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thosewickedlovelies · 8 months ago

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A guide to writing fics set in museums / with a museum worker character

Hey hi hello it’s your local museum worker here, offering you some insight and tips to writing museum-related fics! This is primarily organized as a list of different jobs you could have in a museum and what their duties entail. This post might also be useful to you if you’re considering working in museums and want to know What Goes On In There. Let’s go!

For simplicity/fic-writing purposes, I would divide museums into 2 very rough groups: large national or city museums that Have Money (think the Smithsonian or British Museums, or the Chicago Field Museum or the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds); and smaller local museums. These could be local industry and culture/history-of-our town museums, historic houses, or really niche subject museums run by One Person With A Passion.

Big national museums have a fuckton of staff and money (museums can never have enough money. But these places are very well-off compared to somewhere small that might always be hustling and writing grant applications). If you work here you’re likely to have a specific role in a particular department, and you probably won’t do much outside this role (ex., if you work in collections management, you probably won’t also design exhibits)

The smaller the museum, the more varied your workload will be/the more likely you are to be doing a little bit of everything. You’re probably organizing collections storage, manning the front desk, and desperately running fundraising efforts, all at once.

To this end, smaller museums are more likely to be closed one or two days a week- you’ll be there, probably cleaning displays or managing storage, but visitors won’t be.

A lot of (most?) universities also have museums, so a college town setting is also doable. But the same big vs small museum disparity is still possible! At Penn State University, for example, the Palmer Art Museum is its own (recently redone iirc) building in the center of campus with a lovely plaza out front, while the Matson Museum of Anthropology is uhhhhh a couple classrooms in the Anthropology Department (which they’re currently rebuilding tbf, so we’ll see what they’ve done with it in 2025).

Types of Jobs

Curator

The one museum job that everyone can name. Nominally the person in charge. Probably laments that their job is way more admin than fun hands-on stuff now.

Actually this is the role I have the least knowledge of, but I think that’s partially because this job might vary the most from place to place? Structural organization can vary a lot between institutions, but I think the higher up you get in any field, the more your job tends to consist of meetings/overseeing, designating, and ~liaising~

A list of things a curator might do:

Planning or approving events and fundraisers, schmoozing with donors and members at said events, approving or designing a schedule of exhibits, publish outreach/advertising or research materials, oversee hiring, approve new object acquisitions (or de-acquisitions), generally make sure that the museum is working within the scope of its mission and if necessary, change or refine their mission

The curator might not necessarily control a museum’s funds; in this case they’ll liaise with the people who do, likely a Board of Executives or Board of Trustees. Once they get the money from these people, though, they could potentially redistribute it as they see fit.

��If you work in a fuckoff museum like the BM, you could also be the curator of a specific department, arranged by overarching subject, geographic area, time period, or even object type (eg Curator of Archaeobotany, Curator of Korean Collections, curator of coins from the medieval period). These categories can be more or less specific depending on what kind of holdings your museum has. I think these types of curators would still be able to do interesting things, as they aren’t the ones who Oversee The Whole Place.

You can also be an assistant or associate curator, like being an assistant manager.

Education/Engagement

These are the people who design fun extra activities (esp for kids) in the galleries or relevant events/workshops/lectures the public can attend. They might be called Engagement/Education Officer or Events Manager or anything similar

Again, the bigger the museum you work at, the more specific your role is likely to be. You might focus on web content/outreach and social media, manage the ‘friends/members of the museum’ program, or engage with shareholders, etc

Or you might do things like develop content and events to engage adult audiences. Workshops or lectures connected to new exhibits, after-hours visits. These people are also probably the ones with an eye on accessibility- you’ve probably seen advertisements for museums’ early or late hours for older visitors, or ‘quiet hours’ for people who might be overstimulated by normal museum hubbub, or tactile workshops designed for visually impaired folks.

I think most places would try to have someone specific for kids activities at the very least. They’ll be designing little activities or dress-up stations for the galleries, kiddie mascots or scavenger hunt trail kind of things, as well as, potentially, activities for any digital elements in the museum. They probably also coordinate school visits and act as a tour guide for classes, and will lead the kids in specific workshops or lessons in classrooms attached to the museum.

As a note on technology- some people would probably say that integrating digital elements into exhibits is the ~next big thing~, that museums have to get with the times in this regard, but opinions vary. Big science and technology museums are the most likely to have the most digital and techy elements in their exhibits, so if this is your setting, your character could also be a generic “tech person”. I would go so far as to say the smaller/more local the museum, the less technology you’re likely to have, but smaller museums are able to get grants, some of them potentially for specifically this type of thing, so it’s totally possibly that they have a few tablets with integrated activities, or some other Digital/Screen Thing.

Engagement Officers are probably the most likely people to be drafted for out-of-hours events, so that’s a potentially fun thing for your character to do. Some museums, particularly bigger ones, have event spaces attached that anybody can rent out, for weddings, galas, markets, etc, so they might also take care of these bookings as well.

Exhibit Design

This role has a lot of nebulous terms: exhibit coordinator, design constructor, exhibit programmer- but these are the people who design the exhibits. They’ll come up with a theme or narrative, a design scheme, choose the objects, write the text. They’ll probably come up with some marketing material as well, that matches the design scheme, or they’ll liaise with the marketing people who will.

These people might not be as familiar with the collections as the collections management folk (below), depending on how strictly divided your roles are, so they’ll likely consult with the collections people on choosing objects for a particular exhibit or theme (they say that good exhibit design builds an exhibit from the objects up, but I digress).

These people will also direct and participate in the install and deinstall (the actual terms) of exhibits- putting the objects on the right plinths/stands and arranging everything just so in the cases. Genuinely there’s a lot of psychology behind exhibit design- colors, lighting, the way you might design an exhibit to be navigated vs the path people will actually take through the gallery, people’s sight lines and where their eyes go first, how the display of any given object affects people’s perception of the importance of that object. Fascinating stuff, many books on the subject.

There are also a lot of accessibility concerns to be considered here- how bright is the gallery, how large is your display text, at what height is the central eyeline of your cases?

Museums often loan objects to and from each other’s collections, so if you’re building an exhibit and you’d really like to include X type of object but your museum doesn’t have any, you can borrow some from another museum (this isn’t necessarily a guarantee- museums are allowed to say no to these requests, but I think manners would dictate that they should have a good reason)

Museums sometimes tour whole exhibitions as well- the objects, the text placards, maybe even the stands for super special or fragile items- and exhibit coordinator people are the ones who would handle those arrangements.

Potentially good opportunities for angst stories here- wow things come to life at your museum, you fall in love with a statue but oh no it’s only at your museum for three months

Collections Care

People who work in Collections Management have the most direct contact with the museum objects themselves. You probably work here if you prefer objects to people. When a museum gets new material, these are the people involved. They might not always initiate acquisitions, and the final approval is probably down to the relevant curator, but 98% of the time they’d be consulted (I hope).

A mind-boggling statistic is that most museums only have like 10% of their collections on display at any given time. Yeah. Forreal lol. But collections folk will know where the other 90% is and what’s in it (particularly the longer they’ve been there).

There’s usually a head Collections Manager. Other workers might be a Collection Assistant/Associate, Collections Officer (we like calling people Officers for some reason), Registrar, or some variant of these depending on the specific flavor of your duties.

Main job duties can be divided amongst documentation and database work, organization and storage of objects, and lite conservation. Just how much/how technical the conservation work depends on your own training, but also on the size/funding of your museum. The more money, the more likely your museum is to have its own lab with people specifically trained as conservators. More on them later.

Here’s what happens when a museum gets new stuff!:

Ideally, it goes to a ‘quarantine zone’ first. This is a separate space or room where the objects can relax for a few weeks to a few months (ultimate best practice is actually a year, but, you know. that’s a long time) to ensure that they’re not harboring anything icky (bugs, mold, etc) that will infect the rest of the collections. It’s ideally super-sealed and climate-controlled, but the primary feature should be that it’s away from the main collections store.

Collections folk do the paperwork. They’ll give each individual object a unique number (following their preexisting system that will allow it to be identified distinct from all the other objects in the collection). They’ll create a ‘collections record’ for the object- documentation containing any and all information about the object. This includes the accession paperwork (everything that says ‘we legally own this now’); provenance info (all previous owners and everywhere else the object has been in its life); measurements and description (in painful detail); and conservation history and concerns (ie ‘there’s a crack in the side so pick up with care’, ‘this was repaired in the 70s so that glue is gonna fall apart any day now’).

(I'll say as a fic writer that this would be an great time to wax poetic over a beautiful statue or painting; you can’t write “This golden crown deserved to be worn by a great king, or maybe by that broody Roman general in the painting in Gallery B” in the collections paperwork, but you can think it.)

For fiction’s sake, your collections records could be either paper or digital, but in an ideal world a museum would have both setups, for security’s sake. So you’d fill out some long forms and/or input all the information to the digital collections management system (‘the CMS’, or referred to by your specific software’s name, as there are many out there). The CMS is not a static archive, but rather a living register that’s updated every time an object is interacted with. The object records also include where an object is at any given time (‘normally in Case E in the Fancypants Gallery, currently in Conservation Lab A for repairs’).

Once the objects are done in quarantine, they’ll go to storage. If they’re being displayed immediately, they’ll probably go to some interim storage space/shelf with other objects for the same exhibit and in that case only get a temporary setting. Every object will get labeled with their object number (directly on them, with a special pen that’s safe for this. Or if it’s really tiny, like a coin or jewelry, then their own tiny box will get the label). Small or fragile items, or items grouped together, will go in their own boxes (made of acid- and lignin-free cardboard or polyethylene plastic, like Rubbermaid totes; lined with polyethylene foam and then acid-free tissue paper). Stable ceramic vessels might sit directly on lined shelving, particularly if they’re very large or heavy, like many stone objects.

Listen, every type of object has a particular way(s) of storing that’s best for them, you’re gonna have to look that up yourself or consult someone if you need that level of detail

Ideally, before being stored away, objects are also photographed. This could be part of the Collection Officer’s duty, and/or your museum could have a photographer on staff. (say it with me:) This is more likely if your museum is really huge and/or has a backlog of unphotographed collections and has hired someone specifically, even if temporarily, to improve its collections documentation.

I would say a collections person, or anyone with a museum studies degree, should have some minimum amount of conservation knowledge that includes basic storage standards for different object materials, how to spot potential preservation problems (like if your bronze axe head is actively oxidizing or if that green spot looks the same as it always has since starting and pausing decaying), and maybe how to give objects a basic clean or deal with certain types of problems. But the nitty-gritty science is more the realm of Conservators, someone with a degree that ends in -Sci or who’s done some other certification course.

The general collections store should always be dark, slightly too cool for prolonged human comfort, and labeled to high heaven. Objects will most likely be grouped by material- ceramics/pottery, metals, precious metals and stones (jewelry or beads), stone, glass, wood, bone/ivory/other organic material like feathers or teeth or anything that can be decorative, textiles, paintings. A museum often has some paper material/documents, usually part of or related to a group of objects they acquired, but generally paper and photographic material is the realm of archives and archivists. Yet again, the bigger/more well-funded the museum, the more likely it to have a separate archive department, so your character could also work as an archivist in a museum.

Another thing the collections care folk probably do is ship objects. Remember how I said that museums loan objects and exhibitions to each other? The stuff’s gotta travel somehow! If things are being shipped internationally, they’ll go in big wooden crates, with specifically dimensioned partitions inside. Then it will be lined with our favorite foam and tissue paper, cut so the objects sit snugly inside. I haven’t personally worked anywhere with a possibility of local shipments, so I can’t say where the threshold might be as to when a museum would just pay an employee to drive the objects over vs ship them with a shipping company. But the preparations would be similar, minus the big wooden crate but with extra-careful packing (and paperwork and insurance etc)

Conservation

Conservators are the people who work in labs with fancy equipment. Not every museum will have a formal conservator or a lab of any kind; sometimes the collections care person fills this role, or if something urgently needs care beyond the abilities of the museum’s equipment, they might send it away to a lab elsewhere, the same way you can send your old VHS home videos to a professional archive to be digitized.

If an object is actively deteriorating in a way that could harm itself or other objects (as opposed to like, at risk of fading bc the lighting is wrong, which is a straightforward fix related to the environment), that’s when a conservator would intervene.

Some methods/machinery by which you can analyze objects:

Ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) light - Different materials absorb and react to light differently, which you can use to identify them. Useful for seeing things like the different layers of paintings

Stereo-microscopy (microscopes, of varying strengths)

At magnifications of x5-x100 you can see things like tool marks from an object’s manufacture, traces from wear, deposits, and coatings

At x50-x500, with a thin sliver of a sample, you can see (and hopefully identify) fibers, layers, particles, metallographic structures

You can get information from objects without taking samples, but samples are usually worth the information.

energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF) - EDXRF allows you to identify the elemental composition of the surface layer of an object. So it might tell you what a tool is made of, and also the composition of the objects it was used on, if they left traces

scanning electron microscopy (SEM) - an SEM uses a focused beam of electrons to produce a magnified, high-resolution image of the surface of an object

X-radiography, both film and digital - X-rayy are beneficial for objects that might be covered by dirt or corrosion and can show you details of an object’s construction or hidden structural weaknesses

I’m not a conservator, so if you want more hard science-based info, ask one of them lol

Listen to me. If you take nothing else away from this post, let it be this:

Once an object is in a museum, it is never seeing natural daylight again. Sunlight is the ultimate enemy of every object’s lifespan. If you need to see an object in the sun or moon light for ~magical spell reasons~, you will straight up be stealing that object to smuggle it outside.

Okay. That being said, you do hear (and could probably google) stories about museum employees stealing things from their museums on purpose to prove a point about security or insurance to their higher-ups, so like. Depending on your type of museum, it might not be impossible to steal from lmao. (Don’t tell anyone I said that.)

Possibly the most useful advice for you to keep in mind when writing your conservator or collections care characters would be that touching objects hurts them. It might not hurt them now, it might not even hurt them in ten years, but every time you handle an object, there’s a risk that you’ll damage it. Not on purpose, obviously, but to err is human. The simplest, most effective advice my conservation professor ever gave us was “don’t handle an object if you don’t have to.” That means don’t move an object without a plan and a place to put it, first examination should always be visual, not tactile, etc. Unfortunately, that means that your character cannot walk around lovingly handling and caressing their favorite objects (unless this is a Night at the Museum situation where the objects are caressing them back, ykwim)

Museum Technician

These people probably have a lot of different names, but basically, technicians are the background muscle of the museum. They do the technical construction of bigger pieces of exhibition material, up to and including the exhibition cases themselves.

So they wouldn’t deal with the small mount that the object rests on, but they might build the big plinth that the mount sits on. They’ll help move things around the building, particularly big heavy things, hang big framed works, assist with exhibit installs, and generally do most things which might involve power tools/equipment or heavy lifting

I worked in a big museum that hired a third party company to supply their technicians; I interviewed at another place that hired their own. If you’re a small museum, you might just have a freelance person that comes in once or twice a week to help move things.

Other

Other miscellaneous roles one could have in a museum: researcher (for exhibits and/or collections), gift shop or cafe worker, security guard, room attendant, translator, archaeologist, consultant

Honestly, TL;DR? Just have your character be a consultant of some kind. “Oh no, I don’t work here, I’m Y’s friend. They called me in to provide some expertise on X subject that they’re doing an exhibit on.” This could work for literally any subject- history/archaeology/anthropology, art, transportation, science and technology, anything you might find pictures of in an archive, idk. This could get you into an office or meeting room of some kind in the ‘employee only’ space of the museum, or potentially all the way into the collections store if you’re giving them information they were missing about some objects. Otherwise you’d probably (hopefully) need a key or some other kind of security clearance to get into the collections store.

Whew, that was a ride, huh? I hope this guide was useful to someone! I’m always open to answering questions if you think I forgot something or if anyone wants more details <3

#hopefully this is useful to people as Gladiator II comes out <3 #i dont really know how to tag this lol #museums #fic advice #writing advice #reference #writing resources

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wonderjanga · 8 months ago

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Cardboard.

Billy has a lot of free time on his hands. He doesn’t go to school, his job as the Whiz Kid doesn’t take more than a couple hours, and he has no parental supervision. So what does he do with his time? He gets crafty.

Billy: *making something with cardboard, sitting on the steps of the rundown apartment building he lives in*

Crackhead: *also sitting on the steps, yapping about whatever to Billy*

Billy: *listening to him as he works*

Ms. Bambi: *also also sitting on the steps, but next to Billy to make sure he doesn’t get kidnapped or something by the crackhead. Is also smoking*

Crackhead: *pauses mid story to look “What’re you making there, kiddo?” *eyes the cardboard*

Billy: “A Gucci bag.” *super focused on making the bag out of cardboard. Is using a rusty pocketknife to make details too*

*silence*

Crackhead: *bursts out laughing*

Billy: *looks up from his work* “Wha- What’re you laughing at?!???”

Ms. Bambi: *stifling laughs* “Bill, you’re not actually making a Gucci bag, are you?”

Billy: “So what if I am?! I’m gonna make it, I’m gonna sell it for 50 dollars, and then I’m gonna have food money for the week.”

Crackhead and Ms. Bambi: *shares a look before looking at Billy, holding back more laughter* “Kid…”

Billy: “What?! You don’t believe me? Trust me! I’ll come back with my money and then I’ll rub it in your faces!” *storms off with his cardboard*

Crackhead: “Sure, kid. Sure!”

Later…

Billy: *putting the finishing touches on his cardboard bag with some paints he found in a dumpster* “Alright… Done!” *lets it dry for a bit*

Even More Later…

Billy: *throws the bag in his pocket dimension when he thinks it’s done and heads outside and transforms into Marvel*

Marvel: *flies to New York and then detransforms in an alleyway*

Billy: *pulls the bag out of his pocket dimension and sits on the side of the road, advertising his bag to people who pass by*

Passerby: “What a cute bag! How much is it?”

Billy: *perks up* “50 dollars, ma’am.”

