#and it’s fine when I’m out at college because the public transport is actually pretty good so I dont feel like I need a car | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

luvdetroit · 3 years

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Hey! I 've just read the first chapter of the dbh series you wanted to start, and I really like the plot 🥺 Do you plan on continuing it? 👉🏻👈🏻

hey, sorry for the late reply! i actually do have it planned out a bit differently than i originally wrote it in the first chapter. i think this planned version is better than the one i posted. there are many other ideas that i have in my drafts, i just haven’t released them yet.

thank you for reading it! i'm happy you enjoyed it and i'm sorry for saying this but i think i'll just scrap this idea and go with my new one (VOW). it will be somewhat similar, just more complex? and hopefully interesting!

not sure if you are even interested in hearing about them but i’ll drop them here! maybe if you or anyone is interested, i will follow through with posting them (have been feeling very bad about my writing recently).

for anyone who does read my ideas, please do not steal! i really worked hard on thinking about these and would be really hurt if anyone took them. they aren’t super original or anything, but i still created them 😩

these are really roughly written so please don’t judge 🚶🏼‍♀️🚶🏼‍♀️

please do comment or send me a message in my inbox about which idea you like more, if i should do a specific one or all of them even! 💞💞💞

1. TITLE: VOW

pairings: various! x fem!reader

genre: meta (?), angst, fluff, etc

plot: metafiction. mc surfs the web to buy d:bh and finds a seller who is willing to sell the game for cheap (suspiciously). mc contacts the user and a deal has been made.

we will flesh out the seller later, he ain’t all that important rn. so mc gets the game after maybe two days? and in the packaging the seller wrote a letter to her, it is pretty cryptic. we can get into detail on the letter and stuff later.

so mc starts the game up right away because she is excited to play it. on her first play though everything is pretty normal. there are a few differences/odd occurrences but mc doesn’t bat an eye because it’s her first time playing so she wouldn’t know.

gradually as she plays, the characters (connor and markus) are more aware of them being in a game. (sense they are in the same series and are prototypes it only makes sense for them to be able to sync themselves/go beyond their coding).

connor and markus have broken the fourth wall/have become aware with other players. they grow a deep hatred for the player. sense they can’t throw their anger at the creators of the game, they can do so with the player.

at first, connor and markus only did minor things that didn’t really stand out to the player. when connor/markus breaks the fourth wall and directly talks about the player, the player thinks it’s apart of the game.

but when connor/markus mentions the player’s name that is when they freak out a bit, but assumes the characters got their names from their playstation.

it’s only when connor/markus states some personal stuff about them do they feel fear. (connor/markus can sync with the smart tv that also contains all their info).

connor/markus have tried to sync with the game/tv enough to transport the player in the game so the player can experience first hand what it’s like to live in their world. but their connection weakens each time the player resets. their memories are also wiped out.

over time connor/markus are able to retain their memories a lot faster but forget the previous players of the game. even if they don’t remember the previous players they still think of one goal. transport the player into their world, let them suffer, seeing first hand how THEY feel.

connor/markus will be slightly oc. they will have somewhat of a dark side.

i didn’t explain this in the summary bcus i’m dumb but the game can’t be destroyed (it’s like a possessed object). even if you throw it out or something it will still go back to you bcus you own it. the only way to get rid of it is selling it.

ik some wack logic but sjakwkw

sam is the seller of the game. (his username is GAMER BOY 69). the game is sold for $10 with free shipping and no tax.

mc: does this really only cost $10? why is this so cheap?

sam: i’m just being generous

sam: are you willing to buy it?

mc: can you show proof that you actually have it and it isn’t broken?

sam: sure, hold on a second

[sam sends a video of him filming the game packaging and saying his username (in a bit of embarrassment) and mc’s. he reassured her that it isn’t broken and works perfectly fine. he tells her he didn’t like the game so that’s why he’s selling it.]

sam’s letter is in a white envelope, his writing is slightly messy, almost jittery (from nerves). he feared he was being watched by, ‘them’ so he wrote cryptically.

sam’s note: i’m sorry i did this to you. i really am. i just didn’t have any other choice. don’t play the game, please.

2. TITLE: PARESTHESIA

pairings: various! x fem! reader

genre: dark au, cult au, angst, fluff, etc

plot: in this au kamski doesn’t publicly make androids n stuff

so amanda stern is still kamski’s mentor in this au

she, ‘disappears’ at some point and is listed as a missing person

kamski knows she isn’t gone though bcus she told him her plan

basically amanda is very manipulative and warped kamski’s young mind into thinking humans being lesser beings and that kamski can really create something even more superior, androids.

kamski and amanda are humans but they are excused because of them being intelligent and having that sort of mindset- humans being filth on this planet

instead of kamski making cyberlife public

he instead also disappears after a few years later (once he’s done w college)

it’s a gap between amanda and his disappearance to not completely draw suspicion

cyberlife is created in secret, hidden from the public

belief: humans are disgusting and should be replaced by something far superior, androids.

rules: only those who have the same mindset as kamski and amanda can join the cause and contribute. (so human co workers of amanda and such help gather material and thirium (blue blood) to create more androids in secret).

practices: a member has to willingly be able to sacrifice any body part kamski chooses to replace for an android part or partake in any experiment kamski may have. if not, they aren’t fully in the cause and should be ridden of.

kamski wants to take a oblivious civilian in for a secret test of his

he wants to test out how human his androids can be and if it can blend in with humans in normal day to day life.

so he releases one of his androids, connor (rk800) out into the world. his mission is to find a human he can initiate a relationship with. once he finds that human, he slowly grows a relationship with them over time- kamski is studying all of this through connor’s eyes.

kamski is amazed by this new discovery- his androids do blend in with humans well.

the last secret test for mc is connor telling her his true nature. (telling her he isn’t human, he’s an android). connor breaks this to mc at his, ‘house’ which is connected to their secret compound/underground base.

kamski wants to know how mc will react to this news because her actions depends on whether she’s just another piece of human scum or not. this will validate whether she can join their, ‘organization’ or not.

mc will be confused by connor’s sudden news at first. she won’t believe him until he pulls back his skin to show his porcelain interior.

she’ll be surprised then and question whether their relationship was all real or not.

connor reassures her that he does share her feelings. he admits that at first this was a mission but he truly does feel for her. he asks her if she still has feelings for him even after knowing he isn’t human and mc (after a bit of thinking) says that she does.

this makes connor happy as well as kamski bcus mc got through the test. this is the first android-human relationship too.

a few days pass just to really make sure mc doesn’t act any different and really is telling the truth about having feelings for connor still- when connor informs mc that his creator wants to meet her in person one day.

connor and mc go to his place and he leads her downstairs to his normal looking basement- and there is this really intricate hidden puzzle/door that opens to their underground compound.

connor leads mc to a room and meets kamski. kamski comments on mc- on how he was surprised that mc quickly took a liking to connor and how she still has feelings for connor even after finding out the truth. he’s impressed and approves of the relationship.

he tells her he hopes she keeps her word about this organization being a secret because he wouldn’t want anything bad happening to her so soon.

after that connor and mc go about their relationship like normal. although, connor has been experiencing these odd feelings lately. he’s also been oddly wanting to act out violently towards the most smallest things. like mc talking to someone else, smiling at someone else, touching someone else, even if it was platonic.

it didn’t sit right with him. he never voiced these new feelings to kamski though. he was too afraid kamski might tell him he has something wrong with his software. he doesn’t want kamski to call him defective and replace him for another connor. he doesn’t want to be seen as not good enough for mc.

connor doesn’t act on any of his thoughts. he doesn’t let his emotions control him.

after about two weeks kamski calls connor and tells him he wants him to meet someone (rk900) and that he should bring mc.

so connor visits the compound and meets kamski in a lounge area with mc. they both enter the room with kamski casually laying on a lush couch. a small smile is brought on his face when he noticed connor and mc’s presence. he greets them both and tells them that he’s happy they could make it.

connor opens his mouth, about to ask who the person kamski wants him to meet when rk900 walks in with two cups of tea + thirium in his hands.

rk900 places a tea down in front of kamski, the other tea and thirium on the opposite side of kamski’s before returning his attention to connor and mc. his eyes scrutinizing connor and mc.

kamski’s smile widens at connor’s reaction and stands up, clasping rk900’s shoulder with one hand. he prompts rk900 to introduce himself.

rk900 introduces himself somewhat stiffly in a monotone voice.

rk900: my name is conan.

it was short and to the point. he offers an open hand for a handshake.

connor looks over conan, completely ignoring the hand offered to him, then at kamski with all sorts of emotions. the main ones being confusion and fear. at this point connor is wondering if conan is going to replace him for a reason connor does not know.

kamski breaks the awkward silence/tension in the room.

kamski: “well, connor? aren’t you going to greet your brother?”

connor takes a few moments to process this information and absentmindedly inquires, “brother?” in a small voice. his brows furrow slightly and his gaze draws towards his look alike. from up close, conan looks exactly like connor with a few differences. he was slightly taller than connor and had cool greyish blue eyes. why would kamski decide to make me a brother? i didn’t ask for one.

kamski: “yes, brother. i just thought it might be lonely to live alone in that big house of yours so i have gifted you with your own brother.”

at this point connor is having a mental breakdown. kamski doesn’t do things without a logical reason. he’s not telling me the full truth.

connor finally breaks out of his thoughts, his eyes darting back to kamski and he nods shortly, ignoring conan’s still outstretched hand and his presence altogether.

connor: [in a stony voice] okay, is that all?

conan drops his hand.

the corners of kamski’s lips twitch, threatening to split into a menacing smirk at connor’s cold reaction. kamski clicks his tongue mockingly and sits back down, grabbing his tea.

kamski: “that’s not how you should treat your brother. [sighs] that will be all, but you have to teach conan how things work around here. that’s what a big brother should do, after all.”

connor bites back a disgruntled sigh of his own and settles for a slight frown.

connor: “why wasn’t he informed before meeting me? didn’t he go through the same test runs as me?”

it took everything in connor to not let his irritation show through his tone.

kamski pins connor with an annoyed glare, a small bit of amusement shining through.

kamski: “why are you testing my patience connor? are you not happy with my gift?”

kamski’s words were light mockery, with a dark undertone to them. connor knew better than to irritate his creator further. he bows his head slightly to him.

connor: “i apologize for causing you further inconvenience. i..am just surprised by the new addition, that’s all.”

kamski simply nods lazily. waving a hand, he tells them they are dismissed.

connor turns away from his creator and him to the exit with you following right beside him silently. he places his hand on the small of your back and presses you close to him possessively. the slight tapping of a pair of shoes follow behind connor and you. connor ignores it.

connor walks through the maze of hallways without pause, part of him hoping his, ‘brother’ would get lost and never return.

he knew better though. without even looking, he knew conan wasn’t even a step behind and it irritated connor to no end.

once the three enter the, ‘main area’ which was basically the center of the compound, connor turns around to face conan.

connor: [monotonously] “give me your hand, i’ll transfer the data so this all can be over with.”

connor outstretches his hand. part of him wants to pull it back because he doesn’t want to touch him.

conan looks at connor’s outstretched hand to connor’s face.

conan: “no, i can’t do that. kamski specifically told me to get the information from you the, ‘human’ way. he wishes for us to talk to each other like brothers.”

connor looks even more bewildered at that bit of information..why would kamski do this without his consent? this..has to be some sort of test. maybe conan is just playing the role as his brother to spy on him and catch him doing something that may incriminate him? does kamski know about his odd..’glitches’? did he make rk900 just to dispose of him and replace him?

no, he couldn’t have known..the cameras in his opticals were shut off weeks ago. so why was rk900 here? what is kamski getting at?

connor also took notice of how..machine like conan is. conan walks stiffly and has a rigid stance. in that sentence he brings up what kamski wants rather than his. he follows kamski’s orders as if they were law without question.

connor still has his hand in front of him and ignores what conan says

he’s like, “it would be easier if we just did this.” (he’s irritated and is insistent)

and conan refuses, again repeating, “we have to follow kamski’s orders.”

and connor taunts conan

he’s like, “can you not think for yourself? i thought you were supposed to be alive.”

at that, mc finally speaks, telling connor off, “that’s enough, connor. i think you should just follow what kamski says. conan is just as alive as you and needs some of your guidance.”

connor’s eyes slightly widen as well as conan’s. connor’s frown deepens at your words. you’re defending him. why? you should be on his side, not him.

conan still has a blank face but his eyes are now trained on mc, curiosity being one of the emotions flickering in his eyes.

connor notices conan looking at mc and narrows his eyes in disgust.

connor: fine..we can discuss everything at my place.

connor turns and places his hand back on mc’s lower back, pressing her as close to him and far from conan as possible.

conan follows on without question.

3. TITLE: DARK EXTERIOR

pairings: various! x fem! reader

genre: dark au, angst, fluff, etc

plot: the main plot is androids taking over and humans as pets

so mc is obviously gonna be a human, she is like in one of those sort of adoption places but it’s more like a buy your pet thing

and mc is gonna be 18 y/o because yes

- mc and her parents live in a house that is located in a rather secluded area in the woods

- when word gets out about androids dominating humans and turning them into slaves- mc’s parents decide to live underground. mc is 3 y/o during this time. (the father is an artist/architect, this was originally just a project for himself). years pass with them being undetected. (it was 2038 when androids dominated humans)

- 15 years passed without them being detected and mc is 18 y/o (year is 2053)

- mc’s father scavenges for food and such once a month

- underground they still have a tv, tablet, and phones to keep up with how everything is going in detroit

- mc feels trapped after living underground for basically her entire life and learning second hand about androids, the revolution, etc

- mc starts doubting her parents and their reasons. she questions whether if there are bad androids out there who will snatch her up.

- mc asks her father if she can help him scavenge one day but he along with her mother are against that (this is on her birthday when she turns 18 y/o bcus she thinks she’s mature enough to)

- this causes a big argument between her parents and her and she voices her doubts to them- this ends with mc locking herself in her room. after awhile when it’s night time, her father visits her and apologizes for yelling but tells her she still can’t go up there because it’s too dangerous.

- mc hides her anger and lies to her father about her understanding. when it’s about midnight mc decides to sneak out and go above ground.

- mc is wandering in the woods mindlessly basking in everything- she kind of becomes careless (she doesn’t act cautious when wandering around). she maybe follows a bird she sees (owl) out of curiosity and nears markus and his crew (simon, north, and josh). they were having a picnic or just stargazing.

- simon hears rustling and light footsteps coming towards them so he alerts the others, he’s like, ‘do you guys hear that?’

- the others listen and do hear the footsteps and rustling coming rather close and quickly. all of them are tense (because they have experienced a lot of..attacks in the past so obviously they got their bars raised)

- so mc bumps into markus and everyone is surprised by mc’s sudden appearance

- mc stops in her tracks and looks at markus, it takes her a minute to really look at him bcus it’s dark and her human eyes are very poor at catching details

- she recognizes markus and is frozen. she also faintly recognizes his friends because they are also a big part of the android revolution (or so she’s been told by her parents).

- after a beat of silence north says, ‘a human?’ in a rather disgusted tone.

- josh observes you and asks out loud, ‘how can a human be this far out of the city?’

- north: ‘maybe it escaped from it’s owner or something.’

- after observing you, markus reaches out to you (you are still frozen and too scared to move) and places his hand on the nape of your neck. he realizes you don’t have a chip installed there to tell him who your owner is. (let’s say every human at birth has a chip installed to their nape to identify them and their owner)

- markus informs the others that mc doesn’t have a chip which startles them.

- north: ‘wait..it’s a fucking wild?’

- josh: ‘how could it live this long on it’s own if it is a wild?’

- (markus had his eyes on you the whole time) he asks you if there are more of you in the forest and you slowly shake your head no. they all know you are lying though.

- north: ‘there are more like it in the forest..how come we didn’t know about this?’

- josh: ‘this is pretty bad..if there are more wilds out here hiding this could damage the trust we built with the others. everyone will be outraged if they find out we let wilds slip under our noses.’

- simon approaches you slowly and asks again if there are more people like you out there

- when you shake your head again markus holds your chin between his thumb and index finger, tilting your head up so that you can look at him in the eyes.

- with a dark look in his eyes markus says, ‘don’t lie to us again kitten because i’m not in the mood to play nice. now, tell us the truth. are there more of you out there?’

- you are scared now and regret ever leaving the hideout. knowing it would be futile to lie again, you nod. (you are unable to say anything because your throat feels constricted).

- north: ‘where are they?’

- you don’t say anything because you don’t want to give your parents away. you continue to berate yourself for your stupid decisions.

- north sighs (clearly irritated by you not answering their questions immediately), ‘well? aren’t you going to speak? or can you not speak?’

- josh tries to calm north down, ‘intimidating it isn’t going to make it talk’

- north: why are you defending it? have you gone soft now?

- josh: [sighs] are we really going to do this? i’m just trying to tell you that yelling at it won’t get us anywhere-

- north: babying it isn’t getting us anywhere and i don’t see /you/ doing anything.

- simon steps in before the argument could get even more heated and pushes the two away from each other, “that’s enough. can you both not argue for once? now is not the time.”

- a little bit of pressure on your chin directs your attention from the two arguing to markus.

- markus: show us and i promise we won’t hurt you.

- mc thinks about this, ‘deal’ and realizes at that moment she doesn’t know what the hideout even looks like from the outside bcus she was so caught up on other things.

- mc makes a half baked plan to pretend to know where her hide out is, lead them, then find an opening to escape

- mc responds after a bit of pondering, (in a feeble voice), “okay.”

- north: [annoyed and slightly surprised] that’s it? that’s all it took?

- markus lets go of mc’s chin and gives mc a slight nod, telling her to show them the way

- before mc could take any step north butts in

- north: shouldn’t we restrain it first? tie it’s hands so it doesn’t do anything stupid?

- mc really dislikes north and is pretty scared of north out of all of them.

- markus notices your discomfort and shakes his head at north, “no. we don’t need to."

- north: [irritated] but she is a fucking wild- she’s dangerous-

- markus: [interrupts north + raises one of his hands up] i said, we don’t need to.

- north huffs in annoyance but doesn’t say anything else. part of you is satisfied by seeing north being put in her place.

- markus returns his attention to you and silently tells you w his eyes to lead the way.

- you turn your back towards markus and observe the vast amount of trees before you and walk in the direction you remember vaguely running from.

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wickedlyqueer · 4 years

Text

Holy Poly

Ever since @gliyerabaa became obsessed with the Glinda/Fiyero/Elphaba ship it suddenly reminded me I wrote a poly fic years ago where essentially the Charmed Circle lived together and most of them were dating each other.

I never finished or published it, because I’m first and foremost a gelphie ho. to a point it felt wrong to be calling it a poly fic, bc I just wanted to focus on the gelphie dynamic.

Anyway, because I promised Rae (and I’m sure they’d love to see some gliyeraba content they didn’t write themself) this was the intro chapter of the modern AU, fresh out of college, poly chapter I wrote like 3 years ago.

Save the trees!

Perhaps every accidental cluster of people had a short period of grace. Although gracious was probably not the best word to describe the weirdly formed, yet close-knit circle. Exuberant. Loud. Queer. Those were better words. A loving found family that could not been torn apart even if fate wanted it to.

Neither was their time together short-lived. At least, not if it was up to Glinda. After most of them had graduated last summer, the crushing college debt and the terrifying world that was job hunting in a broken economic system made the decision on cohabitation all the easier.

On the outskirts of Shiz they had found their home: a small house with just enough room for the six of them to not suffocate. It was nothing fancy, but none of them would want it any other way.

“Elphie’s not here?”

Glinda had entered the living room where the boys were spread lazily across their two mismatched couches bought at a garage sale.

“Nope, left quite a while ago,” Boq replied.

“Aren’t they at their usual train station spot harassing people?”

“Language, Crope,” from the kitchen came Fiyero’s rich voice. “Spreading awareness about global warming isn’t the same as harassing.”

“Fine. It’s annoying people then.”

“Not everyone finds that awareness crap annoying,” Tibbett said, throwing a casual glance at Glinda. “I believe someone went weak at the knees for that.”

She felt a blush creeping up; not for the comment he made, but for the comment that was about to come. It had turned into an inside joke in their circle, and she had learned from experience that the less she objected the more humiliation she was spared.

“Is it?” Crope wiggled his eyebrows. “The way I heard, she complimented Elphie on their dedication to the cause for painting their entire visage green.”

The trio threw a fist in the air and shouted in unison, “Save the trees!” without their attention leaving the screen.

“I hate every single one of you.”

“You can’t deny that’s how it went, Glin,” Fiyero commented. “Have you tried texting by the way?”

“I think their phone died,” she checked one more time for any messages, but still no response from Elphaba. “Remind me to ambush them again for getting a decent phone.”

“At least they lost that brick phone.”

Crope snorted. “Yeah, right. Lost.”

Tibbett gave him a wicked smile. “No fun in being a tattletale, babe.”

Whatever they were grinning about it was Crope and Tibbett, and Glinda prefered to stay ignorant on the subject. She headed towards the kitchen where Fiyero was cooking dinner. A towel hanging over his shoulder and his beautiful long black hair stuffed in a loose bun so no strains could spoil the food.

“Smells good, Yero.” She wrapped her arms around his belly, and stretched out completely on her tiptoes and almost managed to put her chin on his shoulder. “If only I could see if it looks as equally good.”

Fiyero laughed heartily and sank through his knees so Glinda could see better. “How about now?”

She smiled. “So far this meal is Glinda-approved.”

“That’s all I need.”

A cheer came from Boq from the living room having beaten the other two at the game.

“I think I’m going to check the train station,” Glinda said as she let go off Fiyero; the pose was growing uncomfortable for the both of them. Their height difference was ridiculous. How she had ended up with two partners so much taller than her was beyond her.

“Oh, you know what you should do? Call Nessa. Maybe she can contact Elphie through their sibling telepathy.”

“I think that only works when they have something to bicker about,” Glinda said, but dialed the number anyway. “Goes straight to voicemail.”

“Why do those two even have phones?” Fiyero muttered.

“Okay, so train station and then I’ll drop by Nessa’s dorm to check on her too. Any other places Elphie might be?”

Four voices spoke as one. “The library.”

“Should’ve figured that one out myself.”

“Glin, you do know Elphie’s like a cat, right? They always find their way back home eventually.”

“I know, but I feel like going outside for a bit. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Sure thing. Oh, and Glinda?”

She turned around. “Hm?”

He took her hand and planted a chaste kiss on her fingertips. “Can I just say you look absolutely wonderful today?”

She beamed. “You’re too charming for your own good Fiyero.”

“It’s why he has so many partners,” Crope called from the couch, apparently eavesdropping on the conversation. There was zero privacy in this house. “Too handsome too. Who could say no to that gorgeous face?”

“Not us,” added Tibbett. “And don’t forget that he’s a flirt without realizing it. It just comes natural to him and it’s adorable.”

Fiyero had the advantage that his dark skin hid most of his blush, but knowing him since high school, Glinda knew what a flustered Fiyero looked like.

“I just got a lot of love to share, I guess,” he smiled shyly. “Let me know when you find Elphaba, okay? Dinner will be ready around seven.”

Elphaba wasn’t at the library and neither were they at the train station. All Glinda found there were old memories. She could see the young, nervous girl fresh from the Pertha Hills standing on the platform. Fiyero’s steady hand on her shoulder to ease her worries. Had four years really passed so quickly?

She traced her footsteps from the past. Her gaze wandering over the square in front of the train station like it did then. The only thing that was missing, was a green person storming towards her. From that moment on she was captivated by Elphaba, although the first few months she had let her socialite behavior overrule.

“You could’ve disclosed in our online correspondence that you’re green!”

She had whined once she had found out the Green-Tree-From-Shiz-Station was her roommate. Elphaba had pointed at the five enormous trunks brought into their room by an upperclassman.

“Only if you had disclosed you would bring your entire house with you.”

Glinda had thought the roommate matching system had completely failed her. No way had she the highest match with a snarky, social-reclusive green person! It had taken her some time to realize they were ridiculously similar, just coming from different angles.

Her path down memory lane continued when she entered Shiz campus. It only had been two months ago since she graduated, but it already felt foreign being here. As if she no longer fitted. A group of giggling first year students passed her. Glinda recognized her own innocence in them back at that age. Feeling as if you’re on top of the world only because you have yet to learn what that world entailed.

Unconsciously she had walked to Crage Hall. She admired the building when a busted up blue van pulled over. It was Elphaba’s. They all jokingly referred to it as the Abduction Truck, because that’s how sketchy it looked.

Elphaba got out and moved over to the back of the truck. The only reason Elphaba had bought that van was to drive Nessa around. Normally they were a very dedicated public transport advocate, and although Elphaba would deny it, Glinda knew they’d bend their own morals to please Nessa.

Glinda walked towards the car and Elphaba looked surprised. “Hey, what are you doing here?”

“Looking for you actually.”

“Oh?”

Elphaba opened the backdoors to reveal a Nessa waiting impatiently to be led out. “You do take your time don’t you, Elphaba? The air conditioner was already turned off and in this heated garbage tin can of yours I could’ve already suffocated. Hello Glinda.”

“Hey Nessa.”

Elphaba lifted the ramp from the truck. “And yet you still live. The Unnamed God must have favorites after all.”

Nessa rolled her eyes. “Just open a window next time, please?”

“Yes, your majesty.” Elphaba vastened the ramp and Nessa rode her wheelchair to the pavement.

Elphaba shoved the ramp back inside and closed the door. Glinda walked towards them and was met with a strong smell. She sniffed Elphaba’s shirt and got worried. “Why do you smell like chlorine? Were you near water?”

Elphaba gestured to Nessa. “Had to drive this kid to Red Sand.”

“Your half year check-up! I completely forgot.” One of the reasons why Elphaba had bought the van was so Nessa could study at Shiz. Every six months they had to drive all the way to Red Sand where Nessa had to do exercises in a swimming pool. That’s what Glinda understood of it at least. “How was it?”

“Still pretty paralyzed,” Nessa supplied dryly.

“Doctor Kazhki said your legs were looking healthy.”

“As healthy as they can be paralyzed, yes.”

Glinda tugged at Elphaba’s hand before the argument could escalate. “Hey, you vanished without a single message.”

Elphaba frowned. “No I didn’t, I sent you a text and—ah,” they had gotten their phone out. “Must’ve died before it was sent.”

“No way!” Glinda feigned surprise. “Tomorrow we’re gonna get you a new phone and I won’t hear any of your usual excuses.”

“Can you do your flirting somewhere that isn’t in front of me?” Nessarose disrupted them. “I’m going inside.”

She wheeled away.

“Thanks for the ride, Fabala. Oh no problem, Nessie.”

Nessa turned around and stuck out her tongue. “If you can converse with yourself, what do you need me for?”

“Ungrateful brat.”

It was their way of saying goodbye. Being an only child Glinda still had no idea how sibling relationships worked. Especially those of the Thropps.

