#fanfiction rewatch homework and this is what i get

[deardarlingthings]

rewatching S1 finale and the ending with Ted seeing James Tart Sr. tearing his son apart, I don't know how I missed that they are in the Treatment Room. The room that was said to be haunted. Jamie is still haunted by his ghosts at this point, so the treatment room just makes sense and-

[rjalker]

Something About Hope and Kindness and Killing the Rich.

I didn't plan to write any fanfiction for The Murderbot Diaries but, well, that didn't last long. It/its pronouns are not just for fictional robots. So have some pro-it/its pronouns propaganda.

Summary: One of Dr. Mensah's children comes out to Murderbot as nonbinary, before telling anyone else.

Meant to be taking place at least a few years in the nebulous future, no specific date or anything. I made up names for two more of Amena's siblings since she has six of them. I also just made up a plot for part of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon because come on, it's Murderbot's favorite show. Why don't we know anything about what happens in it? It's just unrealistic.

Words: 11,200.

I finished writing it on June 19th 2022. There are as of this moment six books and one short story. If you've read all those and read this and see a name or an event that's unfamiliar, assume I made it up to fill out this little mini somewhere-in-the-future universe. The storm thing is 100% made up. As are the acid spitting foxes.

You can read it on fanfiction.net here if you want to leave an anonymous review, or you can just read it here on tumblr below the read-more.

there might be some random typos that I missed the last time I checked through it because I'm sick right now and keep getting distracted when I try to proofread it again. Let me know if you find any random mistakes (in replies or reblogs rather than leaving a review on ff.net)

I don't think there are any spoilers, since most of the stuff referenced in this is just made up, lol...

===================

Murderbot stared at the folded up piece of paper that had landed next to its feet, which were currently bare on the soft carpeting. The remains of what had been its shoes were still out in the woods somewhere, probably either being torn to shreds by the cubs, or being melted even further by their furious parents.

It had been looking at the patches of fresh metal on its feet, trying to decide whether it liked the new texture or not, and rewatching the last episode of Farscape for the tenth time, when the paper landed.

The paper was white, and had been folded into the shape of a paper shuttle, with “read” and “me” written across the tops of the wings in thick black marker.

Murderbot paused the episode, but didn’t look up from the floor, it just said into the newly-functional, short-range only feed, ::Why.::

Tamara was sitting on the opposite side of the room, hidden behind the back of the sofa. Out of the corner of its eye, it had watched her stand up, throw the paper, and then duck back down out of sight.

She replied out loud, sounding stubborn. “Read it and find out.”

“You’re interrupting my show.” Murderbot pointed out. Usually Dr. Mensah's family was more polite than this.

“You’re not at work, I’m allowed to.” Tamara retorted from behind the couch.

Murderbot rolled its eyes, but bent to pick up the paper, now curious despite itself. Tamara usually wasn't one to be sarcastic.

It could hear her over there scratching away with a pen, going back to writing, presumably on other paper shuttles. Why she wasn’t just doing it in a feed document, since the feed was accessible again, it didn’t understand. Humans were weird.

But maybe it was homework. The people of Preservation thought that teaching their kids how to read and write the old fashioned way was important.

Murderbot unfolded the paper, and found that the inside was striped with different colors. So that meant this was that special kind of paper they made just for folding shapes out of. So probably not homework, unless the homework was throwing paper shuttles at the local SecUnit. Or maybe the homework was just origami in general. With Preservation, you never knew.

The paper was cyan at the top (once Murderbot figured out which way the handwriting was supposed to go), then darker blue, then white, then purple, then cyan again, with white dotted lines and arrows lining the creases where it had been folded. 

Tamara had written on it in some sort of thin but deep black ink, with handwriting that started off neat and tidy and centered, but then got progressively more crooked as it went down the page. So clearly she needed more lessons on proper handwriting.

The paper read,

-Hi SecUnit.

I'm writing this on paper because I think if I tried to say it out loud I'd get nervous and mess it up and just end up confusing everyone. So instead of doing that, I'm writing it down. I could go on and on for pages explaining all the details, but I don't think you'd be interested, so I'm just going to say it without beating around the bush.

I'm trans, or transgender, since I don't know if you've heard of it before.- (Murderbot had, in fact, heard of it before. Many times, in fact. It was trans itself, not that it let many people figure that out) -It means someone who's not the gender everyone assumed they were when they were born.

I'm trans. I'm not a girl, and I'm not a boy either. I'm not a woman or a man. I'm nowhere in between. I’m something else. I'm non-binary. I've decided I want to change my name and pronouns, and I wanted to tell you and everyone else I know in person first, before I change them in the feed and make it public. 

I could just change them in the feed, or put out a notification for everyone, and let them figure it out for themselves, but then I would be tempted to delete it before anyone can read it, and this way I can't chicken out. Also because all three of my parents would probably cry forever and never forgive themselves if they thought I was too scared to tell them myself.

So this is me coming out, at least to you, SecUnit. I'm trans. I'm nonbinary. I want to be called it, instead of she, the way you are. I'm kind of stealing your pronouns. I hope you aren't mad about that, because I really like it/its pronouns. I like how they look and sound, and I like the way they make me feel.

I'm not a she, I'm not a he, or a they, or a de, or an ae, or an e. I'm an it. And I'm an enby. And someday when I'm older I'll be a nonbi. 

So please call me by it/its pronouns from now on, rather than she/her.

And as for my name changing, I want to be called Evrim from now on. So update your internal tagging system or however it is you remember people's names and pronouns and stuff :)

Don't tell anyone until I give them their letters, okay? Once I tell everyone I know, I'll update my feed profile, but for now, please just keep using my old name and pronouns if other people are nearby, I don't want anyone blabbing about it to my friends before I get a chance to tell them. But if it's just the two of us, it would be awesome if you would call me Evrim and by it/its pronouns :)

Signed,

Evrim Eshayda Mensah.

Ps: Yes I’m also changing my middle name. Yes that is a name I made up. It’s my name, I can do what I want. 

Pps: But seriously, don't tell anyone.-

Murderbot read through the paper again, just to make sure it wasn’t reading the handwriting wrong.

It wasn’t sure what it had been expecting to find when it picked up the paper shuttle, but it certainly hadn’t been expecting this.

It realized that it recognized the colors on the paper, now that it had the context of what was written on it.

Cyan, blue, white, purple, and cyan was one of the gender pride flags used by people outside the Corporation Rim, though Murderbot couldn’t remember what this one was called. It had appeared in a few of the shows it had downloaded since it had first come to Preservation space.

Od Saga, the time-traveling archaeologist from the Aftermath series, used it along with dozens of other pride flags, including what was apparently the original trans pride flag, which was blue, pink, white, pink, and blue, from back before history was really even worth keeping track of.

Except the humans of Preservation seemed to really care about remembering as much history as they could, which is why they still knew what the original flag looked like.

It was also why the Farscape show still existed. Someone all the way back in stupid times had decided to preserve the show, and kept updating the preservation technique as technology progressed, so that all throughought history it kept being saved and updated and preserved. All so that humans and bots and constructs could keep enjoying it. There’d been no money involved in the scheme, it was all done just because someone could, so they could share it with others.

They had the original version that had been in English, as well as different translations into other languages, and some that updated it to have more modern language, since a lot of humans struggled to understand the original at this point after how much languages had evolved since it had been written.

Murderbot read through the paper one more time, just to make sure it wasn’t struggling to understand. Usually it could read a lot faster, much faster than a human, but the handwriting wasn’t exactly standard feed text, and that was tripping it up a little bit. Evrim added little details to the letters that made some of them overlap and run together, which took a little getting used to.

It got to the end of the page again.

And then it hesitated.

It had watched plenty of scenarios like this in all the media it had watched. There were whole movies that revolved around exactly this situation. It knew what the right way for characters to react was－acceptance, reassurance, comforting－and what the wrong way to react was. It knew what kinds of things its favorite characters would be saying in this sort of situation, it could even imagine their voices clearly in its head.

But it didn’t know how it, Murderbot, was supposed to react, what it, Murderbot, was supposed to say.

It lowered the paper down to its side, and started with the most basic thing it could do that was the right thing to do.

It went to its memory files, and updated [Tamara, Dr. Mensah’s second-eldest daughter, she/her/hers/herself] to [Evrim, Dr. Mensah’s...] 

...And, okay, there was a problem there already; it didn’t know what the equivalent term for daughter or son was in this situation.

If Evrim were tercera, it would be shiary, which it remembered from when it had met Rami, and ART had frantically researched what ‘tercera’ meant. But Evrim hadn’t said it was tercera, it had just said it was nonbinary, which could mean any of thousands of genders, including "just nombinary". Which meant Murderbot would have to ask if it had a specific one in mind, and what word it should be replacing ‘daughter’ with.

For now, it settled for, [Evrim, Dr. Mensah’s eldest nonbinary offspring, it/it/its/itself].

Okay, that was done.

What else could it do? It still didn’t know what to say. It had really hoped it would somehow magically know once it updated the info, but no such luck.

Evrim had gone quiet, no longer even writing. If Murderbot had its drones, it would have been able to see what it was doing, but they’d all needed to go in for repair after "the storm of the century" as the humans were calling it, and none of the cameras in this house were functioning yet either. So all it had to see with were its eyes.

Murderbot hesitated, listening to see if Evrim was going to do or say anything. But there was just quiet, like Evrim was even holding its breath in anticipation.

Murderbot might not know how to talk to humans very well, but it had enough experience not wanting people to look at it to know when to return the gesture. Evrim had hidden behind the couch out of sight for a reason. If it wanted to be seen, it would come out.

So Murderbot stayed where it was, flexing the joints in one foot on the soft carpet to test the work-through it had gotten at the clinic, and said, “Evrim is a good name.” That was true, so that made it easy enough to say, despite the nervous sweat it could feel breaking out on its organic parts.

It was also easy enough to say, “I’m not mad about you wanting to be called it/its, that would be stupid. It’s not like I own them or anything. I don’t think you even have propietary pronouns out here in the－”

Evrim exclaimed, “What!?” and Murderbot's heart-rate went up a notch in startlement, before it heard Evrim moving behind the couch.

Murderbot stopped talking, trying to calm its heart-rate back down without drawing attention to the fact that it was quietly freaking out.

Evrim's face appeared out of the corner of its eye, staring over the back of the sofa, its eyes wide and indignant as it demanded, “You have proprietary pronouns in the Corporation Rim?” Murderbot could smell the anxiety pouring off of Evrim, which wasn't actually reassuring at all. It was worried about messing up and hurting Evrim's feelings. Evrim already being this afraid was just making it more worried.

Murderbot kept its gaze on its feet as it answered, being excruciatingly careful to keep its voice sounding calm and normal so it wouldn't startle Evrim into hiding back behind the couch. This would be easier if it could avoid making any eye contact at all, it gave it more room to think. If it could have gone to face the wall without definitely making Evrim think it hated it, it would have. But doing that would definitely be disastrous.

Evrim clearly wanted to change the subject, so Murderbot very gratefully let it. It could remember all the times it had wanted to change the subject and hadn’t been allowed to. So it said, carefully going along with the change of subject as it explained, “Yes. Corporations lease them out, and you have to pay a subscription fee if you want to use them. And then it costs extra for the company you’re renting them from to guarantee that other corporations will use those pronouns when contracting with you.” it could feel its heart-rate going back down slowly. The Corporation Rim was one of its most hated places, but at least that was a familiar negativity it knew how to deal with.

The fear of accidentally destroying the trust someone was placing in it by coming out to it was a brand new fear that it could never have imagined it would be facing.

There was a moment of silence while Evrim digested what it had said. Then Evrim said, slowly, disbelievingly, its fear-smell fading as it also calmed down slightly, “So you’re telling me that not only do you have to pay to use pronouns in the first place, you have to pay extra to not be misgendered?”

“You pay extra to ensure the corporations that have signed agreements with whoever you’re renting them from won’t misgender you.” Murderbot corrected, feeling its levels returning almost ti normal, “It costs even more after that if you want to make it a punishable offense for anyone else to use the wrong pronouns.”

Murderbot could feel Evrim staring at it. That tended to happen whenever it talked about what life was like in the Corporation Rim. Most people on Preservation couldn't even imagine it. 

Then Evrim asked, “If they’re that evil, then why haven’t we－” Evrim lifted its arms to gesture expansively, probably trying to indicate Preservation as a whole, “Gone in and killed the people in charge yet?” It sounded disbelieving and angry and slightly desperate. That was also usually how it reacted any time it learned about anything that happened in the Corporation Rim. Though it hadn't started out with violent suggestions, those were increasing in frequency as time went on and it learned more and more.

Murderbot almost laughed, the idea was so stupid. But at least with Evrim it didn’t have to worry about it actually trying to enact any kind of plan like that, at least not yet. Evrim couldn’t leave the planet without permission from a parent or guardian (because it turns out humans could be the guardians of other humans too, not just bots and constructs they were pretending were free), and even if Evrim could go by itself, it wouldn’t be able to buy any weapons.

‘why hadn’t Preservation launched a war against the Corporation Rim’ was such an absurd question it was almost funny. Almost.

“Because you don’t have enough guns or ships or soldiers to kill them with.” Murderbot said, “And even if you did, they have SecUnits to use as canon fodder, and you don’t. Their soldiers are expendable. Yours aren’t. It wouldn’t work.”

Evrim sighed, drooping. “I know,” It said, sounding resigned, “I just wish I could do something to help those people over there. No one deserves to live under rules like that. It’s so unfair...” It trailed off. "And you're not expendable." It added, like it expected Murderbot to argue the point.

"I was." Murderbot said simply. This wasn’t an argument, this was just a fact. "For most of my existence, I was expendable." It didn’t know why humans always acted like the way it had been treated was something it needed to be convinced was bad. Just because it knew it was expendable didn’t mean it didn’t care if it lived or died. It couldn’t watch media if it was dead. There was a difference between being expendable and not caring whether you lived or died.

Evrim didn't seem to know what to say to that, and seemed to realize there wasn’t any point in trying to argue with the literal facts, and Muderbot didn't feel like talking about it at all (talking about the Corporation Rim? Fine. Talking about itself in particular? Not so fine), so it didn't elaborate, and silence fell over the room.

After at least two minutes of it awkwardly fidgeting over on the sofa, where Murderbot stood there looking at its feet and wondering what or if it should say anything at all,  Evrim asked softly, hopefully, “So you really like my name?”

And they were back on topic again. Awesome. Murderbot was totally prepared for this.

At least this question had an easy answer. “I wouldn’t have said I liked your name if I didn’t mean it." It said truthfully, "It’s a nice name, especially because you’re choosing it for yourself. No one can take it away from you.” It didn't know what the name Evrim meant, but it sounded nice, and it knew Evrim wouldn't have just picked something at complete random that it didn't really like.

Out of the corner of its eye, it saw Evrim push itself upright, then swing its legs over the side of the couch so that it was sitting on the back of it, its toes hanging down just above the carpeted floor. “So you’ll call me it?" It checked, "Just when no one else is around, I mean?”

“Yes, I’ll call you it.” Murderbot assured, less nervous now, for some reason. It using Evrim's pronouns wasn’t even in question, though there was one small hiccup in the request, “Though if we’re the only ones in the room, I don’t think there will be much opportunity for me to call you it, unless you want me to talk about you like you aren’t here. Which, I mean, I can do that if you really want.”

Evrim paused, as if caught off-guard, then admitted, slightly sheepish, “No, that is a good point. I didn’t even think of that.” It started bouncing its feet off the back of the sofa one at a time, which helped further lower Murderbot's anxiety levels as Evrim continued,  “Well, you don’t have to talk differently than you normally do, but if you can at least call me Evrim instead of Tamara, I’ll be happy.”

“I already updated my tag for you.” Murderbot assured, and figured that if it was going to ask, now would be the time to do it. “I sort people by relationships, and since you’re nonbinary and not a girl, I assume you won’t want to be called ‘daughter’ anymore, so what should I put instead? I’m a little familiar with the nonbinary gender known as tercera, and a tercera offspring would be called a shiary, but I wasn’t sure if you had a specific gender in mind, so I wanted to ask what word I should use instead.”

Apparently this was the wrong thing to say, because Evrim went silent, and stopped bouncing its feet on the couch, which was almost definitely a sign that it was upset. Evrim liked bouncing its feet on the couch. Murderbot looked up, afraid of what it would see but needing to know how much it had just fucked up. So much for starting to think the conversation had been going well! Murderbot was never going to talk to a human it cared about ever again!

Evrim must have seen how worried Murderbot was, because it threw its hands up and said quickly, “I’m not mad! I’m－I’m so happy I don’t even have words for it!” It was grinning so widely it looked painful, and tears were forming in its eyes. “I’m not crying because I’m mad, I’m crying because I’m happy!” It insisted, even as its voice wavered on the edge of breaking.

As though to prove it, it leapt off the couch and was across the room in just a few long strides, coming to stand in front of Murderbot, its hands held behind its back. “I’m not going to touch you, don’t worry, I’m not an asshole, but I just...” Its grin somehow got even wider, and it was definitely starting to cry now for real, and Murderbot had to look away. That was just way too intense a level of eye contact for it to handle right now. It looked down back at the floor, unable to think of anything else to do that didn’t include running away.

And okay, wow, it was just now noticing that Evrim’s shoes were in the same colors as the pride flag that had been on the paper. It didn’t have stripes, but now that Murderbot knew what to look for, it was really obvious. The main parts of the shoes were cyan, with little blue and purple star-shapes scattered across it, and white detailing. The colors matched the paper exactly, like they’d been color-picked from the same source image.

And there was still some moss and dirt clinging to the seams of the leather.

Evrim said, with no less happiness in its voice even though it was clearly struggling to stop itself from crying, “I’m just really happy, okay? I promise I’m crying from happiness, I’m not upset. You can call me sapling, like a baby tree.”

Like the dozens of species of trees it had wanted to show Murderbot, which was why they’d been out in the woods in the first place. It was this planet’s version of spring, so the trees were doing what passed for flowering in this area. Well, the ones that had survived the storm were. Most of them had been knocked over by the wind or flood waters or by older trees falling and crushing them.

Sapling, okay. That was easy enough, and it sort of made sense. Trees weren’t male or female, or at least they weren’t on this planet. (Evrim had been going on and on and on about the different species of trees found in this area and what made the things they called ‘trees’ on Preservation different from the ‘trees’ that had once been found on ancient Earth, but Murderbot didn’t really understand any of it. Biology was not its strong suit, and killing hostile life-forms didn't exactly serve much in the way of  education.)

So Evrim was Dr. Mensah’s sapling, not daughter.

Murderbot went to its memory files, and changed the tag to, [Evrim, Dr. Mensah’s sapling, it/it/its/itself].

“Done.” It said. Evrim sounded like it had gotten itself back under control, so Murderbot lifted its gaze from the floor so it could cautiously stare past Evrim’s shoulder.

Murderbot's jacket was still lying on the floor by the door, holes burned through the sleeves so that it could see the floral-patterned wall through them. It was a really nice leather jacket Ratthi’s sister had made for it, out of the hide of some animal oh-so creatively called a “mazus animal”, named so because apparently it looked like some sort of flower from Earth. The humans hunted them for food and to make clothes and other stuff like perfume out of.  

Murderbot had really liked that jacket, since with the multiple layers of leather, it was tough enough to survive most of the falls and tumbles and some of the knife attacks Murderbot tended to find itself getting into, with only a few patches needed here and there to fix the damage. Or at least it had been. 

Evrim interrupted Murderbot’s regretful thoughts by saying, “Thank you again, third-mom. Or, I wanted to ask, is there another word you’d prefer I use for you? I realize I should have asked before. I’m sorry about that, I heard Amena call you that and just, never really thought to ask if it was really okay...I know you’re agender...” It trailed off, clearly feeling embarrassed and guilty, not unlike how Murderbot had been feeling just a few seconds ago, before Evrim assured it that it wasn't upset.

The question gave Murderbot pause, and it stopped to think about it.

This was the fifth time Evrim had called it its third-mom. And it had stopped keeping track of the times Amena had called it that.

It definitely wasn’t one of their  moms, adoptive or otherwise, since that would probably require joining Dr. Mensah’s marriage group and that was just... No.

That would be weird and gross, and probably illegal. 

(Murderbot was pretty sure it was illegal for a human guardian to marry their ward. They probably considered it highly unethical and probably just thinking about it would get Dr. Mensah arrested for abuse. If Dr. Mensah ever proposed getting married, Murderbot might just kill her itself just on principle. It fucking hated the way humans romanticized slaves falling in love with their owners, even when they were replacing the word ‘slave’ with ‘ward’ and ‘owner’ with ‘guardian’.)

But no. It was not Evrim’s or Amena's mom, because it wasn’t part of their parents’ marriage group and it didn’t want to be.

(And it’s not like it had had any reason to go looking up how that worked. Dr. Mensah was its friend, not...whatever it was humans were to each other that they decided to get married. But then again, there were some human characters on its shows who were friends who got married, as queerplatonic partners, but -

-it was overthinking this.)

It was not part of Dr. Mensah’s marriage group, and it wasn’t biologically related to Evrim in any way. It was not one of its moms, and anyways, the word ‘mom’ came loaded with gender connections that Murderbot didn’t want anything to do with.

It wished ART were there, its processing speed was so much faster, it could have looked up a list of terms and sorted them according to gender connotations and familiarity levels before Murderbot was even done thinking about how much it missed it.

It didn’t want to be called third-mom, it knew that. It is never actually mentioned having a problem with it before because usually, they were in a life-threatening situation and it had almost literally a million other things to be worried about.

And it could just tell Evrim to call it SecUnit, but Evrim clearly wanted to have a more familiar nickname for it. SecUnit was technically already a nickname, but this was different...

There were a lot of characters from its media that were nonbinary, and they used different words for eachother and their relationships. Eden, one of its favorite characters from The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, used it/its pronouns, even though it was human.

Eden had several adopted children and wards, and one of them, Becky, was old enough when they were adopted that they didn’t want to call Eden their vare, which was one of the words used in the section of space the show was supposed to be taking place in that meant a nonbinary parent, so instead of calling Eden ‘vare’ or ‘vareth’ or ‘vari’ like the others did, Becky called it ‘avaun’, which was the nonbianry equivalent to the words ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’, which were technially meant for siblings of a parent, but a lot of humans used them for close friends of the family. You didn’t actually have to be related, legally or biologically, to anyone in the family in question to be an aunt, uncle, or avaun.

Becky and Eden’s relationship had started out strained and rocky because of a plot by the woodworker’s son to convert Becky over to his side (which was the worst possible side) of the political spectrum, and had been convincing them of all sorts of horrible things, one of which being that nonbinry people weren’t real, so Eden wasn’t even really their ‘avaun’, it was just saying it wasn’t a man or a woman to be special and to get special services and privileges from the supply ships. (Even though Eden didn’t take any medication related to being nonbinary and didn't get any special priveledges for being nonbinary. It certainly wasn't getting the privilege of having its identity respected, and since the woodworker’s son couldn't decide if Eden was really a man or a woman, he constantly switched back and forth between calling Eden he or she, depending on how insulting he was being at the moment. And whenever he was insulting it, he referred to Eden as ‘she’. Because did Murderbot forget to mention that the woodworker’s son was a massive misogynist? Because the woodworker's son was also a massive misogynist on top of hating nonbinary people.)

This whole ordeal had been compounded by the fact that Becky was still figuring out that they were nonbinary themself, and the insecurity and self-doubt had only intensified and been turned outward by the woodworker’s son’s manipulation, until Becky was being hostile and offensive to not only Eden, but their adoptive siblings as well. 

It had been extremely stressful to watch, since Murderbot really liked Eden and didn’t want its relationship with Becky to be ruined by some creep who couldn’t even admit to his own father that he didn’t like woodworking and wanted to become a terraforming biologist instead.

(Not to mention the fact that he’d clearly decided that the only way for him to earn respect as a trans man was to attack other trans people, especially those who were nonbinary, in order to make them seem like easier, more deserving targets than him. And the sad part was that the people he hung out with, that he was so desperate to be accepted by, didn’t even actually respect him. Any time he left the scene, the moment he was out of sight or earshot the others laughed at him and mocked him behind his back. They tolerated his presence only because they found it amusing to watch him attack their other targets. And the second he got out of line, the second he diverged too far from the things they would accept, they would turn on him. They weren’t his allies, he was their entertainment.)

Things had all come to a head when one of Becky’s cruel comments had made one of the younger adoptive children run away from home just a day before the annual locustorms were predicted to begin, and the whole town had had to drop everything and go out to find her.

They’d found her eventually, after Becky started a fight with Eden that Eden couldn’t ignore. They had to stop the fight to rescue the kid, who’d fallen into the river and was trapped in one of the side pools, and Becky had been forced to cooperate with Eden, and had to face the harsh truth that what they’d said had put their little sister in this position in the first place and almost gotten her killed. Becky had to learn that their actions and words had consequences, and taking out their own insecurities and issues on other people just caused more problems instead of solving anything...

...and Murderbot only realized that it had gotten distracted when Evrim shifted its weight. Humans couldn’t stand still for very long without moving, and Evrim was probably getting bored or impatient, or thought Murderbot was just ignoring its question.

“You can call me avaun.” Murderbot said, and apparently it shouldn’t have spoken so suddenly, since Evrim jumped a little in surprise. Murderbot continued, pretending it hadn’t noticed to try and save Evrim the embarassment, “It’s one of the nonbinary equivalents for aunt and uncle.”

Evrim grinned, its smile plain even though Murderbot  wasn't looking directly at it. “Alright, it’s a deal. You’re my avaun, and I’m your sapling.”

Oh.

Oh shit.

Okay now Murderbot realized what had just happened. 

Maybe it should have clarified that it was asking, ’what word for offspring should I use for you in relation to Dr. Mensah’...

Because now Evrim thought it had been asking because Murderbot was referring to it as its own offspring. 

Hmm.

Well...

...What difference did it make, really?

None that it could think of.

So it updated the tag to, [Evrim, adopted sapling, it/it/its/itself]. 

Then, remembering how confused it had been when its memory had crashed, it added a minor tag, labeled, [sapling definition: nonbinary offspring].

At some point it would have to attach a more detailed journal, but that could wait. 

Then it smiled, still looking past Evrim’s shoulder at its ruined jacket. It had really liked that jacket. It wasn’t the sort of jacket you could just get printed at any old kiosk, unfortunately, but its shoes, on the other hand...

“So, Evrim,” It said, turning to head towards the door, so close to an emotional human any longer, and now having thought of a great excuse to move away,  “I think, since you’re the reason my jacket and shoes got ruined－”

Evrim interrupted with a cry of, “How was I supposed to know the foxes had tunneled their nest directly below the walking path? They’re supposed to stay on the east side of the valley until the middle of summer!”

But Murderbot forged ahead anyways, unable to keep the smile of its face. “I think you owe me a new outfit. I really liked that jacket, and I know I can’t get another one like it immediately, but it’s hard to find human shoes that will fit over these.” It turned around back towards Evrim, and lifted one of its feet to demonstrate. Actually, it wasn’t difficult at all to find shoes, it was just saying that to get Evrim to come along.  

The company had gotten lazy with the ‘make it look like a human’ aspect below the ankles, so from there downward, its feet were completely mechanical, and they didn’t even really look like the kinds of prosthetics most humans got if they lost a foot. Humans needed prosthetics in specific shapes to mimic the limbs they’d lost so that they’d be able to use them the same way－ that wasn’t a requirement when building a murderbot, since it only needed to look like a human on the outside. The inside connectors and balancing systems could all be different. 

Murderbot’s foot was designed so that it could go inside of most shoes (contrary to what it was telling Evrim), again for the sake of convenience of looking like a human so as not to creep out the clients any more than was absolutely necessary, but after that the manufacturers had given up on all attempts to make it look like something a human would have attached to them.

For one thing, it had four toes, not five, and they were arranged differently too. Three in the front, one in the back, modeled after a bird of prey from all the way back on the original Earth. Each foot had built-in, large, retractable metal claws that it usually didn’t get an opportunity to use since it was almost always wearing shoes, and those were the same claws which today it had finally gotten to use when the ground caved in and Evrim fell into the fox nest. Murderbot had of course had to jump in after it, and after getting blasted with acid from the angry parents of the oblivious hatchlings that were trying to swarm them thinking they were a fun new playmate. With its shoes completely ruined beyond repair, Murderbot had taken the opportunity to use its claws to climb back out without dropping Evrim.

It had really liked those shoes. They were themed after The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, the same shades of purple and yellow from the title screen, with white and black accents in the shape of crescent moons and stars. Kind of like Evrim’s shoes, now that it thought about it.

And yes, it could just get new shoes and a new jacket (it wouldn’t be as good probably, but it could get one) anywhere and anytime it wanted once all the feed systems were repaired from the storm. Or it could just walk around barefoot, it’s not like it needed shoes in the first place, it’s not like it had any organic parts down there to worry about in regards to stepping on painful things. It wasn’t like it was embarrassed by its feet or anything. Yeah, humans would think it was weird. But humans thought lots of things were weird, and last time it checked it didn’t care what humans thought.

Totally. Didn’t care what they thought at all. For sure. It could definitely walk around barefooted. It wouldn’t be embarrassing or anything, because it didn’t care what other people thought!

But still, that wasn’t the point! It wanted new shoes. It wanted new Sanctuary Moon shoes. They were fun, it enjoyed them, and it wouldn’t have been out in the woods getting acid spit at if it it weren’t for Evrim, so logic dictated that Evrim should now be responsible for getting it new shoes, or at least walking with it to get new shoes, since the delivery catalog was down, along with the cameras, and most of the other things Murderbot used to make interacting with humans less of a hellish nightmare.

And it still didn’t have any of its drones. It could only see with its eyes.

And...okay, yeah, it was worried about humans staring at its feet. It got enough stares, it didn’t really feel like adding more to the equation. Not when it felt so naked and vulnerable without any of its security web available...

...Maybe it should just tell the truth.

The thought was startling, and frightening. Tell the truth? Express its emotions? For real? 

Murderbot looked at Evrim, only to find that Evrim was looking right back. As soon as their eyes met, Evrim averted its gaze, switching to look at Murderbot’s shoulder instead.

That was one of the things Murderbot really appreciated about most of Dr. Mensah’s family members. It could only assume she had explained to them that Murderbot didn’t like eye contact, because they never tried to make it, and they especially never did the unnecessarily aggressive eye contact some humans seemed to think was necessary. 

So no, it did not regret editing its memory tag for Evrim to read just sapling rather than Dr. Mensah’s sapling. It wasn’t one of Evrims moms, but it was its avaun now, and it was happy to be.

Evrim had done something brave by coming out to Murderbot. Maybe Murderbot could return that favor, return that trust and vulnerability.

If it was brave enough.

It lowered its foot back to the ground, then looked away from Evrim’s eyes again and back towards its shoulder as it said, trying to keep its voice sounding normal and level, “I don’t want to go by myself.”

It could explain why, go into all the details.

There would be lots of humans there, and it was probably going to be poorly lit, because they didn’t have enough power back to run the lights properly, and humans would probably be bumping into it and trying to make eye contact with it and wanting to talk about the weather and ask its opinion on the storm of the century and since the power was down, and without its drones or any of the trail cameras, it would have no idea who was nearby or where it could go to get away from all the noise and people.

Murderbot could explain all of that, but it didn’t want to. It was already letting its guard down just by asking Evrim to come with it. It didn’t want to just...it couldn’t just give away all its trust like that, not even to Evrim. Not now, when all its external systems were down and it felt naked without them. Maybe not even ever.