Passerby: “Fifty dollars… Hmm…” *fishes through her purse* “Darn it. I only have two twenties-”

Billy: “That’s fine!” *grabs the money from her and hands the bag to her* “Thanks a lot, ma’am!” *runs off*

Later, when he saw the crackhead again, he did a money spread on his arm. Though it was kinda pathetic because he only had two bills. It got his point across:

Crackhead: *completely bewildered* “You actually sold it?!??”

Also, Billy had no idea he was counterfeiting and therefore committing a crime.

Then, there was another time Billy got bored enough. It was during the summer when he was sweating his butt off in his little apartment. It was then the idea came to him. Sunglasses. Whenever the window was shining light right into his eyes? Sunglasses. Whenever the sun was too bright outside? Sunglasses. Looking classy? Sunglasses. They were the perfect solution in Billy’s bored, mind. So he got to work, making them, with cardboard of course. He used some tacks to keep the pieces together and he used some cut up, colored film he found in the back of a store for the lenses.

Safe to say Billy was proud of himself for making it. They looked good in his unprofessional opinion!

Unfortunately though, he couldn’t see through the film he used for the lenses. Major bummer but whatever. He just chose the wear the sunglasses on his head like a fashion accessory.

Billy: *just finished up with his broadcast and happens to pass by Mr. Morris*

Mr. Morris: “Billy, are those sunglasses on your head?”

Billy: “Yeah?”

Mr. Morris: “Wha… Where did you get them?”

Billy: “I made them.”

Mr. Morris: “They’re… Really, really nice.” *sounds like he’s struggling to say it, but is happy to see Billy being a kid*

Billy: *blinding smile* “Thanks!”

Then, there was another time Billy got bored. This was during the winter and he was freezing so badly he swore he was turning into a Billy flavored popsicle. So, he decided to make a shelter inside of his shelter. That’s right folks. He, with the help of Cap, made a cardboard house in his little apartment.

Billy: “Freddy you should definitely come over. I have the coolest thing at my place.”

Freddy: “What is it?”

Billy: “You’ll see.”

Freddy: “Cryptic. I like that.”

Later…

Billy: “Tada!” *does jazz hands as he gestures to the cardboard house*

Freddy: “Is that a house?”

Billy: “Yeah!”

Freddy: “Wha… Wha… It even has windows!” *points the windows* (The windows are made of the same film that was used for the sunglasses)

Billy: “Yeah!!”

Freddy: “This is awesome!”

Billy: “Yeah!!!”

They proceeded to mess around in the cardboard house for the rest of the day. They’re like 9 years old in this, guys. Let them be kiddos.

Then there’s the rainy seasons. Billy doesn’t have an umbrella so he might as well make one, or a couple. He has to remake it every time it gets wet. See, he found a metal cane he uses as the handle. He only really remakes the part that actually blocks rain.

Billy: *steps into Whiz Radio with his cardboard umbrella*

Coworker: “Is that your umbrella?” *sounds concerned*

Billy: “Yes…?”

Coworker: “Do you not have an actual umbrella?”

Billy: “This is my actual umbrella.”

Coworker: “Huh.” *slightly dumbfounded*

When Billy was done with his show, that coworker went up to him and gave him an actual umbrella. Like one of those clear ones.

Then, there was the cardboard statue of tawny. Billy made the tiger pose for hours.

Billy: “Tawny, I’ve told you already. You’ve gotta stay still!”

Tawky Tawny: “Yes, yes.” *rolls eyes*

When Billy was done, he looked so proud to present it to Tawny. The tiger keeps it in a safe place at all times. Well, until that fateful day, at least.

Billy: “You sat on it?!”

Tawky Tawny: “Yes, my apologies.” *hangs head in shame*

Billy: *stares* “Tawny, it’s fine. I’m honestly just happy you actually kept it.” *smile*

#dc captain marvel #billy batson #shazam #captain marvel dc #fawcett comics #fawcett #fawcett city #freddy freeman #tawky tawny

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pangur-and-grim · 9 months ago

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I'm looking into getting a purebred cat for the first time because I've developed allergies, and it's such a different world from my niche corner of dog breeding, I'm so lost How common is it for cat breeders to focus on temperament over conformation? I've shown a dog and been to many shows, and am working on a breed in development. I'm uncomfortable with a fixation on "correct" appearance versus a heavy focus on what an animal's quality of life is and what they're like to live with If I'm paying more for a kitten than I charge for a puppy I want to know the breeder has done a lot of handling and enrichment, grooming conditioning (for relevant breeds), and pair their cats for temperament strengths and weaknesses, not just conformation. What should I look for on a breeder site/what should I ask without sounding rude? I also have seen a couple breeders advertise a health guarantee including FIP for one year, and I'm wondering how that's possible. Can you really guarantee against it? I'm so sorry you and your gremlin are going through this, it sounds like a rollercoaster!

it's difficult to answer your first question! cat breeding seems more…..casual in terminology than dog breeding, if that makes sense?

with temperament, there’s a stereotype for each breed (Bengals = active, Siamese = yowly, Ragdolls = angelic beings, etc). breeders often have a page on their site explaining their idea of what the breed is (the ideal appearance, personality, and so on), and then a section with their breeding cats, with blurbs for each one. and they usually also have social media, where you can see how these cats slot into their lives.

if you’re from the states, be VERY WARY of breeders who cage their cats! that’s more of a cultural norm there, and personally, I prefer breeders who treat their animals like family members and live alongside them.

here are two examples of breeders who go above and beyond: Praticalcats and Trillium Devon Rex. their sites give away how obsessive they are about their animals - all the articles on Praticalcats, and all the genetic testing on Trillium - and I would feel comfortable recommending them to anyone who asked.

as for over-emphasis on a “correct” appearance – for each breed, there will be a certain look that’s a red flag. Devon Rexes that are too brachy, Maine Coons that are too large, Siamese that are too spindly, etc. if you do enough research on your breed of choice, you’ll start recognizing it. the cat will look more ‘special’, and more ‘like it’s breed’, but it’s an exaggeration at the cost of other qualities.

for specific questions like what handling they do, whether they’re conditioned to tolerate grooming, and how the cats get paired with buyers, most of the time you have to contact a breeder to ask that. there should be a mini job interview before any money changes hand, where the breeder grills you, and you get to return the favour. if a breeder skips this, I’d consider that a major red flag. and don’t worry about sounding rude, a good breeder will be delighted that you care so much about all of this!

and now, the guarantee against FIP – what are they guaranteeing, exactly? it might be a guarantee that they’ll replace the kitten if they develop FIP (the contract with my breeder had a similar clause). but if they’re guaranteeing that any kitten from them won’t develop FIP, then that’s nonsense. basically all young cats get exposed to the feline coronavirus that causes FIP, and whether they develop it or not is just a lottery gamble. I'd be suspicious of any breeder who claims that their kittens are exempt from this.

anyway, I think I've answered everything. hopefully that was helpful, and not just me rambling!

#if you have any specific breeders in mind you can always dm them to me and I'll take a look :)

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newtkive · 1 year ago

Text

shift shenanigans - s1 social media au

note: jus for fun ! may or may not do more parts.

warnings: crude humor, slightly offensive jokes from richie sry

part two

liked by syd_adamu, marcus.brooks11 and 30 others

chefboyardee: my friends! i love my friends! the two on the right more than the left (i’m joking i promise) 😁😁😁😁

see all 8 comments

syd_adamu: brave of you to call him your friend y/n

↳ chefboyardee: boss man carmy save me

↳ syd_adamu: oh.. :///

marcus.brooks11: you did me so dirty, friend.

↳ chefboyardee: love you marcus you look spectacular

↳ marcus.brooks11: don’t start

richietheking: Where am I?

↳ chefboyardee: ya motha

liked by syd_adamu, chefboyardee and 10 others

richietheking: Getting sh$!t done.

see all 8 comments

marcus.brooks11: This is coolllddd.

↳ richietheking: You already know it man.

syd_adamu: this is actually crazy

carmyberzatto: can you show this on instagram? i think you should delete this.

↳ richietheking: Delete your life.

chefboyardee: come down to the beef for a number 6 the occy way 💯 the safest joint on the block 🤑💯we are 🔛🔝

↳ richietheking: Eyyy I know that’s right.

↳ carmyberzatto: please don’t advertise this.

WE HAVE THE BEEF 🥩

[ 8:25 am ]

y/n:

bruh im about to lose it. heads up when you guys get to work.

marcus: that catering order is about to be crazy

DO NOT REPLY: These white boards are stressing me out.

syd: we know, probably giving you ptsd from not finishing high school

DO NOT REPLY: Fuck you I did finish it.

y/n: oh i gotta change ur contact name richie

richie poo: ????? What

y/n: it was ‘DO NOT REPLY’ lols

marcus: valid

syd: real

richie poo: What? Why?! That’s so rude

y/n: cuz you piss me off

and you kept blowing up my phone yesterday

richie poo: You weren’t answering, and we needed help at the cook out.

syd: the one where you poisoned everyone?

richie poo: Fuck off.

y/n: when i’m off work, i’m off work.

marcus: don’t let carmy hear that, y/n

y/n: don’t remind me

syd: he’s trying at least, go easy on him. he really has great ideas

richie poo: You mean you have great ideas in that little notebook

tina: Never trust a broad with a notebook.

syd: hey! i’m just being helpful

y/n: do you guys think my ig post will hurt carmys feelings

marcus: it would make me a little sad if i were him, but i don’t think he cares

y/n: great i’m gonna cry now

syd: i doubt he even saw it y/n it’s fine

richie poo: Check the work chat. Cousin is in a mood.

y/n: oh great

tina: Help us all.

syd: be nice you guys

WORK

[ 9:15 am ]

carmy: Everyone, we have huge catering orders tomorrow to prep for today. Please get here as soon as you can, the earlier you clock in the better. Additionally, please be careful what you post on social media. I don’t want people to get the wrong impression

y/n: yes chef 👨‍🍳

syd: ok sounds good

richie poo: Cool it, Cousin. What’s the issue with the social media

tina: I use FaceBook. That not allowed now??

carmy: Tina, you’re fine. I’m talking about those who post work things on public accounts

marcus: facebook is crazy

richie poo: I can’t go private

y/n: he needs the likes

richie poo: No I’m disabled from doing so. Not sure why

y/n: liar

richie poo: 😑I don’t like you

carmy: Then please don’t post pics of yourself posting up with a gun and an air horn outside of my shop anymore.

marcus: that pic was fire can’t lie

carmy: Well, it’s bad for business.

richie poo: Fine, whatever

y/n: carmy

carmy: What, Y/n?

y/n: is this because of my caption on my post i’m sorry i promise i wasn’t being for real

carmy: I don’t care Y/n.

y/n: is that code for ‘i care a lot and i’m crying in the office right now and that’s why the door is closed’

syd: ? why the oh

y/n: he opened the door and yelled no 🤨 but i think i saw red eyes

carmy: Please get back to work and I’ll comp a meal for you later

y/n: OMG yes chef 😍

richie poo: Inappropriate emojis and you shouldn’t have to incentivize her to work

y/n: shut up acting like HR i’m gonna beat your ass

jealousy is ugly which is why you have that mug on your face

carmy: Stop

y/n: yes chef 👨‍🍳

i heard your giggle tho

richie poo: Again with the schizo episode

syd: you can’t say that richie

richie poo: Oh sorry

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leuke-rants · 4 months ago

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Webtoon characters I am supposed to hate/dislike but I love/like instead:

1) Rashta Iskua (The Remarried Empress):

Even before we meet Rashta we are suppose to hate her, Laura talks very poorly about her and even the comments call her demeaning names and say how much of an awful person she is.

After we properly meet Rashta the author goes out of their way to present her as this evil mastermind who is out to ruin Navier's as well as all of her allies lives (example, when she smirks as Laura gets drugged away to the dungeon)

And this is pretty much what happens throughout the comic, Navier gets praised for just existing and her flaws are either ignored or are not presented as flaws while Rashta gets blamed for almost anything bad happening in the story with her flaws being exaggerated.

Now don't get me wrong, I am aware that Rashta has done some horrible and unforgivable things (and I am not gonna try and justify them), but so did Heinry, Ergi and other characters who get immediately forgiven.

Rashta is an illiterate, traumatized and naive young girl who got enslaved as a child, she got traumatised by all of the horrible things Alan and his family have done to her and yet I am suppose to scorn her for not understanding how things work in her new life and for wanting a better future for her and her baby, all the while I am suppose to coddle an empress who was born with a silver spoon on her mouth amd cheer for her psychopath husband who commits atrocities in her name.

Rashta is is not a good person and I won't make any excuses for her, but I can't help but feel so bad for her. She deserved so much better, both in terms of writing and how the fandom treats her.

2) Lady Krista (The Remarried Empress):

Krista is another female character from TRE who deserved so much better.

All she ever wanted was to keep her position as a queen,aka the same thing that Navier wanted, but because she doesn't kiss the MC's ass she is the villain.

Yes, working with Kuffman ( or whatever his name is) and trying to go after her brother in law aren't exactly the best things to do, but like as said earlier all she ever wanted as not to be replaced.

This poor woman lost her husband, she got replaced as queen by a foreign woman, most of her ladies in waiting abandoned her and her family turned their back at her to avoid Heinry's wrath. She ended up taking her life just like Rashta did and just like Rashta no one cared.

Hell, people started liking her, so to remedy that, the author turned her into a ped* who went after a much younger man, but even that doesn't mean anything when Navier married said younger man.

This woman deserved so much better, I hope she and Rashta can find peace in the afterlife.

3) Stace (Down To Earth)

The moment we are introduced to Stace we are suppose to dislike him because he annoys the MC Kade and that dislike slowly turns into hate because Stace is trying to get with the FL Zaida (I think this is how you write her name).

People will say that Stace is a creepy weirdo who tries to steal the MC's girl, even though Kade and Zaida weren't dating at the time, the dude just tried to shoot his shot after Zaida herself told him that she and Kade weren't dating.

I see a lot of people bringing up the fact that Stace is a photographer who wanted Zaida to be a model and take pictures of her and therefore he is a creep, completely ignoring the fact that Stace is a manager at Spencers and the reason he is looking for models is because he wants to advertise the shop.

"But he put her in lingerie so he is a creep", again, he is manager at SPENCERS, lingerie is not something unusual in that shop. Besides, Stace didn't force anything on Zaida, the moment she said she wanted to change because she felt uncomfortable, he allowed it without any problem. Stace didn't even force Zaida to take the job, he and Suzy suggested it so that Zaida can be more independent from Kade and have her own life and money.

And speaking of Kade, I'd argue he is the actual creep. The only reason he saved Zaida is because he found her sexy and beautiful, he even said how he would kick her out if she turned out to be a child. He is the one who made the "No feelings rule" yet he constantly sexualises Zaida and is clearly attracted to her. Also, he bought her lingerie as nightwear when they knew eachother for one week. Kade didn't ask Zaida what she would like to wear or if she'd feel comfortable wearing lingerie but he bought it anyway so he can ogle her.

Even so, people find it cute when Kade does these things, but god forbid Stace breaths the same air as the MCs without getting flammed in the comments.

And yes, I am aware that Stace called Zaida a monster, but if the girl I had a crush on suddenly grew horns and his eyes started glowing, I'll freak out as well.

Stace should fire both Kade and Zaida and find some real friends, cause he deserves so much better.

4) Thanatos (Lore Olympus)

People hated Thanatos in the beginning of the story because he tried to get Persephone fired and for exposing her crimes later on.

Honestly speaking I never hated him, in fact he has always been one of my favourites.

Thanatos had every right to want Persephone gone, she had zero experience in the field she was suppose to be working on and she got special treatment from Hades, aka her boss.

Imagine if this was real life for a second, imagine your 40 year old boss bringing in a barely legal girl to work for him, who has zero prior experience in working and gets special treatment on top of that.

Not only is this pretty gross but also very unfair to the other employees who had to work their asses off to get the job they have and never got any benefits form their boss. It's even more unfair to Thanatos who is Hades's adoptive son and never got treated any different than the other employees, but this inexperienced child gets the VIP treatment from Hades.

Thanatos geta treated horribly throughout the comic especially from his so called father. Hades ignores, belittles and in general doesn't care about him. Hades reaches out to Thanatos only because he needs his help not because he cares about his adoptive son. The "apology" Hades gave was Bakugou levels bad and it was basically Hades going "I am a traumatized uwu emo boy so you can't hate me".

Thanatos gets victim blamed because he was a "difficult child" that didn't make things easier for Hades, a grown ass adult. And before anyone says "but Hades was not ready to become a father at the time", true, but he could have at least tried to pay attention to this abandoned child or he could ask for help raising him.

His also has a pretty shitty girlfriend. Daphne tells him how Hades giving Persephone special treatment is not a big deal and he should stop whining about it. She also invites Hades into their home even though Thanatos told her how he doesn't want to talk to him.

My boy deserves a rise for putting up with all of this bullshit.

5) Demeter (Lore Olympus)

I feel so bad for Demeter. She is constantly demonized in every Hades and Persephone retelling and LO is no different.

This woman has done so much and received so little.

She fulfilled her role as a daughter, sister and fighter exceptionally well and yet no one acknowledged her for anything.

Zeus told her that he'll make her queen of the gods if they sleep together, only for him to choose Hera instead. He didn't even make her queen of the mortal realm, despite Demeter being the reason the realm is alive and flourishing, he just tossed her aside and forgot about her. The only time Zeus remembers her existence is when he needs something from her and then throws a tantrum when she declines.

Hades treats her the worst. First, he refuses to give her the volcanos, they are important to him but he never told her why they are so important. Second, he constantly belittles and demeans her because "she is an annoying helicopter mom", because god forbid a mother doesn't want an old, dusty man with bad reputation near her teenage daughter.

Like, Demeter has every right to be concerned and guess what, she was right! Persephone hasn't been to Olympus for one month and she gets drugged, kidnapped and SA'ed. Demeter was right about the other gods being assholes and Olympus being dangerous.

Anyway, I can go on and on about Demeter but I am pretty sure you get my point. This woman should disown Persephone and go live her life with the nymphs and her son, far away from the rest of the gods.

6) Minthe (Lore Olympus)

Ah yes, the infamous Minthe. Even people who have never read the comic recognize her as the "Trashta" of LO.

