#a child is being sexually used in this film but we’re all meant to be ok with it bc she likes it so it’s feminist???

[baby-girl-aaron-dessner]

Was I the only person who felt uncomfortable while watching Poor Things? The movie about a child who is new to the world and is being exploited by men the whole time?

Am I the only one who thinks a man shouldn’t be directing this sort of film? It very much seemed like a man’s idea of women’s sexuality and liberation because it was so far removed from the realities that women experience (e.g. periods, birth control and issues around consent).

As Angelica Bastian said, “there’s a corroded spirit to the story, like it’s intermittently possessed by an edgelord who’s unaware most women menstruate, and an early-wave white feminist who believes having sex is the most empowering thing a woman can do. (For all the fucking, there is no menstrual blood!) In many ways, the film demonstrates the limits of the modern cis-male auteur’s vision for and about women — particularly their sexual selves.”

Please, to the critics of poor things, tell me I’m not alone in my discomfort.

#costume and set design were top tier though #poor things #emma stone #a child is being sexually used in this film but we’re all meant to be ok with it bc she likes it so it’s feminist??? #film #oscars 2024 #oscars #feminism #white feminism #liberal feminism #yorgos lanthimos

[vavandeveresfan]

"‘Barbie’ is bad. There, I said it." Thank god, someone I can agree with!

Opinion by Pamela Paul for the NYT, January 24, 2024.

We can all agree 2023 was a good year for the movies. Critically and commercially, several movies did well, and only one of those successes took place within the Marvel cinematic universe. Even the 10 Oscar nominees for best picture, announced Tuesday, included nine actually good films.

Is it safe now to call “Barbie” the outlier? Can I say that, despite winsome leads and likable elements, it didn’t cohere or accomplish anything interesting, without being written off as a) mean, b) old, c) hateful or d) humorless?

Every once in a while, a movie is so broadly anticipated, so welcomed, so celebrated that to disparage it felt like a deliberate provocation. After “Barbie” so buoyantly lifted box office figures, it also felt like a willful dismissal of the need to make Hollywood solvent after a season of hell. And it felt like a political statement. Disliking “Barbie” meant either dismissing the power of The Patriarchy or dismissing Modern Feminism. You were either anti-feminist or too feminist or just not the right kind.

Few dared rain on Barbie’s hot pink parade.

Those who openly hated it mostly did so for reasons having to do with what it “stood for.” They abhorred its (oddly anachronistic) third-wave feminist politics. They despised its commercialism and dreaded the prospect of future films about Mattel properties such as Barney and American Girl dolls. They hated the idea of a movie about a sexualized pinup-shaped doll whose toy laptop or Working Woman (“I really talk!”) packaging couldn’t hide the stereotypes under the outfit.

For those who hailed it, there was a manic quality to the “Barbie” enthusiasm, less an “I enjoyed” and more of an “I endorse.” How fabulous its consumer-friendly politics, its I-can’t-believe-they-let-us-do-this micro-subversions, its prepackaged combo of gentle satire and you-go-girl gumption. They loved it for reclaiming dolls and Bazooka-gum pink, its Rainbow Magic diversity, its smug assurance that everything contained within was legitimately feminist/female/fine. They approved of the fact that Weird Barbie’s quirks could X out Stereotypical Barbie’s perfection on some unspoken political balance sheet. That by being everything to everyone, a plastic doll could validate every child’s own unique and irrepressible individuality. To each her own Barbie!

And now there is a new Barbie cause to rally around: the Great Oscar Snub and what it all means — and why it is wrong. Neither Margot Robbie nor Greta Gerwig was nominated for best actress or best director, respectively. “How is that even possible?” one TV host exclaimed.

“To many, the snubbing of the pair further validated the film’s message about how difficult it can be for women to succeed in —<em> and be recognized for </em>— their contributions in a society saturated by sexism,” CNN explained. Ryan Gosling, nominated as best supporting actor for his role as Ken, issued a statement denouncing the snubs and hailing his colleagues.

But hold on. Didn’t another woman, Justine Triet, get nominated for best director (for “Anatomy of a Fall”)? As for “Barbie,” didn’t Gerwig herself get nominated for best adapted screenplay and the always sublime America Ferrera get nominated for best supporting actress? A record three of the best picture nominees were directed by women. It’s not as if women were shut out.

Every time a woman fails to win an accolade doesn’t mean failure for womanhood. Surely women aren’t so pitiable as to need a participation certificate every time we try. We’re well beyond the point where a female artist can’t be criticized on the merits and can’t be expected to handle it as well as any man. (Which means it still hurts like hell for either sex — but not because of their sex.)

Robbie had far less to do in “Barbie” than she did in “I, Tonya,” for which she justifiably got an Oscar nod. In this movie, she was charming and utterly fine, but that doesn’t make it a rare dramatic achievement.

With “Barbie,” Gerwig upped her commercial game from acclaimed art house to bona fide blockbuster. She was demonstrably ambitious in her conception of what could have been an all-out disaster. She got people to go back to the movies. All of these are successes worthy of celebration. But they are not the same as directing a good film.

Surely it is possible to criticize “Barbie” as a creative endeavor. To state that despite its overstuffed playroom aesthetic and musical glaze, the movie was boring. There were no recognizable human characters, something four “Toy Story” movies have shown can be done in a movie populated by toys.

There were no actual stakes, no plot to follow in any real or pretend world that remotely made sense. In lieu of genuine laughs, there were only winking ha-has at a single joke improbably stretched into a feature-length movie. The result produced the forced jollity of a room in which the audience is strenuously urged to “sing along now!”

A few reviewers had the gall to call it. The New York Post described it as “exhausting” and a “self-absorbed and overwrought disappointment,” a judgment for which the reviewer was likely shunned as a houseguest for the remaining summer season.

In our culture of fandoms, hashtags, TikTok sensations, semi-ironic Instagrammable cosplay, embedded anonymous reviews, sponsored endorsements and online grassroots marketing campaigns, not every critical opinion is a deliberate commentary on the culture or the virtue-signaling of an open letter. Sometimes an opinion isn’t some kind of performance or signifier.

There’s a crucial difference between liking the idea of a movie and liking the movie itself. Just as you could like “Jaws” without wanting to instigate a decadeslong paranoia about shark attacks, you can dislike “Barbie” without hating on women. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. And sometimes, alas, not a good one.

#Barbie #Barbie salt #barbie critical

[knoxvilleforever]

Enemies to Lovers with Bam Margera Headcanons

request: would you ever do an enemies to lovers hc with bam x reader ?!

let’s be honest

bam is difficult

and when he knows you don’t like him already

he’s gonna be extra difficult

there’s a tension every time you’re around each other

a tension that the two of you believe is hatred

however everyone else would agree it’s sexual

being assistant to jeff on the jackass set meant you spent a lot of time around all of the guys

and sometimes your job extended to looking after them too

you were thankful for it sometimes as it meant you were out of the office and doing something fun

that is until ban margera decided that he also needed an assistant

and he took it upon himself to bring all his ridiculous requests to you

now usually you would outright refuse

but jeff had asked you to just keep bam happy

because a happy bam is easier to work with

so you found yourself having to tend to bam’s needs

however what jeff also told you

was that you could absolutely and most definitely should

fuck with him

because they all noticed bam was being more of a dick to you over everyone else

‘i asked you for a beer like ten minutes ago.’

‘do we pay you to stand here and talk?’

‘can you go get my sunglasses, they’re in my car which is back over the other side of the parking lot.’

he says this to you whilst a pair of sunglasses are on his face

‘you’re wearing sunglasses.’

‘i want my other pair.’

so you think it’s extremely well deserved when you and knoxville take bam’s car and empty it of all his shit

and then leave it parked in a totally different parking lot across town

or when you switched his very specific coffee with sugar

for salt

child’s play you know

but the old ones still work the best

‘what the fuck did you do to my drink?’

‘is that not what you asked for?’

the way you play so innocent makes him even more mad

at first the crew think it’s funny

but then it gets to a point where you’re at each other’s throats

and in true bam fashion

he takes it too far

you’re making sure you have all of the permits you need for filming whilst the whole cast prep for the day

‘are you joining us tonight y/n?’

‘what’s tonight?’

‘we’re celebrating the end of the week. we’ll be at the bar, if you haven’t got a hot date already.’

you open your mouth to respond when the sound of bam margera laughing fills your ears

‘right. like she’s got someone to go home too.’

it was a real low blow

and everyone knew it

your cheeks were burning and you couldn’t find it in you to respond

so you turned your back and marched into the office, telling jeff you’d prefer to stay back for the day

what you didn’t see were the guys tearing bam a new one

‘what the fuck was that?’

‘do you really have to be such an asshole to her?’

‘you could just admit you fucking like her-’

‘like her? i don’t know what you’re fucking talking about dude.’

‘yeah right. you’re too scared to just ask her out so you default to being a douchebag instead.’

-ryan, probably

bam was sat in stunned silence

he knew they were right

but he wouldn’t admit it

because he had to swallow his pride to go apologise to you

and he definitely wasn’t doing it in front of the guys too

so he stood up silently and was on his way inside to find you

you were sat in jeff’s office with the door closed when it swung open to reveal bam

‘if you’re looking for jeff he’s-’

‘i was looking for you.’

‘oh.’

there’s a heavy silence for a while

and you were about to pick your pen back up when he spoke

‘i’m sorry.’

‘right.’

‘no. i am. i only said it because… well it’s because… i, um…’

‘because…’

‘i like you.’

you actually burst into laughter at his admission

‘great joke, bam. now i know you don’t think i have any work to do, but i really do need to-’

‘i’m serious! i’m just fucking stupid and i don’t know how to talk to you so it’s easier to be an asshole and i only said that earlier because i’m jealous of whoever does get to date you.’

‘so you’ve been making my life hell… because you like me?’

‘yeah, i know. it’s stupid and you hate me, so i’ll leave you alone now.’

he turns to head out the door when your voice stops him

‘buy me a drink tonight and maybe i’ll think twice about hating you.’

#bam margera #bam margera headcanons #bam margera x reader #jackass #jackass headcanons #jackass x reader #knoxvilleforeverwriting #viva la bam

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

“Elliot Page doesn’t remember exactly how long he had been asking.

But he does remember the acute feeling of triumph when, around age 9, he was finally allowed to cut his hair short. “I felt like a boy,” Page says. “I wanted to be a boy. I would ask my mom if I could be someday.” Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Page visualized himself as a boy in imaginary games, freed from the discomfort of how other people saw him: as a girl. After the haircut, strangers finally started perceiving him the way he saw himself, and it felt both right and exciting.

The joy was short-lived. Months later, Page got his first break, landing a part as a daughter in a Canadian mining family in the TV movie Pit Pony. He wore a wig for the film, and when Pit Pony became a TV show, he grew his hair out again. “I became a professional actor at the age of 10,” Page says. And pursuing that passion came with a difficult compromise. “Of course I had to look a certain way.”

We are speaking in late February. It is the first interview Page, 34, has given since disclosing in December that he is transgender, in a heartfelt letter posted to Instagram, and he is crying before I have even uttered a question. “Sorry, I’m going to be emotional, but that’s cool, right?” he says, smiling through his tears.

It’s hard for him to talk about the days that led up to that disclosure. When I ask how he was feeling, he looks away, his neck exposed by a new short haircut. After a pause, he presses his hand to his heart and closes his eyes. “This feeling of true excitement and deep gratitude to have made it to this point in my life,” he says, “mixed with a lot of fear and anxiety.”

It’s not hard to understand why a trans person would be dealing with conflicting feelings in this moment. Increased social acceptance has led to more young people describing themselves as trans—1.8% of Gen Z compared with 0.2% of boomers, according to a recent Gallup poll—yet this has fueled conservatives who are stoking fears about a “transgender craze.” President Joe Biden has restored the right of transgender military members to serve openly, and in Hollywood, trans people have never had more meaningful time onscreen. Meanwhile, J.K. Rowling is leveraging her cultural capital to oppose transgender equality in the name of feminism, and lawmakers are arguing in the halls of Congress over the validity of gender identities. “Sex has become a political football in the culture wars,” says Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU.

(Full article with photos continued under the “read more”)

And so Page—who charmed America as a precocious pregnant teenager in Juno, constructed dreamscapes in Inception and now stars in Netflix’s hit superhero show The Umbrella Academy, the third season of which he’s filming in Toronto—expected that his news would be met with both applause and vitriol. “What I was anticipating was a lot of support and love and a massive amount of hatred and transphobia,” says Page. “That’s essentially what happened.” What he did not anticipate was just how big this story would be. Page’s announcement, which made him one of the most famous out trans people in the world, started trending on Twitter in more than 20 countries. He gained more than 400,000 new followers on Instagram on that day alone. Thousands of articles were published. Likes and shares reached the millions. Right-wing podcasters readied their rhetoric about “women in men’s locker rooms.” Casting directors reached out to Page’s manager saying it would be an honor to cast Page in their next big movie.

So, it was a lot. Over the course of two conversations, Page will say that understanding himself in all the specifics remains a work in progress. Fathoming one’s gender, an identity innate and performed, personal and social, fixed and evolving, is complicated enough without being under a spotlight that never seems to turn off. But having arrived at a critical juncture, Page feels a deep sense of responsibility to share his truth. “Extremely influential people are spreading these myths and damaging rhetoric—every day you’re seeing our existence debated,” Page says. “Transgender people are so very real.”

That role in Pit Pony led to other productions and eventually, when Page was 16, to a film called Mouth to Mouth. Playing a young anarchist, Page had a chance to cut his hair again. This time, he shaved it off completely. The kids at his high school teased him, but in photos he has posted from that time on social media he looks at ease. Page’s head was still shaved when he mailed in an audition tape for the 2005 thriller Hard Candy. The people in charge of casting asked him to audition again in a wig. Soon, the hair was back.

Page’s tour de force performance in Hard Candy led, two years later, to Juno, a low-budget indie film that brought Page Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations and sudden megafame. The actor, then 21, struggled with the stresses of that ascension. The endless primping, red carpets and magazine spreads were all agonizing reminders of the disconnect between how the world saw Page and who he knew himself to be. “I just never recognized myself,” Page says. “For a long time I could not even look at a photo of myself.” It was difficult to watch the movies too, especially ones in which he played more feminine roles.

Page loved making movies, but he also felt alienated by Hollywood and its standards. Alia Shawkat, a close friend and co-star in 2009’s Whip It,describes all the attention from Juno as scarring. “He had a really hard time with the press and expectations,” Shawkat says. “‘Put this on! And look this way! And this is sexy!’”

By the time he appeared in blockbusters like X-Men: The Last Stand and Inception, Page was suffering from depression, anxiety and panic attacks. He didn’t know, he says, “how to explain to people that even though [I was] an actor, just putting on a T-shirt cut for a woman would make me so unwell.” Shawkat recalls Page’s struggles with clothes. “I’d be like, ‘Hey, look at all these nice outfits you’re getting,’ and he would say, ‘It’s not me. It feels like a costume,’” she says. Page tried to convince himself that he was fine, that someone who was fortunate enough to have made it shouldn’t have complaints. But he felt exhausted by the work required to “just exist,” and thought more than once about quitting acting.

In 2014, Page came out as gay, despite feeling for years that “being out was impossible” given his career. (Gender identity and sexual orientation are, of course, distinct, but one queer identity can coexist with another.) In an emotional speech at a Human Rights Campaign conference, Page talked about being part of an industry “that places crushing standards” on actors and viewers alike. “There are pervasive stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that define how we’re all supposed to act, dress and speak,” Page went on. “And they serve no one.”

The actor started wearing suits on the red carpet. He found love, marrying choreographer Emma Portner in 2018. He asserted more agency in his career, producing his own films with LGBTQ leads like Freeheld and My Days of Mercy. And he made a masculine wardrobe a condition of taking roles. Yet the daily discord was becoming unbearable. “The difference in how I felt before coming out as gay to after was massive,” says Page. “But did the discomfort in my body ever go away? No, no, no, no.”

In part, it was the isolation forced by the pandemic that brought to a head Page’s wrestling with gender. (Page and Portner separated last summer, and the two divorced in early 2021. “We’ve remained close friends,” Page says.) “I had a lot of time on my own to really focus on things that I think, in so many ways, unconsciously, I was avoiding,” he says. He was inspired by trailblazing trans icons like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, who found success in Hollywood while living authentically. Trans writers helped him understand his feelings; Page saw himself reflected in P. Carl’s memoir Becoming a Man. Eventually “shame and discomfort” gave way to revelation. “I was finally able to embrace being transgender,” Page says, “and letting myself fully become who I am.”

