#like. i know more about cooking terminology than most people or whatever and i have decent technical skills however -

[karmas-chameleon]

Behold: a (not so) short fic I wrote just to introduce three puns

Having Manfred von Karma as a boyfriend wasn't without its share of issues. His working hours were far more than what I'd consider reasonable, and pulling him away from his job for even the smallest of breaks was always a hassle. He was slightly more up-to-date with technology than I'd anticipated for a man his age, possibly because his work necessitated its occasional use, but he still fell short of my generation. It wasn't that I wanted him to be familiar with any sort of IT terminology; I wouldn't expect such a thing of most people - but I would've liked my boyfriend to text me more often than calling.

Still, the occasional anxiety-inducing phone call was a minor problem. The issue that had occupied me for weeks was far worse. I was in a relationship with a man far wealthier than myself, whose interests seemed to overlap nearly entirely with his career which I knew next to nothing about.

In a scenario like that, how was I ever meant to give my boyfriend a gift?

If there was ever something he needed, he could simply buy it. If there was ever anything he wanted, I'd have no clue what it was. And he would've likely bought that as well.

I'd spent hours racking my brain for ideas, and shooting them down. I could buy him a book, but when would he have the spare time to read? We were already in the middle of reading a mystery series together that had at least half a dozen more volumes in it. I could get him some sort of clothing, but I wasn't sure of what. He seemed to be fine with what he had.

I considered asking the man himself, but I didn't want to give anything away. And just giving him exactly what he told me was too easy, and far too boring. It took me long enough to come up with a better idea, one that should've come to me sooner.

I'd ask the people who worked for him. Not anyone involved in his career, but the ones who helped him throughout the day: his chauffeur, his cook, his maid, and anyone else I could find. I'd barely spoken to them myself, but I knew that they'd worked for Manfred for years, decades even. If there was anyone who would know of a good gift idea, it would be them.

I began with Manfred's driver, sneaking out of the manor to try and find the man. It was a Saturday afternoon, a time when the car wasn't usually needed and when I was usually playing video games. In other words, the perfect time for a meeting my boyfriend would never know about.

I found the car being washed by its driver, and approached with a wave. “Hello, er…”

The man turned toward me with a towel in his hand. “Ah, Frau Martin. Do you require my services? I-” he glanced back to the soapy car. “...I suppose I can drive you.”

“No, no! I don't need a ride, I mean, I have my own car. I just wanted to ask you something. About Manfred.”

He nodded, and quickly returned to working on the car. “I will try to assist.”

“Well, I was just wondering, Mister…um…” I leaned over slightly beside the vehicle, trying to put myself in its driver's field of view. He was so engrossed in scrubbing that I couldn't tell if he was listening or not. “Sorry, what's your name, again?”

“Rainer Schein,” he replied.

“Gotcha. Well, I was trying to think of gift ideas for Manfred, and figured I'd ask around. You've known him for a long time, right?”

“Yes. Though little of that time was spent talking. Herr von Karma is a man of few words. It is appreciated, but I do not think that it lends itself well to thinking of gift ideas.”

I frowned. ‘A man of few words’ certainly described someone in that car, but I didn't think it was Manfred. I couldn't recall ever hearing Schein speak before, and the taciturn man offered little when he did.

“I guess I'll keep looking around, then,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”

I turned around and began to head back to the manor entrance, only making it a few steps before I heard Schein’s quiet voice again and looked over my shoulder.

“...Whatever you decide to give him, I am certain he'll appreciate it. He started behaving differently after he met you. Happier. One doesn't need to talk to him to notice.”

“O-oh! Thank you, I…I'm sure I'll come up with something.”

I went back inside and made my way to the next person I barely knew in the manor: its chef. The man would be working in the kitchen by that time, preparing dinner. Sure enough, when I poked my head in, I saw him in front of the stove with a skillet in hand. I walked in and called out a greeting, prompting a yelp from the poor man and a clattering of the skillet against the stovetop.

“S-sorry!” I cried. “I, um, didn't mean to surprise you.”

“It’s quite alright, madam,” he replied as he hastily turned the heat down and clutched at his hand. “Wouldn't be the first time I've had a minor accident in the kitchen. It's not even the first time today, in fact.” He took a deep breath and turned to me, somewhat more collected. “Now, did you require my assistance? A change to your meal, perhaps?”

“Oh, no, this isn't about food, actually. Although I did want to tell you how much I liked your cooking.” I smiled sheepishly. I'd been living with Manfred so long and hadn't even bothered to speak to the one who'd prepared all my meals. “It's just about the best food I've ever had, I think. So, um…thanks. Mister, er…?”

“Berndt. Hans Berndt.” The man attempted to give a small bow, accidentally backing into the stove in the process and exclaiming something I couldn't comprehend, but whose meaning I understood clearly. “...Ahem. Apologies, madam. And many thanks for the compliments.”

“Oh, you're welcome. And, uh, no problem. But what I came in here to ask about is…well, Manfred. I'm trying to think of what to give him as a gift, and I figured you'd know his tastes better than anyone, right?”

“Gastronomically speaking, yes. But I'm not entirely certain if that's helpful.” He placed a hand on his chin, and put on a thoughtful expression. “I'm capable of preparing most of what my master asks for, save for wine and the like. I'll leave that to the vintners. But you're not looking for food to make yourself, are you? Do you have any experience as a chef?”

I frowned. “Um…none at all. I was hoping I could just buy something, honestly. Are there any things I could get for him that he really likes? Some favorite dessert or treat or…something?”

“Hmm…I hate to admit it, but I'm not sure what his tastes in desserts are. He didn't like sweets.”

“Didn't?” I asked, puzzled. I'd seen him eat desserts on multiple occasions, even shared them with him.

“When he ate alone, he rarely requested dessert of any sort. But before, with his daughters, he'd give them whatever they liked and eat along with them. And now, as well, it's the same situation.”

“...Oh. So he…doesn't actually like sweets?”

Berndt shook his head. “I said that he didn't. But he requests desserts from me now, and quite often. Perhaps he enjoys the experience of sharing a meal with someone more than the flavors themselves, but that's still a form of enjoyment, is it not?”

“Yeah, I guess so. And it is kinda nice to think that he likes doing stuff with me so much that he'd go out of his way like that.” I smiled to myself, then sniffed the air as I caught an odd odor. “Um…do you smell something burning?”

“Do I-” Berndt turned back to his skillet and let out a shriek, prompting me to apologize hurriedly and rush out of the kitchen.

I was no closer to finding the perfect gift idea, but there was still one person in the manor left to consult, and with dinner now likely delayed, I had plenty of time for a chat. All I had to do was find her.

Of the three I planned to talk to, the manor’s maid was the one I had the least experience with. I'd spent hours in the car with chauffeur Schein, and I saw chef Berndt multiple times a day when he came to deliver our meals to the table. But the woman responsible for cleaning every room was practically invisible when she worked. I didn't know her name, and wasn't sure I'd ever actually seen her. I had a vague memory of spotting someone who wasn't Manfred in a room I passed by, but that was all.

I searched through several rooms, poking my head into the library as well as both of Manfred's daughters’ rooms. If the maid was determined to remain unseen, I supposed she would be cleaning in the last room I checked, which gave me an idea. It seemed unlikely, but that was just what I was looking for.

I found her cleaning my room. Not my bedroom, exactly, now that I shared a bed with Manfred. But it was the room that still contained my computer and a small mountain of plushies. She looked up as I stepped in, a rag in one hand, a brush in the other, and an array of tools strapped to her body like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

“Oh! Miss Martin, right? Sorry, I saw you heading out to see Rainer and figured you'd be gone for a while,” she smiled sheepishly. “I can clear out if you want.”

“...Uh, no, that's alright.” 

I stared at her a second longer than was polite, somewhat puzzled by how different she seemed than the rest of Manfred's staff. She was younger - not as young as me, certainly, but not quite middle aged. And she had a more casual look to her uniform than I'd expected of a maid in a manor. Though the sheer number of cleaning implements attached to that uniform only increased my puzzlement, and I commented before I could think.

“That’s a lot of cleaning…stuff,” I said lamely.

“Sure is.” The woman stowed what she held in her hands and placed them proudly on the small space that remained on her hips. “And I use every bit of it. Helps me keep this place clean, from the floor to the ceiling.”

“Manfred makes you clean the ceiling?” I tilted my head back and squinted, trying and failing to find any places where dirt could hide.

“Oh, he's never asked me to. There are plenty of places I don't think he'd ever notice if I skipped, really. But I would. And I've got higher standards for myself than that.”

“Well, you've been doing a great job, from what I've seen. Or what I haven't seen, I guess. Not a speck of dust in the house.” I smiled, then recalled why I'd been looking for the maid in the first place. “Um, but I wanted to ask you something, actually. About Manfred.”

“Oooooh,” she gasped, and grinned at me. “You're asking about him, and you came to me? This has to be something good.”

“It's not,” I said quickly, unsure of what exactly she was expecting, but fairly certain my question wasn't it. “Not- I mean- I just wanted to ask for gift ideas. And I figured you'd known him for a while, right?”

“A while? You could say that. I've worked for him for a couple decades now, even spoken to the man on occasion. He helped me out with a bit of legal paperwork a while back.”

“Huh. Does Manfred help everyone he knows with legal stuff?”

“Oh, I doubt it,” she laughed. “But that reminds me, I haven't even introduced myself, have I? The name's Colleen Hauss.”

“Nice to meet you. So, uh…”

“Right, gifts. Well, I could recommend something corny like ‘unconditional love' or ‘your time' or some other nonsense, but I'm guessing that's not what you're looking for. You want something material. And I'm sure you've already realized, but your boyfriend isn't lacking in any of that.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I…I know.”

“But it's not the end of the world. You can still get him something, it just has to have more sentimental value than practical. Which unfortunately means that I'm not going to be much help. Only the two of you can tell what things have meaning in your relationship.”

I ended my series of inquiries exactly where I began: unsure of what gift to choose, and with no idea of where to start. I thanked Colleen and exited my room, leaving her to finish her cleaning as I walked through the manor. There was one more person I thought to ask, one person who I felt must know Manfred's taste in gifts better than anyone.

I stepped just outside to ensure privacy, and made a call. Immediately after it was answered, I heard a groggy voice.

“Why.”

“Uh, hi Franziska. I had a question about-”

“I wasn't asking why you were calling me, fool. I was asking why you were calling me at two in the morning.”

“O-oh. Sorry, I, um, forgot about the time difference. I can call back later, whenever it's-”

“No, you've disturbed my sleep already. You might as well ask whatever foolish question you have.”

“Erm, right. Well, I just wanted to ask about gift ideas for Manfred. I couldn't think of anything, so I tried asking around the manor, but I still couldn't come up with anything good. Manfred's chauffeur just told me that he'd like whatever I got him, his chef said that desserts were no good, and his maid…she basically just told me to think of something myself.”

“Pardon? Papa's maid, you said? ‘She’?”

