#(which there are and who do exist) if we’re in the objective moral right and following these
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hi............. if you are up to it i would very much like hearing about your ocs
** 11/20/23 edit: IM USING THIS AS AN EXCUSE TO POST THIS
* Funfact! I only remembered about this ask now because my friend asked me about the same ocs and it came to mind so I’m picking the old draft back up
Anon you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into
Fun fact about me dear readers I have over 278 oc’s (11/20 edit: now 347) and counting all are fully developed too. However, we’re gonna focus on the ones I posted previously
The ask to make my day OKAY
BACKGROUND
Was on a whiteboard with a bud and he made the joke about throwing a baby he was holding, I told him to do it and drew ‘C supports baby throwing’ which lead to the "#cforpresident" hashtag being drawn by him. This silly little thing promptly dissolved into a full fledged au because none of us are capable of being normal
There’s three universes sorta associated with this au, and there’s no actual name to it— it just.. exists.
PRESIDENT C
The first version of this character in this AU, C (no real name here, just C) is the President [It’s sorta unconfirmed what the fuck he’s the president of but we kept making the joke of him being POTUS so maybe the canon world in this is just… our irl world.] My man’s Vice President is unconfirmed because my bud Sarah who ‘ran against me’ swapped to swat last second so.. guess there is no Vice President. C had a husband (Ace), got married before he entered office and got unlucky cause his spouse is fucking dead. He’s sorta just tired of this shit™️. In this world monster begins aren’t rare but they’re not exactly accepted, even more so if you look dangerous. C is a shapeshifter with his default look replacing his head with a ball of black matter; it’s an odd substance, as it gives off a look of a black hole but you could literally shove your hand into his face and bam your arm is in a weird kind of pocket dimension (this can only occur when he allows it though, so don’t try it you’ll punch the President.)
His other look, however, is much more human but simultaneously is used far less. That look is defaulted to a demon, and although he can change aspects none are permanently and he’ll always revert back to the demon look Oh yeah President C is morally good but he has cannibalized a vampire-bat shifter so, sometimes his morals are off.
His backstory is pretty sparse, I don’t have any ideas for his family life before presidency; he just showed up running for President and gained popularity real fast. He’s very advanced with his shapeshifting, he can use it to become people and even objects or full animals. His main team consists of Orin, the swat captain, and Sarah, who’s a rank below Orin. Sarah’s very responsible and very underpaid while Orin is horrible irresponsible and uses Sarah’s payment on Panda Express. President doesn’t let that slide when he finds out; but otherwise he has a good connection with them both.
TYRANT C
This one was a ‘what-if’ personality/role swap of the President C au; instead of being the morally good, demon presidents— Tyrant C (still just C here) is the morally corrupted, sheep president. Just like President, he’s a shapeshifter with the base for being the black matter head one; however he generally uses the humanoid sheep one more often as a way to seem more innocent and harmless— like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
He’s fuuucked up, his whole point is gaining power and he’s lucky that the force that follows him is so loyal. In this one he had a husband as well, Zander (Ace’s alternate universe self), however the two married purely for tax benefits, the fact that it would help C’s campaign to be a queer president. They were a tragic case of right time, wrong person. Although both of them had truly loved each other to an extent (C didn’t know what love felt like so he hasn’t realized at the time while Zander was constantly bouncing between love and hate) both of them kept fighting. Tyrant was the one to act first but trust me, if Zander had lived longer, he might’ve killed Tyrant first.
He gets away with it because corrupt fucker, however he quickly finds that he needs somebody else to fill in for the spot that Zander had earlier; somebody to bounce ideas off of— and who better to than his SWAT captain, Orin. Orin is a huge simp. He’s actually responsible here however Sarah’s personality doesn’t swap and instead she just doesn’t like Tyrant too much. So, Tyrant decides to seduce Orin to get him wrapped around his finger because really; if he’s got the swat captain he’s got the power of his team too… yeah no, he falls in love on accident. Then he’s forced to acknowledge that this is what love feels like.
He’s a lot less good with his shapeshifting; only able to shift between his void matter and the goat one with even that taking to much energy as he wasn’t able to use them as he grew. He’s a man cut off from the world, however not from sorrow and guilt the same way President did.
Tyrant’s meant to be much more complex than President; his backstory includes shit like abuse from parental figures, cult shit, and with him having been raised with so much negativity he’s completely convinced that this is how everything has to be. Violence and evil have always been his normal; he was a kid groomed into a mindset that never left until he felt something beyond anger for the first time. He’s fucked up, he’s done some real horrible shit, but he doesn’t know that being good is on the table. He’s at a point where learning to grow won’t do anything to reverse years of trauma and anger. Tyrant has regrets he can never voice due to his nailed in beliefs, he will never be able to fully accept that he had loved Zander, that the king sized bed in his home feels too empty. He can’t acknowledge the way he makes two cups off coffee sometimes, one just the way his fiancé used to drink his. He can never come to terms with the fact that he regretted killing him. He can never accept that he misses his parent despite their abuse, that deep down he wishes he were still their little boy oh so willing to help mom and dad out with their ‘buisness’. Tyrant wants to, really, he does. However, some people aren’t capable of accepting that reality. He grew up within a world that called him a monster, and he was merely giving back what they had started.
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do you have like. a fic that deals with the soulless jack arc the way u want
Hiii anon this ask absolutely made my day. Very excited to answer this.
Okay so, I don’t have a fic of this but I do have the secret better soulless Jack arc that exists in my head. This originated from me brainstorming it in DMs to @autisticandroids (so there is stuff in here that is from them) around the time I watched the canon version for the first time a couple of months ago. It diverges fairly significantly for 14x16-14x18 and then sticks more closely to canon for 14x19-14x20, but like, the things I've changed mean that those episodes are put in a different light by the time we get to them, and so the main point of this soulless Jack arc is “okay, what actually is the best way to deal with this?” and the answer is compassion!!
(About 2k under the cut)
Obviously, Mary doesn’t die in this au, because it undercuts stuff to the extent that I don’t think it can have been the original plan. That doesn't mean, though, that I'm reverting to the improved soulless Jack arc I think s14 was building to before it got derailed by Mary's death, because that focusses a lot on Dean and Dean & Jack parallels, which isn't really the most interesting to me. This is a very Cas & Jack centric soulless Jack arc, as it should be.
So, the major structural diverging for me starts in 14x16 – in this version, instead of Cas being off screen, him trying to find a way to fix Jack’s soul is the focus of the episode. He gets to have two episodes getting increasingly desperate and probably physically threatening people (because I will forever be mad about the fact that in the entire show he punches 1 (one) car for Jack and that’s it). The idea of this – in addition the fact that Cas’s pov here is the most compelling objectively – is to help to maintain the sense of foreboding re soulless Jack, but also crucially to keep it in the right context of this being specifically something devastating for Jack and people who care about him. The idea of him as a potential ‘threat’ isn’t the point.
Then, I’m a little torn because I do think the s14 Nick stuff is the stupidest writing decision spn ever made, but I do also think Jack killing someone intentionally (as opposed to the stuff with Mary) is an escalation point that makes sense, because like, the issue with soullessness is that his moral reasoning’s off, but with a trustworthy guide he would still be fine! So I think while the emotional core of 14x17 is Cas still trying in vain to find a solution to Jack’s soul, this is the background to salmondean having taken Jack on some kind of motw case, explicitly as a test-drive for him, effectively. So the question the episode is asking – while it becomes increasingly clear that Cas’s mission going to be fruitless – is “is Jack’s soullessness going to be a problem?”, and then when he (well-meaningly!) brutally kills some malevolent civilian and flies off in a panic, we get the answer “apparently yes”.
Okay so NOW we get to my alternate 14x18 which is my favourite bit. In the canon soulless Jack arc, obviously we get Hallucifer 2.0, which I find pretty insulting tbh – I think it smacks of the writers being like “oops! We don’t know how to convey Jack interiority properly so we’re going to make him hallucinate someone to talk to instead!” (From the point of view that Nick’s death was probably meant to be the escalating event rather than Mary’s, this would make slightly more sense as a fossil of that, but it’s still annoying.) SO my solution to this is to convey Jack interiority by co-opting a bunch of other characters to voice his worst fears to him, in a way which escalates the situation, but like, in a way that makes it clear that the situation is being escalated because it’s being handled poorly. We’ve turned this into a Jack character study episode and all of the other characters are tools to serve this goal <3
Firstly, we ideally have a morally dubious ally. Annoyingly, I think Rowena's already too good by this point, and while an Uncle Crowley would be perfect, he has been killed off leaving his slot vacant. Anyway, we have [whoever. A not-dead Aunt Meg would also be great] make a spike btvs “I’m not good but I’m okay” style argument – “it’s fine that you don’t have a soul, you’re just like me and I’m fine”, which is kindly meant but still upsetting to (an already pretty distressed) Jack.
Then we get apocalypse world Bobby, with some other hunters in tow (including non-fridged Mary trying to talk him down), and (in line with the vibe from him at the beginning of 14x19, which was just never followed through on) he’s like “you are just a monster now, and we’re therefore going to kill you”. Which is clearly completely the wrong approach and just escalates things further as it reinforces Jack’s fears about himself and makes him more upset. Jack sends out some sort of shockwave in his panic to get away, and injures a couple of the apocalypse world hunters as well, but not intentionally. By this point he’s so upset that he’s leaving a bit of a trail of destruction in general, and that obviously increases people’s belief that he’s dangerous but like – he’s just distressed! They just need to be kind to him and tell him it’s okay and that they’ll help him!
And then we get to salmondean driving to intercept Jack. Cas is racing back from where he was of trying to fix Jack's soul, but they’re still a lot closer than Cas is, so Cas is begging Dean on the phone like “please please wait till I get there to talk to him. Please.” But Dean’s like “no, we need to sort this out right now” and so he and Sam barrel into the situation without Cas. They try to holy fire ring Jack to contain him while they try to talk him down, which obviously just makes Jack even more upset. (Sam is uncomfortable with this and tries to talk Dean out of it / tries to use waiting for Cas as an excuse, but he does ultimately fall in line.) And then when they’ve got Jack in the holy fire, Dean is taking what he genuinely thinks is a tough love approach of “well you’re not a monster, if you can get this under control” (voicing Jack’s fears to him. We’ve co-opted the avatar of the narrative to serve the end of expressing Jack interiority <3), and Jack’s like “otherwise you’ll kill me?” and Dean’s like “yeah. If I have to”. It eventually escalates to the point that Jack feels so overwhelmed that he is about to give up and just walk through the holy fire, not knowing whether it’s going to hurt him, but just before he does Sam caves and breaks the circle, so we don’t actually know what would have happened, just that he was prepared to do it. Salmondean don’t quite realise what was about to happen, but the audience do.
So we finish 14x18 with Jack still at large, and still upset and therefore out of control, and the crucial takeaway is that all of these attempts to talk him down failed because everyone was making the same misapprehensions about how to help Jack, making Jack’s non-monster status conditional, just feeding into his fear that he can’t avoid being a monster, and the destructive distress it’s resulting its, whereas Cas’s approach would have been “no you’re not a monster, and I’m going to help you” which is why it’s the only one that would have worked.
Then, when we get to 14x19, escalating to trapping Jack in the box makes more sense, because they have already tried talking to him. At the same time, the audience knows that trapping him in the box is still the wrong approach, because Cas's compassion that he didn't get to exercise is still in clear contrast to all of the other failed approaches. The Dumah stuff in this episode probably gets replaced by something where Jack has a little more agency, because the point is “yeah he might do dubious stuff in a well-meaning way without a guide, but if he is looked after he’s fine", so it makes sense to show him doing some well-meaning 'bad things' – having stuff that he's purely manipulated into is a little dull.
In addition to the fact that salmondean wanting to trap Jack in the box makes more sense in this version, because Sam let Jack out of the holy fire ring, Dean can leverage Sam’s ~responsibility in whatever chaos Jack has causes since, to persuade him to go along with the box plan, so the character dynamics make a little more sense there. Also obviously, removing the revenge motive that comes from Jack having killed Mary makes Dean come off as less callously vindictive, and more (very poorly, but still) trying to deal with this very difficult situation. Like, he's still not behaving particularly sympathetically, and he has fallen back pretty quickly into his earlier ways of viewing Jack, but it's much more earned, and less "woah! Where did that come from?!" than in canon 14x19. Another thing that's fixed by Jack not having killed Mary is that he looks much less gullible for being tricked into the box, as opposed to the canon portrayal of which is sublty ooc in a really insulting way.
And then, like in canon, Cas is away while all this is happening, and stuff plays out pretty much the same when he returns, except that Dean tries to physically restrain him from going to get Jack from the box, and Cas shoves him out of the way, because I do have an agenda re the angel and (here, very mild, but still) violence in defence of his child <3
For Moriah, the actual Jack stuff can play out pretty much the same (but of course with the prevailing sense that "no, Dean is wrong to think he has to kill Jack! Cas will be able to sort it!"), only obviously Chuck doesn’t kill Jack. This is for several reasons: 1) Chuck killing Jack is a massive cop-out in that it avoids dealing with the repercussions of Dean nearly killing Jack, which is lazy, boring writing; 2) if the point of this rewritten soulless Jack arc is “what is the solution? Is there an alternative to trapping/killing him?” we need him to survive so that we can see that the solution would have worked, have the cruel approaches refuted; 3) for there to have been something gained from all this, the arc needs to conclude with Cas leaving with Jack. Cas has had major revelations re the situation his child would be in continuing to live at the bunker, and also been shown the extent to which his drive to take care of Jack differs from Sam and Dean's, both of which are reasons for him to realise that he does need to step up as Jack’s parent, in order to do right by Jack, the way he wants to. Like, Cas has learned stuff from this, and he should get to act on it, rather than just having his child killed in front of him. Also, I get a real kick out of getting to say to the audience “look, only one of these three can reasonably be considered Jack’s parent after all that! It's only Cas!”
Not sure what really happens after that. Certainly I am super enamoured with the whole “Cas caring for soulless Jack” vibe – it compels me greatly. I also have in the back of my mind a character-stuff-masked-as-lore solution which could happen either instead of or following that, where Cas sacrifices his grace to fix Jack’s soul, and then Jack is able to restore Cas’s grace via giving him a little of his own (given it’s turbocharged nephilim juice), and it doesn’t give Cas angel terminal illness this time specifically because it’s the grace of his son. Like, their chosen relationship being recognised metaphysically in a way that resolves the situation.
Anyway crucially, the soulless Jack arc has been rewritten so that the instead of the clumsy canon version, the focus is “what does it truly mean for him to be soulless? How do we resolve this situation?” and the answer is that while his moral reasoning is a little out of whack, he does still mean well, and we can resolve things by being kind and having his dad take care of him <3
#literally i was SO delighted to receive this ask omg#jack kline#castiel#dean winchester#sam winchester#spn s14#spn meta#anonymous#asks#spn#worded thoughts
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Porn is Other People
An Impromptu Treatise on the Ethics of Keeping Other People’s Nudes
!!! Long post incoming !!!
I feel like it’s a topic that has been talked about a lot but never really discussed in-depth, which is a shame because it’s a very ethically nebulous idea with lots of meaty moral dilemmas associated with it. We do ourselves no favors by keeping the conversation constrained to the few posts floating around telling you you’re a terrible person if you have nudes of someone you don’t associate with anymore. At the end of the day there’s no objective “right answer” for how to handle something like that, so that’s what I intend to explore here.
I’m a nude hoarder personally so I’m always careful to consider whether any that I’m holding on to are ethical or not. There’s very directly safe answers like pictures a sex worker sends you in exchange for payment. There’s also the relatively safe option of pictures sex workers post for free on social media (provided they haven’t expressed that they don’t want their pics saved), but those are also usually of lower personal value than ones sent expressly to you, so the main reason to keep them would be only if they’re of exceptional quality. There’s also the situation of a sex worker retiring and/or knowing after the fact that their content was abusive or coerced in some way. I think a situation like that is more for each person to decide how they want to respond on their own since it is still their property if they purchased content but at greater severity of abuse I lean more towards deletion. Those are the easiest questions to answer though, and things only get stickier from here. Pun intended.
Personal nudes from private individuals carry a lot more tricky edge cases than those obtained through commerce since personal relationships are far more complicated and nuanced than the professional relationship one may have with a sex worker. Obviously if anyone asks I’m happy to delete any I have saved, and you should too, but there’s also the question of when to delete even if they didn’t ask for it.
If someone leaves your life there’s several factors that go into whether I’d feel comfortable keeping their nudes like how good of terms we’re on or if they have someone in their lives voicing concern over it. I’ve had partners leave my life on good terms and ask me to delete their nudes as well as partners leaving on bad terms while making it clear they have no issue with it.
One idea that I find fascinating is the shelf life of these things, the fact of owning nudes that are old enough that the person depicted in them almost doesn’t exist at all anymore. People change and grow all the time and nude photos, like any photos, can be a vital looking glass into the people and times we used to be a part of. Sometimes the opposite is true however, and the past needs to be let go, erased completely if need be. That leads into the idea of nudes depicting people who have since died in real life but I’ll be omitting that case from this essay for you to consider yourself.
Like most of my rambling posts there is no real point I’m trying to get at here; save that the ethical ideas we sometimes take for granted often have the same deep and complex nuances that come with living in real life, and all too often go unacknowledged by the two-dimensional view of reality social media posts offer. If you’ve made it this far I encourage you to consider any nudes you have saved and the person they depict. Even if you come to the same conclusion on them that you already held, the important part is that you engaged with the idea and made a conscious decision.
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hay mattie! i was wondering if you would be open to talking more about the pleather vs animal leather post you reblogged?
If you ask me to make a nuanced point we’re gonna be here for weeks. So sure.
First there’s a big difference between leather substitutes and pleather, let’s get that out of the way. Currently, plastics are the only material I’m aware of that can mass commercially match leather in texture, durability, and other physical attributes, but that most certainly doesn’t mean it’s the only one which *can exist*. Biodegradable plastics is a big on the rise field that’s worth looking into in this regard, and there’s currently some companies attempting to make viable leather substitute from mycelium with reasonable success. So while right now pleather is the predominant leather substitute material, having leather substitutes isn’t a bad idea and absolutely should be made more sustainable in the future.
There is also plenty to be said of how mass market animal products trades are exceedingly cruel in a capitalist society. I’m well aware that most leather comes from animals raised for slaughter in factory farms that keep them in terrible living conditions. Problem is, the leather trade hasn’t really got shit to do with those conditions. Supply and demand is, and has been for the majority of the 20th century as well, a complete lie. Companies don’t make products to meet demand, they make products to put every component of what they produce to profit and artificially inflate the demand through advertising to meet it. Those animals would be abused and dead regardless, not even not eating meat could change that bc you’re never realistically going to get enough people to move from those products to others thanks to the companies being capable of moving to alternative markets where your outreach on its harm isn’t present or saving face with rebrands and superficial reforms to make the people who only moved away from their meat products out of moral discomfort become complacent. And leather is a byproduct trade of that, that industry could very easily take to what corn production did and just shift to marketing that byproduct as a manufacturing end material or commercial product. That’s not even getting into how leather is genuinely uniquely useful for many applications, the point of it all is that really the idea that even large movement level consumer outcry cannot and will not ever push a corporation with the power they have today to do jack shit. They’re too large, have too many resources at their disposal, and have too many lanes to simply avoid change to save money that the majority of objecting people aren’t gonna be aware of. Hell I haven’t gotten into the half of what they could potentially do here that issue is far too nebulous.
There’s ALSO something to be said about the fact that the current material realities of mass-market leather production weren’t really the point of the post in question. That post was making a point of how deeply ideologically flawed lots of modern animal welfare movements are when it comes to dealing with the nature of inter species relationships between humans and animals and their ideological and moral ramifications. That post made it much clearer in much shorter terms than I could, it’s about the narrative of using products that kill an animal “cutting a life short before it’s time” and being unjustly cruel is at its heart unable to contend with the thought of death. Animals die a lot easier than we do, of lots of different things. Predation is normal, lethal competition is normal, disease and disaster are normal, accidents are normal. Even domestic animals are creatures only trying to survive to fulfill their biological drives on this planet with, not awareness of, but full preparation for the significant chance that most individuals won’t get to do that. Animals die, and they die pretty early all the time of normal things. Human needs are one of those things, we are as much a natural predator in an ecosystem as a coyote or a bear or a hawk. The circumstances of our existence have spiraled FAR beyond that being readily apparent, but just bc we don’t have a naturally constructed living environment does not mean our presence in ecological relationships is unnatural. To divide the world into natural and unnatural is a logical fallacy in the first place, humans are an animal species who shape their ecosystem around them to suit their needs just as any other living organism does. The only difference between us and deer is that we keep adapting beyond typical natural limitations on our growth faster than most evolution can keep up with, which is still not an unnatural thing. The post in question is criticizing the mindset of ignoring humans place in natural ecological relationships with other animals by anthropomorphizing them to the point of being unable to morally reconcile the reality that all living creatures kill others to survive. Which is a real problem, bc a movement for reform built on such a fraught foundation isn’t going to make effective change in the world, it’s gonna spin it’s wheels attacking others whose normal lives conflict with their denial and falling into traps set by corporations like the idea that pleather is a more ethical thing for animal life. You wanna take a guess how many animals die from plastic byproducts along the entire production life cycle of a pleather product from raw plastic pellets to manufacturing byproducts to trimmings to finished product to waste at the end of its lifespan, with shipping impacts and micro plastics shedding at just about every single stage in that process? Cause I’m willing to bet it’s at least a couple more than are involved in leather products, and the thing that dies to make the leather be it a cow or a sheep or a goat is at the very least a casualty of a normal natural interaction between one species and another, whereas animals killed by waste byproducts are avoidable casualties of our species sprawling beyond the bounds of ecological sustainability that should be avoided to maintain ecosystem health. And even that itself isn’t unnatural strictly speaking, most animal species are capable of accidentally growing far beyond the limits of what their ecosystem can sustain and damaging the balance of life around them for it.
