening Image, shows how far we’ve come and how much has changed. At the start, Luke Skywalker was a farmer boy and at the end he’s a galactic hero/terrorist. At the start, Frodo was just a normal guy living in the Shire, but at the end he’s on an epic adventure to save the world. At the beginning, Bilbo Baggins is content with living at home, but in the end he’s prepared to go on an adventure to help his friends take back their home from a dragon. In Miraculous Ladybug, Marinette is an introverted klutz who grows into a confident superhero.

So, yeah, that’s how I plan out my stories. Each beat is an essential component to create the narrative flow. If none of this made sense, here’s a link to a website that might help out: (x)

Of course, a story is more than it’s plot. You mentioned you had issues with dialogue?

Well, my method for writing dialogue is by throwing myself into the character. I act like them. I try to emulate them. For me, dialogue isn’t about making it correct, it’s about making it organic. Dialogue is linked to the characters you write it for. So someone stiff and stoic is probably not going to clip words and spell everything out. Someone lax and playful will probably clip words and phrases, and also throw in slang.

The kind of dialogue I usually write is inspired by Thor: Ragnarok, because the dialogue used is mostly improv, or improvised. In other words, make it up on the go. Have fun with it. If you want to, throw yourself into the character and try to act like them.

In terms of chapters, I don’t think length matters as much as content and flow. You want to make sure it paces well. You want to make sure that you’re not bogging it down with writing that’s unnecessary, like a diverging plot about food while the characters have to worry about going somewhere. Not unless it’s necessary for the plot.

In other words, chapter density is all up to you. What’s necessary and what’s not? Does it feel too short, as in they reader reads it and it feels like the hero punched the villain and it’s over? Or the read it and they felt like there was a full struggle where they fought and clashed and finally won.

Besides that, I don’t have much else to give. In terms of links and tutorials, all that I learned in class or from experience. (Don’t make me talk about the Fanfiction.net days.) But, if you’ve got anymore questions, I’ll be glad to answer.

[azeez-unv]

How Do You Know if Learning Objectives Are Being Met?

Here are a few in-class tips to get you started:

1. Avoid Yes/No questions.

Avoid yes/no questions and phrases like “Does this make sense?” In response to these questions, students usually answer “yes”. So of course it’s surprising when several students later admit that they’re lost. To help students grasp ideas in class, ask pointed questions that require students to use their own prior knowledge.

2. Ask students to reflect.

During the last five minutes of class ask students to reflect on the lesson and write down what they’ve learned. Then, ask them to consider how they would apply this concept or skill in a practical setting.

3. Use quizzes.

Give a short quiz at the end of class to check for comprehension.

4. Ask students to summarize.

Have students summarize or paraphrase important concepts and lessons. This can be done orally, visually, or otherwise.

5. Hand signals.

Hand signals can be used to rate or indicate students’ understanding of content. Students can show anywhere from five fingers to signal maximum understanding to one finger to signal minimal understanding. This strategy requires engagement by all students and allows the teacher to check for understanding within a large group.

6. Response cards.

Index cards, signs, whiteboards, magnetic boards, or other items are simultaneously held up by all students in class to indicate their response to a question or problem presented by the teacher. Using response devices, the teacher can easily note the responses of individual students while teaching the whole group.

7. Four corners.

A quick and easy snapshot of student understanding, Four Corners provides an opportunity for student movement while permitting the teacher to monitor and assess understanding. The teacher poses a question or makes a statement. Students then move to the appropriate corner of the classroom to indicate their response to the prompt. For example, the corner choices might include “I strongly agree,” “I strongly disagree,” “I agree somewhat,” and “I’m not sure.”

8. Think-pair-share.

Students take a few minutes to think about the question or prompt. Next, they pair with a designated partner to compare thoughts before sharing with the whole class.

9. Choral reading.

Students mark text to identify a particular concept and chime in, reading the marked text aloud in unison with the teacher. This strategy helps students develop fluency; differentiate between the reading of statements and questions; and practice phrasing, pacing, and reading dialogue.