“Um…yes.” I was somewhat puzzled by Franziska's words. She sounded much more alert than she did at the beginning of the call, so I didn't think that it was sleepiness making her confused.

“What is her name?”

“Colleen. Colleen Hauss. Did you have a different maid when you lived here?”

“...No. Nevermind. But she was correct. Everyone you asked was, from the sound of it. You can come up with something to give Papa, and you certainly don't need to call at this hour to ask me.”

“But- but I don't know what he likes! What he wants as a gift.”

“Consider what sort of gifts you like to receive, and why. You'll think of something, I'm sure of it. Good night.”

The call ended, and I sighed at my phone. I did as I was told, thinking about my favorite gifts over the years: new video games, cute plushies, tickets to concerts. None of those seemed particularly applicable to Manfred, but they all had one thing in common: they created memories that stuck with me for years.

I came up with an idea. Perhaps not the perfect gift that I'd been searching for, but it was something.

----

A week later, I came to Manfred sitting in the library with a grin on my face and both hands hidden behind my back.

“Manny, I've got a surprise for you.”

He paused his rare reading break and set the book down beside him, looking up to me with a curious expression.

“What is it, Miss Martin?”

“A gift! Now, don't say anything when I show this to you, I've gotta explain.” I pulled a hand out into the open, showing off what I held: a pair of small plush marshmallows, one pink and one white, both with little blushing smiles and tiny legs. Immediately, I saw Manfred raise an eyebrow. “Hear me out! This is a present for me and you.”

I revealed my other hand, and a pair of scissors. “See, these marshmallows came as a pair. They're even connected with a little ribbon at the bottom. But I figured that I could cut them apart, and give one to you and one to me-” I snipped the satin ribbon as I spoke, taking the white marshmallow for myself and offering the other. “...And we can keep them with us when we're apart, so that even when we're separated, we've still got, um, something…connecting us.”

My voice got quieter at the end of my explanation, as it sounded increasingly foolish to my own ears. Why would I offer a plush toy to Manfred von Karma? He didn't want such a thing. He certainly didn't need it.

But he smiled and took the proffered marshmallow, running a finger along its soft fabric. “It's very cute. But what's the occasion? I'd hate to learn that there's some holiday or anniversary I've forgotten.”

“Oh, uh, there's no occasion, I guess. I just got them ‘cause I felt like giving you a gift. Um…do you like it?”

“Of course.” He stood from his chair and wrapped his arms around me. “It's wonderful. Although…”

“Although what?” I frowned at him as we separated, worried about what sort of mistake I'd made.

“I hope not to need something to remind me of you. If I had my way, we'd never be apart. But I suppose that can't always be the case, and when I do miss you…” He looked down at the little marshmallow in his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “This will be perfect. Thank you.”

(pictured: the mallows)

[tinyrebeldinosaur]

Responsible For A Food Delivery Whatsfordinner.Ie Budget? 12 Top Notch Ways To Spend Your Money

When it involves cooking, it is necessary to bear in mind that every person started someplace. I do not know of a bachelor who was born with a wooden cooking spoon and also prepared to go. There is a great deal of learning that have to be performed in order to come to be a prolific cook and then there is always space for improvement. Not just do you require to begin with the basics when it comes to food preparation but you practically require to begin again when discovering to cook a brand-new food such as Chinese, Thai, or Indian food.

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This means that at any type of given time in your cooking learning cycles there is fairly most likely someone someplace that is far better and/or even worse at food preparation than you. Take heart from this since even the most effective have poor days when it involves food preparation. There are many individuals that cook for various reasons. Some chef in order to eat as well as survive while others prepare due to the fact that they in fact enjoy the process of cooking. Some chef during times of psychological upheaval and also others cook out of sheer monotony. Whatever your factor for food preparation or finding out to cook you must constantly begin with the basics.

The first thing that you require to discover is what the various terms you will find in dishes actually indicates. There are several brand-new and also occasionally international sounding terms that you will certainly discover in common dishes. These terms can mean the difference in dish success or failing. You must have the ability to find a good area in any inclusive recipe book that clarifies the various interpretations for unknown terminology. If you aren't absolutely particular what is implied by "folding in the eggs" it remains in your benefits to look it up.

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One more great little bit of guidance when it pertains to cooking basics is to attempt less complex recipes for some time and afterwards expand your perspectives to the extra intricate dishes that abound. The majority of recipes will certainly have a little note concerning their degree of trouble and also you can check out the recipe to see whether or not it is something you want preparing or positive that you can prepare. Keep in mind Rome had not been built in a day and it will certainly take quite a long time to build a reliable 'collection' of dishes to work into your meal planning rotation.

The good news is that when you have actually discovered the fundamentals of food preparation it is not likely that you will certainly ever before require to relearn them. This indicates that you can constantly build up and also broaden your cooking abilities. As you find out brand-new dishes and also enhance your culinary skills as well as talents you will certainly uncover that preparing your own meals from square one is a lot more rewarding than preparing packaged meals that are purchased from the racks of your neighborhood supermarkets.

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You will certainly additionally find as your experience as well as self-confidence grows that you will find yourself increasingly more typically improvising as you go and changing dishes to fulfill your personal choices. If you like basically of active ingredients or want to make a dish a little bit basically spicy in flavor you can make easy adjustments along the way in order to accomplish this goal. In other words you will certainly begin in time to create dishes of your extremely own. Which is something you won't always learn when it pertains to standard cooking skills for newbies but you would never ever discover if you didn't grasp those standard cooking abilities.

Cooking Indian Food in the house - Where to Start?

If you review my article, Curry - A Journey, released on the Curry page of this site, you'll know that my very first experiences of the meal were of the common variety which the British usually cooked as well as consumed when living abroad a couple of decades ago. You'll also recognize whatsfordinner Affordable dining that I then found "genuine" Indian culinary as well as made a decision that as I could not manage to eat in restaurants that a lot, I needed to learn how to cook the stuff myself.

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My very first quit after that, was a neighborhood bookshop, where the choice of publications on Indian culinary was somewhat limited. Nonetheless, I struck lucky and uncovered a publication called Indian Cookery by Madhur Jaffrey - what a locate. Written in straightforward language yet with wonderful descriptive message and recommendations on what to serve with what, it was just what I had been looking for.

There was an impediment, nevertheless, which was the countless checklist of flavors, flavorings and also flavourings in the front of the book. I really did not understand where to start - I would certainly become aware of fairly a lot of them, having actually enjoyed a few TELEVISION programs on Indian cooking however, "assistance" I thought, "buying that lots of at one time is going to cost a fortune". If you're thinking the very same, do not panic. Sign in your shop cabinet. You probably currently have several of the items you will certainly require. For instance, look for black peppercorns, bay leaves, chilli powder (if you're already a fan of chilli con carne), ground ginger, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon if you cook cakes or apple pies. Maybe you'll discover mustard seeds if you do your own pickling and sesame seeds if you make rolls or cook Chinese food. That just leaves a few basic active ingredients which show up in a great deal of Indian dishes - cumin, coriander, turmeric as well as cardamom. Usually you need ground cumin as well as coriander yet if you buy the whole spices, you can grind them as required (as well as they maintain longer in this way also).

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The other point I did was to pick a fairly easy recipe to begin with and I simply acquired the seasonings I needed for that. The next time I wish to prepare an Indian meal, I selected another dish with similar components so I needed to just get a pair extra things. Quickly enough I developed an entire shop cupboard of the things I required and it didn't have had such a drastic impact on my budget.

Then there was no stopping me - I also understand some dishes by heart currently as well as you can do the same if you intend to.

You do not need unique devices for Indian cookery, although I would not be without my electrical coffee grinder (to grind seasonings) and it's nice (however not required) to have the standard recipes to serve your dish in. Other than that, you require a little bit of patience and it's enjoyable to cook with a buddy to ensure that you can share the cutting as well as grinding or have a person reviewed the recipe bent on you step by step so you don't go wrong between.

The flavours are terrific, a curry night is actually friendly, so go on, give it a try.

N

A

P

[inactive20011968]

i love collecting recipes (literally cant cook anything)

[rothjuje]

I had anxiety like woah yesterday but the energy from it enabled me to get tons of little things done around the house that I had been putting off, which is nice at least.

I haven’t been as anxious lately (I had a lot of general anxiety when Trump was in office and about covid until we all got it in January 2022) so it surprises me now when it comes out of nowhere. Well, not really nowhere, I have a tendency to get anxious before I ovulate (because that’s when I have the most energy to be anxious with) and right before my cycle starts (hormones).

Today I’m hanging with that somewhat local fumblr and I’m gonna drag her around to all the farms I never get to see because the twins. After that, I have a date with an autism parent that I’m slightly nervous about. I haven’t met her yet and I’m afraid of using the wrong terminology etc. I love meeting new people if it’s casual, but this feels not causal because I’ll be sans kids which is my norm.

George has his IEP assessment on Monday which is probably another source of my current bout of anxiety. He qualifies for services either way because of his diagnosis/the fact that he is preverbal, so I don’t know why I’m nervous about it. I just want it to go smoothly, I don’t know how far they’ll push him/what their expectations of a two year old are.

I am either going to potty train Gen this week or next. I’m sure it will be a fight but things are calm enough here now and it needs to happen. I was actually told not to potty train George, and that a therapist from his school will help me with that when they determine he is ready.

Jess and her husband are anti gender roles. A lot of people here are. I did not see one (not even one) stay at home dad in TX but have met several here at school drop-off/pick-up. I am definitely not pro-gender roles, but I am pro whatever anyone wants for their life. If you want to be a stay at home mom, cool. If you want to be a stay at home dad, cool. I make Justin empty the trash and do the yard work, mainly because it’s not my fav but also he’s stronger than I am/has more energy so why shouldn’t he do the more labor intensive tasks? And I fired him from laundry after his mother asked me in 2014 if I knew that I had to separate the lights from the darks (none of his whites were actually white) and then he shrunk a couple wool sweaters and I was done. We got in an argument about it recently and I said fine, you can do towels and sheets. And then he put the rags in with the nice towels and now all our nice towels have orange splotches so no, I don’t allow him to do the laundry. Everything else is pretty even though. We probably do dishes and cook the same amount. I am weird about dirty floors and counters so I probably clean those more. He is weirder about the interior of our cars (I’ve just given up) so he cleans those more.

Anyway. I think it’s interesting to hear how others divvy up their chores. I have had several people from older generations horrified that I expect Justin to do chores while being a stay at home mom. It makes me feel kind of bad, but also it’s 2022.

What are the expectations of a SAH parent anyway? Now I’m curious.

[swordgayist]

cultural appropriation in ATLA (hinduism edition)

i’m sure there’s already a ton of posts about this, but whatever, i’m still making one idc. 