So all in all, that’s what I have to say about the pleather post. I understand fully not wanting to be involved in the process of mass market manufacture of leather goods due to the unnecessary callous cruelty of those industries themselves, but when you take it out on a product and not how that product is produced you move people to miss the point of the objection and fall into bad ideas that end up doing more harm than good. You wanna improve animal health conditions in modern commercial farms, put pressure on the corporations responsible for it to change by making them suffer until they’re forced to, and accept absolutely nothing except unconditional and by the letter surrender from a corporation ALWAYS. They can and will use every single other available Avenue to avoid blame and avoid change first. It’s a valid point of serious debate to consider how one should do that in this day and age, given that in their current state effective reform resulting from outcry or protest has effectively been nullified in most nations across the world, one which I don’t have any satisfactory answers for even ones as long winded and no doubt dubiously coherent as this one was. But leather isn’t your enemy, not in and of itself.
#mine#long post#i have no idea if the formatting is gonna come out right I typed this on mobile and the return key works extremely weird on mobile#also I wrote this first thing after waking up
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The Whale: "my room is my head"
Hello, and welcome back (or just welcome if you are new to this page) this is my review of Darren Aronofsky's The Whale.
The Whale is a very beautiful movie, you can tell it was done with very much care; from the dialogue to its equally powerful visual language, every single element is intentionally placed and fits with one another really finely. Today I'd like to take you through this movie and why I think it works so well. enjoy :)
The film follows the story of Charlie, an obese, middle-aged man who has lost contact with his family and the rest of the world and lives in almost total isolation in his apartment. Apart from his only friend Liz, nobody enters his house, no one is allowed to. The place crumbles, and folds on itself as it becomes the man’s mind, his inner struggles and thoughts displayed for the viewer. It’s the sad coziness of the living room, the messiness of the kitchen, the stillness of Alan’s room, untouched and crystallized in time.
We're dealing with a character that has been stuck in the same situation for decades; as his body grew larger, his room shredded thinner, encapsulating him completely, as if the flesh and the room were one. He became an inanimate object the day he stopped fighting for himself, for the ones who once loved him, and the ones who still did. The narrow format of the frame contributed to creating this sense of unescapable claustrophobia and helped the viewer get into the protagonist's private existence. You can feel the heavy load of isolation and the weight of the many words unsaid; the light is dim, and the grain of the film falls static in the air, collected like dust.
Before we go on discussing the story and characters I need to clarify that whenever I find myself to particularly like a film on first watch, I always get informed on the criticism it has received, by taking a look at the other extreme of its polarized reception. In this case, I’ve come across many reviews criticizing its confused moralistic messages; the shameful portrayal of “fat people”, in a way that reinforced stereotypes and misconceptions; the uncomfortable abuser/abused relationship of Charlie and Ellie, and how the director seems to have given him way much more kindness and empathy that he actually deserved.
What I’ve noticed throughout the years is that we tend to look at films with merciless scrutiny; we search for the morals and hidden meanings of everything and deem every choice as intentionally thought out to lead to an ultimate purpose. If it’s subtle then it’s ambiguous, if it’s explicit then it’s too preachy, and if it’s preachy it’s either right or wrong, condemned or acclaimed, and to me, that makes little to no sense.
The truth is that we will always find what we set ourselves to look for if we search hard enough and squint our eyes at the minuscule acts that take place on the screen. We tend to look at movies as universal thesis on life, death, and human relationships rather than individual stories, of individual people, examples of humanity in which we may or may not find resonance (or reasoning) with our personal experiences.
In my opinion, this is a story of a man (not the story of a man) whose selfishness and self-hatred lead him to do horrible things to the ones he loved. Selfishness and self-hatred, both of them are necessary to reach a point this low, and I don’t think the author is trying to save him, I don’t think Aronofsky helped him to redeem himself or forced his daughter to forgive him. And as we take our seats at the cinema or in the sad coziness of our living rooms, we are invited to witness the consequences of this man’s actions, we’re not asked to pick a side and root for The Whale, and that’s what makes this film beautiful.
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Step One
My Reaching for Personal Freedom workbook came in! I’ve been wanting to work the steps, and I still intend to get both a temporary sponsor until July, and then a permanent sponsor wherever I settle, but for now, I want to journal.
So.
Step One.
Admitted I was powerless (lol, typed powerful by default/Freudian slip) over [literally anyone and anything except my own damn self] and that my life has become unmanageable.
Why is it difficult to admit my powerlessness?
Because I’ve been training my whole life, or at least a significant portion of my whole life, to effectively influence and change other people. I want to control how you perceive me, what you do, how you affect me, what my day is like based on your actions and my feelings about them. I want to be valuable, effective, admired, loved, safe. Part of my ever-shifting world view has included messages that the world is a scary, unsafe, dangerous, chaotic place and I need to have a plan to manage it all. Even if there are individual people I trust, I don’t trust the people that I trust to love me - an untrustworthy person. I don’t feel connected to the people who I perceive as threatening, and I don’t feel worthy of the people who could be safe. I often feel alone, broken, and hopeless; my driving force for a long time has, in part, been about forcefully and powerfully manipulating myself, my environment, and other people to create an artificially safe world, against the tide of a nasty brutish and short existence. But the underlying belief is that the world ISN’T safe and I’M the one who has to pull it together. Yikes. No wonder I’m anxious.
How do the effects of the disease of alcoholism make my life unmanageable?
I come back to the elements of white supremacy culture a lot, because they seem to overlap with and summarize my family culture growing up, aka alcoholism and mental illness and addiction and emotional illiteracy and deep, terrified, lonely, isolated, hateful shame.
As someone who is inching toward identifying as a double winner, I see a lot in common between the addiction to alcohol and the addiction to the alcoholic. One numbs through drinking, the other numbs through busyness and fixing. The elements of both sides and WSC feel like the bedrock of human frailty, the place in which we stumble when we don’t trust each other and the world: perfectionism, one right way, worship of the written word, urgency, quantity over quality, individualism, defensiveness, paternalism, either/or thinking, power hoarding, fear of conflict, the narcissism and solipsism of thinking we’re the only ones, the entitled belief of one’s right to comfort, the delusion of objectivity, and our ever-present negativity bias.
These elements have been barriers in my relationship to self and others. They showed up in my friendships, my self-esteem, my family, my jobs, my world view, my politics, and my ability to pursue recovery. It’s all connected. And it’s all so much bigger than me - who am I to think I have any power, any real influence, over anything or anyone besides myself? The ego tries to protect itself, but I’m freer when I relax into the crash.
What keeps me holding on to the illusion that I have the power to change someone else?
Partly ego, both grandiose and vulnerable: the belief I have that much influence, power, knowledge, insight, skill; but also the belief that my own gains came from outside of me, from people “better” than I. It’s like the dynamic revealed to me by Brene Brown that my self-hatred and other-hatred were the two sides of the same coin. If I believe that I’m weak, small, ineffectual, a victim, then it must be true that once other people “whipped me into shape” then I have the power to do the same for others. Perhaps a moral obligation to pay it forward, as such. But I don’t think any one person saved me, nor could they have. When the student is ready, a teacher appears, but honestly teachers are all around me as I speak. It’s not a reflection of the teacher’s value whether or not I am receptive, or understand, or apply the lesson in a certain way. The world is ever-changing, fluid, impersonal, delicate, and nothing is ever about me. Not the good, or the bad - it’s all neutral, it’s all changing, and we make meaning of stimuli as we have the receptors for it. I can’t build someone else’s receptors, and sometimes I think I make people numb by flooding them when it’s not a good fit, or good timing. I want to be whole and happy, and I am the expert and doyen of that. I am in charge of my life, and it’s my responsibility to stay open and available to the good things. I don’t know what will work for other people, just like no one really knew what would work best for me. Even if they had great ideas, they clearly didn’t work or help in some grand, magical, external way. I have been a series of small awakenings and it couldn’t have been another way, or it would have been, right? If my presence inspires a change in someone else, they were clearly already open to that change. Lives don’t shift with brute force, and people certainly don’t flourish and thrive that way. It always feels right to do things on your own time, in your own sustainable way, and I want us all to have that pleasure. It’s more consensual, lasting, real. Who cares if it can’t be mass-produced, copied and pasted, made generic? It wouldn’t taste as sweet if it wasn’t truly customized to each of us. Who am I to tell someone what flavor they are?
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As Hoped, Still Annoying
So I was vexed by the exercise of extending the mad-libs program in my programming course. Not because of the four or five steps - the existing word types gave a very clear template (If you have ArrayList<String> nameList, ArrayList<String> countryList, and ArrayList<String> fruitList, even someone who knew nothing about programming could make an educated guess about how to add a list of verbs into the mix) - but because I’m still not entirely clear how much I was intended to learn and get used to the process of extending functional but slightly brittle code and how much I was intended to identify that class structure as a problem.
We’ve now gotten into the refactoring portion, where we’re able to swap a big pile of variable declarations and a piled-up if statement out for a HashMap that associates a String with an ArrayList. This lets us loop through an iterable of all the names and check all the near-identical conditions of the if statements more cleanly.
Pro Tip, if you’re using more than three if statements stacked on each other - not inside each other but just handling different variations of what might happen - you probably want to see whether there’s a way to shrink it down and make your code more elegant. Anyone who wants to extend your code later - including you - will probably have to come back to this pile of if statements, make sure their situation isn’t covered, and then add a new situation to the mix. It gets sloppy and error-prone fast.
It may be that the answer is “both,” and you’re going to have to make executive decisions when coding about how much time to spend refactoring older stuff. XKCD had a great chart about efficiency
and I consider it valuable to this discussion. Unfortunately while the theory is worth a look and the chart is good to revisit for other things it doesn’t help much here because the time shaved off (the “time shavings”? That makes me sound like a Hypello) is far more difficult to judge - practically unknowable - and may even be distributed not just within your own team and the people extending your code but also out into the world, represented as seconds saved by people using your program. Which in theory could put it to the far top left of the grid, shaving off 0.4 seconds 14,000 times a day.
I’d consider that a moral good - saving millions of people a little bit of time is kind of what automation is all about - but that doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile to my own business to spend X hours on it right now. Doing things as a gift to the world kind of has to have its own calculus for worth.
I do appreciate the lesson - and they didn’t even focus on it like it was a big deal (maybe they should have) - that these complex data structures can contain other, equally complex data structures. You’re allowed to have a multidimensional ArrayList. You could have ArrayList<ArrayList<String> > - a list of lists of words. I already used a two-dimensional List like this to search through all my existing word lists and remove words when they got used, so that “He liked to <verb> and <verb>” never turned into “He liked to sing and sing” due to chance rolling the same thing twice in a row.
The more recent point about being able to have a HashMap that makes your ArrayLists more searchable by type, by having the type as the key and ArrayList as the value, is what makes the above replacement-of-pile-of-if-statements possible.
I’m sure there will be more, though I think the bigger lesson will be what I already learned in C# when I was doing Unity, where beyond the current complexity you just want to be making complex objects - for instance in Unity you could have a PlayerCharacter object and it could contain pointers to all the sound files for that character’s voice lines, a tie-in to the parts of the tech tree that character unlocks, all the player controls to let you maneuver the unit around the world, and all the rendering and animation to let the player view them, and then because that’s all “one object” as far as the system is concerned you could index all PlayerCharacter objects with an ArrayList or HashMap in order to quickly search a scene for them and do something to everyone in the scene (such as fixing everyone’s relative point ranking when anyone scores a point).
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Are There Objective Moral Facts?
Lyx: Di ba kuya as Christians we believe na there are universal values/things that are inherently good? How do you usually justify it without using the religion card haha
Me: Tungkol sa existence ng objective moral values ba ang tanong mo? I think they are self-evident. Sabi mo nga, there are things that are “inherently good.” Even those who give lip service to relativism know this. Subukan mong nakawin ang wallet ng kaibigan mong relativist, at magagalit siya sa’yo. Kahit mga liberal activists na relativist pagdating sa sexual ethics are quite dogmatic against things like racism and homophobia. So it seems impossible to deny the existence of objective moral values.
Test yourself. Is rape sometimes good? Is torturing babies just for the fun of it morally right? These diagnostic questions will let you know if you are a moral realist or a Jeffrey Dahmer—kung kailangan mo ba ng philosophy lesson or ng psychological counseling.
Speaking of philosophy, moral realism is the majority position among moral philosophers today. Contemporary defenders of moral realism include philosophers like Nathan Nobis, David Enoch, Christian Coons, Michael Huemer, and Terence Cuneo.
Persuasive sa akin yung argument ni Terence Cuneo. Simple lang siya, and it’s in the form of a “companions in guilt argument.” The idea is this: There is this thing which you cherish. But if objective morality has to go, then you must also let go of this other thing which you cherish. For example, epistemic facts. Importante sa’yo ang epistemic facts, otherwise, why are we having this conversation?
But moral facts are like epistemic facts, argues Cuneo. So then:
If there are objective epistemic facts, then there are objective moral facts.
There are objective epistemic facts.
Therefore, there are objective moral facts—that is, moral realism is true.
Lyx: Can you expound more on the assertion “if there are objective epistemic facts, there are objective moral facts” kuya
Me: Moral facts are facts about what we ought to do from the perspective of morality, e.g., “You should donate money to the poor.” Epistemics facts are facts about what we ought to do from the perspective of knowledge and evidence, e.g., “You should believe only what is true or supported by the evidence.”
The fact that we’re having this conversation right now is indicative that you care about epistemic facts. You care about what counts as justified true belief. But kung babalikan mo yung definition na binigay ko above, moral facts are parallel to epistemic facts. Both are normative, that is, both contain the property of oughtness. And both are objective, that is, they’re independent of what you or I think.
Sa kanyang librong The Normative Web: A Defense of Moral Realism, Cuneo points out at least six more parallels between epistemic and moral facts. So whatever objection one might throw against moral facts, the same can be applied against so-called epistemic facts. But if that is the case, then why should we believe the claim that “Moral facts do not exist” or that “We are not justified in believing in Moral Realism,” *if* these are epistemic facts?
Lyx: Ahhh oki oki gets. Last na kuya, how would u differentiate “good” and “right.”
Me: Siguro I would adopt the distinction that William Lane Craig makes. Good/Bad, he says, are moral values. Right/Wrong, on the other hand, are moral duties. What’s the difference? Well, value has to do with worth, but duty has to do with obligation. Obviously, just because something is good, does not mean it is obligatory. For example, it might be good for me to become a lawyer, but I’m not morally obligated to become one. After all, it might also be good for me to become a pastor. It’s important to make this distinction because in seeking the best explanation for moral facts, the best explanation should be able to explain both.
Lyx: Would you say na what counts as good is subjective?
Me: No. Kaka-argue ko lang that objective moral values are objective. That is, they’re truth-value is independent of human opinion. For example, the laws of nature hold true whether we acknowledge them or not. Kapag tumalon ako mula sa isang gusali, babagsak pa rin ako kahit sabihin kong di ako naniniwala sa law of gravity. I believe the same is true about the laws of morality. For example, to say that the Holocaust was wrong is to say that it was wrong even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was right, and it would still be wrong even if the Nazis had won WWII and succeeded in brainwashing all of us, so that everybody believes that the Holocaust was right.
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Hi! Got a prompt for you if you're interested (feel free to write a drabble, a one-shot, or a multi-chap): Levihan, "One more chance." Open to interpretation. Thanks, and good luck! :)
okay so i decided to combine this prompt together with my headcanon for that levihan ring merch for a canon setting one-shot!
One More Chance
"What do you think of rings?" Hange asks Levi out of the blue, in the little room that could suffice as an office for his unofficial position as second in command.
"Why?" Levi knows that Hauge doesn't ask questions out of the blue without motives.
They could be random, absurd, silly, but there was always a reason behind their questions.
Hange plants one elbow on the table, bent forward in anticipation for Levi's answer. His eyes catch the glint of Hange's bolo tie as it swung back and forth.
Jewellery? Vanity aside, Hange knows better than Levi how expensive it is to obtain warm clothing and food, much less a bunch of shiny rocks. They spent days mulling over the Survey Corps’ budget, where to allocate resources, how to seek funding, and to keep expenses humane but tight.
“Why?” He repeats, unsure as to whether to sneak in a crass joke as Hange’s eyes were shining—in a different tone compared to the bright-eyedness that showed whenever they made a new discovery. It was, what was it? Nostalgia? Levi is certain that Hange had never, of ten years being by their side, even hinted at a desire for a ring, for whatever reason they might yearn for the object.
Hange knows Levi is perturbed—suspicious, even. They know that such an ambiguously-worded question, simple as it was, will not warrant a straightforward answer from Levi. He is far too observant to not think of Hange’s line of questioning as uncharacteristic from the usual. The usual Hange will elaborate; they will give details. Perhaps this is a ring made from a special sort of metal to go undetected from metal sensors to sneak past the enemy and pass on valuable information etched in code on the inside, for example. Whatever reason that prompted Hange to take a sudden interest in rings wasn’t for battle, or for moral good, which frankly, is more embarrassing for them.
“Do you keep those patches with you?” Hange changes the topic. Levi blinks, then turns to the drawer and pulls the handle. The open drawer speaks for itself; filled with rows and rows of haphazardly torn patches of the Survey Corp’s uniform, the emblem of the wings of freedom.
“You keep it here, huh…” Hange muses, touching one patch tenderly, feeling the crusted blood stain at the tip of their finger.
“Do you remember who each patch belongs to?”
Levi shakes his head, not defending the lack of differentiation between the patches. To him, each patch is louder than a name attached to it. A fellow soldier whose heart he carried on within him.
“If I die, Levi, will you bring back my patch?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions.” Levi is quick to retort, sounding mildly irritated that Hange brought up the possibility of death.
“We all die someday.”
“We should think about how to stay alive,” Levi says firmly. “And what does any of this have to do with rings?”
Hange laughs, patting Levi on the shoulder affectionately. “You won’t let that go, huh?”
“It seems important,” Levi says, disgruntled. “You’re not usually so hesitant.”
“It’s not.” Hange waves their hands defensively, straightening up to avoid Levi’s gaze.
“What’s that in your pocket? Your hand keeps touching it.” Levi is sharp as ever, Hange thinks, itching to back out and tend to more important commander duties.
“Maybe next time! I have to go!” Hange brisk-walks out of the office, leaving Levi in the dust. He has the immediate urge to follow them, to grab their arm and ask what’s wrong, to force some kind of coherent understanding to this muddled conversation. Yet, he continues sitting on the chair, wondering if their mutual awkwardness had swept past them in the form of a lost opportunity. The patches flutter a little in the wind, as though asking him, what are you so afraid of?
He closes the drawer and sinks back onto the creaky, wooden chair, waiting for Hange to come back.
The next time he sees them again is when he’s so battered that his back trembles at the prospect of sitting on another hard surface. The series of negotiations, arguments, plans, fly past him in a whirlwind of decisions led by Hange. He occasionally spots the bulge in their side pocket, but his head is spinning with a million of other more dire worries to figure out what the hell is this unresolved mystery from months ago.
One night, as Hange tends to the bandages around his head, traces the stiches on his face, and mumbles quiet nothings about how they’re glad he’s alive, he finally lifts a shaky hand to point at the bulging pocket.
“Are you going to tell me what’s in that?”
“Nothing that will help us stop this mess,” Hange says, sweeping some of the fringe off his forehead to wipe the sweat underneath.
“But it’s important to you,” he states. Hange nods slowly.
“And you want to show it to me.” He tries, unaccustomed to the presumptuousness of his claim. But there is little time. If there was ever time before, now they were running on thin, cracked lines of time, teetering over the edge.
Hange sighs, and stuffs a reluctant hand into their pocket to bring out a small box.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t use the Scouts’ funds.”
“The Survey Corps doesn’t exist anymore,” Levi reminds them, to distract his mind from speculating endlessly about what’s in the box. He wants to sit up. Physically straining himself feels unwise, so he settles with tilting his head to get a clearer view of both Hange and the box.
Hange carefully holds his shoulders to sit him up, leaning him against them.
“I got rings for us.”
“Huh?”
The box is opened, and inside were two shining rings in silver and gold. Purple embellishment on the gold and green on silver. Not to mention it was heart-shaped rings. Levi feels his cheeks getting warmer by the second by its blatant implications, and is thankful that the bandages literally covered half his face.