Minthe is proof that it doesn't matter whether you are the side chick or the main girl, what matters is that you are the main character.

Persephone is a homewrecker but because she is the FL it's ok for her to steal Minthe's man.

Yes, Minthe and Hades's relationship was toxic af and although I am not trying to justify Minthe's abusive behaviour, Hades is no better

He himself financially abused Minthe, he emotionally cheated on her with barely legal girl and never bothered to defend her against his racist family.

Hell, he was going to propose to her until he saw a younger and more vulnerable girl and he completely forgot about his girlfriend.

Minthe exposing Persephone was petty af, but I don't see the problem here. Persephone committed a crime, so even though Minthe did it for selfish reasons I don't see a problem with a mass murder getting consequences.

Again, I can go on an on about Minthe but I have more characters to talk about.

Girl should go and live her life with that one mortal who thought she was a goddess, far away from any god, cause she deserves a good life after what she has been through.

Also, an honourable mention to Leuce, Alex and every other character who got screwed over by the gods, they all deserved so much better.

7) Prince Bavilo (The Princess's Jewels)

Ok, Bavilo is not the same as the others, mainly because you are not suppose to hate him after a certain point, but I still wanted to talk about him.

We are suppose to hate him by the moment we see him because he is mean to the perfect FL Arianna. People call him jealous and spiteful because he isn't as perfect as his sister but Bavilo's anger towards Arianna makes perfect sense.

For one thing, he was right about Arianna setting a bad example to other women. She is a princess who collects men like Pokémon for her harem without caring about anyone else but herself.

She took away a general from another country and she basically kidnapped a dude after she threatened to start a war with his country if he didn't submit to her.

This doesn't just set a bad example for young girls who will definitely try to imitate Arianna but will definitely cause problems for the kingdom, Bavilo has every right to be against his sister.

His life is absolutely shit, his mother physically and emotionally abuses him on a daily basis, she is using him to gain more power and generally doesn't really care about him, his brothers don't seem to think highly of him, no matter how hard he tries to get his father's approval the king will never acknowledge him or love him as he loves Arianna and on top of all of that the queen (aka Arianna's mother whose name I don't remember and don't care to look up) is manipulating him, she wants Bavilo on her side to get back at his mother but just like everyone else she doesn't care about him.

His anger towards Arianna is completely valid, he suffers so much while his spoiled sister gets all the love and attention not only from their father but from literally anyone who knows her.

This boy should run away from his shitty and toxic family and cut all ties with them and marry a woman who would truly love him, become king and start his own family. He deserves a happy ending.

8) Queen Phoebe and Lord Demeter (This Isekai Maid is Forming a Union)

Though these two are pretty similar, so I decided to put them together.

First of all, both are actual villains and not demonized characters like the rest of the people in the list.

And second, both of them are well written characters, with goals and motivations instead of hate sinks to make the MC look better.

Both of them are a deconstruction of manhwa tropes, Phoebe is the MC who dies and gets reincarnated as a scorned young noblewoman and Marinus is the ML who is a straight up a psycho that can only be fixed by the FL's love.

But unlike stuff you'd see in a generic manhwa, these two actually face consequences for their actions and are not glazed by the author.

Phoebe is an elitist and racist woman who abused her power, she doesn't care about anyone other than herself and her family and is a horrible human being who mistreates her servants and will do extremely messed up stuff to get what she wants . This is pretty much how every OI protagonist acts like, the difference is the author doesn't let Phoebe get away scott free just because she suffered, she gets a very deserved karma and is forced into hiding after the commoners started a coup against her and her family.

Marinus is written is a similar way. Despite his tragic backstory,the narrative does not excuse his actions because of his trauma. Marinus committed mass murder, he killed the MC Bridgette in the first timeline and her fellow servants ( who were all minorities btw) after they tried to protect her. Then he pretended to have amnesia so that Annette (the FL) won't be mad at him. He was an awful father, he killed his own wife after she wanted to divorce him and poisoned his own daughter because he liked to feel needed (also he was a huge asshole to his son)

Yet, despite all of this, Phoebe and Marinus are my favourite characters. They are very well written and interesting, they move the plot forward without being plot devices and the author gave them a reason as to why the act and think the way they do without justifying any of their horrible actions.

#manhwa #manhwa critical #the remarried empress critical #rashta #krista tre #lo critical #lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #prince bavilo #down to earth #stace down to earth #this isekai maid is forming a union #the princess's jewels

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lilia-calderus-pet-goat · 17 days ago

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RANDOM THUNDERBOLTS* HEADCANONS!!

Yelena is actually the one in the vents, because Kate Bishop mentioned that according to Clint, they were very comfortable. Speaking of Kate, they go for coffee, pastries and shopping once a month–and Kate gives her so much crap about taking up the Avengers mantle after shitting on it initially.

Ava, meanwhile, is in the walls. Thus she's heard argumentative phone calls between Bucky and Sam, or stressful phone calls between Mel and Val. This Tower is a prison.

Speaking of Sam and Bucky, they had been preparing to live together in Louisiana before Valentina ruined everything. 💔 Like the moving company was halfway doNE.

Ava, also, is like–always tired. A package deal with her chronic pain. She's an insomniac, however, with much trouble falling asleep.

It's like, a whole thing. Every night she'll be rushing through the tiwer restlessly instead of sleeping, opening the fridge for water, or generally making noise. She wakes others up and eventually it becomes a collective issue.

Like, none of them sleep well, but she's far too restless. And so they all start brainstorming to find ways for Ava to fall asleep more easily. Music, white noise, that sort of thing. Finally, it's John's idea that actually works: conversation. Apparently sleep was impossible for him too due to ptsd from Afghanistan–and apparently, the one thing that used to help was talking to Lemar until they both fell asleep.

At first Ava thinks it's stupid, but it works. She never outwardly tells him it did, she just keeps inviting him to talk about literally anything. They make a habit of it.

I like to think that each girl in this movie has her respective blorbo? Yelena & Bob, Ava & Walker, Mel & Bucky. Not romantically. Just vibes.

Yelena and Ava love texting each other/talking about whatever. Their favorite activity is obviously thinking of clever insults to throw at Walker.

In the universe where Antonia lives, Yelena becomes her big sister and Ava her gf. Just ‘cause.

Mel never called herself Mel pre-working for Valentina, or if she did, she did it in hopes of working for her. She was Melissa–then Val gave her the nickname Mel. Because Mel is hardly allowed or able to have an identity outside of Val.

Valentina is like... evil soccer mom. Via Mel. Makes all their appointments, trying to do enough PR work to make the american public conveniently forget the soviet assassins, the high level criminals, the goddamn void, the impeachment/investigation oN Val and the disgraced captain america who killed a guy in public. Photoshoots! Sponsorships! Partnerships! Advertising! Merch! Mel has never been so overworked in her life.

Yelena, John and Alexei will occasionally watch soccer/football together. There is a lot of yelling. Bob doesn't like it. Neither does Ava. The two of them get noise cancelling headphones and sit together someplace else. Bucky oftentimes joins them.

Bob does the most chores out of everyone, feeling the need to overcompensate his usefulness, since he can't be the Sentry without the Void.

Yelena and Alexei have both been desperately trying to get back in touch with Melina, but ever since Nat died, they can't find her anywhere.

Yelena makes Alexei watch, “Good Bye, Lenin!” after he says he's never even heard of it. He proceeds to think about it for days and loses sleep over it.

Ava misses her surrogate father, Dr Bill Foster. Like, desperately. Alexei's newfound bombastic dad energy sneaks its way into her heart.

Mel was a gifted kid desperate for academic validation. She also had severe mommy issues. A surprise to no-one. All in all her working for Val I'd a recipe for toxic workplace codependent disaster.

Ava is the one who starts calling Walker, “America’s ass(hole)” and at first Bucky hated it for being a Steve reference, but after everyone else began referring to him as such, he got over it.

Bob and Joaquin Torres have been unknowingly playing video games together for months. One day Bucky walks in on Bob, asks, “hey kid, what are you–” and recognizes Joaquin's username from something Sam had mentioned at one point. He loses his shit.

Valentina constantly makes really caustic and mean spirited jokes about how she would've treated Olivia, (John’s wife) better. Bucky, who technically doesn't disagree, but hates Val, tells her that he could have treated Everett Ross better. Valentina is gagged for approximately five seconds before laughing and saying, “well, obviously, your sexualities would be better aligned–” and she NEVER elaborates.

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sunshine-jesse · 2 years ago

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Control: The Strange Dynamics of Andy and Leyley or

The Incest End Is Not The Fucking Bad End, Stop Coping

EDIT:

Hey guys! This post is blowing the fuck up, but this was my first essay on this game, and I think I've had many more insightful things to say since then. Here's a link to a masterpost with all of my essays, which I'd definitely suggest reading after this one:

Anyways, without further adieu...

I heard a lot about this game going in. I knew the general story beats and the funny haha incest memes. I knew it was about a toxic codependent relationship where Ashley, the sister, acted like your standard overly-controlling person who used various abuse techniques to keep someone in line. I expected Ashley to be a yandere-type character where she was borderline psychotic, irrational, and had a skewed perception of reality. I expected her to be a crazy bitch, and I love me some crazy bitches.

But then I actually played through the game. ...That is not what I got.

The game advertises Andrew as a doormat extraordinaire who is strung along by his Very Not Good sister and has no agency of his own' that he's just a henpecked abuse victim. But in practice, that doesn't seem to be the case. One of their first exchanges that in the story is when the occultist played his music and Ashley wanted them to check it out. He says 'no', sure, but then he smirks and says 'but I'll come along if you do.'

That is not the dialogue of someone who has no will of their own, that's the dialogue of someone who willingly gives up their own agency.

This is not, on its own, a sign of anything out of the ordinary. What caught my attention with it, though, is how it flew in the face of the common narrative surrounding their relationship dynamic. But that's not the first time I noticed it, it's just the first time, in retrospect, that their actual dynamic begins to show. The first time I personally noticed it is in the choking scene.

There are a lot of ways to view this situation. But my own reading? This was not a crime of passion. This was not him trying to break free. This is him doing something he's thought about for a while. This is premeditated. In this scene, Andrew is done playing along with Ashley's shit. In this scene, I firmly believe Ashley is the victim.

Ashley is the more openly abusive of the two who seeks to do whatever she can to trap Andrew so he'll never leave her. That much is clear. But Andrew-

-clearly has these same tendencies. He says this shortly after Ashley mentions putting her name up on a call girl's wall for money. There's protective brotherly instincts, and then there's this. This is not something you'd threaten a sister with, this is something that a man would threaten his wife with, which is directly brought attention to in the story.

(hey look he accepts the framing of it being WIFE beating at face value, and says Ashley is the only one who makes him like that! HMMMMMMMMMM WONDER WHAT THAT IMPLIES???)

It also implies that this is not the first time physical force has been threatened! I mean, that much is obvious, because of the choking scene that happened before, but I more mean that this implies that Andrew either threatening or utilizing physical force is an established pattern of behavior. However, the Decay route implies that she never thought Andy would kill her (but Andrew would) which can either be for or against depending on one's perspective, so I don't hold to the idea that it's an established pattern too strongly.

Okay, so. Andrew has some controlling and possessive tendencies too. So what? Their relationship is codependent. It's advertised as such. What of it?

Well first of all, it pretty much blows the lid off of the idea that Ashley is the sole perpetrator of abuse in their relationship. I've seen a lot of people view Andrew's behavior as justified retaliation against abuse, but frankly, I don't believe that him threatening to strangle Ashley for violating boundaries by trying to hold him accountable for his actions (given the strangulation part happens after she brought up Nina's death and how Andrew was ultimately responsible) is justified. And I ESPECIALLY don't believe that him threatening to backhand Ashley for her transactional attitude towards sex is justified in ANY circumstance.

EDIT: This part was edited in from the original post for the sake of readability so they don't have to see the reblogs to see the updated version! This post gained more traction than I was expecting!

…But perhaps even more telling is what she DOESN'T do.

Pushing someone's boundaries until they lash out is a pretty common tactic in abusive relationships. It's easy to see why, too: It justifies prior behavior and paints them in a negative light to others. This can be an important aspect of using DARVO (deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender) against someone, although the two ideas aren't necessarily linked.

It's pretty easy to argue that this is what Ashley does, but if you look at the one time her boundary pushing DID go too far, when Andrew lashes out with physical violence… she doesn't do that. She doesn't blame him. She doesn't paint herself as the victim. She doesn't even try to give a reason as to why she shouldn't be killed outside of the comfort she gives him. Why is this notable?

Because the mom does, in fact, engage in what could be considered DARVO against Ashley:

(i will elaborate more on this screenshot in particular below)

Ashley is directly compared to Mrs. Graves by Andrew, and yet she crucially displays none of the habits that Mrs. Graves does. Mrs. Graves lays the blame on Ashley, but Ashley doesn't lay the blame on Andrew. Mrs. Graves tends to paint herself as the victim of Ashley, but Ashley does no such thing to Andrew. The mom denies her culpability at every turn; Ashley doesn't. Ashley tries to hold Andrew accountable for his role in Nina's death, which could be considered a kind of DARVO. But she never denies that she had a role to play in it. She just mentions that he was the one who pulled the trigger. And he was.

(and the point was more that she DIDN'T engage in it when threatened with physical violence; the perfect chance to)

In Mrs. Graves' mind, she is the victim of either Ashley, or society as a whole. In Ashley's mind, she knows what she is, what she does, and what she's about. The only thing she's oblivious to- or doesn't acknowledge, at least- is the threat Andrew poses to her. In her mind, she's the bad guy. In Andrew's mind, Ashley is the bad guy. In official art, she is the bad guy:

And yet, in the game itself, Andrew is the one holding the cleaver. Not her. Hm.

Ashley is the world's most convenient scapegoat. She allows people to mask their own worst habits and pretend they're better people than they are. She accepts this role. She embraces it. She doesn't try to deny it. But when that mask slips, people lash out at her. Both Mrs. Graves and Andy (NOT Andrew, crucially) predicate much of their self-perception on being what she's not.

But they're the ones who enabled her to become like this, every step of the way.

And that's what blew my fucking mind, and made me question just who the victim really is. She was never given a chance to be normal, because other people relied on her NOT being normal.

By the end of my second playthrough, I felt worse for Ashley than I did for Andrew, and I still do.

So. What am I getting at? What does this show me about the relationship between Ashley and Andrew?

(I also wanted to point out that Andrew does engage in DARVO too but I didn't want to distract from the behavior of the mother. Unlike what Andrew does, it doesn't require someone to reassess the narrative they have towards the game in order to realize the implications of it, whereas it's pretty easy to justify Andrew's words as not qualifying as DARVO if you buy into the narrative that he's the sole victim and/or that Ashley is the main perpetrator of abuse. A friend of mine pointed out that it's a pretty key part of the push/pull dynamic they have, and I completely agree.

However, the direct comparisons to the behavior of the mother can't be ignored no matter your narrative, so I felt as if I needed to highlight that more.)

EDIT OVER

It shows me that their relationship is all about control.

Specifically, the push and pull of who controls who in any given situation.

Andrew weaponizes his incompetence. He always looks to lay the blame on Ashley. This is drawn attention to several times, and said explicitly in the Decay route.

He is always surrendering control to her, and yet he never HAS to. He could always just say no. He could always refuse. What are the consequences? Her being upset? Well, unfortunately, it's not that easy. That's not how abuse dynamics work. He probably feels like he has to, or rather, feels like there's no other option. That he's in too deep, and stuck with her no matter what. But personally, I think it's pretty clear from his willingness to surrender control to Ashley that he still feels like he has it at points, because the moment he feels like he's about to lose it, he either considers violence, even as a child-

(the actual scene of slicing her finger is pretty sus too with this reading in mind)

-or resorts to it, outright, in both the choking scene and the vision in the Decay ending... when Ashley doesn't have enough bullets to defend herself (this will be important later!).

SO WHAT POINT AM I TRYING TO MAKE??? AM I JUST MAKING ABUSE APOLOGIA (the answer may surprise you)?

No. I don't think so.

Ashley is obviously very bad. She's controlling and uses pretty textbook abuse and entrapment tactics on Andrew whereas everything he does to her is inference, with Ashley too daft to realize just how much danger she's in until the vision in the Decay ending spells it out for her- and I don't know if a true abuse dynamic allows for one to be completely unaware of the consequences of breaking free. She could just let go of her desire for control and Andrew would be a much happier person.

And that's the point, because so would she.

I bring up control because that push and pull- that desire for control over each other- is exactly what's tearing their relationship apart, and this effect most obviously manifests in the two endings of episode 2. In the Decay ending, Ashley either tries to exert control over Andrew due to a lack of trust, or Andrew allows his feelings of entrapment to truly take root in his mind and guide his actions. In the Decay ending, Andrew becomes a true doormat with no will of his own, allowing his feelings of bitterness and resentment to fester and grow, eventually resulting in their deaths.

In the Burial ending, Andrew does the exact opposite. He takes control of the situation and does exactly what Ashley would do without much of a fuss. This eventually culminates in THAT scene (assuming you take the Questionable route), where his facial expression alone speaks volumes:

Look at how fucking confident this man is. This is not the face of someone who's unsure of himself; this is the face of someone who knows exactly what he wants and takes it. He is absolutely in control of this situation, and everyone is happier for it.

And what does Ashley have to do to get this ending?

Let's go back to Decay for a moment. If Ashley has bullets in her gun, she has control over the situation. She, at any point, could put an end to Andrew and survive. And yet, at the very end of it all, she could choose not to. She could choose to surrender control to Andrew, allowing herself to die. And that ending, I believe so much of his life and willpower will have decayed that there's nothing left for him to take control of, leaving him no choice- or rather, no use for the control he now has- but to die with her.

And in the Burial ending, she has to let him out of his cage before it's too late. She has to surrender control to him, and when she does-

-He will become everything she ever needed him to be.

It's all about her surrendering control, and it's all about him taking control. Because, no matter what, as long as that happens... the two of them will be together forever.

In life...

...or in death.

How romantic.

So no, the incest end is not the fucking bad end. They're going to be together forever in the end either way, so they might as well live through it.