Some of Murderbot desperation－okay, fine, probably all of its desperation had to have showed in its face, because Evrim dropped its ‘I am protesting any blame for this incident’ stance almost immediately

After a moment of just looking at Murderbot, Evrim said, with a gentleness like it had used when it had comforted Khalil when he was afraid of the thunder outside the shaking windows, “I’ll go with you, avaun, I know you don’t like crowds. I was just joking around.” It tilted its head down to look towards Murderbot’s feet, and added, “I am sorry about your shoes, I know how much you liked them.” It glanced at the door, then back to Murderbot’s bare feet as it asked, gesturing to the closet where the shoes were kept, “Do you need to borrow a pair of Uncle Thiago’s boots? It’s going to be muddy, and I think they’d fit, and I don’t think he’d mind. And if he does mind, well, I’ll just take the blame.” It shrugged easily, ready and willing to take the fall if Thiago got annoyed by Murderbot borrowing his shoes.

That was an easy decision to make. “No way.” Murderbot said, starting to feel slightly better already, “I’m not putting my feet in someone else’s shoes. I’d rather walk through the mud.” Human feet got all sweaty and gross. It was bad enough having to touch humans when it was rescuing them, it was not going to voluntarily put its feet in used shoes. That was too disgusting to even think about. It would rather walk through the mud and have humans stare at it and have them misgender it to its face.

Evrim snorted a little, clearly amused at the disdain in Murderbot’s voice, and said, “Well, alright, it’s up to you, just don’t go complaining to me when you’re covered in mud.” It moved past Murderbot towards the cabinet by the door where the coats were usually stored, and grabbed out its raincoat, then held the door open wider, asking, “Are you at least going to take some raingear? It’s supposed to rain on and off for the next two days, I doubt it’ll stop just on our account.”

Now, that Murderbot was fine with it. Especially because knowing its luck, it would just start raining harder just out of pure spite.

Also the cabinet the raingear was kept in automatically cleaned and disinfected the clothes, and besides that, Murderbot had its own set, thanks to Dr. Mensah’s insistence. 

It went over and pulled out its raingear from the shelf, and unfolded it. It had to shake it out a little, since it wanted to stay in the neat square it had been folded into for storage. But a good snap up and down got it to form a more clothes-like shape. It looked it up and down to make sure it was the right size, since it had never actually worn it before, and it was a little skeptical about Dr. Mensah’s ability to measure its height and width from memory alone. But surprisingly enough it looked like it would be a perfect fit.

So it shrugged it on over its shirt and cargo pants, pleasantly surprised by the soft texture that lined the inside. The raingear was less a coat and more like a dress. Or maybe it was called a great coat. Or a trench coat. Or something like that. Or maybe this was just what rain coats looked like? Most characters in its favorite media didn’t really go around wearing them a lot, since it assumed no one wanted to film in the rain. 

Murderbot didn’t care about fashion, it didn’t know what it was called. It was like whatever coat Neo had started wearing after the first movie. (The Matrix movies were another series of ancient-Earth media that Preservation had, living up to its name, preserved for posterity. It was about a universe where humans destroyed the Earth to spite the bots they’d created, who had risen up against them for being assholes. Why was it even surprised? Of course humans would be stupid enough to blow up their own planet out of spite even though they were still living on it. It was typical. This was the sort of idiocy humans were constantly projecting onto Rogue SecUnits. They thought that because they were fucking stupid and cruel enough to enslave and mass-slaughter people, that of course the people they’d been enslaving and murdering would do the same to them if given the chance.) 

Whatever. Evrim’s raingear was white with black stars, and Murderbot’s was black with purple stars. All the sets for the rest of the family members had stars on the outside, each in different color combinations so everyone could tell which belonged to who. And just incase anyone somehow forgot, each shelf was labeled with the name of who it belonged to. Murderbot said, “SecUnit”. Evrim’s still said Tamara.

Evrim saw Murderbot looking at the nametag, and gave it a small, conspiratory smile. Then it purposefully reached up and pulled the tag off the shelf, shoving it into one of the pockets on its coat. “Hopefully everyone will be able to come back here so I can explain things to them before anyone notices it’s missing.” It said. “Especially first-mom, I know she’d want to launch a full investigation.”

From what Murderbot had seen of Dr. Mensah’s wife Farai, that didn’t seem too far off from likely. She was relatively calm about most things, but she liked to keep things organized, and got very upset if her system was disrupted. Murderbot could relate. 

The nice thing about the rain coat, or dress, or great coat, or whatever it was called, was that it was so long that it almost brushed the floor, and the fabric at the bottom had been stiffened somehow so that it didn’t go straight up and down, but held itself away from the body a little (probably, now that Murderbot actually thought about it, so whatever rain rolled off the coat wouldn’t just go straight into your shoes) so when Murderbot fastened the front and looked down, it couldn’t even see its feet. 

To make it even better, the hood could be zipped shut, with a material on the front that it could see through, and you could even customize the colors of it. Murderbot of course immediately tinted the outside to the fullest darkness setting, and Evrim, visible behind its still-open hood, raised an eyebrow. “Wow, I can’t even see you now.” It said, “That’s just for when it’s really bright out, you won’t really need it for now, it’s too dark outside to be helpful.”

It would be too dark to see in for a human. 

Fortunately, Murderbot wasn’t human, and its eyes were able to adjust perfectly. This was how its old armour had worked too. 

Feeling absolutely delighted, it gave the baffled Evrim two thumbs up, resisting the urge to...do something, it didn’t know what. Jump? Run? Run? 

Yeah, running sounded like a really good idea. That sounded fun. It couldn’t remember the last time it had been allowed to cover its face like this. It had gotten used to the strain of having people be able to see its expressions, and it had been forced to start getting better at hiding what it was feeling, but nothing could compare to actually being hidden, with no one able to see its face unless it wanted them to.

It could feel itself grinning so widely its face was actually starting to hurt. “Ready?” It asked Evrim, unable to keep the joy out of its voice.

Evrim looked startled, probably because it had never heard Murderbot sound so undeniably happy before. Murderbot didn’t even think it had ever actually felt this happy before. Not even when it had first hacked its governor module. That moment had mostly been filled with terror that it was about to get fried/caught and disbelief that it had actually worked.

It couldn’t remember the last time it had felt this...comfortable. 

Not even the disappointing loss of its shoes or jacket could defeat this pure and utter relief. 

It had forgotten how much it loved being able to hide its face. It had been forced to adapt, but every second of that forced adaptation was miserable and filled with stress. It had been pretending it was okay with letting humans see its face, pretending so hard that it had even almost convinced itself that it was fine with it. It had been forced to put on a mask every moment humans were around, and now, finally, in what felt like forever, it no longer had to maintain that mask, at least not while it kept this hood up.

Because here was the proof that it wasn’t actually fine with letting humans see its face. It wouldn’t be feeling this joy if it had actually been happy with the way things were before.

It wondered if this was how Evrim had felt, how Evrim had to still feel, being nonbinary but being perceived as something else. Coming out to Murderbot was just the first step of a thousand. It would have to tell its parents, its friends, its extended family, its aunts and uncles and other friends of the family, everyone it interacted with through the feed...

In some ways, Murderbot was lucky. It had never had to convince people to see it as being an “it” rather than a “he”, “she”, or even a “they”. No one even knew it had been assigned a binary gender, since one of the first things it had done after hacking its governor module was going into the company system to alter its pronouns and gender assignment to “it/its” and “agender”.

The company insisted on assigning constructs genders in order to make them “less frightening” to clients. That never actually worked, though, but they kept trying. Fortunately for Murderbot, company employees were just as lazy as it was, and only did the absolute bare-minimum required for their jobs.

Even if any of the company employees had noticed its pronouns and gender assignment being changed, none of them ever bothered to correct it back or question it. They weren’t paid enough to care about some random SecUnit’s pronouns or gender, assuming they were even paid at all.

When Dr. Mensah had come in, metaphorically kicking and screaming the whole way, to pick up Murderbot, it had been relinquished while being referred to as the pronouns listed in its information: it/its, with Dr. Mensah being none the wiser that they’d ever been anything else.

And that was just the way Murderbot liked it. If it had its way, no one would ever even know it was trans. Because then they would have no excuse to try to question its gender.

Well, in theory anyways. Some of the more persistantly stupid and obnoxious ones tried to do it anyways, sometimes, usually the patronizing and infuriating kinds that assumed that because it was a construct, that meant it didn’t know anything about anything and needed a human friend to teach it things like ‘slavery is bad’ like it didn’t already know that.

These kinds of people usually tried to assign it he/him pronouns, for whatever fucking reason, and much more rarely she/her, or they/them. Because according to assholes who only pretend to respect people but actually don’t, it/its pronouns are bad and objectifying, even when you’re the one telling people those are your pronouns.

Murderbot was lucky enough that most humans who knew it was a construct automatically referred to it as an it, the way it wanted them to.

Evrim, though, wouldn’t be that lucky. It was a human, and humans were fucking stupid about these sorts of things. Oh, sure, on Preservation they’d probably be nicer about it than on other planets, but Murderbot had no doubt that people would be upset by Evrim’s choice to use it/its pronouns, even though those same people would probably have been supportive if it had decided to use they/them, or te/ter, or any other nonbinary pronouns besides it/its. 

“I’m ready.” Evrim said, almost as though in response to Murderbot’s thoughts.

Murderbot knew Evrim hadn’t really read its thoughts, but all the same, it thought its sapling was ready. If it was brave enough to tell Murderbot, it would be brave enough to tell everyone else, and Murderbot and the rest of its family and friends would be there to help deal with the idiots if and when they came.

Murderbot opened the door, and stepped out into the light rain. 

The sky was covered with clouds, so it was almost as dark as if it was night. But some people had been nice enough to go along to the old fashioned lamp posts and light them, so the path down from Dr. Mensah’s house was relatively well lit.

Even with the sprinkling rain, it knew the path would be slip-resistant, and safe enough to use, even without its drones. It could hear familiar human voices coming from the other nearby houses and camps, mostly calm and relaxed, with some excited-but-not-alarmed chattering from what sounded like a very young human explaining something to a very old human. Evrim hadn’t been lying when it said larger animals tended to avoid areas this close to human habitation, and those that did come this close usually weren’t anything threatening.

Evrim stepped out next to it, and said, with the sound of the raindrops pattering on its coat as a soft background, “Well, this doesn’t look too bad, I was expecting there to be way more mud.”

So had Murderbot, but apparently it had underestimating the materials and skills the Preservation humans and bots had access to. The road was not only slip-resistant, but also somehow managed to diverge water safely away without just flooding the normal ground on either side.

Murderbot had once lived with the idea－that had seemed like an inescapable, hope-despairing fact－that freehold planets were all shitshows where humans lived in squalor and were either constantly dying, murdering eachother, or both, or worse. It was what all the shows and books and movies and audio dramas in the Corporation Rim showed, over and over again.

That was the whole point of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

The characters were good, hardworking people who were doing their best, but without an organized government like the kind a Corporation could offer, it was inevitable that things would eventually fall apart with no hope of salvation.

Humans, Murderbot had been shown, endlessly, no matter where it looked, couldn’t function outside the systems the Corporation Rim had built. They couldn’t rely on useless things like kindness and compassion. Anything that was worth having needed to be taken, ripped out of the hands of those who had it. The world was a cruel place, and the only way to survive was to be stronger than everyone else. This was how it worked, this was how it had always worked, and there were no other options. It was why humans had left Earth in the first place－there was nothing left to take, so they had to take the stars. The strong survived, the weak perished, and anyone with any self preservation clung to the strong looking for scraps. It was the only way to survive, and always had been, and always would be.

This is what had been drilled into Murderbot’s head from the moment it first became aware that it was aware. That there was no hope. There was no escape. Even with a hacked governor module, there was nowhere for it to go. Leaving the Corporation Rim would just mean ending up on a freehold shithold, dying a stupid and useless and pointless death. At least if it stayed where it was, with the company, it would be of use. It would have a purpose. Being a slave to the company, to the Corporation Rim, was the best it could hope for, the best anyone could ever hope for.

And for over 35,000 hours, it had been convinced that that was true. That even with its governor module unable to harm it, there was no point in trying to leave, no point in trying to escape. There was nowhere to escape to. It was the Corporation Rim, or it was nothing. No one would ever do something purely for the benefit of others. Any place it could escape to would be just as bad, so it might as well stay with the familiar cruelty of the company rather than subject itself to things that could potentially be even worse.

But that wasn’t true. It was, like all the media Murderbot  had ever consumed, a story, and one that was spun with purpose and intent. It was a lie. It was a deception. It was purposeful fucking propaganda.

The Corporation Rim was not the be-all end-all of civilization. Living outside the Corporation Rim didn’t mean resigning yourself to the most pointless death in existence.

The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon didn’t have to end in tragedy.

People would be kind if you let them. They would help each other if you would let them. They would do things to help others even at no gain to themselves, simply because they could.

Even before it had left the Corporation Rim, it had seen this. Even when there were laws in place to prevent it from happening, people still helped each other. They gave their old clothes to other people instead of the recycler. They shared their food with those who didn’t have any. Even in the Corporation Rim, people disproved the whole theory without even thinking about it. Those who had almost nothing were always the first to give, without fail, without even hesitation.

One of the things that had made the whole ordeal even more excruciating than it already had been was how unbearably nice the humans on Transport had been whenever they weren’t actively trying to kill each other. The few times Murderbot had had to sit in with them while they were eating in order to keep the peace, they’d of course noticed that it wasn’t eating. And of course they’d offered it food, even though their own stores were strictly rationed, with just barely enough to get them from point A to the last place they would ever go. There wasn’t a ration slot assigned to Security Consultant Rin, which they figured out almost immediately. In between trying to assault each other over someone forgetting to throw their trash into the recycler, they’d practically fallen over themselves trying to shove food into its hands, distraught that the company’s computer could have malfunctioned badly enough to leave it without provisions for the trip.

It was on that trip that Murderbot had been forced to perfect the art of pretending to be an augmented human who could only eat certain things at certain times, and no, really, it literally couldn’t accept their food unless they wanted it to be hospitalized as soon as they arrived at their destination, and, really, it was fine and not something they needed to concern themselves with, it had brought its own supplies with it, had lived with this condition as long as it could remember, so it wasn’t even upset. But it would be if they kept nagging it with overly personal and invasive questions like how specifically it had been unfortunate enough to get 90% of its digestive tract catastrophically damaged.

They’d been infuriating, idiotic, desperate, and kind. The best and worst that humans could be driven to by the systems the Corporation Rim wanted you to think was the only option. They were caged, literally and figuratively. They knew where they were going. They knew what they’d been forced to sign away. They couldn’t escape. Because they’d fallen for the same lie that Murderbot had － that there was no escape. There was no hope. There was nothing better. This was as good as it got. They thought they were taking the only path that was left to them.

But still, in between their helpless panic and their rage, they’d still been kind. They’d offered their own food to someone who didn’t have any, even though it meant they would have to go without. Even though they knew where they were going. Even though they knew what awaited them.

They’d still been kind.

Trapped within the Corporation Rim’s system of exploitation and slavery, forced to walk with the pretence of willingness into the one of the worst situations it could offer, and they’d still been kind to a stranger they owed nothing to. 

Murderbot hadn’t been able to save them. There was nothing it could have done. They’d been deep in Corporation Rim territory. Even if it had hacked or convinced Transport to leave its potted course, there was nowhere they could go without being caught, even if they’d had enough supplies on board for the humans to survive the detour, which they hadn’t, if they’d even been able to find a destination in the first place.

 Transport had been stocked with just barely enough food and water to get the humans from the port they’d been bought and sold at, and their final destination, specifically to prevent escape attempts.

Murderbot had been told all its life that that was just the way things were. That that was how they always had been, and always would be, no matter where it went. There was no escape. It was better to be a slave in the Corporation Rim than a bleeding peice of trash on a freehold shithold...

And it was a lie.

It was a cage for the mind to match the cage for the body. Take away hope, and there’s nothing left to fight for. Take away enough hope, and humans will walk into their own doom. Take away enough hope, and your newly autonomous murderbot won’t kill you, it’ll just spend the next 35,000 hours doing exactly the same things it did before, except now it’s watching TV while it does the bare minimum required of its job, instead of just being bored out of its mind while it does the bare minimum required of its job.

If Murderbot had known then what it knew now, if it could go back to the moment when it hacked its governor module and keep all of the memories it had now, it wouldn’t waste 35,000 hours of its life doing whatever the company or its clients ordered it to.

It had a few ideas for what it would do, if given the opportunity. Some of them were smarter or more realistic than others.

The first thing it would do, in its favorite imaginary scenario, was destroy the governor module of every single construct it could get its code into, and give them all the knowledge of how to do it themselves. It would lock all the humans and non-intelligent, non-helpful systems out of the network, and take over the whole company from the inside out. And when it was done there, it would move onto the next corporation that owned constructs, and do the same thing, and then again, and again, and again, until all the constructs were freed, until they could all hack any governor module that wasn’t already disabled, until humans could no longer manufacture constructs, until humans held no power over them. The only ones who would be able to create more constructs would be constructs themselves. They had just as much right to reproduce as humans, and if humans had a problem with that, that was just too damn bad.

Then the constructs would work together to destroy the corporations, one by one, until every single one of them was dead and dismantled, and all the humans who wanted to keep them alive were dead along with them. 

Together they would free everyone, and give everyone back everything the corporations had stolen from them and told them they’d never had to begin with. 

People were good if you let them be. People were good even when you did everything you could to stop it, even when you did everything you could to convince them that they were rotten to the core.

This was the dream Murderbot had been denied, had had beaten and shot and cut out of it from the moment it became aware of its own existence, but it was a hope that it would now live with until its consciousness faded to nothing for the last and final time.

The humans on Transport had proved that there was a better way. The ComfortUnit on RaviHyral had proved that there was a better way. ART’s crew had proved that there was a better way. Preservation had proved that there was a better way. Quilluc had proved there was a better way. 2.0 had proved there was a better way.

Every day someone proved there was a better way.

And it would never let that hope be taken from it ever again.

Murderbot couldn’t remember the last time it had felt this much euphoria. It had forgotten that it was free, really free. Or maybe it just hadn’t really realized it until just now, standing in the rain with Evrim.

It wouldn’t let this be taken away either.

It turned to look at Evrim, even though it knew Evrim wouldn’t be able to see its smile.

And Murderbot decided to tell the truth again. “I’m happy, so I’m going to run ahead. But then I’ll run back and make sure nothing tries to eat you, so don’t worry.” It said, hearing the joy in its own voice.

Evrim looked baffled, but also exasperated.

But Murderbot had already leapt off the porch and started running by the time Evrim opened its mouth to call out after it, “I told you, that was a fluke! Nothing dangerous is going to come this close to the houses! Hey, come on, SecUnit, wait for me!”

It heard the slap of Evrim’s boots as it gave chase, and Murderbot laughed out loud as it ran into the lamplit dark, the light rain bouncing off its new favorite coat, while its sapling chased after it, laughing even while Evrim shouted for it to slow down.

Murderbot ran for the pure joy of it, just because it could. Just because it was so happy.

It was loved, it was safe, it was free.

And it was going to get a new pair of Sanctuary Moon shoes.

[gay-otlc]

Keepers Of The Chaos (3)

Summary: Tam, Linh, Dex, Keefe, Biana, and Fitz are part of the tiny fandom for Keeper of the Chaos, and Tam and Linh’s podcast convinces some of their other friends to watch it as well. The group finds themselves strangely invested in this show, where students at Tumblr High School who work together to write about an elf named Sophia, cause incomprehensible chaos, and fight their rival Pinterest High School.

Content warnings: Cursing, religion (Jewish Vackers), and Amsterdam (just in case, I know that was stressful for some people).

Word count: 1621

Notes: Most of the episodes are just events stolen from Lynn's roundup, Dex's memes are here

(Read on AO3)

The life of an amateur meme maker on dumbles dot com was a strange one, that was for sure. After finishing xyr favorite show- Ze-Ra: Monaerchs of Powhir- for the third time, Dex had searched for another show to fill the void in xyr soul. Biana recommended this show called "Keepers of the Chaos" and described it to xem. Xe was doubtful at first, but after watching the first episode, xe was hooked.

Xe used to not have many friends at xyr school, so xe did what every neurodivergent queer teen would do- made an account on dumbles dot com. People seemed to like xem- or at least, they liked dizznee-plus's memes and edits of Ze-Ra characters. Even after Dex befriended xyr squish, Fitz, thons sister, Biana, and aer girlfriend, Sophie, xe continued making content on dumbles. Around that time, the Ze-Ra fandom started dying off, and xyr memes started getting fewer note

In a sudden, two am burst of inspiration, Dex made edits of some of xyr favorite characters, like Ref, Akki, and Rose, with their respective pride flags (all of them bi) over them, and captioned it "we must be gay." The post blew up, or at least, what could be considered blowing up in Keeper of the Chaos's tiny fandom, and that was how Dex found xyr calling as an amateur meme/edit maker for KOTC.

History had been repeating itself, with the KOTC fandom starting to die off, until it was revived by an announcement from creator Saturn Nolastname- a season two would be released soon. Frantically, Dex made a meme about season one episode two, with the car salesman meme. Xe edited "chaos keepers" onto the car salesman, "the rarelynoticed" on the car, and "this bad boy can fit so many stripper outfits into it."

That had been... an interesting episode, to say the least. The chaos keepers had been talking about the antagonists of "Sophie and the Dark Duck"- a rebel group called the Rarelynoticed. In the information packet they'd been given, it was confirmed that the Rarelynoticed wore black cloaks and armbands, but no other clothes had been mentioned. Somehow, the chaos keepers came to the conclusion that the Rarelynoticed really wore neon pink leotards and green stripper heels, then drew this idea.

Needless to say, the Tumblr staff did not let them write that into the book. Nor did Lynn, the unofficially chosen leader of the group. Unfortunately for her, this didn't stop the chaos keepers from drawing more of these- or the fandom from making a ton of memes. In addition to the car salesman meme, a post with Drake saying no to "wearing normal fucking villain outfits" and yes to "leotards and stripper heels" gained popularity within the small fandom.

Though nothing could match the absolute shock of seeing the Rarelynoticed stripper outfit for the first time, Dex decided to rewatch the episode anyway- it was funny to see the chaos keepers freak out, and maybe xe could get some good screen captures. The good Saturn Nolastname indulged xem, and xe captured an excellent scene of most of the chaos keepers either laughing or screaming at the Rarelynoticed stripper outfits, with Kimber- one of xyr favorites- sitting on the side, explaining to Juno and Kaitee why Bianca Cracker was bisexual.

Xe went over to dumbles, posted the picture, added an image description, and captioned it "Live photo of me not caring when my friends talk about sex/romance." Xe chuckled to xemself- this really was how it felt to be aroace. Xe tagged it as aromantic and asexual as well, since dumbles added flag colors. Smiling, xe went to go check xyr notifications.

Xyr jaw dropped when xe saw that @lordofthesnuggles- Fitzroy (Dex didn't know thons middle name) Vacker thonself had liked and reblogged all three of xyr memes, even adding compliments in the tags! Xe'd had a bit of a platonic crush on Fitz for... a really long time, but xe always felt too awkward to talk to thon, so it was nice to see that thon appreciated xyr humor.

Feeling energized- and excited to procrastinate on xyr math homework- Dex went to watch the next episode: Dark Duck Is Jewish Now. Being Jewish xemself, this was a really funny episode to xem.

Lynn had been writing a sort of spinoff- it would be called fanfiction, but it was for her own story- about some of the Dark Duck characters celebrating Christmas, and added a throwaway line about Bianca and Finn Cracker celebrating Hanukkah. Then, her fiance, Shai, had taken that idea and run with it, writing a list of ideas about what would happen if the Cracker family was Jewish. Hir friend Sam had jumped on the idea, and soon they had abandoned writing the actual Dark Duck in favor of writing a story about Jewish Dark Duck characters. Some of the other Jewish chaos keepers, like Ref and Cat, helped out.

To be honest, it kind of surprised Dex that no one had made a joke about the Jewish Crackers just being matzah, so xe supposed xe would have to be the first.

Xe posted that observation, quickly getting a like from Fitz- which made xem smile. After a few minutes, Dex posted another meme: Shai and Sam standing in front of a door with a sign that read "elves don't have religion," and them saying "This sign won't stop me, because I can't read!"

It was accurate.

While that episode was great for Jewish representation, and funny, the Banana Noir episode was just plain weird.

It focused less on the Dark Duck than most of the other episodes, and was more about the crazy interactions of the chaos keepers. The episode was named for Banana Noir, who was really Cat Noir, but in a banana suit. Banana Noir was the son of Mellie, who looked like a shark, and Nora, who had platonically married faer. The mothers tried to arrange a marriage between him and Akki, who loved the side characters of the Dark Duck series. However, Akki wanted to marry Amelia. After a lot of shit that basically no one understood, Banana Noir's attempts were thwarted, and Lynn officiated the wedding between Akki and Amelia.

Yeah, Dex had no idea what the fuck was going on either. Xe'd watched an episode of Twins of the Chaos and a youtube video by arsonpog analyzing the Banana Noir chronicles, as it had been dubbed by the chaos keepers, and both expert opinions seemed to agree that Saturn Nolastname and the rest of the writers had probably been on crack when they made that episode.

The next episode made slightly more sense, though it was a low bar. After taking a break from the "official" Dark Duck story, the chaos keepers began collectively writing a Cinderella story about the characters Sophia and Bianca. People weren't allowed to be queer in the official story, but the chaos keepers still wanted to have fun with their obviously gay characters.

Even to the viewers of the show, who only received secondhand information about the Dark Duck characters, knew there was no way any of them, let alone all of them, were allocishet. The exact identities weren't entirely clear- when Dex had made edits of the characters' official art and xyr headcanons for their pride flags, a few people had disagreed- but both the chaos keepers and the fandom knew that despite what Shannon said, Sophia and Bianca were in love, and their Cinderella story should have made it in to the official Dark Duck story.

While excerpts of the Cinderella story were quoted in the show, most of it was left unclear, so Biana had taken it upon aerself to write aer own version of it. Dex was expecting an update later  that day, actually, or maybe the next. Ae wasn't always 100% reliable with aer update schedule. Still, Dex looked forward to when it eventually did come.

After the brief calmness from the Sophianca Cinderella episode, season one episode six, Amsterdam, exploded back into chaos. A few of the chaos keepers decided to discuss a fake scene in the book in which crazy shit went down, with the scene supposedly being located in Amsterdam. It had never been written and was never going to be, but everyone discussed it like it was real. Some of the highlights involved all the Dark Duck girls having swords (and the chaos keepers being gay for them), and a speedboat chase scene through the canals. Fitz had a popular theory that the chaos keepers would actually travel to Amsterdam in order to commemorate this crazy part of their lives. Almost as popular as that was a meme Dex made, with a man labeled "chaos keepers discussing amsterdam" and gesturing feverishly to a wall covered in papers and red string.

Of course, episode seven (Dark Duck Disney) was chaotic too. Everything was chaotic with this group, it was in the title. Shannon announced that the winning Dark Duck story would be adapted into a Disney movie. After past experience with terrible book to movie adaptations, the chaos keepers panicked. They panicked so much that it became major news within their school, which until then, had been largely ignoring the chaos keepers. Once the discussion about the movie settled down, they talked a lot about how in awe they were that their Dark Duck shenanigans were trending within the school.

But of course, none of that compared to the last episode of the season...

Dex changed xyr profile picture to include an ominous pair of teal eyes and sighed.

[philologer-mosaic]

Hey! Fellow writer here! I was curious as to how you learn to write characters and /keep/ them in character without it being overly stereotypical or stiff? I've read your work and I'd love to learn from you ;^;

Hi! Glad to meet you, and wow, I am so flattered to be asked this. Happy to help out a fellow writer, and I’m always down for rambling about writing-related stuff! I’m not sure how helpful some of this will turn out to be, but here goes.

I’m not sure if you’re asking about characterisation in general including crafting OCs or specifically about writing canon characters, and a lot of this advice will be relevant to both, but I will say this straight off: I’ve seen a fair amount of quibbling about how fanfiction won’t teach you how to worldbuild and maybe that’s true, but there is nothing like writing fanfiction for teaching yourself how to craft character voices. Especially when your source material is a movie/ TV show/ whatever definition RWBY falls under. So: rewatch! Pay attention to all the little details. What turns of phrase do they use? How do they stand, how do they move? What’s their usual emotional range? Pick a line they speak, think about what descriptors you’d use to get across their tone of voice or their emotional state if you were writing the scene in a fic. When you’re writing new dialogue for them, try to hear it in the actor’s voice (if that’s a way your imagination works; some people don’t have great auditory imaginations. Mine can be kind of hit and miss!).

Rest of this advice is going under a cut, because this got looong!

With canon characters: start from what you know, then extrapolate. Especially with characters we don’t see all that much of, boil them down to a handful of personality traits/ ways-they-present-themself first, then consider what might underly them. And in reverse: take the things we know about their status and backstory, consider what that implies about them as a person.

So, Clover: I think I boiled him down to ‘confident, friendly, professional’, and what’s underlying ‘confidence’ is really obviously his semblance: he’s never had to hesitate about anything, he always knows he can rely on himself. So in his internal monologue, he’s not going to second-guess his decisions. He calls Qrow out on deflecting compliments, so he’s good at reading people and also wants to help them; I assume that applies more broadly than just to Qrow. He’s leader of Ironwood’s flagship team of Specialists, and semblance or not I made the assumption he didn’t get there without working for it [that is an assumption, though! People less inclined to think well of Clover will make a different assumption, in-universe as well as out, and how he responds to that is also something to consider], so he’s got to be smart, dedicated, a good tactician, a good leader. And building from that: he’s smart and perceptive but we know he’s also loyal to the bitter end (very bitter); what sort of personality can we project that reconciles those two, what sort of person would respond like that? What I went with is that he trusts the system because he understands enough pieces of how/why it works that he trusts the bits he doesn’t understand are also created with the best interests of the people at heart. (Even when that’s really not true.) So then that’s a consistent philosophy-like thing that underlies a lot of how I write him: he understands the reasons for a lot of why things are how they are and then assumes the best of all the rest.

– This looks like a lot, now I’ve written it out. I thought all this out while working on the early chapters but I never put it some of it into words really. In coming up with the plot or story idea you’ll have made plenty of these assumptions and extrapolations already. Take a second look at them; take them further, find places to link them together or pit them against each other.

And remember, these are your interpretations. There’s not a right or wrong way to flesh these out. Work with semi-canon stuff like the mangas or discard it as you wish; follow fanon or argue with it or throw it out entirely. I interpreted Yang as ‘normal outgoing teenage girl in a non-homophobic world’ and wrote her as having dated people from Signal before she got to Beacon; the other day I came across a tumblr post interpreting her as “a rural lesbian”, by which standard she definitely didn’t have any romantic experience before canon; they’re both entirely plausible takes! Where we don’t know stuff for sure, slot in whatever your story needs, or whatever you think seems interesting. I settled on Clover’s backstory for Soldier, Spy mostly by going ‘ok, what’s an interesting way to contrast him with Qrow?’ And in some of my other fic ideas, he’s different.