“Go kiss your girlfriend.” Nessarose waved without looking behind and went into the building.

Elphaba turned around and smirked. They wrapped their arms around Glinda’s waist. “Well you heard her.”

Glinda raised her eyebrows teasingly. “Since when do you take orders from your sister, hm?”

“Wow. You ruined the moment.” But they smiled and kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry I didn’t notify you.”

“All is forgiven. You’re here now.”

It was a beautiful afternoon and without another word between them they had agreed to walk around campus. Glinda curled into Elphaba’s arm. She had done it so many times before it was like second nature. She had loved strolling around campus with Elphaba, back when they were still at Shiz. Near the Suicide Canal they settled down in the grass and soaked up the nice autumn sun while it was still warm.

Glinda leaned into Elphaba and smiled. “This brings back memories.”

“Curled up in my arms after one of our many picnics at the Suicide Canal? Whatever gave you that idea?” Elphaba teased.

Glinda nudged them playfully. “Sentimentality, I suppose. My entire walk I’ve been seeing myself through a looking glass.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, like at the train station I remembered–” Glinda stopped dead in her tracks. How could she have let that one slip!

Elphaba let out a roaring laugh. “Are you referring to our ‘meet-cute’?”

Her entire face had turned bright red. “It wasn’t cute, I’m still embarrassed by it.”

“Aw, don’t be. It was actually refreshing from all the usual green freak insults.”

“How? I thought you were going for a metaphor to reflect a greener planet! I didn’t even consider a green person existing. How is that less offensive?”

“True, but then you became so flustered when I looked at you funny. I’ll never forget how you threw a fist in the air and yelled ‘save the trees!’ to show your support.”

Glinda buried her face into her hands. “Oh god.”

Elphaba laughed. “It was cute” and put their face closer. “You’re cute.”

“You’re making it worse,” Glinda’s words sounded muffled through her hands.

They planted a comforting kiss in her hair. “We still ended up like this, so it couldn’t have been all that bad, right?”

“I suppose,” her embarrassment fading, Glinda let herself fall back on Elphaba’s shoulder. “I thought I’d never see you again after that. Big surprise waited ahead of me. God, I thought you were a senior or something. No other freshman I know functioned that entire first week, and there you were, already trying to make the world a better place.”

She felt Elphaba smile. “I was such a determined little fuck back then. I didn’t even sign up. I got off the train and saw the group of volunteers and basically pestered them until they gave me a jacket and some flyers to hand out.”

“And they haven’t gotten rid of you since.”

“Nope. I’m the best thing that happened to them.”

Glinda paused, weighing her words before saying, “And to me.”

“Damn, you are sentimental today,” Elphaba noted.

Glinda took Elphaba’s chin and slowly lowered it until their eyes were leveled. Just before their lips touched she whispered, “You’re ruining the moment.”

“Now we’re even,” Elphaba murmured, smiling into the kiss.

A/N: to be clear of all the dynamics (bc they are very entangled and a bit of a mess): - Glinda is asexual and through high school became very dependable on Fiyero (as he was the first person she ever came out too). Dependable to a point they couldn’t imagine their lives separately. So it falls more in a QPR relationship, where their platonic bond is unbreakable. - Elphaba is non-binary, bi and aromantic. Their relationship with Glinda is definitely the most couple-y, and can be classified as a “typical” romantic relationship. They also connected with Fiyero instantly and fell for his charms. - Fiyero is very poly because this boy’s got a lot of love to share! He’s also aro (which might seem contradictory, but it’s something I’ve seen a lot of overlap with, funnily enough!) and so his relationship are very platonic/sexual based. he has that sort of relationship with Elphaba, Crope&Tibbett and one or two other people outside the charmed circle. - Tibbet’s genderfluid and good with any pronouns and will raid Glinda’s closet on any occasion. In an open relationship with Crope and they obviously communicate incredibly well with this. - Crope’s just very gay. - Boq is a trans guy and aro/ace. He’s the only not in a typical “relationship” and definitely isn’t looking for that either, but he can’t live without his chosen family. Together with Fiyero, they’re basically the “dads” of the group and keeps everyone in check.

If anyone wants to run with these dynamics; you have my blessing! I won’t be continuing this story but if it inspired you feel free to build on it!

#wicked #wicked the musical #gliyeraba #gelphie #bc it's.. kinda mostly gelphie still bc it me and i love them ok #anyway rae #hope you like it dfjkdhf #this is basically just for you

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onthepyre · 4 years

Text

rest your bones next to me (part 2)

previous / next

1.9k, swearing, prinxiety and background moceit

With Roman and Remus at his sides, Virgil found navigating the desolate streets at night to be far less nerve-wracking. Roman took to rambling about the people they were headed to meet as Virgil and Remus sipped their drinks.

“Okay, so there’s Patton and Janus — they’re married. I probably ought to warn you, Janus has this big scar on his face from something that happened when he was a kid. He won’t tell us what exactly it’s from, but we think it’s a burn. Mostly just don’t make a big deal out of it, ‘cause he’ll kill you.”

“Learned that the hard way,” Remus mumbled. “He seems tough, but he’ll grow on you.”

“And then Patton is the sweetest guy you’ll ever meet. If he had the money he’d take in every kid he meets. Their apartment doesn’t have heat, and there’s only one bedroom, and the stove is pretty shitty. It’s a roof over our heads, though, gives us somewhere to stay. They just ask that you contribute something at least once a week.”

“So like, bring home dinner?” Virgil paused his slurping to glance up at Roman as they walked.

“Yeah! Or give ‘em some money to go towards rent, or buy some toilet paper. Just basic shit. Remus and I usually get some of the groceries. We work part-time at the theatre. Pay isn’t great, but it’s enough to stay with Patton and Janus and save for… whenever.”

“Tell him about Logan.”

“Oh! Logan’s seventeen, he’s lived with Pat and Jan for about two years now, his cousin is a friend of theirs. He was with them for their wedding, actually. He’s hoping to get into college on academic scholarships — he’s managed to stay in school this whole time. Remus and I dropped out when we started living on the streets. School just complicates things.”

“Wait, you guys don’t go to school? What about your parents?” Virgil paused to think, realizing he wouldn’t be able to attend classes without money for public transport — money he didn’t have.

“I think they told the school we moved or something. Or maybe that we got accepted into some private school.”

Remus shrugged. “I think they said we died, but Roman doesn’t believe me.”

“Oh my god. In what scenario would we both die, but not them? Murder-suicide?”

“Maybe.”

Virgil smiled. “It’s plausible. Which one of you killed the other?”

“Oh my god.”

Remus stopped walking so he could cackle properly, with Virgil just behind him. Roman stood, hands on hips, staring at them.

“That’s not even funny.”

“It’s funny because you think it isn’t,” Virgil said. He had stopped laughing, but Remus was bent nearly in half on the sidewalk. Virgil had to admit, it really wasn’t that funny, but something about upsetting his brother had absolutely killed Remus. He wobbled, catching Virgil’s arm for balance.

“If you don’t hurry the fuck up, there is going to be a murder.”

This only prompted more howling. Roman covered his face with his hands as Virgil stared. He assumed it must have been a strange scene to the people in the car that drove by — half-illuminated by streetlights, they were a strange trio to spot in the early hours of the morning. At last, Roman reached down and pulled Remus up, then began walking. Virgil followed at their heels.

“So, how old are you guys?”

“Sixteen. We both got outed by some shithead on student council back in May. Needless to say, our parents weren’t too happy about it. What about you?”

“I’m sixteen too.” Virgil took a long swallow of his slurpee. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Hey, that’s okay,” Remus said. “Shit’s rough. Let us know if you do.”

“I will.”

As they lapsed into silence, Virgil noticed for the first time since he left his house how cold it really was. A gentle breeze nipped through the holes in his ratty jacket, and he realized he could feel his nose going numb. His fingers were already tinted a bright shade of pink, but he chalked that up to the ice in the slurpee. He wondered, if it was chilly enough to bother him in early October, how he was possibly going to survive winter.

Apparently sensing that he was starting to worry, Roman started talking again. “Okay, the apartment is right up here. It… does look kind of sketchy from the outside, but I promise it’s nicer inside.” Remus dug a keyring containing at least twenty keys from his pocket. He handed it to Roman, who found what was apparently the apartment key. Roman, with a smile on his face, handed it to Virgil. It was small, silver, and entirely nondescript, except for the letter “R” carved into the top. The engraving was messy, seemingly done out of boredom — Virgil assumed with a pocket knife.

“Pat let me unlock the door the first day we stayed here. He said it makes it feel more like normal, like you’re coming home after a long day. I figured I should pass it on. We’ll get you your own key sometime soon.”

Virgil tried to hide how strangely soft he suddenly felt, but it was apparent he failed when Roman slung an arm around his shoulders.

“I know it’s kind of a lot. I’m sorry. Really. It’s right up here, we can talk to Pat and Jan and then go to bed, okay? Some sleep’ll do you good.”

Overwhelmed, Virgil nodded. He had little time to process Roman’s words, as Remus skipped ahead with a smile on his face.

“We’re here!” He stopped in front of a large brick building, its white paint flaking off. A set of rusty metal stairs led to an off-white door on the second story, but Remus led them through the gate to the first floor entrance.

“I’m not sure how many people live above us, but they’ve gotta have at least three kids,” Roman whispered. “There’s no other explanation for how much fucking noise they make.” Virgil grinned. Hands shaking, he jammed the key in the lock and turned it. He opened the door gently, in case someone was asleep, though based on Roman’s words he assumed nobody was.

Virgil’s assumptions proved to be at least partially correct when a voice from the kitchen exclaimed, “Boys! You’re finally home!” Remus bounded inside, leaving Virgil and Roman standing in the doorway. Roman’s arm fell from Virgil’s shoulders and gave as he gave an awkward half-wave.

“This is Virgil. He got kicked out. Would it be okay if he stayed with us?”

The man, who Virgil assumed was Patton, melted by about a million degrees. “Oh, honey, of course. Stay as long as you need. Come on in, I’ll make you some hot chocolate.”

Hesitantly, Virgil stepped into the apartment. Roman entered just after him, kicking off his shoes onto the tile floor of the kitchen. Virgil followed suit, then handed the ring of keys back to Remus, who had sat down on one of the mismatched chairs at the table.

“Does anybody know if Logan is still awake? He was studying last time I saw him.”

“He went to bed about an hour ago,” said a new voice. Virgil spotted him suddenly, sitting in the corner of the room, a copy of some obscure book in his hands. Based on the large scar on his face, Virgil assumed him to be Janus. He nodded at Virgil, then resumed his reading.

“Roman, Remus, do you want some hot chocolate?” Both nodded, and Patton pulled another two mugs from the cabinet, making five total.

“I assume they told you the conditions?” asked Janus without looking up.

“Contribute something once a week?”

“You’ve got it!”

Virgil sunk his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. He had little to distract him without Roman at his side, leaving him to fall back into every nervous habit he had.

“Come sit,” said Remus, patting the chair next to him. Virgil spent the next ten minutes fielding questions from Patton and Janus — what’s your last name, are you planning on going to school, do you have a job, how much stuff do you have with you, are you able to go home to get more. Jones, no, no, nothing, no. The mug of hot chocolate set in front of him came as a relief, as it gave him an excuse to stop talking.

“I’ll have Roman take you down to the Goodwill tomorrow,” Patton said, sitting down across from him. He glanced at Roman, who nodded, smiling. “That jacket of yours isn’t going to do much when winter comes. If you’d prefer it instead of a new one, though, pick up something to use as scrap fabric and we can mend it.”

Suddenly unwilling to even remove his hoodie, Virgil nodded. “Yeah,” He said softly, picking at a hole in the sleeve. “That sounds good.”

“I’m exhausted,” Roman announced. “Are you tired, Virgil?” His voice was just a bit too loud, and Virgil caught onto what he was doing — looking for a way to get him out of the room. He appreciated the effort.

“Dead on my feet,” he said as he stood. “Where am I sleeping?”

“The couch, if you want, but it’s got a bunch of springs poking through, the floor, or you can join the pile.” Roman gave a wicked grin.

“What’s the pile?”

“There’s only room for one bed. You can figure it out.”

With only seconds of consideration, Virgil chose the floor. With a small nod, Roman led him into the next room. His voice was hushed when he spoke again.

“I know the bed situation is kind of weird. We’ve got an extra blanket, but it can get kind of cold on the floor, so I can, uh, sleep with you. If you want.” He scratched at the back of his neck, then turned to the closet in the corner. “It would be at least a little less weird than cuddling with a bunch of guys you met five minutes ago.”

Virgil smiled at his back as he dug through the piles of clothes. “Roman, I met you like, an hour ago.” The boy in question sputtered indignantly. “But yeah. It is pretty chilly, so if you don’t mind the back pain tomorrow, that would be… fine.”

Roman nodded, almost enthusiastically, as he turned with a blanket in his arms. “Okay. I know there isn’t much room on the floor, but wherever you want.”

Virgil collapsed onto the beaten-down shag carpet, Roman close behind him. He spread the blanket over them then laid down, letting the exhaustion show through his bright facade for the first time.

“Do you just want me next to you for body heat or is it okay if I…?” Roman’s voice, barely a broken whisper, didn’t make it through the end of the question, but Virgil caught the idea anyway.

“It’s fine. I can pretend we’re star-crossed lovers or something instead of dealing with… this. And I trust you. Somehow.” He hoped Roman heard the joking tone in his voice, because his words, though true, felt far too vulnerable to share. Roman took them as an invitation and turned to pull Virgil to his chest.

It felt strange at first, but they quickly settled into an embrace. It kept the cold at bay, after all, so it was better than being alone. Virgil buried his face in the folds of Roman’s shirt, and Roman pressed his nose against Virgil’s hair. It carried the distinct overtones of romance, but it wasn’t something Virgil was eager to fight against. Despite the odds, he slept like the dead.

#prinxiety #roman sanders #virgil sanders #remus sanders #patton sanders #janus sanders #swearing #fluff #sharing a bed #kind of #june's writing

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gb-fics · 3 years

Text

Chocolate Mystery

Fanfiction:

Kiryuuin Shou x Kyan Yutaka (Golden Bomber)

Note: A chocolate mystery is like a murder mystery, just that the stakes are way lower. Have a happy Valentine’s Day! (^-^)

Valentine’s Day was a waste of time, that was Shou’s opinion on it at least. Especially since they still had so much to plan and organize until the tour started in March. Mere weeks and they would start their program with two shows per day, not knowing how that would work out at all. They had more important things to do than act lovey-dovey with someone.

Shou felt that way, because he was a responsible adult, to whom the fans were more important than anything else, and not because he didn’t have a significant other to spend the day with.

His bandmates were a different matter of course. Jun was spending Valentine’s Day with his family and Kenji hadn’t passed on a single opportunity to bring up the hot date he had secured for himself. Yutaka hadn’t bragged, but Shou knew, that he always had a date on Valentine’s Day. Most years, he wouldn’t shut up about it.

So, Shou was the only one sitting at home on his own today; not because he was sad and lonely, but because he was the only one dedicated enough to make the sacrifice to ensure their tour would work out as planned. He was angry at the others for leaving all the work up to him - as always. He wasn’t jealous, because Jun had already found the person, he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, nor because Kenji would certainly get laid tonight with these obscene good looks of his, nor because of Yutaka.

The doorbell interrupted his negative thoughts.

Shou furrowed his brows. He was not expecting anyone. Absolutely everybody he knew had better things to do today than show up on his doorstep. Didn’t people know it was Valentine’s Day? They were supposed to be smooching or canoodling, or whatever you did on this day when you weren’t Shou.

Suspiciously he went over to the door.

“Yeah?”, he asked over the intercom.

“A delivery for Kiryuuin Shou”, a male voice said.

Shou hesitated. He wasn’t expecting anything. He hadn’t ordered anything online lately and when he did, he usually used his real name, since it was the one showing up on the bills as well. But it wouldn’t be the first time he had ordered something to the office and then forgotten about it. The staff usually forwarded the packages to him using his stage name.

He buzzed up the delivery guy and opened the front door already, so he wouldn’t have to ring again at the apartment door.

The young guy coming up the stairs wore a blue jacket with a logo patched to the shoulder, that looked somewhat official, but clearly didn’t belong to the regular postal service. He carried a small white box in his hand that seemed too delicate and quite frankly too clean to resemble a regular package.

“Mr. Kiryuuin?”, he asked.

“Yes, thank you”, Shou said and bowed his head lightly without taking the box. “What is this?”

The delivery guy looked down at the box in his hands in honest confusion. He looked so young, Shou guessed he was a college student working parttime.

“Well, it’s chocolates”, he pointed out dumbfounded. “It’s Valentine’s Day. I’m working for this start-up. We offer a delivery service especially for today. So, people can send chocolates to their loved ones. I’ve got a delivery for you.”

Shou stared at the box as if it might contain something poisonous. He sensed a cold and hard knot forming in his stomach. It was a very unpleasant feeling.

“Who sent this?”, he asked.

The delivery guy shrugged apologetic.

“Well, you’re the one who has to figure that out, dude. No girlfriend?”

Slowly Shou shook his head.

“I want to know, who sent this”, he inquired. “Can’t you check your records?”

“No, sorry, can’t do. Most girls pay cash and don’t leave a name. It’s not necessary.” He shrugged.

“Do you know what’s inside?”, Shou wanted to know.

Now the guy furrowed his brow. He looked annoyed. He probably had other deliveries to make. Maybe he had a quote to fulfil.

“It’s probably chocolates. What else would it be?”

“What if someone sends a bomb?”, Shou asked.

The poor boy looked seriously troubled now.

“Why would anyone do that? We just deliver chocolates and flowers and stuff. Just take it.”

Briefly Shou considered to just outright decline it. But then, they would probably just throw out the box and he would lose every chance he had to find out who had sent it to him.

“Fine”, he said warily and took the box.

The guy held out a paper for Shou to sign and he did it absentmindedly, before he took the box inside with him. It really looked pretty and had doted ribbons wrapped around it, too. It seemed like something you would send your crush chocolates in on Valentine’s Day. Even if it were chocolates, it was still troublesome.

Shou placed the box on the kitchen counter and stared at it. He tried to breathe calmly. Just in case, he had locked the front door from the inside.

Whoever had sent him this box knew where he lived. A strange person – someone, who could literally be anyone – knew his address. They could be watching the building right now. There was nothing scarier than an anonymous present send to your private address, when you were a celebrity.

No matter how much Shou tried to fight it, he felt the panic rising in his chest, the anxiety drilling his stomach. He remembered all the trouble it had caused, when his address had gotten leaked the first time: The rushed moving, having to find a new place within a short period of time, organizing the transport of the furniture, while not being able to stay at his own apartment. He had crushed on Yutaka’s couch for more than a week and even after he had finally moved, Yutaka had needed to stay over the first night with him, because he had felt too tense to fall asleep alone at the new place.

More than the stress of moving, it was the feeling of being unsafe at a place that was meant to be his home – his safe space – that Shou dreaded. He didn’t want to go through it again. Constantly scared that someone was staring up to his window, while he packed up his things, scared to leave in the evening, because someone might be waiting on the street for him. Honestly, it had taken Shou months to settle into his new apartment. He still made jokes about being pissed, because someone had forced the trouble of moving upon him, but truth was, that even now, years after, he still felt his chest tightening occasionally whenever he came home late in the evening, not being able to shake the feeling of someone watching him as he unlocked the front door.

He turned around and drew the curtains, although his apartment was up too high for anyone to look in through the window anyway. Instead, he switched on the light overhead and felt a little bit calmer instantly.

He was still anxious, but at least the panic didn’t make him want to throw up anymore.

He considered taking the box over to the next police station. Maybe there were fingerprints on it. Maybe they could send someone back home along with him to watch the door to make sure no creepy stalker was sneaking around his neighbourhood while he slept.

But then the police might just laugh in his face, because a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day wasn’t exactly much to go by. And he didn’t want to risk any publicity, before he had talked to the management. But could he really call them right now? It was Sunday and everyone was out of office, on Valentine’s Day for sure. Not that he wouldn’t be able to reach anyone, but he would feel bad for bothering them today. It would be better to inform everyone on Monday. No one had dropped dead animals on his doorstep after all. He probably wasn’t in any acute danger.

He really needed to talk to someone, though. Even if it was just to calm himself. Someone, who would understand and who was also affected, because a threat to Shou posed a threat to the entire band of course.

Shou took up his mobile and was about to dial Yutaka’s number, when he stopped short.

Would Yutaka really be okay with it, if he just called him now? He would probably scold Shou for bothering him. On Valentine’s Day moreover, when he had a date for sure. A small, mean part of Shou wanted to call him even more so. It would be the perfect excuse to ruin Yutaka’s date and take his revenge on him for being out having fun, when Shou was sitting home alone, working on the tour for all of them. But then he knew that he would never bring himself to be that much of a jerk. No matter how bitter he was, he didn’t want Yutaka to suffer because of his pettiness. The same went for Kenji, actually. He couldn’t call either of them and disturb their dates for selfish reasons. After all, they might be out with their future spouse this very moment. He couldn’t risk their chance of finding the right person.

So, he called the only person, who already had.

“Hello?”, Jun said after the fourth ring.

“Hey, Jun, it’s me, Shou”, Shou muttered.

“Oh, what’s up?”, Jun sounded tense, as if he dreaded the answer. Maybe he was scared Shou would make him work on his day off.

“I got Valentine’s chocolates”, Shou said. “That means, it’s supposed to be chocolates. It’s really just a white box. And I’m completely freaking out. I mean, it was an anonymous delivery. Jun, I think my address got leaked. Some crazy fan found out where I live and sent me this box and now, I’m not sure, if I should call the management or go to the police or …”

“Shou, calm down”, Jun interrupted him.

Shou took in another deep breath, trying to remind his body that he was not in physical danger right now.

“I’m scared”, Shou said quietly.

“You’re just being paranoid”, Jun said. “Those chocolates could be from anyone.”

“Exactly!”, Shou agreed.

Through the phone he heard Jun sigh.

“I just mean, they could be from the office. Or from someone you know. Have you opened the box yet?”

“Hell, you think I’m crazy?” Shou’s voice sounded too high-pitched in his own ears. “I’ve been sent teeth in the mail before. Fucking teeth. And those were sent to the office. Someone, who is crazy enough to sent it to my private address could be sending a severed ear, or a poisonous spider or whatnot. There is really no way I’m going to open this box.”

“You should just open it”, Jun said. “Didn’t you talk to the others yet?”

Shou stayed silent for a moment, clenching the phone tightly in his hand. He knew that Jun was really just asking about Yutaka, because he was always the one, whom Shou called first.

“I didn’t want to disturb them on Valentine’s Day”, he admitted weakly.

“Oh, but you could disturb me?”, Jun asked huffily.

“A sudden phone call can really ruin a first date”, Shou pointed out. “Your wife is not going to divorce you, just because you picked up the phone.”

Jun sighed once again.

“Okay, Shou, whatever you do, don’t take the box to the police, before even knowing what’s inside. I don’t think you should bother the management with it today either. Just take a look inside and if it’s something weird or dangerous, call me again and we’ll work it out. Okay? Just try to stay calm.”

“You’re just going to hang up on me like that?”, Shou assured in disbelief. “While my life might be in grave danger?”

“Well, it is Valentine’s Day”, Jun reminded him. “So, I’ve got to go. Open the damn box. Talk to you later.”

“Thanks for nothing”, Shou mumbled into the speaker, but the dial tone told him that Jun had already hung up. His bandmates really were useless.

He eyed the box again. Was Jun right? Was he overreacting? Maybe he should just brace himself and open the box. Not that he was going to eat the chocolates, if there were any inside. They might be poisoned. Or filled with a magic love portion. Or make him go bald. But at least he would know for sure what was inside the box.

He shook his head. No, he couldn’t do it. He just wasn’t brave enough. He needed to calm down first.

Turning his back on the white box as if he could trick it into thinking he didn’t care, Shou started pacing the apartment. He wasn’t sure if the movement actually helped to calm himself, but at least it gave him the feeling, that he was doing something. He stayed clear of the windows, though. You never knew who might be watching.

He got out his phone and checked it, although he didn’t know what for. He wasn’t expecting any calls.

Catching some fresh air would be nice. It would certainly relax him to go for a walk outside. But he didn’t dare to leave the apartment. He felt the anxiety rising in his chest almost physically. Moments ago, he had still considered consulting the police, now he couldn’t image going out on his own anymore at all. Eventually he would need to get new groceries. Maybe he could order something online? But how would he known whom to answer the door safely?

Shortly Shou closed his eyes.

His fears were getting irrational now. Maybe it would be better to stay inside today, but even if the box turned out to be from a creepy stalker fan, the management would come pick him up by tomorrow the latest. For that, he really needed to check what was inside the box, though.

There was really no point in avoiding it. He had to take a look inside, before he drew any conclusions. And really, how bad could it be? He had received teeth in the mail before and he had survived that, although it had freaked him out quite a bit. There was a fair chance it wouldn’t get worse than that, even if the circumstances were more frightening this time.

He went back over to the box and stared at it challengingly. It was just a box presumably filled with chocolates. It would not get the better of Shou.

Hesitantly he reached out.

The doorbell rang.

The sound was so loud and unexpected, that Shou flinched so hard, he hit his arm against the kitchen counter. He winced.

Who might that be? The stalker themselves? Were they testing him? Playing mind games?

But then, the explanation didn’t have to be so dark. Maybe Jun had changed his mind and come over to check on Shou. Quite a bit of time had passed since their call. Enough time for him to get here, if he hurried.

Shou walked over to the door and turned on the intercom.

“Yes?”, he asked warily.

“Buzz me up, you fucking moron”, a familiar voice shouted through the speaker.

Shou felt his whole body relaxing instantly. It was alright now. He didn’t know why Yutaka had shown up at his apartment, but it didn’t matter. Important was only that he was here now and just hearing his voice made Shou feel almost safe again.

He pressed the button to allow Yutaka into the building. This time, he waited before opening his front door, though. He stood behind it, until he heard Yutaka’s aggressive knocking. He never rang the doorbell like a normal person, but had to use his fist as if he was trying to pick a fight with the door.

Shou unlocked the door and yanked it open. The desire to just throw himself into Yutaka’s arms was almost overwhelming. He just wanted to be held for a moment, he just wanted to no longer feel alone but physically safe, and it would have been his reaction with any of his acquaintances showing up on his doorstep right now. Yutaka wasn’t special.

Yutaka’s facial expression stopped him short, though.

The lines showing on his forehead made him look grumpy, but he kept his eyes on the floor as if avoiding Shou’s gaze, which was pretty weird for someone, who usually never dodged a confrontation.

“What are you doing here?”, Shou asked.

Yutaka exhaled soundly and he finally looked up. He seemed oddly relieved, as if he had expected a different greeting.

“Jun called me to give me a heads up. He told me your paranoid ass was stressing over Valentine’s chocolate.”

