#what time is it? that's right it's 'projecting my personal issues on trek characters' hour! again.

[quarks-pussy]

Oh man. I'm thinking about like… little, autistic Worf growing up on earth, thinking that yes, he's different from all the other kids but it's okay, after all they're humans and he's a Klingon and that's why he's different and he'll probably be able to hang out with other Klingons down the line and it'll be fine. And then, when he's older, he does and… he still doesn't fit in. He's still different, he starts to think he'll never belong anywhere. Not because being raised by humans changed him until he didn't fit in with Klingons but because he never did with either of them from the start. I don't know the wholesome conclusion yet tho, sorry. I haven't gotten to that part of my life yet

#what time is it? that's right it's 'projecting my personal issues on trek characters' hour! again. #worf rozhenko #star trek #ds9 #tng #worf #personal #okay to reblog #original posts fresh from quark's pussy

[maniacalmagician]

EVERHOOD: Pinocchio in Psychedelic Purgatory: the Rock Opera Adventure. OR: I walked backwards into hell, and felt euphoria as I became privvy to the Divine Truths

Hello tumblr people. I’ve been Away. I played a game recently and I wanted to talk about it.   damnit i really wanted to put pictures into this mini essay. ive been away from this garbage site for too long, i dont know how to do it lol.  ok anyway    First, I want to say to the developers and anyone else that this has quickly become one of my all time favorite games. Currently writing I have personally never felt a greater emotional attachment to an experience with a piece of software. Perhaps it is the extreme idiosyncratic nature of it, perhaps it is the deeply intriguing storyline, mostly however it is a combination of those in addition to some of the most outstanding psychedelic visuals I have ever seen, particularly in the finale sequence, and a killer soundtrack that combines many genres but focuses mostly to being as bangers as possible. I will be upfront and say this game comes with a boatload of trigger warnings, and thus the aforementioned idiosyncratic nature of it may not appeal to everyone, however I feel it necessary to indicate potential content warnings here as I would hate for people to be triggered: epilepsy is the big one, I myself have mild stutter based epilepsy and it didn't cause health problems or anything but my case is not universal. Anyway. That is a hard warning on epilepsy. I do it because The Incredibles 2 did not, lmao (that's an example of the kind of visuals that trigger me personally. An aside ) Other things include (spoilers): arachnophobia, misophonia (screeches, unsettling sounds), themes of death, immortality, suicide. Some game mechanics are not immediately intuitive and puzzles require some pretty clever but sometimes obtuse solutions. Direction is not always super clear either. People have complained of performance issues but I am leaving this review after playing the switch port, which played smoothly other than some awkwardly long loading times here and there. What I have played of PC so far runs smooth but as of writing, performance for me was fine (my pc is a lowend budget build). There is a difficulty to it. Even playing on easier modes, it can be quite unforgiving. If you're a fan of hard games (I am but I suck at them) and rhythm games (this is, uh, Not? That? Almost functions as half walking sim, half rhythm Game, dodgy shoot em up kinda feels. Truly unique gameplay I think. Constantly switches things up, too. But yes I also adore rhythm games, and yes i also do suck at those too.), half of it is that. The devs troll you with puzzles. It's truly a wild experience as it advertises, one of a kind. And yet, however.... This game wears, much like its heart,, its references, on its sleeve. If you are not into that kind of thing, you will probably be annoyed by this game. It also loves to delv into meta, as many puzzles and interactions are references to the UI of the game itself. Personally, I'm not wild about meta but I appreciate the ernestness here, so I'm willing to roll with whatever this game throws at me because every turn feels unexpected, fresh, funky, somber, and wildly intelligent, with boldly sincere ludonarrative choices, script and art direction. If you like Geno from super Mario Brothers, which, guess what, narrator here LOVES Geno from Super Mario Brothers, this is functionally the game you've always wanted that Nintendo could never make because Square has held Geno hostage in some kind of underground torture facility since 1995. Turns out they were rather right to do so, because when that puppet is out serving a higher authroity, he can be quite dangerous. Narrarively it borrows much from its sources but I would argue there's proof the writers have spent time thinking about the implications of their source materials worlds, and that reflection casts itself back to create this, experience that is wholly unique even if we know Red is Geno and "Gaster" (who was based on Uboa from Yume Nikki or princess mononokes forest spirits), and some kind of disco Marceline character who changes their identity frequently, skeleton brothers- well undead brothers, really - We have to remember in the creation and consumption of media sometimes, influences and archetypes are ever present and Everhood almost itself is a realm that would indulge in the idea of self referential material. It makes for this very Jungian experience of friendly archetypes we're familiar with, which works well with this setting of an immortal realm. Thats not to say the personalities we do meet aren't expounded upon - they are, heavily, and become uniquely their own. (Spoiler) if my theory is to be believed this world is a purgatory where people have made their own artificial vessels and as time has made them bored (though some seem to be having a good time) while typical strains of the Pinocchio myth are thrown in about questions of identity and death - and probably even more so towards Timothy Learys concept of the Ego Death, or the return to the collective soup of unconcious being. Undertale will probably always be a reccomendation even by its own reference to it so comparisons to it will be littered through here. It feels like the developers were emboldened by Toby Foxs spirit in game development (his creative energy is rather infectious) and shared many similar ideas, but this feels far more aimed towards a maturer audience (references to the things I mentioned in the trigger warning list) and focused on achieving this feeling that its predecesors have as well. Yume nikki. Lisa. Earthbound. Toby's games. super Mario rpg in its humor, Cat Soup in its psychedellic depressive vibes, all this cool indie cult classicy kinda mash up soup.  bizarre antics and then these characters who have surprising depth the further you go. It has been 6 years since Undertale came out, and the developers for Everhood have called a lot of the "what ifs" that fans of that game ask, an answer in their own game. (What if No Mercy was forced, for example? What if going against destiny is the wrong thing to do? Why is Death such a Bad Thing? etc!) And the further along you progress, the smarter the story gets, the more complex the narrative threads and characters. This game knows how to write compelling literature and that wasn't an element I expecting but god am I so glad for it. Literally my pea brain saw Red's design flipping around some frets on a streamers videocapture (shoutout to based fellow tampa native Charles White, thank you for being witty and having good taste and your Floridian comisery.) one night and went "oh i like." But the experience I got in exchange was, so, so much more than that (but the tetris effect won't let that image disappear from my eyelids quite yet haha.) I hear there are multiple endings and one requires a 3 hour long trek. I'm not done with the game at the time of reviewing. You bet your sweet ass I am going to find out the Ultimate Truth. I found a way to deal with some of the bullshit in other games, I may not be great at games but I want to see whatever imagery these guys put on screen so it compels me to seek out all the alternative routes. I am going to be following these developers projects very closely. If this is their debut, their next project will be ... ... I would hate to force expectations, like if you just made a magnum opus like this it'd be perfectly alright to retire, but I just once again want to say thank you to the developers for putting your heart on display for the world to see. I see it. I have dealt with struggles similar to the ones in the stories this game articulates about anxiety and depression, existentialism and dread, dissociation and all the heavy themes that were risky to include narratively - I'm certaintly glad you took the risks you did. May update this review as I get further along the story but yeah. Tl;dr: haha pinocchio myth done well make brain go brrr. 9.99999999999998/10. I am taking an infitisimal fraction of a point off because of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spider in the monster maze. that thing was abhorrent, but I won't let it deter anyone else who wants to play.

#everhood #audnalysis

[bexterbex]

A Soul to Mend His Own | Ch. 77

Warning, PLEASE CHECK TAGS IF YOU SEE SOMETHING YOU DON’T WANT TO READ THEN DON’T READ. | Tag lists are closed | INBOX OPEN

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Will tag as I go along, Will update tags, Slow Burn, Influenced by Star Trek and other Sci-Fi themes, References to We Happy Few, Tons of References and quotes to George Orwells 1984 see if you can find them all, The First Order is the new Big Brother,  but who is really surprised, Blatant Nazi Symbolism, Interrogation Themes, Eventual Smut, Eventual Romance, Really just drawn out Slow Burn, Don’t repost without permission, Torture themes, Suggestive Themes, Execution themes, Disturbing Themes, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Verbal Abuse, Controlling Kylo Ren, Physical Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Possessive Kylo Ren, A character shamelessly based on Zelda

A Kylo Ren x Modern! Reader in a soulmate au with canon divergence. —————————————SLOWBURN————————————–

He is already the Supreme leader, searching the universe to find you, his Empress. Your name on his wrist has been the only constant in his life, while you have doubts about his existence and his acceptance of you. He isn’t in the database and why did the name Kylo Ren cover Ben Solo?

MASTERLIST

Chapter 77: Attack Dog

Kylo eventually brought you both back to the bed, your evening of lovemaking taking a toll on your energy. You were laying on his chest once more, a much more intimate sleeping position than you were used to, but seeing as many things had changed in the last 24 hours it was nothing new. “So, now that I am officially Empress, I feel different.”

Kylo glanced down at you, hand rubbing your bare back. “You are a different person now, the same in many ways, but different. So far I’ve seen you more sure of yourself if our lovemaking had anything to say. I would also say you take less shit, in general. You are now an Empress, and not so much my little Kitten anymore.”

You considered his words and his observation carefully, “Mmm yes, I guess I am more of a lioness now, but you can still call me Kitten when we are alone, especially when the beast is to come out.” You saw his pupils dilate with arousal at the mention of the beast, something he so desperately wanted to become again.

You shook your head knowing the question he wanted to ask., “No not tonight, I still need to be able to function tomorrow. When you return from your first mission, you can let the beast out but only when I tell you to. Do you understand?” You knew you would have to send him out into the universe away from you but you knew he would return to you.

He nodded, you could tell that he was still thinking about it as he licked and chewed on his bottom lip. The beast lingering below the surface.

“Tomorrow I will need my guard dog on his best behavior, we will be meeting with the Final Order High Command along with the First Order High Command. Seeing what our objectives are when it comes to defeating the Resistance.” You felt him shift underneath you. In his eyes, you could tell that it was his desire to please you, please his Empress by doing a good job. He was a guard dog ready for the order to attack. “Let us try to relax, we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow, and we have already exerted ourselves.”

He seemed to hum in agreement. You could feel the energy of the Force wrap around you, this time with a caress instead of a threat. It felt comforting knowing that all of him wanted you there with him at that moment. It didn’t take long for both of you to drift off into sleep while still entangled in each other, as one whole soul.

Your dream was different tonight, much different from when you first met your protective match. You were now with him, happily, near your throne. You were wearing a beautiful gown, and he was in his armor, but he didn’t seem scary. You were walking hand in hand as you walked away from your throne, a lazy sort of walk that meant you had nowhere to be. You were taking the lead as you two walked, but his body seemed relaxed in your presence as you came to a beautiful garden. That was alive, and full of greenery and running water. A little bit of paradise, you two seemed to not be bothered by any of the staff or guards that seemed to be present, along the edges of the dream world. It was like you two were left alone to your own little happy bubble. A place where you two could be one, without the interference of others.

As you came upon a large beautiful fountain in the middle of the garden space you and he sat along its edge. He removed his helmet without word or command. Losing his important piece of armor to look at you, his Empress. In the dream, you held hands and kissed sweetly, until you felt that familiar pressure behind your ear.

You woke up to being attacked with feather-light kisses, “I thought Kylo Ren wasn’t sweet.”

The kisses continued as he responded. “He isn’t but he does know how to worship his Empress. A loyal guard dog is loyal to his master.” His voice was laced with hunger, but you didn’t have time for that.

You took his head in your hands bringing his face to yours, “Now, now there will be playtime later, but now you and I must get ready for battle.” This caused a different type of spark to appear in his eyes, one that thirsted for violence.  One that would allow him to be not only your guard dog but your attack dog. A weapon of destruction that only obeyed you.

You got up from the bed and headed into your dressing room, where you called upon your ladies-in-waiting. You looked at your reflection in the mirror, the woman before you was much like Kylo said, more sure of herself and taking no shit. Confident, powerful, and badass were how you felt. Unfortunately, it took Kylo breaking your mind for you to fully see and accept the positive sides of yourself. You were an Empress, soon to be an Empress of the entire galaxy if Kylo had any say. You were about to rule over the greatest dominion that anyone has ever seen and you were living for it.

Adlez and Olivia-Rose entered and took an immediate evaluation of you. They weren’t allowed to take care of you when you got back, and that always seemed to worry them. They saw you several times a day, checked in on you personally, making sure you were still in one piece, and if not it was their job to put you back together.

Adlez eyed you with suspicion, “Something seems different.” It was more of an observation than a question. She took hold of your hair.

You lifted your chin to her, a signal of authority,  “It is, we now have an army to defeat the Resistance and the New Republic once and for all. We will bring order to the galaxy, and today I want my looks to reflect that.” You meant business today, whether she liked it or not.

Olivia-Rose seemed intimidated by this new declaration. Both of you had never been in any sort of galactic war before, your planet Earth being kept out of it for millennia.

“I am an Empress and I would like to look like one from here on out, nothing less, is that understood?” You were now taking command, usually, you let Adlez engage in the decision making, following her lead, but now you were going to be making all the choices, going with your gut feelings.

They got you ready in record time, both of them stayed rather silent throughout the rest of the morning, Adlez giving you looks here and there. Breakfast was a quick affair once you sent off your staff to do various projects, only Mitaka was to be with you for the rest of the day.

Kylo returned to your chambers only to escort you to your meeting, where you would be making final battle plans with your new combined High Command. You hadn’t decided on whether or not to keep the name First Order or to change it to the Final Order, both had their strengths and weaknesses in the name alone.  

You entered the room, all eyes on you faces you recognize and those you did not. You were in full command of an army, almost the entire galaxy, and the large room reflected it. The table felt as if you were in some sort of fantasy movie with its size, but that didn’t matter, what mattered was that you were now about to send out a full-fledged assault against the enemy. But you watched as the officials in the Final Order seemed to want to disregard your position as their eyes followed Kylo as he stalked around the room. A guard dog at the ready, one who refused to sit.

“Do we have a problem ladies and gentlemen? I know I am not the person you wished to become Emperor, rather Empress of the Final Order, of the Sith Eternal, but I am.” You spoke to those on your left, on your right was your trusty First Order High Command, along with Phasma and Pyre.

An older gentleman spoke up, “No, we will follow you, Empress. We just have the belief that the Sith should carry on.” His eyes and emotions seemed guarded. But his eyes flickered back to the large black creature you called your husband.

“Ah, I see. He was supposed to finish the ritual and become a Sith Lord was he not?” You glanced at your husband briefly, his body ready for a fight, before you turned back to the older general.

A female general spoke up this time, “He was. Now we have no Sith leader.” This was something that seemed to affect all the Final Order High Command.

You regarded this statement, “He could still turn into a Sith if he so chooses.” You wanted it to be his choice though, you knew very little about the ways of the Force and how it works and what the Jedi and Sith meant. You trusted that Kylo would make the right decision for himself.

Before your lovely guard dog could respond, Pryde spoke up, “Or you could have a child that would be.” His words made your blood boil and caused ice to shoot up your veins. Now was your chance.

“Ah, now Pryde? What was the rule that was made about that particular thing, Hmm? Not to comment on mine and Ren’s love life? I think you have violated that, wouldn’t you agree, Lord Ren?” You called him Lord Ren as he was technically no longer the Supreme Leader of the First Order, you were the one in command, you were the Empress.

Kylo’s lightsaber ignited in its glorious red fury, cackling and hissing at the opportunity that awaited it like it was a living being. Kylo drew close to the general whose eyes were wide with fear. Pryde wasn’t looking at you, where he should be, no, his eyes were focused on the deadly weapon in front of him. But Kylo looked to you, and you responded with a small, barely noticeable nod. And in an instant, Pryde was no longer a problem for you.

You could see Kylo shaking with excitement. This was the first time you had commanded him to use his weapon for you, for him to be your proper attack guard dog. You could feel the waves of pleasure through the static of the Force that he seemed to be generating around you, encapsulating you in a protective bubble. No longer were there dangerous mindless tendrils, now it was his pure energy and emotion as it surrounded you, making you aware of how he was feeling. You could feel a mix of pride, arousal, and hunger for power in his Force energy.

“Now that the trash is taken out shall we move on to our next tactic? I would like to capture as much of the Resistance as possible.” You felt smug, and you could see that this pleased the Sith Eternal, to watch your attack dog slay someone so easily. It seemed like a treat for them. One of the Final Order generals asked, “May I ask why Empress?” You knew among the most dedicated in most military regimes that being captured was the worst position someone could be in. There was honor in dying for your cause, but living and giving secrets made you the worst enemy possible.

You stared down your nose at him. Your body glowed with confidence. “I have my reasoning. I would like to see many of their leaders face to face before they end up meeting my husband’s blade. Is that too difficult general?”

You could see the nervousness in his face, he did not want to meet the fiery blade himself. “No, Empress it is not. We shall capture the leaders of the Resistance and kill the rest?”

You were pleased with his weakness of will against you, his desire to please.“Yes, that should be all. The new Chancellor Armitage Hux will go over the final battle plans with you all. I must prepare my best weapon.”

Hux regarded your statement with some minor glee on his face, you could tell he was holding it in. You just gave him a huge promotion. Something that after you conquer the galaxy, you could properly celebrate. But for now, you were off to war.

Kylo followed you out into the empty side hallway. No one wanted to stick around for very long while he wore his helmet and was now representing his title of Jedi Killer.

You ordered, “Helmet off.” He obliged, and it fell carelessly to the floor, making a loud thud sound that both of you ignored. You just gazed into his dark eyes that were hungry and waiting for you to give your orders.

“I will have two of the knights with me, unfortunately, Phasma and Pyre will be sent out along with the rest of the forces, but I will remain on this side of the galaxy safe, and out of harm's way.” Your hand stroked down the front of his chest, you could feel the tension that was building within him, he wanted to fight, but he also wanted to stay behind and protect. “You will do well, I will be safe. I need you to fight for me, I need my big scary attack dog on the front lines, slicing through our enemies. Do you think you can do that? Because when you return if you are successful I will have a treat for you.”

His breathing was deep and quick, holding back his lust for you at that moment, knowing that you needed him to be an attack dog in this moment, not your lover. All he could do was nod again, words lost to the mind of the beast. But he couldn’t help himself from placing a hand on your hip and kissing you quickly, holding back all of his need for you, for just one kiss.

You understood that you needed him to move quickly, “Go now, prepare to leave with the others. I want you personally to bring me the leaders of the Resistance. I want them to know fear, I want them to believe that I will show them mercy. I want them to have hope in that I will release them, let them go, but you and I both know that won’t happen. I want to crush all hopes of future rebellion from this galaxy.”

Kylo nodded quickly and swooped down to grab his helmet, but before he placed it back on his head he kissed you, “I will not fail you.” And just like that, he was down the hall with his black cape swooshing around him, like some sort of demon hell-bent on bringing destruction to the galaxy. Which wasn’t far off of what he would be doing. This was the official start and end of the war.

A/N: Insert “Dig Dong the Witch is Dead” song from the Wizard of Oz here. Pryde finally be dead y’all. And now to star/finish a war. 

#kylo ren #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren imagine #a soul to mend his own #kylo x reader #kylo x you #star wars #first order #star wars imagine #Star wars soulmate au #sw first order imagine #star wars first order #star wars final order #sith eternal

[maddiefriendlovesbilly]

Spencer x Ghost?

Spencer x Ghost

(AAAAA- it has been months since you sent this to me, and all i can say is im so sorry) Side note I have my friend @lethalbreadkills helping me with this one!

For reference: Maddie (maddiefriendlovesbilly) is green, Jimmy (lethalbreadkills) is red (((its 4:30 at the time i have joined this so im dead braincell wise sorry yall))) and Orange is stuff we decided together :3

Also this is so very chaotic im so sorry for this anon but this has been in my fuckin drafts for SO LONG and this is the only way its getting finished (its now 5 am uwu) im so sorry for all the shitposting i do its a mess. I shouldnt have been allowed here. (we finished at about 5:30 am its hell <3)

Sphost? Ghencer?? Sphoster??? I adore and despise them all equally.

We have decided that it should be BeanieGhost

Anyway I think this ship is really cute

They’re both so neurotic I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue

One of them starts a rant on some topic and the other joins the hell in

I’m an advocate of LETTING SPENCER INFO DUMP BECAUSE HE DESERVES IT OKAY

And Ghost would let this dream come true???

I would die for both of them and if Spencer told me I had to die I wouldn’t even complain, no questions I’d just be like “Aight.” I trust him that much.

(Not sure I trust Ghost’s judgment enough to do that unquestioningly; sorry Ghost)

Back on topic

I can’t imagine these guys on anything that comes close to society’s definition of a date

It’d be more like “hey you wanna come on this hunt with us?” “maybe, depends if there’ll be snacks” or like chilling in Spence’s room binging the entire star trek: original series in one sitting or “oops sorry about that level 11 entity that attached to my soul and is now wreaking havoc in your house, wanna make out later to make up for it?” “Fine but you also have to play three rounds of Call of Duty with me afterward”

They wouldn’t be romantic often but like highkey? I can see them throwing themselves into the line of fire for each other with a recklessness only they could survive

We can’t forget that Spencer is a more than 60,000-year-old overpowered demon/god/entity/thing, which, yes, could throw a slight wrench in this ship for multiple reasons, but I choose to make angst out of it instead.

Side note: Ghost is a chronic conspiracy theorist (and you can’t tell me otherwise) and every once in awhile Spencer will offhandedly say something like “Y’know I helped the Egyptians build the pyramids” and Ghost just goes fucking feral.