This led to a series of decisions. One was asking the world to call him by a different name, Elliot, which he says he’s always liked. Page has a tattoo that says E.P. PHONE HOME, a reference to a movie about a young boy with that name. “I loved E.T. when I was a kid and always wanted to look like the boys in the movies, right?” he says. The other decision was to use different pronouns—for the record, both he/him and they/them are fine. (When I ask if he has a preference on pronouns for the purposes of this story, Page says, “He/him is great.”)

A day before we first speak, Page will talk to his mom about this interview and she will tell him, “I’m just so proud of my son.” He grows emotional relating this and tries to explain that his mom, the daughter of a minister, who was born in the 1950s, was always trying to do what she thought was best for her child, even if that meant encouraging young Page to act like a girl. “She wants me to be who I am and supports me fully,” Page says. “It is a testament to how people really change.”

Another decision was to get top surgery. Page volunteers this information early in our conversation; at the time he posted his disclosure on Instagram, he was recovering in Toronto. Like many trans people, Page emphasizes being trans isn’t all about surgery. For some people, it’s unnecessary. For others, it’s unaffordable. For the wider world, the media’s focus on it has sensationalized transgender bodies, inviting invasive and inappropriate questions. But Page describes surgery as something that, for him, has made it possible to finally recognize himself when he looks in the mirror, providing catharsis he’s been waiting for since the “total hell” of puberty. “It has completely transformed my life,” he says. So much of his energy was spent on being uncomfortable in his body, he says. Now he has that energy back.

For the transgender community at large, visibility does not automatically lead to acceptance. Around the globe, transgender people deal disproportionately with violence and discrimination. Anti-trans hate crimes are on the rise in the U.K. along with increasingly transphobic rhetoric in newspapers and tabloids. In the U.S., in addition to the perennial challenges trans people face with issues like poverty and homelessness, a flurry of bills in state legislatures would make it a crime to provide transition-related medical care to trans youth. And crass old jokes are still in circulation. When Biden lifted the ban on open service for transgender troops, Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che did a bit on Weekend Update about the policy being called “don’t ask, don’t tuck.”

Page says coming out as trans was “selfish” on one level: “It’s for me. I want to live and be who I am.” But he also felt a moral imperative to do so, given the times. Human identity is complicated and mysterious, but politics insists on fitting everything into boxes. In today’s culture wars, simplistic beliefs about gender—e.g., chromosomes = destiny—are so widespread and so deep-seated that many people who hold those beliefs don’t feel compelled to consider whether they might be incomplete or prejudiced. On Feb. 24, after a passionate debate on legislation that would ban discrimination against LGBTQ people, Representative Marie Newman, an Illinois Democrat, proudly displayed the pride flag in support of her daughter, who is trans. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, responded by hanging a poster outside her office that read: There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE.

The next day Dr. Rachel Levine, who stands to become the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the Senate, endured a tirade from Senator Rand Paul about “genital mutilation” during her confirmation hearing. My second conversation with Page happens shortly after this. He brings it up almost immediately, and seems both heartbroken and determined. He wants to emphasize that top surgery, for him, was “not only life-changing but lifesaving.” He implores people to educate themselves about trans lives, to learn how crucial medical care can be, to understand that lack of access to it is one of the many reasons that an estimated 41% of transgender people have attempted suicide, according to one survey.

Page has been in the political trenches for a while, having leaned into progressive activism after coming out as queer in 2014. For two seasons, he and best friend Ian Daniel filmed Gaycation, a Viceland series that explored LGBTQ culture around the world and, at one point, showed Page grilling Senator Ted Cruz at the Iowa State Fair about discrimination against queer people. In 2019, Page made a documentary called There’s Something in the Water, which explores environmental hardships experienced by communities of color in Nova Scotia, with $350,000 of his own money. That activism extends to his own industry: in 2017, he published a Facebook post that, among other things, accused director Brett Ratner of forcibly outing him as gay on the set of an X-Men movie. (A representative for Ratner did not respond to a request for comment.)

As a trans person who is white, wealthy and famous, Page has a unique kind of privilege, and with it an opportunity to advocate for those with less. According to the U.S. Trans Survey, a large-scale report from 2015, transgender people of color are more likely to experience unemployment, harassment by police and refusals of medical care. Nearly half of all Black respondents reported being denied equal treatment, verbally harassed and/or physically attacked in the past year. Trans people as a group fare much worse on such stats than the general population. “My privilege has allowed me to have resources to get through and to be where I am today,” Page says, “and of course I want to use that privilege and platform to help in the ways I can.”

Since his disclosure, Page has been mostly quiet on social media. One exception has been to tweet on behalf of the ACLU, which is in the midst of fighting anti-trans bills and laws around the country, including those that ban transgender girls and women from participating in sports. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves says he will sign such a bill in the name of “protect[ing] young girls.” Page played competitive soccer and vividly recalls the agony of being told he would have to play on the girls’ team once he aged out of mixed-gender squads. After an appeal, Page was allowed to play with the boys for an additional year. Today, several bills list genitalia as a requirement for deciding who plays on which team. “I would have been in that position as a kid,” Page says. “It’s horrific.”

All this advocacy is unlikely to make life easier. “You can’t enter into certain spaces as a public trans person,” says the ACLU’s Strangio, “without being prepared to spend some percentage of your life being threatened and harassed.” Yet, while he seems overwhelmed at times, Page is also eager. Many of the political attacks on trans people—whether it is a mandate that bathroom use be determined by birth sex, a blanket ban on medical interventions for trans kids or the suggestion that trans men are simply wayward women beguiled by male privilege—carry the same subtext: that trans people are mistaken about who they are. “We know who we are,” Page says. “People cling to these firm ideas [about gender] because it makes people feel safe. But if we could just celebrate all the wonderful complexities of people, the world would be such a better place.”

Even if Page weren’t vocal, his public presence would communicate something powerful. That is in part because of what Paisley Currah, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, calls “visibility gaps.” Historically, trans women have been more visible, in culture and in Hollywood, than trans men. There are many explanations: Our culture is obsessed with femininity. Men’s bodies are less policed and scrutinized. Patriarchal people tend to get more emotional about who is considered to be in the same category as their daughters. “And a lot of trans men don’t stand out as trans,” says Currah, who is a trans man himself. “I think we’ve taken up less of the public’s attention because masculinity is sort of the norm.”

During our interviews, Page will repeatedly refer to himself as a “transgender guy.” He also calls himself nonbinary and queer, but for him, transmasculinity is at the center of the conversation right now. “It’s a complicated journey,” he says, “and an ongoing process.”

While the visibility gap means that trans men have been spared some of the hate endured by trans women, it has also meant that people like Page have had fewer models. “There were no examples,” Page says of growing up in Halifax in the 1990s. There are many queer people who have felt “that how they feel deep inside isn’t a real thing because they never saw it reflected back to them,” says Tiq Milan, an activist, author and transgender man. Page offers a reflection: “They can see that and say, ‘You know what, that’s who I am too,’” Milan says. When there aren’t examples, he says, “people make monsters of us.”

For decades, that was something Hollywood did. As detailed in the 2020 Netflix documentary Disclosure, transgender people have been portrayed onscreen as villainous and deceitful, tragic subplots or the butt of jokes. In a sign of just how far the industry has come—spurred on by productions like Pose and trailblazers like Mock—Netflix offered to change the credits on The Umbrella Academy the same day that its star posted his statement on social media. Now when an episode ends, the first words viewers see are “Elliot Page.”

Today, there are many out trans and nonbinary actors, directors and producers. Storylines involving trans people are more common, more respectful. Sometimes that aspect of identity is even incidental, rather than the crux of a morality tale. And yet Hollywood can still seem a frightening place for LGBTQ people to come out. “It’s an industry that says, ‘Don’t do that,’” says director Silas Howard, who got his break on Amazon’s show Transparent, which made efforts to hire transgender crew members. “I wouldn’t have been hired if they didn’t have a trans initiative,” Howard says. “I’m always aware of that.”

So what will it mean for Page’s career? While Page has appeared in many projects, he also faced challenges landing female leads because he didn’t fit Hollywood’s narrow mold. Since Page’s Instagram post, his team is seeing more activity than they have in years. Many of the offers coming in—to direct, to produce, to act—are trans-related, but there are also some “dude roles.”

Downtime in quarantine helped Page accept his gender identity. “I was finally able to embrace being transgender,” he says.

Page was attracted to the role of Vanya in The Umbrella Academy because—in the first season, released in 2019—Vanya is crushed by self-loathing, believing herself to be the only ordinary sibling in an extraordinary family. The character can barely summon the courage to move through the world. “I related to how much Vanya was closed off,” Page says. Now on set filming the third season, co-workers have seen a change in the actor. “It seems like there’s a tremendous weight off his shoulders, a feeling of comfort,” says showrunner Steve Blackman. “There’s a lightness, a lot more smiling.” For Page, returning to set has been validating, if awkward at times. Yes, people accidentally use the wrong pronouns—“It’s going to be an adjustment,” Page says—but co-workers also see and acknowledge him.

The debate over whether cisgender people, who have repeatedly collected awards for playing trans characters, should continue to do so has largely been settled. However, trans actors have rarely been considered for cisgender parts. Whatever challenges might lie ahead, Page seems exuberant about playing a new spectrum of roles. “I’m really excited to act, now that I’m fully who I am, in this body,” Page says. “No matter the challenges and difficult moments of this, nothing amounts to getting to feel how I feel now.”

This includes having short hair again. During our interview, Page keeps rearranging strands on his forehead. It took a long time for him to return to the barber’s chair and ask to cut it short, but he got there. And how did that haircut feel?

Page tears up again, then smiles. “I just could not have enjoyed it more,” he says.”

#suicide m #transphobia m #Elliot Page #transgender #representation #celebrities #actors #tv #movies #rep #trans #transmasculine #nonbinary #queer #long post

[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

#transformers #bayverse #part one #maccadam #Hannzreads #Hannzwatches #text post #long post #film analysis #off topic

[the-resurrection-3d]

(@maskwasii​ wanted me to post this despite, ironically, it all being shit I’ve told him before. Regardless.)

Something that I’ve been thinking about for awhile and might as well post while I’m waiting for the sleeping pills to kick in:

It really feels like the great irony of shipping drama is that it pushes out the people who would take this shit seriously. By “this” I mean darkfic topics like rape, incest, pedophilia, and so on. Because let’s be real with ourselves: regardless of your opinion on “dead dove” content, the majority of people who make that content don’t fucking care what you have to say. Nothing you can say is new to them, most of them are perfectly comfortable with remaking twice, thrice, even 5+ times after being mass-reported, and as far as ao3 goes, that site’s rules are intentionally designed to make removing someone else’s work as hard as possible.

A lot of people say they’re just against “romanticizing”/ “fetishizing” that type of content, which is fine on its surface, but there really isn’t any consistent metric for what “romanticizing” actually means outside of just pointing at shameless porn and going “don’t do that.” I remember once scrolling through an anti’s blog, seeing a typical post about how they’re only against romanticization, and then ~two posts down was a callout for someone for having edgy OCs. No context whatsoever into the actual story’s lore or how the author seems to want said OCs to be viewed-- the OCs themselves are bad people/have bad kinks, therefore this blogger must be shunned and publicly shamed. Again: hate stuff like rape/non-con kink all you want, but let’s imagine, for a moment, that Alberto had a genuine rape kink in “the grammar of violence” series instead of intrusive thoughts -- that type of presentation, where we’re meant to feel sorry for Alberto due to his urges (”””urges”””), is in a completely different universe from how I handle the same urges in Nick. 

When a work does not have an obvious sexual element, they stumble. The best example of this is how they’ll insist that murder can’t be romanticized, even though many books, shows, and films not only justify but aestheticize their protagonists' murders, fully intending for us as consumers to derive some amount of pleasure from watching the protagonists kill people (often in very drawn-out, spectacular ways).

It’s thus undeniable that many antis, knowingly or not, conflate “having X in your content” with “romanticizing X” -- take that one popular post that’s just a bunch of screenshots of the number of works tagged with “underage” on ao3 and decrying all of it as “child porn.” If you’ve ever earnestly written about csa trauma and tagged your fic with “underage” and/or “explicit” to try and keep your readers safe, no you didn’t, you’ve written CP. 

Why would anyone bother trying to write a serious story under these conditions? 

I know I joke a lot about how trying to put actual effort into your fanfics is a waste of time (except it’s not a joke because it’s true and I’m only here because I’m Asterion trapped in the labyrinth of my own autism), but seriously. Even showing support for these creators leaves many people feeling at risk, which removes pretty much the only thing fanfic is good for, aka that community element. 

I’ve mentioned this before here and there, but I’ve had multiple people come to me asking for help on their stories because they wanted to avoid “romanticizing” something fucked up, and every time, they have only a vague idea of what that would actually mean. I’m not trying to shit on them for this, because it’s not their fault, but these are the writers I’m talking about -- they have anxiety over the hypothetical backlash they could receive before the act of writing has even begun. 

Anxiety in art can be productive, such as when it motivates a creator to research experiences or cultures they don’t have firsthand experience with, but how can someone do that research when the guidelines don’t exist? “Don’t write porn.” Okay.... but I’ve seen fan-art of Luca doing stretches called “horny.” (Yet also somehow cartoon Beetlejuice calling a 13-year-old girl “babes” and getting jealous when she pays attention to other guys is just him “acting like an uncle.”) Furthermore, sometimes the only way to handle your trauma is to write through it, in all the gorey details. Sometimes that means writing a graphic rape scene, writing an unhappy ending, or writing “trauma porn” (keeping in mind, of course, that I’ve seen people’s fucking memoirs called trauma porn solely because they didn’t bend over backwards to make the reader feel comfortable).

Fandoms are just so fucking vile not only to survivors, but to people who want to earnestly and respectfully explore topics relevant to those survivors. The kinksters don’t care, as we’ve already established, and the people who don’t do any research or put in any thought at all will also continue just spewing their bullshit, because they lack the self-awareness to even realize that they’re doing so. I know a lot of dead dove creators are also survivors and are using their shit to cope, so don’t get me wrong, I don’t think their content is an issue in and of itself-- but again, let’s be real, most of them know that their content isn’t saying anything meaningful about trauma or the systems that enable it, nor are they trying to. The coping, that exploration, is within the process and not the product.

But some survivors need it to be in the product. Some survivors are unable to make art, or are not yet ready to make art about their trauma, but would benefit from consuming others’. So, while I don’t think having kinky dead dove art is an inherent issue, it's an issue when that type of content ends up dominating the creative marketplace, because as much as the creators themselves are soothed by it, a lot of other survivors are alienated. Both of these responses are valid. But I just think it’s a meme and half how, given everything I’ve seen, antis seem to be doing the most damage towards the kinds of content they always say they’ve made an exception for. 

[five-rivers]

Long Night in the Valley chapter 12

The scene shifted the moment Tempest woke up. They were outside, on a street in the middle of the city.  Storm clouds circled overhead.  

Tempest stood in front of them, hands in her pockets, a bland expression on her face.  

“So,” she drawled.  “You’re Nine’s friends.”

“Uh,” said Ochako, taken aback.  Right after Four had said she wouldn’t talk to them, this was disconcerting.   “Yes?”

“I’m his teacher,” said Aizawa, stepping forward.

“Yeah?  You think you’re doing a good job raising up little child soldiers?”

“Excuse me?” said Aizawa.  

“You heard me.”  She shifted her gaze to Ochako, then to Todoroki and Iida.  “I bet Souma told you I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

“He did say something along those lines, yes,” said Iida, even as Ochako worked very hard to elbow him.

“I can follow why he’d think that,” Tempest said. “I spent most of my life fighting against the government.  Lord knows I wouldn’t have approved of him choosing a ‘pro hero’ to follow after him.”  She took her hands out of her pockets to make air quotes.  She was wearing brass knuckles.  “Whatever a pro hero is supposed to be.  Government lackeys.  Cops and war criminals with a different name.  I’m shocked he pulled a halfway decent person from the muck.”

“We’re not war criminals!” protested Iida.  

“Oh, yeah?  I forgot, the Geneva convention was nixed, wasn’t it?  They had this big meeting and decided none of it applied to metahumans, and then, bam!  Everyone’s a metahuman, so it doesn’t apply at all, huh?  Neat, right?”

“What we’re doing now might not be what you’re used to,” said Ochako, “but it’s the way society works, now.”

