For now, it concludes them! You only get one of those issues at a time, but they happen every five issues or so. Tbh, I barely skimmed them, because I find them intensely, intensely boring. Wheelie is a sweetheart, but he's much more interesting in his spotlight issue and in... chaos theory, I think? Right near the end of phase one, he and Rodimus have bro time together, and those issues are pretty well-done and charming.
I forget the context here, but "the Thirteen" refers alternately to the thirteen original Primes, the tribes they lead, the metrotitans they (+1 depending on if we take Caminus's/Windblade's insistence on the 13th colony existing, since Nexus Prime was dead by that point) fled Cybertron on, and the Ores Shockwave seeded at their last known locations. Since Jhiaxus is involved here, I'm gonna take a guess and say it's either the Primes or the Ores. ...I have been doing entirely too much research on the Thirteen Primes for Roadtrip Shenanigans Worldbuilding.
Yessssss Shockwave feelings are great. Spoiler: Shockwave As a villain Shockwave is great even without making that connection because of his thought process going energy crisis->doing evil experiments for better energon->having created super-energon, realize that inevitable heat death of the universe will still ensure the eventual death of Cybertron->Destroy all of time and space and thereby create CYBERTRON ETERNAL. But then you get into everything that was taken away from him and his friendship with Orion Pax and how Orion Pax slowly, painfully came to realize that Senator Shockwave was truly gone, and those few pages near the end of Dark Cybertron where they were able to get his pre-Shadowplay self in control and he was horrified and regretful. I need an AU where he survives Dark Cybertron and has moar adventures with Optimus Prime and how that would affect stuff.
i have more mtmte fandom complaints (a shocking twist), this time about everyone's favourite narcissist! however, this is too petty even for the CDCF, and it's not an objectively bad thing that he's done, just something that pushes my buttons a bit. Spoiler: petty.png ray drew a really decent megatron! the post just crossed my dash, and for once in his fucking life ray didn't give the subject that weird half-lidded grinning sameface -- he looks stern and megatronly and handsome! he has a powerful nose! it's good, is what i'm saying. so of course he ruins it in another way >:| like. i get that commentary on posts can be annoying, but why are you like this, ray. did you really need to add the "#that's really annoying" in addition to the passive-aggressive-but-not-overtly-rude main text? like. goddamn. i wish that the mtmte fandom was not so..... intertwined. i don't mind seeing rhett cross my dash every now and then (i even reblog his posts on occasion 'cause the kid is genuinely really funny sometimes, and his art is cute. i would probably even be following him if it weren't for our wildly incompatible beliefs and the fact that i am well-informed re: The Drama) but. fuckin' ray, man. every interaction i see him have leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. luckily he does not show up too often. anyway. I Love To Complain.
...okay question. How are Transformers named, in-universe? (The first time. Not counting name changes.) If they choose names for themselves: how long does this take? Do they remain nameless until they choose a name, or are they referred to by... batch number or whatever? Do they stay nameless until they earn a nickname from their comrades, whether based on their abilities, their form, or their personality? Does a protoform suddenly know its name when it matures into a fully-formed mech? Are they assigned names by whoever's in charge, be it Senate or commanding officer or whatever? I want to know, man. Spoiler: the real question... Why the hell is Megatron named after Megatronus, The Fallen Prime? Either he chose it himself or he was assigned it, but either way he's known as "Megatron" even before he comes into conflict with the government. (I'm... assuming the Senate would have the power to rename mechs in the same vein of "we own your identity" as empurata and shadowplay.) If he chose it himself: dude. You tiny edgelord. What thought process even happened there? "Ah, yes, I will take the name of the most destructive force in the universe, rar rar rar I'm a big strong drill"? If he was assigned it: ...what did you even expect when you named a mech after the Betrayer? Edit: re "not on my post please": I admit avoiding the Dramabombs is a large part of why I've not really gotten into the tumblr TF fandom. I follow... exactly one TF blog, and it's the "TFLN on MTMTE panels" one.