Shou waved him in and made sure to lock the front door again. It made Yutaka roll his eyes visibly.

“It’s just weird”, Shou defended himself. “How would anyone know my private address? It’s scary they were delivered here.”

“The only thing weird about it is that anyone would send you chocolates to begin with. What a strange choice”, Yutaka muttered and went into the apartment without waiting for a proper invitation. He moved like he was at home here, too. “What’s with the curtains?”

Without waiting for an answer Yutaka went over to pull them open and let the daylight in again. He remained standing next to the window.

“Shut them again”, Shou asked. “I’m worried someone might be watching the apartment.”

“God, Shou, it’s probably someone you know. That’s how they knew your address. That’s the most reasonable explanation and what any normal person would assume first.”

Shou didn’t know why Yutaka sounded this angry. He usually had an aggressive way of talking, but at least with Shou he was normally patient. Maybe he was annoyed that Shou had ruined his Valentine’s date. The thought made him feel giddy and gleeful inside, but he tried not to pay attention to it. He was happy that Yutaka had chosen him over his date, but not in an inappropriate way.

“If they know me, they could have given the chocolates to me in person”, Shou said. “If we’re speaking of what a normal person would do.”

“Maybe they were scared of your reaction”, Yutaka said and crossed the arms in front of his chest. It looked funny how he remained standing next to the window instead of sitting down anywhere.

“If they knew me, they should have considered, that it would frighten me this way”, Shou insisted.

He smacked his lips, angry at Yutaka for scolding him instead of offering him the comfort he craved. But then he reminded himself, that Yutaka had probably given up on his date to be here in the first place and he should be less strict with him.

“Maybe they are just stupid”, Yutaka answered, his voice a lot louder than it had to be. “They have to be for liking you in the first place.”

“Why aren’t you on your date?”, Shou asked.

“My date?” Yutaka sounded so baffled, that he forgot to shout this time. “Who told you I had a date?”

Shou shrugged uncomfortably. He didn’t want Yutaka to think he had spent a lot of time picturing him on a date or anything.

“I just assumed”, he said vaguely. “That’s why I called Jun and not you. You always have a Valentine.”

Yutaka sighed.

“Well, this year I don’t. I messed up big time.”

“That doesn’t surprise me”, Shou mocked, more cheerful immediately. “I’m just surprised it never happened before.”

Yutaka gave him a dry smile and nodded over to the box.

“Now, just open the goddamn box already, so we can put that behind us. Whoever sent it probably left a note inside.”

Shou looked at him dumbfounded. He had to admit, that he hadn’t really thought of that yet. Just because the delivery boy hadn’t been able to give a name, he had assumed the box had been sent anonymously. He hadn’t really considered, that it might contain an actual confession.

“Alright”, he agreed sheepishly and turned towards the box. He waited for Yutaka to join him.

He didn’t.

Shou looked up. Yutaka had turned his back on him and was looking out the window as if he didn’t care at all, what Shou was up to. He had lowered his arms again and seemed unable to decide what to do with his hands. That was unusual for him. Normally Yutaka seemed very much at ease with his own body. Briefly Shou considered, that in spite of his dismissive words, Yutaka wasn’t entirely convinced that nothing horrible was inside the box either. Maybe he was also scared of Shou finding a severed ear inside and just tried to act tough to not worry him any further. He had the habit of acting more chill than he really was, just for Shou’s sake.

“Are you just going to let me do it alone?”, Shou asked incredulous.

“What do you want me to do?”, Yutaka asked and scoffed. “You need me to hold your hand?”

Shou felt his cheeks heating up and he lowered his gaze onto the box fast. Actually, he thought that it would feel nice, if Yutaka held his hand to comfort him, but he wasn’t going to admit that out loud.

“Of course not”, he said quietly and reached out to undo the ribbons around the box. With Yutaka by his side, he felt a whole lot braver than before.

Slowly he lifted the lid of the box.

There were chocolates inside indeed. Small, dark pralines that looked like they had been purchased from an actual chocolatier. The expensive kind.

Yutaka had been right about the note, too. On top of the chocolates sat a folded piece of white paper.

Shou took it up and unfolded it. His heart was beating very quickly. He felt scared, but strangely enough not in a dreadful way. He felt nervous.

His eyes fell onto the handwriting.

Shou, the note read. No “dear” or “beloved”, that would indicate a confession. The Valentine’s note started like an announcement. I don’t like admitting this, but I have romantic feelings for you. Since no one else will want you as their Valentine anyway, would you be mine?

The note was signed, too.

Shou put it back down onto the kitchen counter and licked his lips.

“You gave me a scare, idiot”, he said and looked up.

“I didn’t know you wouldn’t even open it”, Yutaka said and finally turned around to face Shou, although they were still several metres apart. “I’m sorry, though. I came here to miniate the damage. I wasn’t meaning to scare you.”

Shou nodded slowly. Yutaka looked lost as if he didn’t know what he was doing at Shou’s apartment any longer.

“Apology accepted”, Shou said.

“You don’t seem surprised”, Yutaka observed.

Shou smiled.

“Well, when you pointed out that the sender would have to be extraordinary stupid, I kind of figured. After all, you’re the dumbest person I know.”

“Alright”, Yutaka said and clapped his hands together. “I just wanted to assure there was no reason for you to be scared. Your address didn’t get leaked. You can sleep peacefully tonight. So, now that that’s settled, I’ll be on my way.”

He finally took a step away from the window to move towards the front door.

“Don’t you want to hear my answer first?”, Shou wanted to know.

Yutaka stopped short and looked at him wide-eyed. His face seemed to mirror the fear Shou had felt only a short while ago. Finally, Shou understood how much he had needed to overcome himself to show up here and face Shou, while he opened the box. He must have wanted to comfort Shou badly, if he was that scared of his reaction and had come here anyway. But then, it was very much like Yutaka to put his own worries behind himself only to take care of Shou – while being a total jerk about it at the same time.

“I think I better … I should …” Yutaka pointed towards the door helplessly. He looked like he wanted to just run out the door, before Shou could answer; like an animal in flight mode.

“Yes”, Shou interrupted him hastily to put him at ease. “Yes, I do want to be your Valentine.”

“Really?” The word came out incredibly soft and the tension disappeared from Yutaka’s shoulders visibly.

“Absolutely”, Shou confirmed and walked over to the window. Yutaka still looked like he could need some comfort. “I’m so happy the chocolates were from you.”

Gently he reached out and put his hands against Yutaka’s neck.

“I’m happy too”, Yutaka whispered.

Shou leaned in and rested his forehead against Yutaka’s. He sensed his body relaxing instantly. Being this close to Yutaka put him at ease like nothing else.

“I’m happy I’m no longer in danger of getting arrested by the police for having shitty taste in men”, Yutaka clarified.

Shou chuckled.

“And I’m happy that I won’t have to move”, he said. “It’s such a hassle.”

Yutaka laughed quietly. Shou sensed his body trembling softly against himself. The sound of Yutaka’s laughter made him feel safe. He leaned in and kissed him right in front of the window.

He didn’t even care to draw the curtains first.

#Golden Bomber #Kiryuuin Shou #Kyan Yutaka #kirikyan #fanfiction #fanfic

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boymeetsweevil · 5 years

Text

Heat Index

Grouping: Reader x Taehyung

Word Count: 2700 exactly!

Warnings/Themes: use of toys, mutual masturbation?, tae has a sweat kink probably

Summary: The town being in a heat wave puts Tae’s in a bit of a love drought. But even still, he makes do and (kind of) does you.

Another drop of sweat rolls down Taehyung’s face. It makes his nose itch with the gentle grazing sensation and falls on the cardboard flap in his hands. The sweat darkens the area it lands on and he stops for a minute to take in the perfectly circular shape haloed from the way the drop burst on impact. Normally he wouldn’t be so interested in his own sweat, but he feels as though his thoughts are slowed and dulled by cotton. It’s the heat.

“I’m really sorry, Tae,” you apologize as soon as you return from your kitchen, a single plastic-wrapped treat in hand. “They’re not putting in the AC until tomorrow.”

“It’s fine,” he says pleasantly while taking the popsicle from you. But it’s not really fine.

The heatwave terrorizing your town has been going on for almost 9 days at this point. He’d volunteered to help you move in, only for the weather to put a halt in your plans. But after the 4th day, you couldn’t put it off any longer and had to go meet the movers at your new place. Taehyung being the chivalrous boyfriend that he was—or that he wanted to be—kept his word despite the warnings from various weather people on his TV telling him not to leave his own air-conditioned apartment.

Though it might seem as though his priorities aren’t in place, Taehyung would honestly admit that the worst part about the heat wave was the lack of sex that came rolling in with it. With your new place being on the other side of the city and with the both of you relying primarily on public transport to see each other, your sex life seemed to be dwindling—no—frying in the sun. So, when you brought up the move yesterday he figured he’d just be helpful with unpacking until the AC installation finished and then suddenly become very helpful with packing you full of him. But that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

He bites at the popsicle forlornly with his back teeth. You have your own popsicle that’s a subtle pale green. It’s lime. Your favorite. Even if he didn’t know you well enough to know that you loved all things citrus, he’d still know you were enjoying the lime pop. The way you happily slurp around the cylinder while leaning on one of the larger boxes makes for quite the mirage in Taehyung’s sex desert. Your back is arched elegantly so you can peer out the window on the opposite wall and admire the much better view you have in your new space. And your skin looks iridescent with the sheen of sweat the weather has lovingly draped upon you. Then you catch a stray juice trail about to run onto your hand with the flat of your tongue and chase the flavor all the way to the top of the popsicle and Taehyung suddenly needs a plan B fast.

You jump with a shriek when your neck meets something shockingly cold and wet. Turning your head, you see that it’s just your boyfriend running the edge of his snack along the place where sweat was collecting like a pretty dew on your skin. His tongue follows the sticky path he just made, causing your eyes to flutter shut on their own before you fight them back open.

“What are you doing, that’s so...gross,” your breath hitches when he bites down at the intersection of neck and shoulder.

“Nothing.” The popsicle descends again to follow the same trail he made but, this time, you only flinch a little. “Just enjoying my snack.”

“Am I the snack?” You give him an unamused look.

“You’re always a snack, baby.”

“Sorry,” you’re not sorry but still remove his hand from your shorts with some care, “but I draw the line after 80 degrees.”

His hand only retreats a little and ends up sitting on your stomach, laying like a hot coal there. You can feel the arousal twisting your insides and raising your temperature like it does. The only problem is that this time you really can’t afford to get any warmer. You’re sure that you’ve already sweat out all the important things in your body and if you so much as look at Taehyung the wrong way, you’ll become a puddle that’s 20% you and 80% limesicle.

“But it’s been so long.”

The tip of his nose reacquaints itself with the shell of your ear. The heat of his front does the same with your back.

“You won’t die. Back off and help me with these other boxes. There might be a fan in here somewhere.”

The promise of a fan measures up fairly well against the promise of (sweaty) sex and he immediately hunts for the scissors he was using to open more of the boxes. With the blades in hand, he cuts through the tape holding yet another wardrobe box closed with hope as his only means of staying cool. The flaps reveal no spinning blade treasure—only kitchenware that you promptly scoop up and rush out the room with. Taehyung stares dumbly at your fleeing back, slick and bare besides a black sports bra, before cupping himself lightly. It’s just to take the edge off, his thinks to himself.

After the kitchenware layer, the box is rather oddly packed. There’s a bunch of hangers, which he promptly puts into your closet, and some knick knacks he knows you plan on putting on your bookshelves once they have books on them. There’s even some winter clothes that he’s fairly sure should have gone in a different box while you were packing them. Before he can dwell too much on your lack of packing skills, he reaches the bottom of the box, which contains yet another box. It’s a simple shoe box. Which wouldn’t be out of the ordinary if you were a shoe fan like some people he knew. However, you aren’t a shoe fan. In fact, all of your other shoes were jammed into the bottom of another box that had been opened earlier. So why do you have this shoebox here?

Going solely off intuition and knowledge about you after nearly a year together, he’s guessing there’s just some random sentimental things inside that you didn’t know where to put. If that’s what’s inside, he knows he shouldn’t peek, but he’s curious to see if anything to do with him is in the box. He pulls the lid up daintily, like the secrets won’t escape if he’s gentle, only to slam it back down as soon as he eyes the contents.

Well, he supposes sex toys could have sentimental value. But they don’t have much to do with him.

He lifts the lid again now that he’s certain nothing in the box can tell on him. With the sounds of you organizing your kitchen as his personal soundtrack, his begins rifling through the box. There’s a few bullets, what he thinks is a dildo but it’s covered in scales and has a few unnatural bends in it, some beads of varying sizes, and a classic hitachi among other things. Some of them he’d seen before, and some he hadn’t. Perhaps some of them kept you company before he started to. After a few thoughtful moments, he grabs one of the toys before replacing the lid and stashing the shoe box.

You’re almost finished sorting through all the different families of silverware you’ve collected over the years, when two hands land on your unclothed waist. The feeling of his palms on your sweaty skin has you squirming a bit.

“On a scale of one to ten, how wet are you,” Taehyung whispers in your ear.

“Your romance never ceases to amaze me.”

“Sorry, but...is it really just me?”

His forehead bumps against the back of your head as he takes in the way you look in shorts and a sports bra. It’s an understated look, to say the least, but he’s always loved the way you look with sweat on your skin.

“No,” you groan when he presses an open mouthed kiss to the nape of your neck. “But it’s just too hot to be doing cardio for no reason.”

His tongue darts out and flicks at your lobe, sending a quick blitz from your core out to your extremities. A small gush of arousal rushes down and you squeeze your thighs together in a stubborn effort to keep calm.

“What if I told you it’s not too hot?”

“You found the fan?” You turn around in his arms with shining eyes and he feels like an ass for not being able to say yes.

“No,” he grimaces. He attempts to wrap his arms around your waist placatingly, but you brush him off partly in anger and partly because you’re overheated. “But, if there’s no cardio needed, is it really too hot?”

“No cardio?”

You eye him suspiciously but let him drag you by the wrist back into the living room. Clearly he’s emptied out and flattened several other boxes since you took all your mismatched forks to the dining room for sorting. Only a few boxes remain unopened. The question of what he’s planning is still lingering when he pulls you over to a little setup that looks like he wrapped something in a pillowcase

“I don’t get it.”

“You will,” he grins boxy reassurance at you before sitting before the bundle on the ground. You follow suit while he unwraps it to reveal a vibrator you hadn’t used in a long while.

“What’s the joke, again?”

“It’s not a joke,” he whines, “This is how we can be lazy and get off.”

“I never really liked that one. I got it for free in a raffle in college and it was weirdly shaped so I couldn’t really get it to work.”

“Please? I swear I can make this work.”

You’re really tempted to say no. There are several drops of sweat actually rolling down your back as you ponder having an orgasm in your now-90-degree apartment. It seems ill-advised and like more work than Taehyung is marketing, but he also makes a convincing case. The convincing case being him and the fact that he still manages to look nearly edible in the middle of a heat wave.

His hair is flat and darkened against his forehead, heavy and saturated with sweat after brushing it back with his hands. The summer sun has darkened him slightly, making his skin appear more radiant in combination with the layer of his light sweat. The fact that he’s been shirtless and handsy all day only works in his favor. You sigh in defeat.

“Fine.”

His expression brightens considerably and he scrabbles up to rest his weight on his knees and heels to tug off his shorts to reveal the simple black briefs he had on underneath. He returns to a reclined position before snatching up the vibrator. You don’t get much warning and only barely get your own shorts hanging off one leg before he’s switching the toy on and nudging it between your thighs.

“So how did you—Oh!”

He has it angled differently than you did the times that you used it, and you wonder through the vibrations traveling over you if it's actually supposed to be for someone else to use on you. The thought dissipates quickly with the sudden wave of acute pleasure that creeps over you. It’s the type of feeling that has you almost smirking to yourself as you bite your lip, eyelids drooping closed as you hum to yourself. Taehyung lets out a sympathetic moan when you start rocking your hips against the device ever so slightly.

When your underwear is wet enough that he can feel it dampening the tips of his fingers near the toy, he removes it from your center. Your breath catches in your throat in a needy scoff that he ignores in favor of placing the still pulsating toy over his own crotch. There’s a small wet spot darkening the material of his briefs where his swollen head lays tucked up. He’s never really ever used a vibrator, but he figures it can’t be too different an experience. But when he touches it gingerly to the base of his clothed erection, the vibrations knock his breath out his lungs.

“Fuck, oh my...god,” he chokes out. Greedily, his finger twitches to kick the speed up a half unit. The increase has him nearly drooling within seconds and creates a steady dribble of pre-cum. “Shit, that feels good.”

“Share,” you snap at him after about 90 seconds of neglect to you dripping center.

“Make me,” he mumbles before massaging the toy up and down his length, ripping a gasp from his own lips.

You don’t take kindly to Taehyung hogging the vibrator. So you kick off your panties the rest of the way and decide to sit on the toy to get some action where you can. Before that, though, you do him the service of tugging his briefs down until they bunch around his knees. Once you’re settled, you’ve effectively trapped him where you want him. On the floor with the toy nestled between your folds and his shaft.

With your added weight and the return of your subtle hip rocking, the vibrations feel more intense for the both of you. You hiccup above him, hands coming out to brace your weight on his chest. It’s the only point of contact between you besides where your pelvises are slotted together. Naturally sweat begins to pool in the small spaces where you’re both joined, but it’s minimal and you don’t care. Especially not after Taehyung’s clumsy fingers knock the pulses into one of the different pattern modes. The steady buzz between your folds becomes a sudden tangle of tiny bursts. The pleasure hits you in matching percussive beats and you curl over Taehyung helplessly as the first wave of your first orgasm hits.

His eyes are squeezed shut because he’s not accustomed to the intense vibrations, but the sound of your moans let him know that you just came. He’s quick to follow with a few shallow thrusts that have you instinctively tightening your thighs around his hips to maintain your balance. The low, drawn out sound of his groans is accompanied by his large hands coming in to lock at your hips, grinding you down against him, soaking him further with your arousal. His holding you down has you squealing and squirming with oversensitivity at first. But when he doesn’t let go even after he spurts onto his own chest, you feel the familiar curls of pleasure behind the acidic overstimulation. Your nails scratch a fiery trail down his chest, somehow further raising his internal temperature as you both struggle in the silent endurance competition.

Who can last against the toy longer?

With gritted teeth and a river of sweat dripping down from his forehead, Taehyung taps out first. He switches the toy back down to its lowest setting before letting out a bark and squeeze at the flesh of your hip in a silent surrender. Your breathing is harsh and you’re so exhausted that you don’t even bother to use the muscles in your thighs to get off him. Instead, you nudge the toy out from in between you and let it clatter to the floor between Taehyung’s thighs while you recover still in his lap.

“That was fun,” you pant after a few minutes of silence. The sweat cooling in the space between you and Taehyung makes you finally scoot off him and onto the floor.

“I told you it would work. We didn’t even have to move that much.”

“That’s also true.” You watch him use the spare pillow case to wipe off the tacky cum on his stomach. “I never doubted you for a second.”

“You definitely did!”

“I whined about how hot it is. I didn’t say I thought your plan would fail.”

“I guess.” He lays star-fished out in the middle of your sparsely decorated living room before popping his head off the ground. “We really do need to find that fan, though.”

#btssmutclub #bangtan bookclub #networkbangtan #bttnetwork #95line.net #btswriters #kimtaehyung.net #bts smut #taehyung smut #bangtan imagines #bts imagines #taehyung imagine #bangtan scenarios #bts scenarios #taehyung scenarios #bangtan fanfic #bts fanfic #taehyung fanfic

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spidercakes · 5 years

Text

Starker AU in which all Peter’s friends are really confused about what his ‘new job�� is.

“I’ve got it,” Peter says, sparing his friends trying to figure out what the pizza bill will be split four ways. They all frown at him but he goes down to the first floor of the library anyway and pays for the pizza before he brings it back up. Mostly he’s just happy that they can study with food because nothing is worse than trying to balance equations on an empty stomach. Ned, Liz, and MJ frown when they see the boxes because they didn’t watch him order it online so they had no idea he just got them all their own pizzas. If nothing else they’ll have left overs for tomorrow.

“Dude, how the hell can you afford that?” Ned asks.

He can’t, technically, but Tony gave him access to all his accounts and Peter figures if he’s got access he might as well treat his friends. But he can’t tell them that because their relationship isn’t public and there’s like a million reasons why Tony might want to keep it that way and Peter likes the anonymity also so he hasn’t said anything. “Um. I got a new job,” he lies. Actually he quit his job because if he never has to work at McDonald’s again it’ll be too soon. And he’d been so frustrated with shitty customers and his asshole boss that he accidentally told him to mcfuck himself before just walking out. He’d felt instantly bad but also he’s never going back there. Like ever. And thanks to Tony he doesn’t need to.

“Where and are they hiring?” Liz asks, digging through the pizzas to find hers and snatching it. Ned and MJ take that as an invitation to do the same, leaving Peter’s in front of him.

“Oh um. Probably no where you want to work,” he says and changes the subject to their upcoming sociology quiz and they all groan. It’d been the only elective that they could all take together and they all hated it with a passion.

Ned watches as Peter all but flees the table at top speeds and yeah, none of them want to study but its still weird behavior. MJ squints as they all look at him, half turned towards the stacks blushing of all things as he talks to whoever on the phone. “Does he even answer the phone for May?” Liz asks and Ned shakes his head.

“Nope. He declines her calls and tells her to text.”

“So who the hell is that?” MJ asks and Ned’s thoughts exactly.

Liz slams her hand on the table, earning a bunch of looks from the people around them and wincing. “Sorry,” she says to no one in particular. “Guys!” she hisses at him and MJ. “He got a new job, suddenly seems flush with cash, is on the phone despite the fact that no one our age talks on the phone, works somewhere I wouldn’t want to. He’s totally a sugar baby!”

Ned and MJ look over at him giggling softly into the phone, cheeks still red and oh my god. “Oh my god he’s a fucking sugar baby. Do you think he sucks old man balls?” he asks, wrinkling his nose.

“Well, he’s on the phone and this dude must have a ton of cash because he’s paid for us to go out for like, the last two months. Boomer for sure,” MJ says.

Liz wrinkles her nose too. “You know what, better him than us,” she says, pulling a slice of pizza from the box and taking a bite. They nod in agreement as Peter comes back over looking weirdly happy considering being a sugar baby has to suck.

“I’ve got to go soon,” he says. “So we should probably make this quick.”

Ned gives him a gentle pat on the shoulder because he appreciates Peter taking one for the team. Peter looks confused, but they’ll let him tell them about being a sugar baby on his own terms.

Peter walks in the door and he’s so tired but Tony just got back from Malibu and he’s missed him so he agreed to go over anyway. Tony’s on the couch looking as tired as Peter feels but he reaches out for him anyway, pulling Peter into his lap so he’s straddling him. “Missed you,” Peter murmurs, wrapping his arms around Tony’s neck.

“Missed you too, baby,” he murmurs, hands settling on Peter’s hips as he leans in to kiss Peter. They stay there like that for a few minutes, kissing softly as Peter curls his fingers through Tony’s hair.

Tony pulls back after a moment, grinning. “By the way you’re such a college student. Do you actually spend money on things that aren’t pizza and clubbing?” he asks, dark eyes glittering in amusement.

“Ok first of all we go to pubs because we have taste, okay? And pizza is good. And filling. And its like a nice treat after a long day of studying or classes, leave me be. What’d you expect me to get, a sports car?” he asks and he’s joking but Tony shrugs.

“Kind of, yeah. But I guess with access to more money than you can fathom you end up addicted to Starbucks,” he says like Starbucks isn’t really expensive and a total treat to him normally.

“I like Starbucks,” he says in his own defense. “And the planet is dying, I’m not going to get a car when public transportation is fine,” he says.

“There are environmentally friendly options,” Tony points out and Peter wrinkles his nose.

“I swear to god if you mention Tesla like Elon Musk isn’t like that I will have to go through his Twitter feed to pull receipts on why he’s a shit bag who shouldn’t be supported,” he says and Tony laughs.

“Can’t say I care for Musk. Frankly I’m a little annoyed with people comparing us because first of all my name isn’t you know... fucking heinous. And also if I’m going to be compared to celebrities I always thought I was a bit more like Paris Hilton,” he says and Peter snorts.

“Totally misread but actually pretty nice and surprisingly passionate about the things you care about? Yeah, you guys are comparable,” he says.

“I meant that we’re hot but you know, that too,” Tony says. “But since you insist on mostly gorging yourself on pizza I took the liberty of making sure you’re taken care of and got you an apartment. Something closer to here and school so its less of a travel,” he murmurs.

Peter is grateful, really, but MJ, Liz, and Ned are about to be fucked for rent. “Um,” he says, unsure how to bring that up but Tony’s got a knowing look on his face.

“Want to go see it?” he asks and Peter doesn’t know how to back out so he just nods.

Peter almost shits when he sees the place because its fucking gorgeous but that’s more surprising is Liz, Ned, and MJ fighting over who gets the lemon chicken in the fridge. They all turn to face him and their eyes go wide, presumably, because Tony is standing there with his arm around Peter’s waist. “Um,” he says intelligently.

MJ drops the lemon chicken and Liz immediately snatches it off the ground, still safe in its container. Ned just looks stunned. “Your sugar daddy is Tony Stark?” he asks, voice going up.

He swears he can feel Tony’s anger even if he knows Tony isn’t showing it. “I didn’t tell them you were my sugar daddy! I don’t even know where they got that impression!” he says honestly.

Liz squints, “dude, you went from dirt poor and crying about money every other day to funding all our outings, buying us food all the time, and after like two months of avoiding giving us answers you told us you got a new job. It seemed pretty obvious that you’re a sugar baby. No judgement,” she throws out there.

“A job?” Tony asks and Peter lets out a squeak.

“You make money at jobs, I panicked!” he says in his defense.

“Why not just tell them the truth?” Tony asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I didn’t think you wanted to deal with the press and stuff and I get that so I kept it to myself,” Peter says and Tony frowns.

“So... you haven’t said anything because you thought I didn’t want people to know?” he asks.

Peter shrugs, “more or less and I get it, its okay. People will probably say some really nasty things and I can see why you wouldn’t want to-” his words are cut off as Tony draws him in for a kiss. He goes, making a surprised noise but happily leaning into it.

“Baby I thought you didn’t want people to know and I couldn’t figure out why. God, we’re dumb,” he mumbles.

“Does this mean we get to live here now? Because now that I have seen how rich people live I don’t want to go back,” Ned says, earning a snort from Liz. She’s the only one of them that grew up not dirt poor so this probably isn’t that big of a step up for her.

“Obviously. If Peter wasn’t paying his portion of the rent something tells me you wouldn’t be able to afford the place you had,” Tony says and Peter relaxes.

