#best if you zoom in also! <- guy who worked on this zoomed in 80% of the time

[linkprize]

💜 a little unconventional, i know, but mama, i'm home! 💚

#beetlejuice #beetlejuice the musical #lydia deetz #barbara maitland #adam maitland #delia deetz #charles deetz #this was originally gonna be way more detailed but procreate literally could not handle any more than this LOL #somewhere around the 60 layer mark it started lagging unbearably and i just decided i had to leave it #best if you zoom in also! <- guy who worked on this zoomed in 80% of the time #beetlejuice tour #THE TOUR CAST DESERVES MORE FANART!!!!! so im out here doing my part #made while thinking about the photo lydia takes during jump in the line btw

[popculturebuffet]

Hatchetfield Retrospective: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals: I Mean What The Fuck?

SPOILER WARNING FOR ALL HATCHEFIELD PRODUCTIONS PRE-NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE

CONTENT WARNING: MENTIONS OF SUICIDE

Hello all you happy people and tonight we're gonna chronicle a story so astronomical, though thankfully not the last remaining story to tell as I celebrate spooky season by kicking off a look at one of the best new horror franchises to pop up. While I took a brief look at this series back in 2020 with the first episode of nightmare time, I think it's time I booked an extended stay in the tiny town of Hatchetfield for a full on retrospective. So get your cups of roasted coffee, pre-order that Tickle Me Wiggly, book your tickets to Watcher World and roll a fatty bowl of Perky's Buds as I take a look at this weird, wonderful world of horror, comedy, showstopping numbers and telling Clivesdale to rightly go fuck itself with the first stop on our tour, the musical that started it all by ironically being about a guy who doesn't much care for them. A Brief History of Starkid and Hatchetifield

So before we get to the horrifying tale of life becoming a musical, we need to look at the weirdos behind the curtain of this wonderful series of plays, zoomcasts and I assume tales Nick Lang shouts to his brother over zoom at 3 in the morning we might see someday, Starkid Productions Aka Team StarKid aka "Aren't those the guys who made that weird harry potter musical?". Most of you are well aware of who they are and their rough history, most of you also likely better than I but since I like to keep these reviews accessible and since some of my audience read whatever I put out regardless of if they gave one pigfart about it going in

It all began at the University of Michigan, GO BLUE! I don't have a connection to it myself but after watching about 80 hours of dead meat you start doing that on reflex. It was here while reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire a nerd by the name of Nick Lang wondered "hey woudln't it be funny if Draco bullied hermione because he liked her" This lead to this group writing the song granger danger, and deciding "Hey this could make a fun musical". Hence a Very Potter Musical was born. Nick asked his buddy Darren Criss to use some of his songs (One from a previous project Little White Lie), which snowballed into Darren both doing a lot of the music and playing Harry Freaking Potter himself.

What was supposed to be a fun goofy side project by a bunch of dedicated nerds became an internet sensation and thus Team StarKid was born, deciding they could keep this going: staging musicals at school then throwing them up online for other nerds. Naturally another Harry Potter musical followed and finding out abotu these and devouring the soundtracks, a twelve years younger and less sad but far more unteitonally creepy towards women me found thees musicals, laughed his ass off and was a fan from that day forward. While I wouldn't watch the next few shows I would listen to the soundtracks and followed starkid for a bit.

While the team would face the setback of Darren moving on to Glee, which I was watched at the time so at least I got to hang on to him even as he hung ont o a show slowly falling off the earth and into it's molten core where the lava men tore ita part piece by piece, it still held firm, moving on to musicals about Sentient Genitals, space bugs wanting to break the status quo, the goddamn batman wanting to be somebody's buddy, Achmed the tiger fucking man, an interquel for star wars that's also an inspiring 80's movie, waking up with mud on your dick and not wanting to do the work today. All were anchored by goofy alternate takes on the characters they were parodying, suprising amoutns of heart, a talented if sometimes shifting crew, and of course Nick Lang, who along with his rarely seen because he shy and now he in kanas brother matt, wrote the musicals and Nick directed a few himself.

So naturally when Nick decided to relocate to LA, in part because some of the troupe like longtime member and certified Chad Joey Richter were already there and likely to shake things up, half the troupe went with him and the other stayed behind, amicably parting ways and with Merdith Stephin, who'd been a big part of things returning with their partner for VHS Christmas Carol later and the upcoming Jangle Ball tour. Sadly they soon lost another member as long time Starkid and sex machine Joe Walker retired from acting. So in a tight spot with half the troupe gone, Nick decided to swing for the fences and thus decided to shift genres slightly: from goofy parody comedy's with heart (and the occasional original), to an intrictatley built shared horror comedy multiverse. After spitballing a lot of ideas for the setting, Hatchetfield was born and three ideas for musicals came out of it mostly formed: Nerdy Prudes Must Die, Black Friday.. and this very one. Despite coming third in ideas, TGWDLM was decided to be the first of the series, to test to see if audiences would take to it with it's accessible premise.

The result.. was a massive hit, ushering in a new era of starkid, fresh fans, and a return to prominence after it dimmed somewhat. Hatchetfield gave the group new life, and over time they've picked up even more members and came out swinging stronger than ever, having done Black Friday the year after, spun the franchise off into the webcast series nightmare time during the height of the pandemic, and now going into it's third musical next year with Nerdy Prudes Must Die. As I write this it's kickstarter is still going and has reached it's goal, but to help the Lang Shang A Langs reach their stretch goal i'm offering you a deal: For every three of you starkids who sends me a screenshot of you either pledging or upping your pledge (I myself can't go over 5) I promise to review another starkid musical at some point beyond the Hatchetfield Series, starting at the back with A Very Potter Musical and going up, and to sweeten the pot if you hit them all i'll also cover the tin can bros productions too. So if you want a lot of nostalgia, cringing and jokes at a Transphobes expense while supporting a work that is very much everything she isn't, my ask box is open.

Hatchetfield means a lot to me: I ran into it in 2020 just as my love of horror was really ramping up, having really loved the trailer for Black Friday and watching TGWDLM first in case I needed to see it. Which you can watch either on their own, their both standalone works but it works better in order given the crowd pops any time something from TGWDLM gets referenced. It got me back into starkid and while I still need to crawl through the massive backlog of shows i've missed, what i've found is wonderful and i've found these wonderful PEIPS have kept going and kept an honest to god comradery and love for one another that's commendable. And it was thanks to that I got to feel that love again. See how these people had grown and gotten even awesome with time as we talk about the man whose name is in the title whose destined to go viral and the waking nightmare he finds himself in. A Story So Astronomical

Before we can open this musical's tummy and get into it's blue guts, we have to get down to brass tacks nad break down what exactly happened here.

TGWDLM is the story of Paul Matthews, an average man living an average life as an office drone in Hatchetfield. He spends his days with Bill, his struggling single dad best friend whose desperate to reconnect with his daughter, Ted, the office walking erection who dosen't seem to get Paul wants nothing to do with him , and Charlotte, a meek and saddeningly frazzled woman whose in a loveless failing marriage to her cop husband , having an affair with Ted to try the fill the void. Working hard for the mildly obnoxious Bill Lumberg impersonator Mr. Davidson, Pauls' only real refuge is Beanies, a local cafe that makes a nice carmel frappe and more importantly to Paul, employs his crush Emma, a cynical barista who hates the place's musical gimmick understandably as while unlike Paul I LOVEEEEEEEEEEE musicals, minimum wage food service jobs are already draining and obnoxious, adding being forced to sing to it no matter how tired you are or obnoxious the customer sounds like my own personal hell.

Also around are a green piece girl who in trying to brush her off Paul pisses off instead, a man in a hurry, and Peter who badly needs his hot chocolate for his low blood sugar. I can relate to peter. Can't wait to properly meet him when I get around to watching Abstinance Camp. Yes folks I'm that behind on Nightmare Time Season 2, you may boo. Soundtrack's dope though.

Things quickly change though when a meteor crash lands on the starlight theater, and the next day in excellent horror fashion Paul slowly notices something… just isn't right, starting with a whole ass group musical number. We'll get to the songs in their own sectoin much like Starkids closest spirtual cousin the muppets, and it soon esclates to being forced to sit there while his boss grins like ti's the ending credits of pearl and tells Paul how he wants his wife to choke him out at night while Paul slowly dies inside in real time.

Paul starts to grasp the implications of everything having turned into a musical and infected everyone, but it takes Emma a moment… till she finds her boss and coworker, now also part of the extradimensional hive mind, poisoning their customers mid-musical number and planning to infect her too. Our heroes barely escape through some human shaped bushes and Emma finally grasps the implications.

They thankfully find other survivors in Bill, Ted and Charlotte, though that's all the good news they have: Downtown's been swarmed and when Charlotte calls her husband for help.. and instead gets a musical number about how their cops and they make sense

Our heroes, like most citzens barely survive their encounter with the cops, scarring them off after Ted brains Sam's brains out of his head with a trash can lid. Needing help and with the hospital being downtown at the heart of the swarm, our heroes instead go to Emma's kooky college instructor Professor Hidgens, the star of the show and a survivalist fringe scientist who foresaw this exact sort of apocalypse and thus built up his estate on the edge of town to be ready for it, including booze. I mean what's an apocalypse if you can't get hammered right? I don't drink but I feel the apocalypse is one of those "code red" situation where even if you don't, you need to get blazed anyway. Liked if Keith David dies. I'm still convinced he's immortal but in a year that's been constantly punching me in the dick via Warner Bros Discovery, i've learned not to take anything for granted.

So Paul and Emma get closer and get all snuglay, Bill threatens to kick Ted in the head, and soon Charlotte makes things far worse after Sam singing the only bad song in the musical at her somehow dosen't make her run screaming but gets her to free him. We then get one of the best as the Hive gets fed up with the soft touch and just plans to murder them all, but in horror rock paper scissors "guy with the gun" beats monster anytime, and Hidgens saves them. Our party ends up having to split as stupid as that sounds as Bill finds out Alice is still in town and in downtown, so he and Paul go to save her, Emma stays behind at Hidge's instince to disect the corpses and Ted stays because wellll

Though he DOES point out there likely isn't an Alice left and this is a suicide mission

And I do mean sad as they find Alice already infected and proceding to sing a whole song about how her dad sucks dirty ass in thunderstorms, how it's his fault she ended up here, and pressing every parental parent button and insecurity bill has. The poor guy reaches for a gun as a result and luckily, Paul, in an incredibly heartbreaking scene, talks his friend out of such.

Unfortunately neither of them in the state they were in thought to WATCH said gun so Bill dies seconds later and it's only the military showing up that prevents Paul from sharing the same fate. While Paul gets a gun butt to the head, Emma gets some MMMMM Drugs and wakes up tied to a chair, with Ted likewise. I mean he's into it but he's gotta be asked first. It's just common courtsey. Turns out Hidgens is on the creatures side.. he's not hived but the idea of a musical seeming utopia where everyone is happy, ther'es no traffic accidents, the trains run on time , is wonderful and plans to lure the aliens here. How he does it is with one of the best piecs in musical theater. We'll again get to that later, but thankfully our heroes manage to escape while the hive is distracted with Hidgens and opens his tummy.

Paul might have a way out though as the Miltary Man he meets is the gruff but loveable and resonable John Macnamara, who works for PEIP, your standard issue extranormal government organization that covers weird shit like this. HIs orders are to murder anyone he sees and let god sort out the corpses, but

And gives Paul an out, especailly after hearing how sweet he is on emma: he has a few hours to grab her, GET TO THE CHOPPA, and escape before they nuke the place as god intented. Well the Judeo-Christian god. The god with a thumb in this pie wants a musical apocalypse.

Paul gets back to the others with the news and allows Ted to come. This goes as badly as you'd expect as Ted tries betraying them and taking the chopper himself

Naturally given this is a horror work, this gets Ted killed by the hive who already have McNamara and a few of his PEIPS by the time he gets there. They sing a very unsbtle and unsettling song while our heroes barely escape.. only to get further proof that Pokey isn't the only god who hates Paul as it turns out the pilot is Hive!Zoey who crashes, leaving Paul as the only thing that MIGHT be able to stop this: Hidge , as reinfieldy as he was, theroized the meteor, the source of the Blue Shit and thus the hive, must be the hive queen. Blowing it up real good might be a good shot

What follows is more soul destruction… seriously when I first watched this only being familiar with the earlier starkid works, I had no idea the emotoinal punch in the scrotum I was in for, as Paul gets infected and has to fight his inner depressiona nd the hive and seemingly wins, blowing up the theater and seemingly the hive.

Emma survives, and is reunited with Paul and is happy.. for about 5 seconds. In a tragic and horrifying twist ending Paul survived, everyone else apparently did too… and Emma is left to scream futilely in horror for help as her fate is left uncertain and the world… is left to be united by a singular voice, who in a deep void far away laughs musically having finally gotten his leading man.

Scary If You Think of the Implications

So you might of noticed with the synopsis the tone of the musical: Nick was very clever here as he likely knew both people coming in from other starkid works and people who came in fresh, like my friend @jess-the-vampire who I got to join the hive here and at least interested in checking out more of Hatchetfield and starkid, Twisted in particular since we're both big into disney and the idea there was an entire number about the guy who showed up all of once to have a tiger bite his ass made her laugh, would expect this to be way goofier than it was. Even I despite spoiling myself on how it ended before I watched it, wasn't prepared.

TGWDLM is still a comedy to it's bones, with both great jokes I remembered vividly from the first time like the ENTIRETY of what do you want paul (I struggled not to loose my damn shit the first time I heard Davidson say he wanted his wife to choke him while he jerked off while Paul prayed for death but death won't come in the background), "Kick your head" (With Corey and Joey absolutely killing me, especially Joey as Ted hams it up to high heaven),Ted's love of workin boys, Working Boys itself, "I'm professor hidgens!' and more, as well as a few I forgot like "I don't want to die in your filthy presbeterian church", Jon's impecable background acting, and "He didn't want to go like this. He wanted to do what he loved: getting choked by his wife while he masturbates!". It's also delightfully meta with every song being some form of standard brand of Musical song, something i'll break down more when we get to the songs themselves.

It strikes a good tone for a horror comedy: the situation is rediculous enough to generate tons of laughs, but also still GENUINELY horrifying and heartwrenching. It dosen't forget it's either. It's not the depth either as character depth is something that dates back to Very Potter which somehow turned Voldermort from pure unrelnting horrifying evil to a guy whose still evil but also struggles with his sexuality and missing his partner. No what catches you off guard, is the horror. With Horror Comedy you can vary a lot. Take the Chucky Franchise for instance. 2 is a horror comedy, but still leans heavier on the horror aspect, with Chucky still taken dead seriously despite now cracking one liners, Bride leans more into the camp and gore, and Seed just went full on insanity and camp with no real horror to be found apart from Chucky's treatment of his own family. You can vary in just how much you have. TGWDLM strikes me as where the franchise is now: it takes itself seriously, but isn't afraid to still throw jokes in there for contrast or just for fun, being dead serious when it needs to be and hilarious when it doesn't, and sometimes mixing the two.

The premise on paper sounds goofy but like Paul says it's when you think of the implications it gets bad and the show does a great job of doing this: When the Hive first shows up in "La Dee Da Day", it's goofy and played for laughs: it' is mildy creepy everyone's acting like it's a musical, but it's mostly funny for Paul's utter confusion, the homeless man talking about how he "used to want to kill them all while high on bath salt zombie drugs snacking on a dead mans face" and even as dark as THAT gets Paul's horrified flat what brings it right back around.

It's only when Charlotte gives a monologue about how sam not sounding like himself in the shower really underved her that it starts to get serious, but the next scene shifts back to comedy.. while uppping the discomfort. Now the Hive is directly trying to convert paul, and while it's done in the most hilarious manner possible, the grin splattered on Davidsons face, the fact he can't remember what he wanted once he stops singing, and the clear instiance of him joining them are unsettling And then.. we get the coffee shop scene. This is why I say it' sby design: the langs knew audience expectations.. .probably figured the horror part woudln't be a true factor here.

Instead what starts being only mildly unsettling (Emma unknowingly singing with what the audeince can tell are hive infected co workers).. only for it to slowly ramp up: they perform complicated manuvers she wasn't ready for and when she tries to quit.. they tel lher she can't.. and then in a cheery monotone explain they POISONED everyone else and gladly sing while several people die aorund them are are reborn with a singular voice. The terror on Emma's face combined with the various patrons going from choking to death to slowly JOINING IN one by one on the how do you do.. it's truly impressive and not being a sfamiliar with the fandom if we haven't talked about how great this scene is before we damn well should.

We get one last respite with show me your hands but from then on the comedy almost never comes from the hive again, something that didn't hit me till just now: the rest of the comedy comes from Sensei Bill, show stopping numbers and other things with only the "All your friends are here" bit in the climax being a hive involved joke. It shows the Hive's slow evolution horrifically as it goes from bumblingly comedic if still horrifying, From here on it WEAPONZIES our heroes despairs hopes and needs: it prays on Charlotte's desperate desire both for her husband to live and for him to actually love her again, turning her. It prays on Bill's love of his daughter to lure him and his difficulties as a parent to utterly destroy him, it uses PEIP and the helicopter to nearly kill emma, uses Paul's last ditch plan to infect him.. and uses him to twist the knife one last time fo rour ending. Every time our heroes have hope the Hive uses it against them, which gets more ingenious when you think about how most horror works, including a lot of the other hatchetfield stories, go: Even if our heroes may loose eventually the ones who survive or at least make it to the end don't give up, keeping going, and use hope, determination and grit to survive. Here the Hive uses that AGAINST them. It's again where the balance is effective: when you stop to think about it, this work is ENTIRELY bleak, but thanks to the comedy you don't. It only hits you later when you have no escape from it, just as our heroes have no escape from The Hive, Pokey.. or themselves.

Production wise TGWDLM is stripped down, and by design: with a new tone, new cast members and a new venue, the StarKids had a lot to work out with this one, so the costumes are the simple kinds they could rent or make cheapley, the effects are minimal, the blue shit very clearly being homeade slime, sam's brain apparently falling out repdatedly during one performance and most other things being pantomimed, and the set is even more so, simply some colored lights on cube.

It works perfectly though: the lack of props in places like typewriters in the helicopter and elsewhere is played ENTIRELY for laughs, and the lack of detail in places like the cups of poisoned coffee or hidgens getting his stomach torn to pieces leaves it to the audeince to imagine just how horrific those things are. Sometimes what you can make a persons mind do can surpass what your budget can, a staple of horror. It's no shock one of Hatchetfields primary influences is the similarly cheap for it's first two instalments evil dead franchise, with Rami's tenants of horror not only guiding the stories here but ending up as part of the cannon later. While StarKid is FAR from strangers of stretching a budget, TGWDLM is easily the second most impressive example of that with only nightmare time, operating on nothing for it's first season as far as I could tell surpassing it. That leaves us with the acting and music, which naturally given Starkid is both a very actorcentric group and a very musical one, need their own sections. The Stars of the Show

Starting with the man whose name is in the title whose destined to go viral , we have Paul Matthews, played by Starkid Newcomer Jon Mattenson. While a fresh face to the StarKid verse Jon to my lack of surprise was a long time stage actor before this, doing a series of one man shows including one I hope someone has video of Shark Tank: The Musical. Given he was performing in Chicago at the time it didn't take long for him to meet future fellow starkids Lauren and Jeff, with Jeff even doing the music for Jon's one man show, which i'm also adding to the "stuff I will do if you help up those backer numbers." So naturally when Starkid needed new members, he was a perfect fit.

