Happy Upsetting Day! Hopefully youâre not upset that youâre getting a podcast instead. Today we discuss the important and oft-overlooked movie genre: Over the Top.
Now, I know what youâre saying: âThatâs not a genre, thatâs a movie! A great movie! You are not the men to bring it low!â
And youâre right. So we contacted Jason âDavid Wongâ Pargin for backup. Heâs known as the âalternate thumb positionâ of podcasting, and today we finally find out why. Weâre not here just to make fun of Sylvester Stalloneâs wild misunderstanding about the importance of armwrestling in modern society, weâre here to make fun of its entire legacy: from The Wizard to Road House, from Twister to the Huey Lewis/Gwyneth Paltrow classic⌠Duets? Yes, Duets! We make fun of Duets! We dare.
Haha, thatâs the poster for Over the Top?!
Haha, thatâs the poster for The Wizard?!
Haha thatâs the poster for Duets?!
Haha thatâs the poster for Road House?!
Twister is beyond reproach.
I also once again defend my title as âMost Losingest Competitorâ in Seanbabyâs Book Game! Guess how it goes! Hey, fuck you. Maybe it goes well this time.
It⌠it doesnât.
And remember, Jasonâs here promoting his new book: Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick. I have read this book. All the way to the end. Yes, I know youâre proud of me and I appreciate that, but I mention it because I know the book is fantastic. Itâs funny, thrilling, stupidly hilarious, and also subtly, cuttingly relevant. I donât know how he pulled all that off, but he really did. Itâs sort of Idiocracy for the Elon Musk generation. Itâs sort of cyberpunk for the TikTok generation. Itâs funny and itâs deep and itâs compelling and itâs satire and itâs a book! You read those!
Malibu was a slipshod comic imprint that could have only existed in the gimme-gimme-glut of â90s comics. Malibuâs entire business model was âmom knows youâre sick so she picks up comics and you appreciate the gesture too much to tell her to fuck herself for buying The Ferret.â And yet, because there is no justice in this world, Malibu did get a TV show out of the deal. That show was Night Man — Batman for people who did not understand what was cool about Batman.
Hereâs a real quick breakdown explaining everything you need to know about Night Man:
His name is Johnny Domino and heâs a saxophone player, two things that would definitely get you fucked in the â90s and then never, ever again.
He was struck by a lightning bolt while playing saxophone on a cable car and obviously he deserved it. That let him tune into — no shit, the showâs words — âevil radio.â Now he can sense evil, but thatâs such a worthless power he also stole a suit that can do anything.
Here he is kicking a guy off of a motorcycle and into an explosion.
Now, itâs not everyday youâll hear me say that a costumed man kicking a guy off of a motorcycle and into an explosion is not awesome, but thatâs because I donât watch Night Man every day.
Instead of a Batmobile, Night Man drives a Plymouth Prowler.
A crude drawing of a Plymouth Prowler is how you say âerectile dysfunctionâ in hieroglyphics.
Basically Night Man sucks and everyone knows it except for Night Man, and he will never listen no matter how urgent or well-reasoned your arguments are. The whole show is a manifesto about why we must never allow the â90s to happen again, but I want to focus in on one episode. The rollerblade episode. You know: The one where Night Man fights a gang of super rollerbladers who have rockets on their skates.
This is because every â90s show was required to have a rollerblade episode, and they all drew the same conclusion: Rollerblades are definitely the coolest, but they can only be used for evil.
From Prayer of the Rollerboys to Hackers, pop culture loved to depict rollerblades as, at best, the tools of misunderstood criminals. This particular shot of dangerous teens rollerblading in formation was everywhere:
Hollywood genuinely thought that shot was terrifying. They thought youâd turn and flee if you saw that on the street, rather than gently inquire if they were training to display the pride flag in a synchronized sucking competition.
It was a crazy thing to do – depict this slightly novel method of conveyance as inherently evil, or at least bursting with the potential to be. Pop culture saw the very first pair of rollerblades and immediately thought âhow will this affect the world of crime?â That didnât happen with anything else: There was no wave of segway movies where roving gangs used them to encircle frightened seniors. There was no flurry of hoverboard villains immediately cracking their skulls open and ending the film on a downnote. But somehow the three primary fears of every old person in the 1990s were: Brightly colored gangs, carjacking, and different ways to make rollerskates.
This, then, was supposed to be horror:
It was bold of them to cast a young black man in the role of âracist old white woman.â Right down to-
And all this because the gang really wanted his⌠Jeep Grand Cherokee?