“I know, I told them not to make it heart-shaped but you know when Reeves knew it was for you he said I had to make it obvious, whatever that meant,” Hange says quickly, snapping the box shut so as to save themselves from having to confront what was glaring at them.
“It’s not practical for fighting,” Levi murmurs, reaching out to take the box from Hange.
“Dedicate your hearts… wasn’t that what Erwin said?” Hange, always the one to inject light humour in tense situations, decides it will be alright to quote Erwin’s war cry in what is essentially a confession.
“Right.” Levi opens the box, looking expectantly at Hange.
“What?”
“Rings are for wearing, right?”
“You said they weren’t practical!”
“We’re not fighting now.”
Running their hands through their hair, Hange looks rather sheepish. “It’s a bit selfish but I just want to be remembered. As more than a patch.”
Levi frowns, bandages crinkling. “You think I’ll forget you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I won’t forget you. Ring or no ring.”
Upon hearing the seriousness of Levi’s voice, the light-heartedness returns to Hange, as they cheekily present the ring to them.
“Well then, will you dedicate your heart to me, shitty Captain?”
“Whatever, Four-eyes.” He says it as flippantly as he can, yet handles the ring like sudden movement will break it.
“Hah! I wonder what the kids will say about the rings…” Hange stretches out and lays beside Levi, admiring the ring on their hand amidst the backdrop of night stars. He takes their hand and weaves his fingers through it, placing their interlocked hands on his chest.
After the plane takes off, Levi’s eyes are trained on the floor. The plane rattles, swerves, and gains momentum. Everyone around him is emotional—rightly so, because their leader had said a fleeting goodbye before leaping to their death. He holds one hand in the other, feeling the cold metal on his finger. Rings don’t leave the smell of Hange’s skin when they lie their head on his shoulder after a long day. Rings don’t capture the sound of Hange’s laugh when they make friendly banter with their juniors, or when Levi makes the occasional, dry joke that only they pick up on. Rings don’t emulate the dialogue of their late-night discussions in his office, the tea that he makes and that they drink from the same cup—to save the time needed for washing, according to Hange. He doesn’t protest.
Still, the ring is all he has left. The one chance Hange had, they entrusted in him this ring. They could translate Levi’s words into more palpable versions for other people, but they could not for the life of them come up with words to express their more vulnerable feelings. For Hange, the ring was another chance to cement what remained unspoken: I hope you remember me. I’m here with you.
The last chance Levi had, he placed a fist on their heart.
“Dedicate your heart.” The ring flashes in the sunlight, making Hange blink back tears.
Now, he clutches one hand in the other.
“See you, Hange.” The ring stares back, patiently. He closes his eyes, bringing the thin, metal sentiment to his lips.
“Keep watching us.”
thank you for the prompt @djmarinizelablog !! ^_^
#aot#levihan#rings#levi ackerman#hange zoe#levi x hange#fanfiction#my writing#hanji zoe#shingeki no kyojin#prompt#how many times can i use these same three lines from chapter 132#yes i admit merch has inspired my writing what can i say#tbh a heart shaped ring irl sounds hard to wear XD
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Dany antis:
We have to understand that Mirri was devastated over her town and the abuse she suffered. To empathize. She’s a “hero” therefore, for killing a BABY.
We do NOT have to understand that Daenerys was devastated over the loss of her husband and child. She does not deserve empathy despite her losses. She’s “evil” for killing a grown woman who killed a baby.
We have to understand the culture of wealthy grown educated men who have subjected human beings to slavery for hundreds of years.
Oh, but they weren’t alive for hundreds of years! We can’t hold that against them!
But we also can’t deny them the benefit of the excuse that they’ve done this for hundreds of years.
We do NOT have to understand the culture of a teenage girl who is a Khaleesi of the Dothraki, who kills the wine seller for trying to kill her and her baby.
Because she killed him painfully. We don’t care that Varys suggested killing her with the tears of Lys, and remember that the victim dies an agonizing death. We don’t think about the morals of a painful death when the intended victim is Daenerys.
The same applies to when she crucified the slavers. We’re going to insist she did it indiscriminately, even though we know she didn’t kill a single woman who would have had less power, or child who would be entirely innocent, nor did she kill random civilians, they were all nobles. All slavers. But there are innocent slavers! Innocent slavers are definitely a thing.
The people who make laws that are not up to modern standards, like Daenerys, are evil.
But the people who follow those laws, like Ned beheading a man for running away from the dead, or Jon who beheaded a man for refusing to follow an order, or Robb who threatened to hang a man if he didn’t join the war against the Lannisters, aren’t.
Daenerys may have warned the slavers she would show no mercy if they didn’t free the slaves and pay them reparations, but she should have given them a trial even though they own the system.
It’s true they were all slavers, but if she was punishing them for being slavers, she should have killed all of them. The fact she didn’t kill all of them shows it wasn’t about justice, so she’s evil.
But she was also wrong for wanting to kill all of them, and Jorah talked her out of it. The fact he had to talk her out of it shows she’s evil.
And then when Daario tried to talk her into slaughtering them Red Wedding style, and she refused, that’s also proof she’s evil because Daario represents her evil nature.
We can empathize with the slavers! Because we might have done the same thing! We all like to think we’d stand against slavery, but if it’s our culture we might not. And we might stand by while our friends torture 163 children to death to spite an abolitionist.
We say we empathize with the slaves, too, but it’s more we sympathize with them. We understand that they are victims. We don’t see ourselves in their place. We don’t empathize with the anger the parents of those children felt. They follow Dany blindly. They don’t understand choice. That’s why they follow her.
What we CANNOT empathize with (because we know we would NEVER) is a teenage girl who walked along a road lined with the corpses of children who were tortured to death to spite her. We know a GOOD ruler would be stalwart in the face of such horror and hold a trial. Because even though the slavers own all the systems in existence in that city, there’s no way a trial could have caused the death of lesser evil instead of greater. Trials are foolproof!
She should have killed them all or tried to have every one of them examined by witnesses who are profoundly biased. We cannot empathize with that.
Dany’s attachment to the Dothraki shows her savagery. The Dothraki are rapists and slavers and she lusted after her husband when he made that speech and so it doesn’t matter how she tried to fight rapists later. They are all terrible. The Khals are monsters and she loved one, so that shows she’s a monster.
Also, she’s evil for killing the Khals.
She was wrong for sacking Astapor and Yunkai but not staying to rule them. She made it worse because poverty is as bad as slavery and the freed slaves are not able to build their own society, and she should have known that. She was wrong for not staying and ruling them.
She was also wrong for staying in Meereen and ruling it because that makes her a colonizer.
She agrees to allow adults to sell themselves into temporary slavery, and that’s wrong, because voluntary indentured servitude is as bad as generational chattel slavery-except when it’s in Westeros! The rulers in Westeros are rightful, but Daenerys was trying to enslave them by having them bend the knee! She was using the privilege of her father’s name, and it’s different when the Starks do it.
Dragons are evil. They serve no good purpose and she’s evil because she has dragons.
Also, Jon should have a dragon.
When Arya met the Lannister soldiers, and Ed Sheeran, that was to show how she realized that they are not all bad. This shows that sometimes enemies are good. This will show that we should empathize with enemies. That Dany is bad because she doesn’t even though she agrees to help the Starks, whose father supported the man who murdered her brother, and was not disturbed by the murder of her niece and nephew. Who would have killed a baby, had he known Jon was her nephew. Who would have killed her.
This does not apply to Daenerys and her armies, of course. The North was one hundred percent right to treat her with hostility.
Daenerys considered killing Tyrion when she met him! This shows that she is willing to kill people just because they are related to enemies! She’s evil!
Even though she named Tyrion her Hand. Even though she agreed to aid the North with no strings attached once she saw the army of the dead. Even though she accepted Varys into her service when he’d tried to have her murdered. Varys being part of the plan to sell a teenage girl into sexual slavery was not evil because she turned that to her advantage.
Dany was wrong for even considering killing Tyrion despite the fact that she didn’t and ultimately named him her Hand.
She was wrong for killing the Tarlys even though they were oathbreakers who killed their own friends and attacked their liege’s home. Even though the punishment for oath breaking is death. Even though they refused to bend the knee in exchange for keeping their lives, lands and titles, which is standard procedure in Westeros. Even though they refused the Wall, where Tarly sent his eldest son.
She didn’t kill them for oathbreaking or murdering her allies. She killed them for not bending the knee! Even though she only attacked them after they did that, and she did not harm Jon when he refused to bend the knee, she allowed him to mine her dragonglass, and offered to provide men and resources to help.
Sam was not wrong for hating Daenerys for killing his father, even though he was an oathbreaker, an abuser, and threatened to kill Sam. Even though he said that nothing would give him more pleasure than telling Sam’s mother that her son died. Even though Sam knew of Dany’s great deeds from Aemon. It’s understandable that he would still mourn his father. Even if his father was a monster, we have to empathize with his anger.
YET Daenerys is dead wrong for calling out Jaime for murdering her father. Her father was a monster! How dare she feel anything about his murder! She had no right to object to Jaime’s presence at Winterfell, even though he tried to kill her on the battlefield and said straight out said he wasn’t sorry for all he’d done and would do it again to protect his family.
She was wrong for restoring the family name of the man who killed her brother and cheered the brutal murders of her niece and nephew. Because she only legitimized Gendry for personal gain, even though he could have done the opposite of joining her, and tried to take the throne himself.
She is wrong if she is good to the family of her enemies because she is self serving, and she is wrong if she’s not good to them because it’s not their fault.
The Starks are not wrong for judging Daenerys by her father’s actions even though she came to help save them. Sansa is not wrong for wanting to evict children from their homes because their families were traitors.
When the Starks are suspicious of the family members of those who’ve harmed them, it’s fair. They are being smart.
When Daenerys is suspicious of the family members of those who’ve harmed her, it’s proof of her being paranoid like her father.
When Sansa told Jon that the free folk should join their fight against Ramsay, that they owed it to him because he’d saved their lives, that was smart!
When she told Arya “you should be on your knees, thanking me,” she had every right to assert her accomplishments.
YET, Daenerys was very entitled to want the North to fight Cersei with her in exchange for her helping them defeat the army of the dead, even though Cersei was their enemy too, and she sent them a letter saying “come bend the knee or face the fate of all traitors.”
It was not wrong of Jon to tell the North he bent the knee to save them, even though she said she’d help before he bent the knee.
It’s Dany’s fault the Night King got a dragon even though the wight hunt was Tyrion’s idea and Daenerys did not like it. Even though Jon told her, “I don’t need your permission. I am a king.”
Dany held Jon prisoner even though he had to stay to mine the dragonglass and he stated that he did not need her permission to leave. That’s what being a prisoner means, right?
Daenerys went mad because her family was fraught with incest. This does not imply that Jon will go mad, because his mother was not a Targaryen (even though his mother’s parents were related). Generations of inbreeding unequivocally mean madness, but the ramifications of those generations are undone if one guy at the end of the line produces a child with a woman whose parents were also related. That’s how genetics work, right?
Daenerys is a colonizer. Even though she didn’t have any goal other than destroying the slave trade in Essos. She only did that for selfish reasons even though Yunkai trains bed slaves and neither Meereen nor Yunkai added to her military might. Even though she never forced her religion or language on them. Even though she renounced power over the cities when she left, so that the people could choose their own leaders.
The Starks were never colonizers! Even though the earliest Starks were First Men, who committed genocide against the Children of the Forest. The First Men called themselves the First Men, they did not acknowledge the humanity of the Children. Therefore, the Children were not human.
The First Men destroyed the Children. The Starks built a Wall to separate the dead from the living, but left thousands of living and Children of the Forest at the other side of it. The Starks destroyed the other families, established power over the area, established their religion and language as the official religion and language. The Starks became the Kings of Winter by bringing to heel, and sometimes extinguishing, other families. That’s fine because the Starks are good. That’s not colonizing! The Starks were always good! They killed the warg king and his sons and beasts and then married his daughters. That’s not rape, that’s marriage!
The Targaryens who adapted the Westerosi religion and language and did not in any way repress other religions or languages, were the oppressors.
Dany hardly did anything in the Long Night. Her armies and dragons did not thin out the dead army, making it possible for Arya to kill the Night King. Two dragons can only do so much against an army of 100k. Even though Dany’s army also was over 100K.
YET, she burned MILLIONS in KL (even though the population of KL is under a million and even though I just said she could not have possibly taken out much of the dead army.)
When Daenerys didn’t weep and wring her hands over her abusive brother’s death that was evidence of her turning “mad.” Even though he abused her, sold her, and pressed a sword to her belly and threatened to cut her baby out of her body.
When Sansa smiled as Ramsay screamed, being torn apart by dogs, that was not a sign of anything bad. He abused her!
When Daenerys crucified the slavers even though a trial would have yielded nothing, because they had owned the entire system, that was a sign of her being a villain.
But Varys wasn’t wrong for trying to poison her before she did anything wrong because he sensed what she would do! Instinct > Trials. Unless the “instinct” is Daenerys’. Then it’s paranoia, even when the people she suspects of plotting against her are plotting against her.
When Arya killed two men, baked them into a pie, fed them to their father, slit his throat, smiled faintly as he died, cut off his face, then killed every one of his bannermen, with no knowledge of whether those men had been there at the Red Wedding, or whether they’d spoken against it, that was not a sign of her being a villain. Because if it’s a Stark, we understand complicity.
Besides, Arya is not a ruler. Only rulers do harm. Not explorers! Explorers who believe “I’ll never know her, she’s not one of us”, have never done anything bad in all history. Happy Columbus Day, btw.
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okay, so, here are my thoughts on the finale,
i’m gonna start with the things i didn’t like, just because of who i am as a person! my feelings are mixed, but... looks lovingly at evil morty. he truly was the only exception as usual ♥
i’m not going to lie, this whole thing felt. rushed. although some of rick’s meta commentary about not touching citadel shit because it was canon and he and morty were supposed to be going back to lighthearted one off adventures, and “the second he reveals that he’s evil, we’re out” made me laugh, it also felt very disingenuous and ham-fisted. having him do all these fourth wall breaks honestly took away from the impact of what this episode could have been, but whatever.
i just got the vibe that they wanted everyone to stfu about the citadel and evil morty, so they quickly stuck together this episode that dealt with fans’ demand in one fell swoop so they could move on from the existence of both plotlines. i honestly thought it was a bit wasteful since tales from the citadel resonated with a lot of fans and it was an interesting bit of worldbuilding with compelling narratives going on.
you already all likely know how irritated i am with morty’s character degrading so much once again. this entire season has been building him up to becoming so much more capable, only to wrench it away from him again by instead having his co-dependency with rick ramped up to the point it was literally out of character. this has come out of nowhere. at no point in the show’s entire run has morty ever been this needy with rick.
again, i feel like this may have been written around what eventually ended up happening at the citadel, with the revelation that mortys are ‘bred for forgiveness.’ it would have been far more compelling for our morty to have continued to go down the path of being decidedly unforgiving of rick’s bullshit, thereby making him deviate from the norm in a similar way to evil morty himself and implicating that the cycle of a morty going to these extremes is going to be repeated once again.
rick did not deserve or earn voicing the recognition that his dynamic with morty was toxic, and abusive. are you fucking kidding me? the smartest man in the universe only JUST clocked onto that? bullshit! he’s known all along, and he’s been using it for his own gain! he doesn’t get to just say it with that regretful voice as if he’s been clueless / oblivious to it this entire time. they just wanted the audience to feel sympathetic for him by throwing in this tidbit and a tragic backstory, as if that even sort of makes up for everything he’s put his family through.
abandoning the people you’ve hurt is ALSO abusive and toxic behaviour! he’s done it time and time again! how is acknowledging the fact that you hurt people, that you hurt your family, the people that love you despite the fact you objectively don’t deserve it, then ditching them once again instead of staying with them and improving as a person and helping everyone heal from what you’ve put them through, ANY BETTER?? he never changes!!
i also couldn’t really process the fact that rick just handed morty his portal gun like it was nothing-- i feel like him topping it off and using it behind rick’s back should have been a bigger deal than what it was. also, morty would not break a guy out of a mental asylum without a second thought. he simply wouldn’t do that.
we’ve fallen right back into the status quo of morty being stupid and rick being the smartest one in the room who always knows what’s going on, even when he actually shouldn’t for the sake of a few meta jokes. which is more annoying than i can put into words tbqh
obviously i hated all the parallels they were attempting to make between rick and morty having a romantic relationship and “breaking up.” never has morty behaved so uncharacteristically in any other episode of the show. it honestly felt disrespectful to all the growth he’s had as a character to reduce him to something so pathetic.
i guess this is less of a thing i disliked, and more of a commentary on rick’s character? but once again, his hypocrisy really leapt out at me once it was revealed that he always has a hand in bringing together beths and jerrys in order to ensure that more mortys will end up in the multiverse. i find it unbelievably sad that he’ll willingly ensnare the two of them in the throes of a relationship that he knows is likely to become toxic and�� cause the both of them to be miserable throughout their time together; they’re rarely happy / compatible together and always end up sticking it out for the kids. it also makes his constant shitting on jerry even more egregious and almost serves to call his love for his daughter into question for me. he’s using her as a means to his own ends by manipulating situations so she’ll meet jerry and they’ll likely end up together.
don’t get me wrong, i actually really loved the fact he had a hand in founding the citadel he now loathes so much, and i think the constant creation of mortys as grandsons ‘bred to forgive’ ricks is so fucked up and awful in the most intriguing way. it’s akin to him fiddling with the concept of keeping mortys in constant pain to cloak his comings and goings around the multiverse (on paper, morty, on paper!), except this time he did it in reality.
evil morty. oh my god, evil morty. my saving grace. my ray of light. i’m so, so, so pleased with the way he was handled. while i admit i was looking forward to more of a slow - burn thing, getting a bit of insight into his presidency and possibly exploring a dynamic with him and c-137 (we’ll get to that)... i honestly still really loved what ended up happening with him, even though i still believe on some level that they just wanted to tie up his narrative thread so fans wouldn’t remain fixated on him.
of course he did. of course that motherfucker rick created a boundary within the infinite multiverse that ensured he’d always be the smartest man within it as far as mortys and other people in his life were concerned. i’ve always found it odd that such universes were never brought up even in passing; the nature of infinite possibilities always dictated that someone smarter than him must exist out there, and that worlds existed where he was nobody special.
him being morally gray. i could cry. i was clinging on to the hope that it would be shown he hates ricks more than he looks down on mortys, and it absolutely was. while he was okay with killing and hurting mortys to achieve his own “selfish” ends, it’s clear that he’s unhappy with the cycle of abuse from their infinite grandfathers that pushes him to these extremes, loathes the concept that mortys are not supposed to defy their ricks. “if you’ve ever been sick of him, you’ve been evil morty too.” he hates ricks FAR more than he does mortys, and you can pry that from my cold, dead hands. he believes mortys are beyond help because of the way they stick by rick-- the fact they’re literally created with being yes-men for rick in mind.
he didn’t seek to make changes for the greater good of other mortys within the citadel. i think he understood on some level, it was impossible. i think he has this belief that other mortys are part of the problem, because they perpetuate the cyclic dynamic of toxicity and harm-- they don’t move to break free from it the way he does, and so he feels no guilt leaving them behind while he breaks into the aspect of the multiverse where rick has no power. it’s honestly heartbreaking that he’s come to have a mindset like that.
i think seeing c-137 reach out to help rick up once again instead of accepting what i hope and pray was a semi - genuine offer to join him as he departed was just yet another instance of him witnessing a morty doing the most to save the man who makes their lives a living hell. if he was truly unsympathetic, he’d have made no such offer. if he thinks a morty is capable of pulling away from the hold ricks have on them, he wants them out of this shit just as much as he himself wants to break free from it. i think he has the mindset that i know they tried to play it off with “haha the other seat’s a toilet,” but i don’t think that was the case and they were once again just undermining the moment for no good reason. SCREAMS!! don’t get me wrong what he did WAS selfish and evil. but in a way you can understand where it derives from
again, it REALLY irritates me they’ve undone so much of morty’s character just to ensure he wouldn’t end up taking evil morty up on his proposition. if morty had retained even a tenth of the character growth he’s been having from late season four until towards the end of season five, wherein it began to unravel, he’d have left rick. undeniably.
the yellow portal. oh my god............
it made me so fucking emotional to see that. he’s won. he’s free.
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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 25, part one
(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff)
Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!
Holy crap, Episode 25! We’re halfway through! *Cue Bon Jovi*
Hunt Invitation
After taking a nice long break to watch Word of Honor pick lotus pods, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli return to stressing over the shitshow that is the post-Sunshot cultivation world. Jin Zixuan has come to invite them to the Phoenix Mountain Hunt, with a special invitation from his mother to Jiang Yanli. Jiang Cheng reacts to this in a mature and reasonable manner, while Wei Wuxian...doesn't.
On the surface, Jiang Cheng has matured in recent months; much more than Wei Wuxian, with his secret burdens, has. But it's only on the surface, as we'll see later in the episode, when Jiang Cheng's insecurity will take the reins.