Jon instantly feels like he belongs too: it takes a LOT to come into an experienced group and play lead on your first show, even more when your in a musical but do not get to sing until the final act. But by god Jon not only pulls it off but easily commands the entire play. And it's not that everyone else is bad. Far from it, as usual the rest of the StarKids bring it and we'll get to their performances. But as Paul, Jon utterly brings it: Paul is a layered guy being entirely boring and sedate in the office and while a tad awkward with Emma he also manages to be utterly charming, with Jon and Lauren having wonderful chemistry. You get why despite his very thin excuse for coming here and her seeing right through it she likes the guy who doesn't like musicals, and why Paul has friends and quickly becomes the group's surrogate leader: while he's an utterly normal guy, he's a likeable one, one who clearly cares for his friends.. and Ted because he kinda has to. He can be awkward but usually only when really freaked out. It's remarkable just HOW layered this character came off on second watch: first time around I liked Paul but second I fucking loved this guy.

A big part of this is background acting. While it's a common and valuable skill, especially in a comedy, Jon takes it to another level: As Jess pointed out to me every scene with him, every background movement is paul and whether hte's terrified of what's going on around him and worried for his crush's safety or DEEPLY uncomfortable because his boss is talking about jerking off, there's something to dissect and pull from. Jon is just that terrific and actor and I feel despite how talented this troupe is NO ONE else could've played paul like Jon. This is one of those performances only the actor who gave it could give.

And of course his peak is with Let It Out, where Jon effortlessly bounces between the real paul, terrified of both what he's becoming and what it's awakening, and his smiley nightmarish body invader. The effortless switching between the two in face is just mesmerising: you can't look away even if you badly want to as Paul struggles desperatley to defeat himself.. and is loosing. You have to wait the whole musical to hear Jon sing but once he does it's clear he wasn't cast as paul because he wasn't a great singer.. but because he was such a great actor.

Paul as a character is surprisingly deep: as part of the musicals meta commentary on musicals themselves Paul seems to be your typical lead stuck in a dead end situation he needs to dream his way out of. The probelm for the hive and paul himself is he really DOSEN'T know what he wants ,Paul. What he wants to actually DO with his life beyond work in an office job he dosen't seem especially happy at and maybe marry someone. IT's also realistic as Paul as most people struggle with what they really want and most who end up in an office drone job like Paul simply needed a job. And while he seems content working the job and hating musicals, as seen by the fact he still works it in every other relality after this with the only change being actually getting to connect with Emma before the apocalypse hits, one line in "Let It Out" makes it PAINFULLY clear:

"I've Never Been Happy, Wouldn't That Be Nice?

It's easy to see Paul trying to use having a steady job or finding a partner as a patch for the fact he feels deeply unhappy and alone and needs something to help him along. Yet a partner can't fix that for you ,as i've had to learn and said job isn't exactly plesant. Sometimes having depression, and in my case (and possibly pauls as there are signs), autisim, means you try to stave off the encroaching darkness with something, anything to make it better. It dosen't mean Paul CAN'T find enjoyment in his job, he met his best friend and niece there, is clearly on great terms with charlotte and Ted… well okay he has to deal with the constant smells of axe bodyspray and jizz coming from his office but 2/3 ain't bad. And he and Emma do have genuine chemistry. There's a reason their together in the next timeline and all. These aren't bad things and in fact probably hlep, but their a patch to a larger problem. It's telling a planned nightmare time story for him had him fantasies via dream machine that he was an 8 foot antrophormic squirrel living out howard the duck because the only person everyone loved without any strings attached was Peanuts the Hatchetfield Pocket Squirrel

It shows someone with depression can function but that paul probably needs counseling. It also does show his grit though: despite his depression and anxiety, he keeps going, keeps trying and despite hating the genre dosen't stop actually watching Musicals if you look closely. He knows the lyrics to "There You Are" as seen when hidgens makes everyone sing it and has seen Mamma Mia. It's something you fine folks pointed otu and Jon clearly agrees with: while he may not like musicals he dosen't stop trying. Paul is a wonderful character and I hope he gets a happy ending eventually.. or at least that if Nightmare Time ever returns he gets a happy ending for a change.

Next up is EMMMMA! Emma is played by Lauren Lopez, one of the three longtime starkids and has been in every play except one, and that one's a technicality I throw out of her flawless record as Starkid experimented with doing two smaller shows at once, and even as amazingtastic as Lauren is.. she can't clone herself. YET. While she's spent the bulk of Starkid history playing either crossdressing rolls or just plain weird ones, from best boy Draco Malfoy, to a verison of Apu from aladdin that needs to be put down due to clearly having contracted the Motiva virus, to Comissioner Gordon, she had quite the career with her roll in Starship being the only acception I can think of once the shows got started proper.

This would change after Firebringer, her first starring role in a starkid show and since sh'es played usually adult or teenage women. Why?

Maybe Nick and Matt wanted to let her stretch creatively, maybe they just got tired of that bit and wanted to let Lauren try different things. Maybe there's no real reason to it and it's just a thing that happened. I dunno. Maybe i'll be lucky enough to get to ask Lauren herself someday, i'd be honored to interview any starkid past or present.

Point is the transition didn't loosen her timing nor her talent one iota. While I can't speak on her role in firebringer as I haven't seen it yet, I can say Emma is one of her best rolls and they only reason I can't say for certain it's the best is that she somehow equaled herself with the next play and I have no idea wether Emma or Linda is better.

Emma is a complex character at first seemingly like just a jaded minimum wage worker who only seems to like exactly two people in the world: Paul because he's likely the only person she serves all day that seems to treat her like a human being, and Hidgens because he's charming, nice and probably is a fantastic guy to get high with. Like seriously, I bet Hidgens let's her test growing weed in the back of his fancy ass bunker mansion. HFPD is'nt going to come up there, their stretched as is covering Sam's midlife crisis.

She's guarded as hell but yet charming: anyone whose worked minimum wage can tell you it blows and the Langs amazingly perfectly captured what it's like to work that kind of job in your late 20's, working for those who don't respect you and those way younger than you. Throw in your depressoin, anxiety and autisim all swirling to make the frantic pace of food service near impossible and forcing me to get disablity, and it'd basically me be just without spitting in the food or slacking off.

Emma's mostly there to get them to hidgens, have wonderful chemistry with paul and make one liners, but she's still utterly endearing, with Lauren having tons of great deliveries and it being clear this situation is a LOT to pack in, that sure it's funny to watch.. but the sheer stress of it would break anyone.

And while her goal of leaving this town isn't exactly new, her REASON for it and wantin ga weed farm (since it'll be local nation wide soon as she put it and with Biden outright saying he's going after criminal charges for it recently, likely readying to do just that, she fucking called it), are heartbreaking: She was always cynical and not wanting to be caught in her older more succesful family minded sister Jane's shadow, she left… and then refused to come back. And kept doing so…. till FLASH, BANG, Jane…. was in a box and emma came back to mourn her. It sums up death painfully well: that you think you have all the time with a person in the world but sometimes.. it just… it comes up short. Thankfully of the two people i've lost neither were estranged from me but it still hurts not getting to say goodbye and it's clear emma carries a LOT of guilt and thus decided to make something of her life before it was gone.

Jane's death is also a masterful example of stealth setup. It's what i'm now calling when something is setup for later in a franchise or series, but it's not obvious at the time. It's something you likely want expanded but don't realize the creators not only plan to but always did. When watching this even KNOWING Black Friday was a coming I just didn't think that Emma's brother in law would end up not only being a main character but someone who'd help really solidify hatchetfield as a setting. Nor that he'd be played by Dumbledore but that was just pure luck. Nor that he'd end up fucking his wife's ghost possessing a car via the cupholders.

Strange times. Emma is perfectly played, being snarky and standofish as usual at times, utterly sweet with paul, and naturally terrified with any. And while Jon is clearly the background acting mvp here, Lauren deserves props for Emma's combination of horror and "what the fuck am i watching" during Workin boys"

Next up we have Ted.

Ted is played by my boy Joey Richter, another Starkid long timer and while he's missed a few more shows than his fiance, he's still one of their MVP's, starting as a headbanded Ron Weasley broing it out with harry and becoming over time a starship ranger, a kid who talks to his sentient penis, and of course his finest hour, about TWENTY diffrent rolls in the Trail To Oregon. That's not hyperbole: due to the play's stripped down cast, there were only 6 actors (The others being Lauren, Merdeith stephin whose not in this play nor a full time member of the group, though they did come back for A VHS Christmas Carol, Jeff Blim,Jamie Lynn Beatty and Corey Dorris in his best roll to date), and the other 5 were all mains with Jamie having a very small second part and Corey having a sizeable one. In contrast Joey had to play EVERY. OTHER. PART. Which included one song, independence, that was him taking on about 15 diffrent rolls, and had a rapid fire bit, and the role of main villian mcdoon, getting one of his best songs in Wagon on Fire as Result. The man is a fucking god and I hope he and Lauren are very happy together, having been together for years but only gone public with it two years ago to announce their engagment. Given the fandom had been shipping them, not their characters THEM, since AVPM the squee could be heard from the red planet mars.

So i'ts no shock Joey kills it as the office's walking erection, wearing his now trademark mustache, something he's worn in most roles since to the point many assumed he wouldn't be taking over as Peter in NPMD apparently.. forgetting you know.. shaving's a thing. Jeff Blim's shaved and that likely took 80 razors and the will of mighty thor himself to get done.

Joey just has the perfect smarmy accent for ted, one I can't place but juts fits him so well and while being the standard "survivior who no one really likes and is waiting for to die" Joey's charm and charisma make him tolerable and enjoyable. It helps he's not USELESS. While he does betray our heroes for his own selfish needs later, bastard and all, he doe smake some good if dickish points, trying to get Charlotte to see that her husband is well and truly gone (even if it's to sleep with her) and pointing out that Alice is likely already dead and saving her is a suicide mission, which it sadly was. His putting it in the most dickish way possible means it never really takes, but it's nice to show that as much of a bastard as he is, ted isn't entirley useless. His utter glee when watching Workin Boys is also one of the funniest things i've seen in a StarKid production or really in general. He's as into it as we are.

Next up is poor Charlotte, played by Jamie Lynn Beatty. Jamie has played a nice variety of rolls for the team, as shown with her rolls after this playing a basement dweller and the oliva newton john style Ghost of Christmas Past, but has a niche at times playing sad eyed woobies. Jamie's utterly expressive eyes really help. Charlotte is a throughly sad, throughly tragic character, a woman whose clearly still only with her hubsand due to a combination of badly trying to make it work when it's clear Sam, whose cheating on her with Zoey and god knows who else, has long since checked out and stays married to her because

And because she's throughly religious, being presbetarian, and thus refuses a divorce despite cheating on Sam to fill the void, said void only being filled by bastards like Ted. It's part of why I badly want a nightmare time focusing on Charlotte, as the poor woman needs a hug, not to have her zombie husband gaslight her into letting him go then make her one of them. That said the Hive charlotte is fucking awesome, and the high note Jamie hits on "Join Us and Die" is one for the ages. It was hard seeing Charlotte's pain again and knowing it does not nor it never will end well for her.

That said there is an elephant in the room with Jamie and i'm jsut going to adress it now: she's weirdly NEVER gotten a lead roll in any of the hatchefield musicals, and her only nightmare time focusing on her was as the villians. Given how the rest of the main cast of TGDWLM has all gotten an episode a piece (most within season one no less), and that even Melissa recently got one in a fundraising livestream (that I haven't seen but is apparently bonkers), it feels weird though I don't doubt that they've TRIED to do a charlotte story, even announcing one was planned for season 2. It just might not have worked out yet. Hopefully in the future we'll get to see Jamie in the front.

Next up to bat Corey Dorris, my guy. Corey isn't from the very FIRST starkid show, but he's still a UM graduate, GO BLUE!, see I told you it was automatic and showed up as early as Me and My Dick, which again I have to reassure some of you does in fact exist. Fun Fact: it was written about Joey's friendship wth Darren Criss. So yes had we gotten luckier on of Darren Criss' earliest credits would've been a walking talking penis. Your welcome for now knowing that. Point is Corey has been there a long time and the hatchetfield era has seen a thankful up in his promience, going from primarly playing side roles iwth the exception of his great run as Grandpa in trail to oregon even if he had to wake up with blood on his dick and he didn't even know where it came from, to getting either main cast rolls or outright starring turns, as seen with Nightmare Time's "Watcher World" and "Daddy". He's also the troupes longest standing black member, and this era has seen the Langs try to diversify more, with longtime Coregrapher James Tolbert getting bumped up to the cast and hiring Bryce Charles as for Nightmare Time 2, as well as adding the Bisexual Mariah Rose Faith with this musical, the gay Tolbert, and the non-binary Jae Hughes in their respective works. Not a fact I really needed to go out of my way for but I appricate even a small operation like this taking steps to actually open up.

Corey is unsuprsingly fantastic as bill, playing a hilaroiusly awkward dopey dad, but a realistic one: he's not say homer simpson…

He genuinely clearly loves Alice, tries to look out for her and is supportive of her sexuality, which I know is a low bar to clear but I do think it's nice that Alice's sexuality is just a casual thing rather than a source of drama both here and in a spirtual sequel to the duo's plotline here in Watcher World. The issue is a combination of Bill's currently unamed and unseen ex coming off like this (Gem homer)

When it comes to her budget for trying to win their daughters love, and Bill not knowing how to handle Alice clearly putting some distance between them. The fact Bill really dosen't like Alice's girlfriend Deb and thought it was REMOTELY a good idea to admit it and try to prop up Grace Chastity, another great bit of setup for later musicals, as the ideal instead. One of the few weaknesses of these two is that we don't really get to dive into who they are or why their like this or see Alice as more than just a mildly rebelious teen before she's infected. We get SOME insight with Not Your Seed but it's left deliberately ambiguous what's a lie to get bill to break and what's a painful truth. For the record I think her wanting to live with him and the why does it hurt to love you monologues have some kernel of truth, with the latter being amplified to really harm bill, while "Your right about deb she's a hardcore stoner" is a very obvious lie. IT's part of how brilliant the number and the hives tactics there are: you don't know what it's making up to feed on bill's pain and insecurity, and what's actually true feelings alice had simply amped up to do the screen. Bill gets plenty, but we only see their conflict with each other from his side.

While it is mildly weak though.. I do think it dosen't harm the show as it feels intentional: we only see bill's side.. and that makes Not Your Seed more troubling as we genuinely DIDN'T know till watcher world how the conflict actually worked and never get to thanks to Alice being taken by the hive. We don't know how much Bill blaming himself for the fight that lead to Alice not going back to clivesdale and seeing Deb instead was or if Deb really did do more drugs despite stopping Alice from getting in with the smoke club, aka Joey and Lauren miming three cigarettes at once because their the best. We don't know what's true and what's not or if they coudl've fixed things and thanks to this tragedy we never will. All we know is Bill feels guitly for letting the divorcce happen, for letting his wife take her and for failing to be the dad he wants to be, and that's all the hive needs to seal his doom. It's the point I made: bill can be a dumbass, but any parent can fuck up or simply have problems with thir kid that aren't their fault and the tragedy here is what woul dbe an easily reconcilable fight turned into the death of two people who deserved a happier ending. Thankfully the Langs clearly saw the potetial in the two and thus we get Watcher World with nightmare time. So it's hard to be mad at this for not fleshing them out when it happened later and even in context it's kind of the point.

Finally for our core characters we have Professor Hidgens. Hidgens is played by Robert Manion, aka the elephant in the room. Robert joined starkid breifly for twisted but fully joined and was embraced by the community with this show and it's easy to see why. I will have plenty of praise for his performances here and in Black Friday and Nightmare Time Season 1. It can't be avoided. But neither can the truth: Robert was suspended from the group a year ago, as he'd harassed a member of the band via text and to the langs credit once again, they took it dead seriously, not only bringing in an HR Rep to have an outside perspective and a professoinal to handle this, but suspended Robert… with only WEEKS till Nightmare Time 2, forcing Nick to play Professor Hidgens, and Peter aka Hot Chocolate Boy, while Joey took over as ethan and will be taking over as Peter for Nerdy Prudes Must die. Nick has said he will be allowed to come back both after a resonable time period and taking proper undisclosed steps and so far that period has stretched over a year and into next given the NPMD recasting. If he'll return I do not know and the most I can give RObert for his jackassery.. is that he genuinely apologized, didn't get defensive and is taking his fully deserved supsension with grace and humility instead of whining like a baby that his actions have consequences. Again VERY low bar to clear but given how most harassers and abusers seen in media refuse to admit they did anything wrong or pull a louis ck and do do that but then show up not a year later and act like they still deserve a career. I'll take that.

So very ugly actions aside.. Robert is phenomial as hidgens, giving hi ma rex harrison voice, and somehow making you feel he's an old man depsite being the youngest of the team at the time. He's hammy, hilarious and goofy, being every old man who saw this coming cliche rolled into one turtleneck and neat coat and he's already a faviorite from the start from "Nice try but i'm professor hidgens" to his attempt to get laughs at his charoltte-tan pun, to "You bet your ass we got booze'

But of course where Hidgens/Manion really shines.. is Show Stoppin Number. Good god. I'll gush about the number later but the reveal that Hidgens is actually on the hive's side, a fan of musicals and has his own terrible musical about his 6 boyfriends , Workin Boys: A New Musical that turns out is a transparent parody of a failed broadway musical with basically the same premise from a guy the langs went to school with at UM, Go Blue. Again gotta save this for the music portion as much as it hurts, but god he's brilliant in that moment. The only real flaw is that Hidge's heel turn comes out of goddamn nowhere with no foreshadowing and even then like with Bill, it's pivoted by the fact that it coming out of nowhere makes it more funny and suprising. It's no wonder the fandom took to robert.. and I sincerly hope he's GENUINE in taking the steps to atone for his actions.

Before we can get to our final two cast members, both playing multiple parts, we have to talk about our antagonist: the Hive. The Hive has no main host, thus no actor to break down, being played by EVERYONE in the company at at least one ponit. Even Lauren, who plays the only speaking character who never gets infected, still has a role in the background of la de da day as one of the infected.

The Hive is a masterful antagonist and thankfully unlike some horror villians like Micheal Meyers, finding out more about it later via Nightmare Time 2 didn't diminish it much. It works on it's own as this mysterious force that slowly but surely infects people and goes through a clear evolution in tactics and method. It's first phase of attempts don't exactly come off forceful, but still have some logic: singing as a group in La Dee Da Day is to attempt to get people to follow along, which clearly worked for a lot of people, while they manage to take all but three of CCRP's employees simply by having Davidson work on them one at a time with ONLY paul resisting. They lack finesse, as seen by the fact neither works on paul and their as subtle as Mr. Davidson's need for his wife to choke him out at night, but they clearly worked on a LOT of people.

The next step is force, but even then they don't go full on slasher YET, instead simply using cunning, poisoning a few cups of coffee, then spreading to the police. THey don't know HOW to use this autority, it's hilarious in hindsight knowing that a centuries old entity REALLY dosen't know how cops work at all, but it's clear their starting to learn. It's almost as if this is the first time Pokey has done this, or that the distance between this reality and the black and white mean that he has to relearn stuff he knows. or he's just such a self obessed diva that he forgets this kind of stuff out of habit, with his scheme in "Yellow Jacket" only being so streamlined because he had one target in mind and someone so important to hatchtefield as a whole that he CAN'T forget them no matter how self absorbed he is.

