#the dark concept the music and then there’s the random ass shot of him making himself some brekkie 💀
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forever laughing at jungkook aggressively buttering a piece of toast in the dark 🤣
#confused is an understatement for what i’m feeling rn 🤣#the dark concept the music and then there’s the random ass shot of him making himself some brekkie 💀#jungkook#lia rambles
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Othello
pairing: jason todd x reader, reader is a psych major because i think the concept of psych majors in Gotham is funny lmao
warning: i wrote this at 1 am, kinda short, swearing
a/n: i got strong feelings towards Othello, The Catcher in the Rye, and Jason Todd, but this one’s for @tadpole-san smirk smirk smirk
part 2
You liked studying at Gotham University’s library for the ambience.
Whether or not you got any actual “studying” done depended wholly on your mood and whatever being that may or may not have been watching you from above, but even if you somehow managed to procrastinate the entire time you were there, at least you could walk back to your dorm with the comforting fact that you had gotten in your cardio for the day.
The place itself was gorgeous with its overarching ceilings, long hall lined with pillars supporting a seemingly endless array of books, the cozy golden glow of the lights, and the generally pleasant atmosphere provided by the myriads of students sitting around its tables and lounging on its couches. The entire campus was stunning - but it would only be surprising if it wasn’t thanks to the very generous grants from patrons of the Gotham elite, most notably people like Bruce Wayne.
You had a particular spot you liked near the edge of the library, in a little corner mostly surrounded by shelves with enough space for a few usually-unoccupied couches. Aside from you, the only regulars to sit there mainly just consisted of one other guy who recently had started to drop in every few days or so to listen to music and do his own work. You didn’t mind him - he never bothered you, and you both kept up your mutual solidarity towards maintaining a very comfortable silence.
That was, until one particular day.
“Is that Othello?” You glanced over the book in your hand and saw the guy’s startlingly green eyes gazing right at you over his dark-rimmed reading glasses. He wasn’t wearing his earbuds as per usual, so you figured your agonized sigh of boredom must’ve come out a little too loudly.
“Yeah,” you finally answered, slowly lowering the book a little. “Unfortunately.” He cracked a slight grin at that.
“What, you’re not a fan of Shakespeare?”
“I don’t hate him,” you started with a fairly nonchalant shrug, “I just think this book in particular is just kinda-”
“Boring as fuck?” he finished very eloquently, causing you to grin back despite yourself.
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“I can agree with that,” he said with a nod towards the book. “Definitely not one of my favorites, that’s for sure. Good premise, dynamics were pretty interesting, but I couldn’t really get into it either.” The fact that he was discussing Shakespeare’s works in a way that suggested he had fully read the book (without wholly relying on CliffNotes) and that he did perhaps genuinely enjoy some of them suggested to you that he was probably an English major. “And Iago was a bitch-”
“I know!” you nearly exclaimed, throwing your hands up in very evident frustration. “Iago was shady as hell, and I don’t get how Othello never saw it coming from him. Like, no one can be that oblivious, come on. I wouldn’t have listened to him.” RIP to Othello, but you were different.
He was actually laughing at that point, shaking his head in disbelief.
“You and me both. You an English major?” You shook your head, holding up your Psychology Twelfth Edition textbook that had been resting on the table beside you.
“Psych.” He raised a brow and you inwardly sighed.
“Jeez - at GU? I’m impressed.”
Being a psych student at your particular Gotham-based university was both a blessing and somewhat of a curse. The classes were phenomenal and your professors consisted of some of the best and most experienced in the nation - but that also came with the downside that the city you lived in had some of the biggest psychopaths and the largest insane asylum in the nation as well.
Well, you win some, you lose some.
“It’s not that bad,” you tried to say, but the smirk playing at his lips proved that you weren’t convincing anyone. “Let me guess, you’re an English major.”
“What gave it away?” he deadpanned, chuckling regardless as he closed up his own book and extended a hand out. “Name’s Jason Todd. I’ve seen you around a lot, but we never really talked, huh?” You smiled as you reached out to shake his hand, introducing yourself as well.
“I guess not. You usually look like you’re pretty busy.”
“Something like that,” Jason grinned, leaning back against his chair and sliding off his glasses. Without them, the lights somehow gave them an almost glowing effect. “I figured you wouldn’t want me to bother you.”
Bantering over Shakespeare with a cute boy wasn’t exactly your definition of being bothered, so you shook your head.
“Believe me, that was a lot better than Othello was.”
You saw Jason at your spot again the next day, then the day after and the next, lounging across from your couch and always seeming rather out-of-place with his black leather jackets and ripped jeans, but a welcome sight to you nonetheless. And just like that, suddenly, your visits to the library weren’t just for the sake of cardio and the ambience anymore.
He was surprisingly amusing to talk to, whether it was complaining about more books for your respective English courses or just ranting to each other about the struggles of being a student at GU. It was easy to bond over things like getting your midterms interrupted by random threats from the likes of the Riddler, or arguing over whether or not the city’s latest vigilante, some guy named Red Hood, was actually cooler than Batman himself.
He had been particularly passionate about that last debate.
Aside from being easy-going and annoyingly attractive, you also figured out that he was ridiculously smart, especially when it came to helping you with your English course. Whether it was explaining the deeper societal message behind a particular reading or helping you research topics for your thesis, Jason had a knack towards figuring out exactly the things you yourself seemed to struggle with.
“How do you figure all of this out?” You asked one day out of sheer disbelief after he connected The Catcher in the Rye to themes of disillusionment about innocence and one’s childhood, and not just towards the protagonist, Holden, being an ass. “Seriously, I thought I was pretty decent with this stuff, but you blow me out of the water.”
He shrugged it off like it was no big deal, sliding off his reading glasses and setting it on top of the wooden table you were at. You had grown fond of the way they looked on him.
“It’s nothing special,” he dismissed in response, lifting his gaze from the book to fixate it back on you. “You do great by yourself, I just kinda give you a little push with my interpretations.”
He did that a lot - downplaying the fact that he was actually smart as hell like it really was no big deal. The way your grades had started rising after he started helping you out proved otherwise, though.
“Still, thanks for helping me out,” you insisted, eliciting another slight smile from him. “It means a lot.”
“Oh yeah?” His tone had gotten cheekier as he leaned closer to you. “How much is a lot?”
“That’s up for you to decide,” you smirked, moving back and closing up your laptop. “Not me.”
“You know, if you really wanted to thank me, you should get a coffee with me sometime.”
“We get coffee together like every week,” you deadpanned and he sighed.
“Not like that. Like a date.”
It hit you like a truck.
“A date,” you repeated, like you hadn’t heard him the first time.
“Only if you were into that,” he added, trying to play it cool as he moved to pack his things into his bag. “I’m not working tonight, so I thought you might wanna give it a shot.” That was even more surprising, because he always happened to have a mysterious night shift going on. He never told you what exactly that was, aside from off-handedly mentioning something about motorcycles and Crime Alley every once in a while.
You were still letting it process.
“...if you don’t want to-”
“No, no - that sounds great,” you interjected, already starting to smile. At the sight of it, he managed another grin himself, an evident hint of relief flashing across his face.
“Right. Yeah. Cool.” He cleared his throat and shot you another grin as he tossed his bag over his shoulder. “Let’s head out. And I’m telling you right now, I’m not letting your broke ass pay for it.”
“Jason!” you protested as he laughed and nudged your shoulder with his, making you join in despite yourself.
At least Othello had managed to lead you to one good thing.
#pandemonium scrawl#I kinda want to see a fic where he works at like a bookstore or something#will i write it?#lmao who knows#jason is an english major#I like that headcanon surprisingly#jason todd is in college#jason todd#jason todd x reader#jason todd x you#dc comics#dc#reader imagine#dc imagine#red hood#red hood x reader#fluff#college au#kinda cute i guess
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helloo! i'd like to request something for the prompt game please :D kasamatsu + band!au + strangers to lovers + dialogue number 14 if that's okay? thanks, sam! and welcome back~
ofc!!! i tried to keep it shorter but im a bit rusty w my kasamatsu hehe hope u enjoy! wc: 2.3k
Kasamatsu admits that balancing his band and college work isn’t exactly an easy task. Between late evenings spent at gigs and all nights at the library, he is on the brink of his sanity, standing right at the tipping point. He yawns as he enters his nine am mandatory calculus class, another mistake made in his overconfidence that he would somehow be able to get his shit together.
You, on the other hand, are a closeted fan of his band, sitting three rows behind him in class. Every Tuesday and Thursday, you watch him drag his feet in and his hand lifting to his mouth in a yawn. Quickly, you duck behind your book as if Kasamatsu would ever give you the time of day. The brunette is well-known on campus with his successful group and good looks, not to mention he also dabbles a little in basketball while also maintaining a decent grade point average across all his classes. Triple threat, they call him.
When you first came into class and saw him there, shocked is an understatement. You’ve been following his band his high school from across the country. To see him in the flesh, so real and so human with his tired eyes, it almost feels like a dream. One you hope nobody would ever pinch you awake from. Thus, you made it your goal to be there before him every morning, which is a feat in itself. Kasamatsu may be grinding through the night and falling asleep in lectures, but he’ll be damned if he shows up late to class.
Throughout several weeks, you’ve seen girls come up to him left and right, shot down almost immediately by his intention to focus on the professor’s words. He lets them down easy and makes it clear that he pays thousands of dollars to study, not play IRL Tinder. This man gets sexier everyday.
You take your time packing your things when class is over, mainly because you’re too distracted watching Kasamatsu do the same. He is blind, or chooses to ignore, the whispers and shy glances thrown his way. Perhaps this is why you haven’t approached him yourself. You’re just one of his many admirers, a stroke in the massive painting of his life. Sighing, you pick up your pitiful self and make your way to the dining hall where you’re supposed to meet your friend for breakfast.
When the two of you settle on a table, you begin your weekly rambling about how beautiful Kasamatsu looks in the morning. Moriyama, being the good friend that he is, nods and listens intently.
Moriyama is an intriguing character. The two of you met because he had tried a line on you. In your perpetual state of flustered embarrassment, you had stupidly confessed to him: “Sorry, my heart belongs to Kasamatsu Yukio.”
In another twist of fate, he revealed that he had actually gone to high school with the guy and knew him pretty well.
“You know I can introduce you to him, right? No need for all this pining and drooling from three feet away.”
“It’s not the same,” you argue, “he’s practically a living legend on campus. I’m too intimidated to even breathe in the same air as him.” Your obsession has perhaps taken you too far, but if you expect to continue being his fan, the last thing you want is to scare him away.
“You’re so overdramatic,” Moriyama rolls his eyes. Coming from him, this sentence means a lot.
“What? It’s not my fault Kasamatsu’s so hot. He could bang me so hard backstage then pretend I don’t exist and I would still pay to watch his next show,” you groan, spooning yogurt into your mouth.
In that moment, several things happen. Moriyama’s eyes widen and fly behind you. Footsteps sounding at that same spot suddenly cease completely. You, realizing what possibly just happened, feel the heat flare up your cheeks.
Kasamatsu, in his sleep deprived state and probably completely delirious, had stopped in his tracks. His head whipped around to the source of the comment, finding Moriyama sitting with someone who looks distinctly familiar, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.
“Kasamatsu—”
Before Moriyama can even finish his sentence, Kasamatsu is already blurting out. “Okay, maybe I’m crazy but did I just hear you say that out loud?”
You want to crawl into your hole six feet underground and never see the light of day again. Ducking your head, you don’t even want to chance a glance up. The utter mortification is chewing away at your bones and you wish you could just evaporate into thin air.
Moriyama quickly interjects with a quick laugh, “Hear what? Also how have you been, man? I haven’t seen you in forever. Come join us for breakfast.”
Kasamatsu’s brows pucker. Maybe he really is going insane. And horny. Which is a very bad combination. Nevertheless, he slides into the empty seat next to Moriyama. He stares at you for a few seconds, squinting, before snapping his fingers. “Oh, I remember now. You’re in my calculus class.”
He knows you? “How do you know me?” you squeak, cursing your fangirl self for losing your voice. You never speak up in class, always choosing to come up to your professor for questions at the end of lecture. You’re quiet and tucked away behind him, so you never expected him to recognize you.
The smile he sends you is blinding. Even with shadows under his eyes, he still looks gorgeous. “You’re always first to arrive and last to leave. Figured you’re a hard worker in class and probably acing it.”
Your mouth dries. Kasamatsu noticed you. He actually noticed you. “Oh, um, I’m okay. I’m okay in class, I mean.”
“The question you should be asking is her name, Kasamatsu,” Moriyama scolds, smacking his back.
Kasamatsu pinks sheepishly. “Sorry, yeah. I’m Kasamatsu Yukio, by the way.”
Idiotically, you blurt out “I know” before your name. When you finally introduce yourself, you also clarify, “I’m a huge fan of Blue Devils. I mean, I’ve been following you guys since like high school. Absolutely love your music.”
The man actually reddens even further, but still he beams proudly. “Thank you! That’s crazy. Have you been to our shows?”
Almost all of them. “A couple, yeah.”
“We have one tonight in an actual venue. Are you coming?”
“Ah, it was sold out before I could get a ticket, actually.”
Kasamatsu blinks, “Oh, you’re more than welcome to come. I can get you a pass. Both of you—if Moriyama’s interested.”
“That would be amazing!” You grin, “Is there anything I can get you in return? I don’t want to just accept a gift from you for free.”
“Well, if you are good at calc, I wouldn’t mind some extra tutoring,” he suggests with a teasing grin.
Moriyama rolls his eyes, “Just ask her out instead of using tutoring as an excuse.” The two of you sputter, face colored a dark shade of red. You’ll kick his ass when you get the chance.
—
That one mistake turned out to be the greatest opportunity of your life. In addition to attending his show that night and meeting all of his bandmates, each one more good looking up close than then other, you manage to have weekly study sessions (you’re holding off on calling it dates) with Kasamatsu. The two of you take turns booking rooms at the library to cram, which mainly consists of you reexplaining concepts to the man. Although he isn’t a bad student, he’s also still struggling a bit to keep up.
“Hey” is what you hear before you feel a warm surface press against your cheek. You look up to find Kasamatsu with a steaming cup in hand. Gratefully accepting it, you catch a whiff of freshly brewed tea. You take a sip and smile. Black tea, no sugar. “Just the way I like it.”
“Noticed you never add anything to your tea,” Kasamatsu says almost proudly.
You raise the cup to him in thanks. Both of you go through your usual routine—you focusing on reviewing material for next week while Kasamatsu pores over his notes from this week, occasionally poking you to ask questions.
Honestly, a big part of you still wonders if this is all a dream. This guy you’ve been crushing on for years is sitting in the flesh right across from you. You peek at him from time to time, watching the way he frowns at his book. His blue, almost grey, eyes shine underneath the flickering lights. Even the way his lips curl unhappily is cute.
When he catches you staring, you quickly drop your gaze back to your laptop, missing the way he smiles quietly.
“Will you come to our show this weekend?” He asks as the two of you pack up.
“Ah, I have a shift at my part-time job.”
He looks surprised, “That late?”
You shrug, “Food never sleeps, I guess. It’s at the burger diner by campus.”
“Oh, are you guys open late?”
“Close at one.”
He nods, “Maybe I’ll see you there after then. The guys usually get really hungry after a gig so we can drive some business your way. I’ll make sure they tip well too.”
Your heart warms at the thought. It’s a thoughtful gesture but you’re even more thrilled at the prospect of seeing him. “Sounds good.”
True to his word, Kasamatsu brings the guys to your workplace at midnight after their show ended. They order quite a spread, practically everything on the menu. Kasamatsu goes as far as to help you carry orders to their table. You shoot him an appreciative smile.
Over the time your friendship has bloomed, Kasamatsu has been nothing but a gentleman. He walks you home to your dorm if you’re studying late into the night. He meets you in class with a muffin or a cookie from his early Starbucks runs. Surprisingly, he begins placing himself next to you each session. “This is better anyway,” he mutters. “Two birds, one stone.”
His vague words had you tilting your head in question.
“I don’t have random people coming up to me to sit with me and, well, I get to enjoy your company.” It’s a nice thought—him enjoying your company, that is. He had blushed a little when he realized what you said, but chose to direct his attention to the slides pulled up before him, missing the way you hide your smile behind your sleeve.
Now, you hear the rowdy boys chattering on as they devour their meal as if it’s their last. They speak through mouthfuls of burgers and fries, but you find the sight endearing, mainly because you’ve never seen Kasamatsu so relaxed. It’s quite refreshing really. Your attention is piqued when you hear one of them ask: “So doing it tonight huh?”
Kasamatsu retorts with a “shut the fuck up” and flings a fry his way. The way the other guy wiggles his brows suggestively has you freezing. What if he was meeting up with someone tonight? What if he was going to do the deed?
Somewhere in the distance, you hear the faint cracking of your heart. Of course, Kasamatsu is popular. It’s no surprise he’s got his nights covered as well. You sigh dejectedly, feeling the hope inside you crumble into dust. The rest of your shift goes by rather uneventfully, but you try to avoid going to their table too much, lest you hear more details about Kasamatsu’s planned tryst. The man himself steals glances your way, wondering if you’ll be checking on them anytime soon.
“Your check,” you smile as you set the bill on the table, “I got the owner to give you a discount since you guys ordered a good amount.”
All of their eyes seem to sparkle as they thank you in unison, their synchrony almost puzzling. As you move to pick up the bill and change, Kasamatsu catches your hand before you move away. “What time does your shift end?”
“Half an hour. Why?”
The other guys are already packing up their things and giving you little waves as they exit the restaurant, leaving the two of you alone. “I’ll walk you home, it’s late,” he murmurs, fingers still wrapped around your wrist.
“Oh, you don’t have to! I usually take the bus back anyway so it’s no big deal.” You want to confirm whether he had plans that night anyway. You’d hate to be in the way of that.
He shakes his head, “I insist. Also, um, are you doing anything tomorrow?”
“Catching up on studying most likely.”
“Oh,” he pauses, “if you have time tomorrow night, do you want to catch a movie with me? Maybe dinner after?”
You blink at him in surprise. Now that you’re looking at him properly, you notice that his cheeks are several shades darker than the red neon glow of the diner sign. He’s shifting on his feet and his other hand finds purchase on the strap of his bag, fidgeting with the material. “Um, like a date?”
“Y-yeah,” he stutters slightly, his throat moving as he swallows. “Sorry, I probably should’ve made that clear,” he coughs, “b-but if you don’t want it to be the we can also go as friends.” Perhaps you’ve tortured the boy long enough but you can’t help but relish in his awkward chuckle as his hand lifts to rub the back of his neck nervously.
Biting back a huge grin, you nod. “It’s a date.”
Kasamatsu’s eyes light up and a pleased grin spread across his face. “It’s a date.”
The hollering outside the building has the two of you whipping to face the window where his bandmates have their faces pressed up against the surface, laughing and smiling to congratulate and embarrass their friend. Kasamatsu flushes, “I’ll see you later to pick you up.”
You nod but he’s already out the door, leaping to kick his friends away. “You stupid idiots!”
Laughing, you watch as the group makes kissy faces at Kasamatsu all the while the man fruitlessly attempts to shut them up. He really is cute.
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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: Transcript
[This can also be found on AO3!]
[Intro Music]
O: Welcome back to the madness of King Bay or the second live action Transformers movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
S: And our second anniversary episode!
O: [laughs] Yay?
S: I sounded way too perky for that.
O: [laughs] As with the first live-action film if you like Revenge of the Fallen then this may not be the episode for you. But we'll be back soon with G1 episode 41! So please join us then.
S: Mm, Revenge of the Fallen came out in 2009, still starring Shia LaBeouf and still directed by Michael Bay-
O: It is- [laughs] Yeah, I know, pity. Uh, it is frequently considered the worst of the live-action films which is concerning that both Age of Extinction and The Last Knight have even lower ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.
S: That takes some doing.
O: Right!?! [laughs]
S: Uh-huh. Technically, even Dark of the Moon has a lower audience score than this one, but a higher critic score. So, um... make of that what you will?
O: Basically, what we're saying is until Bumblebee came out the uh, series hit its peak with its first movie [laughs]
S: Mm-hm.
O: But! Let's get started today by talking about our initial experiences with this particular film.
S: I don't think I saw this in theaters, and I found it really unmemorable. Uh, aside from there being a few characters that stood out that I still enjoy, but they're very few and far between.
O: Okay, so if you remember in the last- the previous [Bayverse] episode? I didn't remember where I saw the first movie. I remember EXACTLY when I saw this movie because I watched it in theaters for a bachelorette party. Personally, I found the concept of watching a manly action film for a bachelorette party to be fucking hilarious, and I still do! But I really wish it had been for a better movie. I don't remember having much of an opinion on it when I watched it, but I also didn't watch the third movie in the series until literally the last couple of years when I was blazing through a fuck ton of Transformers media. So, I clearly didn't care enough to see the continuation in theaters or even rent or borrow it until well after had been released.
S: We begin, yet again, with narration from the one and only Peter Cullen!
O: According to our opening scene uh, you know, the last movie is not the first time that Earth had been visited by Cybertronians.
S: Ah, shocking! We are shown some craggy mountains populated by ancient humans with spears.
O: Said ancient humans come across a huge Cybertronian installation of some sort and a bunch of Cybertronians.
S: Mm-hmm. Ominous. And then there's a weirdly ancient Egyptian or alien-esque Cybertronian with a staff that's apparently in charge.
O: Several humans are squished, and presumably they're all destroyed before we move on to Shanghai, China in the modern day.
S: Oh, will this be relevant? Who knows!
O: Maybe! Maybe! Maybe.
S: We see the Autobots and the military guys from the last movie now working together to hunt down the remaining Decepticons.
O: The combined group is named N.E.S.T. Short for, “Non-biological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty.”
S: Oh, that's a mouthful.
O: It is, so hence ‘N.E.S.T.’
S: Yeah. There have been some additions to the Autobot roster.
O: Which for simplicity's sake we're going to talk about them now, because they don't really do a lot-
S: Yup.
O: -in the movie. And they do show up (kind of) in that last section but again, very few of them even have lines. I- I think aside from Optimus, the character with the most lines might actually be Ironhide?
S: Yeah. Um, Sideswipe, not a lot of his personality from G1 or any other iteration for that matter is carried over in this, unfortunately. Instead of being a Lamborghini he's apparently decided to channel Tracks and is instead a Corvette Stingray.
O: And yet, still no Sunstreaker to be found, much to my frustration.
S: Jolt, a new character who's not in the movie except at the very end and he has very few fleeting shots in between and has no lines despite his bio saying he's come to Earth to join Optimus’ group in the last two years since the first movie. He seems to use electric whips. [makes whip noises]
O: [laughs]
S: And ah, promptly dies in the Dark of the Moon prequel comic.
O: So he never really does get to do anything.
S: Yeah.
O: So then we have Arcee, Chromia and Elita One. They are referred to as the ‘Arcee Sisters,’ or if you want to get really confusing, the ‘Arcee Twins’!?
S: [laughs]
O: Even though there's three of them-- at some point.
S: Yeah.
O: Uh, but instead of, you know, their- them being referred to by individual names. Apparently, they were written as one entity and while it depends somewhat on what real- related media you're looking at, the three of them are commonly portrayed as a multi-component Transformer much like Reflector. They have very little personality, and they do very little in the movie. Their alt modes are all motorcycles. Arcee is pink or red, depending on the toy, Chromia is blue, and Elita One is purple. Their robot modes sort of resemble Thrust from Beast Machines as they have no legs and function like weird sentient unicycles.
S: Yep, and then there's Skids and Mudflap. Oh boy, where do we start with these two? Well, uh, first, there's definitely someone out there who could have given a better breakdown on this than two random white ladies. Uh, awkward… sorry.
O: Yeah, just in advance we are both white women, we do not know what we're talking about here from a personal perspective.
S: Yeah, so we're just going to sum it up with an extremely uh- in an extremely generalized way. There was a lot of backlash for these two characters due to them possessing a number of racist african-american stereotype- stereotypical traits that at worst point to the people involved being racist in their own regard, or at best, really not thinking through how this was going to come across to the audience. They've been referred to as comic relief in the same vein as Jar Jar Binks at several points. Which is I think a good comparison for our purposes, and unlike the other five characters we just rattled off, these two will feature somewhat prominently in the movie so we'll talk more about them as they pop up.
O: At least kind of in vague sentences because as we said, none of the characters really do very much in this movie.
S: Yeah…
O: Even the ones that are in there for the bulk of the movie, don't do very much in this movie.
S: Yeah.
O: And then our returning Autobots from the first movie are Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ironhide, and Ratchet.
S: Mm-hm.
O: We see N.E.S.T. surround a construction vehicle that transforms into a huge ass robot mode and begins wrecking shit.
S: Yep. Things go boom and everything's extremely orange and blue regarding the lighting and environment. The second car Decepticon is spotted nearby and he tries to evade N.E.S.T. but is almost immediately bisected by Sideswipe.
O: We don't even really get to see his robot mode either- like, he sort of vaguely transformed I think, to like, crash through a building and then was- turned back into a car and was immediately killed by Sideswipe.
S: Yup. Optimus is fucking airdropped from a plane-
O: [laughs]
S: Uh, to take on the construction vehicle Decepticon.
O: I- I'm pretty sure they just really wanted that shot of a semi driving off a damn plane.
S: Yeah.
O: Which I mean, okay, fair, it's a cool shot but still. Uh, so then we see Optimus transform midair deploying some parachutes that have the Autobot logo on them... for some reason.