Jin Zixuan is adorably pleased by Jiang Yanli's acceptance of the invitation. Wei Wuxian is less pleased, but sort of tries to suck it up.
Jin Zixuan kind of undercuts the romance of his errand by asking Wei Wuxian for the Yin tiger amulet as soon as Jiang Yanli is out of earshot.
As always, Jin Zixuan makes an impression by being the best Jin currently in existence, but the Jins are terrible. JZX is working to advance his dad's ambitions, and as such he is currently Wei Wuxian's enemy.
(more after the cut)
Opening Ceremonies
There's a bunch of cultivators arranged for the opening ceremony. Later someone will say that this is more than 5 thousand people. Ok, sure.
As I've said before, it's best to think of it like a theatre production and assume the other 4,900 people are offstage or, you know, painted on the backdrop.
The young lead cultivators from the four main clans are standing together. Nie Huaisang is trying out some new body armor.
The clan leaders are seated up on the stage, along with Jin Furen and Jiang Yanli. Unfortunately Jin Furen doesn't seem to have a personal name that I can discover. Her title Fūrén ( 夫人) means she's the primary wife of the head of the family, according to this excellent meta.
So “Madame Jin” is a decent translation...if you're French? I feel like instead of English subtitles including borrowed words from French (”Marquis” in NIH), Greek (”Water of Lethe” in WOH), and other European languages, we could try borrowing Chinese words instead. Jin Zixuan's mom is titled, not named, Jin Furen. Since we don’t know her actual name, I'll call her that and abbreviate it JFR.
Wei Wuxian's childishness continues at the opening of the hunt, as does Jiang Yanli's encouragement of his childishness. I know she's had a rough couple of years, and it's understandable to want to baby her little brother out of a sense of nostalgia. But it's not good for him, and she shouldn't do it; she should encourage him to be more mature, just as she does with Jiang Cheng.
War Crimes Contest
Jin Guangyao says they're going to have an archery competition, and they're going to liven it up by endangering some prisoners. These prisoners are Wens in Wen cultivator uniforms, meaning they're not the noncombatants that were being hunted down earlier. But they’re still helpless people in chains.
There are three different reactions when the Wen prisoners are brought out. All the Jins are pleased, or neutral. All of the Jiangs, including Wei Wuxian, are upset.
The Nies and the Lans, what we see of them, are a little shocked, but not obviously upset. Based on those reactions, it seems like this is a maneuver that in-world is considered shocking and cruel, but not necessarily unethical or immoral. Shocking, cruel displays of power are pretty normal in this world; remember when Wen Chao lit a Lan cultivator on fire just to say hello, and nobody complained?
This whole scenario, of course, has been designed to provoke Wei Wuxian. One major goal of this event, and the whole reason for wanting Wei Wuxian to come, is to get the Yin Tiger amulet. Making him lose his shit in front of 100 5000 cultivators is a good step toward compelling him to hand the amulet over.
We see Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli both signaling Wei Wuxian to keep it together, and he takes a step back and tries to chill.
Meanwhile, Jin Zixuan seems annoyed by all this, and goes to take a shot at it, making it clear from his demeanor that this is easy and JGY is making a show of nothing.
He hovers in the air and makes a perfect shot, pleasing most of the crowd and impressing Jiang Yanli.
Then his cousin Jin Zixun taunts the crowd, challenging anyone to do better. This presents a bit of a problem for Wei Wuxian. For the sake of the Wen prisoners, Wei Wuxian should just take this taunting and let the contest end, if no-one else is willing to take a shot. But for the sake of the Jiang Clan’s status, and his continued control of the Yin Tiger amulet, he needs to put the Jins in their place.
Every Day is Blindfold Day
This moral dilemma is resolved with an abrupt tonal shift, where the humanitarian concerns of all parties seem to vanish. Wei Wuxian flirts embarrassingly with Lan Wangji and then goes as far over the top in besting Jin Zixuan as it's possible to go.
The flirting hits differently, incidentally, when you edit Jiang Cheng's annoyed reaction out of it:
Lan Wangji doesn't seem embarrassed by Wei Wuxian's request, despite it happening in front of 100 5000 of their fellow cultivators. He looks Wei Wuxian straight in the eye for longer than necessary before turning away; it’s not exactly stern disapproval. We’ll get very used to this look, in Wei Wuxian’s second life.
Fortunately, Wei Wuxian carries a blindfold with him wherever he goes, (gifset here), and he is such a good cultivator he can hit 5 parallel targets simultaneously without even holding his bow straight or tightening the string.
(OP fixed the angle of the bow for this gif, which is why everyone is standing on a hill in the background).
Everyone is pleased by this shot except Jins Guangyao and Zixun; even the Jin cultivators are clapping, and Madame Jin is presumably this happy any time Jin Guangyao’s plans go wrong.
With that they start the hunt. Jin Zixun challenges Wei Wuxian to do the whole hunt blindfolded. Wei Wuxian agrees, but the censorship committee said no, apparently, so we don’t get to see that.
Flute Hunting
We do get to see Wei Wuxian luring monsters into his nets by being too sexy for his robe, too sexy for his robe, and playing the flute.
We also get to see Jiang cultivators looking puzzled while random monster roars happen in the woods around them. We do not get to see any monsters, which is probably just as well.
Jiang Cheng is annoyed and concerned, muttering "I told you not to overdo it" which means he didn't, you know, tell Wei Wuxian NOT to do this, just not to do it quite so well. Jiang Cheng knows what Wei Wuxian’s abilities are and he is making use of him, as he should, but he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions.
Tree Confession
Wei Wuxian sees Lan Wangji and starts to say hi, but then he has a desaturated flashback to Lan Xichen telling him to back off, so he stops himself. But then Lan Wangji comes over to talk to him.
Lan Wangji starts off talking to him about his latest anti-resentment musical discoveries, and Wei Wuxian pushes back, even calling him Lan Wangji, but gently. Wei Wuxian asks "who am I to you?" and Lan Wangji turns the question right back at him, then waits a looooooong time, eyes downcast, while Wei Wuxian thinks of a serious answer.
Wei Wuxian says "I used to treat you as my zhījǐ" --which, as we’ve discussed before, is variously translated soulmate, confidant, intimate friend--with a strong meaning of "the person who truly knows me." Lan Wangji says "I still am." Coming from Lan Wangji, who NEVER says how he feels about Wei Wuxian or about anything, really, this sounds a lot like a confession of love.
It definitely takes the form, visually, of a love confession, as Lan Wangji speaks, then gazes at Wei Wuxian while he waits for a reply. Wei Wuxian's reply is this:
I don't think Wei Wuxian is oblivious (I'm speaking strictly of CQL, not MZDS, as always with these posts; they are different works). I think he loves Lan Wangji back, and knows it. But Chenqing and everything it represents are between them.
Lan Wangji is quite literally NOT his zhījǐ any more, because he doesn't truly know Wei Wuxian right now. He loves him desperately, but he doesn't know about his core, and hasn't accepted his cultivation method. So Wei Wuxian answers his confession by showing him Chenqing, effectively declining to accept his still-conditional love.
Snake Measuring
Next we get terrible hetero courtship in the form of Jin Zixuan finding snake discharge on the ground and talking to Jiang Yanli about comparative snake measuring. Seriously: that is the actual conversation that they are having.
Jin Zixuan boasts for a bit, and then awkwardly tries to ask Jiang Yanli on a date. When she turns him down he gets mad, because he's a typical heterosexual dude even though he's secretly a delightful person...very, very secretly. Jiang Yanli, for her part, can't string a fucking sentence together to save her life whenever he's around, so she's not helping their mutual understanding.
Lan Wangji attempts to hold Wei Wuxian back from beating Jin Zixuan’s ass yet again, but eventually JYL wants to leave, JZX tells her to wait, and WWX intervenes. Why doesn't Jiang Yanli have a maid or Jiang cultivator with her while she's on a date, incidentally? These kids are confused about whether they're doing feudal patriarchy or whether they're doing modern social life.
Jin vs. Jiang
Wei Wuxian jumps in between Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan, which JZX objects to. Jin Zixuan has no fucking business objecting and Wei Wuxian is 100% right, at this point. As soon as WWX shows up JZX should hand her off to her Shidi, bow, and leave her the fuck alone. Instead, he draws his sword on Wei Wuxian, and kind of on Jiang Yanli since she's right behind Wei Wuxian. Fortunately, Lan Wangji blocks him.
This instantly blows up into a Jiang-Jin Clan conflict, with Jiang Cheng unfortunately absent since he let his unmarried sister go off in the woods alone with the son of the Cultivaton world's most famous lecher. It looks like it’s a personal conflict, but since Jin Zixuan already told Wei Wuxian directly that Jin Guangshan wants his amulet, any arguments between them are part of a larger power struggle.
Cousin Jin Zixun comes running up to start shit. Wei Wuxian pretends--I am SURE he's pretending--not to know who he is. The dude hassles Wei Wuxian every time he sees him; Wei Wuxian is a troll, and right now CJXZ is butting in to something that doesn't concern him. Rather than argue, Wei Wuxian insults him by telling him he’s not memorable.
Jin Furen shows up with several maids and cultivator dudes in tow, which is the proper way for a highborn woman to wander around in the woods. She also brings Clan Leader Yao, because if it's Wei Wuxian Blaming Hours, Yao is going to be there.
I initially found the deep friendship between superhot Yi Zuyuan and dumpy Jin Furen implausible, but then I remembered that my lifelong bestie is a smokin' hot redhead with impeccable fashion sense, while I am a roly-poly nerd. Friends don’t always match. Also, Jin Furen's actress, Hu Xiaoting, looks like this:
...so she is actually hot in real life. Not as hot as Zhang Jingtong (who plays Yu Ziyuan) but literally nobody is as hot as Zhang Jingtong. Don't @ me, you know I'm right.
This is a heck of a long scene, so we’ll pick it up in part two!
Soundtrack: Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi
Writing prompt: Newly-divorced, cold-hearted CEO Yu Ziyuan buys an apartment next door to newly-divorced, warm-hearted pastry chef ...uhh let's call her Jin Dàngāo (蛋糕), sure. She can name her business after herself.
They discover their daughter & son are in the same college class, and so they meet up over coffee....several times...trying to matchmake their hopeless, hapless kids, while bonding over their own terrible (former) taste in husbands. Who will Cupid strike first, the kids or the moms?
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Bayverse: Treating These Movies with More Dignity than They Deserve or Contain, Because I’m a Goddamned Professional - Part One
TRANSFORMERS (2007) - UNCOMFORTABLE SEXUAL TENSION BETWEEN TEENAGERS THAT I DIDN’T NEED TO SEE
So.
This is a little different than what I usually do.
Clearly.
God, how did we even get here?
Oh, I remember.
The date was September 17th, 2020, and I was in a stream with nine or ten other people watching the first Bayverse Transformers movie. Why we were watching it doesn’t particularly matter- sometimes you just gotta watch garbage so you can refresh your palate for the good stuff, I suppose. Also, a couple of folks wanted to make goo-goo eyes at Blackout’s rotors.
...It’s not my thing, but I’m glad they’ve got something to make the journey worth taking.
I made some sort of comment about only using my brain for this blog’s content, and someone (you know who you are :)) suggested that I take a proper look at the film. Being who I am, I immediately latched onto this idea, despite it being technically outside of what I write about.
And then I quintuple-downed, because winners don’t quit.
Good to know that my BA in Film Production wasn’t a complete waste of time.
Fun fact, I broke my television trying to watch Transformers for this. I think the universe was trying to stop me, by making me perform surgery on electronics, and also aggravating my carpal tunnel.
This movie came out when I was 13, and it was the first Transformers thing I saw after Cybertron. Yes, the anime one. No, not the one that’s objectively terrible.
Anyway.
How did I feel about Transformers when I saw it the first time? Well… it was okay. I liked the robots. I thought Mikaela was pretty, not that I knew what that meant back then. I watched it a few times, if only because my oldest younger brother kept renting it at Blockbuster. It was fun.
Now I’m older, and wiser, and know feminist theory, so my opinion is less “this exists” and more “blind, murderous rage”.
Our film opens up with some claptrap about the Cube™, a MacGuffin of ultimate power that allows the Transformers to create worlds in their image and populate them. Which means this is how they reproduce.
It always comes back to baby-making, doesn’t it?
The narration goes on about how the Cube™ is very powerful, and some folks wanted it for good, and others for evil. The criteria for being “good” and “evil” isn’t established, and I’m not exactly sure how one would define such a thing, when all the Cube™ does is create life, but, well, we’ve only just begun. Maybe we’ll get some answers later on.
Haha, I doubt it.
So, the Cube™ is the catalyst for our 4 million year war this continuity, and that sucker was lost in the shuffle a while back. This is a problem, because, again, the Cube™ is how the Transformers reproduce. Now everyone’s in a mad scramble to find the thing so their species doesn’t die out.
Three guesses as to where it ended up, and the first two don’t count.
Smashcut to the shit nobody cares about- the humans. We see an Osprey fly over the Qatar desert, carrying a buttload of American soldiers. We get a taste of some good old-fashioned xenophobia, as several soldiers mock a guy for not speaking English and loving his mother’s cooking, going full “funny haha gibberish language” on him. We’re two and a half minutes into the film, and I already want to stab something.
Ed Sheeran breaks into the conversation, I guess because he was feeling left out, revealing that he is the New Yorker stereotype of the film, for some reason. The fellas ask their captain, Lennox, what he’s looking forward to most about getting home from their tour, and he reveals himself to be a family man. While he’s been away, his wife had a baby, who he hasn’t so much as held yet. His men respond by mocking him.
For loving his child.
We’re three minutes into the film, and the toxic masculinity might actually make me have an aneurysm.
The Ospreys land, the lads disembark, and we get a snapshot of what downtime during deployment looks like to Bay. There are a lot of kiddie swimming pools involved. Two men play basketball. We watch multiple men take outdoor showers. A young Qatari boy brings Lennox a camelback water pack with a smile on his face. This lets me know that he’s a prop and not a character in this film. I can’t wait to see how many horrors he’ll be put through to simulate pathos.
We get a shot of a helicopter flying over the desert, one that the US military doesn’t recognize as their own. They send a couple of planes to check it out, and said planes get their shop wrecked. The helicopter is revealed to be the same ‘copter that was shot down several months prior. That’s… not good. Ghost helicopter?
No. Not at all, actually.
Lennox gets on a video chat with his wife and daughter, who is wearing one of the most ridiculous baby outfits I’ve seen in a hot minute. And I used to work in childcare, so I’ve seen a good amount of those. The writing implies that normal bodily functions are unladylike and therefore undesirable… in an infant… and that’s when all hell breaks loose, thankfully saving me from more of Bay trying to make me give a shit about these characters.
The helicopter lands, we get a shot of the mustachioed pilot, who glitches (gasp), and the line “have your crew step out or we will kill you” is uttered.
Not even trying to hide the nationalism, are you?
This film hit theaters in 2007, when the xenophobia from 9/11 was still heavy in the air of the general populace, so things like this were more tolerated, and in fact approved of. Of course, it’s not like America has really improved on that subject, or ever really had a point where we weren’t terrible about it, since we live in a world where the military-entertainment complex exists.
See, the Department of Defense and a good chunk of American entertainment industries have a little deal going, and have for the last few decades, and it goes like this: The DoD will allow the use of their vehicles, personnel, and bases, or the likenesses of such, for free, in exchange for their operations being shown in a positive/morally justified light. This is why you never see the armed forces portrayed in a way that makes them out as anything less than heroes- nobody would be able to afford the sets/likenesses without the DoD’s aid. This is also why you see straight-up advertisements for the military branches on televison, in cinemas, and online, and why both the Army and Navy have flirted with having Twitch channels.
It’s all a ploy to get you to join the military, kids. It’s propaganda.
But enough about that, it’s time for our first transformation sequence!
We get a lot of moving parts with this, since it’s realistic CGI in a live-action movie, and it still holds up. It’s hard to tell what’s actually happening, but it, if nothing else, feels alien, surreal, and horrific to behold. They even included the original sound effect in the cacophony, which is nice.
Our ghost helicopter reveals itself to be a Transformer, not that we get that terminology at any point in this film. This specifically is Blackout, a Decepticon. The soldiers start firing on him the moment he starts transforming, then are surprised when the thing they started shooting with several guns retaliates. This is the point where everything ever in this military base explodes, brilliantly and repeatedly, because it wouldn’t be a Bay film without it. There’s a lot of shouting and bright lights, and I’m positively certain that a great deal of people died during this fight.
It’s just a shame that I don’t care.
Blackout rips the top off of a building like it’s a tin of anchovies, and then snags all the hard drives he can, downloading everything. This is a problem, but it seems like nobody was prepared for a giant alien robot hack-attack, because in order to shut down the power to the servers, you need to be able to unlock the breaker box, and no one seems to have the key. They solve the problem with a fire ax.
Lennox is leading the Qatari boy through the base towards safety. I should mention that it’s night now, and several hours seem to have passed since the Ospreys landed, so I don’t know why this kid is still here. He’s got, like, a house and family to go home to.
We get some more tank-throwing action, Sergeant Epps almost gets flattened under Blackout’s foot, then the movie decides it’s going to try to make things more interesting by having each shot cut flash, for whatever reason.
Someone shoots Blackout with a rocket launcher, I think, and this is the point where he throws his tiny little man off his back to go do his job. Yes, Blackout’s got a baby, and that baby is Scorponok, his symbiotic pal who likes to dig into the ground and be a sneaky little bastard.
Blackout blows up a ton more military equipment and personnel, and then it’s time for another smashcut.
Now we’re in high school, just like all those dreams I’ve had where I’ve forgotten my homework. This is where we meet Sam Witwicky, our main character, and also the stand-in for our target demographic. He’s insufferable, and I don’t like him. Mikaela Banes, our love interest, is also present in this scene, but we don’t get to know about her character for, like, another 20 minutes, because who gives a shit about women, right? They’re just props, right?
Right???
RIGHT??????????
RIGH-
Sam is presenting on his great-great-grandfather, Archibald Witwicky, for his family genealogy report, in front of a class containing maybe three actors who are age appropriate.
I know child labor laws are a good thing, and that hiring adults to play teenagers is just the lay of the land, but I swear some of these students look like they’re old enough to be on their second mortgage and third kid.
Anyway.
Archibald Witwicky was an explorer, one of the first to traverse the Arctic circle, and apparently his crew was made up of folks from 2007, because I swear the clothing for a few of these dudes isn’t period-appropriate. We get a seamen joke, because of course we do, and a sextant joke, because of course we do. Sam is also hawking all this crap he’s brought in for the presentation, because he is a little bastard who has no idea what his peers would want to buy, or really how to relate to them at all. He’s selling these “priceless” artifacts so he can get a car. Mikaela finds this charming, for some fucking reason. Also, her boyfriend is weirdly stroking her shoulder blade with his knuckles the whole time this is happening, and I hate it.
Archibald Witwicky went mad after his expedition, talking about an “ice man” so often that his family ended up locking him in a mental asylum, likely to be forgotten about. Which is sad. But we won’t be getting into the medical mistreatment of the mentally ill in Bayverse, now will we? That’s just Too Deep™.
Sam’s teacher didn’t very much appreciate having his class be turned into an episode of Antiques Roadshow, but still gives Sam an “A” on the project, despite it being a very poor report that lasted all of two minutes. I suspect the teacher has tenure, and therefore no longer gives a shit about academic integrity. This “A” means that Sam’s father will buy him a car.
Which is nice, I suppose, if I gave a damn.
Sam’s father, Ron, picks up his son in a car he probably bought at the crux of his midlife crisis, in a green that reminds me of a school gymnasium floor, then plays a prank on his child by pretending to pull into the Porsche dealership. Sam isn’t getting a Porsche, which is good, because he doesn’t deserve one. As Sam gripes to his father, a yellow Camaro drives by oh so conspicuously. Wonder what’s up with that.
Instead of the Porshe dealership, they head over to the used car lot, which is being run by Bobby Bolivia, who spends his time yelling at his employees and wanting to murder his mother. Sam is incredibly ungrateful about the fact that his dad is helping him get a car, even though it’s his FIRST car, and nobody gets a nice one the first go around. Or, at least, they shouldn’t, given the statistics about accidents with young drivers.
“No sacrifice, no victory” is uttered by Ron, which is the family motto, or so he claims. Archibald Witwicky said the same thing when he had multiple people dying trying to get to the Arctic Circle, so there’s precedence for the phrase, but we’ll see how it holds up throughout the film.
Bobby Bolivia shows Sam and Ron the cars he has for sale, and Sam is immediately drawn to the yellow Camaro in the lot, though there’s a small problem- it’s too expensive for what he and his father agreed to. Also, nobody knows where the hell it came from, so paperwork might be an issue. When Bobby tries to show Sam the yellow Beetle they have right down the line, everything explodes, because this is a Bay film, and fuck the original material this movie was based on. Bobby lets them have the Camaro for a lower price, suddenly fearful of whatever strange powers have just visited his place of business. “The car picks the driver” is suddenly more than a bullshit line to spout off in order to sell cars, and I’m certain that’s shaken the poor man.