As for who Pokey is for the untiated as i've put it off long enough, Pokey IS the hive. He is Pokotho, The Singular Voice, one of the lords of the black and white, five eldrich abominations each represented by a cuddly toy and cutsey nickname, likely inspired by what seems to be their leader, Wiggly. The Lords are the cause of the weirdness in hatchefield and thus each timeline, and often the world's end, either directly via their machenations and various servants, or indirectly as it's implied there presence is why the local witchwood is so bizzare and why the various bits of messed up shit that happen in each timeline happen. They largely operate on their own and have their own goals, but can be invoked as a group as part of various bargins with some in hatchetfield.

As you can probably gather this all comes from later in the timeline: The Black and White gets introduced next play as does the first Lord we meet face to face, Wiggly, and Nightmare Time would introduce the rest, all 5 getting a cameo in the final story, and each brother getting a story to themselves with Blinky and Tinky getting introduced in season 1, Nibbly in season 2 and Pokey getting properly reintroduced and fully confirmed as the Hive in the same seasons finale.

From what I can tell Pokey isn't all that diffrent between incarnations, and uses the Meteor as a medium, having it crash here and scientest extracting the blue shit from it in "yellow jacket" leading to him getting an avatar they created there. It also offers some insight that isn't suprising as we're told by a figure I won't introduce JUST yet for those juts tuning in that "he hates every voice but his own. And you can tell: while he tries to be nice to Pokey ANYTHING but his voice , his version of a person is anthemea. It explains why he's so ungodly cruel when he really gets going, gleefully using Charlotte's dead husband and bill's dead daughter to manipulate them and instead of just jumping emma as soon as he got the chance since he clearly had a number of hosts ready, teasing her with the idea Paul's alive. To him defying his will, his voice is worse: the only happiness is in the hive, wtih him. He'll give you what you want sure.. but at the cost of who you are because to him that's all that matters. It's likely why his medium's more limited than his brothers, who seem to have an easier time reaching otu: it's likely none of them want to give him the faintest chance of enough power to take them on and given he's the only lord to have outright taken a world, their fear isn't unujustified.

It's what makes Pokey so terrifying: They seem to want what's best for humanity.. but see a complete lack of will from anything but itself as best. Nothing will stop it, there's no depths it won't sink to torture you, and you WILL be part of the hive. I've always felt the best horror villians are one with a bit of personality and Pokey hits that itch like a bullseye. He's operatic, selfish and nightmarish, being a primadonna director with the goey face of an elder god who you can't bargin with. Just give up your choice. He dosen't feel overpowered becfause while abbsurdly powerful, the horror comes from the fact that they MIGHT have been able to stop him at a few hosts.. but by the time they realize it he's won and the rest of the musical comes off as him just playing with his food. A clever unstoppable meance that chills you to the bone and is remarkably well written given half a dozen people play him, yet all play him consitent, with the same chilling instance on being the singular voice. One being, dozens of bodies, no escape.

So speaking of dozens of bodies we're on to our other ingenue, our newest addition and one who like the other remaning cast members plays a bunch of extra rolls, Mariah Rose Faith Castiles, just the first three at the time of this as she's since married. She's a wonderful, kind person and a clear talent that fit right in. She's also like Jon heavily tied to this franchise having only missed one show, Black Friday due to getting a part in Mean Girls, something that was sad but also good for her. The Pandemic meant she was avaliable for Nightmare Time and after quitting the tour due to her anxiety she's back for NPD and we're glad to have her.

Mariah plays four roles in this one: Melissa, CCRP's receptionist who has a crush on Paul and dosen't show up much, Zoey, Emma's bratty coworker whose having an affair with sam, Alice, Bill's Daughter and Greenpeace girl, a GP volunteer who paul pisses off by trying to brush off. Since 3/4 of these characters show up hived on screen she spends most of her screentime as the Hive and does a terrific job, being jolly yet clearly off in La Dee Da Day, creepily monotone in cup of poison coffee nad finally heartbreakingly nightmarish as Alice, as she uses every insecurity bill has to tear the poor guy apart. She gets a truly great scene as Hive!Zoey to oas our heroes almost escape only to reveal nope, hive's flying the plane. It's no wonder Nick wanted her to play the lead as Lex next time, and she got her chance with Nerdy Prudes Must Die as Stephanie… and as fate would have it Grace Chasity , her co-lead is played by Angela Giratina, her replacement as Lex and as has become clear via streams and the Yellow Jacket music vidoew, a now good friend in real life which I find as strange as I do sweet.

Finally for cast introductions we have Jeff Motherfucking Blim, my boy. who with this muiscla finally got to use his now iconic unshaven coked out jesus look on screen. This is how I met Jeff but he'd been around a while: When Joey coudln't do Holy Musical Batman!, Jeff stepped in as Sweet Tooth, and hammed it up so hard he earned a permeannt spot with the group, going on to play the best version of ALaddin. What would lead to his rise here though was the Trail To Oregon, an orgen trail spoff he wrote and wrote the music for. So with former music makers Talk Fine moving on to do their own stuff, Jeff was the natural choice to step in as Starkid's prime music meister, with Talk Fine head Clark Backstresser only stepping back in for a VHS chrismtas Carol. Hatchetfield feels almost as much Jeff's baby as it does Nick and Matt's, and he really gets to flex his musical muscles with this franchise getting even better with each production.

We'll talk more about his music in a moment but as an actor, Jeff is fucking hinged, having a great habbit for ham, hilarity and looking abosltuely nuts in the best way possible. Case in point while he does a good Bill Lundberg as Mr. Davidson before he gets infected, post infectoin Davidson is one of the best things i've ever seen, a perpetual creepy yet hilarious smile, an inablity to show a woman's curves without having 8 of them, and jolliy telling Paul to stay whlie he tells his wife he wants her to choke him while he jerks off. The musical plays to his strengths, with Sam being likewise unhinged if not as smily , getting to ham it up with terrible love song you tied up my heart, and while he's more calm as Col John Mcnamar of PEIP, a secret orignation against the parnormal, he's still hammy, gladly throwing jon's phone before iconicallyt elling him to wear a watch instead of just… you know.. not destroying his property and only means of calling his friends. I get something as important as time deserves it's own device but still man. He's had a hell of a day. He also does a chilling job with the very heavy "America is Great Again", proving the guy can be chilling when needed.. something we'll see all too well when we get to Nightmare Time.

So with that we're down to the various other roles played by the rest of the cast. Manion's other major roll is Hot Chcolate Boy, aka Peter. He's a delight, Emma's Boss, she's really fogerattble other than, since the Langs likely realized "Shit charlotte is dead", the "All your best friends are here" gag in the starlight showdown, A Homeless man who will be vastly important, utterly steals la de da day, and freaks paul out expertly and of course future star of Hatchetfield Man in a Hurry. He was written to just say "i'm in a hurry" in the script but Jeff eventually just kept brushing past so much that he was brought back for black friday and flanderized from just some uncaring jackass with a scarf and a trench coat who keeps showing up places you REALLY shoudln't go to when your in a hurry. We are truly blessed for that. So that leads us to one of the most important and vital parts of Starkid and this show, the Music. Show Stoppin Numbers

The soundtrack for TGWDLM is postively packed. As i've made clear there's only one song I really DON'T like on the whole soundtrack and we'll get to it. The gimmick of it all being the hive gives things a unique vibe with the music not being our heroes inner yearnings but a sign shits about to get bad. While this isn't Jeff's first kickass starkid score it's the one that really showed what he can do, trapsing all around genres and theater standard types of songs to make this catchy earwormy soundtrack.

The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals is our title track and gets us going out of the gate. It's omnious as it goes on much like the musical, with the Hive going from talking up how great musicals are and how great.. to asking "should we kill him? Should we kill him?" for paul not wanting to sing and dance with them all, and calling him a bitch, an ass and a cuck (not a cock like I thoguht for some time), for not joining in their singing season. The part where paul dosen't show up on queue is also fucking gold. Music wise it's lively a true all timer of an opening number Faviorite Part: Joey's "But tonight we're gonna chroncile a story so astronomical!" just the way he says it is so perfectly hammy.

La Dee Da Day is a great parody of those big showy crowd numbers musicals have, being a great one in it's own right…j while parodying the usual cheerfulness of that sort of thing with how unnerving it comes off for poor paul and of course the homeless man… who "used to want to kill them all while high on bathsalt zombie drugs snacking on a dead mans face", with small horrible implicatoins hidden from the GPG throwing "my old skin away" to how "a song takes all the pain away" for the old homeless man meaning evne if the hive puppets can FEEL the pain it uses them anyway. ti's nicely done Best Part: Gave a clue but as you can probably guess the Homeless Man's horrifying yet hilarous rant. The only downgrade for the soundtrack version is Paul's confused "What" is missing, which I fell really completes the joke. as does Joey getting entirely up in his face as he gets more intense.

THen of course we get one of my faviorite numbers and performances: What Do You Want Paul? This is where I fell in love with Jeff Blim folks, as his giant horrifying smile during the whole thing is one of the funniest goddamn things mankind has ever created. Making an I want song into a song about how someone wants the main protagnist to want like an I want song is fucking brilliant and is every bit as hilaroius as it sounds. Pauls utter confusion and horror the whole time, especially once we get to "I want you to choke me out at night" is hilarious. Speaking of which that is one of the funniest things Team StarKid has EVER done. I mean it. The sudden pivot to that, Jon's perfectly timed discomfort and just how beautifully and straightlaced Jeff holds it, as well as his offhand "if you leave your fired" to paul… i'm tearing up laughing NOW just thinking about it. It's one of only two songs that I went back to. Best Part: "I want you to choke me while I jerk off", both for Paul's reaction of who is this for and just for being one of the most excellent comedic swerves starkid has ever done.

Cup of Roasted/Poison Coffee is fine. It's mildly annoying but it feels like the point, that it's SUPPOSED to be the annoying half assed kind of jingle Beanies would have.. and makes it that much more horrifying when we get the Poisoned version, and the hey mr buisness how do you do as the newley hived corpses join in. Chilling. Best Part: Again the hey mr buisness part after all those people what get murdered.

Show Me Your Hands is another comedic goldmine. It not only feels like subtle commentary on the police ("WE make sense") but is packed with great ham from jeff, great deadpan from mariah and robert frigging breakdancing. It comes off like a bunch of 12 year olds playing cops in the bodies of actual cops.. which might be a good nightmare time story down the line Langs. You can have it for free. Best Part: "Your cat is dead". Just the delivery alone is enough. Thank you so much Mariah.

You Tied Up My heart

Yeah as i've made no secret of I hate this fucking thing. In concept it's not bad, a cheesy love ballad that's the hive tricking charlotte and look, Jeff's music and vocals are fine. But with the both obvious solution, the seriousness of what he's doing, and just the sheer length this thing wears on you. What should be horrifying, the hive gaslighting charlotte becomes an endurance test. It's also baffling as Jeff did an absolute banger of a ballad "When the World's At Stake" for Trail to Oregon so I don't know what happened here. I'm more baffled because he can do better. It's not even god awful, it's just.. not good. Best Part: That shriek of "Charlotte!". It's the one thing about the song I can compliment

Join Us and Die is thankfully 800 times better, giving Jamie a chance to fucking belt it and being an acting ending powerhouse. Like the songs before that thing that happened, ti's comedy packed, the last bit about beating up Ted styled like "Bop It" is fucking magical. A truly electric villian song Best Part: "it is time to dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" I love that woman, how she did that I don't know but holy shit.

Not Your Seed is fucking incredible. While Mariah got to sing before and got a bit of a showcase with La De Da Day, here she REALLY gets to show how impressive her voice and acting are. Not Your Seed is just 2 and a half brilliant minutes of Mariah absolutely killing it on the stage, and utterly shredding poor bill to pieces. The slow pacing only drags out the pain for bill and feels delebrate, like Pokey WANTED this to fucking hurt him for as long as possible for surviving this long, to make Paul WATCH for his defiance as Pokey broke his best friend. Especially "you let me out of your sight for one second" just the rapid delivery of that and "didn't you know I wanted to live with you" hit like a fucking truck. She's the top. Look What Happens Nightmare Time would also give us the series definitive cords and the title for it's anthology show. Nicely done Best Part: Very fucking hard. Mariah does not make this easy. But Why Does It Hurt To Love you gets me as it's this sudden, painful, and probably HONEST, taking Alice's real emotions break that REALLY guts you and sadly poor bill. Thankfully not literally. As tragic as that headshot was at least it was quick.

Show Stopping Number has the thankfless task of following up one of the shows best numbers.. so naturally it's also one of the shows best and what's become it's signature piece. Robert fucking owns the stage as hidgens, first with the slower tunes leading in..a nd then with the falsetto switch when he decides to intro Workin Boys. Just the shift from the old man voice which is still BEAUTIFULLY sung in a crooner bing crosbyish style to Robert's more natural register… how are this man's lungs human? I shoudlnt' have to tell you returning starkids that Workin Boys is one of the best jokes ever crafted, from being a clear pisstake on Glory Days (something I didn't know but somehow makes it funnier once you do, as Glory Days is every bit as prentious, stupid and nostalgia baity as WOrkin Boys from the looks of it), to Roberts great dance moves (coregraphed by lauren) to the great hook of "five o clock can't come soon enough". IT's fucking magic. i may have.. complicated feeligns about robert I already talked about at lenght, btu I can't deny workin boys is great nor that i'm excited for the short film, which I hope gets released publicly in some form. The first song already has me hyped. And yes there's a short film: MANY people wanted Workin Boys to be a full musical which while understandable wasn't something that would really work given it was deisgnd to be a parody, hence instead compromising with a short ABOUT Hidgens actually getting to make it as part of Black Friday's backer goals. Best Part: BUISNESS CALLS I'M UP TO MY ASS IN SHIT, WHAT IS THIS BUISNESS. I mean that entire part, including the phone call desreves it but i'm calling out the sudden shift and hte hilaroity of that first line itself. I'm not entirley convinced that this was salvaged from them TRYING to make a full on parody of glory days at some point.

America is Great Again gets a bad wrap as i've seen it shockingly low on several hatchetfield ranking lists on youtube and along with John's other song, which we'll get to I feel is underrated. It's a chilling song and while it's politics are welded to it's sleeves, given the Langs had a friend outright quit to become a lawyer over the election , it's clear it REALLY hit them hard. And frankly as MANY bros tend to forget, Poltics and political satire are baked into horror. So while it's in your face about it's critques of trumpisim (The loud has become the strong).. it's not exactly wrong. The you can't run and easily disposed parts espcially given the kind of legslation put on women's bodies and LBGTQ+ peoples lately and general hostility to anyone diffrent period. The fact this hasn't gone away with the election really just makes this song hold up that much more. Best Part: The Final Solution onward. Just how horrifying it is mixed with Jeff's ham.. perfect.

So we've come to my faviorite song, Let It Out. This song is pure brilliance as is the staging, with the hive all on the fringes urging paul to let it out because they know their victory isn't not a matter of how but a matter of when. Of course the man treat and the thing tha tbrings this is Jon Mattensons' performance, effortlessly switching between paul and the hive, going from pained horror to having a smile painted on his soul like it was nothing. It shows in the voice, with paul's panicked speech constrated with the hvie's plastic singing and when Paul does sing he's barely there. it's one of the best horror freakouts i've ever seen, and trust me that threeshold is vast and expansive. The ending shout of "I don't like musicals' is badass.. and sadly futile as his fate

Is "Ineveitble", our final soong and a nice cruel twist on big splashy finales. Most musical finales , those that end happy anyway are about lifting you up, really reving you up as you get out of the theater and giving you hope for tommorow. Even pretty grim works like "Spring Awakening" can end on a nope of hope. This one? Nah. This one takes your heart and smashes to bit, forcing you, much like emma to watch as a puppeteered paul sings several even more warped version osf the score at her while trying to convince her that the horrible monster she's been fighting is a good thing and that the world became "peaceful and just". It's truly haunting and sadly catchy as hell so we're pretty much fucked i'd say. Watching emma run around desperate to escape as it's clear ther eisn't, i'ts at ruly chilling way to end a truly excellent musical.

So thus we close a curtain on one Hatchetfield. If all goes well I'll be covering Black Friday next month , then possibly taking a break for december before getting into nightmare time next year. This could change as when push comes to shove to feed the hive that is my bank account I HAVE to proritze the reviews I do on comission, but i intend to try my damdenst to get the review out around the actual black friday. I hope you all enjoyed this as it was a LOT to get done, but it was a true labor of love. This is one of my faviorite musicals and I was glad to dig through it with a fine toothed comb and I can only hope a few years after it's release my analysis isn't too played out. Stick around if you enjoyed this for more reviews, don't be afraid to reblog it or join my patreon to help keep this blog going, and thank you once again so much for reading. I'll see you in line for a Tickle Me Wiggly.

#team starkid #hatchetfield #tgwdlm #paul matthews #emma perkins #henry hidgens #ted spankoffski #bill woodward #alice woodward #charlotte sweetly #sam sweetly #zoe chambers #man in a hurry #peter spankoffski #joey richter #lauren lopez #jon matteson #corey dorris

[albumwalloffame]

Top 10 Worst Album Covers of 1986 - Part 1/2

I've been doing the worst album covers list at the end of the year for a couple years now, and I do this because I love looking at and talking about album covers. The Album Cover is one of my all time favourite forms of art, and many would argue that it is such an integral piece to the album listening experience. So, it made me wonder, why don't I go back and really explore the album covers of years previous, let's pick a random year and look at some of the absolute worst album covers that the year has to offer. Maybe I'll also do a best list, I dunno, but let's start with 1986, why? Because the 80s are remembered as one of the best decades for music, and yeah the music was pretty great, but some of the album covers… nah. So, let's enjoy this blast from the past, this is the top ten worst album covers of 1986.

10. Europe - The Final Countdown

I know I've already brought this cover up when I inducted it into the Album Cover Wall of Infamy in 2021. It's just a ridiculous image. It's the band members in the Phantom Zone, it's a bunch of trading cards falling to Earth, it's dumb, and not the fun dumb either, it's just straight up dumb. I think the key difference between something being "fun Dumb" and being "Dumb" is entertainment value, and frankly this image is kinda boring. This album cover is dumb and boring, sounds like a lot of Hair Metal acts now that I think about it.

9. Pet Shop Boys - Please

No, you do not need to increase the webpage's zoom, that really is how tiny they made the image. I guess this made sense back in the days of vinyl, when the record sleeves were huge compared to casette's and CDs, and since vinyl has made a comeback I guess I shouldn't be surprised if anyone disagrees with me. I still don't get why you would do this, when you have all this space to work with, you stick a tiny image in the center and fill the remaining space with a solid colour. Why not just have the full photo be the album cover?

8. John Fogerty - Eye of the Zombie

First of all, that isn't a zombie. That is, judging by the nose and the eyes, a cat person. Okay, let's assume that the term "Zombie" is being used as an umbrella term, like "Fae" was. Fae used to refer to all kinds of magical creatures, so maybe the same idea is being used for "Zombie"? Except that's stupid, especially by 1986, when the previous year saw the release of George A Romero's Day of the Dead. Secondly, Zombie or not, get the Hell away from me, take a step back, I do not want your face close to mine.

