#Animating this server is so goddamn hard

[bugsnbites]

I lost track of Pomme during the explosion after the election does anyone know what happened to her

[llawlieta]

Kokuhaku, a Lawlight fic

a Lawlight Server Valentine's event gift for @ponury-grajek ♡

I hope you like it! Tried hard to make a very clowny very sweet thing! It's also somehow 14k words long! Wow!

Somewhere along the way — the chains or the cell or the room with the birdsong — L had forced something in Light to open like a flower, or like a wound. Alone with L, Light was a different person. He was living another life, tucked discreetly underneath the first one. It felt much like being Kira had felt. Sometimes, it felt just as violent: this feeling that L inspired in him, that turned his insides and made a mess of him. Even when it simply felt soft between his ribs, it hurt. — or — “You and Matsuda can make out in the break room all you want, if that’s what you apparently like. I’m learning a lot about you today.” “You’re imagining it in quite vivid detail. Would you like to watch?” The corner of Light’s mouth twitched, and he calmed himself by imagining attacking Matsuda like a wild animal. “L,” Light said, smiling like he worked in customer service. “Are you going to eat the goddamn carrot or not?” — or: After Light gives up being Kira and L no longer considers him his prisoner, almost everything is sorted out. The only thing left are those annoying feelings lodged in Light's chest. Maybe he should confess?

Thank you so much to @laaawliet for doing a great job of brilliantly organizing this event!!

clicky here to read it on ao3!!

[mintyisms]

The Game Grumps Play Danganronpa V3

Chapter Five Starters

"We've heard your thoughts and we're glad you opened up a dialogue and we will consider all things going forward."

"I had my arm severed!"

"I've got a media server and I'm just downloading whatever comes out. I mean...ripping the Blu-ray of it that I bought."

"Let's get existential, baby!"

"He went off to be a crazy lunatic."

"What's on the menu? Oh, Olive Garden."

"I'll bring him endless soup and salad."

"I was gonna make out with you, but now I'm not gonna."

"Damn, it's almost like stairs lead up."

"I'm a dirty little piggy."

"Can that fucking robot bear talk?"

"I remember that I hate robots."

"It's a first edition Charizard. Definitely PSA 10."

"We need to do that thing where we hold him up and then like duct tape him to the wall and then he's just stuck to the wall."

"She has the laws of God and anime on her side."

"I didn't know you were into Legos."

"Sorry, I'm an edgelord."

"We're surrounded by a bunch of problems, but a bitch ain't one."

"Anybody got any jelly? No reason."

"Here, try this kool-aid."

"Did you miss free mallet day at the Wells Fargo? They're giving mallets away! All you have to do is sign up for a credit card!"

"I waited too long and I forgot the joke."

"I see you ignored my previous warning about not screwing around, so quit screwing around!"

"Get bigger doors."

"I wanna rage."

"Little did we know he would turn out to be so friendly and dead."

"Aw, man, it does suck out here."

"Hell, yeah, let's play some baseball."

"Wouldn't it be really inconvenient if someone killed you?"

"Everyone's been to space. Even Earth's in space."

"Pardon, me, m'lady, may I pet and or skritch the doggo?"

"Oh! The manhole cover!"

"I'm so fucking dumb."

"Are they doing a mad, three hour goon sesh?"

"Is he...thinking about me?"

"My body? Well, it's bangin'."

"The whole world is fine. We're in Des Moines, Iowa. Everyone is alive."

"Notice I didn't say put on pants."

"There's a fucking obstacle course with bombs and shit."

"We all learned that killing is badong, which is bad and wrong at the same time."

"It's going to be fun and weird repopulating the earth with someone that does not care for me."

"I should scream, but not loudly."

"Go take a shit, bitch."

"I'm not convinced he's dead."

"It really takes the power out of your words when you burp like that."

"I just let Jesus take the wheel."

"Why is everyone being so suspicious?"

"This is highly unorthodox bathroom behavior."

"You have to feed it after midnight. Or don't feed it after midnight? Fuck it, I don't remember."

"I'm highly emotional, and that blocks critical thinking."

"Pull up your pants, dude. Adults have their pants all the way up."

"These goddamn smart TVs are so stupid."

"I want to apologize for the display of anger you are about to see."

"I threw the remote as hard as I could against the wall and then screamed at it on the floor like it was a dying child."

"We pay ten times more for everything in this world and nothing works."

"I wish I could go to the moon right now."

"No. Everything you say is wrong, so no."

"Let's show him that these snoots can't be booped!"

"I'm gonna to shoot someone with a crossbow."

"This is not looking good for our Samsung brand deal."

"Find a different song to sing."

"Dude, it looks like I have three toes."

"Watching him? Like what, voyeuristically?"

"My hand looks like a butt. I never noticed before."

"Addressing someone is the first step to not ignoring them."

"Let's not get happy."

"It's funishment time!"

"Are you gonna play this until you die?"

"You'll all survive this as along as that dumbass detective with the pervert hat doesn't unravel all of this."

"You gotta force stop when Windows stops responding."

"I don't care. This is all a farce anyway."

"This is the Oreo with the most stuff."

"Wow, someone actually thought a logical thought here."

"Should I show my dick to the people watching? Will that make me have higher ratings?"

"Literally nothing changed but two people dying."

"If you made out with me right now you'd be covered in some kind of pomegranate juice."

"You guys are training without me? What the fuck?"

[factsnewsnetwork]

Video Game Enthusiasts Lament that the Best Game of the Year Is Essentially Softcore Fetish Pornography

"I mean, fuck's sake," says Derek "CuntBlaster97" Przybelski, a "gamer" from Salt Lake City speaking to Facts! News. "So many games came out in 2024. A new Tekken, a new Dragon Age, a Final Fantasy 7 remaster... and basically the only games worth playing are two goddamned co-op shooters, something that looks like what my solitaire-addicted grandma would get peer pressured into trying in an alley, and this fucking shit," gesturing to the 8-foot-tall F-cup goat person depicted on his computer's monitor. He proceeded to "run" a "dungeon," frowning and muttering angrily while having the most fun he's had since he was a child.

"It's basically fucked," says another video-gamer who wished to remain anonymous. "Like, this is the only actual good game that's released since September," referring to Saber Interactive's Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. "I can't play that one though or I'll get banned from my girlfriend's Discord server for being a chud. But, like, fuck's sake, I can't play this one either. What if my parents see this?," gesturing to his "gaming avatar", a two-foot tall, 200-pound opossum woman which nobody over the age of 30 would be able to recognize as sexualized. "I have Steam Family Share with my little brother. If he sees this in his library I'm fucked... it's probably the only thing I'm gonna play for the next month though, at least until the next Abiotic Factor update."

"Atlyss is part of a larger trend," according to Vanessa Dobbins, a researcher at the University of Waterloo's Games Institute. "In the 90s with the advent of the M-rated video game, there was mostly a clear deliniation between good games, which were wholesome, and what we in the field call 'slop,' which was edgy and sexual -- which at the time meant anorexic women in leather. World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment, being a good game yet edgy and sexual, was an outlier that caused changes in the behavior of Homo stupidens, the common video game developer. Now good games tried to become sexual in imitation of Warcraft, whereas slop games rejected sexuality in an attempt to seem superior to it. With Japanese gaming falling victim to anime in the mid 2000s, however, good games mostly became the territory of Homo stupidens basementii. This subspecies generally does not begin seeking a mate until relatively later in their life cycle, resulting in a shift in sexual games from the likes of Bayonetta towards more abstract sexual imagery, like the black slime from Changed, or in this case, ass-cheeks wobbling so hard that they should rip off."

An inside source at Unity Technologies, Inc., owners of the "Unity" video-game software which was used to create Atylss, told Facts! News that they are working hard with Microsoft Corporation and Sony Group to do as much as they can to prevent further good games from being released in the future. "This one slipped through the cracks, but we are working night and day to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again."

[thecartoonghoul]

I feel like an outsider in the lgbt community or more specifically the trans community and I know this might come off as me being hard to please but I legit I don’t feel like I belong cuz outside of being lgbt I have pretty much nothing in common with the vast majority of them I’ve seen(longish post btw)

-I’m not into a lot of the music that’s popular in these circles(hyperpop, house, metal, and most harder rock in general aren’t my thing)

-I don’t like loud concerts/clubs because the noise is just too much for me

-I refuse to participate in drugs and quite frankly we need to have a talk about how people romanticize drugs because it’s a serious issue

-Although I am on occasion willing to play some video games i wouldn’t call myself a gamer

-I don’t know or do anything involving coding or engineering

-This one I admit is a bit of a nitpick but even among the ones that do enjoy watching cartoons I’ve yet to come across any who are interested in animation the same way I am like rarely if ever do they talk about golden age stuff much it’s usually just anime, dramedies(mostly 2010s and later), baby shows, animated sitcoms, or stuff they’re nostalgic for and while I don’t dislike most of those things it does annoy me a bit how other things tend to be ignored.

Also while I can tolerate some things society has deemed cringe I do have my limits and I know this isn’t all trans women but the uwu puppygirl shit is painfully cringe and I hate how prominent it is on pretty much every platform I go looking for fellow trans fems not to mention the rather disturbing fetishes I’ve seen(especially incest like wtf is wrong with you) and I’m tired of holding my tongue or pretending to be someone I’m not just because I want to make friends and don’t want to be perceived as transphobic.

Ignoring Twitter since I was already on there and knew it wouldn’t work the first platform I tried to search for transfems on was TikTok but it didn’t take long for me to realize that it’s got the same issues most others have, more recently I’ve also tried multiple discord and reddit servers but all of them were like this(+ some were way too comfortable with right wing beliefs and/or zionism), tumblr isn’t as bad but ngl i feel like I’m talking to the void more often than not since I pretty much never get any interactions beyond brief small talk.

I’ve officially given up on looking exclusively for transfem spaces and am now hoping to find LGBT inclusive spaces that don’t feel the same as everything else cuz I hate being so lonely all the goddamn time, for the record I live in a mostly conservative small town so I don’t have anyone irl I can talk to about this and the few irl friends I did have all ghosted me.

This isn’t a sympathy begging post or anything like that I know I’m not entitled to these things and that far more important things are going on right now I just needed to get this off my chest.

[ere-the-sun-rises]

@bruciemilf

Bruce sits on the chaise lounge in the terrarium with his head in his hands, staring down at the paperwork the accountanta brought by.

"This is going to be my villain arc."

Harley snorts so hard she pops her bubble gum and Pamela tosses a scornful raised eyebrow his way as she prunes his rosebush.

"Send some of that to the Parks department." Pamela blithely suggests. "Tell them to get that goddamn greenhouse back in shape or I'll have to do it."

He scowls at her. "And who, exactly, do you think is responsible for buying out ACE Chemicals and turning it into a butterfly conservatory? Of course I already gave Parks the four million to do the renovations and expansions. In fact, I gave them ten just to make sure it actually got done."

"Hyena conservation." Harley throws out.