Over in Washington, D.C., the Secretary of Defense prepares to address just what the hell happened in Qatar, lamenting on how young the audience he’s going to be speaking to is. In particular, he’s referring to the two dweebs and the hot chick sitting in one of the rows. All the women in this movie who aren’t someone’s mom are made up to be very pretty. And not even in a realistic way.
But we’ll get to that in a bit.
So, the military network was hacked. That’s bad. Nobody knows who did it. That’s also bad. The only lead the US has is a soundbite, which is the signal that hacked the network.
Everyone here at the briefing is going to be helping to figure this mess out. This is great, if you like looking at Rachael Taylor for a few seconds at a time, and can compartmentalize hard enough to make that worth the effort of watching this godforsaken film.
Back at the Witwicky household, we meet Mojo, a chihuahua with a cast that doesn’t seem like it’s actually doing anything. I wish he was the main character instead of Sam.
Sam arrives home from the dealership, and says “alright, Mojo, I’ve got the car. Now I need the girl.”
As if ownership of a person is something to aspire to.
As if women are property to be owned.
As if women aren’t people, but rather commodities.
We’re 17.5 minutes into this film.
We’re introduced to Judy, Sam’s mother. She’s shrill, and annoying. This is by design, because none of the women in this film are actually people, but rather archetypes to bounce off of the male characters.
Sam and his father have a moment of what some might consider banter, then Sam gets huffy with his mom over gender roles for the dog. I, for one, think Mojo looks positively dashing in his bedazzled collar, and to hell with whatever Sam says to the contrary.
Sam drives off to go be a misogynist, with the promise to be back by 11PM.
Over in Qatar, the soldiers and that little boy are running from the attack on their base, as Lennox’s wife watches a public announcement on the matter back at home. The Secretary of Defense lets us know that we’re at DEFCON Delta at this point. Lennox Jr. cries, and all I can think about is how they probably pinched that baby to make that happen. They pinched a baby for Transformers (2007).
The soldiers in Qatar talk about shit they have no idea about, Sergeant Epps going on about somehow having been able to see a forcefield around Blackout through his super special binoculars. I don’t know how, or why, he knows this. I don’t know anything anymore.
Ed Sheeran has his doubts about this whole thing, and Lennox is also present in the scene, because I guess he’s important. Through a bit of dramatic irony, Fig- the guy everyone was making fun of for being bilingual at the start of the film- says that this probably isn’t over, as the shape of Scorponok shifts through the sand just beyond them.
Epps is having a minor crisis over the fact that Blackout saw him, but we don’t have time for that, because we’ve got to get to cover. The lads decide to head to the little Qatari boy’s house. Again, I wonder why he was at the base at all, considering that it seems like they’ve been traveling for a good portion of the day.
Back with Sam, he’s picked up his friend Miles, and together they’re going to a lake party. Are they invited to this party? Yes, but also no. It’s public property though, so it should be fine. As they park, Sam notices that Mikaela is here, which is great for him.
Mikaela’s boyfriend, Trent- whose name I had to look up- is a massive tool, and starts pestering the two boys for daring to exist in his airspace. Miles climbs a tree. I’m glad he’s having fun, at least. Sam makes a joke at the expense of people with brain injuries, and this for some reason? Warrants a shot of Mikaela making the blank “pretty girl” face? In response?
Mikaela saves Sam from becoming a wet stain on the grass, which is very kind of her, and more than Sam really deserves. Trent, his boys, and Mikaela start to head off for another party, to get away from Sam and his tree-loving friend. Mikaela offers to drive, and Trent says that she can’t handle his truck, because she’s a ~girl~. This causes Mikaela to ditch him, and start walking home.
The script knows enough about misogyny to know that this would be a nice “take that”. Michael Bay, however, likely fails to see why everything he did with said script involving this character is a goddamned problem.
Because Mikaela, bless her heart, has a lot of problems.
Let’s start with the outfit: a croptop, a jean skirt that BARELY covers her ass, and a pair of wedge heels that are at least four inches tall. On a character that is, at oldest, freshly 18.
Look, I’m all about self-expression and the freedom to choose how you dress for yourself and yourself alone, but this clearly isn’t that. This is a character, not a person, whose wardrobe was designed for the straight male gaze. She’s wearing fucking STRAP HEELS to the lake. This is about oogling. This is about reducing a whole-ass person to the same status as a piece of meat. In fact, who was on wardrobe for this? I’d like to have a few words with-
A woman? Okay, well, what else has she worked on?
You can’t be fucking serious.
ANYWAY.
Miles just called Mikaela an “evil jock concubine.” I don’t like Miles anymore.
As Mikaela walks down the road, strutting hard enough that I’ve got sympathy pains in my hips, the radio in the Camaro turns on, playing “Drive” by the Cars, and giving Sam a hell of an idea; he’s gonna drive Mikaela home, so she doesn’t have to walk the 10 miles to her house. Why he knows how far she lives from the lake isn’t addressed.
Sam kicks Miles out of the car and goes to give Mikaela a ride, which she accepts after a bit of self-deliberation, and also him making an ass of himself. The shot here is framed with Sam like he’s a normal-ass person, and Mikaela from her breasts to the top of her waist. Because of COURSE it is.
She hops in the car and then goes off about her taste in hot guys. Which is weird, and out of left field. Sam is about as confused as I am, then continues to make a fool of himself. This is his nature as a person. Mikaela has no idea who Sam is, even though they’ve gone to the same school for the last 10 years and have multiple classes together. And the fact that she was staring him down all through his genealogy presentation. And at the lake.
This movie isn’t very well thought out, I feel.
It’s at this point the the Camaro turns the key on itself and starts to sputter out and die, as “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye pops on the radio.
I don’t like how this car is trying to get Sam laid.
I don’t like how this car is trying to get Sam laid with a girl who didn’t even know his name five minutes ago.
I don’t like how this car knows what sex is.
The Camaro breaks down on a cliff, and Mikaela hops out to work on the engine, and also to get the hell away from Sam’s sputtering.
As Mikaela admires the sweet engine in this Camaro, showing off her knowledge of cars, we get several shots of her from her breasts to her thighs, while Sam is treated like an actual person. Don’t bother trying to play it off as an artistic choice, Bay, this is blatant horndogging. This adds to NOTHING, other than my ire.
Sam says more stupid shit, and Mikaela, who must be the nicest fucking person in the world, just tells him to fire up the engine so she can try to sort out the problem. Then he asks why she goes for jackasses like Trent, and she decides that she’s hit her limit for today, opting to walk the rest of the way home. Good on you, Mikaela. Don’t take Sam’s bullshit.
Sam, realizing that he’s put his foot in his mouth for the 80th time today, pleads with his Camaro to do him a solid and work, and this actually works out for him. Great. Sam, victorious, once again offers Mikaela a ride, which she, once again, takes.
He drops her off without further incident, and she thanks him for listening. Even though they didn’t really talk that much. I dunno, maybe they had a super deep conversation offscreen. Mikaela asks Sam if he thinks she’s shallow, because clearly all women need approval from the men around them, and Sam says that there’s more to her than meets the eye.
Which made me groan aloud.
Anyway, she gets inside without a problem, and Sam professes his love for his new Camaro for allowing him to talk to a girl. Or at least talk at her.
Back in Washington, D.C., at the Pentagon National Military Command Center, we’re making weirdly racist calls on who hacked the military.
Up with Air Force One, a conspicuous boombox transforms into a robot, and then runs off to hack shit. The President of the United States requests some snack cakes. A flight attendant goes down to storage to retrieve said snack cakes, and finds that boombox in the elevator with her. Considering this is Air Force One, you’d perhaps expect her to immediately be suspicious of such a thing, but this is Bayverse, and we don’t think here.
The flight attendant brings the boombox down with her and places it on the counter as she goes to get the presidential snack cakes. The boombox immediately disappears. Now, you’d perhaps expect her to immediately be suspicious of such a thing, but this is Bayverse-
The flight attendant opens up the snack cake package, for some reason, and drops the cake on the floor. She then proceeds to eat it, and then act shocked when it tastes like floor. There’s a robot in her fucking line of sight, and you’d perhaps expect her to immediately be suspicious of such a thing-
She leaves to go feed the President floor cakes, and our little robot friend gets to work stealing government secrets. He, if nothing else, looks pretty cool doing it. He’s a very pointy lad.
Back at the Pentagon, Maddie- Rachael Taylor’s character- can hear the hacking. This sends everyone into a panic, because, well, that shouldn’t be happening. The hacking noise is a direct match to the one from Qatar, so that’s obviously a problem.
Back on Air Force One, our little robot friend is looking for “Project Iceman”, which he very quickly finds, and downloads everything they’ve got on it, and also plants a virus. The process seems to be… doing things to him. It’s weird. This movie is weird.
The Pentagon cuts all the system hardlines, stopping the process, but it’s too late- he got what he wanted, just about. Two security personnel come into the room, and the robot kills them both with some spinning blade disc nonsense. Air Force One is forced to land for the safety of everyone on-board. More security detail comes in to deal with the little bastard, but he transforms into a boombox and sits on a shelf to avoid suspicion. Now, you’d perhaps expect-
With the plane grounded, our robot is able to walk his little ass over to a cop car. And when I say walk, I do mean walk; this fucker is in multiple folks’ line of sight and nobody notices a thing. When he enters the car, he’s greeted by the mustachioed driver- the same driver who was operating the helicopter at the beginning of the film. This mustache man is a holographic avatar, one that’s being used by all the Decepticons.
We get our first real taste of Cybertronian language, as our robot- it’s Frenzy, his name is Frenzy- lets everyone know that he’s found a clue to the location of the AllSpark, and, through the power of the internet, knows where to find the guy who’s gonna give them what they need.
Three guesses to who it is, and the first two don’t count.
Back at the Witwicky household, Sam’s car does a runner in the middle of the night. Sam, horrified that his property is being stolen, pursues on a bike, screaming at his dad to call the cops. Sam also calls the cops, as he tears through the neighborhood.
The Camaro breaks into an abandoned building, Sam follows, and we finally get a shot of our audience appeal character. Sam watches in disbelief as a giant yellow space robot shines a beacon into the sky, then makes a video on his flip phone recording the experience. He apologizes to his parents for owning pornographic magazines, and goes to face his probable demise.
However, death does not come from above, instead manifesting itself as two of the strongest junkyard dogs in the known universe, who break their brick-inlaid chains to get at this little dip of a man. Sam is chased through the yard, climbing on top of a couple precarious oil drums, even though there’s a ladder, like, right there. The Camaro rolls in, scaring off the dogs, and Sam bolts, throwing the keys to his ride at his ride. When he gets outside, the cops have arrived, and immediately arrest him.
Back with the US government, the Secretary of State is having a conversation about all the bullshit that just went down with Air Force One. He and his fellow cishet old white men discuss their options, until Maddie comes in to set them straight on some of the facts. They act all indignant about it, because women can’t be smart, right?
Right???
RIGHT??????????
RIGH-
Anyway, we get a weird little deflection of Maddie’s role in everything, because a woman is nothing without the men around her, then she brings up the point that the bullshit that happened on Air Force One went down in just a few seconds, which isn’t something that anyone can actually do. She brings up quantum mechanics, which everyone blows off as nonsense- not that I wouldn’t as well- and theorizes on a DNA-based computer, which is technically a thing, if not trapped in the realm of speculation. It’s at this point that the Secretary of Defense tells her to come back when she can back these wild claims up, and isn’t just clearly spitballing.
And then he snaps his fingers at her, and any point he might have had leaves my brain so I have more room for being enraged.
Back with Sam, we’re at the police station talking to the cops. His dad is here, and Sam is trying to explain that his car is a dude. Even though he took at a video (one that was likely crap, given how quickly he spun his phone around to show off what he was seeing) the cops, understandably, don’t believe him. Then one of them, not so understandably, starts… threatening Sam? With his sidearm? And daring him to try something? This isn’t any sort of statement on the corruption of American law enforcement, it’s just bizarre.
Back in Qatar, our soldier buddies have found a telephone line, and are going to try to use it to get in contact with the rest of the world. It’s just too bad that Scorponok’s decided to make an entrance, and knock said telephone line the hell down. Ed Sheeran has next to no reaction to this, despite it happening maybe ten feet behind him. Fig speaks Spanish, and Ed Sheeran makes a point to be an asshole about it.
Scorponok is about to stab Lennox with his very pointy tail, when Epps notices- finally, someone with peripheral vision- and starts shooting. Then everyone starts shooting, kicking up enough sand to blind themselves, as Scorponok scuttles away, buries himself, then reappears behind Ed Sheeran.
Ed Sheeran does not survive this experience.
The others bolt, not wanting the same to happen to them, and for the fourth time I wonder just why the hell this young boy was at the base in the first place.
Off in the distance, the community of a nearby town wonders just what the shit is going on out in the desert. Our soldiers run into the town, and everyone gets their guns and start firing on Scorponok, who retaliates, because why the hell wouldn’t he?
Lennox demands that the young boy take him to his father, and proceeds to borrow his phone. As shit goes down outside, we have a sort-of gag where Lennox is trying to contact the Pentagon, while a telemarketer tries to get him to buy a phone package. In order for this call to go through, he’s going to need a credit card. This is where the well-known “pocket” scene comes from, as Lennox searches Epps’ pants for his wallet as he fires on Scorponok. It’s probably the best-written thing in this whole film.
With the credit card acquired, Lennox finally gets through to the Pentagon, and tosses Epps the phone so he can talk. Maybe he’s got anxiety about speaking on the phone, I dunno.
Scorponok shows off his disregard for historical architecture, blowing up several buildings, and the US government just watches this all go down. One of the actors in this scene looks like my dad, and it trips me up every time he’s on screen. Anyway, now the Pentagon knows about the giant space robots running around in Qatar. They send over some air support about it. All this manages to do is piss Scorponok off.
So they try it again.
This time it works, sort of.
At the very least, he’s left now.
Tail fell off, though.
Also, Fig’s been grievously wounded. The others, for once, don’t make fun of his native language while they help him hold his blood inside his body.
Back at the Pentagon, Maddie’s looking to prove that the bullshit that’s been going on is of the sci-fi variety, and in order to do that, she’s going to need a little outside help. She takes the information from the Pentagon, slaps it into an SD card, hides that shit in her blush compact, and then runs out the door to Glenn Whitmann’s house. Or, rather, his grandma’s house.
Glenn is a hacker, and shouldn’t be seeing anything that Maddie’s brought him, but everyone knows that confidentiality is for nerds, so whatever.
Back at the Pentagon, Maddie’s immediately been caught. It’s almost like slapping the military network onto an SD card maybe wasn’t such a hot idea.
But what do I know?
Glenn takes a look at the soundbite and figures out that there’s a code embedded in the thing in about two seconds. Good to know our tax dollars are being well-spent on the US military, that some dude in his jammies can figure this shit out faster than a whole team of analysts. They figure out that “Project Iceman” is involved with this somehow, and also the existence of Sector Seven.
It’s at this point that the FBI busts in. Good. I kind of want Maddie to go to jail for this, because she was about as stupid as she could be handling the situation.
Glenn’s cousin goes through a closed glass door- don’t worry, it’s tempered- and there’s a weird cut before that exact same shot continues, and he’s tackled into the pool. There was no reason for that to have happened, but here we are.
Back with Sam, we’re treated to him in his boxers, shooting basketballs in his room. He goes into the kitchen, where Mojo is standing on a stool. It’s a very tall stool, the sort you sit on, and he’s just… there. I don’t know how he got there. There’s no one else in the room besides Sam, and I know he didn’t put him there.
Clearly this must mean Mojo is God, and being on that stool is his divine will. I will be approaching the rest of the franchise with this in mind, because it’s clearly the only answer.
Our merciful Lord Mojo jumps up on the kitchen counter and begins growling at something through the window. Sam looks out… the opposite window… to find that his Camaro has returned to him, and is less than thrilled about it, to put it lightly. He drops a jug of milk- luckily it was mostly empty, given the sound it makes when it hits the floor- and gives his buddy Miles a call. You remember Miles, don’t you? If you don’t, it’s fine, because he reestablishes his quirkiness with a single shot, as he sits in a swimsuit and bathes his huge-ass dog in a kiddie pool, and answers the phone with a headset he just happened to be wearing. He must get a lot of calls during Dog Washing Hours.
After giving us one of the most intense voice cracks I’ve ever heard, Sam books it out of his house, hopping on a bike to escape his murderous Camaro. He’s not seen the thing commit any murders, mind you, but he seems pretty convinced that it would do the job, given half a chance. Also, this isn’t the bike he rode the night before; that one is likely being chewed on by those strong-ass junkyard dogs. No, for some reason, the Witwickys have a pastel pink girl’s bike, with the fun little handle tassels and the basket and everything. As far as I can tell, Sam is an only child, and if you think Bay’s going to allow for a teenage boy to have the vulnerability to own a pink bike, you’ve not been paying attention for the last 48.5 minutes.
The Camaro gives chase, rolling after Sam on his bike at a brisk 7 MPH down the friggin’ sidewalk, one of the only scenes in this travesty of a film to actually get me to crack a smile. Sam races through town until city planning puts a stop to him, through the magic of using chunks of cement to decorate the mulch around their trees. He crashes his bike, faceplants into the concrete in front of Mikaela, and promptly dies, thus ending the film.
No, he doesn’t die. I just told a fib. I’m sorry.
Instead, he does a flip and lands on his back, likely receiving a concussion, in front of Mikaela and her friends. Her friends laugh, because everyone hates Sam, as they should, and Mikaela says that what he just did was “really awesome.” Don’t try to be nice, Mikaela, this is Sam we’re talking about; you could stick the dude in the freezer overnight and he still wouldn’t be even remotely cool.
Sam gets back to the whole “running away from a car” deal, and Mikaela decides that this is the sort of thing she’d like to do with her day, so she ditches her friends in the middle of their scheduled Burger King™ time to go see what the hell Sam’s on about.
As Sam is chased by the Camaro who is being chased by Mikaela on her motorized scooter, a cop becomes involved, tearing through the streets to join this ridiculous game of tag. Now, we’ve seen two different flavor of cop so far- the mustachioed avatar cop car that picked up Frenzy from the airport, and the dude who threatened a teenage boy with a gun after accusing him of being under the influence of drugs. Either way, I don’t think this is going to turn out well for Sam.
Sam’s cornered himself under one of those really wide bridges where people can park their cars, which wasn’t terribly smart, but it’s Sam, so this is about par for the course. The Camaro manages to miss him, but the cop car does not. Sam is actually pretty cool with the cops being here, as if they could do anything about “Satan’s Camaro.” I guess he didn’t see the decal on the side of this car that says “to punish and enslave…”
Sam attempts to approach the car for help, and gets clotheslined by a car door for his troubles. He hits his head on the pavement, certainly exasperating the brain injury he received not ten minutes ago. Still, he continues to try to talk to the holographic avatar through the windshield, revealing that the bike he’s been riding is his mother’s. Mystery solved, I suppose.
The cop car doesn’t much appreciate being slapped on the hood, and begins to rev violently at Sam, threatening to run him over several times. Then it explodes into being a robot. Sam, who’s seen a lot of really weird shit in the last 24 hours, nopes out of the situation. It’s at this point that I realize he’s wearing a shirt for the band the Strokes. I don’t know why that stuck out to me, but it did. Guess my brain needed something to latch onto during all this.
Sam is running as fast as his little legs allow, as our newest robot friend takes up a leisurely jog to keep pace. Then he kicks Sam. He kicks Sam’s body like the football. This, of course, instantly turns Sam into a bag of jelly and kills him, thus ending the film.
No, he doesn’t die. I just told another fib. I’m sorry.
Sam somehow survives being punted by a giant metal leg and lands in the windshield of a car that doesn’t turn into a robot. Then he gets yelled at by the cop car. This is Barricade, a member of the Decepticons, and Sam’s got something he wants. Or, should I say “LadiesMan217” has something he wants.
LadiesMan217 is Sam’s Ebay username. This is both stupid because no teenage boy existing beyond the year 1985 would have ever called himself that, and also because it’s just stupid.
Barricade wants the glasses Sam presented for his genealogy report, and he wants them NOW. Seeing as the thing he wants is for sale, and nobody had been bidding on it, one would wonder why Barricade and his associates didn’t just try to purchase them like upstanding citizens. Perhaps Decepticons don’t understand the concept of money, or perhaps they don’t have a stable address to have the glasses shipped to. Or perhaps nobody considered that angle when the script was being put together. Who can say?
Sam gets back to running away from Barricade, we see where Mikaela got to, and the two of them collide. Sam rips Mikaela off of her scooter, and they both fall to the ground. Mikaela, who did not buckle the clasp on her helmet, asks Sam what his fucking problem is. Then his problem shows up, and they take a very long time to get up so they can run. So long, in fact, that the Camaro has to swing in to save them. After much pleading from Sam, Mikaela gets inside Satan’s Camaro, and the two of them are whisked away to safety. Barricade pursues, and then the butt rock starts.