S: Is branding that important to the Autobots or their allies? Plus, uh, someone's gonna need to go collect those later.
O: I wanna know why he landed in the middle of a highway- in robot mode!
S: No one here seems to think critically about any of this stuff when they're effectively undercover.
O: Apparently not.
S: I mean how many people with cell phones are taking photos and video of this? TONS!
O: Tons! That becomes somewhat relevant later.
S: Even though people are still being evacuated.
O: Well, yeah- it said people were being evacuated but then to all these- all these shots that happen here, you still see a bunch of cars on the road.
S: Yeah.
O: While this is all happening.
S: And people still in their homes.
O: Yeah!
S: Optimus catches the rogue Decepticon who tells him menacingly, “The Fallen shall rise again!”
O: Hey, if it gets me out of this movie faster I for one welcome our Fallen overlord.
S: Unfortunately, we've got like, another two hours to go.
O: [sighs] Fuck.
S: And now in a completely different movie! Sam is getting ready to leave for college.
O: His parents are having very different reactions. His dad can't seem to wait for him to leave, while his mom is tearing up at every little thing that reminds her of Sam. Apparently, his dad's got plans for his room, and I'm thinking, “Man cave- how creative.”
S: Ah, he wants his personal theater system, I guess. After being hugged by his sobbing mother, Sam comments that, “You see this Dad? This is how you're supposed to react when the fruit of your loins goes into- out of the cruel world to fend for himself.” Okay, god that is such a cringe line.
O: I don't want to think about the fruit of that man's loins. I don't want to think about that man's loins at all, okay!?
S: Neither do I, that's why it's so cringy.
O: Yeah- yeah, thanks- thanks for that Sam.
S: [sighs] We are treated to an awkward moment when Sam's dad spanks his mom on the butt as she walks away. Sam is disgusted- I guess he is our audience surrogate in this moment.
O: His dad then tries to play it off as, “It's like a coach,” and NO that does not make it better! [laughs]
S: That actively makes it worse! Sexual harassment is not okay. Sam is apparently the first Witwicky to go to college.
O: I have questions. Again, what the fuck does Sam's dad do that allows them to have this huge house that didn't require a college degree at any point!? Who knows! Uh, the Witwicky’s have apparently got another dog since the last movie, uh, so just another thing to add to this movie-- dog humping.
S: Lots of dog humping, in their dog condo. It's kind of unsettling.
O: I don't know why they thought that this needed to be in the movie, but here we are.
S: Mikaela calls Sam, intending to break up with him- she is the most emotionally mature person in this movie.
O: Yep, pretty much! They talk, uh, Sam insinuates that they're going to be entering a long-distance relationship while he's at college.
S: While they're talking, Sam pulls out an old ripped t-shirt. His D-Day shirt as he refers to it. Which is apparently, the shirt that he was wearing during the battle in Central City from the first movie.
O: This is important! This is a plot point!
S: Yeah, we also have to assume that he has never washed the nasty shredded clothes from that day. Because, I suppose, he wants to hold them and relive the memories of being chased by giant alien robots that wanted to murder him.
O: [laughs] No clue. Uh, Sam does try to convince Mikaela to move near the college he's going to, but she refuses.
S: Her father's been released from jail since the first movie, and she insists on needing to take care of him. That should not be poor Mikaela's responsibility, but she is the most responsible person in this movie as I said.
O: Well, and I get it, right? Like, her dad just got out, presumably she has not seen- really been able to live with him for years. She's both worried about him, and probably wants to spend time with him.
S: Yeah, that's fair. Convenient plot device is convenient, as a sliver of the AllSpark falls off of Sam's shirt while he's on the phone to Mikaela.
O: It seems to zap Sam and then he drops it.
S: When it lands on the floor it burns its way through the floor and into the kitchen bringing a bunch of kitchen appliances to life.
O: They all attack Sam.
S: How did they get ammo? Does just being brought to life just give them ammo?
O: Uh, dear god, why does one of these things have a penis? That's my question. Furthermore, why is it shooting things OUT OF ITS PENIS!?!
S: Because... Michael Bay.
O: I had- yeah, that's all I got, man.
S: Bumblebee bursts out of the garage and begins shooting at the little Decepticons, saving Sam's sorry ass yet again.
O: Maybe Bee should be trying to smash them instead of shooting at them? They're on the front lawn at this point so all I can think is- their neighbors have to be able to see this!
S: I thought this was in the back lawn, but I'm not sure.
O: I- they're outside, he's no longer in the kitchen. He's trying to shoot Decepticons outside the house, it probably is the backyard, but I don't know. Sam yells at Bee to get in the garage.
S: Way to micromanage your giant robot bodyguard slash friend. [sighs] Again, it's like- you'd yell at a dog or something.
O: [laughs] Bad Bumblebee, bad! Of course, Bee smashed out of the garage, uh, despite having a perfectly good door in front of him and then re-enters through the hole he had previously made.
S: Sam's mother is not happy about the surprise kitchen renovations, but Sam's dad calms her down by telling her that the government will pay for it all.
O: I'm so glad to know that this is where my taxes would be going to in this universe.
S: Well, it's definitely worse than some of the other things that it could be going for.
O: [sighs] I suppose that's true.
S: Sam's mom is like fine, but I want to pool and a hot tub! And I quote, “And I'm going to skinny dip, and you can't say shit about it!”
O: And quite frankly that woman's put up with a lot of stuff, I- I respect- you know as long as she's got a good fence- her right to skinny dip in her own yard. [laughs]
S: Yeah, they need that privacy fence. Sam goes into the garage to tell the audience, I mean uh, Bee, uh, how Bee can't come to college with him.
O: For reference, ignore the bit in the last movie where Bee talked because that's just gonna be ignored for like, three freaking movies.
S: Yeah. To calm Bee down he says, “You'll always be my first car!”
O: Not even, you're my best friend- you're my first car.
S: “Congratulations Bumblebee, you're my possession!”
O: Pretty much!
S: Oh, that's creepy. Sam gives the AllSpark shard to Mikaela for some reason, because Mikaela shows up at the end of all of this.
O: Right, you know like, everything has exploded, Mikaela's out there looking lovely with a bouquet of flowers.
S: Yep, instead of calling the Autobots or giving it to Bumblebee, nope it is given to Mikaela for safe keeping. Well, I mean she is the most sensible person out of the civilians?
O: Everyone here? Yeah, it's not that it- can't make it that- it's not that I don't think Mikaela can keep it safe. She manages to do so quite swimmingly through this movie, but it's rather… not that she can use it at all, and it could potentially be dangerous for her to have it on her person!
S: Yeah.
O: And Bee is right there! It's not like he couldn't give it to Bee and tell Bee to take it to the Autobots.
S: Yeah, like, that would be, uh, a lot more sensible. Though if they'd done that it might have been put in with the other... another thing that happens later in the movie.
O: [laughs] True.
S: Anyway, they smooch, words are said, and a somewhat sappy 2000 era love song plays.
O: Meanwhile, no one seems to notice the toy remote control truck that's being controlled by no one.
S: A remote controlled truck that is somehow communicating with outer space, and somehow this character will be vaguely important
O: Shush! My boy is here!
B: [laugh]
S: Ah, Soundwave shows up and takes over a surveillance satellite.
O: I'm sure I've mentioned this before at some point because I know I've said this multiple times, at least to Specs, but yes, I actually like the Bay version of Soundwave. He's not in the movie much, but having him take over a satellite and spend the rest of the movie gathering intelligence and sending troops out? *chef’s kiss* Feels very in character, keep going baby. His design is still garbage... just like everybody else though.
S: And his voice sounds very nice.
O: That's because it's actually Welker! He's allowed to be in this movie, doing a sizeable chunk of the speaking Decepticons even! This is not a G1 similarity I necessarily expected, but I do find it hilarious. Apparently, he also did the voice for Soundwave in a bunch of other language dubs too, which while interesting... I have to question why? It's not like Soundwave's voice would have necessarily sounded the same in those other languages in the original G1 dub. It just sounds like an odd decision?
S: Money.
O: Money. I- kudos to him for attempting it at least? But I still don't know why they did it.
S: Back at the N.E.S.T. headquarters, we see Mudflap and Skids uh, shenanigans, and they're unloading dozens of bodies! Presumably, soldiers that died in Shanghai, uh- that's, uh, welcome to the morbid stuff that they don't spend any time on it at all.
O: Uh, why Sideswipe silver? You had one job movie, one job. Sideswipe is a little red sports car this is like, his defining characteristic- surely this was doable!
S: I don't think anyone involved in making the movie was a very big fan of G1 or wanted to maintain, you know, artistic integrity with regards to that.
O: [sighs] Yeah, I know, what am I saying? I think the actual reason is I've heard red is harder to film?
S: Oh, that might be right.
O: Like- but- [sighs] I don't- it could be, because I want to say- I'm sorry if I'm incorrect- I want to say that's actually the reason Optimus’ color scheme got changed around quite a bit?
S: Mm.
O: And why he's got more blue on him.
[According to TFWiki: “When Optimus's design was first revealed, many fans of the Generation 1 series objected to the flames seen on Prime's body. When asked in an interview why he put the flames on, Michael Bay claimed he liked them because it was "cool". It was later revealed on a special featurette on the DVD that the flames were added because, apparently, red is not very good to film on camera, so Bay chose a blue truck but used the flames so that when Optimus transformed, the layout would result in maintaining his iconic red chest.”]
S: So, a jumped up government official shows up at N.E.S.T. headquarters.
O: And I think we all know where this is going. Uh, this will be our bureaucratic bastard for this evening.
S: Yeah, you know, the wimpy suit who keeps getting in the way of the ARMY men and their REAL job- AMERICA!
B: [laughs]
S: Sorry, um, and here we have a lovely shot of Optimus transforming. It's like some nice rotating thing.
O: Okay, get the robot transformation porn out of the way, next!
S: [sighs] And the bureaucratic weasel confronts Optimus on why haven't the Decepticons left the planet now that the AllSpark is destroyed, like they thought they would?
O: Optimus seems to take the opinion that Daddy Prime knows best. Weasel's not super happy about this, but Optimus does say the Autobots will leave Earth if asked. Neither of these groups are handling this super amazingly. (Yes, even Optimus.) Both sides have a point, if they'd stop trying to wave their metaphorical DICKS around and actually talk from a position of respecting each other's expertise, I'm betting this would go a whole lot better.
S: Probably. The N.E.S.T. members back Optimus up. Our only returning characters here are Lennox and Epps, both played by the same actors from last time.
O: Though I did not realize this at first. I totally thought Epps was played by somebody completely different, and I'm gonna blame the writing because Epps is not given a lot of things to do here.
S: He was a very memorable character in the first movie.
O: Yeah.
S: Yeah, and uh, anyway back to college! College away!
O: Sam's apparently going to Princeton, on the government's dime no less!
S: Oh god, he does absolutely nothing with it in later films. Again, we're assuming due to the filming locations that Sam lives in Southern California or thereabouts so we're a bit surprised to realize he actually decided to go to college on the other side of the country.
O: It certainly doesn't come across like Mikaela is a priority in his life.
S: Yeah. I mean seriously, he could have gone to school in California there's plenty of good schools in California.
O: Yup! But uh, are you ready for some booze and boobs?
S: [sighs] We're introduced to Sam's roommates.
O: The only one that will actually play much of a role in the plot will be our buddy, Leo here.
S: I hope you're being sarcastic.
O: I mean- I mostly mean that he's there.
S: Well, no, I meant with the buddy bit.
O: [speaking while laughing] Uh, yes, that was sarcasm.
S: Yeah. Uh, Leo runs a conspiracy theory website called The Real Effing Deal which is currently scrambling to get a- footage of the fight from Shanghai. Uh, from earlier in the movie up on their site.
O: Which again, is ABUNDANT! Because Optimus landed in the middle of a highway.
S: Yup.
O: Anyway, they're trying to do this until another person, Robo-Warrior, one ups them and gets the footage up, I think on a different site, first.
S: Yeah. Sam does his best to play cool and blow Leo and his friends off because it's all, “Fake.” [laughs]
O: Also, I'd like to take- take a moment to note the era accurate Naruto poster decor among the sea of boobs.
S: Yeah. Leo makes a comment that he and Sam are poor.
O: Alright! Sit down and buckle up because this legitimately pissed me the fuck off. So to rant for a moment, let's go back down the checklist of Sam's white fucking privilege, shall we? He lives in a big house in a nice neighborhood. In what we are assuming is Southern California, which is not a cheap place to live. His parents have enough time for leisure activities and in fact, go on vacation in Paris after dropping Sam off.
S: Yup.
O: His dad bought him a car in the last movie and yes, he was very much implied to be being a cheap ass at the time, but at no point is there any indication he couldn't have bought Sam a nicer car.
S: And the car that he's driving when he like, jerks him around on what type of car he's going to get him, it looks like it's a fancy expensive car so...
O: That's also true! Speaking as someone who grew up in a lower income rural area, and I say this not even remotely being the worst off in that area. Our floors were rotting out, every time we had a heavy rain we had to run to the windows with towels because so many of them leaked, and more applicable in this situation- my family did not have the money to save up for college for me, or any of my siblings. Yes, I realize the government is apparently paying for his tuition, but that just proves my point even more, because Sam's gonna come out of this with no student loan debt!
S: Yup!
O: So poor my fucking ass!
S: Uh-huh. Sam's mom shows up in his dorm room high is a goddamn kite because she apparently bought and ate some brownies from the bake sale not realizing that they were weed brownies.
O: And she's just gonna be a punchline for the next several scenes, sorry.
S: Yeah. To just list a few of the things that his high as a kite mother does: She talks about him losing his virginity loudly, and kind of at length to various women in the hallway. [nervous laugh] And in the surrounding environs, mentioning that his car is a talking robot, tackles a dude for some frisbees, and petitions Sam's dad for sex on the campus green. Considering how much she ate it's very likely she will need to go to the hospital because her knees may attempt to kill her.
O: Uh, then we cut the Soundwave, apropos of nothing, uh, ejecting Ravage into space. Look, I get him for 10 seconds I'm going to fucking enjoy it.
S: Ravage’s design here is very prominent with the pointy bits and teeth.
O: Rawr. [laughs]
S: And he lands near a US military base and runs over to a pipe sticking out of the ground and basically- uh, ralphs up a bunch of itty-bitty bots?
O: Into the pipe. Uh, you know. So I’m just saying uh, Soundwave’s baby had babies, this clearly makes Soundwave a grandad.
B: [laugh]
S: All the bots fall down the pipe and once they're at the other end meld together to form a new bot that is...gah.
O: He's interesting! At least, visually, in that he is basically flat, so he can be borderline invisible when he's looking head-on at something.
S: He looks like a knife raptor.
O: Uh, this thing's name is Reedman and he doesn't show up except in this one scene. Uh, he also brings our ‘Decepticons voiced by Frank Welker’ count up to three after Soundwave and Ravage.
S: Reedman?
O: Reedman, yeah! I looked at the wiki!
S: [laughs]
O: I looked at the wiki, and I was like, “That's a terrible name!” but that's the name!
S: I am judging whoever named that character, so hard.
O: [laughs] Aren't we just judging the entire movie?
S: Oh yes, but…Reedman?
O: Fuck if I know, man.
S: Another piece (aside from Sam's piece) of the AllSpark is being held here so, uh, Reedman gets to work stealing it.
O: Alarms begin to go off and several military guys arrive at the bunker and shoot at our knife raptor.
S: Ravage begins firing at the base to distract them.
O: I'm very amused he's got his tiny little hip missiles too!
S: Meanwhile, back at the plot we're all absolutely dying to continue- cough, cough, no, cough.
O: [laughs]
S: Sam's been dragged to a college frat party by his roommates?
O: It looks like a frat party. I don't even know why they want to bring Sam uh, they don't even seem to like him.
S: Eh, they want to have someone less cool with them so that basically they can be like, “Hey, look at that lame guy, we're much cooler.”
O: Well, Sam is definitely the least cool person in the area right now due to mommy shenanigans.
S: Yeah, while at the party Sam is missing his first video call with Mikaela. God, you are such a sucky long distance boyfriend, Sam!
O: Right!? You had one job! So we see Mikaela getting ready, taking her hair down and talking to her doggo while getting her computer set up.
S: Sam's- uh, promptly begins to spazz out by the uh, snack table and draws strange symbols with food.
O: These symbols are Cybertronian and the AllSpark fragment has helpfully downloaded a bunch of stuff directly into Sam's brain.
S: [sighs] We've upgraded from they want the glasses to they're going to want the brain, aren't they?
O: Something along those lines, yes! Quite frankly, again, I think they can have it. [laughs]
S: One partygoer notices Sam's new hobby and saunters over to seduce herself to him.
O: [laughs] Uh, blondie's name is Alice, and don't worry we'll get to see her panties later because what the absolute fucking fuck Bay!?!
S: [sighs] Bay, why- why'd you hurt me so? [sighs] There's a discussion about girlfriends and Sam says, “kind of,” in regards to having one.
O: Kind of? KIND OF!?! Sam, you dick waffle!
S: [sighs] The quintessential jock yells, “Who drove the freaking yellow Camaro!?”
O: Sam’s Bee senses tingle, and he leaves the party.
S: Bee is waiting outside on the lawn, or possibly the bushes but…
O: In that general vicinity! [laughs]
S: Yeah, but Alice follows him down and hops into Bee's passenger seat.
O: Bee attempts to communicate to Sam that this woman is ~baaaad news~ using various voice clips and songs. And this would have been a really interesting bit if Bee did have his voice back and he had to communicate with Sam like this because he's doing it in front of Alice!
S: Yeah, like, that would have been interesting and a neat way of utilizing his past experience to communicate.
O: Yeah, because I- I don't know remember if we've talked about this super much but there- there's nothing wrong with Bee still relying a bit on that because it is kind of funny and entertaining to see. It's- just make it so he has to use it in scenarios with other people around?
S: Yeah, god, he could do so much with musical lyrics.
O: Pretty much!
S: Alice seems to know something is up, as Bee makes her as uncomfortable as physically possible as he can, including spraying her with a icky yellow liquid and slamming her into the dashboard.
O: She exits in a huff before Bumblebee takes Sam to a graveyard where the rest of the Autobots are waiting.
S: So that was night. Now we are inexplicably in the daytime, I think?
O: Morning. Early morning it looks like.
S: Yeah. Optimus tells Sam the last piece (or as much as he is aware) of the AllSpark was stolen and attempts to convince Sam to remind the other humans why the Autobots are necessary and why they're trying to use a college student for this is a big question.
O: I don't know- and Sam says no, because he's just a normal college student. I don't understand this, I feel like I would jump at a chance like this? Like, dude, does it have good health insurance? Does it have a pension? Yes? Sign me the fuck up! But I want to ask, why the heck didn't Sam tell the Autobots here about the fragment he gave to Mikaela!?
S: Because he's a shitty little baby- I mean, obviously.
O: Oh, [unintelligible]. Then out in the middle of the ocean in a different movie… Over the Laurentian Abyss, which is where the dead Cons were dumped in the last movie. Several Decepticons have stowed away on what looks like a cargo ship.
S: The fact that it's going directly over where they need to go is uh... they probably hacked it.
O: Wouldn't shock me.
S: Yeah, so who the Decepticons are is absolutely unimportant. The only recognizable one is Ravage.
O: And I think only one other one will actually get named.
S: Yeah.
O: Uh, so they all jump off the ship and into the water, and I have to you know, bring up- they specifically said they dumped the dead bodies into this trench because of the pressure and cold in the last movie. So, why are all these Cons just perfectly fine with a little skinny dipping?
S: I mean, maybe it's just supposed to keep- I don't know, whatever self-repair systems the dead ones have from working and it doesn't do shit to like, perfectly fine robots? I don’t know.
O: They were using cold as a weapon against them in one though. Like, against Bee.
S: That's absolutely true, but I mean, if cold didn't [did] do anything to them how would they operate in space?
O: I don't know, but they clearly had Megatron on ice.
S: Who knows... yeah.
O: And he got frozen in the Arctic!
S: Yeah, I know, the entire thing is garbage. It may be- maybe water- maybe frozen water is their kryptonite? God. [laughs]
O: Welcome to Earth! [laughs]
S: Why didn't they dismember the Decepticons, or incinerate them? Or you know, take important parts, crush them, destroy them or whatever. Like, throw them in 100 different places- that would work a lot better than this! Run them through a trash compactor or something, before they dump them down into the Laurentian tre- Abyss.
O: I’ll tell you exactly why. Uh, because the government put out a bid for trash removal and the lowest bidder won.
S: The government does stupid things, many times. [sighs] We see a military sub monitoring this area, reading the five Cybertronian life signs.
O: They reach Megatron and a little doctor bot (whose name is Scalpel), starts uh, poking around at his corpse.
S: [sighs] He shouts about his need for parts, and one of the nameless Constructicons is offed. The parts and the AllSpark fragment are all shoved into Megatron.
O: So Megatron's back.
S: Yup.
O: And yet, still voiced by Hugo Weaving so I don't care. No offense, Hugo Weaving. Uh, get back to me in two movies. Also notice they didn't kill Ravage here, because I'm entirely convinced Soundwave would end them.
S: Probably, because I mean, they did like- the little doctor boss specified, “Kill the little one!”
O: It- to- pointing to a random Constructicon.
S: Yeah. Fun bout of bad continuity, the radar shows the five life signs, as Ravage and Scalpel are both too small to show up, and then uh, when they come up they have six life signs but uh, you'll remember they had to kill a Constructicon down there. So uh, it should be this same number, even with Megatron in tow. Or maybe they brought the other Con- Decepticons back to life, I don't know?
O: I don't think so, we never see them. They could have brought Blackout back to life, but we'll get into why they didn't later.
S: I mean maybe they brought uh, shoot- Scorponok?
O: No, Scorponok never died in the first movie.
S: Oh… well… yeah.
O: He just- they got his tail like-
S: Oh, that’s right.
O: The- the army guys cut off his tail but then he disappeared.
S: Oh, that's right. Mm.
O: Megatron's apparently salty enough at humans though, in general, to smash through this- the military sub on his way up, so all those people are dead now.
S: He'd do that even if he wasn't feeling salty, you know that.
O: Oh yeah, he's a bastard, but you know.
S: Uh, Megatron flies to one of Saturn's moons where the Nemesis is being uh, well, it's parked and is used as a base by some of the remaining Decepticons, which includes our old buddy Starscream. And he knocks Starscream around for taking over the Decepticons while he was ‘away’.
O: You know, while he was literally fucking dead. [laughs]
S: And so we are introduced to the Darth Sidious to Megatron's Darth Maul.
O: Including liberal use of the word ‘disciple’!
S: [sighs] So much sighing. This is the Fallen whose name we will not find out in the movie itself because it would be really fucking confusing to have Megatron, and his master, Megatronus, running around.
O: Also, um, a bunch of little baby robots in pods? On the wall.
S: Robot eggs. So many robot eggs.
O: But no really, I'm not sure we can explain that any better than we just did- so just roll with it.
S: Yeah. Anyway, the Fallen isn't shown to have an alt mode in this, but once you see him you do realize he was the Transformer that was shown at the very beginning of the movie while Optimus was monologuing.
O: And as kind of mentioned previously, he looks vaguely like the queen from Alien, but you know, with eyes and a huge staff he fights with.
S: And less arms and no tail.
O: Yeah. Apparently though, only a Prime can kill the Fallen. Don't ask us how the fuck that works!
S: I guess only a Prime can kill a Prime? Because wasn't the Fallen a Prime?
O: Yes, he was considered a Prime but I don't- I still don't know how the mechanics of that work is what I'm getting at.
S: Is it just a weird cultural hangup?
O: I- I don't know! That's what I'm saying, it's never explained!
S: I know, I know. This will get weird in a bit.
O: [laughs]
S: It will! [sighs]
O: But they're like, “So if we remove that one pesky remaining Prime we’ll be off scot-free!” [laughs]
S: Yep. The Fallen explains that the AllSpark cannot be destroyed it can merely be transformed.
O: Everything transforms on Cybertron, but right now the AllSpark is currently living rent free in Sam's head.
S: And I think he wants some goddamn rent, but I think we all want some goddamn rent for having this living rent free in our heads.
O: [laughs] Right!?! Bay, you should pay us for watching this movie!
S: [sighs] So, the Decepticons are going to go after Sam (again), kill Optimus, or at least make another attempt at it (again), and presumably somehow use Sam's brain as they AllSpark.
O: But then Starscream walks in holding a dead robot baby, waving it around and saying they need more Energon or all the hatchlings will continue to die.
S: Well, someone apparently… uh.
O: I just don't know why this is here. I'm sorry, I don't- I don't know why they felt the need to have Starscream motioning while holding a dead baby!
S: [laughs] Being a very bad nurse maid-
O: Yes! But now it's time to go back to school.
S: I already want to hit someone in this class well, multiple someones. Sam is setting it in on his physics class.
O: With the absolute creepiest, filthiest, fucking professor I have seen in a good long while.
S: Ah, innuendos, a god complex, this man is so many sexual harassment lawsuits, and a restraining order waiting to happen.
O: This is not appealing! Who the fuck does this appeal to?
S: I don't know but I'm ace, so I'm possibly not the best person to ask.
O: Is this a straight woman thing!? Where the hell are we gonna find one of those this time of night?
B: [laugh]
S: Sam starts freaking out like he was uh, doing at the party, writing equations, and stuff all over the board. He basically gets up, and bowls his way into- up to the front of the class and basically shows up the shitty professor.