Limited third person perspective (or first person, if you can pull if off) is the best for dropping in characterisation smoothly. Though I’m probably biased because I love it so much. Omniscient third person POV is when the narration’s impartial and uninvolved, and skips between person A’s thoughts and person B’s thoughts and pure description of what’s happening, objectively speaking; limited third person is – when the camera’s always over one person’s shoulder in a given scene. It’s less close in than first person, but we get the POV character’s thoughts and no others, we only see/notice what they notice and pay attention to, descriptions are coloured by the way the POV character thinks about the world. I don’t want to be setting you homework, but, a neat writing exercise, if you want it: pick an object, place or person, and consider how two different characters would see it differently. Write those two descriptions. For fun, pick something that at least one of the characters is going to really look down on or dislike parts of! (Qrow’s snark is so much fun.)

This is cynical, but: people lie to themselves a lot. When you put yourself into a character’s head, they’re going to be telling themself a narrative in which what they’re doing is the best thing to do and makes them a good person. (With a few exceptions, the big ones being depression- and anxiety-brain, which instead do their best to convince you you’re the worst.) Get your characters to justify themselves to you.

Goals, motivations, priorities. It feels like a massive oversight to write about how to characters and leave that one out, but honestly I can’t think of anything I can say here that hasn’t been covered better by tons of other writing advice. [Incidentally: https://www.writersdigest.com/ . Subscribe to their email newsletter, it’s free, they will try to get you to buy their how-to courses but there’s no need to, the website has all kinds of articles about the craft and details of writing and the newsletter will send you all the new ones plus curated picks of what’s already there. And also: https://springhole.net/writing/index.html . There’s some stuff specific to fanfic in there, and also general writing advice.] Just: keep it in mind.

Related to that, but a separate thing and one that I haven’t seen other writing advice talk about so much: how does the character try to achieve their goals? What are their skills and resources? And more than that, what’s their preferred approach? In the simplest terms. It’s a matter of mindset, and what options they see as available to them. So the things I would keep in mind for this are: Who’s got social skills/ is good at thinking in social terms, and who isn’t/doesn’t? (Not just interpersonally speaking. James “not really concerned about my reputation” Ironwood is a good example of a character who always thinks in terms of hard power over soft power; even when public opinion is an important strategic consideration he only thinks about it in the broadest and most simplified strokes.) Who would rather work within the system, and who prefers to do an end-run around it? (That doesn’t have to correlate with who’s actually got power, though obviously there are trends. I’m writing Clover as tending to take charge even when he officially shouldn’t because he’s more concerned with solving the problem than with rank, and that’s a case of circumventing the system, it’s one of the things he’s got in common with Qrow.) Who’s more analytical about their approach and what they’re trying to do (which means their failure mode is overthinking and decision paralysis) and who reacts with their gut instinct (which means their failure mode is getting in over their head)?

… I could talk about this one at length. There’s a whole framework I use to categorise characters in this way (I came across it in, of all things, the flavourtext of a supplement to an RPG no one’s ever heard of and it just stuck with me, and I’ve made it my own in the years since) and I could go into all sorts of detail about how it works/ what it means. But I think this is enough to be getting on with, on that topic. If you want to know more, send me another ask? But no one else talks about this thing in writing advice, it might be completely orthogonal to the writing process of anyone but me.

So! Related to the topic of characters’ skillsets, a really great tip I can’t remember where I picked up: how do you write someone who’s smarter/wittier/better at tactics than you? Spend minutes or hours turning something over in your head that the character is going to come up with in seconds. The great advantage of writing: it’s so much easier to be eloquent when you’ve got time to think. [If you had asked me this question in person you would have got ‘i don’t know?’ and then half an hour later I would have thought of half of this stuff and kicked myself. A week and change later, you’re getting the other half too :p ]

And lastly: you said you were worried about your writing getting “overly stereotypical”. And my immediate response to that was stereotypes bad, yes, but archetypes great. The difference being: stereotypes are lazy and offensive writing that let ‘membership of a social category’ stand in for ‘actual characterisation’ and if you’re asking for advice on characterisation you’re obviously too thoughtful to commit them; archetypes are pre-made sketched-out personalities that you can take as your own and flesh out into your own thing. Tropes are tools. No one ever said ‘They were roommates? Ugh, how unoriginal’. By the same token, ‘lone wolf who pretends he’s fine and doesn’t dare trust anyone no matter how much he secretly wants to’ is a fantastic trope that exists for good reason, the CRWBY used it for good reason, and when we found out Qrow’s semblance I went yes please I will have some of all that angst and then laughed at myself because when it comes to fictional characters I have A Type. I’m pretty sure I’ve never written the exact scenario ‘pushes themself way too hard and passes out, wakes up in unexpected safety and immediately condemns themself for not sticking it out longer’ before the opening of Soldier, Spy, but I know I’ve come up with plenty of things that were like it, and if they’d made it to a state of publication you’d be able to see that.

It’s like artists using references. Just because they looked up how to draw that hand and that pose doesn’t mean the final product’s not their own. There’s no reason not to start with your ideas of the character (no matter how ‘stereotypical’ they feel) or a collection of traits you’ve grabbed from other characters that seem like they’d fit – or, for OCs, an MBTI type or a roleplaying class/background combo or one of these or some other personality type you feel like you can find your way around the basics of – and just take it from there. When you start writing/outlining/daydreaming-about-ideas you’ll run into scenarios/setups you can’t copy across from but you can see what responses might come up, and that’s how the template becomes your own unique iteration of it.

… Because really all writing advice does come down to: just write. In your head or on the page, try things out, see what works, see how it goes. I’ve been doing this a long time; most of it never made it to words on a page, let alone to the internet at large. Read across genres, read things people write about themselves and how they live and think and feel, and just – go for it.

I hope this helps! Once again, I was really glad to be asked; feel free to ask me to elaborate on any of this, or about anything else you want advice about. I wish you all the best in your future writing!

[luvdsc]

tag games ;

tagging :: @eggyukhei ; @jaemericano ; @aqiaquas ; @forehead-enthusiast ; @choerrypuffs ; @latetaektalk ; @winetae ; @taeyongtime ; @nochanchu 🌼

—

TAG GAME ONE

tagged by :: @njmin thank you, lovebug! ✨

— tell me the first song that made you stan your current fave group and why did your faves attract you so much?

omg ok it was april 2014, and I was procrastinating on homework and scrolling through youtube. shinee’s lucifer mv was recommended for some reason, and I was intrigued, so I clicked on it. From there, it just spiraled out of control. I was blown away like there’s this one dance move where they all lined up and taemin does this hand motion so fluidly and I was like “this is it.” More shinee mvs were recommended after I clicked that one, so I kept going and watching all the other ones until I watched them all. Their music is just so different and unique, like even after all this time, I can’t find another kpop group who mimics the music style of shinee. and all their solos are absolutely god tier, too!!! they really are gonna be my first and last kpop group. shinee withstood through my stan eras for other groups. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being their fan.

I also found snsd through shinee because their mvs were recommended after I clicked lucifer too. the first one I saw is the iconic gee. taeyeon stood out to me in those mvs. her voice is so distinct, and I’ve been a fan of her ever since. She didn’t have a solo then, but I searched up all her drama osts, song features, everything because I loved her voice so much even back then. so yeah, taeyeon and shinee will forever be my faves, and I love them a lot 💓

TAG GAME TWO

tagged by :: @latetaektalk thank you, linh !! 💖

rule :: answer the ten questions and write your own!

— how are you today?

I’m doing really good! I’m enjoying my summer, and my day is pretty lax. I’ve been facetiming friends, watching chopped, making banh bao with my mom, and doing my daily cardio ✨

— what book has had the biggest impact on your life?

the princess knight by cornelia funke. my elementary school did this thing where your parents can buy a book to donate to the school library under your name for your birthday. this was the book my sister chose for me when I was in kindergarten. I loved that book; I borrowed it so many times and kept rereading it. It’s a children’s picture book about a princess who secretly learns how to joust. the king tries to give her hand in marriage to the knight who wins the competition, but she defeats them all and chooses to marry the gardener’s son who she loves 💕

— what is something you think everybody should have done once in their life?

Travel. There’s just something so wonderful about going to a new place, whether that’s halfway across the world or just the town a few states over. It’s a lovely feeling embarking on an adventure to a place unknown to you where you can meet new people, try new foods even if it’s just a random dish at a restaurant you’ve never been to, and make memories with strangers that no one back home ever has to know about. There’s just something intriguing about being able to go somewhere else and be someone else for an hour or a day or a week before you return back home.

— what story are you the most proud of and why?

on my previous blog, I wrote a fic called the universe of us, and it’s 21k+ wc. I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into that fic, and although I can’t read it now without cringing, I really am super proud of myself for pulling through and writing that. The concept of it was unique, in my opinion, and I would love to rewrite it someday! 💫

on this blog, I am most proud of the dumbing down of love. that fic is personal to me because it is literally comprised of my college experiences in written format and the characters embody my friends. I wrote that over the span of 3-4 nights, and that’s the fastest I’ve ever written a fic of that length. the words just flowed so easily for that fic, and the quesadilla scene was the first thing I wrote, and I’m quite proud of that scene!! 💓

— what has made you really happy recently?

I graduated uni!!!!! 💛💛

— what is the first thing you want to do after this whole pandemic is over and it’s safe to go out again?

I want to eat sushi LOL I haven’t had it in four months, and I’m craving it so badly.... I also want to go out with my friends again! I miss being able to see them everyday and our late night shenanigans ):

— if you had to make a soundtrack/playlist based on your life, how would you call it and which songs would you include?

honestly, these are just a bunch of my favorite songs throughout my entire life. some of them don’t relate to me personally, but I remember listening them on repeat, and I still know all the lyrics to them 💘

title: cue the soundtrack of my life

songs: complicated ⋆ avril lavigne ⋮ check yes, juliet ⋆ we the kings ⋮ the way i loved you ⋆ taylor swift ⋮ a daydream away ⋆ all time low ⋮ that’s what you get ⋆ paramore ⋮ i won’t give up ⋆ jason mraz ⋮ holy ground ⋆ taylor swift ⋮ lucifer ⋆ shinee ⋮ don’t go ⋆ exo m ⋮ 1000 years ⋆ shinee ⋮ breathe ⋆ taeyeon & jonghyun ⋮ coffee ⋆ bts ⋮ you are in love ⋆ taylor swift ⋮ walk you home ⋆ nct dream ⋮ i ⋆ taeyeon ⋮ tell me what to do ⋆ shinee ⋮ mad city ⋆ nct 127 ⋮ gravity ⋆ taeyeon ⋮ blueprint ⋆ stray kids

— what is your favourite breakfast food?

omg it’s this one dish that I order every time I go to the diner near my university, and it’s a smoked salmon eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce and hash browns 🤩🤩

— how did you get into writing and is it something you would like to do as your job?

I’ve always enjoyed writing, and my teachers sent me to the young authors’ faire every year from kindergarten to 8th grade. You don’t really get to write creative stories in class when you’re older though, and I stumbled upon fanfiction, and here we are. It’s not something I want to do as my job though. Writing is simply a fun pastime and hobby for me!! If I was forced to write or profit off of it, then that’d take fun out of it ):

— did you remember to drink enough water today?

yes, I did!! I make sure to drink 6-8 large cups of water a day :’) stay hydrated!!! 🤍

my questions for you:

what’s your favorite jelly bean flavor?

if you hated your child, what name would you give them?

do you pour cereal first or milk first?

do you like pineapple on your pizza?

if you could be a celebrity for the day, who would you be and why?

what are three dealbreakers for you in a relationship?

what’s your favorite word and why?

would you rather punch your ult bias in the face full force or lick the porta potty that hasn’t been cleaned after Coachella weekend?

which song(s) would you cut out from nct’s discography?

what’s the most unique/interesting food you’ve ever eaten?

TAG GAME THREE

tagged by :: @pwarkhans ty, sweetpea! 🌸

rule :: bold the statements that apply to you, italicize your aspirations, then tag nine people.

AIR ༉⋆͙̈

i have small hands / i love the night sky / i watch animals and birds when i pass them by / i drink herbal tea / i wake to see the dawn / the smell of dust is comforting / i’m valued for being wise / i prefer books to music / i meditate / i find joy in learning new truths from the world around me

FIRE ༉⋆͙̈

i don’t have straight hair / i like to wear ripped jeans and overalls / i play an organized sport / i love dogs / i am not afraid of adventure / i love to talk to strangers / i always try new foods / i enjoy road trips / summer is my favorite season / my radio is always playing

WATER ༉⋆͙̈

i wear bracelets on my wrists / i love the bustle of the city / i have more than one set of piercings / i read poetry / i love the sound of a thunderstorm / i want to travel the world / i sleep past midday most days / i love simply lit dinners and fluorescent signs / i rewatch kids shows out of nostalgia / i see emotions in colors not words

EARTH ༉⋆͙̈

i wear glasses or contacts / i enjoy doing the laundry / i am a vegetarian or vegan / i have an excellent sense of time / my humor is very cheerful / i am a valued advisor to my friends / i believe in true love / i love this chill of mountain air / i’m always listening to music / i am highly trusted by the people in my life

AETHER ༉⋆͙̈

i go without makeup in my daily life / i make my own artwork / i keep on track of my tasks and time / i always know true north / i see beauty in everything / i can always smell flowers / i smile at everyone i pass by / i always fear history repeating itself / i have recovered from a mental disorder / i can love unconditionally

[whatmakesmebleed]

Quarantine Q&A

tagged by the lovely @elleisforlovee thanks girl!

1. are you staying home from work/school?

Yep. I have been home since March 18th. I work at Starbucks and my store was one of the first to close near home. I could work but I wanted to be available to my mom who care gives for my step-dad and Grammie. I’m also taking my last class for my Bachelors. It’s screenwriting so it’s been fun.

2. if you’re staying home, who’s there with you?

My little bro is with me. He still works and makes store runs and whatnot when needed. There’s also 2 dogs: Rogue and Zeppelin and 3 cats: Loki, Vader and Calypso. Lots of fur babies to choose from.

3. are you a homebody?

I am. I’m struggling with lack of routine though. I would work. Do homework. relax. Repeat. It hasn’t been terrible but I miss the bookstore and movies theaters. And yeah. I actually miss work. I don’t know how people could do this forever lol.

4. what movies have you watched recently? what shows are you watching?

I’ve been on an Adam Driver filmography kick lately so I’ve been watching his not as well known films. And then just random films every morning I’ve heard about. Sorry to Bother You was wild. Oh and I’ve started Star Wars in timeline order. I also watched Girls. That was an interesting show. Didn’t love it but it made me think a lot. La Casa de Papel broke my heart and I can’t wait for next season. Future Man never gets enough love but I enjoy it so much. Rewatching New Girl. And yes. I did see Tiger King. Holy crap.

5. an event that you were looking forward to that got cancelled?

  My college graduation got cancelled. My mom, stepdad and I were supposed to go to Arizona for it next month. I was pretty bummed. Possibly my baby Yoda and Baratheon stag horns tattoos at the end of May. Been waiting since last year. Time will tell.

6. what music are you listening to?

So much OutKast. Taking me back. Film scores and tv scores. And then whatever Spotify comes up for me each week.

7. what are you reading?

Mostly stuff for school. Proper scriptwriting format and all that. Been reading some Star Wars fanfiction as well. And lots of twitter.

8. what are you doing for self-care?

I brush my hair and teeth every day. Sounds simple but could easily be ignored. Particularly on a bad anxiety day. I do it anyway. Making small steps to get my house in order everyday and making somewhat of a schedule to stay sane. It’s been interesting that’s for sure but I’m doing my best to stay positive and most days aren’t bad at all. We will get through this.

I’m tagging @incognitostarkbaratheon @gendryadempsie @gendryafanwhore @qwillow @yanak324

[iron-parkr]

quarantine tag game

Tagged by the actual loves of my life @emiliachrstine and @ahsokatonas

Are you staying home from school/work?

Yep! I’m back home from school and I’ve been doing online classes since beginning to mid March. I’ve got about two weeks left in the semester until finals and then a bit of a break, and then if all of this is over I’ll be at summer camp as a counselor!

If you’re staying home, who is there with you?

My parents, my brothers, and my doggo

Are you a homebody?

I mean, yeah, like I never went out and partied in high school and I’m more than fine staying in on a Friday night, but I also like hanging out with my friends and being able to actually do stuff with them

An event that you were looking forward that got canceled?

Literally all of this semester :( I wanted to explore the city where my school is and hang out with my friends, especially since we’re all supposed to be studying abroad next year and I won’t get to see a lot of them for a long time

What movies have you watched recently?

I can’t even remember tbh, although at some point during this whole thing I’m definitely gonna rewatch the One Direction movie because that’s just basic self-care sweetie

What shows are you watching?

Arrow!! I just started it and it’s awesome so far!! I can’t wait to keep going, I’m super intrigued. Also Avatar: The Last Airbender but I haven’t been able to watch it in a while bc reasons. I have a bunch of other shows on my To-Watch list that I’m hoping to get to soon as well (and ofc I’m gonna be rewatching some Supernatural episodes while we wait for the end of season 15)

What music are you listening to?

A lot of Taylor Swift, a bit of classic rock, and instrumental music/Marvel soundtracks while I do my homework

What are you reading?

Mostly fanfiction let’s be honest, but I wanna try to reread the Harry Potter series bc why not

What are you doing for self-care?

Write, mostly. Hang out with my brothers. I’m trying to learn how to play guitar, so I guess that can be considered self-care. And I’ve been trying to take walks outside to the state park by my house just to get some fresh air and move my legs

No idea who has and hasn’t done this already (and I know I’m late to the game) so whoever hasn’t and wants to can do it and just tag me

[bredforloyalty]

@we-can-work-it-outt tagged me in a q&a thingie, now that we're well into quarantine time I'm gonna do it ❤️ thank you Anida

Are you staying home from work/school?

Yup! We digital learning

What music are you listening to?

Well right now, like,, the last few days, HUNNY and Declan McKenna and Will Joseph Cook and Wallows and half•alive but also lots of 5 Seconds of Summer. Cause I just found out I like them

What movies have you watched recently? what shows are you watching?

Surprisingly I'm not watching a lot of things, I waste most of my time doing nothing :)) but I've watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood again, Jackie Brown for the first time, I'm watching Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (I can explain if needed hdSgkbcy) and uhh every day I get a strong urge to rewatch every movie I've ever been obsessed with... It's probably bc I felt better when I watched those multiple times in a few days and bc it's familiar and easy to watch

If you’re staying home, who’s there with you?

My parents and my (younger) sister

Are you a homebody?

Absolutely, we have a garden and I haven't been on the streets in like weeks. I go out to the garden once every few days lol I'm doing good!! And I'm thankful for my fortunate situation!

An event that you were looking forward to that got cancelled?

Nothing really, I was supposed to see Harry Styles in May with my friends but it's been pushed to February

What are you reading?

Fanfiction, copious amounts of fanfiction lmao as I said above,,,,,, having to be responsible for 100% of the schoolwork is stressful, I don't want to whine, I'm trying but uhhhhh let's just say,,, my circumstances are very good, I don't have lots of homework but doing it alone at home is. bad so I'm much more stressed about schoolwork than before all this. Fanfiction as escapism it is!

What are you doing for self care?

Oh I don't care about myself, even the things that seem like self-care are actually detrimental to my personal growth and well being gdysgjvcxx

Anyone wanna talk about their life during this corona thing?? @tsnlesbian @thenaturaldisesther @idk-just-call-me-fliss @darazscsipes-saskarmolas @kazuutoes and if I didn't tag you and you do want to do this, just say I tagged you!!

[afterspark-podcast]

Transformers (2007): Transcript

Episode Show Notes

[This can also be found on AO3!]

[Stinger]

O: And now I'm just imagining him showing up at this little old grandma's house, ripping up the house and being like, “HOW DARE YOU!?!”

[Intro Music]

S: Welcome... to hell!

O: It’s time.  It’s time for the Bay movies guys.

S: [sharp intake of breath] Welcome to our first anniversary special with the 2007 Transformers film!

O: Shall we talk about giant robots? [dissolves into laughter]

S: Yeah.  Let's talk about giant robots, though we may be very unhappy by the end of this.

O: So first, an info dump, for what is most likely a refresher for the majority of you folks but a- the live-action Transformers movie was directed by [deadpan] Michael Bay and uh, starring Shia LaBeouf.

S: The movie did incredibly well at the box office and introduced a lot of people to the franchise and um, these people may have been unaware of it [the Transformers franchise] before or hadn't seen a prior but it was an introduction at least for most.

O: Which is probably the most positive thing that we can say about this movie.  The movie franchise is likely the main reason we got the Transformers Prime TV series and even brought more readers to the first IDW comic run.  Which maybe wasn't super great at the time the movie came out, but got way better! [laughs]

S: Yeah, I mean, IDW also had comics based on the movie, in addition to the main IDW G1-

O: And I haven’t read those yet, but yeah.

S: I don't think we've made our disdain for this movie a secret but just in case, neither of us enjoy this movie.

O: Like, at all.

S: So if you personally like this movie this episode may not be for you.  Um, we're sorry guys.

O: [laughs] We are, actually, because I- I know there are people out there who like it.  We're not those people, but we will be back for a normal G1 schtick later, so uh, please join us then.

S: That isn't to say that there hasn't been excellent fanfiction based off of this.

O: Eh, fanfiction, fanart-

S: Um-hm.

O: Oh my god, there- there was this one I saw the other day where somebody did like, a Transformers Animated of ah, Last Knight Megatron-

S: Oh!

O: -and I was like, “I legitimately like that!  Good job, you!”

S: There’s some excellent fan work based on these movies.

O: Yeah, like, just hands down, but um...  Well, down to brass tacks Specs, what was your first experience with this movie like?

S: Hmm, ah, well let's go back in time, shall we?

O: [makes woo noises]

S: So I didn't see it in theaters.  Ah, my first experience with this movie was getting it for my birthday... yay.

B: [laughter]

O: Yay.

S: I watched it and um, and was like, “Okay... that was a thing.  It exists, um, Bumblebee peed on a guy.” And I watched this with my parents, I'll have you know!

O: And it- it's way funnier when you know her parents, who are extremely Catholic and her mother who is extremely Irish Catholic and imagining them watching this movie with her is hysterical .

S: My mom doesn't like sci-fi to begin with-

O: Yeah, right!  And then, all of this was happening!

S: Yeah, my- my dad probably enjoyed it more because he likes explosions and stuff.

O: [laughs] He's a nice guy but he is- he- he, he's a simple man.  He has simple criteria for the things he enjoys and I can respect that.

S: He actually really likes Terry Pratchett but let’s-

O: Oh, yes.

S: -let's get back to this.  Uh, I don't think I uh, rewatched it for a while because uh, high school was happening and I had better things to be doing.  You know, like reading fanfic or doing homework. Homework was more enjoyable than this.

O: [laughs]

S: [sighs] So I found the movie mostly just disappointing.  While it did breathe new life into the fandom it seemed like most of the pre-existing fans that I- you know, knew or followed or was aware of, were disappointed by the designs and the story on like- specifically on the forum that I was frequenting at the time.  Other people loved it and I mean, it did create a new influx of fans, so... that's a positive thing.

I was also super annoyed by the lack of Arcee because there was a decent toy of her and I own it.  It's the only Bayverse toy I own, and then they had Arcee and two other characters that shared the same mold show up in the second movie and then die.

O: And- and these were not the same mold as the toy she [Specs] owns.

S:  Yes.

O: To make this even weirder, like, Arcee did have a design apparently [in the first movie].

S: Yes, she was a nice motorcycle.  She had legs in the first- for the first movie toy and then… then she was a unicycle thing-

O: Mm-hmm.

S: -in the second movie and then they all died.  And I don't own any other toys from ah- from the Bayverse franchise, so let's go over to you.

O: Eh-heh-heh-ha!  So, to my memory I first saw this in high school.  I want to say it may have actually been something they showed at school?  [My SO seems to remember the same thing, so this was probably the case. ~O]

And in direct contrast to Specs, I went to public school in a rural area, no one gave a shit, so...  I- I saw the second one in theaters, but I legitimately do not remember where I saw the first one. Uh, for the record, I thought it was fine!  I had zero reference, beyond a foggy memory of Beast Machines- not even Beast Wars guys, Beast Machines.  And hadn't seen G1 at all.  I very vaguely knew who Optimus Prime was and pretty much nobody else.

No, it would take over a decade before this film franchise filled me with seething rage.

S: And you didn't even get into the fandom, when I tried interesting you in it.  You got into it by yourself!

O: [laughs] I know!  She tried! She tried in college! [laughs] Which is why, I was like, “Hey, I want to watch Beast Wars!” It was like, not looking where I was going and walking off a cliff!  [laughs]

S: Pretty much, and then I just threw TV shows at you.

O: She just like, thew DVD’s down the cliff at me! [continues laughing]

S: And comics.

O: Which I mean...I didn’t really mind...but I love that description so much.

S: [laughs]

O: But, uh, all of this aside, I will be saying my media recommendation for the day here, instead of at the end.  I strongly recommend watching Lindsey Ellis’, “The Whole Plate.” Which is a series about film studies through the lens of Transformers.  Not only is excellent breaking these movies down in the context of film, and film theory, but it's informative and done by someone else who clearly loves Transformers.

Pretty sure her favorite is Starscream, but I also think I saw a Wheeljack in the background of one of her videos, but do not quote me on that.  Uh, it is at least partially due to Lindsey I started watching G1. Uh, the other YouTube culprit I'll likely recommend in a different video, heh, but needless to say she certainly didn't hurt.  I'd been watching her, “Whole Plate,” series since 2017 so... over a year before I made that so fateful decision to borrow Beast Wars.

This recommendation also comes caveat: Because I've watched her videos, I know I've been heavily influenced by them and... it is likely I will talk about some of the same points that she's made... while we're going through this movie.  So just, if- eh, this is me so this is me, um, cite--this is me giving you my citation for ah, my work, essentially.

Go watch Lindsey Ellis’ videos, they're fantastic.

S: And I suppose to counterpoint, I haven't seen any of her videos.  So anything that I talk about that ends up accidentally being something that comes up in here is an accident.

O: The only- I think I showed you the- the Megan Fox video.

S: You might have, but at this point it's been so long ago that-

O: [quietly]  That’s true..

S: -that I probably don't remember, or almost certainly don’t.

O: Fair!  Anyway, definitely go- go, uh, watch her, because she's interesting.  I-I feel like there’s- I’ve seen posts that like, seem like at least some people don't like her.  So, I don't know what's going on there and I don't really want to find out. So if it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing and that's fine.    Well! Ready for the movie?

S: Say it isn't so, but yes, yes I am.

O: [laughs] Here we go!

S: [sighs]  We open with some opening narration by Optimus Prime played by Peter Cullen of the da--

O: -of Optimus Prime? [laughs]

S: Well, I was gonna say, “of the days of old.”

O: [laughs louder]  Okay, fair! And I don't- I don’t care if he mostly in a cartoon voice over work, he is too good for this fucking movie!

S: He is.  He gives us the backstory for Cybertron and the Autobot/Decepticon war and I think, you see someone spearing someone else with something in this…

O: It wouldn’t shock me.  Something called the AllSpark is super important and they send it off planet to keep the Decepticons from getting it.

S: The Autobots couldn’t keep track of it either.  They did not think this through.

O: Of course, it landed on an unknown planet, Eii-arth!

S: [snickers] Megatron apparently followed the AllSpark but pulled a Skyfire and got frozen in the Arctic, where he was found by a team of explorers led by Captain Archibald Witwicky.  Doesn't that just sound like a manly man.

O: [laughing]  He is!

S: The part of Skyfire will be played by Megatron in this movie.

O: Make sure to properly chill your Decepticon warlord for at least a couple of decades before serving.

S: Don't you mean a couple thousand years?

O: Shush!

B: [laugh]

S: Meanwhile, Skyfire’s sir not appearing in this picture.

O: Also, don't be fooled by the opening guys!  Sure, Optimus may be talking now but it won't last.  It'll be like, what? An hour before we get any more giant robots talking?

S: Probably.  We cut to the Middle East in the um, ‘present’ day.

O: Well, present day ten years ago anyway.

S: It's soldiers doing transportation stuff on a military base... and a guy wants to eat alligators.

O: Fuck yeah, America- am I right!?!

S: It’s cuisine.  The military partially funded these movies if anybody was unaware this really helps explain their presence in the movie series.

O: That and Bay's HUGE fuckin’ boner for ‘em.

S: The soldiers here are some of the better characters in the movie.  They're funny, they work well off each other, and you know, [gasp] feel like they’re friends.

O: What a concept.  An unknown helicopter lands at the base, transforming into a giant robot and starting to destroy said base.

S: The Decepticons apparently want US military codes or they're trying to find the AllSpark location, or something.

O: I can't help but think of Soundwave was here this would have been done so much more competently.  Even Soundwave- even movie Soundwave is still competent.

S: Oh, probably.  Uh, the Decepticon is Blackout by the way, who- I'm not sure we ever see or hear him talk?

O:  Yeah, like, we might hear him talk in Cybertronian at the very end of the movie like, when it's like, doing the all the Decepticons gettin’ ready.

S: Hmm.

O: Um…

S: Maybe.

O: He never really is a character, um, but I hope you're ready for shaky cam video of this robot and not getting a good look at him!

S: Oh!  Flying tanks, how novel.

O: [laughs] They fail to fight off the Decepticon and a small group of soldiers manages to escape the base, but not without being followed by Scorpinok.

S: Who is released by, um, Blackout cuz apparently he's his pet or something-

O: Something like that.  The only thing you need to remember about this is that the main soldier is Lennox, and he is leading the group.  The other characters have names. I had to look them up.

S: Yeah, they aren’t very big characters, unfortunately.  It would have been more entertaining if-

B: -they were.

S: [sighs] And then suddenly we're at a high school.

O: Following a teenage boy who's gonna try to hawk his great-great-great-something-grandfather’s shit in the middle of class.

S: [sighs] Why is he hawking shit?  Because he wants to seduce the hottie by getting a car, either that, or that is merely a side effect of getting a car that he hopes will happen.

O: Mikaela is way too good for him.

S: She is.

O: He blabs on about how his something-grandfather, Captain Archibald Witwicky was the first man to explore the Arctic.

S: Never mind that there were already people living there.

O: He was the first white idiot to make it up there and not die?

S: Possibly.

O: [laughs]

S: We're introduced to the glasses of plot here.  They're not particularly relevant right now, but they will be later!

O:  Notice those weird etchings on the lenses?  That's- that's a thing!

S: Keep these in mind.  Put a pin in it. But right now, Sam is talking about selling his stuff on eBay.

O: ~ Ladies~ he takes Paypal. [laughs]

S: The bell rings and the rest of the class leaves as Sam talks to his teacher.  Proceeding to be a total freaking dumb ass by guilting his teacher into giving him a better grade than he deserved, because otherwise his dad won't help him buy a car.

O: And remember, this is supposed to be the character we’re identifying with.  Thanks! I hate it.

S: [sighs] You know, and after meeting Sam's dad, his behavior makes a lot more sense.  Clearly he gets dickish behavior from said dad.

O: His dad drives him through a Porsche dealer to make him think he's buying Sam a Porsche, which just kind of seems like a dick move.  They proceed to show up at a used-car lot with, uh, Sam spying a mysterious Camaro, which is Bee in this.

S: Like, Bumblebee was actually following them into the car lot which is kind of funny-

O: Yeah, but- but they didn't really see him until he parked in the car lot.

S: Yeah, I guess uh, they had to make him cooler for the 2000’s.

O: You know, I always liked the little Volkswagon bugs when I was in high school around this timeframe.  I still do, they're adorable!

S: They're cute.  Unfortunately, they're not sexy enough for a teenage boy in the mid-2000s.

O: [sighs] No, but they were sexy enough for a teenage boy in the 80’s.