There’s a lot of screaming and yelling, the Camaro busts through a window and several shelves in an abandoned building, there’s some drifting, and then suddenly it’s nighttime. Barricade somehow got in front of the Camaro, and is circling like a shark. The Camaro locks the two teenagers inside itself, though I suppose they could climb out through the still-open windows if they really wanted to. The Camaro cuts the engine off, then cuts it back on and bolts for the exit, and this somehow tricks Barricade long enough for them to get past.
The Camaro dumps Mikaela and Sam out one of the doors and then transforms into that yellow space robot we saw a bit ago. It’s Bumblebee! Nearly an hour in, and we finally get a proper look at the little bastard. I guess that’s what happens when you spend the first 20-something minutes on being xenophobic and appealing to the focus groups that think it’s fine sexualize high schoolers.
Bumblebee- no, he’s not introduced himself yet, but I just can’t keep calling him “the Camaro” anymore- comes out of his transformation ready to square the fuck up. Barricade throws himself at Bumblebee, they roll around on the ground for a bit, then things start sparking and exploding, because this is a Michael Bay film. Frenzy jumps out and starts chasing down Mikaela and Sam, while Bumblebee and Barricade murder death punch each other. Frenzy manages to grab Sam by the ankles, drag him to the ground, and rip his pants off. Not sure how that happened, considering he’s still got his shoes on.
While Sam’s busy being chased by a sentient pile of safety pins, Mikaela’s taken it upon herself to be proactive about her survival, and is raiding a nearby building for power tools. She sprints out holding an electric jig saw and saves Sam by decapitating Frenzy. If you know anything about Transformers, then you know this doesn’t actually kill Frenzy, but good on her for being a badass. Why couldn’t Mikaela be our main character again? Oh, right, because she’s a ~girl~.
Sam punts Frenzy’s head, like, 50 yards, which seems like something he shouldn’t be able to do, given that he’s a massive weenie, but there you are. With that out of the way, Sam takes Mikaela’s hand and they run off to go watch the giant robot fight. The bottom of Frenzy’s head turns into a spider and he crawls his way over to Mikaela’s purse. He’s gonna steal her gum, the fiend!
Mikaela and Sam have, unfortunately, missed the giant robot fight, which means that we, as the audience, have also missed the giant robot fight. Which is unbelievably stupid, seeing as everyone who has ever watched this movie came for the GIANT GODDAMN ROBOTS.
Mikaela asks just who the hell the yellow robot is, I guess because she’s finally had a second to process what the hell’s going on. Sam claims that he’s a super-advanced robot, “probably from Japan.” Whether or not this is a reference to the Japanese origins of the original toy line isn’t clear, though somehow I think it’s more xenophobia. Sam also makes the claim that if Bumblebee had intended to hurt them, he would have done it by now. This is quite the jump from a few hours ago, when he was calling the poor guy “Satan’s Camaro.”
Sam finally, finally asks Bumblebee what his deal is, and we get our first taste of the Bayverse Bumblebee Gimmick. The Gimmick here is that, due to an injury to his vocal processing, Bumblebee cannot communicate through traditional means, i.e. speech. Because of this, he instead strings together sentences by flicking through the radio frequencies and choosing key words. This can lead to some interesting audio design, like describing his fellow Autobots to “rain down like visitors form heaven, Hallelujah!” because a radio sermon fit what he was trying to say best.
This gimmick is one that has been used in other pieces of Transformers media, at least in part. Bumblebee is unable to speak traditionally in Transformers: Prime, and instead communicates in beeps and clicks that his teammates can understand, but not so much the humans, save for Raf. In Bumblebee (2018), the idea was used whole-cloth, with the injury resulting in his inability to speak happening on-camera within the first 10 minutes of the movie, and the idea of “expressing oneself through music” being introduced by his human companion Charlie Watson.
All in all, I rather like the idea going on here; it’s an interesting part of his character that opens up for a lot of interesting and creative moments.
It’s just too bad it was introduced in fucking Bayverse.
But yeah, anyway, the other Autobots are coming to Earth. Shit’s gonna be lit.
Bumblebee turns back into a Camaro, and Sam uses the power of FOMO to get Mikaela to go in the car with him. We get a shot of Barricade fucking dying on the side of the road. Frenzy murders Mikaela’s phone, and then steals its identity, including the little bejeweled heart stickers. Good thing Mikaela remembered to go get her purse, otherwise he probably would have felt very silly doing that.
Mikaela refuses to sit in the driver’s seat, seeing as she now knows Sam’s car is sentient, and sort of feels weird about this whole thing. Sam suggests that she sit in his lap instead, as the camera angles to give us a peek at the cup of Mikaela’s bra. When asked why the hell she should do such a thing, Sam says it’s a concern about her safety, given that the middle console of the car does not have a seatbelt. Sam either fails to recognize that seatbelts going over two layered bodies won’t save either of them in the event of a crash, or he’s just trying to make an excuse to have a pretty girl in his lap.
Given what movie this is, I’m going to guess it’s the latter.
Mikaela has a similar line of thought, but scoots over anyway, saying that the seatbelt line was a “smooth move”. It wasn’t, but if I picked apart every single bad line Sam had in this film, I’d be here all day.
Mikaela questions Bumblebee’s taste in alt-mode, which offends him to the point of dumping both her and Sam out in the street and driving away. He returns, moments later, as a sleek new Camaro, that I’m sure some car aficionados would call “sexy.”
Bumblebee’s alt-mode is a 2009 Chevrolet Camaro, of which there were none during the time of filming. It was put together for this movie in roughly five weeks. Sam is blown away by the fact that he now owns a car that does not currently exist in his universe. Mikaela is impressed, or at least she would be, if women were allowed to show that emotion in a non-horny way in a Bay film.
Judy doesn’t count.
As Bumblebee breaks into yet another restricted area, we get a shot of the Earth from orbit, as several objects rocket towards the planet. Sam and Mikaela watch the Autobots burn up in the atmosphere, and Mikaela tries to hold Sam’s hand as they do, and it’s at this point that I have to address how much I hate these two’s dynamic.
I don’t give a single solitary shit about this romance, because A) it’s poorly written, B) Mikaela could do infinitely better than Sam, C) I dislike Sam so very much, D) Mikaela, who is a way more interesting character, got placed on friggin’ love interest duty because ~girl~, and E) it’s useless padding to try and make me care about what’s happening here, and I just DON’T. I do NOT care about whether these two get together or not.
We see the Autobots crash-land, three out of four of them causing massive amounts of property damage and possibly killing at least one person. Their stasis pods crack open, and they each climb out, completely naked and in desperate need of clothing to hide their shame. With a quick scan of nearby vehicles, they’re once again decent to be seen in public.
Bumblebee drives the kids out to what I can only assume is the warehouse district he sent that beacon out in, as our collection of good guys finally come together at long last. A massive Peterbilt semi-truck stops directly in front of Mikaela and Sam.
We’re over an hour into this film, and we’re just now getting to the quintessential Transformer, Optimus Prime himself.
In the original cartoon, Optimus’s alt-mode was what’s known as a cabover truck, one where the cab- where the driver sits- is seated directly over the engine. These were popular during the days when maximum truck-lengths were much shorter than they are currently. This is why when you look at height charts for Optimus over various continuities, his G1 cartoon counterpart much shorter than his other iterations.
Modern trucks are longer, and don’t need the cab to sit on top of the engine to save on space. The designers chose to use a Peterbilt to make sure that Optimus would have an imposing stature when compared to his fellow Autobots.
Because heaven forbid we not have heightism come into play in this film.
Our Autobots transform, and say what you will about these bastards being visually incomprehensible, the transformations themselves are cool as hell. My personal favorite is Jazz’s, where he does a cool windmill into his root mode.
Optimus crouches like he’s looking at a cool bug on the sidewalk and addresses Sam by name. He doesn’t even acknowledge Mikaela, which I find to be a bit rude, but whatever. He then introduces himself as the leader of the Autobots.
Peter Cullen is back as the voice for Optimus Prime, sounding wonderful as always. He almost wasn’t brought on for this project, because Michael Bay didn’t want him. If the fans hadn’t thrown a hissyfit, who knows who we would have gotten to be our space dad for the next hour and a half?
This is actually an issue that’s recurred several times in the last few years, and not just with Cullen; Frank Welker, the voice of Megatron, as well as many other Transformers, has been refused roles within Transformers properties. In general, this is because both Cullen and Welker are union actors, and Hasbro would prefer to hire sound-alikes than pay more money for the originals. This isn’t to shame the non-union actors, goodness no, just to merely point out less-than-fantastic business practices.
I realize there have been a lot of tangents, but you have to understand that I am suffering as I do this.
Optimus then introduces his team- there’s Jazz, whose first line is “What’s crackin’ little bitches?”, Ironhide, who incorrectly quotes Dirty Harry, and Ratchet, who calls out just how obnoxiously horny Sam’s character is. We also finally get Bumblebee’s name.
Mikaela asks the very good question of why the fuck the Autobots are here on Earth. Optimus explains that the AllSpark is here, and they’ve got to get to it before Megatron does. He then goes on to explain who Megatron is, stating that he “betrayed” the Cybertronian empire.
No, how exactly he did that isn’t addressed. We’ll just have to take Optimus’s word, I suppose.
If you’ve sussed out by this point the the AllSpark and the Cube™ are the same thing, congrats! You win. Megatron followed the AllSpark to Earth, where he promptly was neutralized by the cold of the Arctic circle. This was 110 years prior to the events of this film, and where Archibald Witwicky came in to the story.
When the expedition was happening, Archibald fell through the ice during a collapse, and ended up finding Megatron’s frozen body in an ice cave. He went poking around on this strange metal giant, and ended up activating Megatron’s navigation systems, which imprinted the coordinates of the AllSpark onto Archibald’s glasses.
Don’t ask how that works, it just does.
So, the Autobots need the glasses, so they can find the AllSpark before the Decepticons do, so those guys don’t use it to build an army out of Earth’s machines, which will destroy humanity.
Sounds simple enough, let’s go get that vision correction device!
Back with the military dudes, everyone’s taking a gander at the tail that Scorponok left behind. They theorize that the metal that makes up these giant murder-robots reacts to extreme heat, but elaboration on that point will have to wait, because the tail has begun to flail. They quickly strap it down, then call the military to let them know to strap anti-tank guns onto anything that’s going to be approaching any giant robots.
Meanwhile, in an interrogation room, Maddie and Glen have been left to sweat a bit. Glen takes to stress-eating, while framing it as a psychological tactic to subconsciously prove his innocence to the FBI.
This is a fat joke, with the added nasty layer of Glen being a black man about to be interrogated by one of the most intimidating white cops I’ve seen in a hot minute.
Glen immediately folds, pinning all the blame on Maddie, and claiming that he’s been a perfect angel his whole life. We get some weird purity culture out of him, before Maddie lets the FBI know that she needs to talk to the Secretary of Defense, NOW.
Over at the Witwicky household, Sam’s parents are watching the news, trying to find out what all those loud crashes were about. Optimus Prime drives down their residential street, the rest of the gang in tow, then they all park to wait for Sam to go get the glasses.
For about 20 seconds.
Sam has to physically hold the door shut to prevent his father from coming out and seeing several very tall robots from outer space tip-toeing around his freshly-landscaped yard, I guess because they got antsy. Optimus plods around on the grass and breaks a fountain, and our benevolent god Mojo comes out of the house, assuredly to smite the leader of the Autobots.
Mikaela runs onto the scene, and Sam chastises her for not controlling the robots who didn’t even acknowledge her existence, outside of pointing out Sam was sexually attracted to her.
Mojo pees on Ironhide’s foot, which prompts Ironhide to threaten to shoot the creature. This is why Ironhide isn’t getting into heaven. Sam, one of Mojo’s chosen few, claims that the mortal shell of his god is seen as a beloved pet by many humans. Sam runs into the house, before Mojo can incur his divine wrath on the Autobots.
While Sam goes to get the glasses, the Autobots decide to do a little peeping on the house, watching his parents watch TV. Sam tears his room apart trying to find the glasses, and Optimus thinks that it would be helpful if he brought Mikaela up to help look. It’s at this point that I realize that Sam has an utterly bizarre fish tank.
I mean, legitimately, what the fuck is this? No filter, no plants, might not even have any rocks on the bottom. Is this a comically oversized bong Sam threw a couple fish into? What the fuck.
Mikaela starts looking for the glasses, running into what is likely a box of porn mags, then they both look out the window to find that the Autobots have decided to hide in plain sight by transforming... in the middle of Sam’s backyard. Amazing work, gentlemen.
Sam finally convinces the Autobots to go sit in the alley and wait, only for Ratchet to run into a power line and trip into a greenhouse. The resulting impact is interpreted as an earthquake. Judy does not have the reaction one might expect from someone who’s lived in California for at least ten years.
Ratchet’s fine, by the way.
The power cuts out, and Ron goes up to check on his son, because he’s at least a halfway-decent father. Ratchet’s shining a light to aid in the search for the glasses. Sam’s parents notice this bright light, and bang on Sam’s door to see what’s up.
Sam quickly hides Mikaela and then attempts to salvage the situation, answering the door and trying to control the narrative. Unfortunately, Ron is far too inquisitive for Sam to do this, and then Judy asks if Sam was masturbating.
Judy, is privacy just not a thing to you? Because if not, it really ought to be.
She keeps going with it too, trying to come up with code words, until another one of the Autobots trips and causes Ron to panic again, climbing into Sam’s ancient claw-foot bathtub to protect himself. He looks out the window to check on his beloved yard, lamenting that the earthquake tore it up.
Ironhide is strongly considering killing Sam’s parents. Optimus tells him that they don’t harm humans, and also begins to wonder if he made a mistake bringing this guy along.
Back in Sam’s room, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Sam is an absolutely terrible liar, and Mikaela reveals herself, if only to prevent Judy from trying to talk about self-pleasure again. Of course, now she gets to be subjected to both of Sam’s parents objectifying her, so this might be a lose-lose situation.
Sam is reminded that his backpack is in the kitchen, just in time for the government to show up at his house. Mikaela makes a comment about Judy being nice. I suppose on a surface level, yes, being told that you’re gorgeous by someone’s mom is nice. I do have to question the context that compliment took place in, however.
Sam’s about to hand the glasses over to the Autobots, when someone rings the doorbell. It’s Sector Seven, and they’re here to talk to Sam about his stolen car being part of an issue involving national security. Ron and Judy are more concerned about their yard being torn up, Judy yelling that they “need to get their hands off [her] bush.”
We still have another hour of this movie.
The agent leading this mission asks Sam to come with him for questioning, which his parents are very much against. Mojo also voices his displeasure, but it would seem that Agent Simmons is not a follower of the Tenets of Mojo. Sam gets geigered, and his readings are high enough for Sector Seven to take him and everyone in this house into custody.
As Sam and Mikaela are riding in the back of the car, Simmons brings up Sam’s Ebay account, and also the phone video he took of Bumblebee earlier in the week. Mikaela is rather unimpressed with Sam at the moment, probably because he’s gotten her arrested. She still tries to help him out though, because she really is just the nicest fucking person on the planet.
Alas, the combined efforts of these two teenagers isn’t enough to fool the long arm of the law, especially when it’s a branch of said law that deals with extraterrestrial activity. Simmons threatens to lock up these literal children for life if they don’t start talking. Mikaela isn’t taking the bait, so he goes after her father’s parole hearing instead.
Yep! As it turns out, Mikaela and her father stole cars to get by, and she’s got the record to back that claim up. Simmons calls her a criminal, then says that criminals are hot. Mikaela looks like she’s about to cry, and I don’t blame her in the slightest.
Optimus, I suppose because his dad senses were tingling, takes the opportunity to place his leg in the road for the car to run into, then grabs said car like an unruly cat and lifts it until the roof rips off due to stress. The agents in the other cars pile out and point their guns at the giant space robot. The rest of the Autobots quickly relieve them of their weapons.
Optimus notes that Simmons doesn’t seem surprised that a bunch of giant robots just took all his guys’ guns, and demands that he exit the vehicle, posthaste. Simmons obliges, after a bit more prodding. Mikaela undoes Sam’s handcuffs, and he gets fucking pissy about it, as if this girl he’s had a grand total of three (awkward) conversations with should have told him something as personal as “hey, so my dad’s in jail and I’ve been to juvenile detention.”
Luckily, she doesn’t let him get away with it, calling him out as the spoiled, self-centered, privileged little shithead that he is.
Of course, we don’t get any sort of real acknowledgement from Sam, having to move on with the plot. Perhaps, if we hadn’t spent the last hour and 20 minutes faffing about on drivel, we could have had Sam get an actual moment of self-reflection, and potentially even character growth. However, this is Bayverse, and everyone knows that personal accountability is for fucking sissies.
Mikaela and Sam ask several questions, but get no answers from Agent Simmons. And then Bumblebee pees on him.
I hate that I had to write that. I hate it very much.
Anyway, I don’t know why that had to happen, but it did, and I’m nothing if not thorough.
Optimus tells Bumblebee to cut it out, and with that the Sector Seven agents are cuffs and left on the side of the road. Mikaela orders Simmons to strip, as punishment for threatening her father, then cuffs him to a street lamp.
...Yes, that does sound like a bizarre sexual fantasy, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately for our teen heroes, they forgot to confiscate everyone’s phones, and Sector Seven knows what’s up, thanks to the power of speakerphone. More cars and a couple of helicopters show up basically immediately, and the Autobots decide it’s time to dip.
But not before Ironhide fires off a pulsewave into the ground that causes a five-car pileup.
Optimus, I suppose because he knows he chose a ridiculously flashy alt-mode that is in no way practical, just picks the kids up in and places them on his shoulder like a couple of parakeets, then takes up a leisurely jog to get away from the eyes in the sky. He runs through the city, racking up what is likely millions in property damage, as the helicopters pursue. He passes by a “Legalize LA” billboard, which feels odd to see, given what movie this is.
The ‘copters somehow manage to lose Optimus, despite him being relatively slow, and having a notable radiation level that they’ve been using to track him. He hides inside the scaffolding of a bridge, only for Mikaela and Sam to slip off of his polished body to their deaths, thus ending the film.
No, they don’t die. I just told another fib. I’m sorry.
Bumblebee snatches them up just before they hit the ground, the impact of his metal body catching them at 75 mph, killing them instantly and ending the film.
Nope, that doesn’t happen either.
Mikaela and Sam are fine, some-fucking-how, but Sam’s dropped the MacGuffin glasses. The helicopters swing back around, having noticed the sound of a car crashing into the ground and the screams of two whole adolescents. They break out a fucking harpoon gun and fire on our kid appeal character.
Repeatedly.
They wrap up Bumblebee in a series of cables, as he screams like a moose. Mikaela and Sam are held at gunpoint by what is honestly far too many dudes, and are then arrested for the second time in ten minutes. Bumblebee is smoked... because he’s a bee? Sam, not liking this one bit, finds the strength in his weenie body to push a cop off of himself, run at one of the dudes with the smoke guns, throw him to the ground, and then start smoking him. He’s immediately tackled, but points for trying.
Sam and Mikaela are placed back into custody, and the rest of the Autobots regroup with Optimus to see what the plan is. Optimus says that they can’t save Bumblebee without hurting humans, so I guess Bumblebee is just a POW now. Well, at least they got the glasses. That’s cool.
Back at the Pentagon, things are getting dicey, as the other world powers are starting to suspect that something’s up. The Secretary of Defense is approached by a man with a mustache and a briefcase. He’s from Sector Seven, but the Secretary gives not a fuck about mysterious organizations. All the computers in the room suddenly go down, the virus from earlier working its magic- only this time, the blackout is global.
Mr. Mustache opens his briefcase, while explaining that Sector Seven is something known as a “special access” sector of the government, which is why nobody’s ever heard of it; it’s beyond top secret. Commissioned by President Herbert Hoover 80 years prior, it deals with alien life.
When the Beagle 2 spacecraft was lost on the way to Mars in 2003, the mission was declared a failure. This was a lie. The Beagle 2 recorded several seconds of Mars before being crushed to death by a Transformer. This tidbit is pretty funny, given that the Beagle 2 was rediscovered on Mars in 2014, seven years after this film released. Not a terribly mysterious death anymore, is it?
Comparing the footage from Mars to the footage from Qatar has Sector Seven thinking that these are the same species. Which they are. God, it’d be so fucked up if there were two species of giant robots in this film.
Mr. Mustache theorizes that because the Transformers now know that they can be harmed by human weaponry, they’re being proactive about their safety and shutting down all forms of communication technology with that virus that keeps popping up. It’s only a matter of time before the shit hits the fan for humanity.
Mr. Secretary tells his guys to try going analog with comms, breaking out the short-wave radios, to tell their ships to return home.
Over at an Air Force base, Lennox and the gang have landed, only to be scooped up by a bunch of dudes in suits.
Back with Maddie and Glen, the two of them have fallen asleep in the interrogation room, Maddie still wearing her friggin’ four inch pumps as her legs are propped up on the table, crossed in a way that seems rather uncomfortable. Glen gets to sleep like a normal human being, with his head resting on his forearms. Why this place doesn’t have a holding cell for these situations is beyond me.
Mr. Secretary comes in to bring Maddie on as his advisor. Glen can come too, I guess, considering he’s the one who actually figured out the sound file virus.