O: Uh, Bulkhead did this in Prime, I'd like to personally nominate Bulkhead as our main character instead of Sam.
S: Oh yeah, Bulkhead would be a much more fun character. Sam is promptly kicked out of the class uh, because showing up the professor and also the fact that the dean is apparently there. So he's been- that professor has been like this while the dean is there.
O: Yes, so, uh, obviously he's sleeping with the old lady too, is what I'm getting from this.
S: That's creepy, it's even worse! I mean, this is a female dean.
O: Yeah, female dean not just a random like, male dean, I mean an older female dean!
S: [sighs] Oh god. Sam calls Mikaela mid freak out, and realizes that the AllSpark has caused his little problem.
O: Uh, so he asks her to bring the AllSpark fragment to him on the East Coast. Uh, by the way I would just like to take a moment to tell you this very important information, Mikaela's dog's name is Bones.
S: Uh, the little remote controlled truck Decepticon, who we regret to inform you is this universe's version of Wheelie, uhh, is stalking around the garage where Mikaela is.
O: Wheelie, uh, clearly hasn't gotten the memo on you know, Mikaela taking out a Decepticon with a power tool in the first movie, decides to be a dumbass and say, “You're hot, but you're not too bright,” as he attempts to steal the AllSpark fragment.
S: The fact that Wheelie has some sort of metric for human um, attractiveness is honestly, really concerning.
O: Just a little bit.
S: [sighs]
O: Uh, predictably though, Mikaela fucks him up with a welding torch, including taking out one of his optics.
S: Wheelie begs for mercy from the Warrior Goddess.
O: At last Mikaela is given a proper title.
S: Uh-huh, and then Mikaela shoves him in a box and hops on a plane.
O: Metal box, I feel like it's important it does actually hold him.
S: Yeah, a metal box, and hops on a plane with him and the AllSpark. And honestly this feels like something that she couldn't successfully do after 9/11.
O: Which is hilarious, because this was definitely filmed after 9/11. So we just have to go with she's so sexy that she was able to get the big metal box on the plane without having to go through an x-ray.
S: Except that everything that goes on the plane when you check it should go through x-ray…
O: I know, I know!
S: Or-
O: Boobs! The power of boobs!
S: Never mind that the power of boobs should not, you know, somehow affect the people that do not get exposed to the boobs.
O: See- see this is why uh, this movie would have been stopped in its tracks if one of the TSA agents had been a woman- a straight woman.
S: Or one of the people who sorts stuff or- because like, just imag-
O: It looked like it was her carry-on.
S: Now I'm just imagining that the people, because like you know how they sometimes go and randomly open bags to go through the contents? [laugh] I'm just imagining someone doing that and then there being a major freak out because out comes a stupid remote controlled car that’s yelling at everyone.
O: [laughs] Yeah… yeah.
S: Uh, then we cut to a short segment showing that all the Autobots are heading to locations on the East Coast as the rest of N.E.S.T. mobilizes.
O: But wait! Decepticon pretenders are afoot at Princeton!
S: That's not ominous at all. Sam is in his room going nuts and writing stuff on the wall.
O: Uh, and then Alice pushes her way into Sam's room and attempts a rather forceful seduction.
S: She straight up picks him up and tosses him on the bed.
O: Which really should have been his first clue that something was very wrong!
S: Yeah, because Alice is not uh, portrayed as a…
O: A big woman.
S: Yes.
O: She's very slight and conventionally attractive.
S: Yeah, so she gets on top of him, and then we get the most awkward shot of Decepticon panties as the metal tail comes out from underneath Alice's extremely short dress.
O: Thanks for that Michael Bay. I always, always wondered what brand of underpants Decepticons were wear, given the chance.
S: [sighs] She kisses Sam, apparently with tongue, and Mikaela walks in and is understandably pissed.
O: Alice asks if she's his girlfriend and Mikaela just says, “Ex,” and walks out, and I'm just like, “Yes, girl DRAG him!”
S: And meanwhile, Leo is sort of fluttering around in the background.
O: Yes, uh, because Alice pushed past him to get into their dorm room.
S: Sam attempts to follow, but Alice is 99% done with his dumb ass.
O: Uh, she attempts to strangle him with her suddenly very long and metal tongue.
S: Ah, that has apparently been places I do not want to think about.
O: I do not want to think about any of this, yeah.
S: Yeah. Sam is able to escape, and we see Alice transform into a very obvious robot.
O: Sam, Mikaela, and Leo run into a nearby library where Sam and Mikaela begin having a whisper argument.
S: They're busy whisper shouting this entire time. Alice catches up and smashes through the library, still chasing them.
O: I'm surprised this thing still has hair in robot mode.
S: Hair? I mean its still got boobs!
O: Bay, what the fuck!?
B: [laugh]
O: So they hop in the car, Mikaela saves both their butts by hot wiring it, and slamming Alice into a lamp post before running her over again with the car.
S: Where was Bumblebee during all of this?
O: Uh, he was actually with the Autobots a few- the other Autobots a few scenes back, so he's definitely not here.
S: Yeah unfortunately Sam and company don't get very far and are captured by Grindor who picks them up like, so you know those uh, claw machines-
O: [laughs]
S: At grocery stores? Grindor basically does that and then he carries them off, like- they’re his claw machine loot. Nearly losing one in the process.
O: I mean, truely, they kind of are. So, uh, you- to- get- you know how I just mentioned that they definitely couldn't have brought Blackout back to life? That is because Grindor looks exactly like Blackout, but he's not Blackout. Because Blackout died at the end of the last movie, and we totally thought he was Blackout and he's even listed as Blackout on some of the toys and a good chunk of promotional material, but- but he's a different character. I don't know why they did this.
S: I don't know they wanted to keep the trademark in use, maybe?
O: [groans]
S: For the Grindor name, because they used it- I think, in anime- Armada. I think they used it in Armada, so this was probably just blatant patent-
O: It was bad though. [laughs]
S: Oh yeah, I know. Or um, trade- name trademarks? I don't know.
O: But he makes a Decepticon number four voiced by Welker.
S: Mm-hm. So, the car is dropped into some kind of warehouse where Sam is confronted by the now very alive Megatron.
O: Who's definitely holding a grudge against Sam for the whole ‘killing him in the last movie’ thing.
S: Yep, Sam is laid out on a concrete slab and Scalpel gets to work. Starting with shoving a metal squid down Sam's throat, uhh…
O: No, no, no! No, no, no, no, NOPITY, nope, nope, nope nope!
S: Yeah, this is uh, pretty gross and I don't like it and I don't think anyone else likes it either. A metal squid uh, exits his mouth and projects images of what's in Sam's brain. [groans]
O: But! This is apparently not all the information in his brain, as Scalpel definitely intends to remove it from his head.
S: Sam is saved just in time by the Autobots.
O: I want to know how Megatron even got into this warehouse. There's not any like, big holes that we can see or anything, aside from the one Grindor- when Grindor dropped the car through.
S: Yeah, there really don't seem to be any openings big enough for him that we can see.
O: Okay, just going to assume mass shifting in this continuity for no good reason, okay.
S: Either that or he did the stupid ‘I'm a contortionist’ through the door, which seems way more respect for the -
O: [laughs] Robot limbo!
S: That seems to be way more uh, respect for the integrity of this building than Megatron should feel.
O: Yes!
S: Ah, so, um, Leo and Mikaela escape in Bee while Optimus takes Sam.
O: So they're separated, and Optimus has to fight Megatron alone. And Megatron turns into a tank for a split second! I didn't even realize this version of him could BE a tank!
S: Yeah, he's a multiformer?
O: Apparently!
[In the background crowd noises are heard as the hosts begin speaking like sports announcers.]
O: But now, it's the match of the century here at the Forest Fighting arenaaaa!
S: It's Megatron versus Optimus tonight, folks!
O: The Warlord himself versus Optimus Fucking Prime! [laughs]
[A wrestling bell rings in the background to signify the start of the match.]
S: Optimus gets a good right hook in.
O: Right before being tackled by Megatron!
S: Is that legal?
O: Hell if I know! It's giant robots, it's all the same amount of legal!
S: Oh! He's got the tree!
[The crowd increases in volume.]
S: Optimus has got the tree!
O: What a hit, you know that one must have hurt!
S: And now it's a sword fight? They both are up and swinging away!
O: It just turned into a three-on-one match, folks!
[The crowd begins booing.]
S: Oh no- no, Optimus- Starscream and Grindor have joined the fray!
O: Wait, somehow a human's gotten into the arena.
S: Starscream and Megatron are chasing him down.
[The crowd increases in volume]
O: But Optimus has intercepted them and has taken them both on!
S: Starscream has been tossed out of the arena- out of bounds, out of bounds!
O: Optimus has gone through a tree!
S: Now the Cons are all just taking turns hitting him. You hate to see it folks, you hate to see it!
O: Optimus is eatin’ dirt!
S: But he's back and now dual wielding blades!
O: Grindor’s lost an arm!
S: Megatron’s taken a good one to the kneecap.
O: And hit to the face!
S: That's it! That's it for Grindor! Hook, line and sinker!
[The crowd roars.]
O: Oh, he must have a splittin’ headache!
S: Or at least he would if he still had a head.
O: But Optimus is distracted before taking the blade to the chest!
[A wrestling bell sounds to signify the end of the match.]
O: That's it! It's all over! Optimus is down, I repeat- Optimus is down! Megatron's the winner!
[Applause and the crowd noise fades out]
O: No really, Optimus is dead now, because Bay wants to make us feel things.
S: Except very badly, and unfortunately, this Optimus didn’t back up his brain on a floppy disk. And I mean there is no pathos here!
O: Of course somehow during all of this no one ends our suffering by squishing Sam accidentally or otherwise.
S: [sighs]
O: [laughs]
S: The rest of the Autobots drive up just in time to see Optimus body.
O: Where the fuck were they!?!
S: Being useless.
O: Yeah, that checks out.
S: Megatron and Starscream flee and land on a skyscraper in the middle of a city, and then argue about what to do next. And we cut to Soundwave doing what he does best, remotely managing resources.
O: Which in this case means tracking Sam's parents down in Paris as they enjoy some fine parisian food, and prank calling them.
S: Yeah, his mom is not impressed about the heavy breathing. Such as it is.
O: We then see several Decepticons, including The Fallen, fall to Earth taking out several air carriers and buildings as they land.
S: One of these Decepticons captures Sam's parents.
O: The Fallen sends out a tv broadcast basically spelling out that he wants Sam turned over to him in order to spare the rest of the planet.
S: Ah, the news story is shown, letting us know that worldwide the number of casualties is in the ballpark of seven thousand, and well, that's not as horrifying as it came across initially, but mmm…
O: Just seven thousand, for the entire world? I, for one, welcome our Decepticon overlords. In case you're watching this in the future, we're recording this at the tail end of 2020 and we live in the US. That's literally less than 30% of the US’ current Covid death count at this point- eh- while we were researching this episode. It's probably more now.
S: Sam, Mikaela, Leo, Bee, and the Twins are hiding out in, and around some abandoned buildings.
O: Leo's upset, but Sam tells him to suck it up because he's involved now.
S: A helicopter dumps Optimus’ body over at N.E.S.T., and that was not a respectful handling of a dead body.
O: To be fair, he is very big, and the humans are very small, and that was not an Autobot helicopter.
S: Yeah, but that was effectively a world leader.
O: Yeah, Ironhide is upset and uh, begins to get antsy with his guns.
S: Mr. Government Weasel shows up and shuts N.E.S.T. down. Lennox gets upset when he realizes the US government is planning out to hand Sam over.
O: And they're right to consider it! You should (theoretically speaking) hand over one person if has the possibility of stopping a massive amount of death!
S: The problem is it wouldn't stop the massive amount of death, and it would just let them basically strip mine the planet because the Decepticons- the name starts with deception.
O: Fair, but the only ones who would know that are the Autobots and possibly members of N.E.S.T. From the perspective of government officials, who do not have this information, it makes sense.
S: Yeah. Skids and Mudflap clue the group in on trying to find someone who can read the Cybertronian text the AllSpark downloaded into Sam's brain.
O: Leo has decided to join them on their uh, “adventure”.
S: In quotation marks. Which is probably uh, for the best because he knows a guy who might be able to help.
O: Remember the rival internet guy from before?
S: Guess who's back from the first movie, and it might not be your first thought!
O: That's right, Agent Simmons from the first movie, who is no longer- is a no longer an agent, is Robo-Warrior.
S: I feel like the tech guy from the first movie would have probably made a better Robo-Warrior.
O: Yeah, I do too... I do too.
S: [sighs] So, Sam and company arrive at Simmons’ mom's deli, or possibly his deli that his mom works at too or something? I don't know it…
O: It's not very clear.
S: Yeah.
O: Uh, come to find out that Simmons has held on to some old Sector 7 documents.
S: Not just some, uh, he stole a lot of shit from Sector 7. Like, enough to fill like a sub basement.
O: [snorts] Uh, now Mikaela pulls out Wheelie, who has been in tow in the metal box.
S: Uh-huh.
O: Uh, smooth talking him into helping them.
S: Wheelie also can't read the writing from before, saying that it's in the ‘language of the Primes’ and that they need a Seeker.
O: I had completely forgotten they referred to these guys as Seekers until we watched this again. I kind of had a ‘what the fuck’ moment.
S: Same. Seekers, in this continuity are ancient Cybertronians that had been tasked with traveling the galaxy, looking for stars to use as energy sources for the AllSpark. This is a little bit of a hint, hint, hint, for uh, something that might happen later.
O: In a convenient coinkydink, some of Simmons’ old documents show several of these Seekers in their alt modes.
S: Wheelie is able to identify an SR-71 Blackbird in the National Air and Space Museum as a Seeker.
O: So off the gang goes to Washington DC.
S: Outside the National Air and Space Museum, Simmons rips off his pants, revealing the Sector 7 thong to the audience... and then turns around so we can get the view from every angle. That’s-
O: No, no, no. I did not need to see robot balls. I did not need to see hairy man balls, and I certainly did not need to see hairy man ass! I'm not even sure why he did this!? I assume he changed pants but I don't know why he did that right here, in a parking lot, in front of everyone!
S: For the pain, I don't know.
O: [laughs]
S: And thus, they come up with the most amazing scheme to get into the museum as it's closing. Leo's being a coward and Simmons intimidates him a bit.
O: Oh god! That man is pressing his man meat against that man's meat!
S: [sighs] Inside the museum, Leo comes out of the bathroom with his pants… mmm, like, down around his ankles, looking for toilet paper.
O: Why did they want to do this to me? I am feeling personally attacked by the quantity of hairy man I am seeing in this movie!
S: Why are they doing this to us? It’s not just to you-
O: Why are they doing this to everyone!?! [laughs]
S: Yeah. The security guard escorts Leo back into the bathroom, chastising him about how this is a family museum.
O: Yeah, the only one guy doing their job here is the security guard, okay?
S: Yeah, and [he] attempts to hand them toilet paper over the top of the stall.
O: Leo then zaps him with a taser and the man falls to the ground.
S: Of course Leo manages to uh, taze himself with the taser too and falls down, kind of by the guy, and is unable to move.
O: Simmons comes in and drags Leo, still twitching, out of the bathroom.
S: I am hoping that his pants are up, but god who knows with this movie-
O: I don't think they were when he started dragging him. [laughs]
S: God, why?
O: Oh, there was butt- his butt cheeks were ALL over that floor.
S: [sighs] So, they run through the museum and find the correct jet, and then Sam uses the AllSpark fragment on that jet.
O: You would think that perhaps, perhaps, before using an AllSpark fragment to wake a Cybertronian up you might check his goddamn faction badge first but, NOOOO! It’s only after the jet begins to transform they notice the goddamn Decepticon symbol.
S: We are introduced to easily what is not only the best robot character in this movie, but quite possibly the best character in the movie, period.
O: Meet Jetfire! He's old, he's cranky, he's a delight, and he's got a pretty sweet looking beard.
S: Yep, and a cane made from his alt mode’s landing gear. You know, for extra old man points.
O: Now bit of a tangent, but in G1 you will remember Skyfire. Our big sweetie pie scientist.
S: Starscream’s ex, you can't forget that.
O: Can’t forget that, and also frequently utilized as a taxi service by the Autobots.
S: Well, Skyfire is often named Jetfire instead, depending on the continuity. You know, name stuff is weird...
O: Yeah, and- but this Jetfire doesn't have too much in common with our big old scientist, I just wanted to point out that he was clearly referencing him. Um, but the one thing he does have in common and the most important thing to the idiots we're following, is that he is a Decepticon defector.
S: Mm-hmm. Jetfire attempts to fire at a large door to get outside but is uh, having some uh, ‘performance issues’ with his equipment.
O: [laughs] Uh, he is able to get outside, so our party follows him um... into Arizona. And yes, we know that movies often have to be shot at other locations, or fudge locations and make certain events work. But I find this one particularly jarring as they are clearly in a desert with mountains off in the distance which does not line up with the geography around Washington DC.
S: Yeah, considering that it was what, a swamp?
B: [laugh]
O: Definitely not a desert with mountains!
S: Yeah, ah, this part was actually filmed at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, or The Boneyard, in Tuscan, Arizona.
O: Jetfire gives a speech about how being an Autobot or a Decepticon is a choice.
S: An intensely personal choice, even. And Wheelie's like, “Holy shit it IS!?!”
O: And proceeds to start humping Mikaela's leg, charming.
S: [long drawn out sigh] So many sighs.
O: [laughs] I don't understand all the humping in this movie Bay, I really don't.
S: Juvenile male humor?
O: I guess?
S: Guys think humping shit is funny, somehow? I don't know. [sighs] Jetfire shows his uh, senility a little bit talking about his parents.
O: “My father? Why he was a wheel! The first wheel, and you know what he transformed into? Nothing! But he did so with honor- dignity, damn it!”
S: And that is a direct quote-
O: [laughs]
S: Straight from the man himself!
O: He's a delight.
S: [sighs] Sam pulls out a knife and begins carving the uh, Cybertronian symbols into the ground. I mean, where- where'd he get the knife? I have questions.
O: Thong man? Probably?
S: Disconcerting- disconcertingly, yes, that is probable. Um, Jetfire blabbers off about the Dagger's Tip before generating a space bridge, and teleporting everyone to Egypt with uh, very little warning. I mean the only warning he gives them is, “Hold on or you'll die!” to the nearby squishies
O: I also feel like we need to preface, Dagger's Tip as in a location, not talking about the- the knife Sam is holding. Realize that might be a little confusion without- confusing without context.
S: Yeah, and are Bumblebee and the Twins… are also here?
O: The Twins are also here translated- trans- translated? Transported.
S: Okay, because yeah, they apparently showed up after they they exited and mass translocated to Arizona. [sighs] Life is weird in this movie.
O: Yeah, so uh, then Jetfire informs us that once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away… The original seven Primes had arrived on Earth to build a device called a Star Harvester which can create Energon by destroying suns. Wait, seven!?! Did they just pick a number at random!?
S: Probably. I don't think whoever it was making this movie cared about the lore that was in other parts of the series.
O: At least seven is also a prime number…
S: Yeah... I mean, heck, I don't remember if they had a different number in [the] Cybertron [tv series]? Because Cybertron I think, did have a list of Primes.
O: I think the number’s are usually 13.
S: Yeah, but it's just- I don't remember when that number came up-
O: Mm- that’s fair.
S: If it was before or after this.
[Okay, this is mildly confusing, (as Transformers lore often is) but the rough concept for The Thirteen has been around since 1999, but was really only solidified in 2004-2005 into specifically, Thirteen Primes. All that being said, even if that wasn’t established in the first movie, it certainly would have been by the time they were creating the sequel. Also, several adaptations of this movie do have thirteen Primes, not seven, and designs had been created for 12 (non-Fallen) Prime heads, so who knows what the heck happened with this behind the scenes. ~O]
S: Yeah, and while they had a rule about not destroying suns that supported life, the Fallen decided that the humans sucked, and tried to turn it on anyway because-
O: He's a dick! [laughs]
S: He was basically the equivalent of a pissy house proud lady who, with a- whose house had a mouse infestation and he wanted to demolish it anyway but… The humans are the mice in this metaphor.
O: [laughs] Uh, the Primes tried to fight him but were unable to actually defeat him.
S: Considering that only a Prime is supposed to be able to defeat the Fallen this is somehow extremely disappointing. So they took the Matrix of Leadership and sealed it in a tomb made of their own bodies.
O: The Matrix of Leadership is a reoccurring McGuffin in the Transformers lore, but for some inexplicable reason in this continuity it is basically just a ‘key’ for the Star Harvester.
S: Well, I think it also has some other purposes, considering what they end up using it for later… but yeah, it's primarily just the horse- blah, the Star Harvester key. Jetfire conveys that Sam needs to find the Matrix of Leadership or they're all fucked. I mean, what happened? Did turning on Jetfire completely destroy the AllSpark fragment or is it just... dead now? Could they use that to re-awaken Optimus body?
O: I mean yeah, you would think right!? Because like, they- they did- they- that's how they brought Megatron back but nobody thought of this!
S: I mean didn't they already have a thing that they could have used to just, wake Optimus up?
O: Maybe? I don't know. I don't know. Moving right along! Um-
S: I want answers! Sorry...
O: We're not gonna get ‘em. And then presumably, they leave Jetfire in the desert because he needs a good long nap after generating a whole ass space bridge.
S: Well, he basically tells them to get lost before any Auto- before any Decepticons show up.
O: Yeah, because assumably he's gonna take a nap.
S: Yeah, I mean- I think another Decepticon does show up at some point in the novelization, but who knows. I think grandpa beats his pants- or beats his ass. Sam reaches the conclusion that if the Matrix of Leadership can activate the Sun Harvester then maybe it could reactivate Optimus, like some sort of robot activating skeleton key.
O: Seems like a bit of a reach, but alright.
S: No one knows what's going on here, so I guess, sure! Let's run with it.
S: They stop by a nearby village allowing Simmons to contact N.E.S.T. and somewhat covertly tell them that they need to bring Optimus’ corpse over to Egypt.
O: [laughs]
S: [sighs] Oh, this is going to be so many… ugh, so many problems.
O: Soundwave is still able to figure out what the fuck they're saying though, and deploys the Decepticons to the same location that Simmons had given N.E.S.T. You know, do you think his back hurts? You know, from carrying his entire faction?
S: Probably, but I mean, he's in space so there's not much weight up there right now.
O: [laughs] Probably lessens the feeling a little bit.
S: Using some gibberish about the ‘three kings’ and also, astrological knowledge, Sam is able to figure out where the Primes’ tomb is and uh, the group heads towards the mountains of Petra.
O: Lennox's group has also brought the government weasel with them along on their ‘Definitely Not Transporting a Giant Robot Corpse’ mission, and then they fool him into jumping out of the plane. So they can carry on without interruption.
S: Slightly less jumping out of the plane and slightly more uh, fooling him into opening the damn parachute that uh, they got the man to wear and then he gets swept out because--
O: It was a parachute. [laughs]
S: Moving plane, open door, there goes the- there goes the parachute. Oops! So much wind.
O: And it really might be one of the funniest scenes in the entire movie. It also reads entirely too close to something our DND group would pull.
S: Oh yeah, yeah.
B: [laugh]
O: Ask our DM!
S: Oh, any one of our DMs.
O: Any one of our DMs, but I'm particularly talking about when my poor husband had to DM.
S: Yeah, I'm thinking about the ‘whale’ incident.
[My husband regretted that our party had the ability to summon large creatures and portals on that day. ~O]
So Sam and company arrive at Petra.
O: For the non-documentary nerds among us, uh, Petra is an ancient city in Southern Jordan. While it does contain more structures than the treasury (which is what I think they show here) uh, this is probably one of the most famous. You may recognize it as the resting place of the Holy Grail in the Indiana Jones movies. And as we were watching, I had a minor panic attack at the giant robots possibly breaking things.
S: Oh, and the giant robots definitely break things. The Twins fight, and hit a wall or a fresco. Revealing a hollow area behind it with uh, very noticeable giant robot bits.
O: [laughs] Then Bee takes aim at the wall and I have another panic attack. Though to be fair, he's got very good aim and only makes what is arguably a very small hole.
S: Through the giant robot bits. Sam enters the new hole in the wall and finds the Matrix of Leadership on the floor. I guess, cradled in the hands of the Prime corpses? Which- this is super morbid!
O: [laughs]
S: When he picks it up, uh, it crumbles into dust. So, Sam does the only thing he can think of, he sweeps all that dust into his sock.
O: Time to go resurrect Optimus with dirty sock dust!
S: Is it the sock of destiny?
O: It is now.
S: I guess it awakens giant robots, but leaves buildings standing.
O: [snorts]
S: All the while uh, he talks about there having to be some sort of reason for everything that's happening.
O: Uh, to quote a much better character, “It's possible to commit no mistakes and still lose,” so Sam you're full of shit.
S: Yep, back with N.E.S.T. uh, they yeet Optimus’ corpse out of the plane and I believe Optimus has parachutes again here?
O: Probably.
S: I mean, if he doesn't that is just so much corpse desecration.
O: [laughs] And it seems like we arrive back where we started in the first movie, as it looks like they're back in that little desert town where the fight with Scorponok took place. You know, they just- they're just gotta destroy it again.
S: And if that's not that same town it looks extremely similar.
O: Starscream begins firing on Sam and co as they head to the rendezvous location with N.E.S.T.