“And we’re not killing people, like you did,” said Iida.  Ochako winced at his combative addition.  

“I did what I had to, to get people out of the torture camps,” said Tempest.  “People like my little sister.  You know what they did to her?  They thought her power was just controlled by her voice.  So, they cut out her vocal cords.”

“They don’t do that anymore,” said Todoroki.  

“You think a government like that is just going to stop doing things?  Without people making them?  Without being forced?”  Tempest laughed and looked up at the swirling sky.  “Maybe you do.  You’re just kids, after all.  But tell me this, do you think they didn’t know exactly what was happening to your family, Todoroki Shouto?”

Aizawa cleared his throat.  “What’s your point, here?” he asked.  “What do you want from us?”

Tempest looked back at Aizawa.  The coldness in her brown eyes made Ochako shiver.  “We could have kept you out,” she said. “That Suzuki idiot, too.  Do you know why we didn’t?”

“Enlighten us,” said Aizawa.  

“Because the way we do it would cause irreparable brain damage.  We know, because we’ve done it before.  I thought it was worth it, but the others didn’t want to hurt ‘Nine’s friends.’”

“Are you implying that we aren’t Midoriya’s friends?” asked Todoroki, frowning.  

Tempest huffed and wind whipped down the road, making Ochako cover her face.  

“No.  To be honest, I’m not completely sold on Nine, either.  He wanted to part of the system so bad, and that’s not to mention—” she huffed again.  “At least he knows what it’s like to be on the other side of the equation.  You four, though… I’m stuck with Nine.  I don’t owe you anything and you’re causing all these problems.  What I want from you—”

Behind her, lightning snapped down from the sky.

“—is to prove to me you’re worth it.”

.

“Vlad, the police were able to find your car,” said Powerloader, holding his hand over the receiver of the staff room telephone.

“Oh, thank goodness,” said Vlad.  “I hate taking public transportation.”  He paused.  “I mean, uh, did they find Yagi?  Is he alright?”

“No, they didn’t find Yagi.”

“Great,” said Vlad.  “So, ask them when I can pick it up.  Why are you making that face?  Did Yagi total it?  I bet he did.  ‘Symbol of Peace,’ my—”

“No,” interrupted Powerloader.  “Yagi didn’t total it.  Or crash it.  It was parked in an alley near the Musutafu entertainment district.”

“Where Midoriya had that fight with Hawks,” said Vlad, putting his head in his hands.  “It got wrecked by one of them, didn’t it?”

“No,” said Powerloader.  “It was parked in an alley.  They found it on a security camera.  It isn’t there anymore.”

“They took it again?”

“The League of Villains took it.”

“You’re joking.”

“I wish I was.”

.

The bus felt empty with half the class missing. The remaining 1-A students (plus Shinso) were all huddled together at the front, mooching off of the teachers mobile hotspots.  

“Did my email go through yet, kero?” asked Tsuyu, leaning over her seat to look at Denki’s computer.  

“Not yet,” said Denki.  “I’ve got all the pictures you guys sent arranged, but I wish we had more video material.  Ashido was the one with the most…”  He sighed. “Ashido, gossip queen, when you wake up I will apologize for all my comments about your hobbies.”

“I have some videos of Midoriya.”

“Trust us, Mineta, no one want your videos,” said Yaoyorozu.

“Huh?  Why not?”

“Tell us this.  How many of your videos are actually of Midoriya and don’t just have him incidentally in the background while you try to film girls.”

“None of them,” said Mineta, obviously not seeing why this was wrong.  “Why would I film Midoriya?”

“Mic,” said Midnight, “please remind me to sign up the walking lawsuit for some sensitivity classes.  How did Eraser miss this?”

“Unfortunately, Shouta is about as sexual as the average rock, so…”

“Remind me to sign him up for some training, too, then.”

“Will do.”

“Walking lawsuit?” asked Mineta.  

Everyone else sighed.  Then Denki’s laptop pinged.

“Huh.  I just got an email from Principal Nezu.”

The adults, including Green Light, the bus driver, blanched.  Adults were bothered by the weirdest things.  In the end, Nezu was just a guy with a quirk, right?  A hero, even!  Principal Nezu, the Education Hero!

Okay, he’d scared Denki (Mr. Terrible Grades) a lot in elementary and middle school, but really.  

(Okay, the crane thing at the Final Exam had been high-key terrifying, but he was trying to get past that.)

“Huh,” repeated Denki, having read the email. “That’s interesting.”

“What is it, my electric friend?” asked Aoyama, drapping himself sideways across his seat.

“Aoyama-san,” said Midnight, “don’t put your feet on the windows.”

“Principal Nezu sent me a link to an ‘All Might adopt a kid’ fanfiction, and it’s by—”

“Midoriya writes fanfiction?” asked Shouji, evidently surprised into using his real mouth to speak.  

“That’s cute, kero,” said Tsuyu.  “It must have been before he met the real All Might, though.”

“No,” said Denki, “it was last updated just a couple of weeks ago, and, well… Midoriya didn’t write it.”

“So, who did?” asked Yaoyorozu.  

“Not Nezu, right?” asked Jiro, winding her earphone jack around her finger.  

“There’s no way, right, Kaminari-san?” asked Present Mic, nervously.  

“Uh, no, no, it’s, uh, it’s All Might. According to Nezu.”

A beat of silence.

“What?”

Denki inserted his pinky into his right ear, trying to clear it.  Man, if the Bakusquad had been here rather than the quiet half of the class…

“Yeah, it says here that this serves All Might right for working on this during school hours?”

More silence.  

“Green Light, the road!”  

“Oops, sorry!”

“Hey, guys, are we sure that All Might didn’t, you know, kidnap Midoriya rather than the other way around?  Guys?”

.

Gran Torino, also known as Torino Sorahiko, was an active hero.  That meant late nights and late mornings.  He was also an old man.  A very old man.  Late mornings often turned into noons and afternoons.  

Sometimes, during those noons and afternoons, he liked to ignore technology and the outside world for a good long while.  Maybe read the paper a little bit.  Or one of those terrible romance novels Nana had left him in her will.  

Still, he was a hero, one wrapped up in something best described as a two-hundred-year-long shadow war, so eventually he did turn on the news.  

Only to see Toshinori’s boy fighting Hawks on live television.  

Not to mention Toshinori hanging out in the background with a shaved head.  

And the ticker said UA student Midoriya Izuku kidnaps Symbol of Peace.

(Which was the dumbest thing he had ever heard, and under other circumstances, he would have been rolling on the floor laughing.)

Gran Torino was an old man, but, luckily, he only felt like he was simultaneously having a heart attack and a stroke.  His body was more than functional enough to place a not-at-all panicked phone call to one Tsukauchi Naomasa.  

.

Tsukauchi Naomasa was incredibly busy.  That busy-ness was divided mostly evenly between desperately trying to find his best friend (who had evidently decided to make a hopefully brief foray into kidnapping teenagers) and trying to figure out what the commission was taking, because it had to be illegal.  Oh, and putting together a complaint that the commission was infringing on police prerogatives.

Honestly, he wasn’t sure how much traction that last would get, since pro heroes had been steadily gaining more and more responsibilities even as the police were losing both them and the power that came with them.  Not to mention Midoriya’s stunt with Hawks… Which… Naomasa just wanted to know why?  What had the point of that been?  On either side?

(Sometimes he wished he were friends with normal people.  Like… he didn’t know… an accountant, maybe?)

(Not that he would give Toshinori up for the world. Just, some normalcy would be nice, too.)

He took a deep breath, remembered what he always told Toshinori about stress, and took a mouthful of room-temperature coffee.

In that thirty-second period, two more problems presented themselves to him.  

One, his cell phone began to ring, displaying the contact information for Gran Torino.  

Two, his email softly pinged, and a message from Principal Nezu asking for any images or videos Toshinori might have sent him slid into his inbox.  

Briefly, Naomasa considered ignoring both of them, but that wasn’t a realistic option and was irresponsible besides.  Contrary to his character.  

He picked the lesser of two evils and answered Gran Torino’s call.

.

Garaki was going to have a mental breakdown.  This was fitting because his car had broken down.  Midoriya Inko was asking him if he thought that his ‘friend’ might come pick them up, if it was safe.  If his ‘friend’ had a car.  

This last had almost sent him into hysterics. Gigantomachia in a car oh-ho!

Except it wasn’t funny at all, as this was almost certainly going to result in his death at the hands of All for One.  No matter that he considered the man his very dearest of friends, he was under no illusions about what All for One would do to him over this inexcusable error.

Perhaps he should just cut his losses and get one of the remote-activated noumu to come for them.  

Then, inexorably and inevitably, things managed to get even worse.

.

“Stop the car!” shouted Tomura.  

“But you said not to—”

“I know what I said!  Stop the car!”

Tomura twisted to see out the rear passenger window. Everyone else turned to follow his gaze, effectively blocking his view.  

“Get out of my way!” demanded Tomura.

There was some awkward, half-hearted shuffling.

“Does that look like anyone to you?” Tomura hissed.

“Yeah!  Like the doctor!” said Toga.  

“I’ve never seen him standing up, though,” said Spinner, dubiously.  “It seems out of character.”

“I didn’t know he owned a car,” mused Compress, rubbing the bottom edge of his mask.  

“Not him!” snapped Tomura.  “The woman!”  He pointed angrily at the rapidly approaching woman with green hair, narrowly avoiding dusting Mr. Compress’s top hat.  

“Eh?  What about her?” asked Spinner.  

“Doesn’t she look familiar to you?”

“To be honest, everyone without mutation quirks looks kind of the same to me.”

“Someone without face blindness.”

“Oh!  She looks like Izu-kun!  Do you think that’s his mom?”

The woman knocked on the window of the car.  Twice, unhelpfully rolled it down.  

“Thank you so much for stopping, we—Oh!”  She took a step back.

She apparently recognized them.  Joy.  He was going to unpack his feelings about this woman later.

“Hey, doc,” rasped Tomura, annoyed.  “What the hell have you been doing?”

“Ahem,” said Garaki, finally stepping out from behind the car.  “I didn’t expect to see you here, Shigaraki Tomura.”

“Because you blew us off and stranded us in the middle of Musutafu?”

“No,” said Garaki, in a way that absolutely meant ‘yes.’  “I knew you were resourceful enough to safely make it out of the city.”

“Oh, yeah?  Really?  You—”

Compress chose that moment to slam his face into the back of Tomura’s head.  Tomura steadied himself automatically on one of the car’s uprights, which cracked dangerously under his hand.  He pulled back as if burned.  

When he looked up, the gremlin’s mother was halfway to the tree line with – What was that in her hand?

He looked back over his shoulder.  

That was Twice’s goddamn mask.  

Compress, for some reason, was also missing his stupid mask (and covering his face like the dramatic weirdo he was), and Toga basically had hearts in her eyes.  Spinner was being Spinner, and therefore ninety percent useless.  He was lucky he was fun to play games with.

How to make her stop?

“Hey!” he shouted.  “We have your son!”

This was a lie, as far as he knew (unless Dabi had snatched him on his way back; it wasn’t impossible), but, he was a villain.

The green-haired woman stopped and turned back, allowing Tomura a full view of her expression.  

He decided that he regretted everything.

.

“Okay,” said Izuku, multitasking by letting Two pick the lock on the League’s safe, “considering Gigantomachia’s ability to track by smell and the questionable running water, we can’t just sneak out.  He’ll find us.  So… I think our best play is getting him to attack Shigaraki, and then when they’re both distracted, we run for it.”

Toshinori nodded and sighed.  “If only we had a giant jug of perfume.  We could throw it at his face and disrupt his ability to smell us.”

“I mean, I found a whole bunch of garbage a way back.  That isn’t perfume, but it does stink.”

“No, no, your plan is superior.  We’d draw too much suspicion if we attacked him like that. Perfume could be written off.”

“Yeah, I can see that.  Because perfume is a ‘nice’ thing.”

“Indeed.”

“It isn’t actually very nice to have it all over you, though,” said Izuku.  

“No,” agreed Toshinori.  “It isn’t.”

The safe popped open.

“I won’t ask if you don’t.”

“Deal.”

“But, anyway, assuming we do get away, what then? Where do we go?  And—Wow.  The League of Villains is broke.  I almost feel bad.”

“I was going to say Deika, but that’s too far, now, and we don’t know if Gigantomachia will come after us,” said Toshinori.  “Drawing him to a place full of civilians would be irresponsible.”

“Yeah,” said Izuku.  He frowned, pulling his head from the safe, and glanced out the window. “What about the Wild Wild Pussycats?”

“What about them?” asked Toshinori.  

“They’re near here, aren’t they?  And they’ve got that whole complex, so, I mean…  I don’t know how they feel about us right now, but it wouldn’t be a terrible place to hide.  Would it?”

“I’d hate to bring all of this down on them as well,” said Toshinori.  “But… That being said, I don’t believe they’re actually there.  They were taking some time off because of what happened to Ragdoll.”

“That makes sense,” said Izuku.  “Should we take the risk?”

“I’m unsure if we have a choice, my boy.  We could try roughing it, but that puts us in a very vulnerable position.”

“And we can’t stay here, with the League.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Okay.”  Izuku sighed and started to thumb through the League’s collection of fake IDs, looking for something he could use.  “Wild Wild Pussycats it is.  We’ve got to convince Machia to attack Shigaraki, and… then we sneak out the back while they’re fighting.”  He shook his head.  “It sounds really unheroic when I put it that way.”

“Under these circumstances, I think heroic is the set of actions where no one dies.”

His mentor was right.  Izuku still felt weird about this, though.  (The pettiness was completely different.)

Not to mention…

He put the last of the fake IDs away and massaged his temples.  “They’re doing something weird in there,” he said.  “I’m going to check on them.  I might be out of it.”

“Don’t worry,” said Toshinori, patting Izuku on the shoulder.  “I’ll keep an eye on things out here.”

(Perhaps all of this could have gone unsaid, what with their connection, but saying things out loud made them easier to organize.)

.

“Hey!” shouted Izuku over the roaring wind. “Stop that!”

“Are you going to fight me, Nine?  All by yourself?”

“No,” said Izuku, somehow contriving to look down his nose at her despite the height difference and the fact that Tempest was floating several meters in the air.  “I won’t have to.  Because I have a secret weapon.”

Ochako could almost see Tempest roll her eyes.

“And,” shouted Izuku, “do you seriously think I just wanted to be part of the system?  Are you serious?  I wanted to help people.  People the system failed.  It isn’t like they’re responsible for the system either!”  He waved his hand to indicate Ochako, Iida, Todoroki, and Aizawa.

“I’d argue about your hobo teacher.  Is this your secret weapon?”

“No, this is, Great-Aunt Miranda.”

Tempest opened her mouth, then closed it again. The wind began to die down.  “I’m – I don’t know what the point of that was—"

“Neither do I!  What’s the point of this?”

“The point is determining whether or not you have people you can rely on, or a bunch of backstabbers who’ll hand you over to a government lab as soon as it’s convenient!”  She stabbed a finger at Ochako.  “She’s just in ‘heroics’ for the money!”  She pointed at Iida.  “He’s only here because it’s traditional for his family.”   She gestured at Todoroki with her other hand.  “He’s doing it mostly out of spite.  And who knows what your hobo teacher is doing this for!”

“There’s nothing wrong with any of that!” protested Ochako.  “You must have your own motivations, too!”

“She does!” shouted Izuku.  “Considering what they are, you have no room to be criticizing Iida!  Besides, you don’t even like me!”

“This isn’t about liking you or disliking!  You’re the—” Tempest visibly cut herself off, then took a deep breath.  She set herself down on the street.  “Knowing what we do now about certain things, a fourteen-year-old would not have been my first choice.”

“Excuse me!  We’re all sixteen!” said Iida.  

“You’re sixteen now, it’s – The fact of the matter is that you’re children.  Naïve children.”

“Oh my gosh, you were younger than I was when you—”

“I was kidnapped and tortured—”

“I know, but why are you taking it out on—”

“By the government that you are trying to lick the boot of—”

“Did you see what they did to Suzuki?”

Ochako felt like she was spectating a very passionate tennis match.  

“If it means anything,” said Aizawa, dragging himself out of the pile of rubble he’d been thrown into by the wind, “I’m just trying to keep my kids alive as long as possible.”

“Then expel them!  Stop them from becoming literal child soldiers!”

“I do,” said Aizawa.

“He does,” confirmed Ochako, who was well acquainted with Aizawa’s reputation.  

“He really does,” seconded Todoroki.  

