Garage bulletin board

Hm! Are alerts not working or have the people whose threads I watch put me on ignore? I guess I'll keep watching, it seems unlikely that seven different people would collectively decide to say "fuck Van", all at the exact same time.

 

Popping out of the woodwork to say that alerts are seriously unreliable on this forum; oftentimes they'll stop appearing for threads I check often and don't appear for threads that don't get a lot of traffic... and then suddenly at random I'll start getting alerts from a thread I forgot about.

Anyway, it's not you, the forum is just a capricious jerk and shows alerts only when it pleases and afaik gets unreliable for everyone, eventually.

 

Haha, I figured it was something like that! Thanks for the confirmation, though!

 

In fact the "oh I forgot I was watching that wait why are there thirty messages" thing just happened with one of the threads I hadn't gotten alerts from, too xD

 

I always use the 'Watched Threads' page to navigate the forums. That way I don't miss stuff, even if the alerts are unreliable.

 

Okay :/

So, I have a Limited Mobile Version of the script done. You can't turn off verification, latency is locked at 500ms and you can't change the message, it'll always just say "Rekudos<3". And also you can install AMO listed extensions on Firefox mobile... but only on Nightly, and only in developer mode.

Is it worth it to send the extension out for Mozilla approval now when I am going to be working on a full version from now on?

 

I need to not drink.

My body cannot handle the drink.

Especially not with an empty stomach. That was stupid.

 

This is kind of Light Salts all things considered but I'm very sad that the Spectrum Zine ended up being so overwhelmingly focused on IDW characters.

I will still probably get it, it's for a good cause but god, I've had enough of the Most Popular Thing In The Fandom already.

 

Every day I look at the "Bulkhead (Transformers)" tag on Ao3, and every day I'm disappointed by what I see.

(do I complain too much about that? I don't think I do, mostly because Shut Up)

For a tag that updates almost daily there's basically never anything that really caters to my interests.

 

And for fuck's sake if people insist on writing WheelRatch, could we please have some other Bulkhead representation than "placid scaredycat who let's Wheeljack run roughshod over both of their lives". If you're not gonna ship them, don't make me feel like I need to stage an intervention to get my boy out of a toxic friendship if the point is him being a balancing factor/emotional reality check for the chaotic protagonist.

 

My ideal Bulkhead&Wheeljack content is honestly when Bulk knows he's made a worse person by Wheeljack's company. In big or small ways -- his best friend is a charismatic firebrand who couldn't give one solitary shit about other people's rules, but is also genuinely appreciative and affectionate with him. It's not an entirely meritless mess of a relationship in the text, there's just a lot of warning signs.

Like I just wish the "Bulkhead can't say no to his best friend" was explored a little more. A lot of times the lack of attention to his character makes Wheeljack so unintentionally unsympathetic, especially b/c I've yet to see a WheelRatch fic that acknowledges that Ratchet treats Bulkhead like garbage.

 

What I REALLY want is something that acknowledges that Bulkhead was just as much a Wrecker, and thus probably a complete nightmare to deal with at first. "Optimus is Bulkhead's morality chain, and while this relationship is strictly good for both of them, Bulk has not confronted let alone banished his personal demons" is my ideal read on that whole situation.

Give me more of Ratchet angrily gesturing at Bulkhead like "HE manages to behave himself!! Why won't you??" and Wheeljack being like "yeah, that *is* pretty suspicious".

 

Also where the shit does Bulkhead being *afraid* of Ratchet come from? I'm sorry, but that just feels like wishful thinking on the part of Ratchet fans, if anything Bulk is just as rude right back at him as Ratchet is. Like you expect me to think that his first reaction to Ratchet blowing his lid wouldn't be "oh goody, being yelled at by an officer, never had *that* happen before" followed by feeling guilty b/c shit, he didn't mean to *upset* Ratchet, they're both just doing their jobs.

The revisionism is galling. His kill count is too high for this bullshit to stand.

 

I think a part of why this bothers me is that I run into so much fic that feels... Flame-y. For a lack of a better descriptor. The writer has clearly picked up on the chemistry between Wheeljack and Bulkhead, but because they don't ship it, they *have* to write around it to avoid the mental dissonance from it.

Like it just makes me go "dude. You don't have to make them fuck" a lot. You can acknowledge their relationship and then no-homo it like the show did. That is already in the text! Just make both of them like "ew???" if someone mentions how close they are. Lay the robot toxic masculinity thick! It'll make your ship that much more effective!

Don't falsely advertise to me that there may be crumbs for me to enjoy if you're just intending on derailing my favourite character :"c

 

"but Van, if you have so many opinions about this, why don't *you* write it?" because I'm busy writing war era Wrecker fic where Bulkhead is the most improbably attractive person among them and they all know it.

If I was even slightly more spite-motivated I would but alas, the pleasure-seeking urge to make the two hottest robots smash is too strong.

 

I'm currently writing Bulkhead/Impactor that sums up quite nicely as "robot toxic masculinity meets elaborate labour frame social rituals". My Impactor characterisation is almost completely made up, which makes it a lot easier, too.

It is feelings porn over literal porn, though. I've been struggling for weeks because I wanna yell about this fic to anyone who would listen but God, even explaining the premise makes me feel so fucking naked and visible that I can barely mention *that* I'm writing it, let alone what it's actually about. We're really plumbing the depths of Forbidden Van Lore with this one, fellas xD

 

*cheeky nature documentary narration* the Common Van falls back on their bullshit usually with a great deal of enthusiasm and vivacity. This specimen is doing it with such vigour it is doubtful they were off it in the first place.

 

I feel like I sometimes give the impression that I don't like TFA Bulkhead because a lot of my criticism of bad TFP Bulkhead boils down to "you're thinking of the other one" but oh no

I simply have a whole *different* set of complaints about the way Animated Bulkhead gets written, and they broadly don't overlap except for the part where I do not *wike* it.

Also, my affection for Animated Bulkhead is a lot more about wanting the kind-hearted savant to have a good life and be loved and appreciated as a form of neuroweird wish fulfillment, while my love of Prime Bulkhead is far more "hot war criminal that *fucks*".

The difference is best demonstrated by how the worst I can bring myself to do to TFA Bulk is have him get creeped on by 'Cons and then having his team flip their shit b/c they assume someone got physical with him. Whereas Prime Bulkhead makes for an excellent punching bag and the committing of War Crimes goes both ways with him.

 

*holds nose*

*jumps straight into .hack//R:2 without looking back*

 

My friend is a big .hack fan and it's with their support that I feel comfortable skipping the majority of R1. Apparently R2 doubles down on the cosmic horror and the wackinesss between the real world and the digital world gets extremely wild the longer G.U. goes on, which is the thing that really appeals to me about this series.

R1 gives me a lot of the same vibes as Xenosaga -- I would probably only like this if someone went through the work of remaking it forreal, but as it is I'm more interested in the concepts than the actual... story |D The characters seem fun but I'm not 100% sure if I can get over the cringe curve of the production values. (It's also, frankly, kind of a trope codifier, and therefore I've experienced variations of the whole "simulation grows beyond the bounds of the box it lives in" that are a lot more interesting and less bare-bones.)