10. One question quiz.

Ask a single focused question with a specific goal that can be answered within a minute or two. You can quickly scan the written responses to assess student understanding.

11. Socratic seminar.

Students ask questions of one another about an essential question, topic, or selected text. The questions initiate a conversation that continues with a series of responses and additional questions. Students learn to formulate questions that address issues to facilitate their own discussion and arrive at a new understanding.

12. 3-2-1.

Students consider what they have learned by responding to the following prompt at the end of the lesson: 3) things they learned from your lesson; 2) things they want to know more about; and 1) questions they have. The prompt stimulates student reflection on the lesson and helps to process the learning.

13. Ticket out the door.

Students write in response to a specific prompt for a short period of time. Teachers collect their responses as a “ticket out the door” to check for students’ understanding of a concept taught. This exercise quickly generates multiple ideas that could be turned into longer pieces of writing at a later time.

14. Journal reflections.

Students write their reflections on a lesson, such as what they learned, what caused them difficulty, strategies they found helpful, or other lesson-related topics. Students can reflect on and process lessons. By reading student journals, teachers can identify class and individual misconceptions and successes.

15. Formative pencil–paper assessment.

Students respond individually to short, pencil–paper formative assessments of skills and knowledge taught in the lesson. Teachers may elect to have students self-correct. The teacher collects assessment results to monitor individual student progress and to inform future instruction. Both student and teacher can quickly assess whether the student acquired the intended knowledge and skills. This is a formative assessment, so a grade is not the intended purpose.

[gov-info]

In celebration of Native American History Month, LOC added 428 Native American documents containing constitutions, charters, and acts from the years 1830 to 1960 to Law.gov.  The collection contains two types of material: constitutions from the 1800s produced by the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek; and constitutions and charters drafted after the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act.  The latter includes laws produced by the Office of Indian Affairs of the United States Department of the Interior.  These materials are divided by region based on the new KI class designations: Arctic-Alaska, US-Northeast Atlantic, US-North Central, US-New Southwest, US-Pacific Northwest, and US-South.

The oldest part of the collection has some of the most interesting documents and can be found mostly in the US-South region. Some of these are in the native language of the Native Americans, for example, Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee.

Other documents give a snapshot of what life was like in the community at that time. The Laws of the Cherokee Nation, for example, contains population statistics tables on districts in the Cherokee nation. It has some categories you might expect for 1824 like age, slaves, gender, and race, but also shows the numbers of blacksmith shops, ferries, public roads, goats, sheep, horses, looms, ploughs, and wagons.

The Constitution and Laws of the Muskogee Nation explains how debts are to be collected and rewards are to be granted for the apprehension of criminals.  Some interesting criminal laws include laws against selling goods on Sunday, opening sealed letters, and destroying pecan trees.

General Laws of the Legislature of the Chickasaw Nation 1867, 1868, 1869 & 1870 has the debt of the Chickasaw Nation in September of 1867, the monthly pay of the militia, and the salaries of officers of the Chickasaw Nation. Interestingly, Senators and Representatives were paid the same daily rate as draftsman, clerks, and interpreters ($6 per day).

Article XIV of The Constitution and Laws of the Osage Nation demonstrates the separation between citizens of the United States and citizens of the Osage Nation. The article details how employing or renting to a United States citizen required a permit from the Osage Council, approval by the Indian Office at Washington, a fee of $1 per month, and a hefty fine if these rules were not followed.

Finally, the Ordinances of the Town of Tahlequah can answer any questions you may have about what was and wasn’t legal in the capital of the Cherokee Nation in 1890.  For instance, Ordinance XXIII makes it unlawful for “boys or other persons” to have and use a bean-shooter, disturb the birds, and shoot or explode fire-crackers “except upon the Fourth of July, and Christmas and New Year’s Days.” On their first offense, boys under 14 would be reported to their parents. Thereafter (and for everyone else) the penalty was between $1 and $5. That may seem harsh, but it is only half of the penalty of carrying a policeman’s whistle without the proper authority! (Ordinance XXIX).