I think it's been said that the name of the Fallen isn't well-known in the current time period, so Megatron's name isn't (in-universe) intentionally derivative of it. Given that some people have ended up with pretty terrible names (e.g. Dent, Ambulon) I don't think they're necessarily chosen by the bearer the first time around.
That's fair, I forgot the Fallen's name has been Officially Erased From History. ...considering IDW's Thirteen lore lines up pretty closely with Aligned's, though, I am curious: Spoiler 1: it really looks like "the Arisen" is shaping up to be Aligned's Optimus Prime. Are we lining up for a Destined Reincarnation Battle between chaos and peacebringer? ...was the Big War that just ended that battle. How soon before someone in-universe puts the pieces together. C'mon Alpha Trion you were there, get this myth arc moving. 2: If modern Optimus actually is the first Optimus Prime reincarnated, and Megatron is Megatronus reincarnated... why does Optimus get to keep the -us suffix and Megatron doesn't? ...this actually dovetails really nicely with the "sparks don't die, they go to the core and regenerate/reincarnate" headcanon someone else shared earlier. Probably not, but in that case... where do they get names? ...I am not going to get a twitter just to pester the creators with inane worldbuilding questions.
So I'm rereading exRiD and finding that Spoiler Arcee isn't just bloodthirsty. I'm pretty sure she actually is neurodivergent. Between the "people like you feel bad when your friends die" and the "Everybody went from being happy to have the real Prowl back to not wanting to talk to you...it's weird." And right before that, "It's hard. Figuring things out. How people will react." And she tries hard to not say anything that will upset the people that she likes/needs to not be upset at her, and she doesn't quite understand how to people. What she does understand is how to hurt people, and she's happy to do that, but she would like to be able to not hurt people. I'm not going to be sad about Arcee.
in putting together a quick-reference for the Thirteen, I've had to type the words "Cybertron," "Prime," and "metrotitan" so many times they've started blending together. Highlights so far: "cybertime" and "metrotron". help me
I love Arcee. I'm just not sure I want to be sad about her. I'm already sad about Whirl. I want my precious adorable murderchildren to be happy, like the Dinobots, or the Constructicons. Well, the Constructicons, at least. For the most part. I want to go back to the part where she's sitting on a roof looking at people through a scope and muttering "Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. You live because I let you" to herself.
Spoiler: Nickel and Prion Does anyone else find it really suspicious that immediately after an organic group slaughtered everyone on Prion the DJD showed up there and found and recruited the only survivor? I feel like what actually happened there is more complicated. Maybe the BBC were chasing the DJD and the DJD accidentally lead them to Prion?
Spoiler: MTMTE 6 Guesses as to the probability that Swerve is telling the truth when he says that "But as punishments go, I've had far worse. I wasn't always this short, y'know?"