7. UB40 - Rat in the Kitchen

I can't tell what I'm supposed to be more disgusted by, the giant radioactive rat, or the skinny cheese man climbing the walls. Also, great job putting the band name on the album cover twice guys.

6. Jean-Michel Jarre - Rendez-vous

I don't think I need to say anything with this one. You guys remember that ASDF movie sketch? Like, it's not only an incomplete Earth, it's an incomplete face, and it's kinda disturbing. There is one question I have though; Who is this Granger person?

Well, let me talk a bit about Michel Granger, a French Artist from Roanne. He actually did a lot of the covers for this guy, and… a lot of them are really good. 1976's Oxygène, 1978's Équinoxe, 1993's Chronologie. Notice how none of the examples of good album covers came from the 80s, and that's because for most of the 80s, the album covers were not done by Michel Granger, as far as my research brought me, this was the only one… and that's just kinda… sad.

Part 2 here!

#music #art #album art #album covers #bad album covers #top 10 list #1980s #europe band #pet shop boys #john fogerty #ub40 #jean michel jarre #Album Covers Wall (Hall) of Fame

[onlinesikhstore]

Stylish SARBLOH Pure Iron Steel Smooth Sikh Khalsa Taksali Kara KADA Bracelet M1

Stylish SARBLOH Pure Iron Steel Smooth Round Sikh Khalsa Taksali Kara KADA Bracelet M1

Design No. M1 

Please note we have customised these kara for a Sikh guy on demand. We had six of them, four of which were already sold before Listing on eBay. Only two left in stock. Please click buy now asap to avoid any disappointment. Gur Fateh Ji!

These Karas are from the Holy and Pious Land of Shiri Amritsar Ji (The City of Golden Temple/Darbar Sahib Ji/Harmandir Sahib)

Weight of this Kara is approximate 80-110g (variable due to size of kara).

Width is approx 0.8 cm and Thickness is approx 0.8cm

HEAVY Smooth SARBLOH TAKSALI KARA (variations are prepared by measuring the internal diameter of Karas).

These Kara are rememberance gift for life. Best thing ever to gift your loved ones and these always remind them about your presence. I am myself wearing a 15 years old Kara that my Grandmum has gifted me and it always remind me of her. Kara GIFT FOR LIFE #karaforlife #kadaforlife Visit My eBay Shop: OnlineSikhStore Check out my other items! Be sure to add me to your favourites list! Sign up for my email newsletters by adding my eBay Shop to your favourites Apart from religious values Karas are the best to be given as a rememberance/memorable gift. Hence, a brilliant gift idea for loved ones. These Karas are one of the Sikh Kakars.

(Very Smooth - as shown in photos - photos are zoomed to show details) - Very  Popular design in market right now - very famous in youngsters and we are the only seller who has this exclusive design for sale in UK.

Very Smooth from inside and heavy. Non allergic to Skin.

These Karas are from the Holy and blessed land of Shiri Amritsar Sahib (The City of Golden Temple/Darbar Sahib/Shiri Harmandir Sahib Ji). Please choose variation size while buying or mention it to us in your note:

Please measure diameter of your old kara or 3 and half knuckles of your fist then choose size from the variations.

Please read below more Information about Sikh Kara:

A kara  ਕੜਾ , کڑا  कड़ा , is a steel or iron (sarb loh) worn by all initiated Sikhs. It is one of the five Kakars or 5Ks — external articles of faith — that identify a Sikh as dedicated to their religious code. The kara was instituted by the tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh Ji at the Baisakhi Amrit Sanskar in 1699. Guru Gobind Singh Ji explained:

He does not recognize anyone else except me, not even the bestowal of charities, performance of merciful acts, austerities and restraint on pilgrim-stations; the perfect light of the Lord illuminates his heart, then consider him as the immaculate Khalsa.

The kara is to constantly remind the Sikh disciple to do God's work, a constant reminder of the Sikh's mission on this earth and that he or she must carry out righteous and true deeds and actions, keeping with the advice given by the Guru. The Kara is a symbol of unbreakable attachment and commitment to God. It is in the shape of a circle which has no beginning and no end, like the eternal nature of God. It is also a symbol of the Sikh brotherhood. As the Sikhs' holy text the Guru Granth Sahib Ji says "In the tenth month, you were made into a human being, O my merchant friend, and you were given your allotted time to perform good deeds." Similarly, Bhagat Kabir reminds the Sikh to always keep one's consciousness with God: "With your hands and feet, do all your work, but let your consciousness remain with the Immaculate Lord."

The basic kara is a simple unadorned steel bracelet, but other forms exist. It was historically used like a Knucke Duster for hand-to-hand combat. Battlefield variations include kara with spikes or sharp edges. Sikh soldiers of the British Indian army would settle disputes by competing in a form of boxing known as loh-musti (lit. iron fist) with a kara on one hand.

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We polish all our Karas with Brasso Polish and Cotton cloth before dispatch. It gives them good shine that will be long lasting. We ensure that our karas are rust free but with Sarbloh you can't Guarantee that as Rust is the Characteristic of Pure Iron/Sarbloh karas.

There may be little bit rust present which is seen commonly in all SARBLOH KARAS due to purity of the metal/Pure iron + Cuts/marks are common on these warrior style Karas. These Kara have no joint, made with Traditional methods mostly by hand in Amritsar. Sarbloh Kara are warrior style Kara.

Brilliant finish and very decorative. Ideal gift item for loved ones on all occasions.

We are UK based supplier smartfashions.co.uk. Items can be collected from our shop in Rochester, Kent, UK.  We have 100% positive feedback. Please bid with confidence and check our other fantastic listings. If you are not happy with your purchase we will give you 100% refund on return of item. No hard and fast rules for refunds and returns.

Very Reasonable Economy Royal Mail Postage in UK for this Chunky Kara.

Postage discounts will be given to International buyers for multi-buys.

Any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you for looking at our shop.

PLEASE NOTE: Please measure/check size of your kara/bracelet first while ordering to avoid any hassle or posting it back to us and paying extra for p&p for exchange and swap of karas with other desired sizes.

There will be charge of £4 p&p towards exchange/swap of Kara for any size issues for UK buyers and £9.99 p&p for international buyers that needs to be paid by PayPal in advance or interested buyer can send us pa repaid self addressed envelope for any exchange/swap along with the original item in its original packaging and buyer should also return us the gift item/bags sent along with the item for appreciation of purchase. We may post back gift items/bags along with the swapped item.

P.S. Colour of item may slightly vary due to camera flash and light conditions. Some Karas may have negligible small black grinding mark on the kara joint. This is always seen on all karas as most of the Kara making/shaping work is done by hands. However, this do not affect the quality/look of Karas.

Design Number: M1 Gender: Unisex Country/Region of Manufacture: India Main Material/ Metal: Sarbloh/Pure Iron/Steel Type: Bracelets/Bangle Main Colour: Silver Tone/Sarbloh Ethnic & Regional Style: Asian

[getmemymicroscope]

One of the oldest movies I've watched (after Snow White, Bambi, Dumbo, The Gold Rush, and the Bollywood movie Kismet), but more to the point, very much (sort of) in line with that run of books/movies I had earlier that seems to try and give us the point of view of a criminal and, even more than that, this idea of guilt building-up until they break. This time, it happens almost immediately for one of our main characters - and not at all for the other; you can tell right away who is dealing with the reality poorly and who is, more likely than not, going to be the one who slips and gets him/them caught. And, sure enough.

I mean, our inquisitive "detective" (if you want to call him that) quickly picks up on the unusual behaviors of both men - though, as an audience that has only known them for the upwards of 30 minutes, we wouldn't pick that up until it is pointed out. But even he quickly realizes that one of them is closer to breaking than the other, and hones in there to ruin their dreams of getting away with a "perfect crime."

I've said this before - and I don't doubt in the least that this would happen to someone, anyone, who did this sort of thing and had any sort of moral compass at all - but, like, it becomes a bit frustrating to watch (or read) because the morally correct (though, not too correct since they did commit a crime) character ends up just becoming frustratingly annoying to deal with. Like, Brandon is frustratingly creepy because he feels no remorse and, in fact, views himself as superior to everyone else; Phillip, meanwhile, is frustrating annoying pretty much from the start because clearly so aghast at what they've done. Like, why did he even go along with it - but that isn't something we find out, because all we get is a consecutive 80 minutes of their lives, from murder to end. Sure, they spout some philosophy during their celebratory party (maybe a preamble to the villain's 'bragging monologue to allow impending doom' of current day?), but mostly we just see one guy go around as if nothing is wrong and the other guy go around as if nothing is right. And, of course, the ego of one and the conscience of the other end up being their downfall.

Hitchcock was apparently experimenting with long 'single take' shots in this, which is obviously clear - we have multiple shots that just drag on and end by zooming into something, creating a moment of darkness before zooming back out to a different angle, and we also have that scene where a conversation essentially happens off screen while we watch Mrs. Wilson walk back-and-forth clearing off the table and the chest (and, also, we get the view of half of Rupert's back). It's interesting, but clearly it didn't really catch on much (probably for good reason).

The movie doesn't really get into the psyche of our characters, aside from trying to show us that it does exist and that everyone deals with it differently, which makes sense - it would be hard to do much exploration of that in 80 minutes. We just see from a distance as it causes things to fall apart, but you walk away wondering what exactly damned them more - a weak psyche or a large ego?

The movie also sorta caused me to flashback, just slightly, to the much more recent movie Candlestick - and not just because the titles of both movies are murder weapon options in the game Clue (though, admittedly, that is why I watched this movie). That one, with a much less famous starcast/director, also featured a main character who committed a murder (alone, and for a different reason, admittedly) and then hosted a get-together (I think it was more of a dinner there, as opposed to a planned party here) - and I guess that makes sense, given that the director of that movie cited Rope as an influence for his film.

It's not Hitchcock's best/most famous work, and the filming method does take a minute (or 80) to get used to, and both Brandon and Phillip (and Rupert, even, if we're being honest) are sorta grating, but the story isn't that poorly told overall. I think it just suffers from having to have a character breakdown immediately, just so that the progression from "perfect" to "caught" in 80 minutes can be achieved somewhat reasonably.

Like the novel Malice Aforethought (and others, I'm sure), this breakdown is sorta caused by accidental coincidences (someone mistaking another guest at the party for the man whose body is hiding in the chest, for example) and harmless statements interpreted as harmful by a fragile, breaking mind - and once it's started, it becomes very easy for an apparently super-smart Rupert to figure out something is up. And by pure chance he happens across the one piece of evidence he really needs to tie it all together (see what I did there?; though, admittedly, it is a stretch of a pun since the piece of evidence and the rope are two different things), and combined why a seemingly benign statement about the rope around a bunch of books, he is able to piece it together.

Don't do murder!

#movies #movieblr #gmmm does movies

[greensparty]

Album Reviews: Ringo Starr / Djo

This week I got to review two albums from very different ends of the music spectrum.

Ringo Starr EP3

album cover

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to see Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band live (my second time seeing them) and I was blown away that at age 82, he is still a showman singing and drumming like he was in his twenties. He was always the funny one in The Beatles. Over time it has become cool to poke fun at Ringo, but his solo career is criminally underrated. As a member of The Beatles, he gets loads of respect, but as a solo artist he doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. He has to live up to the Fab Four and each of their solo careers, but he has actually made some great solo albums. While he hasn’t released a full length album since 2019′s What’s My Name (read my review here), he has been keeping super busy during the pandemic. Last year he released the EPs Zoom In and Change the World (both were included on my Best Albums of 2021 list). Many of the songs feature some special guest stars including Dave Grohl and former bandmate Paul McCartney. Now, Sir Ringo is back with newest EP simply titled EP3 dropping today from UMe.

Sir Ringo Starr (center behind drums) with the All-Starr Band in June 2022 at Boch Center

Similar to the previous EPs he recorded as his Roccabella West Studios and brought in various collaborators, including Steve Lukather (part of the All-Starr Band lineup I saw in June) and Linda Perry. Something I’ve talked about in previous EP reviews is that when you have a short album of four or five songs, the bullseye is bigger and easier to hit. With this EP, it is Sir Ringo’s rocking pop sound with his lyrics about peace and love, which he’s been doing for quite some time now. But in a way, that’s kinda what we need right now from Sir Ringo - something positive, fun and familiar. I think Zoom In is probably a better EP, but for a collection of four songs with Sir Ringo singing and playing drums, it hits the bullseye and then some! Let’s hope we does a full album real soon!

For info on EP3: https://shop.ringostarr.com/

3.5 out of 5 stars

Djo Decide

album cover

I have to ask, what is in the water on the set of Stranger Things that is causing so many of the cast to become musicians outside of acting? The series itself has always been driven by a synth-heavy score and a soundtrack filled with 80s hits (just look at the revitalized success of Kate Bush this year). But I ask about the cast becoming musicians because Finn Wolfhard was the singer/guitarist in Calpurnia and is now in The Aubreys, Maya Hawke is a singer-songwriter and she actually has a new album out this month, and Gaten Matarazzo has been singing in some musical theater when he’s not filming the TV series. Cast member Joe Keery is also one of those with a music career. He had been a member of the Chicago band Post Animal before parting ways in 2019. Around that time, he began performing under the name Djo and released the album Twenty Twenty. Now he is back with the new album Decide, which drops today.

Joe Keery on Stranger Things (bonus points for his character working in a video store in the most recent season)

Keery hails from Newburyport, MA and he has been playing a ton of music festivals this year including Boston Calling. I went into this album rooting for a hometown hero. In addition to Stranger Things, he has popped up in Free Guy and he’s going to star in the upcoming season of Fargo. But alas, I was disappointed. The album is indie synth-pop and it aspires to be DFA artists like Holy Ghost!, who are young guys doing 80s-style pop-rock you can dance to and rock out to. With Decide, there were some good songs here and there, but overall it was a letdown. I wanted this to be so much better, mainly because I like Keery on Stranger Things. His character Steve started out as a typical 80s teen villain and his trajectory on the series has been incredible, especially this last season. While Decide wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be, I am going to keep my eye on what Djo does next.

For info on Decide: https://djo.ffm.to/decide

2 out of 5 stars

#album review #Ringo Starr #djo #joe keery #the beatles #stranger things #post animal #music nerd #tv

[onlydylanobrien]

Dylan O'Brien - NME Magazine Interview

Dylan O’Brien: “I was in this transitional phase – close to a quarter-life crisis”

From YA heartthrob to legitimate leading man – how the 'Maze Runner' star hit his stride after a whirlwind decade

Definitely!” hoots Dylan O’Brien when NME asks if he still has to audition. “I’m not Tom fucking Hanks, bro.” He’s clearly amused by our question, but forgive us for thinking the 29-year-old actor gets cast on reputation alone. A decade into his career, and he’s making an impressive transition from teen TV star and YA franchise hero to charismatic leading man.

New York-born O’Brien cut his teeth on MTV’s hit Teen Wolf series, before landing the lead in the Maze Runner film trilogy based on James Dashner’s hugely popular novels. Leading a band of bright young things that included ex-Skins tearaway Kaya Scodelario, Game Of Thrones’ Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, he honed his craft while racking up nearly a billion dollars at the box office. “My career is a constant acting class,” says O’Brien. “To be able to do the Maze Runner movies simultaneously with Teen Wolf was amazing in terms of getting in reps and working my [acting] muscle.”

Now for the sometimes tricky bit. Many actors struggle with the post-breakout period, but O’Brien is making it look easy so far. This year’s Netflix hit Love and Monsters proved he can carry an old-school family adventure, and new film Flashback (out next week) reveals an appetite for weirder, more cerebral work. He stars as Fred Fitzell, a young man reluctant to buckle down to life as a nine-to-fiver with a boring corporate job and a long-term girlfriend (Mindhunter‘s Hannah Gross). When he runs into a freaky-looking acquaintance from his teenage years, Fred becomes obsessed with finding an old high-school friend he used to drop a mind-bending experimental drug called Mercury with. It’s difficult to say any more without entering spoiler territory, but Flashback is a wild ride underpinned by the idea that we can exist in several realities at once. Even if you follow every plot twist, you might not fully understand the end. “Oh, it’s definitely a headfuck,” O’Brien agrees. “There’s not totally an answer to figure out. There’s a lot of different things that people can take from it.”

Speaking over Zoom from his LA home, O’Brien is bright, thoughtful and really good fun to talk to, especially when he relaxes into the interview, but he clearly knows where his line between public and private lies. When he first read the Flashback script, written by the film’s director Christopher MacBride, his “mind was blown” by just how much he related to Fred. “I felt like I was in this transitional phase of my life that was, you know, sort of close to a quarter-life crisis type thing,” he says. “For whatever reason, it was like me and this script were meant to be. I remember reading it and thinking: ‘I am this guy right now.'”

“There were a lot of things in my personal life that were neglected for a while”

When we ask why O’Brien felt as though he had reached a “transitional phase”, he gives an answer that’s vague but not exactly evasive. For understandable reasons, he doesn’t mention the incredibly traumatic motorcycle accident he sustained while shooting the final Maze Runner film in March 2016. O’Brien suffered severe trauma to the brain and said in 2017 that he underwent extensive facial reconstructive surgery after the accident “broke most of the right side of my face”. Tellingly, he’s never really revealed what happened on set or how it affected him.

Today, O’Brien dances around the details of the accident and other issues he was dealing with at the time, but doesn’t shy away from discussing his inner conflict. “You know, it was a lot of personal things combined with at-a-point-in-my-career things,” he says after a brief pause. He says he’d have been going through some of this stuff anyway, simply because of his age, but it sounds as though success intensified it all. “It was like this whole fucking storm of shit,” he continues. “I was simultaneously so fulfilled and happy about these, like, otherworldly and surreal things that I had experienced in terms of where my career had brought me. I had all this confidence and fulfilment and beautiful people [in my life] – such amazing things to experience at a young age. But at the same time, there were a lot of things in my personal life that were unchecked and sort of neglected for a while.”

O’Brien says that in time, he realised he had to “stop for a second” and “re-explore how I wanted my life to look going forward”. In fairness, you can see why he needed a breather: his career took off while he was still a teenager. After his family moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles County when he was 12, O’Brien contemplated a career as a sports broadcaster – his Twitter bio still bills him as a “no longer suffering Mets fan” – then began posting YouTube videos as moviekidd826. A funny, slickly edited skit titled ‘How to Prepare for the SAT in 45 seconds’, shared when he was just 17, shows he was a born performer and storyteller. YouTube success led to him getting a manager, but his breakthrough role in Teen Wolf still came out of the blue. At the time, he was treading water at a local community college and taking auditions on the side.

Still, he has since taken a rather fatalistic view of this career-making moment. “It’s totally weird because, when I think about it now, I don’t see how it could have happened any other way. I can’t picture myself doing anything else now,” he told Collider in 2011. “It was really sudden and a little random, and not provoked by anything. It was just out of nowhere. It wasn’t my intentional doing.” Today, O’Brien summarises his skyscraper career trajectory succinctly. “I guess I just graduated high school and started acting,” he says. “And then I felt like I was just flying by the seat of my pants and never got a chance to stop.” Thankfully, straight-out-the-blocks Hollywood success hasn’t taken away his sense of perspective. When I say how easy social media makes it to compare yourself unfavourably to others, O’Brien jumps in: “Yeah, that’s very true. I was watching the Billie Eilish doc the other day, and I was like, I’ve done nothing. I’m not an artist at all!”