“Oh thank god! I didn’t want to be rude and say no to this place but I wasn’t about to screw my friends over either,” he says, realizing too late that there must have been a reason for them being here. Then he frowns, “wait, how did you guys get here?” he asks.

“Subway,” Ned tells him and MJ rolls her eyes.

“There was a note on the table from a T.S with this address and we assumed it was for you and we all wanted to see what being a sugar baby would get us so we decided to snoop and hope we didn’t find you fucking some old as tits boomer,” MJ says bluntly.

“Also if this was a job its a damn lie that I wouldn’t want a job where I get to sleep with Tony Stark,” Liz tells him.

“I’m so glad I don’t need to feel guilty for the free stuff,” Ned says, hand pressed to his chest. “I was wondering if maybe you decided fuck it and were maxing out a line of credit or something.”

Peter nods. “Hm. Makes sense. So now I’m sexiling all of you because I don’t want to have to worry about being quiet. Get you lemon chicken and go,” Peter tells them.

Ned wrinkles his nose. “Gross, dude.”

MJ snorts, “like you wouldn’t sleep with Tony Stark. Not like that’s a hardship. We might as well pack our shit at home,” she points out.

“Uh huh, whatever you guys need to do. Now out so I can get fucked through my mattress,” he says, grabbing Tony’s hand and dragging him off through the kitchen before he pauses. “Wait, where’s my room?” he asks and Tony laughs.

“Follow me, baby. Glad you liked it,” he murmurs as he pulls Peter along.

#tony stark x peter parker #starker #alternate universe #fanfiction

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no6secretsanta · 4 years

Text

Drawn To You

From @fairysdarkestnight for @aoicanvas.

It was my first time writing something completely AU, so I hope you enjoy it! Happy Holidays!!!

******

Twelve Days ‘til Christmas

“I want your sperm.”

Shion spit out his coffee and stared at his oldest friend. “You want my what?”

Quickly grabbing a few napkins and wiping off the tabletop, Safu sopped up the drink before it could spill to the floor. “Sperm. I want to have sex with you.”

He looked to the side, refusing to make eye contact with her. “I…I can’t Safu. I’m sorry.”

“Is it that I’m not your type? You don’t find me attractive?”

There were the beginnings of tears in her eyes, and Shion hunched a little in his seat, pulling down his red beanie. “It’s not that, exactly. You’re my best friend, Safu, and –”

“Your only friend.”

He chuckled lightly. “I suppose you’re right. My only friend then. And I just, don’t really feel that way. Towards anyone.”

Safu took a drink of her tea – black, with no sugar, he knew – and stared at the counter where a scowling worker stood taking orders. “Is he more your type? You’ve looked over at him 27 times since we sat down.”

Blushing lightly, Shion took a drink, grateful that at least she wasn’t asking for his sperm anymore. “I told you, I don’t feel that way towards anyone. He just looks familiar, is all. Like he might be in one of my classes or something.”

It was true, after all. Shion would’ve sworn that he recognized the man but couldn’t quite place him. It’d been bugging him since they’d walked into the shop off campus. He and Safu made it a goal to visit all the coffee shops in the area – something she claimed was about finding one with “just the right atmosphere and blend of tea” – so it was the first time they ordered from that particular shop.

“Your pupils grew and your face flushed when you saw him.”

“It was warm.”

“You should just go talk to him. You’re interested in him, even if you don’t see it.” Safu calmly took another sip of her tea, and Shion was glad to see that any rejection she may have felt at his words was pushed to the side. It was a very Safu-like response, and if she was handling it like that, then he knew she would be fine.

He hoped.

Shion sighed and finally met her eyes. “I’m not saying that I’m interested in him – I’ve never felt that way before. But if it’ll make you happy, I’ll go talk to him.”

She raised an eyebrow at his words, and a little smirk crossed her lips. “I don’t believe that you’ll actually say what I want you to say. So I’ll just go talk to him myself.”

With that, Safu pushed out her chair and marched toward the counter where the man wiped down the cappuccino machine, still wearing the same scowl as before. She waited there a minute before clearing her throat, and the man turned, his scowl deepening further than Shion thought it could.

Shion couldn’t hear what Safu was saying, but her gesturing towards him made it fairly obvious. As he slouched down even further in his seat, Shion felt heat rise to his cheeks. He loved Safu, but she didn’t always think through her actions.

Like this.

A loud laugh made it to his ears and Shion knew, he just knew, that the laughter belonged to the worker. This day can’t possibly get any more embarrassing.

Famous last words.

“I got his number for you.”

“YOU WHAT?!”

Eleven Days ‘til Christmas

Shion wouldn’t be able to return to that coffee shop. Ever. More than twenty-four hours had passed, and he could still feel the heat on his cheeks. It was a shame too – he’d really liked that coffee.

Bzzt.

His phone. A text. Probably from Safu, asking if he’d called the – barista? Shion wasn’t sure exactly what his job title was – and he didn’t have it in him to respond. What would he say? No Safu, I haven’t, because I’m a coward who didn’t even want to talk to him in the first place.

I just wish I could remember where I know him from.

It was going to bother him, and it wasn’t like he could just go back to the shop and try to figure it out. Safu had made that impossible.

Bzzt.

Sighing, Shion reached over to grab his phone. He should probably talk to her sooner rather than later – Safu only got worse the longer he ignored her.

Oh. It’s from Mom.

“Flour? She texted me because she needs more flour? I live across town. Oh well, I guess I could pick up a few more packages of ramen while I’m there.”

After pulling on his coat and beanie, Shion walked the short distance to the bus stop. The grocery store near his apartment didn’t have the flour his mother needed, as it carried only the college necessities.

He scanned his pass and took a seat near the front. At that time of day, there was hardly anyone on the bus – just a couple students on their way home from class – and Shion let his head fall against the window. It had been a stressful day, and it was barely half over. All he wanted to do was curl up in his bed and take a nap.

The bus screeched to a stop, making Shion flinch with the sound. Only a few more stops. Just a little longer.

A passenger thumped into the seat beside him, and as Shion pressed himself into the wall, the stranger turned to look at him. “Hey, that’s pretty nice hair you got there kid. Bet you dye it for attention. You want some attention?” Cackling. That was the best way to describe the sound coming from the man’s overly large mouth. “Hey, now that I look a little, you got some nice eyes too. What do you say about jumping off at the next stop with me? I promise I’ll treat you real nice.

Shion couldn’t do anything but shy away and pull down his beanie to try and hide the shockingly white hair. He didn’t like riding public transportation for a reason, but it was a necessary evil if he wanted to visit his mother while the bakery was open.

“Leave the guy alone. You’re being a nuisance. Take your fat body elsewhere.”

The voice was low and threatening, but the man next to Shion didn’t even budge. “Who the hell do you think you are punk?”

“Someone you don’t want to mess with.”

He couldn’t see his savior’s face with as far down as he’d tugged his beanie, but his voice alone sent shivers down Shion’s spine. And apparently, it was enough to send the stranger scurrying to the back of the bus.

“Thanks,” Shion whispered, slowly uncurling from his defensive position.

Grunt.

“Oh I’m screwed.”

“Only if you ask nicely.” The man beside him snickered. “I mean, that scar is quite sexy.”

There was nothing he could say to the – admittedly attractive, thanks Safu – barista sitting next to him. “Shion.”

“Oh I know.”

And there it ends. Nope. Not today.

The rest of the bus ride was spent in silence as Shion stared out the window. Just as he stood to get off, the man grabbed his hand. “Nezumi.”

Shion grinned and nearly skipped off the bus.

Ten Days ‘til Christmas

“I don’t want to do this, Safu. You know I’m no good at it.” Shion sighed as he laced up a pair of ice skates. Their university hosted an open-air rink every year and somehow, despite Safu’s annual insistence, he’d avoided what was sure to be a disaster.

“Yes but we’re in our senior year, Shion. I want us to go at least once.” Safu tugged his hand so he stood in front of her. “I don’t know where I’ll be working next year, and that lab job you applied for would keep you busy right up until Christmas.”

Shion laughed a little and shook his head. He wasn’t even sure he would take that job if he got it – he was majoring in biology, but he loved working with people.

But his damn looks.

A whistle rang through the air. Shion turned to look, lightly glowering at the general location it came from. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did.

Nezumi.

“Oh look Shion, it’s that guy from the coffee shop. We should go say hi.”

“Safu, you’re the one who talked to him. Let’s just get on the ice and pretend like we don’t recognize him.”

Hitting him slightly to get him to turn around, Safu’s eyes lit up. “He’s coming over here.”

Shion groaned. “Just kill me know.”

“Oh, so should I screw you first or kill you? Just so you know, I’m not terribly into necrophilia.” Nezumi smirked as Shion pulled down his beanie as his cheeks flushed.

Safu backed away, and merely smiled and waved when Shion sent a panicked look her way. “That’s not, I’m just, ugh.”

Nezumi held out a hand as he bowed at the waist. “Will you do me the honor of this dance, Your Majesty?”

A chill wind rustled the ends of Shion’s hair, sending a shiver through him. “You’re ridiculous. I can’t skate anyway.” A brow lifted. “Yes I know I’m at a skating rink. You can stop looking at me like that.”

“So?”

A sigh. Then, “I suppose so. But when I fall on my face and take you down with me, don’t blame me.” Silver eyes glinted as Nezumi grabbed Shion’s hand and dragged him onto the ice. He nearly tripped on the edge of the rink, but Nezumi reached an arm around his waist and anchored him to his side.

“Careful there. Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

The first few laps around the rink had Shion holding desperately onto Nezumi’s arm for balance. Safu skated by them multiple times, snickering at Shion’s scared expression each time. But Shion barely noticed.

Nezumi was fascinating.

He was a literature major, and lived and breathed Shakespeare. One moment he would recite as Hamlet, and the next he would be Titania, complete with a high, breathy voice that was so feminine that Shion barely recognized it.

“You know, when your friend asked for my number, I was seriously concerned for her well-being. He marched right up to me, grabbed me by the collar, and demanded that I write down my number so that her sad, pathetic friend could hook up with someone he found hot. I was honestly scared for my life. Even thought about calling the cops on her.”

Shion laughed. “Yeah, she can be a little overbearing sometimes. Though given how you chased away that creep on the bus, I think you would’ve been just fine.”

“Though I wouldn’t have been as hesitant if I’d actually been able to see how cute you are. With your beanie pulled over your eyes like that, I thought you were some pervy old man with a fetish for young baristas.”

He shoved Nezumi away from him, laughing as the other flailed about to get back his balance. It was the first time that he’d seen Nezumi, the epitome of grace, act even the slightest bit clumsy.

What he forgot to take into account was that Nezumi was also his support beam, and without the other man there, Shion went tumbling to the ground. A loud crack resounded through the night air, and Nezumi immediately knelt by his side. “Hey, you okay?”

Shion just laughed and held up a hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I’m going to drop you. You’re an idiot.”

“Hehehe. Yeah but I’m your idiot.”

Nezumi blinked at his words and then smiled ever so slightly. “Yeah, yeah I guess you are. I think I can live with that.”

Nine Days ‘til Christmas

“I can’t do this, Inukashi. The kid was just so, ugh, I don’t know. I couldn’t say no to him, but this is a really, really bad idea.”

Nezumi stood beside his oldest – friend, rival, acquaintance? – as they waited in line for lunch at the university’s cafeteria. He would’ve gone to literally anyone else, but Inukashi owed him a meal for returning one of the dogs that had gotten loose the previous week, and the cheapskate refused to pay for anything actually decent.

“I dunno man, seems like you’ve got it pretty bad. I mean, you’ve met the kid all of what, three times and he’s already got you committing? Whatever happened to the whole ‘You lose the moment you have something to protect’ thing you had going on?”

Sighing, Nezumi reached for the largest slice of cherry cake he could find and could feel Inukashi slump in defeat beside him. “Yeah, that’s the problem, mongrel. I refuse to lose because of some irritating brat like that. I mean, he’s sexy, but he’s clearly got problems that I don’t want to deal with.”

“Yeah I totally get that. Makes total sense. Especially with the way you’ve been waxing poetry about him since the first time you saw him. Really seems like you hate the guy.”

“He’s an airhead you doesn’t know anything about the world. It’s just so damn irritating trying to keep him out of trouble. I mean, the guy can’t even tell off a creep by himself without mommy there to hold his hand.”

Crash.

Inukashi’s head swiveled toward the sound of a tray full of food falling to the ground and began to snicker. “Seems like somebody heard you.”

“What?”

“Your boyfriend – you said he had pure white hair, right? You should go see if he needs help. After all, you wouldn’t want some brat like that following you around like a puppy, right?”

Not bothering to respond to Inukashi’s words, Nezumi left his tray in line and rushed over to where Shion bent over the mess he made, trying in vain to pick up the multitude of udon noodles that lay scattered on the floor.

“Here, let me help.”

“I don’t want your help. Apparently all I am is a nuisance to you. So just go back to your friend and stop pretending like I even exist in the first place. You won’t be the first.” Blazing red eyes bored into Nezumi’s and where he expected to see sadness, he only saw fury. “And you certainly won’t be the last.” Without another word, Shion sopped up some of the broth that spilled and threw the entirety of his lunch in the trash.

“Damn Nezumi, you really know how to pick them. Kid seems like he’d be a match even for your drama queen.”

“Shut it Inukashi. I don’t want to talk about it.” Nezumi picked his own lunch tray and stalked off, wanting to get as far away from the cafeteria as possible. He’d screwed up.

But maybe it’s for the best.

Eight Days ‘til Christmas

“Of all the insufferable things to say, he had to go with that. He doesn’t even know me, Safu.”

Safu nodded along. “Yes yes Shion, the guy’s a prick. Sorry that you have such shitty taste in guys. You wouldn’t be having this problem if you’d just gone after me like I suggested in the beginning.”

Fury still glowed in his eyes and Shion acted as if he hadn’t even heard her. “He flirts with me and helps me and then when I’m thinking that I ‘m actually going to ask him out on a real date instead of accidentally running into each other, he has the gall to say that.”

Their steps on the quad’s stone walkway echoed through the nearly empty campus. With only about a week until Christmas, most of the students were finishing up exams or had already gone home for the holidays. Shion’s steps sped up and Safu had to nearly double her pace to keep up with him.

“I don’t know why you’re so upset. Sure, the guy’s apparently pretty awful, but it’s not like you haven’t come across that type before. And you’d only seen him a couple of times.”

Safu pulled him over to a coffee cart in front of the cafeteria and ordered two lattes. She didn’t normally drink coffee, but Shion figured that the all nighters she’d been pulling weren’t treating her well. He’d assumed one of them was for him, but when she glared at him and proceeded to down both of him, he decided it was probably better not to get in the way of a sleep-deprived Safu and her caffeine.

“It’s ust that it was the first time I’d ever felt that drawn to someone. Like, I couldn’t wait until the next time I saw him, even if I was horribly embarrassed because someone decided to talk to him on my behalf.”

Safu just shrugged and tossed her empty cups in a nearby trash can. “Speaking of, if you don’t want to see him, we might want to go elsewhere.”

“Wait wait wait oh my God, is he here? Like right now?” Shion’s head turned wildly from side to side, scanning the empty quad for any sign of Nezumi. And there, lounging in one of the university’s hammocks, lay Nezumi. He was reading a book, that jerk. “No. I’m not going to go out of my way to avoid him. Like you said, we’d only seen each other a few times. It’s not like we were dating or anything.”

As they walked by, Nezumi glanced up from his book – Faust – but quickly moved his eyes back to the page. Shion visibly slouched, but continued walking. The conversation turned to school, and the brief non-interaction with Nezumi was pushed to the back of his mind.

Seven Days ‘til Christmas

“God damn it, can’t I even get my mother a Christmas present without you being here?”

Nezumi blinked and put down the two conditioners he’d apparently been comparing. No wonder that hair looks so silky. No. Bad Shion. He’s an asshole. You shouldn’t be admiring his hair.

“Look, it’s not like I’m following you. If anything, you’re the weirdo stalking me for my fabulous good looks.”

Shion screeched and stormed out of the beauty store. His mom would just have to deal with getting something ordered from online.

Six Days ‘til Christmas

There weren’t many places to be on a Friday night in a college town if you weren’t one for parties, as Shion found out very quickly. His first year in college had him hanging out in coffee shops until they closed or studying in the 24-hour library. Safu occasionally dragged him to one of the clubs, but drunk people tended to be more vocal about him, so he tried to avoid it as much as possible.

It wasn’t until his second year that he saw a poster for the university’s drama department, showcasing the shining star, Eve. Although Ophelia’s part wasn’t large in Hamlet, the girl took his breath away and he kept going back.

He couldn’t quite place what it was about Eve that had him so enthralled. She had a beautiful voice, and outperformed anyone else on stage, but there was something more, something beneath her acting skills that drew him to the theater week after week.

This Friday was no different. Shion took his regular seat in the back of the theater, opened his playbill, and nearly walked out of the theater. There, staring up at him, was a picture of Nezumi.

Or rather, Eve.

Well, I guess that solves the mystery of why he looked so familiar.

Shion strongly debated walking out of the theater. He didn’t want to see Nezumi, and after their (brief) run-in the previous day at the store, Shion wasn’t sure if he was up to watching Nezumi prance about on stage. The thought that Nezumi merely had a sister crossed his mind but was quickly discarded. It explained far too much about the man, and Shion had already heard his rendition of Titania, so it wasn’t a question of skill.

But he’d already paid for his ticket, and it’s not like he had anything else to do that night. That’s why he was there in the first place. Besides, it was a retelling of A Christmas Carol, one of the few novels he’d read, and he’d been looking forward to this production since they announced it back in October.

So instead of fleeing the theater before he could catch sight of Nezumi, Shion settled into his seat and waited for the torture to begin.

It was worse than he thought. Apparently, this retelling meant that Nezumi – Eve – was the star. There wasn’t a moment on stage that Nezumi wasn’t there for. So instead of being able to enjoy the show, all Shion could think about was the pain he felt when he heard Nezumi utter those words.

How could he have been so stupid? It’s not like it was the first time someone had gotten close to him, only to find out what they really thought of him. There was a reason Safu was his only friend. And even if there was a connection between them, something that inexplicably drew Shion to the other man, it wasn’t destiny. There was no such thing as soulmates.

And he’d been naïve to think that something more might’ve happened between them.

As Shion exited the theater, after absorbing absolutely nothing of the show, his phone vibrated. There was apparently a party that Safu wanted to go to but was too nervous to show up by herself. Which seemed odd for Safu, but he decided not to question it. Nothing good ever came from questioning Safu. So with a reluctant sigh, he texted her back and told her he’d be there a little after midnight.

Five Days ‘til Christmas

As Shion approached Dorm No.6, he grew more and more apprehensive. People spilled out from the building and although he was more than a block away, Shion could feel the bass thudding through the air. It wasn’t anywhere near the quiet solitude he found in the library, and it lacked the sophistication of the university theater.

He just wanted to go home.

But he’d promised Safu he’d be there, and there was no use backing out when he’d already walked all the way there.

It wasn’t long before his best friend skipped up to his side, looping her arm with his. “I really appreciate you coming all the way over for this. You can leave in a bit, if you’d like. I just always hate showing up to parties alone, and neither of my roommates were able to come.”

Shion smiled. “It’s no problem. Not like I had anything planned anyway.”

The two of them made their way through the mass of bodies, holding onto each other so they wouldn’t get separated. They talked a bit about the finals they’d had that day, or rather, the day before as it was well after midnight at that point. They were nearly shouting their words, but it wasn’t the worst time Shion had at party Safu dragged him to.

There was a makeshift bar in one of the rooms, so they headed there first. Shion didn’t usually drink, and Safu said it was bad for the brain cells, but he figured she might run into one of her other friends there, and he was anxious to leave. It was getting to be a bit much for him, but he wouldn’t leave Safu alone.

It wasn’t until they’d made it to the bar that Shion spotted him. He was impossible to miss, with those piercing silver eyes and hair pulled up into its signature style. They made eye contact for a moment, but Shion quickly turned his head to the bartender and ordered something strong. He didn’t care what, but if he was going to have to be in the same room as Nezumi, then he didn’t want to be able to think. Safu eyed him warily, but apparently decided that he wasn’t going to overdo it.

She was wrong.

As Safu hit it off with one of the other students nearby, Shion ordered another drink. And another. And another. The smart thing would’ve been to go home – he had after all, only shown up for Safu’s sake – but it was just like every other time. Just knowing that Nezumi was in the same room made it hard for Shion to leave, but the longer he stayed there and the longer he pretended he wasn’t staring at Nezumi, the more he drank.

It wasn’t long before he had to lean against the wall for support. It wasn’t bad – he knew he could still get home if he needed to – but there was something relaxing in being alone at a party. He was surrounded by strangers who apparently didn’t care that his hair was snow white or that he had a scar winding around him. The music was loud, sure, but his head was pleasantly fuzzy and he found he didn’t care as much as he did before.

Drink number six had him slightly staggering, but he was still fine. But he was more concerned with finding Nezumi. The man had disappeared from his sight, and without the view, Shion found himself getting more and more frustrated. If he wasn’t going to talk to him, the least he could do was stand still so Shion could watch him.

“Hello Your Majesty. You need a hand?”

It wasn’t until the silky voice whispered in his ear that Shion realized he’d fallen to the ground. Huh. Maybe he drank more than he thought. Too much, apparently, if he was starting to hallucinate Nezumi talking to him.

“You’re not real. Go away. I don’t want to deal with you right now.”

Imaginary Nezumi chuckled. “Oh man, you’re gonna have one hell of a hangover tomorrow. What is that, tequila? Come on, let’s get you out of here before one of the vultures swoops in and grabs you. I’ve seen more than one person eyeing you.”

Although the party had been going on for more than a few hours and it was well after three a.m., there was still a mass of bodies to wade through before they were free. Shion wasn’t exactly sure where Nezumi was taking him – which was weird since Nezumi was in his head after all – as the exit was several halls down in the opposite direction.

“You’re too drunk for me to trust you right now, so I’m taking you back to my room. This is the liberal arts dorm, so it isn’t too far. How’d you get invited to a cast party anyway?”

Shion shrugged and reached up to pet Nezumi’s hair. “Safu did. And your hair’s so soft. What do you do with it? I wish my hair would be that soft. Why were you at that party anyway? As Nezumi and not Eve if it was a cast party. And how come you feel so solid when you’re just in my head? Is this why people drink so much? So that they have realistic visuals of people they want to see?”

His reaching threw him off balance and Nezumi had to dart to catch the kid before he face planted. “Let’s leave the questions until we get you settled in for the night, okay? Then you can ask me anything you want. I’ll even let you play with my hair if you’re good, Your Majesty.”

A pout formed on Shion’s lips. He felt that if he didn’t ask his questions now, then Nezumi would disappear, never to be seen from again. So instead, he threw his arms around Nezumi and held him in place. “I don’t want you to go.” With just a little stretch, Shion managed to place his lips on Nezumi’s.

It wasn’t the most romantic kiss, and it certainly wasn’t magical. There’d been too much alcohol involved for it to be clean, but neither seemed to mind. They broke away from the kiss and Nezumi rested his forehead on his.

“I’m not going anywhere, Shion. As long as you want me by your side, I’ll be there. I’ve found that I need you there with me.” A gentle smile crossed Nezumi’s face and, although he would deny it if ever asked, let his head fall on Shion’s to comfort him. “Now let’s go get you taken care of, Your Majesty.”

When Shion woke up that morning, it was to an unfamiliar bed and a multitude of texts from Safu. She was worried about him, as she didn’t see him leave with anyone, and she wanted to make sure he got home on his own alright.

He couldn’t tell her what happened, as apparently he’d wandered into an empty dorm room and fallen asleep, and he didn’t want that to get back to his mom. She’d only worry, and with the bakery being busy for the holidays, that was stress he didn’t want her having.

Four Days ‘til Christmas

The day after the party and his head was still pounding. Though, to be fair, that might have had less to do with the tequila he’d had and more to do with that fact that he’d thrown up all over his pillow and hadn’t had a chance to wash it yet. So instead of having his nice, memory foam pillow that he’d brought from home, he’d resorted to using a sweatshirt.

Not exactly the best night’s sleep ever.

So now, instead of relaxing on his Sunday morning, enjoying his last moments of peace before the rush of last-minute bakery orders, he was at the pharmacy picking up some headache pills.

And yet, somehow, even that was ruined.

It had been a couple days since he talked to Nezumi – the real Nezumi, as he wasn’t counting that alcohol induced hallucination – and he wasn’t sure how he should approach him.

Not that there’s any reason to in the first place.

He wasn’t as angry as he had been – he was, after all, quite used to people’s negative reactions – but he wanted to at least get an explanation. There’d been no reason to spend time with him or help him out if Nezumi only thought of him as a nuisance.

And the day at the ice rink…

Shion shook his head to banish the memories. If he was going to demand an explanation, then he needed to be focused.

Footsteps echoed down the aisle as Shion approached the raven-haired man. He stopped, opened his mouth, and promptly shut it as Nezumi turned to face him, a smirk on his face.

“Well hello Your Majesty. Didn’t expect you to see the light again after the other night. And you didn’t even stay until I came back with breakfast.”

The shock on Shion’s face made Nezumi snicker with delight. “What, did His Majesty drink a little too much tequila and not remember our glorious night together?”

Red flourished on Shion’s cheeks as he struggled to form a sentence with Nezumi laughing the whole time. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.” With that, Shion turned on his heel and stalked out of the pharmacy.

He didn’t even pick up any medicine.

Three Days ‘til Christmas

As Shion was packing for break, a piece of paper floated down from his nightstand. The paper Safu had given him with Nezumi’s number on it. He stared at it for a moment, debating with himself, before sighing and putting it back in its place. He might be able to throw it away someday, or put it into his phone, but that day was not today.

Two Days ‘til Christmas

“Shion, I really appreciate you coming over to help with the bakery. There have been several rush orders phoned in, and I really couldn’t say no.” Karen hung her head as Shion came around the counter to wrap an arm around her.

“It’s no problem Mom. If I can go across town to pick up some flour for you, I can help out in the bakery for a few days. It’s not like you taught me nothing, after all.”

Karen laughed lightly and hugged her son in return. “Speaking of…”

“No. One flour run is all I’m capable of.”

“Shion please. It’s just a couple blocks. You wouldn’t have to even take the bus.” Karen was elbow deep in flour and while she could clean up, she was much more efficient than Shion at baking, and they were still behind, despite the extra hours he knew his mother had put in.

“What will I get in return? I’m not doing this for free, you know.”

Karen rolled her eyes. They both knew he would go regardless, but it had become a bit of a tradition between them. “I have enough ingredients set aside for a cherry cake, and enough chocolate for a gallon of your favorite drink.”

A grin broke out on Shion’s face as he grabbed his wallet and headed towards the grocery store. It really wasn’t much of an effort to go, but since his dad had walked out on them, those teasing moments helped keep up both their spirits. It made him feel guilty about moving across town for school, but it was a requirement of his program.