Nobody wants a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Itâs the least stolen car, right behind active-duty police vehicles and the Power Wheels Jeep Grand Cherokee. Kelley Blue Book lists the average retail price of a Jeep Grand Cherokee as â[heavy sigh] yeah I guess Iâll take $200 and a dog for it.â Thatâs depending on condition. If the paintâs faded, you wonât even get the dog.
Anyway, that driver was Johnny Dominoâs best friend because — as I mentioned — Johnny Domino sucks and takes what he can get. Heâs on the case of the stolen Jeep Grand Cherokee when Iâve already solved it – they used it to drive to a better car and then stole that. They left it in an Arbyâs parking lot because it blends in.
Johnnyâs keen detective skills take him to⌠the first rollerblading shop he sees. He basically just asks the clerk if he solved the case:
But no. No is the answer.
Luckily the nerd friend uses computers, because no plot advanced in the â90s without somebody saying âthe computer!â After computering it, the nerd sees an old coworkerâs name crop up.
Man, I do not know what to tell you If you blow all your cash on rollerblade contests. That is a firm commitment to not surviving the â90s. If you met a person who sucked dick to buy Slap Bracelets from KB Toys, they would use the brief respite between cocks to question the longevity of your investment plan.
Anyway, thatâs why Night Man has to enter a rollerblading competition. Hereâs the teenager that signs him up for the contest, and the actual dialogue that stayed in the script despite desperate margin notes that read, âplease change this, I have been beaten up by every teenager I have ever met for asking if the word âcoolâ is a sex thing, and even I can tell you this is not how teens talk.â
Johnny Domino of course gets his only friend — the one who still flinches when Johnny refers to them as âthe Best Pals Clubâ – to rig up a Good Rollerblading device.
And yep, you guessed it: The sign-up kid — the one who talks like surfers making fun of the way old people impersonate surfers — turns out to be the villain. So no, the very first rollerblader Johnny Domino ever met did not turn out to be evil. But the second one did.
Here we see the gang with no name, so Iâm going to call them The Rollerbuds, using their elite technology and futuristic weapons toâŚ.
Rob one of those chintzy crystal stores in the mall. The ones that sell like, jumping dolphins and pegasus statues to ten-year-old girls.
They actually steal the pegasus statue! It is worth eight dollars! And only because thatâs what Stephanie will pay for it!
Hereâs the villain, whose name I forget so Iâm just going to call him Billy Bitch-Storm, badly lying to the new recruit in his teen gang — 37-year-old Johnny Domino — about how fast they are:
We see many shots of these rollerbladers going all out. Itâs like half the episode. It should be noted that even with altered footage, their top speed seems to be about twenty miles an hour — a speed easily achieved with just normal rollerblades. Their main adversaries are any car or bicycle. Their only weakness is moving aside suddenly so they run into a stationary object.
Iâm not joking. Thatâs how Night Man defeats the villains of this entire hour-long episode.
Only Billy Bitch-Storm remains, and now the writers found themselves penning a tense standoff between a guy theyâve established is bulletproof, superpowered, flies, and fires lasers⌠and a guy with skates that are up to 20% faster than normal skates. I really have to give Night Man credit here. The fight goes exactly how youâd expect.
And so ends the episode, wherein Night Man proved that at least half of all rollerbladers are evil, rollerblading is so super easy that even the olds can do it, and anyone can beat up a rollerblader. In short: Perfect accuracy.
Blockbuster died so hard that today itâs a joke: a punchline whose setup is how terrifyingly fast new technology can destroy whole industries. But back in the day, Blockbuster was King Dick of Fuck Island, and everyone knew it. Working at Blockbuster was the dream job of every teenager and thirty-something burnout whoâd seen Clerks too many times and told his girlfriend he was âdefinitely more Randall than Dante, maybe 72/25 — no, haha, Iâll be honest, itâs probably 60/40.â But even that was a lie, wasnât it, Brandon? Youâre not even Clerks. Youâre Mallrats and thatâs what keeps you up at night, staring into the void. Asking it why you even live. Begging it to give you a way out of this Mallrats life. Hoping today will be the day it answers.
Anyway, thatâs why Blockbusterâs training videos were top notch. Welcome to Blockbuster University!
Youâre going to major in âhow about some Mike and Ikes today?â And youâre going to minor in âsir, we know exactly which scene in From Dusk till Dawn is too worn down to watch. Weâve already offered you a refund; do you really want to drag this into the light? Now, how about some Mike and Ikes today?â
Hereâs Marie, our training video protagonist:
And yes, that is her normal face. Her resting expression is one of passive, uncomprehending mania – like she opened the front door and instead of finding her home on the other side, itâs a faerie circus. She likes faeries, she likes the circus, but her world is gone and the only thing keeping madness at bay is the certainty that this is all a dream.