"Already did that." He scowls even harder at the paperwork. "I've thrown five million at every reputable conservation organization I can find at least twice for any animal you can think of. I've outpaced the US's donations to the WHO for the last six years standing and Doctors Without Borders for the last ten. I'm running out of ways to be charitable."

"You could take up my old job." Pamela grins at him. "Seduce rich men into supporting the economy. You've already got a Robin and a Hood - do the math, pretty boy."

Harley cackles. "Yeah, I thought the Bat stood up for the little guy against the bad guys. Go blow up a nuclear reactor."

"Or sabotage a cobalt mine." Pamela shrugs.

"Or give your money to me." Harley smirks and bats her eyelashes.

He huffs. "So you can buy more red and black leather jackets for Bruce the hyena? You already have one of my credit cards for that already."

Harley pouts. "I could always use another limitless black card. A girl should be able to have her wants covered as well as her needs."

He levels her with a flat look. "That's Pam's job."

Harley grins. "Damn good at it, too."

"Bankrupt Elon Musk then buy his businesses for the total sum of twelve dollars before you repurpose every rocket he's made into homeless shelters or affordable housing." Pamela snipes from the other side of the rosebush. "Then throw in server costs for Wikipedia in for free."

Bruce stops, cocking his head like a dog hearing a noise. "I hadn't thought of Wikipedia. I should also buy JSTOR and make it free."

Harley sits up. "Oh, would you? I'm trapped behind the scientific paywall now that my university disowned me."

He scrunches up his nose. "Harley, just use my card." He looks over at Pamela. "But I think I can do the Elon thing too. It'll be a nice challenge, seeing if I can fuck up his companies faster than he already does."

Harley waits a beat, then impatiently taps her foot. "Well? Get on it! I want Twitter staff looking like they just left Mad Max."

"You mean X?" Pamela laughs snidely.

"I'm not calling it that and you can't make me." Harley sicks out her tongue at her wife, then looks back at him. "What are you still doing here? Go do rich guy stuff."

Bruce's groan is loud enough to make both women and Dick hanging from an I-beam in the ceiling laugh.

Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

[yeonchi]

SPPDM 20th Commentary Part G: Sixty Minutes to the End of the World

(Art by Christianmar762XSZ, Minake, DiscordingChaos, Liamasterink, Necrolyzer92, Ryu-yaoista, sagiturn, Tarmo-Flake and loolaart_)

A bit of breaking news before I begin this post. At the time of publishing, Fabio Yabu has unlisted the Sea Princesses books from Amazon Kindle, meaning that they are only accessible to people who bought them, including myself. It is a shame to see this particularly on the 20th anniversary year of the series, but honestly, I don't think it's that big of a loss because Yabu has said he barely makes any money off of Kindle and my scans, transcripts and translations are superior anyway.

Holy shit!!! Is this whole part a JoJo reference??? You're goddamn right it is.

The final battle begins! With 60 minutes to go before Bites the Dust finishes charging, will the Shark King complete his plan to subjugate humanity? Will Parker stop the Shark King's plans with his life, or will the Salacians and Drylanders find them before it's too late? Find out in the climax of the Sea Princesses 20th anniversary story, The Conquerors of the Lost and Forgotten!

Special guests from different worlds and times ahoy in this part.

Check out the story here:

Join the Discord servers as well to be notified for when each part has been fully published!

Server de Princesas del Mar

Salacia en Discord!

Who are the heroes and villains of the story? At the start, you may have found it difficult to answer that question. That's because the answer will be different, depending on whether you side with the Drylanders or the Salacians and consider them the heroes while the other side are the villains. In short, both sides are heroes and villains when you think about it.

As you read through the story, the answer as to who the heroes and villains are becomes defined. The princes and princesses, starting from Polvina, Ester and Tubarina, gradually show themselves as heroes, while Parker and the Shark King, though heroes from their own perspectives, end up being the villains of the story. The Turtle and Whale Kings along with their factions serve as anti-heroes and anti-villains respectively for a portion of the story.

The Shark King's Bites the Dust has been activated and there is only one hour before its power is fully charged, meaning the Shark King can do anything with its power. Bites the Dust caused obscenely enormous statues of the kings to appear all across the planet, affecting the Earth's gravity and causing anomalies in time that echoes back, connecting multiple universes and making it hard for Hiroki and his friends to get a fix so they can help.

The reason for why I set this story in an amalgamated universe with additional multiverse elements is because of the conflicts between the continuity of the books and animated series along with all the ideas that the renaissance fandom have for their universes. My personal project universe has very few royal OCs while Liam's universe and other universes created by his fans, collectively known as the Liamverse, have shitloads of OCs that he or his fans created (I categorise them as such because they tend to share the same characters).

Some characters from the Liamverse, like Axolotl Princess Katrina and Sea Iguana Prince Ignacio, will return to their own universes at the end of this part because their backstories and relationships aren't compatible with what I'm going for in the end. It's also why Katrina has her "You took everything from me" moment with Socita in Part C; her creator shipped Katrina with Marcello but I'm shipping him with Elektra (Socita and Marli were brief polyamorous flings, the former meant to call back to The Piano Lesson).

Now that Hiroki can get a fix on Yabuverse PM10, he opens the Aurora Curtains so that he and his friends can rush through to help. Each chapter in this part will centre on one group of heroes, whether they come from another universe or another time.

Chapter 31 begins with the Octavia Army encountering their N-Space X counterparts, who are Hiroki's friends and Kamen Riders, and they fight them (see the list here). Black and Black RX arrive from their respective universes as well (so they're not the same person from different times), along with the Reiwa Riders up to the currently-running Gavv and the spinoff Kamen Rider Legend. Decade (Hiroki) and Zi-O (Sougo), having separated from Femme (Polvina), defeat Narwhal Princess Nicole before they move on.

While the Riders do help the Octavia Army fight off the Shark King's forces, why do they end up fighting them too, especially when they're in the middle of a crisis? The thing is, I didn't want the Riders or the interdimensional heroes to show up too early because that would ruin the tension I built up. The Riders' assistance of the Octavia Army shouldn't take any focus or glory away from them, which is why I ended up having the Riders fight them as well to test their worthiness of being great kings and queens. I'll admit that it's bad form to do this, especially when the Super Hero Taisen crossover movies feature two groups of heroes fighting for most of the movie instead of working together, resulting in them unknowingly enabling the villains' plains, but this was the only solution I could think of.

Chapter 32 features the Metal Heroes and Ultramen. When picking the heroes to be featured in this part, I took into consideration tokusatsu series that were broadcast in Brazil and France aside from series that I liked, so in the case of the Metal Heroes, all the Showa heroes were featured here. The Metal Heroes assisted the kings and queens while Ultraman Ginga, Victory and X contributed their efforts as well. But that's not all, for there is another surprise about to be revealed.

As the Octavia Army begins to struggle against the Shark King's forces, balls of light rain down on Dryland to reveal... the future princes and princesses of Salacia, the children of the current royals. This was Liamasterink's first effort to expand on the lore of the series for his universe by giving the princes and princesses children, starting off with Flikin, who is Marli's son born to an unknown father, but spoiler alert, is Liam in this story (which means either Flikin or Liam's hair needs to be different than what it actually is). At the time there were problematic elements with this that I already called him out for and condemn anyone who negatively criticises him for it, especially when it's been several years since then. Having the children come from the future and setting the story years after the original are the steps I've taken to correct the problematic elements with Liam's concept.

So yeah, for the most part, the kids seen here are directly taken from Liam's OCs, with some exceptions; Sting, who was meant to be Vivi's son, was changed to be her brother (as shown in Part B); and Jacky, who was meant to be Isa's brother, was changed to be her son. Sirilo and Marli's children as created by manuelalejandro5980 and Marcello and Tubarina's children as created by Liam (will explain later) have been divided with their ships. As Ester has not been shown to have any children of her own (due to nobody making up a ship other than Liam with Ester X Marli), I gave her two children named Rohan and Lizzie (short for Elizabeth). Although there are other children OCs that the Liamverse has made, I didn't show all of them for brevity and because I wanted to leave the floor open for others in regards to shippings, but that is likely going to change with the hypothetical animated adaptation.

Flikin and Barti (Sirilo and Angelica's son) transform into Ultramen Trigger and Decker before they fight Marcos and the Crab King and Queen. Marcos is defeated by Flikin and finished off by Marli and Liam, the former being an homage to how Musashi Miyamoto defeated Kojirō Sasaki during their duel on Ganryū Island in 1612. Elements of Marcos' character are taken from Kojirō, particularly his signature sword technique, the Tsubame Gaeshi. It's also fitting that Marcos, Marli and Flikin are swordfighters since they are royals of the Swordfish Kingdom.

Chapter 33 turns our focus to Fabio Yabu's creations the Combo Rangers and his failed slimegirl concepts that I adapted into the Demon Slayers. The Combo Rangers defeat the remaining soldiers of the Nokizaru task force before spouting Demon Slayer anime theme references at Isa and Nico. Meanwhile, the Demon Slayers fight Naimo and the younger princes and princesses with their Slime Breathing. Nico sees this and immediately goes to help them, which turns out to be a mistake as he and the others are defeated by the Demon Slayers' other breathing styles, Nico himself being finished off by Bubbly with the Hinokami Kagura. Isa is alarmed at Nico's defeat, but the Combo Rangers stop her from running to him before they hit pressure points on her body, allowing them to finish her off with a point-blank group spirit blast. In a bit of a meta moment, Fabio Yabusaki thanks the Combo Rangers, the Demon Slayers and his daughter before they continue on.

For those of you who are interested in the known forms of Slime Breathing (out of ten), here they are:

Slime Breathing First Form: Slip and Slide 粘の呼��� 壹ノ形 粘滑 (ねりすべ)

Slime Breathing Second Form: Borax Cloud 粘の呼吸 弐ノ形 硼砂毒雲 (ぼうしゃどくも)

Slime Breathing Third Form: Cutie Rush 粘の呼吸 参ノ形 ふわふわ大進撃

Slime Breathing Fifth Form: Imperfect Dragon 粘の呼吸 伍ノ形 画竜点睛 (がりょうてんせい)

Slime Breathing Sixth Form: Glitter Pebble Scatter 粘の呼吸 陸ノ形 ギラメちらし

Slime Breathing Eighth Form: First Howling Ray of Moonlight 粘の呼吸 捌ノ形 新月初哮 (しんげつしょうこう)

Slime Breathing Tenth Form: Infinite Purgatory - Slimeado 粘の呼吸 拾ノ形 無間粘獄・竜粘 (むげんねんごく・たつねり)

Meanwhile, as Parker runs all over Santos searching for the Shark King, he runs into Azuma Yeonchi (that's me) along with his assistants Alec and Shanna, the Tandy Computer Whiz Kids. In the midst of the chaos, Azuma imparts some advice onto Parker about being cancelled and that what he decides to do next is what matters. After parting ways, Azuma and his assistants head off to join the battle.