ATLA’s cultural appropriation, everyone knows about it, the white people don’t speak about it, and the asian and indigenous people get ignored. we know the cycle. but i wanted to come here and highlight some of the most prominent examples of ATLA abusing hinduism, as i am kinda sorta hindu (i was raised in a hindu household, i go to chinmaya mission, that kinda shit). i might forget some things so keep that in mind.

this is gonna be divided into 3 main sections, since there are different ways that they disrespect hinduism that i don’t wanna lump together.

and i’d say i know a lot about hinduism but that doesn’t make me an expert, obviously, so if other hindus have anything to add and/or correct then please do !! and if anyone else wants to share how their cultures were appropriated then please do that as well !!

so let’s get started shall we?

appropriating hinduism

1) the avatar

we’ll start with the most obvious example: the avatar itself

i know that there are parts of the avatar mythos that are taken from other cultures as well but the idea of the avatar itself is primarily from hinduism.

basically in hinduism, the term dashavatara refers to the 10 reincarnations of lord vishnu (the god of preservation), with avatar(a) meaning form or incarnation in sanskrit, and das(a) meaning ten. it was said that whenever the world was out of balance, lord vishnu would come down to earth in a certain form to restore balance. Each reincarnation is considered a different life with a different story. the avatars of lord vishnu are often considered the saviors of the world.

so basically, the central idea of the show and the actual name of the show is largely based on hinduism.

2) chakras

many different indian religions have a concept of chakras (chakra meaning wheel or circle in sanskrit), but hinduism is the one that primarily preaches the system of seven chakras, the version used in ATLA.

chakras connect the physical body to the ‘subtle’ body (referring more to the spirit and the psyche) by connecting parts of the body to aspects of the mind. the idea is that through different forms of steady meditation you can manipulate the different chakras and allow the pure flow of energy through the body.

the whole idea of chakras on ATLA is that aang has to unblock them all to let the cosmic energy flow through him so that he can go into the avatar state at will. so yeah, pretty much that whole idea was taken from hinduism.

3) terminologies

these are just a few terms that were taken from hinduism. i’m pretty sure there are more that i can’t think of right now but yeah.

“agni” kai 

i’ll be honest i don’t know where the ‘kai’ part is from, i don’t think it’s from hinduism but if it is well fuck me i guess.  ‘agni’ in hinduism is the god of fire, so the creators used it in ‘agni kai’, the name for a firebending duel.

“bumi”

this is in reference to the hindu word for ‘earth’, which is bhoomi. this is also in reference to our goddess of earth, bhoomi devi. also this doesn’t really bother me but i wonder if the creators knew that bhoomi is a name typically used for women (as are most hindi names ending in ‘i’/‘ee’).

in general, concepts like having multiple complex gods (the spirits) who are capable of good and evil and the reincarnation cycle are prominent in a lot of asian cultures, including (and arguably primarily) hinduism.

mocking hinduism

now we get into the mockery of hinduism in ATLA, because it is very much there.

1) whoever the fuck that baboon guy in the spirit world was

now what the fuck was this.

i mean i wouldn’t say this is the most egregious example of them making fun of brown people but lord why did this even need to be there? this random guy from the spirit world has an indian accent ? and is fervently chanting ‘om’ for some reason, and it’s clearly meant to be seen as comical. also portraying brown people as monkeys....... really.

2) combustion man/sparky sparky boom man

when rewatching ATLA in 2019 i actually had no idea that this was a thing, because the last time i had watched it was as a kid and i didn’t finish it.

so lord was i in for a surprise when i saw...

now... now what.

if you didn’t know, combustion man’s ‘third eye’ is designed to replicate the hindu god of destruction, lord shiva. right down to the vibhuti on his forehead (referring to the three line markings around the third eye).

in hinduism, lord shiva’s third eye is used to reduce people to ashes, though as far as i can recall, not very frequently. the primary significance of the third eye is that it represents the ability of higher spiritual thought and higher consciousness.

the ATLA writers take the ACTUAL significance of the third eye, throw it out the window, and then take its destructive abilities to make a super duper cool and dangerous new firebending technique.

and if that wasn’t bad enough, the actual person who uses this technique, and is meant to emulate a GOD who is PRAISED, is a scary, burly, half metal man who is a villain and an assassin. not to mention the design of his facial hair replicates that super duper scary “terrorist” depiction of brown people, particularly of muslims, that white people are so thoroughly terrified of for no reason. 

this is a parody of a god, and they portrayed him as this terrifying, maniacal fucking assassin who, along with p’li, the combustion bender from LOK, is constantly referred to as a “third-eyed freak”. i’ve made this analogy before and i’ll do it again, this is like making jesus into a hitman.

now onto my favorite example...

3) guru pathik

ah, this motherfucker.

i don’t really have any problems with him as a character, i mean hell, must’ve taken a fuck ton of patience to handle aang’s “why would choose cosmic energy over katara” bullshit.

but we all know it, we see it plain as day, don’t even try to deny it.

“guru” literally just means teacher or guide, so i don’t really know why pathik needed to be referred to as “guru” so distinctively from aang’s other teachers and guides, but that’s just extremely trivial compared to all the other issues with this character.

first of all what is this character design? what is he even wearing? if they’re trying to replicate the clothes of swamis and priests and stuff this is already wrong, realized people don’t dress like this. and why the fuck does he have an indian accent? and why was this indian accent done by a non indian (brian george)?

once again, the poor but extremely heavy indian accent is clearly meant to be mocking, if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t’ve gone out of their way to get a non indian person to DO an indian accent, and instead they would’ve just gotten an actual indian person to play the role. 

and oh yeah, the onion and banana juice. because hindus just eat weird shit right.

whether it’s actually weird or not, the show certainly portrays it as weird. and as far as i know no hindu actually fucking drinks onion and banana juice.

ironic because brown people can absolutely destroy white people in cooking. but i digress.

i know what you’re all waiting for. because the guru apparently didn’t have enough fun with guru pathik, so they just had to come back to him in book 3:

where do i begin.

so this is obviously john o’bryan’s super funny and hilarious depiction of pathik as a hindu god.

usually when a god has multiple arms it’s to carry an array of things, from flowers to weapons to instruments, and one hand is typically free to bless devotees (ie. goddess durga and lord vishnu respectively):

but of course white people see this as weird and so they make fun of it, hence guru pathik having multiple arms just flailing about aimlessly (save for the two that are being used to carry the aforementioned onion and banana juice).

then there’s the whole light behind pathik’s head which is usually depicted in drawings of hindu gods to show that they are celestial.

also what the fuck is he holding? is that supposed to be a veena? because this is what a veena looks like:

and i assume the reason this was added was to mock the design of goddess saraswathi, who carries a veena:

but that right there in the picture of pathik looks more like a tambura than a veena. 

and it also just kinda looks like a banjo?

but i guess the animators just searched up “long indian instrument” and slapped it on there. actually no, that’s giving them too much credit, they probably didn’t search it up at all. 

and then the actual scene is pathik singing crazily about chakras tasting good or something while playing the non-veena and it’s all supposed to be some funky crazy hallucination that aang is having due to sleep deprivation. just some crazy dream, just as crazy as talking appa and momo sparring with swords or tree-ozai coming to life.

our gurus and swamis and sadhus and generally realized people are very respected in hinduism, they’re people we look up to and honor very much. and our GODS are beings that we literally worship. and the writers just take both and make caricatures out of them for other white people to laugh at.

4) other shit

before we move to the next portion i just wanna mention there are also smaller backhanded jabs that i can’t really remember now, but one example was when zuko was all “we’ll be sure to remember that, guru goody goody”. or when a character would meditate and say “om” only when the meditation is supposed to be portrayed as comical or pointless. or in bitter work when sokka was rambling on about karma. small things like that. but moving on.

south asian representation, or lack thereof

now i finally get to the “losing” hinduism part. by this i mean the lack of actual representation there is of south asians (the region where hinduism is primarily practiced) despite the fact that hinduism plays such a big role in the show’s world design.

i think it’s safe to say that broadly the main cast consists of aang, katara, sokka, zuko, toph, azula, iroh, mai, ty lee, and suki. 

a grand total of none of these characters are south asian. the writers don’t even attempt to add any south asian main characters. 

there are characters with dark skin, like haru and jet, but a) they’re not confirmed to be south asian and don’t have any south asian features or south asian names, b) they’re side characters, so they don’t count as representation, and c) even if they were south asian and main characters, jet wouldn’t even count because he’s portrayed as a terrorist.

the ONLY truly south asian character we get is fucking guru pathik. so yeah. not representation.

i don’t get how the creators of this show rip off of hinduism (among many other south asian cultures they rip off of), mock indians, and then don’t even have the decency to HAVE a main character who is south asian.

i’ve never gotten a chance to compile all this, and this definitely isn’t all the creators have done, but i hope this was somewhat informative.

[luckyspacerabbit]

drell diaspora meta <3

as told by me! a mixed diasporic chindo (chinese-indonesian) :)

preface: bioware failed to flesh out Drell culture and heritage to my satisfaction so I wrote this meta for both my personal reference and because I wanted to represent Thane and Drell as people who suffer from a history that invokes parallels between real world colonization/imperialism, as well as portray his personal conflict with this accurately because it's very painful and I think gets naturally overlooked by people who lack this background!

Contents:

The Family Unit

Food

Music

Customs

Hanar Intervention (honestly read this bc I think it's the most important section!!)

1. The Family Unit

Size: They're small by necessity: as in there is no room on Kahje to support. This is a bit of a complicated topic. Drell families are likely to lose their children to the Compact giving them incentive to have more than one or two but it’s probably very expensive to provide for them. I can see a lot of cultural tension here. There are pressures in either direction. There's a lot of sadness too. It makes every child extremely precious.

Values: Independence is an important quality-- but not to a fault! Because family units can be taken apart at any time, being able to take care of yourself is a survival skill. In addition, spiritedness is a closely held value-- To make up for the loss of large family trees and ability to be in close quarters (due to the constant coming and going of family members) it becomes very important to showcase your passion-- whether to each other or about any matter of things in life. Overall, spiritedness is most important! caring and wanting to improve upon yourself as well as self-discipline and hard work.

A.N: Probably because, as evidenced by Thane’s dialogue, they've come to view what happened on Rakhana as like, self-inflicted or weak of spirit ( :( this has me extremely messed up. The whole situation is based on Colonialist propaganda honestly so this conflict to me is so personal and painful to watch in real-time because you can see it very plainly in Thane and you can tell he carries that generational trauma)

Carrying on: The ability to be vulnerable is not as important as the ability to show that you care, which can come from action or words, but usually, this means vulnerability and passion go hand in hand. Finally, homecoming is very important. Everyone is so scattered all over the galaxy, time together is time that counts. Bonding circles (An old tradition) have become “Bonds,” a colloquial name for annual family gatherings.

Read on Under The Cut <3

2. Food

Drell are born with a full set of teeth but they can’t be that tough yet. There must be specific dishes for each age to celebrate. That means as they age, softer meats-> harder foods are part of a traditional practice to track development! (Age 1 Birthday Food: Beetle Based Dish, so on till age 16/17)

Rakhana Diet: I also think that on Rakhana insects would have been popular! Because it’s an arid world and it would have been a very nutritious and accessible source of protein. It also strikes me that their recipes may have been very paste-based because it’s an easy way to flavor things when food is scarce! Also, paste flavoring like sambal (spicy chili). Other Foods:

Eggs? Eggs. It’s just a lizard thing but also! Really simple and easy to make.