Thatâs that exact expression, and I will brook no arguments.
Hereâs Buster Sales:
Heâs our magical training video host. Heâs got a kind of offputting mookish presence, and he lives in the TV — like if Max Headroom was the manager of a local carpet store that couldnât keep any female employees for reasons that are not discussed. He lives in a non-dimension whose totatility is the carpet they use in airports, and he wants to help Marie be a better corporate shill.
He is the very avatar of aggressive capitalism, and itâs his mission to show Marie that every time she thinks sheâs helping a customer, sheâs really costing Blockbuster up to $6.50 in upsales. He actually first describes himself as âa professional opportunist,â to which Marie wisely responds âthat doesnât sound very nice.â And Iâm not shitting you, thereâs a weird split-second of crazy rage from Buster:
Before he laughs and explains ânot like that.â
What is that expression? Thatâs the face Bilbo makes in the six frames before he monsters out on Frodo. If somebody makes that face at you for a second and then laughs, know that they just briefly imagined what your organs taste like. Iâm clearly reading something into this thatâs not there. Itâs just that Buster really fucks with me. I donât know. That scratchy nothing dimension. His weirdly contrasting fashion sense from an era that never happened. All of his mannerisms are somehow subtly menacing to me.
Thatâs not a guy telling you how to talk a customer into a soda — thatâs a painting of Christ askew in a church. There is something wrong here and you just donât understand what it is yet, but you better start guessing before Mass starts. It might be short for something.
Buster starts off talking to Marie about customer interactions she had, but halfway through the video he suddenly steps up his game and becomes telepathic. Now he alerts Marie of âopportunitiesâ before they happen. He doesnât tell her what they are, or what to do, he just warns her a second before a customer talks to her. In order to⌠do what? Fuck with her?
Then something happens. Something I donât think should have happened. Buster butts in during a conversation to prompt Marie and the customer actually stops the training skit to ask: âHey, are you okay? You look a little freaked out.â
Iâm not being cute. Thatâs a direct quote. Marie staggers — lilâ trapeze elves doing backflips in her head — and points back at the now blank TV. She mumbles something about just checking the monitor, but Buster is gone and sheâs thrown off her game.
This is an insane turn for a training video to take!
Earlier, Buster expressly promised Marie that nobody could hear them talk, so she wouldnât look crazy. And it did work that way at first, but then Buster⌠revoked that promise? Just to make her look crazy? Why?
The arc of a training video is usually that of a harried employee who receives instruction that makes their lives steadily easier. That is not what happens here. Marie starts off happy and in control, then Buster puts her in weirder and weirder scenarios that she doesnât know how to handle. He starts bringing up boys she might like, and boys that might like her. He starts hinting about things she can get if she listens to him. Here Marie is being stalked through the aisles by a superdork:
And Buster doesnât advise her on how to deal with unwanted attention in a professional manner: he pushes them together and encourages Marie to get close to him, so she can learn his desires:
Later, a regular customer named Mrs. Simpson comes in with her son, Doug. Buster knows that Doug likes Marie, but she doesnât pause to question why Buster suddenly has access to the personal details of her life. She only says âDougâs a nerd,â to which he answers — again, direct quote: âMaybe so, but Mrs. Simpson is an opportunity.â
Thatâs some weird shit! Why include that in the video? The only possible implication to draw is that Marie should, at the very least, tolerate the kidâs advances so his mother spends more money at Blockbuster. W-what?
Buster doesnât even chime in with advice during this interaction. He just starts laughing insanely, making pig noises and crazy faces behind Marie.
Iâm not leaving out context. Itâs not a joke, or a setup for something. Itâs just ominous and vulgar and distracting. The filmmakers make sure you can see it in Marieâs body language! I do not know how this trains you for a day-to-day life renting Baywatch tapes to tweens in sweatpants!
Around this point in the video, Buster turns aggressive for no reason. Marie isnât ignoring his advice, or even arguing with him. She happily does everything he says, and still he starts ambushing her by screaming, or blowing whistles and banging cymbals when sheâs not paying attention:
Again the training video takes a few seconds out to specifically show us the real world consequences of this. Marie yelps in pain and covers her ears, and all the customers jump at her reaction, pausing to see if sheâs okay.