“No one thought ‘Love and Monsters’ was going to be good!”

O’Brien is also self-deprecating when he talks about being cast in Flashback, suggesting it happened because he had such an intense connection with Fred. “I was honestly like, ‘Who is watching me right now?’ That is the best way I can describe how I was feeling when I came across this script,” he says. “Chris [MacBride, director] and I had this conversation that went so well in terms of [my] understanding this script that I think he’d sent around a lot and [that] very commonly wasn’t understood. I think Chris has even said that the night before shooting, he suddenly had this thought, like, ‘Wait, do I even think he’s a good actor?'”

Though O’Brien has firmly ring-fenced elements of his private life, he’s actually pretty frank about his acting vehicles. He readily admits he was expecting a snobbish response to Love and Monsters, a CGI-heavy hybrid of post-apocalyptic action and romcom that dropped on Netflix in April and topped the streamer’s daily most-watched list. “It means so much that Love and Monsters has gotten the response that it’s gotten,” O’Brien says. “No one thought this movie was going to be good.” His blunt honesty makes me laugh out loud. “No one did though!” he says in response. “And so, fuck that. You know, most of the people who say something to me about the movie, they’re like: ‘I watched Love and Monsters, and it was… good?’ And honestly, that just cracks me up.” For obvious reasons, we hastily decide not to share our response to the film – namely, that it was a whole lot better than expected.

In Love and Monsters, O’Brien plays Joel, a survivor of a so-called “monsterpocalypse” that has bumped humans to the bottom of the food chain. Though he’s known in his colony as a bit of a coward, Joel sets off on a treacherous 80-mile journey to find his high school sweetheart Aimee (Iron Fist‘s Jessica Henwick), which means evading the hungry clutches of various supersize grizzlies including a giant monster-frog hiding in a suburban pond. It’s a simple but pretty out-there premise that wouldn’t work if O’Brien’s performance was even slightly condescending. Instead, his unselfconscious sincerity really sells a film that has as much in common with the family-oriented Robin Williams movie Night at the Museum as darker fare like The Walking Dead.

His obvious affection for the project really comes across during our interview today. “When I read the script, I just thought it was so sweet and funny and smart and unique, but at the same time reminiscent of all these movies that don’t really get made any more,” he says. That’s a fair point: Love and Monsters is neither a fail-safe superhero movie nor a slice of classy Oscar bait. “And when they were talking about how to market this movie, it was so funny hearing all these conversations like, ‘How do we actually get people to watch it?'” he adds. “But that’s a big part of the reason I wanted to do this movie: because it felt like something I missed seeing.”

“I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who want to make something out of love”

So in a way, Love and Monsters was a risk for an actor seeking to establish himself outside of a bankable movie franchise and a hit TV show. O’Brien has only made four films since his final Maze Runner outing in 2018, and insists he hasn’t been tactical with his choices. “I don’t have anyone saying, ‘We need to get you in an Oscar vehicle’, or any of that kind of shit,” he says. “I’m really lucky to be surrounded by people who think like me: that you should do what you’re drawn to, and make something out of love.”

He’s recently finished shooting a mysterious crime thriller called The Outfit in London with Mark Rylance. Directed and co-written by Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for his screenplay to Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, O’Brien calls it “quite possibly one of the most special pieces of writing I’ve ever experienced”. He first read the script on a plane and says he “actually stood up and clapped” when he got to the end. Considering O’Brien probably wasn’t flying Ryanair, this reaction presumably attracted a few baffled glances.

Anyway, it must be pretty intimidating walking onto set with Rylance, a multi-award-winning actor revered by his peers – Al Pacino once said he “speaks Shakespeare as if it was written for him the night before” – but it sounds as though O’Brien took it all in stride. He says he’s confident in his abilities, but admits to having a slight wobble whenever he begins a new project. “I’m always sort of re-questioning everything – like, ‘Can I even act?'” he says. “But I think there’s something very natural about that. I think even Rylance could relate to that feeling. Acting is like starting a new year at school every single time.”

At this point in his career, O’Brien has made peace with the fact that some people will have preconceptions about him based on what he’s known for: Maze Runner and Teen Wolf. “People will put you in a box no matter what,” he says. “There was definitely a time when that would get to me, especially when it felt like somebody had a perspective on me that in my soul, I just felt wasn’t accurate.” Still, there’s no doubt he wants to show us what’s really in his soul with more films like Flashback. “If anything,” he adds bullishly, “it just makes me think: ‘Right, I’m really gonna show them now’.”

‘Flashback’ is out on digital platforms from June 4

#dylan o'brien #love and monsters press #flashback press #the outfit press

[frogtanii]

hq boys as the crimes they’d commit

warnings: CRIMES, crackfic, probably many typos idk i’m so tired lmaooo, cursing, drinking ??? idfk 😩💦

an: and i did this for what?? inspired by hq hcs royalty @sugardaddykenma @hina-wit-da-glock (AJSKSJ SORRY FOR TAGGING Y’ALL IF YOU SEE THIS, IT IS DEF NOT UP TO PAR W Y’ALLS WORKS ILY)

karasuno

sawamura daichi- insurance fraud!! somehow this is such a dad crime to commit?? dadchi didn’t try (dumb excuse, how do you accidentally commit insurance fraud smh) to commit insurance fraud but at one point in his late-thirties, he was very very broke and was already working as much as possible so, he decided to fake an ankle injury, as you do, and filed a bunch of claims which made him bank. daichi kept doing it until he was able to quit one of his jobs and buy himself a really nice suit and a rolex (uhhh 🥵). he somehow never got caught tho and to this day, none of his friends know how he was able to afford a tesla on a cop’s salary (sorry daichi but acab 😔✨)

sugawara kōshi- child abandonment!! ok you can try and fight me on this but i feel in my bones that suga absolutely despises children. he can tolerate ages 10+ but anything younger than that, he will punt them into the next dimension. the thing is, people just assume he likes kids because of how good he is with his team which is why his aunt begged him to babysit his nephew taro. taro was being an absolute brat when suga took him out for the day and he was 👉👈 this close to snapping. he put taro down for like 3 seconds to pay for their ice cream and when he turned back, the demon spawn was gone. he panicked, running around the park looking for taro when it turns out, taro was just bent down behind the bench. some random karen called the police and suga has never craved murder more.

nishinoya yuu- arson!! you CANNOT tell me nishinoya doesn’t have a ~murder~ playlist that he listens to to get himself hype (me too noya, me too). one night, he got a lil too hype listening to start a riot by duckwrth and watching demolition videos on youtube. he snuck out of his house to an empty shed like 30 minutes away and maybe... lit it on fire while genocide by lil darkie played on a speaker nearby. what he did NOT anticipate was the absolute size of the fire so he freaked out and called the firefighters who promptly called the police. he didn’t want to get grounded so he called daichi to bail him out. daichi still told noya’s parents 😔.

tanaka ryūnosuke- vandalism!! tanaka had been on alt tiktok and saw a group of cool friends spray painting an abandoned building. he thought “that’s cool, lemme do that!” but then he realized he had no friends (AHDGS JK I LOVE TANAKA). he asked nishinoya who was grounded from the arson incident and he knew he definitely couldn’t ask daichi, suga, asahi, or enoshita so he decided to go it alone. that proved to be a MASSIVE mistake. he got the supplies, arrived to the building of his choice (thanks saeko :3), and decided to spray paint a huge p3ni5 in bright red paint. he finished “successfully” and zoomed back home. what he didn’t realize with his two-and-a-half braincells is that he signed his glorious piece with his full name. the cops were at his house the next morning...🧍

hinata shoyō- forgery!! hinata did NOT think that forgery was even a crime. how was he supposed to know that he wasn’t allowed to copy his mom’s signature on a permission form! all he wanted was to go to an overnight training camp 😿

kageyama tobio- attempted murder!! kageyama swears it sounds worse than was and he is absolutely incorrect. what happened was so much worse. he and hinata were having a competition to see who could hold their breath the longest underwater (you can’t tell me they haven’t done some dumbass shit like this) and kageyma lost almost instantly (he has the tiny lungs of an asthmatic). he didn’t want hinata to notice so he held hinata’s head under the water for like 10 seconds. suga walked in though, saw hinata thrashing around in the water and immediately called the police. kageyama never forgave him.

tsukishima kei- cyberbullying!! first of all, i had no idea you could get arrested for cyber bullying!? that being said, neither did tsukishima who spent 80% of his time making fun of people online (and on his real account!! bold). eventually one of the people he bullied (hinata) reported him on instagram and his very lame account was deleted (pls don’t bully people online 😤).

yamaguchi tadashi- shoplifting!! andjksh this is so funny because this scenario has happened to me and i can just SEE this happening to poor tadashi. yamaguchi gets super late night cravings (and usually tsukki will walk with him at like 3 am 🥺 nEWAYS) so he’ll sneak out and walk to the mini-mart near his house. one night, he was so tired but also super hungry so he went onto his nightly routine and basically sleepwalked into the store. he picked out his favorite chips and candy bar (which are sour cream&onion lays and milky ways in case you were wondering 😌✨) and just... walked out the store without paying. the store clerk was mysteriously missing so yamaguchi made it all the way home, ate half the bag of chips and passed out without realizing what he’d done. once he did, he cried for 2 hours straight.

nekoma

kuroo tetsurō- telemarketing fraud!! kuroo originally did telemarketing fraud as a joke?? like he was trying to prank call someone pretending that they had lost their information and they actually gave it to him??? he was mildly concerned but even more excited. he did it over and over again but he never used the info for anything. to this day, kuroo literally has a notebook full of credit card numbers and bank account passwords but he refuses to use it because he believes it’s ✨wrong✨(but it isn’t wrong to take all that information in the first place under false pretenses, not realizing that once people find out, they are forced to close credit cards and accounts but go off self righteous king). once he brought the book up to kenma and he offered to sell it on the dark web. now kuroo feels less bad about what he’s done! :D

kozume kenma- computer crime!! pfttt this one seems kinda obvious but what do you expect from kenma :). he spends so much time on the internet, he’s definitely picked up some less than legal skills that still help him now 👀. kenma did little mini crimes like getting into other people’s wifi but his crowning achievement was when he hacked into the minneapolis pd website and had it so when you opened the page, a black lives matter screen came up. he never told anyone that it was him who did it but he thinks it’s the best he’s ever done.

yaku morisuke- racketeering!! yaku, the feral king, ran an underground gambling ring in the basement of nekoma (do they have basements?? who knows! i don’t!) during his third year. the only reason it didn’t get shut down was because coach nekomata took a portion of yaku’s profits whenever he won (which was literally all the time). everyone on the team has lost money to him which is why they never play with him anymore. they won’t even let yaku play monopoly 😔.

haiba lev- indecent exposure!! poor lev’s head is so empty, he tends to fall for whatever pranks his senpai’s do to him. this time kuroo had somehow convinced him that in order to grow his schlong, he had to run outside naked for 10 minutes because the moonlight had special growing properties. lev was a lil scared ngl because he was already superrr tall and didn’t need to grow his height (or his dick ((boy is hung)) but poor lev is insecure) but he did it anyway. long story short, an old woman saw him parading around the neighborhood naked and called el policia. 0/10 dick did NOT grow and had to spend a night in jail naked 😿

aoba johsai

oikawa tōru- prostitution!! KAKKAKA iwazumi made fun of oikawa for being so shitty and said that he couldn’t pick up anyone if he tried. flattykawa took this as a personal challenge and went out onto the street, asking people if they’d have sex with him. with the way he was asking (and the way he was dressed), people assumed he was a paid w h o r e and someone eventually reported him. iwazumi had to pick oikawa up from the station- he never let him live this one down.

iwaizumi hajime- battery!! it wasn’t technically battery but oikawa is a lil bitch and overreacts (at least in his words -_-). the amount of times iwa-chan has beat the absolute shit out of oikawa is uNREAL. he just can’t handle the stupidity sometimes so he just smacks the crap outta him. not for real for real but the way oikawa reacts, you’d think a murder was occurring. one time, shittykawa screeched so loud, they got a noise complaint -_- hajime hates it in these streets.

matsukawa issei & hanamaki takahiro- conspiracy!! issei and hiro have a secret blog where they discuss conspiracy theories and such but one day, hiro found an article that explained how jfk’s death was an inside job. he sent it to issei who began to theorize how HE’D do it. that devolved into a massive thread on their blog of how’d they murder a president which blew up and caught the attention of the cia who sent the a letter telling them to quietly delete the blog. they did because they were terrified but they kept the letter and now it’s framed in issei’s apartment.

kyōtani kentarō- assault!! baby is an angry little boy but for all the right reasons. he was at a bar (when he’s all grown up, duh) and he spotted an absolute drunk creep hitting on a girl who clearlyyyy did not reciprocate his feelings. kyōtani, being the respectful king that he is, went over to the guy, pulled him by the jacket and beat. the. shit. out of him. while the bartender was happy with the fact that the creep was out, he was not impressed with the damage to his bar. he just sent kyōtani out who casually adjusted his leather jacket and rings, and hopped on his motorcycle to ride away into the night. i am the FATTEST simp for this man ONG 🥴

shiratorizawa

ushijima wakatoshi- stalking!! poor ushijima has no idea how intimidating he can be. he was on a train late at night after practice and the woman sitting across from him left her purse sitting on the seat. being the gentleman that he is, he took the purse and followed her to return it. the only problem is that the closer he got, the faster she ran and when he tried to speak (yknow with his scary, deep, baritone voice), the woman screeched and called the cops on him because he was a “strange, big man who was following her home.” when the police showed up, ushijima was painfully confused and just held up this tiny ass purse in his massive hands. the cops laughed.

tendō satori- ???!! no one knows what crimes (or how many 😳) tendō has committed but each of his teammates have different ideas- ushijima: “i don’t believe tendou is capable of committing any sort of felony. well, maybe murder”; semi: “of COURSE he’s capable of crimes??! do you know how many times i’ve seen him come into the dorm with a suspicious stain of red on his sweater?? *shudders* if i end up dead, tendō did it...” in actuality, the only crime tendō has committed is ~drugs~ but he’s not bouta tell his friends that.

goshiki tsutomu- would be a VICTIM!! my baby tsutomu would NEVER commit a crime!!! i love this man with my everything and the only crime he’s committed is being too damn cute 😤🥺

#haikyuu!! #haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu!! headcanons #hq hcs #hq headcanons #crack fic #tsukishima kei #daichi sawamura #sugawara kōshi #ushijima headcanons #tendou satori #goshiki tsutomu #kyotani kentaro #matsukawa issei #hanamaki takahiro #iwazumi hajime #oikawa torū #haiba lev #yaku morisuke #kenma kozume #kuroo tetsurou #yamaguchi tadashi #hinata shōyō #haikyuu kageyama #nishinoya yuu #haikyuu tanaka #shiritorizawa #karasuno #aoba johsai #nekoma

[felassan]

Article: ‘The Most Powerful Woman in Gaming Wants to Make EA Loved Again’

Laura Miele is helping direct the company toward a future where it’s more attuned with consumers.

One of the first things Laura Miele did when she became chief studios officer of Electronic Arts Inc. three years ago was to gather 19 video game influencers in a conference room. “What do you want me to hear? Lay it on me,” she recalls asking them. “One guy sitting at the corner of the table, he just said, ‘I don’t understand why you don’t give players what they’re asking for.’ ”

[rest of article under cut for length, pasted as Bloomberg has an article read limit]

One of the first things Laura Miele did when she became chief studios officer of Electronic Arts Inc. three years ago was to gather 19 video game influencers in a conference room. “What do you want me to hear? Lay it on me,” she recalls asking them. “One guy sitting at the corner of the table, he just said, ‘I don’t understand why you don’t give players what they’re asking for.’ ”

It’s something many gamers have wondered about EA for years. The $40 billion company, one of the biggest in gaming, is responsible for Battlefield, Madden NFL, and other megahit franchises. But many gamers have long seen EA as a necessary evil, resenting the direction in which it took some games and bristling at its aggressive attempts to extract money by charging extra for digital items in games that cost as much as $70 upfront. This dissatisfaction was no secret in 2018: Gamers spent their days filling up Reddit and other message boards with free advice for EA—but many felt its decision-makers weren’t listening.

EA’s leadership knows it has to improve that relationship, and Miele is a key player in its efforts to do so. Her focus group asked for new content for Star Wars Battlefront II and requested new types of games. Miele quickly assigned 70 people to the Battlefront development project, which dramatically improved its net promoter score, a measure of how likely people are to recommend the game. She also prompted EA to create a skateboarding game and committed to reintroducing its college football franchise, the two genres at the top of the influencers’ list.

In a sense, the guy at the meeting became a stand-in for all of EA’s long-suffering customers in Miele’s eyes. “I wanted to do right by this player,” she says.

As chief studios officer, Miele manages 6,000 staffers and thousands of contractors globally. She oversees EA’s 24 studios, where she makes personnel decisions and sets strategy, and she’s reshaped how the company uses analytics to create and market its games.

In the process she may have become the most powerful woman in gaming. In a 2019 International Game Developers Association survey, fewer than 30% of the more than 1,100 respondents were women, and few if any hold a more central role at such an important company. “It’s a tough place for a woman,” says Peter Moore, who was Miele’s boss when he was EA’s chief operating officer. “It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but she battled her way through.”

Proving good intentions is more important for EA than ever, as the business model of gaming continues to shift in ways that have the potential to alienate customers. Like its rivals, the company is increasing its focus on free-to-play games, making money through sales of digital products such as outfits and weapons for characters.

There are signs it’s succeeding. Apex Legends, EA’s free-to-play hero shooter game, has posted more than $1 billion in sales since it was first published in 2019, and it continues to grow. “The way to succeed with free-to-play games like that is to listen to and engage your customer base and earn their loyalty through incremental purchases,” says Doug Clinton, managing partner of the venture capital firm Loup Ventures, who says Miele deserves much of the credit for Apex Legends. “It feels like a proof point for her that the company is adapting well beyond traditional disk sales.”

Miele, 51, was born in San Francisco but grew up on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. She got her start in games—the kind that require a board—during family nights, when she pitted herself against her brother in Monopoly, Clue, Yahtzee, and backgammon. While attending the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, she worked at architectural companies. By the time she dropped out she’d moved on from receptionist positions to more senior roles, while gaining a reputation for organizing lunch-hour card games with her co-workers.

Miele landed a job as a project manager at Westwood Studios, a video game developer best known for Command and Conquer, in 1996. She eventually took over all marketing for its parent company, Virgin Interactive.

It wasn’t always a hospitable atmosphere: Miele remembers her colleagues expecting her to take notes at meetings, then clean up afterward. “That is just not something I would do today,” she says. “I adapted a lot because I was so passionate about what I was doing. I found my voice along the way.”

When EA acquired Westwood in 1998, she stayed on. At the time, the company did revenue forecasting by looking at sales data once a month and putting together spreadsheets by hand. Miele was tasked with developing more advanced analytics. She hired a group of data analysts, nicknamed “the Jedi,” and had them build EA’s first statistical regression models to examine sales trends, seasonality, and preorders. It took almost two years to put the system in place, but it overhauled the company’s business processes, and executives were soon using it to determine how to invest in advertising and promotions. “I loved how data and analytics can inform your judgment and your gut instinct,” Miele says.