Desert fruit! Water-based fruits that are similar to cantaloupe and citrusy things like calamansi.

On Kahje: Their diet must have to shift, so lucky they’re omnivorous.

Probably fish. Likely the main source of protein there.

This is off topic but I think that eating kelp runs as a joke for Drell on Kahje because of the similarities between their colors and striping. I don’t know what kind of joke. But I wonder if Drell teens will order fried kelp and point at each other like “cannibal”

Sauce…………. Dark sauces…...

You can tell the difference between a Kahje Drell and a Rakhana Drell (If they are still in existence? Most likely but very hard to find) based on their fish opinions

Raw fish consumption is normal on Kahje but Drell are not technically “built” for that diet so they may get sick with overconsumption! It must be well cooked to avoid illness.

3. Music

There's a natural inclination to communicate verbally due to their distinct biology.

Drell anatomy (throat) allows for unique sounds and trills

Highly present in language and utilized in music (On Rhakana there were probably dialects that incorporated certain clicks and trills as part of the “alphabet” just like irl, but I imagine those that can still speak it are very limited and it must be passed down or retaught through preservation efforts)

Rhythmic dance and music to tell stories and legends! Especially of great creatures that transcended into infamy. Like a big old serpent that through storytelling became a mythical dragon type of thing.

Clothing/Robes, loose-fitting and comfortable to work in Arid environments and allow for movement (tight ass clothes not the norm ashdjfk esp for dancing, Thane’s just a career man who thinks he looks good and he lived on Kahje so--)

4. Customs

The Pursuit of Life a.k.a Perah (I made this term up)

It's a cultural value centered around making the most of life through boldness. Seizing the moment because not every Drell gets the opportunity to call their life their own— this is in reference to both the compact and the death of Rakhana. Therefore if you ARE lucky enough to have ownership over your own life, you must not squander it. There are a number of purposeful benefits to Perah, such as:

Leading Drell off of Kahje (avoiding Kepral’s)

Giving Drell an “Adventurous” reputation due to far journeying and mixed work

A lot of Drell are able to form community ties outside of the home due to this norm! Because a lot of them have long and wide and journeys across the galaxy to share with each other and cultural commonality, they have an immediate kinship with each Drell they meet.

Puppetry/Masks

The Drell face is shaped like a mask so it only makes me think there must be culture-specific dances or plays utilizing masks in order to tell traditional stories and celebrate moments of life

There seems to be a lot of reverence and appreciation for the different and diverse, including animals and other species, leading me to believe that there are masks based on different creatures!

5. Hanar Intervention

Loss of Population: Effects

Destruction of the family unit, disjointed/fractured because of the Compact and limited living space on Kahje

Death of Rakhana leaving entire generations and specific regions behind, permanent severing between sects of Drell society

That means the inability to read certain texts as well as languages dying off between generations.

The disappearance of traditions, including many religions

Loss of understanding of Drell language and terminology

A.N: Thane is a rare case with access to high reading material and close ties to “hidden” communities/pockets of people; Most Drell do not know the meaning of Siha due to Hanar assimilating via Enkindlers

Most also do not know about traditional religion! I imagine these pockets must be so small. Thane probably had to work very hard to recover this knowledge which goes to show his complex relationship with his heritage.

It’s likely that there are factions of Drell who attempt to preserve and celebrate their culture despite being uprooted.

Possible rebellions/isolationists who reject the Compact which has mixed reactions by the majority of Drell community, not limited to shunning and disownment (:/ bc these things are sadly complicated)

A.N: Thane comments that it's an honor to fulfill the compact, which naturally implies it's shame to reject it. Let your imagination on the consequences of that rejection sink in.

A misconception is that Drell like to adopt whatever culture they live in but it's more like most of them lack the access to return and reclaim their own roots or have been shamed out of it

[crippleculture]

Is the low-medium-high support needs terminology just for autistic people or disabled people in general? Because I have 8 different disabilities (including autism) and I don't know where one ends and another starts most of the time but my executive function and memory skills are so bad that I will go weeks between showers and get seeping rashes, I can't cook anything more complicated than a tv dinner and about half the time I can't even do that, I can only hold 3 things in my head at once otherwise they just all spill out and i forget them all, I forget basic words or my thoughts completely disappear during conversations, I can't drive and may never be able to, and it's so hard for me to process instructions or basic tasks like emptying the dishwasher or do basic math in my head that I have chronic headaches... but since I can talk and can take a shower by myself when I have the brain capacity to do it and can use the microwave about 50% of the time everyone just thinks I'm high functioning or whatever,, but I'm trying to figure out if I'm ACTUALLY low support needs or medium or low-medium or what, but I don't think this is all just from my autism, so, not sure what the protocol for that is.

[thanksjro]

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

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

So.

This is a little different than what I usually do.

Clearly.

God, how did we even get here?

Oh, I remember.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

Haha, I doubt it.

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

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

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

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

For loving his child.

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

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

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

No. Not at all, actually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s just a shame that I don’t care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As if women are property to be owned.

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

We’re 17.5 minutes into this film.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t be fucking serious.

ANYWAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which made me groan aloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Sheeran does not survive this experience.

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

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

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

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

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

So they try it again.

This time it works, sort of.

At the very least, he’s left now.

Tail fell off, though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judy doesn’t count.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For about 20 seconds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ratchet’s fine, by the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We still have another hour of this movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nope, that doesn’t happen either.

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

Repeatedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being advocated for by Optimus Goddamn Prime.

We still have another 50 minutes of this movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, right, because ~girl~.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y’know.

Like a vast, predatory bird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feminist icon Megatron?

Feminist icon Megatron.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congrats on your first murder, Sam.

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

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

In tow.

In tow-

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

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

Then Bumblebee talks and he’s fucKING BRITISH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s where they leave us.

IT TOOK THREE PEOPLE TO WRITE THIS SCHLOCK.

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

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

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

What a mess.

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

COMING SOON:

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

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

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

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

[deathandmushrooms]

It's been raining for forever and will rain for the foreseeable future. Great for future-mushroomer me, but it's driving present-me batty. So, here's...

Some non-exhaustive-but-potentially-exhausting maybe-helpful mushroom-foraging guidelines for the curious-but-anxious beginner...

We can assure our readers, whom we wish to preserve, that there are only two facts to bear in mind when selecting fungi:

ALL FUNGI ARE EDIBLE.

SOME FUNGI ARE NOT EDIBLE MORE THAN ONCE.

- Discworld Almanak by Terry Pratchett

Below, you'll find:

Finding and Identifying mushrooms

Foraging mushrooms

Eating mushrooms

Finding and Identifying Mushrooms

Don't eat anything unless you're so confident with it you would feed it to you favorite writer currently working on the dramatic final installment of whatever you're most excited about. Ask yourself: would I feed this to renowned author and local Tumblr treasure @neil-gaiman? No? Then spit it out, Jeremy.

Mushrooms aren't scary. The more knowledgeable you become, and the humbler you remain, the more confident you'll be. Find people who know mushrooms, and preferably not just on The Internet. Get a guidebook or 3 (ideally local) and learn relevant terminology and identifying features (e.g. different kinds of pore surface: gills, tubes, etc). Find a lot of mushrooms and take them home to ID.

But before you do, take many pics in situ if you can. Environment and ecology can be key to a positive ID. Harvesting mushrooms you don't plan on eating is a great way to practice learning relevant terminology and building up a sommelier-esque mushroom vocabulary. "Ah yes, this coral fungus smells woody, with hints of moss....and a soupçon of string cheese."

Research, forage, and cook with intention. When hunting for a mushroom, learn all its look-alikes, especially toxic ones. Don't just note what the mushroom looks like, but where it's growing, how it's growing, amongst whom it's growing, whom it has beef with. Is it growing saprotrophically off a dead log (I.e. Breaking down dead material)? That's probably not a chanterelle, but it might be a jack-o-lantern and supposedly they're slightly bioluminescent so you should probably take it home, bring it to some dark corner, see if the gills really glow and then not eat it regardless.

Mushroom identifying apps are a good way to get some ID possibilities to research more thoroughly, but do not rely on them alone.

Set yourself up for success by starting off with mushrooms with no toxic look-alikes, or those with a few key features that clearly distinguish them from their toxic look-alike (morels, chicken or the woods, lion's mane, etc). Research mushrooms in your area, pick a few (seasonally appropriate) varieties to keep an eye out for. The fewer varieties you focus on, the less likely you are to get your wires crossed. And...

... learn their ecology and save yourself a lot of heartache looking for mushrooms in places they could never grow. Do they grow mycorrhizally with a certain type of tree? That is, do they form a symbiotic relationship with certain trees? Or do they grow saprotrophically, breaking down dead wood. Do they prefer certain environments? For example, I started off with black trumpets. They have no toxic look-alikes, and they are usually growing mycorrhizally with oak in mossy areas. I look at my feet for moss and acorns and then I know my chances are fair, weather permitting.

Foraging mushrooms

Get a knife, maybe a brush, and a breathable container (e.g. Basket, canvas tote) where your mushrooms won't get crushed. It's amazing how fast a plastic bag can speed up rotting. Also...maybe look up local knife laws.

Clean as much as you can in the field. Trim off the dirtiest part of the stem, check for debris.

Before you're confident with field identification, store different species and mushrooms from different patches in different containers. I take a canvas backpack with me with paper lunchbags that I label with a number. When I take pictures of the mushroom and it's environment, I also take a picture of the bag I'm putting them in. Because I am anal.

Just because a mushroom is a member of an edible species, doesn't mean that particular mushroom is good for eating. Mushrooms can get infested with bugs, or mold, or succumb to the ravages of time that come for us all. Give it a sniff, and if it smells off, it is. Check for bugs; especially with boletes. Scrape away the tubes to check (but only after you've gotten a confident ID; after you do this you can't take a spore print). For example, here are some pictures of some black trumpets which are choice edibles.

The ones on the left are good, but the ones on the right are no good. With black trumpets, I'll smell a bad one before I even see it. It's important to learn how a mushroom's appearance changes over its life cycle, or how weather conditions might change the appearance.

The "real" organism, so to speak, is the mycelium. The mushrooms are the fruiting bodies. So, make note of nice patches of your favorites. Depending on the type of mushrooms, it might fruit several times over a season. I take a screen cap of where I am on Google maps and save it alongside pictures of the mushrooms and selfies of me doing my excited mushroom face. Some mushrooms, like chanterelles, are slow growers. But others might only need a few days after a good rain to pop up.

Eating mushrooms

Don't eat multiple foraged mushrooms in one meal. Wait 1-2 days between varieties. Poison Control has a hard enough job as it is without you complicating things unnecessarily.

Thoroughly cook all mushrooms. Safety aside, that's just good culinary sense. Gotta caramelize those natural sugars, dontcha know. Maillard reaction and all that.