“I used to see Tensei’s group chat, and every time he expelled someone…”  Iida shivered.  

“Huh,” said Todoroki.  “Is that why you’re so… insistent about rules?”

“Of course not!  Rules are important regardless of why so many students were expelled during the first month of school!”

“So, why didn’t you expel these ones?”

“If you honestly believe the problem child wouldn’t have flung himself at the first villain he saw after that and dove straight into vigilantism, you don’t know him very well.”  He sighed, standing, and brushed dust and pebbles out of his tracksuit. “That goes for these three as well. They’re insane and it’s not my fault.”

“Isn’t saving others what heroes do?” asked Izuku, walking closer to Tempest.  Ochako wanted to run out and grab him, but this whole ordeal had just shown how useless that would be.  “No matter what?”

“Not no matter what.  This is why I…”  She shook her head, sighing.  “Not no matter what.”  She leaned forward, her hands on her hips.  “Don’t die. You do realize what will happen if you die, right?  I don’t have to spell it out for you?”

“N-no,” said Izuku.  

“Besides which, I’m not a hero.”

“You saved people,” protested Izuku.  

“And, as your friends pointed out, I’ve killed, too.”

“I know,” said Izuku.  “But you aren’t a bad person.”

“Lots of people kill during wars,” said Ochako, going to stand by Izuku, “and that’s what you were fighting in, wasn’t it?  I mean, I don’t know a lot about that time, but…”

“You wouldn’t.  It’s been over a hundred years.”

Izuku nodded.  “This fight isn’t doing anything, though.  None of us want them here if the vault opens.”

“The what?” asked Iida.  “The vault.”

“Hopefully,” said Izuku, “you won’t have to worry about it.”

“The fight did do something, though,” said Tempest.

“What?” asked Izuku.  

“For one,” said Tempest, “it made you think. For the other…”  Her eyes flicked over Ochako and the others.  “Everyone you fight will have their own reasons. Remember that.”

.

As they walked down the street, storms still brewing overhead, Ochako kept catching glimpses of children in the alleyways and cross streets.  

“Who are they?” she asked, unable to help herself.

“My sister and I,” answered Tempest, brusquely. Ochako, watching the back of the woman’s head, saw her twitch slightly towards one of the alleys.  “About the time we were taken.”

“Taken by who?” asked Todoroki.  

Tempest laughed.  The sound was entirely humorless.  “That government you’re so eager to serve.  You’ve noticed, I hope, that my sister and I aren’t completely Japanese?”

“Yes?” said Todoroki.  “I’m not blind, after all.”

“Todoroki,” said Aizawa in a warning tone.

“Good for you.  Our mother was Japanese.  Dad was American.  We went back and forth to see the family.  Problem was, everyone on Mom’s side quirks.  We didn’t even realize it.  The government tracked the weather disturbances to our movements and raided our family reunion.  Never saw my parents again.  Never saw anyone, for that matter, except my sister and my aunt – Dad’s side – who tried to smuggle us out and got shot for it.  We spent four years in that hell before Ryuji rescued us.”

“You’re more open about this than I would have expected,” said Aizawa.

Tempest sneered.  “Why wouldn’t I be?  I’m a terrorist, and people only become terrorists if they want to make a statement. Which I did.  Trust me when I say this, Nine, if the hero commission took you into ‘custody,’” she spat the word like it was dirty, “you’d be in the same boat. What do you children think they do to all those high-profile criminals in Tartarus?  The ones that are held indefinitely in a private prison without even a show trial?”

“I know, Three,” said Izuku, far more calmly that Ochako would have been able to.  “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to be a hero.  It’s easier to change systems from the inside.”

“Not this system.”

“No,” said Izuku, “but then I had no idea this part of the system even existed.  They do a lot to hide it, after all.”

“Hm,” grunted Tempest, skeptically.

The buildings began to thin out, interspersed with wilderness.  The road rapidly graded narrowed into a one-lane road, then gravel.  

“Is this normal?” asked Ochako.  

“We have more control over our environments than the other ones.  You’ve noticed that only Eight and Nine had multiple versions of themselves running around and being confusing.”

“I didn’t do that on purpose,” said Izuku.  

“Exactly.  Any of us could send an army of ourselves against you.  Only those two don’t have a choice about it.  Amateurs.”

“Shouldn’t they have had the same amount of time as—” started Ochako.  She broke off as a series of concrete walls topped with barbed wire rose up in front of them, scraping at the surrounding trees, shedding clumps of dirt.  

The trees fell away, leaving a clear, baren space between the walls and the trees.  Slightly beyond the structure moonlight glinted off the surface of a lake.  

“Well.  Welcome to Jinoshi Lake Camp, kids.”  Tempest turned, putting her hands on her hips.  “This is where I met Ryuji.  And…” She glanced up at the walls.  “This is as far as I go.”

“You aren’t going to show us where to find this ‘Ryuji?’” asked Aizawa.  

“I promised myself I’d never go back there.” She jerked her head over her shoulder. “I’m not revisiting it for you.” She started walking away.  “Have fun.”

#bnha #boku no hero academia #fic #my fic #long night in the valley

[dallaswinstonsleatherjacket]

Y’all want some prompts? Here’s the prompt store:

Some tws: not intense ones but: homophobia, injuries, drinking, smoking, drugs, swearing

Sad-

Johnny gets beat up, Dally finds him

The greasers lose a rumble

Dally tries to drink his gayness away

Soda dies, Steve is broken

Dally dies. What does Johnny do?

Dally misses his mom

Dally wishes he had a family

What happens after two go to war, and only one comes back?

After the book: describe everyone, what they do, how they act, how they’re broken

5 times Dallas Winston didn’t die, and the 1 time he did

Soda and Steve fight

They break up

They realize they can’t live without eachother

Happy-

Dally and Johnny-first kiss

Steve and Soda-sneaking around(bonus-someone catches them)

Steve and Soda-first kiss

Steve and Soda-kids

Steve getting frustrated at someone or something and Sodas just like *calm down, deep breaths*

Soda makes the gang do yoga

Someone threatens Johnny, Dally makes them pay.

Darry saves pony from some Socs. He expects a lecture, but doesn’t get it

The gang bands together

Cute:

Dallys sick, Johnny takes care of him

Soda takes care of Steve when he has like a hangover

Soda has a panic attack, Steve helps

Soda has a panic attack, Darry/Pony help

Dally DOES NOT like thunderstorms, guess what, one happens.

Dally questions his sexuality, Johnny comforts him. (They aren’t dating)

Johnny gets scared by something, dally comforts him

Johnny falls asleep in Dallys arms.

Dally saves Johnny from his parents

Steve finds Soda crying

Dally has a nightmare

Pony hasnt been giving Darry his lunch money change...they figure out he never eats lunch. The Socs are beating the money out of him

Artsy-

Dallys life story

Johnny before he met the gang

How Darry deals with stress

How Soda met sandy (and how they broke up)

How Steve and Soda fell for eachother

How Dally feels about Johnny

Steve Randle before he met the gang

Dally and Johnny having deep conversations under the stars

Johnny cant sleep, he wanders off. Dallys terrified, trying to find him

Johnny & Dally,

1. Being caught meeting up discreetly by either A. Soda B. Darry C. Steve.

2. Dally having a panic attack and Johnny comforting him. (or vise versa.)

3. Dally/Johnny having second thoughts but something gets rid of them.

4. Dally being just soft in general and getting teased.

5. Their first sleepover.

6. Them cleaning each other up after a rumble.

7. Johnny moving into Dally's room.

8. Dally trips and falls and Johnny laughs. - comedy gold right there folks

9. Johnny finding Dally when he was little on video, A. him trying to be *smexy* or B. him like just doing stupid shit as a child.

10. Them reading the outsiders.

11. Them DURING a rumble.

12. Them being caught by a soc *together* doing one of their secret meetup

13. Watching a scary movie together.

14. Johnny showing Dally a romance movie, Dally acts like he hates it, (he loves it).

15. Their first christmas together.

16. Their first argument. - sadness

17. They Breakup

18. They get back together.

Diologue

“I’ve heard about you. Dallas Winston, right?”

“I hate how it’s silent when you’re not around”

“Sleep here, please. Don’t stay out in the lot.”

“Did they touch you?”

“Cuddle?”

“Here, take my jacket.”

“Dont be afraid, Johnny. I’m right here.”

“Hey, you can talk to me, okay?”

“You’re not broken”

“You don’t have to do this alone.”

“Stay calm, deep breaths, okay?”

“You’re safe now. I got you”

“Do you know what it’s like? Huh?”

“Why do you love someone like me?”

“Please just hold me”

“Dont hurt him! Please, don’t hurt him”

I’m just trying to help.” “Well, I hate to break it to you, but you just made it worse.”

“Don’t I make you happy?”

“You’re going to get someone hurt.”

“I never thought you’d be the one to break my heart.”

“Don’t underestimate me.”

“You’re a complete mess, but I don’t care.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Did I just see you smile?”

“You’re dumber than I thought if you think I’m letting you do this alone.”

“If I could go back in time, I’d still choose you.”

“So… I might’ve been a little drunk.” “Only a little?”

“I honestly have no idea what I’m doing.”

“I can’t believe we’re dating.”

“Please don’t tell me you filmed that.” “Of course I filmed it.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I meant what I said, every word of it.”

“I can’t stay mad at you, and that pisses me off.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

“I knew you’d overreact.”

“I specifically told you not to leave.”

“You’re not as heartless as you pretend to be.”

“Stop hogging the blankets!”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“I know it’s the middle of the night, but can you come over, please?”

“You know I love you, right?”

“How did you find me?”

“That was a really shitty apology.”

“Not to be dramatic, but I think we’re all going to die.”

“I should’ve fought for us.”

“I love you, okay? I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it.”

“Everyone wanted to give up on me, except you.”

“We have to leave the country.”

“Are you seriously still angry at me?” “You ate the last donut!”

“Come to bed.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“Just forget everything I said.”

“Seeing you smile makes my day.”

“You mean the world to me.”

“Oh no, you are not dragging me into this.”

“I know you’re trying to push me away, but I won’t let you.”

“The only person I need right now is you.”

“You look really good, by the way.”

“You realise this sounds totally crazy, right?”

“What’s my problem? You’re my fucking problem!”

“You make me a better person.”

“Don’t give me that look.”

“Okay, but consider this: I don’t care.”

“Oh, thank God you’re awake.”

“That’s an order.”

“Promise me you’ll come back.”

“You had another nightmare, didn’t you?”

“We have to look out for each other.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed!”

“Just stay away from me, okay?”

“No one can know about this.”

“The only place I feel safe in is your arms.”

“We’re done.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“Do you ever regret it?”

“At this point, you’re the only thing keeping me sane.”

“I love it when you laugh.”

“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it together.”

“We’ll make it work.”

“Do you ever think about running away?”

“I can’t lose you.”

“You deserve someone better than me.”

“Come here, I want to show you something.”

“You’ve got to be more careful.”

“You’re actually pretty cute.”

“I’m so tired of feeling like this.”

“What did I do wrong?”

“Why does everything always turn to shit?”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m a monster.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Can I freak out now?”

“What did you expect? For everything to just go back to normal?”

“I just needed to hear your voice.”

“What I’m about to do is totally crazy, but just roll with it.”

“I know you don’t care, you don’t have to pretend.”

“You owe me.”

“Of course I was worried about you.”

“How much time do we have left?”

“You look different.”

“How could you even think that?”

“Let me out of here!”

“That’s a good picture of you.”

“Give ‘em hell.”

“Get out of my way.”

“You want to know what I really think?”

“It’s about time.”

“You can’t keep ignoring this.”

“I hope you burn in hell.”

“I could think of worse ways to die.”

“Too late.”

“Can we start over again?”

“How do you always manage to look so perfect?”

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Run.”

“You love me?” “Of course I do, you dork.”

Darry Prompts :

1. Kids

2. Bills

3. Struggling with Sexuality

4. Panic Attack

5. Him during a rumble

6. Him and his brothers

7. Him on christmas

8. if he found out __ was pregnant/ gotten -- pregnant

9. getting jumped by socs

10. finding out ponyboy and johnny had ran away

11. headcannons

12. rando love story

13. coming out

14. missing his parents

15. his reaction to losing his parents

#I think I have more #idk where all of these are from either #starspams #/pos #credits to owners obvi #my friends and I made some up too

[itsonlystrange]

So, after reading @hawkinsschoolcounselor latest post, I went into the comments and, boy- they were, well. They were not great. I mean I guess I laid this onto myself but, anyways, I’m going to be answering this comment right here:

This is ALL for fun! It’s all a bunch of light hearted love, but this comment REALLY ticked me the wrong way.

For starters: There’s always been this trope in media of “one is enough.” Or “we have enough representation!” And it’s VERY prevelant in tv shows. The theory that “oh! There’s already one gay character, that’s enough for you, right?” Is sh!tty. It’s horrible.

Think of it this way: if there are 200 white sheep in a room, and then the shepherd brings in one black sheep, do you think that would suffice the other black sheep from the other herds? Do you think that would ‘hold them over’? I mean imagine being a black sheep in a crowd of 200 other white sheep, you’d feel alone. Okay, so now pretend there is a tv show, and this black sheep is watching that tv show, and of course, all the actors in the tv show are WHITE SHEEP. So then, in season 3 of Sheeper Things, they FINALLY introduce a black sheep, and of course the black sheep is happy, but still, they can’t help but realize that all of the white sheep are still there and overcome that small black sheep by a LOT!

I’m assuming that comment was made by someone straight, as they clearly don’t grip representation. Also, I’m assuming that person is slightly homophobic, just by the way they phrased it. It seems odd, I mean, what’s the issue with having one more gay character?

Well apparently, in their minds, Will being able to overcome his childhood is much more effective then Will being gay- so.

Let me lay it out for you:

Surprise! You can be gay AND want to hold onto your childhood! And, there are already so many other characters that could have a lovely arc of learning to accept themselves and learning to be their true selves away from societies norms *cough* mike *cough* Lucas *cough* but of course, they want to make WILL the one who gets this arc because if Will was gay that means he has a better chance of getting with Mike! (This was under a Mileven video btw) so they want him to be canonically straight so there is no chance Mike and Will can be endgame!

Now second: 90% of the comments under this video are people saying they think he’s asexual.

1. You can be gay AND asexual

2. Asexuality is the feeling of not being sexually attracted to anyone. YOU CAN BE ROMANTICALLY ATTRACTED TO PEOPLE IF YOURE ASEXUAL.

3. Will is fourteen! And if we’re using the logic of “oh he hasn’t wanted to kiss anyone so he’s asexual!” Then shouldn’t Dustin be asexual too?-

4. WILL IS FOURTEEN! Just because he doesn’t want to get down and dirty at that (very young age!) DOESNT mean that he doesn’t like sexual attraction at all. It’s kind of insane how people are seriously making these assumptions over a 14 year old child, some people like to wait, and that’s fine!

5. If the people in the comments meant aromantic, there really isn’t anything in the show that proves that he doesn’t like anyone, period. I think partially it’s heteronormativity and people not wanting to see the fact that Will clearly has a crush on mike, or had one in the past. The script even went as far as saying “But his eyes aren’t on the cute girl, they’re on - - Mike.”

Why do you think the script would put that in if there wasn’t something there, unrequited or not? Personally, I think that a lot of people don’t want to accept the fact that Will could have a crush on Mike as that would destruct their heteronormative bubble. They don’t want the main boy in the show to be gay because it disrupts the balance in their life. And it makes the chances of mike and Will ending up together being strong.

6. Saying “you have one gay character, that’s enough representation!” Is BULL. SH!T. There will NEVER be enough representation in the media for the lgbtq+ community. Ever. Even when we keep trying, there will always be something. Whether the show being cancelled or the one gay character dying, representation in the media for minorities are slim, but ESPECIALLY for the lgbtq+ community.

We are all VERY proud of Maya and Robin. We love Robin, but that doesn’t mean the Duffers just get to sit back and be like “oh, we already have one gay character, we don’t need more.” Like, what? That’s not how this works. Representation doesn’t just get to stop after the heterosexuals deem us to have “enough gay characters” or “if you add too many gay characters it’d get unrealistic” no. We’ve (me being a bisexual) have went through YEARS AND YEARS of ZERO representation. ZERO. While the hets always got their happily ever after love story, we WAITED.

We love Robin, but that doesn’t mean they can just halt Will’s arc since season one because you deem the representation to be enough.

