WHO'S UP FOR SOME SHOCKWAVE FEELS SPITBALLING Because somehow someone liveblogging into the robot RP discord turned into screaming about the trashy scientist son (Random side chatter snipped unmarked) Spoiler: chatlog, longish loq: but like. even just taking the Prologue chapters-- the contrast between. What we see of him in the flashbacks, this brilliant, passionate engineer... and the guy who says "they thought taking away my emotions was a punishment" just. Continues to hurt. ..."I'm not going to scream," I say, beginning to scream sorry @Petra: u know who else screamed shockwave, b4 they did mnemosurgery on him :') @CodyCat: PETRA loq: STOP HURTING ME :p Petra: IT'S CANON loq: I KNOW CodyCat: (Also the guys on the institute saying he´s a "screamer") Petra: THEY CALLED HIM A SCREAMER CodyCat: jinx @IvyLB: I'M JUST I WANT TO WHACK HIS HEAD Petra: i basically see the mnemosurgery as killing shockwave and making someone else IvyLB: BC NO THAT ISNT THE MOST LOGICAL YOU DINGUS IvyLB: that's pretty much what it is Petra: death of personality loq: I mean. "Cool motive still murder universal destruction" but. Protect Him Petra: but the new personality isn't actually emotionless someone without emotions wouldn't have motivation to do ANYTHING it'd be like the worst depression every loq: I mean by the end of DC he definitely starts displaying emotion again Petra: i wouldn't necessarily call him passionless either, given the scale he's working on in DC IvyLB: i feel like this is just a fail on the writer's part for the most part not understanding that "emotionless" does include ambition and loyalty and shit loq: [is still very tempted to do a prose rewrite of Shockwave breaking his mnemosurgery/conditioning] Petra: i think his base mental state is just too altered loq: on the other hand: possibly very good writing, Shockwave refusing to acknowledge that he is not the pinnacle of logic and progress because-- if he does still have some emotions, why did they take away all the good ones? Shockwave who doesn't want to process his trauma, Shockwave who throws himself into work because it's what he has left and it's how he makes himself Useful (if he's useful and dutiful maybe they won't take this last pleasure from him, the quiet pride of a job well done and the joy and excitement as an experiment bears fruit)... [makes a home in the dumpster] IvyLB: oka y but sensual pleasure: an emotion yes or no? loq: I would argue that any form of "pleasure" would count as an emotion whether or not it got taken from him... IvyLB: yeah like consider if it would be worse for him if he actually ended up still being responsive to stimulous and deriving pleasure from sensuous touches but none of the accompanying emotions that should be there loq: (I mean. Assuming neural wiring works the same way in Cybertronians as in humans, they did also take his hands, and with them some of the most sensitive tactile input) YES IvyLB: or if it's like a purely physical reaction and nothing pleasurable whatsoever Petra: but if there's some pleasure i think he'd chase it loq: ...goddammit I don't know who I'd even ship him with but yes IvyLB: maybe unless he thinks its a distraction loq: Why not both IvyLB: maybe he chases it until he decides its a distraction loq: YES IvyLB: but yes who to ship him with HM loq: (I mean this is the same brat who said "I don't like how this world's going I'm gonna wreck it") IvyLB: basically mmmmmmmaybe one of the senators? liek his old friend whathisname loq: I can 100% see him trying and trying and then-- this obviously isn't working so clearly it's impossible so he has Better Things To Do [flounce] IvyLB: SO like there's time between his shadowplay and him throwing his lot with Megs possibly a lot of time loq: yes IvyLB: Shockwave was playing the long game and I know it said he hadn't been seeing the guy he uh prevented the untimely death of by shooting his leg off for a while BUT THEY HAD SOME REAL TENSION GOING BEFORE THE SHADOWPLAY STUFF SO WHO TO ASK FOR EXPERIMENTS IF NOT THAT GUY which makes the "oh man we haven't talked in forever" WORSE loq: fUCK IvyLB: dammit shockwave he thought you had a thing going CodyCat: Pre-empurata shockwave and OP? and then suddenly shockwave is no longer himself IvyLB: that would of course also be a nice oomph >:D what i wanted to find was the name of the senator who shockwave should totally have been doing the horizontal tango with Dai Atlas CodyCat: Oooh
okay okay okay but consider: Spoiler: lorge pitchrom, pitchrom, pitchrom-- But on a deeper character level, you've got the two characters, where at the least, their emotional presentation to the world is super... off. But then with Shockwave, you've got that because his emotions are nominally removed. And with Soundwave, you've got intense emotion, buried under massive amounts of introversion and reserve. Shockwave doesn't understand loyalty, but Soundwave's family, whether it's his cassette family or the decepticon family, is everything. And Shockwave's emotions are kind of [null], but Soundwave hates him so much! Imagine the frustration of trying to provoke some kind of emotional response, any kind of emotional response, out of Shockwave, and just getting hit with 404 emotion not found. Except that a 100% emotion removal is.... nnnot exactly a thing, even in terms of his character, as was discussed up above. And even emotions like ambition are foundation stones to potentially rebuild the rest of what he lost. Plus, Shockwave likes understanding things. Dude's a scientist. He's doing mad science shit all over the place. Breaking apart the universe and figuring out how to put it back together. And after he was a scientist, he was a senator, and c'mon, to play the political games he was playing effectively (especially as a dissenting voice under the functionalist government), he must have had a nice understanding of how people tick. Even the glimpse we get in the flashback story is all about him connecting to people on a personal level. The shadowplay might have taken his emotions, but it doesn't remove the objective memories of the things he did and why he did them. It's got to be a fascinating mess inside his head. (also soundwave can't read shockwave's mind, and that's my favorite silly telepath trope) But I could just imagine these two clashing for days. Soundwave with