Even if a mushroom isn't "toxic," you might learn something new and upsetting about yourself when you eat it, like an obscure food sensitivity you inherited from that ancestor you never knew you had but now get to secretly resent. So, when eating a new mushroom COOK AND EAT A SMALL PIECE AND WAIT 24 HOURS. Wait for what? Hopefully nothing. But if you start getting stomach cramps, itching in weird places, or visual hallucinations, you may want to toss those mushrooms back into the wild. TBF to mushrooms, this is true of all food. I've yet to experience this with mushrooms, but I have had this experience with fruit! Did that stop me from eating fruit? No: my survival instincts aren't great. My ancestors were very lucky.

Different mushrooms can be stored different ways for the long term: drying, freezing, etc. But in the short term, a paper bag in the fridge is ideal.

When in doubt, butter or olive oil and a little sea salt. Also, cream and thyme are lovely with most mushrooms. Very thin mushrooms (e.g. Craterellus) barely need any time on the heat at all before they're done or past done, i.e. shrivelled up into a small non descript mass in the pan with all the texture of sad dirt jam.

Or just fry them in pancetta. You do you.

Most importantly: do your own research and a lot of it.

Foraging for mushrooms is hugely rewarding, and learning is a process: in this case, a very enjoyable one.

I mean... unless you poison yourself.

But still,

[lexsssu]

Shall We Date: Worship Me AU - Uriel (Avatar of Chastity)

What if the MC gets transported to the Celestial Realm instead? What if the angels were the love interests?

GENERAL HCs

Uriel — “The Flame of God/God is my Light”

Has a penchant for perfection

Give him a task and you bet your ass he’ll come back finished with results so phenomenal you’re sure that if you did it, there’s no way it would turn out this great

Reserved, but not exactly anti-social

It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk about himself whenever people ask about him, but it’s just that he thinks there are a million other things that are worth more to converse about than his exploits or the things he enjoyed

Chastity doesn’t just mean staying pure by abstaining from sexual relations and the lack of temptations one experiences, but being placed in the face of temptation and yet staying true to one’s morals. This is why Uriel doesn’t condemn anyone who decides to engage in such acts, whether within the sanctity of marriage or not, whether it is done because all parties hold sincere feelings for one another or not.

Gone is the ancient time and the rules that once applied then cannot be the same for current times. This is why Uriel has made it his mission to continuously study about humans, to stay up to date with the way they thought and felt so as he can better serve as a guiding beacon to them

When he’s not busy with his regular duties, you would normally find Uriel at the Celestial realm’s library with stacks of reference books on his table. Time is nothing to them, which is why for him it felt as if humans changed too quickly in so little time

An ideology that may have taken decades or centuries to form is but a blink of an eye to them which is why Mr. Perfectionist can’t help but immediately want to be informed in the hopes that it will help him improve himself

If he doesn’t keep adding and updating to his knowledge then how can he even hope to be one of the guiding virtues of humanity with outdated ideals?

Ideals can and will change over time, but his morals are the one thing that Uriel will never change.

His mind and body may be corrupted over time, because eternity is such a long time indeed, but the morals that made him who he is, what HE is will always stay the same

Tbh you can’t tempt this guy with anything

If you do manage to “tempt” him, know that you didn’t actually succeed but he just liked/pitied you enough to go with whatever fuckery you wanted him to commit

That's why he normally agrees with whatever bullshit his twin brother, Gabriel, tries to wrangle him into

Uriel ain't doing it because Gabriel tempted him, but because he loved his twin so much that he's willing to indulge him whenever he wanted to fuck shit up

Gabriel is the one who starts messes and Uriel is the one who just lets him be, because he's a supportive big brother

...Much to most of the other virtues' ever increasing stress

Is an advocate of "actions speak louder than words"

He's a serial head-patter

Will boop your nose when he notices you're a bit too lost in your thoughts

Azrael is normally the victim of his headpats and nose-boops

Since he makes it his job to know all that IS known, he finds some modicum of interest in that of the UNknown

Things like extraterrestrial beings for example. Basically, anything that didn't belong to any of the 3 worlds was within his scope of interest

If you check his YouTube history you'll see it's filled with UFO sightings, conspiracy theories, UMAs, etc.

Probably joined that raid in Area 51 while undercover—

Asks Gabriel to bring him souvenirs and pictures whenever his job takes him to a location near hotspots for UMAs, UFOs, and other strange otherworldly phenomena

Reminds Azrael every now and then to inform him if he ever ferries a soul that had come across any UMA and ask them about their encounter

As the virtue of chastity, it's up to him to teach the little cherubims about the birds and the bees as part of their training to become full-fledged angels

More often than not, his terminology and clinical way of explaining has traumatized most of the little ones…

...much to Raphael's increasing stress

"And then the man will place his pe*** inside the woman's va**** where he would start thrusting continu—"

What's worse is that he even has diagrams for it

So many little cherubims lost their innocence to Uriel-sensei…

He doesn't purposely try to annoy Raphael unlike Gabriel, it's just that his actions and way of going about things aren't the way most people would fo it and what's worse is that he unintentionally traumatizes people

And it's usually up to Raphael to do damage control on all the virtues' behalf

Raphael almost killed him that day he had to give that talk to Luke and his batch

"...What's wrong about telling them what happens between a man and a woman? It's biology and something that's done frequently by humans"

He doesn't see the point of beating around the bush when their purpose was to teach the new recruits about humanity and everything about them, including how they reproduce

Favorite food is pancakes…

...because they look like flying saucers

Uriel enjoys stargazing at night, not just to look at the heavenly bodies but to spot any UFOs if he's lucky enough

He isn't particularly bad at cooking, but he's not great either

Pancakes are what he's most confident in cooking and he makes the best darn ones in all of the celestial realm

If he's the only one left at home and you're sick, don't expect chicken soup and be ready instead for a stack of warm and fluffy pancakes topped with some butter and generous helping of syrup, whipped cream, berries, and etc.

When the day finally comes that he falls in love with someone...the 3 worlds will know true fear—

But legit though, all those millennia of being a single pringle and practicing so much restraint flies out the window when this man finds himself utterly and deeply in love with you

JP VA: Daisuke Ono

ENG VA: Matthew Mercer

ROMANTIC HCs

He's read so much about the different forms of love and has felt them all except for romantic love so he's a bit rattled at first

Probably coops himself up in his room for a day or two to get his bearings

When he does finally step foot out of his room, there isn't any obvious changes at first but you can't help but feel that there's something different about Uriel

Uriel is now a man on a mission

As perfectly as he executed his tasks for millennia, as fierce as he wielded his flaming sword during the Great War against the rebels, and as ruthless as he was when he faced the truly wicked…

…Uriel will have you

Of course, regardless of how much he wanted you to become his that didn't mean he suddenly turned into some sort of barbaric brute that kidnapped women for sport

He will study you so thoroughly that at times it almost feels like he knows you more than you know yourself

The little mannerisms you make during your everyday life that escape your notice? It's a given that Uriel has seen and already safely filed them away in his mind for future reference

"...She likes pointing with her lips?...Cute…" What he wouldn't give to catch you doing that while he was with you so he could partake of your lips as well—

Once he’s interested in you, only God knows at this point what has to be done for him to even lose a small bit of it

You have essentially become a key figure in Uriel’s world

Uriel always has you at the back of his mind to the point that it could even be called obsessive

However, he’s still the virtue of chastity so you don’t have to worry about him ever forcing himself upon you or anything of that sort

He’s super clingy and sorta weird, but he loves you and the last thing he wanted is for you to become sad because of him or anything else

Though he honestly can’t deny that seeing the myriad of expressions on your face, from happiness to sadness, to surprise, excitement, anger, and etc. was one of his favorite hobbies ever since falling for you

Despite his earnest wish to make you his, Uriel surprisingly takes a long time to even confess

He’s a perfectionist so it’s a given that he’ll take everything into account, including how he’ll make you fall for him first before he even thinks about confessing

Bothers Raphael for some “research material” on how to woo you a.k.a. borrow some romance manga despite Raph’s initial protests

For the sake of his own sanity, Raph begrudgingly lends Uri his stash of romance manga

It’s both hilarious and somewhat disturbing to see how taken he is with something other than work and UMAs

Amused: Michael, Cainabel, Gabriel, Simeon

Scared/Disturbed: Raphael, Luke

Neutral/Confused: Seraphiel, Azrael

Secretly plays the alto saxophone, but doesn’t deem his skill worthy enough for you to hear so he practices when he’s absolutely sure that no one is there to hear him when his skills aren’t yet up to his standards

Lowkey jealous when you hangout with the demon brothers and tries to find ways to distract you from hanging out with them

“ I seem to have seen a creature most extraordinary earlier. I believe it was one of the UMAs detailed in the tome for mysterious dwellers of the nether. Mayhaps you’d like to accompany me on a hunt? ”

His face is as straight-laced as it always is, but if you knew him long enough and looked closer, you’d notice that his ears seemed to have the slightest twinge of redness to them.

Honestly speaking, he tries to be a smooth and cool boi when it comes to you, but this dork seems to lose all his tact when faced with the radiance of your eyes and the intensity of your smile

With how long it takes him to make everything perfect before he woo’s you, time and space itself will cease to exist before he finally deems himself ready

So you have to do the wooing yourself and show him that you love all of him, imperfections and quirkiness included

[keiishin]

boyfriend!oikawa hcs

hi i’m back lol continuing with the bf headcanon series feel free to send in requests for who you want next in this series!! sorry this is kinda long lol bb tooru is my fave so i got a lil carried away 🥴

being in a relationship with oikawa would be a lot of work tbh but it would be WORTH IT

like the two things he loves the most are volleyball and you and he would really love it if those two things could be together as much as possible

if you play volleyball then he’d LOVE to just like play pepper with you whenever there’s a stray ball lying around like just goofing off and chatting while casually passing the ball back and forth like omg he would love that

for this reason there’s always a ball lying around whoever’s house youre at so even if you aren’t at a gym you can play as much volleyball as possible (although sometimes when you’re playing just like in someone’s room one of you accidentally loses control of the ball and it breaks something or knocks something over which prompts the two of you to jokingly argue and blame the other person like “maybe if you hadn’t tipped the ball so short i would’ve been able to play the BALL” “that ball was perfectly playable!!”) (the “arguments” dont last long tho bc one of you always breaks and starts laughing and everything’s all happy and playful again)

the two of you would watch games together as a date night like you’d just curl up on the couch together with popcorn or something and just put on games from the other schools so you could analyze their plays together and talk about strategy

or sometimes he’d put on a seijoh game (ofc one where they win) just so he could talk about how good he looks and brag about his team (not like he needs to bc you already KNOW)

if you DONT play volleyball that’s totally cool too don’t worry!! he’d still love you uwu

of course he’d wanna try and teach you a couple things hehe yes he’d make sure you at least know all the terminology and stuff

also you better come to watch all of his games !!! he expects you to be front row watching and cheering for him !!