S: [sighs] The group splits up in order to draw the fire away from Sam.
O: Leo, Simmons, and the twins head off. Bee heads off in another direction, and then Sam and Mikaela head towards Optimus’ location on foot.
S: This seems like a bad allocation of resources but, ohh-kay.
O: [chuckles]
S: N.E.S.T. also spots Starscream, but he has released an EMP burst, cutting off all their communication.
O: Government weasel however, has landed safe and sound and is able to reach (and annoy!) the N.E.S.T. headquarters.
S: Yep and N.E.S.T. uh, headquarters is frustrated that weasel can contact them but they can't contact Lennox's group.
O: Simmons group stops uh, once they realize Starscream has stopped following them.
S: Megatron and Starscream (none too gently) land on the Great Pyramid.
O: God damn, more defacing world heritage sites?
S: Well, the Egyptian authorities would definitely have um, a case against them for this. Because you know, they they charge people with doing dumb ill-advised things on the pyramids
O: I dunno how you're gonna get money out of Megatron but, alright! [laughs]
S: Eh, I'd go with the blood from the stone thing, and literally selling off materials from his body, but who knows? That's also very morbid. Um, Megatron orders an attack and Devastator forms out of more than the requisite number of constructicons from G1.
O: And Devastator makes our last Welker voiced Con for the day, bringing our number up to five-
S: And it’s-
O: -out of 12.
S: And spoiler alert uh, Devastator looks nothing like G1 Devastator, and also this is in like- the same location that Simmons and Leo are at.
O: Yep. Sam and Mikaela though are continuing their march towards N.E.S.T. All the while trying to avoid Decepticons, and thus hide in one of the nearby houses.
S: Ah, I like the lighting in the scene, the lighting is very nice. So one wall is mostly structured from uh, glass bottles. You know, provides some very nice ambient lighting without the need of electricity. It just- it's very pleasant. It's a very pretty look
O: Then we get a really nifty scene of the Decepticons looking for them that's basically, one big long continuous shot of it going out of a hole Sam is looking out, going around the scene and then going back through I think, the keyhole? For the door to the house they're in.
S: Yeah, that sort of continuous shot's very nice. You don't see those very often. Sam catches a tiny Decepticon bug that comes through the hole, leading to them being found, and the house's roof being ripped off by Starscream.
O: They attempt to escape.
S: The Twins uh, begin to fight Devastator, while the combiner tries to eat everybody with his horrifying trash-compactor-crusher mouth.
O: Mudflap is eaten, but doesn't go down easy and punches his way out of Devastator's mouth.
S: The Decepticons reveal that they are holding Sam's parents hostage.
O: But they're all saved by the timely arrival of Bee.
S: Ravage is killed when Bee rips his entire body off his spine??
O: How does Ravage keep ending up in two pieces in these things?
S: I think technically he might be in more than two pieces, but ughhh...
O: Meh, I'm just saying- there was the spine in one hand, and the rest of them in the other hand, at least from my memory.
S: I know, it's just- god, unfortunately this feels a whole lot like shucking an ear of corn.
O: [laugh] Oh, god- yeah... yeah... yeah.
S: [sighs] I'm sorry for that image.
O: Sam uh, tells Bee to take his parents out of danger once they- he- they've gotten them away from the Cons.
S: Uh, Sam's dad argues with him in what we're assuming is supposed to be a counter to his no caring attitude about Sam going off to college in the movie. One of the only positive things is his dad's care- for his dad's character is that he does seem to want to take care of- take care of his son.
O: Pity doesn't show more.
S: Yeah.
O: Okay, tangent, but you may have noticed we're being less descriptive about things that are happening at this point in the story. That's because we basically hit a point where the remainder is a gigantic action scene and not really much else.
S: Yeah, it's a whole lot of punch, punch, switch scene, punch, punch, switch scene.
O: Yeah, so-
S: Shoot, shoot, shoot.
O: We're trying, but if something doesn't really make sense it's because stuff is swapping and not a lot is happening. Oddly enough this movie is actually a good example of why you should keep things simple, from a storytelling perspective. And yeah, I know if you examine the basis of this movie's plot it is pretty simple, but instead of just, you know, actually going from point a to point b there's just a ton of waypoints kind of getting in the way of the action that’s actually happening. Uh, like, “Oh well, we'd better go over to this set for yet another action sequence!” Nothing that's happened in the last 30 or so minutes has really mattered to the overall plot because it's just action sequence, action sequence, action sequence.
S: Yup, dirt, explosions, running, falling down.
O: Rinse and repeat.
S: There is nothing of substance here. Speaking of pointless, it's back to Simmons for absolutely no reason.
O: Uh, Megatron's been on top of the Great Pyramid doing nothing this entire freaking time and now he chooses to shoot down a helicopter.
S: I don't think he's even been monologuing.
O: Yeah, he hasn't! He has- that's what I mean, nothing! He's not even doing anything interesting!
S: Simmons takes the radio from the pilot of said downed helicopter and follows after Devastator as he heads toward the Great Pyramid.
O: American Army porn.
S: And Air Force. And Navy, [sighs] probably?
O: [groans]
S: Sam and Mikaela are spotted by Ironhide and the three Arcees.
O: Two Arcees are downed by some Cons after their one speaking line in the entire freaking movie.
S: Devastator begins climbing the Great Pyramid.
O: Is Megatron waiting up there for Devastator?! Is- is it just too much work to wreck the pyramid by himself?
S: He's got all of these lackeys, he wants the lackeys to do shit for him.
O: Oh, lord.
S: Simmons follows and contacts the Navy.
O: Okay- okay, the only thing I can think of here is that they needed Simmons to do something. Otherwise, why the heck do they call in military reinforcements then call in yet more military reinforcements!?
S: More American Army porn.
O: [sighs] Devastator demolishes the top of the pyramid. Yes, yes, destroying more history, yes, yes.
S: Yet more American Army porn!
O: And then Megatron chases Sam and Mikaela as they approach N.E.S.T.
S: After many, many, MANY, explosions, Sam and Mikaela reach Lennox.
O: Who's like, “You'd better have a good reason for us to be here!”
S: “I got a sock full of dust!”
O: [laughs] Yes, you do Sam. Yes, you do.
S: [sighs] Jetfire shows up, taking out a Con with his cane.
O: Then Scorponok, you know, from the first movie, immediately shows up just to stab Jetfire and ruin all of our days.
S: You know, his triumphant return after disappearance in the last half of the previous movie.
O: And now for the moment you- we-
S: [sighs]
O: We've all been waiting for!
S: Ugh… [unintelligable]
O: Do you want me to do it?
S: Yes, please.
O: Simmons says, “I'm directly below the enemy scrotum.” Why would you say that? Why would you say it like this? Why wouldn't you just say, “I am directly below the enemy”!? Why did you feel the need to add the word ‘scrotum’ to that sentence!?! [laughs]
S: The enemy's anatomy should not be that important, but I guess Bay thinks balls are important- er, hilarious.
O: Important and hilarious.
S: God.
[I am furious that we didn’t know about this clip until AFTER we did this episode, but yeah, this exists. Bay was SO proud of this joke. ~O]
O: Uh, Devastator comes to pieces after being hit by an experimental Navy railgun from the ship that Simmons has been contacting.
S: Yeah, back with Lennox and company, Epps proves yet again to have one of the best lines in the entire movie.
O: They throw some smoke grenades to provide a target for the Air Force.
S: Unfortunately, this smoke's just a teensy bit too close to the party.
O: Epps responds with, “It wasn't my best toss, okay!?”
S: [sighs] In the ensuing chaos of the airstrike, Sam runs ahead to try and get to Optimus and Megatron appears out of the smoke to shoot him. Or to dramatically close in on him, I guess.
O: Megatron gets pushed back by some of the N.E.S.T. covering fire and nyrooms away very awkwardly.
S: Except, what's this!? Sam's dead.
O: [loudly] WOOOOOOOOOOO!
S: Mikaela's not so happy about this though.
O: Uh, sad music plays. Dialogue can be heard faintly as Lennox and the N.E.S.T. crew begins CPR. His parents show back up... again. For what purpose exactly? I think this would have read just fine with Mikaela just being the only one sad about Sam.
S: I don't know. If this is their attempt at pathos, but it kind of sucks. I mean, I know that the audience is supposed to feel bad that this guy's dead but-
O: I don't! [laughs]
S: They did a terrible job of making me care, but now is the moment where Mikaela tells Sam that she loves him.
O: They had a whole thing about this earlier in the movie we really didn't go over but they were having kind of an argument on who should say, “I love you,” first. Blah- blah- blah- blah-
S: Ah.
O: But now, a window into Sam's psyche.
S: What, you mean it's not just going to be boobs, boobs, and more boobs?
O: No- no the seven Primes appear in a vision to Sam.
S: Oh god, does this make Sam a Prime? I really hope not…
O: Oh my god! One of the Primes is voiced by Bulkhead! And by Bulkhead, I of course mean his voice actor Kevin Michael Richardson. A man with a huge filmography that I guarantee you've heard at least a dozen or so things that he has done, if not more!
S: The Primes tell Sam that he is worthy of being a Prime.
O: Bulk, why do you have to hurt me in this way, and by extension, EVERYONE?
S: The magical sweaty sock dust reconstitutes into the Matrix of Leadership. And, I mean, I'm kind of concerned that some of the remaining sweaty sock dust is now blowing away, or maybe this sock will be some sort of horrifying museum relic.
O: Considering what he did with his shirt, I wouldn't be surprised. Um, but I don't really care, because this just means the movie is getting closer to its inevitable conclusion.
S: Fair. Sam then takes the Matrix and stabs it into Optimus chest.
O: Stabby stab? We bring him to life by giving him another stab wound? Magical stabby stab?
S: I think this is how you get robot zombies.
O: Good thing nobody had any Dark Energon on hand.
S: Or the Hate Plague. Of course, the Matrix is immediately snatched up by the Fallen.
O: Because we want to have our cake and eat it too. We need to bring Optimus back to life and also to get the giant sun stun gun going too.
S: So, the Fallen activates the Star Harvester.
O: High levels of shut up and die reached as the Fallen finally reveals some amount of fighting prowess with a bitchin’ anti-gravity staff.
S: Yep. Jetfire, who has been sort of hanging out this entire time having a giant hole in his chest, sacrifices himself to upgrade Optimus so that he can go fight the Fallen.
O: Jetfire, buddy, sir, you deserved better.
S: He did.
O: Here's one of the few scenes where Jolt is visible as he helps Ratchet get Optimus battle worthy.
S: Yeah, um, the electric whips were somehow needed for this for some reason, somehow.
O: Optimus, having gained the power of flight, begins to fight Megatron and the Fallen.
S: But not before destroying the Sun Harvester.
O: Megatron's face is badly damaged as Optimus moves on to the Fallen and rips off the Fallen's face saying, and I quote, “Give me your face!”
S: Then Optimus rams his hand through the Fallen's chest and uh, rips out and crushes the Fallen’s spark.
O: Starscream, being the sane one here, suggests that he and Megatron flee.
S: Megatron, considering that he is dealing with both a head injury and a missing arm from the elbow down, takes Starscream up on his offer. The Fallen having been defeated, Optimus returns to the ground and shrugs off all of Jetfire's parts
O: [You] couldn't have kept anything? The gun? No, nothing. Was it a frame thing- did you miss the slimmer frame, Optimus? Just be honest here, you know.
S: I mean, maybe he considered it kind of morbid having like, corpse parts on him? I mean that would be-
O: Fuck if I know.
S: That would be kind of morbid, but yeah... it feels like it's just showing disrespect to Jetfire's sacrifice. [sighs] Then we move back to Sam and Mikaela, interspersed with shots of N.E.S.T., the Navy, Simmons, etc.
O: Ah, yes, soldiers, brothers in arms, kissing! Soldiers, brothers in arms, KISSING!
S: [laughs] Sorry, sorry I was just- like, my brain put those together at first and not what it actually was.
O: [laughs] I mean, to be fair, that would probably be a more interesting movie!
S: Yes. Optimus thanks Sam for saving his life. And I have many questions Optimus. Did you have- what did you see Optimus? What did you see? And we end with an Optimus monologue about the two races working together in the future.
O: Ohh, Optimus, you’re- you're just going to be discarded in two movies, sweetie. Um, don't trust the US Military, we do not have a good track record.
S: Yup. Linkin Park, much like the first film what plays us out as the credits roll.
O: And thus, we are divided from the rest of the movie. A New Divide if you will.
S: Oh, is that a name drop?
O: It's the name of the song. [laughs]
S: Or title drop, yeah.
O: [laughs]
S: Alright, so what's your take?
O: Wow, I really don't like that movie. The last 30 minutes- hour- whatever, felt like an eternity where the only thing happening was explosions, and robots maybe punching each other and I just didn't care about anything that was happening? The early part wasn't really much better, but at least the characters, you know, were talking to each other.
Um, the writing overall isn't good for like, dialogue and again, some of the events just kind of feel like why did this even need to happen? And I do think it's worth mentioning that this was filmed during the 2007 writers’ strike.
Additionally, regardless of how bad I personally find the dialogue, I still have to give props to Peter Cullen's performance of Optimus. Even the first time I saw this movie, I was sad that Optimus died. And keep in mind at the time I didn't know anything about Transformers, aside from seeing the first movie. I feel like Cullen puts a lot of heart to his performance of Optimus, and I really can't think of a time where it's felt like he's phoned it in and I really do appreciate that. Even here, even with the, “Give me your face,” line.
What did you think, Specs?
S: Well, I don't have nearly as much to say as you did.
O: [laughs]
S: Um, I liked Jetfire. The SR-71 Blackbird is a very neat plane, and I mean, I liked it before this movie came out. So, I liked him for more than one reason. But he was cranky, and delightful, and a jet, and the best part of the movie. Everything else was just kind of painful. Yeah.
O: Yeah, I think that's fair.
S: Yeah. I mean, I liked Mikaela too, but...
O: Yeah, she- say goodbye to her because she's not gonna be in the next movie. This is the last one with Mikaela in it.
S: I think she got the better part of the deal.
O: [laughs] Pity we can't make as graceful as an exit.
S: Yep.
O: But that's it for us now. Uh, we will be posting another episode. Uh, where we go into more detail on what we personally would have wanted to see in this movie. But we know this is running along as it is, and I think based on our estimates this should be around the same length as last year's episode so we're gonna split it. We are also aware that you personally may not care about us trying to you know basically fanfic- fix this so…
S: Mm-hm. Remember to check us out on Tumblr or Pillowfort as Afterspark-Podcast for any additional information, show notes, or links we may have mentioned. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter @AftersparkPod (all one word). And various other locations by searching for Afterspark Podcast, such as AO3, iTunes, Spotify, and Youtube, just to name a few. And feel free to send us questions on Tumblr, Youtube, or AO3.
O: As always, thank you so much for listening. Happy (probably belated by the time this is posted) holidays to everyone. 2020 has been a hell of a rough year, so please stay safe and we will be back with more normal episodes soon.
S: Toodles.
[Outro Music]
S: Sam grabs out a knife and begins carving the Cybertronian siblings into the ground um, I mean, where did you get the knife?
O: You mean symbols? You said siblings.
S: [laughs] God- oh god, I can’t talk!
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1110: Wizards of the Lost Kingdom
I only saw this episode once, while I was on my two-day binge back when season eleven first debuted – and by then I was kind of running out of binge-watching oomph, because I don’t think I paid much attention to it. If I had, I wouldn’t have been so blindsided by shit like the mermaid and her rainbow bridge or the flying lion-centaur whatchamafuckit. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom is depressingly cheap and desperately amateurish, but it's also unbelievably fucking weird.
There’s a great evil abroad in the land or something. The Castle(TM) is Attacked and the resident Bearded Wizard(TM) gives his son the Callow Youth(TM) a Magical Ring(TM) to keep safe – but of course the stupid kid drops it on the way out. After gathering a few allies, slaying a few monsters, and dabbling in casual necromancy, the boy sneaks back into the castle to retrieve the ring and do wizardly battle with the bad guy. The day is saved, the princess is rescued, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The music attempts to convince us that this is epic and exciting, rather than corny and embarrassing.
I have rarely felt as bad for a group of actors as I did watching Wizards of the Lost Kingdom. I kept wanting to hide behind the couch so I wouldn’t have to look at the expressions on their faces as they humiliate themselves by being in this movie. Even Crabby the Crab Hat doesn’t want to be here. The whole thing looks like a third grade class put on a play starring everybody’s parents. The only person who gets out with any shred of dignity is whatever poor bastard was hiding under the Gulfax suit… oh, no, wait, no he didn’t, because according to IMDB the same actor also played Dad the Wizard.
Let’s look at our characters. There’s our hero Simon, who is about thirteen and seems to be familiar with the concept of a quest but would probably much rather be reading a book somewhere. His buddy is Gulfax, a dude who paid way too much for his alpaca fursuit. Kor the Conquerer is supposed to be a troubled alcoholic mercenary, but he really does look like Gordon Ramsay except not as badass. The wicked queen dresses like she’s trying to look sexy for the Swamp Thing. Princess Aura acts like your nine-year-old sister parading around in one of those Disney Princess gowns. The bad guy is less impressive than his own fashion accessories and can disintegrate people except when it would be inconvenient for the plot. Simon can disintegrate people, too, but saves it for non-humans despite the fact that they’re shown to be sentient.
Then there’s what all these people actually do. Despite a much more kid-friendly tone, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom is a lot like Ator: the Fighting Eagle. Both movies present us with characters who are supposedly on a heroic quest, but all we see is them wandering around the woods while random things happen. When I tried to describe this film to a co-worker, I realized I could talk about the various incidents in whatever order I liked, because none of them really contribute to the plot or even connect to each other.
Take, for example, the bit where Kor is captured by the cyclops who wants him to marry his sister (the cyclops’ sister, that is. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom isn’t that much like Ator). It comes and it goes, and that’s it. Kor had earlier said he didn’t know who this mysterious bucket-helmeted figure was, and Simon pouts a bit because that was a lie. It really, really doesn’t feel like the major betrayal the script wants us to think it was. It comes across as the cyclops’ sister being an embarrassing ex-girlfriend Kor just didn’t want to talk about, and he and Simon argue for thirty seconds and then hug and make up, completely negating whatever small emotional impact the whole thing might have had.
Or how about the part where Simon straight-up raises the dead? In most fantasy settings that would be considered a turn down a dark path, with far-reaching consequences for both the plot and the character development. In Wizards of the Lost Kingdom the corpses get up and basically tell Simon to get fucked because they want to rest, and then crawl back into their graves. This is a world where black magic exists and can claim your soul, but apparently necromancy isn’t in that category. All that happens is Kor tells Simon to respect the dead more.
What about the bit where Simon realizes the bad guy and his Crab Hat are spying on them through a magical birdbath? The kid casts a spell that makes the water explode in the evil dude’s face so he can’t see them anymore, but this has no plot consequences because a scene or two later the bad guy has simply re-filled the birdbath and is watching them again. Why did we even need to see that? Why did we need the bit with the little gnome dude who enables Kor’s alcoholism? The drinking is never a plot point because this is a kids’ movie (unless marrying the cyclops’ sister was something Kor promised to do while drunk), and the gnome promises to re-join them for the climax but when he does he just watches.
How about the part where Kor tries to save a drowning topless blonde woman in the weirdly orange river (this is the only place where I can definitely identify a shot MST3K cut, since we got one very brief look at her tits)? She vanishes only to reappear on a rock with one of those mermaid tail blankets over her legs, telling them she was testing their manhood to see if they were worthy of her help! They were, so she creates a rainbow for them and tells them to follow their hearts across the river!
Uh. Okay. So I can see how Kor was worthy, since he jumped in and all, but Simon stood on the shore yelling at him to stop because it’s too dangerous. Shouldn’t his unmanly ass get left behind?
Unquestionably, however, the weirdest thing in the movie is the fucked-up trippy vision Simon has while bug-woman plies him with drink and flower petals. This scene fascinates me. So there’s a bunch of Satanists sacrificing women on a spray-foam altar, while a voice tries to tempt Simon to the dark side. In response, he summons up the ‘forces of good’ to deal with the situation, and they appear in the form of this stop-motion… chimera… thing. Imagine a lion centaur, only both the horse part and the human part are lions, so it’s like a six-legged, two-torsoed leonine centipede abomination, but instead of arms on the upper set of shoulders it has weird veiny bat wings. It hovers there snarling while the Satanists complete their sacrifice, which summons a giant floating semi-transparent head in some scaly makeup. The head makes faces and breathes green fire, until the lion thing glares cartoon lightning at it and it explodes.
What the actual unmotivated fuck. What even was that? I want to say it’s demonstrating that Simon is pure of heart and can’t be tempted to evil but like ten minutes later he’s raising the fucking dead. What the hell is with the lion monster? Is it a metaphor for something? Is it saying that the forces of good can be just as terrifying as those of evil, like how if you read descriptions of angels they actually look like beasts from your nightmares? Was it actually supposed to be pretty and the model-makers just weren’t up to the task? What am I looking at?
Did anybody actually realize how weird this all was? One does get the impression that the writers were just scribbling down whatever bullshit came into their heads without regard for continuity or anything. Can we have a mermaid in our movie? Sure, why the hell not. Zombies? Awesome, everybody loves zombies, throw ‘em in there. A garden gnome? A goat-man playing the pan flute? A jilted cyclops with a spiral perm? Absolutely, the more, the merrier! Concepts!
And yet for all that, the single worst failure of writing in Wizards of the Lost Kingdom is the anticlimax of the ending. Through the whole movie everybody’s been looking for the Ring of Magic, which makes the wearer all-powerful. One of the wicked queen’s dwarves (played by actual little people who should all have been paid double for being in the same movie where the queen says we’re running out of dwarves) finds it, but Simon snatches it back a moment later and goes out and saves the day. Of course he does – he’s all-powerful. It’s a foregone conclusion. The only tension comes from wondering how many of those kids who were freed from prison are gonna get swords in the gut while Simon worries about making pretty special effects in his wizard’s duel.
One last bit of illogical crap. After the battle, Kor wanders off to go back to his ‘itinerant boozehound’ gig, and tells Simon to be a good king. Uh… Simon’s not gonna be king. The rightful heir is Princess Aura, who’s literally right there. Simon can marry her and be royal consort if she still likes him once they’ve both been through puberty. Is there a law in this kingdom that if you save the day you get to be in charge? That does seem to be where the last guy got his throne… and yet I have a faint suspicion that the writers just assumed Simon would rule instead of Aura because he’s got a penis and she doesn’t.
All that may have given the impression that I hate this movie but I really don’t. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom just isn’t worth the effort. Instead I just pity this movie and everybody in it. Every last one of them did a terrible job, and yet they still all deserved better. On every possible level, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom is truly less than the sum of its parts.
#mst3k#reviews#wizards of the lost kingdom#tw: incest#80s#just fuckin weird#everybody do the zombie stomp
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A Presentation of Epic Proportions
Just the other day, I had a school assigment of the most peculiar kind. It was supposed to be executed as a collaborative team effort in groups of 2-3 students. I was blessed with two individuals, whose contribution to the project was very minimal. One of the guys was too busy with his part-time job to contribute much, though I have to give him credit for trying anyway. The other one focused more on waiting for some kind of a divine inspiration to start working, and spent the time in the local pubs looking for it. Such a bohemian approach might have proven quite effective, had this assignment been associated with the nuances of various craft beers, but alas, it was about a sheet metal design that, by definition, must have dearly dispirited my fellow student not to give a shit. So, I basically had to maneuver this team project to completion practically on my own. For a solo endeavour, it simply was a bit too much to chew, especially as I initially set the goal a little bit too high, in some ill-adviced burst of optimism. Well, when the project started, I genuinely thought that these two heroes, without a cape, would actually contribute more to it. Eventually, I made it – but as you may observe in the transcription of the project presentation, that I had to perform in English...oh, well...check for yourself. Here it is, in full detail:
“Ok, ladies [articulated with an extensively sarcastic tone, as the audience was 99% young men], may I have your undivided attention, please...
We have gathered here today to witness the ultimate triumph of the human mind over matter, that is, sheet metal matter in this particular case. I have the immense pleasure to welcome y'all to the magical mystery Powerpoint presentation of a state-of-the-art sheet metal gun cabinet. This spectacle will be brought to you by this dubious threesome of mechanical engineering undergrads... Oh, wait. My dear colleagues in this joint venture could not make it today, unfortunately, quite like they could not make it most of the time, during this whole project. For starters, I might as well introduce you to my designer team, anyway – the aptly named Team Ahma [a reference to a Finnish sitcom]. My team consisted of these two characters, who magically were mostly absent throughout this ordeal. Had they actually made it to school today, here in the right hand corner of the podium, you'd be seeing a handsome young bloke named [I better not publish any personal information, y'know...], and in the penalty box, for cross-checking the progress, you'd be witnessing the hangover happyface [please, insert a sophomoric genitalia reference here]. Please, give a round of applause to these two high-performance individuals here.
The underlying objective of this collaborative effort was to design a steel cabinet, with the basic function to store away four individual pieces of firearms in an upright position, hence designed exclusively for weapons of the long-barreled variety, such as shotguns and hunting rifles – or, if this cabinet was targeted at customers in the Middle Eastern regions, also AK-47's. This design project was commissioned, supervised and reviewed by our Dear Leader and mentor in 3D design [well, y'know how it goes by now, don't cha...]. This sheet metal design project was commissioned with one precondition: the cabinet's storage capacity was to be limited to four guns. It was due to the fact, that the Finnish gun legislation had a thing or two to say about storing larger number of guns. The material thickness of the cabinet walls, locking mechanism and whatnot were strictly regulated if the number of weapons exceeded four. So, basically I had free hands to come up with pretty much any kind of cabinet, as long as I maintained some kind of an awareness, that the gun rack was not designed for more than four pieces.