Spoiler: 37:59-47:35 RS: I think I've noticed, and observed this in your works and I think is worth noting in this interview, is the removal of agency from your characters by the State. JR: Right, yeah. RS: My girlfriend actually dislikes a lot of Shockwave's characterization because what she liked about the character was that he chose to be logical, and, you know, he chose his appearance, but you stripped off the agency of him as a character through the shadowplay and the empurata. Personally I think it was an interesting choice but it ties into what you were going with with MTMTE: the Senate removing agency from your characters, similar to Trepan binding and restraining and invading Megatron's mind and of course, Shockwave's mind being altered and body changed, and of course poor Whirl, who will never be the same again. Just, like, you could almost see Shockwave as the bridge between Whirl and Megatron because of it. JR: Yeah, I think of those points. Because the loss of agency and the removal of agency is terrifying. And in the broader context of MTMTE, which is all about personal decisions and their consequences, then, you know, the profound expression of totalitarianism and the abuse of the state is robbing you of your ability to make choices, to make informed choices, to exercise free-will, having all those things forcibly removed is terrible. And so this is what principally, pre-war, when the Senate was in its final phase, and the Functionists too, was somewhat looming large, this was what lay beneath, ostensibly, a peaceful, prosperous, non-warring society, was the lengths that the government would go to, to silence dissent, to make you malleable, to put you in your place. And I was careful, I think, with that as a backdrop, and having seen what happened to Shockwave with the mnemosurgery, the shadowplay in particular, and to a different extent what happened to Whirl, you know, issue 34 and happened to Megatron, it would be terrible if Megatron had been entirely rewritten, if his personality had been got at, and had he was robbed of agency, it would have ruined any character development or exploration, or of the direction of his life from that point forward, it wouldn't have been earned, if you know what I mean? RS: Yes, absolutely. It's also relieving to hear you say that as well. I was wondering about much of that, just because we lead into Megatron Origins from that point. JR: Yes, well, I was careful to say, Trepan says "I barely scratched the surface," and because clearly you appreciate this, and there are others listening, the visual motif in the pre-war stuff, his thoughts were presented as text, and we saw at the beginning of the mnemosurgery, a few words were being removed but they weren't being rewritten. It was the way of suggesting visually, the scratching of the surface, the exploration of his mind, rather than "here I'm replacing your thoughts with some other thoughts, I'm implanting something new." The tension of that scene was supposed to pivot around the fear the reader would feel that this character was going to be done to, in terms of his destiny, and that everything Megatron is has come about because a third party interfered. That was what happened to Shockwave, as an outcome under the Senate, and I wanted people to be worried about Megatron, that that would happen to him; it came close but it didn't happen. RS: Excellent. Thank you so much for the profound detail you go into. I'm just going to ask a couple more questions because we only have five minutes left of the hour that you gave us. JR: That's okay, we'll just see where we go. RS: This has been very enlightening, so thank you so much for agreeing to do this; this has been quite pleasant. JR: Good, well, good. I would hope so. Better than the opposite. You're gritting your teeth thinking, "Just five minutes, please, hurry up." You'll have to make an excuse in a minute, "Oh, I've caught fire" or something, you say "Oh god, my legs are on fire." I've been there before. I've been interviewed by people before that caught fire. RS: One last thing about 34, poor Trailbreaker/Trailcutter. JR: Yes. That didn't go down too well. RS: You used him since Wreckers even, in Bullets where he was on the ethics committee, you had the entire ethics committee on the Lost Light. JR: I know, I know. RS: And now two of them are dead. JR: Yes, and of course, the full name of the Offstead planet, that was its specialist subject, wasn't it, it was ethics. We don't go there but we establish that a couple issues earlier. Yeah, I'm well-aware that it's a deeply divisive event, the death of Trailbreaker/Trailcutter. For those that don't like it I can't make them like it, it was intended to do a number of things, really. It was intended to show Trailbreaker in the best light, as the one who, arguably, did right. He was certainly the most compassionate of the four, even more so than First Aid. What I wanted to do, sorry to digress, was to leave a funny taste in the reader's mouth and make them wonder, well, in a sense, Trailcutter plays to the standard narrative of the heroes will always act heroically, probably the opposite of the Optimus Prime that shoots Sentinel in the head, that sort of archetypal heroes who will always do the right thing no matter how unpleasant. And I wanted people to think, well, that's all well and good, but would I have forgiven him? Would he have been justified in saying "you know what I'm going to step back, they