It wasn’t until he was halfway down the flour aisle that he realized who stood in front of him. “Nezumi.”

“Your Majesty.” Nezumi shifted slightly so Shion couldn’t see what was in his basket, but Shion didn’t particularly care. After realizing that he evidently didn’t hallucinate Nezumi that night and had, in fact, fallen asleep in his bed, Shion wasn’t sure what to think.

His memories were still fuzzy, but the Nezumi he talked to that night didn’t seem like the same one who would say those things about Shion to his friend. But it was still Nezumi, the man that Shion could no longer deny being drawn to. That first day in the café, Safu had seen something he didn’t. And while he might not have appreciated her methods, he would have to thank her.

Because it got him to this moment.

“I’m busy tonight, but can we meet tomorrow? I just, I think we need to talk.” Nezumi bowed his head a little, looking more uncomfortable than Shion had ever seen him.

“…Yeah, I guess so. I’ll be helping out at my mom’s bakery, so if you don’t mind swinging by at some point, I can take a break then. It’s Karen’s Bakery, just a couple blocks from here.”

Nezumi nodded and reached out to take Shion’s hand. “Thanks. I’ll see you then.” And then, before he could react, Nezumi pressed a quite kiss to Shion’s forehead and rushed out of the store.

Christmas Eve

The clock struck eight and Shion flipped the sign to closed with a sigh. He’d waited and waited and waited, but Nezumi had never shown. Flour covered every inch of the kitchen, and Christmas Eve promised to be even more hectic.

Shion sighed and began to wipe down the counters. There wasn’t any reason for him to be disappointed. He hadn’t expected Nezumi to show up at all, to be honest.

But still.

It took more than an hour to finish cleaning the kitchen and by the time he had, Shion was nearly collapsing from exhaustion. He’d forced his mother upstairs before he closed the shop, as she’d been up since three that morning and would be again the following day.

Bang bang bang.

Shion startled awake, not realizing that he’d fallen asleep leaning against the counter. The knocking came again and while he could hear a voice, Shion couldn’t make out what the person was saying. Regardless, they were going to be open again the following day, and there was nothing that couldn’t wait until then.

Putting the last few drying dishes away, Shion made his way to the staircase leading to the apartment above the bakery. The banging had stopped, so Shion assumed whoever was there had given up for the night.

His phone began to ring.

Safu never calls me, and Mom would just come down if she needed something.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. The numbers weren’t programmed into his phone, but something about them seemed oddly familiar. He wasn’t particularly in the mood to talk to anyone, especially if it was a telemarketer, but there was just something nagging at him to answer.

“Shion?”

“Nezumi? How did you get my number?”

Silence. Then, “Safu. She gave it to me that first day. Please, I’m so sorry I’m late but I’m here. Outside the bakery. Let me in?”

“I’ll, I’ll be right there.”

Shion raced towards the front of the bakery, knocking into tables as he went. He’s here. He actually came.

A panting Nezumi stood outside the door, cheeks red and hair speckled with snow. “I-I brought cherry cake. It’s my favorite, so I really hope you like it too.”

A gentle smile crossed Shion’s face. “It’s my favorite too. I’ll make us some hot chocolate, if that’s alright.”

“That sounds great.”

It wasn’t long until the two of them sat across from each other, identical mugs of hot chocolate buried underneath a mountain of whipped cream in their hands. Nezumi unwrapped a misshapen cherry cake, recognizable only by the specks of red on the outside. “I-I tried my best, but baking isn’t exactly my strong suit. I just, I wanted to do something for you, to show you that I was sorry for what you heard and that I want to be with you.” Nezumi’s voice rose barely above a whisper, but his gesturing hands made up for the lack of volume. Bandages covered his fingers, and there were burns across his hands.

Shion reached out and covered beat up hands. “Thank you Nezumi. It means everything to me.” And when their eyes met, they knew they would be alright.

They were home.

#fairysdarkestnight #aoicanvas #no6 #no 6 #no.6 #no. 6

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marginalgloss · 4 years

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a dream of north

I don’t recall exactly when I first read Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. It must have been in the late 1990s, since I’m fairly sure it was after the release of the sequel, but definitely before The Amber Spyglass came out. (I was very excited for that one.) I would guess I was no more than twelve or thirteen. It seems a little odd now to think that initially these were promoted as books for young people. My edition was published by Point, the Scholastic imprint best known for pulpy teen horror fiction; in a bookshop today you are more likely to find a new edition of one of Pullman’s novels dressed up in handsome pastel colours, with a more ‘artisanal’ cover style. Which is fine, and well-deserved. But my copy is the same one I read more than twenty years ago; I know this because it is missing the top-right corner of the last thirty pages or so, having once been lovingly chewed by a late lamented family dog.

Northern Lights is not a long book, and in many ways it feels like a quick sketch of a fast-moving story, one which is touches lightly on the world in which it depicts. By the standards of genre fantasy or science fiction, there isn’t a lot of detail here. We follow Lyra, a young girl growing up in an alternate Oxford — it might be some time in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, by our standards. Through a combination of accident and concealed design, Lyra is drawn into a conspiracy that involves two aspects: an expedition to the distant arctic in search of a mysterious particle called ‘Dust’, and a conspiracy to kidnap children and transport them to this same far northern region. What follows is an adventure in pursuit of Lord Asriel, a man Lyra believes to be her uncle, while alternately monitored and pursued by a sinister rich woman called Mrs Coulter. This race to the frozen North forms pretty much all of the main body of the book.

For the most part it rolls along at a storytelling pace: one thing happens, then the next, then the next. It really does have the rhythm of a story one might tell out loud to children, over many bedtimes. (Consider the frequent asides about what Lyra must eat, and where she sleeps — so often a chapter will end with her curling up to sleep in some sheltered corner of a forsaken place.) It doesn’t come across as overly considered. With a few exceptions, the book doesn’t often slow down to explain itself. If a reader were so inclined I’m sure it would be possible to poke holes all kinds of holes in the plot. Even by the end of the novel I didn’t feel entirely sure what Dust was, nor did I really understand what the antagonists were trying to do with it. Are they trying to destroy it, or to control it? And some of it seems whimsical, in the best possible sense. Want a Texan cowboy with his own gas-powered balloon and a talking bear for a best friend? Why not? It’s fun. It may be whimsical but that isn’t to suggest it’s frivolous; the author’s imagination comes from a place of experience, from deep reading. It’s a world that fascinates, even as it seems to resist scrutiny.

Something else which surprised me on returning to this book was the near absence of any explicit references to organised religion. There are mentions of something called the Magisterium, but it’s far from clear what their role is in the story, while a passing mention of ‘Pope John Calvin’ seems like a sort of gentle joke for older readers. This seems significant because at a certain point after the final book in this series was released, public discussion of Philip Pullman’s work became centred around his attitude to organised religion. By then a new populist atheism was having a kind of resurgence — people were talking about ‘the New Humanism’ or ‘New Atheism’ as if it were something to be excited about. Pullman would be loosely associated with this movement, insofar as his books could be championed by people who might proactively define themselves as atheists.

But to the best of my knowledge, his statements on these matters have been altogether more measured, and less definitive. I’m curious now to revisit the later novels and consider the extent to which they really have much to do with atheism at all. It’s been a while, but it always seemed to me that the atheist reading was worth unpicking from the anti-religious impulse in these novels. There is a certain amount of what you might call ‘fantasy spectacle through hard science’ in Northern Lights — the many-worlds theory, the vague invocations of particle physics, all of which was so excitedly summarised by the New Atheism as the ‘wonder’ of the universe — and yet I’m not sure the novels are altogether so content to settle on a purely materialistic view of reality.

The big idea of Northern Lights is in the daemons. They are a beautiful idea, and the book’s story could easily be read as one long pursuit of this idea. What if every person was born with an animal companion which represented — no, which actually was — an indivisible part of their being? As if we all had another organ of personality, like a second brain or a second ‘heart’, linked to our bodies by an invisible thread. The notion has the genius quality of immediate appeal to all ages. Children (and many adults) love the idea of a permanent animal companion, while older readers may appreciate the associated philosophical concepts: the shadow self, or psychological anima; or just the little angel/devil on our shoulder.

Perhaps the existence of the daemons a kind of heresy, as much as it implies that each person’s soul (for want of a better word) belongs essentially to themselves. There are no refunds, and a daemon is not subject to exchange; a daemon is not the property of some other high power, gifted at birth and reclaimed at death; they might not even be properly said to belong to their ‘owner’, any more than their person-companion belongs to them. Still, in spiritual terms this might be characterised as a problem of accounting rather than of blasphemy. There is a lovely image presented early on of the crypts under one of the Oxford colleges, where great people are buried alongside precious tokens depicting the forms of their daemons. Even in death they belong to one another, though the account into which they have been deposited remains a mystery.

After the reader is introduced to the associated rituals and taboos, it is the pain of separation from one’s daemon that becomes a sort of leitmotif in this book. All this is expressed incredibly well — the sense of separation anxiety is perhaps the most memorable aspect of the whole story. It is unpleasant for one’s daemon to be handled by another person, and it is literal agony to be separated from it by more than a very short distance, and so when the reader discovers that children are being severed from their daemons it seems like an uniquely agonising kind of cruelty.

The allegories for this ‘cut’ are more explicit than I remember. At times it is directly compared to castration or genital mutilation. Lobotomy might be another comparison. The procedure seems to have a uniquely devastating effect on children — it seems that adults have undergone it without such dramatic effects — but as with much in this book, that much is never explained. Again, it’s unclear why the procedure is happening at all. Nobody seems to be gaining anything by it. It is like one of those pointless bleak cruelties we find in Roald Dahl. It’s something to do with Dust, we’re told, and it is dependent on the unique relationship that children have with their daemons before they reach puberty. But that it is hard to rationalise is, I think, part of the point.

Hanging over it all is the horror of institutionalised abuse. It is the kind of abuse that needs no justification, any more than senseless vivisection does. It is merely the pulling apart of a thing to see how it works – for the cutter, the gratuity is its own reward. Perhaps in so far as we can find any meaning in it, it’s in the idea that growing up needn’t involve a sort of deliberate caustic severing of whatever it was that made us childlike in the first place. We may not need to put away childish things, and we certainly don’t need them to be torn from us. Perhaps growing up should be less like a departure from ourselves and more like a process of reification, in which something that was latent all along only becomes settled and manifest with the passing of time.

#books #philip pullman #northern lights

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afterspark-podcast · 4 years

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Transformers (2007): Transcript

Episode Show Notes

[This can also be found on AO3!]

[Stinger]

O: And now I'm just imagining him showing up at this little old grandma's house, ripping up the house and being like, “HOW DARE YOU!?!”

[Intro Music]

S: Welcome... to hell!

O: It’s time. It’s time for the Bay movies guys.

S: [sharp intake of breath] Welcome to our first anniversary special with the 2007 Transformers film!

O: Shall we talk about giant robots? [dissolves into laughter]

S: Yeah. Let's talk about giant robots, though we may be very unhappy by the end of this.

O: So first, an info dump, for what is most likely a refresher for the majority of you folks but a- the live-action Transformers movie was directed by [deadpan] Michael Bay and uh, starring Shia LaBeouf.

S: The movie did incredibly well at the box office and introduced a lot of people to the franchise and um, these people may have been unaware of it [the Transformers franchise] before or hadn't seen a prior but it was an introduction at least for most.

O: Which is probably the most positive thing that we can say about this movie. The movie franchise is likely the main reason we got the Transformers Prime TV series and even brought more readers to the first IDW comic run. Which maybe wasn't super great at the time the movie came out, but got way better! [laughs]

S: Yeah, I mean, IDW also had comics based on the movie, in addition to the main IDW G1-

O: And I haven’t read those yet, but yeah.

S: I don't think we've made our disdain for this movie a secret but just in case, neither of us enjoy this movie.

O: Like, at all.

S: So if you personally like this movie this episode may not be for you. Um, we're sorry guys.

O: [laughs] We are, actually, because I- I know there are people out there who like it. We're not those people, but we will be back for a normal G1 schtick later, so uh, please join us then.

S: That isn't to say that there hasn't been excellent fanfiction based off of this.

O: Eh, fanfiction, fanart-

S: Um-hm.

O: Oh my god, there- there was this one I saw the other day where somebody did like, a Transformers Animated of ah, Last Knight Megatron-

S: Oh!

O: -and I was like, “I legitimately like that! Good job, you!”

S: There’s some excellent fan work based on these movies.

O: Yeah, like, just hands down, but um... Well, down to brass tacks Specs, what was your first experience with this movie like?

S: Hmm, ah, well let's go back in time, shall we?

O: [makes woo noises]

S: So I didn't see it in theaters. Ah, my first experience with this movie was getting it for my birthday... yay.

B: [laughter]

O: Yay.

S: I watched it and um, and was like, “Okay... that was a thing. It exists, um, Bumblebee peed on a guy.” And I watched this with my parents, I'll have you know!

O: And it- it's way funnier when you know her parents, who are extremely Catholic and her mother who is extremely Irish Catholic and imagining them watching this movie with her is hysterical .

S: My mom doesn't like sci-fi to begin with-

O: Yeah, right! And then, all of this was happening!

S: Yeah, my- my dad probably enjoyed it more because he likes explosions and stuff.

O: [laughs] He's a nice guy but he is- he- he, he's a simple man. He has simple criteria for the things he enjoys and I can respect that.

S: He actually really likes Terry Pratchett but let’s-

O: Oh, yes.

S: -let's get back to this. Uh, I don't think I uh, rewatched it for a while because uh, high school was happening and I had better things to be doing. You know, like reading fanfic or doing homework. Homework was more enjoyable than this.

O: [laughs]

S: [sighs] So I found the movie mostly just disappointing. While it did breathe new life into the fandom it seemed like most of the pre-existing fans that I- you know, knew or followed or was aware of, were disappointed by the designs and the story on like- specifically on the forum that I was frequenting at the time. Other people loved it and I mean, it did create a new influx of fans, so... that's a positive thing.

I was also super annoyed by the lack of Arcee because there was a decent toy of her and I own it. It's the only Bayverse toy I own, and then they had Arcee and two other characters that shared the same mold show up in the second movie and then die.

O: And- and these were not the same mold as the toy she [Specs] owns.

S: Yes.

O: To make this even weirder, like, Arcee did have a design apparently [in the first movie].

S: Yes, she was a nice motorcycle. She had legs in the first- for the first movie toy and then… then she was a unicycle thing-

O: Mm-hmm.

S: -in the second movie and then they all died. And I don't own any other toys from ah- from the Bayverse franchise, so let's go over to you.

O: Eh-heh-heh-ha! So, to my memory I first saw this in high school. I want to say it may have actually been something they showed at school? [My SO seems to remember the same thing, so this was probably the case. ~O]

And in direct contrast to Specs, I went to public school in a rural area, no one gave a shit, so... I- I saw the second one in theaters, but I legitimately do not remember where I saw the first one. Uh, for the record, I thought it was fine! I had zero reference, beyond a foggy memory of Beast Machines- not even Beast Wars guys, Beast Machines. And hadn't seen G1 at all. I very vaguely knew who Optimus Prime was and pretty much nobody else.

No, it would take over a decade before this film franchise filled me with seething rage.

S: And you didn't even get into the fandom, when I tried interesting you in it. You got into it by yourself!

O: [laughs] I know! She tried! She tried in college! [laughs] Which is why, I was like, “Hey, I want to watch Beast Wars!” It was like, not looking where I was going and walking off a cliff! [laughs]

S: Pretty much, and then I just threw TV shows at you.

O: She just like, thew DVD’s down the cliff at me! [continues laughing]

S: And comics.

O: Which I mean...I didn’t really mind...but I love that description so much.

S: [laughs]

O: But, uh, all of this aside, I will be saying my media recommendation for the day here, instead of at the end. I strongly recommend watching Lindsey Ellis’, “The Whole Plate.” Which is a series about film studies through the lens of Transformers. Not only is excellent breaking these movies down in the context of film, and film theory, but it's informative and done by someone else who clearly loves Transformers.

Pretty sure her favorite is Starscream, but I also think I saw a Wheeljack in the background of one of her videos, but do not quote me on that. Uh, it is at least partially due to Lindsey I started watching G1. Uh, the other YouTube culprit I'll likely recommend in a different video, heh, but needless to say she certainly didn't hurt. I'd been watching her, “Whole Plate,” series since 2017 so... over a year before I made that so fateful decision to borrow Beast Wars.

This recommendation also comes caveat: Because I've watched her videos, I know I've been heavily influenced by them and... it is likely I will talk about some of the same points that she's made... while we're going through this movie. So just, if- eh, this is me so this is me, um, cite--this is me giving you my citation for ah, my work, essentially.

Go watch Lindsey Ellis’ videos, they're fantastic.

S: And I suppose to counterpoint, I haven't seen any of her videos. So anything that I talk about that ends up accidentally being something that comes up in here is an accident.

O: The only- I think I showed you the- the Megan Fox video.

S: You might have, but at this point it's been so long ago that-

O: [quietly] That’s true..

S: -that I probably don't remember, or almost certainly don’t.

O: Fair! Anyway, definitely go- go, uh, watch her, because she's interesting. I-I feel like there’s- I’ve seen posts that like, seem like at least some people don't like her. So, I don't know what's going on there and I don't really want to find out. So if it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing and that's fine. Well! Ready for the movie?

S: Say it isn't so, but yes, yes I am.

O: [laughs] Here we go!

S: [sighs] We open with some opening narration by Optimus Prime played by Peter Cullen of the da--

O: -of Optimus Prime? [laughs]

S: Well, I was gonna say, “of the days of old.”

O: [laughs louder] Okay, fair! And I don't- I don’t care if he mostly in a cartoon voice over work, he is too good for this fucking movie!

S: He is. He gives us the backstory for Cybertron and the Autobot/Decepticon war and I think, you see someone spearing someone else with something in this…

O: It wouldn’t shock me. Something called the AllSpark is super important and they send it off planet to keep the Decepticons from getting it.

S: The Autobots couldn’t keep track of it either. They did not think this through.

O: Of course, it landed on an unknown planet, Eii-arth!

S: [snickers] Megatron apparently followed the AllSpark but pulled a Skyfire and got frozen in the Arctic, where he was found by a team of explorers led by Captain Archibald Witwicky. Doesn't that just sound like a manly man.

O: [laughing] He is!

S: The part of Skyfire will be played by Megatron in this movie.

O: Make sure to properly chill your Decepticon warlord for at least a couple of decades before serving.

S: Don't you mean a couple thousand years?

O: Shush!

B: [laugh]

S: Meanwhile, Skyfire’s sir not appearing in this picture.

O: Also, don't be fooled by the opening guys! Sure, Optimus may be talking now but it won't last. It'll be like, what? An hour before we get any more giant robots talking?

S: Probably. We cut to the Middle East in the um, ‘present’ day.

O: Well, present day ten years ago anyway.

S: It's soldiers doing transportation stuff on a military base... and a guy wants to eat alligators.

O: Fuck yeah, America- am I right!?!

S: It’s cuisine. The military partially funded these movies if anybody was unaware this really helps explain their presence in the movie series.

O: That and Bay's HUGE fuckin’ boner for ‘em.

S: The soldiers here are some of the better characters in the movie. They're funny, they work well off each other, and you know, [gasp] feel like they’re friends.

O: What a concept. An unknown helicopter lands at the base, transforming into a giant robot and starting to destroy said base.

S: The Decepticons apparently want US military codes or they're trying to find the AllSpark location, or something.

O: I can't help but think of Soundwave was here this would have been done so much more competently. Even Soundwave- even movie Soundwave is still competent.

S: Oh, probably. Uh, the Decepticon is Blackout by the way, who- I'm not sure we ever see or hear him talk?

O: Yeah, like, we might hear him talk in Cybertronian at the very end of the movie like, when it's like, doing the all the Decepticons gettin’ ready.

S: Hmm.

O: Um…

S: Maybe.

O: He never really is a character, um, but I hope you're ready for shaky cam video of this robot and not getting a good look at him!

S: Oh! Flying tanks, how novel.

O: [laughs] They fail to fight off the Decepticon and a small group of soldiers manages to escape the base, but not without being followed by Scorpinok.

S: Who is released by, um, Blackout cuz apparently he's his pet or something-

O: Something like that. The only thing you need to remember about this is that the main soldier is Lennox, and he is leading the group. The other characters have names. I had to look them up.

S: Yeah, they aren’t very big characters, unfortunately. It would have been more entertaining if-

B: -they were.

S: [sighs] And then suddenly we're at a high school.

O: Following a teenage boy who's gonna try to hawk his great-great-great-something-grandfather’s shit in the middle of class.

S: [sighs] Why is he hawking shit? Because he wants to seduce the hottie by getting a car, either that, or that is merely a side effect of getting a car that he hopes will happen.

O: Mikaela is way too good for him.

S: She is.

O: He blabs on about how his something-grandfather, Captain Archibald Witwicky was the first man to explore the Arctic.

S: Never mind that there were already people living there.

O: He was the first white idiot to make it up there and not die?

S: Possibly.

O: [laughs]

S: We're introduced to the glasses of plot here. They're not particularly relevant right now, but they will be later!

O: Notice those weird etchings on the lenses? That's- that's a thing!

S: Keep these in mind. Put a pin in it. But right now, Sam is talking about selling his stuff on eBay.

O: ~ Ladies~ he takes Paypal. [laughs]

S: The bell rings and the rest of the class leaves as Sam talks to his teacher. Proceeding to be a total freaking dumb ass by guilting his teacher into giving him a better grade than he deserved, because otherwise his dad won't help him buy a car.

O: And remember, this is supposed to be the character we’re identifying with. Thanks! I hate it.

S: [sighs] You know, and after meeting Sam's dad, his behavior makes a lot more sense. Clearly he gets dickish behavior from said dad.

O: His dad drives him through a Porsche dealer to make him think he's buying Sam a Porsche, which just kind of seems like a dick move. They proceed to show up at a used-car lot with, uh, Sam spying a mysterious Camaro, which is Bee in this.

S: Like, Bumblebee was actually following them into the car lot which is kind of funny-

O: Yeah, but- but they didn't really see him until he parked in the car lot.

S: Yeah, I guess uh, they had to make him cooler for the 2000’s.

O: You know, I always liked the little Volkswagon bugs when I was in high school around this timeframe. I still do, they're adorable!

S: They're cute. Unfortunately, they're not sexy enough for a teenage boy in the mid-2000s.

O: [sighs] No, but they were sexy enough for a teenage boy in the 80’s.

S: [laughs] Yes, but that was when he knew it was his- it was friend shaped.

O: [laughs] Oh-

S: Bumblebee is-

O: G1 Bumblebee is so friend shaped.

S: He is. He's friend shaped to everyone except Megatron, really. Well, all of the Decpti-

O: No, he’s friend shaped to Megatron in the comics too!

S: Oh god, well, are we talking IDW comic or the original?

O: I was talking about the- I was talking about the- the plot in IDW, yeah. [laughs] Mostly I just thought was funny because his design is very, very similar in that toG1-

S: Yeah-

O: And I was like, yeah that’s pretty funny though.

S: Yeah, you're right he was very friend shaped in that.

O: He is friend shaped to everybody.

S: But in the Marvel Comics he's not friend shaped to the Decepticons.

O: Oh no, nobody's friend shaped in the Marvel comic. [laughs] Are you kidding me?

S: Ah, ah, Bee’s been following this kid around for a while and the car salesman clearly has never seen this damn car in his life, but he's still gonna try and sell it.

O: I-I mean given that it is his car lot, I can’t- I’m not sure I can fault him on this decision really? [laughs]

S: Well, it’s not honest.

O: [laughs] No.

S: And he's like, “I'm honest- whatever.” I think he has, “honesty,” actually on a sign somewhere.

O: [continues to laugh]

S: I don't know, it's not- it doesn't really matter. And, um, there's also an ostrich here. Why is there an ostrich!?!

O: I think he has a petting zoo or something, I don’t know.

S: He is down to make that dough.

O: Very.

S: Bee also comes with racing stripes.

O: We all know that makes him go faster, Specs!

S: [snorts]

O: [laughs]

S: Amongst other things, Bee contains a bee air freshener, that says “BEE-OTCH,” a small disco ball, and a weird lion bobblehead, that I thought was a small taxidermied animal at first.

O: [laughs] And we didn’t even see it till our second walk- er, watch through either! Just to make this more ridiculous!

S: Yeah, it vanishes so I gather Spike didn’t- oh god, not Spike-

O: No, this isn’t Spike, it would probably be better if it was!

S: Yeah. Sam didn't think it was too hot either.

O: Yeah, but uh, this whole bit, just feels creepy. Sam's gonna buy Bumblebee, a living, thinking, being, whose intelligence definitely surpasses his own.

S: And let's compare this to Charlie from the Bumblebee movie, who's trying to rebuild a car by herself with no support from her family and then there's Sam. And I mean, okay, yeah, she does get Bumblebee, basically- basically in a transaction. She does kind of buy him, but when she realizes that he's a person, she treats him like a person.

O: Exactly, and Sam is just this entitled little rich kid living in a nice house and has everything handed to him in Southern California! I don't know what his parents do, but clearly they make good fucking money!

S: I don't know what they do.

O: Me either!

S: Bee is even parked next to a VW Bug, an old one. Which he will then proceed to wreck.

O: I feel like this is the start to Michael Bay being like why do you like, “Why do you like that nerdy shit? Come look at boobs, tits, and nice cars. These are the only things that are really important.” This will be the hill I die on.

S: [sighs] I don’t understand Michael Bay.

O: If you didn’t like this, why did you do it!?! I know the answer is money.

S: Money is-

O: But you can at least do it enjoyably!

S: Yeah, well, money is the root of a lot of... stuff. Speaking of, Bee is... very much a dick here. He destroys this guy's entire lot of cars, or at least all their windows. Because he emits a supersonic noise and you know, busts all the windows in an effort to get Sam to buy him or get the guy to sell him to Sam-

O: For a cheaper price, basically.

S: Yeah.

O: Cutting to the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense is briefing a team of technicians who will be attempting to decode the Decepticon signal they got from Blackout earlier. (Kind of.)

S: One of them is a very intelligent young woman named Maggie.

O: Who will proceed to be shot like another piece of tits and ass, like all the pretty woman in this movie. Oh, and if you're not young and pretty in this movie series you're basically just a harpy.

S: [sighs] And after this movie we will never see her again. Which might imply that she has more longevity than Sam.

O: Smart girl. At Sam’s house, we’re introduced to his mom, his dog, and some casual sexism.

S: We're not allowed to put girl jewelry on a male dog in this house, are we?

O: Of course not! What would the men think? That jewelry is awesome and they're totally allowed to wear it. Yeah, actually let's do that- that sounds way better.