Look, I’m not saying Spencer IS touch-starved and most likely has issues creating and developing relationships and therefore avoids interpersonal connection, especially offline, but I AM saying he is prime material for it. (thats a lie thats exactly what shes saying don’t believe it) (I’m projecting okay dont judge me) (loser imagine projecting)

Imagine with me for a second: Why does Spencer willingly stay with a family who locks him in their basement with only minor complaining? He’s a near all-powerful entity just released into the world for Spence’s-sake - If he wanted to, there’s no telling what havoc he could wreak! So why doesn’t he? Why would someone so powerful, so terrifying, so dangerous that a group of people decided to seal him away forever stay with the first family he finds in sub-par conditions for years - especially someone who’s seen to be as high-maintenance as Spencer? Let me hit you with a theory: He’s chasing the feelings of validation, safety, and love - no matter how rarely it’s shown - that a family can provide. Being socially isolated for even a few years can do a number to a person’s psyche (I should know, I’m projecting onto this character right now), let alone thousands.

Now maybe Ghost can’t match thousands of years in isolation, but damn if he doesn’t have a few years of crippling loneliness on his record too.

I can see the two of them learning how to be vulnerable around others together, emotionally and physically; learning how to open up and how to talk through issues; and some third point, because points are better in threes.

(May I suggest that these losers are both trans but thats just me adding in my own projection lmao)

(You absolutely may)

Imagine the conversation thats just “so i have a murderer in my head thats an ass” “rip to u ig sounds like a you problem :///”

imo spence has trouble expressing emotions other than like,,, annoyance and haughtiness, its like sort of his go-to defence, so showing Ghost his emotions is a big step for him

I hear you, and i say yes good. (found this one headcanon that i kinda live by where he was uh, either autistic or adhd i dont remember but theres that too) OH yeah that would be at thing huh. Spencer: *is emotionally vulnerable @ ghost* ghost: oh shit im trusted??? Oh fuck uh.

Yeah so like…. Ghost and spence showing emotion at eachother is kind of :flushed: ghost be like: whats an emotion. Imagine having emotions fuciiing loser hhaha,,,, *laughs nervously*

Ghost is also very emotionally distant with most people so it would probably be like “what??? The fuck?? Emotions?????? You have those???”

Ghost and Spencer be like *gay*

So another idea is that maybe Spencer realizes Ghost doesnt play any games [like the uncultured SWINE he is] and decides he must [remedy] this and so he introduces him to like, nintendo first. (some bitches thought that said nintendo fortnite. Im bitches) and theyre playing like, mario kart or smash or smth and Ghost gets really [fuckin into it]

Ghost and spencer: *literally in eachothers laps playing fucking wii tennis*

Spooker: what are the- *TOAST FUCKING SLAPS A HAND ACROSS HIS MOUTH* shut up you dont wanna know what happens when its mentsonssbfdjfsd (sorry i had a stroke uwuwuwuw)

(Theyre in denial we don’t judge in this house)

They will not hesitate to play dirty either, they will straight up push each other over and vaguely flirt

Ghost is losing and straight up fucking goes “ur hot” and spencer actually dies and boom ghost is the winner. sparkle emoji Magic sparkle emoji

“I am Not a HomoSexual:™:” “Yeah, sure you aren’t” “Screw off”

Pet-names-ish: Asshole, Gaymer-Boy, casual insults, Mr. Spirit Bitch, Mistake, Loves Ghosts More Than His Boyfriend What A Fucking Loser aka Gay-ass

Pros:

They both open up a lot most likely. Gain someone to trust since they’ve sort of been through the same things (though on much different scales)

I can see soft hours of hanging in each other’s bedrooms

Spencer is a tsundere you cant tell me otherwise youre just a coward if you disagree

So is Ghost so this can only go well

Every time Ghost has to solve a case at the Acachallas Spence is just peaking out from his basement like “the fuck is this?? Hot Man??????”

Enemies to lovers 500k (Gets Hot and Steamy :flushed: NOT CLICKBAIT!!!!11!!!!! 18+!!!!!!! GAY LOVE StORY!!!!!!) Lemonz!!! Made from teh Sexiest of Wattpaders UWUWUWU YAOI Boys Love don’t like don’t read!! (this is so fucking stupid jkfnd) I hate this with a passion Q^Q. All my years of being a basic watpad fanboy have helped me to the moment i bring maddie to tears

The steam is just like,,,,, holding hands and being angy all the fuckin time the steam is literal because their anger translates into actual steam

Cons:

Their angst has nowhere to go and it just sits between them like two raccoons at a dumpster-style mexican standoff

They really start off hating each other huh. Like, I know this can still lead to healthy relationships but neither of them are very good at healthy relationships with people he hasn’t known for his Whole Life so that’s an Oh No.

They totally feed off of each other’s stupidity (but this could be seen as a pro too so take that as you will) as well as anger - im talking one-upping each other kinda shit

Its ridiculous honestly how intense it gets, like they straight up need intervention sometimes because they dont realize they can just STOP

Conclusions:

I think this would be a relationship that would that a lot of time and hard work to make work, but i think in the end it would be really super cute!! Like it would make no fuckin sense to anyone else but somehow they’d understand each other and help each other through their similar issues. Also theyre both big nerds in different ways and i think they’d have just ranting sessions back and forth over and over and it would be soft!!!!! So yeah, i think it would work, at least, i want it to :D

So. Maybe?? I feel like it could, but they’d need to work pretty hard to make it healthy and not constant fighting. Could be stupid amounts of cute and wholesome but also could be stupid amounts of oh no and pain, depending on how the two act. If they learned how to get along with each other and work past their differences it could be super cute and soft. Just a very, er, bumpy beginning. And middle. And end. (this makes me very nervous,,,,why did you mention an end) (wouldnt you like to know weather boy) (TvT) UFDUNS bumpy but soft . Agreeing with the loser gay, want this to work it’d be interesting :3

#spencer x ghost #jess writes #ishhhhh??????? #venturiantale #venturiantale pie #johnny ghost #spencer acachalla #johnny toast #jimmy casket #fred spooker #let me know if you enjoyed this or not it was intense #sr #ship review #ship reviews #vt ships #vt ship reviews #vt ship review #vt sr

[smallblueandloud]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 for the writing ask- I AM SO SORRY I COULDNT STOP!!! xoxo

aaaah these questions look SO GOOD thank you so much <3 <3 for this ask meme, which will be open all weekend!

1. tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

i pulled open all of my WIP google docs for this and my laptop started whirring ominously, lmao. this is going to be a Little Long but i love talking about my wips so who cares!! (under the cut because EXCERPTS)

guys and dolls but gay - very, very casual rewrite of guys and dolls if sky masterson was a woman. i’m loving how chill i’m being about this one because it’s so much fun to not have to worry how i’m going to write lyrics in a not-weird way and just focus on the story. this one’s first because it’s theoretically closest to being finished.

sky, laughing: “oh? people. all the people you turn down every day. well, i imagine there’s someone out there that’ll catch your eye.”

sarah, stiffening: “...yes, there will be.”

sky: “and what might this person be like?”

sarah: “he will not be a gambler, for one.”

sky does not miss the pointed pronoun. “i’m not interested in what he won’t be, i’m interested in what he will be.” she sits down on the desk, in a pointedly masculine pose, and sets her fedora next to her - at her most Hot Queer, basically. “how will you know when he gets to you?”

my fic for the aos rarepair fic exchange - i can’t give any plot or ship details, for obvious reasons, but it’s 1.3k and i’m having fun with it!

steven roadtrip of destiny - canon divergent fic set at the end of steven universe future where steven goes on a roadtrip instead of... canon. it deals with some heavy emotions and it’s also a character study so it’s tentatively shelved until i get around to rewatching suf. but i am projecting on steven like crazy and it’s really, really cathartic. it’s taught me a lot about myself too lmao.

He’s never been anonymous before. He kind of likes it. It means he can fold his arms on the table and put his head down without Pearl worrying about his posture, or someone asking him if something’s okay.

In the last few months, he’s grown to hate people asking him how he’s doing, or if he’s okay. He always ends up lying, because he doesn’t want to worry them, and he ends up feeling worse.

Probably because it’s more of him supporting other people without supporting himself.

He should have told someone how he was feeling. He should have reached out. Sadie could’ve helped him. Lars would’ve listened. Connie would have hugged him and then found him the appropriate mental health professional.

(God, Steven wants a hug. Also the appropriate mental health professional? Whoever that would be.)

untitled aos fic - i don’t want to give a lot of details because :eye emoji: and also i don’t know much about what the plot of this is going to be anyway, lmao. but here’s an excerpt:

daisy “that actor who doesn’t shut up about data harvesting” johnson (@daisyquake) tweeted: two weeks :eyes emoji:

Elena Rodriguez | Seven Cents S2 Streaming On Netflix Now! (@yoyorodriguez) retweeted and added: the problem with being friends with daisy is that you SHOULD have some insight into what her tweets mean but you still have no idea

Fitz (@justfitz) retweeted and added: Try being married to her

untitled star wars twins fic - because i am a total and massive nerd. i’m just kind of stuffing everything i have feels about from the post-anh era into this and planning on figuring it out later? i’m really loving talking about the culture of alderaan (and the culture of the survivors) and also i just love writing luke and leia’s relationship... so much......

(no excerpt for that one because i’ve basically posted all of it in various posts lmao)

aos ds9 au - i’ve posted a LOT about this already and i want to keep the plot a surprise but fsk is in this and married and half the cast is aliens, what else do you need in life.

“Good morning,” says Jemma, coming into the room with her hair wet and her uniform crooked. “Hello, darling.”

“Hi,” says Daisy, turning her face up for a kiss. Jemma obliges absently as she walks past, looking around the room.

“Has anyone seen my hair clip?”

“No,” say Fitz and Daisy in unison.

and of course, last but never least in my heart, chapter 3 of the magnum opus - writing this is on hold until my brain decides to stop hitting me over the head at every possible moment, but there’s like... 2k written so far? it’s. it’s going.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Coulson, and makes quick work of the right gauntlet. It’s only halfway through the left one that his fingers slow and he says, quietly, “Simmons designed these, didn’t she?”

She lets out a quick breath. “Yeah.”

He stays quiet for a few more seconds, finishing up the last of the straps, making sure they’re tight enough. Finally, he says, “She should be helping you with these.”

Daisy pulls her arms back and swallows down some words, or maybe a couple of feelings, or maybe a sob. “Yeah, well.”

2. tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

the last sentence of the magnum opus!!!!!!!!!!

no, lmao, i’m gonna try to be serious. i really, really want to write some librarians fic in the near future? also MORE OF THE SENSE8 AU. i’m DYING to write some stuff about that. especially sam’s cluster, for some reason? Let’s Make Him Suffer (Comedically)! one day i’m gonna finish that list of what cluster/situation each song is about and then it’ll be over for all of us!

3. what is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

i spent about eight months imagining a scene where riza hawkeye was really injured and mustang was holding her in his arms (basically the promised day scene but with more privacy) so does that count?

hmm, just for some other possibilities: glinda telling dorothy about elphaba, laura somehow seeing or speaking to natasha during catws, a good omens au of the good place (specifically the ”i don’t even like you!” / “you doooooooo” scene), kencyrath au of star wars (ESPECIALLY THIS ONE, except setting up the first scene alone would take 7k, but i want to talk about leia and luke and their MESSED UP TRUST ISSUES in this au).

oh, also, something about star trek tng where jean-luc and beverly and jack were in love and then jack died and picard left. more specifically a scene set during the pilot episode where jean-luc very cordially offers beverly the option to transfer off the enterprise, that he wouldn’t dream of holding it against her, and beverly very cordially telling jean-luc to go fuck himself. i want to write 30k of that broken triad. i want it so bad. i dream of that fic. maybe one day when i find myself with a completely empty month or two, i’ll binge all of tng and Write Some Stuff.

4. share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

since you and i have tww in common, i’m gonna do a tww fic! otherwise i’d have to reread literally every fic i’ve ever written, lmao.

(this is long but i put this post under the cut so i have RIGHTS. also consider this a sneak peek for the j/d fic in the sense8 au?)

“It’s okay,” says Helen. She sits for a moment in silence, seeming thoughtful. “The Congressman and I are in the same cluster,” she says eventually. “I’d- I supposed that’s easier on the Secret Service?”

“Yes,” says Donna. “The-”

She stops herself from saying anything further. President Bartlet and the First Lady aren’t exactly quiet about who’s in their cluster, especially with senior staff, but that doesn’t mean she should go talking about it in an unsecured room in LA, of all places.

To cover for her blunder, she gives up something else: “The same with Josh. They got really lucky with him, actually. It’s just him and me, so they won’t have to worry about anyone threatening the Chief of Staff through the barista in the local Starbucks.”

Helen looks up from the Ohio numbers she’d drifted back to, a slow smile creeping up on her face. “Josh is in your cluster?”

“Uh-” says Donna, feeling like national security wasn’t worth whatever she’s just blundered into. Oops. “Josh- Josh is my cluster, ma’am.”

She catches her mistake the second it’s out of her mouth, but Helen doesn’t call her on it, more focused on other revelations. “No wonder you two look at each other the way you do!” she says, sounding delighted. Donna shuts her eyes, praying for this to go away. It’s not that she’s ashamed of Josh - it’s just so, so complicated, and other people never think about how difficult it was. Still is.

i’m just... i really liked the idea of donna fumbling and having to reveal this to cover up for what else she was going to say? i don’t know why i’m so charmed by this. i think it’s because it would be impossible in the show - you can’t show what someone was going to say on television, not without a lot of setup and very careful scripting. it’s just a really fun situation to write about and i’m really proud of this conversation in general.

also helen santos was a dream to write and i love her a lot. i kind of want to write one of the fics in the series about her and her cluster solely because like... look at her. she’s a delight in literally every scene. i love her.

5. what character that you’re writing do you most identify with?

daisy johnson!!! i love writing daisy johnson!!!! she is the most adhd character i’ve ever written and i literally just have to transcribe my own inner monologue and it works perfectly!!!!!

Swing shift: 1600 hours to 2400 hours. Daisy always ends up getting back to her quarters at like 0030 hours, when Jemma is asleep and Fitz is reading some kind of technical journal. Then she has to eat replicated pizza, alone, and freshly replicated pizza is actually pretty hot but it feels cold at that time of night, like, spiritually.

6. what character do you have the most fun writing?

...whoops i literally just answered that lmao. uh. i also really love writing sky masterson in the guys and dolls fic? she’s just weaponized hot queerness in a suit and i love her for it. she is intentionally trying to seduce this repressed lesbian and it’s really funny and also really hot of her and it’s so much fun to write.

also, i wrote chidi for the tgp fic and it was possibly the most fun i’ve ever had with a pov, although that was also because i was purposefully trying to mimic the tone of the show. i still think that line about michael and a grenade is, like, the funniest i have ever been in my life. but chidi’s panic was surprisingly easy to write? all of tgp’s characters have such STRONG voices, it makes writing fic ridiculously easy as long as you don’t get stuck on a plot for six months.

7. what do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? would others agree?

oof, this one is ALWAYS tricky. uh? uhh?? i’m going to ruin everything by saying this but i basically alternate between the same two sentence structures and i am really frustrated about it. i also alternate between the same two styles of endings and i always use the same beginning (set scene, main character pov, thoughts-as-exposition, back to scene).

BUT ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE i like to talk about emotions and relationships and character development!! i have my “queer subtext goggles” superglued to my face, lmao. i like to think about how characters must have felt about things in canon and how it must’ve influenced them. i like making people deal with the consequences of their actions, especially how it’s influenced they themself. i also just really, really like writing people who love each other, whether it’s romantic or platonic or anything in between. i just want them to be happy! i just want them to stick together! doesn’t matter what fandom, i stand by it.

#loudwithlaughter #sb and l rambles #sb and l answers #sb and l is writing #thank you for sending this in!!!!! #now for literally All The Tags lmao #aos ds9 au #verse: fitzskimmons thingy #fic: you're a candle in the window #verse: and it's golden #mcu ideas #tgp ideas #st ideas #fic: help me hold on to you #fic: on that bumpy road to love #jesus CHRIST that was a lot of tags #okay okay i'm pressing post now #this was such a delight thank you SO much for sending it! #the steven roadtrip of self discovery fic

[thewadapan]

I rewrote the most infamous Transformers comic of all time.

I wanna give fair warning here. See, when I started working on this comic, I wasn’t really expecting it to turn out quite as dark as it did, and I suspect neither are you. After all, this is The Beast Within, right? The story where Grimlock goes crazy and talks in Comic Sans? How bad can things get? It turns out that - with just a few decisions made in poor taste - the answer is “very”, to the point where I feel the need to stick some kinda content warning at the top of this post. Unfortunately, I also feel like I’ve got a responsibility to the story, and there’s no way for me to do so without ruining it, so this is the best you’re gonna get.

This isn’t the first time I’ve made a comic like this. All the way back in 2016, I made “its christmas... so what??”, a kinda-bad re-lettering of a four-page ‘80s Marvel comic called “The Night the Transformers Saved Christmas”. I wasn’t too happy with the result, so half a year later I tried again - producing “PASS”, a re-lettered version of an obscure six-page UK-exclusive Marvel comic originally titled “Peace”.

“The Beast Within (My Pants)” is quite a different, uh, beast.

Each of the three comics I’ve produced was intended to be the last of its kind - standalone, yet fitting into the same overarching continuity. You can read any one of them alone, or you can read all of them in the order I made them. They’re individually available as albums on Imgur at the following links:

“its christmas... so what??”

“PASS”

“The Beast Within (My Pants)”

Alternatively, you can download the whole set as .cbz files - renamed .zip archives of images which you can open with a standard comic book reader.

It’s not too late to turn back.

Still with me? All caught up? Good. You’re probably wondering what the hell I was thinking...

I. I Have Summoned You Here For A Reason

Our story begins all the way back in 2004. The UK company Metrodome, looking to spice up their DVD box-set releases of the original ‘80s The Transformers cartoon, hired some local talent in the form of Mr. Jamieson (owner of a then-notable fansite) to write up some bonus features. They also commissioned him to write a mini-comic to be packed in with the set - with art by Mr. Gibson, a self-proclaimed fan since childhood with seemingly no other ties to the franchise.

The comic wound up being published in two parts (the second being subtitled “Consequences”) across the “Season 2 Part 2″ and “Seasons 3 and 4″ box sets. As a kid, I actually owned the latter of those box sets, and would watch it almost religiously - to what I can only assume must’ve been great annoyance from my poor parents - but I have no memory of it including a comic of any kind. Maybe it did, but it got separated at some point, and is lying around in some forgotten folder. A damn shame, that is. No, seriously.

I’m sure some record of the fan response at the time exists out there, in the doldrums of one of the many hard-to-search often-defunct forums which existed back then. I can’t really be bothered looking for it, sorry. You’ll have to content yourself with this TFWiki talk page for “The Beast Within” from mid-2007, which speaks of “Consequences” in hushed tones - as though it is a fabled artifact, prophesied to bring about Armageddon.

Another record - this one from 2009 - comes in the form of an eight-page TFW2005 thread ominously titled “Anyone afraid of the Dinobot combiner?” If you’re reading this commentary, you’re already strapped in for the long run; I recommend reading the thread in full. Well, okay, I don’t: it made me wince throughout, and I’ll be explaining the salient bits here, so there’s really no point subjecting yourself to it.

User “Razorrider”, after reading the TFWiki article on the Beast, opened the thread, noting “I don’t feel afraid of him myself.” The reactions soon started to pour in - some agreeing that the design was in fact “awesome”, others describing it as “hideous”.

Just going off my own personal opinion here, I think it’s fair to say that effectively nobody on the first page of the thread had any idea what they were talking about - and the pages that follow fared little better.

I think the main issue stemmed from the fact that a lot of those users didn’t think to explain the metrics by which they judged a “good” design (or, indeed, a “bad” story). When one person says “I think Optimus Prime has a good design”, they might just mean “I think he looks cool”, or they might mean “I think his proportions and colours give him a heroic stature which reflects his personality”. In that sense, a “good design” is one that communicates aspects of a character visually, even if it’s ugly. The Beast is hideous, yes, misshapen, yes, and it looks like the result of a teleportation accident, fine - but those are all intentional design decisions that perfectly reflect the nature of the character. In the foreword to the first part, Mr. Gibson notes the following (you’ll have to imagine that it’s written in Comic Sans for yourself):

Creating ‘The Beast’ was probably the most interesting aspect of the project. I wanted him to be a grotesque, twisted character that contained the design elements of the Dinobots he is created from.

People proclaim that the Beast “should never have existed” - a line from the comic’s narration, note - but somehow fail to realise that this is the comic’s own intent.

(Compare the Beast’s design to that posted by one user on the second page of the thread, which - minus an admittedly-inspired Triceratops-fist - just looks like an upscaled version of Grimlock.)

Okay, the alarm bells should be ringing in your head now. This is all starting to sound disturbingly like I’m some sort of The Beast Within apologist, isn’t it? How slippery is the slope that leads from “the Beast is a good design” to “The Beast Within is a good comic?” Have the hours spent poring over this thing in MS Paint turned my brain to mush, capable of only vague all-caps-Comic-Sans-penned ponderings?

...Well, yes, but- look, just stick with me!