This isn’t apples and oranges. Will can be gay AND not want to grow up. It isn’t always just black and white.

Maybe it’s the people who refuse to see the way Will looks at Mike, and just takes that as “2 bros looking at bros”, but there is very clearly something under the surface there.

since season ONE they have built Will up to be gay. Since the first episode.

Put it this way. Joyce used the term “f*g” in episode one. Why do you think they would use a slur like that If it weren’t going to go somewhere. What was the point of using a slur to describe Will in season one, or to Troy and James literally tormenting the Party for Will being gay almost all of season one. What was the point of that if that wasn’t going to go anywhere?

I can GUARANTEE that If Mike promised El that he’d go crazy together with HER instead of Will, the milevens would eat that up and call it “romantic!” However, because it’s just two boys, it’s totally platonic, right? It’s totally just two bros being bros.

If Mike held el’s hand like that and said “we won’t let him.” To el instead of Will, milevens would EAT THAT UP. They’d say that was the most romantic sh!t in the show.

If Mike told El that meeting her was the best thing he’d ever done, MILEVENS WOULD EAT THAT UP. They’d call it the most romantic thing of the century. It’d be on ever fan accounts Instagram pages. It’d be in all of the bios. But of course, because it’s two boys, it HAS to be platonic.

A lot of times milevens excuses for things are “well mike said he loved her so it’s end game”

Stancy, anyone?

Or Mike said “you’re the most important thing in the world to me.”

In the most DRY way possible. If Mike said that to Will in that way, EVEN I WOULDNT BELIEVE HE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH.

I mean the way Mike said that line clearly shows that el isn’t the most important thing in the world to him. There’s something underlying there. Like I said, that line was DRY. There was no emotion behind it. He was just saying that to get El to shut up, to get El to forgive him, so they could move on.

If Mike had said “you’re the most important thing in the world to me” to WILL like that instead of El, I wouldn’t have believed it either. And I bet that If that was the case the milevens would say “Mike doesn’t really love Will! That line was so dry!” But because it’s El and Mike, they say that’s the cutest thing since sliced bread.

Again, I have zero issues with Milevens, it’s only the toxic ones like the comment above that get to me.

Will has been set up to be gay from DAY ONE. The duffers have studied film for YEARS. Do you seriously think they’d let these all be coincidences? Do you seriously think that after writing season two NOBODY said, “hey, that’s a little gay.”

One scene is fine. If we only had gotten crazy together, yeah, I don’t think I would have thought it to be canon. But it’s the fact that they wrote in OVER 10 QUEER CODED ROMANTIC SCENES BETWEEN MIKE IN WILL, JUST IN SEASON TWO.

You can’t make that up! That cannot be an accident!

They’ve said over and over that everything they do, every song they play, every outfit the characters wear, is intentional. It’s all there for a reason.

Finn and Noah had to read these scripts, rehearse them, and then spent hours filming them. Do you seriously think it wouldn’t have cross their minds that “Hey! That’s a little weird Mr Duffer.”

That’s mostly because Finn and Noah probably already know where the show is headed.

If your only source of Mileven evidence is that Millie has said that they should get married and that they kissed in the end, then, I have some news to break.

Obviously, if anything were to happen in season 4 with Mileven not being end game, Millie couldn’t just say that. Finn couldn’t just say that. It’s their jobs to keep the fans intrigued and on their toes.

David knew he wasn’t really dead but he still had to pretend in interview after interview that Hopper was indeed dead. And he played it off pretty well.

Millie knew El wasn’t really dead after the season one finale yet she still had to play it off like El was.

So obviously, they can’t just outright say “Mileven isn’t end game!”

I mean,,, I’m sure they’d get fired for it.

So, we really shouldn’t pay attention to what the cast says in interviews, and we shouldn’t take that as canon, either. Their job is to subvert our expectations for the show, and they’re doing it well.

TL;DR:

Will can be gay and also have an arc where he doesn’t want to grow up and where he can learn to be his authentic self. The interviews the ST cast do should not be taken as canon as their jobs as actors are to keep us on our toes and subvert our expectations. Byler has a lot of proof and has a large chance of being canon, and most milevens don’t want to believe Will is gay because that means Will would have a larger chance of getting with Mike. The lgbtq+ community still need representation regardless of Robin and just because we got one lesbian does not mean the duffers can sit back and go back to their only heterosexual couples and ideas.

Byler is end game :)

@kaypeace21 @strangertheory @stranger-analysis @willthecleric (opinions?)

#stranger things #byler #mike wheeler #stranger things 4 #st4 #will byers #byler theory

[nettlestonenell]

Enola Holmes in Review

Gentle Readers:

1.       I did not plan to watch Enola Holmes

2.       I do not/have not watched Stranger Things, and my entire concept of Millie Bobby Brown as a human is encapsulated in the occasional errant tumblr post, and a line of eyewear she apparently has created, posters for which hang at my glasses-provider.

3.       I had never heard of the YA novels about Enola Holmes

There she is!

Yes, I do tend to enjoy nearly any incarnation of Sherlock Holmes. And, yes, I am often surprised by this fact. For some reason, Holmes, unlike, say, Chris Evans as Cap or Chris Hemsworth as Thor [instances where I can’t really imagine enjoying anyone else in the role] I am always interested to see someone else’s [writer and actor and director]’s take on him. *Subtle shout-out to James D’Arcy’s 2002 turn in A Case of Evil.

Mr. Jarvis! [and there was Vincent D’Onofrio and opium!!]

And yet, watching the Enola Holmes trailer [no doubt b/c of tumblr], and yes, admittedly not unmoved [we are not made of stone] by Cavill’s Curls™ the delight I felt in watching that advert led me to start informing my family that on September 23rd what I was going to be doing was enjoying Enola Holmes on Netflix [and anyone else was free to join me].

Someone important is missing from this picture

And what a delight it was. In the run-up to its debut I read more than a few reviews of the film [and, I think, every one of them written by men], some of which struck me as simply coming from a place of mean-spiritedness, yet none—even the positive reviews—preparing me for how ENJOYABLE this film is.

I’m not going to provide a full review point-by-point here, b/c the film involves cases to be solved (no, none of them are overwhelmingly complex—YA novel--, so all the more reason not to spoil any pay-offs). But I do have some things to talk about.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM – And what a nice, nice elephant it is! Henry Cavill as Holmes is, in my opinion an absolute delight of a performance. From the moment he first says Enola’s name (a perfectly-rendered reaction to the moment playing out) this Holmes fits into this Greatest Showman-like version of Victorian England, where no one’s too dirty no matter how poor, and where despite a flaming red dress, cut too low for daytime wear, young Enola is never once mistaken for a working girl. [Again, YA novel] As other reviewers have noted, HC is, well, Cut and Bulked Out, and in his highly tailored frock coats well, strapping is too light a description word. *not a complaint. Cavill’s Curls are out and proud and here to tell us that we are meant to be Having Fun, and Gentle Readers—THEY DO NOT LIE.

No, not a priest’s collar where he is undercover (though I had thought so)

In fact, you could absolutely write your thesis statement on this film, that it’s really a fraternal, familial love story between Sherlock and Enola. Sherlock is the character during the two hours that actually changes. [Yes, Enola comes to an understanding about herself, and her circumstances change repeatedly—but it is Sherlock who experiences a Change of Heart/Reversal]. 

Raise your hand if you’re totally here for significantly older brother/significantly youngest sister family love!

HOW I WOULD DESCRIBE IT – This might in no way be helpful, but, Enola Holmes is basically The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles...

Where have you gone, Sean Patrick Flanery?

a YA historical storyline that’s written adjacent to [there, famous people] here, enduring fictional characters. It’s adventurous and pleasantly immersive, historical morays are given a slap-dash portrayal, rather than a fully-accurate representation, there’s adventures to be had, and side-characters to be converted into caring about the title character as much as we, the audience, do.

LUCY HONEYCHURCH – Yes, that gorgeous girl from Windy Corner. The timeline doesn’t jibe, but I daresay Helena Bonham Carter (back in a corset—though she may have worn those for Bellatrix) as Eudoria Holmes *IS* what Lucy Honeychurch might well have become beyond A Room with a View’s end. Bonham Carter looks absolutely at home here (period films have sorely missed her! –she had a part in 2015’s Suffragette), and still wears the trappings of Victorian England like a second skin. 

Not to mention that she now join my personal comfort-list of on-screen mothers with the likes of 1997’s Little Women Susan Sarandon and Cinderella’s Hayley Atwell.

FAMILY ISSUES OR PLOT HOLES? 

It’s a fair question. There’s a lot going on in this plot, some of which...seem solvable. Why has it been so very long since the Holmes brothers have seen their own mother? And sister? How could the woman we come to know as Eudoria raise a Mycroft? [see also, Molly Weasley?] Why aren’t people who seem to care about Enola more engaged with saving her from all the dangers London throws in her way? Why does Enola accept several acts of violence aimed at her, why does she in certain instances Do What She Is Told? Rather than chalk these up to plot holes or convenient devices, I’m siding with the Holmes family being dysfunctional [who knows what dad was like? We’re certainly not told here]. 

[clears throat]

The conversations between Mycroft and Sherlock barely skim the surface of any subject they interact on. Classic dysfunction: distancing one’s true self from human interaction b/c keeping the peace supersedes all else.

Enola accepts certain treatments b/c if we really do watch her relationship with her mother, there is an element of something amiss—as I will declare the later abandonment shows. Enola is a child used to being elevated and celebrated on one hand, and shut out and isolated on the other. Her parent has informed her about so much, but essentially locked her away in a false reality, where Enola is not taken to see the world, nor taught how to interact in it (which is explicitly stated). Perhaps it is not so surprising that the Holmes’ brothers have not cared overly much for visiting their remaining family. And when repeatedly confronted with a minor child (and yet a child likely though old enough or about so, to be married off) being forced to endure things diametrically opposed to her will—the brothers’ reactions are stoic, the system they accept as to how life must be lived immoveable and morally right simply by its very existence.

MILLIE BOBBY BROWN – THE STAR – In what has to be an Emmy-nomination-deserving turn, MBB is nothing short of wholly in charge of the screen. She never overpowers the story. She’s as loveable as Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping, and as ready for her closeup as Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games. As another review mentioned, she handles the 4th wall breaks in such as way as we look forward to the next time she’s going to talk to us. We ache with her sorrow for her lost mom, and rage with her at the adults in her life choosing wrongly for her future—or simply not choosing at all.

A random observation, but one that feels important to me: her HAIR. Yes! They’ve managed to make a late Victorian-era film where the heroine’s hair looks like real hair that someone really styled (or in some scenes, didn’t). And yet, where the hair looks proper for the time. [wild applause]

COMPLAINTS: Well, in honesty there aren’t any. If you want to complain that there isn’t any dirt, that the evil of the world (I mean, c’mon, this is narrowly post-Dickensian London, here) is neutered, that the adults in question seem neither alarmed enough or emboldened enough at either their mother or sister being missing and possibly out of their depths in a dangerous society without protection, and in Enola’s case real-world skills--? Well, I’m certainly not going to disagree with you. This is YA Victorian London, after all, not Ripper Street. There is also neither a hint of or actual threat of sexual violence at any point in the film. But the lack of that has preserved us from having to sit through that, as well as no doubt lectures about how Enola’s virtue might be spoilt and she might become useful to no man.

The relationships are appropriate, too. Despite strides between Enola and certain adults in the film, by the time the credits roll they’re not showing physical affection toward each other (a move that would have seemed over-the-top), and teen relationships are shown progressing at a reasonable and mutedly awkward pace.

Now, Netflix, green-light me five more films (or more). There’s still a new version of John Watson to meet, after all!

#enola holmes #netflix enola holmes #millie bobby brown #henry cavill #helena bonham carter #SUCH A GOOD TIME! #universally well-liked!

[jaehyunspeachparty]

1.16

warnings: This story contains content that could be problematic for one or the other. Among other things, the story may contain content about sex, rape, late pregnancy, relationship with a large age difference, and others. Just because it's in the warnings doesn't mean these topics will appear, but they will definitely be covered in the story. The content of the story is fixed and doesn’t change. If you don't feel comfortable with these topics, then it's okay if you don't read the story. I just write down my ideas here and I just enjoy writing about life. The fact that some things in life are not rational or weird for some people is also part of it 

Jaemin ... Hyunjin ... Jaemin ... Hyunjin ...

This was on her mind all the time and this just wouldn't let go out of her mind. She knew none of this was right. She had to tell Hyunjin that she kissed Jaemin. He was so loving to her that she had to be fair to him. Miga just didn't know what to do next and she went into the small break room to get a coffee. But when she opened the door, she saw that there were already people inside. Kiha, Beomsoo and Hyunjin were sitting at the table and they looked depressed. "Oh," she said, not really sure if she was bothering the boys. But Hyunjin got up immediately and hugged her. He pressed her firmly against his chest and Miga could feel how fast his heart was beating. "I'm glad you're here." He stroked her hair and she didn't know what to do. "Are you okay? Hyunjin, did something happen?" She was a little worried, of course. "It was a very hard day today. We received a lot of criticism and Hyunjin in particular took a lot," said Kiha, and he also looked depressed. "What did they say?" Asked Miga and stroked his chest. "I did everything wrong ... I'm just a failure," he sighed and buried his face in her hair. He was looking for comfort in her because she was the person who made him feel good. "You are not a failure. The pressure is only increasing." You try to calm him down, but Hyunjin still felt bad. "You have to tell your father that. He's particularly strict with him," said Beomsoo and laughed a little, because he found it particularly ironic that Hyunjin was currently dating the daughter of his strictest teacher. "Dad? Really?" Somehow Miga couldn't imagine her father being so strict. He couldn't even be really strict with the twins when they were doing their pranks. For her, her father was just soft and full of love. "Should I talk to him?", She then asked and gently stroked Hyunjin's cheek, but he shook his head. "No, that only makes things worse. I have to try harder." Hyunjin looked at her and he seemed determined. "You don't have to do this for my father." Miga doesn't want him to overexert himself. "I do that for you too ... for us ..." He put his forehead on Miga's and he smiled. Her heart was pounding and she saw how serious he was. She was extremely important to him, for that he would risk everything. One day he wanted to introduce himself to her parents and he wanted that they will like him and his work. It wouldn't work with Jaemin ... probably never. So one point for Hyunjin. She didn't know what to say so she just kissed him. Then she made herself a coffee and sat down with the boys, while Hyunjin was always looking for her touch, but not badly, but with a lot of love. He took care of her, wanted her to be comfortable with him. He never took one step too much, but gave her enough time. He was maybe quick with feelings, but he let her take every step of the sexual. He could wait, he wanted to wait because he was nervous about sleeping with her after all. He was afraid that he would fail, that he would not be able to fulfill her wishes, because he wanted to be perfect for her. "How is the shooting of your new drama going? There is a lot of news about it," Kiha asked Miga and tried to divert attention from the subject of their criticism. "It haven't started yet, but soon," she said and smiled. "You're playing with this new actress Chunghee, aren't you? She's so beautiful," Beomsoo grinned widely and confessed his crush. "Yes, but I don't know her yet," confessed Miga. So far, Chunghee was always busy as she has not yet finished filming her last drama. She was fairly new to the industry, but because of her beauty and acting talent, people quickly noticed her. "Isn't she too old for you, Beomsoo?", Kiha asked his colleague and laughed. "11 years," added Hyunjin and laughed while gently stroking Miga's shoulder. Sometimes Miga felt like they were in a relationship. He gave her all of the comfort and attention. It felt good for her to be with him, it was so natural..so easy. But then suddenly her phone lit up and she immediately read the message that was from you. "I'm in the training room with your father. Are you coming?" Miga read the message and quickly took the last sip of her coffee. "Okay, I have to go. My mum is waiting," she said and smiled. "I wish you a nice weekend with her," said Hyunjin with a smile and looked at her with wide eyes. "Let's see what mum wants. I think it's strange that she suddenly wants to have a weekend with me alone." "Maybe because you start shooting the drama and then you will have little time?", Hyunjin said. "Yes, maybe", Miga said with a shrug, but when she wanted to get up he held her tight for a moment to kiss her gently. "Are you calling me?" He asked, whereupon she nods and kisses him again. Then she goes up a floor to go to the training room and when she opened the door she saw you and Jaehyun sitting on the floor, arm in arm. "Can you two stop being so cute?" Said Miga and rolled her eyes. "I also want to have something from your mum before you go away for the weekend," said Jaehyun and grinned. "Yuck Dad." "Don't always think about something dirty," you say and laugh. "How was your day?" You ask and Jaehyun sighed. "We had to give the trainees feedback today, which was pretty tough. It annoys me especially with one of the trainees because they have so much talent." Jaehyun told the story and Miga immediately noticed. “Who do you mean?” She asks and pretends to be innocent. "Hyunjin, maybe you've seen him before. He's the visual of the group because his look is really unique," said Jaehyun. "But what's the problem?" You ask and Miga was relieved that she doesn't have to ask any further, otherwise it would be conspicuous. "We're thinking about him becoming the group leader but lately we've been feeling like he's distracted. He has to try harder." Jaehyun sighed and stroked your hand. Miga felt bad. Was she the reason for this? She didn't want him to fail because of her. "Is it too much for him?" You ask and Jaehyun shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe that, or a girl, it can also be family problems." Miga had to swallow the words of her father and Miga didn't know what to do. "Okay, we should go now." You get up and take your bag. Miga followed you and you both say goodbye to Jaehyun.