Super Sentai is the subject of Chapter 34 now as various Sentai teams fight the Shark King's forces across the Earth, with the Changemen, Flashmen and Gokaigers fighting in Santos, with the three Sentai having been homaged in the Combo Rangers Universe graphic novel trilogy. When the Gokaigers say their lines, I took care not to directly identify them by their names; because I did an adaptation of Gokaiger myself, I wanted to leave it up to the reader as to which version of the Gokaigers they wanted to see, whether it was the original team led by Captain Marvelous, or the ripoff adapted team led by the Doctor. Why can the Gokagers be the originals but not the Kamen Riders? It's because the Riders featured were the Salacian Riders from my personal project, so there's a bit of a symbolic reflection there with the Riders fighting their counterparts.

Oh and by the way, Junya Ikeda won't be voicing GokaiSilver in the Japanese dub because he's currently in prison after being found guilty of defrauding an elderly man and using his ATM card to take his money. As such, Ikeda has been replaced by Kenichi Suzumura (Ryutaros). The original English version is not affected.

Angelina charges at King Shai and fights off him and his soldiers before the Gokaigers arrive and intervene. The Gokaigers fight Shai's platoons using their weapons, then they use Goggle V and Go-On Wings to finish them off. Next, they fight some royals formerly of the Revengers using the powers of ninja Rangers, before finishing them off with the Cross Megabattle Armor and Gold Mode. Angelina gets the upper hand on Shai and sends him flying at the Gokaigers, allowing GokaiRed to finish him off with the Galleon Battlizer.

The Shark King's defeated generals join up with the other royals and the Drylanders as they try to find Parker and the Shark King, only to be confronted by the interdimensional heroes, who want to prevent the group from getting to them. With no other choice, the royals fight the heroes, who transform into their final forms. They let the Divine Princesses and the Shark King's family along with Daniel, Nikki and Marcia leave to find Parker and the Shark King. As the fight goes into the next chapter, they are joined by the Shark King's remaining clones of the royals. This leads the heroes to deal their finishers on the clones before they let the Octavia Army win against them so they can pass.

Chapter 35 begins with Parker managing to find the Shark King with six minutes left on the clock. The entire confrontation is an abridged version of the fight between Jotaro Kujo and DIO from the end of JoJo Part 3, Stardust Crusaders. The Shark King's Time Vent is also able to stop time, which causes complications for Parker until it's revealed that Seretao taught him a way to see through the time stops.

The Shark King curbstomps Parker and nearly squashes him under his statue. Parker, having been encouraged by the "spirit" of his brother, manages to gain control of the time stops after realising that he snatched the Goldvisor from the Shark King during the fight. Thanks to this, Parker gains the upper hand and sends him flying to the ground.

Parker decides to wait for Trebon to stand back up before he finishes him off, but then a gunshot makes him drop his Masamune Blade - it's Bia, who he knew as Maya Andrews. This reveal is inspired by a scene from another CCP drama, Cold Arrow (冷箭), featuring a female spy codenamed Pangolin, and the only reason it's memeworthy is because of the other Pangolin from Jiangnan Showdown (激戰江南). Bia reveals that she laced the chicken soup with pufferfish poison, which she is immune to being the Abysmal Princess. The rest of the Octavia Army arrives as Miss Marla tells Parker to hand over the Goldvisor, but he refuses. A mysterious assailant attacks Duante and Bia to take the Mermaid King's crown and the Staff of Oblivion before Parker throws the Goldvisor to him as well; it's Seretao, who had been orchestrating events all along.

Seretao activates Final Vent and a bright light from the Staff engulfs the entire Earth. The skies open and the goddess Salacia descends from the heavens; she proclaims that after seeing how Drylanders protect the oceans and Salacians see a different side to them, she decides to take another chance on the Drylanders and allow them to forge new bonds with the Salacians. With this, Bites the Dust is left to complete as the statues of the kings explode and the interdimensional heroes and future royals return to their own worlds and times. The princes and princesses not native to this universe, like Katrina and Ignacio, are returned to their own universes as well; they were brought to Yabuverse PM10 due to the anomalies caused by Bites the Dust.

As everyone celebrates the end of the war, the Shark King is arrested along with Parker, Angelina, Liam, Mauricio, Marli and Socita. Kate Lethbridge-Stewart arrives and tells Parker the news she wanted to tell him; his brother, Sherman, is still alive. After somehow surviving the destruction of Azuchi Castle, he was adopted by the Hiiragi family and he became an actor, singer and writer under the name Philip Zhou, while also becoming a YouTuber under the name Myzhouji, an homage to the Asian-Australian YouTuber Mychonny. Parker and the Shark King would be taken back to Yokohama, where they would then be transferred to the International Criminal Court to be tried for their war crimes. Angelina and the others would remain in Santos as they would be taken to court in the city.

Sixty Minutes to the End of the World was the title of Part G, but with the conclusion of the final battle averting the crisis, the war between Dryland and Salacia comes to an end as well. But there is still more work to be done as we come to Part H, Peace At Last, which will also serve as the epilogue of the story. See you on 21 December.

The final battle between Dryland and Salacia has ended in a draw, and with it the war. But there is still more work to be done as Parker, the Shark King and others are tried for their crimes. A new age of harmony begins in Part H, Peace At Last. Love will triumph over hate and dreams will never die!

(Art by くろみつ/DanielStudios, Yo-Kai Benja and Tarmo-Flake)

[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

[justfor2am]

how many book emojis r there .uhh 📒📓📔📕📖📗📘📙📚 (this is for that ask game im not just randomly sending book emojis .tho tbf id do that too) (kinda random but?????? i want an axolotl emoji when will they add an axolotl emoji they r my second favorite animal (first is bunnies 🐇) and i want to show them off .where is it when will i get an axolotl emoji‼️ i can accept not having emojis for like my fav bunnies n for my other fav animals thats FINE but no axolotl? actually crime wada hell)

waough first off: axolotl emoji would be fire, but you know what emoji we really missing? chocolate cake.

ALL of the cake and cake-adjacent emojis are vanilla, where's the love for my fudge lovers???

anyways, because you've got me going on pokemon now, fuckin obligatory pokemon au.

mumscarian because i love those guys: Mumbo: Pokemon Lab Technician Electric/Steel/Dragon/Normal/Flying Magneton (heheh gear go brrrr) Electrode (heheh orb go brrrr) Dragonair (he deserves one elegant-looking pokemon. as a treat) Steelix (YA METAL GUY WHOOOO) Porygon (what a lil weirdo. i love porygon) Noctowl (obligatory low-level starting area pokemon that he got emotionally attached to and now bullies him when he's up late) Scar: Retired Gym Leader Normal/Fairy/Psychic Meowth (obligatory jellie insert) Togetic (raised it from an egg!) Clefable (happy lil fella who Double Slapped scar into next week the first time they met) Espeon (also raised it since it was an eevee!) Alakazam (abras are so fucking annoying to catch but goddamn he did it) Girafarig (ehehe spooky 2-faced pokemon) Grian: Aspiring Champion Bayleef (only one with an actual starter lmao) Pidgeot (best flying pokemon i'm right btw) Vulpix (lil fire fox.....) Misdreavus (goofy ghost pokemon? perfect for him) Starmie (pretty gem need i say more) Eevee (untapped potential!!!) i picture this as grian being the usual pokemon protag trying to beat the elite four except he gets wayyyyyy too carried away with the side quests

mumbo works in a pokemon containment facility meant to observe and rehabilitate hostile/abandoned pokemon (either via adoption or relocation to the wild) and is in charge of keeping the servers running and making sure the database is up to date, which it frequently is not. grian tries training against mumbo often, but you can only battle the same trainer so main times before memorizing his movesets and using the same battle strategy over and over again, so mumbo gives him scar's number and suggests grian train with him instead. scar's only been retired a few years so he tends to have to shoo away rookie trainers from his front porch all the time, but grian instead offers to run favors for him (entirely by accident. scar's reputation FAR precedes himself, and was known for knocking trainers flat on their ass countless times when facing his team. plus, being one of the youngest professional gym trainers in the area, it's hard to get some peace and quiet.) scar finds this hilarious and decides to give grian a stupid amount of tasks to do, ranging from grocery shopping to weeding his garden, until grian finally caves and admits why he's really here. grian fully expects to be sent away, but scar is swayed by grian's persistence and complete dedication to the, objectively speaking, pointless tasks he was given, so scar agrees to help train grian's team.

misc. notes here: mumbo is the oldest of the three at about 26, with grian being 22 and scar 25. i think it's weird that pokemon just lets children run off and be trainers so let's assume that's not common practice here mumbo has a handful of badges, mostly so that his pokemon will listen to him. nearly all of his pokemon (minus the noctowl and the porygon) were gifted to him, so they're a little unruly at times. scar raised all of his pokemon either from eggs or newly born. (if i weren't working with gen 2 he would 100% have a sylveon) grian's eevee was actually a gift from scar, given to grian as an egg that he took great care in watching over.

[girldraki]

Who are you talking about?? I feel like I missed something important??

under the cut because oh my god

we would say scroll down real hard but you probably don’t want to see those posts to be honest. like two days ago tumblr user es*tericec*logy, known for being an Online Wizard, answered an ask from a did system who wanted to interface with spirituality via a headmate by saying they had a Mental Disorder that gave them Delusions Of Godhood and dropped an incredible line along the lines of “do you know how many death cults have been run by people who believed themselves to be literal deities”.

so there was some degree of backlash to this and instead of pulling back they uhhh doubled tripled and quadrupled down eventually leading to them declaring, among other things:

that fictive and kin identity were inherently toxic ways to interact with fiction full stop

that all tumblr fandom “forces people to display pseudo-did symptoms” like… In Order To Engage Whatsoever

that “90-95% of systems on tumblr are faking, because you can’t ALL have squid game headmates lol”

several hours into this, upon being asked to confront the “90-95%” figure of Fake Tumblr Systems, instead chose to declare that tumblr had successfully harassed them into declaring their did diagnosis by “assuming they were a singlet”. did not address that this didn’t actually make the fakeclaiming better

in relation to point one, openly agreeing with a mile long ask someone sent them arguing that fictives/kin “were all the intellectual property of their source’s creator(s)” (???) and “were [somehow] controlled by their authors” (?????) phrased in a very Turning Point Plurality “checkmate, ‘fictives’” manner

repeatedly accusing everyone who took problems with their statements of being anime alterhumans enmeshed in codependent relationships with discord server mates (derogatory)

maintaining through the above accusations that they were exclusively saying this out of concern for peoples mental wellbeing and they didn’t have a problem with anything they were describing despite the fact that it was painfully clear they were mocking these people for what they considered Poor Mental Health

“everyone who agrees with me has had therapy and learned how toxic fandom environments are lol”

that “autism isn’t a gender” upon someone comparing their rhetoric to that quote (i.e. immediately went “well it’s not”). upon explanation of autig ender, declared that everyone was being CONDESCENDING and OF COURSE THEY KNEW ABOUT THAT. continued simultaneously to mock hypothetical “autismgender”

responded to multiple anon asks by telling them people were venmoing them money for Dealing With That, without apparent awareness of the fact that this is an insane thing that 99.9 percent of internet users do not experience

that, despite the fact that they are a goddamn internet wizard who posts about wizard spells online, the only real form of plurality is that sanctioned by the fucking dsm, and that this take is “objectively correct”

that the only thing they had done was to tell people not to spiritualize a serious mental condition and everything else was just them responding under duress

[bitchassbucky]

.eps (cut)

Word Count: 1.7k

Warning/s: dark!bucky x dark!reader, MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH, blood mention, gore and dismemberment, murder, toxic/abusive relationship dynamics, sedation/drugging/use of sedative, stockholm syndrome-ish, one very special character reveal

A/N: this version of the epilogue is the 'clean cut' - there's a good chunk of it missing but it's not particularly important to the story. if you want to read the EXPLICIT version, there should be another one uploaded at the same time. (sorry, this is scheduled so i don't have the link yet lol)

follow the CTRL series:

i - .exe

ii - .avi

iii - .raw

iv - .png

v - .zip

CTRL playlist CTRL moodboard

Safeness, comfortability, warmth are all but a false sense of reality.