all his actions so rooted in emotion that trying to follow Shockwave's mostly-emotionless motivation for anything is like missing the bottom stair, every single time. Shockwave wanting to break down how Soundwave functions, so he can at least understand why he will act in certain ways and adjust for it, but every time Soundwave is like family!, or like injustice!, there's a gap in the logic chain and after this happens so many times, Soundwave is like [okay MAYBE FRUSTRATION IS A THING I CAN STILL FEEL] So I'm way on board for multishipping this guy as hard as I can (old political allies are gr8, shipping him with Optimus Prime is actually a way to yank some emotion out of OP's cold, heartless asshole, so I'm on board with that. also maybe some of his old outlier ducklings?). But I love Soundwave so much and want to ship him as hard as I can, and I could see these two bouncing off each other in exciting, sexy ways, that's all I'm saying :3 Spoiler: mtmte 55 sonnnnnn of a bitch, I forgot that Shockwave totally killed Ravage in the DC prelude. I got to that panel and was like AWWW, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS-- But also, ALSO. Glitch. Glitch and Shockwave. These two were broken like nothing else in this canon, and they both were empurata'd, and were friends as proto-autobots, and after their breaking they were hardcore, high-ranking decepticons, and I don't know how to ship them yet, but I think it should totally happen)
I'm so interested by exactly to what extent the mnemosurgeons made Shockwave 'emotionless' (were they just aiming to strip him of his energetic lively personality and leave him in an artificially induced depression, or outright trying to reduce him to a drone/living calculator with nothing left at all) - and how much his processor might have been able to rewire itself to function around the damage. The shadowplay could carve out his emotion centers, but it would be interesting if, like a human brain, his circuits tried to recreate the connections to bridge the gap or repurpose other sections of his brain to pick up the slack. He might not have been able to retrieve what was erased, but he could take his oldest, strongest motivators (the energon crisis, self-interest) that he had memories of devoting his efforts to, and build up a kind of cold, ruthless determination and certainty that he is logical and farsighted and right to keep driving himself forward. I don't think it killed 'Shockwave' as a person - but it did traumatize him and strip him of any internal emotional buffers and support, and instead of focusing his processor on fixing his positive emotions, he dropped anything he saw as non-essential, crushed any attempts to heal his emotion centers into a tiny black box where he wouldn't have to see the stark difference between who he was and who he is now, and settled in for the long haul trying to become the kind of scientist he'd need to be to surpass Jhiaxus. In this scenario, it was very much a narrowing of his focus; he didn't have the emotional capacity or energy left to care about so many things (the energon thing, the outliers, politics, the Matrix, his many off world projects), so he went for some good old fashioned science and revángè My other painful headcanon? Shockwave never stopped screaming. All his emotions got rewired to pain, leaving him absolutely no room for anything else. Eventually he adjusts to it, but it's a constant white noise in the back of his head, and he keeps himself occupied with Decepticon stuff and science because he doesn't have to do emotions to make what he thinks are logical decisions, or to invent some new world-ending device - he just needs his knowledge and problem solving centers (Soundwave tries to read Shockwave's mind, but all he hears is dead, silent screaming) Edit motherfuck the autocorrect on this phone is a strange and terrible thing
Hell, they wouldn't even have to be deliberately rewired to feel pain - maybe just having his emotions ripped out left a large enough wound that the mental and physical agony and violation of having undergone x-treme mindrape might mean endless internal screaming is just the natural response. I also wonder how much of a role the spark might play in emotions, but that gets more into deep fanon and headcanon territory
!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh nooooo, I already shipped it like burning, but now I ship it so much I think I'm going to have to actually get off my ass and do something about it D: Also I had more thoughts about Spoiler: mtmte 55 Glitch. SO, after Megatron does his Megatron thing to him, the guy is... totally fucked up. He's flipped his loyalty over to the decepticons hardcore, but he doesn't have any personal connections within the decepticon forces. Megatron's not going to waste much time on him, he already took care of the important part. Why wouldn't Glitch latch onto this high-ranking decepticon officer, who-- he knows! Who he's known for so long, and who took Glitch under his wing and protected him from the functionists. And really, after fighting back against the functionists together (together!), isn't it fate that they were always meant to come together again like this? Fine, Shockwave was never the same after the empurata and shadowplay. But Glitch knows what it's like to experience empurata. And isn't shadowplay almost an extension of that, cutting out the centers of the brain that allow him to express himself fully, rather than just mutilating him physically? Glitch understands what Shockwave has been through better than anyone else, and the two of them must have been meant to be. Bonus for Shockwave being totally distanced from Glitch's extreme emotional needs, but seeing his outlier abilities as a useful tool, so hey, why not do what it takes to keep him around. Double bonus for Shockwave also feeling some unsettling Emotions at seeing this cybertronian who he'd once protected personally and who he'd helped make a safe space for in the world. And okay, maybe he doesn't understand now why he did that, but-- he did do it. Why did he do it? And Glitch is here and so desperate for affirmation, and he's setting up the script so well that an idiot would be able to see the steps to give him exactly what he wants. So Shockwave can do that without getting emotionally invested-- right?