if you can’t come to a game for whatever reason expect him to be v pouty and whiny for the rest of the day (you can make it up to him with cuddles and kisses though)

when you come watch he’s extra flirty and shows off way more than usual and his team low key hates it lol but they love you so it’s fine

when they win you’d better be there as soon as they leave the court and he’ll give you a big sweaty hug and an even bigger kiss like he’s so happy and you’re happy for him and you don’t mind that he’s sweaty (his teammates think it’s gross lol and iwa always makes fun of him for how clingy the two of you are when you’re together)

the rare times they lose....oh boy

he’d be pretty cold and brush you off at first like “it’s fine,” and just cooly walk out straight faced and not showing any emotion

as soon as you’re back home tho and out of sight of his team mates he’d just come to you and break down in ur arms :( he’d feel like it’s all his fault and you’d have to constantly reassure him he did his best AHHH okay i’m gonna stop here i don’t wanna get all sad and angsty

ANYWAYS volleyball aside whenever he’s not at practice he’s with you

if you go out for a date you guys like to do cute quirky little things like go to a board game cafe or go stargazing or something or honestly ?? just going for a walk together hehe he likes to be in public together so he can show you off

oikawa is all about pda omg like nothing gross but like he Wants other people to know you’re together mayhaps he rlly loves leaving hickies on you in visible places oop

but if you decide to stay in guess what there’s not a moment you aren’t touching each other like you thought y’all were clingy before?? when it’s just the two of you it’s even MORE

cooking?? he’s got a hand around your waist of youre hugging him from behind or something. watching stuff together?? you’re all tangled up in each other’s limbs. so much affection hehe

also lots of time spent in whoever’s room together if u know what i mean hehe

too often y’all will be just innocently cuddling or kissing softly or something then someone’s hands start wandering and like the flick of a switch things are more passionate and urgent and heavy i mean it’s bound to happen when you can’t keep your hands off each other

this leads to so much teasing in the change room mostly from the other third years lol like more often than not he’ll be all marked up from you sometimes in places he doesn’t even know and there’s sO much giggling and teasing (he loves the attention tho so he doesn’t mind)

the two of you would have little arguments fairly often but usually it’s nothing serious and you’d resolve it very quickly too and no hard feelings it’s good your communication is v open and that’s how you guys can be so close y’all understand each other so well

anyways yeah in summary having oikawa tooru as ur bf would just be full of affection and goofiness and fun and it’d be so nice ;—;

[w-0-r-n-n]

Whenever I have to think about what my queer identity would be classified is I feel a heaviness in my heart

It used to be easy I was

•nonbinary

•pansexual

That's IT.

THEN.

I found out a was a transman.

I didn't realize that those things dont *really* contradict so I was terrified

And the whole time I was almost denying it

I felt like I could just ignore it

But I had a girlfriend. A shitty girlfriend who was clingy and got sad when I spent time with anyone else. I only stayed with because I thought she would harm herself

I was

•A confused in the closet nonbinary trans man

•in a "romantic" relationship other people thought was WLW

•I was suffering

I didn't even know I was aromantic, I just stayed with her because I was worried for her, thought I could help her if I just was there for her.

And then at the end of the school year we moved

I stayed in contact with her almost a year, I thought being emotionally drained when talking to somebody was normal and the issue was just me.

But that wasn't what made me break up with her

I took a break from speaking to her and everything went to shit.

She used one of my friend's phones to text me something

She blamed me for her cutting. She said she did it so I'd pay attention to her

I didn't even cut her off for that, just stopped talking, the only reason I actually did it was because my online English friend Arthur. They told me that I had to do it.

And I didn't until recently, I just ignored everything that made me think of her.

A little while after that I was able to actually see and accept myself.

I a m

•a transmasc agender person

•Aro in some form

•pansexual

•I a m queer

But even still all those terms feel w r o n g in some form

Like how I am as a person is so much more than t h a t

Like my identity is so complex that using terms to try to put it in a box is like I'm trying to, for a lack of a good phrase, trying to turn a whole tray of chocolate chip cookie dough into just some fucking cookies with no chocolate chips for people who don't even deserve them!

And I don't want those fuckers to eat these shitty cookies that aren't as good as the whole dough! I want to just cook that whole tray, even if it's somewhat burnt, even if it's a mess, no matter how it really is. I don't want to use terms! I don't want to have to justify any part of me that I cannot control! I am just a person

I use pronouns and names and terms because that's what someone has to do to deal with a society who cannot imagine someone who doesn't want anything they want

I use these terms to show pride in what I am. And the way the word queer is when used in pride just never works for me, I am not wondering. I know what I am. I a m strange and odd and a freak to normal society but to show pride in certain parts of myself I have to concede. Around others I joke that my gender is a half hearted shrug or sigh but to me? It feels like it! I feel like I cannot use queer terminology around my family and I can't be ambivalent to most of it in places for me

As dramatic as it is I just feel like a dim star, alone in the inky darkness of what I am with whatever light that comes out of it is much simpler than I could describe. And that is terrible.

[scintamclia]

AMELIA ‘LIA’ CHEN. 50. LEADER OF THE SAINTS.

hello loves !! i’m tess, i’m 18, i’m in cst and i’m the creator of this rp ! you might’ve already seen riley’s intro, and i can promise you this one won’t be as long ! anyways, let’s get to it ! ok i lied about the length i had no idea i’d write this much im so sorry

A life of faith in medicine can heal all ailments, but no medicine can heal this broken world.

biography

amelia chen was born and raised in dallas texas to a lower class family that did their best to make ends meet. her mother worked as a nurse at the local hospital, spending long nights in the emergency room and even longer mornings cooking breakfast for the family. during the day, she slept and amelia’s father would head off to work at an aluminum factory. her parents were hard workers, sacrificing family time for comfort and food on the table, but there was no lack of love in their home. amelia was an only child, so whatever time her parents could spare was spent on her--- the weekends were reserved for story time and practicing her medical terminology.

amelia took pride in her mother’s work, spending her childhood dreaming of following in her footsteps, healing the sick and giving back life to those on the brink of losing it. she was only eleven when she saved her first life. seeing a man hit by a car on her walk home from school, she ran into the nearest store, told them to call an ambulance, then ran to the wounded man and pulled the first aid kit from her backpack. she always kept it on her. she followed her mother’s technique, that voice in her head with her every step of the way. by the time the ambulance got there, the man was laughing, even with a nasty wound on the side of his head. he was bandaged up tight, medical wrap neatly sealing the wound, and his face spotless. bloodied rags surrounded him, but the little girl was gone. 

amelia wasn’t the most popular in school, she kept to herself and focused on her studies. by 18, she was accepted into the military as a field nurse. she was the best in her class, saving thousands of lives in only her first year in the field. she did three tours of iraq, treated just like the soldiers she kept alive. it was only when their caravan was attacked and amelia was forced to fight that her commanding officer took notice of her skills.

amelia hadn’t told anyone, but she had convinced one of the soldiers to train with her a few times a week, knowing if she could defend herself, then she’d be able to help others more than ever. her commanding officer immediately pulled her from the nurse’s section and put her into a uniform. she was a soldier from then on out, and while it wasn’t her idea career, lia grew to love her new job. 

in all her years, she hadn’t taken into account just how many ways there was to save a life. as her skills grew, along with her determination, amelia rose to the rank of first lieutenant, just under the captain. she was only twenty-six.

amelia stayed in the army for about another twenty years, getting married and having two children within the same time span.

she had only been out of the army four years before the outbreak happened. within the first few months, she lost her son and her husband. two different tragedies, two different reminders.

from there on out, it was just amelia and her daughter. during the first year, the two found a rogue group and traveled with them for a while. it was only when two survivors showed up at their camp begging for medical help that things started to change. amelia rose to the challenge, taking a risk and coming to the survivor’s aid. they were led to a sanitarium, and just as they had said, a wounded man awaited them. they had an abundance of medical supplies, but no skills to put them to use.

lia helped their man, and soon enough, the two groups merged, all under lia’s authority. she was a born leader, healer, and soldier. with those under her belt, their group created the saints. 

it’s been three years since they created the saints, and in that time amelia has learned to open up to her people more, in her own way. she often has a straight face on, but she’s more than happy to help anyone who needs it.

she works day and night to keep the saints running, and never lets an eye off her daughter. as the only family she has left, lia would die if she lost her. she has connected with her people, even through her hard exterior, and prides her camp on their relentlessness to heal anyone who comes through their gates. she loves her people, she just has a hard time showing it.

basics

amelia chen was born and raised in dallas, texas to a lower class family that worked day and night to keep food on the table. her mother was a nurse, and her father a factory worker. amelia dreamed of following in her mother’s footsteps, and at 18, she signed up to the army to be a field nurse. she did three tours in iraq, helping the sick and the wounded that was brought into her tent, running the trauma unit like a well oiled machine. taking combat lessons from a soldier that toured with her, her skills were put to use when her caravan was attacked by insurgents. her commanding officer took note of her skills, and before she knew it, she was being handed a gun and a uniform, thrown into the army’s soldier count. as her skills and love for the new job grew, she rose in rank. by twenty-six, she was a first lieutenant. she spent another twenty years in the army, getting married and starting a family within that time. she left the army only 4 years before the outbreak. during the first few months of hell on earth, she lost both her son and her husband, the only remaining piece of her family being her daughter. after a year, two survivors showed up to her rogue camp asking for medical help, and soon, the saints were born. she became their leader, connecting with each of them through the power of medicine. now, she just wishes life upon all of them. she’s a hard one to crack, but she cares so much, even if she doesn’t show it.

wanted 

her daughter !!!! there’s a wanted connection up for her on the main

parenting buddy - someone she can come to with her concerns about her daughter, someone she trusts with that sensitive information

a one night stand - this would have been a drunken night, possibly some feelings confessed, and the next morning they acted like nothing happened. it’s been awkward ever since (bonus points if they were best friends before they slept together)

the wounded man she saved when creating the saints

[jancys-blue-bayou]

I still have two mini fic prompts from @los-laureles-fics reply to do lmao so here we go with number 3. things you said too quietly. You’re in for a real treat because what do I try out now? A TED WHEELER POV. (on Jancy, lol).

“Ted! We need more ketchup! There’s another bottle in the fridge, can you go get it?”

Karen can probably hear his sigh but she should be happy at least that he doesn’t object. Best not to rock the boat. Not when we’re having company. He hands over the spatula to Mr. Sinclair who’s been standing with him by the grill, discussing the finer points of how to get the hamburgers just right. Out of all the events his wife insists they host, the 4th of July party is probably the one he leasts objects too. It’s a day worth celebrating of course, to honor this great nation and it’s a party that suits him as he can just keep himself by the grill instead of being forced to smalltalk with all the neighbors and Karen’s friends. He’s quite content with flipping burgers and talking about meat with Mr. Sinclair who he finds the most tolerable out of the guests as he doesn’t over-engage in conversation with him at least. That really grinds his gears, when people just drone on and on and expect him to listen and care.