When a prey takes down its walls, the predator moves in. Camouflaged in familiar colors, in words that you’re used to hearing, in praises, in lies. Most predators use the mask of the night to move in darkness—unyielding and calculated. Come morning, there will be only one left alive, tainted with victory and bloodshed.

You and Bucky have been engaging in a dance for two—a battle of who’s willing to take the leap of faith and unleash hell upon the other.

Stifled smiles and pursed lips.

The air is filled with unsaid irritants, little things that ticked away like bombs.

There was no time for pleading, no time for mercy, no rest for the wicked.

Did you still love each other?

How far are you willing to go to keep up with his… complacency?

Bucky’s mundane life already taking a toll on you. The endless nightmares of him feeling you. The swirling vision of Bucky being with you every waking—and sleeping—moment: it grates your soul to shreds.

“We’ll be together forever, right?”

“Yes, darling.”

“What about the day after forever?”

“That too, honey.”

Where was the man you loved so deeply? The man that broke his morals just to be with you?

Was he under this hull of a Yes Man? A poor little thing that says ‘yes’ to everything like a puppy.

The man you held so dearly now slipping away, chipping his humanity, shedding the once-human.

“Would you marry me tomorrow if I asked you?”

“Of course, baby, why wouldn’t I?”

“Would you kill for me?”

“I’m meant to do the same for you.”

It’s irritating how Bucky gave up too quickly. Too fast, moving too fast. The gazelle let the lion tear its neck as it lay there, unmoving, letting the blood seep into its hide.

When you first met Bucky, it was your own fairytale unfolding before your eyes. Kismet, reality, forgiveness from above. He was soft and shy, passionate, lively.

Far from what you expected from a man his age—you blame Steve for forcing you into his narrative before. That all men are out to get you. They will hurt you. They will use you and leave you for good. But Bucky? Bucky came in like a knight. He saved you from the carcass of your past. He saved you from the sins that you prayed and knelt for.

Bucky taught you how to love.

Bucky taught you how to live for yourself.

Bucky taught you that being alone doesn’t mean you have to be lonely.

“It was an unspoken little thing, wasn’t it?”

“What thing, baby?”

“Our love.”

“Yes, honey, it was.”

He worships you.

He worships you like a fucking God and you hate it.

Suffocating, too suffocating. You dove straight for the water and now you’re drowning.

Do you still love each other? The question hangs in the air, heavy with its weight, light as a feather.

It’s all your fault. It’s all your fault. It’s all your fault. It’s all your fault.

You stand there with a syringe half-filled with a horse sedative. It’s a concern how easy it is to waltz into a pet store and pick up a general anesthetic. You make a mental note to look at it later.

Bucky’s body slumps forward, his forehead meeting the edge of the table with a dull thud. If the overdose doesn’t kill him, the weeping crack in his head will.

Holy fuck, humans bleed a lot. And fast. Good thing you already have that clear tarp taped down. Even with the hush money stuffed down your throat, it would take a good nick to regrout the kitchen.

“What is that for, honey?”

“I’m painting the cabinets.”

“Okay, darling.”

So you let him bleed, surprised that the liquid is redder than what you thought it would be. A soft gurgling noise came from Bucky, the last of air escaping his dead body. You stood there, syringe in hand, as you thought how to dispose of a six-foot-tall man without arousing suspicion.

Not that he’ll be missed anyway: the local news and the internet already branded him as a psycho and you as a victim. You were both victims in this fairytale. They reported his case as “skipped the town like the sicko he is.” So, no—no one’s going to look for him.

The sun was high up in the sky and there was a dead body in your kitchen.

A butcher and a surgeon walk into a bar for a drink. “What do you do for a living?” Said the butcher, “I save lives! What about you?” The doctor answers. “I save animals from dying slowly. We’re basically the same. You’re just very clean.” You see, the butcher comes into the bar covered in blood, reeking of death. The surgeon, on the other hand, wears his white coat with pride even though he’s surrounded by death every passing second.

Today was the day you learned that you have the tools of a butcher and the precision of a surgeon. Unlike before.

You carefully take Bucky’s fingers off of his left hand, leaving a skin flap on the edge of the last knuckle for you to stitch close later. Four promises. Four goddamn promises and he broke all of them.

It was his fault that he’s dead. He made you do this.

Placing the body into the trunk of a rental, you begin your journey to the end of your fairytale. Off to the woods, where you buried your first love. In a town where not everyone who dies leaves.

The drive to and from the place was tiring, to say the least. The internet connection of the diners was spotty at best. Locals were overly friendly with the city folks who came passing through their towns. The roads reek of roadkill and manure from the farm animals that were left to roam for fresh grass.

At least you get to come home in a spotless apartment, alone once again.

But not lonely.

Your space is yours again. No trace of anyone anywhere. Immaculately yours.

—

Humans are social creatures.

No one can truly be alone, especially in today’s world where we’re connected to everyone—whether we liked it or not.

Leaving your wretched job behind was an easy feat to do. No one can say no to the victim of such a vile crime. That’s all they saw you: a helpless little thing. So off you went; saying half-assed goodbyes and sending emails of courage and hope and fucking resilience.

Your resignation meant that the company’s free of any dirt from you, Bucky’s disappearance quickly becoming a joke and a rumor blending in one.

They let you leave: in your bank account a fat check ensuring that you’d shut up about the scandal for months until you can’t feed yourself no more. So you packed your bags and jet off without looking back. You never liked that apartment anyway.

Nevertheless, you found yourself looking into another dead-end job in one of the towns you stopped over before. It’s a charming place like time froze in their plaza while the rest of the world went on. You found a small studio apartment in a street tuckered away from the main avenue, you settled there as days became nights and nights turned into days.

You woke up one morning craving a healthy serving of coffee and pancakes, luckily the town’s local diner wasn’t far from your new home.

The coffee was too hot, the pancakes were amazing, fluffy, and just right. You’re sitting in a sunny booth, the warmth doing its wonders.

“Hi, can I get today’s paper, please?” Your voice is sweet as you call your server, giving her a quick smile.

A pair of Raybans adorn your face, unconsciously hiding behind its darkened glasses. The waitress gives you a thick stack of newspapers, refilling your cup with black coffee.

Upon opening the paper, you ignore the town’s headlines and go straight for the job postings. The door jingled open as patrons come in and go, waving to familiar faces.

Job Vacancy Announcements

Secretary to the Town Sheriff

You skimmed over the rest of the details, only noting the address of the office. The job looks quite lucrative for someone who would only take messages and organize files for the sheriff.

Looking over the job posting again, you read over the words walk-ins only. That shouldn’t be hard enough.

The diner looked deserted save from the man sitting behind your booth. Leaning over and tapping his shoulder, you put on a polite smile, “Hi, sorry, do you know how to get to the sheriff’s office from here?”

“Hello, darling.” The man croons in an accent, he looks over to you, “join me in my booth, will ‘ya?”

You’re in no position to reject his proposal, you’re the one who needed an answer.

Taking your coffee cup, you slide into his booth, “hi.”

“Just the face I wanted to see.” Clean-shaven, a hint of mint and smoke, and something woody; a worn leather jacket and white button-up shirt hugging his soft frame. “Some folks over on the apartment complex were talkin’ about a city girl wanting to rent a studio all by herself. That happen to be you?”

You look over to him, trying to understand how that small of news spread like a wildfire, “yeah. I moved in a week ago.”

He leans over, smiling sweetly as he unabashedly lets his eyes roam your features, “What’s a city girl like you doin’ in a place like this? I hope we ain’t too boring for you, gal.”

Chatty—he’s way too chatty.

“Just wanted a change of pace, really. Away from the bustle of the city.” You rustle the paper, clearing your throat to get back on the matter on hand, “so the sheriff’s office? Is it too far from here?”

“What business are ‘ya bringing into the office?”

“A job, actually. Says here that they’re looking for a secretary.” You might as well tell him everything, he seems too chatty to be dismissed over and over again.

“Well, darlin’, today’s your lucky day. No need to drive down the old road.” He reaches down to his seat, pulling up a brown hat, “Hi, I’m Sheriff Bodecker. Now, to whom do I owe the pleasure?”

You bite back a giggle, you’ve always wanted to be involved with the law.

[luminous-shifting-vibes]

*sequel* to actual fucking quotes from the shiftblr coffeehouse discord server

once again, it's out of context because x1000 funnier

also x1000 longer than previous post

"ur satan is gnc af"

"Bestie I’m already having gender envy over a fucking demon please"

"O_O ODEPIJHFbavevisdpvfhzdcnjawedsidjksjdkoeirjfmkdsoeirujdksodifjndmksoidfjdksidfj ITS" NOT IN MY FRAFTS IS SPEDNT 1 hour PN THAT SHIT"

"AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

"ohoho sexy"

"I am very proud of myself"

"himbo x edgy fuck"

"YOU COULD SQUISH HES CHEECKS"

"he has teefs"

"SQUASH"

"good for biting 📷"

"he's a himbo basically"

"B͂̒̄iͫ̍̈tͧ̓ͯè̄̇"

"bifth"

"i havent watched blue exorcist in years but mr okumura my beloved </3"

"MY LIFE QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED"

"is it important information to mention that the person i put up for my turn is the son of satan" "I know like 1 thing about everyone who isnt ranboo lmfao"

"crimes"

"tumblr sexyman"

"idk why but my first thought was cowboy onceler"

"I vibe with him but he is very long and twisty"

"steampunk e-girl"

"steampunk tumblr sexyman"

"Canonically bi crimelord I agree!!"

"OOO FRIEND SHAPED"

"ARTIST SIGHTED"

"they look like someone i would want to be friends with but is way cooler than me so i'd never actually talk to them"

"babby..... would die for him"

"honestly i probably kin him"

"i'm sure he's lovely but he looks way too much like my ex i'm sorry-"

"i'd be down for another rotation! i have another twink to show y'all"

"Also :00 blonde friend"

"Let us all infodhmo"

"Hsjagdvbs shhh im on phone"

"Nix woukd you like to joon?