The most accurate recurring statement in the thread - though perhaps not in the way it is intended - is that The Beast Within reads like a work of “fanfiction”. See, Transformers is a franchise with an ever-growing history, and many of those who work on it now have been lifelong fans themselves. This is true of many franchises which have stumbled into the new millennium, finding themselves seemingly unable to die. We live in an age of fanfiction - yet some fanfictions are fanfiction-ier than others.

When compared to the likes of Star Wars and Star Trek and Marvel’s comics, one sees a marked difference in Transformers. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, every story Hasbro put out seemed to fit vaguely into a single guiding narrative - each distinct strand of their multimedia barrage falling into contradiction with one another, yet still seeking to adapt some underlying premise. The 2001 series Robots in Disguise - in the West at least - saw a complete departure from that narrative. The ramifications of that strange borderline-afterthought cartoon cannot be understated, yet in retrospect feel like they’ve been a part of the franchise for as long as anyone can remember.

Almost every year since, Hasbro has effectively wiped the slate clean. Each new series tries to be its own thing. Continuity between series - if it exists - is understated, ignored, or overwritten. To date, this is still something that confuses us geeks; so used are we to the mired pits that are the canons of Star Wars and its ilk. This can be frustrating - there are only so many times one can retread the same story - but so too has this rare cycle allowed authors to really explore the concepts and themes presented by the premise of “car robots” to a level of depth which I believe is simply unattainable in franchises which adhere stringently to a single narrative.

That’s the bright side.

In practise, many Transformers stories have become increasingly myopic - existing only in service of themselves, or (more often) in service of older (better?) stories. The single most influential of these stories is almost certainly 1986′s The Transformers: The Movie, and it’s that influence which is felt most strongly in The Beast Within.

Of the countless insights offered by Terry van Feleday - if you don’t know who that is, don’t worry, I’ll explain later - I find that this one rings most true:

When Optimus Prime du jour mouths off “One shall stand, one shall fall” for the twentieth time, there is simply no longer that understanding that he will not be the one who stands.

Where so many modern Transformers stories are misguided recreations of the animated movie, The Beast Within is a reaction to it. But we’ll get to that. First, let’s talk a little about the story’s artwork.

Mr. Gibson himself, I believe, deserves almost none of the criticism he’s received over the years for his work on this comic. Though his layouts are occasionally cluttered, and he does seem to have been trying a little too hard to emulate the style of Pat Lee (the man behind Dreamwave Productions; license holder for Transformers comics at the time) in the first part, his panels have a strong sense of energy and tone.

Though he didn’t exactly get to explore a broad range of emotions over the course of the comic, he managed to keep the characters expressive - always a challenge, when dealing with visors and mouthplates - and, crucially for a cast of this size, on-model. Look at the fury on Razorclaw’s face! The way Prime’s fist flies out of the panel! Menasor, torn in two! Predaking’s sundered legs! The mishmash of heads inside the Beast! The sickly colours of the second half! While it lacks the practised ease seen from some fans-turned-creators on more recent books, it’s still impressive work.

Regardless, Mr. Gibson’s first outing with Transformers proved to be his last. He didn’t end up getting paid work from Dreamwave Productions as he’d perhaps hoped (though in retrospect, neither did most of the people who illustrated for that company, so that was probably for the best). There’s no mention of The Beast Within on his personal website, which bills him as a “children’s picture book illustrator”, amongst other things. To put it simply, the guy’s always been a talented illustrator, and his style’s come a long way since this comic - the portfolio work on his website is very impressive.

(On a whim, I went back to late 2004 on the internet archive, and did in fact find the comic’s first spread buried at the back end of his portfolio. The entire website is a product of the early-2000s - there’s a link labelled “Go to Flash site” in the sidebar, though the page it takes you to sadly seems to have been lost to time. It all seems like it was borne of another age entirely.)

Anyway, let’s get back to that TFW2005 thread. The thing that makes it particularly notable is that, on the fourth page, Mr. Jamieson himself wades in to try and set the record straight. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

For a lot of people, I think, the idea of interacting with an author might seem strange. They’re aware of J.K. Rowling’s online antics, and are becoming increasingly comfortable with celebrity interactions on Twitter, sure. But there’s a difference between those kinds of interactions and the kind that take place on forums or in chatrooms - places where everyone’s on a level playing field. I come from those corners of the internet, and am lucky enough to have had conversations with lots of people who’ve made things I like, and have seen almost the full range of approaches those people take when dealing with their audiences. It’s safe to say that Mr. Jamieson’s approach in that decade-old thread is just about the worse one there is: over the course of just five posts, he smugly lashed out at the people in the thread, whipping them into a fervour that lasted for three more pages after his departure.

Regardless of whether or not Mr. Jamieson was correct - in the attacks he levelled at the other users, in the defence he offered for his work - there can be no question that this kind of behaviour is grossly inappropriate.

(Whether it is more or less appropriate than digging up old threads and archived web pages in an attempt to justify a bastardisation of a much-maligned comic book remains to be seen, I suppose.)

The key point that Mr. Jamieson kept returning to is that he sought to avoid the dreaded “info dump” (a hallmark of early Transformers stories), and didn’t want his readers to be “spoon fed”. A recurring criticism of the story is that it seems to begin halfway through, with little explanation for what’s going on - but I, like Mr. Jamieson, don’t think that complaint holds water. The Beast Within begins “in medias res” because we already have the context: eighty issues of a comic, ninety-eight episodes of a cartoon, and - crucially - a movie. Everyone knows the story of the Transformers, because the story of the Transformers - ironically enough - never really changes. “Is it ever really over, Jetfire?”

(That’s the last line of the original version of The Beast Within, by the way. I had to add the comma in myself.)

Like the impact of Robots in Disguise, the impact of The Transformers: The Movie is kinda hard to see unless you were there at the time - and I wasn’t - but in 1986, it did something which was profoundly shocking to thousands of children: it introduced them to death.

That’s about all I’m going to say about the movie itself, because much more experienced critics than me have already mined it for every ounce of subtext. I’ve already quoted the work of Terry van Feleday, who did some excellent scene-by-scene analysis of the film in a thread all the way back in 2010 - and I’ll come back to her writings a few times in this post. This very year, sorta-famous YouTuber hbomberguy released his own long-form take on the movie - what I find interesting when comparing the two interpretations is that van Feleday struggles to find much merit in the movie outside of its opening, while hbomberguy employs a reading that allows him to be much more optimistic and charitable even towards the end of the movie.

In a way, I think Mr. Jamieson had an intuitive subconscious understanding of the subtext which both of those critics later brought to light, an understanding which directly informed the premise of The Beast Within. In the same way one can read the monster planet Unicron as a physical manifestation of death, so too can one view the Beast - and Mr. Jamieson (almost certainly unconsciously) posits that, although death does not belong in a children’s cartoon, it is an inevitability that all children must eventually face. It is the dark spectre that lurks beneath the surface of every childish thing made by an adult.

An author places some of themselves in a book - but the reader withdraws something of their own perception as well. I wondered what I might see in the book: a child believes a lie because they know no better; a grown adult sees the lie because it fails to line up with experience. In this way, a child’s story could be so many different experiences. With enough subtext, a thing made for a child becomes an entirely different world to an adult. [...] There’s no telling when subtext will defeat the facade of a thing.

(I’ll tell you what that quote’s from later.)

I wonder, perhaps, if the endless swathes of edgy reimaginings of children’s stories are something of a mass outcry from those who grew up being told - every Saturday morning - that when people got blown apart, they’d be put back together by the next week’s end. What was it like for those children, in December of ‘86, to learn that some people could never be rebuilt?

II. It Pleases Me To Be The First

It occurs to me that I never did really do a commentary on “its christmas... so what??”, although I did talk about it a little in the commentary for “PASS”. Its title is a reference to the famous (well, you know what I mean) cover of “Stargazing” (issue #145 of the original UK run), which featured a banner reading “IT’S CHRISTMAS!” over an image of Starscream, arms out, yelling “SO WHAT?”

(Side note: at first I thought that I hadn’t read that particular story, but it occurs to me that as a kid I used to borrow a lot of Titan Books’ reprints from my local library - and I do in fact have distinct memories of reading Transformers: Second Generation, which did collect “Stargazing” amongst other Christmas stories - so I guess I probably did read it, even if I don’t remember doing so.)

The Women’s Day comic is something of a curio, as explained in this excellent article (which reprints the comic - with its original text - in full). It’s basically the only US strip which was published outside of the eighty issues of the run proper. This rare, standalone nature is something I have sought across every re-lettering I’ve done - from the UK annual-exclusive not-by-the-usual-author set-in-the-future “Peace” to the UK DVD-box-set-exclusive set-in-an-ambiguous-cartoon-inspired-continuity The Beast Within. These works feel like they’ve been lost to time - and corrupting them feels like unearthing buried treasure (and smearing it in turds). But I’ll get to that.

Back to “its christmas”. As I explained last time, I just went through the comic panel-by-panel and changed stuff to whatever I thought would be funny. I didn’t edit the two-line introductory blurb (which ended up informing the backstory detailed in the new set of AtoZ profiles). I barely paid attention to established portrayals of the characters beyond Soundwave’s association with music. I had no large-scale plans.

There’s a lazy (and poorly-conceived) gag where the little girl calls Bumblebee “gay” (also note that at the time, I misinterpreted the art in the third panel of the third page - I thought it was the girl speaking, when in fact it was her mother - leading to some erroneous dialogue), which in retrospect feels like a less-drawn-out version of the excruciating opening scene from Freddery McMahon’s Combiner Wars abridged special. That spoof somehow manages to be less funny than its source material, and I sometimes think that the same holds for my own creations.

Still, that’s not to say that “its christmas” doesn’t do anything that I like. I’ll admit that lines like “lol without mustard christmas will be CANCEL suck it nerds”, “toot toot here come some flutes”, and “help me drag it to the hospital” still kinda make me laugh. I like the way Bumblebee drowns out the little girl’s insults by tooting loudly at her. The final panels - wherein the humans steal Bumblebee’s blood as the other Transformers watch impassively - have an offbeat intensity to them, and when it came to writing Bumblebee’s AtoZ profile it was those which I chose to call back to.

If I had to sum up “its christmas” in a single word, I’d pick “childish”. The jokes, the characters themselves, the entire concept behind the comic - all feel kinda immature, and that was kinda by design. Summer Meme Sundae was a terrible piece of work, but - if I had to ascribe a theme to it - that theme would be growing up; realising that you’re running out of summer holidays. “PASS” and “The Beast Within (My Pants)” kept that atmosphere, but became increasingly cynical and obscene. That was just the natural direction they had to go in.

III. Every Place Reminds You Of Some Place Else

I’ve long had an idle fascination with abridged series, and have toyed with the thought of making an abridged series of my own. Most notably, I’ve long fancied the idea of abridging Machinima’s Prime Wars Trilogy of Transformers cartoons. Here’s an extract from a message I posted in Allspark Chat (the Discord server associated with the Allspark Forums):

I'd probably try and keep Megatron mostly the same as he is in the show as it is. Optimus'd be kinda murderous - you can tell he can't wait for Rodimus and the rest of the Council to kick the bucket so he can retake unilateral control over Cybertron. I'd maybe try to go for something of a more sympathetic Starscream - he wouldn't actually have any plan, he just has Cybertron's interests at heart and ends up trying to use the Enigma solely to rid the world of Megatron and Optimus forever. Windblade'd maybe be trying to force some hero's journey stuff - picking fights with progressively bigger opponents in a misguided attempt to prove her narrative worth

As pitches go, it’s not much. It doesn’t help that, as I previously mentioned, Freddery McMahon himself - pretty much the only name in Transformers abridging - has already tackled the series; his style of parody isn’t really to my taste, but his production value is fairly impressive and would largely overshadow any improvements I made on a script level. I feel like the Prime Wars Trilogy has potential, because it’s a fascinating piece of media, but I find myself unable to answer the question of how to parody something that already feels so much like self-parody. Sound familiar?

By the time the last entry in that series - Power of the Primes - was wrapping up, I'd been posting semi-frequently in the Allspark’s threads with a borderline-apologetic tone. Takes included:

The emptiness of Cybertron lends it a Beast Machines-esque tone

The Mistress of Flame’s death is cathartic

You can see right through the script

I want to get off Machinima’s wild ride

Wow, Windblade sure screams a lot, doesn’t she

The finale of Titans Return is good, actually

Hearing Megatron say “piss me off” is an unpleasant surprise

Hey, this soundtrack’s pretty good

Wait, no it’s not, but Galvatron’s implied reversion to Megatron is

Narrative emergence gives rise to Buddhist allegories in TFTM

Grimlock acts like his cartoon self - but only around friends

Okay, for realsies, the soundtrack’s good now

They’re right to kill Sludge; he’s the least toyetic Dinobot

I’d probably describe a lot of what I saw in the Prime Wars Trilogy as a kind of narrative pareidolia - only instead of seeing faces in inanimate objects, I was seeing value and meaning in an indefensible web series.

The problem with abridged series is that they require a ridiculous amount of effort. You need to be a good writer in the traditional sense, but you need to be able to work around the visual material available - you’re gonna have to edit everything yourself, you’re probably gonna need to do custom animation, and you’re certainly gonna need to wrangle a cast of voice actors. All of that for ten minutes of animation that’s probably gonna get taken off YouTube within ten minutes of upload. It’s just not feasible - and yet there’s part of me that loves the idea: commentary and content, all rolled into one.

To pretend that it was Combiner Wars that led me to create “The Beast Within (My Pants)” is a little misleading, however. The real answer - I’m sorry to say - has more to do with ponies.

See, every now and again I get very acute nostalgia for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, which was perhaps my first brush with fandom - or at least, proper fandom. It’s heard to measure these things, y’know? Anyway, when that happens, I realise that I don’t really want to sit and watch a cartoon for little girls, so I usually just listen to some fan-made music or - as was the case last time - rewatch one of the abridged series based on the show. I use the word “series” here in plural because there were in fact two (well, two that matter): Friendship is Witchcraft and The Mentally Advanced Series. There’s long been quiet debate over which of the two is the (soundwave) superior series, and I’ve historically believed that they’re (buy some) apples and oranges. The latter is a more thoughtful parody of the source material, while the former is more polished and standalone.

However, after blitzing through Friendship is Witchcraft once more in its entirety over the course of a couple of days, something about it clicked for me - a bigger-picture thesis - and I realised that it had much more to say about its source material than I (or, well, most people) had given it credit for. It was at that moment that I felt the awful urge to create a My Little Pony fanwork of my own.

(The quote I used earlier, about subtext in children’s stories, was spoken by Princess Celestia in Rainbow Dash Presents: The Star in Yellow, a Mentally Advanced Series special inspired by a fanfiction which, fittingly enough, was written by Matt Marshall (AKA Blueshift/blue/Yartek/RockLordsRock), who was also the man behind the infamous “JaAm” relettering which effectively inspired all of these projects of mine. It’s like poetry.)

As we’ve already established, making a fancy-schmancy animation was out of the question - but a crudely-edited-in-MS-Paint comic was the next best thing, clearly. I started glancing through IDW Publishing’s official My Little Pony comics - having purchased a few in a Humble Bundle many years ago - but, aside from a couple of promising stories, quickly realised I didn’t have much hope. The comics are just, to put it frankly, not as good or as interesting as the show, and the fact that I’d need to adapt at least two issues at once (over forty pages) to tell any complete story made doing so an unappetising prospect. Furthermore, IDW’s comics are still very much in print, and (as the abridged series show) any such parody would stand on shaky legal ground.

Seeing as I wasn’t about to delve into the dark realm of prose any time soon, and the idea of messing with some other fan’s work rubbed me the wrong way, I decided to give up on my equine dreams and instead turned back to more familiar territory. I glanced over the list of old Transformers Marvel comics, but nothing like those I’d previously relettered stood out to me. I perused the short stories included in Dreamwave’s 20th Anniversary Transformers Summer Special. I even looked into some Fun Publications stuff. Nothing sparked my interest.

Perhaps my most promising lead was “An Arcee Sort of Day”, a vaguely-maligned (as in, “meh”) three-page standalone comic released mere months ago by IDW as part of an anthology - but the poor resolution of the available scan (the comic had been released in its entirety as part of the free preview for the anthology) meant that editing it would be a nightmare, and there was very little in the way of dialogue for me to mess with besides. More than that, the idea of directly mocking a comic from a compilation designed to showcase female creators (particularly one featuring Arcee, who’s been a controversial character in recent years) struck me as tasteless in the extreme. If only I had an easier target!

Oh wait, I did.

IV. Let The Slaughter Begin

If I actually ever read both parts of The Beast Within before starting work on this project, I don’t remember doing so. I do remember reading the Beast’s TFWiki page when I was much younger, and remember feeling like the wiki’s take on the concept seemed disproportionately harsh. To be honest, it was quite vindicating to read the source material and discover that I still agreed with my younger self’s assessment - the problems with the story are not on a conceptual level, but in the execution.

I barely gave myself time to digest the story before diving in and working out how exactly I could mess it up. I knew from my previous comics that the Autobots would all be unrepentant shitheads, so the natural choice was to portray the Decepticons as favourably as possible. Where the Autobots are callous, poorly-spoken, stupid, and divided, the Decepticons would be caring, articulate, intelligent, and united. In the story’s context, these traits would be weaknesses: remember, only the Beast has the killing instinct needed for decisive victory in this endless children’s story. I also knew that everybody in the story would hate Grimlock, and that - unlike with Roadbuster in “PASS” - they’d be right to do so.

That was pretty much the extent of my planning. I gathered up all the pages and started clearing out the text from the speech bubbles. Already, I had something of a problem: the use of the infamous Comic Sans MS font in the first part of The Beast Within was one of its most iconic features, and I wanted to retain that, but my own previous reletterings had canonically established Times New Roman as the “voice” of the Autobots. In fact, as far as those older comics were concerned, Times New Roman was the voice not just of the whole Cybertronian race, but also of the narrator.

The only lines which used a different font were those where I’d chosen to retain the comic’s original lettering, and with Roadbuster’s dialogue. It’s hard to articulate what exactly the joke with Roadbuster was - he seemed like the odd-one-out in the opening panels of the story, so I ran with that by having him be persistently ostracised by the other Autobots. The twist, as you find out when he finally speaks, is that he seems to be the only Autobot who’s unambiguously a good person; the rest bully him for effectively no reason.

In the commentary for “PASS” I released earlier this year, I explicitly ask:

If these are the Autobots… then what were the Decepticons like?

My own gut feeling was, I think, that they were people like Roadbuster - genuinely good individuals who never wanted a fight - and so for this comic I knew I had to give them Roadbuster’s Arial voice. I also knew that I’d have to keep the Autobots’ Times New Roman voice for the most part. The only question, then, was what to do about Grimlock, the combiners, Jetfire, and the narration.

(It’s worth noting that Soundwave and Triton were both Decepticons too, yet they both spoke in Times New Roman. The Doylist reason for this is simply that, at the time, I was happy to have everyone share a voice. In Triton’s case, the Watsonian reason is that he’s trying to mimic the Autobots’ “accent” to better fit in. If I had to make up a reason for Soundwave, I’d say that he’s only recently defected from the Autobots, as a reference to van Feleday’s insane Soundwave-as-an-ex-prisoner-of-war theory. Had Soundwave had a speaking role in the comic, I’m sure I would’ve explored that backstory in his AtoZ profile - but alas, it wasn’t to be.)

In fact, there was initially some ambiguity over who the comic’s narrator would be - if I used Times New Roman, would I have to keep the voice of the same narrator as in the previous two comics? In the end, I decided to draw from my source material: the on-panel narration would be Grimlock’s inner monologue, rendered in full Comic Sans glory, while the "Interlude” would employ a more omniscient third-person voice. That third-person voice is, I think, distinct from the narrator of the previous comics, and feels like a more solemn version of the narrator of the AtoZ profiles I released alongside the commentary for “PASS” (or, indeed, the latest batch included here). Remember, I wrote the first two comics years before all of this recent material. More on the text-only pages later.

When he speaks out loud, Grimlock uses the regular Times New Roman of the other Autobots. In fact, the only dialogue which uses Comic Sans is that of the Beast, which I view as the true externalisation of Grimlock’s feelings. You can also view it as the “real world” (as depicted in the text-only pages) leaking through into the comic’s reality, in much the same way that an aware-of-death adult perspective seeps through into a seemingly-innocent children’s cartoon. The other combiners simply use a slightly bigger font than the individual Decepticons. Oh, and all of the combiners use red text.

In the original toyline, Jetfire was something of an odd-one-out, as he was really a Macross “VF-1S Super Valkyrie” toy licensed by Hasbro from Bandai (who had in turn purchased the molds from the recently-bankrupted Takatoku toys). Both Whirl and Roadbuster have similar origins. I was under no obligation to do anything special with Jetfire’s dialogue, but because of the way he’s introduced in the comic - and as a nod to his shared real-world history with Roadbuster - it felt right to give him his own voice. Though he still uses Times New Roman, the font is scaled up and he speaks entirely in capital letters. His dialogue was a challenge to write, as most of his speech bubbles are very small, but I think this worked out in my favour: his speech often ended up butting up against the bubbles’ outlines, giving the impression that he’s always speaking just a little bit too loudly.