Miele also decided to make one major break with EA’s existing business practices. In 2011 about 80% of game advertising budgets were spent on TV ads. But she saw how much time gamers spent online and decided to spend the bulk of the ad budget for Battlefield 3 on digital, downplaying other types of ads and cutting the TV ad budget to only 30%.

Messing around with the plan for Battlefield 3 was a good way to make people nervous. Miele remembers two executives calling her in for a meeting and demanding to know why they weren’t seeing billboards for the game as they drove in to the office. “It was scary for me, too, and I don’t blame our executives questioning me on that,” she says. But the game ended up being EA’s fastest-selling, moving more than 5 million copies in its first week. From that point, Miele’s marketing strategy became the standard for the company.

When EA signed a 10-year deal with Walt Disney Co. in 2013, Miele became Star Wars general manager. In 2014 she took over publishing operations, marketing, and other key areas, first in the North American region, then globally in 2016. At the time, the game industry was moving from physical disks to digital downloads, transforming its relationship with retail partners such as Walmart Inc. and Best Buy Co.

Miele was in charge of smoothing things over, explaining that EA would start competing with them for customers even as the retailers accounted for the largest portion of the revenue. “I never said to them, ‘Hey, see you later, we are moving on,’ ” she says. “It was, ‘How can we move forward together?’ ” EA began making physical cards with digital credits that its retail partners could sell at their stores, allowing them to share in the revenue from digital sales.

EA’s studios are spread around the globe, and Covid-19 altered Miele’s routine radically. “It was a very difficult year, and I’m really proud about how our company showed up,” she says. “I considered myself a wartime leader last year. You had to get in a bunker with everybody.”

Days became an endless progression of Zoom calls. To keep up with gamers, Miele started spending evenings listening to Clubhouse chats while answering work emails. Because she hasn’t been on the road, she’s also had more time to dine at home and play board games or Apex Legends and The Sims with her 16-year-old twins. As the pandemic retreats in the U.S., her schedule might change, but she still envisions providing more flexibility to her employees to work from home and office. “I do think we’re going to have a different work environment as we go forward,” she says.

Miele is itching to get back to the studio visits. She’s helping steer EA further toward smartphones. The company plans to release mobile versions of Apex Legends globally this year and spent $2.1 billion in April for Glu Mobile Inc., a mobile game publisher, while also preparing the next releases in its existing franchises. “I think the next Battlefield and the mobile shooter games, along with how successful the M&As come out will be key litmus tests of her management this year,” says Matt Kanterman, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “Her scope is clearly rising.”

— With Dina Bass and Jason Schreier

[source]

#video games #interesting.. #long post #longpost

[refinedbuffoonery]

I + Can’t + Lose + You (2)

masterlist. Read it on AO3. 

A/N: Did I take my time on this or what? Yikes. I’ll try to get the next update out much faster. Enjoy! 

*****

Riley had to admit, she was having the time of her life on this impromptu road trip with Mama. 80s music blasted from the truck’s speakers, and she and Mama danced in their seats. But Riley knew their fun was coming to an end the moment she spied the sea of brake lights in the distance. 

It took no time at all to catch up to the traffic. Every vehicle packed on the freeway sat at a standstill. 

“How do y’all live like this?” Mama asked incredulously. “There is no reason for this many cars to be on the road.” Riley chuckled. 

After another half mile of crawling through bumper to bumper traffic, Riley was finally fed up with it too. “Okay that’s it,” she announced. “We’re taking the back way.” 

LA streets were slow, but nothing was as slow as the 10 during rush hour, and they’d left right at the beginning of it. Avoiding the freeways like the plague, Riley wound through the city streets, flooring the gas through every yellow light. 

After a particularly risky one, Mama questioned, “Who taught you to drive?” 

Riley grinned ear to ear. “Jack.” Mama rolled her eyes and double checked that her seatbelt was buckled. Before long, they were back on the freeway, zooming toward the desert. 

In Indio, they stopped to get gas and use the restroom. From here to Phoenix, there was just a whole lot of nothing. Maybe some cactus, tumbleweeds, and the occasional Joshua tree if they were lucky. 

Although, Riley doubted her luck, considering she was driving to Phoenix in a truck with crappy air conditioning in the last week of July. She regretted not changing out of her favorite black Van Halen tank top into one that was a lighter color. 

By the time Riley exited the gas station’s convenience store armed to the teeth with snacks, Mama had finished filling up the gas tank and was now leaning against the tailgate, waiting. “You’re still driving,” the older woman said. Riley sighed. Of course she was. 

Riley jumped at the sound of a door slamming open behind them, almost dropping her armload of snacks. A guy wearing a navy blue hoodie sprinted toward an old Bronco, clutching something to his chest. He dove into the car and sped off. Riley and Mama winced at the squeal of the tires as he skidded out of the parking lot and back onto the road. 

The sole convenience store employee had chased after the thief to no avail. Dejected slump curving his shoulders inward, he stared after the long-gone car. 

Wordlessly handing the snacks to Mama, Riley cautiously approached the employee. He was just a kid, 25 at the most. “Hey, I’m sorry that happened.” She tipped her head toward where the Bronco had been parked. “Are you okay?” 

“Am I okay?” he asked incredulously. “Of course I’m not okay! That was the third one today and my boss is going to be fuc--pissed and it’s all because I can’t see in the back anymore because the first guy smashed the security camera with a can of Pringles which he then stole.” He had the wild look in his eyes of a furious customer service employee who was about to explode but couldn’t because they were, well, a customer service employee. Riley pitied him. 

“Well, I can’t do anything about the thief, but I think I can fix your security camera issue.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah.” Riley wasn’t totally sure she could fix it, but she’d seen Mac build and fix enough cameras over the years she figured it was worth a shot. “Can you show me where it is? I’m Riley, by the way.” 

“Marco,” he replied, holding the door open for her and Mama. Marco led her to the far corner of the store. Back here, everything a customer did would be completely concealed from the cashier. Mounted from the ceiling, the security camera’s shattered lens didn’t do much good. 

“Can I take it apart?” 

Marco looked skeptical, but he said, “It’s not like you can break it any more.” 

Riley unhooked it from the wall and began taking it apart. Aside from the shattered lens, it wasn’t actually broken. She could fix it if she had a camera. 

Riley froze. She did have a camera…

God, when did she turn into Mac? 

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she muttered as she cracked her phone open. Riley didn’t bother checking to see if she had any notifications first. They were about to disappear forever anyway. Mama’s eyes widened, but Mac would’ve been proud. She held up her unusable phone and wiggled it. “In this line of work, always get the insurance.” 

“You’ve spent too long with that MacGyver,” was all Mama said, but Riley didn’t miss her impressed smirk. 

The hardest part was breaking her phone. Riley prided herself on having the lowest phone replacement rate, which she knew was only because mission success relied on her tech actually working. Mac only sacrificed hers when he had no other option. 

Riley also knew Mac picked which phone to sacrifice based on who would have the most dramatic reaction. So, she dutifully handed it over every time wearing a serious expression, refusing to give Mac the satisfaction of being annoyed. 

Connecting the phone camera to the security camera wiring was easy enough. The finished product looked janky as hell, but Riley was pretty sure it would work. “Alright, go check whether it works.” 

Marco wove his way back to the counter. A few seconds later, a shrill “It works!” echoed through the convenience store. 

Mama smiled. “Good girl. I’ll meet you in the truck.” 

A rush of pride filled Riley--the same one she got every time she MacGyver-ed her way out of a problem. Fixing the security camera hopefully would put an end to Marco’s shitty day. 

She met Marco by the exit. “Thank you!” the kid said, throwing his arms around her in an overenthusiastic hug. Riley stiffened at the contact and patted Marco’s shoulder. He let go, none the wiser to her discomfort. 

“You’re welcome,” Riley said. “Have a good rest of your day.” She exited the convenience store and walked back to the truck. 

**********

Mac was alone in the war room when Riley’s location disappeared off the map. 

Gone, in the blink of an eye. 

“No,” Mac said to himself, voice catching. Her location last showed her at a gas station in Indio, but she could be taken anywhere from there. There was a whole lot of nothing and no-man’s land for her kidnappers to make her disappear in. 

Watching the tracker cut out finally pushed him over the edge. Mac succumbed to all the worst case scenarios that were threatening to incapacitate him completely.  They know who she is, and they’re forcing her to hack something. Or maybe they don’t know who she is, what she can do, and they just grabbed her off the street because she’s pretty and...Mac couldn’t finish the thought. 

Without anyone there to stop him, Mac let himself get absorbed in his own head. I’ve lost her, for good this time. She’s gone. Riley’s gone.

Why the hell hadn’t she sent him a clue? Every time she got kidnapped, she always managed to give him a clue about her whereabouts. Riley was one of the smartest people he knew. How did this happen? Who the hell took her? 

I never told her I’m in love with her. 

God, what if he never got that chance? Or what if something really bad happens to her and he’s too late to stop it and she loses her faith in him? 

He had to find her. And when she was safe and healed and at home he’d tell her. Mac stormed out of the war room, nearly running Matty over on his way out. 

“Where are you going, Blondie?” she asked. 

“To get Riley back.” 

He didn’t stop walking until Matty said, in the gentlest possible voice, “Mac.” 

Her tone was the only reason he turned around. If she’d spoken in her Matty The Hun voice, it would’ve fueled him to keep walking, but something about the knowing gentleness made him pause. He turned to look at her, every emotion he felt about the situation and about Riley plain on his face.

 “Okay,” she said, giving him a small nod. If she didn’t know about his feelings for Riley before, she definitely did now. 

Mac ran to his truck and sped off. 

**********

Matty added Mac’s location tracker to the screen in the war room. Like a true Californian, he skipped getting on the 10 completely and stuck to the secret back ways he’d learned over the years. Like Riley, he sped through every yellow, but eventually he got stuck in a long chain of red lights. 

Despite the fact that one of her two best agents was MIA and the other was out of his mind with grief and fear, Matty smiled to herself. Mac would find Riley; they always managed to find each other, against all odds. And when they finally reunited...maybe some things would finally be put on the table. 

Good things, Matty decided. She’d always suspected their relationship might go down this road. For years, Mac and Riley unconsciously gravitated toward one another. They stood unnecessarily close together, they constantly flicked their gaze to the other, they kept tabs on the other’s emotions. 

Because of that, she’d rarely put them undercover together as a couple because of the romantic potential. If they were ever going to move past their obliviousness and develop feelings, Mac and Riley deserved for that to happen on its own, without a bunch of charades in the way. Although, given the details they’d both left out from their reports on the op in Monte Carlo, it might’ve been just the thing to finally push them together after all this time. 

All of the chaos of the last year must’ve brought new, deeper feelings to the surface, because after defecting to Codex, Mac and Riley grew closer, though they remained guarded with the rest of the team. Even if they didn’t recognize it, their relationship was changing, hopefully for the better. With the hands they’d been dealt in life, Mac and Riley deserved that kind of lasting happiness more than anyone else she knew. 

Eyes still trained on the screen, Matty whispered, “Go get her, Mac.”

#beth writes #i+can't+lose+you #macgyver #macriley #macgyver fanfiction

[uncannychange]

It's a heck of a thing to sit and watch a full-grown man dissolve like a candle in a frying pan over high heat.

However that's what Doctor John Cameron Ice and billionaire Marcelo Zucchero did years ago, and while frighting to watch the pair regarded the event with optimism as the start of what they hoped would be a world-changing discovery.

Dealing with impairments their whole lives, Ice having a badly curved spine, and Zucchero struggling with a congenital heart defect. Ice had come to the billionaire with a proposal for a radically new form of treatment that would cure them both, and offer the same for thousands of other conditions, up to and including old age. He financed it fully.

Until at last the first full-blown clinical trial was held and William-X became a puddle in a vat. And yet he still lived because as he was so reduced his every cell was rejuvenated and re-calibrated and most fantastic of all the mysterious substances known as Dark Matter and accompanying Dark Energy was made a part of him as it bonded with his Y chromosome turning it into a very special Neo-X chromosome.

Then the pair watched as the man listed only as William-X in their records started to reform into a human.

But what a human! No longer an elderly man in his mid-80s William was hale hearty and a woman who appeared to be in her early 20s.

Oh, and due to the Neo-X chromosome possessed of what could only be called superpowers far beyond those of ordinary mortals. While having the mind of his former self William-X was otherwise a whole new person. And frankly, she went more than a touch mad.

Deciding her only choice was to dash out and fight crime and or evil, unable to stop her the being what soon became known as The Indelible She-Funk (the name hints at her powers, but in case you're eating we won't go into detail) made quite an impression on the public.

At first, thinking that the experiment was going to be a failure. After all, it only worked on men (doesn't work if you already have an X chromosome) and there was no telling what weird powers the new women would have.

Then Marcelo's money-making instincts kicked in and so was born.

Supreme Ultra-human Genetic Augmentation Regimen Strategies, or SUGARS.

Housed in their all-white cube-shaped headquarters, The Sugar Cube, men without families go in, their identities are erased, and outcome a new breed of super-heroines for hire The SUGARS!

Led by Ice and Zucchero, who themselves have gone through the process, emerging as the telepathic super hypnotic powered Empress Bee, and Blizzardella the princess of polar powers.

Crime has never been more scared or turned on.

Below are some of the new Super Women.

Hector Hensley: The Starry Knight

Hector on finding himself turned into an attractive young woman exclaimed “Oh man! I am spacing out here!” and then she did... shoot out into space.

Seems she has the ability to teleport herself and up to twenty-two other people, animals, or objects anywhere in the world, after first taking them on a dizzying spin in outer space.

Impressive if you ignore the two or three people who always lose their lunch on landing at the destination.

Guy Bright: Good Knight Nurse

Gained the ability to control the body functions of other people. Blood pressure, blood sugar levels, temperature, etc... 

Which led to GKN's most famous way to take out the baddies, the orgasm blast. 

Which led to the Good Knight Nurse also taking special stealth training at The Sugar Cube to become sort of the de facto “dark knight” of the SUGARS, not so she could sneak up on others, but so she could better hide from people following her demanding “blast me! blast me!”

Marsh Marshall: Ballistic Ballerina

Marsh, an ex-motorcycle racier rose from the vats at The Sugar Cube with super-human agility, and the ability to run at super-speed (max velocity 444 MPH) on her toes!

However, she still insists that SUGARS get her the best bike they could find which she still uses to get around from place to place, saying “Hey, those damn toe-shoes are expensive!”

Jim Yates: The Transcendental Technician

Found she had the ability to “commune” with technology and machines. Said Neon, “when they said I was going to be a super-heroine I was thinking more along the lines of Wonder Woman smashing into villains, not going around and setting on copying machines to see what they had been used for.”

Joel Walton: Nun Better

Can force a confession out of anyone, has a flock of telekinetically controlled 12-inch rulers, and can cause elemental changes in small objects (if she tosses some small bland cookies or a glass of wine at you they might change into explosives or knock-out gas when they arrive.)

Says Nun “This is all so weird, I'm an agnostic!”

Paul Aaron Flynn: The Pink Avenger

Not only did his trip through the SUGARS process give his super-powers, but it also seems to have turned him into a Japanese woman... with pink hair!.

Her very unusual power is the ability to fire pink force bolts that cause anything struck by them to have their reality altered becoming feminized, eccentric, and leaving behind the scent of Shiseido Ever Bloom Fragrance.

Such as the team of bank robbers who found themselves turned into a middle-school cheer-leading squad from the '50s or the mad bomber who found himself turned into a living version of Betty Crocker and his bomb a plate of toll house cookies.

Alfred Ferguson: Puzzle Boxer

Alfred really, really wanted to be a knockdown taken `em out rough and tumble sort of super person. 

But the SUGARS process does its own unpredictable thing and instead, Alfred found she now had the ability to break any code, solve any puzzle and defuse any bomb or trap. She insisted on being trained in all the combat skills The Sugar Cube had to offer, and on being called not the Puzzler as PR suggested but the Puzzle Boxer so people would think she was mainly a fighter.

But as the SUGARS process had also turned him into a five-foot-one-inch cutie no one is really buying it.

Henry Hiroto Kazuhiko: The Clone Ranger

The only single person in the world that if she wants to talk to herself, has to use Zoom.

Maximum clones: 15.

James Jasper Mueller: Obsidian Rose

Turns into a shadow, walks through walls, phasing through a person knocks them out.

But that's not the important thing with Obsidian Rose. James on finding himself turned not only into a woman but a rather spooky one at that did not take it well.

Plus on being handed the bill for being healed by the SUGARS  process (talk about out-of-network NONE of it is covered by any insurance) with the only real way out to sign an exclusive five-year contract to work for SUGARS as a super-heroine for hire.

The former Mr. Mueller said screw this and went rogue founding a team with other disgruntled SUGARS that she calls Adventuresses, Mercenaries, Outsiders & Killers or AMOK.

Which is just as well, because what's a bunch of supers if they don't have another bunch of super baddies to fight? Pain in the neck, that's what they are.

And boy howdy does this ever help with the merchandising from The Sugar Cube.

#gender bender #satire

[loverofpiggies]

Updates about Updates!

(A lot of this was copied directly from Patreon!)

Hey guys! I hope you're having an okay time, considering the madness that is happening in the world right now. I have some important news! I can't promise this will be accurate, and I will do my best to make it happen, but. (Keep reading to see more!)

As many of you might already be aware, because of the pandemic, all my conventions are currently shut down. I had 5 conventions so far, at minimum, be completely cancelled, or postponed until next year, or some later date. 80% of my income disappeared essentially overnight. Since then, I've been in hella focus mode on my etsy. I've made a ton of new designs, taken lots of photos, like I'm REALLY pushing my etsy because somehow it has become my primary income. Also, the stress and.... well, honestly, depression losing all my shows have caused me, has made certain things very hard to do. For example, making Gloomverse. Gloomverse is updating as it always does, because before the pandemic began, I prepped all these pages. Yep, they've been in queue that long! But I prepped them, because I knew convention season was about to start, and I needed to make sure I could travel, and not have to worry about updates. Essentially, what was meant to be a 'convention update queue' has turned into a 'pandemic update queue'. And it has taken its toll on me. I'm still drawing, but I have been working at a snails pace when it comes to Gloomverse updates. I don't write scripts for Gloomverse, I write the pages as I go. I give myself a sentence or so synopsis of what I want a chapter to be about, and then go from there. (That's actually how I keep track of the most important plot points, too). Usually I can zoom through drawing pages, when I'm in a really good mental place. Creative writing definitely works best when you're happy and content.

But that's definitely not how things are right now for everyone, myself absolutely included. I've been drowning myself in yard work, and tarot card designs, and keychain designs, and photos for my etsy-- all very mindless tasks, especially compared to writing stories. 

I've also been sort of reeling over the fact that, this was the year I was going to dump every extra penny into a house savings fund, I had more conventions planned than any year before, and a lot of them were REALLY good shows.

Essentually, the queue runs out on May 5th. I have no more pages done after that, and every time I try, it's been very hard to do so. The hope is that I will still definitely get it done, especially since the weather is getting nicer, and working on a picnic table somewhere would be nice, but I'm just giving a little advanced warning if I am unable to get my creative brain going again. And, since that brain hasn't wanted to work all of April.... well. Who knows. ):

Please be safe, okay? Thanks a bunch. <3

#cqchat #gvchat #gloomverse #important #):

[bluejaywriter]

Guess who re-listened to the entire ZSJL (all 4 hours)

Me. The answer is me.