S: [sighs] But don't worry if you think Mojo [Sam’s dog] is emasculated or something. Later movies will have him humping absolutely everything.

O: Yeah, because that's what I want to watch in a movie about giant alien robots!

S: Admittedly, these movies aren't particularly about giant alien robots. They’re-

O: No, they're like- about Sam's love life and explosions [snickers].

S: Or whatever the human lead’s love life.

O: [quietly] True.

S: That's- that’s typically how it runs. [sighs] Back to the army guys again. They're still attempting to escape Scorponok. Except they don't know that Scorponok’s following them.

O: No, but they're like, trying to get away from the base.

S: They're trying to get somewhere where they can contact help, I think? So they're making their way through the desert, with this young kid that showed up at the very beginning of the movie and was like, “Hi! You're my friends, I'm bringing you something.” And he escaped with them.

O: Yup. They decide they need to get their intel back to Pentagon as soon as possible.

S: And in our other movie, Sam's friend is a moron, and Mikaela's boyfriend is a dick, just a beefier dick than Sam.

O: So infuriating, this should be relatable. I was the weirdo in high school! But no, I still just want to strangle Sam with my bare hands.

S: And- well, honestly, Miles (Sam's friend) isn't really a moron. He's just acting like an actual teenage boy.

O: [laughs]

S: [huffs] He's climbing trees and entering cars through the window and then in the next scene when we see that, the door is open? So he like, dived through the door?

O: Continuity. Continuity is not a thing, Specs.

B: [laugh]

S: [sighs] Sam proceeds to bait Mikaela's jock boyfriend to satisfy his own ego, but just barely manages to avoid a knuckle sandwich.

O: UNFORTUNATELY. Said boyfriend then proceeds to treat Mikaela like property.

S: He won't even let her ride in the front seat of his truck. She knows significantly more about trucks than you do, you asshole! She could probably-

O: Oh, she could run circles around this asshole.

S: Well no, I was thinking she could probably you know, set something up so that his truck killed him.

O: Ah-ha-ha, there we go! That's the movie- that's the movie Mikaela should have been in.

S: Well, I mean, Megan Fox- she is apparently good in Jennifer's Body. Sam boots his friend out of Bumblebee so that he can offer... Mikaela a ride home.

O: It’s shitty to strand your friend like this, dude.

S: It's especially shitty, because the car has backseat.

O: And he couldn't shove his friend back there.

S: [quietly] Yeah.

O: Mikaela reluctantly accepts and Bee has decided to become Sam's wingman, apparently.

S: I'm assuming he knows what teenagers do in cars, but really, does he actually understand what teenagers do in cars!?!

O: [while laughing] Um, I'm-I’m not sure to be honest.

S: Well, considering they apparently learned English from the internet.

O: Yeah, you’d think there’d be some porn thrown in there.

S: I’d assume so. Um, he breaks down causing Mikaela to open his hood and check the engine.

O: And what kills me, is that she's saying relevant things throughout the scene but the way she's shot, she's not treated like a person, she's treated like a-a-an object to be viewed essentially, and it is very frustrating. I know we could assume that it's from Sam's perspective, but boy does this get old.

S: It gets really old. Sam asks her about why she hangs out with her boyfriend. Of course, he phrases it like, strongly hinting that she should hang out with him instead. And Mikaela can totally tell that he's doing that so she's like, “I'm out,” and starts walking off.

O: But Bee suddenly starts working again so Sam's able to convince her to at least let him finish driving her home.

S: She'd have probably had a better time walking home, let's be real.

O: Probably.

S: Except she might have had really uncomfy shoes...

O: Eh, except like, it was sunset, and it was night by the time they got home. So I have to ask, how far out of town were they?

S: That's a good point. Um, and then we get Sam saying uh, [sighs] that, “There's more than meets the eye,” about the Mikaela.

O: Why does this just feel like another slap in the face of the original series?

S: Probably because it is, and on to Air Force One. Frenzy, who's apparently someone's carry on here, because he's a boombox in this and was actually under someone's seat.

O: Or! You could choose to imagine him walking onto the onto the plane himself. Just thing about this little radio, who’s got teeny tiny little legs, and walks on the plane. It's way funnier! Also, did he steal Soundwave’s alt!?!

S: That is a fun thing, but yeah. Hello president who is obviously Bush! Whose face we don't see, but unfortunately we get to see his besoc- besocked feet.

O: He wants a ding dong.

S: [sighs]

O: Betcha do! Uh, Frenzy attempts to get data from the military database by way of Air Force One, but he’s caught while doing this, and so the Secret Service shoots at him.

S: The Secret Service apparently didn't get the 4-1-1 on what you don't do on a plane. You don't shoot shit on a plane. You really don't wanna do that. It just leads for a bad time, for everyone, very briefly.

O: [laughing] Yup! Very short lives!

S: Either that, or they're lucky and they manage to make a safe landing but... you don't want-

O: Do you really- do you really want to risk that? No.

S: No, you don't want catastrophic decompression on a plane.

O: No you don’t.

S: I mean, who knows, maybe Air Force One is better... built? Once they uh, basically, they end up taking the plane down, uh, in an emergency landing, because shots fired or whatever. Then once they bring the plane down, Frenzy is able to sneak off the plane through the a- he goes down like, the doors that the wheels go out and then it's just funny.

O: It is.

S: Yeah, he goes over to Barricade after that.

O: Barricade’s a police car. He will be more relevant later, but uh- you have any doubts that this little thing was Frenzy, you just need to see that little walk off the plane and you will know.

S: Cuz he- he's got like, his hand up to hide his face.

O: Yeah, like he’s- he’s like, trying to be nonchalant. Like, after they thought he was trying to kill the president it is delightful.

S: Mm-hmm and Frenzy is smarter than the- the Secret Service on this plane because he had like, shurikens.

O: Yeah! Once he's in Barricade he pulls up the eBay listings for Sam's Grandpa's glasses and says, “We must find LadiesMan217!”

S: Why did he pick that username?

O: I don't know, but I legitimately find it hilarious every time a Cybertronian has to shout it in this movie. I know he said it in like, Cybertronian there, it is still great.

S: Oh Sam’s ego, but yeah, it is really funny anytime a robot shouts that. At Sam's house, Bee apparently has got places to be. So he just, you know, turns on his own ignition and then drives off by himself.

O: This awakens Sam, who then goes chasing after his own car on his bike.

S: And call- he calls the police. Sam calls the police to report that his car is being stolen. Going so far as to remind them that his dad is the head of the neighborhood watch.

O: Well, if you needed a another reminder that Sam is a rich white boy, there you go.

S: [sighs] Yeah…

O: Sam finally catches up with Bee, who's standing some distance away beaming the bat signal- I mean the Autobot signal some kind of signal-er, some kind of signal into space.

S: Sam starts recording all of this on his shitty flip phone, and thinking that he's going to die the first words out of his mouth are, “Porn’s not mine, it's Miles’!”

O: Oh yes, that's the last image I'd want to leave my own mother with. Talking about your erections, lovely.

S: Considering one of the conversations that happens later…

O: It may be were relevant than I want to imagine, yeah. Mm-hmm. Moving on!

S: Yeah. Sam is then chased by some good doggos, who managed to get free of their uh, basically they weren’t very well contained.

O: Yep.

S: But the poor puppies are denied their midnight snack as Bumblebee bursts in and save[s] him and you don't really see the dogs go away. They just start aren’t there anymore.

O: [laughs] And despite thinking his car’s alive, he shouts something that they, “Can keep the car!” and chunks his keys at Bee.

S: I don't even know what the building they're in even is, cuz he goes into a building and then suddenly it seems like they're not in a building anymore and it's... what's going on?

O: Yeah… Um, Sam's arrested when the cops show up for making a false 9-1-1 call because his car is obviously right there.

S: Yep, and it's not like there was any evidence of other people around.

O: There weren’t.

S: At the Pentagon with some assholes, including the Secretary of Defense and our- Maggie, our pretty lady analyst. Maggie proceeds to sneak into a very high up meeting basically to say, “The system is alive!”

O: Which is completely insane in any other context, except this movie, where she is technically right, but it still sounds like a pretty insane context-

S: Yeah.

O: Er, sane- sounds like pretty insane an idea.

S: She kind of gets kicked out... of the meeting.

O: Yeah.

S: But she's right, and she will be vindicated later. And, um, I hate the color balancing in this movie everything is so orange and blue. It looks like everyone's skin tone is basically, you know, orange and like, they all have really bad spray tans? Or at least all the white people do. None of the black people in this movie really have to deal with looking like an orange.

O: They may still have orange light on them, but it's not quite the same way.

S: Yeah, and now it's police time.

O: Where we've made Sam do a pee test, and then they hold up a bottle that says, “Mojo,” on it and they're interrogating him about it. Mojo, as previously stated... is his dog and it is very likely that the bottle would say, “canine,” on it because that's how it worked when I had to pick up medication for my cat from the pharmacy. [Well, the cat’s was labelled ‘feline,’ but you know what we mean.] So they're just being assholes.

S: And I mean, that looks like a legit prescription bottle.

O: Yeah.

S: So, I don't think most people keep their illegal drugs in legit prescription bottles.

O: [laughs] Fair, fair.

S: I mean, I have no personal experience but… [sighs] And back to the Middle East with the soldier boys.

O: Scorponok attempts subtlety, only narrowly missing killing Lennox.

S: He does however succeed in killing the oblivious glasses guy, or maybe he doesn't kill him, maybe just badly injures him? I don’t know.

O: I’m pretty sure he's dead because we don't see him for the rest of the movie. If I'm wrong I apologize.

S: Okay, that's a good point. The soldiers all book it and take shelter in and around these bombed out buildings. Which is apparently the young boy's village. [sighs] They have brought hell down upon this small village and this will never be addressed.

O: The dad of the kid that's been helping them seems awfully nice, considering they have brought a giant mechanical scorpion to the front door.

S: Yup, that poor man does not deserve any of this shit.

O: Nope!

S: And here's one of the few legitimately funny scenes in this movie.

O: Lennox, has to call the Pentagon. Which involves Lennox having to go back and forth with the most bored guy in a call center ever, but he also needs a credit card because it's a long-distance call. A really long distance call.

S: He's able to get that credit card from Epps, one of the soldiers in his squad.

O: And this is all happening, while they're in the middle of a firefight. So they're having to yell to be heard and stuff. Epps is also shooting at Scorponok, so Lennox has to grab the wallet off of Epps.

S: And so their conversation on how to navigate this is effectively a something like. “It's in my back pocket!” “Which one!?!” “Left cheek! Left cheek! Left cheek!” All while firing at Scorponok. And apparently he's like- eh, Lennox is like, “You have like fifteen pockets!”

O: [laughs] Which I feel like is legitimately funny! And I just kind of wish I just didn’t have to like, be concerned, is this racism- with the call center guy looking and sounding Indian and I don't know, because that seems like something Michael Bay would do.

S: Yeah… yeah. Jets and other military things have apparently been quickly scrambled and show up.

O: Including a military drone, just like what Soundwave turns into in Prime, so I was chuckling.

S: Explosions happen, and miraculously they don't appear to hit any civilians, somehow. And then there's more shooting and more explosions-

O: And I get very bored.

S: And they're able to shoot off a part of Scorponok's tail, while the rest of Scorponok conveniently gets away.

O: They definitely thought this is important. The music swells, things are happening in slow motion… you should be paying attention to this.

S: Basically, uh, the military guys get rescued and presumably no one does anything to help repair the damage that…

O: They've done to this village.

S: Yeah, we never hear about the young child again.

O: Nope!

S: [sighs] And back in America, Maggie has stolen intel from the Pentagon and uh, shows up on her friend Glen's doorstep. And she- she hides it in her makeup case.

O: Which is pretty clever. Also, he's apparently a master hacker!

S: Yup. He pulls out some bullshit program that basically auh, you know, pulls, “It's alive!” from the Decepticon audio data Maggie brought over.

O: Which is about the point the feds show up with the SWAT team and arrest them both.

S: Yeah. Bee shows a back up at Sam's house presumably just to fuck with Sam which at this point really does seem like a Bee thing to do in this movie.

O: Yeah… Bee’s kind of a dick.

S: Sam escapes on his mom’s bike.

O: Why does his mom have a bike that looks like it belongs to a five-year-old!?! I mean, like- look, I'm not saying don't do you, cuz do you, but- but- but… his mom confuses me.

S: Apparently, she's just a very girly girl who... has a basket that needs to have a pillow in it. Maybe she takes Mojo for bike rides?

O: I would believe that.

S: I could see her doing that considering that she does put jewelry on him. She makes him a handsome boy.

O: She does.

S: [sighs] Oh god, so now Sam is running away from his own car, like a crazy person and then uh, runs into Mikaela who's out apparently having lunch.

O: A day, yeah.

S: Well, lunch with her friends.

O: Yeah!

S: She has normal friends, and Sam proceeds to look like a crazy person.

O: He thinks his car is chasing him. The fact that he's right doesn't really play into how this looks right now.

S: Cuz yeah, he's- he's riding a very pink bike that--

O: Saying his car is chasing him.

S: Yeah. Bee was definitely driving on the sidewalk, and probably on people's lawns for parts of this.

O: It was funny Mikaela hops on her scooter because clearly she's like, “I guess I go- I guess I better go help this dumbass.”

S: Mikaela was just a very nice, responsible person. She's- she's kind.

O: Yeah, she’s not the- like yeah, you don't really see her being mean.

S: She-

O: Even to Sam, even when Sam is being kind of a jerk earlier she's never outright mean to him. She's done, very done, but you never really see her being mean to him with- unless he kind of deserved it like later.

S: Mikaela is a very kind person and unfortunately she doesn't- her character just doesn't get the recognition that she deserves.

O: No, she doesn’t.

S: [sighs]

O: Barricade catches up with Sam.

S: The police slogan on the side of his police car says- or his police car alt mode says. “To punish and enslave”.

O; What about being undercover, dude?

S: Well, be honest most people don't really pay much attention.

O: [quietly] True.

S: He dicks with Sam for a bit before transforming into robot mode and yelling, “Are you LadiesMan217!?!”

O: Really quickly, and it's amazing. Sam runs away and knocks Mikaela off her scooter.

S: Sam, you dumbass, you could have really fucking hurt her, you jack ass.

O: Pretty much. [singing] ~Here Bee comes to save the dayyyyyy!~

S: Sam proceeds to pull a, “Come with me if you want to live,” to Mikaela, which... At this point, considering that he has now uh, conflated her with himself to the Decepticons probably- is probably true, yeah.

O: Fair. They have a high-speed chase, somewhere in Southern California.

S: Bee gets them somewhere relatively isolated before dumping the two of them out and transforming to fight with Barricade and... is this still the middle of the day? I- no this is at night, it’s night now.

O: It keeps kind of swapping, it's weird. And then Frenzy hop-

S: How long where they… ?

O: I don't know how long this was going on, because it was like- it looked like it was mid-afternoon and they don't get dumped out till night, like the sun has set, night.

S: Like, jeez.

O: I don't know, heh, but Frenzy hops out of Barricade and attacks Sam and Mikaela.

S: [sighs] Sam manages to lose his goddamn pants in this altercation.

O: Of course he does. Mikaela, being the badass that she is, grabs a fucking power tool and attacks Frenzy with it. Cutting him into pieces!

S: Mikaela kicks ass, and she would have been a far better protagonist. My heart weeps that this wasn't actually the reality.

O: Eh, that's okay they kind of did it in the Bumblebee movie.

S: Yeah. Sam shows his bravery by... bravely kicking Frenzy’s head away.

O: Frenzy, using a second set of legs coming from his head... walks over to Mikaela’s purse, because she dropped it earlier, and then disguises himself as her cellphone.

S: After stabbing her, you know, her real cellphone. Presumably to get data from it or something?

O: I would assume? Yeah.

S: Otherwise it's gonna be a very bad disguise. She opens it and is like, “Where are all my god damn contacts?”

B: [laugh]

O: Yeah, fair.

S: And then there's some crack about Bee being Japanese, once Sam finally gets his actual introduction to his, you know, ‘not a car’.

O: This should be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the original toys being created by the Japanese company Takara, but given Bay’s track record, I really have to wonder. I know I keep bringing that up, but like, parts of this movie feel very uncomfortable to watch-

S: [quietly] Yeah.

O: -and certain racial stereotyping that he does not only in this movie, but even worse, honestly, in the sequels... just makes me feel really uncomfortable.

S: [quietly] Yeah. [normal volume] They ride off in Bee, both Sam and Mikaela and not wanting to sit in the driver's seat because Bee is driving and... that wouldn't be polite somehow.

O: I'm not even going to comment on what I'm actually thinking. Sam tries to pull off a slick move, telling Mikaela she should sit in his lap because there's only one other seat belt.

S: That's bad, if you're in an accident you're both gonna die. Though, I mean, considering they’re both in a giant alien robot…

O: I mean their driver is a sentient alien robot, who's used to being a car, so hopefully that doesn't happen, right?

S: Mostly I'm just imagining that a giant alien robot car isn't going to have the same sort of, you know, safety tests-

O: Oh, safety precautions!?! Ha! [laughs]

S: [trying not to laugh] Safety test results that an actual car-

O: [continues laughing] That’s fair!

S: So who the hell knows how this would work! Bee takes offense at being called a ‘piece-of-shit Camaro’.

O: Leading to him dumping them out, driving off without a driver, and then driving past a very conveniently placed newer yellow and black Camaro with the exact paint job he wants. Because Michael Bay cares about very few things in this movie. Tits! And you, yes you! Driving a nice shiny car, because you are a man. A virale, sex having man!

B: [laugh]

O: Or at least that's what he's assuming!

S: Oh, and the way Bumblebee scans this car is kind of ridiculous cuz he’s- he’s up on two wheels driving like half on his side so he’s-

O: Yeah, like on his side! So he’s got to scan it with something like, on the bottom of his car mode???

S: Yeah, on his undercarriage and it's weird and silly.

O: And it’s just like, yeah, nobody saw this. Sure!

S: Like, they're driving in a tunnel, there were definitely other people around, cuz people-

O: There definitely were!

S: Cuz people honked at them, people honked at them when Bumblebee dropped them off. But yeah, let's go. Bee picks them up and they're like, “Oh wow, you could have done this anytime?” and then Bee precedes to take them trespassing so they can meet new people.

O: Where even are they?

S: I don’t know! I don't think anyone knows.

O; Valid point.

S: Who knows, maybe they're in Oregon now.

O: [laughs] Yes! They drove north. Very far north!

S: They could have if they were driving all day, I don’t know! Either that or they were going around goddamn circles.

O: I'm willing to bet that actually.

S: And finally we're going to get more robots as um, meteorites rain down. These robots being our Autobots.

O: Who will still not improve this movie enough to matter.

S: Which is so depressing.

O: It really is!

S: Mikaela and Sam hold hands because as uh, movie logic dictates- if you have a man and a woman who spend more than a few minutes uh, with one another they will be in love by the end of it.

O: Who cares! The Autobots seriously fuck some shit up when they land on Earth!

S: Oh they do. And not a single fuck was given, because they seriously have no idea what the fuck's going on.

O: A bunch of people are running around at several of the crash si- sites recording things too.

S: Um-hmm. Recording stuff, and probably putting it on YouTube-

O: I would assume.

S: -or whatever in-universe equivalent of YouTube.

O: I think it's just YouTube, based on a sequel, but don't quote me on that.

S: Who knows, we even see Ratchet’s weird ambulance mode in the background of some of these shots. So we can see where and when he scanned it.

O: Apparently, according to the TF Wiki, this is supposed to be a Hummer H2 rescue vehicle. So not even technically an ambulance.

S: And then we see Jazz at a Cadillac dealership.

O: Isn’t he supposed to be a Porsche?

S: Yep.

O: I mean, [sighs] why start being accurate with alts now, right?

S: Well, I'm going to assume that Cadillac paid for this product placement.

O: [laughs] Yeah…

S: Whereas, Porsche probably didn't give a shit.

O: And Porsche was already in there so they did pay money, but the Cadillacs probably paid more.

S: Probably, I don’t know. He's- yeah, he's not even a Cadillac. Jazz is a Pontiac Solstice, so why are we even had a Cadillac dealership?

O: Money. Ironhide however, is a huge fucking truck now.

S: A GMC Topkick. He also apparently, uh- a little girl mistakes him for the tooth fairy.

O: It’s pretty cute actually. I gotta give them that.

S: Yep. Optimus lands on scams a conveniently placed semi.

O: [It] kills me that they copy the paint jobs. I think I’d prefer if the paint jobs were something that were like, inherent to them, to their biology. But no! There's another truck out there with blue paint and orange and red flames on the side, are you shitting me?

S: I mean…

O: Or on the front.

S: [snickers] It's likelier than you think. Does this mean that there is another cop car out there with, “Punish and enslave,” on the side, or it- was this some civilian’s idea of a cop cosplay?

O: [sighs] Well, we do see little details change like the Autobot signals [symbols] on Ratchet’s paint job. So maybe that was a small enough detail to be changed. The only reason we even know the semi-truck’s paint job is because we saw a drive by.

S: Yeah. Uh, the Autobots show up in an alley where they meet up with uh, Bee, Sam, and Mikaela.

O: Optimus transforms, he's a Kenworth W900 truck in the live-action series. Which looks somewhat different from his design from the cartoon which was based on a Freightliner WFT-8664T.

S: To make this more confusing they used an entirely different [truck] model while filming, but we're going with uh, Hasbro’s official answer here.

O: Namely, the Freightliner was a cab over truck and the Kenworth isn't. It's a more traditional semi that you see stateside anyway.

S: He introduces the rest of the bots and their robot modes are also terrible.

O: Jazz apparently learned to speak from the Internets and knows the lingo.

S: Well, presumably they all did. I think Jazz is the one who actually paid attention.

O: Yeah.

S: Ironhide, our weapons expert.

O: “I blow shit up!”

S: And [uneasy laugh] welcome to one of our least favorite lines ever and it's Ratchet’s introduction no less.

O: And I quote, “The boy’s pheromone levels suggest he wants to mate with the female.”

S: [quietly] Oh god. Ugh...

O: I'd like to remind you all that Ratchet is uh, Specs’ favorite G1 character. So this is particularly ughhh. [laughs] I’m so sorry. Not like my faves really go- are handled any better to be fair, except maybe Soundwave.

S: We've also got to make it clear that he can't fix Bee. So Ratchet zaps him with something or whatever.

O: They just need Powerglide to fix him, obviously! With his magical ray of healing.

S: Yeah that'd probably do the trick. Optimus puts on a laser light show to explain the plot to Sam. And I mean, the laser light show was cool but... this seems like a really weird-

O: Weird place to do it? But uh, he's Optimus Fucking Prime, he does what he wants.

S: This is all funnier to listen to once you realize just how young the Bayverse versions of Transformers are compared to their counterparts in any other continuity. Optimus is like 10,000 years old, tops? Compared to the G1 versions, where everyone's like, millions of years old.

O: I would love to see G1 Megs’ reaction to us. “You're how old!?! Sparklings! Why are sparklings in charge!?!”

S: Why are babies fighting? Oh my god it's the baby war.

O: [singing to the tune of Muppet Babies] ~Robot babies!~ [laughs]

S: Oh god, the fact that there are actually, at least, a few crossovers that's basically Transformers babies. Where they basically took a concept of Muppet Babies and did it with Transformers.

O: Oh lord, oh lord. Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh.

S: Cause it’s- yeah, Megatron is Meggy.

O: [sighs]

S: I read those-

O: No.

S: -way back-

O: No. I refuse to believe those exists.

S: [starts laughing]

O: I live in a world where those don’t exist because I haven’t seen them yet, and I don’t have object permanence!

B: [laugh]

S: Unfortunately, I can introduce you to things that will make you regret this fandom.

O: You would! YOU WOULD! [laughs]

S: I’ve in this fandom since like, 2002!

O: You’re like, “Bitch, I been in this fandom for decades!”

S: Well, definitely more than decade at this point. It will be two decades of-um, in like three years.

O: [laughs]

S: Optimus continues to explain that Megatron basically destroyed Cybertron.

O: Oh sure, blame Megatron for this. Nevermind what we learn about Sentinel Prime later.

S: And in any case it takes two to tango, so…

O: Uh-huh.

S: It may not have been good if they've just rolled over and let Megatron do whatever the hell he wanted but…

O I don't really trust this Optimus either, soooo, you know.

S: Yeah. It’s a war, both sides are going to do... a lot of shit.

O: Yup.

S: We get a bit better look at Megatron's design in the flashback, as Optimus continues to explain.

O: Thanks! I hate it.

S: Megatron here just looks like a bipedal bag of knives.

O: And that sounds like the world's worst cryptid!

S: Optimus tell Sam um, that he may be Earth's only hope.

O: Help me Whitwicky, you're my only hope!

S: What a depressing hope.

O: Definitely! So now it's time for the plot glasses, which apparently were imprinted with the coordinates for the AllSpark when Sam's great granddad whatever found Megatron.

S: I don't understand the mechanism that did this.

O: I don't either, just roll with it.

S: [sighs]

O: The movie is.

S: [groans] You know, the Decepticons could have literally just bid on the fucking auction for the glasses.

O: And I refuse to believe that, that is not exactly what Soundwave would have done if he was here, because that is the perfectly reasonable plan.

S: Or you know, literally just sending Frenzy to infiltrate his house. Anything would have been better than what actually happened.

O: Pretty much. But eBay!

S: That would have- it would have been way funnier if Soundwave had done the, you know, bidding on eBay robot- the robot war is literally a bidding war.

O: Yeah, and less things would have blown up. Michael Bay would have died from lack of explosions, but I- I think that's the price I'm willing to pay.

S: [sighs] Maggie and Glen get brought to the uh, Pentagon... maybe? They're in some sort of holding cell waiting for interrogation.

O: Yeah... I get- I- I think it's the Pentagon, I'm not actually sure.

S: And then Glen proceeds to eat all the doughnuts that were left in um, left there. And they're delicious, delicious looking doughnuts.

O: [Homer Simpson intonenation] Emmm, doughnut. And now driving through a quiet suburban neighborhood, late at night- all of the Autobots!

S: [sighs] Sam tries to convince the Autobots to stay outside and stay quiet, while he goes inside and tries to find the glasses. And he's actually um, reasonably polite and respectful about this, considering the situation.

O: Eh... but the Autobots are super impatient.

S: [sighs] And Sam’s dad continues to be an asshole. Basically moaning about how he spent all his money on a car for Sam, and now Sam gets home late and he had to do all of Sam's chores. Like the KIND person that he is.

O: So instead of you know, just doing something nice for your kid you're going to just- stand out here, at the screen door, having a dick-measuring contest with your teenage fucking son. Granted it is pretty fucking hysterical that Optimus and the rest are sneaking around the yard while Sam is desperately trying to be like, “No dad, I got this, you don't need to come out here, it’s fine!”