SOMEBODY WROTE A THING! Remember that Drone!Megatron AU? Yeah. http://radio-cybertron.tumblr.com/post/150082851227/of-martyrs-and-miners It's definitely a good start. Has anyone found anymore of these?
Hahaha, holy shit, Brainstorm, dude From a 2015 booklet(?) with a nearly-barren wiki page, apparently. I am so bitter this isn't in the comics proper. I laughed hard. I know Blaster's cassettes aren't a thing in idw continuity, but like. This is Jean Grey/Madelyne Pryor levels of shenanigans.
WAIT, oh my god, this entire wiki page is SOLID GOLD. Guys, guys. We've been ROBBED of the most hilarious transformers content, this whole time. This is everything we always deserved about the cassettes. Spoiler: long Ravage pounces on a slumbering Steeljaw but is unable to elicit a reaction until he confesses that Steeljaw is his best friend. Recordicons #1 Ravage encounters Ratbat in a dark alley, and is knocked out when they're surrounded by ne'er-do-wells. When he recovers, the criminals are all tied up, and he cheerfully gives an interview to Slamdance. Recordicons #2 Ravage recounts the battle which he has dubbed Digital Doom on the Highway to Destruction to Buzzsaw, who disputes the accuracy of the title. Recordicons #3 Ravage tells Steeljaw that the Autobot is his friend because "the enemy of enemy is my friend". When Steeljaw suggests he's got the saying wrong, Ravage reminds him of the time he ate Enemy's body. Recordicons #4 Commissioner Garboil and Howlback meet with the mysterious vigilante known as Batbot, and inform him that the arch criminal Blackcat has escaped from G9. Recordicons #5 While hiding behind a Taco Horn, Soundwave tells Ravage to keep quiet and no Yattering. Unfortunately he doesn't specify no updates to Boxball, and they are consequently found by Blaster. Recordicons #6 Ravage's future self travels back in time to warn himself not to waste his life on the Internet. This goes about as well as could be expected. Recordicons #7 Hipster Laserbeak is listening to a song by an obscure artist, but when Ravage turns out to not only have Rosanna friended on Yatter, but to have contributed to the song in question, Laserbeak can't enjoy it as much any more. Recordicons #8 Slamdance interviews Ratbat on the subject of Batbot. Ratbat is disturbed when Slamdance puts up an image of Batbot next to him, but Slamdance turns out to merely be pointing out how hideous Batbot is. Recordicons #9 Positive universe Ravage tracks down his negative universe twin, who seems quite placid until the first Ravage denies him use of Yatter. Recordicons #10 Negative Universe Ratbat comes across positive universe Rumble and Frenzy, demanding to find his counterpart. They tell him his alternate self was killed by Scorponok, who apparently is also dead. When Ratbat offers to deal with any unfinished business that his counterpart left behind, it turns out to be office paperwork. Recordicons #11 Heroic Ravage joins up with the equally heroic Blaster and is happy to meet lots of new Recordicon friends, though he stays a safe distance from Blockrock. Recordicons #12 When Steeljaw points out to Ravage that another Steeljaw must exist, Ravage erroneously concludes that the mirror Steeljaw must be his worst enemy and the encounter with the heroic and actually friendly Steeljaw does not go well. Recordicons #13 Following an accident, Ravage is warned by Glit about the dangers of texting and driving. Outraged, Ravage asks for a second opinion, only to get the same verdict from positive-universe Glit. Recordicons #14 Batbot has fallen foul of Blackcat and is suspended over a vat of boiling liquid. All is not lost however, as Slugfest comes to his rescue. Recordicons #15 Laserbeak picks up his bar tab, only to find that his name's been misspelled "lazerbeak", something he complains makes him look like an illiterate loser. Lazorbeak, sitting nearby, looks unhappy. Recordicons #16 Nightbeat and Hosehead's conversation is interrupted by a white mini-cassette falling out of a nearby light pylon. Soundwave becomes annoyed at Ravage for giving his disguise away. Recordicons #17 Ravage reminds Steeljaw that the Autobot had used the excuse that he was too busy solar recharging to be Ravage's friend. Moments later Steeljaw finds himself getting a fast charge courtesy of Solarbot. Recordicons #18 Squawktalk begins shouting strange phrases, leading Ravage to suggest that Beastbox might want to look into an anti-virus. Recordicons #19 Ravage is startled by the arrival of no fewer than five future versions of himself who have all traveled back in time to prevent