#gaming #the coffin of andy and leyley #gravecest #ashley graves #andrew graves #someone help me i can't stop thinking about this fucking game

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thewadapan · 7 months ago

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So why did Transformers One bomb?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I. The One True Origin of the Transformers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II. The Spider-Verse of Transformers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III. I did not care for The Godfather

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV. No politics means no politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V. Place / Place, Cybertron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI. Into nothing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's all any of this stuff is.

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

When Eric Pearson came onto the project,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#transformers #transformers one #movie review #essay

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icallhimjoey · 6 months ago

Note

eddie?! 👀 did you say EDDIE?!?! 👀👀👀👀

i DID say eddie! i had a tiny idea that fit the version of eddie ive written before (and the only version of eddie ive written before) and so... here we are. i am: so sorry. Wordcount: 6.6K

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Let’s Go Home

(find all other parts of this story here)

“Let’s go get him.”

You sound very determined for someone completely unsure of how to handle the situation. It’s difficult to watch someone so deeply unhappy struggle with parts of their past they can’t seem to get a grip on.

“I… what?” two wet, red-rimmed eyes stare back at you. Confused. A little annoyed.

“Yea. Come on. Let’s go. We’re packing our bags and we’re going to go pick him up and bring him back here.”

Eddie doesn’t get it. Frowns, entirely unsure of who you’re talking about.

“Steve’s already here… and Wayne is coming here for Christmas, we don’t need to–…” he looks so tired.

“I know we don’t need to.”

It always happened when the days got a little shorter. When the nights got colder and Christmas loomed. When happy, wholesome family moments would be advertised all over the world, and it all became glaringly obvious – once again – how that was something Eddie never got to be a part of when he was little. Not until Wayne took him in and tried his best to make the holidays special in his own way.

No matter how hard Wayne tried, though, the bitter aftertaste of abandonment and loneliness was impossible to get rid of.

Eddie would never admit this to Wayne, but celebrating Christmas just the two of them felt just as pathetic and lonely as it had done when he lived with his parents still.

Different.

Definitely not as traumatizing, which was good.

But still dreary, and sad, with a lot of playing pretend that he was okay and happy and fine.

He was never okay and happy and fine.

Still isn’t okay and happy and fine.

That’s not Wayne’s fault, Eddie knows, and he feels like a shitty person because Wayne always tried his best. Did what he could. It just never quite worked.

Christmas would roll around, and Eddie would get depressed.

That’s just what happened.

Eddie would slip into sadness, scary thoughts intruding happy places they weren’t allowed to settle into, but he’d not yet learnt how to tell them to fuck off. To leave him alone. Didn’t know how to get the uninvited guests out of his house, and felt powerless as he watched them settle into his living room. Nothing he could do about it.

Somber, pensive moments would slowly stretch until they covered most of the day. Mornings were the happiest, still. He’d wake up after falling asleep eventually, never managing to slip into dreams before 3 AM, and for a moment, he’d forget. The short amount of sleep would have him tired enough to not remember the reality of his life for a second, and in those moments, it would just be you in bed with him and that would be the only thing in existence.

It’s awful to feel reality set into someone’s body mid-hug.

You wish you knew how to keep it out.

Over the years Eddie had learnt he had to vocalize his feelings. His thoughts. Knew that a burden shared was a burden halved, but knowing things in theory didn’t make them easier in practice.

“What can I do? Let me help.” You’d whisper, and Eddie was lucky you’d known each other for so long. There were no worried questions of are you okay, or a concerned soft hey what’s wrong.

You know he’s not okay, and you know what’s wrong.

“You, here. That’s all you need to do.” Eddie would murmur and he’d pull you in to hold you for a short while. And sometimes, that would temporarily fix him.

There is part of Eddie that honestly thinks if he doesn’t think about it, that it’ll be okay.

If he ignores it for long enough, it might go away by itself.

He’s lucky that sometimes, it does.

He pretends that the foundation of shit that he’d been given for his life hasn’t got all the cracks in. The house he has tried to build on top might shake a bit in the wind, but he can convince himself that the strong support beams that have been put in place will make sure the whole thing doesn’t collapse.

But it’s getting closer and closer to Christmas, and he’s sinking deeper and deeper into everything that’s dark, and cold, and uncomfortable, and painful, and scary.

Everything is designed to make people feel happy around this time of year, and he’s in LA where the sun shines all year long and it doesn’t even really get cold at all. Not like it gets cold in Hawkins. The days don’t really get that much shorter, and he can go outside in a T-shirt and be fine. But maybe that’s precisely the problem right now; there’s no quick get inside the house, and no let me warm your hands up for you.

The comfort of a frozen nose that get nuzzled back to life is unattainable in LA.

“Can you go to another meeting? Would that help, do you think?” you silently ask him one evening, hidden under the covers and too tired to stay awake for much longer, even though you know Eddie’s wide awake next to you. He’ll toss and turn for a couple more hours after you’ve drifted off.

“Yea, of course. I should.” Eddie is quick to reply, but you know he doesn’t want to.

Talking about his addiction with strangers when he’s trying his best to pretend it’s not there will just make things worse, he thinks. Logically, he knows it probably won’t, but there’s always that fear.

“Can I join you?”

You feel how Eddie shifts in bed, probably to take a look at you, but your eyes are closed and you’re about to fall asleep. This isn’t the time to fall into a conversation in which he asks you why on earth you would want to hear a lot of people you don’t know talk about a lot of drastic measures you don’t need to know people let themselves be pushed to sometimes.

So instead, you feel a kiss press to your temple, and he whispers, “Sure you can.”

At first, Eddie doesn’t say much in the meeting you join him for. You mostly listen to issues other people bring forward, and try to think of things you’d do if Eddie was the person speaking. If he was the one with all of those problems. How would you help?

How would you fix it?

When a kind, soft-spoken voice asks if there’s anyone new who wants to share, a lot of eyes fall on you, and you shift in your seat. Sit up a little. Feel Eddie squeeze your hand in his which could have meant, it’s okay, you can tell people why you’re here, but instead it means, I got this.

Eddie talks.

Tells everyone about how he feels like he’s deep in a depression and that he doesn’t really know how to get out of the dark pit he’s fallen into.

How it feels like he’s five years old and stuck in a small dark room, and he’s feeling all over the walls but can’t locate the light switch, and the longer he’s looking, the more he starts feeling claustrophobic in there.

You make the mistake of asking him if he can call out for help.

“Have you tried asking? Maybe someone else can turn the light on for you…”

Eddie breaks down, elbows on his knees, face hidden from the group as he looks at the wooden floor boards through his tears.

It’s not your fault.

Eddie doesn’t expect you to understand the feeling of being so utterly helpless and alone that he knows there’s no use in even trying to call for help.

No one would’ve answered.

You scoot your seat closer to his, and lean into his side as you wrap an arm around his back, fingers curling around his shoulder. It’s nice. He needs it. He also knows there’s thirteen pairs of eyes on him and he doesn’t know how to tell you that no matter how hard you’ll try, you won’t be able to actually fix anything.

“Let me turn the light on. Let Steve, or let Wayne– Robin… we can all help turn the light on. We’ll fly Wayne out, Robin too, and anyone else that you want. They can all move in, we have the space for it. Just… please, let us turn the light on, Eddie…”

It’s the fucking sweetest thing he’s ever heard, but he can reach for the light himself now. He can find it in the dark, and he can turn it on. The problem is that it doesn’t make a fucking difference.

Turning a light on now doesn’t change anything about his past.

Eddie gets asked if he has anything more to share. He sniffs and wipes his face with both his hands before he sits up and leans back and says, “Thank you, but um, no. I don’t. It’s this time of year, I guess. I know it’ll pass.”

You hold hands, fingers intertwined, as you listen to everyone else share more of their own personal issues, and when you leave Eddie puts his arm around you and pulls you close to kiss the side of your face. He tells you that he loves you, that he’s glad that he came, and he thanks you for coming with him.

You can see in his eyes that none of it helped.

Eddie lets himself sink deeper and all you can really do is be there for him. Be there when he wakes up and be there when he goes to sleep. You give him the gift of routine. Of healthy meals. Of pleasant walks outside. Long showers after.

It helps.

But it doesn’t fix anything.

You try your best at damage control. Talk to Steve. Call Wayne a lot.

And it helps.

But about two weeks later, Eddie starts isolating.

He had never isolated before.

Not like this.

He’s in his home studio, hyperfocussing on four seconds of a song he’s working on, and when you interrupt to tell him you’re going to go to bed, he says he’ll come up in a minute. He just needs to figure this bit out. “I’m so close, I can taste it.” Eddie smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and for a moment you think Eddie’s going to let you listen to his work in progress. He always asks for your opinion, but this time he doesn’t. He just looks at you with a smile that’s just there for reassurance until you leave him alone.

At 5 AM you get woken up by Steve, who softly says, “You need to come downstairs…” and leads the way for you.

“I got up to pee, and the bathroom is right above the studio…”

You find Eddie in the exact same spot, going over the exact same four seconds of music.

He looks like he’s being tortured, barely able to keep his eyes open. When you gently pry the guitar from his hands, his breathing changes, and you think if he would have had the energy to sob, he would have cried like a child.

“Let’s go to bed, Eddie.”

Eddie lets you take him upstairs, but then locks himself in the bathroom and when you ask if he can let you in, all you can hear are soft sniffles whilst the shower runs.

It’s then that you decide.

Something is different this time around.

Something deeper has bubbled up, and you know whatever you are doing here, in LA, to help him simply will not be enough.

You establish a plan and pull out two suitcases that you place onto your bed. You’re going to pack your bags and you’re going to go get him.

It’s clearly necessary.

Eddie is no longer letting you comfort him and you’re scared that the next step is going to be a relapse.

“What are you doing?”

“Let’s go get him.”

“I–… what?”

Eddie hasn’t slept, and his unwashed hair is wet from the shower he’s sat in for a while, and you’re very calmly and methodically folding clothes into a suitcase. You might as well be speaking in a different language right now.

“Yea. Come on. Let’s go. We’re packing our bags and we’re going to go pick him up and bring him back here.”

Eddie slowly moves to sit down on the bed, and he looks at what you’re doing for a moment before he sighs and softly says, “Steve’s already here… and Wayne is coming here for Christmas, we don’t need to–…”

He stops speaking when he sees your slight smile.

“I know we don’t need to.” You say and Eddie doesn’t like how you look at him with so much care in your eyes. He doesn’t think he deserves it.

Doesn’t deserve you.

“Do you want to bring both of your black hoodies?” you then ask, not giving him a chance to question what’s happening, and so he just goes, “Yea… yea, sure.” before he lets himself fall backwards onto the mattress where he shuts his eyes.

You let Eddie sleep for as long as sleep will hold him. Pack up both suitcases and let Steve help you book travel back home.

“Do you want to come?” you ask when Steve is on the phone to a travel agent. He is listening to the woman who’s reading him back information he’s just given her, so he can’t answer you, but he reaches out and holds your hand whilst you listen to him book two tickets to Indiana.

When he gets off the phone he reaches for your other hand as well and says, “I’ll watch the house.”

You give him a slight frown. “You know he’d love you to come with us… Wayne says Hawkins is covered in snow. We could watch Christmas films in the trailer… get Robin and run across Lover’s Lake again… or, call Dustin and, I don’t know, Eddie could challenge him to a snow ball fight and they could play–”

“Dustin’s 26 years old.”

“Yea...” you frown at Steve. “So?” you sound desperate.

Steve huffs a laugh as he rubs his thumbs over your hands. He grimaces a little before he says, “No offense, but… he doesn’t need us out there. Of course you’ve got to go with him, but every other person is going to be one too many.”

And Steve’s right.

The next day, Steve joins you outside as you’re about to leave. He hugs Eddie for a long time by the trunk of the car, and you know they’re softly talking to each other. You can only see Eddie’s back, and Steve’s face is hidden by all of Eddie’s curls, but suddenly you can hear Eddie laugh before he pokes Steve in the side.

You get hugged next.

Eddie doesn’t sleep on the flight. Just stares out the window and gets lost in thought. You know he’s not entirely sure of why you’re taking him back to Hawkins, but he’s also not asked about it again.

When your rental car stops in front of Wayne’s trailer, you turn the engine off and sit in silence for a moment as you both just… look at it. It’s four in the afternoon, but it’s getting dark outside already.

Forest Hills.

A surprisingly large lot of land that holds about twenty-four sporadically placed trailers; some of them neatly lined up, others facing whichever way. Wayne’s trailer was one of those ones, placed diagonally to the road, surrounded by dry grass for most of the year which was now hidden by a thick layer of snow.

Momentarily, everything about the image that you’re looking at looks like it’s 1987. Maybe 1988. You can easily envision a younger version of yourself running up to that same front door, it swinging open before you could even get up the steps, Eddie bursting through just to throw you over his shoulder and haul you inside.

“We’re here...” you break the silence, stating the obvious, and find Eddie’s hand to squeeze.

It’s a little silly, but it looks like he’s scared.

“Did you tell him we were coming?”

“Wayne?”

Eddie turns to look at you, slightly confused because, yea who the fuck else?

“Yea. I called Wayne.”

You watch how Eddie takes a breath. Watch that information settle within him.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

And Eddie does. Doesn’t want to do anything without you, ever.

But he takes a shaky breath and says, “I’ll come get you in a second.” before he opens the door and gets out of the car.

Footsteps crunch in the snow, and you watch Eddie, hands in pockets, rush up the steps to what used to be the trailer that he lived in with his uncle. The trailer that he found home in when he was about seven years old and Wayne had decided that his bedroom could actually be Eddie’s bedroom instead for a while.

A while turned into fifteen years in the blink of an eye.

You watch Eddie hug Wayne through the window. It’s another long embrace, but this one doesn’t part with boyish grins and jabbing fingers. Instead, you can see how Eddie goes limp in Wayne’s arms a little, and when he goes to pull back, Wayne just… holds on.

Just a little longer.

It feels a little wrong to be watching them like this, chin perched on the steering wheel, fingers hidden in your sleeves. It feels especially invasive when you see how when they eventually part, the first thing both men do is bring their sleeves to their faces to dry what has become wet.

Then, Eddie steps away. Slowly walks towards the room that used to be his bedroom, and he goes alone.

Good, you think.

That’s good.

Wayne didn’t understand at first, when you told him over the phone. That you were coming over for a strange, but important visit. But this was good.

It takes a while.

Your fingers start to lose their feeling a little as you wait in the car, but it’s fine. You are not the priority right now.

When Eddie eventually emerges from the trailer, you get out of the car, and wait for him to call for you. A, come on. Come inside. It’s fucking freezing out here.

Instead, you get silence. Eddie doesn’t stop walking to wave you over.

He makes his way all the way over to where you’re stood next to the car, and then, he hesitates for a moment.

Eddie can’t look you in the eye.

“Everything okay?”

You know it’s not.

“He um…” Eddie starts, voice trembling. “He’s not here.”

“What?”

Eddie moves closer to place a kiss to your temple, eyes looking away, over the top of the car, across the trailer park. “He’s not here. I didn’t find him.”

Eddie steps around you and gets into the passenger seat, and for a moment, you stand with both shoes in slush whilst you try to think of what to do next. When you look back at the trailer, you catch Wayne through he window. Gives you a smile and a wave.

For a moment you contemplate running over, up those same steps, to ask what happened inside. Maybe Wayne has answers to questions you keep asking yourself.

Before you can, Eddie roars the engine back to life.

You give Wayne a wave back from where you’re stood and round the car to get into the passenger’s seat. You can talk to Wayne later.

Back inside the car, you put your seatbelt on and look at Eddie for a moment. He’s got one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the gearshift, and he’s biting his lip as he stares into space.

“If he’s not here…” you start pensively.

“It’s quite the drive.” Eddie answers, unmoving.

“We have the time.”

“I don’t think we’d make it back here before midnight.”

“Hey,”

Eddie turns his head to look at you.

“We have time.” You repeat yourself and place your hand on the back of his head where you softly scratch your fingers into his hair. “You good to drive?”

You don’t get an answer. Instead, Eddie puts the car in reverse and starts backing out. Just before he’s about to fully leave Forest Hills Trailer Park, he stops the car, even though there’s no traffic to wait for.

“I can drive if you want me to–”

“N-no, that’s not it. I can drive, but I…”

Eddie stares. Looks at his hands and just sits in silence, going through it. Then suddenly, he takes his seatbelt off, opens his door and quickly says, “I’ll be right back.” and he runs.

Left in a car with a running engine and a wide open door, you turn in your seat to watch Eddie’s breath leave him in white clouds as he runs back to the trailer, back up the steps, back inside. You’re too far away to see in the windows now.

It only takes a minute.

When he comes back, jogs down those steps in the snow, he looks a little lighter somehow. Like running back towards the car is a little easier.

Eddie gets back in the car, and he’s all loud inhales and rough exhales, hands rubbing together because it’s cold and he just ran through the snow, but then he looks at you as he puts on his seatbelt and he smiles.

There’s tears in his eyes, but he’s smiling.

“Had to tell him it’s okay. That I’m okay.”

Somehow, Eddie is beaming and solemn at the same time, but you’re happy that something has changed a little. That he seems to get it. You sink into your seat a bit more when Eddie pulls onto the road and starts heading south.

Eddie told you once, years ago, that he used to live in a motel before he came to Hawkins. How that’s all his parents could afford, and even then, they were always fighting with the front desk about money. Always late on payments.

It was just one big room, and even though it was just him, his mother and sometimes his dad, there were always people in their room. Strangers. Friends, his mother would tell him. Sometimes she’d even tell him, this is your Uncle Frank, and Eddie would be forced to shake the hand of a man he had never seen before and would never see again.

Eddie spent a lot of his early childhood confused.

He spent a lot of his childhood hiding.

Afraid.

Alone.

He wouldn’t ever trust anyone. People told him one thing and then they would laugh together and they would do something else.

Adults were evil, and yet the world was made so that adults were the ones that had to look after him. That made the decisions. That told him, go play outside, even if rain was coming down hard, and Eddie would have no other choice but to listen. To do as he was told.

He was only a little kid.

When Eddie was seven years old, he got kicked out of the room at eight in the morning and got told to not come back until they were ‘ready for him’.