Sounds relatively easy, right?
Except maybe for the fact, that the flood of options presented a kind of a challenge in itself. I was faced with the pointed question: where could I find a single, all-consuming concept for such a sheet metal design? You see, I didn't really pay attention when we had the theory class. I was too busy typing cover letters for a summer trainee position. Ok, where do people find info on anything nowadays?
Well, online, of course.
Despite being a member of the sad boomer generations, whose level of internet comprehension usually will not suffice for anything more than checking emails and watching dubious adult entertainment, I managed to do quite an extensive round of online research. So, before getting my hands dirty with the tedious maneuvering around the minute details of the actual design, I navigated in the cyber jungle of gun retail. I checked what kind of cabinet applications were available, with what specifications – and most importantly, for what price range. I browsed through the online bazaars of long-barreled guns typically stored in a cabinet like this, as well. In the hope of gathering some information that might prove useful in my project. I even gave a once-over at the legislation. It was totally unnecessary, but some of the imperatives imposed by the law actually seemed worthy of consideration.
Maybe I should elaborate...
As I do not have any prior experience in the sheet metal industry, except at the customer end, I was essentially shooting in the dark at random. I could have squeezed my brain juice into the project design, with neither forethought nor intention, and just hope for the best. I decided to implement some of the basic tenets of the gun regulations in the design, instead. Neither of my fellow designer students objected. One was too busy, trying to make some money with real work, and the other one just didn't give a shit. Why did I want to go the extra mile, then?
[Off-topic alert: here comes a lengthy rant about the sad state of affairs, when you’re getting re-educated in the ripe age of +45...]
I shall graduate in December 2021, and when the day comes, I'll be closer to 50 than 40 years old. My past work history consists of mainly irrelevant bullshit jobs. Until my life drastically changed in 2016, I used to consider work as just a nifty means to pay for my real passion, that was to make music with no inherent commercial potential, that is: all kinds of progressive rock, for beer money and ”exposure”. Work was just the necessary evil to pay for all this. What I actually did for work didn't really mean shit to me...and now, as I've been trying to apply for any kind of a trainee job, suitable for a mechanical engineering undergraduate, I've come to notice that my previous work experience doesn't actually mean shit to my potential employers either. I started applying for trainee positions starting next summer already in early December. Now, we're living in mid-March. Each and every application that I sent out, bounced back like a boomerang, with the bulk response written in the most dry and academic tone: thanks, but no thanks. So, if I wanted to make a difference in the eyes of my future employers, I would be compelled to go the extra mile every single time I had the chance. I guess I can now better relate to how it must feel to be, say, young, gifted and black in this country – or in any other Western country, for that matter. I had become an old white nigga in the eyes of society. I might as well have shot heroin all my life so far...I have skills and experience that are totally irrelevant for an engineering job.
I wonder if there was actually some factual point, that I was circum-navigating there...
To cut to the chase:
I chose to apply the minimum material thickness of 4 millimeters to the outer walls of the cabinet, along with the idea, that this cabinet ought to be practically impossible to break into. I hoped that these design constraints would lace this project with more focus and drive. After all, it's quite a hard-wired human tendency to fall into the trap of under-achievement, or to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of a design project like this. In this particular case, lowering the standards would have probably saved my ass, though. Usually, being dolled-up with no exact destination to go, getting the job done without paramilitary leadership, or the channeling of demons, might prove unnecessarily hard.
On top of this, a sneak peek at the similar products on the market provided some crucial insight on the basic dimensions and structure for this type of a gun cabinet. There was no need to invent the wheel anew, when all I needed was some modifications on it. With all the necessary background information gathered, I was ready to outline the initial to-do list for the project, where to start, and how to stay on track. In short, I decided to go for a cabinet of impressive proportions and powerfully expressive character – a sheet metal cabinet on steroids, sort of. The preliminary online research also implicated, that the market was actually dominated by rather second grade tin cans. In this respect, I assumed that it wouldn't really take much of an effort to stand out. I concluded, that my desire to put a little more emphasis on the function and safety of the cabinet would suffice to differentiate it from the competition in this particular capacity range. Thus, one of the key elements in this cabinet design was the double-layered steel chassis, structured in 4 millimeter steel plate. For the sake of simplicity and cost-effective manufacturing, I favoured the basic perpendicular bends of 90 degrees. After all, I was not about to design a fancy mobile decoration of steel, to be suspended from the ceiling on Christmas eve. For such an unregulated cabinet design, the material thickness was probably a bit of an overkill, but I reckoned that it would prevent any unauthorized entering into the cabinet. Furthermore, I assumed – and quite rightly so – that these two layers of steel were prone to make the structure heavy enough, not to be moved into the pikey-model Toyota Hiace with Bulgarian register plates, at least not single-handedly by any amphetamine-fueled random break-and-enter artist. Obviously, a determined professional would make his way for the guns, no matter what this cabinet was made of. First and foremost, I designed this cabinet along the lines, that the robust structure would essentially discourage any half-assed attempts to illegitimately take possession of the goodies inside. I would guess, that it's not a thoroughly thought-out idea to break and enter into a house of some old timer who owns guns, in the first place. Let alone, the idea of trying to break into a cube of steel, without proper power tools. In the unfortunate case, that a random junkie decided to go for it, I would dare to envision, that all the meth in the world was not enough to grant manpower to manually force this steel door open. It would require spesific tools, paired with an exceptionally determined or desperate mindset. Although, I guess it would certainly make for a hilarious episode in one of those popular reality shows you can watch on TV nowadays
In conclusion, taking on such an extra challenge provided me with a clear objective for this design project. Had I known the amount of work that ensued, I might as well have chosen to install a beer tap, or a Nintendo Wii game console with motion sensors to my design. I opted for enhanced security. Although, the Finnish gun culture is nowhere near as bizarre as the American ”Shoot 'em up”-culture, quite the contrary, actually. In the outbreak of a zombie holocaust, the Finnish gunmen are more likely to remain as one of the last sane frontier guards on the fault lines of civilization, in my honest opinion. We don't get to witness random mass shootings, conducted in a spur of the moment drug-frenzy, so often. Nor do we need to read about juveniles shooting one another in a fit of an existential teenage angst, because the Playstation 4 abruptly went offline for no apparent reason.
On a more serious tone, I started the project by searching for some vague idea for a steel cabinet, and the gods of mechanical engineering must have been in favor of this humble endeavour, since I managed to formulate the concept fairly quickly. At the end of the day, how hard can it be to sketch a rectangular box with a door? My kids are reaching teen age, but I'm sure they could have managed to draw something like this with a slide ruler and a pencil way back when they were only five years old or something. In retrospect, though, I feel compelled to make a bold statement, that it sure ain’t easy. Somewhere along the way, I was introduced to a phenomenon, that I would like to refer to as What The Fuck-factor. I apologize for the graphic and evocative term I coined for it, but believe me, it is quite an appropriate definition for such an indecent phenomenon. It is formulated also in the Murphy's Law: if something has even a slight chance of going wrong, it most certainly will. I had my fair share of that in this project, that’s for sure.
The next chapter in this surreal drama, the actual design process itself, was carried out with the PT Creo 3D-modeling software, in compliance with the guidelines imposed by the sheet metal standard DIN 6930. Without giving it that much thought, I adopted a kind of top-down approach. I decomposed the concept into smaller sub-concepts, such as the individual components in the assembly. It all sounded great in theory, but in the rush of a work overload, the emotional strength to actually keep the big picture clear in mind at all times...it just magically seemed to evaporate into the thin air, like fairy dust...
To be brutally honest, the design process was a fucking nightmare.
I apologize for my frequent use of French adjectives. I've been trying to discipline myself against the abundant use of such foul language, but I just can't help it. My mouth is quicker than my moral filters for politically correct choice of words. Besides, the occassional strong word usually gets the point across much better, and I wouldn't be surprised if the cuss words were accountable for the most part of the modern office communication. Before starting a new life as a CAD-padawan, I used to work for a company, where the corporate language was best described as management by perkele.
Perkele is a vintage cuss word in the Finnish language, loaded with some eerie sense of personal empowerment, thus way more powerful than the more offensive ones, that are trending in the speak of the millennials.
The sketching started in a tried-and-true manner: by throwing up some random ideas in whatever form seemed fit. The design concept for the steel door seemed to provide a promising start. So, without further experiments, the steel door design was underway. Since the door played quite an integral part in the cabinet, the dimensions of the door pretty much laid out the framework for the rest of the design. And this small, ill-considered choice of component was probably the single most damaging factor contributing to why things got essentially sour a little bit later. The overall thickness of the door, in particular, set all kinds of funny little restrains on the design of the other parts, consecutively. It was 35 millimeters, that is a relatively large number in this context, and it projected a certain set of esoteric demands on the dimensions of the doorframe, and particularly on the hinge mechanism needed.
Now, the hinge mechanism...
That was a real pain-in-the-ass in this project...
The ultimate can of worms.
There is an idiom in the Finnish language, usually uttered aloud in a fairly sarcastic tone. It goes: ”liian monta liikkuvaa osaa” - that stands for ”too many moving particles”, in English.
It's a perfect description for the hardships that I encountered with the hinge design. The mission objective was to control the movement of two metal bodies, in relation to each other. Or to be more precise, to control the opening of the door. The doorframe was pretty much a static component. So, I had one moving particle – the door. Due to all kinds of funny preconceptions, it soon became painfully obvious, that this one moving particle was actually one too many.
Liian monta liikkuvaa osaa, y'know...
And little by little, frustration was gaining momentum...
I had the steel door assembly figured out by now, as well as the design for the doorframe. Then I realized, that I had figuratively shot myself in the leg. I could almost taste the irony in my mouth. The universe seemed to have a sick sense of humour. Don't get me wrong, I am actually one of those Myers-Briggs personality types who prefer their humour just like they prefer their morning cup of coffee – pitch black, with absolutely no sweeteners. (I'm also quite fond of quality gin, and craft beers with a bitter flavour...so, I guess I'm a downright psycho, and those of you, who order soya frappuccinos in Starbucks, will be my first victims, when I finally lose my shit and dash off on a killing spree...I'm joking, right?)
I soon realized, that if I wanted to implement all the safety measures that I originally opted for, I needed to ensure that the door fit the doorframe like a glove. The tight clearance between the door and the frame was an inherent part of the whole concept for an idiot-proof gun cabinet. In practice, the idea was that the door would refuse to eject open, even if you cut your way through the bolt of the lock, or the hinges. This approach necessitated a lot of extra work. It also called for a special kind of double-action hinge mechanism, something similar to those jump-action hinges that come installed in some of the hipster brand kitchen cupboards, like Puustelli etc. This type of hinge ejects the door outwards first, before opening 90 degrees in the desired direction. Well, it works wonders in the kitchen fixtures, but...
Would it work with a steel door that weighed like a ton?
That was exactly what I needed to find out.
Had this concept fully realized in practice, which it obviously did not, it might have actually imposed an additional set of requirements on the hinges, in turn. I formulated all kinds of funny little mental configurations, how this particular type of hinge might have worked in this cabinet setting. At some point, it finally dawned on me, like a sudden moment of comprehension, or the sensation to which the Japanese zen buddhist tradition refers with the term ”satori”. I was practically shooting myself in the leg some more...
Even if I made this science fiction hinge mechanism work, so that the door would actually open beautifully, without any obstructions...then what?
In the name of safety, I had adjusted that clearance between the door and the frame to be extremely tight. Thus, it was absolutely necessary for the door to be perfectly aligned with the frame, vertically. Otherwise, the door would neither close nor open. This concept seemed to suggest that it was essential to lock the door into position, when either fully open or fully closed. Otherwise, it would get stuck. So, the deeper I delved into the details of this particular hinge mechanism, the more evident it became, that it would probably be way too complicated to design. I must admit that I felt tempted to call it quits, and go home and watch football on satellite TV. This project was turning into a joke, with me being the punchline, and it wasn't funny anymore.
I introduced this sheet metal project as state-of-the-art, remember?
Now we're getting to the artsy part.
I could have responded to this unfortunate turn of events by sketching an alternative, or even a set of alternatives, and then move on like nothing happened. Sticking to the idea, that my steel door insisted on the application of this particular type of hinge mechanism, was beginning to resonate the ambience of a game of Tetris, where you kept getting the wrong pieces round after round, ad infinitum. At this stage, however, my unjustified optimism hadn't been killed yet, so...when this issue called attention to an ever-increasing amount of detail, I simply considered it as a challenge accepted, or a personal insult to my intelligence, even. It was a call to arms. Thus, I insisted on not to seek any alternatives, not yet, as if bound by a samurai honour code. After all, I had the concept for this particular type of hinge mechanism clear in my mind. There was only the trifle matter of putting it into realization, to take care of.
At this stage, the summoning of demons might actually have proven quite handy.
I was faced with the ultimate question: how to tap back into the creative flow, when the empire was falling around me?
Maybe I should have attached a slide of the hinge mechanism I found in some engineering porn site that was infested with a multitude of graphic illustrations and video shootage of all kinds of highly technical gadgets and gizmos. Y'know, the one that I found most promising to develop further.
Well, I didn't – so, you'll just have to imagine how it looked like.
I'm sure this sounds like the stuff from some poorly screenplayed science fiction movie, or the mindless verbal rambling of a voodoo hierophant who's probably tripping balls on magic mushrooms. However, I'm afraid that I'll have to let you down on your vivid speculations about the origins of this concept. It was very real. We found something similar applied to safes and vacuum containers, and such, with more or less sophisticated mechanisms, that might have worked with our sheet metal cabinet. The only catch with all the mechanisms was that they seemed to require lots of time to design, especially to get the dimensions exact – and this project was little by little running out of time. Our cabinet door required something sturdy, like the hinges on a huge cast iron safe. The weight of the door, fully assembled, approximated near thirty kilos already. On the other hand, we needed something compact, in order to squeeze the hinges in the formidably narrow space between the outer sheet metal casing and the doorframe of steel.
For some peculiar reason, this project suddenly started to feel like the biggest wild goose chase in the history of gun cabinets...but, like I said: after an extensive online research, we finally came across such a sophisticated mechanism, that seemed appropriate for our needs, with just a few minor modifications. It called for an infinite amount of trials and errors to dimension right, but we gave it a go, anyway. The margin to have each component in our cabinet assembly in working condition by the deadline was getting incredibly small, and risk assessment probably wasn't our strong point. We took on a challenge, only to fail in the most beautiful fashion. Obviously, this particular hinge design proved way too sophisticated to execute in the given time. Eventually, we had to face the facts, discard this fancy hi-tech mechanism, and go for the second best option. Just twelve hours before the deadline for the final submission, I basically had to witness my deep faith in humanity disappear into the ether, as this issue with the hinges turned out to be such a gift that just kept on giving. I resolved this problem with a straightforward and brutal solution: by thrusting a simple rod of steel vertically through the door, attached with a pair of bronze sliding bearings. After that, I extruded a couple of additional holes in the doorframe – and voilá! The cabinet design was complete. This impromptu change of plans, conducted in the very last minute of the project, obviously compromised the original idea for an idiot-proof cabinet door, but we really had no choice.
Maybe next time we'll be equipped with more profound wisdom and battle-hardened experience, so that we'll be able to execute more informed choices. This project was supposed to be a crash course in the wonders of sheet metal design, and provide us with some hands-on experience with the topic. In practice, it was more like an experiment in the dark forests of the human mind. In this respect, however, we did quite well. Yes, the design process turned sour and frustrating at times, or to put it in a more evocative wording – it was a genuine pain in the ass, but did we die? Nope. It certainly is a very human trait to lose focus and give up, after reaching the ultimate frustration point. On several occassions, during this endeavour in psychological torture, I was tempted to take a Big Lebowskian stance, let go and cry out:
”Fuck it, let's go bowling!”
But I didn't.
Of course, I can only speak for myself, when I say that out of sheer hatred towards anything even remotely related to sheet metal, I forced myself to complete this assignment – like, when the software crashed on me for the fifth time during the course of just a few hours. My immediate urge, more often than not, was to smash the computer screen with a baseball bat, when things didn't quite go as planned. But, instead, I manouvered myself into a kind of zen state of mind. Of course, my mind was not completely empty, like in a genuine higher state of consciousness. It was actually pretty full – filled with some explicit thoughts, certainly Not Safe For Work environment, but I guess it's safe to say that these thoughts mostly hinted that I was not going to let a stupid machine get the best of me. Well, I have 15 years' worth of experience in logistics, so I guess I am more resilient to stress than the average person. I have worked for Satan himself, in a most high-stress job you can imagine. So, as an afterthought, I guess this project was actually fairly easy on me. It was challenging in many respects, but eventually the project design was completed with not much collateral damage.
Maybe this chunk of metal does not provide enough ground to build a profitable business model on it, but it just might suggest a novel and street smart way to store away your firearms. I'm sure you could get a bigger and standardized cabinet for almost the same amount of money, but then again: who actually needs to possess more than four pieces, anyway? If you feel a sting in your heart, when I say this, maybe you should ask yourself:
Did Jeffrey Epstein really kill himself?
Am I just preparing for the zombie apocalypse?
I would guess that no one in his, or her, right mind really needs five or more firearms. For those of us, who need a cool storage application for max. 4 guns, I designed this shiny little sheet metal beast. I am still entertaining the possibility, that this boutique cabinet might have an enticing appeal to those of us, who prefer a highly customised luxury approach, rather than a generic application of nothing special, dashed out for mass production in the sweatshops of the third world countries. Obviously, this design philosophy did not quite exclude the need to take the ease and cost of manufacture into account – and that's what I did.
I refrained myself from integrating overly complicated shapes, just for the sake of appearance. Every bend in the sheet metal structure was well-thought out. Maybe I could have done with less welding seam, but I opted for reinforced safety. Remember, the primary goal was to enhance the possibility to come up with an idio-proof cabinet design. You see, idiots and guns don't really mix that well. It sounds like common knowledge, but as we all can see in the nine o'clock news on a daily basis, not many are catching up...
From the very outset of this project, I tried to view this cabinet design through the imaginary lens of the potential customer. I dare to guess, that the most likely candidate to purchase a weapon storage application of this caliber (pun intended!) would be a white, heterosexual Finnish male going in his late 50's. This stereotypical character resides somewhere in the back of beyond, in the most rural areas of Finland, in the hard core of the Baby Boomers paradigm, that is the classic ”rintamamies”-house, built in the 1940's. Our protagonist here presents the Jungian archetype of a DIY-handyman, with a passion for hunting wild game in his spare time. He is quite an active and respected member of society – the local hunting society, in particular. He's got his mortgage paid off by now, which means that he can very well afford to treat himself to something special, every once in a while – like, a brand new, state-of-the-art gun cabinet, because the old one is...well, old. With this in mind, I decided to design this cabinet for the higher price range. I rest assured that the hefty price tag would be justified by the extra emphasis on security. I wanted to take my cabinet design to the next level, and to some degree, I guess I succeeded. After all, it usually is a tell-tale sign of an amateur-at-work to compete on price. I opted for excellence without compromise. All too many gun cabinet manufacturers seemed not. The vast majority of the products on the gun cabinet market seemed to capture the ethos of the classic one-liner, said by the American musical genius Frank Zappa, back in the day:
”If we can't be free, let's at least be cheap.”
For many, this kind of an approach seemed to be a very viable option in a gun cabinet design. I'm sure it can be a convenient philosophy in life, in general – as it seems to be for many, too. It was never an option for this particular design project, to say the least. I am a firm believer, that you are the sum of all the experiences you go through, as well as the people around you. Being surrounded by dysfunction and incompetence will eventually get you nowhere. At the end of the day, with all the designer's blocks and frustrations dealt with, after getting strangled in a multitude of loose ends, for God knows how many times, overcoming the obstacles in this ”joint” venture eventually provided me with a sense of pride in a job well done. My gun cabinet might not become a nifty prototype for a potential customer product, but nevertheless, I came up with something unique. The technical documentation of this project design might seem like a white paper on how to ruin a perfectly promising raw idea, but then again....there is no such thing as perfection, when it comes to rushing things to completion, especially, when it's not something you're doing by choice.
In retrospect, with the hinge issue aside, the design for this cabinet evolved pretty smoothly and effortlessly. The double-layered steel chassis took maybe a couple of days to sketch, model and annotate – just like most of the other components did too. Believe me, it's not an understatement, when I tell you that 90 percent of this project consisted of figuring out how to make a double-action hinge work in a desired way. Maybe it could serve as a topic for further development. It probably would require quite a few iterations to configure the mechanism to work perfectly in the context of this gun cabinet. With this project, though, I had to rush the design to meet the deadline. Thus, I cannot say for certain, whether this sheet metal cabinet will perform as desired, or if it has any of the enhanced technical value I opted for. Chances of true success might be minimal, respectively. With the benefit of doubt, however, I dare to suggest that the original objectives of this project could still be accomplished through the application of such customised hinge mechanism. Now, we'll probably never know.
Unless, of course, the conservative dark forces are going to bring back the good ol' times, and I can have another go at this...
Or, maybe not...
I thank you dearly for your time and patience. If you wish to ask me anything about this project, I will gladly answer. Of course, it would be more convenient to continue with the technical and psychological nuances of this project over a pint of beer...but alas, the school cafeteria does not have the licence to sell alcohol. Well, anyways...knock yourselves out.
Ok, that's about it. Now I'm excited to pass the torch on to the next project team: the podium is all yours.
Arrivederci!
It remains to be seen, how my English teacher reviewed this presentation. Most likely, the required level of formality was not reached, which might be reflected in my English grade. However, I think that there is only a narrow window of opportunity to make a lasting impression, in the everyday interaction with the people around you. I would guess, that this presentation will not be as easily forgotten as the ones peppered with rambling formalities. My last Powerpoint slide, that was depicting the benefits of this design project, was basically just a picture of a giant facepalm. Try erasing that mental image from your mind now, eh!
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Heavy Rotation Part One
Here comes my first ever 5SOS fanfic! This series is a collaboration with the remarkable @sublimehood and we are super excited to finally share it with all of you! Let me know what you think! (unless you hate it, then keep that shit to yourself :P)
Quick synopsis: New Girl meets Empire Records. All the boys are in this one, but with particular focus on Ashton <3
Warnings: I cuss a lot *shrugs* . Also, this shit is LONGGGGG haha.
Heavy Rotation- Part One
Nothing had ever looked as beautiful as the city lights that lay ahead as the Greyhound sped toward Los Angeles. It wasn’t the lights themselves that appealed to me. Growing up less than two hours outside of New York City, it would take much more than that to impress this girl. No, it was the absolute freedom and opportunity for a whole new life that this magical new city held that had me glued to the window with excitement. I pulled one ear bud out to listen to the driver’s announcement with arrival details as I began gathering my belongings I had scattered across both seats in my row, as well as the row across from me. Books, notebooks full of song lyrics, my acoustic guitar, food wrappers, random articles of clothing and all kinds of miscellaneous shit were strewn all over. Sixty five hours was far too damn long to be cooped up in a moving vehicle, despite stopping several times. I had just gathered the last of my things at the very moment the bus came to a stop at the station.
After collecting my checked bag from the bus’s underbelly, I stopped for a moment to take it all in. The sun was just starting to rise and wash over the city with a soft, warm glow. Knowing nowhere I needed to be would be open this early, breakfast at the McDonald’s across the street from the station was sounding pretty damn good. I sat alone in a booth surrounded by the only possessions I owned that mattered anymore, and scrolling through musicians forums online on my cell phone. One particular neighborhood, Silver Lake, kept coming up in discussions and I just knew that was where I needed to start my search. If I were a normal, sane human, I should be utterly terrified of the fact that I just moved across the country with about two percent of a plan for my future, but I am not, in fact, a normal or sane human. It was exhilarating to not have a clue where I was sleeping that night, and to know that if I wanted to get anywhere in this city, I had to bust my ass to do it.
I let a couple of hours pass until it seemed like I might actually be able to accomplish something, hopped in a cab, and instructed the driver to take me to his favorite spot in Silver Lake, which turned out to be this killer little locally owned coffee shop. Don’t mind if I do! Dragging my few belongings along with a latte in hand, I begin my hunt for anything that looks like it involves music and might be hiring. I couldn’t possibly have expected this to be easy, right? Every recording studio, indie radio station and music store for at least a mile was extremely quick to kick this East Coast girl with way too much shit in her hands right back to the curb. That mildly uneasy feeling in my stomach, that probably would have started for anyone else back at the bus station in Jersey, began to creep up on me. I had enough cash in my beat- up handbag to get me maybe a week in a seedy motel, but what happened after that if I didn’t find a job IMMEDIATELY, I am not ready to start thinking about yet.
This situation requires more coffee. I make my back to Mr. Taxi Driver’s favorite coffee shop, order my drink, and skim the bulletins next to the counter while waiting. Somebody, somewhere must be hiring and/or looking for a roommate, right?