S: [laughs] Yes, but that was when he knew it was his- it was friend shaped.

O: [laughs] Oh-

S: Bumblebee is-

O: G1 Bumblebee is so friend shaped.

S: He is.  He's friend shaped to everyone except Megatron, really.  Well, all of the Decpti-

O: No, he’s friend shaped to Megatron in the comics too!

S: Oh god, well, are we talking IDW comic or the original?

O: I was talking about the- I was talking about the- the plot in IDW, yeah. [laughs] Mostly I just thought was funny because his design is very, very similar in that toG1-

S: Yeah-

O: And I was like, yeah that’s pretty funny though.

S: Yeah, you're right he was very friend shaped in that.

O: He is friend shaped to everybody.

S: But in the Marvel Comics he's not friend shaped to the Decepticons.

O: Oh no, nobody's friend shaped in the Marvel comic. [laughs]  Are you kidding me?

S: Ah, ah, Bee’s been following this kid around for a while and the car salesman clearly has never seen this damn car in his life, but he's still gonna try and sell it.

O: I-I mean given that it is his car lot, I can’t- I’m not sure I can fault him on this decision really? [laughs]

S: Well, it’s not honest.

O: [laughs] No.

S: And he's like, “I'm honest- whatever.”  I think he has, “honesty,” actually on a sign somewhere.

O: [continues to laugh]

S: I don't know, it's not- it doesn't really matter.  And, um, there's also an ostrich here. Why is there an ostrich!?!

O: I think he has a petting zoo or something, I don’t know.

S: He is down to make that dough.

O: Very.

S: Bee also comes with racing stripes.

O: We all know that makes him go faster, Specs!

S: [snorts]

O: [laughs]

S: Amongst other things, Bee contains a bee air freshener, that says “BEE-OTCH,” a small disco ball, and a weird lion bobblehead, that I thought was a small taxidermied animal at first.

O: [laughs] And we didn’t even see it till our second walk- er, watch through either!  Just to make this more ridiculous!

S: Yeah, it vanishes so I gather Spike didn’t- oh god, not Spike-

O: No, this isn’t Spike, it would probably be better if it was!

S: Yeah.  Sam didn't think it was too hot either.

O: Yeah, but uh, this whole bit, just feels creepy.  Sam's gonna buy Bumblebee, a living, thinking, being, whose intelligence definitely surpasses his own.

S: And let's compare this to Charlie from the Bumblebee movie, who's trying to rebuild a car by herself with no support from her family and then there's Sam.  And I mean, okay, yeah, she does get Bumblebee, basically- basically in a transaction. She does kind of buy him, but when she realizes that he's a person, she treats him like a person.

O: Exactly, and Sam is just this entitled little rich kid living in a nice house and has everything handed to him in Southern California!   I don't know what his parents do, but clearly they make good fucking money!

S: I don't know what they do.

O: Me either!

S: Bee is even parked next to a VW Bug, an old one.  Which he will then proceed to wreck.

O: I feel like this is the start to Michael Bay being like why do you like, “Why do you like that nerdy shit?  Come look at boobs, tits, and nice cars. These are the only things that are really important.” This will be the hill I die on.

S: [sighs] I don’t understand Michael Bay.

O: If you didn’t like this, why did you do it!?!  I know the answer is money.

S: Money is-

O: But you can at least do it enjoyably!

S: Yeah, well, money is the root of a lot of... stuff.  Speaking of, Bee is... very much a dick here. He destroys this guy's entire lot of cars, or at least all their windows.  Because he emits a supersonic noise and you know, busts all the windows in an effort to get Sam to buy him or get the guy to sell him to Sam-

O: For a cheaper price, basically.

S: Yeah.

O: Cutting to the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense is briefing a team of technicians who will be attempting to decode the Decepticon signal they got from Blackout earlier. (Kind of.)

S: One of them is a very intelligent young woman named Maggie.

O: Who will proceed to be shot like another piece of tits and ass, like all the pretty woman in this movie.  Oh, and if you're not young and pretty in this movie series you're basically just a harpy.

S: [sighs] And after this movie we will never see her again.  Which might imply that she has more longevity than Sam.

O: Smart girl.  At Sam’s house, we’re introduced to his mom, his dog, and some casual sexism.

S: We're not allowed to put girl jewelry on a male dog in this house, are we?

O: Of course not!  What would the men think?  That jewelry is awesome and they're totally allowed to wear it.  Yeah, actually let's do that- that sounds way better.

S: [sighs] But don't worry if you think Mojo [Sam’s dog] is emasculated or something.  Later movies will have him humping absolutely everything.

O: Yeah, because that's what I want to watch in a movie about giant alien robots!

S: Admittedly, these movies aren't particularly about giant alien robots.  They’re-

O: No, they're like- about Sam's love life and explosions [snickers].

S: Or whatever the human lead’s love life.

O: [quietly] True.

S: That's- that’s typically how it runs. [sighs] Back to the army guys again.  They're still attempting to escape Scorponok. Except they don't know that Scorponok’s following them.

O: No, but they're like, trying to get away from the base.

S: They're trying to get somewhere where they can contact help, I think? So they're making their way through the desert, with this young kid that showed up at the very beginning of the movie and was like, “Hi!  You're my friends, I'm bringing you something.” And he escaped with them.

O: Yup.  They decide they need to get their intel back to Pentagon as soon as possible.

S: And in our other movie, Sam's friend is a moron, and Mikaela's boyfriend is a dick, just a beefier dick than Sam.

O: So infuriating, this should be relatable.  I was the weirdo in high school! But no, I still just want to strangle Sam with my bare hands.

S: And- well, honestly, Miles (Sam's friend) isn't really a moron.  He's just acting like an actual teenage boy.

O: [laughs]

S: [huffs] He's climbing trees and entering cars through the window and then in the next scene when we see that, the door is open?  So he like, dived through the door?

O: Continuity.  Continuity is not a thing, Specs.

B: [laugh]

S: [sighs] Sam proceeds to bait Mikaela's jock boyfriend to satisfy his own ego, but just barely manages to avoid a knuckle sandwich.

O: UNFORTUNATELY.  Said boyfriend then proceeds to treat Mikaela like property.

S: He won't even let her ride in the front seat of his truck.  She knows significantly more about trucks than you do, you asshole!  She could probably-

O: Oh, she could run circles around this asshole.

S: Well no, I was thinking she could probably you know, set something up so that his truck killed him.

O: Ah-ha-ha, there we go!  That's the movie- that's the movie Mikaela should have been in.

S: Well, I mean, Megan Fox- she is apparently good in Jennifer's Body.  Sam boots his friend out of Bumblebee so that he can offer... Mikaela a ride home.

O: It’s shitty to strand your friend like this, dude.

S: It's especially shitty, because the car has backseat.

O: And he couldn't shove his friend back there.

S: [quietly] Yeah.

O: Mikaela reluctantly accepts and Bee has decided to become Sam's wingman, apparently.

S: I'm assuming he knows what teenagers do in cars, but really, does he actually understand what teenagers do in cars!?!

O: [while laughing] Um, I'm-I’m not sure to be honest.

S: Well, considering they apparently learned English from the internet.

O: Yeah, you’d think there’d be some porn thrown in there.

S: I’d assume so.  Um, he breaks down causing Mikaela to open his hood and check the engine.

O: And what kills me, is that she's saying relevant things throughout the scene but the way she's shot, she's not treated like a person, she's treated like a-a-an object to be viewed essentially, and it is very frustrating. I know we could assume that it's from Sam's perspective, but boy does this get old.

S: It gets really old.  Sam asks her about why she hangs out with her boyfriend.  Of course, he phrases it like, strongly hinting that she should hang out with him instead.  And Mikaela can totally tell that he's doing that so she's like, “I'm out,” and starts walking off.

O: But Bee suddenly starts working again so Sam's able to convince her to at least let him finish driving her home.

S: She'd have probably had a better time walking home, let's be real.

O: Probably.

S: Except she might have had really uncomfy shoes...

O: Eh, except like, it was sunset, and it was night by the time they got home.  So I have to ask, how far out of town were they?

S: That's a good point.  Um, and then we get Sam saying uh, [sighs] that, “There's more than meets the eye,” about the Mikaela.

O: Why does this just feel like another slap in the face of the original series?

S: Probably because it is, and on to Air Force One.  Frenzy, who's apparently someone's carry on here, because he's a boombox in this and was actually under someone's seat.

O: Or!  You could choose to imagine him walking onto the onto the plane himself.  Just thing about this little radio, who’s got teeny tiny little legs, and walks on the plane.  It's way funnier!  Also, did he steal Soundwave’s alt!?!

S: That is a fun thing, but yeah.  Hello president who is obviously Bush!  Whose face we don't see, but unfortunately we get to see his besoc- besocked feet.

O: He wants a ding dong.

S: [sighs]

O: Betcha do!  Uh, Frenzy attempts to get data from the military database by way of Air Force One, but he’s caught while doing this, and so the Secret Service shoots at him.

S: The Secret Service apparently didn't get the 4-1-1 on what you don't do on a plane.  You don't shoot shit on a plane. You really don't wanna do that. It just leads for a bad time, for everyone, very briefly.

O: [laughing] Yup!  Very short lives!

S: Either that, or they're lucky and they manage to make a safe landing but... you don't want-

O: Do you really- do you really want to risk that?  No.

S: No, you don't want catastrophic decompression on a plane.

O: No you don’t.

S: I mean, who knows, maybe Air Force One is better... built?  Once they uh, basically, they end up taking the plane down, uh, in an emergency landing, because shots fired or whatever.  Then once they bring the plane down, Frenzy is able to sneak off the plane through the a- he goes down like, the doors that the wheels go out and then it's just funny.

O: It is.

S: Yeah, he goes over to Barricade after that.

O: Barricade’s a police car.  He will be more relevant later, but uh- you have any doubts that this little thing was Frenzy, you just need to see that little walk off the plane and you will know.

S: Cuz he- he's got like, his hand up to hide his face.

O: Yeah, like he’s- he’s like, trying to be nonchalant.  Like, after they thought he was trying to kill the president it is delightful.

S: Mm-hmm and Frenzy is smarter than the- the Secret Service on this plane because he had like, shurikens.

O: Yeah!  Once he's in Barricade he pulls up the eBay listings for Sam's Grandpa's glasses and says, “We must find LadiesMan217!”

S: Why did he pick that username?

O: I don't know, but I legitimately find it hilarious every time a Cybertronian has to shout it in this movie.  I know he said it in like, Cybertronian there, it is still great.

S: Oh Sam’s ego, but yeah, it is really funny anytime a robot shouts that.  At Sam's house, Bee apparently has got places to be. So he just, you know, turns on his own ignition and then drives off by himself.

O: This awakens Sam, who then goes chasing after his own car on his bike.

S: And call- he calls the police.  Sam calls the police to report that his car is being stolen.  Going so far as to remind them that his dad is the head of the neighborhood watch.

O: Well, if you needed a another reminder that Sam is a rich white boy, there you go.

S: [sighs] Yeah…

O: Sam finally catches up with Bee, who's standing some distance away beaming the bat signal- I mean the Autobot signal some kind of signal-er, some kind of signal into space.

S: Sam starts recording all of this on his shitty flip phone, and thinking that he's going to die the first words out of his mouth are, “Porn’s not mine, it's Miles’!”

O: Oh yes, that's the last image I'd want to leave my own mother with. Talking about your erections, lovely.

S: Considering one of the conversations that happens later…

O: It may be were relevant than I want to imagine, yeah.  Mm-hmm. Moving on!

S: Yeah.  Sam is then chased by some good doggos, who managed to get free of their uh, basically they weren’t very well contained.

O: Yep.

S: But the poor puppies are denied their midnight snack as Bumblebee bursts in and save[s] him and you don't really see the dogs go away.  They just start aren’t there anymore.

O: [laughs] And despite thinking his car’s alive, he shouts something that they, “Can keep the car!” and chunks his keys at Bee.

S: I don't even know what the building they're in even is, cuz he goes into a building and then suddenly it seems like they're not in a building anymore and it's... what's going on?

O: Yeah… Um, Sam's arrested when the cops show up for making a false 9-1-1 call because his car is obviously right there.

S: Yep, and it's not like there was any evidence of other people around.

O: There weren’t.

S: At the Pentagon with some assholes, including the Secretary of Defense and our- Maggie, our pretty lady analyst.  Maggie proceeds to sneak into a very high up meeting basically to say, “The system is alive!”

O: Which is completely insane in any other context, except this movie, where she is technically right, but it still sounds like a pretty insane context-

S: Yeah.

O: Er, sane- sounds like pretty insane an idea.

S: She kind of gets kicked out... of the meeting.

O: Yeah.

S: But she's right, and she will be vindicated later.  And, um, I hate the color balancing in this movie everything is so orange and blue.  It looks like everyone's skin tone is basically, you know, orange and like, they all have really bad spray tans?  Or at least all the white people do. None of the black people in this movie really have to deal with looking like an orange.

O: They may still have orange light on them, but it's not quite the same way.

S: Yeah, and now it's police time.

O: Where we've made Sam do a pee test, and then they hold up a bottle that says, “Mojo,” on it and they're interrogating him about it.  Mojo, as previously stated... is his dog and it is very likely that the bottle would say, “canine,” on it because that's how it worked when I had to pick up medication for my cat from the pharmacy. [Well, the cat’s was labelled ‘feline,’ but you know what we mean.]  So they're just being assholes.

S: And I mean, that looks like a legit prescription bottle.

O: Yeah.

S: So, I don't think most people keep their illegal drugs in legit prescription bottles.

O: [laughs] Fair, fair.

S: I mean, I have no personal experience but… [sighs]  And back to the Middle East with the soldier boys.

O: Scorponok attempts subtlety, only narrowly missing killing Lennox.

S: He does however succeed in killing the oblivious glasses guy, or maybe he doesn't kill him, maybe just badly injures him?  I don’t know.

O: I’m pretty sure he's dead because we don't see him for the rest of the movie.  If I'm wrong I apologize.

S: Okay, that's a good point.  The soldiers all book it and take shelter in and around these bombed out buildings.  Which is apparently the young boy's village. [sighs] They have brought hell down upon this small village and this will never be addressed.

O: The dad of the kid that's been helping them seems awfully nice, considering they have brought a giant mechanical scorpion to the front door.

S: Yup, that poor man does not deserve any of this shit.

O: Nope!

S: And here's one of the few legitimately funny scenes in this movie.

O: Lennox, has to call the Pentagon.  Which involves Lennox having to go back and forth with the most bored guy in a call center ever, but he also needs a credit card because it's a long-distance call.  A really long distance call.

S: He's able to get that credit card from Epps, one of the soldiers in his squad.

O: And this is all happening, while they're in the middle of a firefight.  So they're having to yell to be heard and stuff. Epps is also shooting at Scorponok, so Lennox has to grab the wallet off of Epps.

S: And so their conversation on how to navigate this is effectively a something like.  “It's in my back pocket!” “Which one!?!” “Left cheek! Left cheek! Left cheek!” All while firing at Scorponok.  And apparently he's like- eh, Lennox is like, “You have like fifteen pockets!”

O: [laughs]  Which I feel like is legitimately funny!  And I just kind of wish I just didn’t have to like, be concerned, is this racism- with the call center guy looking and sounding Indian and I don't know, because that seems like something Michael Bay would do.

S: Yeah… yeah.  Jets and other military things have apparently been quickly scrambled and show up.

O: Including a military drone, just like what Soundwave turns into in Prime, so I was chuckling.

S: Explosions happen, and miraculously they don't appear to hit any civilians, somehow.  And then there's more shooting and more explosions-

O: And I get very bored.

S: And they're able to shoot off a part of Scorponok's tail, while the rest of Scorponok conveniently gets away.

O: They definitely thought this is important.  The music swells, things are happening in slow motion… you should be paying attention to this.

S: Basically, uh, the military guys get rescued and presumably no one does anything to help repair the damage that…

O: They've done to this village.

S: Yeah, we never hear about the young child again.

O: Nope!

S: [sighs] And back in America, Maggie has stolen intel from the Pentagon and uh, shows up on her friend Glen's doorstep.  And she- she hides it in her makeup case.

O: Which is pretty clever.  Also, he's apparently a master hacker!

S: Yup.  He pulls out some bullshit program that basically auh, you know, pulls, “It's alive!” from the Decepticon audio data Maggie brought over.

O: Which is about the point the feds show up with the SWAT team and arrest them both.

S: Yeah.  Bee shows a back up at Sam's house presumably just to fuck with Sam which at this point really does seem like a Bee thing to do in this movie.

O: Yeah… Bee’s kind of a dick.

S: Sam escapes on his mom’s bike.

O: Why does his mom have a bike that looks like it belongs to a five-year-old!?!  I mean, like- look, I'm not saying don't do you, cuz do you, but- but- but… his mom confuses me.

S: Apparently, she's just a very girly girl who... has a basket that needs to have a pillow in it.  Maybe she takes Mojo for bike rides?

O: I would believe that.

S: I could see her doing that considering that she does put jewelry on him.  She makes him a handsome boy.

O: She does.

S: [sighs] Oh god, so now Sam is running away from his own car, like a crazy person and then uh, runs into Mikaela who's out apparently having lunch.

O: A day, yeah.

S: Well, lunch with her friends.

O: Yeah!

S: She has normal friends, and Sam proceeds to look like a crazy person.

O: He thinks his car is chasing him.  The fact that he's right doesn't really play into how this looks right now.

S: Cuz yeah, he's- he's riding a very pink bike that--

O: Saying his car is chasing him.

S: Yeah.  Bee was definitely driving on the sidewalk, and probably on people's lawns for parts of this.

O: It was funny  Mikaela hops on her scooter because clearly she's like, “I guess I go- I guess I better go help this dumbass.”

S: Mikaela was just a very nice, responsible person.  She's- she's kind.

O: Yeah, she’s not the- like yeah, you don't really see her being mean.

S: She-

O: Even to Sam, even when Sam is being kind of a jerk earlier she's never outright mean to him.  She's done, very done, but you never really see her being mean to him with- unless he kind of deserved it like later.

S: Mikaela is a very kind person and unfortunately she doesn't- her character just doesn't get the recognition that she deserves.

O: No, she doesn’t.

S: [sighs]

O: Barricade catches up with Sam.

S: The police slogan on the side of his police car says- or his police car alt mode says. “To punish and enslave”.

O; What about being undercover, dude?

S: Well, be honest most people don't really pay much attention.

O: [quietly] True.

S: He dicks with Sam for a bit before transforming into robot mode and yelling, “Are you LadiesMan217!?!”

O: Really quickly, and it's amazing.  Sam runs away and knocks Mikaela off her scooter.

S: Sam, you dumbass, you could have really fucking hurt her, you jack ass.

O: Pretty much. [singing] ~Here Bee comes to save the dayyyyyy!~

S: Sam proceeds to pull a, “Come with me if you want to live,” to Mikaela, which... At this point, considering that he has now uh, conflated her with himself to the Decepticons probably- is probably true, yeah.

O: Fair.  They have a high-speed chase, somewhere in Southern California.

S: Bee gets them somewhere relatively isolated before dumping the two of them out and transforming to fight with Barricade and... is this still the middle of the day?  I- no this is at night, it’s night now.

O: It keeps kind of swapping, it's weird.  And then Frenzy hop-

S: How long where they… ?

O: I don't know how long this was going on, because it was like- it looked like it was mid-afternoon and they don't get dumped out till night, like the sun has set, night.

S: Like, jeez.

O: I don't know, heh, but Frenzy hops out of Barricade and attacks Sam and Mikaela.

S: [sighs] Sam manages to lose his goddamn pants in this altercation.

O: Of course he does.  Mikaela, being the badass that she is, grabs a fucking power tool and attacks Frenzy with it.  Cutting him into pieces!

S: Mikaela kicks ass, and she would have been a far better protagonist.  My heart weeps that this wasn't actually the reality.

O: Eh, that's okay they kind of did it in the Bumblebee movie.

S: Yeah.  Sam shows his bravery by... bravely kicking Frenzy’s head away.

O: Frenzy, using a second set of legs coming from his head... walks over to Mikaela’s purse, because she dropped it earlier, and then disguises himself as her cellphone.

S: After stabbing her, you know, her real cellphone.  Presumably to get data from it or something?

O: I would assume?  Yeah.

S: Otherwise it's gonna be a very bad disguise.  She opens it and is like, “Where are all my god damn contacts?”

B: [laugh]

O: Yeah, fair.

S: And then there's some crack about Bee being Japanese, once Sam finally gets his actual introduction to his, you know, ‘not a car’.

O: This should be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the original toys being created by the Japanese company Takara, but given Bay’s track record, I really have to wonder.  I know I keep bringing that up, but like, parts of this movie feel very uncomfortable to watch-

S: [quietly] Yeah.

O: -and certain racial stereotyping that he does not only in this movie, but even worse, honestly, in the sequels... just makes me feel really uncomfortable.

S: [quietly] Yeah. [normal volume]  They ride off in Bee, both Sam and Mikaela and not wanting to sit in the driver's seat because Bee is driving and... that wouldn't be polite somehow.

O: I'm not even going to comment on what I'm actually thinking.  Sam tries to pull off a slick move, telling Mikaela she should sit in his lap because there's only one other seat belt.

S: That's bad, if you're in an accident you're both gonna die.  Though, I mean, considering they’re both in a giant alien robot…

O: I mean their driver is a sentient alien robot, who's used to being a car, so hopefully that doesn't happen, right?

S: Mostly I'm just imagining that a giant alien robot car isn't going to have the same sort of, you know, safety tests-

O: Oh, safety precautions!?!  Ha! [laughs]

S: [trying not to laugh] Safety test results that an actual car-

O: [continues laughing]  That’s fair!

S: So who the hell knows how this would work!  Bee takes offense at being called a ‘piece-of-shit Camaro’.

O: Leading to him dumping them out, driving off without a driver, and then driving past a very conveniently placed newer yellow and black Camaro with the exact paint job he wants.  Because Michael Bay cares about very few things in this movie. Tits! And you, yes you! Driving a nice shiny car, because you are a man. A virale, sex having man!

B: [laugh]

O: Or at least that's what he's assuming!

S: Oh, and the way Bumblebee scans this car is kind of ridiculous cuz he’s- he’s up on two wheels driving like half on his side so he’s-

O:  Yeah, like on his side!  So he’s got to scan it with something like, on the bottom of his car mode???

S: Yeah, on his undercarriage and it's weird and silly.

O: And it’s just like, yeah, nobody saw this.  Sure!

S: Like, they're driving in a tunnel, there were definitely other people around, cuz people-

O: There definitely were!

S: Cuz people honked at them, people honked at them when Bumblebee dropped them off.  But yeah, let's go. Bee picks them up and they're like, “Oh wow, you could have done this anytime?” and then Bee precedes to take them trespassing so they can meet new people.

O: Where even are they?

S: I don’t know!  I don't think anyone knows.

O; Valid point.

S: Who knows, maybe they're in Oregon now.

O: [laughs] Yes!  They drove north. Very far north!

S: They could have if they were driving all day, I don’t know!  Either that or they were going around goddamn circles.

O: I'm willing to bet that actually.

S: And finally we're going to get more robots as um, meteorites rain down.  These robots being our Autobots.

O: Who will still not improve this movie enough to matter.

S: Which is so depressing.

O: It really is!

S: Mikaela and Sam hold hands because as uh, movie logic dictates- if you have a man and a woman who spend more than a few minutes uh, with one another they will be in love by the end of it.

O: Who cares!  The Autobots seriously fuck some shit up when they land on Earth!

S: Oh they do.  And not a single fuck was given, because they seriously have no idea what the fuck's going on.

O: A bunch of people are running around at several of the crash si- sites recording things too.

S: Um-hmm.  Recording stuff, and probably putting it on YouTube-

O: I would assume.

S: -or whatever in-universe equivalent of YouTube.

O: I think it's just YouTube, based on a sequel, but don't quote me on that.

S: Who knows, we even see Ratchet’s weird ambulance mode in the background of some of these shots.  So we can see where and when he scanned it.

O: Apparently, according to the TF Wiki, this is supposed to be a Hummer H2 rescue vehicle.  So not even technically an ambulance.

S: And then we see Jazz at a Cadillac dealership.

O: Isn’t he supposed to be a Porsche?

S: Yep.

O:  I mean, [sighs] why start being accurate with alts now, right?

S: Well, I'm going to assume that Cadillac paid for this product placement.

O: [laughs] Yeah…

S: Whereas, Porsche probably didn't give a shit.

O: And Porsche was already in there so they did pay money, but the Cadillacs probably paid more.

S: Probably, I don’t know. He's- yeah, he's not even a Cadillac.  Jazz is a Pontiac Solstice, so why are we even had a Cadillac dealership?

O: Money.  Ironhide however, is a huge fucking truck now.

S: A GMC Topkick.  He also apparently, uh- a little girl mistakes him for the tooth fairy.

O: It’s pretty cute actually. I gotta give them that.

S: Yep. Optimus lands on scams a conveniently placed semi.

O: [It] kills me that they copy the paint jobs.  I think I’d prefer if the paint jobs were something that were like, inherent to them, to their biology.  But no! There's another truck out there with blue paint and orange and red flames on the side, are you shitting me?

S: I mean…

O: Or on the front.

S: [snickers]  It's likelier than you think.  Does this mean that there is another cop car out there with, “Punish and enslave,” on the side, or it- was this some civilian’s idea of a cop cosplay?

O: [sighs] Well, we do see little details change like the Autobot signals [symbols] on Ratchet’s paint job.  So maybe that was a small enough detail to be changed. The only reason we even know the semi-truck’s paint job is because we saw a drive by.

S: Yeah. Uh, the Autobots show up in an alley where they meet up with uh, Bee, Sam, and Mikaela.

O: Optimus transforms, he's a Kenworth W900 truck in the live-action series.  Which looks somewhat different from his design from the cartoon which was based on a Freightliner WFT-8664T.

S: To make this more confusing they used an entirely different [truck] model while filming, but we're going with uh, Hasbro’s official answer here.

O: Namely, the Freightliner was a cab over truck and the Kenworth isn't.  It's a more traditional semi that you see stateside anyway.

S: He introduces the rest of the bots and their robot modes are also terrible.

O: Jazz apparently learned to speak from the Internets and knows the lingo.

S: Well, presumably they all did.  I think Jazz is the one who actually paid attention.

O: Yeah.

S: Ironhide, our weapons expert.

O: “I blow shit up!”

S: And [uneasy laugh] welcome to one of our least favorite lines ever and it's Ratchet’s introduction no less.

O: And I quote, “The boy’s pheromone levels suggest he wants to mate with the female.”

S: [quietly] Oh god.  Ugh...

O: I'd like to remind you all that Ratchet is uh, Specs’ favorite G1 character.  So this is particularly ughhh. [laughs] I’m so sorry.  Not like my faves really go- are handled any better to be fair, except maybe Soundwave.

S: We've also got to make it clear that he can't fix Bee.  So Ratchet zaps him with something or whatever.

O: They just need Powerglide to fix him, obviously!  With his magical ray of healing.

S: Yeah that'd probably do the trick.  Optimus puts on a laser light show to explain the plot to Sam.  And I mean, the laser light show was cool but... this seems like a really weird-

O: Weird place to do it?  But uh, he's Optimus Fucking Prime, he does what he wants.

S: This is all funnier to listen to once you realize just how young the Bayverse versions of Transformers are compared to their counterparts in any other continuity.  Optimus is like 10,000 years old, tops? Compared to the G1 versions, where everyone's like, millions of years old.

O: I would love to see G1 Megs’ reaction to us.  “You're how old!?! Sparklings! Why are sparklings in charge!?!”

S: Why are babies fighting?  Oh my god it's the baby war.

O: [singing to the tune of Muppet Babies] ~Robot babies!~ [laughs]

S: Oh god, the fact that there are actually, at least, a few crossovers that's basically Transformers babies.  Where they basically took a concept of Muppet Babies and did it with Transformers.

O: Oh lord, oh lord. Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh.

S: Cause it’s- yeah, Megatron is Meggy.

O: [sighs]

S: I read those-

O: No.

S: -way back-

O: No.  I refuse to believe those exists.

S: [starts laughing]

O: I live in a world where those don’t exist because I haven’t seen them yet, and I don’t have object permanence!

B: [laugh]

S: Unfortunately, I can introduce you to things that will make you regret this fandom.

O: You would!  YOU WOULD! [laughs]

S: I’ve in this fandom since like, 2002!

O: You’re like, “Bitch, I been in this fandom for decades!”

S: Well, definitely more than decade at this point.  It will be two decades of-um, in like three years.

O: [laughs]

S: Optimus continues to explain that Megatron basically destroyed Cybertron.

O: Oh sure, blame Megatron for this.  Nevermind what we learn about Sentinel Prime later.

S: And in any case it takes two to tango, so…

O: Uh-huh.

S: It may not have been good if they've just rolled over and let Megatron do whatever the hell he wanted but…

O I don't really trust this Optimus either, soooo, you know.

S: Yeah.  It’s a war, both sides are going to do... a lot of shit.

O: Yup.

S: We get a bit better look at Megatron's design in the flashback, as Optimus continues to explain.

O: Thanks!  I hate it.

S: Megatron here just looks like a bipedal bag of knives.

O: And that sounds like the world's worst cryptid!

S: Optimus tell Sam um, that he may be Earth's only hope.

O: Help me Whitwicky, you're my only hope!

S: What a depressing hope.

O: Definitely!  So now it's time for the plot glasses, which apparently were imprinted with the coordinates for the AllSpark when Sam's great granddad whatever found Megatron.

S: I don't understand the mechanism that did this.

O: I don't either, just roll with it.

S: [sighs]

O: The movie is.

S: [groans] You know, the Decepticons could have literally just bid on the fucking auction for the glasses.

O: And I refuse to believe that, that is not exactly what Soundwave would have done if he was here, because that is the perfectly reasonable plan.

S: Or you know, literally just sending Frenzy to infiltrate his house.  Anything would have been better than what actually happened.

O: Pretty much.  But eBay!

S: That would have- it would have been way funnier if Soundwave had done the, you know, bidding on eBay robot- the robot war is literally a bidding war.

O: Yeah, and less things would have blown up. Michael Bay would have died from lack of explosions, but I- I think that's the price I'm willing to pay.

S: [sighs] Maggie and Glen get brought to the uh, Pentagon... maybe?  They're in some sort of holding cell waiting for interrogation.

O: Yeah... I get- I- I think it's the Pentagon, I'm not actually sure.

S: And then Glen proceeds to eat all the doughnuts that were left in um, left there.  And they're delicious, delicious looking doughnuts.

O: [Homer Simpson intonenation] Emmm, doughnut.   And now driving through a quiet suburban neighborhood, late at night- all of the Autobots!

S:  [sighs] Sam tries to convince the Autobots to stay outside and stay quiet, while he goes inside and tries to find the glasses.  And he's actually um, reasonably polite and respectful about this, considering the situation.

O: Eh... but the Autobots are super impatient.

S: [sighs] And Sam’s dad continues to be an asshole.  Basically moaning about how he spent all his money on a car for Sam, and now Sam gets home late and he had to do all of Sam's chores.  Like the KIND person that he is.

O: So instead of you know, just doing something nice for your kid you're going to just- stand out here, at the screen door, having a dick-measuring contest with your teenage fucking son.  Granted it is pretty fucking hysterical that Optimus and the rest are sneaking around the yard while Sam is desperately trying to be like, “No dad, I got this, you don't need to come out here, it’s fine!”

S: [sharp intake of breath] God, if Sam's dad had actually gone outside.