None of this should be in a training video. I held every minimum wage job out there for about two weeks each. I have rapped along with Wendyâs and watched men burn alive just to learn where Chevron keeps the emergency pump shut-off switch. This is not normal. This strange escalation is not a training video trope, but it does mirror the classic signs of possession.
It all fits. Step by step, in exact order.
Infestation: The stage in which an entity merely makes itself known and familiar, like Busterâs early interactions. It can even feel helpful. Comforting.
Oppression: After you accept the entityâs presence, it will soon turn aggressive — random, small attacks designed to mess with you. Loud noises, harassment, distraction that affects your daily life. Not harming you, so much as wearing you down.
Obsession: You become fixated on the demon, your every interaction becomes about them. Listening to them, talking to them, arguing with them, it doesnât matter. The more you solidify its realness, the realer it gets. The weaker you become, the stronger they do. Until the attacks stop being psychological, and become physical…
Marie, fuck. Get out of there! I know throwing popcorn seems like a small thing, but the rules have changed. Heâs showing you he can affect the physical world now. He can get to you. He can bother you. He can hurt you!
I donât understand why Blockbuster would put these moments in an innocent training video. How does it help a new employee to see that monitor silently flicker on behind Marie? To watch Buster smugly harass her? To see the wounded, angry look on her face as she spins around? To watch Marieâs customers and friends question her sanity? What purpose does this serve, if Buster Sales is not some sort of Training Parasite — an evil presence using naive young employees to exert his influence on the world?
Because thatâs the last step:
Possession. The entity takes control of you.
Iâm very sad to report that Marie did not catch the signs in time. This video ends with Buster Sales fading out and Marie slowly slipping into an unfamiliar posture. She rubs her hands and says, âI guess now⌠Iâm the opportunity expert.â
Fucking is simple. Find the hole or surface of your choice and apply friction until your mother is ashamed of you. Technology made fucking complicated. The internet drove fucking insane. Letâs talk about Hololive, which is a Japanese Vtuber talent agency for Idoru camgirls.
If you lead a wholesome and balanced life, that last sentence was the least helpful explanation you have ever read. You probably got through âletâs talk aboutâ just fine, and then looked at the computer like a dog looks at a vacuum cleaner for the rest. Here are several explanations that will make you a slightly worse person for knowing them.
Vtubers are YouTube stars that use digitally created avatars to represent themselves online.
Idoru are manufactured media stars whose personalities and actions are assigned or created.
Camgirls are sexy ladies that pretend to orgasm online so men can carefully consult a list and send them the appropriate blender they believe that orgasm warranted.
Letâs put it all together: Hololive is a collection of real women operating digital cartoon puppets whose identities are controlled by an online talent agency, and whose primary job is to help nerds who have disassociated with reality have an interactive orgasm.
Arenât you glad you learned this today? Donât you feel enriched?
Iâm serious about the disassociation. These are not actresses playing a normal role — check the talent section on the agencyâs website and you wonât even find a mention of a real person.
They are never allowed to break wank kayfabe. This is deep anime shit all the way down:
This oneâs a cute vampire! Sheâll help you masturbate! Thatâs not your thing? Donât worry! There are robots you can pretend to bang, dog-girls, witches — whatever you need to maintain maximum psychic distance from the real world while you rub one out.
Hereâs a girl whose whole schtick is that sheâs technically a child, but sheâs also really a dragon who looks like an adult woman with debilitating tits wearing one-third of two different shirts.
Thatâs actually a pretty standard anime loophole for creepy nerds trying to confuse their FBI agent. But the tricky thing about Hololive is that itâs not all wank material: They also put on cutesy little skits that scan as just straight-up cartoons. Theyâre animated instead of mocapped, theyâre directed, they have a script, and the only fan interaction is in the comments. For all intents and purposes, itâs just anime, and that gets these clips put in front of a younger audience in a less sexual context. Your mom probably wonât even sigh heavily at you if she walks in to see you watching something like this!
Not heavily!
But thatâs the hook. You like those skits? You like these characters? You can interact with them live! They pull the girls right from those sketches — same character design, same voices, same personality traits — and have them do livestreams using mocapping and digital avatars. Complete with all of Japanâs many interesting problems.
Theyâre not always sexy. Maybe one is just a cute anime girl dancing with teddy bears. You can chime in and tell her you like her moves!
Maybe one is a fake radio call-in show with a demon shadow frog:
You could call in and pretend to have questions only a demon shadow frog can answer. âWhat are ponds like in hell?â You could ask, and it would respond âribbit [screaming in your grandmotherâs voice] ribbit.â The cute girl would giggle!