Like he knew what that meant.

No one had told him how to tell time.

Eddie didn’t go to school.

But he knew that being sent outside meant that he had to go find his own entertainment for a while, and so he did.

Eddie was seven years old when he came back around lunch time with skinned knees and grass stains in his shorts, and there was commotion.

Lots of people.

People in uniforms.

A cop car.

A kind woman who asked him if he had lost his way. If she could help him get home. Eddie had just smiled and said, no thanks, and had tried to hide in the spot where he always hid. Adults were not to be trusted, Eddie knew. No matter how kind they looked.

Eddie was seven years old when he got pulled from his safe space, his little hiding spot, kicking and screaming, and got brought over to Wayne’s trailer. He’d never been back to that motel room again. Had never even gotten close.

The sun has fully set by the time you pull up outside of an old, run down motel that looks like it should’ve been torn down ages ago. Most windows are boarded up, paint on the walls is chipping and what used to be a light-up sign has been torn down.

It’s a dump.

Just trying to imagine someone growing up here has you choking up.

Little four-year-old Eddie running around these grounds? In dirty clothes too big for his body because nobody was feeding him right? Being exposed to things no child should ever be exposed to, simply because his bedroom was also the only room they had?

Before you can let it make you cry, you hear a faint chuckle beside you.

It’s small and weak, but it’s a chuckle none the less.

“I remember this place much bigger,” he says, like it’s funny. “There’s only like… seven rooms.” Eddie counts.

You’re momentarily unsure if coming here was a good idea. If facing this reality of his past is going to be doing him any good. If it won’t just break him down even more. But then Eddie turns to look at you and says, “Come, let me show you.”

Eddie visiting the place where he spent the first few years of his life turns into him giving you a surprisingly pleasant tour of the grounds. He recounts the other people that lived there, the rooms he wasn’t allowed into. How there used to be a soda machine here, and how sometimes the older kids would ask him to get them some cans for free, because his arms were small and skinny enough to just sneak them out the bottom.

It’s easy to skim the surface of this place like this.

To make it about showing you around instead of sinking down past the layers of self-protection that would have him walking around here with wobbly legs.

Yea.

This is easier. Better.

All of the doors are locked, but it doesn’t take much more than a good shove of a shoulder for the locks to give way. For the wood of the doorframes to splinter.

“Entering the Forest Hills way.” Eddie grins, and you suppress a smile. It’s a lie. Forest Hills is full of all honest, all hard-working people. But, it’s still a trailer park, and thus, the joke is funny.

Without much care, Eddie easily manages to open every door he comes across. It’s dark everywhere you go, none of the lights work, but the streetlights out front provide you with plenty of it, and your eyes quickly adjust.

Eddie shows you the laundry. Breaks into a little back office. A supply closet. Some other motel rooms - some that had semi-permanent guests staying there too, just like he used to be one. And some that would have overnight guests that didn’t know about the draft that would make the door slam so hard, you’d lose your fingers if they got caught in between.

It’s almost joyful, how Eddie talks about his memories. He hasn’t got many, he was so young, but every time he comes across something he remembers, he seems pleasantly surprised at his brain’s ability to bring it all back to him.

But then, when you eventually stop outside room number five, he pauses.

Stops.

Stares at the doorknob.

You can feel how his entire demeanor changes, and even though it’s painful to witness, you know that this is why you came here. This is the whole reason you drove all the way out here.

Eddie takes a good, deep breath but doesn’t move otherwise. Just keeps his eyes locked on a rusty old doorknob to a locked door of a room that probably looks exactly like all the other ones Eddie had already shown you.

“Is this where you lived?” you ask, doing your best to make your voice sound as neutral as possible. You don’t want to scare him off. Don’t want to trigger something.

Eddie nods, a barely-there up and down movement of his head, and then he goes for the doorhandle, rattles it weakly.

Keeps staring at it.

“Door’s locked.” He croaks, like that had been a problem for any of the other doors.

But it does make sense.

You understand that the person who opened up all those other doors was Eddie in his thirties, showing you around.

The person staring at the doorknob now, was Eddie as a child.

Afraid to go inside, unsure of what he was going to find there.

Not strong enough.

Maybe only just tall enough to even reach.

But, you were strong.

You had witnessed how a little force had gone a long way with these locks, and after giving Eddie a second to maybe ask for help, because God, you really wanted him to realize he could just ask for help, he doesn’t ask for shit, and you decide to take matters into your own hands.

Before Eddie even registers you taking a few steps back to get a running start, the wood of the door has already split from the blow of your shoulder.

“Oh my G–” Eddie jumps, both arms reaching out to grab at you and to pull you close. He makes sure he holds you where you ran into the door, large palm cupping over the curve of your shoulder, and he rubs the skin there. Which helps, because, you’re not really hiding the fact that Jesus fuck that fucking hurt very well.

Despite the sting, there’s a moment where you both see the humor in what just happened, and looking at each other, you both let huffs of laughter escape you.

“Are you crazy? What you do that for, huh?” Eddie pretend scolds.

You shrug, “Forest Hills way.”

The comedic relief is so welcome, but it’s short-lived. You see from up close how Eddie’s expression drops. He goes from looking at his insane girlfriend with all the love he’s got for her spilling from his eyes, to looking over your head into the dark room where he used to live, and it all slips away.

You wait by the door.

Want Eddie to do this alone because you think it’ll be better that way.

You also truly don’t know what to do, so it feels a little safer to just… wait outside. You wouldn’t know how to help anyway.

Just like when you were outside of Wayne’s trailer, it feels a little invasive to look at Eddie as he silently takes slow steps inside and looks around. At the same time, you can’t really look away. If he’s going to break down and fall to his knees, you want to be there within a second to pick him back up.

Eddie trails slow fingers along a dresser.

Takes careful steps towards a nightstand of which he opens and then closes the drawer.

“Huh…” he comments. Looks around the full room again, sees it in different light as he stands in another corner, the lights from outside showing him different parts of the room.

He disappears into the bathroom for a moment before he steps back out, and he looks… confused.

Surprised, maybe. A little dumbfounded.

He gives the room another glance, and then turns to find you watching him in silence.

“This is really weird,” Eddie comments, both eyebrows raised.

“Yea? How so?”

“I don’t know… it’s different. It’s not like I remember. I think… I don’t know, I think my mind made this room the most terrible place ever in the world, but it’s just… it’s just a room. There’s nothing…” Eddie twirls on the spot, “Yea, it’s just a room. Nothing’s… nothing is scary.”

You swallow audibly, and hesitate before you speak.

“It’s not scary.” Eddie concludes again before you can say anything, and he raises both shoulders at you in a long shrug, like he’s trying to convince you that it’s all right.

You’re not the one who needs convincing though.

“Is, um…” you start, and you clear your throat, entirely unsure of how Eddie is going to react to your question.

After visiting Wayne, you think he gets it now.

He gets why you took him back to Indiana.

Eddie has let his eyes fall on a weird piece of wall art he doesn’t remember, something that maybe they added to the room after his parents had been kicked out, and he’d been taken away to go live somewhere safer.

“Is he here?”

“Huh?”

“Is he in here, somewhere?”

It takes a moment of Eddie looking at you before he fully registers what you’re talking about.

His gaze drifts towards the closet next to the bathroom door.

It’s shut. Both bifold doors closed.

Eddie stalls for a moment, and then he raises an arm to open one of the doors before he drops it by his side again.

The closet’s empty.

It seemingly comes from nowhere, the way your lips suddenly quiver. How your eyes well up with tears so quickly. You have to cover your mouth with your hand to remain silent; this isn’t about you.

Eddie is slowly taking it all in, looks around the inside of the closet. The stains in the carpet. The peeling wallpaper. The mismatched hangers, a couple plastic ones amongst a couple more wire ones. And then he looks up and finds the the little yellowed piece of string that hangs down from way up high.

He reaches up and pulls it.

An audible click is heard.

Nothing changes though.

No light springs on.

Eddie pulls it again. Softly smiles. Pulls it a couple more times.

Click, click.

Nothing happens.

You’re about to burst with a violent sob when you see how Eddie, entirely in his own thoughts, inside of his own memories, slowly steps into the closet and closes the door behind him.

You hear the clicking of the light a couple more times, and need to step away.

It’s too much.

The visuals of a tiny little malnourished Eddie hiding in a closet unable to reach the string of the light in there is going to make you hyperventilate if you’re not careful, so you have to take a walk.

It’s fucking freezing but hot tears trail down your cheeks as you hurry back to your rental car.

It doesn’t take much longer for Eddie to step outside, leaving the place where he spent the first few years of his life. His long legs carry him over to you quickly.

You can tell that he’s holding back sobs until he’s close enough to crash himself into you.

Arms wrap so tightly, they almost hurt. Bodies wrack with silent sobs until deep breaths calm the both of you down.

It takes a good while.

Eddie is first to pull back, and whilst cupping your face, both his thumbs wiping underneath your eyes in a bid to rid you of your tears, he manages to squeak, “Found him.”

“Yea?” you ask wetly. Hopeful.

This is why you came out here.

To find the small version of Eddie who, even as a toddler, knew that calling out for help was a waste of time because the calls would go unanswered.

To take him home.

“Turned on the–” Eddie throat closes up before he can even say it.

“Turned on the light for him?” you finish for him, and he just nods as he presses his lips together to keep them from wobbling.

Eddie goes in for another hug, hides his face in the side of your neck and grounds himself there.

You can feel how he’s actively trying to steady his own breathing.

It works, eventually.

“Did you…” you start, still holding him, but falter for a moment.

“Did I what?” Eddie asks, sniffing loudly, pulling back after you nudge your nose into his hair.

“Did you take him with you?”

It’s such a silly question. Eddie can’t help the smile that carefully plays at the corner of his mouth, and his eyebrows scrunch up as he looks down at you. He can dissect the question that pops up in the back of his brain for the fourth time today another time. How can he even begin to figure out why he deserves someone like you in his life?

“I did.” He confirms, and you let the breath you were holding escape you in a shudder.

He doesn’t think he deserves you.

“Good.” you smile, and maybe things are starting to look up, a little. Maybe the universe is slowly starting to make amends with Eddie. Is starting to apologize for all the shit it put little Eddie through in this godforsaken place no one should spend more than a single night at.

“Let’s take him home then.”

Eddie cries.

Thought he was done, but he’s not.

He lets you press kisses to the skin just underneath his eyes as he closes them.

He lets you open the car door and help him into the passenger’s seat.

Lets you drive all the way back to Wayne’s whilst he cries, because this is the second time little Eddie makes this trip, from the motel to Forest Hills. But this time he’s not scared.

He knows he’s going to go to a better place.

A safer place.

To a person who will try his very best hand at proper damage control. Who’s got a nice trailer, and a room that will get turned into his own bedroom three days into his stay.

To a person who will join Eddie in the closet for those first few nights. Who will just bring him food in there, have their dinner hidden away together, and who won’t force him out.

Who will play silly games with him in there, until the trips to the bathroom feel safe enough to do on his own.

There’s never other people in the trailer.

Just them.

Safe.

Eddie cries as he remembers more. Thought he had forgotten almost everything, but he remembers so much. He can’t talk about anything yet. Not now. His voice won’t let him. But that’s okay. You’ve got the radio on and need to focus on the road, and you’re taking him back to Wayne, and all he really wants to do is sleep.

And you just drive, and hold Eddie’s hand as he clings to you, and this is good.

It’s good.

Little Eddie deserves the fucking world.

You think so.

And you know of a handful of people who would wholeheartedly agree.

Slowly, you think Eddie might start to understand where you’re coming from.

He was never okay and happy and fine.

Still isn’t okay and happy and fine.

But the light has been switched on.

There’s light now.

He might one day be okay and happy and fine, and that’s something that before today was the most difficult thing to grasp.

“We’re taking you home, kiddo. I got you.” Eddie whispers, soft enough so only he can hear it over the engine and the music coming from the radio.

“Let’s go home.”

---

The Taglisted

@almightywdm, @alwayslindie, @capricornrisingsstuff, @chaoticgood-munson, @dailyobsession

@eddies-puppet, @elvendria, @emma-munson, @emotionaldreamer, @everythinghasafacee

@ferfan14, @figmentofquinn, @gri959, @hazelenys, @joesquinns

@keikoraven, @kennedy-brooke, @kravitzwhore, @lovelyblueness, @loves0phelia

@mandyjo8719, @munsonluvrr, @munsonssweets, @nadixq, @niallersfreckles

@notverywise, @overthinking-raccoon, @pepperstories, @pinchofhoney, @readergf

@royale1803, @sherrylyn0628, @shizlac, @solzi1420, @songforeddiemunson

@sweetberry47, @take-everything-you-can, @thebellenouvelle, @tlclick73, @werepartnersnow

@witchwolflea, @xxladymjxx, @yunirgo

Add yourself

#eddie munson #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie fanfic #eddie fanfiction #eddie x reader #eddie munson stranger things #eddie munson x female reader #stranger things #st4 #self insert #icallhimjoey

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theofthevalley · 2 months ago

Note

could you do a headcanon of hermes’ with a reader who is insecure about dating a god? like they think they aren’t enough for him cause so important and stuff?

GN reader would be great aswell!

luv ur writing btw

“Divine Insecurity.”

⇢ ˗ˏˋ Hermes Headcanon’s with Insecure GN!Reader

⇢ ˗ˏˋ It was safe to say that you were, in fact, a bit shy when it came to being in a relationship with Hermes. You weren’t embarrassed by him, oh no, it could never be that. But you thought you were good enough for him. How could a god like him fall in love with a mortal like you? What did you have that made him fall in love with you?

⇢ ˗ˏˋ He could have had anyone else, so why you? He can be with plenty of other mortals in high places, even other gods. There’s no way he would love just you, right? He’s busy and does so many important tasks, so why would he even give you the time of day?

⇢ ˗ˏˋ That’s how you were feeling at that moment. Your head was swirling with bad thoughts about maybe you’re not enough for him. He could do better than little ol’ you.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ Hermes had just arrived back from delivering messages and was about to pull you into his arms and shower you with kisses when he noticed the way you looked at him, like there was something on your mind. Which, in truth, there was, but you couldn’t tell him, it would just be embarrassing to let him know!

⇢ ˗ˏˋ But, being a god of communication, he gave you some space, he thought he may have done something, or you’re just in a bad mood because of another thing. Even so, he gave you some space until you reached out to him yourself.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ This resulted in you sitting in his lap, burying your head in his shoulder as he rubbed circles around your back. He then spoke softly to you as you continued to cling to him.

“Are you alright? Did something happen? Did I do something? Do you want to speak about it?”

“Mhm, I’m fine…sorta. It’s just, why me? You can do so much better than me, so—!”

In that moment, he cut you off with a small huff and squished your face together with his hands. You then sit there with him doing that, trying to shut you up.

“Stop that, Hermes!”

“Nope! Not until you get those silly thoughts out of your head. How could I not love you?! Your voice, your laughter, your smile, the way you talk when you like something, the way you take care of things so delicately. I could go on and on, darling!”

Your face was warm as he stopped squishing your face in his hands. You were flushed with his words. Does he love you that much? But why? You just couldn’t wrap your head around it. It seems like you won’t ever will, but at least you know he loves you and cares about you. He cares a lot.

“Mhm…okay, I understand. A little. This is hard, y’know, being with a god and all, sometimes I feel like since you’re so important that there’s something or someone else that you can be putting time into.”

“Well, just so you know, that’s not the case; this god has only thoughts of you! Even when I’m off duty, all I can think about is how my lovely partner is waiting for me.”

⇢ ˗ˏˋ And so he places a small kiss on your head to comfort you even more about it. He adores you, and now you know that you shouldn’t have doubted your relationship. He loved you and only you. And to him, there was no one else but you, and that made your heart sore with affection.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ You then wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips in response to how he unknowingly touched your heart. He giggles into the kiss and holds you close. You were just as divine as him.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ Advertisement: Hey you! Yeah you, the person who read this whole thing, do you like Hermes? Well this blog is THE place for Hermes fanfiction. Check my bio if I have requests open and my rules. MY REQUESTS ARE OPEN!!

A/N: Yahoo!! Another one down. 😋 I hope you liked this Anon!! And anyone else who see’s this. Also there was an ftm!version of this that someone else asked, but I felt like I’ll just do this version since it’s gender neutral and it can be interpreted as such!

Word Count: 642 words

#epic hermes #epic hermes x reader #hermes epic the musical #epic the musical #hermes #epic #epic the musical x reader #epic x reader #x reader

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thereweredragonshere · 2 months ago

Note

what headcanons do you have for the riders in a modern au?

Sorry if some of these are a little basic lmao I don't think about modern aus all that much.

They all live in Britain. Sue me. I want some dragons over this side of the atlantic.

Hiccup -

Does digital art

Plays minecraft religiously and can do red stone better than he can do maths

has failed exams due to his pretty much illegible hand writing despite answers being mostly correct

Listens to exclusively 80s/90s music

Lives in a flat above a pub that his dad owns called 'Berk' aka 'Berk's bar' (Which is a whole au that i have and is where i got the name for my discord server from lmao. But these headcanons aren't all specifically from that au. Just general ones.)

Gets bullied quite bad at school. He's taken days off because of it before.

Class presentations are his worst nightmare. Can never get his words out during them and gets very freaked out.

Astrid -

Plays Rugby, Football, does boxing, really name any contact sport and she's probably tried it at some point. Her favourite lesson is P.E. (Physical education/gym class) and she will riot if it gets cancelled for some reason.

'Difficult' student. She struggles with anger management and schools are shit at helping kids with that, so she gets labelled as a problem child cuz she always chats back and gets sent out of classrooms.

Despite being a 'problem' child, she still gets all the shit that needs doing done.

Never shows up to school assemblies. She usually just goes and finds a staircase to sit on.

Divorced parents. She bounces between houses quite a lot.

Spends most of her free time at the gym. Buffstrid canon in modern times too people!!

Snotlout -

Got massively bullied in year 7 and like half way through year 8 he switched the fuck up and became a fucking menace. Bro was NOT playing.

Rides horses. Hookfang is a horse.