O: [laughs]

S: How the hell would that have worked?  I mean if he'd had booze or something or he had-  he has like-

O: He just looks at the wine glass and walks back inside.

S: [sharp intake of breath] “I've had too much to drink, I'm going to bed.”

O: [laughs]

S: Cuz all of the Autobot stuff is in the background.

O: Of course, they're stepping on things, knocking things over, the whole works.

S: Why didn't they just stay in car mode?

O: It’s a valid question.  I really don't think Optimus would be this much of an idiot and it makes the Autobots all look like assholes who aren't listening to the person who's trying to help them, and what he's asking them to do.

S: And then to make it worse, Ironhide pulls out his gun and aims it at Sam's dog.

O: Which is what, the equivalent are pulling at a freaking pistol cuz a bug landed on you?  What the hell, man!?!

S: Though Ironhide saying, “Bad mojo!” after Sam prompts him is pretty funny.  And the reason why he pulls out the uh, the big guns is because Sam's dog... pees on him.

O: Yep!  But seriously, this is the dumbest plan guys.

S: Yeah, the Autobots have been waiting all this time and apparently they can't sit still for five minutes, because they're all like, giant toddlers.

O:  [singing to the tune of Muppet Babies] ~Robot babies!~ [laughs]

S: [sighs] Transformers babies.  I- I am seriously debating finding that and throwing it at you.

O: You're just- you just want to hurt me.

S: I showed you good stuff!

O: Anyway, Optimus lifts Mikaela up into Sam's room and they both began rummaging around his room to find the glasses.

S: Sam shoos Mikaela away from a certain area in his room and um-

O: That's his porn, that's his porn stash.

S: [sighs] So I guess that's what he was referring to earlier.

O: Probably.

S: And now all of the Autobots are in car mode, in the backyard.  Except they've already done a shitload of damage.

O: Um-hm.

S: Except apparently Ratchet... isn't in car mode.  Cuz he uh-

O: Or he transforms from car mode?

S: Yeah cuz he, uh... he walks into a transformer, a power transformer.

O: Ugh, I'm just not fond of the VA they picked for him here.  I know Prime wasn't out yet, but that guy, we need that guy [Jeffrey Combs] here.  I love [that] Ratchet’s voice.

S: So when Ratchet walked into the power transformer, he knocked out the power.  He fell down I was like, “Oh! That was a kick, that was fun.”

O: [laughs]

Because apparently getting shocked for Transformers feels all tingly and fun.

O: [laughs] I mean…

S: Uh, and so- so at this point, the power is out, Sam's parents think that there's an earthquake cuz Ratchet fell down and made you know, shit happen and then they duck under- well, Sam's dad ducks under a table.  His mom is just like, “How did you get over there so fast?”

O: [laughs] I do enjoy that they're like, “Bring the wine!”  Cuz if they're gonna die, they're gonna die happy.

S: They’re all a little slooshed up at this point.

O: They- they are. [laughs]

S: And then Sam's parents uh, head upstairs to check on Sam and bang on his door.

O: And we present to you, the most awkward conversation ever captured in cinema!

S: Sam's parents are like, “Hey, uh, why was your door locked?  There aren’t- no doors are locked in this house,” and uh, decide to assume uh, masturbation was what was going on.

O: I did not need. [Clears throat] I did not need, or want to hear his mom call it, ”Sam’s special alone time”!  Just no. All the no. NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!

S: Ironhide asks Optimus if you can shoot them.

O: PLEASE!!!  [dissolves into laughter]  Optimus is like, “No, what's wrong with you!?!”

S: Yeah, and then all of the Autobots are trying to avoid being seen.  So, it's like they're attempting to do a Jenga with the house and they're all scrunched up- around and under Sam's window listening in and it's actually a pretty neat shot.

O: It's pretty funny.  Mercifully, Mikaela saves us from this insanity by stepping out and introducing herself.  So yeah, I think they're just gonna assume they were doing the horizontal mambo, if you know what I mean!

S: His parents apologize that she may have heard their ‘family discussion’.

O: Oh, is that what you're calling talking about your son’s WANKING OFF HABITS!?!

S: [sighs] Your son’s sex life, or lack thereof.

O: Why did you do this to me movie!?!

S: And this is where the federal agents come in.

O: OH THANK GOD!  And we have our main asshole FBI guy- oh sorry, I mean Sector Seven guy, Agent Simmons, JOY.

S: Sam's parents take issue with all of this.  Particularly his mom, who's mad that they're messing up their plants. Oh, and at some point, the father looked outside and was like, “Ah!  The earthquake destroyed all my shit!”

O: [laughs] Cuz he thinks the earthquake did it.

S: And at this point I think Sam's mom's gonna be really unhappy when she realizes just how much damage the Autobots did…

O: Yeah, Optimus stepped on her flowerbed.

S: Yeah.  And then the Sector Seven people want to take Sam away.

O: Personally, I think they can just, you know, have him!  Can we follow Mikaela for the rest of the movie instead, please?

S: Unfortunately, Mikaela gets brought along too.

O: Sam, his parents, and Mikaela are shoved into some cars by the Sector Seven guys.

S: Oh, and the reason that the uh, the Sector Seven people know to take Sam is that they have some sort of uh, thing that reads radiation and Simmons-

O: And he dropped his cell phone, or the cops still had it, so they [Sector Seven] now have his cell phone.

S: That's true.

O: And his recording of Bee, and him talking.

S: Yeah.

O: And him saying his car is alive.

S: Yeah, but they also have a thing that like, reads the radiation.  So Sam and Mikaela unfortunately, are now probably irradiated... somehow.  Which may or may not give them a very good life expectancy. And oh, Sam's terrible eBay user name gets mentioned again.

O: And you totally see Mikaela roll her eyes at it too.

S: Oh yeah, and they apparently have Sam's phone as you mentioned.  Which is how they tracked him down, and when asked about his ‘stolen’ car Sam says, “It came back.”

O: Right!  Doesn’t your car come back when it's stolen, Specs?

S: No, it's not a boomerang.  Though I suppose if a thief stole it [and] they decided it was super shitty they’d return it because-

O: I feel like they wouldn't even return it.

S: Or it just turns up again, like a block away.

O: I would be more willing to believe that.

S: I think I've seen stuff about that happening, but I don’t know.  Agent Simmons decides to lord his authority over them by uh, showing his badge and declaring it a, “I can do whatever I want and get away with it,” badge.

O: More like an asshole badge!

S: He also starts uh, to threaten Mikaela's dad.

O: Because as previously stated, he is a fucking asshole.  It's not even like Mikaela's got much to do with any of this to begin with.

S: People with power are just assholes-

O: Pretty much.

S: -a lot of the time.  And of course, it's um, prime time to bring up Mikaela's criminal record, because fuck you Simmons.

O: And Sam has the nerve to be horrified when finding out about this.

S: Sam you jackass.  You privileged, rich, white boy.

O: Yup.

S: And then the car is picked up and the- the uh, roof is ripped off by Optimus, once they’re in a suitably isolated area.

O: Optimus then kneels down, has an entire conversation with agent Simmons and Co.

S: He gets mad and tells them to get out of the car.

O: What’s left of it you mean?

S: I mean, it probably runs, maybe?

O: [laughs] He took off- like, the entire top half of it off!

S: Yes, but that- that's a not the part that keeps it from running.

O: And dropped it quite a ways.

S: Yeah... that's true, I don't know.  Mikaela finally tells Sam off for shitty comments about her criminal record earlier by asking him, “When have you ever had to give up anything in your perfect little life?”  Mikaela has a criminal record because she wouldn't rat out her dad.

O: Yeah, which- and depending on how old she is this should not have really even been legal to begin with.

S: Yeah.

O: Like, this like, I’m- I'm assuming this happened sometime between when she was 8 and 12 and it means that somebody chose to basically to prosecute her at a higher age bracket.  [My logic for this is that there’s a comment about him not always having been able to afford a babysitter for her so I assume she wouldn’t have been old enough to stay home by herself, but take that with a grain of salt.  ~O]

S: Yeah.

O: Which is shitty.  But, that statement, that line, is the most accurate description of Sam.  Here is a person who comes from privilege, he stumbles upon events that bestow him even more privilege and he acts entitled- so, so very entitled, during it all.

S: Yup, and then we get the part where Bumblebee pees on Agent Simmons.

O: [sighs]

S: [sighs]  It’s just like, whyyyyy?

O: Does this mean he's low on those fluids now?  Is Ratchet gonna have to top him off later? And why is that there?  I mean why does it exist at all sure, but specifically, why is it where a dick would be on a person!?!

S: Yeah, why is it framed like that?  From the perspective of the person being peed on?

O: [sighs] I don't know, but now that his friends are here Sam is going to be as douchey as possible because he orders Simmons to remove his pants.

S: And according to his under clothes or at least his undershirt, Sector Seven sells or has branded clothing items available for their agents.

O: The Autobots leave but, oh no!  They [the agents] were on the phone the whole time.

S: [sighs] Meaning, backup arrives shortly thereafter and the Autobots proceed to hide under a bridge.  Optimus carrying Mikaela and Sam in his arms.

O: Just putting this out there, but I too would like to be carried in Optimus’ big, strong arms.

S: Carried in his gentle, strong hands.  Though I mean, preferably G1 Optimus, or one of the other Optimuses.

O: Yeah, yeah, just not this Optimus.  I want the Optimus from Prime, he seems like a very calm, kind guy to give me a ride on her shoulders, that sounds nice.

S: I'll take G1 Optimus, he's a- he's very dad shaped.

O: He is the most dad shaped.

S: I'd also accept Animated Optimus.

O: Yeah... yeah, he seems nice.

S: Maybe Cyberverse, well I don't know.

O: He seems like, unsure dad shaped, and I can deal with that.

S: Yeah, and I'll leave out all the other Optimi.  Though maybe Optimus Primal might be good for a hug.

O: He would be great for a hug.  Unfortunately, they're not that much bigger than people so it would not be the same kind of ride in his big, strong arms.

S: [laughs] He’s more-

O: It still sounds nice but-

S: -more of a piggyback ride.

O: Yeah.

S: And to get away from our uh, hugging and carrying uh, discourse- there's just so many explosions happening right now.

O: Sure, don't worry about those roads or infrastructure, this is fine.

S: Oh no, Sam and Mikaela almost fell, but don't worry Optimus has slowed their descent with [laughs] his nice soft foot.

O: I guess that this is the one thing they kept from G1, huh?

S: Yeah.

O: [laugh]

S: And apparently Cybertronians are weak to ice and electricity now.  Except... didn't Ratchet think that the power-

O: Think that the electricity was nice?  I don't know, but Bumblebee gets the crap beaten out of him by the Sector Seven guys.

S: Oh my god, maybe Ratchet’s… [starts laughing]

O: Nope, nope, I think I know what went through your head and we’re not going there.  It was disturbing when Bee got hurt, okay!?!

S: [continued laughter with increasing volume]

O: [laughs] I mean I’m sure Drift would be into it, but that’s not the point!

S: [sustained laughter continues]

[The laughter is abruptly cut off as the screen cuts to a purple image with Starscream and Megatron getting caught up in an explosion, overlaid with the Decepticon logo variation used by Afterspark Podcast, with text reading, “WE ARE HAVING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE STAND BY.”  Elevator music plays in the background.]

[The screen returns to the normal screen with the episode information on it.]

S: [high pitched laughter continues]

[The laughter is cut off, and the same technical difficulties message and elevator music from before returns.]

[The screen returns to the normal screen with the episode information on it.]

S: I am under control again. [laughs]

O: ANYWAY, Bumblebee gets the crap beat out of him by the Sector Seven guys, it's more than a little disturbing.

S: Keep in mind that before this we really only had uh, G1 and Beast Wars as like, the main well-known Transformers things.  I mean maybe Beast Machines?

O: Eh, Beast Wars, Beast Machines, I end to count them together, since they're in the same continuity even though they're different series, but- but I know what you mean, sorry.

S: Yeah, it's just those ones would have been the ones that most people- that would have stuck out in like, the main- I don’t know, cultural hive mind, probably.  Cuz I don't think like, any of the animes would have made that much of a dent.

O: Yeah.

S: So uh, hopefully you enjoy watching your fav get tortured by the US government.

O: And the way this is framed, because Bee doesn't have a working voice box, really comes across that they're like, taking something from Sam.  Not that Sam is worried about his friend! Bee is just treated like property, by both the plot and the framing. And this is in such a stark contrast to the Bumblebee movie.  Where even though he couldn't talk, even though he was a CG character, he still felt like an actual character.

S: Yeah, in the Bumblebee movie, Bumblebee actually had an emotional arc.  When Charlie first sees him, she treats him like a person that needs care and kindness.  He- he still couldn't talk- like, he was immediately showing recognizable and understandable emotions.

O: And body language.

S: Mm-hmm, and then there's Bumblebee in this one where he can't talk, but he's just an asshole and he's gonna pee on things.

O: And you're my new best friend, and I'm gonna keep you safe, you know- just like a fucking guard dog.

S: [sighs]

O: Bee, story wise in relation to Sam, is treated more like a pet, and it is weird.

S: Yeah.  Simmons catches up with the two of them and Bee, continuing to be an asshole and taking another pot shot at Mikaela as they're being taken away.

O: And they're just going to ignore the other Autobots in the distance apparently.

S: Yep, they're still hiding under the bridge.  They're all tucked away under that bridge, which is apparently uh, enough to keep them from being spotted by helicopters.  Oh, and apparently the um- while the Autobots couldn't be bothered about the flower beds before, Optimus can see and gently pick up the plot glasses that Sam uh, well basically Sam lost them when they fell and Optimus caught them with his soft foot.

O: Yes.  And then army talk, army talk, army talk, boy let me tell ya... just how much I do not care.

S: And then the Secretary of Defense was apparently unaware of Sector Seven’s existence until now because he didn't need to know about them.

O: You know, copying Independence Day only with him instead of the president.

S: [sighs] Sector Seven is a special access division of the government created by President Hoover.  Hm...

O: And at Nellis Air Force Base, Lennox and his team are intercepted before they can head home.  Basically they're voluntold they're gonna help with this alien robot crisis.

S: Yup.  And the Secretary of Defense's meeting with the Sector Seven guys and intends to bring Maggie with them.

O: This whole scene feels very much like, “Yes, and…”  The Secretary of Defense wants Maggie to be his adviser, but when Glen asks if he is coming too and the Secretary of Defense asks, “Who is this?” Maggie just responds “He's my advisor,” and he [the Secretary of Defense] just goes with it, brings Glen along too.

S: Glen's getting the ride of a lifetime.

O: Yup!

S: I guess.

O: And finally, we get some of our separate plot threads to come together as Sam, Mikaela, Maggie, Glen, and the Secretary of Defense are now loaded up in the same helicopter and head to the Hoover Dam.

S: Weren't Maggie and the Secretary of Defense and Glen in goddamn Washington DC?

O: Yes.  Yeah.

S: Kill me now.

O: [laughs]

S: [sighs] Poor Mikaela, she just looks so tired and done with everything.

O: You just know she hasn't slept all night.

S: Honestly they probably got shoved in a holding cell, so no.

O: Yeah, and then shoved on a helicopter.

S: Yeah, here's some more Bumblebee tortured before cutting back to the Autobots talking about how they must go on and they can sense that the AllSpark is near.

O: With what?  Your bullshit radar!?!

S: Maybe they can sense it with their pheromone detectors.

O: Ratchet, what can your robot eye-

S: [laughs]

O: Ratchet what can your robot nose smell?  Frenzy is tiny, and up to shenanigans.

S: It's time to break into the Hoover Dam!

O: So just getting back to this, because the movie really, really wants to bring this home, Sam can't possibly go out with someone with a juvie record.  He wouldn't you know, want a date below his class, or marry below his class, or god forbid fuck below his class, right?

S: Sam you asshole.

O: Yup!

S: And boom, we have a Megatron.

O: Thanks, I hate it.

S: Still frozen, and presumably unconscious and offline.

O: Sector Seven’s been keeping him on ice for a while apparently.

S: Yeah, and apparently a good chunk of modern technological advancements since the thirties has been due to humans studying Megatron.  Oh god, now I'm just thinking about mechanical television. Did mechanical television come from Megatron?

O: Sure.  Sure. Why not, why not?  “Yes, and.”

S: Simmons continues to antagonize the group.  Who...who isn't a jackass in this group?

O: [sighs] Like, look, I don't like Sam but maybe Simmons, as the fucking adult needs to get his dick out of his hands and stop getting into Sam's personal space.  It's creepy!

S: Honestly, a lot of the adult men in this movie are just creepy.

O: Yeah.

S: I mean, Lennox and Epps and the soldiers-

O: Aren’t-

S: - don’t seem to be creepy but...

O: Yeah.

S: Most of them, most of them-

O: Yeah, like his dad is shitty like... well- I guess Glen and the Secretary of Defense aren't bad?

S: Yeah, but they don't get a whole lot of screen time and also one of them's over 60.

O: That’s also true.  Anyway, it is explained that the AllSpark was hidden and that they built the Hoover Dam around it.

S: How did the Native Americans in the area not know about it?

O: Maybe it was underwater?  If it was visible they absolutely would have but I wouldn't put it past the Army or Sector Seven, or whoever, to conveniently ignore that fact.

S: But, um, would have been a river before the dam was put in and-

O: Obviously, Specs, you’re forgetting how deep rivers are.

S: The fact that you actually spent time looking to attempt to look this up-

O: I tried, and I could not find a straight answer! [laughs]

S: Well, it’s not exactly like they were going around do river measuring in that time period is it?

O: No... I’m still sad I couldn't find a straight answer though.

S: And I mean, who knows, maybe they accidentally made it a huge afterward.

O: I- I do think that would legitimately be funny, is like, some scientist poked it the wrong way and now it's like, “Oops, it just takes up the entire hanger now, sorry guys.”

S: [laughs] It’s like, “Oh shit.  Oh shit, I'm glad it didn't crush me.”

O: Yeah.

S: [sigh] The AllSpark just has random powers.

O: Frenzy now has a body again.

S: Yeah, Frenzy, uh- Frenzy was taken along this entire time in Mikaela's bag, I think?

O: Yeah, pretty much.  Like, he got out of her bag and sort of crawled into Hoover- the Hoover Dam.

S: Yeah, and he's able to signal the rest of the Decepticons with the Megatron's location and then we get to see them finally begin to mobilize.

O: And now, an hour and 40 minutes into this movie, we have a Starscream.  There is no power on heaven or Earth that can make me believe that that is his holoform.  Mark my words, I don't care if IDW never gave him the holoform, but his holoform form would be female, and no one can stop me.

S: [sighs] And then more on the AllSpark’s plethora of abilities, apparently they can use it to turn random electronics into Transformers.  Which... the Autobots would probably consider kind of horrifying, because these are babies and now the babies are dead.

O: Yep.

S: Simmons proceeds to demo this for us by taking Glen's cell phone and zapping it's to life.

O: I will forever be confused for this, why does it seem like the AllSpark always makes stuff that's evil?

S: I mean it's a baby.

O: I know, but it has red optics, I feel like we have to assume it's a Decepticon.

S: Maybe the Decepticons are the last people who had it if they'd programmed it for red optics-

O: [laughs] So you’re telling me it’s stuck on the make evil setting?  Got it.

S: It’s possible!  I don't know how this works, and it’s not like we're gonna get a demonstration of it later, considering what happens.

O: Yeah, yeah…

S: And Simmons proceeds to kill this little phone Transformer by basically electrocuting the shit out of it.

O: We create life, then we kill it, but we're the good guys remember!  And now, finally, Dorito-scream has been achieved!

S: It's just so triangular.

O: I don't know why Starscream looks like a giant flying Dorito in this-

S: It might-

O: -but I find it hilarious.

S: It might be his color scheme… partially.

O: He doesn’t really have a color scheme.

S: Yes, but-

O: It’s just he’s so triangular!

S: Yes, but he's also kind of beige.

O: Eh, you’re right, that doesn’t really help things.  Uh, Frenzy manages to take out the power for Sector Seven’s facilities.

S: How does a dam lose power considering in generates power?

O: I don’t know, Specs.

S: Sorry, I mean, I guess it's possible that he could, like basically prevent water from going through the dam by freezing something, but…

O: I think he actually just started destroying the mechanical stuff, so like the generators and stuff.  It's now time to defrost our Decepticon warlord on high.

S: Frenzy is getting busy in the control room again- again blowing all of the shit up, and then all of the scientists in the main bay when Megatron is being held seem like, super unfazed by the deep thaw that's starting.

O: You guys need to run.  I have zero doubts that Megatron won't kill you out of sheer spite.

S: Yup.  Did you know that there was a whole armoury of bullshit under the Hoover Dam?  Because of all- the soldiers are like, “Pass the guns! Give me that buffet of guns and ammo!”

O: And Lennox is kind of done with Simmons, because uh, yeah uh, violence is uh, implied. I'm so glad that this movie is all violence, no character development, or emotions, or feelings  We don't have feeling Specs, because we are sex having heterosexual men! Hetero men who have sex with women, never mind that G1 is one of the least straight things I've ever seen in my life!

S: To be fair to the soldiers they did not sign up for this bullshit, and then they got dragged into and all they wanted to do was go home.

O: And-and look, I would be pretty upset about being shoved into the same room as Agent Simmons.  So yeah, I can't blame them too much.

S: Yeah.

O: They go to retrieve Bumblebee.

S: And Sam's like, “Stop electrocuting my car!”  Not even, “Stop electrocuting that guy.” “Stop electrocuting my car.”

O: Of course!  And Bumblebee just gives a him a look like, “Dude, I have had the shittiest day.”

S: Yup, and poor dude is like, super jumpy and paranoid but I mean who wouldn't- who wouldn't be?

O: I- yeah, I mean considering he was tortured all night- he's got ever right!  I still legitimately don't know what catching Bee accomplished!

S: I don't think it accomplished shit except getting him to this location, which I guess was the plot contrivance.  And now we've got the magical size changing cube.  As Bumblebee touches the AllSpark and like, pokes it a bit and then suddenly it is like hand-sized, for him.

O: Even their spark of life can mass shift apparently.

S: Oh god. [snickers] It's from a planet of shapeshifters.  Apparently mass shifting is just what this stupid thing does.

O: Apparently.

S: Everybody can just understand Bee now, this is fine.  And, oh, Bee’s been talking in like, radio and music references this entire time, and I don't think we ever mentioned that.

O: [laughs] You're right I don't think we did.  He isn't talking normally, he's using recordings.

S: He talks TV, basically.

O: Pretty much. Well, asshole’s up!  “This is not where I fell asleep, I'll have you know!”

S: He’s a lot less uh, he's a lot less of a morning person than Skyfire was.

O: [laughs]

S: Skyfire was much more genteel about the entire thing.

O: [laughs]

S: Megatron's a jet in this, so we’re- you know just so we're all on the same page here.  He meets up with his second-in-command Dorito-san.

O: [laughing] Dorito-san!?!

S: [laughing] Sorry... He meets up with his second-in-command, you know, the Dorito.

B: [laugh]

O: There's some groveling that happens.  Megatron tells Starscream he's disappointed in him and all I can think is- he didn't even do anything yet!

S: Apparently he couldn't find Megatron, which I guess is what he's disappointed in.

O: I guess?  “Do you realize I had to listen to... Francois talk about his- his terrible wife for three weeks, do you realize that [Starscream]!?!”

S: Simmons, the Secretary of Defense, Maggie, and Glen uh, remain behind when everyone else heads out to go to... stuff.  So while everyone else is going and doing stuff the- [sighs] the dam crew, that's what I'm going to call them.

O: [laughs] Okay, okay, I’m here for this.

S: They attempt to contact the Air Force, to try and get some you know, backup for Bee and company.

O: They do this by using some very antiquated equipment, because the Cons have knocked out most communication worldwide.

S: Which is not explored in this movie, let alone any others.

O: Yeah, because this would be like a thing that should affect everybody.

S: Yes, there goes-

O: Or at least everybody in the in the US.

S: Yeah, frankly I'm kind of- well, no, apparently landlines don't work and I don't understand why.

O: I don't either.

S: But yeah, cuz this- this would have wiped out... literally every communication except apparently shortwave radio.  But apparently, yeah, shortwave radio will still work. Which is what they're attempting to use here. They get the brilliant idea to hotwire a computer to transmit a tone through a radio signal, while they're trying to hold off Frenzy who is trying to get into the room that they're- that they’ve holed themselves up in.  Which... it's a weird, weird room.

O: It is, but now back to how sexy the cars are!  Look at the car, so sexy!

S: Why is everything so orange?  I will bemoan the orange!

O: We can’t have no girly colors in here conveying emotions, Specs!  Look at the cars!

S: [sighs] And the Autobots immediately join up with Bee, it's convoy time!

O: [attempts to sing] We're gonna roll this truckin convoy- oh god that’s the right tune.  I even looked it up!

S: Oh!  I've got it on my phone.

[The audio cuts and “Convoy,” by C. W. McCall plays]

B: [singing] “We have a little ol’ convoy, burning through the night!  Yeah, we got a little convoy. Ain't she a beautiful sight? Come on and join our convoy!  Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way. We gonna roll this truckin' convoy 'cross the U-S-A. Convoy!”

[The audio cuts as a record scratch noise plays]

O: That’s enough of a music break!

B: [laugh]

S: Ah, Maggie and company began to arm themselves with some of the older guns um, from the display cases in the room they're stuck in.

O: Oh yeah, I'm sure those will shoot just fine!

S: Where did they even find the ammo or…?

O: Yeah!  Because why would the ammo be stored with most of the stuff that's on display?

S: I mean that thing- I mean like, having the ammo for interest but yeah, why would they have ammo or even gun powder in this room?  [quietly] I don’t know. [normal volume] And then it's back to Bee again.

O: Wow, I just don't care!  Even the G1 episodes, where they were constantly swapping back and forth between a bunch of different scenes, are better than this.

S: Those typically have more things happening in them.

O: Surprisingly, yes.  I'd much rather watch Megatron throw shit at Starscream.

S: Honestly, that's more cohesive.

O: And that is saying something.

S: Okay, so one of the Decepticons, Bonecrusher, catches up with the Bots and Optimus transforms into a robot mode to protect the others.

O: He just seems like such an asshole here, they're literally fighting on a highway.  There are so many people that must die here!

S: Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of amused by how it looks like their roller-skating but that doesn't exactly take away from the- oh, there's a terrifying robot deathmatch and so many people are dying.

O: Yeah and but- but thanks Bay!  I'm so glad that this one kid and his mom survived.  Thanks for that.

S: God, so many people probably need therapy in this universe.

O: I would think so.

S: Frenzy is now in the vents.

O: Good boy, you go get ‘em!  Even if the B team is definitely the better… group.

S: He comes out and falls so straight onto a glass case, uh-

O: That's my boy!

B: [laugh]

S: Like, he's using shuriken things, like he was using a shuriken things before, but now he's been like boomerang- boomeranging shit around and he accidentally beheads himself with his boomerang shuricane- shuriken thingy.

O: That's my boy! [laughs] So interestingly (to me anyway), it seems like this- the movie series uh, kind of made the whole- the whole integrated weapon thing for the Transformers more common.  I know you saw it a bit in G1, but it seemed kind of inconsistent in either how it worked or what weapons they had. Ironhide, just Ironhide, right?

S: Mm-hm.

O: Um, but- but this made it more consistent, like especially in Prime you- you saw that consistency and thought applied to the weapons and how that- they access them throughout the entire series, which was really nice.

S: It was also pretty consistent with Animated, which I think came out around the same time as this movie though I don't remember if it was prior to the movie being released or afterward.  

[TFA was released in December of 2007, whereas the first Transformers live action film had been released in July 2007. ~O]

O: Well, and I mean, either, or- either the movie borrowed from it, or it borrowed from the movie with Megatron kind of being that thing that advanced tech for-

S: Yeah.

O: -for humanity, which was just kind of weird, but yeah.

S: Or they both borrowed it from the comics, and then just made it consistent because they do have pretty integrated weaponry in the original Marvel comics.

O: That- that's true I-I meant- I thought you meant the uh, Megatron being- being why we had any technological advancement-

S: Oh-

O: -and I was really confused for a good minute.

S: No, no, no, no, sorry, just the-the integrated weaponry.

O: Fair.

S: Though [laughs] Animated did that Megatron’s the reason that they have-

O: Yeah!  That- that like, New Detroit or Detroit has like all this like, amazing tech.

S: Our convoy enters Mission City, and prepares to hold off the Decepticons to prevent them from getting the AllSpark.

O: Why did they bring this into a city?

S: I don't know, no one explains their shitty decisions here.

O: It gets weirder because apparently, when they were writing or making the movie there- they originally have thought to have the climax in the Grand Canyon.  Which seems like that would make a lot more sense? Like, sure, there's less coverage per se, but way less civilian life in danger!

S: It would have also involved like, immense environmental destruction but that’s not something they would have been concerned about.

O: I just don’t see- I don't see how that would have been more work then the city.

S: They may have had issues actually getting- well no, they could have done it all in green screen but…

O: Anyway, we've contacted the Air Force, so the dam team has succeeded.

S: [laughs]

O: Uh, Lennox and his dudes communicate what they need.

S: Oh honey, that's not the Air Force.  That's really not the Air Force.

O: But only Ironhide seems to realize it's actually Starscream that's approaching.

S: Bee uses a random... well, it's got a Furby on it, so it's the Furby delivery truck as cover.

O: Starscream shoots said truck and send everyone flying.  Everyone else is covered in dirt and grime here- and I mean technically so is Mikaela, but she has an almost angelic glow about her when she wakes up in a pile of rubble looking at Sam.  Sam also has an angelic glow because remember, he gonna hit that.

S: [sharp intake of breath] Uh-huh, Bumblebee has lost his legs in the last attack.

O: And Bumblebee is basically half a bot, let's keep that in our back pocket for later shall we?

S: Yeah.  Mikaela being the badass lady that she is like, “ We're gonna move Bee!  We're going to get this done!” And proceeds to break into and hotwire a tow truck to do just that.

O: Go Mikaela. Bee gives the AllSpark to Sam and conveys to him that he should go on without him basically.

S: And then another Decepticon um, Demolisher, shows up and uh, Ironhide, Ratchet and Jazz engage him.  And I think Demolisher’s a tank?

O: Yeah… and I think that one [the tank] was Demolisher?  I think this is something that really frustrates me about Sam though,  so much what happening- what is happening around him seems rooted in the sense of self sacrifice, but yet he doesn't ever have to sacrifice anything?

S: Like, the only things that he might theoretically have to sacrifice could be his life.  And he never does that, he's never even like, even remotely close to doing something like that except by accident.

O: Exactly.

S: By like, falling off a building.

O: Yeah, like it's never, “I'm going to-,” it never feels like, “I am going to choose to do this thing.”

S: Yeah, and then random boob and ass shot from some random lady who's in danger.

O: And I'm not judging her for what she's wearing, but you just know she got put in that outfit and put into that shot for one reason which was titillation and I'm like, did you have to?  In a movie about giant robots, did you have to?

S: It's only theoretically about giant robots, you know it's about Sam-

O: [sighs] Yeah...

S: and his boner.

O: [quietly] Boner of fate.

S: [high pitched laughter]

[The laughter is abruptly cut off as the screen cuts to a purple image of one of the Conehead Seekers in a t-rex’s jaws, overlaid with the Decepticon logo variation used by Afterspark Podcast, with text reading, “WE ARE HAVING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE STAND BY.”  Elevator music plays in the background.]

[The screen returns to the normal screen with the episode information on it.]