You spent the whole afternoon and evening in the hotel. You chat about irrelevant things and somehow Miga didn't seem to be completely with herself. She was so closed and she never was like that. But at night something changed... You haven't been able to sleep deeply since you had children. The years when the children cried in their sleep, when they were hungry and simply needed you, left you in a light sleep. And that night you woke up too. "No ... please don't ..." It was Miga who talked in her sleep. You turn to her and see that she is sweating. But she got quiet again and you close your eyes too. "Leave it ... NO!" She was starting to get louder now and you thought she was having a nightmare. You stroke her arm and hope that she will calm down soon. But it got worse. Miga began to whimper and scream and she became very restless. From that moment you couldn't let her be like that anymore, you have to wake her up. "Miga, wake up. You have a nightmare." You take her in your arms and stroke her to calm her down. Her pulse was high and she was breathing hard. It took her a while to realize that this was all just a dream. She lay in her mother's arms and whimpered like a little girl. "Everything is fine. Mummy is here." You stroke her hair and kiss her forehead. Her body was shaking and you wonder if she has dreams like this often. Was that the reason why she sneaks out of the house and drives away every night? "It was just a dream," you say and smile gently, but Miga shook her head. "No, it's like going through it every day." You didn't know what she meant and you start to worry. "Miga, would you like to tell me something?" You stroke her dark hair and sigh. There was something close to your little girl's heart and you had known it for a while, but you couldn't really gauge it. And Miga told you the whole story that happened to her at school. She even said that Jaemin was coming and if he hadn't been there, something bad would have happened. You didn't quite know how to react. You NEVER wanted anything like this to happen to your daughter. You thought she would be safe in school. At the moment you didn't know whether to cry or scream. You were angry with the school, the boys and you were sad that Miga had to experience that. "Why didn't you talk to me about it?" You ask her worriedly. "Because then you'd think it's a lie so I wouldn't go to school." Miga was crying into your chest and she was still snuggled close to you, just like she had done as a little child. "Miga, I know I'm very strict about your education, but I take things like that very seriously." And that's when you tell her the story when you were pregnant with the twins and you had Mathew in your life. "Mum, why did you never told me that?" The girl wiped away her tears and looked up at you. "It's a dark time that I don't like to talk about myself." You stroke her hair and worry so much. "Mum, I really can't go back to this school." You understood Miga and you now understand so much more. "I know we might find another solution. I just want you to finish school and even if we have to pay a private tutor." You smile and your daughter nodded and it seemed like a good plan. You two then lie down again and watch a little TV and at some point Miga fell asleep in your arms again and this time she no longer had a nightmare.

You couldn't sleep all night because you are very concerned that Miga has been sexually molested by the two boys and that nothing is being done against them. Miga was always in danger, as were the other girls. In the morning you go for a walk with your daughter. There was a forest near the hotel and a lake that you walk along. Miga clung to your arm and you were glad that the old familiarity was restored. "How's the project going with the new baby?" She asked you and you sigh. "Don't expect too much. We've been trying it for over six months and I don't seem to get pregnant anymore. I think we shouldn't try anymore, but your dad still has hope." "Oh, Daddy ... weren't we good enough for him?" Joked Miga and laughed. "No, he's so incredibly proud of you all. I don't think we can handle the thought that you are all growing up. You were as cute as you were little and we had such a good time with you. I think we are a little bit longed and think that a new baby can make up for it. " You sigh, it was hard to tell the truth sometimes.  You go a few more steps and Miga thought about it. You quickly realize that something was bothering her, but you gave her a little bit of time because you had the feeling that she would soon open up. "Mum?" She suddenly asked and you smile gently. It was so difficult for her to hide something from you. She could easily play something in front of her father, but you're more likely to see through her. "What's happening?" You turn to her and look deep into her eyes. "When did you know dad was the right one?" And when she asked you that question, you knew she was lovesick.  "Well, whether he was the right one? I never know if the moment ever existed. There were more things that spoke against your father." You smile and think about the time when you were newly in love. "Then why did you marry Daddy?" "A lot spoke against your father, but my heart only wanted him." You're grinning and even now you couldn't hide the fact that you love Jaehyun completely. But Miga wasn’t happy with your answer. She looked at the floor desperately and sat down on the wooden bench that was on the way. "Can you feel the same for two people?" She folded her hands and sighed. You sit down next to her and try to look at her. "I don't know, I've never experienced anything like it. Do you feel something for two people?" You try to give her a familiar environment so that she could finally open up to you. "Yes ... One looks good, is always there for me. I feel so comfortable with him and I forget all my worries and problems. The other drives me crazy, everything is so exciting. It always remains exciting and everything feels so intense." Miga found it difficult to describe all of this. "And is there anything negative?" You ask, maybe it helped her to sort out her thoughts better. "One is an idol and the other is ... older ..." Miga sighed and she can hardly believe that she had already told you so much. "How much older?" You ask with a raised eyebrow. "In Daddy's area." Miga bit her lip and you remember when she once asked you about a older guy. You were pretty blocked back then and you regret it now. "Do I know the guy?" You ask, because you already had a feeling who it was. Miga didn't say anything because she didn't know whether to tell you. "Miga, if you don't want your father to know, it'll remain our secret." You had agreed with Jaehyun that you would tell each other everything about the children, but it was difficult with Miga. She was a woman like you and she had problems which Jaehyun would never understand. "Never tell it Daddy. Please! Promise Mum." And suddenly she started crying again. It hurt you to see your little girl like this. She had carried so much pain with her for the past few weeks and kept it all to herself. "Miga, I promise you. That'll stay between us." You take her in your arms and she laid her head on your chest. She sobbed a few more seconds until she collected herself again. "One of them is Hyunjin, whom Dad told us about yesterday. He's so cute, he's so calm and relaxed. I can talk to him about anything. But he'll have his debut soon and won't be allowed to date. Besides, Dad wants not that one of his trainees is dating me. He's already so strict on Hyunjin. And I don't want to distract Hyunjin. Dad said he was distracted and I'm afraid it's because of me. I know Hyunjin likes me. .. " Miga began to sob again. "It doesn't have to be because of you. And an idol can also date beside his job. Your father secretly dated me for two years." You smile and wipe her tears away. "No Mum, he knows about the other person and he knows about the incident. I give him too much grief." She looks up at you with big eyes and you stroke her hair to the side. "Okay. What about the other one?" You ask her further and Miga quickly looked away from you again. "Mum ... if you tell Dad, I can never tell you anything again. You can’t tell anyone else too." She wouldn't go on talking if you didn't promise her that. So you promise her that you won't tell Jaehyun or anyone else. "It's Jaemin ..." Miga looked at you uncertainly and you froze. Of course you suspected it, but to have it confirmed and that shocked you more. "Jaemin?" You ask again and she nodded. "We have so many interests in common and it's all so exciting." She sighed, but you had a few other questions that worried you. "Do you sleep with him?" You knew the question was rather inappropriate, but you were her mother, after all. "Mum ..." she hissed angrily, but then she softened again. "Don't worry Mum, I'm still a virgin. If it goes on like this, Chichi and Sunoh will fuck around before me." Miga was annoyed, but you were relieved. "Miga, I know it's difficult, but is it possible that you only find Jaemin interesting because it's something forbidden?" You don't want to mention the age at all and try another way. "No, we have so many hobbies and interests in common." "Miga, I don't want to sound like your mother at the moment, but Jaemin is not only older, he has known you since you were a baby." You sigh and wonder why Jaemin let it get this far. He was the older one, he should have refused her. Why did he allow Miga to develop such feelings. "MUM. You just don't get it." She started to sob again and you didn't want to lose your new confidence. "No, I get it, but ..." You turn to her and take her hand. "I want you to take the pill or the IUD now. Something that will protect you." Suddenly the girl blushed and she wasn't quite sure. "You are 19 years old and it will happen with someone someday. No matter who it is ... contraception is important." Jaemin was still heavy on your shoulders. But you realize that it didn't work out to talk her out of it. It was more important to you that she trusted you and preferred to tell you everything than that she does it secretly. But you already had a plan.

The weekend with Miga was good and you were glad that she had opened up to you, but all of that kept you busy. The sexual abuse, Jaemin ... Miga was in the real world and you couldn't protect her anymore. "How was your weekend?", Jaehyun asked when he came into your bedroom and sat on the bed. "Fine. I feel closer to her again," you say and try to smile, but your mind was elsewhere. You wanted to help her without her knowing. "That pleases me." Jaehyun smiled and leaned over you. "And we will take Miga out of school." You don't want to send your daughter anywhere near these guys for a second. "Now suddenly?" Jaehyun laughed and lay down next to you. "I still want her to finish school anyway. Maybe with distance learning or a private tutor? I know some of you do that. Maybe you can talk to people at SM?" You're trying to find a solution to everything somehow. "Yes, of course, I'll ask around tomorrow." Jaehyun suddenly realized that you were serious about this. "And it should be a woman to teach her," you add. Under no circumstances do you want her to be in such danger again. "Uh, yes I can ask." Jaehyun was slowly becoming confused. "Y/N, I'm starting to worry." He sat up and looked at you desperately. But how should you tell him that. You had to keep that with Jaemin a secret, but that with the boys ... "We need to talk to the director." You're already going through the conversation in your head, but Jaehyun couldn't follow you. "What's going on?" He asked more panicked and you turn to him and you started to cry. "They tried to rape our little girl..."

providentia masterlist

daddy jaehyun masterlist

#jaehyun #daddy jaehyun #jaehyun scenarios #jaehyun imagines #jaehyun jung #jaehyun dad #jaehyun angst #nct #nct 127 #nct u fluff #nct u #nct 2020 #nct angst #nct 127 angst #nct 2020 angst

[stark-park]

So I've been thinking about why I love The Old Guard so much and it's because it says fuck you to all the normalised stereotypes and tropes in relationships that are abundant in media these days.

Starting with romance, we're shown that Joe and Nicky are so deeply in love with each other and have a very healthy relationship. We're all aware of that at this point I know, but for me it's the way it's shown.

I'm an aromantic and sex-repulsed asexual which means sex scenes often ruin whatever it is I'm watching, I find it disgusting and will close my eyes and stick my hands over my ears. It's just not my thing and there are so many movies that chuck these scenes in for what seems like no apparent reason other than the fact they could. Action films seem to do this a lot and I'm so glad we didn't get this with TOG. I suppose the film's plot would have struggled to actually fit this scene in but again, it would have been so easy for them to introduce Joe and Nicky with a sex scene and shown us explicitly that these men are a couple.

Instead, the first direct showing of them being a couple is when they're cozied up together sleeping on the train. Sure we get those looks on the kill floor but if someone had just shot up my family and potentially killed us permanently, I would look to my bro and check he's still alive and ready to kill some bitches too. Also, it shows us just how much these two care for each other that they're sleeping soundly in a soft embrace. I am a sucker for Soft men and affectionate (but not inherently sexual) touch.

The way these two love each other so naturally fills my heart. Looking across the table at one another with smiles meant just for them, Joe's wink, "the love of my life", "as much as I like watching you sleep, I'm glad you're awake", them holding each others shirts/arms after Keane shoots Nicky, spooning, just... YES!

Of course, the van scene is so soft and tender and loving too! I hate watching people kiss, it's gross, and here this film presents this extremely romantic couple who are so in love with each other, and they only ever kiss on screen ONCE! I only have to look away from the TV for a few seconds and that's it! They aren't kissing each other throughout the film to make the audience know FOR SURE that they love each other. They don't need to. And I'm all for it! Also, gay representation! Healthy, happy gay representation!

With Andy and Quynh too, we get those smiles to one another, "the two of us, until the end", and granted there isn't much screen time with Quynh but their relationship is still shown to be so incredibly strong and loving without needing kisses or sex shown to us. I mean, you could read it as a strong platonic bond and disregard comic canon, and their relationship is STILL powerful with the loss of Quynh weighing so heavy on Andy's heart. Romantic or platonic, Andy and Quynh's relationship is given such weight to it.

And speaking of platonic relationships, I absolutely love Andy and Booker's relationship. The BFF/sibling roles they have is great, "you're still in this shitty game with me", the affectionate head bonks, "you and me Book", the way they understand each other. Their relationship is incredibly strong and given just as much attention as the romantic relationship in the group. It isn't shown as a second tier relationship, it's one of the reasons Book betrays the team after all - "this is what you wanted" - which makes it all the more heartbreaking. I know people love friends to lovers but when so much of media has this trope, it makes it seem like friendships aren't to be fought for as much as romantic ones, that friendships aren't enough. It was so nice to have a movie have this strong friendship and when I wished for "oh god please don't make them kiss" it came true! No kiss, no romance, no weird sexual tension, just pure and utter love for their friend/family.

And in conjunction with the heartbreak, one of the main reasons for Book's depressed arse is due to familial relationship! The fact he can't escape the grief of his children dying and this is given more weight to it than the relationship he had with his wife. The thought of losing my parent is something I can absolutely relate to and while this isn't the same as losing a child, it's something I can understand much more than a romantic partner.

I'm just really in awe of this film and how it presented relationships. The way it has me, an aroace, fawning over a romantic pairing is something I didn't think would happen. I just really appreciate it, especially in a day and age where romance and being in a relationship is held in such high esteem. Kissing? Sex? Ew can't relate, but soft head bonks and smiles, hell yeah gimme more of that!

#Aroace approved #aromantic #asexual #Aroace #The old guard #The old guard thoughts #Tog thoughts #lgbtqia #lgbt representation #sex repulsed

[onisionisacanceronthisearth]

Why we care about Onision and Coolguykai’s kids (Masterlist)

There’s a lot of information floating around about the kids but I don’t know if anyone has made a post compiling it all together so I figured I would do so. Also because an “argument” used again the anti-o community is that “we’re creepy for even thinking about kids” so I figured I’d show that we’re not just thinking about them for no real reason. For some slight background information, they have an older son around age 7 and a younger daughter around age 4. This is written in bullet form under the cut with bold sections for easier/quicker reading for those who would prefer that. Feel free to add more if you know anything and I’ll keep updating this post. Eli=Kai

Update: The girl fell 12 feat out the second story window to the ground giving her a depressed skull fracture. This was because Kai was cooking and left the child alone in a room with the tv and a caprisun while they were cooking and James was in the garage. The right side of her head was caved in and requires constant monitoring. The girl was known to climb the furniture and also known for standing at windows by the couple which is why the windows are supposedly kept locked to protect her. Even then, she was left totally without supervision and fell as far as she did right onto the driveway. She may have serious brain damage. James filmed her body while Kai comforted her because he was paranoid it would be seen as his fault (the video wouldn’t absolve him of anything, he’s just an low IQ dumbass). James also made a lot of awful sexually themed tweets while he was in the hospital with his potentially dying daughter. Here and here are links to the full police report, the daughter’s name was redacted due to her age

Greg refuses to talk with children who cannot speak properly yet. Besides the obvious stupidity behind this (children learn to talk from being spoken to), giving a child the impression that they are only recognized for what they can do for their parents is an emotionally damaging thing to do. It’s also damaging to show emotional neglect which Greg is doing by not caring for his children beyond the uses he has for them

Greg and Eli will have sex in front of their kids and while sharing a bed with them. Early exposure to sex is harmful for kids and despite the obvious fact that Greg isn’t a dom, he still does have rough and harmful sex with Eli and the other girls they bring in for threesomes. We have seen the marks on Eli’s neck, we now know those kids likely have seen Greg give them to him. There was an incident where the boy was in the room on a tablet while his parents were going at it right in front of him as well as the now infamous story that the first time Sarah had a threesome with the couple (Greg and Eli suddenly started having sex without Sarah’s knowledge or consent then she joined after), the daughter was in the bed with them too. They would start and stop sex as the girl kept waking up because they were right beside her on the same bed

During a blackout once, Eli decided to vlog about it. In the video you can see one of the children under the table with a tablet shining in their eyes. Instead of comforting the kids they were told to hide under the table with a tablet while their parents vlogged about it. The parents then promptly went out to eat. It’s unsure if the kids went with them (we didn’t see them in the vlog) so either the kids were out with them while their parents spoke quite vulgar in the car, or the “loving” parents left their two very young children alone at home during a blackout with nothing but some tablets to keep them happy

Overall it does seem like the parents think that tablets are an adequate babysitter for toddlers. Even if that toddler isn’t in the same room as them. That is very obviously not safe nor a good substitute for caring for a child. Given the accident the girl had, it’s clear they think that if they leave an active toddler in a closed room, totally out of sight, with a tv that that’s safe

They chose to parent their children using the “gentle” and “attachment” parenting techniques. They do not implement these styles properly however on top of the possible negative effects of these parenting techniques. This has resulted in:

Not ending breastfeeding at an appropriate time or with the proper care required for prolonged feeding

Breastfeeding at night without brushing teeth afterwards resulting in the boy losing his teeth at age 2

The boy not being told to not be physically violent with his sister or dealing with the child’s violence but instead instructing him to punch Greg instead (the boy will push his sister off the couch for example).