“Large cold brew, coconut milk and a shot of espresso.” the barista calls, setting my drink down. But at the exact moment I reach for it, someone else does too. A large hand accidentally covers mine, and I instinctively look up to see who it belongs to. The most gorgeous hazel eyes I have ever had the privilege of seeing lock with mine. His curly dirty blonde hair falling casually in his face, that chiseled jawline, that dimpled smile- holy crap. This is one seriously beautiful human being. Something inside me vaguely in the vicinity of my stomach decides it wants to be a gymnast all of the sudden and begins performing somersaults. I feel my cheeks flush slightly and finally remember to pull my hand away.
“Sorry. I assumed it was mine, but please. Take it.” The handsome stranger insists.
“Thanks,” I reply. “Pretty unusual order. I’ve never met anyone else who drank this.” I state, awkwardly. What the hell. Who even am I right now? I am NOT awkward. Pull yourself together, bitch.
The barista calls the same order once again, and Mr. Beautiful grabs it with smirk. “Cheers.” he says, holding his drink in the air in my direction. I playfully clink my plastic cup against his, and then I notice his eyes flutter to my guitar case on my arm. “Are you a musician?” he asks.
“Aspiring. You?” I answer, avoiding looking in his eyes to regain my confidence and for fear of never being able to stop.
“Also aspiring. I work for a recording studio part time but I’m also in a band, which is completely LA cliche, but they are some of the best musicians in this city. You should check us out sometime. Oh, I’m Ashton, by the way.” He says while flashing that mesmerizing smile once again and holding his hand out to shake mine. I reach for it. Dear god, those hands. The kind of hands that make you wonder what they’re really capable of…
“Emma,” I reply, regaining my composure and flashing a flirty smile. “This recording studio you speak of wouldn’t happen to be hiring by any chance, would it?”
“Hmm, I don’t think so, but ya know, it never hurts to ask.” he replies, as he reaches over the counter to grab the barista’s sharpie and a small napkin. I’m incapable of pulling my eyes off this flawless creature as he jots something down. “Here’s the address. Go in through the record store and ask for Liz. She should be there after 1pm today.” he adds as he hands me the napkin.
“Thanks! I didn’t think I’d run into someone so willing to help around here.” I reply excitedly, taking it from him a little too slowly and deliberately rubbing my fingers against his again.
“I’ve gotta get back to work, but hopefully I’ll see you around.” Ashton says with another goddamned smile as he walks away.
What the hell just happened to me? I feel like I got punched in the gut. I pick my bag up from off the floor, and drag it with my guitar and drink to the nearest table. Checking the time on my cell phone, I realize it is only 11:30am. So, looks like I’m sitting here daydreaming about what just happened for the next hour and a half. But that’s it though, that nagging voice in my head insists. Just daydreaming. No man is getting in the way of my music.
“UGH I know, I know.” I sigh to myself out loud. The elderly couple next to me turns to me with puzzled expressions on their faces, and I simply smile back at them and turn back to my phone.
The walk to the record store wasn’t far, so I gathered up my things and decided to go there shortly after one o'clock. The black sign above the door read “Heavy Rotation” in an edgy, handwritten-looking font. I take a deep breath and enter the record store Ashton had written on the napkin. An attractive guy around my age with electric blue hair is sitting on a stool with his feet propped up on the counter next to the cash register flipping through what appears to be a rock n roll magazine. He doesn’t even blink when I walk in. “Welcome to Heavy Rotation. Let me know if you need any help.” He says, in a somewhat disgruntled tone, still not looking up.
“Hi,” I greet him as I approach the counter, “I’m looking for Liz? And also, I like your hair.”
He glances up and looks me up and down, as if appraising the situation. “Thanks, I like yours too.” My fire engine red ombre look wasn’t properly appreciated in small-town New Jersey, but I knew LA would understand.“Gimme a sec, I’ll go get Liz.” Blue-haired guy walks to the back of the room, and I take the opportunity to glance around. It’s perfect. A little dark, very “offbeat”- retro but with a cutting-edge vibe; low ceiling, eclectic lighting, rows upon rows of records, vintage and new alike. The store itself is much larger than it appears from the outside, as it stretches far back into the building. A deep purple velvet curtain covers a doorway on the right side of the room, separate from where Blue-Hair went into, and I have a sneaking suspicion the recording studio lies beyond. A thrill creeps up my spine. Solely over the concept of being so close to where music is actually produced, and having absolutely nothing at all to do with the fact that the flawless man from the coffee shop is most likely behind that curtain.
Blue-hair comes back with a blonde lady, whom one could deduce is Liz. I approach her with my hand outstretched. “Hi, Liz? I’m Emma. I met Ashton at a coffee shop and he thought I might be able to talk you into a possible job around here?”
She shakes my hand while looking me up and down, eyes lingering for a moment on my guitar. “I bet he did.” she replies with a small chuckle. Not really sure what the hell that’s supposed to mean… “It’s nice to meet you, Emma. I’m sorry, hon, but we aren’t hiring at the moment.”
“Please. I’m sorry to sound pushy and desperate but I’ll do anything you need. There has to be SOMETHING I could do here.” I press, attempting to keep the panic out of my voice.
“Well, what makes you think you would be a good fit here?” Liz asks, eyeing me interestedly.
I take a deep breath. “I have wanted to be a musician for as long as I can remember. I’ve been singing since before I could talk and music has always been my number one passion in life. I know more about music than most people twice my age. I just graduated from music school and realized the east coast scene wasn’t right for me and that I needed to get away from everything there, and hopped a Greyhound bus four days ago to come here and be close to the music. I just want to work a job with music while I work toward my dream. And, not to judge or anything, but looking at this place you’ve got here, I’d say you seem like the type of person who can appreciate that.”
Liz studies me once more, and then slowly answers. “Well, I think we could use a little help with cleaning and organizing between the store and the studio. I won’t be able to give you a ton of hours, and the pay won’t be much. Still something you’re interested in?”
“YES! I mean.. Yeah I think I could make that work.” I reply eagerly.
“Alright then. Come back to the office with me and we can sort out all the details and legal crap.”
Thirty minutes later, I follow Liz out of the office for her to give me the grand tour. Realizing I’m still lugging around everything I own, I ask, “..you wouldn’t happen to know anyone in the area who is looking for a roommate, would you?”
Blue-hair perks up from the behind the cash register, “did you say roommate? Are you looking for a place to stay?”
“Mikey… I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” Liz chimes in immediately.
Glancing back and forth between the two of them, I turn back to Mikey, “uh, yeah I am. Do you know a place?”
“I live upstairs with my friends and we currently happen to be looking for a roommate!” he replies enthusiastically.
“Well that sounds almost too perfect… can I see the space?” I ask, ignoring the look of disapproval on Liz’s face.
“Liz, mind if I abandon my post for a minute to run her upstairs?” Mikey asks.
She sighs, and then nods.
I stash my stuff in a corner of the store and follow him up the stairs. The building is pretty old, but in the cool, artsy, vintage way and not the nasty, dilapidated old. When we reach the second floor landing, Mike pulls out a set of keys and unlocks the front door. One could definitely tell that only guys lived there, but that they appeared to have attempted to straighten up a bit. Growing up with 3 brothers, none of this phases me. The architecture was naturally gorgeous but there was really no other decor. Mismatched couches and chairs surrounded an extremely nice and unnecessarily large TV which was surrounded by various video game consoles.
“So, this is the living room. The kitchen is over there. Uh.. there’s only one bathroom, so that kinda sucks, but it’s right here.” Mikey says as he gestures me through the space. “And this here, is your room.”
It was a small room with just a twin sized bed and a small dresser already furnished. Nothing fancy, just the basics, which is exactly what I need at this moment. “How much is the rent?” I ask him.
“Uhh.. so we hadn’t really talked about it yet but considering that Luke’s parents own the building, we pretty much just each pay what we can…” he answers.
“Luke?”
“OH, yeah he’s one of my roommates and Liz’s son, I think he’s home actually, I can introduce you. HEY LUKE!” he shouts across the apartment. Moments later, a tall, good-looking blonde boy steps into the living area. “Luke, this is Emma.. your mom just hired her downstairs, and she needs a place to stay so I’m showing her the extra room.”
“Oh, hey. Nice to meet you, Emma. What do you think so far?” Luke answers, walking over to us.
“Hey,” I answer. “I think it’s perfect actually.” I bite my lip to try and hold back the smile that threatened to expose me. Was every single person who has anything to do with this building good looking?
“Can I ask what brings you to LA?” Luke asks.
“The typical, aspiring musician. But it’s everything I’ve ever wanted. I met Ashton at the coffee shop, he thought you guys might be able to help me out.” I’ve probably said too much.
“I hope so. When can you move in?” Luke asks, and Mikey gets overly excited beside me.
“I um...right now?” I laugh a little awkwardly.
“Perfect.” Luke flashes a smile that would make any girl weak in the knees. But it’s nothing compared to the dimpled one I had the pleasure of witnessing on Ashton’s face.
Things might be going my way a little too conveniently. OR maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me this is exactly where I belong. The guys offer to give me a tour of the recording studio, which I jump at since it’s basically all that’s on my mind right now. When we get back downstairs, they introduce me to a pretty dark-haired girl by the name of Georgia who works in the record store.
“Oh thank god! We need more girls around here!” she sighs with relief as she shakes my hand. She and Mikey both get back to work as Luke leads me through the curtain I had seen earlier toward the recording studio. This is it. This is what I came here for. Excitement starts building, and I’m going to pretend it’s exclusively over the possibility of finally being able to make music, NOT because I know the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen might also be somewhere behind that curtain.
The recording studio is everything I ever imagined and more. Dark walls, sleek black furniture and decor, framed awards and photos of celebrities lining the walls. When we enter, Luke introduces me to Calum, their tall, dark and handsome ‘other roommate’ who also happens to be Georgia’s boyfriend. I mentally answer my previous question- yes, every single person associated with this building is drop-dead gorgeous.
“Other roommate?? How many people live up there?!” I ask, half amused, half concerned.
“Don’t worry,” Luke assures me, “you get your own room. We worked out a system for the rest of us….”
“.. I don’t wanna know…” I say darkly.
Both guys laugh. “Don’t worry, it’s just us, Mikey and Ashton.” Calum replies.
I choke on air at his last word. “Ashton? The guy I met at the coffee shop? HE is also our roommate??”
As if on cue, Ashton comes into the main area through a door to the left. “Hey! Emma, isn’t it? Looks like you found the place!”
“My mom hired her to help out around here, and she’s also gonna take the spare bedroom upstairs.” Luke adds.
A look passes over Ashton’s face, just briefly. What is that look? Surprise? Disappointment? Concern? It’s gone before I can even register what the hell that might be about, and his winning smile is back. “Wow! Awesome! Well, welcome.”
Just as I’m about to reply, a thin, fake-tanned girl with long blonde hair struts into the studio like she owns the place. “Hey babe, are you off work yet? You said you’d be done an hour ago.” She whines, making her way over to Ashton and wrapping her arms around his waist.
I try hard not to show any signs that my stomach plummeted through the floor at the sight of them together. Let her have him. You didn’t sit on a disgusting bus for sixty five hours to meet guys. You’re here for music. He would only distract you.
“Camille, this is Emma. She’s gonna be working with us and also renting out the spare bedroom upstairs. Emma, this is my girlfriend, Camille.” Ashton introduces us. Is it just in my head or was there something about the way he said the word ‘girlfriend’?
Camille eyes me up and down, clearly debating whether or not I might be a threat. I make the first move. “It’s great to meet you! Nice to know I won’t be constantly surrounded by only guys..” I extend my hand to shake hers. She hesitates before taking it, and doesn’t say anything. So that’s how it’s gonna be.
Ashton and Camille leave the studio together. Everybody else goes about their business, so I head back to where I had stashed my belongings in the record store and take them upstairs, to my new home. I look around as I enter it again, taking everything in. When I get to the bedroom, I toss my stuff on the floor and collapse on the bed. I made it. I did it. I am actually living in Los Angeles. Now, to survive.
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
#5sos#5 seconds of summer#5sos fanfic#5sos fanfiction#5sos fic#5sos ashton#5sos calum#5sos luke#5sos michael#ashton irwin#calum hood#luke hemmings#michael clifford#ashton 5sos#calum 5sos#luke 5sos#michael 5sos#ashton irwin 5 seconds of summer#luke hemmings 5 seconds of summer#calum hood 5 seconds of summer#michael clifford 5 seconds of summer
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ASKS 09
random stuff, some facts about me, some sims questions, video requests, hair sneak peaks, umm and other stuff too…. also I am 10 candies from being able to evolve that dumb fish so wig
Anonymous said: Do you have a car?
Nope!
Anonymous said: Hi wcif the shirts in your coming soon in June update ps I love your cc x
hey! for any WCIFs for that stuff, I am probably going to wait until the posts for the hairs are up because I know that people won’t check when the hairs are posted for my old wcifs.
@angelamariacalle said: you could make a WIP the eyes that you use in your post with ice cream?
i have no idea what you were trying to say ;-; the eyes I used are my default ones which you can download here
@ayoshi-sims said: Once you get this SHARE 6 facts about yourself and send it to your 10 favorite blogs ✨
I still play pokemon go (fight me)
I think that pop music was the best in 2007-2011 (One of the Boys, The Fame/The Fame Monster, Circus/Blackout, Animal/Cannibal, The best damn thing)
I am a super middle child! (two older siblings, and two younger ones as well)
I keep all my kpop albums on my dresser, with my Red Velvet one hanging in a red/white flower crown I own :)
My favorite food to snack on is either a tuna kit, or pickles
I am a bottom XD
Anonymous said: When you get this, please respond with five things that make you happy! Then, send to the last ten people in your notifications anonymously. You never know who might benefit from spreading positivity!
aaaaah okay um
my kpop girlies i stan
my angel rocky (my old af pug)
my friends (irl and online <3)
the concept of love is always something that makes me happy omg i know that is cheesy but like… imagine finding someone that is perfect for you will always be there when you need and like just GOD I NEED A MAN NOW
charli xcx music umm yeah it’s 5 in the morning
Anonymous said: Hello, I was wondering if you have your sims on the gallery? Thanks for your time. :)
Yeah! I have a few sims for download on my origin which is SPOTHARRIS
I also have them for download on this page
Anonymous said: Hello!! Just wondering wicf the freckles from the discontinued model in your older posts (e.g. momo buns) thank you!!! BTW I love your stuff soo much! :)
Hey! I no longer have that file or even know where I got them from :( Here is an OLD af wcif I answered of them though
Anonymous said: Where are you from?
I am from Virginia, which is on the east coast of the United States :)
Anonymous said: Hi!! I feel like this is such a silly question but oh well I’m a noob. If I use your Quartz eyes V2 will they be inherited in the next generation if my sims have kids? Same with your hair colors as well?
I honestly have no idea how any of that stuff works :( I’m sorry! I assume it should but also maybe not? ;-; again, sorry!
Anonymous said: omg the hair with the flowers in it! *-* i love!! will you also make a version without the flowers? I also wanted to say I’m really happy your life is going well and congrats on the 30k followers
thank you so much!! and I the hair will obvi have no flowers :P the flowers should be accessories if everything works out. There are some clipping issues rn but I think it is fixable :) here is a pic without the flowers. If you guys have any recommendations about then pls send them my way
Anonymous said: Would you ever consider doing really long curly hair like the singer Sza’s?
I personally don’t like super long hair in TS4, it just doesn’t look well with most clothes and has clipping/weight issues :( I’m sorry!!
Anonymous said: Do you know what happened to SimpleSimmer?
I don’t, no. But I am sure she is fine :) sometimes people just take breaks
Anonymous said: Hi! So, i really love your sim with the dark brown hair (for your hair cc) and i was wondering if you could ever share that sim! Because she has a beautiful face. Also i am wondering which skin overlay (etc) you are using! You can find me in the gallery under the name: xThisGirl (if that is an easier way for you to respond :)
Hey! You can find her download here, along with all my other sims :) I am glad you like her <3
Anonymous said: Hey! I know you probably won’t read this as fast but I wanted to ask, how do you shift the hairline to the side or any of that? Like your daisy hair, briana hair, and that one wip you had in a tutorial video of yours! I really want to do that but I just don’t know how :(
I will maybe record something for this! No promises bc I have to get someone to edit the videos for me and I don’t wanna bug him but I will see if he can edit it for me if I film it :) It is pretty simple to do once you get the hang of it
@sims4storiesandstuff said: I just wanted to say, your hairs are the shit! Absolutely stunning. I rarely use the EA hairs anymore! I think you deserve every follower you have.
Thank you so much!!! I really appreciate stuff like this <3 I don’t play the game myself much so it makes me happy knowing that my hairs make other peoples games so much more enjoyable uwu
Anonymous said: hello can you make please a video when you make a hair and upload it?
I would like to! I just do so many random things while doing a hair like showing pictures to friends and getting their advice. So I will have to see, would you guys mind if the video had conversation stuff in it? As I said earlier, someone edits the videos for me so I don’t wanna get him to do more work for it by editing them out :( I will look into it for sure though!
Anonymous said: That hair wip in your lil video tutorial is absolutely beautiful!! Can’t wait until it’s released !! 🧡🧡
thank you so much!! Here are some more pics of it:
Anonymous said: are you korean? If not, how can you like kpop if you dont understand it?
I am not korean haha, but music is about more than understanding. It is about the feelings it vibes you get from it and the moods it puts you in. People love screamo music even though it is hard to understand, and music like instrumentals and dubstep heavy are just… what the music makes you feel. I listen to ‘normal’ pop, kpop, instrumentals, artists like grimes that mumble their songs a lot with production heavy stuff. I think that as long as the music is something you enjoy, you shouldn’t be judged for liking it. I know you aren’t trying to be rude with this ask so don’t think I am attacking you please! I am just trying to give you some insight into why different music interests people :)
Anonymous said: I’m so happy to see that you’ve made a patreon account! you really make amazing CC and that’s such a gift to the community, I’m happy that now I get to feel like I can give something to you haha :) have a great day/evening!
thank you so much! and thank you for supporting <3
@lesyatim said: Hello, it’s not ask. I only want to say that you make very beautiful hair and THANK YOU! I Love You💕💕💕💕💕 P.S. I’m from Russia and I don’t now English very well♡)
thank you so much!! Спасибо большое
(that is suppose to say thank you in german lmao)
Anonymous said: When did u make a skin?
it is a hidden gem :P It is mainly to fix the collarbones bc I use multiple skin overlays so I that is why is was never posted :)
Anonymous said: Congratulations i hope you have a happy family 😄
ummm?? I GOT IT I GOT I GOT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT
@dangerouskindofmind said: I actually don’t have a question! I just wanna say you are one of my favorite sims 4 creators out here. Your hairs; snatched. Your clothes; beautiful. Your sims; amazing. And your personality looks just as good lol. I’ve probably downloaded like 99.9% of your content and I just wanna say thank you for all you do to make my sims 4 experience loads better. I also hope you’re having a great day
thank you so much!!!! I appreciate it a ton, I love that my content makes people love this game more <3
Anonymous said: Just wanted to say that literally all of your CC is beautiful and from what I’ve seen, I absolutely adore your personality. Keep it up my dear, you’ve got crazy talent. Much love <3
thank you, thank you!!! My personality irl is kind of shitty lmao I am really shy and like reserved ;-; and it is just memorizing how to do some editing to hair meshes, not much talent involved <3 thank you so so much again though!! I love getting these kind of messages
Anonymous said: Are you gonna make an outerwear cc pack when the seasons expansion pack releases?
I don’t make much clothing CC so I highly doubt it. I am working on a swimsuit that I might post later this month though! We will see what happens though :D
Anonymous said: thank you very much for a playlist that you shared with One Shot,Two Shot,I’m totally in love ur the best
yesss BoA is such a queen, listen to the full mini album if you can! It is one of her best releases in my opinion.
Anonymous said: aharris00britney awnsered me,cuz I remember my question and it’s on the asks recent post AND i’ll shake this print in all my enemies face thx,I asked about the patreon and I’m doing it right now bby <3
hehe thank you!! <3 you show them enemies
– just so the eating ass juicy booty ask so yep that is all I have gotten in the past month that I can answer :P
#asks#i also got the shiny kyogre#i tried to battle a the evolved form of larvitar and lost#i have gotten like 4 absols from the research things tho
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Hi! I have a ? About ur gcf analysis. 1st thanx for writing it. I agree about the walls part bcoz jm said once that jk doesnt really open up to him although jm does try (goes to his room, bring him with friends). But when it comes to the veils... arent u forgeting that they r idols who kinda have to hide , jm wore hats & dressed in black to kinda be incognito? Plus it was oct/nov & idk about u but i tend to wear dark clothes in autumn. Did u take this in account? Or do u think its not relevant?
Well, I analysed the film with jk/jm as characters, not as their actual selves, as it’s called a ‘film’ rather than vlog and jm is listed as an ‘actor’ in the credits, but if you wanted to relate the veil thing to being idols then it works the same way - wearing hats/hoods can have double meanings, it can be to be incognito (which I’m sure it was), but it could also be that they have to put on a front as an idol, show the world a persona that isn’t them. None of us know them personally, we know what they choose to show us, or rather, we see the veil that they put over themselves. But I’m not saying the veil thing is a fact - it’s just a perception, a concept made up by literature critics.
Loads of people wear coloured clothes in the autumn, but honestly costume is a basic tool for filmmakers. In every film/performance you watch, the costume is chosen for a reason - I would know, I’ve written countless costume essays and made costume designs. Even Bangtan’s clothes in their MVs are chosen for a specific reason. Because Jungkook spent so much time and effort with aligning the shots to the sound of the music, slowing certain shots etc. I think he would be conscious over what they wore. Imagine if Jimin wore bright yellow? It would change the tone of the film, it’d look more bright and happy when the film is saying ‘you’ve gotta be there for me’, which is quite an insecure thing - if they were confident and felt secure, they wouldn’t have to tell the other person to be there for them. Yes there’s happiness in the film, but the film isn’t there to focus on them messing around - it’s there to focus on the more serious messages, like wanting somebody there for you and supporting each other through when things go to shit, it wants you to focus on other things that just ‘look here’s jimin having fun’, it wants you to think about things more deeply. Again, hence the song choice. If it was there to just focus on the messing around, then it’d be like one of their Run BTS episodes.
And I know loads of people were like ‘jk probably didn’t think about it’ or ‘it’s probably not that deep’… jk’s obviously thought it out loads, because if he hadn’t it wouldn’t have the same emotional effect on people. He has made things like this before, or at least practiced his techniques a lot. Nobody can make a film that good on their first try, especially if it’s their first time editing. Just because he didn’t post any others apart from the GCFs, doesn’t mean he didn’t make them. jk’s put a lot more effort into it that people realise. He isn’t dumb, people act like he hasn’t got the ability to think that deeply about it just because he’s an idol and not a pro filmmaker. The film is incredibly important to jk, there is no way he’d half-ass it. It’s like with my book Knowing - I have to make sure everything is PERFECT and everything is exactly how I want it to be, I do everything for a reason, and I care because it’s important to me and I’m proud of it. It’s exactly the same for jk. It’s something important that he’s spent a lot of time on, he wouldn’t just throw random things in.
But once again, just to disclaim because people will get upset otherwise - I’m not saying that everything I said about GCF was true, I’m just saying that it’s obvious that Jungkook put more effort in than people realise. If I was to tell you exactly what GCF meant, I’d need to be Jungkook.
Thank you for your ask
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Bias-wrecker: Kim Jongdae Genre: Horror but funny and/or sexy/smutty? Number: 43 I love all of your EXO and BTS fics
lmao you don’t get a drabble my dear you got A WHOLE ENTIRE ONE SHOT
Title: CavityPrompt: 43: “Pick up lines only work when I’m drunk” (part of the 1K followers drabble game)Pairing: Jongdae x Reader (oc; female)Summary: While trying to forget your ex, a man comes to you and promises that he can help you take the memory away.Genre: Demon!AU; angst; light smutRating: RWarnings: light smut; explicit language; references of violenceWord Count: 3,722
Gin is not your favourite.
If you’re being honest, you don’t really even like gin at all, except for the way it reminds you him. He was the one who got you into it, convinced you that its burn was the right flavor for every emotion, every daydream, and every enticing fantasy. Perhaps, you think, that is why you’re drinking it now instead of your usual whiskey. Forcing your body, your mind, and your tongue to have their last fill of him before you move on completely.
The bar is loud, not usually your scene, but that’s why you chose it. This is not the atmosphere you liked - or, maybe you did, at some point, long ago and long forgotten. This was not the atmosphere he liked, and pressing yourself into this shape means he feels further away, somehow. You’re glad to take him in, let him scorch your throat as you swallow the memories, but simply cannot stomach the idea of letting one of his bars, his favored places, ever touch your skin again. He can have your insides, you think, he took control of those from the moment you saw him. There’s not much left for anyone else to have, anyway.
With another shallow sip, you think on if these things ever truly made you happy. Did you enjoy being his girl? Did you enjoy being someone he could parade and show off, someone he thought he was proud of? Did you like all the house music and the expensive cocktails? The high heeled shoes, the blown out hair, the tight dresses he peeled off with deft fingers? Or, rather, the way he cupped your ass in public, leant into your ear and told you he wanted you, told you he needed you, kissed the exposed area of your shoulder always, and looked at you as though ready to leave any establishment from the moment you entered? You think you liked how these things felt more than the objects and the actions themselves. You think you like how he felt rather than the person he was, and while this revelation should make it easier for you to move on, it only serves to make you feel guilty.
‘I can make you forget about him.’