We get a little military glorification, and then it’s revealed that Mikaela and Sam, as well as Maddie and Glen, are aboard this helicopter. Their paths cross at last. Our heroes are transported to the Hoover Dam, where Bumblebee is also. They are still smoking him.
Meanwhile, the Autobots are figuring out where to go, with the power of Archibald’s glasses. Ratchet, who I guess is omnipotent, senses that the Decepticons have also figured out the location, and that this is going to be a race against the clock. And I mean, he’s right, but the phrasing is a bit odd.
Jazz wants to know when they’re going to save Bumblebee. Optimus says that they aren’t, and that Bumblebee’s sacrifice is noble, and that he would want the Autobots to leave him and complete the mission. As this is said, we get another shot of Bumblebee getting smoked and trapped in a lab. Yep, this is totally what he would want. He absolutely signed up for this, giving himself up to the government and not at all fighting like mad to not be captured.
I don’t think Bayverse Optimus actually knows what martyrdom is, which is bizarre, given that it’s a major trait in a lot of other iterations of the character.
Ironhide isn’t even sure why they’re bothering to save humanity, given that humans are violent and awful, his point being hammered home as Bumblebee is tortured for scientific reasons. Ironhide seems to have forgotten that Cybertron has been at war for literally millions of years. Optimus has faith in humanity, however, stating that we’re “young”.
And then he says that he’s going to end his own race, by destroying the Cube™, which is how they reproduce, because that’s the only way to end the war.
Which is arguably one of the most hardcore fictional applications of eugenics ever conceived.
Being advocated for by Optimus Goddamn Prime.
We still have another 50 minutes of this movie.
Optimus then proves that he does, in fact, know what self-sacrifice is, stating that, if all else fails, he’ll shove the AllSpark into his spark, which will destroy them both. He’s pretty chill about it, too.
Up on top of the Hoover Dam, Frenzy has fallen out of Mikaela’s bag.
Mr. Secretary is also at the Hoover Dam now, as is Lennox’s team. Oh, and Agent Simmons, who is thankfully wearing pants. He offers to buy Sam a coffee, as repartitions for threatening his family, arresting him, and being a complete creep to a teenage girl. Sam gives not a fuck about caramel macchiatos with extra foam and chocolate drizzle, however. He only cares about his car.
Mr. Mustache, who is also here, needs Sam to spill the beans on all these friggin’ giant robots that are running around. This is where Sam realizes he has the upper hand for once, and he starts making demands. One such demand is having Mikaela’s record scrubbed clean, which is an actually very nice thing for him to have done for her. We’ll see if his intent comes to fruition. For now, it’s time to talk about Bumblebee.
We get a shot of all these folks heading into the secret base hidden inside the Hoover Dam, and it’s at this point that I notice that Maddie’s shirt is basically see-through.
Inside the Dam, we see that Sector Seven′s been keeping Megatron this entire time, keeping him neutralized with cryo-stasis since 1935. Cryopreservation was invented in the 50′s. This isn’t a nitpick, I just thought it was a neat little fact.
Megatron being on Earth has resulted in most modern technology. This sort of plot point always bothers me, because it takes away agency from the entire human race. We didn’t use our own ingenuity and work ethic to advance society, we plagiarized from a more advanced species. I dunno, it just rubs me the wrong way.
We get the part of the movie where info is hashed out, so that everyone is on the same page, Sam spouting off Autobot propaganda. We can forgive him for this,considering he’s 16, and no one is immune to propaganda, especially when they have zero way of doing their own research to form their own opinion with.
Sector Seven also has the AllSpark, kept in the room next to Megatron’s, like the chumps they will soon find themselves to be. It’s about ten stories tall and the reason the Hoover Dam exists. With so much concrete suppressing its alien energies, surely no one will ever find it!
Except for Frenzy, who came in through a mouse hole. Whoopsie-doodle!
The AllSpark zaps the nasty little man, restoring his body with its weird MacGuffin powers. Frenzy tells all his coworkers that he found what they were looking for, and everyone starts heading over.
Maddie asks Mr. Mustache what exactly he means by “energies”, perhaps worried that this whole thing has been some elaborate ploy to get her to invest in magic healing stones. Mr. Mustache brings everyone into a testing chamber, since the best way to explain how the AllSpark works is through a demonstration.
There’s a big fish tank in the middle of this testing chamber, in which Agent Simmons places a donated device from the crowd- Glen’s Nokia phone, specifically. Simmons makes a geologically-confused comment. When this is pointed out by Maddie, Mr. Secretary hushes her, simply saying that Simmons is a strange man. The tank is locked down, and then the show starts.
Cube™ energies are shot into the tank, and the phone explodes into life, transforming into a gorilla-shaped gremlin creature. Happy birthday, little dude!
Little dude starts shooting at the tank walls, cracking the glass until Simmons pulls the trigger and ends it. Happy deathday, little dude!
The Decepticons are making tracks towards the Hoover Dam, but Starscream- yeah, he’s in this now, don’t worry about it- arrives first, because he is a very fast jet. He transforms, showing off his ridiculous Dorito body, and fires on the base’s generators. The resulting explosions can be heard all the way down in the testing chamber, and Mr. Mustache calls upstairs to see what’s up. Looks like Megatron may be getting warmed up, seeing as his ice bath has been cut off. Lennox asks if there’s an arms room in Sector Seven, which sort of feels like asking a bakery if they have any flour.
Frenzy has entered the room that houses the controls for the cryo-stasis and set that whole system to “no, thank you”.
Mr. Mustache runs through the base, screaming for everyone to get to the Megatron chamber. Off in the distance, the Autobots approach. Could probably used some fliers on your team, huh Optimus?
Back with Frenzy, he’s decided to just straight-up raise Megatron’s core temperature directly. Hope he doesn’t do it too fast; rewarming hypothermia victims recklessly can do some serious damage.
Outside of the base, Lennox and the boys are loading up with weaponry, along with what’s the entirety of Sector Seven′s cannon-fodder department. Oh, and all the main cast. Yep, just got a couple of teenagers chillin’ in the munitions room.
Sam wants Simmons to take him to his car- he hasn’t used Bumblebee’s name in a hot minute, not sure what’s up with that- even though Simmons is currently busy loading a very large gun. Simmons doesn’t want to do that, because he’s got no idea if what Sam mentioned earlier is even true, and he doesn’t want to pin the fate of humanity on a single Camaro. Lennox takes this opportunity to tackle Simmons, despite likely not knowing that Bumblebee is one of the “good guys”. A Sector Seven guy very much doesn’t like that, and points a gun at Lennox, which prompts all of his guys to also start threatening folks with guns.
Mr. Mustache walks in on the scene, but doesn’t do anything, since he isn’t armed and knows better than to tangle with someone who’s packing. Simmons tries to intimidate Lennox, because he must have missed the day of boot camp where they tell you that guns kill people. Lennox is fully committed to shooting this dude in the lungs before Mr. Secretary suggests he give the people what they want, before things get ugly.
Simmons takes everyone to the robot torture department of Sector Seven, where they are still smoking Bumblebee. Geez, you’d think they’d have something in place for if they ever came across another giant robot after Megatron, but I guess not. The gang gets everyone to stop smoking Bumblebee, which allows him to stop moose-screaming and strongly consider murdering everyone involved with his forced captivity. Unfortunately, revenge with have to wait, as we’ve still got to deal with the AllSpark, and the fact that the Decepticons are here.
They take Bumblebee to the AllSpark, where he makes direct contact the thing, causing the AllSpark to transform, compacting itself down into a far more reasonable size that Bumblebee can carry in one hand. It doesn’t seem to weigh more than a grown adult, if his body language is saying anything. I’d make a joke about the conservation of mass being ignored, but since this is Transformers, I can’t really say much. Conservation of mass doesn’t exist for this franchise.
Bumblebee would really like to get this show on the road, and Lennox agrees, quickly formulating a plan to get away from Megatron and taking the AllSpark to Mission City, which is relatively close to their current location, so that they can hide it there.
Lennox, I know this plan is a first draft, and we don’t have a ton of time for revisions, but the whole point of building a whole-ass dam around the Cube™ was because it was very difficult to hide, given its magical MacGuffin powers. Regardless of this flaw, Mr. Secretary agrees. Lennox also asks that the Air Force be involved in this, I guess because the U.S. military wanted more screentime.
Of course, that whole “global blackout” thing is still going on, so we’re going to have to get creative with how we’re going to contact the Air Force. Mr. Secretary and Simmons make a break for the WWII-era radio Sector Seven has, while Lennox and the boys head out to shoot things, and Mikaela and Sam hop into Bumblebee with the Cube™.
This is about the point that Megatron wakes up. The first thing he does is introduce himself, which I thought was very polite of him. Then he breaks out his flail and starts bashing shit around. Not so polite, that.
Over with Bumblebee, we’re shown that the AllSpark, all-powerful object that can create life and is the whole reason this conflict is even happening, is just chillin’ in the back seat by itself. It’s not even buckled up.
Megatron escapes the base, and it’s actually super easy. He just transforms, goes through the tunnel, and he’s free. I feel like we could have at least attempted some security measures for in case the cryo-stasis failed, given that we’ve had this dude in containment for the last 70-something years, but okay.
Starscream comes over to say hi to his boss, not that Megatron gives a shit. He just wants to know where that fucking Cube™ is. When Starscream tells him that the humans have it, Megatron makes a comment about how Starscream has failed him yet again. This is their first interaction in this movie, and Starscream’s been in the story for a grand total of five minutes at this point. I know that this is a reference to their dynamic in just about every installment of the franchise up to this point, but it doesn’t feel earned in the slightest. Even if it’s going to be expanded upon in future sequels, this is a shit-tier way to set their (awful) relationship up.
Not that anyone should ever bank on getting a sequel anyway, but that’s a discussion for another time.
Megatron tells Starscream to retrieve the AllSpark, and then we cut over to the radio plotline. The radio, which is so cobweb-covered I feel like Sector Seven needs to have a serious discussion with their custodial staff, has its nobs and buttons fiddled with by Simmons until it crackles to life. But where are the microphones? Everyone starts looking for the mics, as Simmons pushes Glen into the seat, I guess because hacking modern computers and using Depression-era radio tech are similar enough.
Maddie asks Glen if he can hotwire a 90′s-era computer to transmit a tone through the radio, so that they can send a Morse code message to the Air Force. Which sounds ridiculous to me, but I don’t know enough about radios or computers to know if that sort of thing would be possible. Maybe it’s fine. Or maybe it’s Hollywood bullshit. Who knows?
Back over with Bumblebee, we get a bunch of car commercial shots, of both him and the other Autobots. Aww, the gang’s back together again! Nobody tell Bumblebee that Optimus was completely cool with leaving him to his fate.
Optimus and the gang whip around to join the convoy, and everyone makes their way towards Mission City.
Back at the radio subplot, someone’s bangin’ on the door, trying to get in. The others try to block the intruder, while Glen does his hacking stuff. Mr. Secretary breaks a case and pulls out a gun that’s about as old as he is.
Glen gets the computer working, and Mr. Secretary gives him the Super Secret Military Codewords™ to use to talk to the Air Force. While he does that, Simmons finds a flamethrower and starts burning Frenzy as he attempts to enter the room. The Air Force receives the message for an air strike. Oh, goody.
Over with the convoy, it appears that the Autobots and Lennox’s boys are being pursued by the Decepticons. It’s difficult to tell, seeing as the cameras have gone full Bay-mode, but I’m guessing that’s what’s up. One of the Decepticons flips over a minivan, likely killing a family of five. another causes a multi-car pileup.
Bonecrusher transforms, then Optimus transforms. Bonecrusher iceskates across the highway, slamming into a bus so hard it just straight-up explodes. He is on fire. He tackles Optimus, and they proceed to fall off the side of the raised highway they’re on. Then they beat the shit out of each other, until Optimus decapitates Bonecrusher with his arm-sword.
Yeah, space dad is a little intense in the Bayverse.
Back at Sector Seven, Frenzy’s decided to leave the door alone, and instead is crawling through the ventilation shaft. Mr. Secretary and Simmons fire off shots into the duct above them, as if bullets would do anything against this nasty little pile of needles.
Frenzy bursts through the bottom of the duct and crash-lands into a glass case, taking cover behind a pillar and fires on the humans on the other side of the room. While this shootout is happening, Glen receives a response from the Air Force, just in time for Frenzy to accidentally decapitate himself with one of his own spinning blades of death. This time, he does not survive losing his head.
The Air Force will be sending fighter planes to Mission City, and to establish this, we get several shots of what some might call “military porn.”
Over in the city, the convoy has arrived. Lennox hands several short-wave radios over to Epps, telling him to use them to direct the Air Force when they arrive, so they can take the AllSpark... somewhere, I guess. Above, an F-22 zooms across the sky. It is not one of the Air Force’s F-22s.
Ironhide recognizes Starscream, and gets ready to throw down. Bumblebee grabs a nearby Furby truck and hoists it up to use as a shield. This marginally works, as the missile that hits the truck doesn’t immediately kill him, though it probably did all those Furbies inside.
The resulting explosion throws all the humans around, Mikaela getting weird heaven lighting as she lies unconscious on the pavement. Sam gets it too, though, so I suppose I can’t complain too much about this particular shot. They touch hands. I really wish that I could take this moment of vulnerability as being anything other than an attempt to set up a romance between these two teens who have known each other for maybe half a week. This movie has so starved me of genuine human interaction I'm jumping at the smallest of scraps.
Bumblebee actually didn’t get out of that missile-strike unscathed, his legs having been blown off. All those Furbies died for nothing. Tragic. Sam asks Bumblebee if he’s alright, and immediately tells him to get up. Sam then remembers that Bumblebee’s legs are off, so he yells for Ratchet.
Over with Lennox and Epps, they’ve realized that the plane they saw wasn’t one of theirs. Which, you know, has already been established, but points for getting caught up, fellas. Sam is crying and still telling Bumblebee to get up. Bumblebee is dragging himself across the pavement and whimpering. It’s awful. Where the fuck is Ratchet? This is basically the only reason he’s in this film, and he’s nowhere to be found.
The actual Air Force calls on the radio, asking for their location. Brawl, who is a tank, starts firing on Lennox’s gang. Jazz and Ratchet race through the city streets. How they were separated from the rest of the team is anyone’s guess.
Sam takes a little sit on the pavement to be with Bumblebee, while Mikaela decides to problem-solve and heads for a nearby tow truck. Bumblebee hands Sam the Cube™ because, as the designated protagonist, it’s his job to handle it in the climax of the film.
Ironhide is shot at several times by Brawl, narrowly avoiding being hit each time. This, of course, means that the people he drives by in this shot are almost assuredly dead, since they’re right next to the explosions. He transforms and does a flip, as the film goes slow-mo on a shot of a woman in a low-cut dress watching him flip. She screams. Ironhide screams. I scream, though probably for a different reason.
Jazz jumps on Brawl, managing to kick off a couple pieces of kibble before Brawl grabs him and throws him into the side of a building. Ironhide, Optimus, and Ratchet descend on Brawl, and so does Lennox’s team, Brawl losing a hand and getting thrown into his own building as a result.
Mikaela breaks into the tow truck and starts to hotwire that shit. Wow, a relevant back story that culminates in her being able to save the day, thus completing her arc and staying on-theme for her character. Why isn’t Mikaela the protagonist again?
Oh, right, because ~girl~.
Megatron lands in a nearby alleyway, and Ratchet, knowing this dude is bad news, tells everyone to head for the hills. Jazz isn’t fast enough, however, and gets shot for his troubles.
Mikaela drives the truck over to Sam, who is still sitting there with the Cube™, and tells him to get his ass in gear.
Jazz gets taken to the top of a nearby building and is ripped in two by Megatron, who acts like a bird of prey the whole sequence. Down on the ground, Brawl is starting to get back up from his smackdown. Blackout appears on a nearby skyscraper. Things are looking grim for humanity.
Mikaela and Sam hook Bumblebee up to the tow line as Lennox approaches them. Sam has left the AllSpark out of his line of sight, like a fool. Despite seeing this, Lennox still gives him the flare to let the military know where to pick up the AllSpark. Doesn’t even acknowledge Mikaela. He tells Sam to head for the white building with statues on top of it and set the flare on top of the roof. Lennox can’t leave his men, because he’s the head of his operation. Why he can’t send literally anyone else who isn’t a 16 year-old boy isn’t made clear.
Sam really doesn’t want to do this, probably because he’s a child, but Lennox has recruited him to the military against his will, so he must. Lennox then attempts to make Mikaela leave for her own good, but she tells him to fuck off, because she’s gonna save Bumblebee. Clearly, this is a win for feminism.
Epps radios the choppers coming from the Air Force to let them know they’ll be picking up a package from a teenager, thus locking Sam into the job. Ironhide and Ratchet vow to protect Sam from the Decepticons on his way to the pickup point. Not one single person has pointed out how fucked up this is.
Sam starts to run off, when Mikaela stops him to let him know that she’s glad she got in the car with him roughly an hour ago. They don’t kiss goodbye, which, honestly? Good. This fucking movie hasn’t earned that. Sam for sure hasn’t earned that, even if he did clear her juvie record. No word on that having actually been done, by the way. Sam never got confirmation, and I feel like he’s not really the type to follow up on things.
Brawl fires off some shots and makes things explode. Ratchet and Ironhide provide cover fire as Sam sprints down the road. Yep, they’re making this idiot WALK to the pickup point. Sure hope the elevators are working today, otherwise this is going to take forever.
Sam carries the AllSpark like a football, and in a better movie, this would have been foreshadowed by Sam having actually been a football player prior to the events of the film, perhaps removed from the team for some character flaw he’s since grown from/accepted. However, this is Bayverse, and well, men don’t have to justify their existence in the story with things like themes and having even an ounce of thought put into their character.
Back with Mikaela, Lennox has refused to learn her name, calling her “girl” as he screams at her to get Bumblebee hooked up to the tow truck. Which she was already doing when he got here. Lennox, dude, you’ve got a daughter now, you’re super extra not allowed to treat women like this.
Optimus Prime pulls through an alleyway and crashes into a pile of garbage. I can forgive him being late, seeing as he is a big rig, and probably had to take the long way into town so he didn’t get stuck in too-low tunnels. Don’t worry about how we briefly saw him during the Brawl take-down. This is his for real entrance into the climax.
He whips around and transforms, ready to throw the fuck down. Megatron spots him from his perch and descends.
Y’know.
Like a vast, predatory bird.
Megatron shoots at Optimus in his alt-mode, and Optimus catches him like a frisbee. Unfortunately for Optimus, it would appear that the horsepower on a Cybertronian flightcraft is hella intense, and he’s carried away. The two of them crash through an office building, then roll around in the streets punching each other in the face, debating the worth of humanity as they do so. Wish I actually gave a shit about either of these people, but alas! The film spent most of its runtime objectifying women and insulting minorities. I know nothing about Optimus, and even less about Megatron.
Megatron transforms his arms into a laser gun, and Optimus does the same. They shoot at each other. Optimus gets thrown into a building, then lands on the sidewalk below, definitely crushing a dude underneath him, but I guess we didn’t check that the shot was clear for where the CGI was gonna go, so he’s fine.
Sam’s still running through the streets, while Blackout murders, like, so many people behind him. Starscream lands in front of Sam, running into roughly 30 cars as he skids to a halt. Ratchet and Ironhide fire on him, as Sam takes a breather behind a car. Starscream transforms and blasts off. He was here for about 15 seconds. Sam begins running again.
Megatron is now following Sam, because he wants that Cube™. Sam is hit by a car- not an evil one, just a regular car- and trips. The impact makes the AllSpark activate, which grants several machines in the vicinity the gift of life, including the car full of bitchy women that just hit Sam, who are upset that hitting a human being might have scratched the paint.
I get it, you hate women, can we PLEASE stop beating this dead horse?
Sam finally gets to the pickup building, which turns out to be abandoned and fenced off. Good thing the gate was open, otherwise things could get really complicated. He heads inside, Megatron crashing through a floor-to-ceiling window shortly behind him. Megatron makes the claim that he can smell where Sam is. I’m going to choose to believe that he isn’t lying here, since Ratchet did something similar earlier.
Sam finds the stairs, and Megatron calls him a slur.
He doesn’t, really, but the voice modulation certainly makes it sound that way.
While this is happening, Mikaela is driving the tow truck down an alley, dragging Bumblebee behind her with the tow cable. She stops for a moment to have a short breakdown, seeing as she is a teenager in what is currently a warzone.
Sam is still running up the stairs. Outside, the military shoots at one of the Decepticons. It is, of course, doing absolutely nothing to the giant metal space robot. Mikaela concludes her moment, looking back at Bumblebee, who gives her the okay to keep going with dragging his ass across the pavement. She whips the truck around and tells Bumblebee “I’ll drive, you shoot.”
Mikaela then proceeds to speed down a main road of this sizable city backwards, running into cars and more or less shoving Bumblebee along to his destination.