He doesn’t like being forced to diverge from his spot. Mr. Sinclair assures him he’ll keep an eye on the meat but it’s not like he cares that much about that, it’s just meat on a grill, it’s not complicated. But he was comfortable standing there, and also he doesn’t see why he has to be the one to go fetch the damn ketchup. Isn’t it enough that his money paid for everything and that he cooks the food for everyone (well minus the potato salad, apple pie, sugar cream pie and all the rest that Karen’s been taking over the kitchen completely with in the lead up to the party)? Wasn’t the kids supposed to help out? He looks around. Mike is occupied playing with Holly together with that new friend of his. Judy or Jessica or whatever her name is, something. It definitely was in the J family. Or wait was it Diane? Eh, not important. But then where the hell is Nancy? She’s usually good at helping out.

The sound of laughter in the yard is shut out as he closes the door behind him. He revers the silence of the empty house. He briefly considers lingering inside for a bit to enjoy it but discards the idea as he knows from past experience that Karen will come and find him, she always finds him, and be mad. So he heads to the kitchen.

Oh. There’s Nancy. And the Byers eldest boy. Well, he assumes it’s the Byers boy, he can’t really see his face well given that it’s obscured by Nancy’s head in the way. Well this is awkward. He’s never walked in on Nancy in this situation, he’s not quite sure how to handle it. Nancy has always been a good girl, for the most part. There was of course the business with her sneaking out to see the Harrington kid one year... two years ago? Sometime ago. But Karen handled that for them. And if his daughter were sneaking out to see a boy he was at least glad it was the Harringtons kid, that’s a good family that, with money and good prospects. But apparently that thing fizzled out... sometime in the past. He’s aware his daughter has been dating the Byers eldest boy for awhile now, he’s not quite sure for how long but he’s been coming over to the house a lot more over the last few months than he’d done previously when he came to pick up his younger brother (at least that’s what he assumes the boy was doing here all those times).

It’s not like he minds the Byers. He’s never had to interact with Joyce much, thankfully, he finds her quite frazzled and not the easiest to talk to, just on a completely different wavelength than him. Truth be told he always found Lonnie easier to interact with on social occasions. But their youngest have been friends with Mike for years, which he finds tolerable. At least he’s quiet, a characteristic he very much appreciates, especially in his son’s friends who all tend to be too loud otherwise. And the elder boy isn’t too talkative either, he’s learnt as Karen always insist he stay for dinner nowadays. So he doesn’t mind them (though he’s not wild about his good name being too tied into the Byers who’s carries another kind of weight in town), not even the eldest boy dating his eldest daughter.

He does however mind the boy being pressed up with his back against their fridge. He does mind the red lipstick marks on the boy’s neck, jaw and cheek undoubtedly left there by his own daughter. And he really does mind the hands gripping his daughter’s backside, crumpling the fabric of her summer dress and bunching it up somewhat. Also he could really do without the gasps and moans escaping through his daughter’s lips and the boy’s every time their lips break apart.

He decides to clear his throat. He’s found it usually does the trick of grabbing people’s attention, for example at the dinner table. No effect. The kissing continues and the skirt of his daughter’s dress really is starting to rise dangerously high up. He averts his gaze to the ceiling.

“Ahem, Nancy,” he tries. No reaction. Now really, have they both gone deaf? This obviously will take something more. He tries again, loudly clears his throat and goes: “NANCY WHEELER.”

That certainly does the trick. The two teens spring apart like they’ve been burnt, frantically looking from each other to him. Nancy’s eyes are big and her eyebrows have shot up to her forehead. He hopes the blush on her cheeks are due to surprise and embarrassment and nothing else that preceded his intervention. He looks to the boy and is quite pleased to see that he appears to be wanting to sink through the floor, perhaps that’s even genuine fear in his eyes?

“Dad!” Nancy calls out.

“M-Mr. Wheeler...” the boy awkwardly mumbles.

“Hrm. So that’s where you were.”

Nancy looks down and doesn’t answer.

“S-sorry, Mr. Wheeler,” Jonathan says, looking him in the eye for a second.

“Hm. Well. This is certainly... hm. Well it’s not exactly good manners to sneak off on your own from the party to... fraternize, now is it?” He questions, having trouble deciding on fitting terminology to use for this.

“Fraternizing?” Nancy crinkles her eyebrows. Oh well maybe that term wasn’t fitting.

“And I can’t say I appreciate walking into my kitchen and seeing you pressed up against my fridge and groping my daughter like that,” he lays down sternly, staring down the boy who swallows hard.

“Groping?” Nancy questions again. “And leave him alone, dad! It’s not groping when I like his touch. If you’re going to yell at anyone yell at me, it was my idea to sneak off like this. Jonathan didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t think I did even really, but definitely not Jonathan.”

When did Nancy become so uppity? Usually there’s no trouble out of her. At least nothing that Karen can’t handle on her own. He thinks it’s maybe best to slide this over to her plate too, he’s sure how to discipline this. Because he’s pretty sure that’s what needs to happen at least. But eh, this isn’t his area. Why bother? Better to let Karen deal with it.

His silence instead of a retort seems to infer for the kids that they’re free to go. They start moving out of the room, Nancy clutching the boy’s hand in hers. And wiping her lipstick off of him with the other. They might as well go. He’s glad the interaction is over. He lets out a big sigh before wandering outside again before Karen comes looking.

“The ketchup, Ted! God!” His wife calls out to him annoyed, rolling her eyes in a big way and gesturing, soon as she sees him outside again on his way to retake his designated spot by the grill. Oh right. He forgot why he even went inside in the first place. Understandably, he feels.

“I’ll get it Mrs. Wheeler,” that boy gets up from his seat next to Nancy where they apparently settled next to the younger kids just before he himself got out here again.

“Thank you, Jonathan,” his wife gushes, looking with gratitude at the boy before shaking her head against him and then launching into conversation with Mrs. Sinclair, Mrs. Henderson and Mrs. Byers.

He doesn’t meet the boy’s eye as he walks past him on his way inside.

[michelles-musings]

Microwaves, Disconnection, and “No, you may not have a sexy pic of me.”

Because I am only 44, I can only trace back the re-wiring of human being’s brains as far back as the microwave.

Oh, the excitement in our house when we finally got a microwave. Gone would be the days of cooking, the arduous preparations of mealtime. Tasting, stirring, adjusting, adding something here, changing the temperature... mealtime virtually transformed to an event with minimal directions or effort... and took away all anticipation of the tasty meal to come.

Not at all unlike dating in 2018. I’m going to pause right here to feel a little bit sorry for myself and my fellow souls born in the classic 1970’s decade, because unlike the current teens and twenty somethings who know nothing else, we have endured the sorrow of having at one time experienced genuine connection, romance, old fashioned courting (okay so maybe that was a bit before my time), but dating and all the terrifying awesomeness that came with it....and watching it slowly drift away, seemingly never to be accessed again.

Note writing and passing... and wondering if they would write back. Suffering anxiety attacks while repeatedly hanging up on someone’s answering machine. Having no other God-forsaken way of reaching out and connecting with someone we cared about except to CALL them on the phone. You had to straight up use your words, or pull up your big-girl/boy pants and go to their house. That was it. No other options. Oh the courage we had to muster up, and oh how great the reward that was possible when we did!

The scenarios I describe above, have of course gone the way of Disney’s “timeless classics”, something to appreciate for what it represented in times past, but no way were you gonna haul it out when your friends came over. Not when there’s a new, improved, faster, easier way!!

Today, we are unwilling to even spend two minutes in actual thought to conclude the answer to anything that cannot immediately be answered by Google. If we have something to say to someone, we don’t give a second thought to shooting them a text and disrupting or distracting them in whatever space they are in, because after all, what could be more important than this monumental thing I just have to say to you RIGHT NOW. Don’t even get me started on the stories we then get to make up and live out as the truth if the person doesn’t drop what they are doing and instantly respond.

WE..WILL..WAIT..FOR...NOTHING.

Sadly, for those of us who remember the bittersweet rewards that came forth from the waiting, and the taking risks, we are now also acutely aware of what everyone in this world under the age of 30 is missing out on in this incessant demand for immediate gratification in all areas of our lives.

And to take it one step further, no one but the single forty-something (speaking for myself) is more painfully aware of this transition, as we find ourselves desperately wanting to get back on the dating scene after not expecting to be on it ever again, and floundering like fish on a boat deck while trying to do so.

No one wants to get to know us anymore. “Will you send me a sexy pic?” has now taken the place of “Hello there, beautiful, how are you today? Read any good books lately?”

(And by the way, NO, asshat, the answer to your self-entitled question is NO.)

Not that this is their fault per se. Women along the way, probably while I was in the throes of marital bliss once upon a time, were teaching this group of up and coming thirty and forty-something single men that this was an acceptable request, one at which they repeatedly obliged. So why wouldn’t they ask ME?

Of course, my internal reaction to this request when a man has never even heard the sound of my voice yet, makes me want to reply, “Why sure! Thank you for saving me the time of showering and shaving and getting all prettied up for you, and instead giving me the microwave option to just send you a naked pic of myself right out the gate, so you can sit home and pleasure yourself with it... and we can just skip all that pesky dating anxiety. After all, now that you have a library of my sexy pics, stands to reason that the first night we actually DO meet (if that even happens) that you will be eagerly expecting the obligatory sex that in your mind, my string of sexy pics have promised you. Hell, we could just save some money, skip the dinner and just come on over to my apartment. Or I’ll come to yours. After all, that’s the end game anyway right?

WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED?!?

Men don’t even know how to make intelligent conversation anymore, and they miss the blatant subtelties of flirtatious texts... they can’t seem to even enjoy them for what they are as part of a pursuit process... because GUESS WHAT? I forgot to tell you that the women before me seem to have demasculated most of them with their “independent woman who doesn’t need herself no man” attitudes, that they no longer even WANT to pursue, much less know how to do it, or find any enjoyment in it!

Now if the flirtatious texts carry on longer than a couple of days, we get called a “tease”, or the recipient of your attempted playfulness grows bored and moves on.

Don’t bother playing by any “rules of dating” sister, or you’re just going to get plain old shot on sight.

Sitting back and taking things “slow”, with the intent of not appearing overly-eager is no longer interpreted as the holy grail “self-confident woman” that men USED to say they found as an attractive quality. Now these actions are misconstrued as the single woman playing coy or being a tease...promising something with no intent to deliver. (I must’ve missed what it was that I promised in my mere existence of being single and speaking to you, so feel free to fill me in.)

WHY DO YOU THINK “GHOSTING” IS A THING??

Its such a commonplace thing that it even has its own terminology, because people everywhere aren’t getting what THEY want in a timely enough fashion, and aren’t willing to put more effort into trying to get it than the energy it takes to open an app and type a few keystrokes. Because that’s when your stopwatch begins ticking, my beautiful single forty-something. Unbeknownst to us, we are now under the pressure of an approximate six day waiting period where we are expected to assess the other person’s needs and meet all their demands, physical or technological, or risk having them disappear into thin air after a week of tirelessly texting them and answering questions and trying our best to convey ourselves as grounded, intelligent, emotionally stable women. All is for naught.

