TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

The best boy loves his babies :') Between this and the two Ravage moments it's like awwwww, I see you having feelings there, your reserve can't save you now

 

I've been holding off because BASICALLY I just want to reskin all of jazzwave for myself, but I'm like wait, no, goddammit, you need to put in the effort to make the plagiarism a LITTLE less obvious first

 

WAIT OKAY BUT

Hold on, let me try to put this back together. I had good thoughts while I was following the thread and then got distracted by a burrito bowl and then suddenly it was like four hours later. Let me try to reconstruct. It's not going to be as eloquent as it was in my head, I can tell that already ;u;

So in the original G1 cartoon, Soundwave and Blaster were carriers. With cassettes. And they and the cassettes just seemed to be made that way.

And in the current comic, Soundwave is a carrier and Blaster isn't. Soundwave's cassettes were modified to be cassettes, but it isn't reaaaally clear how much modification was done on Soundwave.

WHAT IF. The carrier models were an established subspecies specialized for information aggregation and analysis. Natural information hubs. Like Rewind and the manymany dead bots of his type were specialized for information collection and storage. But it's hard to TELL this kind of bot apart from the general throng when there's already so much natural variation in what cybertronians could be. So perhaps Soundwave and Blaster are both carrier models, Blaster just never made the step into getting cassettes.

But what I'm trying to poke at more is the idea of cassettes. Because Soundwave's cassettes all started their lives as distinct people and were reconfigured to be his cassettes. Rewind and Eject were cassettes back in the good ol' days, but they've been living independently just fine. If you go into the natural coding and programming that like, TGWP has, it makes a lot of sense that carriers and cassettes would be very strongly drawn to each other. But in terms of a more broad, more diverse population, it makes, like... more sense that people would be able to operate independently just fine, without struggles. So they CAN do the carrier/cassette thing if they choose, but if they don't choose, it isn't a detrimental thing. Kind of like marriage or something? It can be a beneficial social structure, but not finding the right match or choosing to not pursue it doesn't DOOM you to a miserable, unfulfilled life.

And cassettes. hmm hmm hm. So what I'm thinking is.... it doesn't make sense to me for there to be any definable barrier where it's like 'okay, past this line, NOBODY is capable of being a cassette' Especially since we see Ratbat get shrunk down and reconfigured. And Cybertronians share some technobiological structures across all frame types and specialties. Plus the information transfer thing is pretty common, we see Rewind shuffling things in and out of his head, from external storage, to external storage, to external displays. Plug and play is fanon, but like.... it's fanon that makes SENSE, even if it isn't necessarily sexual. What I'm getting at is, if everyone is capable of information transfer, it would make sense that anyone can pretty much be reconfigured to dock with a carrier model.

And I'm seeing a couple flavors of this. To get inside Soundwave's chest, you've gotta be pretty small. Ratbat got his body stolen to make that happen, the others were pretty small to begin with. But it would make sense if there was a way to dock WITH someone without necessarily docking IN them. Like a thumb drive sits outside your computer instead of a CD sitting inside it. Both have their benefits, an externally docked robot has more freedom and ability to see and move and such. An internally docked robot is more shielded, and it's easier for a carrier to protect them. In a wartime setting, it makes sense to kind of let an external docking system slip away, just because it's more dangerous. And if carrier models are already fairly uncommon, it also makes sense that there isn't that much info out there on how they work.

Plus, that information aggregation thing I mentioned. I don't know brains enough to talk about brain structures, and I don't know computers well enough to talk about them either. But I did make a case for Lug being a viable cassette-type model, just one who specializes in different types of info than the audio-visual stuff that Soundwave's cassettes bring him. And I can still make a case for Blaster being a carrier making use of his carrier capabilities, because he does the radio/propaganda thing where he's absorbing information and news about the war and disseminating it in a targeted way to get positive results for the autobots. If Soundwave specializes in espionage and Blaster specializes in propaganda, they're still both doing the INFORMATION thing, taking in, processing, and using information, they're just using it in different ways.