The military has finally realized that their efforts have been pointless, but it’s okay because Bumblebee is here with his superior firepower. Bumblebee proceeds to shoot Brawl in the chest, which kills him. After this, he tries to act cute, lifting up his battle mask in a very “did I do that?” way, as if he’s not the same guy who ripped Barricade apart earlier.
Sam, meanwhile, has finally reached the top of this dilapidated building. Helicopters are approaching his location, but will they make it to him before Megatron does? Honestly, I’d be more worried about Starscream on the building just due East.
Sam is just about to hand the AllSpark over, when Starscream fires at the ‘copter, causing it to crash and nearly chop Sam to pieces. Optimus Prime runs towards the scene, on a roof that I refuse to believe could actually support him. Megatron punches thought the roof from the bottom and asks Sam some philosophical questions. Sam can’t answer, given that he’s hiding on the edge of this building, his flimsy grip on one of the angel statues being the only thing keeping him from falling.
Megatron tells him to give him the AllSpark, and in exchange he might not kill him immediately. Sam tells him to fuck off, and Megatron flails the chunk of building he was hanging on to, causing Sam to fall to his death, thus ending the film.
I’m lying to you. Michael Bay is making me into a liar.
No, Sam is, instead, caught by Optimus, very likely breaking several ribs on impact. This is the point where I realize that they’ve given Optimus fingernails. Sam clings to him like a baby koala, as Optimus parkours down the sides of two buildings, Megatron in pursuit. Megatron actually lands on Optimus 2/3rds of the way down, causing the both of them to fall onto the pavement below. How Sam survives this is a mystery.
Megatron recovers from the fall first, flicking a human away from him for having the audacity to exist in his space. The flicked person hits a car, and is almost assuredly dead. At least, I sure hope so, given that this is the director cameo by the Bayman himself.
Feminist icon Megatron?
Feminist icon Megatron.
Optimus comments on the fact that Sam almost fucking died to get the AllSpark out of dodge, and we get the return of “No Sacrifice, No Victory”. Which, I mean, I guess he’s allowed to say that, since he’s actually had to do something that warranted it. His dad doesn’t get to, though.
Optimus then tells this teenage boy, who has already had a hell of a day, to kill him by shoving the AllSpark into his robot-soul-heart, should he be unable to defeat Megatron.
I dunno, I just feel like it’s a bit of an ask.
Sam climbs off of Optimus so the Prime and Megatron can rumble. He runs through the ruined infrastructure of the city, so he’s less likely to be crushed. Optimus tells Megatron to square the fuck up, stating that “one shall stand, one shall fall.”
Then he gets ragdolled around a bunch, so maybe he should have saved the talk for later in the game.
The military is running around some more, stopping in an alley to see Blackout transform to root mode. Yes, the goo-goo eyes were indeed made by several members of the watch party that started this whole thing. People went wild for Rotor-Cape Johnson.
The fighter jets from the US military are arriving in a minute. Epps warns them to aim for the robots that aren’t evil. Lennox and the gang spread out, reminding each other to aim for the underboob, since Transformers’ armor is weak there. Epps marks Blackout with a little green light, which Blackout almost immediately notices. Blackout fires on the military.
Lennox has stolen a motorcycle and is driving through the streets to circle back around and jump off of the bike, sliding on his back to shoot Blackout directly in his underboob. Wonder what his uniform is rated for for road rash.
Sam is watching as Optimus gets his ass handed to him. Up in the sky, Starscream commits identity theft, and then attacks the Air Force. The Air Force can multitask however, and light Megatron the fuck up. Sam has, for some reason, come out of hiding, and Megatron uses this to his advantage, trying to take the AllSpark from him.
Optimus tells Sam to put the AllSpark in his chest, but Sam has a better idea. He shoves it into Megatron’s chest, which has been basically shot open at this point. Megatron makes a Space Invader noise, convulses a bit, then falls over dead.
Congrats on your first murder, Sam.
Optimus tells Megatron’s corpse that he got what was coming to him, then implies that they’re brothers. What flavor of brother isn’t established, but neither was basically anything between the two main faces of the franchise in this film, so it’s fine.
Ironhide walks up holding the two halves of Jazz. Optimus informs Sam that he now has a life-debt to this child. Whether or not Sam is absorbing any information at this point is up in the air. Mikaela shows up, with Bumblebee in tow.
In tow.
In tow-
Sam stares at her blankly. Mikaela stares back, making the pretty girl face. Man, what a great dynamic these two have.
Jazz is dead. That sucks. Optimus is handed his corpse to hold, while he thanks his new friends for helping out.
Then Bumblebee talks and he’s fucKING BRITISH.
Sam is obviously shocked by the fact that Bumblebee is British able to talk now, since not talking has been his whole thing up to this point. Optimus doesn’t let it phase him. Neither does Ratchet, despite having been working on Bumblebee’s throat injury for centuries at this point.
Bumblebee wants to stay on Earth with Sam. Optimus is just like whatever. Sam agrees to have a sweet Camaro from outer space.
Optimus pulls what is left of the AllSpark out of Megatron’s chest. I’m sure that’s not a setup for potential conflicts, not in the slightest.
Over in Washington, D.C., the US President has ordered Sector Seven be terminated, and all the Transformer corpses be disposed of. And by “disposed of” they mean “thrown into the ocean.” Dang, sure hope Earth signed some sort of agreement with the Transformers so that they never come to Earth again. You know, just be proactive about our galactic safety.
The Linkin Park kicks on, as Optimus gives us our bookend narration, telling us what the Autobots plan to do now that their race is at a genological dead end. As he does, we see Lennox reunite with his wife and child, who I had genuinely forgotten were in this movie.
Optimus is pretty chill with Cybertron dying out, because now they know about Earth. We get a shot of Sam and Mikaela making out, a shot that becomes more and more horrifying the further they zoom out, because they’re making out on top of Bumblebee. Who they KNOW is a sentient creature at this point.
And then it gets even worse, because the shot changes, and oh hey! Turns out that the rest of the Autobots were just chillin’ off to the side while this went down. Optimus continues his monologue, just walking around in his root mode as he tells all of Makeout Point how they’re “robots in disguise” now.
The monologue is actually a transmission he’s sending out into space, inviting any of his leftover pals to come kick it on Earth with them, because Earth is pretty cool.
And that’s where they leave us.
IT TOOK THREE PEOPLE TO WRITE THIS SCHLOCK.
So. Bayverse 1. A film showcasing xenophobia, misogyny, and toxic nationalism. It’s rough. Is it the worst film I’ve ever seen? Not even close, but it’s bad, and it was a huge deal at the time of release. Everyone was seeing it, everyone knew the actors and robots, everyone had a scene that they liked. Everyone was exposed to Bayverse, and as a result, a lot of people entered the Transformers franchise thinking that it was all like this.
And really, how far off would they have been in 2007?
When a franchise refuses to introduce female characters until years after being established, when all those female characters have the exact same body type, when a franchise hires misogynists to write stories, when it allows shit like “Prime’s Rib!” to be published- no wonder Michael Bay was approached to direct.
What a mess.
--------------------------
COMING SOON:
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009) - MEGAN FOX I AM SO FUCKING SORRY
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON (2011) - WILL YOU JUST STAY DEAD
TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (2014) - SHUT UP ABOUT THE LAW SHUT UP ABOUT THE LAW
TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT (2017) - ACTUALLY, FUCK CONTINUITY
#transformers#bayverse#part one#maccadam#Hannzreads#Hannzwatches#text post#long post#film analysis#off topic
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Hi bitches, I'm a bit nervous to ask this but I'm being genuine I promise. I don't want you to think I'm some biggoted old fool.
Could you please help me understand how sex work isn't exploitative? I hear a lot of people saying "it's just the same as normal work, it's better than my job at Amazon/target/wherever and no one is calling that work exploitative" or "well you wouldn't do YOUR job if you didn't have to either" but like, checkout work IS hella exploitative??? Most work IS hella bullshit that only exists to feed the capitalist machine. I DO fight for a world where work is a choice. I understand why The Right would love onlyfans, but why is The Left lining up to defend it?
Sex work - especially things like onlyfans - is overwhelmingly done by the poor or as a way to escape poverty ("I was being paid shit in my previous job, now I can afford an apartment" is something I hear a lot). But in doing so it transfers all the risks to them, it's essentially turning sex work into the gig/hustle economy, isn't it? You end up on a zero hour contract with no union, health, benefit, maternity protection, in a job that can be hella dangerous and have serious emotional repercussions and requires huge emotional labour and/or disconnect and I don't really understand why we're just cheering this along?
I don't object on moral grounds. Sex is sex. Consenting adults do what you want. People are well within their moral and legal rights to choose to sell sex, (or the emotional labour that comes with it), or photos, or whatever they want - just like they are free to go work for target. I absolutely understand the need to - and support - decriminalisation of sex work, the need to make it safe and secure for sex workers, but I just can't see why ~the world at large~ sees huge numbers of young 18 year old women being herded and encouraged into joining Onlyfans - in several cases with people saying "can't wait for you to turn 18 so you can have an OF" so the patriarchy can pay £3-4 a month to see their tits and people cheer this along? One or two get rich, I'm sure, but who is getting REALLY rich? It's the old white men that own onlyfans and take a 20% cut, as always. It's the patriarchy working as it always has. Allowing one or two women to succeed while holding the rest down for exploitation. Except now it's mixing with the worst bits of 21st C capitalism, too. Surely all OnlyFans is is Uber for Sex work, using the gig economy to de-unionise and isolate workers, strip them of benefits, make them into independent contractors and profit off them?
Sure, it's a step up from kidnapping girls from Romania to have them do porn, but is that really the bar? Can we maybe just stop for a second and imagine a world where rich white men don't get richer off the emotional and physical labour of women? Where the other available work options aren't so shit that a zero-hour career with no employment protections, a limited lifespan, in a dangerous industry doesnt look like heaven in comparison? Sure, you can work for three years, sell your emotional labour, and pay for college. But why are we cheering that instead of asking why this has to happen in the first place? We're fiddling around the edges of the system, giving it a makeover, and rebadging it "female empowerment" instead of actually changing anything fundamental. Poor women sell sex. A few are allowed to break out. Men get to leer at naked women for pennies a year. Rich men get richer. Plus ça change. Not even to mention that because of the ~emotional~ connection that onlyfans gives beyond porn, we're embedding the idea that women are "money in, girlfriend out" machines. I know several girls that won't even *talk* to men in any situation without a minimum $50 fee. And apparently the fact we also have a crisis of men so lonely they're willing to pay this isn't a problem either? Where's our luxury communism dreams bitches?
Bitches, I trust you. What am I missing?
I don’t think you’re a bigoted old fool. Nor a prude! I think you’re incredibly enlightened about the dangers of unfettered capitalism and labor exploitation.
Almost all of the issues you highlight about exploitative sex work can be said about exploitative labor in any industry. Poor people taking shitty jobs that don’t pay enough and enrich capitalist, patriarchal corporate overlords? That happens all over the world in industries from meat packing to clothing sweat shops to, yes, sex work. The exploitation of a person’s body for labor is an ethical stain on our culture at large. It’s why we’re so in favor of labor rights advances including a higher minimum wage, unions, and humane work environments.
Raising the Minimum Wage Would Make Our Lives Better
Are Unions Good or Bad?
Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 1: Healthcare, Housing, and Labor Rights
Sex work is not unique in that it opens desperate and poor people up to labor exploitation. It’s not even uniquely dangerous to the bodies of workers--John Oliver did a bit on the US meat packing industry recently that made me faint with body horror.
So we agree that labor exploitation is bad. And it’s something that we should work towards ending in every industry. But I can see why some people would view exploitative sex work to be a different kind of bad. Because sex is sensitive! It can be used to punish and hurt. See revenge porn and the way synonyms for “sex worker” are stigmatized and used as insults throughout society.
Now, a few clarifications. When I refer to sex work, I’m not just talking about cam work on OnlyFans. There are lots of other outlets for many different kinds of sex work. And I’m also not just talking about women sex workers. People of all gender identities and sexualities do sex work, and we should advocate for fair labor practices and safety for all of them. I am firmly pro- decriminalizing sex work so that the industry can be made safe, regulated, and destigmatized in an effort to reduce exploitation. I want sex workers to have the power of collective bargaining! I want them to be protected by law enforcement and our justice system, instead of targeted by it! I want them to pay taxes and have the privileges associated with all tax paying workers! I want them to have the power and protection of a regulatory industry that will purge abusive and violent clients from their field!
I also disagree with the characterization that choosing sex work freely, even out of desperation, is a “step up from kidnapping a girl from Romania to have them do porn.” Human trafficking is not sex work. It’s slavery and torture. Even when the choice is between making $7.25 an hour working at WalMart and making $7.25 as a cam girl, there’s still a choice involved, even if it’s a shitty one. There’s consent. Trafficking victims have no choice, no consent, only violence.
I honestly don’t want to start a debate here. We’re all on the same page that labor exploitation is bad. So I’ll just end with this: not all sex work is inherently exploitative. Which I guess is your real question!
I’ve mentioned before that I have friends who are former sex workers. Specifically strippers and a specialty dominatrix. As with any job, they had their ups and downs, their good nights and bad nights. But they all agree that they freely chose the work not out of desperation or a lack of other options. And they even enjoyed the work in some cases. If someone prefers sex work, thrives in giving that emotional labor to others, I’m not going to judge and I’m certainly not going to tell them they’re being exploited. It would frankly be insulting, condescending, to tell someone that their choice of work (when it truly is a choice) is bad for them.
It’s a fine line, but the line does exist. Sex work CAN BE exploitative. But it is not inherently exploitative, as far as I’m concerned.
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why is it so hard to defect from Atlas?
Barbara Dunkelmann said during Comic-Con at Home last year that this season’s theme would be “distrust,” but i’m wondering now if the more appropriate word is “discontent.” since Divide, we’ve had arguments big and small, teams splitting up and recombining, and of course, :( and :/ galore at all the war, all the crimes, all the war crimes, and all the general bad decisions (not to be confused with James Ironwood, General Bad Decisions). we’ve now had our first major defections of the season with Hazel and Emerald, which is...interesting to me; they’re both long-runners, certainly, but part of the reason they’re long-running is because their arcs have ALWAYS been on a slow boil. for the defection to happen around the mid-season mark, a lot of things (particularly for Hazel) had to happen very quickly, particularly since they both skipped out the previous season altogether. this is made all the more interesting by the fact that the Atlesian supporting cast who filled the time in season 7 are similarly discontented, but...well, a generous reading of it would be that they’re still “figuring things out,” but we’ve also been watching them “figure things out” for two seasons now, Winter and Marrow especially. why did Hazel and Emerald defect first when they work for the main villain, when Winter and the AceOps--who have taken up more screen time cumulatively during the Atlas arc--are still hemming and hawing to various degrees?
long discussion under the cut--but the tl;dr is: it’s because they live in a (narratively constructed) society
i’m actually gonna start with the discontent that DIDN’T result in defection, which is obviously the Yang-Ruby split. we’ve known that members of Team Protagonist--most notably Yang and Ren--have had doubts for a while now, and sure enough, when push comes to shove they pick a path separate from their implicit leader. as protagonists Yang and Ren are frequently our POV characters, so we’re predisposed to sympathize with them as they doubt Ruby’s agenda, root for them as they bring it up to Ruby in conversation, and...watch as they...regretfully but cordially agree to disagree...
wait, what?
that’s the thing about Team Protagonist, especially at this point in the narrative: everyone feels safe and secure enough in themselves and in each other to communicate openly, even when they disagree. every time Yang felt uncomfortable she talked to somebody about it, and even Ren--Mr. Weaponizing Repression himself--was able to express how he felt. even if it took some prodding from Nora/Yang, even if the direction of his emotions ended up misfiring and hurting his friends--they’re his friends. his family, even. Team Protagonist is able to act and stay together so effectively because they make open communication a priority: they follow Ruby’s lead, but they also trust that Ruby will LISTEN to them, even if she doesn’t always agree.
(the reason they had this disagreement at all is because of the time they couldn’t talk things through, and just had to uncritically back Ruby’s play--when they first entered Atlas. funny, that.)
Team Salem obviously doesn’t work the same way, and this season has made it particularly explicit just how much everyone lives in a state of constant fear and surveillance. what makes solidarity and eventual rebellion possible (though terrifying), though, are two things: first, Salem--being an upstart herself--actually encourages a level of individual initiative in her followers (well. encouraged; i have a feeling with the Hound being a success and Hazel and Emerald’s defection she’s about to change her tune). she’s a master manipulator, and uses people’s individual wants to sway them to her side; but she’s also not a mind-reader, which is kind of biting her in the ass right now.
second, Salem herself is so many LEAGUES beyond everyone else on her “team” that (unless you’re actively trying to be a tit) there...isn’t actually much of a hierarchy beyond “Salem’s in charge.” Watts and Cinder--both Atlesian to varying degrees, mind--are the two who try the hardest to carve out some authority of their own, but even Watts is at least convivial with everyone (except Cinder). to be on Team Salem you have to accept that this is her world and you just live in it, and that ends up equalizing people from very disparate backgrounds with very disparate personalities and skillsets. no one, not even Tyrian, is under the delusion that Salem cares about them, or will listen to their counsel. so when it comes to the least of her followers--Emerald, who (joke copyright @professorspork) is basically Salem’s grandpet, this gerbil who follows her around now for some reason and occasionally makes weird noises (”you mean crying?” Emerald asks, crying)--it’s actually quite easy for her to escape Salem’s notice until it’s too late, while firming up the solidarities that she has (Hazel and Mercury--not Cinder).
to defect, Emerald and Hazel need a degree of narrative interiority, some sense of security with each other (even if it’s just subconscious), and time. time to work things out from their point of view, pull the wool from their eyes. this season’s narrative has given them all that and more.
our Atlesian potential defectors...haven’t been so lucky, and the most recent episode has made that contrast very explicit.
i’m sure i’m not the only one who assumed, when Ironwood first floated the bomb plan, that we’d be getting some kind of Mission Impossible sneaky stealth shit. we’re used to seeing the AceOps do small squad missions, after all, and the timing felt right thematically too, since we left War with Ren literally expositing to all of them that they do, in fact, have feelings. an extended mission to themselves would give them a chance to air out those feelings away from Atlas’ own system of surveillance, figure out what to do together...
but we didn’t get any of that. instead, we got the whoosh laser kapow version of a Sassoon poem, and the AceOps barely talked to each other at all. the only points of view we got were from Marrow, and Winter.
this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to them this season, either--remember the Penny Retrieval mission that wasn’t? there were also hopes that Marrow and/or Winter would turn at that point, but then Salem invaded. Winter and the AceOps have had the potential to defect for a while now, but the narrative has been actively withholding opportunities for them to actualize on any of that potential. it’s been actively withholding opportunities for them to act as a team, period.
it’s possible to handwave this as writerly convenience--everyone can’t defect at the same time, the episodes don’t have room for it--but the ways that defections have been prioritized so that the Atlesians come after also points to a recurring motif with Atlas, which Elm says explicitly in Witch: you can deal with your issues later.
there’s always some kind of delayed promise at Atlas, isn’t there? the Amity project will help. Mantle’s Wall will get fixed (until it wasn’t). when Penny confronts Winter about leaving Mantle to die, Winter says first that they don’t have time, and it seems like they never actually do, except for in this imagined later, when they’ll reckon with every thing that they’ve done.
it doesn’t exist, of course. fascism is only able to remain effective through the engineering of crisis, and Salem might as well be a crisis perpetual motion generator. you can’t conscientiously object if your conscience is constantly stifled by the next emergency.
what the Atlesian scenes in Witch demonstrate is this: Atlas presses down all around them, at all times. even if the AceOps want to stop policing each other and work as a real team, they can’t right now, because they are now officers in a war, because they’re constantly looked to, because they’re part of an infinitely greater machine that demands their service. and right now lasts forever--you will NEVER have time to talk out your discontent...
and even if you steal time and perspective like Marrow does (like Emerald has been doing, thief that she is) with Winter, there is no guarantee of any solidarity. what makes their conversation so simultaneously fascinating and frustrating is that there is clearly some level of rapport, or at least recognition. Marrow goes to Winter because Winter’s in charge, but Marrow also goes to Winter because Winter might hear him out...and she does. Winter does what Winter has consistently done when a person seeks her out and earnestly asks to be heard, and responds compassionately. but at the same time, Winter does what Winter has consistently done when a person seeks her out and earnestly asks to be heard: she turns away. in a conversation that is supposed to be about a shared trust between the two of them, Winter cannot bring herself to trust Marrow. the Atlesian system is built out of these hierarchies within hierarchies, distrusts within distrusts (well i guess Barbara had a point after all), and Winter, abused kid that she is, has played this game all her life. so she defaults to rank and duty--what they have to do now--and the conversation goes nowhere. Marrow leaves it as alone and bitterly resigned as when he’d entered it.
so when is this moral inertia gonna go somewhere? IS it going somewhere? well, i’m still holding out hope that the AceOps will get some time to themselves as part of Bomb the Whale, and i’m certain that even if it doesn’t fall into their lap Marrow will eventually demand it. the fact that they still work well together on the field as partners should mean something. the question is, though: what will it take to bring that later to the present?
and at what point does it become too late?
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