"So we go down there, wearing our bike helmets and sports pads, armed with softball bats and hockey sticks- We must've looked dumb as hell, because I weight eighty pounds sopping wet at the time- and start exploring the silo with flashlights and singing 'In The Lord's Army' and that kind of shit-" Sam explains, casually waving a beer bottle. The other guy at the table starts snort-laughing and nodding.

"Shut up Terry!" Says Sam, mock-slapping his friend's shoulder. "Anyway, the four of us are shuffling through this dark-ass underground building full of junk, about to piss ourselves and- SHUT UP TERRY I'M TELLING THE STORY- and we see this faint light coming from under one of the doors. Gotta be where they're doing the rituals, right? So we sneak up to the door-"

"I could hear you from like, half a mile off." Terry giggles.

"Dude shut up- we don't sneak up to the door, and my heart is going a mile a minute, we're about to fight the actual devil or some this, right? So I kick the door in and scream "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU-!" Sam says, way too loud for 1 AM in a suburban neighborhood, but hey, it's a wedding.

Terry makes a noise like a dying rubber duck.

"But instead of like, maidens chained to summoning circles or whatever, it's just Terry chilling in a lawn chair he dragged down there." Sam sigh.

"HIGH AS FUCK, That's really important." Terry adds.

"-High as fuck, and we kinda stare at him, he stares at us, everything is really awkward, because I think I recognized you from the baskin-robbins."

"And he pipes up with 'Are you the satanists?'-" Terry adds in a cracking falestto. "-And I'm high as balls, so I just go 'What?'. So God's Littlest Soldier here starts telling me about the satanic cult in the missile silo and I understand maybe half of it. But like. I can't let a bunch of little kids walk around down there, what if one of you fell into the silo and broke your neck or something? I'm like, fifteen, but relatively speaking I'm the adult here, you know?"

"-I'M TELLING THE STORY TERRY!!" Sam hollers. "So he's like 'Can we help you look for them?' and I thought this was GREAT! More warriors for the cause and all. So we wander around the base for a while but there's not that much of it that you can actually walk in and we get bored real fast. So Terry- He-" My friend's dad starts to laugh, crumpling over the table.

"-So I ask them if they want to go back to the main base and play Dungeons and Dragons." Says Terry as Sam cackles. "And they're like, SURE! So We go back and roll up character sheets and play until dawn, and after that we met up like twice a month or so to play D&D in the abandoned missile Silo."

"The whole time, Terry is like- I gotta hand it to you man, for a teenager what you did was a goddamn miracle- Terry is carefully asking us about what church we go to and questions about the bible like "If God is all-powerful and Benevolent, how come there's evil? Either he's not all powerful or an asshole, right?" and then it's like "Well, we only have god's version of events about what happened between him an Lucifer" and so on-" Sam explains. "-Did a bang-up job deprogramming us from the fundie cult."

"Anytime man." Terry nods, toasting him with his beer. "It's what friends do, right?"

"-So correct me if I'm wrong." I say. "But I'm like ninety percent sure that the was a Satanic Wedding ceremony I just saw?"

1977: Star Wars is released, featuring, of course, Darth Vader

(Pictured: Darth Vader)

1984: Director Todd Durham releases his Star Wars parody movie, Hyperspace, featuring Darth Vader inspired villain Lord Buckethead.

(Pictured: Hyperspace poster featuring two Jawa-esque aliens flying through space in a shopping trolley.)

1987: Hyperspace is released on video in the UK, under the new title Gremloids.

(Pictured: Gremloids cover in the style of the original Star Wars poster, featuring Lord Buckethead.)

To promote the film, Mike Lee, the owner of the distributing company, ran for parliament as Lord Buckethead. He ran in Margaret Thatcher's constituency, Finchley, in order to get on TV. Lord Buckethead was representing the Gremloids party.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead on TV with Margaret Thatcher.)

1992: Gremloids is re-released. Lord Buckethead rides again, this time against prime minister John Major in Huntingdon. (Here's a fun fact about Huntingdon: I was born there! :D) 87/92 Buckethead seems to have leaned pretty hard into the space supervillain thing, with campaign promises including 'demolish Birmingham to build a spaceport'.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead on TV with John Major. Other notable candidates include Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party.)

2017: comedian Jon Harvey, having recently watched Gremloids and learned of Lord Buckethead's candidacy for parliament, decides it's a great bit. He runs against Theresa May in Maidenhead. 2017 Buckethead seems to have a wackier and also more political approach, with campaign promises ranging from nonsense like 'nationalise Adele' to gesturing at actually sensible policies with stuff like 'lower the voting age to 16 and restrict voting after age 80'.

He also made an appearance on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. As with his previous incarnation, he was a member of the Gremloids party.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead dabbing on stage with Theresa May.)