Maybe itâs an edgy english lesson:
And you can type along with her live! Sheâll teach you how to spell âdickâ and you wonât even know the psychosexual damage thatâs doing to you until you grow up and can only get off to porn parodies of spelling bees.
You could just watch one awkwardly chase a star around your grandmaâs wallpaper.
And tell her how much she sucks at frisbee. While youâre there, ask her what the fuck those sheepcops were about.
Those are the innocent ones. Others just brush up against sexuality like a salariman on a crowded train. Hereâs the lolli were-dragon complaining about those, again, absolutely life-ruining tits of hers:
These are the ones that get so big the algorithm has no choice but to start recommending them. People are constantly stumbling in with no context only to find themselves neck deep in an incomprehensible nerdmire.
I do not understand, or even have a guess as to why thereâs a crude drawing of her with crosshairs centered over her crotch, but at least I went looking for this. Check the chat: BaneGalder up there just stumbled in, webweary and exhausted, only to find a big-tittied toddler dragon eating spicy foods and making sex noises. With all the resignation of a soldier returning from the front, he asks: âThis some kind of self torture stream?â
Hereâs the debut of a worryingly young-looking were-shark girl. Sheâs filling out her application so otaku can know her biggest fear as they jerk off later.
Check that chatlog again: Brezima just turned left instead of right and now theyâre in an alternate universe they can almost recognize but never comprehend. âWhat uis this and why was i recomended itâ they cry, but in this universe everybody speaks pig, and the only answers they get are squeals.
Fuckinâ Diablo down there even has an anime avatar:
And he is still utterly befuddled by the many confusing layers of abstraction surrounding this pornography. Because — stay with me – weâll get to the pornography! The tamer stuff is just to get you attached. Because once youâre in a chatroom with your favorite 7th grade cartoon were-dog and a credit card, they know youâre…
Thatâs when they drop some of the pretense and get right to the sex stuff. Hereâs where those âlanguage lessonâ videos invariably wind up:
And thanks to the freedom of this embarrassing cyberpunk fetish, they can do some real weird shit:
Those two actresses switched digital avatars, then had to watch their own bodies do things as another girl piloted them. Itâs like the Freaky Friday fetish you never knew you had until right now:
Yeah, check this out:
The owner of that body is just standing in the corner, looking away, trying to reconcile themselves with this disturbing new world of lost autonomy — thatâs part of it. That is part of it. Thatâs like booping the clown nose in normal porn; itâs just not complete until you hear the honk.
Remember: Thereâs no nudity allowed on YouTube, so a lot of these wankstreams are kind of tame. Iâm not exactly a prude (I donât mean to brag, but you need to go at least three nested subcategories deep to find my jams on Pornhub) so these PG-13 âsexual situationsâ do not offend me. I only bring it up to prove that yes, this is absolutely a sex thing. Itâs not a fine line these girls are walking:
That schoolgirl who was so concerned that somebody else was piloting her body? Here she is hanging out with the dragon-child:
That is exactly what it looks like. Schoolgirl made a rookie mistake and mentioned how fun it looks to have a tail. Anybody whoâs stumbled drunk into the wrong Sea-Tac hotel and then tried to use the bathroom only to find it was the last night of Yiffycon and theyâd just crossed the DMZ ropes could have told you that — but they wonât. They wonât ever speak of it.
We donât cut away or anything — these two mime the entire insertion process, as the schoolgirl struggles and cries out:
This is all on YouTube. Iâm sure this particular video is flagged so it doesnât get recommended to random children looking for cartoons, because Iâm a naive optimist. But thatâs why they have those wholesome skits for the kids to enjoy! Nothing wrong with the algorithm plugging those. Then the kids can follow those same characters into a livestream for the other kind of plugging.
Please remember that these girls are actually alone in an empty room somewhere, hundreds if not thousands of miles apart, each miming half of a sex act so their digital avatars will look like theyâre stuffing things in one otherâs asses.
This is what I mean when I say fucking has gone mad.
Needless to say, this is all way more popular than you think — every video in the hundreds of thousands of views, many in the millions — and more profitable than you could ever guess. What does a normal camgirl call a good nightâs work? A few thousand bucks? And thatâs for showing her actual body.
To be fair, that doesnât happen every stream. And not all of what they do is open for donations. Iâm sure the agency takes an unhealthy cut. Iâm not going to extrapolate out how much they make a year doing this, and say itâs too much. Thatâs not my business. But I will say: You can hold a full-time job in the US today and barely clear 12k in a year.