Newer documents in the collection include those signed after the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act.  Most of the Arctic-Alaska constitutions were signed by native villages, communities, or associations like Shaktoolik, Point Hope, Tetlin, and Napakiak, while other regions used the band, tribe or nation name like the Kickapoo tribe in the North Central region, the Southern Ute tribe in the New Southwest region, and the Skokomish Indian tribe in the Pacific Northwest region.

[devlibrary]

Class 11 English Question Answer - 2023 | HS 1st Year English Notes

Class 11 English Question Answer – 2023 | HS 1st Year English Notes

Class 11 English Question Answer – 2023 can be of great value to excel in the examination. Assam Board AHSEC HS 1st Year English Notes gives you a better knowledge of all the chapters. You can get solutions to questions of both basic and advanced levels. One of the best ways to excel in your board exams is through practicing Class 11 English Hornbill Solutions and Class 11 English Snapshots…

[cherryeol04]

The Firsts

Summary: No one ever told him that living was going to be so difficult. That there would emotions get couldn’t label and distinguish. He’s just a young boy trying to navigate through life and its unexpected ups and downs.

Genre: Humor, Fluff, smut(?)

Pairings: Oc x Felix, Oc x Changbin, Changbin x Oc x Felix

Warnings: poly relationship, angst in some part, excessive fighting about the MCU.

Parts: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14 / Part 15 / Part 16 / Part 17

A/N: This story has a theme of Firsts. First love, first kiss and many other firsts. Each part can be read on their own and are meant to stand as oneshots. It’s basically a collection of oneshots (little snapshots into my Oc’s life. 😁)

Aiden was only 8 years old when he first met Changbin. The older boy was noticeably silent in most of his classes. They both sat in the back row, Changbin two seats to his left. He always found it funny how Changbin would slowly lower himself in his chair when the teacher would start calling on students to answer questions, trying his hardest to never be noticed.

It usually worked.

Aiden found it entertaining - Changbin rocking from side to side to keep himself hidden; sometimes even covering his mouth to make sure he didn't make a noise. It wasn't like the work was hard. It was simple math usually, or reading. Almost everyone got the answers wrong, including himself. Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that Changbin said "here" every morning, he would have sworn that the guy was mute. It certainly seemed that way and he wondered if that's why he didn't seem to have friends either.