2018: Director Todd Durham asserts his legal ownership of Lord Buckethead. Jon Harvey opted not to go to court over Buckethead and handed over the reins. Todd Durham extended an invitation to anyone who wanted to be the 'authorised' Lord Buckethead.

(Pictured: the new Lord Buckethead.)

2019: Lord Buckethead, now played by journalist David Hughes, stood against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. He ran for the Monster Raving Loony Party, the UK's pre-existing gag candidate party. He ran with a similarly silly manifesto as the 2017 incarnation, but with a bit less of a political edge. His promises included 'All doorways to be increased by 1 foot (30 cm) in height' and 'Nigel Farage to be sold for parts'.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead and Count Binface square up.)

Meanwhile, Jon Harvey in his new persona Count Binface, also ran against Boris Johnson. Buckethead and Binface face off! Binface ran as an independent with a manifesto once again blending silly and semi-serious promises such as 'nationalising model railways' and 'giving £1 trillion a week to the NHS'. This was also I believe the debut of his promise to 'move the hand dryer in the men's toilet at Uxbridge's Crown and Treaty pub to a more sensible position'.

(Pictured: Count Binface presenting the offending hand dryer, inconveniently close to both the sink and the urinals.)

He has a point.

2021: Count Binface runs for the position of Mayor of London for the first time, with promises such as 'London to join the European Union'. He notably finished ahead of far right party UKIP.

2023: Count Binface runs in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election following Boris Johnson's resignation. He once again gets more votes than UKIP.

May 2024: Count Binface once again runs to be Mayor of London, debuting his now iconic 'build at least one affordable house' promise. Notably, he finished ahead of far right party Britain First.

(Pictured: Count Binface with Rishi Sunak. Also pictured: Monster Raving Loony Party candidate Sir Archibald Stanton with a ventriloquist's dummy.)

July 2024: Count Binface stands in the general election, running in Richmond and Northallerton against prime minister Rishi Sunak. He debuts his promise to cap the price of 99p flakes at 99p. This is his most successful election to date with 308 votes.

(Pictured: Count Binface with Andy Burnham. Also pictured: independent candidate Robert Pownell, dressed as a fox for his own reasons.)

June 2026: Count Binface stands in the Makerfield by-election against Andy Burnham, (recently) former Mayor of Manchester running for parliament with the intention of standing in the Labour Party leadership contest.

(Pictured: Count Binface on BBC's Newsnight.)

warning: blood, and Grace frying the ever-loving heck out of his arm

It includes:

My transcript of the movie (more on that here)

Audio recordings of the movie

A PDF of the book

The full audiobook

A copy of Andy Weir's doc on Eridians

The audiobook and audio recordings all have their properties programmed so they (should) work just like songs with a track number, album cover, artist, and so on if you download them.

There are two audios of the movie, one is the entire film untouched and one is that same audio cut up and broken down into separate scenes for convenience.

Additionally, there are two versions of the transcript, one with time stamps that match the audio and one without. The time stamps (+ their titles from the audio) are outlined in that version, so if you double-click on that tab or click "show outline," they'll all show up and you can pick a specific scene.

I am FLOORED!

Floored that someone would do this and also at HOW WELL IT WORKS??

This is so well done and cute, everyone go read this at once!

—Did you know that Juneteenth is also celebrated in a part of Mexico? Nacimiento Mexico was once home to thousands who escaped slavery in the US. As many as 10,000 slaves followed a clandestine Southern Underground Railroad to Mexico. —To date, many Black Mexicans from the Texas area retrace a portion of the same route their African American ancestors followed in 1850 when they escaped slavery. —Descendants of slaves who escaped across the southern border observe Texas’s emancipation holiday with their own unique traditions in the village of Nacimiento. —Slave hunters would patrol the southern border for escapees, led by the Texas Rangers but the Mexican army would be there waiting for them (the slave hunters) to turn them away.

These changes from comics canon contain some of the things about the character that were compelling, and also the things MCU had no idea what to do with in later installments

In the winter soldier comics, (which are themselves a violent re-invention of the character, he was raised on a military base and became Steve's sidekick after Steve had become Captain America, kind of a darker figure willing to do dirty work that Cap couldn't be seen doing

in the movie, he's Steve's closest childhood friend. They only end up paired up and fighting together because Steve goes on a desperate mission to save his life

in the winter soldier comics, he is something like 7 or 8 years younger than Steve and they still have a mentor/sidekick type of relationship

in the movie they are the same age and steve is no longer a "mentor" figure, that dynamic is eliminated

in the winter soldier comics Bucky loses all his prior memories after his apparent death, making him a blank slate to be groomed into a soviet super-assassin. There is no brainwashing.