A bright voice at your side interrupts your thoughts, and when you turn to greet its owner you are awestruck. Dark, thick hair, full lips, and a strong jaw, he is everything Chanyeol was not and you find him fascinating. His smile seems vacant, serious in a way, not entirely warm nor inviting, simply existing to make you ask all the right questions. There’s a temptation in his eyes, something that seems to glow as if begging you to fall in, to get lost there, and you want to, but you don’t let yourself. You did that once with Chanyeol. You will not make the same mistake again.
With a scoff, you turn back and look straight ahead at the bar. ‘Pick up lines only work when I’m drunk.’
‘Really?’ he muses idly, leaning into your peripheral. ‘You’ve had four already. I thought you’d be close.’
‘I can hold my drink.’ Glancing down at the half-empty glass, you run your fingers over the rim rather than bring it to your lips. You aren’t lying - you can indeed hold your drink, but tonight you’re holding onto more than just liquor, and you aren’t sure you want anything anymore.
‘Well,’ he sighs, leaning back and waving the bartender away, ‘the point still stands.’
‘Who are you?’ you ask, turning to eye him conspicuously.
‘Someone who can help.’
He’s entirely serene in the way he says this, as if he expected you to know him from the start. Nothing about this statement sounds helpful, really, nor encouraging, just an announcement of fact or belief and it is up to you to decide which it is.
Narrowing your eyes, you scowl at him. ‘How do you know I need forget about someone anyway?’ You glance around the bar, looking at other lonely patrons and wondering why he chose you. ‘This feels so random.’
‘I can see it,’ he states with a casual shrug of his shoulders.
‘How?’
‘Lots of ways,’ he says, turning on his stool to face you fully. ‘In the way you keep guzzling that gin down. The way you frown every time you do. And, probably most helpful of all…’
His words fade, dying in the air and dissipating beneath the incessant drone of the loud music. The bar is loud, not at all your scene, but all at once the world around you seems to disappear and grow quiet. You watch in horror as the glow in his eyes change, morphing from something magical to something awful. It’s all you can focus on, throat turning dry and tongue heavy, the way the glow becomes crimson, spools of red that spiral and mix with the black of his pupils. It makes him look deadly. It makes him look lethal.
It makes him look inhuman.
‘What the fuck are you?’ you whisper, voice small, reduced to almost nothing from the tension in your chest, and you think you have never been so terrified of anything, or anyone, in your life.
‘Someone who can help.’
This time, the words sound menacing.
This time, the words sound like a hiss.
As soon as you have him in your house, you regret it. He fits in easily, looking handsome, looking beautiful, looking like he could belong, and that, you know, is the worst part. On the way, he told you his name is Jongdae - well, he told you the man he is wearing was named Jongdae. He uses the name simply because he likes how it sounds, says it rolls off the tongue rather nicely and makes people feel safe. On the way, he told you he’s been dead for a long time - Jongdae, that is, he himself has been alive since the dawn of time.
On the way, he told you he is a demon. Unfortunate, he said, because Jongdae had been a very, very good man.
‘You would have liked him,’ he said, drumming his fingers on the dash while you drove quickly down the highway. ‘He made great pancakes.’
‘I wouldn’t rest my opinion on someone just because they make great pancakes,’ you argued in a rush, unable to look at him as you white knuckled the wheel.
‘True,’ he conceded, ‘but he was a doctor, and he wanted to make pancakes for his kids. You guys would have made cute babies.’
‘Stop talking.’
Now, you are sitting on your couch and in your hand is a vile containing clear liquid. He handed it to you as if it was the holy grail, as if this was the answer to all your questions. Odd, you think, for such a small, simple thing to be so ominous.
‘What is this?’ you ask, studying it warily. There’s a tremble to your fingers, small and slight, and you grip the bottle tightly in an effort to conceal this from Jongdae.
‘Water,’ he says, simply.
There’s a light, playful air in his voice as if he thinks you’re being silly, as if this is something you both should be laughing about. You want to punch him.
‘I highly doubt it’s just water,’ you seethe, rolling your eyes and turning to look at him. ‘Don’t bullshit me.’
‘No,’ he says with a sharp laugh, one that makes you cringe slightly, ‘it really is just water...from a river...a very special river.’
‘What, Styx?’
‘Close,’ he sighs, rising to stand, ‘but no. That water would be black. This is water is clear. This water is clean.’
Jongdae twirls about your living room, inspecting the books on your shelf and smelling flowers you’ve placed on an end table. He scowls at the smell, turning away from the offending plant to look back at your books.
‘Sorry,’ you say, sarcasm dripping through your tone, ‘my geography of Hell is a little lacking.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says lightly, pulling out your copy of the Canterbury Tales and flicking through with interest. ‘The only person who ever got it close to right is Dante Alighieri, and he was too up his literary ass to really figure out it’s impossible for it to be a cone.’
At this, Jongdae snaps the book shut and points it at you. ‘Like, how the fuck would the Earth be hollow enough to support that shit?’
You stare at him blankly, unsure how to respond. ‘You’re really passionate about this.’
‘Well,’ he continued, placing the book back on the shelf and taking one of your pictures instead. ‘A couple millennia pass with all these people writing about your home, and your life, and no one ever gets it right? Annoying. You look good here, by the way. Nice tits.’
‘You could tell someone,’ you say, ignoring his backwards compliment. ‘You know, sort of how Anne Rice imagined in Interview With The Vampire?’
‘That book was great!’ he singsongs, putting the picture back and taking a candle. ‘Wildly inaccurate too, but great.’
It takes you several seconds to catch his implication, partly because he said the words as if they were common knowledge and partly because he lights the candle with his fingers, again and again, the flames taking on various colours.
‘You’re telling me there’s vampires too?’ you breathe, shaking your head at the concept.
‘Babe,’ he says, slightly exasperated and putting the candle back, lit with a black flame. ‘There’s a lot of shit people have been writing about since the dawn of time, and no one ever really gets it right.’
‘My point still stands,’ you shrug, ‘just tell someone.’
‘We could,’ he begins, turning to you with a smile and walking back to the couch, ‘but then the fun of all hate would be gone and, you know, it’s exhausting being happy with things.’
‘Wow,’ you intone, ‘I find the opposite to be true.’
Jongdae gestures manically with his fingers, slightly making jazz hands as his wrists move with a flair. ‘That’s because you’re so wrapped up in all these human feelings.’
‘Hate is a human feeling,’ you contend.
‘No, it really isn’t.’ The way he looks at you is almost sympathetic, as if you are foolish for even thinking this, and you feel his gaze crawl over your skin, making you shiver. ‘Humans were meant to only have the nice things, the good feelings. You learned spite and hate after Luci gave it to you - taught you how to have a real thrill.’
Once more, you aren’t entirely sure what to say to this. Looking at Jongdae makes you almost feel ill, his concept and perception of the world so beyond your comprehension that you almost feel dizzy. Instead, you glance back to the vile in your hand and wait for your voice to return. When it does, it’s merely a whisper of confusion.
‘This is the most bizarre evening I’ve ever had in my life.’
Jongdae shrugs. ‘I’ve had weirder.’
‘I can imagine,’ you reply with a minute nod.
‘Ever seen someone impaled up the ass and asking Lucifer to give him the power of immortality so he can choke his captors with their intestines?’
Your gaze snaps back to Jongdae who appears wholly unbothered by his question, merely looks at you as though he is bored with the entire conversation.
‘No.’
‘Then no,’ he laughs, pity filtering through the sound, ‘you really can’t imagine.’
Silence fills the room, you looking at Jongdae and he back at you, and you both spend a time like this trying to read one another. He’s handsome, beautiful, but you know this is just the body, and the name, he is using to conduct business on the top-side, as he calls it. He’s handsome, and charming, but something about the way he speaks is whimsical, neither truly dark nor cruel, just honest in the way he moves throughout the world. You don’t want to, but you almost trust him, only because this is the most honest conversation you’ve had in years.
Eventually, Jongdae looks back at the vile in your hand and presses you.
‘So,’ he starts, bringing you back to reality, ‘you going to drink that shit or not? I have a quota to fill, you know. Can’t be wasting my time here.’
And this, this small statement, makes you realize exactly what you are doing - dealing with a demon. It’s easy to trust him because he has not lied, not really. He’s told you everything, but you were the one crazy enough to imagine this would all turn out fine. He’s urging you to drink this liquid because you are just a number. Your life, the brief extent of it or the long, drawn out horror of it, does not matter to him. You are reduced, in this moment, to little more than a job, something he will forget about the moment he walks out of the room.
And that is if you are lucky.
There’s no reason for him to care about you if you are little more than a number, and the outcome, whether you drink this or not, will remain unchanged for you. In both instances, you probably die.
‘I don’t know,’ you say, finally. ‘I’m trying to decide if this will kill me.’
‘Water doesn’t kill,’ he sighs, tired of all your hesitations.
‘Will you kill me if I refuse?’
‘That entirely depends on my mood,’ he says, oddly calm for such a statement.
Narrowing your eyes, you lean closer to inspect his visage. ‘And what is your mood?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says, leaning forward to mimic your position and bringing his nose close to yours. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’
Like this you remain, trying to prise answers from one another as time ticks slowly by. Eventually, it becomes a test, to see who will move first. A tiny ache in your back flares after a time, tense from maintaining the odd angle, and you lean back with pursed lips.
‘You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?’
‘I’m a demon,’ he laughs, the sound a metallic click. ‘I’m not supposed to be sunshine and daisies.’
‘Have you tried?’ you ask, voice airy and light.
‘Tried what?’
‘I don’t know, smiling?’
‘I smile!’ he exclaims, loud voice echoing off the walls.
‘Not genuinely,’ you say, giggling at his offense.
As if to prove you wrong, he plasters a smile on his face, his lips pulling into a cheshire cat grin. Unlike the way he smiled at the bar, this looks sickly, looks almost ill. There’s something wrong about the angle of the smile, something malicious about the way it looks incredible but does not meet his eyes. The smile itself looks beautiful but he looks sick with the action, as if the very concept of contented warmth is causing him pain.
‘Stop’ you demand, waving your hand through the air as if to wipe his expression clean. ‘That looks fucking awful, I prefer you the other way.’
‘Thank fuck,’ he sighs, relieved to mold himself back into his standard, vacant expression.
‘Alright,’ you say, returning to the main topic of the evening. ‘I know enough about the river Lethe to know that it doesn’t make you forget one thing it makes you forget everything. Why would I want this?’
‘Well, shit, look at you!’ he says, gleefully. ‘You know something!’
‘Yes, hurray,’ you sing sarcastically. ‘Answer my question.’
‘The river only makes you forget everything if you have nothing on your mind as you drink it,’ he explains, nodding in the direction of the vile. ‘If you focus on the thing you want to forget, then POOF! It magically goes away and you can carry on living as though it never existed at all.’
‘And if I see him again?’
‘You won’t recognize him,’ he states, gently. ‘You won’t know him at all.’
Glancing back at the bottle, you feel something in your stomach drop that feels close to dread. ‘This feels too good to be true.’
‘Not everything has to be that way,’ Jongdae sings lightly, the tone musical and tantalizing.
You do not let yourself be captivated and instead glower at him. ‘Everything from hell has to be that way.’
‘I’d say,’ he begins slowly, leaning forward once more, ‘the catch would be how you forget.’
‘What does that mean exactly?’
‘Well, first you have to drink the water.’
Jongdae lowers his voice to a seductive whisper, his lips forming a pout that looks almost arousing, almost charming. You could kiss those lips, you think. You could kiss them and you could like it.
‘And then?’ you murmur, leaning into him to taste his air, eyes starting to flutter.
‘And then you have to kiss me the way you would kiss him.’
You want to be repulsed, you think you should be repulsed, but the way Jongdae is looking at you is the most inviting expression you’ve seen on a man in a long, long time. Chanyeol never looked at you like this, you muse, never made you feel important like this, as if you were the only person in the room or the world. Jongdae is eyeing you like nothing in the universe matters, like your mouth on his is the only thing that could make the world turn. From your eyes to your lips, his gaze moves and you feel every single step his irises take along your flesh.
You’re hot, all of a sudden, flushed to the brim with heat and desire, and your fingers are itching to take him, tongue itching to taste him.
‘Please,’ he whispers, voice tight. ‘I want you to kiss me.’
Powerless to disobey, your fingers thumb off the cap of the vile and bring it to your lips.
Jongdae watches you hungrily as you drink the liquid down, tongue coming to wet his lips and your eyes blow wide at the taste. It’s the best drink you’ve ever had. The water is cold, refreshing, tastes almost like crystal and is sweet enough to make your taste buds tingle as though they were lapping at honey.
When the bottle is emptied, you reach for him, carding your fingers through his hair and, suddenly, he is Chanyeol.
You crawl into his lap, and he is Chanyeol.
He takes your bottom lip between his teeth, and you mewl, grinding your hips down onto his to illicit and moan that makes your heart sing. The blood beneath your skin courses through your veins at break neck speed, and you part his lips with your tongue to taste his, fighting against the muscle for dominance as you moan into his eager mouth.
A slight tremble begins in your hands as you clutch at him, moving up your arms and into your back, making you shiver against him. Feeling you become such a soft, malleable thing in his hands makes him growl possessively, and he grips your waist with the hot flat of his hands. While he kisses you, his fingers trace small circles into the soft flesh of your waist beneath your dress before moving down.
His hands find your hips and root you in his lap, forcing your groins to press together and sending an electric surge through your body. In unison, you moan at the contact. Beneath his trousers, you can feel his hardness as it teases against the silk of your underwear. Wetness pools between your thighs and you clench your muscles, breaking from his lips to gasp at the sensation. Laughter erupts from his chest as he captures your lips once more before moving down your jaw to your neck, and making your chests press together tight enough you cannot imagine air existing between your bodies.
‘Chanyeol,’ you breathe, the sound coming out as a mewl.
‘That’s it, baby,’ he says, and you know it is Jongdae saying the words, but it’s Chanyeol’s voice you hear, and the sound alone makes you nearly come undone.
You let the feeling take control, consume every part of you until you think you could come from the force of it. There’s a tension in your core that makes your eyes pop open, brow narrowed in confusion because it should not feel this way - not so soon. Jongdae ruts up into you, groins pressing together, and you hiss at the contact, a cry erupting from your lips but then -
It’s over.
Jongdae drops you back to the couch and rises, staring down at you with a cold smile as he straightens his jacket and trousers. Confused, you glance down at yourself and see your skirt is hiked up your thighs, bruises forming on your skin where you did not know his hands had been. You did not feel them there at all. Chest rising and falling in heaving breaths, you look up at his body and study his swollen lips. You did that. You made the blood rush there, but you don’t remember why you would want to.
In the pit of your stomach, you feel filled with something - you think you can call it regret. The muscles in your body hurt and your chest clenches now, not with desire but with sadness, shame. You hate yourself, you hate him, but you don’t know who he is.
Glancing up at Jongdae, you think you might hate him, but he simply smiles and says, ‘I told you I could help.’
Jongdae was there to help, so you know you do not hate him. You could never hate a thing that existed only to help.
Lost, dazed, and trying to feel numb, you hate something. You think you might hate yourself, now, but you know you hate a man. Every man? No, not every man. One man. He hurt you, right down to the very marrow of your bones. He hurt you so deeply you don’t think you could ever love or forgive again, but you don’t know who he is.
Tears fall, hot and thick, down your cheeks but still you don’t know who he is. You don’t know who he is and you don’t know what he did, and, therefore, you don’t know how to move on at all.
#jongdae x reader#kpoptrashtag#kwriterskollection#noonanet#chen x reader#jongdae au#chen au#exo au#jongdae scenario#chen scenario#jongdae demon au#jongdae fanfiction#exo fanfiction#chen fanfiction#kim jongdae#chen#Anonymous
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Rewatching “Heroes of Mandalore”
OK, so I actually had to split up the reactions between Parts 1 and 2 because so much crap went down in the premiere and I took a lot of freaking notes.
Part 1
BACKSTREET’S BACK ALRIGHT!
OH MY GOD WE’RE BACK AGAIN
Just noticed the tiny detail of Fenn Rau using military hand gestures but gently tapping Kanan to get him to stop.
There’s Manda’o going across Fenn Rau’s vision in his helmet
Oh my gosh Chopper flapping his mechanical arms
*Sabine unleashes the Darksaber* HECK YEAH!
Craap there wasn’t an opening theme...
*Ezra continues having difficulty with his jetpack* Oh my God Ezra...
KANAN’S FREAKING FLYING WITH THE FORCE
*Bo-Katan and her forces arrive* The calvary is here!
Holy crap Kanan...he’s freaking jumping everywhere!
“Her [Bo-Katan] sister Satine once ruled Mandalore.” Ugh I don’t need these feels...
“I’m not my sister.” Aaaagghhhh...
What is this music here when Bo-Katan turns down the Darksaber because it is so pretty
Hey, um @starwars, I would love to see the concept art for this episode
The animation is so freaking good here oh my God
“Your [Sabine’s] father’s being brought back to the capital for public termination.” They’re gonna try and pull a freaking Ned Stark on us...
The color palette for Mandalore is just broowwwnnn....
“Oh... having trouble overthrowing the Empire without me [Kanan]?” Oh my God YOU’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR ZONE
Freaking Kanan’s smile
THAT FREAKING LITTLE JINGLE THOUGH
“You know what I [Hera] mean.” “Well, you know how I feel.” I dunno, Kanan, tell us how you feel!
*munches on popcorn* Take us to church!
“Are we still talking about the mission?” OK GUYS something had HAD to go down between S3 and S4... I mean, C’MON...
Chopper’s exaperated grumbles at Hera and Kanan is literally me right now!
I like the little detail of Kanan drumming his fingers on his arm after Hera ends the holocall
Also, take a shot every time you see his ponytail flap in the wind
You can actually understand Chopper more here
“I do love the capital.” Oh my gosh I love Sabine’s dad. Who plays him?
These actions scenes though are fantastic
We even get freaking POV shots of the driver in charge of the carrier that has Sabine’s dad!
*Kanan kicks ass* YESSS KANAN!
[Saxon trooper peeks underneath the carrier] *starts scatting the Pink Panther theme*
Just saying this: I totally want more of Fenn Rau and Bo-Katan working together
*Kanan closes the top and kicks everyone’s asses in the dark* HE PULLED A ROGUE ONE THIS IS AMAZING
“Are you [Ezra] with Sabine?” “Yeah, I’m with her! I mean, not with her with her- I’m just friends... with her.” HAHAHAHAHA!!!
Oh my gosh guys, Ezra has matured so freaking much since his blueberry days in S1
He’s [Ezra’s] pulling a freaking Legolas from “Battle of the Five Armies”
Oh my gosh Ezra’s scrambling up the cliff.
This animation’s so freaking good!
*Sabine and her father hug each other* Aggghhh don’t mind me crying into my sleeve...
OK so I’m definitely drawing their hug
Sabine’s dad an art critic. I love it.
OH SHIT IT’S HER WEAPON
OH SHIT SHIT SHIT SON
It’s a freaking nuke...
Kevin Kiner, you bastard, you put Sabine’s Catharsis in freaking minor!
I READ YOUR BOOK!
Part 2
*Ursa and Tristan emerge alive* TOLD Y’ALL THEY DIDN’T GET KILLED OFF
Yet again they don’t play the opening theme...
Pretty sure that one random Clan Kryze member is played by Phil LaMarr
“I [Ezra] don’t wanna be a Mandalorian” Well I don’t wanna be a pirate...
*Ezra smacks against the windshield of the TIE fighter* Pfffttt...
Holy crap totally didn’t see the Thrawn cameo coming
*A demonstration is shown of the weapon against Mandalorians* Holy crap they just showed that onscreen
This is definitely not a kids’ show anymore...
Can we talk about the fact that Tiber Saxon is played by freaking Edmure Tully (Tobias Menzies) from Game of Thrones?!?
Holy crap talk about some star power. We need more actors to come over from GoT
You can hear Lars Mikkelsen’s Danish accent come out when he raises his voice
*Bo-Katan slams Sabine against the wall in anger* Oh crap.
“So why not make your [Mandalorian] armor out of something different?” Ezra no
“My armor I [Sabine] wear is over 500 years old.” That’s awesome.
“Any attack on my [Ursa’s] daughter is an attack on Clan Wren.” Go Mom!
The color palette for this premiere is brown, yellow, grey, black, orange, blue, and purple
“The Duchess? You name the weapon after my sister, the former ruler of Mandalore?” Umm awkward...
“Palpatine has shown me [Tiber Saxon] the way to true power!” Did Palpatine show the Saxons freaking Force Lightning?!?
“Oh, I’m moving!” YESS!
Holy crap that shot of Ezra looking at the fight in the hangar is awesome and is giving me sudden onset Clone Wars flashbacks
OK, I can totally see Tristan and Ezra hanging out
Sabine’s pulling a freaking Palpatine from ROTJ! HOT DANG!
Holy crap we’re getting the Dark Side here in Sabine!
Honestly though, for the last ten minutes of this, me and @dynamicdiplomacy were just in silent shock the first time we saw this
*sniffs tearfully* Sabine’s Catharsis...
Clan Vizsla?!?
*Bo-Katan accepts the Darksaber and everyone bows down* Bow down, bitches!
THIS MUSIC IS AWESOME!
Oh that last shot of everyone kneeling is awesome!
*internally screaming*
*externally screaming*
#swr#star wars rebels#swr rewatch#heroes of mandalore#swr spoilers#star wars rebels s4#sabine wren#bo katan kryze#ezra bridger#kanan jarrus#hera syndulla#kanera#chopper#c1-10p#fenn rau#grand admiral thrawn#darksaber#Emperor Palpatine#why me scream
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Hey, now that majority of the Anime of Summer 2017 have been released I guess it’s finally time for me to give all of you my thoughts on the Anime that I have watched this season, I will also be giving an overall rating based on the first episodes and if it’s worth watching or not! Now let’s start!