If youâd found me at 23, working graveyard at a gas station, and told me I could make a yearâs pay in twenty minutes by doing an anime girl voice while I work a cartoon puppet, I would have invested my first weekâs pay in Mime College just so that my dragontail buttplug insertion would be utterly flawless.
Itâs not all fun and ass-games for the girls, though. These talent agencies operate on J-POP band rules with a corporate culture somewhere between Wal-Mart and Scientology. Step out of line even a little bit and youâll get âgraduatedâ — what they call dismissal.
That post above is written so that her departure seems voluntary. The fan wiki doesnât seem to agree:
And holy shit — their âretirementâ page is downright ominous:
I read through all of those, and I didnât see a single mention of one dying or disappearing from unknown causes. But you know what they say about warning labels, right? Everytime you see âdonât eat the silica packetâ itâs because one time, somebody did that.
This entire world is separated from ours by so many impenetrable walls of sheer nerdery that you can stumble into a mass masturbation session where thousands of real dollars are just flying across the screen and you would have no idea what youâre looking at. âSome video game thing,â youâd assume, and then go back to knitting sweaters on a boat or whatever it is normal people do. And every single inch of it is designed as a slippery slope to get young people to click on a funny cartoon right before their whole life takes a waterslide straight into a dragonâs vagina.
I want to be clear that I feel for the girls involved in this. I hope one day they get sick of the mysterious disappearances and unsolved murders that apparently plague the anime sex puppet industry, and finally get a chance to unionize. We will stand by them.
This article is brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Dr. Awkward: the 5th dentist when they say “4 out of 5 dentists recommend Crest.”
Making fun of fan fiction is tricky. On the one hand, it absolutely deserves to be mocked. On the other hand, youâre absolutely an asshole for mocking it. For starters, a professional writer making fun of an amateur writer is generally considered punching down, and people frown on that, despite it clearly being the best direction to punch from. You get extra momentum from gravity!
Thereâs also a level of protective irony inherent to the genre: Half of fan fiction is written to make fun of fan fiction, and the other half just uses that as an excuse if you happen to make fun of theirs. Itâs called âtroll ficâ — purposely writing bad fanfiction to get the internet to make fun of you for, I assume, sexual reasons. I am aware of these pitfalls, and I have figured out an ethical way to get around them: I donât give a shit.
Weâre going to talk about Love Beyond Circuits, Love Beyond Flesh.
Egatro and Potimus sound like bit parts in Hamlet, and Iâll never call the good guys from Transformers anything but the Autoboys from now on. This is so bad that I immediately worry itâs on purpose, but hereâs the thing — even if this is supposed to be terrible, we still need to talk about it. We need to talk about the important work itâs doing in Transformers lore. Specifically in detailing the sexual anatomy of a robot that turns into a truck.
But before you fully explore an asshole, you must first care about that asshole. Thatâs what separates erotica from proctology, and why my proctology erotica can never seem to find a good audience.
The setup for Love Beyond Circuits, Love Beyond Flesh is thus:
That is some lean storytelling. We are a total of perhaps 200 words into this story, and weâve already successfully merged the Transformers and Star Wars universes. Some fan fictions burn hundreds of thousands of words just trying to get their two properties to play nicely, and this motherfucker pulled it off in the span of like six fortune cookies.
I mean, yes, all they did was say âfuck you, theyâre the same universe, fuck you againâ — but the simplicity of genius looks a lot like idiocy from a distance. Sometimes it looks like that up close, too. Like when Jabba announces that his pleasure barge is actually a fuck-barge, which never needed any clarification. When Steve Bannon drags a cringing young woman onto his mega-yacht, he never needs to specify âthis is the boat where I give you diseases in terrible places.â Itâs assumed.
Optimus Prime apologizes profusely for the horrible atrocities his robot cock is about to commit, which is the gentlemanly thing to do when one finds oneself to be an outsized robot on a fuck-barge, but thereâs no need. Leia just soldiers the fuck up:
Here. This is what Iâm talking about: The Transformers dick-building is both casual and astonishing. Of course Prime would have a crotch gate! The author is not just making that up out of thin air, thereâs a precedent: On the original Optimus Prime toy, he kept his entire head in a flippable platform inside the cab. It was a silly but elegant solution — of course it would work the same way for both heads. This is how you do worldbuilding: The author actually takes the existing functionality of the toy design into account before extrapolating the location and functionality of his cyberdong. And let us not ignore the metaphor here: Optimus Primeâs dick is both lead and gold — the least and most valuable metals. Thus symbolizing the way Optimus Prime both treasures and is ashamed of his sex. This is literature!