"skitters away"

"I have two braincells and they both drink dumb bitch juice"

"oof wait whats the order again i have 0 memory"

"i want to bond with him over cosplay-"

"Awkwardly watches in band kid"

"One day I'm gonna a broadway star"

"which isnt to say they were bad. they were just fortnite dancing during rehersals"

"I threw it so hard my glasses flew off and slid under the stage right divider"

"anyway heres my boi"

"emo"

"haha emo"

"virgil sanders kinnie"

"he looks like he listens to my chemical panic at the fallout boy"

"Bro I bet he'd kick my ass with his deck"

"bird man my beloved"

"fuck i had so much to say and then i forgot it all"

"Birds!!"

"guiguhuh"

"crabrave"

"She sounds like someone I would end up stealing her personality"

"yess name collector gang"

"alias glass aiden haven absinthe fish brick rice"

"But I have Cypress, Remure, Genesis, Lemres, and Comet"

"And she's named after a mars candy bar bc alien"

"Hey, if plato went by plato, you can be king thief"

"im not dissing my gramma like that shfojd"

"My dad has seven legal names" "bitches be like *looks at fictional character* *steals their name* it's us we're bithces"

"coraline lowkey traumatized me but i adore it regardless"

"mmmmmm magic man :]"

"°0° green man"

"criminal (affectionate)"

"he would shoplift a candy bar from walmart and then brag to all of his friends about the sick stealing he did"

"despite the fact he's canonically been capable of overpowering a minor deity"

"i would commit so many crimes for him"

"Very babey"

"Yes please tell green man he is very pog"

"he also keeps a lot of dumb secrets"

"but I will sorely miss the chaos and energy of this here chat until I wake again" (by request XD)

"i just say words and if they're funny then they're funny"

"* or extremly chaotic either works"

"at this point we are just taking turns rambling"

"oH--"

"bc my brain has a schedule"

"Hopefully they have gyoza there or I will lose my mind"

"hehe yes spooky man"

"my ghost glucose guardian"

"the head of the undead group that lives there, and we end up dating. (yes I date a ghost, no I will not be taking constructive criticism /lh)"

"ghosts r just inherently sexy"

"i mean im becoming a squid thing so"

"Raven quirk raven quirk!!"

"ł â m p"

"łæmp"

"mothman: ooh lamp you look very nice today! do you come here often? mothman: wait shit no"

"I'd date a ghost"

"mine is still accurate, i am still sobbing (/j)"

"p e e p e e"

""@nick wilde is a tumblr sexyman" is the best thing i have ever seen"

"im sorry im cackling like a dying hyena"

"you're all 12 year olds"

"PEENIE"

"He once caused global warming on accident so he could get a tan"

"god, what a himbo. i love him"

"that reminds me of my friends kin assigned me jesus"

"Man outside of battle be like: princely crying but then in battle hes like: "CATACLYSM! DISASTER! DEVASTATION!" Chill out man"

"Every time I talk about satan it never fails to shock people it's my favorite thing to do"

"im kin assigning him roman sanders" ""Oh yeah he caused global warming because he wanted to get girls" "he what""

"oh damn i forgot satan was straight"

"twink appreciation club"

"give us the twinks"

"my first thought was bottom-"

"so many people to try and get his dad to love him"

"daddy issued"

"OH MY GOD ITS WILBUR"

"Big boy but"

"anyways janus is swagggg"

"........................."

"gib twink"

"give twink then i will share"

"holds him gentle like hamburger"

"This dumb bitch opened a book that said "do not open" and got possessed by a little bastard"

"he is. fragile creachur"

"klug is beauty klug is grace i would let him step on my face"

"If I'm playing swap and I have to hear one more "Pwanet Powew" Im gonna lose it"

"Who is to blame? Pandora or the box?"

"Bakugo isnt my type but I respect the drip"

"i say like my type isnt long-haired pretty boys and girls that look so gnc that people have a history of confusing them for men"

"hes a gremlin and i can appreciate a pretty gremlin"

"that is to say i am attracted to VFlower vocaloid. This is a confession."

"note i am a lesbian"

"You may like Schezo wegey"

"why does he have one single expression"

"soul soul eater passes the vibe check"

"magic wand"

"I Want To Hold His Hand"

"i would commit a war crime for him any war crime idc which one"

"my favorite one is when he sounded rlly gay because he said "Muscular bodies keep me satisfied""

"p e a n u t"

"Klug is a homophobic homosexual its just facts"

"grug from the croods is peak male performance"

"jaw drops to floor, eyes pop out of sockets accompanied by trumpets, heart beats out of chest, awooga awooga sound effect, pulls chain on train whistle that has appeared next to head as steam blows out, slams fists on table, rattling any plates, bowls or silverware, whistles loudly, fireworks shoot from top of head, pants loudly as tongue hangs out of mouth, wipes comically large bead of sweat from forehead, clears throat, straightens tie, combs hair Ahem, you look very lovely."

"tag yourself im the fireworks shooting from the top of the head"

"i like essays"

"central time gang"

"11:11 pog-" (wait... is that a suprise angel number?? yes it is lovelies just for you <3)

"Then again im also a dumbass bitch who wonders what the souls in soul eater taste like. SERIOUSLY THOUGH. THEY LOOK TASTY AS HELL!!!! LIKE GODDAMN BRO YOU'RE MAKING ME FUCKING HUNGRY. Like. that shit- it's Bone Apple motherfucking Teeth. hell yea my guy. Im hongy now.... shlorp I'm seriously considering this. Like. They seem kinda like a liquid? But a solid? Are they like jello? The fuck they taste like my guy???? I keep imagining they're like sour, like sour candy maybe? Or do they taste salty? Sweet? Maybe some combo of two? Do they even have a taste or is it about the texture? The sensation? God my mouth is watering what the hell. I am starving. I think I need to go get a cookie. I'm gonna go get a cookie. Brb. I'm better. I'm still craving souls though. Which is a weird-ass cringey thing to say but I'm being dead-ass rn. They just.... look tasty???? And I wanna eat one. Thus. I am shifting to Soul Eater for the express purpose of satisfying my fucking cravings. enjoy"

"points were made"

"jello? more like helloooo schloooAHFJDSDAIDWNALDHSJKDAIDANDM"

"WAIT I THINK I HAVE AN ANIME GIRL BITING VIDEO TOO"

"anime girl voice: mmm! mm... ahhhhmp!! mmm, mmm... aaahmp!"

"i think it sounds great i'm going to start eating like that"

"several people are typing"

"do these look edible to you"

"forbidden gummies"

"when I was on lsd I couldn't eat my fruit gummies because I thought they were alive because they had little faces on them"

"oh shit yeah don't do drugs"

"anyways general consensus is puyos are edible, ty for your input everyone"

"everypony is a word so powerful it can bring nations to its knees"

"pls the self control it's taking me not to say "hewwo everypony" in gen chat when someone new joins-"

"hewwo evewrypony uwu deaw cewestia i hopwe it doewsnt wain owo"

"ive cooked up a sowution wiwth the knowwege ive acwued. they say a kitcwen time saves niwne, but im just savwing two. Ive gathewwed the inwedients to make a time sowbet. Thewe's hawdly woom fow seconds when the seconds mewt away."

"I had a ten year old sister... you know what happened to her??? very sad, very tragic... she turned eleven....."

"NIIICE"

"Guts dont say the secks word :( /j"

"watch your fucking language in front of the president"

"im so sorry lumi"

"i think you're like ehhhh 8/10 funny"

"now me???? 10/10. Hilarious"

"sometimes i have to take a step back and remember that this is the same guts i follow on tumblr /lh"

""ok every here's some good shifting advice!!! uwu have a good day" "yeah i did lsd and ate fruit gummies""

"i have one setting and it's whatever this is"

"my bitch ass cat just pushed the door open with his fuzzy face and now my sleeping dad is being lulled into dreams by Cosmo Sheldrake's 'Pliocine'."

"me on discord: nick wilde"

"me on tumblr: shifting water! haha funne! me on here: my hermit crabs are cannibals also i want to eat souls."

"im sorry yOUR VIBESA RE JUST SO DIFFERNT"

"u give off older cousin ive never spoken to but always admire at the family gatherings vibes"

"what the fuck"

"BC I HAVE LIBERTU"

"If you adopt me then yes"

"am I qualified for dad jokes???"

"we're all a lot smarter on tumblr"

"I'm like "awww... sweet... sweet little shiftlings... posting such sweet shiftling content... so pure, so wholesome... does not even know abcs....""

"can't think before you speak if you never think B)"

"I'm not responsible enough to be a mom"

"cat pet"

"show us pictures of the cat or i will do Crime"

"maybe thats me being a coward tho"

"MOTH!!!! MOTH MY BELOVED"

if y'all want I can make this a series bc shiftblr keeps giving me more content

[noszkass]

ashley tempest winthrope.

thirty six. defense attorney. jai courtney.

“You're supposed to grow out of your horridness, aren't you? I don't think I ever grew out of mine. Sometimes I think it's still inside me, like something nasty I swallowed, that got stuck...”

content warning: mentions toxic, co-dependent relationships; abuse; death of a peer/family member (via murder).

dominant traits. logical, charismatic, gentleman, stoic, focused, patient, selectively affectionate, charming, observant, cautious, possessive, unpredictable, self-preserving, forceful, obsessive, demanding, melancholic, aggressive, irritable, distrusting, unrelenting, loyal, easily jealous, less hair-trigger more berserk button, no-nonsense, quick thinking, dishonest.

fictional parallels. elijah mikaelson (the originals); geralt of rivia (the witcher); henry winter (the secret history); pope cody (animal kingdom); richie gecko (fdtd the series).

○ born into the winthorpe family; known for their successful generational family law practice, as councilmen from neighboring townships, and good for nothin' criminals who latched onto the teat of a community that's long-since given up on them like leaches─depending on what side of miriam's well it is you live in. ashley's particular branch is the former. estate house in rosebush hill drive, debutant turned matron belle mother who just can't seem to find her way around or out of other people's business (including, if not almost invariably, that of all three of her children), and a certain amount of respectability he was brought up to live by.

○ on the surface ashley winthorpe is a deliciously handsome man. wealthy and put together. takes pride in his appearance and family name. he's also well-mannered and polite, and thoughtful in such infinitesimal ways that you never really think much of until after the fact. and there is something so very not right about him. he has a kind smile that never quite reaches the edges of his eyes and though it doesn't necessarily look disingenuous, there's something about it that doesn't exactly leave you with a sense of ease. like an unfamiliar gesture that's been practiced over and over, so many times that it's lost meaning. like it takes the muscles in his face a moment to pull before they settle in the correct spots. he'll have a conversation with you and while at times it seems he's looking right through you, others will have his attention so intensely undivided it feels as if you've been bared naked and left in a cold room. like you've just been caught lying about something and he knows. somehow, he's known all along. because he listens intently when you speak to him and you suspect somehow he never forgets a single thing he's heard.