Sleeping with the children despite the couple clearly wanting sex constantly as mentioned above

And all the other complications of never telling your child no, never introducing new things to them or imposing rules or restrictions, having one parent refuse to give you boundaries while another that doesn’t even care to talk to you half the time, etc. The parenting style is meant to be gentle, but this results in, as stated above, not telling the children not to hurt people either

The children supposedly only had one friend (or at least the boy did) which was Maddie’s daughter. Greg and Eli spontaneously decided to end their relationship with Maddie resulting in their son losing his only friend and playmate. Given the nature of the split from Maddie, it’s clear their son was not a factor in the decision at all (not saying you have to remain friends with someone for the sake of your kids but the decision to drop Maddie was bullshit and clearly selfish)

While baby sitting his and Maddie’s kids, Greg refused to change Maddie’s daughter’s diaper and didn’t even bother telling Maddie about the diaper being full. This resulted in Maddie coming back to find her daughter covered in feces and it had been on her daughter long enough that the resulting rash caused her daughter to bleed. Greg clearly doesn’t give a shit about babies (no pun intended) and makes me wonder how often his children’s diapers were messy and he did nothing about it

The Jackson house is FILTHY and not suitable for children. Just recently I posted one of Eli’s videos and it contained a part where Eli saw the dog walking around with food in its mouth that Eli didn’t even know where it came from and not even phased by it. Food being left out is a mold and bacterial hazard on its own, very harmful for children. But it’s also teaching kids bad habits and also if the dog could find it, kids could too and toddlers love putting things in their mouths

Greg used to have a large sex doll that had no business being in a small house with children running around with no supervision

Greg’s initial wetland work created a direct line to the lake they live on, that’s a serious drowning hazard, especially for someone who didn’t think he could watch to make sure his kids wouldn’t walk to a tree that could hurt them. He has also now planted (or at least bought) poisonous bright red berries among a bunch of edible ones. So much for worrying about the kids...

The diet of the Jackson family is atrocious. It’s already showing negative effects on the parents but that is much less dangerous than having malnutritioned children. The children are growing and developing and they require proper nutrition for this, not doing so can result in many dangerous complications on top of both mental and physical stunting of growth.

Update: Greg’s daughter has been seen recently in a video and yes, she is crazy small for her age

Greg has been reported as yelling at his child and blaming said child for “causing them to lose” a game. This was reported by Maya while the three of them were playing a video game and were teamed up together. Greg literally yelled at his toddler for not being perfect at a fucking video game not only turning the game into being about winning, but putting expectations on a child that just should not be the case. As a parent, and even as a younger sibling it can even be beneficial to let them win because otherwise it would be unfair to play any games with them, especially those requiring larger amounts of skill. You wouldn’t expect David Beckham to play soccer with his kids with the same vigor he’d play professionally would you? And if you’re playing a game as a team with your kid and you want to win, it’s up to you to play better to make up for the obvious difference in skill when a toddler is playing

Speaking of Maya, when yelling at her for refusing his advances he spontaneously laid on her without her consent and with no real warning (it was intended for her to be another one of Eli’s girlfriends and she was brought over, as far as she knew, to meet with Eli to see if they were compatible in person), Greg was actually holding his child and running in and out of the room screaming at her. The subject matter alone was inappropriate for a child to hear (Greg asking why she was not sexually attracted to him because “everyone was” for example), let alone being carried by a screaming man running around the house. It almost seemed as if Greg decided to use his child as a human shield because there was no other reason for him to pick up a child to bring to a room where he was going to scream at a young woman. The child couldn’t even leave if he wanted to because he was being held

There was audio in the background of one of Eli’s videos where you can hear Greg scream to “take some fucking responsibility for once”. This was either directed at one of his very young children, or yelled at someone else in the house or on the phone loud enough for the children to hear. Again, not a good environment for these children to grow up in

During a livestream the boy once entered the room to tell Greg that he loved him, Greg didn’t respond back in kind. I get that Greg likely wanted to get the kid out of the livestream for his so-called privacy, but that doesn’t stop him from from quickly responding to the kid while doing so. Especially in a private livestream with people who know of your kids and are waiting in line to enter into the household as a third

The children get to watch Eli flinch and otherwise act scared of Greg, they may not understand it, but their brains will remember this. It is also encouraging them to be more scared of their father than they already likely are

James gets mad if Kai turns on the heat even in January. Toddlers and children can be quite sensitive to the cold and it doesn’t matter how he feels, what matters is his children (which clearly isn’t how he feels)

Update: A recent video of the girl has shown that her hair is a sad mess. At that age the girl’s hair should be bright, shiney, and healthy looking. Unfortunately it is unkempt and dull. It would look like her hair is washed too often with bad products and not brushed as it should be on top of visual signs of deficiencies leading to unhealthy hair. I’d take a potshot and assume this child were deficient in amino acids and other healthy fats if she were brought to me (disclaimer: I cannot officially diagnose anyone over the internet). It may also be due to her horrific accident

#onision #coolguykai #laineybot #onision and his kids

[mirandalinotto]

South Solitary Review

Trigger Warnings: Death, Combat PTSD, Referenced Suicide, Sexual Assault/Dubious Consent, Cheating, Implied Pregnancy Loss/Abortion, Hysterectomy, Blaming the Victim..... yeah. it’s a lot.

here there be spoilers. 

I definitely went into this movie thinking it was a cute little story about a girl, her lamb, and her stern uncle. Boy, was I wrong!

Miranda Otto plays Meredith Appleton, the niece of George (played be her real-life father, Barry Otto). I’m going to use Miranda and Barry’s names instead of their character names, because that’s just easier to understand, I think, but please know I’m talking about the characters they play, not they themselves.

So, Barry and Miranda are sent to the South Solitary island because the Head Lighthouse Keeper committed suicide, and the lighthouse needed a new person in charge. Barry is incredibly strict and often rude, but I suppose that’s understandable, at least when it comes to how he treats his staff, considering the state they find the lighthouse management in.

Miranda’s character seems incredibly precious, shy, demure, and completely unfit for the rough life of living on a craggy rock with only a few other people for company. At the start, there are six other people on the island: the Stanley family, which consists of Henry Stanley (a rogue if there ever was one), Alma, his rough and sharp-tongued wife (played by Essie Davis), and their three children... and then the brooding, PTSD-plagued war-veteran, Jack Fleet.

There are some pretty upsetting subjects discussed in this movie, not the least of which being an extremely blunt conversation between Miranda and Essie Davis, in which Essie Davis’ character presses Miranda for intimate details about why she isn’t married yet, and hasn’t had any kids. 

Miranda reveals that she can’t have children, because an operation went wrong (it’s implied that she had an abortion, based on Essie asking, “you were up the pipe?”), and she was forced to have a hysterectomy as a result. She says the child was conceived with a married man (which I’m extremely confused about, because I thought the man involved would’ve been her so-called fiancé...?) and it’s very odd that they just drop that fact into the story, because it seems extremely out of character for Meredith, as we know her currently... and yet, it becomes a fundamental characterization, as she later goes on to sleep with a married man again, and defends how poorly her uncle treats her by insisting that he was the only one who would take her in after the (implied) abortion. 

Essie Davis is unsympathetic to Miranda’s sad backstory, and never warms up to Miranda’s character... so the opportunity for female friendship was sadly missed in this film. They are pretty much enemies from start to finish.

There’s also a subplot where Miranda tries to get to know the youngest child, Netty, but the girl is very hard to read. You can tell she’s had a rough life, and doesn’t suffer fools. Their “friendship” barely develops before Netty fails to care for Miranda’s sheep, and they have a falling out.

Also, there is an ambiguously rape-y, dubiously consensual scene where Henry attempts to seduce Miranda, and is... apparently successful? I feel very strongly that her multiple polite refusals of his advances ought to have indicated to the man that he should leave her alone. She seems incredibly naïve, innocent, and virginal in this scene (which is odd, considering she’s apparently had an affair with a married man before...?!). He’s pretty open about being attracted to her for a good portion of the scene, so Miranda’s polite rebuffs shouldn’t have been taken as consent---as in, he took the fact that she didn’t throw him out of her cottage at the first warning sign as “leading him on.”

To that point, she literally says, “I’m sorry if I’ve led you on,” and he says she hasn’t, and then like one minute later, when she insists she hadn’t noticed that he was interested in her, he acts surprised and goes: “well now you really are leading me on.”

When it becomes clear he’s about to kiss her, she gets this incredibly frightened look on her face, and says, “oh! there’s the milk boiling!” clearly intending to run away from him and tend to the stove, but he forces her to kiss him... and then the scene cuts to black, leaving me very concerned that he raped her.

We see them alone together two more times, one where he forces another kiss on her in the light house, and then another where it’s just a straight-up sex scene. I hate the angle they took the sex scene from, because it looks like Miranda’s body is in an extremely uncomfortable position as he pounds into her. It definitely doesn’t read as a romantic coupling, that’s for sure. 

I guess we’re meant to believe that she warmed up to him sometime between him forcing himself on her in the kitchen and them having sex in her bed days later...?

(I hate it.)

Anyway, Essie Davis finds out about the affair, and makes the whole family leave the island. This leaves only three people left: Miranda, Barry, and the war-veteran, Jack, who has frequent PTSD episodes and really shouldn’t be a lighthouse keeper at all. 

Also, Barry is PISSED when he finds out about Miranda’s affair, and there’s a lot of slut-shaming and victim-blaming that goes on, right before he just randomly... dies? I definitely didn’t see that coming. So he dies while still extremely disappointed in Miranda, and I just hate that, because her character seems fixated on what others think of her. His displeasure with her in his final hours definitely left a wound in her heart.

Which then leaves Miranda alone on the island with Jack. Miranda’s character isn’t good at being alone. The rest of the movie is honestly just her trying to get Jack to open up to her, but he doesn’t really. They embroider things together, and he teaches her how to be a lighthouse keeper, but they only barely scratch the surface of each other’s pasts. 

And then a ship arrives to take her home....?!! The end?! But not before she insists she ought to stay, which I found incredibly weird. She barely knows this brooding man, and suddenly she can’t live without him? She doesn’t want to leave him alone, despite the living conditions on the island being impossible for her to endure? It’s very strange.

I had high hopes for this movie, and I do think it’s worth watching, if only for Miranda’s beautiful, moving performance.... but I just sort of don’t know what the point or message of this film was supposed to be...? 

Miranda Otto’s character is treated pretty poorly by everyone on the island. There is very little happiness or humor to balance the darkness of the story.  Most of the moments that are meant to be romantic or sexy are dubiously consensual, so I didn’t find those very enjoyable, and the subplot about her lamb going missing (presumed dead) and then her finding it months later just isn’t that entertaining, if I’m being honest?

All in all, I’d give Miranda’s performance a 10/10, but the movie as a whole about a 5/10.

#miranda otto #south solitary #essie davis #meredith appleton #barry otto

[waitineedaname]

frame the halves and call them a whole

also on ao3

--

“Alright, I’ve got a bad one.”

“Oh, lord.”

“Brace yourself.”

“I’m bracing!” Sasha made a show of gripping the short carpet on her living room floor and Tim grinned, leaning back against her coffee table.

“Would you rather… date a spider with the head of a human, or a human with the head of a spider?”

“Jesus. I see someone has been reading the discredited statements.”

“Guilty.” Tim shrugged cheekily. 

The two of them were sitting on the floor in Sasha’s flat, and she’d long since lost track of what time it was. Ever since they’d been moved to the Archives, they’d made an agreement to go out and do something together once a week. Sometimes that meant getting sloshed and losing at pub trivia, sometimes that meant dragging each other to whatever new film had made it to theaters that week, and sometimes that meant playing sleepover games in the middle of the night, as if they were twelve year olds and not thirty-somethings with 9-to-5’s. Neither of them had the energy to go out drinking and there wasn’t anything good in the theaters that week, so the third option had won out. They’d ended up on the floor when Sasha made an ill-advised comment about not being ticklish and Tim called her bluff. She’d dissolved into hysterical giggles and he’d said something about how being an oldest sibling meant having a sixth sense for someone’s ticklish spots, and then he’d gone very still and quiet. She’d taken his hand and squeezed and initiated the game of would-you-rather they found themselves in now.

“Okay. Let me think about this.” She drummed her fingers on her lips contemplatively. Tim smiled in that fond way he did when he didn’t want to outright laugh at her. “Are the human and spider bits proportional?”

“Ooh, very good question, Sash. Let’s say they’re the normal sizes for your average spiders and humans.”

“So my options are a human head scuttling around on spider legs or a human with an absolutely microscopic spider head?”

“Yep!” Tim said, popping the ‘p.’

“I’m going to go with option A. I mean, if it’s a human head, I could still hold a conversation with it, right? And I don’t think spiders would make good kissers.”

“I think some of our statement givers would disagree with that judgment.”

“Please don’t tell me we have a statement about a human body with a spider head. I don’t think I could take it.”

“Sure do! Statement number 9170108, or something like that. Some freaked out old coot convinced his neighbor’s head was fake and he was keeping a tiny little spider underneath the fake head.”

“Christ. I’m glad Jon didn’t ask me to look into that one. I might have quit on the spot.” Sasha laughed.

“Aw, and then leave me and Martin to deal with Jon? You know how he gets with the spider ones.” 

“Hm, fair. The Archives need someone sensible around.”

“Hey, you’re not the sole voice of reason down there!”

“You’re right. Martin can be fairly practical when he wants.” She failed to bite back her smirk when Tim clutched his chest, feigning pain.

“Oh, how you wound me, Ms. James! Here I was, thinking it was Tim and Sasha versus the world, but you’ve betrayed me for Martin!”

“Is that your proposal for a Scott Pilgrim reboot? Am I Ramona in this scenario?”

“No, we’re both Scott Pilgrim because combined, we can equal the pure sexual energy of one Michael Cera.”

“Eugh! Gross!” She retched and kicked at him, making him laugh. 

“I’m kidding!”

“You better be! Any and all horniness for Michael Cera is banned in this flat!”

“That’s fair.” He caught her foot and shoved it back at her. “Knives and Ramona were both way too good for him, anyway. They should’ve ended up together at the end.”

“That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said all night.”

“You’re really not pulling any punches tonight, huh?”

“Nope. My turn. Would you rather...” She crossed her arms and stared him down long enough to make him squirm, “get stoned with Jon or Elias?”

Tim groaned so loud she worried her neighbors would complain. “No. Absolutely not. You cannot make me choose that.”

“Hey, you asked about spider people!”

“Yeah, and I’d argue that dealing with my bosses while stoned is worse than a human head skittering around on the walls!”

“Oh, come on. Jon isn’t that bad.”

“Sasha. You were friends with him in Research. I was friends with him in Research. Last time we got drinks, he talked about South American moths for forty minutes. I’m getting a headache just thinking about listening to him while he’s stoned.”

“Maybe it’ll calm him down.”

“Maybe.” Tim pouted, and Sasha did her best not to giggle. “Alright fine. I choose Jon, but only because I cannot imagine Elias getting within eyesight of anything as fun as weed without shriveling up and acting like an affronted Victorian gentleman.”