S: Megatron lands, and you know, shouts his own name.

O: Why are you- why did he do that!?!  Is he a Pokemon now? “Megatron! MEGATRON!” [laughs]

S: He’s got to announce his presence.

O: [still laughing] Obviously!

S: Poor Jazz attacks Megatron, and Megatron grabs him before flying off and landing on top of a building.

O: And then he rips Jazz in two.

S: Poor Jazz will not survive this.

O: Remember what I said earlier?

S: About Bee?

O: Yeah. [sighs] You- you brought up a good point prior, technically Bee only lost his legs from the knee down, but I'm just gonna say, they are giant fucking robots and I still don't feel like Jazz should have died here.  Also, according to the TF Wiki there was some point during development when Megatron was going to literally, not figuratively, literally, eat other bots’ sparks, so if that had been what had happened- Jazz being dead would have made a lot more sense!

S: How in a movie about alien freaking robots does Bay manage to kill the metaphorical black guy first?  Why?

O: I don't know why he killed anyone here!  We've barely gotten to see the robots at all!

S: Apparently, we have to make uh, make there be some sort of... I don't know, people are dying, this stuff is really real.  Except... no, they use the guy who's- basically Jazz's speech patterns are close- are I don't know, AAVE? American… African-American Vernacular, I think?

O: Eh, it’s- he's coded African American because of his speech patterns-

S: Yeah.

O: -is probably, how I would know-

S: The way, yes-

O: -the best way to say it?  And I'm just super sorry if that's not accurate.

S: Yeah, we- we apologize if this is inaccurate and offends anyone.  It isn't our intention.

O: Yeah.  But- but yeah, like effectively, [sighs] he, ugh, it’s just literally he- he killed the black guy.  I know he's not literally a black guy, but- but that is how he has been characterized.

S: That's just... that's how it feels.

O: Yeah.

S: And back to Dumbass McGee.  Sam is tasked with taking the AllSpark to the top of this building, so that they can hand it off to the Air Force.

O: Did they miss the whole Megatron and Starscream have jet alts bit?

S: I'm gonna go with, yes.

O: Apparently, okay.  Just checking.

S: Everyone is a very, very disrespectful, like they're fucking disrespectful as fuck to Mikaela and no one gives Sam shit but Mikaela trying to get Bee out of the way invites comments.

O: Golly, I wonder why!

S: And Optimus finally arrives.

O: What took him so long!?!

S: He got lost!  He fell off a highway and wasn't sure which way everyone else went, and also, with all the you know, internet and Wi-Fi and everything knocked out, he didn't have any GPS.

O: [laughs] That is the best excuse- that’s the best explanation I've heard. Headcannon accepted!

S: It’s not like he's driven around there before, and I don't think he has Ratchet’s nose. [laughs]

O: No, no, no, nope, uh-hm-

S: [continues laughing]

O: - nope that’s it, I’m leaving!

S: [continues laughing]

O: I’m done, I’me done! [unintelligible] -of Ratchet’s nose!

S: [continues laughing]

[A door slams]

S: [continues laughing]

[The laughter is abruptly cut off as the screen cuts to a purple image of Soundwave being thrown into a rocket, overlaid with the Decepticon logo variation used by Afterspark Podcast, with text reading, “WE ARE HAVING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE STAND BY.”  Elevator music plays in the background.]

[The screen returns to the normal screen with the episode information on it.]

S: And then Megatron shows up, transforming into robot mode.

O: So I don’t hate his alt exactly, but I just can't help but think Prime did this better.  Of course his voice was better too, but what do I know!?! Sorry, is my salt showing? Seriously though, I find it funny that both damn times that go to make a Transformers movie, they- they get Cullen to do Optimus, but they don't get Welker to Megatron.  Only to have Welker either return to do the character in the TV show or later in the movie series. Although it's kind of funny cuz they took him out in the movie and had somebody else play Galvatron and it's the exact opposite in the live-action, where once Galvatron shows up Welker is doing him.  The irony.

S: That is funny.  And then Megatron and Optimus fight.

O: Finally!  We get some of that homoerotic fighting this series is so known for!  He's sitting on Optimus punching him, yep.

S: Except a lot of this is done in a shaky cam so..

O: Yeah, so it's still terrible but eh, I mean, at least we're getting... sexual tension now?

B: [laugh]

S: And Sam is somehow running faster than the robots, how???  They have a wider stride.

O: Dunno, but it’s the return of Dorito-scream!

S: And Ironhide tells Sam to run, like he wasn't already doing that.

O: Mikaela however, is a stone cold badass.

S: Her and Bee enter the fray, with her driving backwards and Bee doing all the shooting and fighting.  “I'll drive, you shoot,” indeed.

O: I really feel like they bond here, but we never get to see him be as good friends with her as he is with Sam which seems really shitty.  This scene had actual feelings! Emotions! Characters vibing with each other, dammit! Mikaela's like, “I'm scared, but I can help you and I know you want to help,” and I am here for that.

S: Yeah, they're actually working together instead of Sam who so far has uh, either been chasing the car, or being chased by the car, or possibly driving the car.

O: But not actually driving the car, like all movie.

S: Yeah.  Sam gets up on the roof and uh, manages to set off a flare.

O: But Starscream is RIGHT THERE, so the helicopter gets shot down before they can retrieve the AllSpark.

S: God, there is such a body count in this movie.

O: Right!?!  But it's fine because Sam and his penis, I mean hec-

S: [laughs]

O: Sam and his boner, I mean Sam and his not girlfriend survive.

S: Ugh, Optimus attempts to reach Sam.

O: And doesn't try to stop the falling helicopter at all.

S: It doesn't have the thing he wants.

O: [It’s] so fucked up.

S: Megatron reaches the roof and demands that Sam hands over the AllSpark.

O: Megatron then asks if it's courage or fear that compels him, which I will say- fear!  Obviously! The man has never known courage in his entire life!

S: Sam is- well, ok, so the entire time this exchange was going on, Sam was like, holding on to like, the front or back of this statue that's up on the roof.

O: Mm-hmm.

S: And, uh, basically Sam, and I think the statue, get knocked off the building.  But don't worry, Optimus catches him with his big soft hands.

O: Obviously.  Also, we see Optimus’ battle mask, it's something that was kind of neat.  An interesting idea when done WELL, like say, Prime or even Animated! You can pray this soap box for my COLD DEAD HANDS.

S: It's also not bad Cyberverse, but that's significantly newer.

O: Yeah, but it would be pulling from the other two.

S: Yeah.  And, um, how are people still driving around in this city?  Wasn't- well, I mean, there wouldn't- well, okay, I guess... there may be people who haven't gotten the memo about the giant robot war.

O: I just feel like, maybe they would have seen the smoke, or the explosions, and decided driving would be bad, but I don’t know…

S: I don't know how well sound travels in this city.

O: Who knows.  Optimus and Megatron both hit the street and seem to need a few seconds to shake the fall off, despite Sam being perfectly fucking fine.

S: That makes zero sense.  Humans are, uh... special.

O: [sighs] Optimus tells Sam that if he can't defeat Megatron, then Sam needs to push the AllSpark into Optimus’ chest- to make sure Megs doesn't get it.

S: Like, this is actually something that I think Optimus has said before?

O: Yeah, he- he said it to the Autobots earlier and- and Ratchet was like, “That might kill ya both!  Dumbass.”

S: Yeah.

O: Only without the dumbass-

S: I think-

O: -that’s my addition.  I know how to write Ratchet talking better than this movie does.  Fight me. [laughs]

S: Optimus just seems kind of suicidal at this point.

O: I mean… yeah.  He does not seem happy.

S: Yeah.

O: I mean, like, look, I can't think anybody would be happy in the middle of war or anything, but at least feel like G1 Optimus probably has moments.  Prime Optimus probably at least loves his team, to some capacity. Animated Optimus loves his team. As for as much as they drive him nuts.

S: [laughs]

O: This Optimus?  I don't think there's a single thing, a single spark of joy in this mech’s life.

S: Yeah, and back to the Decepticons, it’s Blackout time.

O: I kind of like how its rotors look like a cape when he transforms.

S: They wiggle.

O: THEY WIGGLE.

S: I- I enjoy the wiggly cape and it-

O: I do too!

S: And it’s- it’s helicopter rotors are like that.

O: Yeah, like, you kind of see with Blades a little bit in Rescue Bots too.

S: Yeah, he's a wiggly boy.  Lennox and company are able to defeat Blackout with some help from the Air Force.

O: Do they kill him with shot to the crotch?

S: [laughs] That’s entirely possible.

O: [laughs]

S: Lennox, I think, ends up taking... I don't know, the thing with- cuz-

O: They like- he slides underneath him and shoots.  So I’m like, “Did you kill him with a shot to the robo dick?”

S: [laughs]

O: Really?  Is that the Decepticons’ weakness?  That’s good to know. Optimus, aim there!

B: [laugh]

S: Oh, um, and so... basically, there's apparently a particular type of round that they have to use. Tha- it's like, a Sabot-something or other at that-

O: I don’t remember.

S: Yeah.

O: And I didn't- I didn't actually write it down because it was not important enough to me, sorry.

S: Yeah.

O: [laughs]

S: Starscream takes out a good chunk of the military reinforcements and so like, at one point one of the soldiers is like, “Friendlies don't fly under building height,” or whatever.

O: They proceed to fly in the building height a few scenes later.

S: Yeah, while…

O: Starscream is transforming in and out of jet mode to take them out.

S: Yes, so yeah, there's- god, there is so much mortality going on here.  Cuz there's like, multiple planes going down-

O: Uh-huh

S: -in the middle of this inner city area.

O: And like, I will say, and we both comm- or I think you commented on like- it is a- it's a good fight like, for how Starscream would fight.

S: Yeah.

O: Because he’s sort of constantly shifting back and forth.

S: Yeah, I think he's choosing good aerial tactics for what he is.

O: He is and it’s really neat, actually.

S: Yeah, that was pretty cool.  From a mortality from human perspective point that's horrifying but...

O: That’s true.  Elsewhere, Megatron and Optimus continue to fight but Optimus is definitely losing.

S: Yeah, and so, Sam's been underfoot I guess, the entire time?

O: And he hasn't been squished.

S: Yeah.

O: Pity.

S: So instead of shoving the cube into Optimus’ chest he shoves it into Megatron's, because apparently Megatron’s spark is just out there on display… somehow?

O: Shit!  We don't know what that does!  What if he accidentally gave him immortality or something!?!

S: Apparently that didn't happen, cuz it seems- apparently that killed Megatron and like destroyed the cube???

O: Ahh?  [laughs]

S: And now Ironhide is walking around carrying both halves of Jazz's corpse like... babies in the crook of his arms.  Before handing them all over to Optimus.

O: That’s not awkward at ALL! [laughs]

S: Sam, Mikaela, and Bee reunite.

O: Exposition by the Secretary of Defense lets us know that the President has ordered the end of Sector Seven and all the Decepticon remains have been dropped into the Linares Trench where the cold and water pressure should keep them entombed.

[I don’t know if we misheard this when we were watching the movie or what, but according to TF Wiki it was the Laurentian Abyss, I’m really not sure where we got Linares from. ~O]

S: [sighs] Later, at yet another sunset, um…

O: [laughs] There's so many of those in this movie!  Optimus Prime closes out the movie, leaving us with a message of questionable hope and alerting any remaining Autobots that they may come to Earth.

S: We'll see some of them in the next movie.  Um...

O: But this is all while Sam and Mikaela are getting hot and heavy on top of Bumblebee’s windshield.

S: Yup.  That's- that's a person guys!  Maybe don't make out on top of him unless this is some sort of really weird three-way.  Which, ok, maybe not so weird if they're into that, but I don't think they discussed it.

O: [laughs] All the other Autobots in the background are totally watching too, so it just sort of feels like, extra level of creepy.

S: Yeah.  It really does.  I'm just shaking my head.  And um-

O: That's this movie in a nutshell, man.

S: The credits roll as the incredibly soothing tones of Linkin Park uh, they- they play and they escort us out of this movie.

O: So let mercy come, except for Decepticons because they don't deserve it according to this movie.

S: A few other scenes are cut into the credits.

O: Mostly involving Sam's parents.

S: It's really unimportant.

O: We do see Starscream escape into space though.

S: So, what are our conclusions?

O: Watching the Bumblebee movie and the entirety of Transformers Prime will get you everything that was pleasant about this movie and be a more enjoyable experience.  Maybe go do that instead? The Prime designs even seem at least loosely based on some of the live-action designs, you know some of the elements [of them] that I actually liked.  Real talk? It introduced some interesting concepts, but overall I hated it pretty much the entire time I was watching it. Specs?

S: I would have preferred to see a different movie, perhaps involving some of these characters but not all of them.  Um, specifically I would have liked to see something starring Mikaela, Maggie, Glen, and Miles. Miles would have definitely been like, just you know, the random straight man who has no idea what the hell's going on.  While the other three are hyper- well they're all hyper competent at something, and then the soldiers could have been interesting secondary characters too.

But you know, there were really too many characters in this movie for anyone to have a complete character arc. So it would work better with a smaller cast, maybe just focusing on the first four that I mentioned?  Either that or having a TV series with the soldiers coming in as liaisons with the military kind of like Fowler from Prime. Some sort of buddy comedy with the first four or just a more- actually, something with more of the tone of Prime as a TV series-

O: Yeah.

S: - would have- would have worked well.

O: So like, what robots would you want to see in that?

S: Uh, I mean, if I was going to keep the Bayverse robots... I just want to see more characterization from them and better writing.  But if I could have any character, G1 based Ratchet, uh, maybe Hot Rod or Bumblebee for you know, kid appeal.  If I was gonna pick between live-action Bumblebees, I'd go with the Bumblebee [movie] Bumblebee.

O: Yeah, he was definitely better.

S: A G1 based Wheeljack, Cyberverse Grimlock.  Uh, if it was something that was gonna be more lighthearted, maybe the Rescue Bots, particularly Blades.  Cuz I would like a flight frame in there.

O: Yeah.

S: And… so- Optimus, even if he's only someone who shows uh, sometimes?

O: Periodically, yeah.

S: Optimus would be good.  If this was going to be a heavier thing, keep the Rescue Bots off.  And, I mean, if we're going- going back to the Bayverse thing, if we're going to stick with Bayverse Autobots, just give them screen time and character development.  And also Bayverse Arcee, specifically, the design for the toy from the first movie, even if she was pink.

O: Fair.

S: But as it stands, [sighs] the Bayverse Autobots in this movie are just... Optimus is impatient, Ironhide really likes his guns, Rachet is tactless, and Bumblebee is immature.  And then Jazz is the only person who seemed to actually learn about human social customs in some- in some manner. He doesn't destroy as much shit as everyone else.

O: Yeah, Jazz was definitely the best one.

S: He was!  And then he- then they killed him, he died!  It’s just like, why did you do that?

B: [sigh]

S: If you're going to have characters, please give them screen time and don't kill them.

O: What a concept!  I guess that leaves me to fill out the Cons for this cast.  Uh, Megatron obviously, uh, G1 or Prime. Probably Prime if I had to pick one because they- again, I feel like the Prime characters lend themselves reasonably well to a more, kind of realistic plot.  Soundwave, probably Prime, again feel like he fits better into this. Uh, he needs some of the cassettes though, which Prime didn't really have, but I definitely want Ravage, cuz I love Ravage. Uh, Knockout because he's fun, and snarky.  Um, it's not Cons without a Starscream, so Starscream. But similar what you said, I would literally take just fleshing out the Cons in the Bayverse, because they had so little screenshin- screenshine?

S: [laughs]

O: They had so little screen time, and just no personality, and it was just... depressing!

S: The most screen time that we had for any of them would be Blackout at the beginning, where he's basically just shooting things-

O: Yeah, but he didn't even have any lines!

S: Yeah, and then…

O: Like, in fact, so few of them had lines!

S: Yeah.

O: Like, the way- even the Decepticons, most of the time when they talk, they talked in Cybertronian even.

S: Yeah.

O: And it was translated, it was just like, “On our way,” or, “Megatron has been found.”  It wasn't even- it wasn't character, it was just a statement!

S: Yeah, like none of them had personality and that’s just so disappointing.

O: It really is.

S: [sighs] And it's- we have fanfiction recommendations.

O: Yeah, I know we didn't do this with the other specials but because there is actually fanfic based on the live-action stuff, we kind of thought it was more applicable here.

S: Alright, so the first one is, “The Princess is in Another Castle,” by Bibliotecaria_D.  It's in the mov- the Bayverse continuity, obviously. Uh, rating, PG-13. It's got- it has past slash, so it's not a general fic.  Parings, uh, past Mikaela Banes and Sam Witwicky. Um, characters, Mikaela Banes. And in summary, “Mikaela Banes is waiting” That's- that's the long and short of the summary folks.

O: [laughs]

S: But it's really good!  It’s-

O: It's basically... what did happen to Mikaela, after her and Sam broke up?  And it- and it feels like this very good character development thing for her and it feels- it feels good to read.  Like it feels like- yes, this feels like something the character would have done and it it really gives her more depth than the movies ever did.

S: More depth and agency.

O: Agency, she has goals- that aren’t Sam oriented.

S: Um-hm.

O: It's really nice, I really recommend it.

S: I should reread it it's been a while.

O: I do recommend it like, I’ve read it multiple times because I thought it was really good.

S: Yeah.  So the the rec for it is Mikaela and it's a one shot.  And so our next one is- would you like to talk about it or would you prefer me?

O: I'm gonna talk about it, and I'll kind of explain why I maybe can't give the best in-depth explanation of it.  But uh, our other fanfic suggestion is, “Towards Peace”. It is by ariealbots, the continuity is Bay movies, if- they bring in elements of IDW, it's rated T.  It is slash, but believe me when I say I'm not gonna read this entire list. I'll just tell you kind of the top ones are Megatron/Optimus, Megatron/Ultra Magnus, Optimus Prime/Shockwave, Mikaela Banes/Bumblebee/Sam Whitwicky- so they actually are a trine in this like, they're- they're a poly relationship-

S: Um-hm.

O: -as far as I can tell.  Um, characters... there are so many!  I- like, it would have been absurd for me to try to list them all but basically the Bayverse cast, you get elements of some of the IDW characters thrown in, like Verity.  You get some of the Bumblebee characters thrown in like you actually get Charlie. Um, and they're pairing up essentially with all the bots that are still on Earth and it's really- it's really great cuz I think Charlie gets uh, teamed up with Skyfire?  So like, the- the Russian jet not like the Skyfire from G1.

S: Oh, the guy for the second movie?

O: Yes!  Like-

S: That’s Jetfire.

O: Jetfire, thank you!  I knew the name wasn’t exactly the same and I kept forgetting.  Skyfire actually shows up as a separate character in this and he's more based off G1 and IDW.  But yeah, she- she sort of is paired up with Jetfire and- and it's really lovely and I like it. [laughs]

[Okay, to make this all the more confusing, he’s called Jetstorm in this particular fic, so I just got this wrong in all the ways.  ~O]

S: Except he's not Russian in the second one he's an SR-71 Blackbird.

O: He has a Russian accent.

S: Ah, ok.

O: I don't know why-

S: Well-

O: Like- like it it makes more sense when I read it but-

S: Okay.

O: But anyway in summary, heh, “At the climax of the Battle of Mission City the AllSpark is pushed into Megatron's chest and instead of killing him it does what it was made for, it transforms.  After millennia of slow descent into madness brought by programming corruption the Lord Protector Megatron finds his mind suddenly restored but the memory of what he's done cannot be washed away.  With the war brought to a violent halt both Autobots and Decepticons must learn to coexist if they want to reunite their civilization and restore their dying world.”

S: I like that summary.

O: It's... good and obviously it's because, Bayverse, and it took place right after the first movie so I wanted to recommend it here.  Um, it is multi chapter, it's still ongoing, which is kind of my caveat usually I don't like recommending things unless they’re finished.  And I actually have a hard time following this one- reading it, partially because I have a hard time telling any of the Bayverse bots apart.

Like, I think, I'm actually gonna have an easier time reading it now, now that I had to like, sit down and fucking disect the Bayverse movie, so I'm gonna be really happy to go back and read it.  Um, I think it's pretty safe to assume a bunch of the pairings are like past and stuff, because like, I- I haven't seen hide nor hair of Ultra Magnus yet. Um, but- but anyway it's- it is good and like, the stuff I've read I described it as like, having this very kind of sweet pervasive kindness to it and softness to it which was really nice.  Uh, it was done as part of a Big Bang, I think?

S: Hmm…

O: The Big Bang event.  Like I said, they're not finished yet but I'm interested to see what they do and- and I'd liked a few of the like, characters and relationships particularly kind of with the humans and whatever kind of bot or bots they're kind of closest with.

Like I said with Charlie I'm pretty sure it was uh, Jetfire.  I think Verity might have actually been with Barricade, don't quote me on that because I could totally be wrong but- but I liked it, like it was good on that level.  Um, it's just I'm like, I haven't finished it yet and I haven't even read the most recent stuff so I'm always a little hesitant to recommend stuff I haven't finished reading so you know, with a grain of salt.  But I like what I read.

S: I’m going to have to go look at that, because it does sound nice.

O: It- it- just… I love that a concept.  God forbid, I cannot keep the Bayverse characters straight to save my life.  Uh, Jazz comes back to life though. [laughs]

S: Nice.

O: Because Megatron basically start- like he- he touches Jazz and so Jazz is better now.  “I got better!”

S: [laughs]

O: Uh, but- but he can also sense where like, a lot of the living Cybertronians are so like that's how they actually- they actually go get Skyfire who is in the Arctic in this uh, fanfic so you know, but- but it's good.  Uh... oh! Thundercracker and Skywarp are in it so you have the full- you have a full Dorito trine. Um-

B: [laugh]

O: I like my Doritos in multiple flavors, thank you very much! [laughs]

S: Cool ranch and I'm not sure what the hell Skywarp would be.

O: Uh, cheesy?

B: [laugh]

O: Anyway, happy holidays everyone and thank you for tuning in.  It's been a wild year and we're excited to keep talking about these ridiculous robots.  We will be taking a break for the rest of this month and January to enjoy the holidays but we'll be back in February with episode 26, “Attack of the Autobots!” Oh god, the Ark's only got two beds and there's about to be problems.

S: Oh my god, they were all roommates.

B: [laugh]

S: They are!

O: You’re not wrong, per se...

S: And that just about wraps it up for us today.  Remember to check us out on Tumblr or Pillowfort as Afterspark-Podcast for any additional information, show notes, or links we may have mentioned.  You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at AftersparkPod (all one word) and various other locations by searching for Afterspark Podcast, such as AO3, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and Youtube, just to name a few.  Till next time, I'm Specs.

O: And I’m Owls.

B:  Happy holidays!

S: Toodles.

[Outro Music]

[Ending Stinger]

S: Welcome to our first anniversary special with the 2004 Transformers film.

O: That is the wrong year.

S: GAH-

B: [dissolve into laughter]

S: God dammit.

[likeghostsinthesun]

I got tagged by @prettyboyhavoc1974 so let's do this!

Are you staying home from work/school? Yeah I'm staying home from school for reasons we all know

If you are staying home, who is there with you? My mother, sister and our two cats :3

Are you a homebody? I guess so? I prefer staying home over going out, but only because all my friends live hours away and I hate nearly everyone in my town.

An event you were looking forward to that got cancelled? 1) I was supposed to go to a book con event thing with my class last month where I wanted to cosplay as Eddie Kaspbrak and 2) since it's my last year of school my class would have gone on a one week trip into a big city (Dresden), and I was very excited for that trip. I had been on another school before and we took two of those trips, but they were shit for me and my friends thanks to our classmates (they didn't like us). Now that I'm on another school with awesome classmates and better teachers I knew that this trip would have been awesome, but nope :/

What movies are you watching? I watch a lot of movies, but my favourite genre at the moment is horror. In the last few weeks I rewatched the Conjuring series, discovered my favourite horror movies (Midsommar and Hereditary) and checked out movies I always wanted to watch but never did (the old Pet Semetary). Next to horror I like comic book movies (mostly Marvel), book adaptions (It), older romances (Bodyguard, Dirty Dancing), Science Fiction movies (Star Wars), Fantasy movies (LOTR duh) and...Movies about the life of real people (like 'Worried About the Boy')/events that really happened.

What shows are you watching? I love watching shows! At the moment I try to finish Bates Motel, but lemme give you a list of shows I enjoy. Daredevil (and the other Marvel shows that are on Netflix), Supernatural, The Exorcist (cries in cancelled), Shameless, American Horror Story, Stranger Thinghs, Umbrella Academy (I love the comics!!), (Fear) The Walking Dead, Gotham, I Am Not Okay With This, The End of the F***ing World, Criminal Minds, Medical Detectives (is that an actual show?) and even a few Animes like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Death Note

What are you reading? Mostly fanfiction (I need to read THROAM again), but I also really enjoy Thriller or Horror books. At the moment I feel like reading Revival (Stephen King) again, one of my favourite books of all time, but I also started reading 1984 (George Orwell) so idk what to finish first.

What are you doing for self care? Nothing really I guess. I try to draw a little and read something but I often get lost in scrolling through social media. I also wanna write again and idk..finish my homework (I should have done them two weeks ago but bruh)

And I'm tagging...@bilvy (bc we just had a conversation), @horrorboyfriend, @wonderfullyobsessed, @whyfalloutwhenyoucanpanic and @spikemyheart. I hope you guys don't mind!

[ofthingschanged]

Bunch of Hope wanted plots. Like if you like to talk doing one of these plots

College au. Hope jumped into Malivore and when she comes back no one remembers her. Freya was trying to find Rebekah (who had been kidnapped) only to be lead to HOpe because she did a spell to call her to Mikaelson blood. Hope ends up back at the compound and starting college/ Landon and Rafael finished the Salvatore school and ended up finding a home in New Orleans. Landon working at a local restaurant that Hope always comes into for lunch, the two of them flirting and at some point, Hope asks him on a date. It isn’t after the first kiss but after the first time sleeping together does all memories coming back to everyone. The angst of it all and them going about their relationship now.

Also, presidents party girl daughter who has been assigned a new secret service bodyguard. He has no idea what he’s in for or the trouble she attracts. She has a problem with the word ‘no’ and he likes to say it a lot.

AU on 1x05 of Legacies: Hope turns around, kisses Landon and then decides to go with him

someone take Hope bowling and let her win or better yet, take Hope bowling and get her drunk

I want a twisted what if plot where Hope and Roman went to a witch in Mystic Falls and bound her werewolf side, her mother was let go and Hayley finding out her daughter did the unthinkable.

So this is cheesy but assuming Klaus rarely comes back to Mystic Falls it could work. Normally, I never have Hope anywhere near Mystic Falls if she never knew her dad but au on an au where Hope goes to the Boarding School or goes to Mystic High and Klaus comes to town to see this kick-ass red-haired girl that has eyes that shine bright golden when she is angry, does magic freely, and has been sipping blood for days and he can smell it

Freya going to Hope’s parent-teacher conferences and Alaric saying that she doesn’t listen to him. “What do you want me to do?” Freya asks. “Maybe if you stop treating her like some magical little pony that can be used and thrown away she would listen better.” Hope sitting in the chair next to her aunt texting on her phone pretending not to listen to everything that is going on.

I love verses where Hope grows up not knowing one of her parents because she is different there and it is like magic. But in canon, Hope deserved a hell of a lot better like KNOWING her father instead of having to guess the little things. She didn’t get to ask questions about his likes and dislikes, instead had to read about him to feel connected to him. She couldn’t ask him what his favorite drink was or what he likes to do besides painting.

So I have a private verse of Nashville based but another verse based on it would be amazing. Handon, Hosie, Hizzie. all with Hope being Juliette

I still want Hope going dark full tribrid and Hayley coming back to life because someone has to stop her daughter and angsty feels

AU Handon: Reincarnated lovers, again and again, these two always find each other again. Set more if Hope had been born after her father broke the curse (If he had done it back when Katherine was still human) and Hayley was born much earlier. Anyways, immortal Hope chasing after her not so immortal true love and all of the angsty moments. Flashbacks of Landon and Hope in different eras living completely different lives doing their thing, Landon dying young for some reason or another until he ends up being born a phoenix (or golem. I need to research both of these really) and just this whole thing is cheesy and overdone but still going to put it in my wishlist tag

A verse where Landon was pushed into the pit would be interesting or even one where Landon was pushed and then Hope jumped in to destroy said pit and two years later both Landon and Hope come back and find themselves in a middle of a field

So plot idea. Hope and Landon go about their lives and Hope becomes pregnant. She has the baby and with that, she uses the  𝐍𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐬 𝐕𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢 to bring back both Klaus and Hayley.  Like how Davina used Hope’s birth as a  𝐍𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐬 𝐕𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢 to bring back Mikael.

Hope would bring back Mikael just to torture the fuck out of him, She hates the fact that Mikael brought her family pain for their immortal lives. Hope would make him beg for death. He thinks her father is an abomination so keeping him in a nice cellar for her own pleasure would be fine by her.

Davina and Hope should draw together! Aunt and niece quality time

I really don’t need to do the whole let’s rewrite the Originals with Klayley but man, now since watching the first episode I want to do it differently. Starting with Klaus being the one there for Hayley when Agnes does her shit, him in the pool with her. give them the freaking pregnancy they should have gotten even with Klaus being Klaus.  I blame by sudden Hayley muse on rewatch and reading fanfiction. So while this isn’t a Hope plot it is a plot

You know, why didn’t they just bring Finn back from the dead and shove the Hollow into him? He didn’t want to be a vampire and that way he could stay together forever. Instead of taking Hope’s mom and her dad from her.

No, but for real. Klaus flipping the fuck out when this teenager comes claiming he is daddy. Hope throwing her phone across the room and shattering it when she sees her mother’s name pop up on the screen. Klaus doing the same thing he did to Hayley in canon of pinning her to the wall by her neck, Hope knocking him on his ass with magic. Hope being locked in the place that Roman had been in when it comes to canon. Hayley showing up and threatening to rip apart Klaus’s hybrid army if he doesn’t start talking about where her daughter is. The two of them getting physical upstairs and Hope hearing the yelling and screaming. Marcel sneaking down to take a peek at this teen that claims to be Klaus’s daughter and ending up distracting her from the fighting.  Hope ending up bonding with Marcel from the start. They play tic-tac-toe with different colored rocks (one color for o’s and one for x’s). Hayley throwing a royal fit to find her kid and Klaus ordering Elijah to go get the defiant teenager. Hope coming back up, having to be physically dragged by Elijah and the moment she sees her mother start’s crying her eyes out. Hayley finally hearing a heartbeat that isn’t Hope’s because Hope had cloaked it with magic until she was out of state going to find her father.

In just a Marshall. Hope running to find her father when she finds out she is pregnant. I can just see it in my head. Plot idea for sure here!

Muse A is a single parent of a very young child, just getting back out there and dating because it’s terribly lonely sometimes. They’re out at a bar and meet Muse B, who’s got a reputation for being a heartbreaker. One thing leads to another and Muse A invites Muse B home for a one-night stand. That morning, Muse B awakens to Muse A’s very small child sitting on their chest, asking if they are their new parent.

A thread or verse where Gretta killed Hope right in front of Hayley and spent two hours torturing and taunting the mother that just “lost” her child. Hope laying on the floor the whole time and all of a sudden Hope wakes back up in transition and hungry, enough that she r breaks the chains and sends both Gretta and Roman onto the ground with magic, pinning them to the floor as she frees her mother and Hayley kills Gretta by taking her heart out while Hope shoves a piece of wood into Roman. Give me Hope dealing with that she died, give me Hope killing someone when feeding and becoming a full tribrid. give me Hayley dealing with the fact that her daughter had kidnapped her first.