Thoughts while listening to ZSJL the second time:

Intro/Part 1: “Should be called “The Amazons””

1. Philippus got the first line of ZSJL (“Alert the Queen!”), unless you count Clark going “URRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH” fifty times, or the Amazons going “OOH-AHH! when the motherbox first goes off.

2. Bruce “Vain” trolololol you probably think this movie’s about you, don’t you, don’t you

3. I wish they did more with Lois in this movie. I was pretty happy with what they gave to Iris and Elinore and the Amazons, but Lois did seem pretty stuck in her “mourning for Superman” mode. Which, okay. But also, ehh.

4. Also I only know Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from that one Harry Potter scene.

5. Has anyone actually counted how many times the Ancient Lamentation Music™ shows up.

6. Why does Wondy’s theme have a cooler synth in this movie than in her movie that’s literally set in the 80s.

7. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Hippolyta? I should mention it more often. She deserves good things (better things than this damn universe seems to want her to have :P).

8. I love that Menalippe is the one calling the Amazons back to their marks. That’d be Antiope’s job if she were here :(

9. Damn even the Amazons get a cool synth theme.

10. But it really is interesting that Junkie XL went with a synth instead of just a straight-up orchestral sound, or even the more tribal sound he seemed to be going for in other parts.

11. I appreciate that the Amazon fighting sounds aren’t like… you know. How most female fighting sounds are in media.

Part 2: “Artemis needs her own movie”

12. I don’t like Steppenwolf’s voice

13. God I’m so glad they got rid of all the Joss lines :P

14. You’d think after 100 years in Man’s World, Diana would have some better excuses up her sleeve e.g. “I sat inside reading a book all weekend” or “I watched a vintage TV show” like God, Diana. Do better.

15. Every time they say “quarantine” in this movie I feel things I’m not supposed to feel.

16. I still don’t get the Aquaman song when he’s taking off his shirt. It just… is a weird fit.

17. I’m glad we got an Aquaman movie before this. It… would’ve been confusing without it. Like, who’s this random long-haired dude.

18. “Dessad, Dessad, I call to thee” is how I start Zoom calls now.

19. I really like Dessad’s voice. It just… it’s nasally enough to be, oh so it’s this character. You just know who he is from the moment he speaks.

20. I dislike WonderBat very strongly but like. Ehh. I get that people like it, and it’s more canon-supported than any of my ships, that’s for sure.

21. I kind of wish we’d gotten the scene where the Amazon turns into a parademon. Or whoever it was.

22. Just listening to the movie makes me realize how grunty Darkseid is. I wish he had some language (maybe he is speaking Apokoliptian? And I’m just uneducated?).

Part 3: “Ray Fisher needs to do audiobooks”

23. I think Barry/Iris’ song is the first one I felt like the pop song really worked with the scene.

24. The football scene was the first part in the movie where I was like, okay the soundtrack is pretty good. It’s not as strong or memorable as Hans Zimmer’s on the last two Snyder DC films, but it does a reasonably good job supporting the film.

25. Ray Fisher has such a beautiful voice.

26. The whole Cyborg sequence is one of my favorite things ever. 2nd or 3rd favorite scene after the Speedforce.

27. I don’t have a lot of patience for Barry, in general. He’s less awkward than in the Josstice League, but he’s still on thin ice.

28. I feel like Arthur’s background scenes are the weakest overall. It might be because we got an entire Aquaman movie, but I also feel like I would’ve been really confused if I hadn’t seen that movie first.

Part 4: “Exposition and stuff”

29. There’s really not a lot of dialogue in this movie. Like. A LOT of things are just visual storytelling. It makes just listening to the movie interesting.

30. Okay, but did anyone else think that Martha Kent had a stronger Southern accent in her scene with Lois? Like, I know it’s someone trying to do his best impression of a Kansas farmer, but... like, sometimes in the past movies she’ll have a slight Midwestern twang, but it’s never quite Southern, and it’s throwing me off.

30. I… get that Superman is like the big deal but it really doesn’t make sense to me that the Apokoliptians never came back in the 5000ish years that Superman WASN’T active. I mean he was only Supermanning for what, less than two years? You literally have a 5000 year-old warrior on your team, I wonder how we can utilize that time frame in a way that make more sense... :P

Part 5: “But what if I don’t care about Superman”

31. I just feel like the part where they’re bringing Superman back is the most boring part lol

32. I also don’t like that Lois JUST gets back on her feet and then… Clark shows up again surprise motherfucker

33. I’m curious what the point was of Aquaman pushing against waking up the Motherbox and Bruce pushing back. Like. Does anything come from that.

34. Okay. This is 1.5 years of writing the Goddess of Death talking, but I kind of strongly dislike that they brought Clark back like this instead of doing the honorable thing and actually going to the Underworld to beg for him back. Like. The JL honestly deserved to get their assess kicked for trying to cheat Death like that. Also it would’ve been cathartic for Arthur’s “no one getting back without trading one in return” line to come into fruition with Bruce dying and then Clark getting his memories back immediately afterward when Lois appeared. Take that Batman

35. Batman, you dumb fuck, the safeword isn’t “Clark” or “This world needs you” it’s “SAVE MARTHA”

36. I’m bored.

Part 6: “The Flash scene”

37. Honestly, am I the only one who doesn’t care about Superman? He’s a side character in this movie. Give me more Cyborg scenes. He just lost his father for God’s sake. Why didn’t we get the scene of Victor figuring out how to get the plane to fly?

38. Although, I have to say when Supes shows up it’s a fun fight. Did he have to punch Steppenwolf so many times tho. It’s fucking brutal.

39. I have no complaints about anything. Forget everything I ever said. This Flash scene. God.

40. Oh good, Cyborg is back. Let’s stay with this guy for a bit. He’s neat.

41. I love that Arthur and Diana both got their dues for Steppy attacking/tormenting their respective peoples.

42. A Hall of Justice/recap scene would’ve been nice. Like we didn’t actually get to see all six of the League just sitting together (eating pie at Ma Kent’s diner) and celebrating.

43. I’m so glad the outro is Silas instead of Lois. It just feels right.

44. I actually prefer Henry Allen’s “Look at you go” line to the “His foot’s in the door” bit. Don’t tell anyone I said that

45. HI DUSTY

46. Man… I hope they don’t kill Hippolyta in a future movie (says me who’s killed Hippolyta in most of my own DC universes)

47. Why does the fake Luthor have such a Joker-esque laugh.

48. I don’t actually care about the Joker. Maybe if I did, then I would care about this scene.

49. Well that was fun.

ALM* final count: 19 appearances

*Ancient Lamentation Music

#ZSJL #gotta watch it a few more times before it leaves HBO Max #this is kind of crack #I actually might've missed one or two ALM counts because I was working at the same time #but still #And I really do like this movie a lot! I'm just having some fun with it #:P

[hayjeon]

Tips on creating fun fanfic headers!

i had so much fun writing the fanfic writing tips yesterday and i got a few more questions about header-making, and so i decided to make one more of these! i hope these tips help somebody out there! hope you enjoy :) 

p.s. these tips won’t require any hard editing skills or photoshop skills, nor any expensive tablets/apps! 

typically i spend around ~5-10 min creating one header, and that’s either after i think of/finish a fic. i have so much fun doing it and sharing it with you that i figured i’d share how i do it! 

why headers? 

as I talked about in my fic tips, one of the most eye-catching things about fics are headers. when i’m scrolling through a rec page, my home page, a tag, or even someone’s masterlist, i’m immediately drawn to well-made headers. that’s what captures my attention, and then i’m more drawn in by the content. so, you can say that headers is your own version of an ad for your own fic, or an extension of it (like the cover of a novel!) 

if you were writing your own book, imagine how much time you’d spend figuring out what you wanted your cover to look like. i try to have as much fun and invest as much time making my own headers because it’s just the cherry on top to my finished product :) 

disclaimer: BUT HEADERS ARE NOT NECESSARY/DO OR DIE! if you don’t feel like you want to do this, then keep writing! its ok! this is just a suggestion. i’ve seen plenty of well-written fics without headers at all, so don’t beat yourself up over not having one/not wanting to do one. this is truly just a fun, extra kind of thing, and only keep reading if you want to learn how i do it! :) 

tips for people who don’t want to make headers: if you still want something to make your fic stand out, use gifs! i use them in my drabbles a lot! this will at least give ur fic a lil boost! 

how to find pictures

I typically use unsplash, which is a free website in which photographers upload their HQ pics for free use. the pics are really high quality, typically stock photos, and don’t have any logos on them like other ones on google. unfortunately, you won’t find any pics of the members or anything, but you’ll find beautiful stock photos of typical scenes like “ocean scene” or “desert scene.” I found the stock photo for cut me open (shown below) on that site by just looking up “medical” or “doctor”. 

i used to use google a lot and just use keywords like “desert scene HQ” and edit the search settings to deliver HQ pics, and a minimum # of pixels, but unplash is definitely better in terms of quality, more aesthetic photos, and no logos/watermarks. 

on some occasions, i will screenshot some scenes of youtube videos, turning up the quality to 1080p or 4k and zooming in so that the pixelation is as crisp as possible, and then editing it later to look good (which i’ll explain in a second!) 

the above photo was a scene from the specific characters from the drama, “100 Days My Prince” that I screenshotted from a youtube video that TvN uploaded, recapping the drama. I cropped it just right so that their faces were left out, which i’ll also mention soon! 

things to look for when picking pictures: 

you want the picture to reflect a specific motif/theme from your fic! if its a moody fic, then try to find a moody scene that you can edit with filters/lighting to look even moodier; or if the characters’ jobs are a big portion of the fic (like cut me open/doctor theme) try to look for stock photos with that shown very clearly!

make sure its high quality: tumblr really dumbs down the quality of the photo when uploading it, so try your best to find something with a lot of pixels in it so that when you start editing, you don’t sacrifice too much of the quality already

try to look for something simple/clean: a picture with too much subject (ie. people in the background, or too much detail) may end up taking away from the main point of your header, which is your title. so find pics without too much clutter! 

try to make sure its landscape: which will help during editing to save some of the quality better. 

editing your pictures

now that you have a specific photo you want to use, now its time to edit! I use VSCO CAM (free app) and my own apple photos cropping tool for faster crops. 

crop/adjust: if your picture is too large/wide, crop it to at least a 16:9 ratio. i’d say aim for skinnier if you can, so that you don’t take up too much space (especially if you’re planning to add headers to your masterlist). also crop out any faces, any clutter, any unnecessary details, so you have a nice, clean slate to work on when adding text. 

contrast/sharpen/clarity/white balance/etc.: i’m not gonna give you a lesson on photography, but i’ll tell you I learned like 80% of everything that i know just by fiddling with it on VSCO! So just try it out and play with the app, see what you can make of it. i’d say a rule of thumb to follow is that you want happier fics with a brighter tone, and moodier/angsty fics with a darker tone so that it can reflect the nature of the fic further, without saying anything! 

if you wanna be extra af like me, then go a step further and photoshop your pics. this one is a good example; when i screenshotted this scene from another youtube video for my fic One Year My Love part 2, i was specifically looking for a scene that would showcase the ornate/regal details of their clothing/environment in contrast to part 1′s modest clothing/scene (the first header in this post). 

i found this scene, but actually, this scene portrays the Crown Prince and the Princess, not y/n. So, the actors weren’t smiling at all! They were actually frowning at eachother in this scene, to portray the tension between the two characters and their marriage. 

So, I took the extra step, adjusting the pic with VSCO so that their shoulders/chins were at the same level, cropped off their faces up until their lips, and then used the adobe photoshop free app to photoshop their lips to be SMILING at eachother!!!! subtle, but important! 

call me crazy for taking that much time but i’m so proud of how it turned out and i loved every second of making this one. that way, this scene makes it portray the happy ending for Jungkook and y/n! 

adding text to your header

you can use any app out there, but i really like Font Candy! I actually ended up buying the 2$ version of this and never regretted it, but you can actually find a lot of their basic fonts on the free version; I tend to use the fonts: OSTRICH SANS, BEBAS, TREND, and INTRO the most! these are pretty clean-looking, block letters that look good whenever i put them as my titles. 

I love this app too cause you can easily control the spacing between letters to make them take up more space, add shadows, or even make them contrast their background using the overlay feature; like this one i made for wildest dreams (see how the text changes depending on what part of the photo its on? amazing! it’s literally with a click of a button!!)

And i’ll always add “written by HAYJEON” or “by HAYEJON”, space it out, and add it somewhere underneath as my own branding.

orrrrrr 

if you want to be more creative, you can even go a step further and use whatever you have on hand to enhance whatever you’re trying to portray. 

for this one, i ended up finding this amazing photo on unsplash and i thought it would do a create job of portraying the “movie-set” quality of what wildest dreams is going to be about. this stock photo had someone else’s names on it, so i used my ipad, and used instagram to just erase the existing writing with the color of the background, and then wrote in my own title and url with my own handwriting/apple pen!!! 

i thought this was pretty cool because it’s like wildest dreams is its own movie/has its own movie set, which, once it’s out, you guys will see that it’s supposed to be! 

saving/uploading

this is pretty easy/obvious, but i figured i’d mention it. all the apps i mentioned are available on the appstore, and they will save directly to your photos. after doing that, i’ll just upload them into a special folder i have on my google drive so that when i’m finished writing a fic on tumblr using my laptop, i can easily download the photos without sacrificing quality. easy! 

and that way, i can save them forever; even if i have to delete them from my computer, i can always redownload them! 

side note: making text separators

i just recently started doing this, but ever since tumblr took down their text separators, i’ve just been cropping the bottom like 5-10 pixels of the header to use as my text separators! (with my laptop)

i saw some other writer doing it and thought that it looked better than what i had used previously (a cropped photo of a random line i found on google); i found that doing this tied my fics together a little better and just looked better aesthetically; 

so there it is! hope you enjoyed! :) i would love to see what other tips you guys have been using, feel free to send me an ask or reply to this post; and if you end up using any of my tips, please let me know! I love to hear from you guys all the time <3 

lots of love, especially during these times, 

hay <3 

#writing tips #story talk

[rockrevoltmagazine]

INTERVIEW: TODD MICHAEL HALL

RockRevolt Magazine:  Lets talk about your debut solo album coming out in early May, Sonic Healing.  I gave it a listen and fans of classic rock should be very excited for this record.  There’s no questions bands that had a major influence on you such as Boston, Rush & Foreigner influenced the direction of this album.  Sonic Healing could plug right into this era.  Tell us how it all came together.

TODD MICHAEL HALL:  I have wanted to do an old school rock album for quite a few years now.  Something I talked with Joe at Rat Pack Records about.  I knew Joe because he negotiated with my band Riot and the last Riot album almost got released on Rat Pack Records.  At the time Joe asked if I might want to do a solo album.  He was thinking something in the metal vain, I was thinking more old school rock.  It didn’t end up going anywhere at the time.  Then after being on The Voice, the song “Juke Box Hero,” which I did and I consider to be in the classic rock category.  I don’t consider it hair metal like Blake Shelton did.  Not sure why he jumped to hair metal, apparently when people hear me they think of hair metal.  Anyway it was kind of hitting, it had like a million views on YouTube.  So then I call up Joe and said I’m telling you I really want to do something in the classic rock vain.  I have a bunch of songs written, can you hook me up with someone that can help me transform them into hard rock.  The thing is when I write as a songwriter I write by myself.  I play on acoustic guitar so what tends to come out is more singer/songwriter type stuff.  He said I have this guy, and it happened to be Kurdt Vanderhoof from Metal Church.  He said let me see if he’s interested.  He talked to him and got back to me and said Kurdt loves classic rock, it’s a big influence on him also.  He wants to talk.  We got on a Zoom call and talked about what each of us had in mind.  I told him I was looking for that riff oriented, melodic vocal, catchy chorus kind of stuff, feel good rock.  He and I joke that we are both old enough to remember the KTEL commercial about freedom rock.  With the hippie looking dude who says what’s that? The other guy is like that’s freedom rock.  Well turn it up.  (both of us laughing as I remember the commercial as well – classic).  To this day Kurdt and I will be joking, turn it up dude.  Kurdt’s a great guy, we just had a lot in common.  Funny thing is I loaded up like 20 of my songs and suggested we just use some or all of it.  He said it was great stuff and we can come back to that but why don’t we start with me just pouring out and writing some stuff and see what happens.  Which was his polite way of saying Todd we’re not going to use your crap (joking).  I get where is coming from.  I never really experienced this before, he had to finish up something in Seattle and he got to his place in Southern CA and he called me and said I’m going to start writing now.  A few days later he sent me five songs.  Then he’s just sending like a song a day.  I got another one then another.  Over a period of like 21 days he sent me 18 songs that happened to be during the shutdown.  I put total focus on it.  I would walk around, listen to the songs and they were just singing to me.  It was like he and I were having a battle.  I would be like I just loaded one up to Dropbox and he would be like, yeah I’m loading up one tonight.  Just back and forth.  Literally these songs were written over the course of four weeks, last March into April.  Then we did the final recordings not long after that.  The album has been in the can since June it just took a long time to get all the promo material together with all the shutdowns.  We really liked what he was doing and what we came up with.  We just never got around to the songs I brought to him originally.  It ended up being an all Kurdt and Todd thing. 

How about the other parts on the album such as bass and drums? How did you handle that?

We recorded during the shutdown.  Kurdt had his own home studio and I had the same thing.  Kurdt basically played the bass and the drums on this as well, it’s all us.  Of course for the video we wanted to have an entire band and the videographer, Jamie Brown, is the one that found people for us.  The bass player is a fella named Drew Heart, he’s actually a singer from Las Vegas.  He has a few different bands that he’s in.  He’s also a singer on an album with Kurdt called Vanderhoof I think from the 90’s, he had some experience with Kurdt as well coincidentally.  He’s not a bass player by trade but was in the video.  It turns out he’s from Michigan and we got along really well.  We have a lot of the same influences.  It was fun to have him around, I would love to have him in a band, he would be great backup vocals.  I’m not use to having singers in the bands I’m in.  The drummer in video was a guy named Abel.  It’s kind of a funny story.  The “Overdrive” video was the second video we filmed.  Day one we filmed a video for “Let Loose Tonight” and the drummer in that video is a different guy named Dustin and he wasn’t feeling well so the night before the second video Jamie called up Abel and asked if he could show up the next day and learn the song.  He did an incredible job and really helped make the video great as he put on a great show.

Do you plan on touring behind the record?

Kurdt and I both have a lot of excitement behind the album, we both say it’s something we’d buy.  We are excited to present it live but the challenge is if there is enough demand.  From my time on The Voice a lot of people in my hometown would like to see that.  Then maybe book some other shows locally over the course of a weekend.  I know Kurdt has some people in mind to play with us if we were going to do something.  But right now we are not sure we’ll have to see as things open back up.

Do you think you and Kurdt will work together again?

I would love to and I believe he feels the same way.  We’ll see what happens.  I remember the first album I did with Riot V, it felt magical.  Then the second album we did felt more like a labor.  That’s what I wonder, this first album with Kurdt was magical, so I’m curious to see how it would happen the second time around.  I would say I’m definitely down for doing something again.  I very much enjoy this style of music.  But before then I have to record vocals for the next Riot album. 