The lettering in the first part of the original comic - aside from being technically legible - is generally shoddy on every level. For emphasis, it alternately uses italics or inconsistent font size. Occasionally, the dialogue switches to lowercase, which kinda gives the impression that everyone’s been shouting the whole time. Most of the text is left-aligned. Some bits of text seem to have been squashed. Most of the narration boxes are parallelograms, but some are plain rectangles. Red hand-lettered text is mostly limited to the combiners’ speech, but also sees use a couple of times for Megatron and Optimus Prime. Some of the combiners’ speech just uses normal red Comic Sans MS text. Meanwhile, the second part switches entirely to black hand-lettered text - presumably from Mr. Gibson - which is a marked improvement in terms of tone and consistency, if a step down in legibility.

It’s interesting to me that, despite my version of the comic sharing the dearth of commas and full stops which plagues the original, it reads very differently. For all its stylisation, it’s my hope that each line I write for these comics comes across realistically - not in the sense that it’s something you’d hear someone say, but perhaps in the sense that it’s something you’d maybe read on the internet. More on that later - first, some miscellaneous notes on the comic’s text:

When I first wrote it, I used the style of self-censorship from “PASS” (and, by extension, the rest of Summer Meme Sundae) wherein the first letter of any curse is replaced by an asterisk. It was one of my prereaders, Tindalos, who noted that “the censoring kinda takes a bit from it”, and I decided that I agreed with him - it felt like I was holding back. You can decide for yourself; I’ve collected the pages with lines that were revised between drafts in an album.

Through pure coincidence, it’s Springer (well, Bulkhead) who gets the first line of dialogue in the comic - just like in “PASS”. In case it’s not clear, the joke is that he thinks he’s safe on the floor and berates Jazz for not doing the same thing, seconds before getting stomped by Megatron. I think this sequence perfectly encapsulates a big part of what I wanted to show about the Autobots: they all criticise one another relentlessly, despite being deeply flawed themselves. It’s a dynamic that, to me at least, actually evokes that of the Autobots in Michael Bay’s movies.

The line “thats me grimlock in the corner losing my religion” is, of course, a reference to R.E.M.’s song “Losing My Religion”, which was itself included as part of writer James Roberts’ “soundtrack” for More Than Meets The Eye. Though he did not appear in the issue for which Roberts selected the song, Grimlock was a recurring character in that series. Hopefully my depiction of the character surpasses that one - though if you ask the people I usually talk to, I wouldn’t be setting the bar particularly high with that comparison.

Optimus uses the insult “grimdick” shortly after Grimlock’s narration provides the example “grimcock”. I intended this to show that, while the dynamic between the two’s been cemented for a good while, Grimlock is always a step behind and still can’t predict Prime’s actions.

Snarl’s line was originally “hey speak for yourself swoop me and grimlock are tight as *hit”, which expresses effectively the opposite sentiment to his final line. The idea that Snarl was okay with becoming part of the Beast was intended to add a bit of brevity to the sequence - but I decided it was better to keep as much emotional impact as possible in the moment.

A more minor change a couple of pages later is Grimlock’s line “how do they do it”, which replaced “love is stupid”. I wanted to expressly draw a parallel between the Beast’s combination and Predaking’s.

The line I’m happiest with is “eat shit megatron this is what you get for being such a fucking weapon”. One of my friends occasionally cracks out the word “weapon” to describe someone - and what better application for it is there than a guy who literally turns into a gun?

Megatron’s line about the “black hole” in Optimus Prime’s spark is a twist on Megatron’s own canonical link to a black hole - an aspect of his original bio which was revisited by Roberts.

I struggled to think of Menasor’s final words. The longer I stared at the panel where he gets torn in half - from which I’d already cleared the speech bubble - the more I was struck by the emptiness of the scene. If one considers Menasor to be a symbol for the Decepticons as a whole, then his silence in that panel is my way of showing that - from this point forth - the Decepticons no longer have a voice; the second part of the comic shows naught but their corpses. Death exists, and nothing is good any more.

None of the text on the final page of the first half remained unchanged between drafts. I wan’t happy with Optimus Prime’s original line at all, and the internal monologue “don’t you deserve happiness” felt a little too serious. The phrase “no u” is the archetypical low-effort comeback, and seemed like the perfect beat to end the first part with.

Prime’s line “gotta jettison some dead weight” is a nod to Astrotrain’s iconic line in The Transformers: The Movie: “Jettison some weight, or I’ll never make it to Cybertron.” I had to check for the exact quote just now and found “jettison transformers the movie” in my search history, so obviously I’d done the same when writing the panel. More than just being a trite reference, I was hoping to draw an obvious parallel and to contrast the unilateral decision Optimus Prime makes on the following page against the more shall-we-call-it-democratic process the Decepticons used in the movie.

I’m probably a little too proud of “big red irredeemable fucking monster of a robot semi fuck”, which is a line that could absolutely only exist in this travesty of a comic.

Jetfire’s use of the phrase “GOTTA BLAST” is a reference to a line spoken by the titular character of the early-2000s CGI cartoon Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, one which has turned into something of a meme. When I wrote the panel, I intended to imply that Jetfire was aiming to crash into the city - but I think it ended up doubling as foreshadowing for the fact that Jetfire flies his passengers into the sun. Additionally, the meme often sees use as innuendo, which shines through in the following panel: Jetfire expels propellant into the Beast’s face while Bumblebee remarks “gah okay i did not want to see that”. The less said about the sound effect “CHOOOM!”, the better.

Remember how all the text in the first part of the original comic was left-aligned? So’s the text in my version! MS Paint simply doesn’t have the option to change the alignment of your text - I actually had to throw in extra spaces at the start of each new line, eyeballing things until I had an approximation of centre alignment. This is something I never did with “PASS”, and I found that doing so gave me more freedom to squeeze more stuff into the speech bubbles.

As immortalised by countless memes, you can’t rotate text in MS Paint either. I tried to use this to my advantage on the comic’s first page, where the steps between the words in Grimlock’s narration give them a faltering quality.

Grimlock’s narration actually ended up being one of the most challenging parts of the comic to write. I wrote a draft of the first page pretty quickly, but decided I wasn’t happy with it and that I’d have to replace it later - which I did, but only after having written pretty much every single other bit of dialogue.

I think the central conceit of “PASS” - that somebody’s farted and the Autobots are trying to find out who dealt it - didn’t solidify until I reached the second page and looked at Rodimus Prime’s body language. In much the same way, the crux of “The Beast Within (My Pants)” didn’t solidify until it came to writing Swoop’s line.

V. Me Grimlock Not Nice Dino

At some point during the creation of “The Beast Within (My Pants)”, I started thinking a lot about incels.

(To be clear, this is the part of the commentary where things get a bit weird, and I start talking about storytelling decisions which I think were made in poor taste but which I don’t think come across overtly in the comic itself. Feel free to skip ahead to the next section. Or, y’know, stop reading entirely.)

Grimlock is childish, despite his age, and is desperate to be liked - no, respected - at any cost. His only asset is his BRUTE STRENGTH. He hates Prime, but wishes he was Prime. He has trouble treating any of the other Autobots like people. He rages against an outgroup whose ideals are - at least ostensibly - rooted in empathy.

I wouldn’t say “I wrote a comic where Grimlock is an incel”, because that’d be a pretty stupid thing to write and I’d feel pretty stupid saying it.

Looking back at a lot of my previous work on this blog, some things do crop up again and again. In abstract, I’d say that the idea of a character seeking friendship and/or respect - and failing to understand why they can’t find those things - is one that I’ve revisited a couple of times. This was a strong theme in the latter half of Another Son - a story which dealt heavily in misanthropy - which featured a character inspired by Sam Witwicky from Michael Bay’s Transformers. The protagonist of Retrace Steps spent the whole story unable to even ask the question “why am I alone”. Many of the characters in Are You Happy - particularly Mr. Hernandez - deal with similar problems to varying extents.

So this makes, what, practically four stories in a row? I didn’t set out to approach things this way again with this comic, but from the moment I wrote Swoop’s line I knew I didn’t have a choice. When people talk about the Beast’s combination sequence, they talk about how violative it appears. Metal tentacles spring from Grimlock like one of Alien’s chestbursters, penetrating or melding with the other Dinobots’ bodies. After that, the resulting monstrosity ambles around, horrifically murdering its former peers. As much as I can have the characters in the story play this stuff off for laughs, I’ll never be able to erase the undercurrent.

This isn’t supposed to be a direct mapping - a perfect metaphor - and by the time this commentary’s done I hope I’ll have pointed in the direction of some alternate perspectives. It just seems important to put my cards on the table and say that, when I was working on this comic, this is the kinda thing I was thinking about. We thought children were safe with Transformers, and then a gun came and shot people they cared about, and for some reason we were surprised to see that they got upset.

With all of that in mind, I take some solace in the fact that I actually found getting into Grimlock’s head to be extremely difficult. His dialogue was a breeze to write, sure - that’s the outsider’s perspective - but actually trying to construct his thoughts in anything approximating a convincing manner was very difficult. The first draft of his narration literally included the phrase “we live in a society”.

VI. Such Heroic Nonsense

I’ve already touched on Terry van Feleday’s opus a couple of times, but I think it’s worth delving a little deeper into how exactly her analysis influenced this comic. For some reason the idea that nearly five-hundred pages of borderline-conspiracy-theorist-level ramblings about perhaps the most maligned movie franchise of the 21st century might be a tough sell is one which I can’t quite wrap my head around. I’d say that it’s because I’ve read the thing and already know that it’s good, but in truth I was pretty much sold from the moment I found out it existed.

Anyway, I frequently get into not-quite-arguments with internet strangers about Transformers, and during those discussions I frequently find myself saying “a good Transformers story should do X”, and then I have to resist the urge to add “like Michael Bay’s movies” because doing so would completely delegitimise the point I’m trying to make. The problem is that, because I’m deliberately omitting the context of my opinions, they come across as being even more bizarre.

I think that same problem exists in some capacity with this comic, where I’m drawing on sources which are intuitive to me but completely alien even to a typical Transformers fan. I’ve yet to even mention the other primary inspiration for this story, which is even more arcane.

Perhaps it’s important to stress that van Feleday doesn’t offer a typical "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron" take. Rather - and I realise I’m about to butcher this - she shows how the humans in Bay’s movies give increasing amounts of power to an alien cult leader because their only alternative is to get wiped out by an alien warlord. So in terms of this comic, “Autobots bad” is very much rooted in her reading of those movies, while “Decepticons good” is just something I thought would be funny.

Well, not exactly. I’ve already mentioned Combiner Wars; something that continues to baffle pretty much everyone who watched that show (and its sequels) is that, while it seems to have no idea what it’s doing most of the time, its portrayal of Megatron is an absolute riot. He is absolutely the protagonist of that series, the Only Sane Man in a world of bizarre psychotic caricatures. I think the same kinda holds in the continuity of my comic, only he’s had more time to bring the people he takes in around to his way of thinking.

Let’s not forget the official “good-is-bad” continuity of Shattered Glass, which - while heavily compromised - was the source of many interesting reinterpretations of popular characters. Effective reinterpretations require you to forget what you know about a character and strip them back to the core signifiers, which you can then put to different use. One of the posters in Terry van Feleday’s thread, “Lobok”, observes:

I like the idea that Bay or the writers looked at Optimus Prime and thought "What would a guy who calls himself that really act like?" Imagine you knew or heard of someone, a human, who called themselves the equivalent of "The #1 Bestest Superior" or "King Supreme Ultimate" - do you not picture either a 7-year old boy or a mentally deficient oo-rah alpha male? Maybe the two combined? Seems much more apt than a wise, noble father figure.

Of the course, I don’t for a second think that Michael Bay had any such thought - but the connection still exists for the audience to make. Therein lies one of the greatest unspoken strengths of Transformers storytelling: the sheer breadth and depth of the signifiers at play. Much of what van Feleday did in her thread was to boil down the concepts found in Transformers stories to reveal those core signifiers.

(Almost a year ago, I wrote a piece for the Refined Robot Co. blog which explored some of her findings by delving into the subtextual meanings of the countless alternate modes worn by Megatron over the years.)

By the same token, I think there’s something to be said for the way Grimlock’s alternate mode ties into his portrayal in my take on The Beast Within. He turns into a dinosaur - something which is rooted in the past, extinct, unable to develop - while most of the other Autobots turn into modern vehicles. Kids may love dinosaurs, but they’ll likely grow up to have a stronger interest in cars or tanks. Grimlock is immature almost to the point of childishness; his beast mode is the lizard king, and he doesn’t understand why you won’t bow.

(Obviously I’m making some big generalisations here for the sake of a point - the other Dinobots have their own prehistoric disguises, and kids’ interests develop in varied enough ways that perhaps this link is only noticeable to those who experienced the transition I describe. When I was much younger, I was obsessed with dinosaurs, and would consume all the dinosaur-related media I could get my hands on. Eventually, however, my crippling fear of sea monsters led me to stop reading books about them - I'd turn the page, see a full-spread painting of a pliosaur taking a bite out of a pterodactyl, and shit my pants. Okay, no, that’s a huge exaggeration: more likely it just got to the point where I knew basically all of the cool dinosaur facts already, and suddenly the deep lore of the grim darkness of the 41st millennium or whatever seemed way cooler. I just find it funnier to imagine that my prosperous future in paleontology was averted for fear that I’d discover the last living specimen of a plesiosaur.)

VII. Where’d You Learn To Talk Like That

Back in “PASS”, I think there was some question as to who exactly was the coolest dude; the biggest guy. Rodimus was in charge, but the others didn’t really respect his authority in the end. Although Triton was an underdog in that story, he wasn’t at the bottom of the pack - no, that role went to Roadbuster. Everyone seems to like Ultra Magnus, but it’s never really made clear as to why that is.

Grimlock’s personality and role within the Autobots was pretty much the first thing I solidified when it came to writing “The Beast Within (My Pants)”. I knew that he was the lowest of the low; the nail in every Autobot’s tyre. As Grimlock evolved, so too did Optimus Prime - the second-most-prominent character in the comic. "The #1 Bestest Superior" became a murderous jock, and the Autobots became his cult of personality.

Speaking of cults of personality, I’ve been posting regularly in the Homestuck Discord server since November of last year. There’s no other place like it on the internet, and - truth be told - I’m not sure any explanation of it I could provide would suffice. The server was created by some guy called Makin - at least, we're pretty sure he’s a guy - who nobody’s ever met but who seems to have an uncanny knack for managing online communities.

Major events in that server have been comprehensively catalogued since July of 2017 by long-standing moderator “Drew Linky” in his journal Several People Are Typing. Between the entries and the related materials, it’s probably around half a million words in length. There’s no other document like it on the internet.

For the first fifty or so pages, Drew had no intention of making his document public. Apparently, one of the reasons he wrote it in the first place was as a way of holding Makin accountable - the guy used to be (and sometimes still is) a bit of an ass. Now, I wasn’t around in 2017, so I can’t really comment on the accuracy of the document’s early entries - but as a newcomer I was struck by how different Drew’s depiction of the server was to my own experience there. If I had to guess, I’d say his style of prose and the cherry-picked nature of the document make it seem like a much more hostile place than it actually is.

In particular, Makin effectively starts out as journal’s main villain (alongside various problem users and Homestuck creators) - a capricious and unknowable entity with absolute power over the server - and many of the entries deal in some way with what users jokingly refer to as his “redemption arc”. Of course, in reality, he’s just some guy, and everyone knows that real people don’t have character arcs.

I still haven’t finished reading SPAT, but I was doing so around the time when I was working on the comic. At some point I started to draw parallels between my bizarro version of Optimus Prime and the journal’s bizarro version of Makin, and I decided to play them up. Much of Prime’s dialogue is inspired by Makin’s style of speech, using phrases like “shut the fuck up”, “nobody cares”, “holy shit”, “get fucked”, “lmao”, “literally”, “literally [...] who”, “guys”, “rational” and “you’re welcome”. I just checked and at the time of writing, with the exception of “literally who” and “you’re welcome”, he’s used every one of those phrases within the last week. Oh, and while the word “suckers” isn’t really a Makin quote, in Homestuck it’s associated with the not-quite-biggest-bad evil empress. It bears mentioning again that the complete lack of punctuation in the comic’s dialogue mirrors the most common style of typing I see online, where people drop their capital letters and full stops.

(In fairness, a lot of us kinda talk the same way in that server. I remember one time Makin said “I also need to worry about lmao becoming some kind of anime catchphrase for me”, which cut pretty deep as I’ve been overusing that phrase instead of “lol” or “haha” or whatever for ages. Look, it’s just a funny word to me: in my head I pronounce it “luh-mayo” instead of “el-em-ay-oh”. Like “I throw my sandwich in the air sometimes / saying aaay-oh / I ordered maaayo...”)

In the comic, the self-aggrandising Optimus Prime is hostile and dismissive to those around him. It might all be a front, but it might not. Even though Grimlock hates Optimus, the Dinobot seems to agree with him a lot of the time, and the narrative itself never really manages to conclusively condemn his actions. The name “Optimus” echoes the word “optimise”; so frequently thrown around in rationalist circles. One could even go so far as to say that Optimus Prime’s ultimate goal in the comic is to kill death-in-the-form-of-a-shitposter.

In seriousness, I’m drawing these comparisons in a pretty tongue-in-cheek way. I don’t actually think that the Homestuck Discord server is a cult of personality - even if, to check the user-contributed “SPAT Epilogues”, some of its populace seem determined to behave like it is. Even if this section of this commentary exists. At the end of the day, I’m gonna write what I know, and I like to think that I know a little about online communities and what happens when they go wrong. I wish I could say that “The Beast Within (My Pants)” is a cautionary tale to that effect, but in truth I don’t think it offers any conclusive answers in the same way that “PASS” perhaps did. “Only worry about the opinions of people who actually care about you,” maybe? “Death is an abomination and we shouldn’t let it anywhere near our kids”, perhaps? “You can’t force other people to like you”?

“You can’t force other people to like the things you made”?

VIII. Burnt-Out Toaster Ovens

In the re-released version of “PASS”, it seemed right to throw in something in the way of extra content. I had fond memories of the Seacon profiles published alongside the original “Peace”, and lifted the format to create short bios for all sixteen characters who appeared in the comic. These fitted neatly on a four-by-four spread (though I ended up merging Topspin and Twin Twist’s profiles and throwing in an extra one for Computron, who did not appear in the comic proper).

From the start, I knew I wanted to do something similar for “The Beast Within (My Pants)”. In fact, I already had two text-only pages to work with; each part of the original comic was prefaced with a prose introduction and a note from Mr. Gibson. I decided that I could rework the text-only pages and add another spread of profiles, using the freedom granted by prose to explain away many of the comic’s oddities.

It took me some time to carefully erase the existing text from the scans that I had, using nothing but the brush tool in MS Paint. It took me even more time to work out some potential approaches to take with the text itself. Eventually, I came up with the following ideas:

A flashback depicting Grimlock and Swoop’s breakup.

A conversation between Grimlock and Jazz (or, perhaps, Slash).

“How Ratchet Got His Head Back”, the interlude which I ended up using.

A synopsis of events between “its christmas... so what??” and “The Beast Within (My Pants)”, which ended up being my first stab at the introduction.

Some in-character commentary as Mr. Gibson, which I did end up including.

From the moment I conceived it, I was pretty set on “How Ratchet Got His Head Back”, and it ended up being a breeze to write. I didn’t end up getting a chance to squeeze in the title - a reference to an issue of More than Meets the Eye - as it didn’t really fit the original format of the page. The introduction, on the other hand, proved much more challenging. My main problem was that, were I to preface the story with a text page, I’d be asking them to read a bunch of probably-mostly-serious words before allowing them to read the comic proper. Not the best first impression!

Nonetheless, I gave it a go - you can read my first attempt in the album of the draft pages. It mostly served to lay out the continuity between my three comics. Rodimus Prime’s crew were abandoned on Cybertron by Optimus Prime (presumably Hot Rod changed his name in Optimus’ absence). Megatron, Optimus and their crews crash-landed on Earth, and millions of years later the events of “its christmas... so what??” occurred. Meanwhile on Cybertron, it took a few million years for the other Autobots to wipe out the remaining Decepticons, as seen in “PASS”. Humanity was wiped out by Optimus in retribution for their transgression (a nod to Mr. Gibson’s depiction of Earth as an empty wasteland), prompting the conflict seen in “The Beast Within (My Pants)”. Much of this timeline remains implicit in the final version of the comic.

When I wrote it, I was pretty happy with the way this information was conveyed in the first draft. It was the ever-ardent Gitaxian - one of my long-time prereaders - who made me realise just what a mistake I’d made:

Something was rubbing me the wrong way about that first prose page and I finally realized what it is / Expositing that Optimus is horrible right off the bat takes away a good chunk of the impact the comic had before you added it

He was right. My prereaders’ initial response to the comic was that Optimus Prime’s motivations were completely opaque, and I overcorrected, not realising that his inscrutability was one of the things that made him interesting. You kinda want him to behave like the Optimus Prime you know and love, but he keeps doing weird things and you never really find out why.

Suddenly, I was back at square one - no closer to having a clear idea of how to introduce the comic. Another of my prereaders, gearshift, had the solution:

It's Transformers or some shit. You've seen the cartoon right? The one with the tape guy? Yeah, the tape guy is barely in this one. What do you mean no sale? Look, fuck, it's got the dinosaur guy. He's right on the goddamn cover, you like the dinosaur guy right? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Bitch.

I liked her pitch because it seemed like it’d do a good job of filtering out readers who wouldn’t enjoy the comic. To quote Alexander Wales, author of Worth the Candle:

I kind of hate blurbs and taglines, especially for something so large and varied as Worth the Candle / My ideal synopsis would tell people what kind of story it was without actually telling them that much about the story; it would select for all the people who would fall in love with the story, and select against all the people who would find it a waste of time. / How to actually write that ... I've got no idea.

(Side note: I’m one of the people who fell in love with that story, to the point where I’ll use any opportunity to recommend it to others. It’s maybe my favourite thing written by anyone ever.)

A closely-related issue is that of content warnings: so far as I’ve been able to work out, there is no warning which I can give for “The Beast Within (My Pants)” which adequately selects against people who won’t like it while also preserving its conceptual twists and avoiding colouring the audience’s interpretation.

Getting back to the actual content of the introduction - I wound up writing less than I would’ve liked, leaving the page looking a little sparse, but hopefully making things easier for the reader. There’s relatively little to talk about in the way of trivia here. When I wrote the phrase “cut right to the spectacles” I was probably thinking of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Cut To The Feeling”. When I mentioned “moist towelettes” I was probably thinking of Hawthorne Wipes. The phrase “truth time” was an iconic - to me, and literally no-one else in existence - line spoken by the trolling narrator of a crack story written by a high school friend of mine, the energy of which I feel like I’ve always been channelling with these comics.

The interlude, on the other hand, is crammed full of references and was a breeze to write. It was the first piece of prose I completed for the project. In general, I was trying to write in a verbose style that would be simultaneously at odds with the bulk of the issue and reminiscent of the prose of veteran Transformers scribe Simon Furman. He was known for using certain distinctive phrases repeatedly in his writing - one such phrase being “like some vast, predatory bird”. The phrase “neither sufficient inclination nor wingspan” is supposed to subtly evoke another Furmanism: “CANNOT, WILL NOT”.

In all likelihood, the interlude would not have existed had I not noticed that Ratchet’s head was in its cartoon colours in the first part of the story, but in its Marvel colours for the second. I had the idea to explain that error away in story - tying into the general schtick of “correcting” the comic - and did so by way of a reference to Ratchet’s original toy, which had a sticker with a face on it behind the windshield rather than a proper head. I was also determined to highlight the fact that Predaking’s legs remain standing for like three pages; I think this minor detail in the artwork is pretty indicative of the fact that Mr. Gibson did a good job.

The way Swoop’s contribution to the combiner is described as “puny” ties nicely to the history established between him and Grimlock in his profile. I like the way the Beast tries to hit Optimus Prime with a “truck-sized fist”. The “antimemetic shielding” was my attempt to explain the recurring disappearances of Optimus Prime’s trailer in a novel way - I did so by namedropping the key phrase from qntm’s There Is No Antimemetics Division; the trailer’s there, you just can’t perceive it and forget that it exists. Finally, “dull surprise” refers to the vague expressions that characterised Dreamwave’s house style.

For the most part, I was able to retain the ordering of the pages as in the original comic, to keep things print-friendly. The one exception to this is the prose page for the second part, which I unfortunately had to move forward so that its cover could fall across a spread. The original comics must’ve included something in the way of backmatter - art cards, perhaps, or adverts - which made up the space.

The huge cast of The Beast Within made creating a profile for every character an impossible task (especially when so many are just crowd-fillers like some of the Technobots were in “PASS”) - but it was perfectly possible to provide one for each non-combiner character with a speaking role.

(If you’ll indulge me in one last barely-relevant tangent as we head into the final stretch of this commentary, there are some rather odd inclusions/omissions in The Beast Within. On the Autobot side, pretty much every 1984-1985 character appears, with the exceptions of Trailbreaker, Hoist, Tracks, Smokescreen, Grapple, Beachcomber, Seaspray, Perceptor and Omega Supreme. The Autobot combiner teams are absent with the odd exception of Silverbolt. Twin Twist - who had been pretty much entirely absent from the original US fiction - makes an odd appearance without his partner Topspin. Steeljaw is the only one of the four 1986 Autobot cassettes to appear. Meanwhile, on the Decepticon side, oddities include the toy-inspired versions of Viewfinder and Spectro (most of the rest of the cast use cartoon-inspired character models) and the omissions of Spyglass and Buzzsaw. Some Decepticon combiner team members - Motormaster, Wildrider, Breakdown, Blast Off and Swindle - only appear in combined form. Just two of the four 1986 triple changers - Springer and Octane - appear in the comic, looking slightly out-of-place in a cast consisting mostly of characters present in the first two seasons of the cartoon. Oh, and the Deluxe Vehicles and Deluxe Insecticons are absent, but that’s to be expected in a cartoon-inspired setting.)

Here’s the first draft of Optimus Prime’s profile:

Unpredictable. Unstoppable. Unrepentant. Many words have been used to describe OPTIMUS PRIME, yet the abrasive leader of the Autobots remains something of an enigma even amongst his followers. He has ruled Cybertron for many millenia, by dint of the fact that he's apparently the only Cybertronian with a shred of competence.

It’s a product of the time where I wanted to really flesh out Optimus Prime and communicate his thoughts clearly to the audience, and as such is pretty blunt with how it characterises him. The final version is a little more subtle, drawing in elements of the scrapped introduction. I figure I may as well go through the other profiles one-by-one to give a sense for what I was thinking:

Megatron initially had a much more personal bio - which seems to have been lost to time - but I wound up cutting much of it to make space for elements of the story’s scrapped introduction.

Starscream draws inspiration from van Feleday’s interpretation of the character - she posited that Michael Bay’s version of the character was actually the Decepticon most loyal to Megatron. The contrast between that interpretation and pretty much every other in the franchise’s history (excluding Shattered Glass Starscream, of course) is pretty funny to me. I tried to use the phrase “fools errands” in as benign a way as possible, which I felt evoked a more traditional relationship between him and Megatron. “Starscream, you fool!”

Razorclaw has little in the way of characterisation in the comic beyond “noble warrior”, and his profile is a wholesale reference to The Chronicles of Narnia: he stands in for Aslan; the rest of the Predacons for the Pevensie siblings. So yes, this version of Razorclaw is a Christ-like figure. As for the witch... maybe Blackarachnia? Eh, who cares. Oh, and the idea of combining with a dead bot was one which cropped up a few times in IDW’s comics, most notably with the Combaticons in Mairghread Scott’s Till All Are One.

Onslaught was in a similar boat to Razorclaw. I found myself drawing from Till All Are One once more, hinting at a (complicated?) romance between him and another teammate.

Blitzwing has only one speaking role in the comic - a shared line with Megatron and Starscream - but I decided to count it for the sake of having a nice set of sixteen characters once more. In Transformers Animated, Blitzwing had multiple personalities, and would change forms depending on which was in control. This interpretation of the character has seen plenty of criticism, so I deliberately tried to come up with something new. I quickly settled upon the idea of tying his vehicle forms to his mood, a metaphor which seemed to dovetail nicely with the way aerial alternate forms were treated in “PASS” and which also allowed me to cement the Decepticons’ supportiveness.

Bulkhead was borne of the realisation that Springer appears prominently in both “Peace” and The Beast Within. This inconsistency is entirely the product of my decision to place my versions of those comics in the same continuity, and I decided to correct it in the tradition of “Bluster” and “Firster Aid” by having them be two separate (but related) characters. I named the new Springer after Energon Bulkhead, who was inspired by “Generation 1″ Springer - the name’s since been used more prominently by an Animated-original character and variations thereof, and is effectively fair game for “Generation 1″ stories. His actual characterisation was inspired by Springer’s behaviour in “PASS” - I liked the idea that Bulkhead bullied Springer, and Springer bullied everyone else in turn. Oh, and I wanted to tie their helicopter modes back to Blitzwing’s profile on a thematic level.

Bumblebee is the only character from “its christmas... so what??” to recur with a speaking role in “The Beast Within (My Pants)”. After scrapping the original introduction I’d planned for the comic, I was left with a single profile to bridge the gap between the two stories. My original idea was that, for their negligence in allowing the humans to steal Bumblebee’s blood, Prowl, Tracks, and Hoist would have been executed by Optimus Prime - though I’m sure he didn’t pull the trigger himself, it’s safe to assume that he didn’t warn them before setting off the nukes.

Ratchet has a characterisation inspired by something “Jonny Angel” posted in van Feleday’s thread: “Ratchet is an ambulance who practices no medicine”.

Jazz is an extremely prominent character in the comic, despite the fact that his only line is a scream in the opening panel. The comic relies on the wider context of the brand to let the audience be invested in him, but in a vacuum it’s kinda funny to see the Autobots fret so much over an effective nobody. Pretty much the entire joke in my version is just a reference to Ryan Gosling’s misguided quest to “save jazz” in La La Land - some of his character’s lines are lifted wholesale to comprise Jazz’s profile, which takes pains to avoid using any kind of pronouns (thereby maintaining the confusion over whether or not “Jazz” refers to the character or the music genre). His profile was the first I wrote.

Ironhide has a role amongst the Autobots loosely inspired by that of Drew Linky (or at least, the version of Drew Linky presented by SPAT) in the Homestuck Discord. I thought there was some symmetry there with Ironhide’s history in IDW Publishing’s comics.

Skids was a tricky character to portray, but ultimately his profile turned out to be one of the ones I’m happiest with. It’s kind of a loose riff on his portrayal towards the back end of James Roberts’ stories, where much of his arc revolved around his relationship with Nautica. According to Word of God, he had unrequited feelings for her - I decided to amp this up by giving him unrequited feelings for everyone. To tie this back to Homestuck, think Eridan/Cronus. Oh, and in terms of the Homestuck Discord server, think your typical hornyposter (and then follow the implications through in terms of Optimus Prime/Makin). The actual name “Skids Maximus” is a play on the way the suffix “Maximus” has historically been used for some combiners, “Optimus Maximus” in particular. I’m convinced I’m not the first person to do a joke like that, but nobody I asked could think of any older examples.

Grimlock was fleshed out pretty well by the comic itself, so I took his profile as an opportunity to expand upon the history of the Dinobots. I saw them as being akin to a group of friends who stuck together throughout school, winding up as an impenetrably toxic and incestuous mess with a ton of deep lore. In a way, there was a time when I was the Grimlock of my group of friends... but we all grew up.

Swoop is Grimlock’s ex-partner, a concept inspired by the other Dinobot combiner we all wish we could forget about. I’m pretty happy with the use of the word “bottom” in this context.

Snarl is based on a combination of various people I’ve known in real life - people who are perfectly nice and reasonable but have zero patience around certain other individuals. From the outside, it’s behaviour that comes across as pretty damn harsh, but - and please note that this is not an endorsement of such behaviour - it’s usually the product of a long period of aggravations.

Jetfire was the last character introduced in the comic, so it felt fitting to save his profile until last. His biography is effectively a mashup of his portrayals in the original cartoon (where he gets frozen in the Arctic Circle) and in Revenge of the Fallen (where he was a Seeker who wound up on Earth), a combination which neatly parallels Bay’s Megatron’s origins. It also references J.J. Abram’s infamous “mystery box” storytelling device, which I intended to mirror the offbeat lack of closure in the comic itself.

The final challenge I faced - one which had hounded me throughout the development of the comic - was what exactly to title it. Titles considered included:

“The BEE” (Tindalos’ suggestion)

“The BEE Within”

“The REEEE Within”

“SHIT” (Gitaxian’s suggestion)

“IM THE BEAST”

“AWWW SHIT” (Fear or Courage’s suggestion)

“AW SHIT ITS THE BEAST”

None of these resonated. Then, almost a whole month later, out of nowhere:

This was the entirety of Daniel111111222222’s contribution to the story - and what a contribution it was.

There were several reasons why I loved his idea. Firstly, it was easy to edit: most of the other suggestions would’ve required me to move lots of letters around, while this one would simply require me to append a few. More importantly, it felt like the title of a Chuck Tingle novel.

The subtitle for the second part - “No Pants” - seemed like a natural choice after that, the idea being that it evokes Grimlock’s inhibitions falling away with his transformation into the Beast. It narrowly edged out “Pants Off”, which I managed to squeeze into the final version of the introduction.

The parentheses in the comic’s title were my own addition, and in retrospect I kinda regret them. They seemed like a good idea at the time, but I’m not sure why. I was wrong to try and improve upon perfection.

IX. Why Throw Away Your Life So Recklessly

So far, the bulk of this commentary has mostly focused on the aspects of this project which I think went pretty well. In a way, that's probably fair enough, because - on balance - I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

At the same time, I can't help feeling that “PASS” - a comic which I probably threw together in the space of one day two years ago - is both funnier and more meaningful than the one which I spent a couple of weeks on.

When I started working on “The Beast Within (My Pants)” towards the beginning of May, I expected to have the project finished and out of the door by the end of the month. If you glance at the release dates of the various things I made, you'll see that I like to put out major projects on the last day of a month - it's a way of setting myself a deadline and it lets me associate a given project with a given period of time.

My first draft of the dialogue was released to prereaders on the 11th of May; my second on the 13th. Around that point, exam season started to kick in and I decided to prioritise to other projects - the Retrace Steps commentary and the Are You Happy retrospective - which both ballooned out into much longer pieces than I'd planned. I successfully met my self-imposed deadline for those projects and pushed back the release date for the comic to the end of June. I released the first drafts of the text-only pages on the 9th, but the profiles didn't follow until the 24th. By the time you read this, I'll have been working on the project on-and-off for over three months; despite the fact that I was ostensibly on vacation for most of that time, I was somehow busier than I tend to be at university.

For context, it took me just four months to adapt Retrace Steps from a short film script to a webcomic (well, “webcomic”), and that was a process which actually required original artwork. At the time I noted that I needed to re-evaluate the way I approached commentaries, as the amount of time required to produce one of a high standard seemed only to increase - they're extremely valuable to me, and seem to be well-received by the few who read them, but are they justifiable if they take longer to create than the things they comment on?

All of this is my long-winded way of saying that I've probably spent more time thinking about The Beast Within than the vast majority of people who know about it, and that I kinda regret that. See, in the sense that The Beast Within provokes a visceral emotional reaction, it’s a “good comic” - but so too does a punch to the face. The Beast Within is not a good comic. It’s mean and deconstructive and poorly-done. My version is borne of contrarianism and hubris, and softens the blow not one bit.

At the time when I was writing Grimlock's dialogue, I found that my own typing style was becoming increasingly acidic.

The truth is that “PASS” is probably the most successful thing I have ever made, and I wanted to make a comic which would put it to shame, and I failed miserably. In fact, I feel like I’ve made something which only I could ever enjoy. It’s derivative in the extreme. As my deadline for this project drew closer, I resorted to drafting bits of the commentary on my phone in public, and at one point somebody idly asked me what I was writing, and - after failing to think of a convincing lie - I said something along the lines of “it’s kinda a long story, and I wouldn’t enjoy telling it, and you wouldn’t enjoy hearing about it”. They seemed perfectly satisfied by that answer, but I wasn’t.

Must we justify the things we create? Mr. Jamieson’s attitude seemed to be to say “screw you, I don’t have to justify myself to stupid people” (while pointing at everybody else in the room). My attitude, as evinced by this commentary, has been to justify every aspect of everything I make in excruciating detail, so that if you tell me “I don’t like X” I can say “I already explained why I thought X was a good idea” and you can say “well you were wrong” and I can say “maybe”.

You’ve probably twigged that, throughout this commentary, I’ve referred to the creators of The Beast Within only by second name. At first, perhaps, it came across as some mark of mocking respect - like citing a scientific source - but the real reason is cowardice, not confidence. Some people occasionally put their own names into Google. There’s a couple of people to whom I really don’t want to have to justify myself.

Over a decade after the release of the The Beast Within, Hasbro released a brand new set of Dinobot toys which combined to form Volcanicus. The creators of the Prime Wars Trilogy and of the Earth Wars mobile game gleefully included the new combiner in their stories, and the fandom at large embraced it wholeheartedly.

As her thread drew to a close, Terry van Feleday wrote something which I think about often:

Of course [...] let’s not forget that no matter the amount of earnest work put into something, sometimes it just turns out shit. There’s a strange perception I noticed in critical response where people seem to find it difficult to consider something both earnest or satirical and, well, not very well made. Sucker Punch can’t be an honest indictment of cinematic objectification and a somewhat poorly conceived, almost hypocritical attempt at being more clever than you should. Transformers can’t be an inversion of the traditional hero/villain narrative showcasing the effects of authoritarian propaganda and a meandering, under-focused, often poorly communicated, destructive mess. Maybe it’s a strange entertainment-version of the Just World Fallacy where lacking results must necessarily result from lacking effort, or maybe it’s modern audiences’ strange worship of subversiveness, where a work critical of old tropes must by default be better than the works it’s commenting on throwing to the dustbin of history, but either way, people are extremely resistant to the idea that films they found emotionally dissatisfying could express depth and meaning and tend to dismiss them as another ‘genre film’.

Mr. Gibson is a children’s picture book illustrator. The Beast has no place on his website.

X. Proceed On Your Way To Oblivion

TFNation - the UK’s biggest Transformers convention - has become something of an annual pilgrimage for me, and (as of the time of writing) I’ll be making that pilgrimage in a matter of days. If you see me there, feel free to come over and punch me. Or, y’know, just say hi. I’ll have some limited-edition printed copies of “PASS” to give out. For more information on that - and for infrequent Transformers-related musings and updates on future projects - wander on over to my twitter!

What are those future projects? Well, after the convention I’m planning to release an original short story. It’s not very good, but it’s got a few stylistic similarities to this comic (read: lots of swearing). I might have a little bit in the way of Transformers prose coming out down the line, but can’t really elaborate further on the form that’ll take. I’ve been planning to get back to Huskyquest for ages, and hopefully I’ll finally be able to do so once I settle back down at university. After that, I plan to focus my efforts on prose, so you may as well expect more radio silence from me.

If you’ve made it to the end of this almost-fifteen-thousand-word monstrosity, you, uhh... win all my internet points? Sorry, that’s all I have.

Remind me never to do this again.

#Transformers #comics #The Beast Within #The Beast Within (My Pants) #The Wadapan #14/08/2019

[douxreviews]

Star Trek: Discovery - ‘The Red Angel’ Review

Spock, to Burnham: "Perhaps you simply have a penchant for the dramatic."

By nature I love brevity: A serviceable 'moving parts' episode that gets us from Point A to Point B, and does it in a way that's often entertaining to watch. Quiet and subdued, building to an exciting climax that mostly works.

And the Red Angel is...

To the great bereavement of all, not Patrick Stewart in a lobster costume as a backdoor pilot to the Picard show.

All joking aside, I... think I like the big reveal? Maybe? To be sure, I am tired of the big mystery character being revealed to be a parent of the main character. It's absolutely a trope, and it often leads to recycled and stagnant storytelling. I do think it can done well, however, as it instantly injects emotion into a character dynamic without having to build the characters' interactions from the ground up. It all depends on how well the show uses it. Whether or not they will do a good job with this storyline remains to be seen.

I do think the writers are hitting their stride, though, and it definitely shows. The stories have suddenly been slowed down to the right pace, which improves the show by leaps and bounds. Part of this is perhaps the direction, which was fittingly subdued and understated here, but I think that even from that standpoint, having far less story to cram into an hour is helpful. 'The Red Angel' has time to spend on its key interactions, like 'If Memory Serves' and 'Project Daedalus' before it, and the show is far better for it.

That said, some of those interactions are better than others. I still don't believe a single thing that comes out of Shazad Latif's mouth, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what the purpose was behind Georgiou's scene with Stamets and Culber. On the better side of things, I liked the reconciliation scene between Burnham and Nhan, and I thought Spock's conversation with Burnham was good, if a little bit of an abrupt shift from their dynamic last week.

Leland and Georgiou are on the side of the angels this week (no, wait, they want to capture the Angel? I'm confused), with a few caveats. The first of these is the big secret that Leland tasked Burnham's parents with Project Daedalus, and that his actions indirectly got them killed. I'm not sure why Leland would think that Burnham needed to know this for the mission, however, unless he knew that the Angel was Burnham's mom. Wait, did he? Huh. In any event, the moment that I guessed the Angel's identity was in that scene, when Burnham told him what her parents were, and Leland said her mother was also a great engineer.

How Burnham processes this revelation is interesting. Her guilty perspective was, as Spock put it, 'a child's understanding,' but she was still living with that childish mindset. And her reaction to the news was emotionally quite childish. At first, she denied it and provided counter-evidence that showed her naïveté about the situation. In that scene, Sonequa Martin-Green's performance reminded me so much of a child that I'm unsure if it was an intentional choice or not. Then, confronted with reality, she got mad and expressed her anger by lashing out at anybody and everybody related to the situation, whether they were responsible like Leland, or not responsible like Tyler. It was only after Spock came and forgave her that she was released from the childhood burden of her guilt and anger. When he did so, Martin-Green's face beautifully conveyed the lifting of a heavy weight from her shoulders.

Let's talk briefly about the plot, before we unpack what this episode may mean going forward. From the outset, it didn't make a whole ton of sense - admittedly, as time travel plots do. To be fair, I at least have a better sense of this plot than I did of Enterprise's utterly nonsensical Temporal Cold War, but certain elements of the time travel irked me. Although the problems worked themselves out from a story perspective with the reveal that the Angel is Burnham's mom, it still made no sense that the characters weren't seeing the obvious flaws in their plans. For one thing, if the Red Angel was Burnham, then she would know in the future everything that they were planning and therefore be prepared. Secondly, and perhaps worse, having Dr. Culber there to resuscitate Burnham if she dies completely invalidates the 'bait.' Nobody except for Spock seems to understand that the only way their plan works is if Burnham will actually be dead if the Angel doesn't show up. This bothered me the whole time that I was watching the episode.

So what does this mean going forward? Disco now has the Red Angel, who is Burnham's biological mother, trapped on the planet. But something fishy is going on with the Section 31 ship, as evidenced by Leland getting The Phantom-ed. Could this be Control taking, er, control of Leland's 31 ship? It certainly seems that way, especially since the voice actor who recorded that line from the computer is credited as 'Control Computer.' As this show seems to be ready to start slowing down for meaningful conversations, I think we will see Burnham and her mother work out some of their emotional issues and baggage next episode. I suspect Stamets and Culber will do the same, as they will be trapped down there as well. How Georgiou and Spock will figure in is anybody's guess, but I don't think it's an accident which characters are left on the planet at the end of this episode.

Strange New Worlds:

Essof IV was a testing site for Project Daedalus. Its inhospitable conditions rendered the planet's surface unlivable, so the researchers built a facility to control the environment.

New Life and New Civilizations:

No new species or creatures in this episode.

Pensees:

-Good funeral scene at the beginning, that did the Wrath of Khan parallel a little bit but didn't overdo it.

-So, if the Federation and the Klingons were so close to developing time travel, why don't they all have it and use it regularly in the rest of Star Trek? The Temporal Prime Directive isn't until way later.

-The theme of faith has been lost in the shuffle here. We'll see how it ties in as the season draws closer to its end.

-Leland said they needed a time crystal for the Red Angel suit. That's the same thing that was in Mudd's time loop device in 'Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad' last season.

-Another chance for Cornwell to use her therapy background. I like that her profession is a consistent and recurring aspect of her character.

-There was a very interesting and important-feeling shot of Sara Mitich's character Lt. Nilsson taking Airiam's place on the bridge. Sara Mitich played Airiam in season one. Huh.

-Burnham was on a roll with her impressions this week, doing the bug-eyed look of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at one point (please note: no political statement is to be ascribed to this joke about a famous person's most distinguishing facial feature) and her best Nicholas Cage 'not the bees' when she was exposed to the atmosphere of Essof IV.

-Hanelle M. Culpepper directed this episode, as well as last season's well-liked 'Vaulting Ambition.' She will direct the first two episodes of the Picard series.

-Happy Talk Like William Shatner Day for anyone reading this on the 22nd! What's your favorite Shatner line delivery?

Quotes:

Tilly: "Some people choose to live their lives as if nothing is a miracle."

Georgiou: "I was thinking you might be smarter than the Stamets I knew. You're also much more neurotic. Have you considered medication?"

Tilly: "What just happened?" I'm with her on this one.

Admiral Cornwell: "Love is a choice, Hugh, and one doesn't just make that choice once. You make it again and again." Whew. Almost had this one as my opening quote.

Spock: "I do wish I'd been there when you struck him. I believe I would have found the moment... satisfying."

4 out of 6 lobster costumes.

CoramDeo doesn't like to lose

#Star Trek #Star Trek Discovery #Michael Burnham #Saru #Spock #Sylvia Tilly #Paul Stamets #Hugh Culber #Christopher Pike #Ash Tyler #Phillipa Georgiou #Disco #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

[weerd1]

Star Trek DS9 Rewatch Log, Stardate 1907.22: Missions Reviewed, “Explorers,” “Family Business,” “Shakaar,” “Facets,” and “The Adversary.”

Long one tonight! We took a run at the end of season three starting with “Explorers.” Sisko reads about Bajorans of some 800 years before building solar sailing ships to explore their solar system, and possibly even making it as far as Cardassia. 

 He decides to build one to ancient specification (adding only a gravity web to the floor because weightlessness makes him queasy) and see if he can make it work. He invites Jake, who is initially reluctant to join, but then gets some news that makes him want to hang out with his father.  As they set sail, Jake tells Ben that he has been accepted to a writing fellowship back on Earth. Meanwhile on DS9 Bashir is busy flirting with a new Dabo girl named Leeta when Dax tells him the Lexington is coming to dock.

 Bashir realizes the woman who beat him out for head of his class is on board, and he prepares to meet her.  She walks past him as if she doesn’t recognize him. Ben reads Jake’s story and is impressed, recommending he take the fellowship. Jake says he’s worried about his dad though and may wait a year. Besides, there’s an freighter captain he thinks Ben should meet.  Before they can finish the conversation, there’s a malfunction and the ship seems to slip into warp. On DS9, after a charming drunken session with O’Brien, Bashir confronts the other doctor to find that she thought “Julian Bashir” was an Andorian. She’s excited to meet Julian for real, and is envious of the long term projects he can undertake. Jake and Ben are lost somewhere in space when suddenly three Cardassian warships appear.  Dukat hails them to reveal that tachyon eddies in the Bajoran system have in fact accelerated them at warp speed right into the Cardassian system. Coincidentally, Cardassia was about to announce the have discovered an ancient Bajoran crash site on their homeworld.

There is a lot of significant stuff going on in this episode. Leeta, who will become a staple of future season and Rom’s wife, is introduced. Though not named, Kassidy Yates is introduced as an idea, and we will see her in the next episode, beginning her long courtship and eventual marriage to Ben. Jake as a writer begins to really flourish setting the stage for his future as a correspondent during the Dominion War. It’s almost enough to make one ignore how little sense the rest makes. OK- 800 years earlier Bajorans built an airtight solar wind sail ship, literally out of lumber. How did they get it off the surface of the planet and into space? But, let’s assume they had chemical rockets that could survive leaving an atmosphere to deliver their wood ships into space, a solar sail would have to be kilometers long.  But, let’s say it’s special reflective material; when the tachyons begin to accelerate them to warp, what keeps the acceleration from crushing them into a thin red paste on the back wall? Ben has gravity control, no inertial dampeners 800 years ago. And assuming they DO survive, I would assume the Cardassian system is several hours at mid-warp from Bajor. Doesn’t take them long here. Then, there’s a crash site on Cardassia; how did the wooden ship survive re-entry? Though, maybe the acceleration DID paste the crew and throw the ship through the Cardassian atmosphere hard enough to crater in.  Holy Prophets that’s tragic.

Quark and Rom have to deal with “Family Business” when a Liquidator named Brunt from the Ferengi Commerce Authority shows up to seize their business because family on Ferenginar is causing trouble. 

 It seems Quark’s mother has been earning profit, illegal in Ferengi society for a woman. She seems to be…ugh, wearing clothes too! Brunt tells Quark he has to get her to confess, and then pay back the profit she made.  On DS9, Sisko meets Kassidy Yates, and they agree to coffee.  While there, she seems restless. Seems she forgot she’s supposed to listen to a broadcast from her brother out on Cestus III. It seems he is part of a league playing an obscure Earth sport called “baseball.” Sisko is smitten. On Ferenginar, Quark has discovered that “Moogie” has made more profit than they thought. MUCH more. He plans to turn her in despite the fact it will ruin him, but she cuts him in on the profits. She confesses and turns some over, but splits the rest with Quark…mostly; she tells Rom there may be some more even than Quark found.

A neat little look at Ferengi society which of course features the marvelous Jeffrey Combs as Liquidator Brunt (one of no less than seven different Trek characters he played). 

SNL’s Andrea Martin plays Moogie here, but will not reprise the role later due to makeup issues. We see Ferenginar is constantly raining, and the traditional house greeting of “welcome to my home; what’s mine is mine” is given. The whole episode will prove to kick off some interesting turns for Ferengi society.

Kai Winn comes to DS9 to see Kira, as her old friend and cell leader “Shakaar” is causing trouble in Kira’s home town.  The minister of the Provisional Government has died, leaving Winn not only as Kai, but as political leader. She makes some changes which will pull some farm equipment out of Kira’s province, and away from the farmer Shakaar. He won’t give it back. Winn expects Kira to talk him into it, but instead she negotiates a meeting with Shakaar to find a compromise. 

Winn dismisses that and sends in security forces to seize the equipment, causing both Kira and Shakaar to gather up the old cell and go back on the run. Sisko refuses to intervene in what Kai sees as a test of her authority. She scrambles more troops into the area, and discord begins to mount, risking a civil war. Shakaar approaches one of the Colonels chasing him, and they realize how futile this is. The colonel brings Shakaar back…with full military support as he decides to run for the position of First Minister displacing Winn.

  I love how Kira can basically start a civil war on Bajor (as much as I hate Winn) and then just come back to the station when it is all over. It is a tight episode though that really makes you swell your dislike of Kai Winn, and gives Louise Fletcher yet another great opportunity to be loathsome.  Shakaar of course is played by Duncan Regehr, once a staple of tv sf and genre: TNG, V the Series, Disney’s Zorro. I thought he had faded away, but it turns out he is in fact now a very successful painter with art on exhibition all over the world.

“Facets” brings us to Jadzia Dax undergoing a Trill ritual where the memories of each specific host are taken from the symbiont and placed temporarily in another host. This allows a Trill to “meet” all the previous hosts. She selects various people close to her on the station to house the various personalities (including sexually coercing Quark into participating…and then assigning him a female host). 

 Things get dark when Joran-the short lived host we learned was a psychotic murderer-goes into Sisko, and tries to kill Dax, but it becomes worse when Curzon enters Odo and they two of them merge into a single entity. One that does not intend to return to the Symbiont. Meanwhile, Nog is working on a preliminary Starfleet exam, and ends up failing. Rom realizes Quark rigged it to keep the boy out of Starfleet, but Rom gets Sisko to administer the test again, setting him on the path to Earth next season. 

Jadzia confronts Odo/Curzon, and realizes that Curzon is ashamed because when he initially failed her out of the symbiosis program it was because he loved her. She accepts his love and tells him she loves him too-as a part of her. An abashed Odo meets her later, admitting that the sensory input of Curzon was tempting, but she thanks him as she now has Curzon’s memory of being part of Odo, and what it is to be a changeling.  

The Dax stuff is fun here, if a little contrived, but we get some great performances out of each of the stars as they assume the personalities of the hosts. Rene Auberjonois is particularly effective as Curzon, though Avery Brooks is downright sinister as Joran. The b-story with Nog is neat, as it is such a great bit of character development for the annoying Ferengi kid from season 1 who is now on his way to a career in Starfleet.  Go Nog!

And season 3 comes to an end when “The Adversary” makes itself known. Sisko is promoted to Captain while a Federation ambassador visits the station. 

The ambassador mentiones a hostile race, the Tzenkethi, have had a coup, and may restart what were apparently rather brutal hostilities with the Federation. Sisko takes the ambassador out on a flag waving mission along the Tzenkethi border with the Defiant, but O’Brien soon notices strange things are afoot. They realize the ambassador is actually a Changeling, and a hunt through the ship starts to try to keep him from his real mission- using the Defiant to attack the Tzenkethi  and occupy the Federation so the Dominion can make its move. The crew becomes more paranoid as they begin to suspect any of them could be the shapeshifter. A very Carpenter-esque blood test scene happens and Commander Eddington is id’d as the culprit.

 They soon find Bashir locked away though, and realize the Bashir who conducted the test was the Changeling. Odo liquefies to chase him down, as Sisko prepares to self-destruct the Defiant to prevent war with the Tzenkethi.  Odo stops the enemy in engineering, and for the first time in history a Changeling harms another Changeling as Odo kills the other to save the ship.  As the invader dies he tells Odo, “it’s too late; we are everywhere.”

The “Thing” like horror aspects of this episode play off pretty well, keeping you guessing who may or may not be the Changeling at any given time. The paranoia we see the crew experience is shared by us as viewers at the end as we realize just how prevalent the threat from The Dominion may be, leaving a very disquieting end to season three. We have to talk here though about Sisko not becoming a Captain until S3. Really? Come on Trek, your first Black commanding officer leading a TV show, and you left him a Commander for three years? At least now Sisko has the rank, he has the goatee, and as we head into season 4, we get the shaved head; Sisko will soon evolve into his final form!

NEXT VOYAGE: Season 4 begins with more Klingons that you can shake a Bat’leth at as paranoia about the Dominion threat leads the Empire to pursue “The Way of the Warrior.” Best of all?  WORF!!!

#Star Trek #star trek: Deep Space Nine #ds9 rewatch

[bisexualstokes-archive]

no but really do you ever watch or read something that becomes like a cornerstone in your life cause csi in general changed my life in so many ways.

I had absolutely 0 direction as to what I wanted to do until I got into seventh grade and we had this forensic investigator come to our school and give us a presentation on forensics. she of course mentioned the show (and mentioned that the science is fake and all that) and that day, I went home and watched an episode just for the hell of it (the season 4 episode ‘assume nothing’)

and then I watched another episode...and another...and soon enough I was spending two to three hours every day after school watching csi on spike tv (and an episode of star trek tng that aired before it lol) and soon enough I was starting to get actually interested in the science and doing research about it (and wrote papers on it for school projects even)

and though I didn’t get into forensics specifically, I did go into biology which led me to being a senior quality assurance technician working in a lab, just as I always wanted to do since seventh grade. 

and beyond that, these characters shaped me just like harry potter did. god knows i definitely have daddy issues and man...Grissom is the kind of man I would want my father to be. Catherine and Sara are tough as nails, the type of woman I wanted to be. Greg’s sense of humor taught me not to take things too seriously, to enjoy the little things in life. Warrick's strong work ethic, and how he started as a taxi cab driver and worked his way to becoming a CSI. 

And then Nick....oh Nick. He breaks that mold of what the typical handsome “jock” type character would be. He’s badass, but he’s emotional. He has prejudices, but is willing to learn and move past them. He always tries to see the good in people, tries to empathize with them instead of take pity. Every time he gets knocked down, he gets right back up. He’s the type of person I would want to be or be with.

and I know I sound so crazy talking about a tv show like this but...the emotions I feel behind it, whether I’m watching, reading, talking or thinking about it are just so real and so intense and I don’t know what I would be without them.

#i think i have three cornerstones in my life that made me who i am today #harry potter csi and doctor who #with person of interest and twin peaks also shaping me but in a different way? #idk why i was just getting really emotional over csi today #then again i am on episode 8 of my season 5 rewatch already and i started this morning #and i have my period soooooo #personal #about me

[disneykathy]

DISNEY WORLD

Disney’s Animal Kingdom

This is the other park I get lost in. I’ve been there a dozen times or more but it still feels like the Moving Island in “Lost”: “Wasn’t Africa to the left of Dinoland? How can I be in Asia? Where’s the damn big tree?? I can’t see the tree!!”

Never fear...when you first enter, you have no choice but to walk straight to the first “land” of this park: Discovery island:

Directly in front of you will be the weenie for this park: The Tree Of Life! It’s huge!

No...it’s not real! C’mon, sane up.

The “tree” is a 145 foot high sculpture of an African Baobab tree. Wander around the tree, under passages and through the Discovery Island Trails. Besides seeing some interesting real-life animals, you’ll see that the “Tree of Life” aka the “BFT”, (use your imagination), has 135 detailed animal carvings in its wood. They are amazing. Please take time to explore. You just got here-you can still feel your feet.

Under the BFT, in its roots, is a theater. This is where you will find the attraction: “It’s Tough to be a Bug”.

If you have a fear of bugs, take heed: although no real insects are involved in this production, it does evoke creepy crawly bugginess. The waiting area is an underground lair with the constant sound of chirping and buzzing. And the show does evoke a few fun special effects that make most of us laugh, but, if you are creepa-phobic, these effects may shoot you right through the wall. Just sayin’.

The show is a 3D movie with characters from “A Bugs Life” who will introduce you to the life of bugs and their importance in our little Earth lives. It’s fun. You can sit. It’s air-conditioned (actually TOO air conditioned).

And for those with a phobia, really, you’ll be fine... (spiders, roaches and bees, oh my!!!).

If you stay in the Animal Kingdom until dark, come back to Discovery Island and stand in front of the BFT. Once it’s dark, they do a new projection like show on the tree that is stunning! I had no idea they did this the last time I was there, and just happened to be passing... I was like “what the hell goes on with that tree?? There were all flashy lights coming out of its limbs- I thought I was having a stroke!

Pandora-The World of Avatar:

It’s beautiful! This newest area of Disney’s Animal Kingdom is gorgeous! If you’ve seen the movie Avatar, you’ll be completely amazed at how they captured the topography and flora of Pandora. If you haven’t seen the film, you’ll be confused. Just go with it.

Avatar Flight of Passage

If you didn’t fast pass this ride, enjoy your day standing in line.

I’d love to say “it’s worth it”. It’s not. Nothing is worth waiting in line for 4 hours. Nothing. If Elvis and John Lennon cane back from the dead to jam with Billy Joel, Elton John and Bruce Springsteen, I wouldn’t wait in line 4 hours.

However, it’s a great ride. This is a 3D flight simulator taking you on your Banshee and swooping over landscapes of Pandora. It’s only 5 minutes but it’s a memorable 5 minutes!

Warning: there are warning all along the queue area about thinking twice if you’re not healthy. Hey Disney-none of us are. I actually thought of not riding because of the excessive warnings. But...

The truth is, if you can ride “Soarin’” without getting extremely dizzy, having a coronary or bursting an aneurysm, you’ll be swell. Only dif here is, you are riding on something similar to a Star Wars speeder bike? It doesn’t actually go anywhere, just moves to simulate what’s happening on the screen. You are in a crouched position. So, if you have neck or back issues, you may want to rethink.

Na’vi River Journey

Your boat takes you on a river journey through Pandora at night. Again, if you haven’t seen the film, most if the trees, plants, animals, bugs in pandora are bioluminescent-a fancy word meaning that they light up at night in psychedelic colors. So, this ride is like floating through a college dorm room in 1968.

Rivers of light

Again, if you are going to be in Animal Kingdom after dark, you might want to get a fast pass for the Rivers of Light show. There are multiple viewing areas for this light show-one entrance is by The Voyage of the Little Mermaid theater And the other is by Expedition Everest.

I hear it’s a beautiful attraction. I haven’t seen it. It’s like, late, and my feet hurt and I’ve seen enough cool stuff to last me. But, if your still bright and bushy tailed, by all means, go. And let me know how it was.

Africa:

I love the atmosphere here. It really feels like you are visiting an African Village (I say that like I’ve ever been anywhere near a real African Village...). The village is called “Harambe” which I think means “spend money” in Swahili. There are some really interesting shops and food stops here-linger awhile...

Kilimanjaro Safaris:

You should have a fast pass for this excursion. You should also go first thing in the morning; the animals are much more active and visible before the heat of the day. They, as opposed to us, have common sense.

For this ride you will board large Jeeps and a driver will take you over muddy rut filled roads and over creaky rope bridges through a variety of African ecosystems where you will see indigenous animals. It’s a wonderful experience.

Last time I rode, 2 long horned Bongos blocked our way And we had to sit and wait until the mood hit them to wander off. And a Rhino jogged next to the Jeep, a little closer than my comfort zone approved of.

Lions, giraffes, crocs, gnus ...you’ll see them all with a steady stream of comments from the driver. You’ll love it.

Warning: pee first. The ruts are deep and the ride is long.

Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail/Wild Africa Trek

This section is right next to the Safari. It’s a walk through African nature trail where you can spend some leisure time really experiencing the animals. And you will get a close up view of the gorillas! I have an obsession with Silver Back Gorillas And will spend quite some time in this area photographing them. Unless it’s 90 degrees, then I photograph whatever lurks in the A/C.

Festival of the Lion King

This is a theater production where they re-enact the film with all the songs...it’s full of color and pageantry and people love it but I can sit in my house and watch the movie in the a/c without having to spend a gazillion bucks on a one day pass, so I am not a fan. But what do I know??

Asia: this area is also beautiful and evocative. Lots of photo ops to take advantage of.

Expedition Everest- I hate roller coasters, but I love this one! I love the theming in the queue, I love the speed, the yeti and even the drops. It doesn’t feel as wild as it looks, and it’s a smooth ride. If you can keep your eyes open, there’s lots to see.

Again: there are all the standard warnings. I had no problem and I am a major chicken with a bad stomach...so only you know you. Chose wisely.

Kali River Rapids- the signs read “You will get wet”. They should read “You will get soaked to your undies!”.

Kali River Rapids is a wild rapids ride that takes you down a raging Indian River. The theming revolves around an illegal mining/logging camp that you will come upon, showing the decimation of the forest.

You won’t notice this at all because you’ll be praying that the raft turns in your favor and drowns the guy across from you instead. I have ridden this a few times and have never not gotten soaked.

It’s a fun ride and it feels great to get wet in the heat of the day. However, it doesn’t feel great to still be squishing in your jeans 2 hours later or freezing while eating lunch in the A/C! So... don’t wear denim jeans, or, better yet, wear your poncho!

Maharajah Jungle Trek- this is similar to the wild Africa Trek, but with Asian animals-duh. The tigers are the Star of this walking tour and you’ll see them up close and personal. The theming of this Trek is lovely-you’re in an ancient ruin of a Hindi temple.

Up! A Great Bird Adventure:

This is a wild bird show like any other bird show you’ve ever seen except for two things:

1-it stars characters from the movie “Up”

2- it’s outside in Florida so, even though the partial roof keeps you out if direct sun and there are a few large fans, you will still be hot. Unless you go on a cool day, I’d say you can skip this and not live your life in regret.

Dinoland: -

The theming here is just...weird. When it first opened it had a sort of Paleontological bent with fossil beds and some Dino bone exhibits. Then Disney realized that people on vacation don’t care bout science, so they changed the theming to...