Is lowkey fucking amazing at maths but he's scared to put effort into it cuz he thinks he'll get made fun of.

When him and Astrid become friends they actually bond over being the 'problem' kids. Though Astrid is a bit more than Snotlout.

Constantly in corner shops. He loves buying overpriced american sweets.

Fishlegs -

Actually very rarely gets bullied cuz no one knows who the fuck he is (Until the gang all become friends, then people DEFINIATELY know who they all are.)

Loves the three sciences. Even physics. He actively enjoys doing physics.

Kinda not really a teacher's pet. He won't tell on you but he certainly won't partake in whatever it is you're doing on your phone in the middle of a very important english lesson.

Loves shakepeare.

Him and Snotlout (When the gang all become friends) set up one of those stupid cliche 'pay me and I'll do your homework' things in the boys toilets at school. Snotlout did the discreate advertising and Fishlegs did the homework. They split profits 50/50 and they both found it so funny that it actually worked. And then they got busted by the head teacher and that's the first time fishlegs ever got detention.

Ruffnut -

Local school fact file. She can tell you every single detail about the place. Wanna know when that one piece of gum you just accidentally touched was stuck to the table? She'll fucking know.

Giver her £10 and she will eat literally anything.

Actually CAN'T get bullied cuz she just doesn't give a fuck

Very good at english/languages

Has never done homework a day in her life. Never will.

Brings random live animals into school every now and again. Much to the genuine delight of Hiccup.

Drives her parents' car somewhat regularly, despite not being old enough and not having a licence.

Tuffnut -

Can tell you the translation of ANY word into French. This guy is a MACHINE in French lessons.

brings full sized nerf water guns into school.

Chicken is canon. Ruff and Tuff share their bedroom with Chicken.

Never ever sits normally. Always swinging on his chair or sitting cross legged.

Chronic beanie wearer

#I probably have more i just cant think of them lmao #httyd #how to train your dragon #hiccup #hiccup haddock #astrid #snotlout #fishlegs #ruffnut #tuffnut

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pparadiselost · 1 year ago

Text

the gentleman and the lure.

akira kurusu x fem reader you thought your relationship with akira ended five years ago, but a chance encounter with him has you rethinking it all. warning(s): nsfw, timeskip au (akira is 23), reader implied to also be 23 minors do not interact.

in all honesty, you initially thought this whole thing was your eyes playing tricks on you.

but some deeper, unconscious part of you knew otherwise. nothing else, nobody else in this world could make you do a double take in the same you just did, your feet hesitating like an out-of-beat step in the larger waltz from the passersby around you. shibuya is wild like that, demanding your adherence to the dance while setting your imagination free.

you blink. it can’t be him.

that chapter of your life had closed five years ago, and you were now preoccupied with finding your place in the world. it had taken a lot of time, a lot of anger and bargaining, a lot of unspoken grief and nights sobbing into your pillow wondering if there was anything you could have done to change the outcome, but ultimately, time proved to be the most effective medicine. you closed that part of your youth with a bittersweet tinge in your memories, and you tucked it somewhere close to your heart to savor on nights whenever drinking alone wasn’t enough to plunge you fully into the depths of your personal melancholy.

but it is him.

wavy tufts of midnight black hair, smooth skin like a greek statue come to life, and sleek black glasses frames that only momentarily hide the big innocent doe eyes that make you stop dead in your tracks.

your throat clamps down on itself. the cacophony of the city suddenly mutes itself in your ears, and you can’t hear any of it. none of the footsteps, the voices, the honking of cars and the blasting advertisements, the chirping of pigeons, everything becomes completely obsolete as you struggle to even breathe. you want to say something, to even get a pathetic squeak out, but it’s as if every part of your mind shut down instantly, and you realize you were rendered frozen.

the man standing a few feet away from you also does a double take, and a few annoyed pedestrians storm between the two of you. but he doesn’t move and neither do you.

“is… is that you? is that who i think it is?” he steps closer, and you can make out his soft voice. his lips are a gentle shade of cherry red, and you’re suddenly aware of how much taller he is than from when you last remember.

your eyes tremble when you finally let yourself take a good look at him, and despite the initial features that caught you like a deer in headlights, you also notice that he’s changed more than you thought. he’s definitely older. his features are sharper. his chest is a bit bigger and shoulders a bit broader, jawline more defined and the once-cherubic roundness in his eyes have honed themselves into something more adult-like.

your heart skips a beat.

“it is you.” there’s nowhere else for you to run now, now that he has you within arm’s reach. you’re still dumbstruck, the million thoughts in your mind unable to string themselves into tangible words, and you’re scared that this chance will slip out of your hands and become something you regret for the rest of your life. but at the same time, there’s too much emotion overwhelming you, almost like the entire passage of time spiel was rapidly unraveling in your head.

your tongue is a deadweight on the inside of your mouth, and yet when he reaches out to grab you, his hand wrapping around your arm and tugging you in his direction, leading you out of the middle of the crosswalk and towards the safety of the sidewalk, all you can conjure up is a surprised gasp. you sound like a wounded animal, but you let the dark-haired man whisk you away, your legs and feet stumbling behind you as if he was a puppeteer and you, the puppet.

it’s only when he takes you to a more secluded area, the mouth of an alley a little tucked away, do you manage to eke out your first words to him.

your voice shakes. you sound like you’re about to cry. you feel like you’re about to cry. “k… kurusu.”

he laughs under his breath, and hearing it makes you want to throw up on your own feet. you’ve craved that sound for so long. it haunts your dreams, your waking moments, the breakdowns you might have had when you stayed up past your bedtimes and let your mental demons claw too long at you.

“that’s me.”

he pauses for a second, and he glances at you almost sheepishly. he is older, but he’s definitely still very young. probably around 23, most likely fresh out of college, maybe looking for his first job out in the real world, going through the same growing pains as you are right now. he still retains that boyish charm you ascribed to him in your brain, and you see it clearly through his big angelic eyes.

“it’s been a while, hasn’t it? i’m sorry. i should apologize for that,” he starts calmly, “i didn’t mean to lose contact with so many people after i moved back home all that time back… especially with you.”

what were you supposed to say? the path of least resistance would be to lie and say that it was alright that you let him go, that you spent your time alone practically torturing yourself over a love that could no longer be. but it wasn’t like you could suddenly dump all of that, especially within the first few minutes of meeting him again, and it wasn’t like your body was being particularly cooperative either.

you hold your breath. he waits a beat, and then he rummages through his pocket and extends his phone towards you.

“here. i wish i had more time to catch up with you. i’m getting back from my lunch break right now, so i can’t stick around. but put in your information, and if you’re willing, i really want to take some time and talk to you again.” his black eyes are on you again, and you can see your startled reflection staring back from his irises. “would you be okay with that?”

you’re a person haunted. possessed. you wordlessly take his phone from his hands, and you methodically type your information in. you give it back to him without much more fanfare, and only then does he allow himself a smile.

his fingers brush across yours, and the spark that shoots straight to your stomach leaves you reeling. your heart sinks like a rock when you see his happy face. his smile is beautiful and poised, and it’s nothing short of a lethal poison to your consciousness.

“thanks. i have to run now, but i’ll contact you as soon as i can. it… it’s a miracle to see you again. i didn’t think a day like this would come.” he admits. he shifts his weight slightly, and he rechecks his watch before nodding apologetically at you. “i know it’s long overdue to say something like this, but… take care of yourself. i’ll see you soon.”

maybe in another life, you would have reached out and grabbed him by the back of his cardigan to yank him back towards you. maybe in another life, you would have followed him out to the train station that had stolen him out of your life and whisked him home, condemning you to a solitude you couldn’t wish upon anyone. maybe in another life, you were a different person that he might have considered worthwhile to keep a connection going, instead of forcing you to spiral and wonder if this was a love worth fighting for.

but it all comes crumbling when you see him dash away. you see the lush glimmer of his black hair as it bounces with his steps, long legs striding across the white paint of the crosswalks. if you were doomed to be the tragic side character stuck behind the whims of a cruel writer’s desires and fate, longing for the warmth of recognition, then this man is undoubtedly the protagonist, always just slightly out of the reach of your outstretched fingers.

the rest of shibuya closes in on him like a curtain call, the people of the city drowning out your vision of him like waves crashing down, and you’re left alone as the overwhelming and biting loneliness wraps its arm around you and chokes you from the inside out.

…

how could you describe akira kurusu? there was no easy label to slap onto everything that went down five years ago, back when you were both young and in high school and didn’t know any better. all the lovebirds on your social media apps threw around these buzzwords like situationship, delusionalship, this and that, but you hate the thought of defining what you and akira had with something so soulless. so simple.

but at the same time, you couldn't deny the truth that whatever you and akira had wasn’t clearly defined either. there were no labels despite the complexity of the relationship, and it was every bit ambiguous as the same situations everyone else bemoaned about their lackluster love lives.

it was this ambiguity that proved to be the stalker at the foot of your bed each and every night.

you two were schoolmates. you tutored him a few times. went on dates with him a few times. slept with him a few times. you two had a relationship in every sense but the label, and you had learned to foster intense and real feelings for him. you’d listen to his heartbeat while curled up in his little bed in leblanc’s attic, and you’d wake up to him rubbing the sleep out of his eyes while you’d pretend to sleep so you could cuddle him a bit longer.

but just as quickly as it seemed to begin, his probation was done, and he left tokyo before you could find any way to cling to him even across all the distance. you had hoped that he’d reach out to you in some way and let you know that you weren’t entirely delusional in believing that you had something special with him, but the long stretches of silence made you realize harshly that there was nothing for you to cling to anymore.

you’d even turn up to leblanc by yourself a few times, and sojiro would shoot you a few glances. but you never mentioned akira to him, and the old man never mentioned akira to you either. it was a silent understanding between the two of you as sojiro fixed you a cup of coffee the way you liked it, that neither of you had been successful in hearing from akira.

“so,” his calm voice shakes you from your thoughts. you’re no longer in high school and crying on your bedroom floor over your boyfriend-not-boyfriend who moved back home. you don’t feel much more adult than your teenager self, but you’re sitting at a table across from akira, who’s busy scrutinizing the menu in his hands.

you reach for the glass of water to your right and take an impatient sip. your mouth feels dry, and it’s a good tactic for you to fully avoid conversation for a little while. just a few days prior, akira had reached out to you through the newly acquired number he got from you, and he had asked you to get dinner with him like he said he would.

you should have known that this would open up old wounds, but the “what if” that nagged in your head had you accepting his offer before you could fully think it through.

could you even call it an offer though? without any real string attached? this was exactly the same way he would unofficially ask you out when the two of you were young. you two would romp all over shibuya, eating yummy snacks and doing all sorts of dumb things, too drunk in each other’s presence to really take in the world around them.

“does anything catch your eye? i heard that this place was pretty good through the grapevine,” he admits. he glances up from his menu and smiles shyly, and you almost choke mid-swallow on your mouthful of water. it’s just so unfair how deceptively pretty he is, despite the fact that the word handsome would be more suitable for a young man he is, but you know better than to think that you could ever resist his sparkling eyes.

you set your glass down. “i’ve never been here before, so… you know this place better than i do. i suppose we can ask the waiting staff here for recommendations.”

he closes the menu. “that sounds like a good idea. do you want something other than water to drink? there’s no need to be polite—this dinner is my treat. oh, don’t make that face. i was the one who invited you out, so it’s only fair that i treat you.”

were you making a face? you bit back the urge to touch your face and hide your expression behind your hands. this really felt too much like a date, and despite the walls you wanted to put back up to fend akira off, his subtle ways of peppering you with the attention you craved so badly deep down through what felt like small talk was a bit too smooth for your liking. did he do this often with other romantic prospects while he was gone? what other people did he take an interest in since the last time you had seen him? god, did he butter others up as he was with you?

you push those negative thoughts out of your head. his five years of silence spoke enough for itself, and you scold yourself internally. you should know better than to swoon over your long lost first love again, and for you, the purpose of this dinner was for you to find closure. you didn’t want to open a door to your heart for him too quickly again, lest he end up slamming it back in your face once more.

the silence between the two of you became uncomfortable. you gather your courage, soothing over the uneasy heartbeat rattling at your ribcage, and you look at him pointedly. “...i wanted to ask this last time, but i didn’t get a chance to. how have you been, kurusu?”

he stares at you as if you’ve grown a second head when his last name leaves your mouth. he leans forward and places his elbows on the table, and he folds his hands, palms down, so he can place his chin on his intertwined fingers. “kurusu? you called me that when i ran into you.”

“what else would i call you?” you don’t want to give him the satisfaction of calling him akira just yet. calling him by his first name was something personal, something intimate. it was a title reserved for people close to each other, and while you might not have hesitated had the two of you retained your relationship from before, right now, he was nothing more than a stranger to you.

he’s horrendously perceptive, and akira shrugs. “you know what to call me.”

your stomach does a flip, and you don’t want to give him more of an opening to flirt with you. it feels as if he’s stabbing you emotionally and twisting the knife into your heart, making sure you can feel the yearning and the pain in every tendon, muscle, and sinew of your being. “why are you in shibuya again?”

he pushes back against his seat slightly, his long fingers wrapping themselves against the edge of the table. “job hunting. i graduated university fairly recently, and i need to keep myself afloat. i figured a big city would have some good opportunities. and besides…”

he trails off slightly, and as much as you hate it, you’re pretty sure you can predict his next words. this place is like a second home to him. he has history here, connections, something that could serve as the foot-in-the-door for his future. he stretches his neck a little, and his jet black hair catches and twinkles like the remnants of starlight under the dim light of the restaurant.

“i’m a little picky about what i do.” his gaze is on you again. “you of all people should know that i’m not the kind of guy to be a corporate slave. i know having the ability to choose is a luxury in a society like this, but i can try, can’t i?”

you wish he wouldn’t say that. you wish you didn’t know him so well. you wish he would stop assuming that you did. you curl your fist in your lap under the table. big emotions swirl in your chest: regret, desperation, anger, but above all, a sense of foolishness for thinking that maybe, just maybe, your desire for him wasn’t as unfounded as you believed it to be.

“c’mon,” he urges. he leans in, and his voice quiets itself. “there’s a lot i have to explain to you. i… i know there’s a lot i did you wrong by. but that’s why i’m here, aren’t i? won’t you give me another chance?”

your heart plunges into your stomach when you hear the sweet cadences of his softened words. the same tones as the dulcet “good morning”s he’d whisper to you after a romantic night, the “get home safe”s he’d wish you when he’d drop you off at your train station late at night, the same whispered words from a lifetime past. he can definitely sense you wavering, the fear in your eyes, the misery that he single-handedly caused.

your lips quiver. the wise thing would be to not answer him, but could you really bear to do that? to sit in silence and close that door. this whole thing could backfire on you and leave you even more broken than he did before, but the gnawing in your gut tells you the very thing you had feared from yourself.

you were still in love with akira kurusu. you had always been.

“d-don’t make me answer that.” you hang your head. akira hums softly, and he pushes away from you again, lengthening the distance between you and him across the table by just a few more inches so you could breathe.

“well… you have the rest of the evening to think about it.” he raises his hand, smoothly waving someone from the waiting staff over. he looks to you through the corner of his eye, and when your eyes meet, he resembles less of the boy you once loved and more like a gentleman this time around, still craving to get his paws all over your love and steal it away selfishly for himself, but with more of a dangerous edge to it. like a blade hidden behind a pretty wrapper, you know his aim was to always gun straight for your heart.

his eyes narrow slightly. his lips part ever so slightly, as beautiful as the day five years ago you had given him your last kiss.

“but at the very least… why don’t you give ‘us’ another chance?”

…

“...thank you for dinner. it was very lovely.”

“there’s really no need to thank me. think nothing of it. like i said, it was the least i could do for you.” akira rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. the night air is cool against your face as the night settles down on the busy city. there’s the distant honking of horns, an ever present reminder to you that the inhabitants of shibuya never truly sleep. the world is constantly moving around you, just like time, whether you like it or not.

the sun is long gone, and the bright city lights replace its glamor. they almost remind you of stars if you let your vision unfocus, but right now, the floor is suddenly the most interesting thing you’ve seen in your entire life.

“if that’s all… i should be on my way before it gets much darker.” if you could run away from the entrance of the restaurant, you would do so in a heartbeat. you want to go home and lock yourself in your bedroom and sob your eyes out into your pillows, undoubtedly over all of the reopened wounds and over your own cowardice in regards to how to face akira. it was like whenever you made the resolve to get over him, he’d romp around your mind, and whenever you tried to play into his game, he’d simply turn the tables on you.

he glances at you. disappointment tinges his features, and it’s enough to make your heart squeeze with a bit of a painful pang. “already…? i was going to ask you if you wanted to do this again. i’ll be around the city for a little bit, and i really enjoyed myself.”

you stop dead in your tracks. it’s a bad idea to accept, but you can’t bear to do it when he’s looking at you with those big, wide eyes. it’s his ultimate weapon, paired best with his quick mind. he knows how to get you to crumble, to make your own mind turn against you, and you’re hesitating again. akira has you dancing in the palm of your hand all so effortlessly.

it’s best for you to be ambiguous. just because he can see all of your cards doesn’t mean that he can predict the way you’ll choose to play them. “i’ll see when i have time in my schedule and get back to you.”

he looks at you as if he’s unconvinced with your lackluster answer, but he’s smart. he chooses not to press you further about it. after all, cornered prey tend to get the most defensive, and he would much rather that you walk willingly into his honeyed traps.

“y’know… are you busy right now then? i’ve got a bit of a hankering for something after such a nice dinner, and my place isn’t too far off from here.” he moves closer to you, and your heart leaps into your throat at the sudden proximity. he smiles gently at you, almost too innocent for your own good. “i’ve been practicing brewing coffee all this time. i could fix you a nice cup. it’ll be a lot better than all the shitty ones i’d make you drink when we were both in high school. do you still like your coffee the same as you did back then? c’mon, it’s just one cup. i’ll make it worth your while.”

you should be wiser. sharper. stricter. but akira looks like a kicked puppy, and he also looks like he’s about to grab onto your wrist and beg on his knees if you were to give him the cold shoulder and leave. there’s a sticky lump in the back of your throat that won’t go away no matter how much you swallow, and you wonder if giving in to him would make the uneasiness in your stomach go away. would it be worth it?