And of course, graphite for lube. If you ever have to fuck or get fucked by a robot — and the way 2020 is going, you absolutely will be doing both before Christmas — youâll remember this storyâs advice and you will thank it with every fiber of your laser-targeted orifices.
I say again: Yes. The worldbuilding! The anal cavity of a sexually conservative robot like Optimus Prime would absolutely be neglected, even rusting. But heâs still a caring friend who knows people love to crawl up his asshole, so itâs also full of special lighting and even a little visitorâs center. Maybe a gift shop, to remember your special time inside his cavernous metal anus.
Holy shit! True to his name, Optimus opted for every Prime add-on when kitting out his butthole. Heâs got the Luxury Package, the Entertainment Package — motherfucker even sprung for the Comfort Package. Writing is about the words you donât write. You donât need to specify it: I know this robotâs ass comes with zoned climate control and a moonroof.
Great art changes your view of the subject forever. Look at Optimus Prime again without picturing the special thrust elevator installed inside his butt. Hear his soothing, fatherly voice without recalling the special neon rainbow lightshow he gives visitors who tickle his âsoft pinky pillows of pure petuniaâs cotton.â
I defy you: Watch R2D2âs antics throughout the Star Wars films and don’t think âthere he goes — the freak of the robot school.â
Look, George Lucas, if you didnât want R2D2 — the lovable inhuman jester of Star Wars — to one day be used for anal play by a bigger robot, then why did you shape him like that? This was inevitable. R2D2 has always been Chekhovâs Buttplug.
Sadly, after this section, Love Beyond Circuits falls apart. Things get stupid fast. Jabba grafts Jar Jar Binksâ penis to the tip of Optimus Primeâs shaft, then:
Optimus just makes a space long-distance call to the brother of the woman heâs currently fucking with somebody elseâs dick, and thatâs it. See, Jabba was too busy micro-managing the Dick Transplant Lab to install basic communication jammers, and the only reason Optimus Prime didnât call for help before now was because he didnât know a good number for it. Well, that and heâs getting double-teamed by what are, to him, basically just super horny lilâ elves.
Fuckinâ Jar Jar lets us all down one last time:
In the end, Leia reveals that the entire Star Wars love triangle – already complicated by one of the participants turning out to be her secret brother roughly 40 years before our culture decided we were actually pretty into that — was bullshit and she was just playing both men, because once you fuck truck, youâre straight out of luck.
But listen, none of that is important. Remember: I didnât bring you here to mock the character development, or the plot, or even the grammar — I came here to do one thing and one thing only: Introduce you to the complicated worldbuilding of Optimus Primeâs fully-loaded butthole and, in the process, forever ruin both Transformers and Star Wars for you.
Oh man, not for one hot second did I think you were actually George Lucas trying to set the record straight anonymously. But itâs so weird that you felt you had to specify you werenât that I completely do think that now.
Thanks for the expanded (butthole) universe, George!
You probably know that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was a recut of a Japanese show with new American actors. It wasnât white-washing, but it was white-splicing, which⌠actually sounds way worse, like an extremely popular thread youâd find on 8kun. To nobodyâs surprise except for apparently everyone in Hollywood, the original Chojin Sentai shows were often way better. But not every season got a Power Rangers reimagining — Chojin Sentai Jetman, for example, wasnât deemed interesting enough to rob. Maybe itâs because the toys would have been boring — and they would have been — but the show sure as hell wasnât.
The theme song alone is worth the price of admission, which is nothing. Itâs worth twice that! I know you canât hear it from these images:Â
So let me sing it for you:Â
âŤJET-TO JET-TO JET-TO MAN
LETâS GO FLY AWAY!
CHOJIN SENTAI…JET-TO MAAAAN!âŤ
Dang I really nailed that. Try to get that sucker out of your head now.Â
The show was filmed in 1991, but takes place in a far distant future with impossibly advanced technology.
Because they were certain — absolutely certain — this would happen within the next ten years, but they just werenât willing to commit to a specific year and risk looking like fools. The first episode opens with my favorite character from anything:
That robot is not âout of control,â it is so fucking pissed off. Trust me, I know what that looks like: I once corrected a British person trying to say âaluminum.â Anyway some narc calls the robot cops, but itâs actually a good thing since this lady hucks babies like Jackie Chan:
The robot cops stop this massacre in seconds. Hereâs me when the Skip Ads button pops up on YouTube:
The high-jumpinâ, baby-snagginâ, button-slappinâ badasses are Ryu and Rie, the cutest supercop couple this side of Tango and Cash. After that aerial display theyâre promptly invited to space — the best place — where they receive an offer to become superhuman:
And this article is over.