Getting into your experience on The Voice how did that come about and then of course you worked with Blake Shelton how was that?

I had seen shows like that over the years and was always somewhat interested.  Then my sister got an email and said I should try out as they were having an audition in Chicago.  I figured what the heck.  I think there was a couple thousand people there.  After I was done they said come on back tomorrow.  Of course I wasn’t prepared, no change of clothes, toothbrush or anything.  So I drove 5 hours back home.  Then I had to prepare, I never did karaoke or have any tracks prepared so I had to get that together.  So I ended up getting the “Juke Box Hero” track and Judas Priest “Another Thing Coming,” I think I did Bryan Adams “Someone Like You” and Journey “Don’t Stop Believing.” I did all but the Bryan Adams song the next day for them.  It was a weird experience.  Then I got a call back for a blind audition and when you are doing those you’re still in a group of 80+ people so you don’t know for sure.  But I did get my shot.  For me you sometimes fantasize, I wonder what could happen.  But for me I didn’t think I would win or have a career in music only and not have the day job.  I was going more for fun and a great experience and it was.  Experiencing television and music production at that level it’s hard to describe, it’s amazing.  And the people associated with the show were very friendly, nice to the musicians.   Not like you are best friends, once the show is over they move on and have a new group to work with so it’s not like Blake and I are buddies.  But everyone is really nice.  No intent to slag the show but you don’t spend much time with your coach.  Your time with the coach is on camera so there’s not a lot of interaction.  Even with the song selection it’s not something you talk to them about.  You’re more dealing with producers on that.  Hopefully I’m not bursting anyone’s bubble on that.  I would say as far as disappointments from the show, this is very minor compared to the lessons I took away.  I just had this fantasy that Blake and I would sit down, have a beer together and just have a half hour to discuss influences and what we wanted to do and that wasn’t a possibility.  But he’s a busy guy so I understand that.

I bet most people do have that fantasy, I’ll get on The Voice and will sit around talking music and work a plan together.  But the reality is they are there for filming and drawing the audience but beyond that there’s no interaction.  But it was a cool experience?

Yeah definitely.  And I think if I got further that would be more the case.  Before my knockout round they had to prepare me for my next song, “More Than A Feeling” by Boston if I had been back for the knockout round.  If I had been back I would have been performing for Blake with the band.  But we were doing it via video chat.  We did chat it up a little bit.  I think if you’re Todd Tillman who won for Blake’s team you probably got a little more chat time with Blake.  I imagine the further you get the more personal time you get.  It was a great experience.  And great exposure.

Did things change for your music  career or was it more of a blip and you move on?

To some extent it is kind of a blip.  But you do gain followers on social media that you didn’t have before the show.  That helps.  I think the pop culture is a bit fickle.  You see over 4 million views on my “Juke Box Hero” video and you think if I come out with a new album in a similar style I should really be able to key into this because there are so many people that liked it.  Doesn’t necessarily translate that way.  But I think there is so much noise and inputs and some many distractions.  So I think The Voice has a certain apparatus that allows you to get a lot of attention but most of those people are more The Voice fans than your fans. 

You mentioned you are working on a new album with Riot V, how’s that going?

It’s going well.  I think the COVID situation had potentially two different effects on bands.  One is I have all this free time for music.  On the other hand it’s oh man we can’t go out and tour to support this album so why bother.  And with no deadline you can kind of slack a bit and that’s kind of where the Riot album has been.  We’ve had the songs written but let 2020 get away from us.  We are just on hold to release the album until we can tour behind it. 

Anything else going on?

I reached a point last year that my business, I run a manufacturing company for restaurant equipment so that had an impact which was stressful.  Even now that orders are starting to come back it’s still tough with lack of materials so there is a ton of stress.  Not a whoa is me thing, it’s just that music is a passion thing I pursue in my free time so it’s difficult to say yes at this time.  It’s hard to find time for anything.  At this time I don’t see me taking on any other projects.  I did have the question did any famous people want to work with you because of your time on The Voice but no that really hasn’t happened.

Have you met any of your idols? If so what was that experience like?

What’s weird for me if you meet someone in like a meet n greet line I don’t consider that really a meet.  I think for me getting to meet someone is to meet them as a fellow musician.  That is much more along the lines of what you are asking.  When I was on The Voice and I walk out and James Taylor is there, granted it was on film and we only had 10 minutes to sit and talk.  To have someone like him throw a compliment your way feels pretty incredible.  Also what is weird for me, for example Geoff Tate was incredibly influential to me in my younger days.  There is a part of me, a little boy that still craves Geoff Tate to say hey Todd good job.  I actually met him, my brother Rick had a record store and Queensryche did an in store for Operation Mindcrime.  I met Geoff and I gave him a copy of my Harlot CD we produced in 1988.  I told him he was a huge influence on me.  Back then most independent bands like us didn’t have a CD so I figured that should impress him.  Now that I’m in a band and people hand me CD’s often I get it that he was a busy guy and why does he give two shits about me.  But I had this fantasy that he would listen to that and write me a note saying good job.  Obviously that didn’t happen.  To this day if I get approached like this, I’m not saying I’m a great person or anything like that, I’m sure I don’t get as much as Geoff Tate does but I make it a point to give it a little listen and find a way to compliment it.  First of all if it’s not my taste they still went through the trouble to write and produce the song and I know how much goes into that.  Getting back to it I still have this fantasy of bumping into Geoff as a fellow musician and we could talk and get to know each other.  At the same time who knows maybe we have completely different views and maybe we wouldn’t get along.  Sometimes you hear stories about people in general.  At this point I’d say the closest I had with that was touring with Primal Fear, Ralf Scheepers is an incredible singer I had bought an album of his back in the 90’s that I really liked.  It was interesting and cool to meet him.  I got to know him really well and that to me is a little more along the lines of what you are talking about, a unique experience.  As well as the experience with Kurdt.  But in general when we are playing these festivals and Judas Priest is headlining, they have their own little dressing room and pathway.  And they have people to make sure you don’t walk in there.  I haven’t had much experience with the big dogs. 

We all have this perception that you are all hanging out backstage but that’s obviously not that way it is.

Some of them will hang out in the normal food tent and they are around and if you are brave enough you can walk up and bug them.  For me that’s not quite the same.  I remember the drummer from Judas Priest was in there and our drummer is like I want to get a picture with him and he was cool but there’s a part of me that’s like you just interrupted him, you’re not really meeting them.  I tend to be like I don’t want to annoy someone.  Although I did with Michael Sweet and Biff Byford from Saxon and Jeff Scott Soto.  So I have done that but I don’t post it to social media for me it’s more of a private thing.  More of a personal memory. 

Top five albums everyone should own?

Oh man that is so tough.  I really loved Malice and Warrior.  There was a band called The Front I really loved.  But I would say if you are in the hard rock genre it would be tough not to say an Iron Maiden album like Piece of Mind, that’s a classic.  Certainly in the Riot catalog you could throw Fire Down Under, not because I’m in Riot but I feel it’s a great album.  I think for me it would be hard not to put Holy Diver from Dio in there.  He was so incredible.  I would say something by Queensryche, Operation Mindcrime. 

I wish you nothing but success on the release of your first solo record.  As I mentioned for a classic rock fan this is an album you should check it.  Any final words?

Thanks for helping spread the word.  Anyone that gives me any type of attention or shot I appreciate it.  This is a passion thing and I’ve got so much joy from music over the years and just want to return the favor and bring some joy to others. 

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INTERVIEW: TODD MICHAEL HALL was originally published on RockRevolt Mag

#Blake Shelton #Kurdt Vanderhoof #Metal Church #Riot V #Sonic Healing #The Voice #Todd Michael Hall

[afterspark-podcast]

My Little Pony/Transformers: Friendship in Disguise, Part 1 Transcript

[This can also be found on AO3!]

[Stinger]

O: So I'm like, “No, I'm just fine with pretending this never happened, honestly.”

[Intro Music]

O: Welcome to our April Fool’s Special!

S: The Transformers/My Little Pony: Friendship in Disguise crossover.

O: Specifically, issues 1 and 2 here.  An episode covering issues 3 and 4 will be released in a few weeks.  Um, so obviously our podcast doesn't normally talk about ponies.

S: For all that it too was a popular Hasbro franchise in the 80’s- I mean, still is.

O: Yes.  I will attempt to give a short blip about My Little Pony characters that show up, but we're gonna kind of assume that you know the mane six.  Which is Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie.  Ah, Specs has seen some of the My Little Pony episodes, whereas I have seen... all of it at this point.  Um, so I'm reasonably familiar with most of the characters.  And uh, for the record, Twilight Sparkle is my favorite, but that's because she's basically me. [laughs]

S: This was a crossover comic that was released in 2020 (for your information).

O: Uh, most of the Transformers characters in here are part of kind of the regular G1 cast that you're all probably used to seeing in various things.  Most of them we've talked about.  There's a few we haven't um, because they just haven't popped up in the series yet.  [Like Arcee.]  The exceptions being Gauge who's from IDW2, and Windblade who's from IDW1, Cyberverse, and several other things.

S: Mm-hm.  They did some fun things with the fonts and some of the other visuals in this.

O: Such as using the Transformers font for ‘Equestria’ and the My Little Pony font for ‘Cybertron’.

S: Mm-hm.  And the character’s speech bubbles use the fonts from their respective series.

O: Some of the issues are done by who I think is the current artist for the My Little Pony comic series.  While the rest are done by Transformers comic artists- like, plural, several of them.

S: And with that we begin.

O: Part 1: Transformation Is Magic!

S: In Equestria, a pony by the name of Quibble Pants is standing in front of a newsstand complaining about some very applicable meta issues.

O: Quibble's a side character.  His whole shtick is that he picks apart plot and whatnot.

S: He's a bit of a nitpicker.

O: The newsstand pony tells Quibble (and by extension us) that this is all for fun.  So don't worry too much about continuity here, guys.

S: Mm-hm, a loud clap of thunder transitions us to a nearby mountaintop where Queen Chrysalis is up to nefarious plots

O: She [Chrysalis] is villain.  She is the queen of the changelings.  She can transform into different creatures, basically, or different ponies.  I think, judging by some of the background characters in some scenes later, that this is after she's lost control of most of the other changelings?  Though she does have a small group working with her here.

S: She plans to bring forth other changelings from other worlds to take over Equestria.

O: I'm sure you can see where- where this is going. [laughs]

S: Mm-hm, and now, on cybertron.

O: The Autobots and Decepticons are fighting, shocker.

S: The Decepticons are clearly trying to take control of a malfunctioning space bridge.

O: A space bridge that Shockwave is convinced is breaching other dimensions.

S: Suddenly, all of the Autobots and Decepticons are zapped away through a portal.

O: Leaving only poor Grimlock to smash into view a few seconds later... thinking they have all ditched him.

S: Poor Grimlock.

O: Poor Grimlock. [laughs]

S: Back in Equestria, Twilight shows up with several royal guards to stop Chrysalis but it's too late and a portal opens, sending the Cybertronians zooming past through the air.

O: Twilight is horrified to see that Chrysalis has summoned living things that are about to go ‘splat’ onto the ground, or more likely ‘crunch’! [laughs]

S: Or possibly clank, if someone slows them down-

O: [laughs]

S: But I mean, who knows?  Twilight speeds off to try and save the newly arrived Cybertronians.  While Chrysalis stays behind to acquaint herself with Megatron.

O: Bee is both surprised and resigned to see himself falling to a colorful death.

S: But Optimus grabs Bee's hand, and intends to break his fall with his own body.

O: Optimus, are you okay?  Do you need to talk?  I feel like you need to talk.  We need- we need to get you into therapy, dude.

S: It's all the self-sacrificing, but yes.

O: [laughs]

S: Yes, he needs some therapy.  The two are saved by Twilight’s a very timely arrival and magical powers.

O: The Cybertronians are just as surprised by the ponies, as the ponies are of them.

S: Bee attempts to blend in by transforming into vehicle mode, to Twilight's consternation.  But Twilight says that doesn't really help him blend in, but it's okay if they're different!

O: She comments on their ‘shape-shifting magic’ and that Chrysalis will be disappointed that they're friendly.

S: To which Optimus says... unfortunately, they are not all friendly.

O: And then we are given the most amazing image. [laughs]

S: Queen Chrysalis, as happy as a kid in a candy store, on top of a tank, aka Megatron.

O: Seriously, it's one of the best images in the comic. [dissolves into laughter] And one that was shared I think, pretty frequently after the comic came out?  So it's very funny.

S: Mm-hm.

O: And we begin part 2 of issue 1: Shine Like A Diamond.

S: Rarity and her staff at her Manehattan boutique have been volun-told to get Starscream all dolled up for his coronation.

O: You know, the outfit he's in in the G1 movie, the purple cape and the crown get up.

S: Rarity attempts to calm him down, because he is being a snippy asshole during all of this.

O: Yes, with vague, implied threats throughout.

S: Mm-hm, so Rarity says, “Happy, healthy subjects show just how good their king is, don't they?”

O: A car is heard in the distance, much to Starscream's surprise, as he didn't think the ponies had cars.  Which, he is correct!

S: Mm-hm, Arcee barrels into him with a flying kick.

O: And Starscream retreats.

S: Leaving Arcee and Rarity to introduce themselves.

O: They seem to become fast friends as Rarity thanks Arcee, and Arcee tries to help clean up the mess Starscream has made.

S: Unfortunately, Starscream returns with the rest of his trine in tow.

O: Arcee intends to fight them alone, but Rarity generates a magic shield to help protect Arcee while she fires on the jets.

S: Thundercracker takes a direct hit, while Starscream and Skywarp are herded closer together by Arcee's fire.

O: Once they're close enough, Rarity uses her magic to wrap the fabric from Starscream's cape, that she was helping make earlier, around the two of them.

S: Skywarp says, “This is stupid!  I'm out,” and teleports away.

O: Leaving Starscream to nosedive to the ground with a boom.

S: Arcee compliments an exhausted Rarity on her help.

O: While they both agree they would do anything for their friends, and for each other!  Now, you may notice that none of the My Little Pony characters have been shown in the Transformers universe, but that is about to change.

S: In issue 2, part 1: Inspiring.

O: It would seem that Twilight's assistant, Spike (the dragon) is wandering around the Ark writing a letter to Twilight.

S: Of course, with Grimlock being the only one left behind, he's presumably found Spike and brought him to the Ark.

O: Spike is of course very enamored with the big old Dinobot.

S: And Grimlock seems to like Spike quite a bit too.  Even holding him in his open palm while they get an alert from Teletraan about an attack.

O: Said attack, by way of the Constructicons, who have come to destroy the Ark while everyone else is away.

S: Grimlock transforms into dino mode and meets them.

O: Grimlock makes the mistake of saying, “Puny Decepticons, even together you no match for Grimlock!”

S: To which, they respond by forming Devastator, and stomping the absolute crap out of him.  “Grimlock and Grimlock's big mouth.”

O: Spike shouts words of encouragement to Grimlock, but quickly sees that the Dinobot is losing.

S: So he thinks, looks at the Ark, comes to a realization, and then runs inside to make his realization happen.

O: Inside, Spike flips through two large books.  ‘Modern Cybertronian For Everyday Conversations’ and ‘Teletraan I For Dummies’.

S: He then climbs onto Teletraan’s console and starts the main engine cycle countdown.

O: Spike yells at Grimlock to get down.

S: Which is, you know, not that hard as Devastator is still stomping on him.

O: Devastator is then blasted by the bit of the Ark that's still sticking out of the ground, causing Devastator to fall to pieces.

S: The Constructicons flee, and Spike checks on Grimlock.  Spike still feels pretty down about himself, because all he did was press some buttons.  But Grimlock says Spike did even more than he did.

O: “Spike learned new language, and operations system in short time!  Spike think of using busted engine as canon!  Spike use pronouns!”

S: Grimlock tells Spike that Spike inspires him, and that he's full of potential.

O: Spike collapses into a happy little puddle of dragon that Grimlock called him, “Inspiring.”  Their friendship is so cute! [laughs]

S: And now it's time for part 2 of issue 2: They Eat Ponies, Don't They?

O: We are brought onto the stage of a cooking show, “Prepping With Pinkie,” hosted by Pinkie Pie.

S: And a special guest, Gauge!

O: And all I can think is- Arcee she still one of her parents in this continuity?  Is Arcee worried about her child!? [laugh]

S: And in the spirit of cultural exchange, Pinkie and Gauge will be sharing some of their favorite recipes in today's program.  I never thought about giant robots having recipes before this, and I didn't want to think about it.

O: [laughs] Pinkie is, of course, making cupcakes.  While Gauge has brought iron filing casserole.

S: Poor Pinkie and ah, several audience members are questioning their decision based on their facial expressions.

O: Pinkie goes to start her cupcakes, but suddenly everything starts shaking.

S:  [singing] Dun, dun, dunnnn!

O: [snorts]

S: A space bridge appears with Shockwave stepping out of it.

O: He has, by his own admission, come to ‘spice things up.’

S: Ah, time for some puns.  Unfortunately, his recipes require a bit more audience participation.

O: Shockwave’s apparently come to discover how much pony it takes to fuel one Decepticon.

S: [sighs]

O: [laughs]

S: He transforms his hands into a grater and a whisk, respectively.

O: Pinkie and Gauge evade him, causing him to demand that they stay still so he can finish his experiments.

S: Oh god, by attempting to whisk them!?

O: [laughs] I know, I know!  I'm not saying it's sane!

S: I know, I mean, I read it too.

O: [laughs]

S: It’s just, now I have vivid mental images of this being attempted and everyone being very…

O: Confused? [laughs]

S: Yes.  Gauge whacks him in the head with a cookie sheet, completely bending it out of shape, and tries to get Pinkie to flee.

O: Pinkie refuses, but in the background the show's audience is running through the exit door- at least part of their audience is running through the exit- exit door.

S: Mm-hm.  Shockwave transforms his hands again, this time to a spork and spatula.  Sporking them to death is not gonna work, dude!

O: Tell him that! [laughs]

S: Mm-hm, again, with the mental images.  Gauge rips off the spork and spatula, sending Shockwave falling backwards, where Pinkie trips him.

O: Pinkie and Gauge grab some frying pans and bean Shockwave's face in between them.

S: Shockwave, thoroughly beaten by a small Cybertronian child and a pony, is kicked back into the space bridge and disappears.

O: The remaining audience claps.

S: And 47 minutes later, the duo tries the other's culinary... contributions.

O: Pinkie declares it as success, though her face implies she didn't enjoy the iron filing casserole.

S: In the background, Gauge is clearly trying to politely spit out the cupcake in a towel. [laughs]

O: And that ends issue 2.  So, join us next time for issues 3 and 4 where we will finish this mini-series.

S: And that just about wraps it up for us today.  Remember to check us out on Tumblr or Pillowfort as Afterspark-Podcast for any additional information, show notes, or links we may have mentioned.  You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at AftersparkPod (all one word), and various other locations by searching for Afterspark Podcast, such as AO3, iTunes, Spotify, and Youtube, just to name a few.  And feel free to send us questions on Tumblr, Youtube, or AO3.  Till next time, I’m Specs.

O: And I’m Owls!

S: Toodles.

[Outro Music Plays]

#transcript #afterspark #afterspark podcast #friendship in disguise 1 #friendship in disguise 2