He must be lonely.

~~~

During the lunch break, he decided to approach Changbin, after noticing that once more the other was eating alone. Standing before his desk, it was an awkward situation, really, as he watched Changbin pick and take small bites of the various items in his lunch box, seemingly not noticing his presence. Which was kind of weird considering he was peering down and nearly leering at the other in hopes to get his attention. After a minute or so of standing there, Aiden finally cleared his throat. Changbin jumped, his head jerking up quickly to look at him.

"Uh...?"

"Hi."

It was a simple answer to the confusion the other had. A small wave of his hand as he stood there, a shy smile gracing his lips.

"Hi?" Silence passed between them for a moment and the 8-year-old wondered exactly what he should do or say, though there was a pretty logical solution to be had. Simply ask to join Changbin for lunch. That's why he came over in the first place, wasn't it?

"Can I sit with you?" He asked. Changbin cocked his head in confusion and took a moment to look around him before finally lifting a finger and pointing at himself. "Yes, you." He laughed softly, his smile widening.

"Why?"

One word. That's all it took to have the nerves come rushing back. He wanted to run away, and pretend like this didn't happen. But it was too late for that. He was standing there, facing Changbin. It wasn't a bad thing that he wanted to eat with the other. He just hadn't expected the other to actually question him about it. So he answered, truthfully.

"Because I wanted to. You seemed lonely." He said gently. It took a moment but eventually, Changbin hummed and nodded his head, a small smile gracing his lips as he accepted the answer.

"Okay."

Grinning widely, he stole the chair from the desk in front of Changbin's and turned it so he could sit down and face him, placing his lunch box on his side of the desk.

"Is that Spider-Man?" Changbin asked as he stared at the front of the lunch box and he nodded.

"Yeah!" He grinned. "He's my favorite superhero!"

"Me too!" Changbin grinned and smiled at him.

"That's cool! I'm Aiden!" He introduced himself as he opened his lunch box and pulled out his bag of fish crackers and opened it.

"Seo Changbin!" Changbin said happily and Aiden laughed.

"We're gonna be best friends, Binnie!" He said happily as he offered the other some of his crackers. The smile that spread over Changbin's lips had such a strange warmth coursing through Aiden. He had never felt something like this, but the little boy knew that he enjoyed seeing Changbin smile like that. He wanted to make sure the other always had such a pretty smile on his face.

[mercuryismygenius]

Tattoo

              Columbine High School 4-20-99

Some bullets can fertilize years, take root within the psyche— a shot is planted          is nourished . . . Someone still asks for the story. What remains              to be said? I have told this same tale to many mouths and watched                “Columbine” become a buzzword on TV shows. Is this what grows?

I know where I stood on the day shots popped. I heard the explosion of so many lives uprooted. I felt the root penetrate the air, exposing the fragility of intricate capillaries. A flower dies.             A new flower grows. Fifteen bodies interred as the years take root. Time heals flesh, but skin wears stories our voices can’t hold. Scars remain. A finger tries to translate this braille, asks a hand to relate . . . And so some of us create things, find expression            purpose, release— a way to weed out the pain.

Headlines sprouted around me and years later they still grow, words digging to make the story complete. Words rusting like leaves. Questions remain. A flower dies.             A new flower grows. Years blossom into memory. But the questions do not change and the answers stay the same. And for some of us there can be no expression, no lesson— no project that will extricate the vein of this leaf. No project that can laser over this blemished skin.

Only the soil can know the intricate roots. Only blood knows what lingers beneath the skin, what festers, what      was always there. How many should-have-beens haunted your tears? A flower dies.             A new flower grows. Skin cells cycle like leaves. Stories remain. What else can be repeated?

How many feet walked these halls? How many hands wrote on these desks? How many eyes read in these rooms? How many minds thought knowledge was a seed? And when “school shooting” was all over the anchorman’s tongue, how many skins had wounds that bled? A flower dies.             A new flower grows. But this kaleidoscopic tragedy   has too many arteries. Our voices cannot separate. The event is gone— what remains is fruit on the ground. Ask what withers       what flourishes. And what gets buried with the remains? Lost                 forgotten.

So many lives . . . I know where I stood . . .

A flower dies. Skin always knew that it could break.

A new flower grows. We remain.

And for some of us there is only skin that can carry. So we tattoo our surfaces, to find where the flower meets the root, to find the distance blood flows, to find ground, not knowing where the story goes.

~*~

[author’s note]

I was a senior---Class of ‘99---when 2 classmates shot up the school. I was also in the middle of a deep, crippling depression that completely depersonalized it for me---that year, and several after, I was a cobbled-together automaton operating on what she assumed was factory settings for a functional human being. Needless to say, processing the shooting was . . . a process.

Poetry was one of my few lifelines---a way to get things out, so they didn’t tornado around inside me. Looking back, I think poetry was really the only thing I trusted at the time to listen---writing poetry, I didn’t have to conform to anybody else’s script. So I wrote.

It took several years to finish “Tattoo”---so titled for the tattoos some of my classmates got. I wrote a poem about 9/11, which also took a couple years to finish, before I finished “Tattoo”. At first, I wanted something polyphonous, to show just how many people---individuals---there are in a community. Columbine was a large school---joke was “2000 in the class of 2000″ because the school had just been renovated in 1995 (the summer before my freshman year) and already it was crammed.’Everybody’ is a whole lot of stories, not THE story that news media need to make it for national consumption.

Anyway, snippets and snapshots didn’t work, and when I finally found my groove, I realized I was writing for myself, that my imagery was personal and might not convey meaning to anyone else. And the poem was exactly itself. It’s been in my files all these years since, part of my me space.

But recently . . . well, I felt like sharing it this month.