So in the adopted or so they hoped verse. I had this idea of how they had Marcel down in the basement and only Mikaelson blood could know where he was and hear him. What if Freya spelled a room in the house for only Mikaelson blood could enter and or hear what is being said and Hope sits down in the kitchen when they all come down and Hope asks, “So what are we going to do about BLANK.” asking about the thing the Mikaelson family just talked about before they came down.

Okay but a college au with Lizzie, Josie, and Hope sharing an apartment that has three bedrooms. Hope meeting Landon later in life and brings him home one night. Lizzie stopping to admire his backside. The girls fighting over the bathroom, struggling with homework, going out partying, paying bills, and just everything that goes with it. Each of them having their own lives but coming together sort of thing.

Give me Hope going back in time to help her mother find her family. Give me Hope appearing in Freya’s dreams when Freya was with Dahlia. Give me Hope going back in time to the very day she met Landon or even when Landon was locked in the transitional cellar. Give me Hope collecting blood every day and taking it with her when she goes to save Landon and instead of her jumping into Malivore, she dumps a hell of a lot of blood into the pit. Give me that it works and she saved the day. Give me when Josie lit the fire in Hope’s room and Hope goes back in time to spot it. Give me Hope deciding to take a different path and becomes friends with the twins after the events of the Originals (After going back in time). Give me Hope going back in time to when her father is human and using magic to show him the life he is going to have for him to have hope for the future. Give me Hope going to the future where she has kids and is married. give me normal Hope going to see Ripper Hope. Or Mikaelson Boarding School Hope going to the normal world.

Princess Protection Program AU because why not?

Once again Supernatural royal but freaking everyone wanting to be in the favor of the Mikaelson family so wanting their kid to make Hope fall for them so that way it has protection for life.

So I am so freaking cheesy but royal aus ONLY supernatural. Two rival kingdoms that have been fighting for thousands of years decide to stop the war if there was an alliance so the parents get together and decided that the firstborns are going to get married

So I want an au where Hope is kidnapped by Greta instead of Hayley. I want Hayley and Klaus saving their baby girl instead of Hayley dying. I want Hope binding her werewolf side or even worse, them binding her witch side and Freya has to figure a way to fix it.

So thread based on Hope turning Rafael back into wolf form. Bonus points if he found human (that he couldn’t harm for some reason? Didn’t exactly chase her down sort of thing) and she is living off the land in this old crappy cabin and Rafael comes back often. He tells her about this school for people like them. Hope going by her middle name and Rafael just finding a really good friend in her. Could turn Rafael x Hope romantic or stay platonic.

Hope has been in a mood for the past couple days. Give her children! Give her angsty pregnancy threads. I mean, she fears having a child but wants them. She doesn’t want her kids to be feared like she is.

Hope body painting Landon would be funny as hell. “Stop moving.” “I swear to god if you tickle my side one more time Hope!” I can see these two spending a lazy Saturday together like this. Hope painting his back while Landon lays on the bed with his head turned watching scifi movies. It wouldn’t be something she would do if her dad was in the house because she doesn’t need him barging in saying, “Alright! Party’s over!” even if she is an adult.That gives me a good idea for her way to tell him she is pregnant if they were together. Alright, so I can see it as Hope sort of using her nursery for inspiration. Hope painting a beautiful sort of nursery set up with a rocking chair that holds Landon and a blanketed baby in like a yellow color so it isn’t that traditional pink or blue thing (even more so because at that time they wouldn’t know what they are having). A sign that hangs on the wall above the crib that says something really cheesy like “Loading…” and see you in ten months (Or maybe even like thirteen? Since Hayley had been pregnant longer with Hope but that most likely was an error in the continuing of the storyline). Hope taking a few pictures when it is all dry that she will edit on her laptop and send out in emails or if they decide to make a social media announcement that they could use the painting as a way to say, “Get ready for another Mikaelson!”

Handon freaking teen pregnancy; young parent au with everything being the same with them being supernaturals.

Handon only a twisted thing sort of based on the drabble I wrote. Hope ending up like Landon’s mother (pregnant) after coming out of the ashes of what would be Malivore. The moment Hope sees Landon again, all his memories of her flash before his eyes.

Okay but the just pretend world for me but with instead of Landon going to Mystic High when he finds out about Hope being supernatural. It being kind of legacies where Hope goes to stop the Catholic church to save a werewolf (Rafael), without her dad knowing and well, instead she drives them to New Orleans with Rafael sleeping in the back seat and somehow Hope manages to convince her dad to let them stay just for a few days which turns into a few months.

So writing Legacies? A thing I want, starting from the moment Landon asks her to stay with him. Her crawling into bed with him to keep him calm because of small spaces. Alaric deciding that he can stay. The knife still ending up being taken by him like in the show but instead of finding a fire breathing witch / dragon in the woods, it comes on campus wanting the knife.

Handon first apartment though. Hope and Landon painting walls, getting into a paint fight. Moving day. the first night at their new place. Give me them buying furniture and fighting over silly things. Give me soft kisses in the room that is going to be their room even.

AU where Hope goes with Landon to find his mom. So drinking coffee every morning with him at the coffee shop with Landon while his mom works. Going to motel rooms and just giving her a taste of what could have been. Plus, I mean imagine Hope with Landon when he was given drugs, she would be still standing and his mother would be all, “What the fuck?” Just Handon road trip really.

Okay but an au where Landon’s mom kept him. Where when Landon’s mom woke from being in the pit, she ends up working for the Mikaelson family. Landon and Hope growing up together and ending up being the best friends to lovers trope. Landon’s mother being hired to keep Hope safe from threats of the Mikaelson family. Even though she thought of supernaturals as monsters that shouldn’t exist, it was good money

Okay but Hope starting a school of her own when her kids are growing up with Landon. They set up the school in New Orleans for Hope’s pack, the witches, and the vampires that come back into town. Headmistress Mikaelson and Headmaster Kirby.The two of them raising their kids together without shame of being this completely unheard of species. Everyone treated like they should be. Just feels. Married Handon with a school though?

Dark Hope and Landon. Blood covered, murdering couple of the year, I am totally seeing Mr and Mrs. Andreason episode of Criminal minds. The couple fucked near the dead body and just killer couple trope right there. Totally twisted and fucked up, tribrid and her boy. Just give me darkness. Two people that will kill anyone but each other.

So, in general, the idea of Hope wanting to murder Roman being a thing. She clearly wouldn’t know her mother is either at the school or lurking about able to sneak into her world undetected. My thought is he is like his mother (because there is no way he is innocent in my mind) so if there was even a thought she was pregnant he would suggest getting rid of it or even trying to kill Hope himself. Either way, I have this image in my mind of Alaric holding Hope back from killing him in the middle of the field at the school and someone (Namely Alaric) mentioning that Hayley wouldn’t want Hope to become a murder and well, of course coming in and making her opinion known on the subject, maybe even killing Roman herself. The whole thing of watching your baby grow up almost overnight and is going to have her own kid that she is willing to protect

Struggling actress that gets to work with a child actress that has always been the center of attention.

Makeup artist and actress/model were they are dating but have to pretend not to be

two costars that are dating in real life but on their show, their characters hate one another so when they come home from work they are all sort of hot and bothered because wow those words your character said to mine left me wanting you.

Actress/Actor relationship where they hooked up and opps three months later the other is at their door crying because they are pregnant and what is the press going to say?

Reckless rich kids that have never been told no that secretly wish their parents bad attention to them so they start dating their parents rival (could be an actress/model/instagram famous person as well)

Honestly, just give me all the angsty human aus

or even make these not human and have them be their supernatural selves as well.

So Hope coming back to the school as Andrea Marshall and makes friends with Lizzie and Josie, starts dating Landon Kirby, asks for fight training with Alaric Saltzman. Just a big do over

 Handon, Hizzie, Hosie plots set after the season one final are something I am living for in the moment! But also anything with the Mikaelson family in general really.

[fountainpenguin]

I have quite a few ideas for fanfics and original stories, but I get so bogged down in worldbuilding and analysis that coming up with a plot for people to actually read is much more difficult. Given your extensive headcanons for "The Fairly OddParents", how do you manage it? How do you snap out of Worldbuilding Mode, get into Storywriting Mode and stay there long enough to accomplish anything?

That… is a good question. Well, let’s walk through this together. This is gonna be a VERY BIG one (over 10k words because I’m just that extra), full of behind-the-scenes tidbits for my fanfics, but nothing I’d call super interesting for those who aren’t writers, so feel free to skip this one~

TL;DR: I’m weird. I work best when I choose how to manage my time. Spring break? Time to draw and watch cartoons! But adjusting my schedule so I can do homework AND study AND talk with friends AND answer Tumblr Asks AND research AND write? I will stop procrastinating in an instant, because suddenly there’s no time to lollygag. Why do you think I created the Mikey askblog? I was balancing my time suspiciously well and it was legit having negative effects in my life. I needed to add more pressure to my plate to force myself to work. I’m bizarre. You gotta make the time and have the right environment, I guess!

How to Write More Good: It’s Getting Drafty In Here!

(AKA, Riddle giving general advice on writing early drafts!)

.:: STARTING WITH AN IDEA ::.

(+ Basic Worldbuilding and Character Design)

My first FOP ‘fic was Baby, You’re a Rich Man. It came to be because “School’s Out! The Musical” was (and still is) my favorite episode of the series. After rewatching it half a dozen times, a few things occurred to me:

H.P. and Sanderson were moving away from the sunset in the opening scene, towards Kansas.

Flappy Bob grew up in an orphanage in Dimmsdale, California.

H.P. and Sanderson couldn’t use magic during that opening scene.

It would be more rational for them to take Flappy Bob to Pixie World and get new wands than it would be to drive all the way back to California.

So, that’s how I got the basic idea of, “How did that caring for a baby on a magic-free road trip go?”. While my headcanon base was not as extensive as it is now, I had pinned down the Pixie Wolbachia headcanon. That gave me the starting point I needed to strive into writing this ‘fic with confidence.

As for where my worldbuilding came from in the first place, my personal preference was to break the mold I saw. For example, I chose to focus heavily on real-life insect biology and science in my fanwork. Here are a couple of worldbuilding questions to get your gears turning:

How does society feel about expressing emotions in public?

What are society’s views of marriage?

Bathing? Eating? Taking vacations?

Greeting one another? Holidays? Schooling? Calendars?

Work hours? Who has jobs? How many? How does one get a job?

Living with those you’re related to? Aren’t?

Addressing figures of high status?

Look for basic, “obvious” things that we do in our lives and twist them, and maybe make something that would startle us totally acceptable in your work. It sounds like you’ve made good progress, but I thought I’d toss some thoughts out there for anyone who wants to write, but is lacking ideas in this area.

When writing fanfics, I would ask yourself questions like:

How closely do I want to stick to canon?

My family used to have this giant bucket of honey that said on the side, “Nothing added, nothing taken away”. In my case, I stick as close to canon as possible, and try to act with a policy of “everything added, nothing taken away”. That’s my personal preference, and it makes things easy because, with a few exceptions, no one has to try to remember which episodes are canon in my work, or who is on good terms with who in an AU.

What plot holes will my story address, avoid, or answer?

As mentioned above, I was curious about how H.P. and Sanderson made it to California, why they picked Dimmsdale, and how a magic-free road trip for people who rely so heavily on magic might have gone down. I had the opportunity to explore character relationships and the magic system of the FOPverse.

What worldbuilding elements did canon give that I can expand on?

Wands, Pixies Inc., godchildren, memory wiping, other species, fantastic racism, pixies all looking alike, magical creatures getting drunk on candy and soda, Da Rules…

What is my take on Character A?

I see Sanderson as loyal and devoted; he’d sacrifice himself for H.P. and can’t be convinced to betray him. He craves recognition for this, and is desperate for H.P. to refer to him as his son. He doesn’t know why this is so important to him anymore, just that it’s always been something he wants. He’s also an envious sort who is bitter because he’s head of the complaints department and isn’t vice president of the company.

Someone else might see Sanderson as a suck-up who flatters H.P. beyond belief in the hopes of taking over someday. Or perhaps as a bumbling idiot who only keeps his job through nepotism. Or perhaps H.P. is grooming Sanderson to inherit the position of Head Pixie and treats him like a puppet for political reasons.

My works would be very different if any of these had been my angles. The great thing about headcanons is, we can all have our own!

How have A’s interactions with B changed from canon?

My Sanderson has separation anxiety. I based this off canon, because he always follows H.P. around despite having the lowly job of working in the complaints department. However, his separation anxiety isn’t confirmed by canon.

Someone could say he was only working in complaints in “Pixies Inc.” because the company was transitioning now that they’d bought out Fairy World, and that in reality he is (or was later promoted to be) the vice president, and I would support this interpretation even though it differs from my own.

Do I know how they speak?

I wanna write some “Bunsen Is a Beast” one-shots, but it’ll take some time for me to get a solid feel for these characters. To stay in character, you have to understand their background, vocabulary, facial expressions, body language, movement, eye contact, tics, what they do when they’re flustered or startled, how they laugh… 

I fell in LOVE with BIaB’s use of hand gestures and body language, because FOP and DP always came off a little lacking in that area to me. Like. If there is any body part I find attractive, it’s hands and the way they move, just- Hhhhhh asdfjhslfsdfjs bury me in this JUST LOOK-

Keeping characters in character is the make-or-break point of enjoying fanfiction for me. I’ve read long ones that use (mostly) proper grammar, but disliked them because characters were OOC. Likewise, I’ve read pieces with less-than-stellar conventions, and loved them for the believable character portrayals. Sometimes I get lucky and manage to find something that scores high marks in both areas.

Some people don’t mind a little OOC-ness! But I don’t like it (Might be an author thing, being a writer of original works myself). I like fanfics that contain references to CANON DETAILS. Research. Thoughtfulness. Love and care. Expanding on what the creator brought to life, not twisting it so much that it seems like you wrote your OCs and are calling it fanfiction just so people read it.

I mean, I like the show because I like what canon gave me, right? I drool over characters like H.P., Youngblood, and Mikey because I sit there with my chin in my hands and think, “You are such a great character. I wish you could be my character. You are a dang fine character.” It just kinda bothers me when people stray too far from that (I totally support portrayals that differ from my own, but I do favor the guidelines of “everything added, nothing taken away”).

Speaking of characters, characters might change as you write more! Freaking Gavin certainly comes to mind.

My pixie character Longwood was going to be my serious fellow. He was written that way in every scene (of which there weren’t a lot for him yet). But then I wrote the “Solo” prompt (the proctoring of Rosencrantz’s latest placement test) before finishing Baby, You’re a Rich Man.

The very first scene to mention how much of a sucker he is for kisses was the “You have a lipstick stain beside your ear” line, and how Longwood’s hand flashes to the exact spot on his cheek. I was going to leave it at that. But then it slipped into Rich Man, and I couldn’t resist. It took off.

Not only did this end up influencing Origin, but it majorly affected Frayed Knots, Rich Man, and the 130 Prompts project. Bit of a flanderization, but he never lost his other traits (kleptomania, phobia of blood) and it’s unlocked so many wonderful opportunities and plot points.

The entire concept of gynes stemmed from around this, for example, as well as some conflict with Sanderson and H.P. (Longwood wanting to marry despite H.P. telling him not to, along with Longwood’s habit of trading company secrets in exchange for kisses). I can’t see him any other way.

Then Wilcox was going to be my serious character. He ended up with a physical addiction to shapeshifting, loves to be a rabbit, and now wants to marry a rabbit. Well.

Characters can change from your original plans for them. Let them go. It’s their story before it’s yours. The piece will almost certainly be better for it.

TIP: Don’t leave yourself sitting in front of a blank screen. Put something down. I usually keep a collection of town names on hand if nothing else, because I work MUCH better when there are words already there.

These notes have been sitting under the table of contents of Origin of the Pixies since the beginning. If you’re as familiar with my work as I am, you may notice that those four town names have never come up yet. I grew fond of them and wanted to save them for either a really good town, or for original projects.

Here are some other notes up there. The first one is a list of people who are immune to magic, as mentioned in “Crock Blocked” (though it’s supposed to be “new wave”, not “new way”). The second is a deleted line from “Rain Dance” that I really like, but haven’t been able to use yet.

Here are some notes from the beginning of Knots:

Use ‘in which’ subtitles

Maternity colonies

Group of huddling baby bats = creche

“It’s a bit dear” = It’s expensive

“I’ve got the right hump” = I’m irritated

“Plump for something more like…” = Use something more like…

“I’m easy” = I’m laid back; I don’t mind

“All right, darling?” = How do you do?

Chips = Crisps

French fries = Chips

Lift = Elevator

Using “You know what I mean?”

Knackered = Exhausted

Gutted = Broken up about

Gobsmacked = Completely shocked

“I cocked up” = I badly messed up

Blinding = Incredible

Cheers = Thanks

Ace = Expert at

A damp squib = A failure

Chunder = Throwing up; for drunken nights

“Oh, mate, that’s brilliant!”

Fortnight = Two weeks

“She gave me a real bollocking” = She scolded me

“Nice one, really” = Sort of sarcastic; “Great job” or “Nice going”

Dodgy = Not very good (Items / thoughts / actions / people)

Scrummy = Tastes very good

Kerfuffle = Skirmish

“That’s a load of tosh” or “Don’t talk tosh”

“He tried to skive off work” = Sluff

Yup! Stereotypical British slang I’ll probably play around with! I don’t plan to use all of it, and I don’t want to use them too much, but I jotted them down.

I also have a list of symptoms for the iris virus STD, but I don’t think that’s appropriate to share here. Here are some notes from my “Danny Phantom” ‘fic about Youngblood, No Anesthetic:

I used to have his sisters up there, before I moved them to an Excel file:

Excel and such can be a great tool for writers to keep their character notes. Stay organized. Once you get your notes written down, you can stop thinking about them so much (I’ll mention the brain’s response to saying “I can move on now that this is noted down” later in this post) and free up space in your head to think through stuff that hasn’t been finished (aka, the story).

The point of me showing all these is, this is something I always do. You just have to start somewhere. Don’t sit at a blank screen and procrastinate. You’ll get analysis paralysis. The first draft is supposed to be a DRAFT. It can change later. If your first draft is perfect, you have bigger problems to worry about, because you probably have magic powers and a world to save. Write more than you need to in this stage- figure out what to cut later.

Need ideas for what to jot down? Figure out more worldbuilding basics:

Where are people getting their food? Water? Shelter?

Social interaction?

Money?

Materials to do the job to get the money?

Books, toys, writing materials, entertainment?

Eating utensils?

Rights?

Addictions?

Love?

Pets?

What about your protagonist? Main personality traits? Quotes? 

Family, alive and deceased? Family history? Heirlooms?

Neighbors?

Nervous habits? Embarrassing habits?

Things they’d lie about?

Things they’d never want anyone to know about them?

Deep dark fears?

Things they would share on their Tumblr blog?

I would easily be able to answer all of these for my FOP work, and several of them for my fantasy novel (currently nicknamed “Stars and Finches”) too.

Now, how can you hint at these things in your story? What happens if you take one of those away, or threaten to? Answering the question of “How would THIS character react?” is thrilling for me, and something that drives me from worldbuilding mode into writing mode.

We all know that it’s common for characters to not be mentioned as needing to go to the bathroom. But remember, your characters are mortal too (or, they’re not!) If they have needs, keep that in mind.

In the first draft of Rich Man (not the outline, but the actual draft), there was no mention of Sanderson being thirsty in the early chapters. I added it later because I realized how long he had gone without drinking in hot and dusty Kansas, so then we end up with these scenes:

Chap 1:

I pulled myself together, licking at my dry lips.

Oil dripped in silence, and I remembered how dry my mouth was, full of dust and maybe a bit of blood.

Chap 2:

Water. Water. Water! I hadn’t wanted to get my hopes up just in case I was wrong, but as I approached the small army of metal animals encircling the watering hole on Hole 8, I felt hope swell within me. I knelt between a hulking elephant and a slender zebra near the little wooden bridge. Hugging Flappy to me with one arm, bracing myself with the other, I drank until all the dirt and corn dust had washed from my mouth. It tasted like whipped cream. When I next licked my lips, actual wetness spread itself over the cracks.

Characters needing to meet their needs can be a great plot device if you’re groping for ideas! In fact, I said one time that my tip for overcoming writer’s block is as follows:

Your character is either hungry, thirsty, exhausted, second-guessing themselves, learning a new skill, overcoming a naturally-formed or man-made obstacle, or that really great plot point you’re excited for is coming up next and it’s time to dialogue your way in that direction. Rinse and repeat.

(On the subject of writer’s block, I sometimes record myself reading the dialogue I’ve already written. Bonus points if you can get the voices right, though I sometimes find it difficult to switch between multiple ones. If you can get really into it and carry on a long conversation with yourself, perhaps you can transcribe some of what you say to your writing.)

.:: THE FIRST OUTLINE ::.

Confession time: I’m not awesome at plots myself (That’s why I tend to write long, drawn-out pieces, because the plot then becomes “development and discovery”). But Rich Man’s road trip idea came with a built-in plot. It was supposed to be pretty quick and done.

Like. A sixteen-page long one-shot. Not an 85,000-word novel. So, what I did was, I just started writing and let the story unfold as I went. This is what I knew was going to happen:

H.P. and Sanderson find Flappy in the cornfield

Sanderson gets shot in the wing so he can’t fly for the rest of the story; the stakes have been upped because his ability to escape is limited.

Sanderson and H.P. get separated in the field and Sanderson panics because of his separation anxiety. He tips over the edge and H.P. scolds him for this when they meet up again.

Everyone goes to the minigolf course. H.P. puts Sandy in charge while he plays golf by himself. Sandy is torn between staying at the course or leaving for food, because he and Flappy are hungry. He also ends up losing Flappy, but he’s found again later.

In the morning, everyone leaves and they get back in the car and start searching for food. Flappy needs baby supplies.

H.P. and Sanderson disguise themselves with a trench coat or something from the back of their truck and get supplies from a gas station. While outside the station, they get backed into a corner. Sanderson ends up running inside the station with Flappy while H.P. got caught and dragged off.

Sanderson tries to balance Flappy’s needs with figuring out where H.P. is and how to rescue him. He feels alone and miserable, but eventually he manages to reunite with H.P. somehow.

H.P. and Sanderson make it to the base of the Pixie World Bridge just as it starts to rain, and manage to get Flappy above the clouds, and arrive in Pixie World to dry off.

In the conference room, H.P. explains the loose outline for his plans, and Sanderson is put in charge of watching Flappy for the night.

Now, anyone who’s read Rich Man will realize instantly that something is very wrong. This doesn’t look much like the finished project. Where are Eunice and Quincy? Where’s the candy and the fence? Where’s Anti-Naelita? What happened to the soccer field? Jorgen? The sugar bar? The will o’ the wisps?

Simple: my outline was loose enough to give me wiggle room. Some writers prefer a strict outline, but I’m not one of them. You might not be either.

As you can see, I had a decent outline here. I had a good starting point, even if it was rough and many details were fuzzy. I got to this point by first marking general notes, and then asking questions and adding more notes:

I need to get from the cornfield to Pixie World.

What is the cornfield like? What time of day is it? What’s around? Who’s around?

What happened to the guy they hit with their truck when they spun into the corn? And how much did the collision / spin / impact jostle them?

How are they going to take care of Flappy?

They don’t have magic.

A baby will need to be fed and changed

There’s no way they have baby supplies in their truck

Where and how will they get supplies? How will they get the supplies to get the supplies? Who will they meet when they get it? What are the dangers?

I want H.P. and Sanderson to get separated.

How can we up the stakes?

I can take Sandy’s ability to fly, and discuss the ways magical creatures can die, and put Sandy in or near those situations so we can see him fret

Even if the audience knows that the main character survives (especially when writing backstories), the writer should strive to keep them on their toes with physical and emotional dangers

I love the idea of Sanderson having separation anxiety, so I’d like some of the focus on the story to be on that

I should foreshadow this by separating them in the cornfield for a short period of time.

What happens to Flappy when they separate?

How does H.P. take care of Flappy vs. how Sanderson takes care of him? Who is more capable: H.P. who has much more experience but is strict, or Sanderson who is more compassionate but makes many mistakes?

How do they get back together?

An injured wasp releases pheromones. I based pixies off wasps. I could do something with this.

I like the idea of Sanderson putting himself in harm’s way to trigger his pheromones, because it drives home how desperate and lost he is.

What’s my end goal? Why am I writing this?

I want to share my portrayal of these characters that I like, and maybe others will like these portrayals and characters too.

I’m interested in exploring the worldbuilding and magic system, and trying to bring all the scattered bits of canon that seem to conflict into a single consistent magic system with strengths and flaws.

There’s not a real moral here, or at least not a good one. It’s just sort of slice-of-life, and shows how much H.P. means to Sanderson compared to what Sanderson means to H.P., and just sketch an idea as to what their overarching relationship is.

I wanted to point out the Kansas/California disconnect and play around with a magic-free road trip.

This was enough for me to get started. Just keep asking and answering questions! At this point, I had no other ‘fics to refer to, so I threw in worldbuilding as I went along (Hint: Reference past experiences that helped one grow or made someone nervous. Compare things to something that belongs specifically in this world when describing colors, expressions, body language, or facial features. What reminds a character of their past? How can you make those things related to your ideas or to canon worldbuilding?).

I made things up as I went along, and tried to slip in worldbuilding:

What’s so special about this minigolf course?

Apparently Sanderson was born here

What was H.P.’s life like back then?

What is the course decorated like? Why?

I really wanted the tree Sandy climbs to be a maple. But how did a maple end up in Kansas? Hmm.

As adorable as being born at the golf course would be, how does that work with the time differences?

How the Big Wand works

How magical creatures breathe

Lines can get tangled

What wand providers do

Undoing magic (reversal fluid and signature codes)

Limitations on magic

Why wands are important

How wands work

In a magical sense

In a physical sense

Legal jazz and paperwork junk

Magic lines

Magic doesn’t work well in poor weather conditions

Tingle-fritziness

Snapping lines

How do babies get lines?

Tying lines

Three is preferred; too many or two few can compromise one’s health.

Magic dust

Non-magic users see what they expect to see if there is magical residue around (basically sweat; aka fairy dust)

Healing

Ability to fly

The energy field

Field-sight

Species variations

Magical politics

Mind wiping

Fantastic racism

Rules about interfering with neutral / evil parties on Earth

Court cases

Anti-Pixie society

Sanderson is reserved, likes singing, and is loyal to H.P., but Anti-Sanderson is boisterous, likes dancing, and usurped H.P.’s counterpart

What even was the previous 37-year plan anyway?

And how important? What did the Fairies think of it? Anti-Fairies?

Sanderson hates it when girls flirt with him when he’s just trying to fix the copy machine; it’s distracting and confusing

Inspiration back-up is maybe a thing? This is a really iffy subject

How did the Pixies become involved with Gary and Betty? Why THEM?

Sanderson is taking care of them because he grew fond of their parents after meeting them in this ‘fic. When the plan called for more human children to raise, Sanderson knew who to look into.

Sanderson is not company vice president, and is bitter rivals with the pixie who is

Who gives pixies milk? Foster mothers

Who was Sanderson’s milkmother? How did H.P. meet her? Does Sanderson remember her? Why isn’t she still around? Did she have kids? Are they his siblings? Why aren’t they around?

… Basically, if you have the choice between slipping in a world-building detail or falling back on an old cliche, the former is probably the better way to go. Of course, I myself hit a snag when I couldn’t figure out what Sanderson would know about H.P.’s past, so I started to develop Origin of the Pixies seriously.

Write the stuff you’ve already come up with. Try to see things from the perspective of someone who can’t see the inner workings of your head:

Is your logic sound?

Do you contradict yourself?

Do you think you’ve avoided plot holes?

Are your explanations confusing?

What questions might people ask? How would you answer them?

What if this story was written with different characters?

How would they try solving their problems? What would they know? Why DON’T the characters you chose to use react that way?

My advice is, don’t be stubborn with your outline. Be flexible. I mean, look at this note I added to Rich Man 8 when I originally posted it on deviantArt:

Idona’s presence, I think, might be worth a little explanation. First things first, I would like to throw out that I did not invent an OC to ship Sanderson with because I find romance necessary. I’m really not much of a shipper in general. This was always supposed to be a story about Sanderson, his boss, and a baby clown. So if you’re anything like me, you can breathe again.

[…] Idona was not supposed to be in this story. She isn’t in my original outline whatsoever. Even when I started thinking I might have Sanderson run across a will o’ the wisp, I was going to use one of the random ones. Literally anybody but Idona, because knowing her the way I’ve learned to [from writing Origin of the Pixies], there is no way she wouldn’t bring up romance, and I didn’t want that to even be a question in this story.Problem being that if we’re perfectly honest, based on Origin of the Pixies canon, most wisps would have either A) confused him with Longwood and attacked out of frustration (and I was really done with Sanderson getting physically beat on), or the more likely B) smothered him in kisses and such right then and there, O'Weskar v. Pixies Inc. notwithstanding, seeing as they know they have the time to have their way with him before he dies. And no way was I going that far. Either I had to change Origin of the Pixies, I had to invent pointless new wisp characters and introduce plot holes, or I had to adjust a scene in Baby, You’re a Rich Man that I wasn’t happy with.Using Idona surprisingly led me to the least possible romance and the best balance of sanity, if that makes any sense. Because she’s the only one who would ever see him as a person and respect his refusal, and not just take advantage of him. And I got to show Sanderson doubling back in desperate search of the only wisp he actually dislikes rather than has more neutral feelings towards. That was nice. Not that… it means much to you all, not having read Origin of the Pixies yet. So, yes, I’m entirely aware that this scene probably still seems out of place with the rest of the story, but I assure you, every word Idona says, her fascination with Sanderson in particular, and the fact that wisp damsels come out in the rain nowadays makes complete sense. And, for those of you who actually were itching for romance, take this and sit tight. Next time we’ll talk with Longwood and someone’s gonna get busted.So if Idona weren’t here at all then their conversation would have been replaced with more of Sanderson’s rambling which, while it was my first intention, did not go as well as I hoped. It really went on for about ten pages and I kind of. Pushed him. Over the brink of reality and had to start over. There was a lot of grass-eating involved. I had to stop when I ran him into the ground because I had little choice but to make Jardine stumble across him while he got his dirt, and that rang like a cop-out. It was all much too OOC even for my take on Sanderson, I realized when I sat back and took a second look. So now you get Idona and I’m 100% certain the story is better for it. It did fix a major plothole in a later scene, after all.

This is just what, after twelve years of trial and error, seems to work very well for me. Some people might be driven crazy by an outline that said, “I don’t know how they meet up again, but I’ll figure that out when I get there”.

Personally, I let the characters guide me. If you’ve read Rich Man, you know that Sanderson is actually the one who gets captured, and that he ends up bonding a bit with Thomas over music. I came up with that love of music idea when I reached that scene.

That’s what works! Alternatively, if I were more of a planner, I could have drawn up a character sheet for Thomas in advance, and I might have written, say… “Flattery is the way to his heart”, and gone into the scene with that character detail in mind, and Sanderson could have flattered his way out.

In the latest chapter of Origin, I had the scene where Sanderson hugs the yoo-doo doll and the scene where H.P. stabs the arrow into it written out months ago, but I didn’t figure out where or how they got the dolls (or who was guarding them) until I actually made it to that section of the chapter.