These theories of course are drawn from my own experiences and the conclusions my own limited mind has been able to muster up in the space where I stand today. I have to have them because to just sit back and accept all these reckless, impersonal, disconnected, self-entitled actions and ways of being in the singles world today... is nothing short of MADNESS! My mind refuses to simply accept these behaviors as the new status quo, whether they are or not.

And I’ve tried. By no means do I wish to be a casualty in the “no forty-something left behind” movement, so I have timidly tried to accommodate and acclimate in some of these scenarios. And by that, I do admit to having sent the occasional harmless “sexy pic”. However, each time I expend this energy, it inevitably only leads to more requests and demands...more, more, more. This pic never serves as a simple provocative tool to invite the recipient on to a bit more of a personal level or intrigue to know you better. It only serves to get you more requests for more pics, and more naked, if you don’t mind. Meanwhile, I, in all my efforts to acclimate, continue to get nowhere near getting what I want... a meaningful, committed relationship and partner to travel the second half of my life with. What I do get, however, are more and more opportunities to fight off feeling like a piece of shit, and the feeling that once again I have taken one step forward and two steps back, feeling more and more discouraged and disheartened after each attempt to try to acclimate a little differently.

The only alternative as I can see right now, without fully taking on the mantra of “if you can’t beat them, join them”, is continuing to flounder up here on the deck with my fellow single forty-somethings, desperately trying to cling to every last shred of our self-esteems that we have diligently worked to restore, and continue to cautiously proceed. Being open to each man being a different experience, but being mindful to not be attached to him or the situation.

Is that cynical? Wise? I don’t know.

What I do know, is that I may never find a man like my father or a gentleman who savors the anticipation even more than the meal itself... and while that thought brings its own pang of misery, it’s still a more manageable emotion than the pain I feel when giving away my worthiness on the clearance rack to every available man who looks my way.

Each day I move forward, doing my best to fill my life with things that bring me peace and contentment, while fighting off my own raging battle with instant gratification and loneliness. Because you see, the struggle now lies within the fact that I know who I am and what I am worth, and that I deserve to be treated with respect. I know what I have to offer and I know I’m worth turning off the stopwatch.

Once you KNOW these things, it’s impossible to un-know them.

[swampgallows]

therapy today went okay but i feel like i talked too much lmfao. i passed out around like 10pm and now im awake again and uhh hmmm ngngngghghhhmhm

also she asked me like “find out what you wanna get out of therapy and then we can set some goals” lmao i wanna GET FIXED 

i dunno if i am actually mentally ill or if it’s just my mom/environment or if i’m neurodivergent somehow or if i need medication or whatever the fuck it is, i just know that it’s not normal to feel okay one day and then have some minor thing happen that catapults me into feeling suicidal. im doing better lately but that’s why i signed up for therapy NOW because i know when im feeling good i get this delusion of like “haha see i never needed it at all :)” and then some little fucking thing happens (or nothing happens) and suddenly i cant get out of bed for three days. i told her that i think it’s more than my environment because even when i was busy at work and even when i was busy and away from home in college i had extremely persistent and severe depression, got into several different overlapping abusive relationships, nearly failed my classes one semester, and then i got hit by a car, was in a wheelchair for 6 months, then had our car hit by a semi immediately afterward. it’s time for new glasses btw lmao as i am still wearing the same pair that got scratched to shit and annihilated in the accident. lmfao The Accident™

this is a pic of them from the night of the accident and the scratches have only gotten worse. id take a new pic but im in bed in the dark and whatever

the therapist seemed impressed with my psychology knowledge which was kind of discomforting, in a way. i guess im just so used to my own situation and people utilizing the internet to learn about their own head cases that i dont consider it novel to have actually done research. also because with my other experiences i felt like doctors would be dismissive of me as if i was trying to one-up them or something, like “well -I- have the degree and YOU dont” like, well yeah, im not sitting here trying to correct you but i am gonna use the terminology im familiar with even if theyre super special SAT words or w/e (like i’m gonna say shit like “comorbid” and “hypnagogic” because that’s the terminology i use all the time to describe these situations... i throw out “5 dollar words” all the time :\) but i think maybe by also having a video/verbal conversation w me that she knows i’m not sitting there meticulously typing up the most fancy schmancy shit i can find, flippin through a thesaurus like a blood elf nobleman vampire’s purple prose or somethin.

i guess what i wanna get out of therapy is uh

1. i dont want to be suicidal, which means 2. i have to build confidence, which means 3. i have to become self-reliant, or more self-reliant than i am.

she suggested, on the grounds of my mom giving me interrogation any time i try to go out on my own (hence me only feeling comfortable to go out when i fucking sneak out of the house or on the VERY rare occasions that she isn’t home) that i have a written list that i either give to her personally or write out and leave for her to read at her leisure of all the answers to her questions: where ive gone, when i’ll be back, what i’m doing, etc. the problem is coming home, though, because then she reads me the riot act of guilt on anything i did. if i go out and get food, it becomes about her. if i go out and do an errand, it becomes about her. everything i do somehow falls back on her. 

i explained to the therapist that even when i was still working—a perfect chance to learn to drive and drive regularly—i took the bus the entire time. but i’d have to be driven TO the bus stop and then take the bus to work, which meant my mom drove me to the bus every day. and my dad would talk about how good it was for MY MOM to have a reason to get up in the morning, and that it’s good for her because it gives her a kind of schedule or obligation to follow. so then like... my schedule now becomes HER schedule. and i martyr my potential independence of driving to work on my own in order to give my mom a sense of purpose. 

so...every day, mom picked me up from the bus stop, just like she had been for all the years i was in school. of course i never went out and did anything after (or before!) work; i never had the freedom. sure i could tell my mom partway through the day if i was staying late or going somewhere else, but my work was also in the middle of a canyon, five miles of nothing in either direction. if i missed the bus home, i wouldnt have another chance to go home for another hour. so having buses come only once an hour and then also having my mom waiting for me at the stop... it was just too much trouble to say like “hm i think i’ll go grab a smoothie before work” or “maybe i’ll hang with my coworkers a bit and go grab dinner with them” or “maybe i’ll start going to the gym after work”. i couldnt make any executive decisions about my own life. i think that restriction of freedom happens for lower income people too, since youre relying on a (notoriously shitty) bus service to get anywhere and you also cant just throw money around that often. i had a little slush fund to treat myself every so often but i didnt have the access to it. 

EVERY day that i was 20 minutes away from the stop i would have to text my mom the name of the stop (imagine, if it were “maple street” or something, my entire text message history with my mom just being “maple” “k” “maple” “k” back and forth for months) in case she had fallen asleep or was doing something, as the bus would sometimes be late or early or whatever. and sometimes i would delay that text on purpose to have the extra time to buy something from one of the fast food places located at my bus stop, then hide it in the bottom of my bag and hope it wasn’t too aromatic that my mom would notice and ask me about it. 

BECAUSE if i bought food on a day she made dinner, she would flagellate herself about it, and if i bought food on a day that she DIDNT make dinner she would flagellate herself about it. it’s HER FAULT because she doesn’t make food enough that i have to go buy my own :((((, so the one time she does cook i’m already getting food because she’s unreliable :((((, and shit like that, instead of like, just because there IS food doesn’t...mean anything!!!!! maybe i just wanted a certain kind of food that day!! But it becomes about her!!!! everything i do hurts her. everything i do. so i just got adjusted to just... not eating, or eating the same things over and over. eventually, when i was still working, i would eat nothing but a muffin until i came home. and if there was food, i would eat it, and if there wasn’t, then i wouldn’t eat. many nights i went to bed without eating even if there WAS food because i was just so fucking tired.

i dunno i kinda lost my train of thought but basically it’s hard to assert myself because i’m not confident because a lot of the time i dont know if im doing something right. it reminds me a lot of the scene in tangled where rapunzel fucks up and something bad happens to her and her mom catches her in the act, and she uses that to reinforce rapunzel’s dependence on her. like obviously my mom isn’t abusive like that but it makes me afraid to fail and even MORE afraid to even try, because i know that if i DO fail--whatever it is--it will just be more evidence for why i should have just asked her or had her do it. and more evidence, to me, of why im worthless and shitty and incapable of doing anything.

like the other day my mom wanted me to follow her in a separate car to a car place to drop off the car she was driving, and then we’d go home together in one car. but she wanted me to do it at 9 in the fucking morning and let me know two days beforehand. i had been going to BED at like 7am at the time so i was already like ‘man this is gonna suck’. but i was still up in the morning and was getting ready to take a shower, iw as on time, but my mom said “i can tell how tired you are and how nervous you are about doing this so you know what dont worry about it. go back to bed.” and it was really shitty for me because YEAH i was super tired and YEAH i didnt feel like i was capable of driving by myself at that moment, like i probably COULD HAVE if it were an emergency, but my mom talked about doing all this shit afterward like going on a shopping trip and stuff and BASICALLY it’s less that i was afraid of the driving but more that i knew the errand wouldn’t end there. and i had gotten zero sleep and just didnt wanna fucking do it, i didnt wanna have a “girl time :)” outing with my mom, and i knew i’d basically get trapped into hanging out with my mom if i went. so i stayed home. but then that’s also a blow to me because stupid fucking worthless idiot that i am cant even drive ten miles in a fucking car, or whatever, useless leech living with my parents contributing nothing, unemployed for a year, blah blah blah. stupid fucking neet should have never been born etc etc etc

she took an uber home and had glowing reviews about the experience and that’s great for her but the guilt made me throw up because i couldnt even do this minuscule thing. so like, if i DO hand her a note and say “here’s all the shit im going to do, BUH BYE” and some shit happens, or i dont get what i need done, or i dont have a fully developed plan of what i’m doing, then it’s gonna be more ammunition toward what a useless piece of shit i am. like, i dont have good food to eat at the house, but i also have NO APPETITE so nothing sounds good, so i cant even think of what foods i would get if i could. it’s such a jarring opportunity that i would just like...not get anything at all and go home. even when i -did- have the opportunity i just went “Uhh umm uhhh fuck uhhh milk” and got that (AND THEN MY MOM CAME HOME W 2 GALLONS OF MILK FROM COSTCO, SO OF COURSE I -DID SOMETHING WRONG-!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IF I JUST LEFT IT UP TO HER INSTEAD OF DARING TO DO SOMETHING MYSELF I WOULDNT HAVE LOOKED LIKE A FUCKING IDIOT AND ENDED UP WITH 3 GALLONS OF MILK AT THE HOUSE) of course i drank the milk i bought, it’s not like it went to waste, but i was CAUGHT because there were now THREE instead of the one gallon covertly getting replaced. instead of me doing something helpful i did something that became an inconvenience.

it’s just little shit but it all adds up. it’s been all of these little fucking things forever and ever and ever, just like my mom’s hoarded garbage. “i bought just a couple of things”, innumerable times throughout the duration of my entire life, forever and ever, “just a few small things” over and over until it’s suffocating.  it’s just all this little shit all the fucking time and it’s suffocating.

naturally, the therapist sent me an article on “daughters of narcissistic mothers”. this will be a delight to read, i’m sure.