○ there's no mistaking his booming voice, jarring, even at a whisper sending shockwaves through your core that has you on high alert. even when it's soft and lulling (in an attempt to offer comfort or catching him melt into the woman he's declared the love of his goddamn life from the corner of your eye through the crack in his office door), there's something threatening that looms. less like hard blunt force and more like a living, breathing fog that blankets you with strong arms, settles deep into your gut, coils itself around your innards, and wrings you dry. the confusing part? you know, without a doubt, he would protect you with no hesitation and ask for nothing in return. and, most of the time, you'd be right. because ashley winthorpe is a good man. no matter how your instincts thrash, screaming at you otherwise.

plot hooks.

i apologize, some of these are all very specific to a singular plot and i could've just included them in a legit request 😬🙃

○ sandbox love never dies. a very specific and imperfect friend group cast in the roles of bastard, bleeding heart, damaged, golden, grim, ingénue, temptress, and wild card. they've been together since any of them can remember. spent their whole lives dreaming about trying to get out of miriam's well, but instead only found tragedies that bind them to each other. tragedies, usually, of their own making. you'll be able to read a little more about these characters in the sandbox love request, which i promise is coming!! there is a doc in the works with more information + a plot server, so expect to be part of those things if you take one of these babes!

○ his secretary. in the past he's helped her out with something legally and she's kind of in his debt, though he insists time and time again she owes him nothing of the sort. i figured it'd be something along the lines of strong holding an ex-boyfriend or husband who wouldn't leave her alone (making her miserable, or something like refusing to pay child support he'd been ordered to pay, dragging her name through the mud, etc. general nuisances to nip in the bud/bad behavior in need of correcting before they became worse as they usually do. you get the idea), because that's notoriously right up his alley. likely using non-legal means to get there; intimidation is sort of his thing. and while he may not be the type of boss or co-worker who meets you for drinks after you clock out, he does have an affection for every single one of his employees and seeing as how she works with him the most, she'd be near the top of that list. maybe she was intimidated by him in the beginning and now she knows he's not everything he appears to be. and they have an understanding.

○ the weight of his guilt. [cw: murder. this will come much later in the plot!] the winthorpes are a family on two very extremes of a type of people. [the bastard] is his cousin on his father's side, a wayward little sister who got knocked up by someone unbefitting of the family and then marrying someone worse by their standards when the father got himself put away over an affair or something just as unbecoming. ashley was always raised closely with [the bastard], his father's hope to sway the boy of many wasted talents to the right side of the family, to make something of himself. but he's a product of his lineage. and only ever finds situations for ash to get him out of. eventually, [the bastard] who he will murder, cold and bloody and bury at the base of an old oak tree will disappear. and ashley's guilt will cause him to reach out. as far as anyone knew, they were the best of friends. always together (even if that relationship was practically handwrought by his father, and he had little-to-no patience for his cousin's antics). it'll be only natural that he come by every now and again to check on them, show care, help fix up things around the house that [the bastard] would have if he were still around. because it'll ultimately be ash's fault he's gone. partially. [the bastard] will deserve what he gets and no one who'll know will be able to convince him anything otherwise, but his family didn't deserve the fallout that came after. maybe a parent or sibling or someone [the bastard] claimed to love while making his way through the female population of miriam's well.

○ the other two winthrope children. they're expected to be upstanding citizens to combat the trash reputation the other winthrope side creates. father is one of a long line of lawyers (with a main practice just outside of town, ashley's secondary office in mw because he prefers it here) and mother is a homemaker whose extracurriculars might as well be solid, paying jobs. they have three children together; ashley (being the oldest son), a daughter magnolia (and the only girl -- taken by sage), and the youngest son, credence (who is very likely expected to join the family business, like ashley). i don't expect anyone to make the parents even though that would be incredible? but they all still have rooms at their home in rosebush hill drive to use at their leisure. it wouldn't at all be out of the question that some of the children still live there -- especially the daughter if she's unwed. they're very old fashioned southern that way. they do these big family events where everyone is expected to participate, go on vacations and holidays together, and church on sundays regardless of your personal beliefs on the matter (that you had very well better keep to yourself if they don't align, ashley has learned). their grandfather also lives in the family house after losing grandma a few years back.

[waywardwrestlewritingwaif]

Stripped

My heart is aching for my darling rat bastard since his breakdown after Wrestle Kingdom. I want him back in NJPW so much. Or failing that, I want him in AEW causing havoc. 

Pairing: Jay White x OFC

Word count: 3,914

Content advisory: Sexual situations (takes place in a strip club), language

The stage is littered with those stupid fucking plastic stars because the owner likes the effect of the girls moving through it. “Stardust” he calls it, like it’s supposed to make everything magical. A fucking hazard is what it is. The floor gets slippery during the night and those stupid things kill any kind of friction you might be able to get in the skyscraper platforms and stiletto heels you work in. So you and all the other girls who work here have to focus on not slipping on stardust while you’re also focusing on shaking your ass and gyrating just right for the drunk businessmen or frat boys or bachelor parties or vaguely creepy loners you rely on to pay your rent. A shift turns into this ninja-style obstacle course of trying not to get your legs broken by the owner’s preferred decorations and trying not to get your face broken by guys who think you owe them more than dancing. 

But it’s a fuck of a lot more lucrative than waitressing or telemarketing, which are the two jobs you’d be likely to get other than dancing, and you’d still get treated like garbage at those places. So you spend time between dances picking these stupid goddamned stars off of your boots, because you don’t want to make it more dangerous to work here than it has to be, and reminding yourself that you could do, and have done, worse. 

Tonight is what you’d call a good night: decent crowd, decent tips, enough turnover to ensure that no one gets too possessive, the clientele drunk enough to be generous but not so drunk as to be violent. So aside from the threat posed by the imitation stardust, you head out to your third dance of the night with a sense of confidence. That is, until you see him. 

You can immediately tell that he’s drunk, obstreperously drunk. He’s slumped into his chair, spread out in an ungainly fashion. The bouncers hover close by, knowing that he’s far enough along to cause trouble but he doesn’t. The waitresses continue serving him, which is a little surprising. The guy must be tipping a fortune. If the mark is generous enough, they’ll bring him drinks until he’s unconscious. They’re supposed to cut him off at a reasonable point and the bouncers are supposed to get him into a taxi, even if they have to take the money out of the register, but if the guy’s throwing enough money around, the servers will toss security a share to look the other way for a bit. 

You’re noticing all this while waiting your turn on stage because you can barely take your eyes off him. His long hair is pulled back into a messy half-ponytail and his beard looks scruffy but there’s something magnetic, something intense about him. Contrary to his body language, his eyes look clear and manic, darting around like he’s expecting someone to jump him at any moment. His shirt is already loose and has a few buttons open and the more he slides around on his chair, the more you’re able to see. And dear god what a treat it is to see. Every time he breathes, there’s a ripple of muscles in his chest that looks like something out of a superhero comic or romance novel. You move around so that you can get a better look at him from different angles and so that you aren’t just sitting by the bar, dumbstruck and practically drooling. 

By the time it’s your turn on stage, you’re so keyed up you’re worried that you’re going to forget what to do or end up wiping out on the star-shaped death traps on stage. Every girl is paying special attention to him because he’s pushing so much money at them. And a lot of them are probably thinking the same thing you are: that he’s young and gorgeous and the chances of getting that combined with that much money and being too sloppy drunk to pose a real threat is like finding the pot of gold at the end of the damn rainbow. You’re all essentially auditioning for the role of “girl he’s going to want to take to a room upstairs for a private dance” and you are determined to absolutely kill this audition. 

You know you look good and you know you can move with the best of them but in order to make your turn really special, you need to channel what he’s making you feel, you need to make him understand what he’s doing to you and you need him to know that you’re inviting him to do more. You usually like to stick to your planned routines because you’ll be more confident on your feet but this is all about getting closer to him, about eye contact and the scent of pheromones and trying to bait a perfect trap. 

He seems to recognize the extra effort you’re putting into your work and gives a crooked smile as he tosses money towards you. He’s not even looking at the denominations, just casually tossing bills on the stage. This is going to be a very profitable evening for you if he does nothing other than stay around for a while. But you want more than that. Up close, there’s an aura about him, equal parts spoiled brat and caged animal, something contemptuous about the way he sips his drink, surveys the surroundings, even the way he looks at you when proffering bills. But when the two of you lock eyes, there’s something else, this desire, a need in him that he wants you to fill. 

You slide gracefully down on all fours in front of him, still undulating to the music, moving close enough that you can speak to him without having to raise your voice. 

“Baby, if you want to have some real fun, you know you can ask for a private room,” you coo. 

“So people keep telling me,” he smirks. 

He obviously wants to see if you’ll be offended, if he’s managed to hurt your feelings by letting you know that you’re just one of many vying for his attention and his money. But his tone isn’t dismissive, it’s challenging. 

“Aw, are you trying to make me jealous, handsome?”

You raise yourself up on your knees, running your hands over your breasts, then down between your legs, never breaking eye contact. He keeps his arrogant expression fixed in place as he produces a few more bills, holding them out between his fingers. So you lean forward, stretching slowly, like a cat in the sun, making sure he can see how flexible you are. You take the bills between your teeth and as you feel his hold on them loosen, you make sure that the swell of your bottom lip brushes the tip of his finger. 

Spinning yourself around, you rise to your feet again in one smooth motion and start to back away as the last few bars of the song signal that your little audition is ending. You make sure to give him a last look and the hint of a smile as you step backstage. When you do, you immediately move so that you can see what he does. 

He downs his drink and spends a long few moments contemplating the glass as the next girl takes to the stage. His eyes drift up to her and he drops a few bills but then you see him beckon one of the staff over. You can’t help but smile. He’s asking for you, you can feel it. 

*

“Guy’s pretty loaded,” the security guard cautions you. 

“Yeah,” you chuckle, “in more ways than one.”

The meat slab in a suit laughs at your joke and reassures you he’s there if you need him before he steps into the darkened booth at the end of the hall. It’s not something they advertise but the clubs keep cameras in the private rooms, so that security can keep an eye on things and take action if clients get out of line. Not every club does this, of course, and you’ve worked at some places where being in a private room meant you were on your own. This place is Fort Knox by comparison. 

You open the door where your Prince Charming is waiting for you. He’s sitting on one of the leather chairs, spread out like he owns the place, a bottle of scotch, the expensive stuff, sitting on the table next to him. Even in the low light you see his sparkling eyes lock on you. 

“Well it’s nice to see you again, handsome.”

You walk closer to him, loosening the robe that you’d thrown on before coming up. As it falls open, it catches on your breasts, the diaphanous fabric just barely covering your nipples, which grow hard at the sensation. 

“You’re the lucky girl who gets me to herself tonight,” he slurs. 

You spread your legs so that they’re on either side of his as you bend over to him. The fabric of your robe brushes against his skin as you bow your head close to whisper, “I feel pretty lucky right now.”

You step back and press a button to start the music, allowing the robe to fall from you as you start to sway for him. You don’t get too close, not right away. Building anticipation is always the best, watching that hunger build in a man’s eyes, all the more so because this one is so arrogant and full of himself as well as being gorgeous. You want to see just how worked up you can get him. So you hang back just a little, letting him watch the way the soft light plays on your skin and the movement of your hands over your body. 