“Okay, first of all, the Victorians loved drugs, they were high on opiates all the time-"

"Like hell am I doing opiates with Elias."

"Second of all, I may have looked into what Elias was like before he got promoted…” She trailed off and bit back a laugh when Tim's jaw dropped.

“No.” 

“And he was a major stoner.”

“You can’t just say these things. I refuse to accept it.”

“I’m serious!”

“Are we talking about the same Elias? The Elias Bouchard that uses words like grandiloquent and apropos? The Elias Bouchard that gets pissy if you round up on your time card?”

“You know what’s even worse?”

“Please don’t make it worse.”

“I’ve seen him wear those socks with weed patterns on them.”

“I told you not to make it worse.” Tim wailed and covered his face. “I swear, if I saw that, I would gouge my eyes out without hesitation.” Sasha patted his leg sympathetically. 

“Well, good thing you chose Jon, then.”

“I guess so! Fuck’s sake.” He sighed and flopped over onto his side to lie on the floor. Sasha laughed at him goodnaturedly, and then joined him on the floor. She expected him to be thinking of his next would-you-rather prompt, but after a long minute of him silently running his fingers through the carpet, he surprised her by asking, “Do you ever miss Jon?”

“Sorry?” She said, confused. “We see him every day, Tim.”

“No, I…” He huffed, “You know what I mean. Do you miss the Jon we knew in Research?”

“Oh…” Sasha caught onto his drift and fell silent, unsure what to say. Tim was clearly brimming with emotions that he was struggling to get out, so she let him take a minute.

“Not saying he’s a completely different person now, but… I don’t know. We used to get drinks with him. He used to laugh at our jokes. He used to make jokes. Weird, dark jokes, but still jokes, you know? But these days, it’s all business, all the time. I don’t think I’ve seen him smile in months. All… All snappish comments and ‘research this, call this statement giver, stop goofing off during work hours.’ Never mind that just a year ago, he was the one using work hours to show us cat videos because he got distracted during his lunch break.” The side of Tim’s face was smushed into the floor and his one free eye was focused on the whorls he was creating with his fingers in the carpet. Up close as they were, Sasha could see the light scar on his chin that he’d once told her was the result of an ill-advised dare as a child, when his brother had challenged him to see if they could jump off the back deck of their house. She touched it, and he leaned into her hand, eyes distant and sad. “I just…” He spoke softly, “I miss my friend.”

“I miss him too.” Sasha said honestly, though she knew Tim was taking it harder than she was. “You know it’s not your fault, right?”

“I know that.” Tim said, and she believed him. “It’s this stupid job. The stupid Archives. I miss being in Research, where I could make fun of the weirdos in the Archives, but now we’re the weirdos in the Archives.”

“We work at an institute that studies the supernatural. I think we’re the weirdos no matter which department we’re in.” She said, aiming for some levity and feeling relieved when Tim let out a soft huff of laughter.

“Fair. Still. The vibes in there are…”

“Bad.” She finished for him.

“You can say that again.” He finally shifted to look at her again. “If you were the Head Archivist-”

“Tim-” She warned, not wanting to dig up an old sore point. 

“I’m serious. If you were the Archivist, do you think you’d act like this?”

“Would I push you away, you mean.” She said. He shrugged and nodded. “I don’t know. I really don’t, Tim. I’d like to say I wouldn’t, but who knows what kind of pressure it involves. I can be just as intense as Jon when I feel pressured.”

“Yeah, but you’d be way nicer than him.”

“You don’t know that.” Sasha said, firm but gentle. 

“...Guess I don’t.” Tim sighed and shut his eyes. She reached down and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

“Next time you’re missing Jon, call me instead, okay? Or Martin, he’d love that.” She ran her thumb over his and gave him a small smile. “You can always count on me.”

His gaze is impossibly soft as he looks up at her, and he seems to almost forget to respond at first. “Yeah.” He finally says. “I can always count on you, Sash.” A cheeky grin spread across his face, breaking the tender moment. “The Pilgrim to my Scott.”

She laughed and let go of his hand to push his shoulder into the leg of the coffee table playfully. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense!” He protested despite his own laughter. “Okay, maybe it doesn’t make sense, but it’s the thought that counts. I’m poetic.”

“No, you’re sleep-deprived.” She sat up enough to eye the microwave from her vantage point in the kitchen. “Oh lord, it’s 2am, no wonder. You always get sappy at 2am.”

“I do not!”

“You do. Big sap.” She patted his cheek playfully and stood. “Want me to get you some extra blankets for the couch?”

“That’d be great.” He hauled himself to his feet, groaning all the way. She snickered.

“You sound like an old man.”

“I’ll have you know, I’m young and spry.” He complained, stretching.

“Mhm.” She rolled her eyes and went to the closet.

“At the prime of my life.”

“And yet you make dad noises getting out of a chair.”

“Hey, lying on the floor isn’t good for your back! Aren’t you older than me anyway?”

“Maybe, but I’m not the one complaining about my back.” She cut off whatever complaint he had prepared by throwing a quilt at him. He caught it and stuck his tongue out at her. She returned the gesture and grabbed another blanket. “Are two blankets good?”

“That’s perfect.” He took the blanket gratefully and settled on the couch. “Should I make breakfast as thanks?”

“You don’t have to,” Sasha immediately said out of politeness, but then added, “But if you want to make pancakes…”

“Understood. I’ll see you bright and early with some pancakes, then.” Tim smiled up at her and made himself comfortable on the couch.

“See you in the morning, Tim.” She turned to walk to her room, but stopped at the doorway when Tim piped up again.

“Sasha?”

“Hm?” She looked back at him and saw his best flirty grin on his face. He winked and blew a kiss at her. More than used to his nonsense, she gasped and pretended to catch the invisible kiss, then promptly put her hand to mouth and pretended to eat the kiss. Tim clutched his heart and fell back onto the couch, trying to act like he wasn’t holding back laughter. “No, you’re so cruel!”

“Good night, Tim.” She said, closing the door behind herself before her poker face could break.

“Good night, Sasha.” She heard through the door, full of fondness and amusement in equal parts. 

Sasha rolled out of bed the next morning to find Tim making pancakes, as promised. They sat at her kitchen table and bickered playfully about movies; Tim listened patiently as she infodumped about the history of science fiction as a genre, and she let him rant for the fiftieth time about Indiana Jones. Tim insisted on washing the dishes like a gentleman, and Sasha insisted on squirting bubbles out of the dish detergent bottle at him. They didn’t speak a word about work or their conversation from the night before, but she hugged him very tightly before he left, as if conveying all the emotion she could through touch alone. From the way he squished his face into her shoulder, it seemed the message came across. 

“I’ll make sure to get you the spider guy’s number.” He said when they finally pulled apart, and she snorted.

“You’re insufferable, you know that?” She said, shoving him out the door.

“So I’ve heard.” He winked and walked backwards down the hall outside her flat. She sighed and waved, a smile on her face as she shut the door.

If he bugged her and Martin more than usual after talking to Jon the following week, she didn’t mention it.

#tma #the magnus archives #sasha james #tim stoker #ambiguous timsasha #my writing #okay to reblog #I blame the liveshow for making this more emotional than intended #wrote more than half of this in one sitting instead of writing my final paper how are y'all doing #my hobbies include infusing dialogue with as much dramatic irony as possibly and crying about s1 archival gang

[aion-rsa]

Unforgotten: the Clues in the Titles and Why Every Detail Matters

https://ift.tt/3b8wdBf

Warning: contains spoilers for Unforgotten series 1-3

“You’d be surprised,” says Peter Anderson, creative director of the studio behind the title sequences for hit ITV crime drama Unforgotten. “You can show something really on-the-nose, and people won’t get it until they’ve been told. We fret and worry about giving too much away but the clue is only triggered when you know the context.”

Each 40-second title sequence for Unforgotten is a curated collection of purpose-filmed scenes designed to go where the drama can’t – namely, inside the characters’ heads. Every series starts with the discovery of a long-buried body, then introduces viewers to a guest cast of characters whose connections to each other, and to the historical murder, gradually unfold. It takes six episodes to solve the mystery, but right from the start, the abstracted and symbolic images created for the title sequence already hold all the answers. 

“Some of the images are big clues,” explains Anderson. “With the current series titles, there were some things that were taken out and then went back in, that are incredibly poignant, really incredibly amazing clues, I can only be ambiguous about it at this stage.”

Our new titles, full of little teasers and clues. Made by the brilliant @PAndersonStudio #OneDayMore #Unforgotten 4 https://t.co/rE5XAo5lx6

— Chris Lang (@ChrisLangWriter) February 21, 2021

How the series four title sequence relates to the new story, airing on Mondays at 9pm, is currently anybody’s guess. The meaning behind its images – a smashed car window, an allotment, a discarded fountain pen, to pick just three – will only become apparent after the finale. “You should have a relationship with the title sequence that grows as the drama grows,” says Anderson. Look back the title sequences for previous Unforgotten series and that’s exactly so – they’re transformed by hindsight.

Take the series two montage, which opens with a shot of a pub table and three empty drinking glasses. Atmospherically, it’s a lonely image, but hardly ominous. In the finale, the scene is revealed to be a turning point in the investigation as the place where the murder suspects gather and the truth is finally told. It’s a terrible truth about three lives irreparably damaged by childhood sexual abuse, and provides the answer to another title sequence mystery. The dreadful significance of a previously unexplained shot of an empty yellow tent is made clear in a heart-rending monologue from Mark Bonnar, who plays lawyer Colin. The abuse Colin suffered as a child began aged nine, on a camping trip. Each week, viewers have been shown the tent from his memory – a formative moment that haunts the titles in the same way it haunts the character.

“That’s one of those occasions where the titles are showing you something awful and poignant, a game-changer,” says Anderson. “In a way, the tent is the scene that forms the whole story of the drama, but it’s in the titles. It’s not a flashback, it’s been allowed to be in this other place, this place that says to you, ‘Before you watch this drama every week, think about some of these things’.”

Copyright: Peter Anderson Studio

Not every image is necessarily a clue. “Some of them are setting the scene, some of them are memories that form the characters, some of them are about placing the different time zones that you’re in.” Unforgotten is a time-travelling series, says Anderson. “The titles are showing us that we will be in memory.”

All four series titles share the visual metaphor of unsettled dust motes floating from scene to scene. “It’s talking about how, the moment Cassie and Sunny (the show’s detective leads played by Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar) come knocking on your door with news or an accusation, it unearths a whole series of events, whether you’re innocent or guilty. The dust, your past, is unsettled. That thread follows through all the title sequences, it’s about the everyday becoming disrupted and changed.” 

Clues and reminiscences are purposely blended in the Unforgotten titles. Some memories may be more important than others, but nothing is frivolous, says Anderson. In the series two sequence, even a glimpsed pan of peas boiling on a stove feeds into the working class roots of a now wealthy, knighted business tsar. “Even the peas have a job to do because they’re taking you back inside the head of a character.”

“One that pops to mind is a car crash scene from the series one titles. It’s the moment that one of our characters was in the crash that put him in his wheelchair. That’s not something shown in the drama, but that’s a moment that formed that character, a lot of his traits come out of this awful thing that happened.”

Read more

TV

Unforgotten series 3 writer: “we live in uncompassionate times”

By Louisa Mellor

Books

Why Unforgotten fans should read Reservoir 13

By Louisa Mellor

Title scenes are a different type of narrative that hark back to the silent movie era, Anderson explains. “It’s about subtly extending the storytelling, extending the characters through their memories, taking you to a place that formed them that the drama doesn’t have the time to show. It might be referred to in dialogue, but we can actually make it in the titles.”

They can make it, but not wanting to give the game away, they also have to obscure it. “Something that seems abstract often is laced with meaning,” he says, citing a tiny snippet in the series three credits where we see a close-up of a deer’s eye. The deer turns out to be a plot point, as the animal hit by an underage driver whose father suspects him of having killed the victim. In the same sequence, a poetic scene shows grass and flowing water. “To the viewer that will just be abstract and atmospheric, but actually, that’s the moment when the river broke its banks and carried away the body.”

The Unforgotten titles incorporate the settings used in the show, but – until this series because of last year’s Covid-19 restrictions on set visits – were always purpose-filmed by Anderson’s studio and not compiled from existing footage. They’d pop in to a set while the production was on lunch and get the coverage they needed, borrowing key props and costumes. That’s how a necktie worn by a character revealed to have a sadomasochistic fetish is glimpsed binding the hands of a young woman (a Peter Anderson Studios intern, being useful on her first day) in the series two sequence. A suitcase used to contain and dispose of a murder victim is spotted sitting innocently at the bottom of a wardrobe. “We have access to all the costumes, the props, the poignant clues from the drama itself. The detail that’s in there comes direct from the drama.” 

Copyright: Peter Anderson Studio

Each Unforgotten title sequence begins life as around 100 short scenes written by Anderson after reading all six of that series’ scripts. It’s unusual to be granted such breadth of access in TV drama, which is part of what makes the title work on Unforgotten so special. The entire Mainstreet Pictures team, from creator and writer Chris Lang to the producers and directors, collaborate on whittling down the list of scenes until they say everything they need to, without giving anything away. 

This kind of devotion from a production company to a TV title sequence is rare in the UK, says Anderson. He’s experienced it precious few times in his career: with Neil Gaiman creating the stunning 2D animated titles for Good Omens, with Steven Moffat and the producers of BBC One’s Sherlock and Doctor Who – for which his studio made the series seven titles starring Matt Smith – and here, on Unforgotten.

Lang tells Den of Geek that he’s never worked on a series with such a symbiosis between the titles and the drama. “We meet at late script stage, when the characters are fully formed, and then we decide together which echoes, teases and clues we want to put in to the opening sequence.” Lang describes the titles for each series as a mini drama of their own, easing the audience into the world of the show. In dramatic and storytelling terms, he says, the titles do a lot of heavy lifting.

“Chris will say ‘Can we add this scene? Because this is why that character was formed’, explains Anderson. “I can’t extend a character’s story in the way that the writer can. He knows implicitly how he’s formed his characters, he knows their past. He knows which memories are important”. It’s about understanding the detail of every bit of storytelling, “that even a half-second snippet really matters.”

Copyright: Mainstreet Pictures

One character-forming scene that’s only a half-second snippet in the series three titles shows a young child being hugged by a woman. The costume, backdrop and lighting suggest the 1960s, putting us in the realm of memory. In that half-second, Anderson confirms, we’re inside the mind of Dr Tim Finch, an extremely damaged man played by Alex Jennings.  “It’s just meant to be a flicker of time showing an overbearing mother that formed part of his character. If you look at the detail of that shot, what’s important is the fact that he’s being smothered and the smothering therefore has a psychological effect on him growing up.” 

Another key memory scene – a child’s-eye perspective of a woman peeling potatoes at a sink, which relates to the moment a character told her mother she was being abused by her father – was coincidentally filmed in the same location: Anderson’s kitchen at home. “I have a 1950s house with a genuine 50s kitchen with a genuine 80s wall with a genuine 70s floor, so as a location, it’s utterly fantastic for time travel,” he laughs, angling his laptop camera down to show a tiled floor fans will recognise from several of the Unforgotten title sequences. 

In the US, Anderson explains, TV titles are highly paid for, but in Britain it remains a lo-fi business. When his studio created the fast-paced title sequence for high-profile Sky One drama Lucky Man, for instance, instead of closing the roads and wiring up a street with cables to film the fast-paced street scenes, they did it using an actor from Starlight Express roller skating through London wearing a GoPro.

Copyright: Peter Anderson Studios

Series two’s yellow tent scene was filmed using vintage camping equipment pitched in the park next to Anderson’s home. “That was me and a cinematographer on the side of a hill. We set it up meticulously with an oil lamp from the period. We wanted the light to be perfect, so for just that one scene we probably spent between three and four hours shooting.”

A television drama often won’t have the time to be so indulgent with its photography, he says. For the series three titles, his studio shot Bristol Bridge in the early hours of the morning, starting off in the dark and the snow, waiting until the light was just so. Production arranged the official permissions, the hotel, everything so that Anderson’s team could film just two scenes of no more than a few seconds each. It’s proof, he says, of how much everybody involved cares and how every detail matters – something well worth remembering the next time your finger hovers over that ‘Skip Intro’ button.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Unforgotten series 4 continues on Mondays at 9pm on ITV1.

The post Unforgotten: the Clues in the Titles and Why Every Detail Matters appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/303o3nf

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek