#it just feels like american high school simulator

[cactusdying]

guys i'm going to be real i dobn't think i expected this kind of direction for the lore update

#cacterart #brutal orchestra #tw drugs #i played class of '09 recently. it feels like class of '09 played me #every time i get an idea for a crossover it's divine whispers. and also autism #anyway back to class of '09 i don't even know if i can recommend it because like #it just feels like american high school simulator #and i live on the opposite side of the world so i have no idea if it's accurate or not #so it all just feels. absurd to me. i still can't believe this game is real #it's 2 GAMES and i played both of them #anyway i'm only posting this here for. archival-ish purposes #i'm very sorry once mre

[annoyingeye]

edit isnt mine!

☢︎︎m҉e҈o҉w҈ m҉e҈o҉w҈ :3☢︎︎

NIKA/ALL PRNS/PL, RUS, ENG

𝙼𝚈 𝙸𝙽𝚃𝙴𝚁𝙴𝚂𝚃𝚂!!

-slenderverse

-creepypasta or just creepy stuff:D

-analogue/psychological horrors

-INDIE, STORY AND HORROR GAMES

-true crime

-paranormal things

-lost media

-psychology

-astrology

-demonology

-urbex

-OCEAN AND SEA!

-ranfren, ptp, htf, ddlc>_<

-punk rock, post punk, emo and goth music!! (i like metal too but not that much)

-zombie and vampires

-wars!

-dinosaurs or just history/prehistory

-guns/weapons

-alan tutorial!!

𝐌𝐘 𝐅𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒

Flippy (htf), Habit (emh), Vinny (emh) Observer (t12), Prebrand (t12), Alex Kralie (marble hornets), Jeff The Killer (crp), Ghoulia (mh), John Doe (jd XD), Sid (skins), Maria (silent hill), Chris (dh00), Michael (ml0), Andre and Cal:3 (zero day), Pinkie Pie (mlp), Abby Anderson (tlou), Toki (Metalocalypse), Ada Wong (resident evil), Wesker (resident evil), Hank Anderson (dbh), Larry Johnson (sf), Todd Morrison (sf), Postal Dude (postal), Sophie (cof), John Ward (ftut), Miles Upshur (outlast), Norman Jayden (heavy rain), Shaggy (scooby doo), Patrick Bateman (american psycho), Jesse Wells (hollow hemlocks)

𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀/𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶 𝗲𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁

Anal Cunt, Buerak, Sedes, 5mewmet, dj trippie flameboy, Злые Гномы, Пурген, Molchat Doma, KMFDM, Type O Negative, Chernikovskaya Hata, Mindless Self Indulgence, Ploho, Nürnberg, Linkin Park, ssshhhiiittt!, Crystal Castles, Pisse, Dezeter, Brudne Place Zabaw, Pornofilmy, Myslovitz, CASTET, 100 Tvarzy Grzybiarzy, Twoyastara Of Death, Hamulec, Gruzja, Казённыи Унитаз, Fester Witch, Оргазм Нострадамуса, Elusin, Treny and many many many other

𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐢 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭

Postal, Half Life, Silent hill, Lomando.com, John Doe, Outlast, Sally Face, Fran Bow, Cry of Fear, Afraid of Monsters, Faith the unholy trinity, Buckshot Roulette, Priest Simulator, Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption, Mortal Kombat, KryptaFM, Neverending Nightmares

movies/shows/series that i like:3

Duck, Zero Day, Saw, IT, My Little Pony, Monster high, Elephant, Scooby Doo, Fight Club, Breaking Bad, American Psycho, Sala Samobójców

𝚁𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚘𝚖 𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚜 𝚊𝚋𝚝 𝚖𝚎:3

-I love windy weather smsmsmms

-talking abt ai 24/7

-im lonely as hell

-im watching movies with Joey Smack all the time

-i love darkness

-staying up all nights

-YES I LOVE EDGY MEDIA

-im a walking multifandom literally

-I LOVELOVELOVE COOKING CAKES

-my favorite animals are wolfs, dogs and lemon sharks!

-idk what i feel abt my sexuality tbh

-my comfort people are Evan Jennings, Rikki Audax and Andreas Ronnberg:3

-atheist:D

-i think about zombie and fake shooters media all the time

-PLAYING GAMES AND LISTENING TO MUSIC 24/7

⠀ DNI!!

-minor p3dos/p3dos

-n4zis.

-adam r0sner supporters

-SOME yansim/genshin/pj sekai toxic fans

-dsmp fans

-ppl who r romantizing being slavic bc its annoying

-SOME taylor swift and lana del rey fans (i dont mean listeners!)

-millennials

-proshippers

-PEOPLE WHO HATE DOGS OR CATS.

-posers

-annoying skinheads and metalheads

-ppl who are hating on other basic/alt ppl

-EVERY WEIRD south park fans

-g0re enjoyers

INTERACT!!

-slenderverse and creepypasta enjoyers!

-tcc (just dont talk abt killers like abt little kids and be normal)

-punks:3

-POST PUNK AND PUNK ROCK LISTENERS.

-indie, story and horror games fans

-KMFDM AND MSI LISTENERS (jimmy supporters dni lol)

-fictional school shooters enjoyers!!

-minors

-edgy people pleaseee

-PRIEST SIMULATOR OR KRYPTA FM POLISH FANS

-analogue horrors enjoyers

-kpop community (the same thing as tcc)

-artists!

-cosplayers hell yeah

-ranfren russian and polish fandom (BE NORMAL PLESSEEEEE)

-PPL WHO KNOWS ABT ALAN TUTORIAL

#Spotify #slenderverse #creepy pasta #zero day 2003 #zombiezzmwuah #starter pack #pokemon #intro post #silly #introduction

[ceresfromnationstates]

Character ref sheets: Henry H. Stickmin

A repost.

Henry Harison Stickmin

Nicknames: Hen, Hank, Sticks, Sticky, Sir Harison, HS_1214, Person of Interest #52763

Age: 28 (As of mid 2019.)

Birthplace: Carlsbad, NM

Current Location: Tucson, AZ

Nationality: Scottish-American

Physical description: Normal build, Blue eyes, (White, sunburnt skin), Shaven hair, Two scars on right forearm, Scar near upper abdomen.

Bio: It would seem that he's done with being a petty criminal. For now.

Just a normal dude like everybody else like him in his country.

No traumatic past, just a normal, carefree kid.

His parents divorced in late 2013, but they're still on good terms.

He's a bit Introverted, and as such is usually silent and doesn't feel all that comfortable out in public.

He considers himself an Agnostic.

Sometimes communicates using hand gestures or body language.

Doesn't like speaking in length, but can if he wants to.

Not a person to let bygones be bygones.

This particular Henry hails from a timeline where he hated toppats and other associated organized criminal groups.

Has substantial knowledge of other timelines, even remembers experiencing a temporal phenomenon well before the botched bank robbery attempt.

Frequently has vivid dreams (or nightmares) about bizarre things, and sometimes about things in the past or the other (less fortunate) timelines.

Has a diary to write down whatever happens in a day or what he's just experienced.

Has been keeping diaries well since mid 2016.

Knows about his extraordinary luck.

Doesn't know how many superntural abilities he possesses.

His knowledge about what happened in those timelines has made him pessimistic, a bit depressed, and hate himself for existing.

Has contemplated on the possibility that he might be living in a simulation, but has since dropped such "bogus crackpot conspiracy bullshit".

A light smoker. One pack is enough to last 2 weeks, and he rarely smokes.

His notoriety has died down since the beginning of 2019.

Sometimes asked if he is the real Henry Stickmin by passing pedestrians.

Has accounts on Reddit, Twitter and YouTube, all under the alias HS1214 and Twitter handle TheHenryHStickmin.

Has a close relationship with Ellie through their shared hardships.

He and Ellie bought a home together using both of their Gov't' monetary compensation.

Sold his old home too.

Both have lived normal daily lives, so far.

A novice home cook.

Has a large amount of friends/accomplices/confidants, ranging from high school and university classmates, members of the Goverment/Armed Forces, members of several police departments, and even an ex-CCC contractor, as well as from countries as far and obscure as Honduras, Australia, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Turkiye, etc.

Knows a lot of languages, most notably Spanish, Scottish Gaelic, French, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, German, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Russian to name a few.

Keeps a roster of his notable confidants/accomplices on paper.

Knows Charles and Dave only to some degree, despite having met them on more than one occasion.

Never ashamed of being a former petty criminal.

Has an H&K USP Compact and an M16A2.

Likes wearing the same set of basic clothing every day (T-shirt, Trousers, Boots)

Recently started wearing boots more often.

Has a taste for clothing, loves thrifting and milsurp gear.

Sometimes, he will wear all black, balaclava included.

Other than his scooter, he also owns a Honda CR-V, which both he and Ellie drive.

Keeps all of his trinkets somwehere in his bedroom, even his Teleporter.

Puts some of his "spoils of war" (a number of various items from previous criminal acts) on display in his parts of house in a show of bravado. Including an empty money bag and the bumper of a police cruiser, license plate included.

Now just trying to live a more righteous life and stay away from crime.

Watched one too much news on TV and is probably plotting something daring against the remnants of what was once the Toppat Clan.

At the same time he only wishes to live a normal life and probably reverse his past mistakes temporally.

Doesn't know whether the CCC is onto him or not.

Backstory

Masterpost | Charles >

#the henry stickmin collection #henry stickmin collection #thsc #thsc fanart #henry stickmin fanart #henry stickmin #thsc henry #thsc henry stickmin #character ref sheet #ceres hath spoken

[sonickitty]

Sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled lettuce, but: H.R. 9197.

My dash is covered with congrats to the lettuce, and that's great, and I don't mean to ruin anyone's day but H.R. 9197, AKA the "Stop the Sexualization of Children Act" is also a thing, and sponsored by 30 House Republicans. This bill aims specifically to "prohibit the use of Federal funds to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10, and for other purposes."

What does that means? Well, the bill specifically references:

Schools that receive federal funding

Libraries

School curriculums that teach LGBTQ+ topics

Drag Queen Story Hour

Content related to gender identity, sexuality, and masturbation

A definition for stripping

I also want to highlight the bill's definition of "sexually-oriented:"

The term ‘‘sexually-oriented material’’ means any depiction, description, or simulation of sexual activity, any lewd or lascivious depiction or description of human genitals, or any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects

So obviously this is nuts for a couple reasons.

All children have genitals, actually. Describing genitals is not sexual. They're just body parts.

Children masturbate. I did, and I have plenty of friends who did. Kids are gonna touch themselves; they've got body parts and they've got hands. They may also have questions about why they do this, and if their parents want to get them a LIBRARY BOOK that helps explain it, they should be able to. At the very least we should consider that an unenumerated right.

Plenty of kids have queer parents. That's part of their reality, and their education in school should reflect that reality.

Some additional talking points for you if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of debating this nonsense:

No one is currently "sexualizing" children using federal funds. It is not happening. A drag queen is not inherently sexual. Being gay, lesbian, trans, what have you, and talking or reading about identity is not inherently sexual. The people who are taking their kids to these programs don't have a problem with it. Why are we wasting time developing bills for imaginary problems when we are literally heading into a recession? When inflation is this high?

Sexuality is a human reality. The more we try to contain and restrain it, the less we all understand it. Kids are going to have questions about who they are and how they relate to the world (gender) and sexuality (their bodies). It is inevitable.

Bills like this are a waste of time, energy, and resources. This is about how people feel. They want to feel safe; they want to feel like they have control of their children's minds. That is not something that can be legislated, and you can't prove a feeling. You also can't prevent queer kids from growing up to be queer adults just by locking them in an ideological echo chamber - just ask my parents! This bill will not have any meaningful, prove-able impact on American life, except to further divide us along ideological lines, and further marginalize queer people and queer children.

#american politics #H.R. 9197 #don't say gay #us politics #homophobia #transphobia #long post #politics

[everygame]

Alter Ego (Apple Macintosh)

Developed/Published by: Peter J. Favaro / Activision Released: 27/04/1986 Completed: 21/11/2023 Completion: Died of old age in my bed, single, but a millionaire. Little Richard’s “Thinkin’ About My Mother” was playing on the radio as I played. “I swear I'm gonna love her… Yes, until the day I die.”

Alter Ego is a dated, sexist mess that basically doesn’t work at all.

I am so fond of it.

One of those games I found in my earliest forays on the internet, digging around for “abandonware” Alter Ego was immediately interesting to my teenage self–a game that let you live an entire life! Sure, it did it in a text-only, choose-your-own-adventure style, but I was already fiddling around with Infocom games and it wasn’t that many years out from owning an Amstrad CPC; the limitations had no effect upon the promise I imagined.

The interesting thing about when I played it then is that I remember playing it into Young Adulthood and never further. Until now I couldn’t remember why. Did I get bored? Was I overwhelmed with options?

Well, here’s a hint. Alter Ego was designed in 1986 by Peter J. Favaro, a psychologist who at the time was just 28 years old (which I am forced to admit is younger than I am now.) It becomes very quickly clear that past a certain point he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

But let’s take a step back here and discuss how Alter Ego actually works. Really it’s one of the earliest examples of a hypertext game (it actually predates Hypercard, if you can believe it.) You progress through seven stages of life from infancy to old age, and in each, you progress through a kind of… card map? choosing cards which each contain a vignette where you have to make a few decisions–if you’re a toddler, do you share your toys? If you’re a teenager, do you act sulky to your parents when they won’t let you do what you want? And then have that effect your stats and have time pass as a result.

As the game progresses, it adds several cards that you can flip over whenever you feel like it. A card that lets you try and meet people, or have experiences with your current partner, for example. A card that lets you make big purchases that you might have to pay off with a loan. 

The goal in Alter Ego is, simply, to… see what happens, and it’s here that the game’s highest pleasures and greatest mistakes are found. I decided to play this via a classic Mac emulator (as I believe that Favaro created this on a Mac) and although I originally played this on PC, the convergence of playing this via a system that I haven’t touched since I was at high school made the early sequences of this game a brush with nostalgia I haven’t felt before. The game is at its highest when you get to in some ways relive, but not quite, the past.

Like most people who play this (at least the first time) I chose to play it making the kind of decision I would make, as best I could, at the time I’d make them, and each experience was a moment of–oh, remember when something like this happened? 

It’s not perfect. Designed in 1986 by a young, white American, there’s this strange sense of re-living your life by way of “Leave It To Beaver” even if, like me, you only know the reference second or third hand. Personally I looked at it as asking: what if I’d gone to an American high school and lived my John Hughes dreams? The game was developed in the same era, I watched The Breakfast Club as a teenager around the same time I was messing around with abandonware and using classic Macs at school... it all intertwines.

And really, if the game had stayed there, I think it could have worked. A kind of… growing up simulator. Add lots of different vignettes, not all which play every time, and then the player plays until they leave college and the game goes “congratulations! You became a CORN FARMER. You married ONE wife and had SIX children. Your dog is called JEFF.”

Sadly, it does not do that, and it becomes pretty clear that Favaro didn’t really have a clear plan or concept for how adulthood was going to work. Childhood and Adolescence, after all, are fairly clear cut. You have to go to school, your parents take care of most other responsibilities. From a western, middle-class perspective, you’ll mostly have the same kind of experiences. As an adult however, all kinds of things can happen at all stages of life. 

It goes wrong immediately. You can go to college, but there’s no clear pay-off, you never seem to graduate! Jobs are just… something you have. Purchases and money quickly turn out to be totally meaningless (there may be a fail-state if you run out of money with huge debts, but I didn’t see it.)

The problem is that Favaro is forced to flatten everything into the most generic experiences once he reaches adulthood as the biggest decisions we make in our lives–who to partner with, our careers–cannot really interact with the canned vignettes of the main path. The box art is like “become a baseball player or a nun!” but even if you could the actual experience is “what if you were a white collar worker in the 1980s” as your nun deals with getting chewed out by their boss and refused a promotion or whatever.

In many ways it’s simply a fault of coming so early. A modern game in even just Twine can far more easily modify its text based on the information you’ve given it, and more easily offer events that either relate to your stats and relationships. In many other ways, it’s the fault of the culture that Favaro lived in and which, sadly, he could not see beyond. I played the “Male” version, and attitudes to women are beyond poor; many later vignettes are basically Penthouse letters (actually, another American reference I only know second hand, I swear) and one vignette featuring your discovery that a friend is gay is… er… not good.

It’s made even weirder by how… judgemental the game’s “narrator” (read: Favaro) is when it comments on your decisions. He definitely has an idea how you should be living your life, and hell mend you for not following it.

All that said, however, there’s still some amusement and possibly revealing moments to be had in the later stages of the game. I for one was surprised by my complete inability to maintain a steady relationship and how borderline panicked I got as I aged about it! It seems like it might be fairly random, which makes how unforgiving it is almost hilarious: I had been living with a woman for years, we’d invested in a company and became millionaires, at least according to one vignette I got on amazing with her son from another marriage… I popped the question and she said no because I was “untrustworthy.” Relationship over.

I probably should have indulged less in those Penthouse letters vignettes… It was… research. For this article. Yeah. Not just because playing this made me feel like a teenager again and the teenager I was would have made all those decisions.

Anyway. As much as Alter Ego doesn’t work, what stands out about it is what stands out about, say, an Infocom game. The text-based nature of it draws you in as deeply as a book, and it simply engages the imagination to make the game something more than it is. I can see Floyd in Planetfall, and I can see my weird picket-fences middle-America alternate life here. For weaving that sort of magic, it does deserve some respect. Just don’t take it too seriously.

Will I ever play it again? As I expressed above, I’ve only ever played the Male version, and the Female version is supposed to have a series of bug-fixes and less instant-death situations, but far, far more sexism. I might take a look at it, but even if I don’t I can imagine noodling on this again, at least as a mirror into memory.

Final Thought: Worth noting that you don’t have to take my word on this game, it can easily be played in-browser, which is probably fine if you don’t have a dense, multi-layered nostalgia attached to it. Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up a digital copy of exp. 2600, a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

#gaming #video games #games #txt #text #review #apple macintosh #mac #apple mac #alter ego #peter j favaro #activision #1986

[angel-beloved]

Please do not make fun of me. Thats about it. For me everything has a place, like shoes are not allowed in the house and only stay in speciffic places. I live by the rule - if its not broken, dont fix it, just like how a chair if it has four legs and it is not broken, you dont need to add 5th leg or break one of the legs. For example there are universal things like cars or cups that can be used for moving people or objects or in the case of the cups you can use it for coffee, tea and water. I hate americans them using the skull emoji on me as if I have said something horrendous for having opinion when I was never allowed to form opinions or criticial thinking and just said yes to everything blindly. It is not selfish and i do not care if it is selfish but people make fun of me which makes me feel worse since I have stuffed down my emotions and never expressed them since people make fun of me and laugh which makes me lash out as a result. I have severe ptsd, anxiety and depression which I take pills for since they ruin my social life and prevent me from verbally speaking which angers other people and makes some even abuse me. I have never cared about sex but I feel the same way about anime and games for girls in the form of dating simulators, if a girl has a boyfriend and he rails her, she is not allwoed to play a dating sim, since her need is fufilled. If a woman has a husbnd and he loves and rails her, her sexual and emotional needs are met, she doesnt need books or anime to satisfy her urges, she literally has an alive human being that cares about her and listenes to her. I have rarely had friends and some boys refused to sit or be near me and always said "thank god she went away" which really really hurt me, it got so bad that despite no longer bieng in school i cry when men/guys are near me since i have been told I am disgusting and ugly and had people throw things at me as if I am a trash can all of my life.

I do not want to ever have sex or try it with anyone since only whores get healthy male attention and guys like whores that scream like harpies and manipulate and not me and I do not even want to be liked, since people treated me like a tumor and bullied me I seem to "fall in love" with anyone who treats me neutrally and doesnt make me cry on purpose or makes me feel afraid or threatened since I have bad emotional regulation/hormonal disbalance and cant stop crying and people took advantage of that, now I am numb and refuse to be near guys since like I said, they only like whores and they creep me out. For me needs have a purpose, and if your needs are fufilled, you do not need to fufill them, its like eating, if you eat too much your stomach will hurt, if you dont eat your stomach will hurt again, and i have to satisfy my self on my own despite hating sex because guys are creepy cruel and suck and I am afraid I will be hated and do not feel deserving of love which makes me hate the whores even more, becuase normal girls are rare and most girls in high school just cursed everyone and hurt them for fun, it doesnt help that i hate parties and am a huge introvert, it hurts hwen someone mentions that my nerdy hobbies are for male attention when the only male attention i got was being told to die and that i am not good for anything and that i am disgusting and at least they are not me and laughing at me and commenting constantly on what i do which made me severely anxious and develop a stutter. If a need is fufilled why do you fufill it? You already have sex? Is your sex life that horrible that you need to take away from someone who literally read erotica in order to not killthemselves because you have actual people to hang out with and verbally be listened to, while no one cared about my problems, no one and I wasn't even hugged or listened to and eventually broke down. High school was hell and I can't move on and small things like criticism or that break me down

Uh-huh. Dunno who this is at all buut I'll set things straight. Keep in mind, I'm not sugarcoating shit or being as kind as I usually am because this ask/rant was pretty much bitching and whining about a lot of stupid shit and I don't have time for that. You're not getting my damn sympathy, not even a damn pinch of it. Straight, honest opinion. Like you gave me yours.

Long post under the cut, trigger warnings for Bullying, pretty privilege, Sexual Assault and sex + a loot of cursing on my end.

I didn't need your damn life story. I never fucking asked for it. I would've been nicer if I asked or if you were someone I knew, but you instead decided to dump this all on me, so here we go. Having a fucking privilege to be pretty like me according to standards is fucking absolute BULLSHIT. It's literal hell to have "pretty privilege" and being afraid of potentially being SAed again or hit on for no damn reason other than "she looks hot and she might sleep with me!" Don't call other women whores for getting the male gaze because you didn't, having the male gaze isn't always fuckin ideal, you know.

I was, you probably didn't guess, bullied. I was bullied to hell and back. Bullied and nobody helped me. Men bullied me, but I didn't hate them. Because they're guys. They're known for sucking ass sometimes. Plus high-school? Can't expect them to act right. Because it's high-school. If you’re still stuck on that and base everything around high-school, go see a damn therapist or something instead of talking to a random girl trying to have fun and have a family on the internet (that I don't have IRL, at least not a good one, mind you.)

I get it, trauma fucks you over, 100%. But you don't put that on others to make yourself feel better, because it makes you look like an absolute asshole, nor can you use your mental illness as an excuse to be an asshat. I have anxiety, and the signs of PTSD and BPD, but I'm not hating on good people or others living their life. If anything, I'm fucking hating the ones hating on others or me for no goddamn reason. I don't delete comments of hate, I respond to them. Not because I want drama, but because I want to protect my FAMILY. I draw the fucking line at messing with the only people who have showed me love and kindness since I was fucking born. You also can't blame all women or say all women are whores. Because you'll be shocked to find A LOT odf women aren't hoes trying to get laid, but ladies living their lives, it is not all about you and your struggles.

And now the final things I will address. Selfshipping/Fictional dating (+fictonal crushes) is a coping mechanism. I have boyfriends (multiple, I'm poly), but I still selfship and hell, so do they. Alexis is a grown married woman who self-ships. Addie self-ships. Selfshipping comforts you, and you can't be mad at people who have fictional crushes or F/Os BECAUSE LIKE YOU HAVE, IT'S A DAMN HOBBY. A FUCKING HOBBY, IT'S A DAMN HOBBY. THAT'S ALL IT IS. You don't get to dictate what people do just because you can't get fucked and those "metaphors" didn't help and just pissed me off more, you were pretty much asking for this rant, "hun".

TL;DR of this post, Your arguments were bullshit and basically you throwing a hissy fit over your life sucking when you basically shit on a ton of people to make yourself feel better, seek some real help if you think it was a good idea to dump all this on someone you don't know, go away and never touch this blog again. Thank you.

~ Sincerely, Angel.

#long post #tw sex mention #tw sa mention #tw bullying #tw cursing #ask to tag if needed

[halyconicabditory]

P3: Nationality/Language

The whir of the toilet flushing in the background blended with the sink, flowing water crashing with my toothbrush and I stared into the mirror. I looked into the mirror. It was a blank stare. Like an endless staring contest with someone, I could not figure it out. A constant crisis of my identity. Who am I? Suddenly It was quiet, the water blended into a white noise that became nonexistent. I just stared, stared, and stared. Until I blinked. Reality had resumed and I dragged the toothpaste onto my toothbrush and continued getting ready. This was my morning routine for years in my later middle school and early high school years. Wake up, go to the bathroom, stare at myself, get dressed, and go to school. I did not know who I was, and it troubled me for a while. I felt as if my clothes and my skin were just me acting in a weird simulated video game. Who am I?

My loving parents could not be as different as they were similar. They both loved the same music, having duplicate copies of Santana and Enya, and Michael Jackson on CDs that piled up in our outdated entertainment center under our TV. They both had the most interesting lives before meeting and creating a life together, and me. A half-white, half-Asian kid living in a white suburban area. My mom had taught me her culture and her language as I grew up in a different, Americanized setting. What was normal to me was weird and strange to my friends and teachers. Superstitions, foods, and ways of acting had made me alienated from the people around me. It was not normal to take your shoes off every time you stepped into someone's house or to take them off before stepping onto a rug when it was reading time in your kindergarten classroom. It was not normal to feel guilty if you did not finish every crumb left on your plate due to generational fallacy. It sounds ridiculous. How do you not know what you look like? It was difficult. I was half -Asian, half-white. There weren't mixed kids like me in my school. They were either all white, and there were 5 other Asian kids. the other Asian kids acted a lot more "Asian" than I did, so I assumed I was white. I felt so alone in these ideologies and experiences. However growing up, I took on Americanized ideas that my mom did not agree with. The idea of Halloween freaked her out, and hanging out with friends on school days was just blasphemous to her. There were days when my mom would work late which would excite me because the only time I was allowed to watch Disney channel was when my dad was home and my mom would not find out. These were the subtle occasions and nit-picky cultural differences that made me want to break away from my mom's side and the culture that was taught to me at such a young age. I had felt so excluded from the normal American lifestyle that I wanted so badly. An American culture that I thought I had fit in so well.

I grew up visiting both sides of my family. 24-hour flights at the age of 6, only to be reminded of how American I was and how I was so strange to the people I could understand so well. It went hand in hand with winter road trips to my aunts upstate and occasional family dinners at my uncle's. The constant appraisals and jokes on how I look so much like my mother and nothing like my father. I had his nose but lacked the blue eyes and blonde hair he carried. I did not understand what they were talking about. In an ignorant and clueless way, I thought they were all joking. I truly believed I looked and acted like an all-American girl. I sure acted that way, I would talk back to my parents, I would fight over bedtimes and I would beg for Mcdonald's. In these ways, I was treated like an American child, so I believed I looked like one. It wasn't my fault. There were no iPhones and selfies and I was limited to the amount of Asian representation in the media. It was the early 2000s. My skin was as light as my father's, and my eyes were squinted like my mother's, but I wasn't looking into my own eyes, I saw what was visible to me, and that was the color of a fair light peach tone. It did not have a hue of a beautiful yellow like my mother's. I was oblivious to things I could not understand yet. These comments from opposing family members and classmates were so odd to me. The adults were nicer, but I still dealt with playful racism that was disguised as racism. I lived through this until I could understand what it was. It started to sneak up on me. I was dealing with the hardships of puberty and emotions that were growing by the hour. I was feeling so sad and developed a deep insecurity.

I didn't know who I was, and I didn't like how I was being perceived by everyone else. I had no one to relate to, except for one girl, adopted from china and we were great friends. Or so I thought, It took me a while to understand that maybe I was looking for more friends who were similar to me, and overlooked all her qualities and how she was ultimately a bad friend. I was limited in my friends, It was a mix of the casual racism in my community and how I was also extremely shy and introverted. I didn't talk to a bunch of people but I had my school friends, friends who I would sit next to in class and walk in the hallways with, but never after school, and the ones I did hang out with, it was never lasting, I went through cycles of friend groups until I felt comfortable. I spent a great deal of my time online. I kept headphones on and spent my free time listening to music, watching movies, reading books, and having online discussions. I had gotten really into a lot of alternative 90s 10's music and new wave stuff from the 80s. Not a lot of people around me listened to that stuff. I spent my free time doing theater and found a great community in that, that was so accepting of everyone. This carried onto high school. Through our fall play, "She Kills Monsters" set in the 90s we were able to collaborate on a playlist that went along with the show that introduced me to my friends with similar taste in music. This helped me find a group of people who we grew up with sharing interesting and helped shape each other, where we felt the most comfortable. I started spending most of my time with them and they became a second family. I found an identity along with them and they helped me be more comfortable with who I was, where I was from, and what I looked like. 

I am not delusional anymore. I know what I look like, and throughout the past 5 years, I have accepted and become more comfortable with who I am. I am American, I am an American girl, but I carry along with me a history of culture and language that I keep special towards my mother and her community. It sort of is a double life, or my mom's side is like a not-so-secret side of me that I have. I can only strive in my future to understand more than I know because it is never too late and you can never stop learning. The people in my life are uber-specific, and it makes me who I am.

[nahasdigital]

Undertale sex visual novel

#Undertale sex visual novel series#

Although the game initially appears to be a lighthearted dating simulator, it is in fact a psychological horror game that extensively breaks the fourth wall. Doki Doki Literature Club! features a non-traditional plot structure with multiple endings and unlockable cutscenes with each of the main characters. The story is told from the perspective of a high school student who reluctantly joins the school's literature club on the insistence of his best friend from his childhood, and is given the option to woo three of its four female members. The game was initially distributed through itch.io, and later became available on Steam. You can pre-order the game here.Doki Doki Literature Club! ( DDLC) is a 2017 freeware visual novel developed by American independent game studio Team Salvato for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. This review was based on a copy of Live A Live provided by publisher Nintendo. In the end, I don’t think Live A Live’s draggy final act sinks the game as a whole, but my initial spark of excitement had faded a bit by the time those final-final true ending credits rolled. By comparison, I probably spent 6 or 7 hours trundling around the Middle Ages map. That’s disappointing, because the first two-thirds of Live A Live were so well-paced, with each chapter serving up a perfect 2-to-3-hour movie-length story that didn’t overstay its welcome. The Middle Ages map is not that big, and frankly, by the end of the game I was very ready to say goodbye to it.Īdmittedly, Live A Live does come to a properly epic conclusion which ties together all the game’s disparate timelines and stories nicely, but in the hours before that climax, I felt my attention waning.

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And it doesn’t end once you’ve collected everyone, as you’re pretty much required to grind through a series of dungeons if you want to be powerful enough to take on the final boss. You actually spend two chapters running around the Middle Ages map – a first that’s already more drawn out than any other chapter in the game, and a second in which you gather all the party members from the first seven chapters. Random battles, something (thankfully) largely missing from the rest of Live A Live, are suddenly introduced, as is heavy amounts of backtracking. Of course, we’ve seen this “knights and princesses” fantasy setting countless times before, and the gameplay becomes more traditional as well. Unfortunately, after you play through Live A Live’s first seven chapters, an eighth time period, the Middle Ages, is unlocked, and this when the game takes a turn for the humdrum. More than one chapter features no XP or leveling and the Distant Future doesn’t force any sort of combat on you until the very end.Īt this point, you may have impression that I loved Live A Live, and indeed, I was pretty wowed by the first two-thirds of the game. That said, while Live A Live is ostensibly an RPG, Square wasn’t afraid to completely cast off the genre’s trappings when it suited them. Sections of the game that rely heavily on combat do tend to drag a bit at times. Honestly, the system isn’t that deep, with most battles not being particularly challenging. All use the same combat mechanics, which combine an Active-Time-Battle-style turn system with a grid-based battlefield you can position your party on. There are some things all of Live A Live’s chapters share. Most unique of the bunch, the Distant Future is essentially a horror-tinged sci-fi visual novel. Present Day is modeled after fighting games with the player taking on a series bosses with Street-Fighter-style intros. The Wild West almost feels like tower defense as the focus is on boobytrapping a town to fend off bandits. Edo Japan tasks you with stealthily infiltrating a castle packed with Metroidvania-style shortcuts and secrets. It isn’t just the tone of the stories that change, each chapter toys with how the game play as well. Prehistory is a silent slapstick comedy (with a surprising number of sex jokes), Imperial China is an ode to kung fu legends and movies, Near Future is your classic giant robot anime setup, the Distant Future is a dark mashup of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien, and so on. Each of the Live A Live’s time periods offers its own unique tone. Each chapter tells its own independent story and they can be played through in any order, although the meta story of the mysterious ultimate evil you’re fighting ties them all together. Live A Live isn’t your typical 90s-era JRPG, and it immediately sets itself apart from its contemporaries by letting you choose from seven chapters, each taking place in a different time period - Prehistory, Imperial China, Edo Japan, the Wild West, Present Day, the Near Future, and the Distant Future.

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[chomelton76]

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[thanksjro]

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

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

So.

This is a little different than what I usually do.

Clearly.

God, how did we even get here?

Oh, I remember.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

Haha, I doubt it.

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

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

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

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

For loving his child.

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

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

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

No. Not at all, actually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s just a shame that I don’t care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As if women are property to be owned.

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

We’re 17.5 minutes into this film.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t be fucking serious.

ANYWAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which made me groan aloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right???

RIGHT??????????

RIGH-

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Sheeran does not survive this experience.

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

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

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

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

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

So they try it again.

This time it works, sort of.

At the very least, he’s left now.

Tail fell off, though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judy doesn’t count.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For about 20 seconds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ratchet’s fine, by the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We still have another hour of this movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nope, that doesn’t happen either.

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

Repeatedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being advocated for by Optimus Goddamn Prime.

We still have another 50 minutes of this movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, right, because ~girl~.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y’know.

Like a vast, predatory bird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feminist icon Megatron?

Feminist icon Megatron.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congrats on your first murder, Sam.

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

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

In tow.

In tow-

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

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

Then Bumblebee talks and he’s fucKING BRITISH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s where they leave us.

IT TOOK THREE PEOPLE TO WRITE THIS SCHLOCK.

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

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

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

What a mess.

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

COMING SOON:

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

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

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

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

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

[argumentl]

The Freedom of Expression - Ep 44 'Guitar Center' preparing to file for bankruptcy & Urgent announcement.

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27th Dec 2020 (Sun) 23:30~ The Freedom of Expression LIVE #3 Live broadcast.

K: Hi, this is Dir en grey's Kaoru with this week's episode of The Freedom of Expression. Joe, Tasai, welcome. Well, I feel kinda attatched to the topic this week. Joe, please could you..?

J: Yes, its sad news, but.. America's largest musical instrument retail chain 'Guitar Center' is preparing to file for bankruptcy. According to the New York Times, its possible that the chain might go bankrupt due to business difficulties. The chain is the biggest musical instrument chain in America, and has around 300 stores nationwide. Taken over in 2007, the business struggled hard with the switch to online sales, but was pretty successful in two and a half years, and up until this February had been increasing sales for ten quarters in a row. However, because Guitar Center is dependent on in-store sales, the business took a huge hit from the coronavirus pandemic. Sales for the most recent financial year were declared to be $2.3 billion, but the chain has $1.3 billion in debt, and its credit rating was downgraded in April. According to the New York Times, the chain fell behind with interest payments of $45 million this month for the first time ever, and although they have been given 32 hours, there is a chance they will default on thier debts. According to specific sources, Guitar Center have been in contact with thier creditors, will file for bankruptcy within the month, and are considering a plan to withdraw at the start of 2021. 

K: It says within the year, right?

J: Oh, yes, sorry, within the year.

K: The first time I went to this store was about 23 or 24 years ago, when we went to America for recording. We were taken there..me and the other members, but it was so huge!

J: It is huge, yeh.

K: It was in LA, but I never relised that type of place existed.

J: Its Hollywood, right?

K: Yeh.

T: How big was it? Like how many guitars?

K: It was as big as a Japanese supermarket.

T: Ehh?

J: Its as big as a wearhouse, isn't it?

K: Well, yeh, it looks like that from outside too.

T: Was it like the instrument shops you see in Tokyo?

K: No, no, no. They normally don't have drum kits and stuff assembled in stores here, but they do there.

T: Ehh? Thats really big.

J: It is. So Kaoru, did you go there and test out the guitars?

K: I have done. But back then, I didn't really feel any preferences as for the instruments, I just got the feel of the place. I was just like, 'Wow, Im in Guitar Center!'. It was a great feeling seeing all the different instruments.

J: The Americans try out the instruments pretty enthusiastically, don't they?

K: They were really good! haha

J: Right?

K: The people playing...I gradually just stopped trying stuff out there.

J, T: Hahha.

K: But when we go on tours and the equipment breaks or something, we have been to Guitar Center to get replacements before. So if it disappears, we could be in a bit of trouble on tours.

J: Thats right.

T: Yeah.

K: Its a bit risky ordering stuff online to arrive at the venue in time.

T: Of course.

K: If you go to the store you can just get what you need and leave.

J: With 300 stores, it seems like there are quite a lot in big cities, so if anything happened on tour, you could just drop into one of the stores..

K: Yeh yeh yeh.

J: And they would have what you wanted.

T: America is amazing. It says here they worked hard with the move to online sales, but don't you need to test-play a guitar before buying? Is it ok to buy online?

K: Nah, but people buy everything online these days.

J: Yeah.

T: I kinda imagined you would go to the store, play the instrument, and then decide you want to buy it.

K: Well, yeh. But I didn't test out my first guitar before buying it.

J: Oh, is that so?

K: It was a specific model that was sold out, so I had to reserve it..

T: I see.

K: And pay for it in advance, then wait till it arrived.

J: Ehh? But you knew what type of guitar you were getting though, right?

K: Yeh, I knew what shape it would be and stuff, but its cause that was my first guitar.

T: By the way, how old were you when you bought your first guitar?

K: Around first year of high school.

T: Ahh, I see.

J: Ahh. Eh?! First year of high school when you bought your first guitar?

K: Yeh. I started playing a bit earlier than that using borrowed guitars.

T: So, you thought, 'I want one', and bought your first one, right?

J: I bought my first electric guitar when i was in Junior High school. Everyone starts a band at that age, don't they? And I thought, if Im gonna do it, then I should be on guitar, right? With drums you really need space at home to set them up, so I couldn't buy a set. I bought a kind of cheap guitar/amp set for beginners. But I couldn't play the F chord properly, it was pretty frustrating.

T: This will make me look clueless, but Kaoru, how many guitars have you actually bought?

K: I havn't really..

T: Oh, not many?

K: No, I havn't actually bought that many...Like 10? I usually have them made through contracts with ESP.

J: But by now you have signature models and stuff, right?

K: Yeah. I mean, I will buy a guitar myself if I want to play it at home or something.

J: Ahh. Well, its kinda sad seeing these musical instrument stores disappear.

K: I've always had the impression that musical instruments don't sell in large numbers anyway.

J: But..well, i've done some interviews in relation to this, and it seems like musical instruments have been selling quite well during covid. Especially in America, it seems like there was a lot of people in the countryside playing guitar at home. But as for sales, they would probably buy online, especially during covid when you couldn't go to the store in person, I think some of the stores would have been closed. So even if online sales have increased...like with Guitar Center, if you have that many stores..there will be the burden of maintenance costs, staff wages, rent, and somehow the debt will grow and grow. But if online buying continues to develop in this way, we might see an increasing trend of people who play guitar without having tested it first.

K: Hmm, yeh, they won't be trying them out first. ???*1

J, T: Yeah, thats right.

J: What are your thoughts on this, Kaoru? About the concept of a test-run disappearing?

K: I wonder whether young people will still buy guitars. I think the people buying them will be like wealthy people etc. But I don't think young people these days are that interested in buying a guitar and starting a band. If they do become interested in musical instruments, I think it will be more and more online sales.

J: I wonder how thats gonna go, with the guitar makers and musical instrument shops struggling..

K: But even if guitars sell, I wonder if there is anyone who will still buy amps?

J: Ahh, I see.

K: Young people these days don't really buy amps, do they? There are amp simulators now, so you can buy one of these machines and input the data digitally, and then just use a regular speaker.

J: And thats just enough, right?

K: Well, you can do it like that, yeh. And you can simulate lots of different types of amp, so you can get specific sounds. People probably aren't buying the real thing these days.

J: But the subtleness of the sound is different, isn't it?

K: Its totally different.

J: Right? Its completely different. So its...Well, for peope like us, we've heard the sound coming through amps at live houses, we've been hearing that kind of sound for years, but for young people, in one sense a different sound is...

K: (*Kaoru talking about amps/simulators. I don't know enough about amps to really get what he means here, sorry!*)

J: Ah, so if they start thinking there is only one choice, rather than listening to the old types and making a reasoned decision?

K: Yes. So even now, if you go to a Japanese musical instrument shop, there used to be amps all lined up, like Marshall or Fender etc. Now, there are no amps, but many types of simulator machines. You can just buy them and take them straight home. It seems like they sell well. So if you find one guitar that is easy to play, and you have one of these simulators, you can make all sorts of sounds.

J: Yeah.

T: I see.

J: Like usally, if the neck is different, the responding sound will differ, but you will be able to compensate for that with a simulator, so..

K: I don't think many people do that.

J: Oh, right.

K: But I don't know.

Kami: Um, can I ask something? Um, I've played guitar before. But I got blisters straight away, and my wrist started to hurt. Does that happen to you too, Kaoru?

T, J: Haha

T: Thats a grest question to ask a guitarist, Kami.

K: Well, during recording...or like when recording something all in one go, it does start to hurt, haha.

T: Haha

J: If you are playing non-stop? But hey, I wonder how this situation will look in 10 or 20 years?

K: There'll be no music stores like Tower Records etc by then.

J: Yeh, yeh.

T: Hmm, yeh.

J: Old guys will be sad. 

K: But even with cars and stuff, there is that kind of rental service now, isn't there?

T: Carsharing?

K: Yeah. So won't car showrooms eventually disappear?

J: I think so. And with clothes, there's a high possibility that stores will start to disappear.

K: Oh, now you mention clothes, do you remember that online thing we talked about before where they put the clothes that you like onto your photo?

J: Yeah, yeah.

K: I had thought about doing that, but the site has shut down!

J: Ah, its over?

K: Yeah, so I couldn't do it.

J: Oh, thats a shame.

T: It is.

J: So many businesses have been hit by covid, I think the view that we see before us will be a lot different by next year, or the year after. Getting aound this will have an effect on the way we live or express ourselves, I feel.

T: I lived on an island in Kagoshima when I was little. We had a Shamisen in our house, it had a kind of plastic stick to play it.

J: Can you play, Tasai?

T: No, not at all. I only ever just picked it up sometimes for fun.

J: You could show us a Kagoshima folk song to finish.

T: Haha, no no no. Why?

J: I don't know. To wrap it up?

T: No, it wouldn't wrap it up, haha. 

K: In that case, Joe, you should play guitar.

J: Lets perform together sometime!

K: No way!

T: Joe!

K: No thanks, haha.

J: I'd gain prestige by playing with Kaoru from Dir en grey. There would be no merit for you though, Kaoru.

T: I'd go numb, I wouldn't be able to play at all if I were you. haha. Playing next to a pro.

J: Well, what can I say? I have big dreams. No, but if we did play together, I'd practice, I'd give it my best.

T: Of course.

K: Well, yeh.

J: If, for example, we played together on this youtube channel next year, I'd be serious about practicing.

Kami: I'll do it too.

J: Kami too?!

K: Hahaha

J: Would you, Kami?

Kami: I would.

K: But your hands would start to hurt.

T: Right.

Kami: I'd practice.

J: You'll practice? In that case, we could have Tasai on Shamisen too, and all play together.

T: Shamisen is ok? Well, I guess its a stringed instrument like guitar.

J: Lets announce something.

*...silence...*

K: Hahahaha

J: No-ones getting on board with this?

K: hahaha

J: Oh, nevermind then! haha.

K: Well, if the opportunity arises, right?

J: Yes, if the opportunity arises.

K: Ok, we'll finish here for this week. Please subscribe. Thank you very much.

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27th Dec 2020 (Sun) 23:30~ The Freedom of Expression LIVE #3 Live broadcast.

*1,2 Couldn't catch.

* Feel free to inform if it looks like I've misinterpreted some of the amp/simulator talk.

#dir en grey #the freedom of expression #tfoe #kaoru #薫

[avlillustrations]

I've been seeing a bunch of Yandere Simulator redesigns on Youtube and decided to jump on the bandwagon... kinda. I'm not really redesigning as much as I'm tweaking the parts of the designs I don't personally like. Which isn't much to be honest, and some of them I'm only changing to stay true to the idea of a redesign. Anyway, be prepared. I'm about to rant here. You have been warned

okay, so first off the character designs aren't bad. In fact I'd be as bold to say they're probably the best thing in this garbage game. My only real problem is the uniforms. I don't mean the argument about the uniforms in the game being unrealistic for a high school (It's a stupid fantasy game made by a American weabo, at this point realism doesn't really matter). I'm talking about how he customizes the uniforms to suit the rivals and students to show their personalities.   Which isn't a bad thing. When designing a character you want their clothes to reflect who they are as a person. The problem is that it's really hard to do things like that when putting your character in a school uniform. Especially, a sailor style uniform. And this is where I have a problem with the uniforms in this game, because Yandere dev.'s solution to this is those ABSOLUTLY TACKY ASS SOCKS. They're so UGLY and they're so blatantly eye catching that it draws the eye away from the character's face. Which, considering the type of characters in this stupid game, is where you want your audiences focus to be. Literally, just get rid of those socks and the character design gets 100% better. Or a better solution, change the uniforms. It's not about realism, but I believe a four piece uniform would be much easier to work with when showcasing a characters personality. Think about it. Skirt, shirt, vest, and blazer. You could replace the vest and blazer with a sweater vest or sweater. The student could choose between three lengths of skirts, different shirts etc..

And I'm starting to lose my train of thought so I'm going to move on the actual rival redesign's. First of all I'm only redesigning the student rivals. Don't really feel like touching the ditzy nurse or skanky teacher. Plus, as much as it pains me to say this, their designs are solid. I can't really find anything to criticize about them. You know besides the obvious uncomfortableness of having adult women be a rival in the first place, but, eh anime game. There has been worse. Now in order, starting with Osana's design. Obviously, the first thing I got rid of was the FUCKING SOCKS. Also removed the ribbon from her hair and turned it into a charm for a charm bracelet(she's already got scrunchies in her hair the ribbon was just unnecessary). The bracelet itself was a gift from senpai, ribbon charm from Raibaru and the kitten charm from senpai's younger sister. I wanted to simplfy her design a bit so I got rid of the hair gradient, made her hair a more natural orange color, and changed her eye color. Also in the spirit of keeping it simple I just gave her a polo shirt, neck ribbon, and the shortest skirt length.

okay, now onto Amai. First off,  Amai's design is one of my favorites... just please get rid of the thigh highs please? Like I don't mind her candycane stripped socks with her casual clothes just not the uniform(though it's not as bad as Osansa's). Especially since the apron and bandana are good enough to give us an insight to her character. So onto the changes, which aren't much. All I really did was change her socks (kept a little blue stipe as a reference to her old ones), different uniform with a sweater vest so it was different from Osana, and for the sake of redesigns I just made her a little chubby. Next rival redesign will be Kizana. I'll give my thoughts on her in game design when I post it. Until then feedback will be apprciated.

#Animevamps art #yandere sim rivals #yandere simulator #character redesign #osana najimi #Amai yan sim

[fascination-street-writing]

Sober to Death | Teenage Au! Risotto Nero x Reader

Under the shroud of the moon, your shadows become ghosts

Content Warnings: Explicit Sexual Content (Not Underage), Mentions of Suicide, Implied Child Abuse, Underage Smoking, & Emotional Manipulation (Unhealthy Relationship Dynamics)

It is the summer of 1988. You have spent the past few days cooped within the shelter of your home to evade the arid, sweltering heat; even the spigots are dry. You long for autumn leaves.

The smouldering faces of painted women stare at you and watch, still, as you glide the twin blades of your mother’s cooking shears through pulp paper. She had promised you for weeks now to buy a new set of crafting scissors for you; your last pair disappeared, seemingly out of thin air. Your father insists that it was the work of garden fairies. You suspect interfamilial thievery.

A dollop of hot glue pools beneath the tip of the gun. A string not unlike a cotton candy fiber chases the glue gun upon separation; a scar on the back of your hand prompts you to not touch the simulant gemstone-encrusted tool. You press the trimmed image of a smoking model against the glue. Turquoise glitter rains down from the bottle and coaxes over the greyscale photograph. Plastic diamonds the color of honey, a magenta feather streaked in silver – you blow over the page of your scrapbook and grin.

The smooth voice of Mina Mazzini echoes from the turntable atop your dresser. Paper trimmings fall to the carpeted floor. Glitter sticks to the palm of your hand. Christy Turlington joins Isabella Rossellini and a nameless American model – the seventeenth page of your third portfolio is complete. You pride yourself in this hobby of collecting the images of women who have been frozen in time by glamour shots and risqué poses. Perhaps immortality truly means to be plastered inside of a teenage girl’s fashion scrapbook and hidden beneath her bed. You fancy yourself a curator – a conservator.

You kick back your feet and breathe in the perfume of the candle that burns on your bedside table. Instead of a pair of proper scissors, you mother had returned from the craft store with the caramel-scented candle. She is, admittedly, a bit forgetful at times.

You hear his fingers rapping against the pane of your window before you notice his presence: a pair of black-sclera eyes with red irises peer into your bedroom. You blow out the candle and turn off the overhead light. He is patient as he waits for you to slip on your Mary Jane’s. The bulge of a cigarette carton peaks out from the pocket of his torn jeans.

Through the opened window, Risotto Nero wordlessly extends his hand to you: yours is dwarfed by his calloused grasp. He leads you beyond your father’s wilting flower garden – you dance over marigolds, asters, and tithonias, careful not to step on the blossoms that suffer in this Sicilian drought.  

Under the shroud of the moon, your shadows become ghosts. Cicadas and katydids sing. Risotto’s brooding, silent form matches your pace as walk towards your rendezvous place. Your legs have memorized the journey: up the hill, past the schoolyard, down the spiraling path behind the market, to the park across from the shoreline.

The wooden plank of the swing creaks beneath your weight. You grip the rusted chains and push, only enough so that your body sways, suspended above the ground. Risotto sits beside you, stagnant. Ashen earthiness wafts through the cloud that forms before his face. The smell of cheap tobacco is so strong that you forget how lovely the scent of the caramel candle felt in the well of your lungs.

The cigarette slips from his fingers to yours. Hot to the touch, you bring it to your lips and breathe in. “Mio padre said he could look at your bike, by the way,” you say to your companion, the first words of the night thus far. He takes back the cigarette. “He says he’ll let you work for him or something, just so you don’t have to pay him back for the new tires.”

He hums with the filter stuck between his teeth. “Thank you,” he mumbles through smoke.

You smile and nod. He had been without his bicycle for nearly a month now, ever since one of the boys in his tenement building slashed its tires. Risotto’s parents had refused to replace them, insistent that their son had purposefully dug his own grave with the older, less reputable residents of their complex – it was his responsibility to lie down and bury himself alive.

If not for his cousin Barolo’s intervention in the matter, you thoroughly believed that your friend would have been thrown out onto the streets. The Nero’s were a temperamental pair, to be sure. You have lost track of just how many times Risotto has come to school with a bruise on his cheek or a busted lip – how many times you have met him at your window in the dead of the night, to be greeted by the aftermath of a blackeye: and always, he blamed the welts on fights with his neighbors, but you knew better. To him, it had never mattered what his parents did – so long as he has his cousin. And you.

His mother and father terrify you, and rightfully so. And yet, a part of you is grateful for their negligence; it means that you have the chance to spend more time with their son, to whisk him away from the strain of his household. You are beholden to the burning in your legs because it reminds you that walking to the park takes longer than a simple bike ride. Though few words are ever spoken between you and Risotto, you savor every moment spent in his company.

His actions tell you that he is appreciative enough of your presence. He drops the spent cigarette into the carton and pulls out a second; the flare of the match glistens in his eyes. You hide the frown that creeps upon your face behind a curtain of hair.

A nicotine high is nothing more than a nasty headache and an upset stomach – you do not enjoy smoking nearly as much as he does.

Although, you have gotten rather good at pretending.

Insegnante di Scuola jailed, charged in Manslaughter

Sordi Fellini, 32, was arrested at his home after Polizia Municipale di Palermo said he fled the scene of the 1:50 a.m. accident. Fellini, insegnante di lettere for Istituto Gonzaga, has been charged for driving while intoxicated, manslaughter, and leaving the scene of an accident involving a death.

Dead at the scene of the 1:50 a.m. wreck was Barolo Nero, 20.

The dried leaves crunch beneath your feet. The wind pulses against your legs, pressing your pleated skirt taut to your stocking-clad skin. There is a certain bitterness that comes with walking home from school, alone. The autumn air becomes more frigid. The journey, longer. The weight of textbooks in the bookbag slung across your back is far heavier.

More than anything, you miss Risotto. You are reminded of him every moment that you catch yourself staring, longingly, at his empty desk in each classroom. Though you consciously leave a seat open for him next to you at your lunch table, as if he might sit down at any moment, you know that it is for naught.

You were not invited to the funeral, because there never was one. Barolo was cremated and scattered along the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Signore Fellini, your estranged literature teacher, has been stripped of his certification – not that a degree would do him any good in prison.

And Risotto disappeared.

His bicycle has become something of a centerpiece in your father’s workshop: a drying rack for freshly cleaned hand towels. Each night that you find yourself hovering over your father – who is typically hunched in his desk chair – to press a kiss to his cheek and summon him for a meal, the bicycle taunts you. It is the emblem of your missing friend.

Tonight, you do not enter the workshop. A detour to the park has set you three hours behind. Your mother greets you from her place at the kitchen sink with a worrying tone. You have missed dinner, though truthfully, you are not hungry. Her water-pruned hands reach for you, yet you bat her away and retreat to your bedroom. Homework assignments wait to be completed. You strip yourself of your uniform and settle for a nightgown.

The evening sky has not yet settled to dusk – the cicadas and katydids no longer sing, for summer has passed and taken everything else with her: the drought, the wilted flowers, and Risotto. Still you sleep, a hand clutched to your chest, as if the meager act of cupping your aching heart might alleviate the dull rhythm that pulsates through you, even while you dream of cigarettes and torn jeans.

And when you open your eyes, jostled awake by the rattling of the window, you know that he has come back, perhaps compelled by devotion. Or perhaps, after all this time, it is that he could no longer bare the self-driven deprival of your affection.

In your room, Risotto’s battered shoes sink into the plush carpet. You close the window and draw the blinds shut. His gaze falls to the record player, then to a neglected crafting toolbox – scattered laundry on the floor, a framed watercolor painting of lilies: everywhere except for you. Your mouth opens, but words fail you. The questions that you have wanted to ask no longer matter because he is here now.

As you study his face, you wonder if his cheeks were always this gaunt. His fists are clenched. You pull him into your arms, crossing a line that you have only ever fantasized of toeing. His hands raise to your spine after a moment of hesitation. Fingernails pry into the thin fabric of your nightgown – he grips you tightly, like he fears that you might drift away if he pulls back. You feel the quaking of his shoulders before his tears fall and collect against the crook of your neck, to pool in the cavity of your collarbone.

Vulnerability has never come easy for Risotto. He wears stoicism like a mask. But here in your room – the forbidden safe haven – he wills himself to let it go; it falls to the floor as you lead him to your bed and pull his clothed body flush against yours, beneath the shelter of a duvet and wrinkled sheets.

“I’ve missed you,” you whisper into the dark. “I was so worried about you.”

His grip on you eases and he settles onto his back before he speaks: “I’m sorry.”

Your face falls. “Don’t apologize. I don’t want you to.” The mattress creaks. You lean against your bent elbow and watch him as he stares at the ceiling. You can practically hear the gears churning in his mind. He is begging for help, but he does not want it – he is drowning, yet he refuses the buoy. “You don’t have to talk about it right now,” you say, referring to Barolo’s death and consequently Risotto’s absence. “Just understand that I’ll always be here for you. Always.”

But he already knew that.

Your eighteenth winter hails no snowfall, but rather gentle rain. You clutch the steering wheel of your hand-me-down sedan, foot coaxing over the pedals. It had once belonged to your father, until your seventeenth birthday. The scenery blends and contorts through the windows and Risotto puffs on a cigarette, exhaling through his opened window. Softly, Christmas carols hum through the speakers. The noise of your tires grinding against the slick roads is muddling.

Midnight Mass was a blur. Tradition demanded your attendance, yet your thoughts wandered. You broke the bread with quivering hands and said your holy words to Mother Mary, fingers and palms conjoined ephemerally. When the bishop dismissed the clergy, you found Risotto in the crowds of embracing strangers and giddy children.

The car swerves into gravel. The scent of sea spray climbs to you. The waves crash against the sand just as the tide beckons them to. You have reached spiaggia di Capaci. The gingham blanket settles into the sand. You and Risotto take your respective positions, a considerable distance left between your bodies. You do not mind the early rain that peppers your face with mist.

Above your heads, the stars embellish the ethereal ink-black sky.

His thumb coaxes over the back of your hand, tracing the grooves between knuckles. Your breath hitches in your throat. It is unknown just how many times your hand has found its way into his grasp before. And yet, you shiver and flush because now it is different – because now, you are an eighteen-year-old woman in love with your childhood friend.

You crane your neck to face him, a question of his intent frozen on your tongue as his red irises meet your gaze. You are motionless, even when his stare falls to your parted lips. The chill that radiates from the ocean holds you in place.

Time stops as he speaks to you: the waves refrain from the shore – the steady drizzle eases – but your heart beats in a fury.

“Can I kiss you?”

You nod and suddenly his lips slant over your own, which remind him fondly of a freshly split strawberry. He bites back the gasp that betrays your composure. He kisses you with such fervor that he pulls his hand away from yours and tethers it to the back of your head, his fingers lost in the matted mound of hair. Like a kitten starved for milk, you explore the caverns of his mouth, the taste of communion wine heavy on his breath.

You find his shifting grasp on your hip daunting. A knee threads between your legs, parting them. A heat pools within you – you grab the back of his neck and pull him closer, closer. You lean into him, keening, desperate for friction.

He toys with your clothed sex and swallows the adolescent moan that you choke on. The hand beneath your dress is cold; goosepimples rise over your tender skin. He separates his lips from yours and pulls back to admire, through half-lidded eyes, as you bite your cheek and squirm while his thumb hooks around your dampened panties. You lie beneath him – your hair splayed around your head like a halo and a red blush stained to your cheeks – and he thinks, utterly and truly, that you must be Persefone herself. 

Risotto’s heart beats, faster still; a contender only to yours. You feel like you might die, blissful that it would be a winsome way to go – on a beach somewhere, echoed only by thoughts of the one you might have loved in time. But when his long finger brushes against your untouched folds and tethers you to your very core, you know that you cannot possibly be dead. He curls himself and retracts. You raise your hips to meet the fever of his palm, eager for the second finger that he has yet to add.

“Please, Ris,” you beg. “More – please.”

He obliges. It is not long before you feel the coil tighten within your lower abdomen – before you fall apart for him.

Through your stupor, you manage to grab his wrist to cease his movements. “We can’t do this here,” you airily insist. “My car –”

He pulls you to your feet. Your shaking legs have you fumbling over sand. The key jiggles in the lock of the backseat door. You shimmy over crinkling faux leather. Your dress falls to the carpeted flooring.

A shirtless Risotto takes in the sight of your naked form. A body once saved for marriage, now prepared for sacrilege. He utters your name and groans: “Voglio scoparti.”

“Per favore.”

He fills you, slowly. Knees bent and tucked beneath his weight; you cry out against the skin of his neck. With little time to adjust, he rocks into you. Your arms wrap around his shoulders, desperate to anchor yourself. Every thrust elicits a gasp from your swollen lips.

You grimace peevishly when Risotto slows his pace. “I can’t do this,” he mutters. “It’s not comfortable.”

He pulls himself out of your folds, only to flip you onto your stomach without a moment to spare. A hand finds its way to the back of your neck, effectively pinning you down onto the car seat. His other arm ensnares your waist and hoists your backend into the air. On bended knees, he enters you again, pounding with a burst of newfound energy and desire.

Condensation coats the windows. The pressure on your neck deprives your lungs; however, the mere thought of Risotto asserting such dominance over your bent form has you reeling towards the edge. Your fingers fly to your sensitive nub, tweaking the it in your own grasp. Your release washes over you, and you cum on his cock with a moan laced in ecstasy.

He finishes on your back, lacquer to your sweat-slicked skin. He rubs something soft against you. You realize, as sand particles fall to the car seat, that it is your blanket. Head flush to his chest, you listen to the thumping within his ribcage. A sigh passes through your lips and your eyes fall to his discarded wristwatch. It is just after 3:00 a.m. – in five hours, you will wake to the sound of your mother’s knuckles rapping against your bedroom door to join her and your father for breakfast before an onerous day of entertaining relatives. But for now, you will enjoy the solace of Risotto’s embrace.

You press a kiss to his cheek. “Bon Natali, Risotto.”

He grins, tired. It is enough to fill you with unadulterated love.

“Bon Natali, bella.”

The early days of the springtime bloom yield the first wave of tourists to Palermo for the season. Market vendors inflate their prices. Restaurants become far too crowded. The beaches – the sacred places – lose their luster as they become a haven for foreigners.

You do not mind the influx of strangers, for you have never found a reason not to. After all, no one comes to your city to gawk at Catholic school students.

The hand pressed to your bare backend feels limp. Even as you trail your finger over his chest, through patches of hair and young muscles, Risotto is unresponsive. Your lips brush against his clenched jaw – he flinches but does not relax. He is perturbed beyond question.

“Ris?” you begin, waiting for him to look at you. He does not. You frown. “Are you alright?”

A stiff nod is his response.

“Well, if that’s the case, can I ask you a something?”

Another nod.

"Would you like to go out for dinner tomorrow night? You know – as in an actual date.”

"No.”

You sit up, tucking the blankets around your breasts. “Oh . . .” you trail off, suddenly self-conscious of the post-sex haze that lingers on the sheets. “Why not?”

Because I’ll be gone – he wants to say. The pair of crafting scissors that he once stole from you years ago, now tucked away within his backpack, is a nasty contemplation. “Because I don’t want to,” he huffs.

“Did I do something wrong? Are you embarrassed of me?”

No. “Yes.” He can feel the splitting of your heart – it feels just like his own.

“I don’t understand,” you insist. He reaches for his jeans, dressing in silence. “You’re just going to ignore me?”

“It’s easier than telling you the truth.” He shrugs on his jacket.

“What truth?”

I’m never coming back. “I’ve only been using you for sex, and now I’m bored – I never thought you were stupid enough to think that any of this was genuine. But I shouldn’t be surprised.”

You bring a hand up to catch the tear that rolls down your cheek. You wait for his rebuttal – for a smile, a shaking of his head, and an insistence that it was only a cruel jest taken too far. But the look in his eyes, that callous sneer, tells you that he is serious.  

You will not cry for him – you will not beg him to stay. “Get out.” You choke over your words. The figs of your tree have shriveled and fallen to your feet, black as death itself. “Get out of my house.”

And so, he leaves you beneath the barren tree you once thought to have planted together. Springtime has left a sour taste in your mouth, after all.

Sordi Fellini Dead in Suicide at Jail, Spurring Inquiries

Signore Fellini, the insegnante di lettere sentenced for his convicted manslaughter of Barolo Nero in 1988, was not under suicide watch at the time of his death.

Signore Fellini was found around 6:30 a.m mercoledì mattina. He posted bail seventeen hours before his alleged demise.

On la Costa Smeralda, echoed only by thoughts of the one he loved a decade ago, Risotto Nero basks atop bloodied sand, dying. A crushed carton of cigarettes lies beyond the reach of his severed hand. The phantom pangs of adolescence remind him of you.

Years of schooling under the scrutiny of god’s eye have turned him away from religion: he was a deist and nothing more. Still, the silent prayer on his lips pleads that he might see you once more – to beseech your absolution, though he knows that he does not deserve it. To prove his fidelity. To give you the life you have always been so deserving of.

No, Risotto was never a religious man. But he worshipped the very ground you walked on. You were his savior – and he denied you like a disciple driven by guile.  

The lump in his throat elicits a painful cough; a blade to his esophagus. He recognizes his folly far better than any man. How differently might things have turned out if he had just stayed by your side – if he had agreed to go on your silly little date; if he had never snuck his way into Fellini’s prison cell to slit the wrists of the man who bequeathed to him an unending grudge; if he had never found Passione.

He might have been a husband, if you would have wanted to marry him. He might have been a father, if you were so inclined to become a mother. He never knew your thoughts of the future because he had never asked.

He might have been anything other than a broken, dead man who has lost everything.

The wooden plank of the swing creaks beneath his weight. He grips the rusted chains and digs his feet into the dried woodchips. A katydid crawls over the mulch next to his sneakers and chirps; Risotto brings the sole of his shoe over the mating insect, ready to squish it.

A pair of Mary Jane’s comes into his view. He leaves the katydid be, which resumes its path to the second katydid beneath the opposite swing. The scent of cigarette smoke wafts through the air.

He meets your gaze. You smile and take your seat in the swing above the female katydid. The cigarette slips from your fingers to his. Hot to the touch, he brings it to his lips and breathes in.

Under the shroud of the moon, your shadows have become your ghosts.

| 3869 Words |

#risotto nero x reader #risotto x reader #risotto nero #jjba reader insert #jjba x reader

[pro-birth]

This is a painting that hung in the University of Alabama until 2006 take a long look at it.

James Marian Sims perfected his surgical techniques by operating without anesthesia on enslaved black woman because he believed black women Didn’t Feel Pain.

He described the experimental surgeries on his enslaved subjects as “So painful, that none but a woman could have borne them.” After perfecting the techniques on black enslaved woman with out anesthesia in America. Sims went on to offer the procedure in Europe to wealthy white women who were always sedated.

This man is arguably the most famous American surgeon of the 19th century. He used to have a statue memorializing him in Central Park

I see him no different than Josef Megele both brilliant scientists who treated human beings like their personal Petri dish for experimentation, pure monsters.

I hope everyone who goes to the gynecologist will close their eyes for a moment and honor these enslaved black women.

#4kira4moms #momentoftruth #maternaljustice #protectblackwomen #thisisamerica #blackmamasmatter #juneteenth #sheshouldbehere #shameoncedars

Edit:

Some people have asked why did I post this, is this to create drama. No, this is to create awareness about the evil and painful roots of racism.

Did you know that these stereotypes persist in medical students to this day!

In the 2016 study, for example, trainees who believed that black people are not as sensitive to pain as white people were less likely to treat black people’s pain appropriately.

I find it shocking that 40% of first- and second-year medical students endorsed the belief that “black people’s skin is thicker than white people’s.”

https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patients-pain

Other findings are equally worrisome. In a 2012 study, my colleagues and I found a correlation between pediatricians’ implicit (unconscious) racial biases and how they treated pain in a simulated African-American or white teenager following surgery: As the strength of provider implicit bias favoring whites increased, the likelihood of prescribing appropriate pain medication decreased only for the black patient. What’s more, a meta-analysis of 20 years of studies covering many sources of pain in numerous settings found that black/African American patients were 22% less likely than white patients to receive any pain medication.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22239747/

Black women are more likely to die from childbirth even when you control for socioeconomics

https://www.npr.org/2017/12/07/568948782/black-mothers-keep-dying-after-giving-birth-shalon-irvings-story-explains-why

The disproportionate toll on African-Americans is the main reason the U.S. maternal mortality rate is so much higher than that of other affluent countries. Black expectant and new mothers in the U.S. die at about the same rate as women in countries such as Mexico and Uzbekistan, the World Health Organization estimates.

What's more, even relatively well-off black women like Shalon Irving die and nearly die at higher rates than whites. Again, New York City offers a startling example: A 2016 analysis of five years of data found that black, college-educated mothers who gave birth in local hospitals were more likely to suffer severe complications of pregnancy or childbirth than white women who never graduated from high school.

This is just the tip of the iceberg

Interested in learning more ?

#theyoungblacksheep

Legitimate and reputable sources:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/04/18/statue-of-father-of-gynecology-who-experimented-on-enslaved-women-removed-from-central-park/%3foutputType=amp

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1376165/?page=3

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/apr/21/j-marion-sims-statue-removed-new-york-city-black-women

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/identities/2018/4/18/17254234/j-marion-sims-experiments-slaves-women-gynecology-statue-removal

Alternate perspective:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2563360/

From Aryanna Chantel posting on Fascinating Facts on Facebook.

#obstetric violence #racism #obstetrics #medblr

[crazynekochan]

Okay, I have an idea for a AU. It comes based on how, aside from the pretty factor, we never really get to see Junko use her Ultimate Gyaru Talent in her plans. I was inspired by hearing about the Amekaji or 'American Casual' subculture of Gyaru and thinking "hey, yknow who this style reminds me of? Kazuichi" A quick reference to some samples before I get into my idea:

(Please excuse the fact that I didn't crop the screenshots)

Anyway- in this AU, I wanted to use how we all wanted Junko to manipulate the Remnants into following her and Kazuichi's trust issues. Junko, finding his talent to be one of the most immediately useful of the class and him to be one of the most easily manipulated and emotion driven of the class, decides to become his best friend! It starts slow, her beginning to hang out with him after classes and eventually during lunch, constant compliments, telling him what he wants to hear, comforting him when he trusts her enough to open up about his issues with trust. Soon enough, she's wormed her way into his circle, becoming his closest friend. He reveals that he didn't chose his appearance for his own happiness but for his image and she pounces. She insists that she can give him a glow-up- give him a partial overhaul. Help him with the god awful layering in his hair, maybe even make Sonia like him (or Gundham, depending on whether or not he has realized his feelings for him/given up on his crush on her if he has one at the start of this au). This is where the Amekaji Gyaru part comes in, she pretty much turns him into one. The way the class gets introduced to this style change is by Chisa coming by to round up Kazuichi when he doesn't come back after lunch. This is an approximation of what I think she would do on such short notice. (He was meant to have an expression but I gave up on that front on the sketch to have an easier go at designing his clothes without obstruction or scruntiching). Oh yeah, it's an Omegaverse AU btw, because I am predictable and pathetic lol.

I kinda want to make a fic with this and I'm planning on using Gundham's POV because he already likes Kazuichi before Junko began sinking her claws into him and he wound be concerned and conflicted from the get go. Because while Junko is very much using Kazuichi (though they don't catch onto that aspect right away), she's boosting his confidence. He's happy to have a best friend who cares about him seemingly unconditionally. But they also realise that he's becoming obsessive in a way that she's certainly not discouraging. He's always talking about her, texting her, hanging out with her, he even picks up some of her traits. At one point someone (Fuyuhiko most likely) would comment along the lines of "what are you in love with her or something" and Kazuichi would respond with something like "oh of course not! Junko deserves much more than me!" Or something equally self-deprecating and out of character like that. It's not healthy.

He would voluntarily watch the brainwashing video with Mikan (like in the Siren AU), believing that Junko just wanted to show him something cool. He would despair at the betrayal, since the despairs are aware enough to realise things like that. If he contracts the Remembrance disease, he would probably go for the convincing Ibuki into suicide route like in the Siren AU, for the opportunity to watch the despair. I love the idea of having an active despair in the cast and with this AU, instead of him just continuing to be devoted to Junko like in the Siren AU, I wanted him to actually come around as a Despair to Hope because of the others. Hajime is there now, he would've begun to be friends with Kazuichi and continue after Kaz remembers and he, being the good boy that Hajime is, actually treats Kazuichi like a real friend should. He didn't get to become close to Fuyuhiko before Junko got to him so he also becomes friends with him. Also, of course, Soudam happens. I'd imagine that they would make him come around enough to rebuke the Junko AI in the end.

Kazuichi definitely would feel guilty as hell when this is all said and done, however, the class would also feel guilty for letting him fall into Junko's clutches too. Also, the greater trauma of him knowing that his second best friend after the one in middle school pulled the same shit but worse? 👌👌👌. I have other sketches of them hat I plan to colour, so I'll be back. I'll link you the fic once I write it. Tell me what you think about this, please! Spare no thought! Oh yeah, I'm mentally calling this the Gyaru AU

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Mod: It will never stop being huge wasted potential that Junko didn’t manipulate all the Remnants by using their trauma and weaknesses, and specifically chose them for their useful talents like it was implied in the game, and instead just went with them being chosen at random because they were Ryota’s classmates

Having Kazuichi be Junko’s first victim is perfect, because with his talent he is super useful to her and can easily make her unstoppable the moment she has him under her control. And with his trust issues and straight up need to have a friend in his life he would be an easy target for someone like Junko, who can very quickly play him like a fiddle. Let him vent to her, tell him what he wants to hear, give him confidence and then put him into his place so that he becomes her loyal dog who sees her like some god who will do anything to please her, just like Mikan did. Until she then finally breaks him by betraying him like his best friend did in the past. The pain must be so unbearable for the poor guy. I feel really bad for him, but at this point the brainwashing is already in place sadly, so he will just get some high from being used and betrayed all over again and again

Kazuichi going through the simulation way past getting infected and having all of his memories must be such a trip. Because he has to pretend like nothing is amiss while everything else is going on and make sure that no one notices his change in character (Which could be hard for him to do, since he doesn’t seem like a good actor) I could even see him during the last trial to try and push the others into doing the wrong choice until they manage to make him believe in hope again and having trust in his friends that they will not betray him ever. Which must be so hard for him to believe after being lied to so many times by people he trusted blindly, where Junko even made him and the others do such horrendous things. But it wouldn’t be DR if hope doesn’t win in the end and everyone manages to have a future

Though the most hurtful part must be seeing everything from Gundham’s POV, because he is stuck with having to watch how Junko is getting close to Kaz. Which is at first of course a nice thing on the outside, but when Kaz starts getting seriously degrading about himself it’s really getting concerning but it’s already too late. Even more painful for Gundham when he might have had a bad feeling about the “friendship” but has pushed it onto him probably just being jealous or something and as such never intervened when he really should’ve done so, because then all of this could’ve been avoided where Kaz was turned into a pupped who got to build the most brutal killing machines imaginable for Junko’s absolute insane plan of creating a world of despair. When the truth comes to light he would be feeling such immense guilt over not having seen the signs and came to help Kaz when he still had the chance (Could be even something Junko could use against Gundham, both back at HPA and in the last trial if he’s still alive at that time in the AU)

Also the artwork of Kaz after his makeover looks sooo good! He is beyond cute and it mixes so well his actual nerdy aesthetic he had before with something more fun and colourful (quite literally) ♥♥

#submission #soudam #au #Gyaru Au #mediamaxine #danganronpa #omegaverse