God, this is aimless. But I could see a carrier model who chooses to specialize in, say, environmental analysis. If they had cassettes like Lug, or ones who could collect atmospheric info, etc. etc. I don't know environmental science. But there are so many interesting ways this information collection and analysis thing could be applied.

But it also makes sense to me that if a carrier model doesn't KNOW that they have those specific carrier capabilities, it would be easy enough to go through life without realizing. Maybe they're just good at info stuff anyways, like Prowl (carrier Prowl, now THERE'S a fascinating disaster/maybe-less-of-a-disaster-than-canon waiting to happen). But I'm thinking like... Radar, Krok's friend who turned into a telecommunications suite. If he'd been a carrier model with cassettes, he could have been super valuable, even moreso than he already was, but he IS plenty useful just as he is (was). Blaster doesn't really NEED cassettes, because he's sitting in a fairly safe spot where a bunch of info is coming to him without extra assistance needed, so he didn't have much reason to ever realize that he needed the thing.

If like.... if the old Senate had decided that carrier models were dangerous, that could also contribute to reduced information being out there about them. It's information collection. That isn't necessarily under THEIR CONTROL. It's people who are primed to consolidate into GROUPS to collect that analysis. If they were applying pressure on Dominus Ambus for how the grand cybertronian taxonomy was being created, they could have forced that subspecies off, so nobody would be able to acquire the info about what carriers were or what they could do. Or they could have used the taxonomy to eliminate carrier models, and heyyyy, hot spots are disappearing, they're pretty close to exerting complete control over what kind of cybertronians are made.

This is going in weird circles now. BUT. Point is. I see the potential in this setting for future carrier models, and for current carrier models who just didn't understand that's what they were. I don't know how to elegantly wrap this up, but I'm excited.

 

This had been my original thought behind that idea! XD Tangling the three of them extra tight together. But oh man, the intelligence business is too good to pass up! CASSETTE GETAWAY, I would kill for that! And I'd love love love to see cassette Jazz pushing back against Prowl's unhealthy and unbalanced ideas of what the cassette/carrier hierarchy should be.

 

The fic that originally got the cuckolding tag was the cyswervegate one, for maximum :? factor. Cyclonus was minimally physically involved, because he was keeping tabs on the whole emotional situation, because Swerve is secretly a Delicate Creature.

But! In terms of actually doing a scene, I could see Cyclonus or Whirl agreeing to be cuckolded, because haha emotionally self-destructive what? That one cywhirlgate had flavors of this, even though they'd been meaning to edge him, not make him feel left out. And if I ever get around to writing partner-swapping, voyeur-tastic cdrwcygate, there will be some shades of this.

But I've also legitimately had a cdrwprowl fic with some of this thing bouncing around my head for a while, where Rewind agrees that FINE, okay. Chromedome and Prowl can do the thing. But only if he's there to keep an eye on things. Things devolve, As They Do when Prowl is involved, until finally Rewind is like AUGH this is too painful to watch and steps in to take charge of Prowl and the scene. But I do always come back around to things ending with everybody-is-involved-now dynamics, because I am nothing if not a one-trick pony :p

(ps: cdprowl cuckolding......... with TREPAN OuO )

 

Chromedome didn't REALLY want to do the thing..... until Trepan slipped it quietly into his head :3c And Trepan winnowed out the best things to say to sink hooks into Chromedome's emotions, the things Chromedome needed to say to PROWL to get him to go along with it, played what-is-consent-and-why-would-i-want-any with all of Chromedome's emotions and desires to slowly draw attention him away from Prowl and make him hinge his sense of self/existence on Trepan, the way Chromedome is prone to do (and ditching him without a second thought and without fixing him the moment Trepan gets bored)

So yes, ENDLESS possibilities :3cccc