Weirder. Now the idea is: this is one of those tacky roadside attractions you’d find on Route 66 in the 50s or 60s. Run by “Chester and Hester”, this two bit Dino-Rama themed low rent stop over features two old fashioned carnival rides - the Primeval Whirl and the Triceratops Spin. The first ride being a small roller coaster and the second is the Dumbo the Flying Elephant Ride with triceratops (triceratops’? Triceratopses?). There are also carnival games and a tacky roadside shop and restaurant. Unless you are with desperate little ones, I’d walk through to pick up the atmosphere and Keep walking.

The real attraction here is Dinosaur!- the ride. This is a dark ride in an enhanced motion vehicle through the Cretaceous period to capture a Dino...And time is of the essence because you have to find said Dino before the great extinction comet hits!

This is a fun trip with lots of bumps, quick turns and jolts..with a few true honest thrills. It is a not to be missed e-ticket ride.

I just rode it and came away unbroken. But, if you have back or neck issues I’d think about skipping it. And, again, use the facilities first.

The Boneyard, which you should save til the end of the visit, is a play area for the kiddies: there are bones to dig up, slides, ropes and climbs and all kinds of stuff to work out any energy they’ve stored up. (You want them to sleep tonight, right?). There are only a few sitting spots for parents/grandparents though. I guess Disney thought we’d be running around sharing joy with our precious darlings. They guessed wrong. They need more seats. And wine.

Well, if you followed my order... and there’s no reason you needed to... you’re done with Disney World!!! Now go back to your room and relax...cuz tomorrow you’re probably spending the day at Universal Studios! ThenThe World of Harry Potter...then Sea World...And Legoland...then of course you’ll have to take the fam to the beach... maybe Clearwater... then you might as well spend a day at Busch Gardens...wait!

You didn’t tour Kennedy Space Center??

[strawberriestyles]

Chapter 5

(Banner made by the loveliest @harry-nofookingway-styles)

Harry X OFC (AU)

In which Melody is reacquainted with an old classmate named Harry, and must keep afloat in the violent, criminal lifestyle of an underground boxer.

Read previous parts here.

Author’s note: Hi, hi!! I loved writing this chapter and I hope y’all love reading it. As per usual, please send some feedback! It’s a kind gift for the work I’ve put into this fic! Enjoy!

Melody didn’t want to get too comfortable, but she had been writing a lot in the two weeks since she had spoken to Harry. She had cranked out two assignments and an overdue essay. She had even begun a short story about a brooding streetfighter. Perhaps she would turn it into her final project.

The inspiration that Harry and the north side had brought Melody was the ultimate reason why she decided to trek across town. It was late, nearing ten o’clock, but she decided that even just speaking to Harry would be worth the journey. Even Bea’s pleas of “don’t be stupid, Mel” couldn’t stop her from slipping out the front door.

The walk to the north side seemed much shorter than usual, for some reason. When she reached the road on which stood the warehouse and Brute’s, she finally observed that it was titled Hark Street. She also found people straggling off to the edges of the pavement and realized that the match had already ended.

Melody picked her way down the street, strategically avoiding the small gatherings of people until she was bathed in the neon lights of Brute’s. Through the window, it looked just as busy as that first time she was here. When she pushed through the door, it was also just as loud. The dance floor was packed. Melody watched an alarming number of arms flailing through the air as too many drunk people tried to move in their limited space.

If only took a moment of scanning for Melody to find Harry. He was sat at the bar, hood pulled up over his head and fingers wrapped around a glass of liquor. The seats on either side of him were vacant and no one seemed inclined to bother him. Melody, however, intended to do just that.

Crossing the room, she slid into the seat to Harry’s left. He turned his head just enough to get a glimpse of her face and then sighed irritatedly.

“Happy to see me, huh?”

“‘Ve asked yeh nicely t’leave me alone,” he said, sipping at his whiskey and setting the glass down rather hard. “Why can’ yeh seem t’do tha’?”

“I just wanna talk. I’m curious. We can catch up, you know, like normal, personable people do.”

Josie appeared in front of Melody and grinned, glancing briefly at Harry. “What can I get you?” she asked Melody. “A Shirley Temple?”

“That would be nice,” Melody agreed with a nod. She hadn’t missed the joking tone of Josie’s voice, but she figured that if she was going to sit at the bar, she might as well order a drink.

“Decided against alcohol, then?” Harry asked patronizingly.

Melody ignored his question, laying her hands atop the counter.

“Why do you fight?” she asked.

Harry grunted. He shifted uncomfortably on his stool and let go of his glass, reaching beneath his hood to scratch at his neck. Melody saw a dark, purplish spot on his cheekbone, so painful-looking that she had to divert her eyes.

“‘F I answer your questions, will yeh leave me alone?”

Melody let a laugh slip through her lips. “Maybe,” she said.

Josie returned, placing a fizzing, reddish drink down in front of Melody. “So, he speaks, huh?”

Harry lifted his head just enough to glare at Josie, who promptly turned on her heel to retreat. She had seen enough of the injuries that he’d inflicted to know he wasn’t kind when he was angry.

“You’re a boxer,” Melody began again. “Why?”

“Already explained tha’ one, didn’ I?”

“Actually, no, you didn’t.” Melody sipped at her drink and found that it was actually not the worst that she’d had. She stirred it with her straw as she waited for Harry to speak again.

“Yes, I have. Told yeh exactly what yeh said and what happened after.” Harry was staring straight ahead of him, at the wall behind the bar. Melody could tell that he was trying to mask his annoyance, perhaps for her sake, but it still seeped into his voice. “This is all thanks t’you.”

Melody narrowed her eyes at the side of his head. Maybe he was cold toward everyone, but he seemed to have a particular amount of spite toward her, and for what? Because of a single sentence she had delivered in the sixth grade?

“No, that’s not true,” Melody denied with a shake of her head. “I told you to stick up for yourself, fine, but you’re the one who kept throwing punches, even when the bullies stopped messing with you.”

Melody watched Harry visibly tense beside her. She could see the veins in his hand straining against his skin. She was angering him, getting on a good portion of his nerves, but if she was anything, she was persistent.

“Maybe I’m the one that got you to go to that first class,” she continued, taking his silence as an invitation to keep talking, “but I’m not the reason you got kicked out of school, and I’m not the reason you’re still fighting.”

“Say whatever yeh’d like t’believe,” Harry dismissed.

“You can’t blame whatever issues you have on me,” Melody defended. She took another sip of her Shirley Temple and then licked her lips. “Maybe you started fighting because you were being bullied, but you kept fighting because you like it, for whatever weird, testosterone-fueled, masculine reason.”

Harry clenched his jaw, trying to stifle the anger that he felt bubbling beneath the surface. He tipped his head back, swallowing the last of his drink, and tapped the counter to ask Josie for another. As much as Melody was annoying him, he wasn’t going to be ran out of Brute’s by some girl’s assumptions about his character.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” he snapped, twisting his head to finally look at Melody. Josie set another glass of whiskey down in front of him and then strode away rather quickly. “Yeh don’ know anythin’ about me. Talkin’ t’me in middle school doesn’ mean that yeh suddenly know my entire past and wha’s made me into who I am. Yeh don’ know shit.”

He appeared a little worse for wear, Melody observed, although his anger did seem to make the look more menacing than pitiful. Other than the bruise on his cheekbone, she now saw that the opposite side of his lower lip had been split open. She wondered how he was drinking alcohol.

“Okay,” she muttered, nodding her head. “Fine, I don’t know you, I’m just playing a guessing game.”

Harry turned back to his drink, seemingly satisfied, hoping beyond all hope that Melody would leave and he’d never see her again. He wasn’t that lucky, though.

“So, tell me about yourself, then.”

Harry felt his eyes roll into the back of their sockets as he closed them. Whatever he did, however hard he pushed, he couldn’t seem to shake this girl. He sipped his drink, resigned to ignoring her. Perhaps then she would finally get bored and wander off.

“The silent treatment, hmm?” Melody was anything but bored. In fact, she was quite amused with Harry. She knew that she was annoying him, but she couldn’t help it. She had always been one to study a character’s past, and Harry’s had to be rather interesting if he’d ended up like he had. “It’s not gonna work, you know. I can talk for hours.”

Harry felt himself growing weary. He didn’t know how much more of Melody and her interrogation he could handle. He slammed his glass down on the table and saw her flinch from the corner of his eye. Good.

“What do I have t’do t’get yeh to leave me the hell alone?” he said roughly.

“I need a date.”

Harry twisted his head sharply, eyebrows furrowed as he stared at her. She looked sheepish for once, like she might have been a bit embarrassed.

“Wha’?”

“There’s this art exhibit next weekend,” Melody began looking down at her drink to avoid Harry’s gaze. This was a last ditch effort to keep speaking to him. “It’s for one of my classes. I need a date for it.”

Harry was silently perplexed for a few moments as he watched her twiddle with the straw of her drink. And then he shook his head determinedly.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

“Harry,” Melody begged. She lifted her eyes to watch him drown half of his glass. “I don’t have anyone to go with. It’s one night.”

He shook his head again. Art galleries were on the other side of town, where the condescending well-off people lived. That wasn’t his scene and neither was art.

“It’ll be an hour tops. I’ll leave you alone if you just come with me.”

That got Harry’s attention. He glanced at Melody to find her looking intently at him. He was almost angrier than he had been before, but if it would get her off his back, maybe this would be the solution.

“Yeh want me at some art thing for your school? Yeh sure tha’s a good idea?”

Melody nodded shortly. Maybe there were other people she could ask to come with her, but there were multiple reasons why Harry was the one she wanted there. She hoped to get him to open up. Perhaps it would inspire more of her short story. She watched patiently as Harry mulled the idea over in his head.

“I don’ have t’wear a suit, right?”

Melody grinned, shaking her head. “No, you don’t have to wear a suit. Just a nice shirt and a pair of pants that aren’t sweats.”

Harry grunted, spinning his glass atop the counter.

“It’s next Saturday at seven. Do you have a phone?”

Harry shook his head. “Not on me,” he said. In fact, it was resting right in his pocket, but he wasn’t going to give Melody any way to contact him. The day that happened he would be sentenced to his own personal Hell.

“Okay, that’s fine.” Melody slid her drink toward her and moved the glass off to the side to reveal the napkin beneath. “Josie,” she called down the bar.

Josie appeared in front of her, looking into Melody’s glass. Her drink was basically full, so what did she need?

“Do you have a pen back there?” Melody asked.

Josie opened a cluttered drawer on the other side of the bar and fished her hand around until she found a red marker. She tossed it onto the bartop and then went back to pouring beers without another word.

“Here’s my number,” Melody said as she uncapped the marker and began to scribble on the napkin, “and my address. Meet me at six-thirty?” She finished off the name of her street and then wrote the date and time below it, just so that he wouldn’t have any excuses for missing it or showing up late.

Harry didn’t say a word as he took the napkin that Melody slid over to him and stuffed it in the pocket of his sweatpants. He wouldn’t be calling her, that was for sure. She didn’t need to get ahold of his phone number.

Melody chugged a good portion of her drink before sliding off of her stool. She placed some money on the counter and pressed a hand to Harry’s back. He tensed uncomfortably beneath her touch. She let her hand fall away.

“I’ll see you then,” she said.

Harry barely nodded beneath his hood. Melody turned to leave, picking her way between the people who crowded the room. Harry turned around and shouted to her.

“Don’ forget yeh said yeh’d leave me alone!”

He clenched his jaw as he turned back around in his seat. He wanted to believe her, that she wouldn’t try to talk to him again after this art thing, but he swore that he’d seen her laugh before she left. He tipped back the rest of his drink.

Chapter 6

#harry styles #harry styles writing #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fan fiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fan fic #harry styles fic #harry styles smut #harry styles angst #harry styles brutality

[chasholidays]

Time travel bellarke. For some reason one or both travel to the past and it was not good. Or anything you want but with timetravel

I couldn’t come up with a historical era for them to go to, so I just made this a Star Trek AU with them coming back to now oops

If and when Bellamy gets back to his own time, he’s going to petition Starfleet to add some mandatory classes on what to do if you’re thrown back in time and/or into a parallel universe, because he thinks generic guidelines and word-of-mouth tips just aren’t cutting it. They need to stop acting like this doesn’t happen all the fucking time.

“At least we’re on Earth,” says Clarke, looking around with a frown.

“I don’t know, Vulcan might be better. If we told Vulcans we were time travelers from the future, they’d probably roll with it and help. This doesn’t look like an advanced enough Earth to give us any help.”

“I think the Prime Directive forbids talking about being a time traveler.”

“Yeah, and we never ignore the Prime Directive.”

Clarke huffs a laugh, and he smiles too. He wouldn’t admit it without some serious interrogation, but Clarke is probably his first choice for a companion in any tight spot. She’s smart and capable and practical, idealistic without being stupid. Which is kind of a problem with Starfleet, in his experience.

“Never,” she agrees, and when the computer finishes its analysis with a ping, she’s the one to go check it. “You want the bad news?”

“No, I like going into potentially hostile situations blind.”

“It could be worse. Early twenty-first century. Pollution levels are near critical, so I’d say between 2015 and 2020.”

“Fuck, we probably landed in the Trump administration,” he says, rubbing his face. “Just our fucking luck.”

“We just need to survive long enough to repair the ship.”

“Yeah, because if there’s one thing we’re great at, it’s ship repairs.”

“You know what doesn’t help? This shit,” says Clarke, mild, but with just enough of an edge to snap him out of it.

“You’re the optimist here,” he says. “But I’ll go with it. So—what’s the plan?”

She looks around the ship, thoughtful. “First step is figuring out if the replicators work and if we have anything we can sell without compromising the timeline.”

It’s as good a place to start as any.

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

*

The replicator works long enough to make them some period-appropriate clothing and breakfast, but given the overall shaky state of the ship’s systems, they don’t want to make anything they don’t have to. They have better things to do with their power; they’re going to have to try to get by on their own.

Unfortunately, they’ve landed smack in the middle of late capitalism with no identification papers, in a country that thinks poverty should be a death sentence.

So that’s good.

And then, of course, there’s the much larger issue, which is that they have to get home, and even if they repair the ship, they have no idea how to do that. They set up a beacon that Starfleet will be able to detect, in case Raven figures out where they went and how to get to them, but Bellamy has no fucking clue how they got here, let alone how to reverse it and get back.

Which is the downside of being stuck with Clarke. It would really help if they had an engineer with them. As it is, all they have is the computer and time.

“And this,” says Clarke, tossing him something.

It’s so small, he barely sees it, but he still manages to catch it, blinks down at the ring in his hands. “Antique?”

“Yeah, a family heirloom. There’s some sentimental value, but I think my mother would understand why I sold it. It won’t be enough money to go far, but we can sleep on the ship, so all we need is food and supplies.”

“Supplies for a ship from two-hundred years in the future,” Bellamy points out. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that whatever parts we might need are probably going to be expensive and hard to access. We should maybe be trying to settle in for the long haul.”

Clarke’s shoulders slump. “I know.”

“So–we’re a young couple who fell on hard times,” he says, slow. “You’re selling your wedding ring to help us make ends meet. We should replicate papers now, before we’re worried about power. If we have to, we can probably find jobs, get a post office box–what?”

She’s staring at him, slack-jawed, but at the question, she smiles, shakes her head. “You have an amazingly detailed plan ready for how to survive in the collapsing United States.”

He shrugs. “Have you ever looked into Starfleet records? People get sent back in time a lot. This one works for most capitalist societies.”

“So, you think we might have to stay?”

It’s a staggering thought. The country is on its way to a much needed and ultimately successful revolution, but Bellamy doesn’t really want to witness it.

“I think we need to make sure we can survive here first,” he says. “And once we’ve done that, we can work on getting home. But unless you have an idea for what to do right now to fix the ship and get back–”

“You’re right.” She sighs. “So we’re going native for a while.”

“At least they speak English,” he says. “Come on, let’s go pawn the wedding ring.”

*

There is something academically fascinating about traveling into the past. Bellamy’s done it before, to an extent, the same way everyone has: in the holodeck, as a curiosity. He never went to this exact year, but he’s been to places like this, in recreation. He knows how it’s supposed to be, and it’s interesting to see the differences.

If he knew he could just end the program and go back whenever he wanted to, he’d probably enjoy it. As it is, he’s too aware of the dangers they’re facing, of how close they are to being found out and detained as illegal immigrants or terrorists or whatever else this regime is afraid of.

It’s not all bad, of course. Most of the time, they’re just living their new lives, taking advantage of their fictitious histories and credentials. Bellamy gets a job at a university, working in the library, and Clarke finds one at a hospital. He never stops being worried every time he sees a police officer, but he learns the routine of it, the same way Clarke learns to keep her head down and not respond when men tell her to smile or whistle as she walks past.

They can’t afford to make waves. They can’t afford to be caught.

“I do like seeing the television programs,” Clarke says, with false cheer. It’s been a month, and she saw her third person die of an injury she could have cured in a matter of seconds at home, and had to turn away someone else because they couldn’t pay for their own treatment. She crawled onto their lumpy couch next to him and curled into his side, and he wishes he had something better to do than just hold her. “They’re interesting.”

“Yeah, it’s amazing how much of this stuff didn’t survive. Apparently they’re in a golden age of television, but I missed most of them.”

“For a golden age, there are a lot of white men,” Clarke grumbles.

Bellamy has to smile. “Most golden ages in history have just been for white men, yeah.” He leans back. “I wonder which of our proudest accomplishments will seem barbaric in three hundred years.”

“It’s not like plenty of people don’t know it’s bad now. And we have an advantage, at least.”

“We might get out of here someday?”

Clarke snuggles closer, which feels like an advantage all by itself. He knew how much he cared about her before, but it’s different now. He thinks she might care about him just as much, for a start. “We know it’s going to get better,” she says.

That makes him smile. “We do, yeah.”

*

After six months, Clarke starts a countdown to the revolution that they both know is coming.

“We should really get out before that,” she says, and he snorts.

“Yeah, I figured. I still don’t know a fucking thing about time anomalies, though. If you have any ideas, I’m all ears.”

“Honestly? I was thinking we could start looking at science fiction.” He snorts, and she elbows him. “I’m serious! I’m not saying we’re going to find the answer we’re looking for, but we might get some ideas. Something we could run by the computer for projections. I’m not coming up with anything on my own, so–”

“So let’s start seeing what other people have thought of.” He shakes his head. “I guess you’re right, it couldn’t hurt. I think you just want to interact with more media,” he teases.

“I don’t just want to interact with more media,” she shoots back, and he laughs.

But somehow, it works. They nearly turn off Back to the Future once it becomes clear that it’s not actually going to help, but the whole thing is fun and amusing, and it’s not like they don’t have time to just enjoy themselves.

And then, in the second movie, the main character gets a letter from the past, the distant past, and Bellamy thinks, well, why not.

“We could do that,” he says.

“Which part?” Clarke asks. She’s already half asleep; her hours are longer than his, most days. And the healthcare system is slowly killing her, he’s sure.

They have to get out of here.

“We could leave a message for Raven. There are some companies that are still in operation, we just have to find one. Tell her where we are and when. Set a delivery date. You remember when we got lost, right? It can’t hurt.”

Clarke’s awake now, and laughing. “I can’t believe you actually got a plan from Back to the Future II.”

“It was your idea,” he shoots back.

“Teamwork.”

He has to smile. “Teamwork.”

*

They get a zipcar out to the park where they hid the ship, have the computer find a list of local attorneys or delivery companies that are still operating under the same ownership. The computer comes up with more options than Bellamy was expecting, which turns out to be a good thing, because none of the first few work out. Some think it’s a prank and refuse outright, and others agree, but with the kind of patronizing expression that made Bellamy think they weren’t really going to follow through.

At the fifth place, Clarke takes a different approach.

“I know this is a little strange,” she says, “but–we wanted to leave a time capsule. For our descendants, if we have any.” She holds up the package, neat, and wrapped in brown paper. “To be opened on the three-hundredth anniversary of our daughter’s birth.”

The man smiles, indulgent, but not opposed. “So, this is the date we, as caretakers, should open the package?”

“And then follow the instructions to find any surviving relatives of ours.”

“Like she said, we know it’s unconventional, but we had a time capsule from my grandparents, and we wanted to give something to that to future generations,” Bellamy adds.

“Well, I can’t promise anything, of course,” says the man. “No one can see the future, and that’s a long time for the business to survive. But we have performed similar services for others, so if you’re willing to risk it–”

“We understand,” says Clarke. “Thank you.”

They leave a few others, just to be safe, and then it’s suddenly–awkward. That’s the thing about time travel; if it works, they should find out soon. They don’t have to wait for Raven to get it, because sometime in the future, Raven will have gotten it as soon as they left, and even if it takes her months or years to solve the problem, they shouldn’t feel that delay.

All they told her was the day she couldn’t come before, to avoid a paradox; everything else is up in the air, and all they can do is hope.

“I wonder if she can even hit an exact day,” says Clarke. “Or if she’ll accidentally show up three years early or something.”

“If anyone can figure it out, it’s Raven. And she has all the time she needs.”

“Let’s hope she doesn’t waste her life trying to figure out how to come get us.”

“We did tell her we’d be fine if she didn’t make it back,” he reminds her. “She knows that.”

“I know.” To his surprise, she takes his hand and squeezes it. “We will be fine, Bellamy.”

“Yeah,” he says. “We will.”

*

Raven doesn’t make them wait long; they check the ship two days after they deposit the messages, and there she is, repairing the engine like she’s been there forever.

“Seriously, you two had to land here?” she demands, by way of greeting. “There’s so much air pollution I can barely breathe.”