Fuck!
Iâll never write anything funnier than âBirdonic Waves.â If I was scripting a parody of Jetman with pigs instead of birds, I could call them âHamma Raysâ and it would be like spitting in your mouth whenever you open it to laugh. Every other joke is like ashes now. Thanks, Jetman.
Hereâs the rest of my stupid fucking article, I guess:
Ryu and Rie are of course game for a few dangerous blasts of clearly bullshit waves, but theyâre worried about being split up. Luckily the commander tells them the worst lie she can come up with:
Hereâs Rie two minutes later:
She barely gets a chance to nod politely at the commanderâs ironic lie before a hole rips open in the side of the space station and she vanishes into the void.Â
We are roughly five minutes into this show and weâve had a leaping baby catch, met the angriest robot, weâre now in space, we got Birdonic Waves, and one of the leads just exploded. If anybody is taking notes on how to do exposition, you can stop now. You have everything you need. This is called the Shotgun Method and if executed properly, you can actually blast audiences with literally everything they need to know in the first eighteen seconds of your show, leaving the rest free for supersonic pig fights.
As the space station explodes, the Birdonic Waves escape and — every time! It gets me every time! – and they blast random bystanders below on Earth.Â
This guy gets it in the chest.
This poor lady takes one right in the gut.
This unfortunate son of a bitch gets a bolt to the head.
And this lucky young woman takes a full Birdonic Bolt straight in the ass.
She minds it the least, by far. Eventually they will all pick bird-themed names. Please remember to act surprised when she chooses Blue Swallow.
Now Ryu has to find and assemble all the potential Jetman, so they can battle evil aliens to save the Earth! It shouldnât be hard to convince these warriors: Each Jetman is granted amazing powers, plus a bitchinâ jet!
Holy shit, Ryu has already found the first cadet, White Swan! And she wants to join up! Like⌠immediately! With suspiciously little convincing!
She has no followup questions. She doesnât even give a shit what theyâre called. She is down to join this deadly elite fighting force within one and a third sentences of meeting Ryu. And he is stoked at his luck, until she says:
Their very first recruit and she enlists not because she cares about saving the world, but because sheâs an adrenaline-junkie excited to risk death just to feel alive for a minute.Â
Then they find Yellow Owl. Hereâs how that goes:
So far none of the heroes in this show actually want to be heroes. And thatâs because Jetman is doing something very special: Every single character, save for Ryu, is on the Heroâs Journey.Â
You canât do that!Â
Itâs tough to do even one âHero Resists The Callâ right, and Jetman is doing four at once. The end result is less like weâre being introduced to a reluctant cast of would-be heroes, and more like everybody in the world is already aware of, and fucking hates Jetman.Â
Hereâs Blue Swallow, the Birdonic Backdoor Baby, who will only join Jetman if you pay her.
One by one, they all reluctantly sign up for the Jetman crew. Not a single one of them is happy about it except for Ryu, who wants to save the Earth, and White Swan, who wants to be choked until she flatlines so she can bring back a ghost to fight.
Finally, they come to Black Condor. Allow me to paraphrase his recruitment interview, and I promise I will barely touch it:
Black Condor starts off standoffish, and turns outright aggressive the second they mention Jetman. All four of the new Jetmen have only one thing in common: They do not give a single shit about Jetman.
To really drive that concept home, the very first villain they fight as a team is a literal jet man:
Hereâs how Ryu responds to the attack:
Ryu fights like every move is a condom: Single use only. Heâll spend forty-five minutes bringing a jet to a fight to fire one volley at some henchman and then leap out as it crashes to earth so he can rabbit-punch a single confused dude. Guess what? The fight does not go well. They need a new weapon!
But donât worry, of course they all come together at the end to triumph over their enemies, forging not only an unbreakable team, but a lifelong friendship. Hereâs Black Condor, after their first big fight:
In summary, I would like to close by saying: Chojin Sentai Jetman is the best show I have ever seen. Itâs Voltron but if every single member of Voltron hated every single other member of Voltron almost as much as they hate Voltron itself. These are only the first half-dozen episodes — there are fifty! At some point this whole thing must devolve into a fully-formed Jetman trying to tear off its own arm as it repeatedly punches itself in the crotch and both legs try to run it into a volcano.Â
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Daniel Kennedy: Who would never join Jetman! Fuck you for asking!