S: [sharp intake of breath] God, if Sam's dad had actually gone outside.

O: [laughs]

S: How the hell would that have worked? I mean if he'd had booze or something or he had- he has like-

O: He just looks at the wine glass and walks back inside.

S: [sharp intake of breath] “I've had too much to drink, I'm going to bed.”

O: [laughs]

S: Cuz all of the Autobot stuff is in the background.

O: Of course, they're stepping on things, knocking things over, the whole works.

S: Why didn't they just stay in car mode?

O: It’s a valid question. I really don't think Optimus would be this much of an idiot and it makes the Autobots all look like assholes who aren't listening to the person who's trying to help them, and what he's asking them to do.

S: And then to make it worse, Ironhide pulls out his gun and aims it at Sam's dog.

O: Which is what, the equivalent are pulling at a freaking pistol cuz a bug landed on you? What the hell, man!?!

S: Though Ironhide saying, “Bad mojo!” after Sam prompts him is pretty funny. And the reason why he pulls out the uh, the big guns is because Sam's dog... pees on him.

O: Yep! But seriously, this is the dumbest plan guys.

S: Yeah, the Autobots have been waiting all this time and apparently they can't sit still for five minutes, because they're all like, giant toddlers.

O: [singing to the tune of Muppet Babies] ~Robot babies!~ [laughs]

S: [sighs] Transformers babies. I- I am seriously debating finding that and throwing it at you.

O: You're just- you just want to hurt me.

S: I showed you good stuff!

O: Anyway, Optimus lifts Mikaela up into Sam's room and they both began rummaging around his room to find the glasses.

S: Sam shoos Mikaela away from a certain area in his room and um-

O: That's his porn, that's his porn stash.

S: [sighs] So I guess that's what he was referring to earlier.

O: Probably.

S: And now all of the Autobots are in car mode, in the backyard. Except they've already done a shitload of damage.

O: Um-hm.

S: Except apparently Ratchet... isn't in car mode. Cuz he uh-

O: Or he transforms from car mode?

S: Yeah cuz he, uh... he walks into a transformer, a power transformer.

O: Ugh, I'm just not fond of the VA they picked for him here. I know Prime wasn't out yet, but that guy, we need that guy [Jeffrey Combs] here. I love [that] Ratchet’s voice.

S: So when Ratchet walked into the power transformer, he knocked out the power. He fell down I was like, “Oh! That was a kick, that was fun.”

O: [laughs]

Because apparently getting shocked for Transformers feels all tingly and fun.

O: [laughs] I mean…

S: Uh, and so- so at this point, the power is out, Sam's parents think that there's an earthquake cuz Ratchet fell down and made you know, shit happen and then they duck under- well, Sam's dad ducks under a table. His mom is just like, “How did you get over there so fast?”

O: [laughs] I do enjoy that they're like, “Bring the wine!” Cuz if they're gonna die, they're gonna die happy.

S: They’re all a little slooshed up at this point.

O: They- they are. [laughs]

S: And then Sam's parents uh, head upstairs to check on Sam and bang on his door.

O: And we present to you, the most awkward conversation ever captured in cinema!

S: Sam's parents are like, “Hey, uh, why was your door locked? There aren’t- no doors are locked in this house,” and uh, decide to assume uh, masturbation was what was going on.

O: I did not need. [Clears throat] I did not need, or want to hear his mom call it, ”Sam’s special alone time”! Just no. All the no. NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!

S: Ironhide asks Optimus if you can shoot them.

O: PLEASE!!! [dissolves into laughter] Optimus is like, “No, what's wrong with you!?!”

S: Yeah, and then all of the Autobots are trying to avoid being seen. So, it's like they're attempting to do a Jenga with the house and they're all scrunched up- around and under Sam's window listening in and it's actually a pretty neat shot.

O: It's pretty funny. Mercifully, Mikaela saves us from this insanity by stepping out and introducing herself. So yeah, I think they're just gonna assume they were doing the horizontal mambo, if you know what I mean!

S: His parents apologize that she may have heard their ‘family discussion’.

O: Oh, is that what you're calling talking about your son’s WANKING OFF HABITS!?!

S: [sighs] Your son’s sex life, or lack thereof.

O: Why did you do this to me movie!?!

S: And this is where the federal agents come in.

O: OH THANK GOD! And we have our main asshole FBI guy- oh sorry, I mean Sector Seven guy, Agent Simmons, JOY.

S: Sam's parents take issue with all of this. Particularly his mom, who's mad that they're messing up their plants. Oh, and at some point, the father looked outside and was like, “Ah! The earthquake destroyed all my shit!”

O: [laughs] Cuz he thinks the earthquake did it.

S: And at this point I think Sam's mom's gonna be really unhappy when she realizes just how much damage the Autobots did…

O: Yeah, Optimus stepped on her flowerbed.

S: Yeah. And then the Sector Seven people want to take Sam away.

O: Personally, I think they can just, you know, have him! Can we follow Mikaela for the rest of the movie instead, please?

S: Unfortunately, Mikaela gets brought along too.

O: Sam, his parents, and Mikaela are shoved into some cars by the Sector Seven guys.

S: Oh, and the reason that the uh, the Sector Seven people know to take Sam is that they have some sort of uh, thing that reads radiation and Simmons-

O: And he dropped his cell phone, or the cops still had it, so they [Sector Seven] now have his cell phone.

S: That's true.

O: And his recording of Bee, and him talking.

S: Yeah.

O: And him saying his car is alive.

S: Yeah, but they also have a thing that like, reads the radiation. So Sam and Mikaela unfortunately, are now probably irradiated... somehow. Which may or may not give them a very good life expectancy. And oh, Sam's terrible eBay user name gets mentioned again.

O: And you totally see Mikaela roll her eyes at it too.

S: Oh yeah, and they apparently have Sam's phone as you mentioned. Which is how they tracked him down, and when asked about his ‘stolen’ car Sam says, “It came back.”

O: Right! Doesn’t your car come back when it's stolen, Specs?

S: No, it's not a boomerang. Though I suppose if a thief stole it [and] they decided it was super shitty they’d return it because-

O: I feel like they wouldn't even return it.

S: Or it just turns up again, like a block away.

O: I would be more willing to believe that.

S: I think I've seen stuff about that happening, but I don’t know. Agent Simmons decides to lord his authority over them by uh, showing his badge and declaring it a, “I can do whatever I want and get away with it,” badge.

O: More like an asshole badge!

S: He also starts uh, to threaten Mikaela's dad.

O: Because as previously stated, he is a fucking asshole. It's not even like Mikaela's got much to do with any of this to begin with.

S: People with power are just assholes-

O: Pretty much.

S: -a lot of the time. And of course, it's um, prime time to bring up Mikaela's criminal record, because fuck you Simmons.

O: And Sam has the nerve to be horrified when finding out about this.

S: Sam you jackass. You privileged, rich, white boy.

O: Yup.

S: And then the car is picked up and the- the uh, roof is ripped off by Optimus, once they’re in a suitably isolated area.

O: Optimus then kneels down, has an entire conversation with agent Simmons and Co.

S: He gets mad and tells them to get out of the car.

O: What’s left of it you mean?

S: I mean, it probably runs, maybe?

O: [laughs] He took off- like, the entire top half of it off!

S: Yes, but that- that's a not the part that keeps it from running.

O: And dropped it quite a ways.

S: Yeah... that's true, I don't know. Mikaela finally tells Sam off for shitty comments about her criminal record earlier by asking him, “When have you ever had to give up anything in your perfect little life?” Mikaela has a criminal record because she wouldn't rat out her dad.

O: Yeah, which- and depending on how old she is this should not have really even been legal to begin with.

S: Yeah.

O: Like, this like, I’m- I'm assuming this happened sometime between when she was 8 and 12 and it means that somebody chose to basically to prosecute her at a higher age bracket. [My logic for this is that there’s a comment about him not always having been able to afford a babysitter for her so I assume she wouldn’t have been old enough to stay home by herself, but take that with a grain of salt. ~O]

S: Yeah.

O: Which is shitty. But, that statement, that line, is the most accurate description of Sam. Here is a person who comes from privilege, he stumbles upon events that bestow him even more privilege and he acts entitled- so, so very entitled, during it all.

S: Yup, and then we get the part where Bumblebee pees on Agent Simmons.

O: [sighs]

S: [sighs] It’s just like, whyyyyy?

O: Does this mean he's low on those fluids now? Is Ratchet gonna have to top him off later? And why is that there? I mean why does it exist at all sure, but specifically, why is it where a dick would be on a person!?!

S: Yeah, why is it framed like that? From the perspective of the person being peed on?

O: [sighs] I don't know, but now that his friends are here Sam is going to be as douchey as possible because he orders Simmons to remove his pants.

S: And according to his under clothes or at least his undershirt, Sector Seven sells or has branded clothing items available for their agents.

O: The Autobots leave but, oh no! They [the agents] were on the phone the whole time.

S: [sighs] Meaning, backup arrives shortly thereafter and the Autobots proceed to hide under a bridge. Optimus carrying Mikaela and Sam in his arms.

O: Just putting this out there, but I too would like to be carried in Optimus’ big, strong arms.

S: Carried in his gentle, strong hands. Though I mean, preferably G1 Optimus, or one of the other Optimuses.

O: Yeah, yeah, just not this Optimus. I want the Optimus from Prime, he seems like a very calm, kind guy to give me a ride on her shoulders, that sounds nice.

S: I'll take G1 Optimus, he's a- he's very dad shaped.

O: He is the most dad shaped.

S: I'd also accept Animated Optimus.

O: Yeah... yeah, he seems nice.

S: Maybe Cyberverse, well I don't know.

O: He seems like, unsure dad shaped, and I can deal with that.

S: Yeah, and I'll leave out all the other Optimi. Though maybe Optimus Primal might be good for a hug.

O: He would be great for a hug. Unfortunately, they're not that much bigger than people so it would not be the same kind of ride in his big, strong arms.

S: [laughs] He’s more-

O: It still sounds nice but-

S: -more of a piggyback ride.

O: Yeah.

S: And to get away from our uh, hugging and carrying uh, discourse- there's just so many explosions happening right now.

O: Sure, don't worry about those roads or infrastructure, this is fine.

S: Oh no, Sam and Mikaela almost fell, but don't worry Optimus has slowed their descent with [laughs] his nice soft foot.

O: I guess that this is the one thing they kept from G1, huh?

S: Yeah.

O: [laugh]

S: And apparently Cybertronians are weak to ice and electricity now. Except... didn't Ratchet think that the power-

O: Think that the electricity was nice? I don't know, but Bumblebee gets the crap beaten out of him by the Sector Seven guys.

S: Oh my god, maybe Ratchet’s… [starts laughing]

O: Nope, nope, I think I know what went through your head and we’re not going there. It was disturbing when Bee got hurt, okay!?!

S: [continued laughter with increasing volume]

O: [laughs] I mean I’m sure Drift would be into it, but that’s not the point!

S: [sustained laughter continues]

[The laughter is abruptly cut off as the screen cuts to a purple image with Starscream and Megatron getting caught up in an explosion, overlaid with the Decepticon logo variation used by Afterspark Podcast, with text reading, “WE ARE HAVING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE STAND BY.” Elevator music plays in the background.]

[The screen returns to the normal screen with the episode information on it.]

S: [high pitched laughter continues]

[The laughter is cut off, and the same technical difficulties message and elevator music from before returns.]

[The screen returns to the normal screen with the episode information on it.]

S: I am under control again. [laughs]

O: ANYWAY, Bumblebee gets the crap beat out of him by the Sector Seven guys, it's more than a little disturbing.

S: Keep in mind that before this we really only had uh, G1 and Beast Wars as like, the main well-known Transformers things. I mean maybe Beast Machines?

O: Eh, Beast Wars, Beast Machines, I end to count them together, since they're in the same continuity even though they're different series, but- but I know what you mean, sorry.

S: Yeah, it's just those ones would have been the ones that most people- that would have stuck out in like, the main- I don’t know, cultural hive mind, probably. Cuz I don't think like, any of the animes would have made that much of a dent.

O: Yeah.

S: So uh, hopefully you enjoy watching your fav get tortured by the US government.

O: And the way this is framed, because Bee doesn't have a working voice box, really comes across that they're like, taking something from Sam. Not that Sam is worried about his friend! Bee is just treated like property, by both the plot and the framing. And this is in such a stark contrast to the Bumblebee movie. Where even though he couldn't talk, even though he was a CG character, he still felt like an actual character.

S: Yeah, in the Bumblebee movie, Bumblebee actually had an emotional arc. When Charlie first sees him, she treats him like a person that needs care and kindness. He- he still couldn't talk- like, he was immediately showing recognizable and understandable emotions.

O: And body language.

S: Mm-hmm, and then there's Bumblebee in this one where he can't talk, but he's just an asshole and he's gonna pee on things.

O: And you're my new best friend, and I'm gonna keep you safe, you know- just like a fucking guard dog.

S: [sighs]

O: Bee, story wise in relation to Sam, is treated more like a pet, and it is weird.

S: Yeah. Simmons catches up with the two of them and Bee, continuing to be an asshole and taking another pot shot at Mikaela as they're being taken away.

O: And they're just going to ignore the other Autobots in the distance apparently.

S: Yep, they're still hiding under the bridge. They're all tucked away under that bridge, which is apparently uh, enough to keep them from being spotted by helicopters. Oh, and apparently the um- while the Autobots couldn't be bothered about the flower beds before, Optimus can see and gently pick up the plot glasses that Sam uh, well basically Sam lost them when they fell and Optimus caught them with his soft foot.

O: Yes. And then army talk, army talk, army talk, boy let me tell ya... just how much I do not care.

S: And then the Secretary of Defense was apparently unaware of Sector Seven’s existence until now because he didn't need to know about them.

O: You know, copying Independence Day only with him instead of the president.

S: [sighs] Sector Seven is a special access division of the government created by President Hoover. Hm...

O: And at Nellis Air Force Base, Lennox and his team are intercepted before they can head home. Basically they're voluntold they're gonna help with this alien robot crisis.

S: Yup. And the Secretary of Defense's meeting with the Sector Seven guys and intends to bring Maggie with them.

O: This whole scene feels very much like, “Yes, and…” The Secretary of Defense wants Maggie to be his adviser, but when Glen asks if he is coming too and the Secretary of Defense asks, “Who is this?” Maggie just responds “He's my advisor,” and he [the Secretary of Defense] just goes with it, brings Glen along too.

S: Glen's getting the ride of a lifetime.

O: Yup!

S: I guess.

O: And finally, we get some of our separate plot threads to come together as Sam, Mikaela, Maggie, Glen, and the Secretary of Defense are now loaded up in the same helicopter and head to the Hoover Dam.

S: Weren't Maggie and the Secretary of Defense and Glen in goddamn Washington DC?

O: Yes. Yeah.

S: Kill me now.

O: [laughs]

S: [sighs] Poor Mikaela, she just looks so tired and done with everything.

O: You just know she hasn't slept all night.

S: Honestly they probably got shoved in a holding cell, so no.

O: Yeah, and then shoved on a helicopter.

S: Yeah, here's some more Bumblebee tortured before cutting back to the Autobots talking about how they must go on and they can sense that the AllSpark is near.

O: With what? Your bullshit radar!?!

S: Maybe they can sense it with their pheromone detectors.

O: Ratchet, what can your robot eye-

S: [laughs]

O: Ratchet what can your robot nose smell? Frenzy is tiny, and up to shenanigans.

S: It's time to break into the Hoover Dam!

O: So just getting back to this, because the movie really, really wants to bring this home, Sam can't possibly go out with someone with a juvie record. He wouldn't you know, want a date below his class, or marry below his class, or god forbid fuck below his class, right?

S: Sam you asshole.

O: Yup!

S: And boom, we have a Megatron.

O: Thanks, I hate it.

S: Still frozen, and presumably unconscious and offline.

O: Sector Seven’s been keeping him on ice for a while apparently.

S: Yeah, and apparently a good chunk of modern technological advancements since the thirties has been due to humans studying Megatron. Oh god, now I'm just thinking about mechanical television. Did mechanical television come from Megatron?

O: Sure. Sure. Why not, why not? “Yes, and.”

S: Simmons continues to antagonize the group. Who...who isn't a jackass in this group?

O: [sighs] Like, look, I don't like Sam but maybe Simmons, as the fucking adult needs to get his dick out of his hands and stop getting into Sam's personal space. It's creepy!

S: Honestly, a lot of the adult men in this movie are just creepy.

O: Yeah.

S: I mean, Lennox and Epps and the soldiers-

O: Aren’t-

S: - don’t seem to be creepy but...

O: Yeah.

S: Most of them, most of them-

O: Yeah, like his dad is shitty like... well- I guess Glen and the Secretary of Defense aren't bad?

S: Yeah, but they don't get a whole lot of screen time and also one of them's over 60.

O: That’s also true. Anyway, it is explained that the AllSpark was hidden and that they built the Hoover Dam around it.

S: How did the Native Americans in the area not know about it?

O: Maybe it was underwater? If it was visible they absolutely would have but I wouldn't put it past the Army or Sector Seven, or whoever, to conveniently ignore that fact.

S: But, um, would have been a river before the dam was put in and-

O: Obviously, Specs, you’re forgetting how deep rivers are.

S: The fact that you actually spent time looking to attempt to look this up-

O: I tried, and I could not find a straight answer! [laughs]

S: Well, it’s not exactly like they were going around do river measuring in that time period is it?

O: No... I’m still sad I couldn't find a straight answer though.

S: And I mean, who knows, maybe they accidentally made it a huge afterward.

O: I- I do think that would legitimately be funny, is like, some scientist poked it the wrong way and now it's like, “Oops, it just takes up the entire hanger now, sorry guys.”

S: [laughs] It’s like, “Oh shit. Oh shit, I'm glad it didn't crush me.”

O: Yeah.

S: [sigh] The AllSpark just has random powers.

O: Frenzy now has a body again.

S: Yeah, Frenzy, uh- Frenzy was taken along this entire time in Mikaela's bag, I think?

O: Yeah, pretty much. Like, he got out of her bag and sort of crawled into Hoover- the Hoover Dam.

S: Yeah, and he's able to signal the rest of the Decepticons with the Megatron's location and then we get to see them finally begin to mobilize.

O: And now, an hour and 40 minutes into this movie, we have a Starscream. There is no power on heaven or Earth that can make me believe that that is his holoform. Mark my words, I don't care if IDW never gave him the holoform, but his holoform form would be female, and no one can stop me.

S: [sighs] And then more on the AllSpark’s plethora of abilities, apparently they can use it to turn random electronics into Transformers. Which... the Autobots would probably consider kind of horrifying, because these are babies and now the babies are dead.

O: Yep.

S: Simmons proceeds to demo this for us by taking Glen's cell phone and zapping it's to life.

O: I will forever be confused for this, why does it seem like the AllSpark always makes stuff that's evil?

S: I mean it's a baby.

O: I know, but it has red optics, I feel like we have to assume it's a Decepticon.

S: Maybe the Decepticons are the last people who had it if they'd programmed it for red optics-

O: [laughs] So you’re telling me it’s stuck on the make evil setting? Got it.

S: It’s possible! I don't know how this works, and it’s not like we're gonna get a demonstration of it later, considering what happens.

O: Yeah, yeah…

S: And Simmons proceeds to kill this little phone Transformer by basically electrocuting the shit out of it.

O: We create life, then we kill it, but we're the good guys remember! And now, finally, Dorito-scream has been achieved!

S: It's just so triangular.

O: I don't know why Starscream looks like a giant flying Dorito in this-

S: It might-

O: -but I find it hilarious.

S: It might be his color scheme… partially.

O: He doesn’t really have a color scheme.

S: Yes, but-

O: It’s just he’s so triangular!

S: Yes, but he's also kind of beige.

O: Eh, you’re right, that doesn’t really help things. Uh, Frenzy manages to take out the power for Sector Seven’s facilities.

S: How does a dam lose power considering in generates power?

O: I don’t know, Specs.

S: Sorry, I mean, I guess it's possible that he could, like basically prevent water from going through the dam by freezing something, but…

O: I think he actually just started destroying the mechanical stuff, so like the generators and stuff. It's now time to defrost our Decepticon warlord on high.

S: Frenzy is getting busy in the control room again- again blowing all of the shit up, and then all of the scientists in the main bay when Megatron is being held seem like, super unfazed by the deep thaw that's starting.

O: You guys need to run. I have zero doubts that Megatron won't kill you out of sheer spite.

S: Yup. Did you know that there was a whole armoury of bullshit under the Hoover Dam? Because of all- the soldiers are like, “Pass the guns! Give me that buffet of guns and ammo!”

O: And Lennox is kind of done with Simmons, because uh, yeah uh, violence is uh, implied. I'm so glad that this movie is all violence, no character development, or emotions, or feelings We don't have feeling Specs, because we are sex having heterosexual men! Hetero men who have sex with women, never mind that G1 is one of the least straight things I've ever seen in my life!

S: To be fair to the soldiers they did not sign up for this bullshit, and then they got dragged into and all they wanted to do was go home.

O: And-and look, I would be pretty upset about being shoved into the same room as Agent Simmons. So yeah, I can't blame them too much.

S: Yeah.

O: They go to retrieve Bumblebee.

S: And Sam's like, “Stop electrocuting my car!” Not even, “Stop electrocuting that guy.” “Stop electrocuting my car.”

O: Of course! And Bumblebee just gives a him a look like, “Dude, I have had the shittiest day.”

S: Yup, and poor dude is like, super jumpy and paranoid but I mean who wouldn't- who wouldn't be?

O: I- yeah, I mean considering he was tortured all night- he's got ever right! I still legitimately don't know what catching Bee accomplished!

S: I don't think it accomplished shit except getting him to this location, which I guess was the plot contrivance. And now we've got the magical size changing cube. As Bumblebee touches the AllSpark and like, pokes it a bit and then suddenly it is like hand-sized, for him.

O: Even their spark of life can mass shift apparently.

S: Oh god. [snickers] It's from a planet of shapeshifters. Apparently mass shifting is just what this stupid thing does.

O: Apparently.

S: Everybody can just understand Bee now, this is fine. And, oh, Bee’s been talking in like, radio and music references this entire time, and I don't think we ever mentioned that.

O: [laughs] You're right I don't think we did. He isn't talking normally, he's using recordings.

S: He talks TV, basically.

O: Pretty much. Well, asshole’s up! “This is not where I fell asleep, I'll have you know!”

S: He’s a lot less uh, he's a lot less of a morning person than Skyfire was.

O: [laughs]

S: Skyfire was much more genteel about the entire thing.

O: [laughs]

S: Megatron's a jet in this, so we’re- you know just so we're all on the same page here. He meets up with his second-in-command Dorito-san.

O: [laughing] Dorito-san!?!

S: [laughing] Sorry... He meets up with his second-in-command, you know, the Dorito.

B: [laugh]

O: There's some groveling that happens. Megatron tells Starscream he's disappointed in him and all I can think is- he didn't even do anything yet!

S: Apparently he couldn't find Megatron, which I guess is what he's disappointed in.

O: I guess? “Do you realize I had to listen to... Francois talk about his- his terrible wife for three weeks, do you realize that [Starscream]!?!”

S: Simmons, the Secretary of Defense, Maggie, and Glen uh, remain behind when everyone else heads out to go to... stuff. So while everyone else is going and doing stuff the- [sighs] the dam crew, that's what I'm going to call them.

O: [laughs] Okay, okay, I’m here for this.

S: They attempt to contact the Air Force, to try and get some you know, backup for Bee and company.

O: They do this by using some very antiquated equipment, because the Cons have knocked out most communication worldwide.

S: Which is not explored in this movie, let alone any others.

O: Yeah, because this would be like a thing that should affect everybody.

S: Yes, there goes-

O: Or at least everybody in the in the US.

S: Yeah, frankly I'm kind of- well, no, apparently landlines don't work and I don't understand why.

O: I don't either.

S: But yeah, cuz this- this would have wiped out... literally every communication except apparently shortwave radio. But apparently, yeah, shortwave radio will still work. Which is what they're attempting to use here. They get the brilliant idea to hotwire a computer to transmit a tone through a radio signal, while they're trying to hold off Frenzy who is trying to get into the room that they're- that they’ve holed themselves up in. Which... it's a weird, weird room.

O: It is, but now back to how sexy the cars are! Look at the car, so sexy!

S: Why is everything so orange? I will bemoan the orange!

O: We can’t have no girly colors in here conveying emotions, Specs! Look at the cars!

S: [sighs] And the Autobots immediately join up with Bee, it's convoy time!

O: [attempts to sing] We're gonna roll this truckin convoy- oh god that’s the right tune. I even looked it up!

S: Oh! I've got it on my phone.

[The audio cuts and “Convoy,” by C. W. McCall plays]

B: [singing] “We have a little ol’ convoy, burning through the night! Yeah, we got a little convoy. Ain't she a beautiful sight? Come on and join our convoy! Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way. We gonna roll this truckin' convoy 'cross the U-S-A. Convoy!”

[The audio cuts as a record scratch noise plays]

O: That’s enough of a music break!

B: [laugh]

S: Ah, Maggie and company began to arm themselves with some of the older guns um, from the display cases in the room they're stuck in.

O: Oh yeah, I'm sure those will shoot just fine!

S: Where did they even find the ammo or…?

O: Yeah! Because why would the ammo be stored with most of the stuff that's on display?

S: I mean that thing- I mean like, having the ammo for interest but yeah, why would they have ammo or even gun powder in this room? [quietly] I don’t know. [normal volume] And then it's back to Bee again.

O: Wow, I just don't care! Even the G1 episodes, where they were constantly swapping back and forth between a bunch of different scenes, are better than this.

S: Those typically have more things happening in them.

O: Surprisingly, yes. I'd much rather watch Megatron throw shit at Starscream.

S: Honestly, that's more cohesive.

O: And that is saying something.

S: Okay, so one of the Decepticons, Bonecrusher, catches up with the Bots and Optimus transforms into a robot mode to protect the others.

O: He just seems like such an asshole here, they're literally fighting on a highway. There are so many people that must die here!

S: Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of amused by how it looks like their roller-skating but that doesn't exactly take away from the- oh, there's a terrifying robot deathmatch and so many people are dying.

O: Yeah and but- but thanks Bay! I'm so glad that this one kid and his mom survived. Thanks for that.

S: God, so many people probably need therapy in this universe.

O: I would think so.

S: Frenzy is now in the vents.

O: Good boy, you go get ‘em! Even if the B team is definitely the better… group.

S: He comes out and falls so straight onto a glass case, uh-

O: That's my boy!

B: [laugh]

S: Like, he's using shuriken things, like he was using a shuriken things before, but now he's been like boomerang- boomeranging shit around and he accidentally beheads himself with his boomerang shuricane- shuriken thingy.