in the movie they deliberately erase his memories by strapping him into this scary device that fries his brain with electricity. It's clearly torture: he is shown hyperventilating as the restraints close onto his limbs and then screaming in agony as the device activates.

in the winter soldier comics Bucky as the Winter Soldier is capable of independent thought and snark, and is shown questioning and mouthing off at his superiors

in the movie, Bucky is completely passive. He barely speaks at all; when he does, he is almost childlike, meek and quiet in his interactions with the Hydra characters, stubborn and confused in his fight with Steve. The main antagonist slaps him across the face for not answering a question and he doesn't retaliate at all even though he can obviously kill everyone in the room in the blink of an eye. In the same scene he also lets the scientists manhandle him and eagerly opens his mouth for the mouthguard even as his heart rate is spiking on the monitor and he's starting to hyperventilate because he KNOWS the pain is coming.

(side note: he is shirtless in this scene for no reason)

(second side note: the line "who the hell is Bucky?" is in the movie because it's iconic from the comics, but it's arguably super OOC for mcu!bucky)

The long hair and cyborg arm are straight from the comics, but the most striking change to his appearance is his mask: in the comics, he's wearing a domino mask over his eyes, but in the film, he has an opaque black mask covering his nose and mouth that takes away much of his ability to emote and looks strikingly like a muzzle. The comics mask evokes mysterious wiles; the film's mask evokes dehumanization.

basically the films gave him a much deeper and more intimate connection to Steve while putting the two of them on even footing as friends and partners, and changed him from a morally gray character who indifferently kills people and regrets and becomes angsty once his memories are restored, to a tortured and dehumanized human weapon who obeys despite not understanding anything that's going on because he knows nothing but pain and punishment.

The film's version is really much more interesting. Snarky antiheroes who kill indifferently are a dime a dozen; a character who is palpably, terrifyingly dominating and powerful yet completely powerless in the hands of those who control him, who is hollowed out of all personal identity and who has no agency or control over his own body as it is mutilated, reconstructed and wielded as a weapon, is something much more delicious and fascinating.

We watch this guy slaughter people effortlessly with an apex predator swagger that projects pure dominance and prowess, then we watch him meekly accept abuse and torture with soft, confused eyes.

The rest of the MCU portrayal of Bucky though after that? Clearly no idea what they fuck they had on their hands or what the fuck they were doing with it.

Flattening his character out into "morally gray depression man and he has Gun." And essentially making his story about shouldering responsibility for what he did as the Winter Soldier. A very flat, "guy did bad thing and now he's angsty and guilty about it and trying to redeem himself" (boring) instead of like. the gut wrenching horror of having your memories burned away and your name taken from you and your body reconstructed without your consent and used against your will.

We could be telling the most brilliant stories about The Bucky, if we all understood the essential principles (that stories are not Owned by anyone, but become Alive when they are told, in the hearts of the teller and the listener, and to listen to a story gives the gift of the power to tell it again)

And if we could all defeat our enemy, the Cringe (which is to say, that which cringes at sincerity)

God, the writers you put on this earth to write Buckyfic are trying to create something "Original" instead

The broad consensus in modern western media seems to be that Torture Is Basically Fine. It works. Torture is an effective way of extracting accurate information. And because that alone isn't enough to make it seem legitimate, there's another failsafe: Torture works only on bad people. Villains crack under torture, and heroes don't.

This is how media creates a culture that finds torture justifiable. Especially media that is largely sponsored by the US military, of course, who in a post-Abu Ghraib, post-Guantanamo, post-CIA papers world has an interest in creating public indifference (or straight up support) for torture, but there's torture in animated movies for children, too. It's ubiquitous.

In real life, torture is horrific violence inflicted on our fellow human beings, that traumatizes both the victim and the torturer, creates heaps of false information, and has no discernible benefits. It doesn't work.

But in fiction, it must work, every time, because if it doesn't, then that collapses the entire structure, doesn't it?

In comes Bucky in TWS.

He's a character who is tortured into complete submission. Who is given electric shocks to the brain to erase his memory, but he still holds onto his own humanity. He is tortured into doing horrible things - the torture works - but it doesn't work completely. He breaks through it. He's beaten, abused, violated on screen, but - and this is important! - because he overcomes in the end, he's not the villain. His story evokes pity and sympathy, not suspicion.

With hindsight, it is clear to me that the mind wipe scene was meant to inspire disgust in the audience. Bucky's terror without fighting back, his defeated acceptance of the inevitable, the slow, lingering pan up his unclothed body. This is emasculating; at the time a lot of meta has been written about how Bucky is shot like a woman in a rape scene.

He submits. This is meant to be suspicious.

But it completely backfires, because what is shown and what follows is the story of a victim of unspeakable abuse finally breaking free from his abuser in a show of awe-inspiring mental strength.