After a couple of minutes of this, he gives a slow clap and pulls out more money for you. 

“You don’t have to do that here,” you remind him. “You’re all paid up.”

“Yeah, well I want to make sure I get the best service.”

“That’s what I’m here for, honey.”

“Jay,” he snaps. 

You give him a little frown, not exactly sure what he means. 

“My name,” he clarifies, as if you’re stupid for not understanding. “Not baby, not honey, not handsome. My name is Jay White.”

A circuit connects in your head as you hear him. 

“Jay White. You’re a wrestler. I’ve heard of you.”

“I’m not just “a” wrestler. I’m the best on the fucking planet.”

“Well then I really am lucky.”

You can hear the tension in his voice and the sooner you can stop this line of conversation and get him back to thinking about your body, the better. You move closer and gyrate slowly downward and back up just in front of him, your hands resting on the arms of the chair just a couple of inches from his. 

He still has the money in his hand and his expression remains sour. 

“Take it,” he nods towards the bills. “I’m a rich man. I can buy whatever the hell I want.”

You smile and shake your head. “You don’t have to do anything. Just relax and enjoy. Not that I don’t love that sexy accent.”

“Oh really? What kind of accent is it?”

It’s starting to feel like he’s brought you in here just to pick a fight, which is throwing you off your rhythm in every sense and also frustrating because it’s not making him any less attractive to you. You keep your slight smile as you lean close to him. 

“It’s a New Zealand accent.”

“You sure it’s not Australian?”

You nod. “I spent a couple of summers working in Australia and New Zealand. I can always tell the difference.”

He pushes his face close to yours, the scent of alcohol so strong that you feel like you’re going to get drunk from the fumes. “Were you working as a whore there too?”

Instead of responding, you pout a little and give him a sad look. At first, he scoffs but after a few seconds, his body relaxes a bit and he looks, if not apologetic, at least happy to move on. 

“Well, show me what you can do, then,” he drawls, taking another drink of scotch. 

You’re happy to oblige, winding your body around him in a serpentine fashion, making sure he’s close enough to feel the heat radiating from you, even pushing your hips close enough that he might be able to smell how turned on you are by him. And that’s only augmented by the feeling of his breath against your thighs, or the low moans that escape him when you hold yourself precariously close, barely respecting the rules of not touching that exist here. 

The music is slower than what plays in the club, sinuous and sensual and you move in perfect time with it, your body flowing like water around him. His thirst is palpable. You catch him adjusting himself or rubbing his palm against his groin with increasing frequency and the more turned on he seems to get, the more lustful you make your movements. 

You’re bent over him, drinking in the sound of his panting and grunting, when he speaks again. 

“I quit my job today,” he grumbles. 

You’re a little offended that he can detach himself so easily from the moment but when you look at him, his expression hasn’t changed, like what he’s going through here is linked somehow to what he’s done. 

“Why did you do that, hon- Jay?”

He smiles when you correct yourself and leans close, his breath condensing between your breasts for a few seconds before he responds. 

“Because I’m too fucking good for them.”

You don’t know who “them” means but you know better than to tell him that. 

“So they don’t deserve you,” you purr. 

“Goddamned right they don’t. Look at all this money I’ve got. Doesn’t mean a fucking thing if I don’t have respect.”

“Why wouldn’t they respect you?”

 He snaps his leg to one side, hitting your knee and almost making you collapse on top of him. 

“Come closer,” he whispers. 

You’re not really sure how much closer you can get without breaking the rules, but you incline your head close to his, so that his lips are next to your ear. 

“They don’t know what they have in me,” he hisses. “They don’t know how fucking lucky they are, how much I’ve given up for them. They just want to make me the leader of the fools in their company because they think that’s the best I can do. But you don’t think that, do you?”

His eyes glitter like a tiger in the jungle shade but you meet his gaze and don’t look away. 

“No,” you tell him, “you look like a damn rock star. You look like a king.”

“I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

He smiles and runs his hand up the back of your thigh, grabbing your ass and holding you in place while he grips your arm with his other hand. He presses his lips against the skin of your inner arm, lightly trailing kisses over the sensitive flesh before giving a sharp bite to your wrist. 

You give a little cry just as the door slams open and the security guard who’d accompanied you up here bursts into the room. 

“We got a problem here?” he roars. 

Jay slumps back in his chair with a defeated expression, like he’s preparing himself to be thrown out of the club by his hair. You rise as gracefully as you can and go to the guard, who’s obviously waiting for you to signal what needs to be done. 

“It’s ok,” you tell him calmly. You walk up to him so that your conversation won’t be overheard. “I kind of goaded him on.”

It’s not really true that you goaded him but it is true that you’ve been wanting him to touch you all night and it’s possible that he picked up on that. 

“Looks like he got a bit grabby.”

“Yeah, it’s not a problem for me.”

You keep your eyes trained on Jay, who’s watching your interaction with the beefy man and obviously trying to figure out what’s going on. In return, the security guard scowls at him and cuts a serious look at you. 

“You want me to turn off the camera?”

There it is, the magic question. The women who work here are dancers, strippers, and their job is only to move in an erotic way, to excite their clients. They’re kept secure by the presence of cameras that alert security if a client is getting out of line, if he’s breaking the rules by actually laying hands on one of the dancers. But there’s what’s allowed and what’s really allowed and that question is at the heart of it. 

The cameras protect the women but they also protect the club: they prove that all that’s going on in the private rooms is dancing and titillation, not prostitution. But if a woman wants to, she can tell security to turn off the camera for a while, meaning there’s no record of what happens. None of the girls are obliged to do it, and the official position of the club is that it’s not allowed, so if you get caught, they’ll fire you immediately. But if you’re ok with offering more than just a dance and willing to give the security guard a cut of the earnings, he’ll shut off the camera in the room and you can do whatever you want with your client. 

You’re not actually planning on charging Jay White anything more unless he wants something really kinky but you’ve already made so much money off him that you can cut the guard in and still have a great night. 

“Yeah,” you whisper, never taking your eyes off Jay, “that’s what I want.”

“It’s done,” the guard grunts. As he turns to leave, he gives your bicep a little squeeze. “You know I’m here if you need me.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

The financial details will get worked out later. Not all of the guards are so mellow but this guy, nicknamed “Bob” by the girls, is old school. He knows you have to bend the rules to make ends meet and knows that no one is making a fortune from what happens here. He never tries to shake the girls down, never assumes that being off-camera means he can just pretend the room is empty. He’s the perfect person to have working at this moment for you. It’s like fate. 

He leaves without another word and you stand in place until you see the tiny red light in the corner go out. Then you walk back over to Jay, bracing your arms on the chair so that you’re hovering just above him. 

“So what does that mean?” He nods towards the camera, apparently having noticed you looking at it. 

“You mean the little red light?”

“The little red light that’s gone out.”

“Well that means that you and I have some privacy, Jay White. That means that the rules are relaxed a little.”

He smiles a little and wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you down onto his lap and giving you a nice preview of coming attractions. Yes, you think, the trailer definitely makes you want to see the movie. You continue to grind in rhythm with the background music but you’re no longer pretending that it’s the focus of your attention. Instead you lean in and press your lips to his, softly letting your tongue slide into his mouth and weaving your fingers into his hair. The kiss is every bit as electric, as passionate, and as needy as you’d hoped. The two of you remain lost in it, moaning and sighing, your bodies writhing against each other, seeking greater contact. 

It’s him who finally pulls back, his eyes hardly focusing as he runs his hands up and down your back. Finally, he pulls you close to him and buries his head in your chest, kissing every bit of flesh he can reach from your collarbone to your breast. When his mouth reaches your nipple, he locks his lips around it, licking, sucking, even nipping at the taut bud as his hands squeeze greedily at your back. 

He bites down sharply and you cry out at the pain, trying to twist away from him, but he’s more than strong enough to hold you in place. He swirls and flicks his tongue over the offended flesh, sighing and mewling as he does. The gentleness of his touches is enough to resolve any hesitation on your part, and you let your head fall back, moaning at the sensations he’s giving you. 

It’s a couple of minutes before you realize that your skin is wetter than it should be and you pull back, your first thought being that you’re bleeding from his bite. His head falls against your chest when you move and it’s then that you realize that he’s crying. Under normal circumstances, you’d ask him what was wrong, but this seems anything but normal, so you thread your fingers deeper in his dark hair and scratch gently at his scalp. 

“I just gave up on the only thing I’ve ever wanted,” he sobs, the tears coming harder. 

“Because they didn’t see the value in you.”

“I don’t know what the fuck is going to happen to me.”

His arms close tight around you and you can’t help pressing kisses all along the side of his head, down his neck as far as you can reach. 

“What if they’re right? What if I’m not as good as I think I am?”

You force yourself back so that you can look him straight in the eyes. 

“Stop it. You know that’s not true. You know you’re one of the greats because you came in here and fucking told me so yourself.” He looks at you with a forlorn expression. “Don’t let assholes make you think you’re worth less than you are.”

In one smooth movement, he stands up and sets you on your feet, wrapping his arms loosely around your waist so that the two of you are dancing like teenagers in high school. You pull him close and bury your head in the hollow of his shoulder, the way you always imagined yourself doing with your crushes back in the day. 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he rasps. 

“You’re gonna be fine, baby,” you reassure him, completely unsure why you feel that way. “You’re gonna be great at whatever you do.”

“You mean it?” He pulls you tighter against him and buries his face in your shoulder. 

“Absolutely.”

“So are you gonna stay with me until I get on my feet again?”

You’re aware that it’s the alcohol talking, that he’s reached the stage where he’s willing to grab onto anything that looks like a stable point in a flood, and it hurts a little that you really mean what you’re about to say. 

“You’re damn right I will. I want to see just how far you can go.”

He smiles against your skin and pulls you even closer. The two of you sway back and forth to the music, languishing in the temporary security of each other’s bodies. 

[agoddamn]

I enjoy the diversity in montral design here. There's legit more different background character models here than in all of Mandalore! Gives me ME1 vibes

PFFF, the buildings you get a glimpse of look exactly like montrals, stripes and all

Galra motherfucker out here

AHSOKA HAS A SIDECAR

IT HAS A TIGER ON IT

who painted this?? I have to know

I just praised the models but this ground. Lordy, this ground. The ground looks straight out of the PlayStation 2

Oh hey, Boil! Waxer just died dramatically last episode, so I'm sure we'll get some kind of indication that life has changed for him, right?

Right?

Borb

"On his knees!" Oh good, I was worried this would go ten minutes without getting weirdly sexual

So the Jedi can't even sense that this town is empty? Man, fandom roids up the Force like crazy

"We don't have time for the planetary scan! Have R2 disarm the bombs" Does the entire army run on one server? You can't run a planetary scan and also have R2 look for bombs?

I bet the GAR couldn't even run Dwarf Fortress

There's several large animal cages in here. Does that mean...that this whole room smells like shit?

Goddamn, Obi-Wan got FUCKED lmao everyone on the whump train, choo choo! I don't remember seeing bruise textures used much before; maybe once?