“...you said your place wasn’t far?” the words coming from your mouth feel like a death sentence. the black-haired man instantly lights up, and he nods enthusiastically.

“just a couple of minutes. follow me. i promise i won’t make you regret this.” he reaches for your hand, and sparks shoot across your body when his long fingers wrap around yours, tugging you closer to his side. your stomach plummets, and you’re struck with the horrifying revelation that his hands feel so right intertwined with yours. it reminds you too closely of when he was yours, of when you’d walk side-by-side as if you were a real couple.

you can barely remember the walk to his place. you vaguely recall crossing a few streets, your attention too transfixed on the man guiding you. you stumble up a few apartment steps, your heartbeat hammering in between your ears and stirring up a storm in your temples as he fumbles with his front keys, swinging his door open too eagerly, and practically shoving you into his apartment suite.

your throat tightens up for the millionth time that night when the first thing you can make out from his doorway is how much his apartment simply smells like him. it hasn’t changed in five years; he still smells exactly like the way he would when you’d nuzzle into the crook of his neck all those years ago.

“it’s not anything special.” he comes up from behind you, kicking his shoes off before straightening them by the entrance. “but it’s perfect for someone living alone. i promise it’s normally a lot cleaner than i have it right now, so ignore anything that… might be a bit messy. y’know how it is with us men and living alone.”

you barely respond to his joke as you slide your own shoes off, stuck in basically a trance-like state. you trace your eyes over every part of his tiny apartment: the pictures hung up on his wall, the coats hanging from the closet with the door slid halfway open, the mismatched bits of furniture he most definitely got second hand. despite his warning, his place is maintained nicely and clean, nothing short of what you’d expect from someone as surprisingly prim and proper as him. he’s a gentleman to his core.

he leads you to his living room, where you can get a pretty good glimpse of his small kitchen. his place is rather intimate, cozy, the kind of place that feels like it was made to welcome you. you barely keep yourself from curling your hands into fists to keep them from shaking, and you focus your mind on the details you can see as you sink down into his couch.

“stay right there.” akira pads into the kitchen, and he opens his cabinets to rummage for his supplies. “i’m going to break out the really fancy coffee cups, just for you. sojiro never taught me this part specifically, but i’m pretty sure he’d rip my teeth out if i served my coffee to a pretty lady in a regular cup.”

you almost stop breathing when he slips in a compliment so nonchalantly. you want to scold him and tell him to quit doing things like that. it’s bad for your resolve, and you hate to think about how he managed to get this smooth while you were gone. you gnaw on your tongue as akira hums to himself, working his magic with the beans of his choice. soon enough, the mature aroma of coffee stains the air, wafting like a magic spell towards you and intermingling with his scent. you could get drunk off a smell like this, entranced and held captive in place without a single restraint to physically hold you down.

you’re so caught up in savoring this nice atmosphere, irregardless of the weird tension mounting the back of your mind, that you barely catch akira as he brings you a fancy cup filled with freshly made coffee. he has a matching one for himself, a pair finely decorated porcelain cups that feature what looks like a painted couple in old rococo-esque clothes. they’re definitely meant to be used together, probably best for a couple. you don’t really get the chance to overthink it too much, as he hands you one and keeps one for himself. you mumble a shy word of thanks as you warm your hands against the glass.

your reflection stares back at you when you glance over the rim. the color is dark yet refined, like you’re staring into a rippling lake rather than a cup of coffee. it smells even more delicious now that it’s up close, and it feels like a shame to drink it. it makes you wish that you were a coffee connoisseur in the way that akira is, like you’re unfit to be able to appreciate the art that comes with making a beautiful cup of coffee.

“i made it just the way i remember you to like it. but better, of course, now that i have more practice under my belt. i know what i’m doing with my coffee now. go ahead. try it, and let me know what you think.” akira encourages you. his eyes are twinkling in clear excitement. you peek at him and then back at your dumbfounded self staring back in the coffee.

you bring the cup to your lips and take a tentative sip, not wanting to burn yourself. a rich and deep flavor, bitter and yet delectable, coats your tongue and the inside of your cheeks. it slips down your throat easily, warming you up from the inside and out and taking away the tension building up in your body straight away. you let out a small sigh of happiness as you take the cup away from your lips, and you’re pretty sure your contentment is written all over your face.

he grins. “good, isn’t it? i knew you’d like this one. i’ll spare you all the details about the beans i’ve used since you probably don’t want to hear it. but have as much as you’d like. nothing makes a man prouder than knowing that he’s made his girl happy.”

there it is again. you look down at your coffee cup with mixed feelings stirring in your heart. but the atmosphere right now is too good for you to want to ruin it. you want to savor what little sweetness you can steal from him. you’ve willingly walked into the lion’s den, and if you’re staring directly into doom’s maw, the very least you could do was to find some enjoyment in it.

so instead you simply lift the cup, pretend you’re gulping back any regrets and doubts in your mind, and take another generous mouthful of the coffee akira’s specially brewed for you.

…

“ohhhh- ah- fuck- wait, d-don’t touch me there like that…!”

your body twists violently against his bed, and akira laughs softly against your ear. his grip on you from behind is tight, and no matter how much you thrash against his chest, he refuses to let go of you. your skin is hot despite the cool fabric of his sheets, and it feels like your body’s going to completely give out on you.

you already knew from the start that his coy invitation for coffee was just bait for him to lure you into his bed. but even with that knowledge, there’s something about being stuck back in a lewd embrace with him again that has your stomach coiling in with both excitement and shame. both of your clothes are strewn against his floor, and his cheap mattress creaks as if annoyed whenever you writhe in his arms.

“you’ve changed so much during the time i took my eyes off of you.” one hand gropes shamelessly at your bare tits, sighing when he feels the plush flesh of your chest fill out his palms. his fingers play with your erect nipples, applying just the slightest bit of pressure all to get you to cry out and throw your head back against his bare chest. “and yet… all of your sensitive parts haven’t changed whatsoever. you’ve missed me, haven’t you?”

you don’t have any words for something like that. your lips are swollen from how much he’s kissed you, the small talk about coffee nothing more than an overture for him to lead you into his bedroom, effortlessly coaxing your clothes off of you and indulging in your body again. you hate how well he meshes with your body, how responsive you are to his physical touches, as if you’ve been waiting for this as much as he was.

“i asked you a question.” his sharp voice cuts through the haze in your thoughts, and you shudder when his other hand snakes down your stomach. one knee expertly separates your legs, and a moan builds up in the back of your throat when he starts playing with your wetness.

akira is a tease through and through. he slides his fingers up and down your slit, and you let out an embarrassed squeak, wanting to cover your face. your juices cover his digits, and heat throbs in your core and pulses under the skin of your face when you register the slick sounds your folds make.

fuck—were you really that aroused already?

“so wet… and all we did was kiss. are you that turned on from just that? you’re rather naughty, aren’t you?” he looks at you with words that are nothing like how sweet his eyes are. your voice dies out in your mouth as his fingers start to circle around your pulsing hole, almost like it’s a silent reminder of how much easy access he has to your body.

it’s not fair how easily he can get you to physically succumb to him. this was definitely your fault; you refused any other romantic prospects ever since akira left you, which meant that it had been five long years where your only sexual release was whatever you had to offer to yourself. and with how badly you’ve been pining after him, it was safe to say that touching yourself came nowhere close to having akira’s hands wandering all over your body again.

you yelp when he bites down slightly at your ear, his sharp incisors nipping carefully at the thin skin.

“i want an answer,” he demands breathlessly. “you’ve always been so shy… that part of you hasn’t changed at all.”

“d-don’t make me answer that…!” you choke out. your voice is high-pitched and strained, nothing like the collected facade you had shown him during dinner. he pinches your swollen clit, and pleasure stabs at your stomach. you arch your back against his chest, another desperate cry escaping you. he’s good at this little back and forth, flickering between torturing your clit to rubbing loving circles into your sticky nub. your pussy convulses, and your inner walls are drooling to be fucked out and stuffed with his cock. your body’s missed his touches almost as much as you have emotionally, and the fact that he’s experienced with your body does nothing in your favor.

he presses his lips into the gentle curve of your face, kissing you over and over again. his kisses are so sweet and chaste, unlike the way he toys with your lower half. your hole flutters and dances around his fingertips, leaking like a broken faucet, your pussy telling him everything you refuse to verbalize. he knows how much you want him to fuck you, but he also knows how stubbornly shy you can get. and he also knows that sex is so much more fun when he can peel back all of your walls to get you right where he wants you.

“you’re going to have to answer me, you know,” he purrs. the vibrations reverberate against his chest and towards your bare back. “a gentleman would never do something his lady doesn’t want to do. you can thank sojiro for that.”

you squeeze your thighs slightly around his wrist, and you shudder. “please… don’t do this to me… it’s embarrassing.”

“it’s only me… you’ve slept with me before. why so shy now?” his tongue laps at the shell of your ear, and another shiver runs down your spine when his warm tongue captures your sensitive skin, licking against the thin skin and making your pussy clamp up unintentionally. “unless…? don’t tell me. is there another guy you’ve been doing this with?”

you shake your head vehemently. you wouldn’t ever dream about fucking someone that isn’t akira kurusu.

“like i said, it’s- it’s embarrassing…!!” you breathe. his hands feel so good, touching you all over from behind. you can feel him grinding his hard-on against your ass, and your throat constricts on itself when you feel how big and thick he is. he was always well-built even when you fucked him during your teenage years, but in your memory, he wasn’t this big… your cunt throbs painfully with anticipation at the thought of being stretched out on such a big cock after such a long dry spell, and the arousal swirling slowly in your stomach pleads with you to set your pride aside just this once.

he sighs against your ear. he’s disgustingly sensual, that stupid akira, and his words are honeyed and sensual. “it’s only me… c’mon, all you need to say is that you want me. ‘please fuck me, akira! please fuck me with your cock! i want it inside my pussy!’ that's all you need to say. not too hard now, hm? i basically told you what you needed to say.”

heat burns at your cheeks, and there’s a lump in the back of your throat. you want it, you want to do everything he just said so badly. you want him to pin you down to his cheap mattress and fuck the daylights out of you, until you can’t feel your legs and you can let go of all the emotional baggage you built up. the shame and the embarrassment grip in between your hips, and you swallow back whatever hesitation swims in your gullet.

“p-please fuck me, akira…,” you whisper, your voice barely audible. “i want you inside me… want your cock inside my pussy…”

“hm? what was that? i could barely hear you.” akira presses harshly against your clit. you let out a loud yelp, electric pleasure jolting up in your pussy. “see? i know you’re capable of being much louder with that pretty voice of yours…”

if looks could kill, you would have murdered akira in your bed with the glare you shot him. he blinks innocently at you, a small grin poised on his lips. this is a battle you can’t win, unless you want to leave his house unsatisfied and unable to do anything about the throbbing deep inside your gut.

“please fuck me, akira!” you make sure your words are pointed. “i-i want you to fuck me! please put your cock inside my- my pussy…!”

he laughs under his breath and rewards you with a kiss, even though you’re flushing with heat and wishing the ground would open up and swallow you whole. “oh, i’ll gladly do that, sweetheart. that wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

you bite back your complaints, heart thumping wildly inside of your chest. his erection prods against your thighs, and you part them wider so he can slot himself from behind. you swallow again when his cock slides up and down your slit, and your vision spins when he grinds up against your pussy. his fingers continue to rub and play with your clit, making sure that you don’t get even a second of rest from him.

his pre-cum stained cockhead prods naughtily at your fluttering hole. you take in a deep breath as he presses his tip against the tight ring of muscle. his dark eyes peer at you. “ready, my pretty girl?”

you nod, and a moan immediately lodges itself inside your mouth when he pushes himself in. he’s slow, painstakingly slow, when he pushes himself in. it’s like he wants you to feel every inch of his length, reminding you of everything you’ve missed, of how good it felt to have his cock penetrating you again after so long. akira hisses through his teeth, pushing his cock into your cunt, fighting past through all of the hot and wet tightness, and it takes all of his self-restraint not to empty his balls into your pussy right there and then.

“shit…,” he says breathlessly, “were you always this tight…? fuck- your pussy’s clenching all over my dick… can’t get enough of me now, can you?”

you focus on your breathing, trying to relax your body. a dull sense of pleasure pricks at your brain, and it spreads and trickles under your skin as if it’s a droplet of blood pooling at your fingertip and dripping down. your stomach curls in on itself, and even when you were bracing yourself for the stretch, feeling it all anew feels like it’s blowing your brains out.

“ah-,” you exhale shakily, trembling in his arms, “s-so big…”

“yeah?” he sounds strained too, his cock twitching dangerously against its tight restraints. “‘ve missed this pretty pussy so much, love. i knew you weren’t someone i could just let go willy-nilly. i’ve got you now, pretty, all in my arms.”

you hum, savoring the sensation of your plush walls stretching out to fit his cock, his balls tensed up at your entrance. he hadn’t started moving yet and you were this starstruck over his dick. how the hell were you going to live through the whole ordeal? it didn’t matter. even this much felt good and had you writhing like a lithe cat against his chest, your curves slotting straight into his wandering hands like two matching pieces of a puzzle.

“y-you feel different,” you mumble as one hand ghosts over your chest and the other makes its place in between your thighs again. a whimper bubbles up inside of you when he goes back to rubbing slow circles into your clit, your pussy clenching up and massaging his dick as arousal shoots through your stomach.

“mhm? tell me about it.” he draws his hips back carefully, and you can hear him let out a haggard exhale when your walls cling to him, not wanting to let his cock go. the friction has you seeing stars in your mind, your brain threatening to melt into goo. he’s still incredibly slow as he pushes back into you, giving your body a chance to catch up, but even at this pace, his thrusts are deep and full.

you shouldn’t stroke his ego, but you wouldn’t be lying if you said that the five years you spent apart from him did change him. maybe you also had gone too long without him and the withdrawal had changed you too. “i don’t know… you feel bigger- feels good inside me…”

“yeah? keep talking to me then. i missed that sweet voice of yours.” his eyelids flutter when your walls twist around him, your greedy pussy eagerly sucking him in deeper and swallowing him in. “ohhhh, fuck…! shit, you feel so fucking good- so fucking tight… haven’t had your pussy in way too long…”

your chest tightens, and you can feel your breathing growing shaky. his thrusts are slowly getting faster, finding a groove that has your thoughts quivering with each snap of his hips. you’re hypersensitive to how he feels inside of you. you can feel everything, and your pussy remembers again how good it felt to have him fucking you. he remembers too, the angles that you liked and just how deep he needed to fuck into you to get you to squeal. and speak of the devil-

“-!! akira!! n-not there, akira! s-so deep-!” your words start slurring together. pleasure rips through your pussy as he effortlessly locates your sweet spot again and starts bullying your deepest parts with his cockhead. “i-if you keep fucking me like that, you’re gonna make me cum…!”

“you say that like it’s a bad thing,” akira chuckles. his dark curls sweep against his forehead, eyes hiding behind the wisps of midnight black hair. “what if that’s what i want you to do? what kind of man leaves his girl unsatisfied? it’s only fun when you’re feeling good… i want to see if i can still get you to crumble after all these years.”

you hiccup as he keeps fucking into you. you can’t think properly, not when he’s hitting your sweet spot without any issue, each thrust forcing his cockhead to slam into your g-spot right on. he keeps playing with your clit, moving in rhythm with his thrusts so that you don’t get even a moment’s worth of reprise. your chest is tight, and your breathing is ragged, your brain only managing to hang on just to get enough oxygen to your fluttering heart.

“yeah, you like it when i touch you like this, don’t you?” akira sounds so full of himself as he practically purrs at you like a cat. he wasn’t lying when he said he missed your body; his cock keeps drooling inside of you. your juices intermingle and mix, acting as the perfect lubricant for him. each snap of his hips is faster and harder, and your mind keeps lighting up with sparks of pleasure as his cock stretches you out. “that’s my girl. ‘m so glad i got your attention again. life is just too boring without you here… ‘m not gonna leave you again, you hear? i made that mistake once. i’m not gonna make it twice.”

“akira!” you scream out, unable to hold yourself back. so much for that rightful fear of yours. you could never resist him, not when he’s saying the very things you dreamt of for five years straight, consoling yourself with no one at your side, just imagining how things might be different if he had wanted you as much as you wanted him.

and now he does. now he’s gripping onto your body, making you twist and turn with pleasure, completely at his mercy with your legs spread apart and your cunt stretched out his girthy cock. the squelching noises as his cock slides in and out of you are downright obscene, and you can’t remember the last time you had gotten this shamelessly wet. not even masturbating had your pussy this excited; your fingers could never replace what real dick did for your cunt.

“there we go. that’s my name,” he praises you. “scream it all you want for me. i want to hear your pretty voice. it makes me feel really good when i hear you crying out my name… it’s like you know that i’m your man. only me. not anybody else.”

you shudder, his dirty talk making your stomach furl in on itself. you hate that silken tongue of his, how he can say such sweet things to you and yet turn you on so badly. you’re glad that he likes you this much; otherwise, you don’t even want to think about what other embarrassing things he might make you do for his own entertainment. this is his version of playing nice. you’re lucky that he considers himself a gentleman and would do anything for your pleasure.

the lewd sounds of lovemaking and skin against skin quickly fill the room, and he’s thrusting into you just the way you like it. he wasn’t lying when he said he remembered every detail of your sensitive body. he was so good at playing with your body that it almost felt like you were being attacked at all angles. he was showering your nipples and clit with attention, his lips chasing after your body and pressing sticky kisses all over whatever patches of bare skin he could reach. he’d lean his head to make out with you too, eating up your moans as you cry into his mouth, his tongue swirling against yours and making you almost collapse into a heap of sweaty limbs and lovejuices out of how good it was.

“so tight… yeah, you like it like this, don’t you? my cock is the best, isn’t it? you keep clenching up around me, pretty girl,” he breathes. his words are velvety and dark, and whenever he slips his tongue into your mouth, he tastes so addictively good. “i can feel how much your pussy wants me… even if you’re committed to being this shy, your body tells me everything i need to know.”