“We’ve been here for six months,” says Bellamy, and then they both break into smiles and hold on to each other together. He passes her onto Clarke, and then it’s all business, Raven getting the repairs done while Bellamy and Clarke have the strange responsibility of putting their affairs in order, quitting jobs and leaving apartments with no notice, only a few steps above vanishing without a trace.

It’s hard to care that much. They’re going home.

Raven brought another ship and more crew to help, and it only takes a day, all told, for them to be redoing whatever she did to get back the first time. After all that waiting, it’s almost anticlimactic. All that worry, all that stress, and then they’re just–home. No money to worry about, no police watching him with wary eyes, just their ship and their people, like it’s supposed to be.

There’s only one thing missing: he and Clarke barely see each other, the first week. They’re together at meals, and sometimes throughout the day, but their duties have never brought them together very much, and after six months of cohabitation, it feels like nothing.

She must feel the same, because at the end of that week, she shows up at the door to his quarters. “I thought we could watch something,” she says, with a small smile. “Maybe some golden age television.”

He laughs and tugs her in. “Can I kiss you?” he asks. “Because I’ve been wanting to kiss you, and if I can’t, I want to know now.”

“I’ve been wanting that too,” she murmurs, and tugs him down.

And just like that, Bellamy’s finally home.

#faramile

[feed-our-souls-too]

Thoughts From ECCC

I went to Emerald City Comic Con last weekend for the first time and had a blast (even though it didn’t all go as hoped - you can’t always get exactly what you want and that’s a good lesson to remember!). I spent a good portion of time shopping and at totally geeky/nerdy panels (Astrophysics of Star Trek, anyone?), but I also went to some panels about being an artist and/or author. I thought I’d write up some of the things I learned. If you’re not failing in some way, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough. This is definitely something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I hesitate because I fear failure, but the reality is that failure is good. We learn so much from it, but we refuse to listen to it, it seems. Instead of the voice of failure, we entertain the voice of evil, who tells us that this mess up means we ourselves are messed up, we are not good enough and could never be. That’s not true, and I believe that is because God wants us to be the best version of ourselves. He wants us to hear the voice of failure saying, “Aren’t you glad you learned that? Imagine what you can do now that you know it!” He wants us to be able to look back and see all the mistakes that lead to our successes. Failure isn’t something to fear. It’s a weapon to arm ourselves with.

Promise, progress, payoff This was about how to make a good ending. I can’t say that I have a super strong desire to be a writer, but storytelling does interest me and I’d love to try my hand at a comic project or two. Anywho, so the idea here is that your story promises something, shows progress toward it, and then gives the payoff of that promise (even if the answer to that promise is something different from the original promise). I think too that as an illustrator, your job can be to tell a story sometimes with only 1 image, and so this idea would be interesting to apply. How do you suggest a promise and a sense of payoff? Food for thought...

They are not judging you as hard as you think. They have their own worries. This one is a good reminder that no one is perfect. You start out in the art field and think, “Wow, look at all these people. They have it so together.” They don’t. They’re people too. Yeah, they have more experience, but they have their own issues too. By and large, people aren’t going to look at You and your work and be all judgy (unless you or they are a jerk). They know how hard it can be and they have their own insecurities. So be nice, encourage one another, and stop telling yourself they’re judging you - because really, you’re probably judging yourself way harder than they are.

How to make the emotional responses of your characters real and interesting/fitting to the story they’re in. How do you respond? How do people you know respond? Take that and fit it to the world around the character. Example taken from one of that comic book artists: Do you go shopping after a fight? Is it because you need to get out and shopping is something you enjoy? Would your character want to get out? Maybe your character goes out looking for trouble (bashing in zombies because she knows they are there), the same way a person might go out shopping (ie, spending too much or buying useless things - this isn’t about being practical, it’s about anger)? 

What is the story within your story? Think about motives, repercussions, and the message these things send. It’s gotta be more than “this person hates this other person.”

Have a cool idea but don’t know where to take it? Just write! (Or draw!) Start by telling the story of the idea to yourself. Write until you’ve run out, then take a break. Don’t worry about quality. Come back to it and edit it or start in another place or even just save it for later. Same kind of idea stands for art. Have a cool idea, but don’t know what to do with it? Just get it down on paper to a point which you will know what the heck it is when you look at it later on. You can come back to these scraps of ideas later and use them for a project you’re stuck on, or maybe in some spare time begin to shape them into something better. You never know! 

The most important thing is not the really cool idea you have - it’s the execution. Same goes for being “unique.” The base idea of your story/picture has probably been told before, but it hasn’t been told by you before. Sounds cheesy, but it’s true. So tell your story. Let its uniqueness come out of who you are as a person, if nothing else.

Good artists (and writers) support other artists (and writers)! Most people want to support each other, both monetarily (though we all understand if you can’t afford things!) and with words and other gestures. Don’t be afraid to talk about your struggles. It might be just what someone needs (”I’m not the only one!”). And be willing to listen too. Make art friends. You need them.

Practical “con” artist stuff (ie, convention artist, for you who are reading this and gasping in shock, haha) -Have a nice tablecloth! Tables often don’t have them (and they’re ugly) or they do have them and the tablecloths themselves are (still) ugly (or just completely the wrong color for your work)! -Try eBay for signs/banners at a reasonable price and then just buy the hangers to put them up -The Devastators Exhibitors Survey. Google it. It talks about how well exhibitors did at Cons in a certain year, which cons make the most money for the exhibitors, how experience plays into success, etc. -Going into a bit of debt on your first few tries is quite probable -cleardisplays.com (also, get display things that are collapsible to transport easier and that don’t weigh a million pounds) or maybe try a local Ikea for affordable, easy to put together display options -Don’t forget simple things like pens, sharpies, tape, scissors, etc -Set money/sales goals. One artist suggested that making about $100/hour was a good goal.

So there’s your food for thought.

#storytelling help #art help #eccc #eccc18 #anxiety #mental health #fear of failure #being a convention artist #admin post #other #managing time and projects

[revwinchester]

Spring Break

Summary: Now that he’s in college, Sam goes on his first ever vacation but when a supernatural creature threatens his friend, Sam has to jump back into the life he had tried so hard to leave behind.

Character(s): Sam Winchester, Tyson Brady, Zach Warren

Word Count: 2478

Warnings: Language, Canon typical violence

A/N: So, I was selected to write a fic for an anthology of fanfic that’s being put together over at @spnshortstories - you should go check it out - and I wrote this piece for that but it ended up being twice the word limit (apparently, I’m a wordy bitch...) and I couldn’t figure out how to cut out half of the words without losing anything important for the story.  So instead I started from scratch on that project and wrote some fun Gabriel/Trickster fluff.  Now that book fic 2.0 has been submitted, you get to read the originally intended story, which is a case!fic set in the cannonverse during the time Sam was in Stanford.  I also edited it to include one of this week’s SPN Hiatus Challenge prompts (thanks to @thing-you-do-with-that-thing for hosting and for the inspiration every week), which is “you’re supposed to talk me out of this” and is in bold in the fic.

TL;DR: This was written for a book and was too long so you get to read it here instead.

Spring Break - 

Brady hadn’t believed his ears when Sam had mentioned he’d never been on vacation.  After finally convincing his friend that it was true, Sam watched in awe as Brady pulled out his cellphone and called someone to make arrangements.  He hung up less than ten minutes later and announced that Sam should find a part time job because they were going to Tijuana for spring break.

“My parents own a timeshare,” he offered as an explanation.

Sam nodded like he understood even though he had no idea what Brady was talking about.

Nevertheless, spring break rolled around and Sam was riding shotgun in Brady’s car.  Brady was behind the wheel and their friend Zach was in the back seat as they made the eight and a half hour drive to Tijuana, Mexico.  They crossed the border without any issues and soon enough, Brady was parking outside of a well appointed condominium.

The boys had left early in the morning so it was only about 2 PM when they arrived.  They quickly unpacked the car and got changed for the beach.

As they walked toward their destination, Sam noticed dark looks on the locals’ faces.  It was a look that went beyond a native person’s disdain for potentially unruly tourists but before he could think too hard about it, Sam felt himself getting pulled into a building.  Apparently, Zach had decided that, since they were of legal drinking age in Mexico, the only way to start their vacation was with tequila shots.  Each of the boys bought a round and the three shots in quick succession worked up a good buzz as they continued their walk to the beach.

Sam couldn’t help but notice the darkness on people’s faces again.  It was a familiar look. One he had seen in so many small, no-name towns across America; one he had worked hard to forget.  Sam did his best to brush it off, to ignore those faces and focus on the smiling tourists.  Hunting wasn’t his life anymore, would never be his life again if he had any say in the matter.  He was Sam Winchester, college student, Stanford University pre-law class of 2005, and he was sure a hunter would catch wind of whatever was happening here and come deal with it.

The three boys settled in on the beach.  Sam was reading through a guide book, thinking about the next few days while Brady and Zach were trying - and failing - to pick up girls using their meager high school Spanish skills.  Every so often they would splash into the water; it was still on the cold side so they never lasted log before retreating to the sunny beach to warm up.  Their afternoon continued on in much the same manner until the sound of music began wafting down to the beach.  The three began walking across the sand toward the road that would get them back to their condo when Zach stopped.

“You guys hear that?” Zach asked. Craning his neck around to look for the source of whatever had caught his attention.  “It sounds like there’s a baby crying.”

Sam listened but all he could hear was the sounds pumping from the bars and restaurants further up the beach.  “It’s probably just something in the music, man,” Sam surmised and continued his trek towards the road.

They got back to their condo and started getting ready for diner.  Sam grabbed the first shower and was dressed and watching the news before Zach and Brady were ready.  Sam was following along with the subtitles for the beginning of a story about a rash of missing people when Brady flipped the tv off.  “You watch enough of that depressing shit at Stanford.  You’re on vacation, give it up for a week! 

Brady wasn’t wrong; Sam did watch a lot of news back in the dorms.  He told himself it was to keep abreast of what was happening in the world but, in reality, it was a habit from his hold life that he hadn’t broken.  Sam’s job had been to check tv and internet news sources for potential cases for their dad while Dean would read through any number of print news sources.  Brady was right, though, this was vacation - Sam’s first vacation - he could take a break from the world.

Once all three were ready, Sam, Brady, and Zach made their way back out into the city in search of dinner and drinks.  They popped into a few bars and by midnight they were stumbling towards the beach with a couple of local girls when Zach started looking around almost frantically.

“It’s still here somewhere!”  When no one else helped him look, Zach turned back to his friends.  “You still say you don’t hear that?  There’s a freaking baby crying somewhere on the beach!”

“You’re drunk!” Brady shouted at his friend but the girl he had his around around turned to him with a terrified look.

“Take your friend home, lock him inside,” she pleaded, “and then leave this city first thing tomorrow.”

Brady turned to her.  “No way!  It’s spring break and we’re just getting started!  Are you tired of me already?” he asked.

“My sister is afraid of an old tale our Abuela told us; a horror story,” the other girl said, rolling her eyes.  

The two girls had a quick conversation in Spanish.  Sam couldn’t make out much but from the girls’ faces and voices he could figure out they were talking about this story.  One word was repeated a few times: “ahuizotl.”

Sam interrupted the girls, his hunter’s instincts on high alert.  “I don’t think the guys introduced us back at the bar, I’m Sam,” he started, needing some kind of in with the sisters, who smiled and introduced themselves as Maria and Valentina.

Sam turned to Maria, the sister who believed her grandmother’s story.  “I really love folklore and local legends,would you tell me about it?  The ahuizotl?”

Valentina rolled her eyes again but Maria looked up at Sam.  “The ahuizotl is like a dog but with hands.  It has two hands where its front paws should be and a third, very strong hand at the end of its tail,” she explained.  “It lives in the waters but hunts from small caves near the water and it lures its… las presas,” Maria turned to her sister for help.

“Prey, victims,” Valentina provided.

“Yes, it lures its victims by crying like a baby.  Then it will grab them with the tail hand and swim into the water to eat their skin and nails,” Maria concluded.

Valentina laughed at her sister’s serious tone.  “Don’t forget the eyeballs.  Abuela said the ahuizotl's favorite was eyeballs.”

Sam could hear the teasing in Valentina’s voice and it made him miss his own brother but he pressed on.  “Did your abuela ever mention how to kill it?” he asked as casually as he could.  Usually he wouldn’t ask that question so quickly or bluntly but if the thing was already after his friend, Sam needed to know how to take it out.  He hoped Maria and Valentina would chalk his curiosity up to the alcohol he had consumed.

Valentina looked at him like he was crazy.  “It’s just a story, Sam.”

“Right,” Sam forced a laugh, “yeah.  Thanks for telling it.”

They pulled Zach away from the beach, Brady assuring him there wasn’t a baby as he ushered the group towards another bar.  The five of them continued with their night but a cloud was hanging over Sam now and he could see the same darkness in Maria’s face, too.

At the next bar, Maria sat beside Sam.  “You look sad, Sam.  I should have never told that story.  My sister is right, it’s just a, um...” she searched for a word, “a tall tale.”

Sam looked her in the eye.  “You don’t believe that and neither do I.  This thing is after my friend and I’m gonna stop it.”

Maria smiled sadly up at Sam.  “How” she asked, clearly humoring what she assumed to be the whims of a drunk man.

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted, defeated.

Sam and his friends made their way back to their condo.  Brady and Zach went to bed but Sam booted up his computer and spend the rest of the night researching.  When Brady stumbled out of his room the next morning, Sam still didn’t know how to specifically kill an ahuizotl but, despite that, he had a plan.

“Beach again today?” Sam asked.

Brady grunted, searching the cabinets for something.  He pulled a small bag out with a tired but victorious smile.  “Coffee first.”

Soon the scent of coffee lured Zach out of his bedroom, too.  Instead of going back to the beach right away, the boys decided to hang out poolside at the condo until Brady and Zach were less hungover.  Sam forced himself to sit still and relax, even managing to catch a nap in one of the lounge chairs.

Sam woke up a could of hours later.  He was alone at the pool but he quickly noticed a piece of paper and Sam recognized Brady’s handwriting:

Needed food.  Meet us at the beach, we’ll grab you lunch.

Sam scrambled up and started toward the beach, stopping in the condo and then a couple of shops and stores along the way to pick up the supplies that he needed.  He thought about his brother as he shopped and all the times that Dean had convinced Sam to let someone older and more experienced handle a hunt.  “You’re supposed to talk me out of this,” he mumbled, more to himself than to anyone else, though he intended the words for Dean and he wished his brother were here, now.  

When Sam got to the beach, he only saw Brady.  He trotted up to his friend and put his bags down in the sand.

“Morning Princess!” Brady joked.  “You sleep like the dead, man.  Zach tried to wake you before we left but you just weren’t having it.”

Sam laughed.  He had only learned to be a heavy sleeper since going to Stanford.  A hunter always needed to be on guard, even while asleep, his dad had said.  “Yeah, well, I didn’t sleep much last night,” Sam admitted.  “Where’s Zach?”

“Oh,” Brady rolled his eyes, “he claimed to hear that damn baby again and he went to check it out.”  He looked down the beach toward a rocky outcrop.  “That was about 20 minutes ago.  Honestly, I figured he’d give up by now.”

“Shit,” Sam muttered under his breath.  It would seem that he was out of time.  He gathered up his bags before he spoke, louder this time so Brady could hear.  “I’ll go take a look for him.”

Sam walked towards the rocks that Brady had looked toward earlier.  When he reached them he put the bags down, donned a head-lamp style flashlight, and began assembling a makeshift blowtorch.  He didn't know how to properly kill an ahuizotl but he hadn’t heard of any creature that could survive being burnt to a crisp.

Sam carefully waded out into the water, holding his weapon above his head to keep it dry as he followed the edge of the rocks.  After a few minutes of wading, he was up to his waist in the sea water and he came to a point where he turned a corner and couldn’t see the shore anymore.  Sam was on high alert now as he continued to follow the shape of the rock face.  The rocks curved again, towards shore, but instead of seeing another part of the beach, Sam found himself in a private cove with a cave opening about 15 yards away.  Sam steeled himself for a fight and cautiously made his way into the cave, flipping on the flashlight he wore on his head.

The cave wasn’t very deep and as Sam looked around his light fell onto Zach’s unconscious form.  He hurried to approach his friend and free him from what looked like seaweed that was binding his hands and feet.  Sam kneeled and put his weapon down on the dry rock beside Zach.  He needed to get his friend out of here before the next high tide.  Just as he finished ripping through the dense plants around Zach’s ankles, Sam felt something grabbing at his own leg.

Sam kicked back hard and reached for the flame thrower.  He managed to disengage and turn toward his attacker just in time to see a long, strong limb dart out of the water and grab at him.  Sam dodged and backed up as far as he could.  He had to lure the thing out of the water if he wanted to stand a chance against it.

Luck was on Sam’s side, it seemed, and the ahuizotl followed Sam onto dry land.  He threw some of the flame thrower’s fuel onto the creature as he dodged another attack from the tail hand, feinting his way behind it so that he stood between the ahuizotl and the cave’s mouth.  Sam ignited the flame thrower and pointed the fire at the creature.  The thing screeched and squealed but Sam used ite flames to keep it away from the safety of the water until it wasn’t moving or making any sound. 

Sam flipped off the weapon and slowly approached the ahuizotl, poking at it with the muzzle of the flame thrower and making sure it was dead.

“Sam?” a familiar but scratchy voice croaked.

Sam froze in his spot.  He had hoped to get Zach out of the cave, at least, before he woke up.  He’d been prepared to tell his friend he’d gotten caught in a rip tide and nearly drowned.  Cruel, maybe, but better than Zach knowing what had really happened to him.

Sam splashed over to his friend and tore at the rest of the seaweed that was binding him.  

“What happened?” Zach asked, “and was that a flame thrower?”

Sam’s hands didn’t falter as he dealt with the rest of the seaweed and helped Zach to his feet.  “Nah, man, you’re wasted,” he improvised, “this is all a tequila induced hallucination.” 

Zach blinked a few times and reached out, poking Sam’s arm.  “Woah, you’re really solid for a hallucination.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve got a really good imagination,” Sam lied as he led Zach out of the cave and around the rocks.  Once they got to shore, Sam checked him over for a concussion.  Certain that Zach was just groggy and not actually hurt, Sam decided that there were two things he needed to do.  First, he needed to get Zach drunk enough that he would actually chalk the past few hours up to booze.  Then he would pray that neither of his friends found themselves this close to the supernatural ever again.

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#spn hwc - week 4 #supernatural hiatus writing challenge 2017 #spnshortstories #supernatural fanfiction #spn fanfic #gen!fic #Sam Winchester #tyson brady #zach warren #stanford!sam #stanford sam #spring break #Sam goes on vacation #fics by Rev

[oosteven-universe]

Hardcore #1

Hardcore #1 Skybound/Image Comics 2018 Story by Robert Hickman & Andy Diggle Written by Andy Diggle Illustrated by Alessandro Vitti Coloured by Adriano Lucas Lettered by Thomas Mauer     Imagine being able to take over the body of anyone on Earth. Sound crazy? Not for Agent Drake and the Hardcore Program. They can turn any person into a human drone to get to targets that normal soldiers can’t. Drake is the best soldier Hardcore has to offer. But when he gets stranded in a body with only 72 hours to discover who’s hijacked the Program, he’ll have to pull out all the stops against an enemy who could be literally anyone.     I really liked this book. I mean there really isn’t all that much time spent on setting the series up and instead we kind of get thrust into the middle of things and by the end of the issue the direction I thought this was heading wasn’t. I was so incredibly excited to see Andy’s name attached to this as I think he is an amazing writer and he sure as heck doesn’t let me down. The way that this is structured is incredibly well done and the overall ebb & flow of the book keeps the reader not only on the edge of their seat but second guessing everything we see as well.     The opening here is dramatic, eye-catching and utterly thrilling and it totally grabs the readers attention and doesn’t let go. One of the things that struck me the most while I was reading was how the words and narration didn’t sync up with the character or what was happening. It was this that piqued my curiosity and made me want to see more. There is a whole lot going on and instead of feeling overwhelmed as new information is given, and it does feel like a lot, it is more like a bunch of puzzle pieces falling into place.     The more we see the more we want to see and at first the less we understand. The idea behind project Hardcore is fascinating to think about. I mean in all honesty it almost feels as if this is the next level of drone warfare which if you think about is kind of scary as hell. The only other thing that could make this worse is that if the weather patterns were also tied into some government program by NASA was tacked into this somehow. Still the way we move through the story with it’s twists, turns and revelations nothing would surprise me at this point.     Oh my Little Debbie snack cakes the work that Alessandro does on the interiors here is insane! The linework is utterly spectacular and the way the varying weights are utilised in creating such attention to detail blows my mind. I mean right from the first panel of the first page you know that visually speaking we’re in for one hell of a massive treat. The utilisation of page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows off such magnificent eye for storytelling. I am huge fan of the way that backgrounds are utilised here to expand the story and show us the size and scope as well. The colour work here is just as amazing and completes this beautifully. ​     The imagination and creativity that we see here extends from the writing through the interior artwork as both science fiction and reality become one. Sometimes it takes a push in the right direction to make things work, think Star Trek and cellphones, Ipads and tablets. I am seriously enjoying the fact that this combines the likes of James Bond in the Stitchers program taken to the Nth degree. The way that characters are introduced and the way the book ends is guaranteed to send your mind ablaze!

#comic books #skybound #image comics #andy diggle