MB Oji-san’s thoughts on Summer 2017 Anime
1. Action Heroine Cheer Fruits: So apparently this series focuses on a group of... I believe middle school students, try gaining more visitors to their small home town by creating their own action hero group, which is a popular trend in their year... The series does have quite a simple concept and the character designs are quite nice, a cute girls doing cute things show that has actual goals, kinda reminds me of Sakura Quest with the concept of bringing visitors to a small town in the country but lacks the all the amazing things it has, it’s something easy to watch but nothing fantastic, 6/10 (Try at least 3 episodes if you want to give it a shot) *Update: Dropped, I have better things to do rather than watch a sub-par show about a group of girls becoming a live action hero group. Would have probably enjoyed this if I was still a kid
2. Ballroom e Youkoso: I’ve seen this series jokingly called, “The Straight Yuri on Ice!!” that got a bit of a chuckle from me, but knowing that I was never a big fan of any form of dancing I knew that this series would have to do a lot to get me invested to keep watching it, and surprisingly it did, aside from the designs of Haikyuu! the soundtrack and animation of this show is pretty great and I find it quite amazing that our MC who was questioning himself about his future managed to gain such a great passion of ballroom dancing just from watching his now current tutor doing the art himself during a competition, not to mention all the girls in this show seem really cute (especially the one voice by Sakura Ayane) 8/10 (I highly recommend this show, one of the best of this season but do the three episode rule also if you find yourself losing interest afterwards)
3. Battle Girl High School - Apparently this is a mix of idol and cute girls fight monsters to save the planet series? Well this show has plenty of cute girls, yet the designs are kinda weak (that one girl that looks like Miria from Cinderella Girls always bugs me tbh) the plot is nothing too special, would be something you can get from some random Anime phone game, which this Anime originated from, but tbh some scenes are cute and I did follow this series closely because one of the girls are voiced by Ozora Akari’s seiyuu so... this show might not be for everyone but watch if it if you want to watch cute girls doing cute things while saving the world 6/10 (3 episode rule) *Want to drop, but cannot due to Akari’s VA voicing one of the girls
4. Centaur no Nayami - Here we have this season’s monster girl series... and honestly I find it a bit lacking compared to Winter’s Demi-chan... sure this series may have some Yuri undertones and cute girls but I find this world’s underlining politics and evolution system a bit unsettling... which is apparently connected to the story of our main cast later on but it seems just so oppressive despite the series’ cute SOL look, it’s good though and if you like cute monster girls go ahead and watch it 7/10 (3 episode rule at best)
5. Fate/Apocrypha - Astolfo, Modred, and Jeanne D’Arc, that should be enough for you to watch this Fate series 8.5/10 (Go ahead and watch it, no need to watch all the Fate series, you still should but this is set in an alternate universe) *Update, Changing the score to a 7, not even Astolfo can save this series
6. Hajimete no Gal - the goddamn MC of this series does not deserve Yukana... despite the stereotypes of gyarus, she’s a sweet girl who’s way out of the dude’s league and you almost want to punch him for all the stupid things he does later in the series 6.7/10 (3 episode rule, or watch if you’re a harem ecchi fan) *Want to drop but can’t, I want to see if Yukana dumps the MC’s sorry idiotic ass
7. Hina Logi ~from Luck & Logic~ - This spin-off of the Lock & Logic series has got to be one of the Animes of Summer 2017 that has impressed me the most, despite having a much more moe style compared to the original series, Hina Logi’s OP animated with paper cut-outs was honestly SUPER IMPRESSIVE, it has got to be my fave OP animation of this season. Not to mention the action scenes are impressive as well, the character designs are nothing to write home and this show does have it’s own share of fan service but it’s honestly pretty fun! 7.5/10 (Watch the original Luck & Logic if you wish to view this one, the original is pretty good would rate it the same score as Hina Logi)
8. Isekai Shokudou - honestly one of the best looking shows this season, despite not having too much of a fantasic plot, you can call this series “the fantasy version of Shokugeki no Soma without foodgasms” well sexual ones at least, but just a simple laid back series about a regular restaurant owner serving customers from another world with his cute fantasy world coworkers 8/10 (highly recommend, watch if you want a nice looking laid back series)
9. Kakegurui - man the ugly facial expressions... the stakes of the gambling games... the GREAT OP but s**tty ED... the fan service... this is actually a really good series tbh 7.8/10 (I recommend it, watch it if you want a well animated series with some nice psychological moments and high stakes)
10. Katsugeki Touken Ranbu - Ufotable + Samurais??????.... it’s OK 7.5/10 (3 episode rule at best)
11. Knight's & Magic - Honestly I feel like this series is being over hyped, I don’t know if it’s because the main character that was formerly just a working programmer mecha otaku who is reincarnated as a pretty boy voiced by Megumin’s seiyuu or good ol’ Chu Chu Yeah! fhana singing the OP (tbh I kinda feel the opening to be one of her weaker songs but eh that’s me) but I can hand it to this series for having well animated robot fight scenes and monsters, I’m kind of a hipster so I hate over hyped series but as a reviewer I will not let this effect the score I’ll be giving it 7.5/10 (I recommend it to people who want a pretty good looking isekai series with some badass looking mechas)
12. Koi to Uso - Despite the character designs of this series seeming a bit wacky sometimes, the coloring of this series is absolutely beautiful, and can I just say the concept of government arranged marriages to counter Japan’s declining child birth rate and Lilina was enough to get me to read all the released chapters of the Manga? Heads up, Yusuke is best girl 8/10 (highly recommend if you’re into good romance with some drama)
13. Made in Abyss - Such simplistic character designs yet unique... such a wonderful soundtrack that I was only wishing it could be Post-Rock... wonderful world building of a world so beautiful... this show is also apparently super dark so as a Metal fan... beauty within the darkness is greatly appreciated 9/10 (HIGHLY RECOMMEND but warning, the source of this series shows that the Anime can get SUPER DARK in later episodes so I’ll be giving you a heads up just in case you can’t stomach it, one of my fave Animes of 2017 next to Tsuki ga Kirei)
14. New Game!! - OVERRATED but... nice Yuri vibes, fan service, cute characters and scenes eh 7.5/10 (watch if you have seen the 1st season)
15. Princess Principal - I just can’t get over the character design choice of this series... moe despite being a serious edgy steam punk spy series... well edgy moe series like Yuuki Yuuna are masterpieces so I won’t let it bug me too much, the OST and scenery of this series is great 7.8/10 (watch if you want cute girls doing edgy spy stuff)
16. Tenshi no 3P! - lolis and some loner teenage dude make music, the ED is pretty Metal but god... dude gonna go to jail 6.5/10 (eh 3 episode rule unless you like lolis go for it) *Update: Dropped! I don’t care for the “Metal that’s always used in Anime” ED, I’m not watching this obvious as f**k Lolibait
17. Youkai Apartment no Yuuga na Nichijou - this has an old anime vibes, which isn’t a negative statement, it’s positive, simply an Anime about a dude who wants to live in his high school's dorms so that he wouldn’t be a burden to his uncle and his family ever since losing his parents and residing in their house, sadly said dorm is burned down in a fire and he ends up living in a supernatural apartment and finding out he has powers to help others, a really nice laid back series the soundtrack choice can suck at times and the character design and coloring is nothing special but I can feel heart in this series 7.5/10 (3 episode rule at best)
18. Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e - this series impresses me, not only with the great coloring and each character have unique individual designs, just the usage of quotes from writers of great and the concept of the students in the school these series takes place in with only the superior classes only truly mattering is a bit cliched but interesting 7.8/10 (3 episode rule at best)
19. Aho-Girl - Funny as heck and short, always making for a good laugh and the fan service in this show merely makes me laugh compared to being aroused, love the voice choices for A-Kun and Yoshiko, reminds me of Yusuke and Futaba from P5 8/10 (highly recommend if you want to laugh)
20. Netsuzou Trap -NTR-: Only 10 minutes or less per episode???? DISAPPOINTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well this series already makes me feel conflicted despite being Yuri but damn the Anime ain’t nothing special aside from that 7/10 (uh want Yuri which is super rare, watch it but the NTR element will make you question yourself)
21. Tsurezure Children - Nice, short good romance comedy Anime, makes your heart skip a beat while laughing 8/10 (watch if you want a good short romcom series)
22. Gamers! - I honestly wonder how the studio got all the rights to use all those game refrences, suprisingly is quite a good watch despite the MC being kind of a wimp 7/10 (Watch if you like a different formula to the “club” genre)
23. Teekyu S9 - Time for more wacky Teekyu stuff 6.5/10 (uh you should pretty watch all 8 previous seasons if you want to watch this)
24. Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni. - tbh a decent isekai series, not too much of that generic crap and every action the characters do feels meaningful 7/10 (Watch if you want something that’s a mix of serious and comedy isekai)
THOUGHTS ON CONTINUING SHOWS
Aikatsu Stars - Koharu’s back and that’s all I need 7/10 (honestly I see the writers are pulling a “Love Live!” writers move and might make all the future episodes way too similar to the 1st series, which sucks since Stars! felt pretty OK despite the low ratings)
Re:Creators - Overrated, that’s all, this show is getting boring, the girl from the Eroge is saving this show 7/10
Shingeki no Bamahaut: Virgin Soul - Still good, I’m just wondering if Nina will be OK, cause I don’t want anything bad happening to her 8/10
Boku no Hero Academia - I love Ochako, that is all 8.5/10
Sakura Quest - the new OP and ED are “meh” compared to the first ones but the 2nd cour seems pretty good and it was pleasant to hear fluent Spanish in an Anime of all places 8/10
Sagrada Rest - DROPPED, but it’s OK, JJBA Part 5 will come after this boring ass show too ded for me/10
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Take One
Take One: Scene One
[College Au! Taking an editing course with Christian]
As class came to an end your professor handed back your peer reviewed midterms. You honestly always thought peer reviewed was a fancy way of saying Your professor was too lazy to actually grade it themselves, but there were no complaints on your end. There was no way a classmate would fail you, they probably had the same anxiety.
Everyone was always lenient at peer reviews. Right?
“Alright Kids, remember to go over the discussion board, read the next chapter and start drafting ideas for the final” Professor Seo leaned on her desk, taking off her glasses. “Any questions?”
“Yeah, can I do a makeup midterm?” One of the kids in the back piped up.
She chuckled. “No make ups, but if anyone enters the film festival, that presentation will be used to replace their lowest grade, including a midterm. Next question?”
“Professor Seo, what is this?” you gasped turning over your paper.
“Is there a problem?” she raised a brow.
“A problem? Yeah, you can say that” you pointed at the C on your review paper. You knew for a fact your film was better than a C, especially compared to some of your classmates. You’d always gone that extra mile. There was no reason in hell this should have been a C.
“I was going to go over that after class with you, I did think the review of your short film was a little on the harsher end but, I couldn’t argue with his reasoning's. He had very valid points”
You scoffed “Lack of personality that did nothing to compliment the overal ambiance of the film?” you quoted the notes on the paper.
“The wording wasn’t ideal but after another review, I had to agree with him. Your film was elegant and safe but-”
“Anyone could’ve directed it” Christian turned around to face you from the row in front of you. “A few generic cut scenes to some rivers, and trees blowing in the wind, accompanied by a monologue that would be best suited for some B rated young adult novel that doesn’t even make it to theaters”
“Excuse you?!” you rolled your eyes and scoffed. “Says the guy that literally can’t produce something without over saturated lights, and some basic trap filter that looks like a child doodled all over your film.”
“At least I have a style”
“And what’s that? Dark silhouettes, fog machines and excessive filters?”
“And your style is what? Slowmo street shots, coffee shops, and disconnected monologues? I felt like I was watchin the rejected footage of the next Amazon teen series.”
“I’m sorry and what’s the purpose of you using a steadicam if you’re literally going to throw these shaky ass, Blair Witch Project filters on all of your footage? It looks like your cameraman had a seizure”
“I’m sorry just how many times did you need to have the same tree shots looped in the video?”
“About as many times as you needed to have a black and white video and a random eye color edit, that looked like a cheesey effect from an early 2000’s music video.”
“Who do you even think you are?!”
“Your new editing partner” Professor Seo interjected with a smile. “You two are going to work together and edit your midterms into a collaborative project for the film festival.”
“Excuse me?!” you couldn’t help but give your professor a dumbfounded look.
“I’d rather we not” Christian groaned, raking his hand through his hair.
She raised her hands in the air “Hey you guys signed the syllabus, even though I did leave a note in there that said subject to change in regards to film festival participation”
“Fine” you huffed “Looks like I’ll need the film festival grade to replace this C” you said just loud enough to make sure Christian heard you.
“If you don’t like the C, don’t do C-grade material.”
“I wanna push him in front of a truck.” you crossed your arms over your chest, mumbling to yourself.
Your friend Dahye laughed to herself rubbing your back. “Down girl… Seriously, is this some sort of foreplay with you two?”
“I’m seriously gonna run him over.” you grumbled. “A couple times”
After class you found yourself in one of the empty work rooms, sitting on the desk, facing Christian. “I’d rather be home sleeping, but thanks to someone I’ve got to make a video for a festival I’m not prepared for.”
“Oh relax Princess. It’s not like we’re aiming for first place.” he took a puff of his vape.
“You’re not aiming for first place. I’m trying to get an A” you sighed looking at your notebook, trying to find at least one salvageable idea. You coughed shooing away the smoke. “And can you not do that indoors? Why do you always have to be such a fuck boy?”
“You love it” he chuckled placing both his arms on either side of your thighs, brushing up against your dress.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” you removed his hand from your thigh.
“You still mad at me Babe?” he pouted, kissing the side of your mouth.
“Don’t kiss me Barom. You gave me a C you asshole.” you playfully shoved his chest away.
“Woah Barom?” he scoffed “What are you my mother?” he laughed. You only ever used his birth name when you were pissed. He placed his hand over his chest, feigning hurt. “Oh come on, I’m the asshole? You compared my film to an early 2000 music video without a steadicam” he laughed. “Also over edited and saturated? I felt like you were just sitting on that one, waiting to use it”
“You compared mine to a rejected young adult movie!”
“Damn right I did. You’re really gonna argue that that was one of your better videos? I’ve seen you do better producing in your sleep.”
“Ouch Christian. I worked really hard on that film.”
“But it’s not to your usual standard. If I let you get away with half-assing something, I’ll never see the beautiful things you make when you actually try.”
You sighed, refusing to admit that he was right. Honestly, your thoughts on your work were lukewarm. You didn’t think it was C worthy, you just knew it wasn’t an A. You had a concept and kind of lost it halfway through. You couldn’t help but toss together an ending with some exposition.“I just...have writer's blocks...”
“Bullshit. You don’t have writer's block.” he set down his vape and tilted your chin to look down at him “You’re just afraid to put out something that other people don’t like. But here’s the thing Babe, it’s not about other people. All that matters is you like it.”
“That’s stupid.”
“That’s art.” he smirked pecking your lips. “Trust me, and just got with your gut. I’m giving you creative control on this one.” he smiled “I concede and you’re the director.”
“You hate giving up the director’s seat.” you sighed playing with the hair on his nape.
“But I love you more…” his voice was gentle as he tucked your hair behind your ear. “I’m here for you... I’ve seen your better work and you have an incredible instinct.” Seeing you relax and lean into his touch he smiled. “Besides you need this project wayyyyyy more than me” he chuckled “I got an A on my midterm.”
“I fucking hate you” you hit his chest, pouting. “I got a C because of you”
“It really is because I know you could do better” You’d met Christian over the summer during a visual editing course. There were only a handful of people willing to spend their summer taking a four-hour course two times a week and Christian was the one who caught your attention. His style drew you in, despite his striking difference in overall appreciated aesthetic.
One study date led to another. Soon enough both of you realized that studying was the furthest thing from your mind and fell into a rhythm of sorts. Dating naturally followed. Despite being together you were both very serious about your projects, opting to separate business and pleasure.
You’d given him feedback before on his work but never any sort of constructive criticism so being forced to work together under these conditions were pretty stressful. “It’s gonna be fine” Christian chuckled, smoothing down the furrow between your brows. “You need to relax to get the creative juices pumpin.”
“I’m not gonna drink before working.” you released a deep sigh.
“Luckily for you, I had another idea….” he smirked, laying you back on the desk, pulling you into a kiss. His lips molding over yours as he grinned against your mouth. “Mmmm...”
“Christian...What if someone comes in?” Your hand slid down his strong shoulders to his chest, as you took a moment to catch your breath. Your lips still, grazing his as you looked at him with hooded eyes.
“Then let’s give ‘em a show” he smirked, burying his face in your neck as his hands wandered lower, cupping your bottom.
To be continued?
Send help I’m having Christian feels I usually try not to update the same person so close to a previous scenario but I really liked this one x_x If you like and want more from this series, let me know
Also, I’m in no way actually insulting Christian’s actual videos lol I love them, it was just for dialogue sake XD
#khh scenarios#khh scenario#khiphop scenarios#khh imagines#khh one shot#rome scenario#rome fluff#rome scenarios#christian yu fluff#christian yu scenario#christian yu imagines#dpr scenarios#dpr imagines#dpr scenario#barom yu scenario#barom fluff#barom scenarios#barom imagines#kpop scenarios#kpop scenario#kpop fluff#c-clown scenario#c-clown scenarios#c-clown fluff
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Saw one of those ask things around for Etrian Odyssey, and I felt like doing it, so. I think someone's supposed to ask you particular numbers first. That's dumb. I'm just gonna answer those that interest me. Which is pretty much all of them.
1. What is your Guild Name?
-It's never been the same. Usually it's a compound word and/or related to the game's region. Skyquake was EOII, Riptide for the watery EOIII, Zephyr for the airship-oriented EOIV. It's Starlight in EOV, which was a really fitting coincidence.
2. Favorite class?
-Chasers/Linkers/Chainers. Which, at the end of the day, are all the same thing. They're all sorts of nifty, but I think I like them the most when subpar attackers get a little something extra out of it, like a Medic with a Polar Rod or a Botanist with a Bow. The downside is you really gotta build around them, but I kinda like doing that, personally. Weirdly, I never liked Buccaneers.
I also really like Runemasters. The Runes putting two contrasting functions into a single spell is an amazing idea. It saves so many Skill Points and makes them really versatile. Them also 'fixing' magic to not be painfully straightforward is worth big points, too. Shamans having 'take less damage from Fire/Ice/Volt, but also do Fire/Ice/Volt damage' was a huge black mark against them, and ultimately why I stuck with a Poison Botanist. Contrasting is cool, contradictory is not. Apart from the 10F boss, I can't think of an instance where that wouldn't be actively detrimental to you. No, I'm actually not sure if that Fire/Ice/Volt is bonus damage on top of normal damage or an affinity change. That would change everything, but I never assed myself to find out. I may be petty.
3. Favorite NPC?
-Jenetta. Full stop. No contest. I guess Edie would be a diiiistant second place.
4. Favorite monster?
-At this moment, gotta give it to the Sword Saurians (shame they weren't an actual race). I'm a huuuuge sucker for any enemy that makes you go 'hey, that's exactly one of our moves'. Them being an enemy chaser, well, it was pretty obvious I'd like 'em. Most commonly, this concept has shown up throughout the series on turtle/coral/crab monsters being wannabe Protectors / Hoplites / Fortresses.
5. Favorite FOE?
-This probably needs more thought than I'm going to give it, but fresh off of EOV's caves, any of those three get points for puzzle design. The sound thing is a big step up from EOIV's moths only moving when there's combat. Once Atlus figured out what to do with them, the Pumpkin trio became great too. They were practically a third superboss in EOIV if you didn't handle them properly.
6. Favorite Boss?
-EOV has had exceptionally good bosses so far, so this answer could certainly change, but I still gotta give it up to the Warped Saviour from EOIV. Unlike every other boss or FOE, which is one big, nasty healthbar, it changes between forms that favour multi-target attacks and single attacks. It's a fight that keeps you on your toes and adapting, but pretty much every class can find a way to contribute. Unlike almost every other superboss. Ur-Child at least gets props for one-shotting himself on Painless Counters, though. That's just hilarious.
7. Favorite Stratum?
-Aethsetically, EOII's Auburn Thicket, hands down. Literally just autumn isn't much of anything, but I'm apparently a colossal sucker for that. It then probably loses all those points by being the biggest difficulty spike in the series. EOIII's Undersea Grotto and EOV's Jagged Reach get big points too. None of them have too much in the way of puzzles, though. They're also all second stratums. Weird. Hall of Darkness's final floor also deserves a huge shout-out for really seeing EOIV take the gloves off. That's probably the most synergy you'll ever see a collective group of monsters have. Having a mini-section for nearly every previous gimmick in the game is worth points, too.
8. Favorite game?
-EOIII probably did the most to solidify the series, and EOIV is easily the one I'd recommend to new players, and I'm still going through EOV, but I think it's the winner here. Normally, I'm not one to go 'yay difficulty', but EOV really did nail the difficulty just right.
9. Favorite song?
-EOIII's Porcelain Forest, without a doubt. EOIII's volcano deserves mention too, especially since nobody else seems to like it. I'll admit it sounds very Streets of Rage-y next to everything else.
10. Least favorite class?
-The easy answer would be the classes that fundamentally don't work, like Beast and Yggdroid. But that's too easy. Probably Troubadour. They do one or two buffs, then are completely useless for the rest of a fight. At least later buff-boys like Sovereign and Dancer do it right.
12. Least favorite monster?
-Any answer that isn't a Petaloid is wrong. Muskoids primarily, though. Party-wide petrification is borderline cheating. Yes, they need to be hit first for the range-increase, but make it an ambush and throw in a Hollow Magus, and, well, you can be wiped before having a single action. Stun Eryngii doing loads of damage on death is also really annoying. I'm sure EOV's final stratum will have new horrors to add to the list.
...After writing 13, I changed my answer. EOV's 1st floor doggos and EOIII's Great Lynxes being able to instantly kill anybody, even if they're blocking, have probably done plenty to turn people away from the series. They're stupidly unfair at that point, and why I'd sooner recommend EOIV over the others to a new player. At least with Baboons, it's at least sort of your fault for not being attentive enough.
13. Least favorite FOE?
-Not a fan of a petrification goats, especially since you need to kill loads of them for Formaldehyde. On further thought, my answer's gotta be the Baboons from the very start of EOIV. I know more than one person who got to mining, got ambushed by not noticing that FOEs move when you mine, wiping, then promptly throwing their 3DS off a building.
14. Least favorite Boss?
-In contrast to Warped Saviour, shitlord dragon is a bunch of crap. Lots of classes are nigh useless against him, and it's very much one of those 'know exactly how he works or you're screwed' fights. Weirdly, he's like a carbon-copy clone of the last sea boss from EOIII, and that wasn't half as annoying, despite having to put up with idiot NPC AIs for it.
15. Least favorite Stratum?
-EOII's fifth stratum is an eyesore, even if the music's pretty good. Not a fan of the enemies, either.
16. Least favorite game?
-The most honest answer would be EO2. Looking back, it's a really poorly balanced game. Like, REALLY poorly. I'm super-biased against the Untold series, because I don't feel it needs to exist, and Story mode feels six kinds of wrong for this series. Especially because I loathe every party choice in EO2U (well, Sovereign is okay, but otherwise). Ohwait, forgot EMD exists. Let's go with that.
17. Least favorite song?
-Any of the more ambient ones, like the caves in EOIV and EOV, or the second stratum in EOIV. ...EOIV had really weak dungeon themes all around, thinking back. EOIII's second battle theme is pitiful compared its glorious first battle theme.
18. What is your favorite floor mechanic? (ie: warping, dead zones, etc.)
-Looking back, these really didn't go anywhere until EOIV. EOIII had the gates in the shrine and EOII had sliding ice puzzles and damage tiles. Whoo. Then IV had things like FOEs breaking walls, being literal walls, changing the fire cave to an ice cave, and more. EOV's just taking things a step further, with knocking pillars down, day/night FINALLY meaning something, and an actually good teleporting puzzle. A couple rooms (especially 3F's redux) where I had to sit down and actually think. Only one puzzle in EOIII made me stop and think (the NW tentacle on B25F). I mean, there's a puzzle in EOV where you've got to use a falling pillar as a (painful) speed boost. That's freaking awesome. Exploring in and of itself is a lot more fun in EOIV and especially EOV than it was in earlier titles. I imagine EOU and EO2U did things to un-borify some stratums. Again, wouldn't know.
19. What floor mechanic annoys you the most?
-Warping suuuucked in EO2. 29F, at least. Especially, especially, especially since you had no adequate way to mark them all. Not even by using random icons. You'd need duplicate icons well before you finished marking all those infernal teleporters. The 'invisible' areas in EOIII's last two stratums feels like a missed opportunity to me. I feel like those areas should be semi-randomly generated, rather than just 'oh, I can't see my little dot on the map'. No, they're not super-closely related, but it brings that to my mind.
20. Do you like the Grimoire system? If not what would you change?
-I conceptually like what it stands for. Get a couple random skills from other classes. But that was the thing. It was either too random or too complex, if not both. It felt atrocious from EOU's demo alone. I can't imagine dealing with that all game. I don't like the idea of you getting monster skills. At all. Apparently, EO2U fixed some things. Wouldn't know.
25. Do you defeat any FOEs when you’re a higher level than them, the same level or a lower level?
-My plan for FOEs is pretty much always ignore them until you've seen the stratum's boss. Or maybe just forever in EOII, where FOEs didn't give you anything of value, ever. Starting with EOII really discouraged me from fighting them, so that's probably influenced me.
26. Do you like the cooking mechanics in EOU2? EO4? EO5?
-Short answer is no. Just looking at the food buffs made them seem pretty underwhelming, and finding/using the rare stuff was a pain, because Wiglaf and Kirjonen were constantly asking for them. In EO5, I just never seem to need food. A Botanist provides enough healing on her own, and when I pull out, it's more because I don't want to lose 40 minutes of mapping or save after a rough FOE fight than because I'm direly low on TP. Also, I never seem to have the ingredients to make anything, anyway. Maybe it's because nobody knows fishing, and all the good dishes require fish? Ramus hasn't shown me a dish since the start of the third stratum, so maybe he doesn't blab about them if you don't have the ingredients on hand.
Memory is hazy, but I think EO2U's way of doing cooking was okay. You'd permanently have one food effect active until you ate something else, right? It doesn't make sense that that's what food would do, but from a mechanical standpoint, it's a neat extra modifier to play with.
30. What is one thing you wish Etrian Odyssey could improve on?
-I certainly like the direction the series went. It could've been stuck in a mire of 'let's emulate early-early-ass dungeon crawlers' forever, and never really moved forward. But uuuuh, single thing I'd like to see the most? Gimme a reason to use multiple parties. It's a great problem to have, but seeing all these cool classes, yet never really having a chance to use them or good opportunities to swap guys around kinda hurts. EOIII and EOV's Learning/Memory Conch and EOIV's jump to lvl-25/35/45 books do help, but the former doesn't really keep them competitive and EOIV's are limited to two uses.
And even that, that's more talking about individual characters. Yeah, I used EOIV's books to swap a second Fortress out for a Nightseeker and then again for an Imperial, but I wanna see a reason to use completely different parties. Simultaneous dungeon-exploring or characters being unavailable for multiple days after being bodied, whatever. I wanna reason to have 15+ characters viable and in play.
31. Do you think about Etrian Odyssey with other crossovers? (ie: Collab events) If so, what collab event would you like to see?
-Screw mere collabs, I can seriously see a lot of potential for a Monster Hunter X Etrian Odyssey game. Basically, it'd be an EO game with some design changes, wearing a MH skin. Weapons would be instead of classes (Lance = Protector, Switch Axe = Imperial, Hunting Horn = Troubadour, etc.), and instead of beating up semi-generic squirrels and durians and doggos, it'd be iconic Monster Hunter monsters. And it'd be more like 'all FOEs, all the time'. Both series kinda sorta have this thing on 'get better drops by killing it in a certain way' that started this thought process.
Rather than exploring through stratums, you'd have a dozen or so mid-sized maps, each with their own gimmicks and FOEs. Your goal, as always, is to killdoze one particular monster. It'd be a task of picking when and where to fight, as other FOEs would be eager to step and make things miserable for everyone. Running and re-initiating fights would be a thing, and monsters would maintain their health. Putting traps and using the field against the FOE would be a big thing. Things like Narmer (and every 1st stratum boss, really; why are the first guys always the most interesting?) the Boiling Lizard, and Primordiphant certainly influenced this thought.
32. Sea exploration or Sky exploration?
-At the end of the day, Sky exploration is kinda... empty. It looks cool, and mini-dungeons isn't a bad idea, but it's more window-dressing than a real system.
Sea exploration has a billion things wrong with it; it's too demanding that all your moves are perfect, putting a money cost on it is stupid, and so on and so forth. I don't like the Untold subseries, but I'd really like to see EO3U do it right. Some of those places are just begging for EO4 style mini-dungeons, like the Lighthouse, the Golem's Ruins, or the Pirate Island. Honestly, if they just straight-up transplant a couple stratums out of Yggdrasil and onto the other islands, that'd be cool with me. Reaching Deep City so early made it feel... not so very deep, really.
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