“don’t say things like that…!” you somehow force your words out through gritted teeth. “i already told you, it’s embarrassing!”

his lips curl into a cruel smile as he nuzzles his face into the side of your neck, clearly enjoying the way he’s making you squirm. if there’s one thing akira loves, it’s putting you in the hotseat and knowing that he has this kind of effect on you. “is it though? i’m only telling the truth.”

he pinches at your clit at the same time he thrusts up harshly into you, and you let out a breathless shriek as red-hot pleasure rams into your gut. your inner walls clamp down unconsciously onto his dick, gripping onto every inch of his cock. your cervix milks and massages his tip, your pussy pleading desperately to be filled up with both his cock and his cum.

“just like that.” he sounds so pleased with himself. akira isn’t the kind of guy to get a big head and walk around as if he ruled the place, but he wasn’t one to let any of his victories just slide past. “see? that pretty pussy of yours won’t lie to me.”

your stomach won’t stop lurching with each rough thrust. the heat deep inside of you keeps coiling into painful knots, and you think you’re going to lose your mind. all you can think about is how good it feels to have akira messing up your insides, your walls squelching and molding itself to the shape of his cock. the pleasure is mind-numbing in every sense of the word, and your brain keeps devouring all of the sensations flickering underneath your skin. he knows how to get you aroused too easily, and he makes sure you feel everything he’s doing to you. whether it’s speeding up or slowing down, egging you on with your most sensitive parts, he doesn’t give you an opportunity to really catch up with him.

“feels good- feels so good-,” your words are starting to melt together incoherently, all of the overwhelming sensations getting the better of you. “if you keep fucking me like that, you’re gonna make me cum…”

“oh, silly girl, we’ve talked about this already.” he kisses your shoulder, and your mouth goes dry when the tip of his sharp teeth ghosts over your exposed skin. “i already told you that that was my goal from the very start. i wanna see my girl cum all over my cock, just like you used to do. you’d make the prettiest noises as you came… are you going to moan for me like that again? or are you going to get shy? do i have to fuck the moans out of you?”

you whimper helplessly, cunt tightening up. you hate how much that turns you on, how much letting him have his way with you has you melting like putty. you must have more of a masochistic side than you’re willing to admit, given how much you get off on having akira manhandle you.

“don’t be mean to me… you’re so mean…,” you eke out weakly.

“i’m not being mean. if anything, you’re the mean one… is it too much for a man to want to see how good he’s making his girl feel? i want to see your face twisted in pleasure, your voice all ruined for me, your body all messed up because of me…,” he hums to himself. the lump in the back of your throat is there again, and as if to accentuate his point, he thrusts sharply into you.

a shockwave of heat shreds you from the inside out, and you arch your back harshly. he keeps torturing you like this. is this his way of edging you? keeping you this close to the edge and telling you about how much he wants to make you cum but not really letting you? akira loves how responsive your pussy is, how you keep milking his cock and fluttering all excitedly around him whenever he whispers about all the lewd things he wants to do to you. your thighs won’t stop shaking, and your juices are dripping everywhere, coating his balls and trickling down your skin and messing up his sheets.

you’re going to cum soon. your body feels weak and flushed all at once, and heat keeps mounting wildly inside of you. you can’t keep up with everything akira’s doing to you, and no matter how much he’s teasing you and whispering all sorts of dirty things into your ear, all of it is going straight into making your pussy feel good. your cunt won’t quit sucking him in, instantly hooked on the feeling of having your ex-fling’s cock stuffing it again.

you’re better than this. you know that, and yet you’re not above falling prey to akira’s words and honeyed traps. he’s spun a perfect web to ensnare you in, and you never stood a chance. he has you right where he wants you.

and you look so, so beautiful to him. he can feel how close you are. your pussy keeps pulsing and squeezing around his length, and your moans are growing more and more desperate. your eyes have lost focus a long time ago, but he knows that if he were to grab your face and force you to look at him, your pupils would still dilate and show him a clear reflection of his triumphant face. sweat beads at your body, and your bare skin is all laid out for him to admire. how could he ever leave you behind like that? you’re everything he’s ever wanted and more. it’s almost too good for him to believe.

“wanna cum-,” you stumble over your own words. “please- ‘m so close, akira… it hurts- don’t edge me…”

he hums, and you let out a pained whine when he slows his pace down, dragging his cock out of you painfully. your hole clings to every inch of his cock, not wanting to let him go, scared that he won’t fuck himself back into you. your brain lights up with pleasure as he slowly fucks himself back in before speeding back up, and the sensation is like whiplash to your overwhelmed senses.

your stomach curls dangerously, and your vision shakes violently as the heat rushes to your gut. you’re so close, so close to cumming, basically almost there. you hold your breath, anticipating the dizzying fall, just needing a little more from him to tip you over the edge. you clench your eyes shut as your insides throw a fit, overstimulated and reeling from how downright good it feels to get dicked down again.

except akira won’t give it to you that easily.

you let out a drawn out cry when he controls his pace and refuses to give you what you want, and you writhe in his arms, clawing at his bare skin and shaking your head back and forth. it’s awful, you hate it, you hate not being able to cum, feeling like there was a dry spell that refused to be satiated. you feel hollow and empty despite him fucking his cock back into you, trying to build that arousal back up.

“y-you’re edging me!” you protest. “please- i was so close- just wanna cum… it hurts…”

“sorry.” he doesn’t sound sorry at all, but he tries to appease you by pressing another flurry of sweet kisses to your face and neck. “can you blame me though? you sound so pretty, look so pretty… i like knowing that i still have it in me. hm? i’m making you feel good, aren’t i?”

it’s unfair how easily he can mess around with both your physical needs and your emotions. all you care about right now is the burning in between your thighs, the secondary pulse inside of your pussy wanting release. your pussy keeps getting more and more sloppy, juices spilling everywhere. your body isn’t resisting any of his touches anymore, and he’s fucking into you without cracking a sweat.

“c’mon,” he whispers seductively. “let me hear you beg for me some more. this is the only time you’ll ever sweeten up to me. you’re usually the thorny one otherwise. think you’re up for it? or do i need to tell you what to say again?”

your throat tightens, and your mind wavers. your thoughts have hazed over a long time ago, not caring about anything else happening in the world. all that mattered to you right now was the delicious stretch of akira’s cock inside your hole, and all you wanted right now was to cum all over his dick like you didn’t have a shred of pride left in your body. and you bet that was what akira wanted out of you: his guarded and jaded former classmate fucked out into a loving, cum-stained mess right in his bed.

the words are leaving your mouth before you can even fully comprehend them. “want it- want it so bad, akira… please, please, wanna cum on your cock- i’ve wanted it so bad… wanted it all this time, nothing else made me feel good! your cock’s the best, i wanna cum on your cock… please- i can’t think about anything else!”

he laughs breathlessly. you don’t know if it’s because he’s incredulous or if it’s because he’s impressed. maybe both. you couldn’t care less, not when your arousal pounds painfully throughout every corner of your body. you think you’ll actually burst if you don’t get to cum soon.

“yeah? god, can you blame me for getting so greedy with you when this is the kind of shit you reward me with?” he kisses your temples softly, and his lips move against your sweat-beaded skin. “i suppose i’ve tortured you enough, yeah? what a good girl you are, doing everything i ask you to do… it’s okay, i’m not going anywhere. you can cum on my cock as much as you want. it’s my turn to pamper my girl a bit…”

finally. finally…! good god, you swear you’re about to see the pearly gates right there. akira angles his hips just right, and he rams mercilessly into you, savoring the choked out cries and moans of thanks you let out, his name generously mixed into your muddled whimpers the way he likes it best. you’re hanging on by a thread, and akira’s fucking you in a way that’ll have you come undone any moment now.

“c-cumming…! ‘m cumming- akira- oh fuck- fuck, fuck, cumming!”

your cunt clamps down on his cock like a vice, and you throw your head back, a breathless shriek dying out on your lips as your orgasm crashes into you like a brick wall. something warm and wet gushes out in between your thighs, and heat overtakes you entirely. it feels so good, feeling that tightness in your gut snap and unravel and come completely loose, all of the pleasure coursing through your veins and making your mind go entirely blank. you can barely force a breath through your mouth, shuddering as akira guides you through your high, keeping your quivering walls stretched out to their limit as he pumps his cock in and out you through it all.

your world spins, and it feels like everything is giving out under you. your already foggy vision is fighting to stay as it is, and you cling to whatever part of akira is holding you from behind. fuck, you can’t remember when the last time you came like this was. masturbating and fucking yourself on your fingers all by yourself always felt so dull and lackluster, and actually getting a taste of real dick after having been deprived for so long felt like your entire universe was being flipped upside down. you didn’t even realize how badly you were shaking until akira held firmly onto your form, keeping you locked flush against his bare chest.

“ooh, bet that felt really nice-,” his voice warbles through your hearing. your heartbeat roars against your ears, and it takes everything in you to fully focus on what he’s saying. “fuck- i missed making my girl cum like that… i almost forgot that you make such a pretty face whenever you cum… makes me want to tease you even more. yeah? did it feel that good to cum on my cock? you missed it too, didn’t you?”

your head is heavy as you try to get yourself to nod, fully aware of all the slick covering his cock now. did you really cum that hard? you can’t make heads or tails out of anything right now, the aftermath of your high still possessing you fully. you’re a fucked out mess in that moment, and your head buzzes with the dull thrums of euphoric pleasure. you’re vaguely aware of how much akira’s dick is twitching inside of you, undoubtedly hurtling close to his own high now that he’s seen you turn into this mushy mess all because of him.

his balls twitch against your lower lips. his cock keeps spasming deep inside of you, and the same desperation that had claimed you whole is egging him on too. he wants to fuck his cum into you, watch your cunt struggle to keep all of it, stare down at you with his lust-stricken eyes as the pearly white ropes start to leak out of you.

you whine against the friction as he keeps bucking his hips against yours, grinding up just to feel a bit more of you. your head spins at the overstimulation, with him still rutting against you despite the fact that you just came. “t-too much, akira-”

“i’m close, promise-,” he grunts out. “bear with me, okay? so close, gonna fill up your pretty pussy with my cum- you’re being so good for me…”

you nod weakly. you want him to fill you up, want to feel the swell of your stomach as his cum floods your insides. you can bear that much. you keep crying out for him, letting your voice spur him on. you’re sure you’re going to be a sore mess tomorrow, aches already spreading across your lower back and legs, but with how much downright pleasure he can plunge you straight into, it’s a worthwhile trade off.

“god, you’re so fucking perfect…! take it- fuck- take it all… gonna make you mine, gonna make you my girl-,” akira groans. you yelp when he grabs at your hips and keeps you stuck in place, and he buries his cock as deep as he can fuck himself into you. a cold shiver spreads across your spine when he cums hard straight into your cunt, and the warmth bursts across your gut. your walls keen and strain as it stretches out to take his semen while his cock is still stuffed inside, and a sense of otherworldly bliss spreads across your brain when you can feel white hot ropes flood your womb.

“ohhhh- fuck- god-,” akira cries out. he buries his head against your shoulder, panting heavily. your intoxicating scent fills his nose, and he swears that he’s no longer on this earth. just as much as you’ve craved the physical intimacy, akira longed to feel this again, to feel your weight in his arms, to feel the warmth of his cock softening inside of your cunt as your lovejuices mix together. all sorts of hazy pleasures flicker up inside of his mind, and there’s nothing he wants to do more than to keep whispering sweet nothings to you and have you all plugged up with his cum, cement you as his for just a few seconds longer.

but he knows better than to push his luck even more than he has. your mind is swimming even more than his is, and he has to be the responsible one despite having initiated this whole mess to begin with.

he pulls out with a low groan, and you turn over to lay down on your back finally. your knees part unconsciously, and when akira sits up, he’s immediately entranced at the slow stream of his cum that trickles out of your fluttering hole. his cum slides down the curve of your ass and onto his sheets, a small pool forming underneath you.

did… he really cum that much?

he lets you have a second to pull yourself together, and he helps you. you’re still shaky, but you manage to thank him quietly as he gets up. he grabs the base of his half-hard cock, and he presses the sticky tip to your mouth. you look up at him wordlessly through your eyelashes, but your tongue darts out in between your lips. you obediently start licking the excessive cum off of his length, making sure to swirl your tongue into his slit and let him see you swallowing down whatever he couldn’t fuck into your throbbing cunt.

you missed this salty, heady taste too. you wish you weren’t so fucked out, wish you had something intelligent to say to this. more than anything else though, you wish you could feel something other than a sick sense of delight at everything that went down. you should be mortified at letting him pry his way into your heart so easily, for letting your walls down so quickly despite having spent five years building them up.

but now that everything was said and done, all you wanted in that moment was for him to lay down again so you could crawl back into his arms and feel his heartbeat against your bare body. that was the kind of man akira kurusu was. you couldn’t bring yourself to stay away from him for too long, no matter what you tried. you two were meant to be, no matter how much that sentiment had hurt you whenever you were young.

akira mumbles something about getting ready to clean you up, and you gingerly let yourself flop back down on his bed. fatigue seeps quickly into you. too much happened all at once that night, and no matter how much you fought through the fog in your head to make sense of everything, you remember very little after a certain point.

…

the appetizing scent of curry and coffee greets you when you slowly let your eyelids flutter open. you’re still naked, and the blanket covering you is light and cool. a gentle stream of sunlight tiptoes through the bedroom, and you stir, suddenly aware of how sleep-logged and heavy your body feels. still, it feels nice when you stretch your arms and legs, before realization slams into your consciousness like a sack of bricks.

you shoot upright, and your back immediately screams out in pain.

fuck. you messed up. you messed up big time.

you scramble to the edge of the bed, and in the corner, your clothes are freshly laundered and folded up. uncertainty gnaws at your stomach, and you rush to get dressed, haphazardly dragging your clothes over your head and slithering into whatever you had on last night. there’s no sign of akira anywhere, at least inside the bedroom, but this place is very much not your room nor your bed, so it has to be akira’s.

it was one thing to go out to dinner with akira and go back to his place for a cup of coffee. it was another to somehow end up having sex with him and passing out in his bed as if you two were actually lovers. you want to slap yourself in the face as the mortification fully settles in. you had only wanted closure last night, and now you don’t know what to make of the situation. things just got messy way too fast; you never had intended on sleeping with him, let alone letting him fuck you raw and creampie you.

you have half a mind to make a run straight for his front door, but when you crack his bedroom door open, you can hear humming and the clattering of plates from the kitchen. you shyly pad out into his hallway and towards where the noise is coming from. whatever foolish hopes you had of making a clean getaway were gone the moment you woke up, clearly having slept in from how much sunlight was pouring in through all of the windows. the very least you could do was maybe thank him for taking care of you last night and apologize for staying the night unexpectedly.

“oh!” akira whirls around with a pan in his hand. surprise blooms on his face, but he quickly smiles at you. “you’re up already! was i too loud? here, why don’t you take a seat at the table? i was hoping i could wake you up with breakfast already prepared, but i guess you beat me to it.”

heat pricks at your cheeks. you want to decline his offer, but the scent of food hits far stronger now that you’re close to the source. you’re begrudgingly reminded of how hungry you are when your stomach practically yowls, so you hang your head and shuffle awkwardly over to take a seat at his dining table. at the center is a small box of contraception and a glass of water, clearly meant for you, and you’re rendered shy again at how far ahead akira is compared to you.

he must have woken up early to have run to the store for plan b and to have enough time to basically cook up a whole meal for you. you don’t have to wait long before akira proudly presents you with a plate of hot rice and curry, followed by a mug of coffee prepared the way you like it best.

“eat. you’ll need the energy if you’re going to be taking the pill,” he encourages you. he presses a spoon into your hand, and you say a quick word of thanks before digging into the food. you’re not sure if it’s because he’s a good chef or if it’s because you’re ravenous, but you make quick work of breakfast. akira laughs softly at how you’re wolfing down your food and reminds you to chew, but before either of you know it, both of your plates are empty and a strained silence lingers above your heads.

“um…” you glance nervously at him. “i can do your dishes before i leave. and- um- please let me know how much i owe you for everything. i really should be on my way…”

“do my dishes? owe me anything?” the dark-haired man looks at you as if you’ve grown a second head. “are you in a rush to go somewhere?”

you should lie and tell him you have a prior appointment. if you’re smart, you would have hopped on the closest train that’ll take you far far away from this dangerous man. but clearly you aren’t as smart as you believe yourself to be, given how many times you chose against the “smarter” option to land yourself where you are now. what’s one more indulgent mistake?

“not… necessarily.” you don’t know how to tell him that you’re not sure how to face everything now. it’s impossible to close the gap of five years in just one hookup, no matter how much your hearts might have both yearned for it. there’s a lot of heavy emotional work left to be done if you want something meaningful to come out of it, and you can’t deny the fact that akira has objectively hurt you by disappearing from your life five years ago.

but when he reaches over the dining table to take your hand and squeeze it encouragingly, your resolve can only hold strong for so long. you peer up from where you’re staring down at your lap. his beautiful doe eyes are looking straight at you, and your heart throbs painfully inside of your chest.

you want him. you want this. you want all of it to work out, somehow.

“if there’s no hurry,” he murmurs soothingly, “stay a while. we have so much we have to catch up on.”

you want to believe in the good. in the worthwhile. in the in-betweens and the gray spaces and the happy endings that are still in the making. it might not have been there the last time, but things have changed, regardless of whether or not you’re willing to accept. with his hand intertwined with yours, this newfound tension hanging between the two of you, maybe it’s time for you to close the gap that had been plaguing you for so long.

this time, you won’t be alone.

author's note: wowee two fics from user pparadiselost within a week!!! i know, i know i have the most random posting schedule oopsie,,,, (//ω//) this fic is dedicated to @clubkira and was inspired by her lovely selfship with akira kurusu! i hope you all enjoyed reading, and if you want to show some appreciation, please consider donating to the humanitarian cause in gaza!!

#persona 5 #p5 #persona 5 royal #p5r #persona 5 x reader #p5 x reader #persona 5 smut #p5 smut #kurusu akira #x reader #fem reader #my writing

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