(and also through the power of gay love but let's not get into that)

That's a problem. By complete accident, the film ends up saying Hey, torture is maybe sometimes bad? And that cannot be allowed. There is a more conventional torture scene in the film, where Steve and Sam throw a guy off a roof to get information out of him, but that almost doesn't matter. This is the one instance that makes the whole house of cards come crumbling down. If Bucky is a victim, then torture is both bad and does not work.

It is obvious to me that what followed TWS didn't know how to reconcile that. CA:CW felt extremely jarring because it treats Bucky with so much suspicion; it even retcons in the trigger word nonsense to justify that suspicion. Bucky has to earn trust. He has to redeem himself. From what? Not being able to withstand seven decades of torture?

Well, yes, the film says. Torture only works on bad guys. Bucky allowed the torture to work on him, and so, has proven himself to be untrustworthy. The abuse he suffered sullied him. He has to earn back his moral righteousness.

I want to stress that I do not think any of this is intentional. I don't think there was a meeting in the writer's room where they talked about how they accidentally made it seem like Torture Is Bad Maybe, and how they could reconcile that. If that had been the case, CW would have been a more honest movie. But looking back, it is clear in how the directors talked about the characters after CW came out, and in the baffling writing choices they made, that they were trying to breach this disconnect, without being aware that this is what they were doing.

For the fan spaces I hung around in at the time, where cis men were a minority, this was baffling. There's a reason post-TWS fic almost exclusively talked about Bucky's recovery, not his redemption. There simply was, in fandom's eyes, nothing to redeem him from. CW made clear that w completely misinterpreted TWS.

I'd love to go back in time to observe what the fallout from TWS and CW was in male-dominated fan spaces; how they talked about Bucky in 2015 and 2017.

Anyhow. With the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious to me that no one involved in the writing of CW and what came after took a moment to actually think about the themes and motives of the movies beyond the shallowest surface, and not just with regards to Bucky.

They wear suits, but they don't even know basic etiquette.

Gilbert Baker added a 9th stripe shortly before his death, with the new stripe representing diversity. He added this stripe in reaction to the 2016 US election. It’s unfortunately not as well known as the 8 and 6 striped versions.

Here’s an image of him sewing together the 9 striped rainbow flag.

Because then Adrian and Rocky can be that couple moving in together and desperately trying to get their cats to get along.

Rocky with his cuddly chatty orange cat who has so many brain cells they often negate each other, and is a maximum clinger. Currently recovering from scurvy.

And Adrian with their feral rescue, an unlucky black cat they found injured at the bottom of a metal dumpster. Who’s aloof and avoidant of everyone except Adrian, the Only One he loves and trust.

Continuing the cat analogy, I'm reminded of a My Cat From Hell episode I saw years ago where a couple were trying to get their two cats to coexist peacefully. Here was the problem: one cat was deaf; the other's tail was paralyzed. The kitties couldn't communicate effectively with each other and didn't know how to deal with that because, y'know, they're cats and their brains are smaller than apples.

So imagine that the Eridians have made Simon a habitat with a more-or-less correct atmosphere, gravity, and temperature. Maybe they've collected enough of his tissue to figure out how to keep him hydrated and nourished.

But unlike Grace and Rocky, Adrian and company don't have thinking machines that can turn Eridian speech into something a human can understand. And as paranoid as Simon is, he's likely to be more combative than cooperative.

Also keep in mind that Simon's habitat is probably dark because the Eridians have little awareness of light.

So as far as Simon is concerned, he's been imprisoned by giant spiders.

I need Simon to be feeling abducted by aliens and for the Eridians lack of knowledge of humans to cause their help to hurt him on occasion.

He does slowly grow to trust Adrian tho, that’s important! They see this extra leaky space blob alone in the universe and dedicate themselves to making him as comfortable, safe, and enriched as possible.

Also, Adrian POV: when your dead husband returns home in an alien ship (made by the SAME alien species of your adopted alien) with the answers to save your dying star AND the entirety of that alien species wealth of knowledge downloaded onto that alien ship.

And! He befriended one of those aliens! An alien who sacrificed returning to its home planet to save your mate and star. Who’s barely hanging onto life and needs specialized medical care that You’ve Already Figured Out.

Robottom: if you're cis and you are asked by your management to police bathrooms, "can you confirm in writing that you are ordering me to approach customers to discuss their sex?" is an email no manager wants to reply to

Innes Mck: this is what I mean when I say "don't let orgs and managers see discriminating against trans folk as the path of l[e]ast resistance." transphobes are persistent and annoying. be just as annoying. show them compliance is going to be a legal nightmare]

My latest obsession

Please look at my drawing I'm actually so proud of it