O: That's my boy! [laughs] So interestingly (to me anyway), it seems like this- the movie series uh, kind of made the whole- the whole integrated weapon thing for the Transformers more common. I know you saw it a bit in G1, but it seemed kind of inconsistent in either how it worked or what weapons they had. Ironhide, just Ironhide, right?

S: Mm-hm.

O: Um, but- but this made it more consistent, like especially in Prime you- you saw that consistency and thought applied to the weapons and how that- they access them throughout the entire series, which was really nice.

S: It was also pretty consistent with Animated, which I think came out around the same time as this movie though I don't remember if it was prior to the movie being released or afterward.

[TFA was released in December of 2007, whereas the first Transformers live action film had been released in July 2007. ~O]

O: Well, and I mean, either, or- either the movie borrowed from it, or it borrowed from the movie with Megatron kind of being that thing that advanced tech for-

S: Yeah.

O: -for humanity, which was just kind of weird, but yeah.

S: Or they both borrowed it from the comics, and then just made it consistent because they do have pretty integrated weaponry in the original Marvel comics.

O: That- that's true I-I meant- I thought you meant the uh, Megatron being- being why we had any technological advancement-

S: Oh-

O: -and I was really confused for a good minute.

S: No, no, no, no, sorry, just the-the integrated weaponry.

O: Fair.

S: Though [laughs] Animated did that Megatron’s the reason that they have-

O: Yeah! That- that like, New Detroit or Detroit has like all this like, amazing tech.

S: Our convoy enters Mission City, and prepares to hold off the Decepticons to prevent them from getting the AllSpark.

O: Why did they bring this into a city?

S: I don't know, no one explains their shitty decisions here.

O: It gets weirder because apparently, when they were writing or making the movie there- they originally have thought to have the climax in the Grand Canyon. Which seems like that would make a lot more sense? Like, sure, there's less coverage per se, but way less civilian life in danger!

S: It would have also involved like, immense environmental destruction but that’s not something they would have been concerned about.

O: I just don’t see- I don't see how that would have been more work then the city.

S: They may have had issues actually getting- well no, they could have done it all in green screen but…

O: Anyway, we've contacted the Air Force, so the dam team has succeeded.

S: [laughs]

O: Uh, Lennox and his dudes communicate what they need.

S: Oh honey, that's not the Air Force. That's really not the Air Force.

O: But only Ironhide seems to realize it's actually Starscream that's approaching.

S: Bee uses a random... well, it's got a Furby on it, so it's the Furby delivery truck as cover.

O: Starscream shoots said truck and send everyone flying. Everyone else is covered in dirt and grime here- and I mean technically so is Mikaela, but she has an almost angelic glow about her when she wakes up in a pile of rubble looking at Sam. Sam also has an angelic glow because remember, he gonna hit that.

S: [sharp intake of breath] Uh-huh, Bumblebee has lost his legs in the last attack.

O: And Bumblebee is basically half a bot, let's keep that in our back pocket for later shall we?

S: Yeah. Mikaela being the badass lady that she is like, “ We're gonna move Bee! We're going to get this done!” And proceeds to break into and hotwire a tow truck to do just that.

O: Go Mikaela. Bee gives the AllSpark to Sam and conveys to him that he should go on without him basically.

S: And then another Decepticon um, Demolisher, shows up and uh, Ironhide, Ratchet and Jazz engage him. And I think Demolisher’s a tank?

O: Yeah… and I think that one [the tank] was Demolisher? I think this is something that really frustrates me about Sam though, so much what happening- what is happening around him seems rooted in the sense of self sacrifice, but yet he doesn't ever have to sacrifice anything?

S: Like, the only things that he might theoretically have to sacrifice could be his life. And he never does that, he's never even like, even remotely close to doing something like that except by accident.

O: Exactly.

S: By like, falling off a building.

O: Yeah, like it's never, “I'm going to-,” it never feels like, “I am going to choose to do this thing.”

S: Yeah, and then random boob and ass shot from some random lady who's in danger.

O: And I'm not judging her for what she's wearing, but you just know she got put in that outfit and put into that shot for one reason which was titillation and I'm like, did you have to? In a movie about giant robots, did you have to?

S: It's only theoretically about giant robots, you know it's about Sam-

O: [sighs] Yeah...

S: and his boner.

O: [quietly] Boner of fate.

S: [high pitched laughter]

[The laughter is abruptly cut off as the screen cuts to a purple image of one of the Conehead Seekers in a t-rex’s jaws, overlaid with the Decepticon logo variation used by Afterspark Podcast, with text reading, “WE ARE HAVING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE STAND BY.” Elevator music plays in the background.]

[The screen returns to the normal screen with the episode information on it.]

S: Megatron lands, and you know, shouts his own name.

O: Why are you- why did he do that!?! Is he a Pokemon now? “Megatron! MEGATRON!” [laughs]

S: He’s got to announce his presence.

O: [still laughing] Obviously!

S: Poor Jazz attacks Megatron, and Megatron grabs him before flying off and landing on top of a building.

O: And then he rips Jazz in two.

S: Poor Jazz will not survive this.

O: Remember what I said earlier?

S: About Bee?

O: Yeah. [sighs] You- you brought up a good point prior, technically Bee only lost his legs from the knee down, but I'm just gonna say, they are giant fucking robots and I still don't feel like Jazz should have died here. Also, according to the TF Wiki there was some point during development when Megatron was going to literally, not figuratively, literally, eat other bots’ sparks, so if that had been what had happened- Jazz being dead would have made a lot more sense!

S: How in a movie about alien freaking robots does Bay manage to kill the metaphorical black guy first? Why?

O: I don't know why he killed anyone here! We've barely gotten to see the robots at all!

S: Apparently, we have to make uh, make there be some sort of... I don't know, people are dying, this stuff is really real. Except... no, they use the guy who's- basically Jazz's speech patterns are close- are I don't know, AAVE? American… African-American Vernacular, I think?

O: Eh, it’s- he's coded African American because of his speech patterns-

S: Yeah.

O: -is probably, how I would know-

S: The way, yes-

O: -the best way to say it? And I'm just super sorry if that's not accurate.

S: Yeah, we- we apologize if this is inaccurate and offends anyone. It isn't our intention.

O: Yeah. But- but yeah, like effectively, [sighs] he, ugh, it’s just literally he- he killed the black guy. I know he's not literally a black guy, but- but that is how he has been characterized.

S: That's just... that's how it feels.

O: Yeah.

S: And back to Dumbass McGee. Sam is tasked with taking the AllSpark to the top of this building, so that they can hand it off to the Air Force.

O: Did they miss the whole Megatron and Starscream have jet alts bit?

S: I'm gonna go with, yes.

O: Apparently, okay. Just checking.

S: Everyone is a very, very disrespectful, like they're fucking disrespectful as fuck to Mikaela and no one gives Sam shit but Mikaela trying to get Bee out of the way invites comments.

O: Golly, I wonder why!

S: And Optimus finally arrives.

O: What took him so long!?!

S: He got lost! He fell off a highway and wasn't sure which way everyone else went, and also, with all the you know, internet and Wi-Fi and everything knocked out, he didn't have any GPS.

O: [laughs] That is the best excuse- that’s the best explanation I've heard. Headcannon accepted!

S: It’s not like he's driven around there before, and I don't think he has Ratchet’s nose. [laughs]

O: No, no, no, nope, uh-hm-

S: [continues laughing]

O: - nope that’s it, I’m leaving!

S: [continues laughing]

O: I’m done, I’me done! [unintelligible] -of Ratchet’s nose!

S: [continues laughing]

[A door slams]

S: [continues laughing]

[The laughter is abruptly cut off as the screen cuts to a purple image of Soundwave being thrown into a rocket, overlaid with the Decepticon logo variation used by Afterspark Podcast, with text reading, “WE ARE HAVING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE STAND BY.” Elevator music plays in the background.]

[The screen returns to the normal screen with the episode information on it.]

S: And then Megatron shows up, transforming into robot mode.

O: So I don’t hate his alt exactly, but I just can't help but think Prime did this better. Of course his voice was better too, but what do I know!?! Sorry, is my salt showing? Seriously though, I find it funny that both damn times that go to make a Transformers movie, they- they get Cullen to do Optimus, but they don't get Welker to Megatron. Only to have Welker either return to do the character in the TV show or later in the movie series. Although it's kind of funny cuz they took him out in the movie and had somebody else play Galvatron and it's the exact opposite in the live-action, where once Galvatron shows up Welker is doing him. The irony.

S: That is funny. And then Megatron and Optimus fight.

O: Finally! We get some of that homoerotic fighting this series is so known for! He's sitting on Optimus punching him, yep.

S: Except a lot of this is done in a shaky cam so..

O: Yeah, so it's still terrible but eh, I mean, at least we're getting... sexual tension now?

B: [laugh]

S: And Sam is somehow running faster than the robots, how??? They have a wider stride.

O: Dunno, but it’s the return of Dorito-scream!

S: And Ironhide tells Sam to run, like he wasn't already doing that.

O: Mikaela however, is a stone cold badass.

S: Her and Bee enter the fray, with her driving backwards and Bee doing all the shooting and fighting. “I'll drive, you shoot,” indeed.

O: I really feel like they bond here, but we never get to see him be as good friends with her as he is with Sam which seems really shitty. This scene had actual feelings! Emotions! Characters vibing with each other, dammit! Mikaela's like, “I'm scared, but I can help you and I know you want to help,” and I am here for that.

S: Yeah, they're actually working together instead of Sam who so far has uh, either been chasing the car, or being chased by the car, or possibly driving the car.

O: But not actually driving the car, like all movie.

S: Yeah. Sam gets up on the roof and uh, manages to set off a flare.

O: But Starscream is RIGHT THERE, so the helicopter gets shot down before they can retrieve the AllSpark.

S: God, there is such a body count in this movie.

O: Right!?! But it's fine because Sam and his penis, I mean hec-

S: [laughs]

O: Sam and his boner, I mean Sam and his not girlfriend survive.

S: Ugh, Optimus attempts to reach Sam.

O: And doesn't try to stop the falling helicopter at all.

S: It doesn't have the thing he wants.

O: [It’s] so fucked up.

S: Megatron reaches the roof and demands that Sam hands over the AllSpark.

O: Megatron then asks if it's courage or fear that compels him, which I will say- fear! Obviously! The man has never known courage in his entire life!

S: Sam is- well, ok, so the entire time this exchange was going on, Sam was like, holding on to like, the front or back of this statue that's up on the roof.

O: Mm-hmm.

S: And, uh, basically Sam, and I think the statue, get knocked off the building. But don't worry, Optimus catches him with his big soft hands.

O: Obviously. Also, we see Optimus’ battle mask, it's something that was kind of neat. An interesting idea when done WELL, like say, Prime or even Animated! You can pray this soap box for my COLD DEAD HANDS.

S: It's also not bad Cyberverse, but that's significantly newer.

O: Yeah, but it would be pulling from the other two.

S: Yeah. And, um, how are people still driving around in this city? Wasn't- well, I mean, there wouldn't- well, okay, I guess... there may be people who haven't gotten the memo about the giant robot war.

O: I just feel like, maybe they would have seen the smoke, or the explosions, and decided driving would be bad, but I don’t know…

S: I don't know how well sound travels in this city.

O: Who knows. Optimus and Megatron both hit the street and seem to need a few seconds to shake the fall off, despite Sam being perfectly fucking fine.

S: That makes zero sense. Humans are, uh... special.

O: [sighs] Optimus tells Sam that if he can't defeat Megatron, then Sam needs to push the AllSpark into Optimus’ chest- to make sure Megs doesn't get it.

S: Like, this is actually something that I think Optimus has said before?

O: Yeah, he- he said it to the Autobots earlier and- and Ratchet was like, “That might kill ya both! Dumbass.”

S: Yeah.

O: Only without the dumbass-

S: I think-

O: -that’s my addition. I know how to write Ratchet talking better than this movie does. Fight me. [laughs]

S: Optimus just seems kind of suicidal at this point.

O: I mean… yeah. He does not seem happy.

S: Yeah.

O: I mean, like, look, I can't think anybody would be happy in the middle of war or anything, but at least feel like G1 Optimus probably has moments. Prime Optimus probably at least loves his team, to some capacity. Animated Optimus loves his team. As for as much as they drive him nuts.

S: [laughs]

O: This Optimus? I don't think there's a single thing, a single spark of joy in this mech’s life.

S: Yeah, and back to the Decepticons, it’s Blackout time.

O: I kind of like how its rotors look like a cape when he transforms.

S: They wiggle.

O: THEY WIGGLE.

S: I- I enjoy the wiggly cape and it-

O: I do too!

S: And it’s- it’s helicopter rotors are like that.

O: Yeah, like, you kind of see with Blades a little bit in Rescue Bots too.

S: Yeah, he's a wiggly boy. Lennox and company are able to defeat Blackout with some help from the Air Force.

O: Do they kill him with shot to the crotch?

S: [laughs] That’s entirely possible.

O: [laughs]

S: Lennox, I think, ends up taking... I don't know, the thing with- cuz-

O: They like- he slides underneath him and shoots. So I’m like, “Did you kill him with a shot to the robo dick?”

S: [laughs]

O: Really? Is that the Decepticons’ weakness? That’s good to know. Optimus, aim there!

B: [laugh]

S: Oh, um, and so... basically, there's apparently a particular type of round that they have to use. Tha- it's like, a Sabot-something or other at that-

O: I don’t remember.

S: Yeah.

O: And I didn't- I didn't actually write it down because it was not important enough to me, sorry.

S: Yeah.

O: [laughs]

S: Starscream takes out a good chunk of the military reinforcements and so like, at one point one of the soldiers is like, “Friendlies don't fly under building height,” or whatever.

O: They proceed to fly in the building height a few scenes later.

S: Yeah, while…

O: Starscream is transforming in and out of jet mode to take them out.

S: Yes, so yeah, there's- god, there is so much mortality going on here. Cuz there's like, multiple planes going down-

O: Uh-huh

S: -in the middle of this inner city area.

O: And like, I will say, and we both comm- or I think you commented on like- it is a- it's a good fight like, for how Starscream would fight.

S: Yeah.

O: Because he’s sort of constantly shifting back and forth.

S: Yeah, I think he's choosing good aerial tactics for what he is.

O: He is and it’s really neat, actually.

S: Yeah, that was pretty cool. From a mortality from human perspective point that's horrifying but...

O: That’s true. Elsewhere, Megatron and Optimus continue to fight but Optimus is definitely losing.

S: Yeah, and so, Sam's been underfoot I guess, the entire time?

O: And he hasn't been squished.

S: Yeah.

O: Pity.

S: So instead of shoving the cube into Optimus’ chest he shoves it into Megatron's, because apparently Megatron’s spark is just out there on display… somehow?

O: Shit! We don't know what that does! What if he accidentally gave him immortality or something!?!

S: Apparently that didn't happen, cuz it seems- apparently that killed Megatron and like destroyed the cube???

O: Ahh? [laughs]

S: And now Ironhide is walking around carrying both halves of Jazz's corpse like... babies in the crook of his arms. Before handing them all over to Optimus.

O: That’s not awkward at ALL! [laughs]

S: Sam, Mikaela, and Bee reunite.

O: Exposition by the Secretary of Defense lets us know that the President has ordered the end of Sector Seven and all the Decepticon remains have been dropped into the Linares Trench where the cold and water pressure should keep them entombed.

[I don’t know if we misheard this when we were watching the movie or what, but according to TF Wiki it was the Laurentian Abyss, I’m really not sure where we got Linares from. ~O]

S: [sighs] Later, at yet another sunset, um…

O: [laughs] There's so many of those in this movie! Optimus Prime closes out the movie, leaving us with a message of questionable hope and alerting any remaining Autobots that they may come to Earth.

S: We'll see some of them in the next movie. Um...

O: But this is all while Sam and Mikaela are getting hot and heavy on top of Bumblebee’s windshield.

S: Yup. That's- that's a person guys! Maybe don't make out on top of him unless this is some sort of really weird three-way. Which, ok, maybe not so weird if they're into that, but I don't think they discussed it.

O: [laughs] All the other Autobots in the background are totally watching too, so it just sort of feels like, extra level of creepy.

S: Yeah. It really does. I'm just shaking my head. And um-

O: That's this movie in a nutshell, man.

S: The credits roll as the incredibly soothing tones of Linkin Park uh, they- they play and they escort us out of this movie.

O: So let mercy come, except for Decepticons because they don't deserve it according to this movie.

S: A few other scenes are cut into the credits.

O: Mostly involving Sam's parents.

S: It's really unimportant.

O: We do see Starscream escape into space though.

S: So, what are our conclusions?

O: Watching the Bumblebee movie and the entirety of Transformers Prime will get you everything that was pleasant about this movie and be a more enjoyable experience. Maybe go do that instead? The Prime designs even seem at least loosely based on some of the live-action designs, you know some of the elements [of them] that I actually liked. Real talk? It introduced some interesting concepts, but overall I hated it pretty much the entire time I was watching it. Specs?

S: I would have preferred to see a different movie, perhaps involving some of these characters but not all of them. Um, specifically I would have liked to see something starring Mikaela, Maggie, Glen, and Miles. Miles would have definitely been like, just you know, the random straight man who has no idea what the hell's going on. While the other three are hyper- well they're all hyper competent at something, and then the soldiers could have been interesting secondary characters too.

But you know, there were really too many characters in this movie for anyone to have a complete character arc. So it would work better with a smaller cast, maybe just focusing on the first four that I mentioned? Either that or having a TV series with the soldiers coming in as liaisons with the military kind of like Fowler from Prime. Some sort of buddy comedy with the first four or just a more- actually, something with more of the tone of Prime as a TV series-

O: Yeah.

S: - would have- would have worked well.

O: So like, what robots would you want to see in that?

S: Uh, I mean, if I was going to keep the Bayverse robots... I just want to see more characterization from them and better writing. But if I could have any character, G1 based Ratchet, uh, maybe Hot Rod or Bumblebee for you know, kid appeal. If I was gonna pick between live-action Bumblebees, I'd go with the Bumblebee [movie] Bumblebee.

O: Yeah, he was definitely better.

S: A G1 based Wheeljack, Cyberverse Grimlock. Uh, if it was something that was gonna be more lighthearted, maybe the Rescue Bots, particularly Blades. Cuz I would like a flight frame in there.

O: Yeah.

S: And… so- Optimus, even if he's only someone who shows uh, sometimes?

O: Periodically, yeah.

S: Optimus would be good. If this was going to be a heavier thing, keep the Rescue Bots off. And, I mean, if we're going- going back to the Bayverse thing, if we're going to stick with Bayverse Autobots, just give them screen time and character development. And also Bayverse Arcee, specifically, the design for the toy from the first movie, even if she was pink.

O: Fair.

S: But as it stands, [sighs] the Bayverse Autobots in this movie are just... Optimus is impatient, Ironhide really likes his guns, Rachet is tactless, and Bumblebee is immature. And then Jazz is the only person who seemed to actually learn about human social customs in some- in some manner. He doesn't destroy as much shit as everyone else.

O: Yeah, Jazz was definitely the best one.

S: He was! And then he- then they killed him, he died! It’s just like, why did you do that?

B: [sigh]

S: If you're going to have characters, please give them screen time and don't kill them.

O: What a concept! I guess that leaves me to fill out the Cons for this cast. Uh, Megatron obviously, uh, G1 or Prime. Probably Prime if I had to pick one because they- again, I feel like the Prime characters lend themselves reasonably well to a more, kind of realistic plot. Soundwave, probably Prime, again feel like he fits better into this. Uh, he needs some of the cassettes though, which Prime didn't really have, but I definitely want Ravage, cuz I love Ravage. Uh, Knockout because he's fun, and snarky. Um, it's not Cons without a Starscream, so Starscream. But similar what you said, I would literally take just fleshing out the Cons in the Bayverse, because they had so little screenshin- screenshine?

S: [laughs]

O: They had so little screen time, and just no personality, and it was just... depressing!

S: The most screen time that we had for any of them would be Blackout at the beginning, where he's basically just shooting things-

O: Yeah, but he didn't even have any lines!

S: Yeah, and then…

O: Like, in fact, so few of them had lines!

S: Yeah.

O: Like, the way- even the Decepticons, most of the time when they talk, they talked in Cybertronian even.

S: Yeah.

O: And it was translated, it was just like, “On our way,” or, “Megatron has been found.” It wasn't even- it wasn't character, it was just a statement!

S: Yeah, like none of them had personality and that’s just so disappointing.

O: It really is.

S: [sighs] And it's- we have fanfiction recommendations.

O: Yeah, I know we didn't do this with the other specials but because there is actually fanfic based on the live-action stuff, we kind of thought it was more applicable here.

S: Alright, so the first one is, “The Princess is in Another Castle,” by Bibliotecaria_D. It's in the mov- the Bayverse continuity, obviously. Uh, rating, PG-13. It's got- it has past slash, so it's not a general fic. Parings, uh, past Mikaela Banes and Sam Witwicky. Um, characters, Mikaela Banes. And in summary, “Mikaela Banes is waiting” That's- that's the long and short of the summary folks.

O: [laughs]

S: But it's really good! It’s-

O: It's basically... what did happen to Mikaela, after her and Sam broke up? And it- and it feels like this very good character development thing for her and it feels- it feels good to read. Like it feels like- yes, this feels like something the character would have done and it it really gives her more depth than the movies ever did.

S: More depth and agency.

O: Agency, she has goals- that aren’t Sam oriented.

S: Um-hm.

O: It's really nice, I really recommend it.

S: I should reread it it's been a while.

O: I do recommend it like, I’ve read it multiple times because I thought it was really good.

S: Yeah. So the the rec for it is Mikaela and it's a one shot. And so our next one is- would you like to talk about it or would you prefer me?

O: I'm gonna talk about it, and I'll kind of explain why I maybe can't give the best in-depth explanation of it. But uh, our other fanfic suggestion is, “Towards Peace”. It is by ariealbots, the continuity is Bay movies, if- they bring in elements of IDW, it's rated T. It is slash, but believe me when I say I'm not gonna read this entire list. I'll just tell you kind of the top ones are Megatron/Optimus, Megatron/Ultra Magnus, Optimus Prime/Shockwave, Mikaela Banes/Bumblebee/Sam Whitwicky- so they actually are a trine in this like, they're- they're a poly relationship-

S: Um-hm.

O: -as far as I can tell. Um, characters... there are so many! I- like, it would have been absurd for me to try to list them all but basically the Bayverse cast, you get elements of some of the IDW characters thrown in, like Verity. You get some of the Bumblebee characters thrown in like you actually get Charlie. Um, and they're pairing up essentially with all the bots that are still on Earth and it's really- it's really great cuz I think Charlie gets uh, teamed up with Skyfire? So like, the- the Russian jet not like the Skyfire from G1.

S: Oh, the guy for the second movie?

O: Yes! Like-

S: That’s Jetfire.

O: Jetfire, thank you! I knew the name wasn’t exactly the same and I kept forgetting. Skyfire actually shows up as a separate character in this and he's more based off G1 and IDW. But yeah, she- she sort of is paired up with Jetfire and- and it's really lovely and I like it. [laughs]

[Okay, to make this all the more confusing, he’s called Jetstorm in this particular fic, so I just got this wrong in all the ways. ~O]

S: Except he's not Russian in the second one he's an SR-71 Blackbird.

O: He has a Russian accent.

S: Ah, ok.

O: I don't know why-

S: Well-

O: Like- like it it makes more sense when I read it but-

S: Okay.

O: But anyway in summary, heh, “At the climax of the Battle of Mission City the AllSpark is pushed into Megatron's chest and instead of killing him it does what it was made for, it transforms. After millennia of slow descent into madness brought by programming corruption the Lord Protector Megatron finds his mind suddenly restored but the memory of what he's done cannot be washed away. With the war brought to a violent halt both Autobots and Decepticons must learn to coexist if they want to reunite their civilization and restore their dying world.”

S: I like that summary.

O: It's... good and obviously it's because, Bayverse, and it took place right after the first movie so I wanted to recommend it here. Um, it is multi chapter, it's still ongoing, which is kind of my caveat usually I don't like recommending things unless they’re finished. And I actually have a hard time following this one- reading it, partially because I have a hard time telling any of the Bayverse bots apart.

Like, I think, I'm actually gonna have an easier time reading it now, now that I had to like, sit down and fucking disect the Bayverse movie, so I'm gonna be really happy to go back and read it. Um, I think it's pretty safe to assume a bunch of the pairings are like past and stuff, because like, I- I haven't seen hide nor hair of Ultra Magnus yet. Um, but- but anyway it's- it is good and like, the stuff I've read I described it as like, having this very kind of sweet pervasive kindness to it and softness to it which was really nice. Uh, it was done as part of a Big Bang, I think?

S: Hmm…

O: The Big Bang event. Like I said, they're not finished yet but I'm interested to see what they do and- and I'd liked a few of the like, characters and relationships particularly kind of with the humans and whatever kind of bot or bots they're kind of closest with.

Like I said with Charlie I'm pretty sure it was uh, Jetfire. I think Verity might have actually been with Barricade, don't quote me on that because I could totally be wrong but- but I liked it, like it was good on that level. Um, it's just I'm like, I haven't finished it yet and I haven't even read the most recent stuff so I'm always a little hesitant to recommend stuff I haven't finished reading so you know, with a grain of salt. But I like what I read.

S: I’m going to have to go look at that, because it does sound nice.

O: It- it- just… I love that a concept. God forbid, I cannot keep the Bayverse characters straight to save my life. Uh, Jazz comes back to life though. [laughs]

S: Nice.

O: Because Megatron basically start- like he- he touches Jazz and so Jazz is better now. “I got better!”

S: [laughs]

O: Uh, but- but he can also sense where like, a lot of the living Cybertronians are so like that's how they actually- they actually go get Skyfire who is in the Arctic in this uh, fanfic so you know, but- but it's good. Uh... oh! Thundercracker and Skywarp are in it so you have the full- you have a full Dorito trine. Um-

B: [laugh]

O: I like my Doritos in multiple flavors, thank you very much! [laughs]

S: Cool ranch and I'm not sure what the hell Skywarp would be.

O: Uh, cheesy?

B: [laugh]

O: Anyway, happy holidays everyone and thank you for tuning in. It's been a wild year and we're excited to keep talking about these ridiculous robots. We will be taking a break for the rest of this month and January to enjoy the holidays but we'll be back in February with episode 26, “Attack of the Autobots!” Oh god, the Ark's only got two beds and there's about to be problems.

S: Oh my god, they were all roommates.

B: [laugh]

S: They are!

O: You’re not wrong, per se...

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

O: And I’m Owls.

B: Happy holidays!

S: Toodles.

[Outro Music]

[Ending Stinger]

S: Welcome to our first anniversary special with the 2004 Transformers film.

O: That is the wrong year.

S: GAH-

B: [dissolve into laughter]

S: God dammit.

#afterspark podcast #transcript #bayverse #transformers (2007)

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