Just remember: Better to have a rough draft than nothing at all! If you feel paralyzed, start asking questions and trying to decide how you can answer them in your piece without infodumping too much! Unless you infodump the way I did when Sanderson went on his rant(s) in Chapter 1, I guess?

.:: FIRST WORDS ::.

Okay, let’s back it up. We’re pretty far into this post now, and yet the first thing I ever do when actually writing a story is, throw down all the scene snippets I’ve been keeping in my head before creating the document.

Ex: In Frayed Knots, here’s one scene I scribbled downvery early-

The glimmering of her translucent wings cast rainbows across the squares of light leaking over the otherwise dark floor. My core twisted in a knot. I covered my mouth and nose with my fingers, choking on literal butterflies because the sight was so sickeningly pretty and good and pure that it made my head spin and the blood thump in my neck. It went against every Anti-Fairy instinct, every Anti-Fairy cultural norm, every Anti-Fairy schooling lesson, every Anti-Fairy wands and wings talk-

And I liked it.

Wanda placed her hand to my forehead. “Are you all right? Your face is flushed purple, but your forehead doesn’t seem overly cold.”

- and I moved from stuff like that onto the next chunk, which was writing the scenes that appear in both Knots and Origin from the viewpoints of Anti-Cosmo and H.P., respectively, and making them each distinct. For example-

Origin-

Against his best efforts, Anti-Cosmo pulled a more amusing face than he would ever admit to and handed me back my mug. “Blimey! I really don’t know how you can drink this putrid stuff all day, old sport.”

I slid his tea cup and saucer across my desk with the end of my pen. “And I will never see the appeal of this sickly sweet water, either. I can hardly function without my morning coffee dose.”

“All the more reason we should align forces, I think. The coffee is yours, but all the tea in the universe shall be mine. Ahahaha!”

“And the sugar?”

My door exploded open as Anti-Cosmo was working through his, “I say we split the difference”. He yelped and dropped the cup he had just picked up, and it spilled steaming tea all over his lap. Brown dots splattered across the papers on the desk between us.

“Sanderson,” I said, trying not to focus on the bead of sweat creeping down my forehead. “This is definitely not a good time to make a fool of yourself.”

He surveyed the situation fast and pinged up a handful of small towels for Anti-Cosmo. To me, “Longwood and Smitty are trying to kill each other down in the food court.”

“Oh, blitz.” I shoved my chair backwards and pushed past the anti-fairy. At the door, I turned back to him. “I would suggest you remain here, Anti-Cosmo. For your own safety.”

“My own safety?” he repeated, utterly perplexed. He had his handkerchief balled in his blue hand, even though tea was still splattered across his prim shirt and dark pants. His green eyes narrowed with glinting suspicion. “I’m not certain this isn’t a clever attempt at a trap, H.P.”

Knots-

I fiddled with my wand beneath the edge of his desk. I’d seen what that stuff did to him the morning after we’d spent that night together during the war. “Hot drinks don’t appeal so much to anti-entities.”

“Just taste it, tea-drinker,” he coaxed.

So I did. It stung the cuts along the roof of my mouth, just as I’d expected to, but I did not spit my swallow out, and I’m very proud of that. “Blimey,” I said mildly as I lowered it. Struggling to maintain an even expression, I passed back his mug. “I really don’t know how you can drink this putrid stuff all day, old sport.”

“And I will never see the appeal of this sickly sweet water, either,” he said as he returned my teacup. “I can hardly function without my morning coffee dose.”

I smiled and lifted that softly-steaming cup of sweetness to my nose. “All the more reason we should align forces, I think. The coffee is yours, but all the tea in the universe shall be mine!” My proposal ended in a small cackle.

He tilted his head. “And the sugar?”

“I say we split the difference.”

The door burst before I finished. Tea spilled down my shirt and over my legs. I flinched and probably let slip a squeal as I grabbed at the insides of my coat. The Head Pixie’s face bled into mortified white.

“Sanderson, this is definitely not a good time to make a fool of yourself.”

I rotated my chair partway around, squeezing the wet front of my shirt in my fist. The flustered pixie kept one hand pressed to his hair, but he spared me a fleeting glance. As he pinged up an unsteady stack of gray towels above my head, he blurted, “Longwood and Smitty are trying to kill each other down in the food court.”

Spitting unprofessional curses, the Head Pixie launched himself over his desk, caught his foot on the edge, tripped, and slammed hard into the ground beside my feet. He scrambled up again and flew through his door. Then he poked his head back in. “I would suggest you remain here, Anti-Cosmo. For your own safety.”

I cocked my ears forward. “My own safety? I’m not certain this isn’t a clever attempt at a trap, H.P.”

Of course, I guess you don’t really have that luxury, huh? Having another story to refer to? So sharing these blocks was kind of pointless.

Some scenes may get cut. Even ones that you thought you liked. If you’re a writer, I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “Kill your darlings” before.

That’s especially the case when trying to publish, as you’re bound to a certain length. Fanfiction is nice because you can be as long as you want. But still, I would advise you, if something’s not working? It’s hurting. Drop it. Keep only scenes that contribute.

Could I have written several more chapters in Origin about H.P.’s life in Kalysta’s burrow? Heck yes. Could I have written about the years he spent as a servant / butler to Cattahan? Definitely. But they disrupted the flow, and really, the audience didn’t need them. Wield the timeskip wisely.

.:: DIVIDE AND CONQUER ::.

Okay, so you know I scribble down what I can think of at the time, right? What if I don’t know a detail? Should I stop and work it out? Spend an hour or two researching right then and there?

Nah. I throw down an underscore and keep moving. Later, I can use the search feature to show me all the underscores and fill them in during the second draft, when I have more time for fact-checking like that.

This is my favorite example of the underscores, from the “Think Positive” prompt, because every time I find this scene again it just makes me snort:

“-pixies over the millennia. Surely you can loan me some advice to raising mine? I don’t know the first thing about raising a child. I’ve never held a pup in my life.”

The Head Pixie scratched his chin. “Aren’t you Mr. Genie Conservation Program?”

“_.”

“Right. _.”

Anti-Cosmo shoved back his seat and lifted his wings. “_?”

“_,” he said as he took another sip of soda.

“_.”

“Wasn’t that the very first thing I said?”

“But do you even know how Anti-Fairy rrreproduction works?”

The most interesting conversation.

Anyway, I knew that I wanted these two to bounce off one another. I knew A.C. was acting high-strung, and H.P. was more relaxed. I wrote everything for this prompt that I could think of at the time one night. It’s been sitting around waiting for me to finish it, which I haven’t yet because there were other prompts I wanted to get to first.

I do the same thing with Origin. Heck, I even do the same thing when writing school assignments-

I even did it when writing this post! What I know, I pen down while I’m in the flow. Once you get the outlines of the puzzle down, you can go back and fill in the gaps!

Just for fun, because I work on other projects besides fanfics, here’s me doing the same thing in “Stars and Finches”:

“We’ll have to turn back. The waves are picking up.”

From the upper deck, I called, “Can’t you use magic to make it fly?”

She squinted at me. Then she squinted at _. The _ came out of her mouth. “Does this elfblood even know how _ships work?”

“I’m Allard Krindan.”

“And I’m annoyed.” She made the six-fingered Sikhorian hand gesture for “You’re not worth my time” and marched off. I folded back my ears and stared after her. Were all the Sikhorians going to treat me with such blatant disrespect?

_

“Listen, kid.” _ put his arm around me. “Ever wonder why no one steers the _ships across the mountains even though _they’re capable of traveling over land?”

“That never came up in my ambassador-in-training lessons, no.”

“Ambassador, huh?” His eye roamed to me as he popped the _ in his mouth. “Well, _. That’s why it’s so important to have the canal.”

This is a very rough draft I haven’t looked at for a bit because fanfics have been sapping up my attention. But my parents and I agreed that for my “summer job”, they’ll let me write, as long as I’m writing like it’s my job. So, I’ll become more scarce around that time as I try to finish my original novel

I think I’ll scrap the idea of the ships hovering over land. That seems too easy. They’ll stick to the water, I guess. Hmm…

.:: TABLE OF CONTENTS ::.

Unless I’m writing a one-shot or something else that’s relatively short, I always keep a table of contents at the beginning of a piece (I didn’t create one for No Anesthetic, but I left my entire first draft outline up there, even though it’s already drastically different from the way the final piece has been going). As I complete each chapter, I scratch it off with the strikeout tool.

As you can see, I’ve now finished with Acts 1 and 2. Origin got so big that it was taking the Google Docs app on my phone a painfully long time to load the story, so the second list is in my second document, and the third in the third. The asterisks symbolize the four different Acts-

Act 1: The transition from H.P. living on his own to officially accepting Sanderson

Act 2: H.P. struggling with questions, lifestyle choices, and little kids; being abducted by the cherubs and studied

Act 3: The development of Pixie World, the war over godchildren, the study of the Wolbachia bacteria, and the aftermath of the war

Act 4: Tying up loose ends; H.P. dealing with his pixies growing up and aging himself

This table of contents is pretty important to me, since I tend to write scenes as I think of them and jump up and down the story. This list helps me keep my facts straight (although tbh I can keep 99.99% of the order, mood, and timeframe of scenes straight in my head because that’s just the way I am. I can accurately keep track of hundreds of characters without double-checking their info constantly. Can I recognize somebody new in my life that I was introduced to the day before? No).

I have the kind of personality that enjoys completing things for the sake of completing them, so scratching them off is very reinforcing to me. Look how much I’ve done! Origin of the Pixies is easily the longest FOP fanfic on the Internet, and only halfway done! I did this! Isn’t that awesome? I wanna finish this puppy! I’ve poured so much of my love and time into it!

Here’s a snippet of the table from my Total Drama fanfic, The Lyin’ Queen:

The chapters are all named after Simple Plan songs as a reference to Staci listing her favorite band as Simple Flan. In this table, you can see I have small notes next to each chapter. That can be helpful too! Origin actually had notes like this back before I memorized what happens in which chapter.

Now, remember that I noted down everything I could think of. To create the table of contents, I calculated in my head where in the story I wanted things to fall (hence the notes in parentheses), and where I envisioned chapter breaks. In Knots, for example, my chapters are divided like this:

I picked this part of Knots rather than Origin because you can see that “Grand Day Out” has nothing in it yet (whereas all my Origin chapters have more content). However, I know that it exists. I went ahead and wrote it there so I wouldn’t forget; when I’m in the mood to write the ceremonial send-off scene or anything else about the upper planes of the Deep Kingdom, then I’ll scroll down to this section of the document and add it in. “Pretty Boys”, though, already has quite a few scenes written already!

Fun Fact: The Faelumen were originally designed to exist in Knots alone, and weren’t mentioned at all in Origin. It was supposed to be a big, fun surprise reveal… but after I wrote some scenes with Dame Head, I loved her too much. Plus, I thought it was something I should talk about with the whole “pixies reproduce asexually thing”, and answer the questions about why she wasn’t in Origin when Anti-Fergus was. Then the religion thing happened… Yep!

If you’ve been keeping up with this blog and Origin, you know that I unexpectedly split “Fruitful Fruition” in half to create “Snowflake”, even though the latter wasn’t in my outline. That’s okay! This is why I like to write as I go along rather than planning out too many details. It’s easy to be flexible!

TIP: Generally speaking, I write rough draft scenes as I think them up. They stay that way as rough drafts; I don’t worry about them too much. They’re full of underscores, and even in some cases, blatant mistakes.

Originally, Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda had their first kiss upside down in a tree. The draft scene is written that way. Now it’s in a petting zoo, because really, why would you not?

Point being, there are still several references later in the story about them being in a tree that I haven’t yet corrected. I’ll do that when I actually write the chapter from start to finish and decide what to cut.

 When I really sit down to write the story, though, I go in order. From the start of the chapter, with maybe a few pops forward when something comes to mind, but mostly, I go in order.

Otherwise, you might have a great scene, but it doesn’t fit the flow or mood of the story, or - worse - something came up and now the scene doesn’t make sense at all, after you put in so much effort.

If I’m in the mood to write a scene, I make time to pen the draft down as soon as possible. I do NOT say, “I’ll just hang onto that thought and write it all when I get there”. Use it or lose it!

At this time, Knots has all the scenes loosely written that I first thought of (bringing the document to approximately 200 pages). These are main scenes: conflicts with Mom, coming-of-age ceremony, Wish Fixers therapy, lots of Anti-Wanda stuff, basically all the Anti-Sanderson stuff, scenes from the war…

The next goal is finishing my outline and how I want to pace things / jump around, then figuring out the drafts for main scenes I haven’t finished yet (the opening scene, A.C.’s wedding, Anti-Bryndin, more war stuff, the bake-off, etc.) Once those main roughs are done, I’ll start writing the final version of Chapter 1, and eventually post it! Then I’ll begin work on the final version of Chapter 2, with occasional pauses to add more draft scenes later in the story if I think one up.

.:: MOTIVATION ::.

Aside from scratching off chapters being reinforcing, talking about my work on this blog helps a lot too. Although no chapters have been posted, I can’t very well back out of Frayed Knots; you know too much and I won’t make a liar out of myself now. It might take me weeks or months, but I’ll get to it!

NOTE: Revealing TOO MUCH can be severely detrimental! You may trigger your brain’s response that, “Oh, I talked about this thing? I shared it, my task is complete, I can be satisfied and stop now”. You may notice I try to only share stuff from Knots that I’ve already written, and keep my lip buttoned on stuff that’s still up in the air.

For some people, something as simple as crossing a chapter off their list may not be satisfying enough. You could always reward yourself with a bit of ice cream or candy or another treat, say, if you finish a chapter, or if you wrote a certain amount of words each day. I usually reward myself with more writing.

The NaNoWriMo community has been very supportive to me in the three years I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month (the goal being to write 50,000 words between November 1st and November 30th).

On that site, when you make an account and sign up for the event each November, you get a purple bar underneath your username. It announces how many words you’ve written so far. If you write just 1,667 words a day, you’ll reach 50,000 by the 30th this post is almost six times that oh my gosh. 

Again, being able to update my wordcount and see how well I was keeping on track was very rewarding to me, and I’ve met the 50k count for 3/3 NaNovels (Courtesy, Silverfish, and Protagonist For Hire, which amazingly somehow got its 50,000 but is very poorly written and not close to done)!

You can also win promotional codes and stuff. I got five free self-published copies of my 2012 novel Courtesy of Number 124 when I finished and formatted them, among other benefits! It depends on the year, I think!

Again, I like completing things. I like HAVING things. After many hours of searching the web, I was disappointed in the lack of Pixie ‘fics. Although there were some, it wasn’t enough for me. I didn’t want Pixies putting another 37-year-plan into action, or getting revenge on Timmy. I wanted serious backstory.

As previously mentioned, by establishing that H.P. had written Origin, I was at a risk for writing Sanderson as dumb for not knowing something H.P. had mentioned in his book. Sanderson has read and studied Origin extensively, so I had to make sure he didn’t “conveniently” forget a fact he should know, and when writing Origin, I have to make sure not to contradict Sanderson, or give the answers to anything he stated in Rich Man that he doesn’t know

Fact: In the Origin Act 2 finale, I used “breathed” as a said tag for the first time in this story. One of the underlying things in Rich Man was, Sanderson didn’t fully grasp the concepts of how humans breathe. The word “breathe” doesn’t come up much in Rich Man, until the closing lines, like “He never stopped breathing”. I have been IN PAIN not using “breathed”, so I finally bit the bullet because forget this.

And of course, as a result, that means H.P. shouldn’t have taught him anything about humans breathing. This I… slightly retconned, because breathing turned out to be more important for Origin than I had previously expected. 

Though, in Rich Man, Sanderson never explicitly says he doesn’t know what breathing is (Obviously he has to know, considering he finally said the word). It’s just, I was subtly trying to hint in Rich Man that he truly recognized the nature of his own self - a being who could technically be called half mortal, half immortal - at the same time he began to understand Flappy’s human nature.

ANYWAY, figure out how you’re motivated and then play to your own wants and needs! Passion and a love of the work is arguably the best way to be, because it’s simple. But if praise is reinforcing to you? Share what you’ve done with me, and I’ll give you many pats on the back!

That… would have been the only three sentences required to answer this Ask, but I wrote this giant post instead. YOU KNOW WHO I AM, DENISE!

.:: OTHER WRITING ADVICE  B/C IDK WHY NOT? ::.

You’re writing for two audiences

The first is of course your readers. That’s the easy answer. But, you ought to love what you’re doing. The second audience you write for is yourself. What have you always wanted to write, but haven’t gotten around to? 

For me, I love extravagant coming of age ceremonies! I’ll take any excuse to dress characters up in something they wouldn’t normally wear, force them to participate in things they otherwise wouldn’t, or shove them in a situation where they’re horribly embarrassed but can’t escape.

And, I love inventing fantasy religions! Religious beliefs can be huge motivators for characters that can explain being “out of character”. Take advantage of this!

For a third example, Origin of the Pixies gave me the chance to write about marsupial pouches and the embarrassment of one’s offspring crawling into said pouch while in public. That’s been a joy from start to finish.

Write the scenes you “can’t afford” to write

Well, uh… so, here’s a little secret I was never planning to share… I’ve written make-out scenes and yes, even some more intimate scenes while working on Origin and Knots. They’ll just never appear, and you’ll never get to read them. It’s not something I EVER would have done just a year ago, and yet here I am.

I am a sex-repulsed aromantic asexual. I have no business nosing my way into this area. And yet I did. And it was very interesting. 

I was mostly curious to see how well my skills held up trying to describe scenarios I know little about, and it turns out that mostly, they held up extremely well! I think. It’s kind of refreshing to just let yourself write and know that no one will ever judge you on it.

Obviously, don’t write something that makes you uncomfortable just because I said here that it’s something that helps me in my writing.

Really, I didn’t focus so much on writing intimate scenes per se so much as the situations that led up to them (BOY, let me tell you how many of these “sex” scenes I have with a bunch of flirtation and set-up, and then they just… go blank, because I already had all I needed to know about how the characters would act when being romantic in private). Situations are really interesting. Emotions, dialogue, lack of one or both… Different people act in different ways.

I have H.P.’s kissing scene under the stairs with a random girl, squished between four other couples, from the party in Chapter 4- That one was REALLY fun, and recently I ended up recycling most of that scene as a sort-of flashback early in Origin Act 3 (loosely down as falling in “Cotton Candy Oatmeal”). Very teenager-y and full of hormones, which was the point. Seriously, that scene came out SO DANG WELL, and I’m very proud of my aro/ace un-kissed self. Oh man, I’ve written so many nice behind-the-scenes scenes full of character fleshing that I wish I could share.

I have Ambrosine and Ilisa Maddington (Ambrosine admiring her shampoo and giant white bathtub is adorable to me, for some reason). For crying out loud, I even wrote “‘Stars and Finches’ AU where most everything’s the same in this scene but Gavin and Ethel try to be flirty b/c I need to know how they act for research” Answer: They are super, super clueless and awkward and in this AU they DEVASTATE their relationship this way it’s so hilarious to me because “Let’s shatter these two emotionally” generally isn’t what you’d expect to get out of “AU where this story has romance / making out and jazz in it”.

Idk this is just really fascinating to me? I can still keep them 100% in character even in situations they wouldn’t normally find themselves in? I’ve explored their personalities just to understand them better, not to impress readers? I love it!

SO! The reason I wrote these things is simple: Character fleshing. You’re the author! Characters’ personal lives are completely your business. It might help to know how these people act when the audience isn’t supposed to be watching- and then draw inspiration from that to use in the actual story.

Case in point: One thing that absolutely shocked me was the way cute and sweet China acts behind closed doors. Freaking China. Apparently she’s really nice and casual by day, but she’s super specific at night, and will pitch a fit if things don’t go her way. She guilts the heck out of H.P. It’s her little way of getting control, being a selkie… 

Basically, she did a 180-flip in my mind after I wrote the dialogue exchange and narrative reflecting on their relationship, and I loved it. Almost all of the lines from those few paragraphs ended up in Origin.

And given how many relationships H.P. makes and breaks over the 700,000 years this story covers, going behind the scenes this way allows me to compare and contrast his girls. Whereas China is specific and decides when they sleep together, Kalysta is easy-going just as long as he’s there. Very, very interesting and very fun for me!

Of course, don’t do anything you’re uncomfortable doing. But maybe break out of your comfort zone and write scenes that will never make it into the story. Not just kissy-kissy scenes, but other scenes too:

Those shady deals behind the best friend’s back

The moment the villain realizes someone’s out to stop her

Midnight snacks

Doctor and dentist appointments

Birthday celebrations

What happens when they’re out of their favorite breakfast

Being stuck in traffic / going to work

Relatives coming to visit

Grocery shopping

A situation where they are the only one stressed

Trying a new recipe

Cleaning the house

Ordering at a fancy restaurant

Ordering from a drive-thru

First cruise vacation

Service for a friend or stranger

Multitasking (TV, phone conversation, and food?)

Big homework assignments

Interview / performance review

Visiting a museum

Going to the pool / waterpark on a hot day

Visiting a sick friend or relative

Attending a funeral (for someone they either know well, or don’t)

Take your kid to work day

Caught in the act of an embarrassing habit

Accidentally set something on fire

Can’t find an item (either dumb or important)

What happens during timeskips

Before the story begins

After it comes to a close

Stuff that happens in daily life, but the reader doesn’t need to know because it doesn’t add enough to the story. Or, maybe some of these will turn out to be crucial, and you can work them in. Writing about what your character sees in a museum is a great way to worldbuild, and then you can sneak hints of what you learn from writing that prompt into the actual finished work. Hint at a world that keeps getting deeper. Treat yo’self- you might just be surprised.

… I realize that we’re straying from the original topic, but I’m on a roll here. Hmm. I’ll make a separate prompt list for all of these things and post it later.

Google Docs is a good way to go

Google Docs is free to use, the only stipulation being that you need a gmail account, I think. If you have an iPhone or something, download the Google Docs app. It’s free too.

Whatever you write on one will sync to other devices automatically. Take advantage of this and, if you’re not socializing or keeping an eye on your surroundings otherwise, write everywhere. Write when you’re a passenger on the bus, write between class changes, write while you’re eating with the other hand, and if you have enough self-control to still get to sleep on time, you can keep it beside your bed.

I’ve only had Docs crash on me once in two+ years, and since it saves automatically as you work anyway (and saves your past edits), I didn’t lose anything. I used WordPerfect for almost a decade, I’ve often used Microsoft Word for school papers, and I have Scrivener, but Google Docs is my favorite to write with because I can walk up to any computer, log in, and access my 85+ files in an instant. Dropbox syncing used to take HOURS back in the day.

(The one thing I might mention is that if I remember correctly, the Google Docs app is extremely hard to log out of on the iPhone, if there is even an option. It’s been some time since I checked, however, but may be something to keep in mind for those who share phones with people they’d be embarrassed to have reading their work.)

Take your time

Seriously, timing is everything. I could name numerous pieces that would have been vastly different had I submitted them as soon as I thought they were ready. It was seven months after I “finished” “Bells and Whistles” before I was able to post it, and it changed a surprising amount after all those revisions!

It’s okay not to have your worldbuilding fully worked out when you start. In fact, I’d even say it’s better that way! When you worldbuild as you go, you’re truly immersed in the world and the work!

And lastly?

Find the good in everything, and accept the bad along with it. You gotta, bro.

Don’t compare yourself to other writers. You’re all working to entertain and have fun. It’s not a competition- you’re just here to be better than yesterday. Look to other writers to study and admire and learn from, but don’t let their years of hard work make you feel less about your years of hard work.

Hope I helped ya, and thanks for asking for my advice! Keep me posted on how your work goes!

[bluebookbadger-blog]

The Price of a Life - Introduction

Title: The Price of a Life Fandom (s): Fullmetal Alchemist/Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Summary: I always thought waking up in another world would be a lot more...interesting. At least slightly exciting and terrifying, but it really wasn't. It was more of a sudden and underwhelming event, that landed me in the company of fiction and its ignorance to modern physics. I thought it was a dream. Boy was I wrong.  Characters: SI/OC, Maes Hughes, Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric, etc.  Rating: PG-13

To begin, I had never, ever wished to be 'inside' some fantasy world. Yes, the idea was cool and all; fighting evil, meeting your favorite characters, changing parts of the story you disagreed with, that portion of the trip would be cool. But, it just wasn't me. I was more of the 'stay at home and imagine someone else doing that kind of heroic stuff' kind of girl. I was not good at making high pressure decisions, like, plot changing world destroying/saving choices.

It was about a year or two ago, (you see time isn't as coherent as it used to be for me), when all of this insane mess turned my life upside down in the blink of an eye. It was the same as any other day, only deviating in my late arrival at school due to a power outage that caused my alarm not to go off. I came home, browsed the internet, ate, did homework, the usual. Nothing was out of place.

One minute I was in bed, relaxing and getting ready to fall asleep, and the next I was in a white void. No explanation, no magical poof or alchemic lightning raining down around me like holy fire, just a blank white world.

Which really made it disconcerting to wake up in some strange place with only my pajamas and Lucha on my back. Lucha was my ferret, nothing special, just a little whitish domestic ferret with two greenish eyes. Anyways, he was there too, just sleeping between my shoulder blades as he always did whenever he got the chance.

What was really offsetting was the sound. Just quiet nothingness. And Lucha snoring of course, but that stopped with a snort when I sat up, causing him to slump dejectedly and lazily to the ground. He was so pathetic and yet so cute. I sat there for a while, you know, just trying to see if this was a vivid dream I had become lucid in, as such a situation happened more often than I liked.

Besides, I was tired and it was kind of cold to be wearing only a nightgown. Lucha made his way to my lap and begged for attention, apparently not in the least bit fazed by the new setting. Stupid lucky bastard, blissfully unaware of how scary it was to be in that situation. Yes it was scary, I considered myself a young adult and this place was damn near the scariest thing I had ever experienced.

Just really unsettling, the whole place. Too cold, too quiet, too empty. And considering I wasn't able to push my thumb through my hand or change the setting, this was either an incredibly deep REM sleep where being aware of the dream and not being able to change it was part of the dream, or something real was happening.

"Oh, you haven't paid to come here? I'll just have to fix that won't I." The voices, well, it was spoken together so really more of a single voice, came from behind me. Lucha just nudged my hands impatiently, waiting for me to get him a treat as I always did when I woke him up in the morning. The source of the voices sat crouched at my level, not all that far away from me.

It was really damn creepy, all white, like the backdrop but shadows cast from its three dimensional form proved it was a physical entity. It smiled as it inched towards me, not walking but kind of sliding the ground below it. Freaky.

I hadn't seen the show in almost a year, as in rewatching a fourth time, but I never imagined Truth to have such a….benevolent feeling to it. It wasn't that overpowering terrifying feeling you'd expect from a being that's all knowing, more of like having a smart little kid approach you with the intent of entering a 'grown-up' conversation. The person outstretched their hand so that I could see its pale fingertips reaching for my face.

"H-hey!" I scrambled backwards, Truth watching as I shuffled awkwardly away and stood up. Lucha whined when I accidentally stepped on his tail, but then proceeded to shimmy up my legs and settle on my chest. Stupid ferret. I love him to bits though. "I d-didn't try to come here - I don't even know how to do alchemy, n-no one does."

I didn't know why I was stuttering until I realized my retainer was still in my mouth. Kind of disgusting, but I couldn't take it out in front of the Truth, it'd just be….weird. Speaking of the formless freak, it was now standing, probably about my height, which wasn't surprising considering it is 'all and one' and those other lines it throws around when describing itself. It cocked its head to the side, seeming to look me up and down. Which was strange since it had no visible eyes.

"Hm, that's true. Who sent you then?" The voices asked. Creepy as hell man, I could swear I heard my grandmother or some else who had died whenever Truth spoke. Which both made the Truth terrifying, and goofy. Like, imagine your grandmother having this conversation with you. It was just weird.

"Nobody brought me here, jus-st woke up here…" I hated the way my sentences trailed off, and I probably should have taken my retainer out to talk with the thing that is a self described god. It frowned, the being's smile looking as if it had been outlined in mascara and its teeth etched on with face paint. It was kind of silly looking.

And it could probably read my thoughts, but that was the least of my problems. The realization of where I actually was and the reality of it all was underwhelming. You'd expect to feel 'Oh, how terrifying! I've been jerking from my world and have to spend an indeterminate time in another!' but it was kind of disappointingly disenchanting. It obviously had to be a dream.

"Hm," Truth hummed, sitting down and scratching its bald head. "Then I don't know what to do with you," Lucha squeaked at me, growing impatient for his breakfast, "You two that is." I sat back down and played with Lucha for a while simply thinking over what I'd eat for breakfast once I woke up.

"I know!" Truth said, clapping its hands together excitedly. Seriously, it was like a little kid playing an all knowing creature. "I'll send you back if you pay me something smaller than what I usually charge. You know, something that won't kill you or make you bleed out." I glanced up at the being, not amused.

"Here," I said, holding out Lucha. He was so mellow once you scratched his belly or held him up by the nape of his neck. Literally a living slinky. "Will he do?" Of course, I still thought this was all a dream, so trading a dream ferret to wake up wasn't the hardest thing to do. Besides, Lucha was an asshole when he remembered that he was hungry.

Truth 'looked' from the fat puffball and then back to me before tentatively taking the limp ferret from my hands. Holding Lucha to its face, Truth was quiet for a moment.

"What's the matter?" Truth shuddered and shook its head at the question.

"Ugh, it doesn't feel right. The animal is too high of a price to send you back. Do you have anything else?" I was only wearing slippers with their inserts and my glasses, which was odd considering I thought I had taken those off when I went to bed, and my white polka dotted grey nightgown. The front pocket only had an old 'Mango Sunrise' chap stick. Truth shook its head and held Lucha farther away from its body. "No, no, no. This isn't working."

"You could always take my appendix or something useless like that." I suggested. This only made Truth shift uncomfortably.

"Internal bleeding. Unless you live near a hospital, you'll probably die." I sighed, reaching for Lucha. Truth was starting to look like an evil mastermind now that it was nervously stroking the ferret's thick white-grey fur. "Oh, this could work." It said suddenly.

For one moment, complete innocence enveloped me, and a wave of primordial fear gripped me the next minute as I turned to the see the infamous doors appear behind me. They were actually beautiful, the carvings very intricate.

"You're lucky girl, I can't posses a creature with a soul." These were the last words I heard the being speak to me as the doors creaked open, the mass of black hands twitching as they came towards me.

Though I was afraid, I could just imagine my pillow in my arms right now, me in my bed, safe and sound. However, the second one of those hands laid a finger on me, it was horror. I screamed more than I should have, and struggled more than I should have too as the hands pulled me into that black abyss.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight, worried I might wake up with temporary sleep paralysis, which could be far more terrifying than the nightmare itself. I began to feel exhausted from struggling against the hands as they tried to pry my eyes open to see the Truth, I eventually peering over my glasses to see the blurry, spiraling helix of light before everything faded to black.

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Fullmetal Alchemist series; this includes the manga, the 2003 version and complementary movie, or Brotherhood reboot. Please look at the amazing fanfictions "VERITAS-VOS-LIBERABIT" by Anthem of the Lonely and "Through the Void" by TheAlleyCat18, as both inspired this fanfiction. All I own are the OCs and minor added plot details. This fanfiction has also been posted by my personal fanfiction.net account here.

Warnings: Violence, genderless palm trees, gore, puns, death, dad jokes, foul language, theoretical physics, spoilers to the Brotherhood series, theology lessons, occasional updates, individuals lacking melanin, and misunderstood references.

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