I noticed this first in the Mortis eps, but I like how Ahsoka has picked up tech skills from Anakin

I like how Ahsoka still identifies with these Togruta even though they're talked about like an independent offshoot

Oh, this is some ugly-ass armor. Rex, who stuck you with mustard?

Cute how the helmets echo the ears, though

"Remind me why I'm the one playing the slave?" YES, THIS IS ALSO MY QUESTION KDJFKD

Anakin: "Besides, the role of Master comes easily to me."

reactionimage.jpg

New Star Wars swear: "useless skug"

Anyway this whole situation just feels terribly...well, Saturday morning cartoon. "We want to bring up how slavery is bad but we're also gonna have the characters treat it with incongruous light-heartedness because if we were serious about it we'd have to address a LOT of shit we've been purposely avoiding"

Like, Ahsoka's terrible acting would be hysterical in ANY other situation (it's very hard to face-act in CG animation but Anakin's "dude. come on." look is great) where there wasn't undoubtedly rape going on in the next room so why. WHY did you do this, writers. Why did you make these choices of juxtaposing shenanigans with grimdark rapemurder

>Lars Quell

Dohoho

I can't tell if the queen's got a furry pink face or if she's got a human skin-type face with fur on the edges

Did you know that there's like five different feline races in Star Wars because everyone just invents their own cat person as necessary

Obi-Wan: I have a plan. *makes an animal friend*

I don't think this habit is ever explicitly brought up aside from in the novels? Anyway, it's my fav weird Obi-Wan thing. He gives off such a posh vibe but he's an overgrown horse girl

"That's not gone well!"

I don't know whether I want to despairingly or approvingly say "why is this so horny"

"My representative sample of this lot is a skinny male eighty-year-old with administrative training" I mean... what do people buy slaves for here?

Writers, PLEASE, either do the fetish storyline OR the heavy one, not BOTH

[magpie-scribbles]

Sweet Relief

For the spicy BNHA Server Collab!

!!!WARNING!!! This contains piss kink! do not read this if you are not into that sort of thing! !!WARNING!!

Pairing: Rappa x F!Reader

Rating: E

Word Count: 2k

Warnings: Smut, piss kink, mention of PDA, dirty talk 

Honestly...he shouldn't have had that last pint, but hell you dared him to drink it in ten seconds flat and he was never one to not accept a challenge. You hadn't even offered him anything in return if he had done it but fuck, sometimes he liked to peacock...well more than sometimes...Either way he had shown you, though he doubted you actually doubted him. But now he was more than a bit tipsy and more than a little bit horny, especially after the way you had wiggled your hips at him as you crawled into the cab...it didn't help that you had also placed your hand on his thigh, fingers kneading him teasingly the whole ride back to your shared apartment.

 And now you're pulling him out of the cramped car and fixing him with bedroom eyes…

You tug your massive boyfriend up the stairs to your abode, desperate to get him alone, not that you wouldn't let him take you right then and there. You both definitely liked to make a scene every so often...but tonight you wanted him all to yourself, you were tipsy and felt absolutely primal. 

Barely able to get the key into the lock as Rappa cages you in from behind, you would have laughed if you weren't so horny. Because of his height you could feel the press of his hardening cock between your shoulder blades, his thick fingers brushing against the back of your neck. God, he could crush you if he wanted to…

Finally you manage to get the door open, having no time to ground yourself before the brick house of a man behind you is shoving you to the floor of the entryway and pouncing on you. You hear a well placed boot to the door and a slam, and then he's dropping to his knees behind you, lifting your ass up so he can rut drunkenly against you.

"You're such a fuckin' tease, fuck." He grunts and humps against you, you can feel the heat radiating from him and it makes your head spin.

"You make me that way." You whine, turning to look at him. 

Once again he catches you off guard; snarling he lashes out, mindful of his own strength, pushing your face against the floor, one cheek pressed against the cool tile, the other smooshed against his palm.

"I think ya need to be punished yeah? For bein' such a brat." He pulls your hips higher and grinds himself harder against you.

"Is it punishment if I like it?" You say smartly and you hear his deep rumbling laugh...and that should not make you as wet as it does…

"Fuck you're a feral lil' thing aren't ya?" His hand moves and then...you feel his hands gripping the back of your blouse and...riiippppp.

"Kendou!" You feel the fabric around your upper body go lax, you don't have any time to react further when you feel him grip your leggings as well…"My favorite leggings!" You cry as he rips them as well...you wonder if they're anything more than tissue paper to him.

"I'll buy you a new pair sweetheart...fuck I'll buy you three, but right now these are in the way." He's tugging the remains down your legs, mercifully NOT ruining your panties as he removes them too (you knew they were his favorite). 

He removes your blouse as well, also sparing your matching bra from his wrath. Balling up the ruined clothing he throws it down the hallway and presses into you again, your now bare body against his fully clothed one.

"No fair, Kendou, you have everything on stilllll." You whine, pushing your now bare ass back against his dick.

"Well I said I was gonna punish you, so you can wait a little bit darlin’ " he rumbles as he ruts against you. 

Rappa looks down at you, watching you writhe and beg for him...fuck. Running his hand down your spine he marvels at the way you tremble at his touch. 

He palms himself through his jeans, desperate for some relief...but fuck...he really shouldn't have had that last beer. Even in his lust-addled brain he could feel it, he had to piss like a goddamn racehorse; he pushes the sensation to the back of his mind.

“Look at you.” he groans, one hand on your hip, the other reaching to tease your clit. “Fuck you’re already sopping, ya like me pushing you around? Taking ya here on the ground like an animal? Fuck doll, imma make sure ya got bruises on your knees by the end of this.” 

You feel like you're going to lose it, his words, his touch, you need him so bad, everything he has to offer you need it, your blood sings for it. 

“Rappa...Kendou, please, please…” you whimper, glancing back at him, nearly melting then and there. He’s a sight, disheveled but so incredibly powerful, cock pressing against the confines of his jeans, biceps taught as he grips your hip and teases your pussy. You feel more slick run down your thighs.

“Fuck you’re so goddamn good.” he husks, reaching for his belt, desperate for relief, the article was also not helping his other need for relief either. So off it comes.

You hear the clinking of the metal and then feel the cool kiss of it against your backside, you mewl and Rappa chuckles.

“Later.” he promises and you swoon.

You hear the scratch of the zipper teeth as he unzips his pants and then...you moan when you feel his hard cock slap against your ass, the heat and weight of it heavenly.

“Still can’t fucking believe you take me so well.” he groans giving and experimental thrust against your ass, his finger at your clit dipping between you lips to collect more of your juices to swirl around your swollen pussy, continuing to be an awful tease.

“Please…” you whine softly, almost delirious from the need for him, you’ll take anything he’s willing to give...you just need.

His finger presses against your entrance, prodding.

“Since ya asked so sweetly darlin’ ” and then, bless him, he thrusts the digit in all the way to the last knuckle and you howl. 

“Fuck, you’re tight.” he hisses and twists his wrist, already setting up a brutal pace as his finger pistons in and out of you. 

He lines his cock up between you plush ass cheeks and begins to rut against you, chasing his own pleasure as he fucks you with his fingers.

You nearly sob when he adds another finger, stretching you even further; in the back of your mind you wonder how he even manages to fit his cock inside you when you're already so full on just two of his thick fingers. Honestly it doesn’t even matter, you praise whatever Deity brought you this beast of a man.

Rappa groans and presses closer, his cock leaking, making the slide of his thrusting easier, shit he needs this so bad, his mind is a haze, he needs this. But the horrible little sensation of another relief keeps pressing at him, making it impossible to completely focus on his own pleasure and fucking you silly; once again he pushes the need to the back of his head as he continues to finger fuck you.

“Kendou...Kendou I need you dick, please I want it…” you whine, pressing back into his finger and his thrusting cock.

“Nah you’re gonna cum on my fingers like a good girl first.” you can practically hear the cruel smile in his voice. “Ya teased earlier, so now you’re paying the prices…’sides I know you can cum from just my fingers, needy little thing.”

Fuck he knows you so well and it’s not fair, your know you can cum from this, but you are a greedy creature and you want more, more, more.

“You’re such a needy little thing...I fucking love it.” he groans, gripping you hip tighter and pressing impossibly close. “Wanna paint ya with my cum.”

“Pleasepleasepleaseplease.” you chat, as you twist your hips down against his fingers, you’re so close, so so close.

He chuckles but realizes his need to relieve himself has definitely taken front and center, it didn’t matter how close he was to cumming all over your back, his need to piss was greater.

“Don’t think I can darlin’, I’m gonna make you howl, then imma take a piss and then I come back to fuck you nice a good like you deserve.” 

“Do it.” you whine softly.

He pauses in his actions, cocking his head.

“Do what?” he questions.

“...Relieve yourself.” you face is so incredibly red, but the idea, hell, the idea shouldn’t make you this hot and bothered.

“Not gonna leave without you cumming on my fingers.” he doesn’t get it… you feel your face heat up further.

“No...here...do it here.” you’re so fucking embarrassed but you want it so bad.

“I-What?” for the first time in a long time you hear Rappa falter and fuck if that doesn’t do things to you.

“Piss on me, mark me, PLEASE.” you are begging at this point, already so debauched in your need that you don’t care at this point.

There is a long pause of silence and you begin to wonder if you’ve actually pushed Rappa too far...and then.

“Fuuuuuck darlin’ you filthy little minx.” and his fingers are pumping in and out of you with renewed vigor, he even adds a third to your needy hole. “You want me to just fucking ruin ya don’t ya?”

“Yyeessssss.” you mewl, so close to the edge, you can feel it tingling in your spine.

“Shit, I love ya, I fuckin’ love ya.” he trusts his cock against you harder and then he shifts, tapping his cock against the cleft of your ass before rising up a little bit. “Gonna ruin ya for anyone else, gonna mark you just like ya want.” 

“Yesyesyesyes!” you're delirious with need. 

And then you hear him groan and the sensation of warm liquid splashing and trickling down your spine greets you. 

You cum then and there, stars behind your eyelids, a silent scream upon your lips as Rappa relieves himself along your back. 

“Holy shit.” he breathes as you clamp down on his fingers. “Holy fuckin’ shit.” if he wasn’t pissing he’d definitely be cumming.

You hadn’t expected the intensity of your orgasm, and as you slowly come down from your high and you feel the last of Rappa’s piss trickle down your back and pool on the floor, you shiver, absolutely wrecked.  

“Stay right there babydoll, I got ya.” his still hard cock slaps against your ass as his arm comes around you to keep you from collapsing into the mess below you. Not that it would matter it was already all over your back but you can’t help but feel impossibly warm and soft from his care. 

You sigh as he removes his finger from you and carefully brings you to sit up on your knees, gently nosing at your temple as he kisses your cheekbone.

“You’re perfect. So fuckin’ perfect.” he whispers against your skin and you melt into his strong arms. “Imma, take good care a ya; take you to the shower, get ya cleaned up, take care of this mess and then…” he bites at the shell of your ear and you shiver. “ Imma take you to the bedroom and mark ya up again.”

The heat that pools in your belly is instantaneous.