him from pressing a button. Recordicons #20 Batbot is suddenly confronted by Howlback who objects to his heroic crusade, but Batbot is joined by Nightprowler. Howlback protests that they're ganging up on her, but it's just good teamwork when heroes do it. Recordicons #21 Overkill claims he's the most ferocious and deadly Recordicon, but Buzzsaw begs to differ. Recordicons #22 Observing Laserbeak perching on Overlord's shoulder, negative universe Laserbeak labels him a poser for perching on who ever's trendy. When Ravage points out he used to do that with their Megatron, Laserbeak asserts that was before Megatron sold out and began fighting a civil war like all the other sheepitrons. Recordicons #23 Classicsverse Laserbeak and Buzzsaw decide their Ravage has gone crazy because he thinks Megatron arrived on the Shattered Glass Earth in the past, was rebuilt as a giant creature and fought some beasts. Recordicons #24 Ravage asks Laserbeak what music he listens to, causing the latter to begin a pretentious speech about the relative worthiness of music, only to be cut short because Sir Soundwave needs his guitar mode with which to rock out on stage. Recordicons #25 Air Hammer tries to get the scoop from Lazorbeak on which Predacons are Recordicons in new bodies, and which are just name reuses. Lazorbeak doesn't have all the answers, but he's pretty sure the projectile-vomiting Soundwave on the next stool isn't the original. Recordicons #26 Following Rewind's death, Brainstorm sets Chromedome up on a blind date with Eject. Recordicons #27 Hound and Mirage have a hint-laden conversation in front of Ravage, before "accidentally" dropping a key near his cage. Ravage reaches a paw out to the key, then extends a metal stick from his wrist which he uses to take a selfie. Recordicons #28 Ravage is on guard, however the Autobots distract him with a laser pointer, and the Decepticons are soon "enjoying" a dip in a smelting pool. Recordicons #29
I mean. I have no actual context for this, so I'm just imagining Brainstorm taking a break from his sneaky time machine building shenanigans to very intently go through the Autobot search engine looking for minibots with similar enough color schemes and height and shoulder width. He's very particular about this. It keeps him up late at night And finally, he reaches Eject, and he thinks fucking jackpot
These are minicomics drawn for a fan magazine by David Willis! Featuring mainly shattered glass ravage, but also there are alternate universe everythings all over the place, and I am le confuse. But Sir Soundwave shows up every so often, and that's all that really matters. But I found a scanned version of this comic! And according to google images, Eject legit shows up in the GI Joe whatsit, and he's watching a reality fashion show with a human, and I am GRUDGINGLY INTRIGUED. Very grudgingly. Also, this showed up in the google image results, and I laughed Spoiler: cartoony robo-vomit
Oh my God, I actually read half of those before I knew anything at all about transformers, because I was a big David Willis fan at the time. I had completely forgotten until now, ty for this!
Oh, shit. Check out sometime-senator Momus's wiki page http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Momus This was the mining foreman guy who called in the alert about the point-one percenter spark being found, and who was rewarded with the right to choose his own alt mode and career. WELL, what did do with a big ol' blank check like that? He became a SENATOR. Note that this was at the height of functionism and senate corruption, and it included him getting a big fancy home in translucentia heights. Now, does that translucentia heights thing sound familiar? Because that's totally the apartment in the flashback where Prowl and Chromedome found Momus assassinated for being a decepticon sympathizer. But apparently, even as a senator, elevated to the tip-top of Cybertronian society, he still made a habit of spending with the lower classes and inviting them to his apartment for parties and such. And the other decepticon sympathizer killed in that whole thing? Senator Sherma. Do you know where else he shows up? At the very end of phase one, when Orion Pax drags Whirl in front of the Senate, and asks them all Megatron's three questions. Apparently it struck a chord with the guy. Not much substantial in the way of revelations, but I'm just ALWAYS blown away by how many distinct character threads the writers for this series manage to pull together into an emotionally compelling whole. Senator Momus is my new favorite. I love him.