are infamous, we know what they've done, I have my limits, I'm not going to donate my fuel to keep them alive." Was he right to do that? Was he wrong? I wanted to pose that question and the question takes on, hopefully a huge amount of urgency, given that he pays for that with his life. So it was ramping up the stakes and the fallout of the ethical question. And I wanted--I know people who have complained that, and god knows people are welcome to complain, that is their right, but I mean people have complained that it cut short his journey, that it cut short his character arc. Well, I would say that that was the completion of his character arc, and any character that you kill off could have gone places. It is a story of lost potential, and I have a reputation for killing people left, right and center, but there are hundreds of Transformers out there, there are thousands of Transformers characters out there; John and I could be far more slapdash and kill-happy if we wanted to be, but that's not satisfying. Each time you kill somebody, you're bringing to an end their journey and denying everybody the stories that could have been told. Now I appreciate in saying that I'm describing Trailcutter there, there are other stories we could have told about him, but for me it was a satisfying end to the journey we'd seen him go through, from a member of the ethics committee, but more recently as someone with a drink problem who would overcome that problem with help and was turning over a new page. And yes it was tragic, it was horrifically tragic, and that was the whole point. It wasn't intended to shock for the sake of being shocking; there are other ways of doing that. It was intended to make you think about the character he'd become, the decisions that he'd make. And yes, the brutality and the callousness of the DJD, and very-low down that list was the need for the DJD to find out about Megatron's defection in an interesting way. RS: Just a couple more things, because we've already exceeded our hour. JR: That's alright, unless you're about to ask some absolutely horrible question, or I'm about to answer your question and deeply upset you or myself, I'm sure we'll do this again. RS: I still want to meet you at a BotCon or something. JR: Yeah, I don't know where I'm going to be next year, in terms of convention stuff, but hopefully I'll be out and about. Spoiler: 47:36-58:06 RS: This isn't a question so much as, you destroyed my agent 113 theory which was Kaon was him, with the death of Trailcutter. JR: Wow, I hadn't heard that one before. RS: Briefly, Mr Roberts here enjoys referencing the number 113 in his works. It was the first issue of Transformers UK that you read, correct? JR: Yes it was, it changed everything. Issue 113 came out in 1987, it was Simon Furman writing, it was essentially the sequel to Transformers the Movie in comic form. It starred Death's Head, and it was part one of his eight-part epic, nine-part epic. So I'm surprised that there aren't dozens of people writing comics because they picked up issue 113. But yeah that's the backstory for the number. RS: So we have a double-agent, from the Autobots, who has infiltrated the DJD, who horrifically kills traitors. It is a tense position, and for all we know, this person is allegedly alive, but we aren't sure yet. I just thought it was curious that Kaon killed the alternate Whirl even though Megatron gave the orders not to kill Whirl, at all, ever. Even though it was a duplicate Whirl, he wouldn't have known that. And I could easily have seen, just being an Autobot in disguise, using what he's done, the Great War, and using it as an excuse, and saying "Oh, you know, I misfired" or something. And electrocuting Black Shadow, he didn't initially kill Black Shadow, it took Tarn to kill him, and Black Shadow was helping the Autobots with the war worlds and stuff. I could easily see him intentionally not doing a lethal jolt, as it were. So that was my theory, but you successfully destroyed it, so good going sir. JR: Well, Agent 113 has got to have done some pretty appalling things in order to maintain his cover. Yes, there is that. And actually, with Whirl, that's a good point with the Whirl thing. I think that killing Whirl, if you're in a battle situation and Whirl is attacking you, in the heat of battle, it's possible to avoid kill Whirl, but to defend yourself maybe you can kill him. Or maybe they just really hated Whirl and disregarded the order. But yes I'm sure there's lots of theories about the mole in the DJD. RS: I just wanted to mention that to you because you're so good at laying out mysteries month after month after month. My sibling counted about 50 mysteries, before the end of Remain in Light. JR: I try to wrap the mysteries up at a certain point, like a rolling program of mysteries and resolutions so we don't have too too many open at one time, try to close some off in a satisfying way, otherwise it just becomes unmanageable, both for you guys and for me. Actually, on the 113 thing, I didn't realize that 113 was the Pixar number as well. RS: It's also a number in Gunnerkrigg Court. It's just everywhere and I'm haunted by it, so thank you. JR: Strange thing, strange. At least I could pin mine on something, otherwise I'd be spooked. RS: I'm blaming you. [talk about music and books and crap] JR: Music: 'Allo Darlin', British indie-jungle-pop Books: Fear, a History of a Political Idea Chomsky's recent essays A Critical Analysis of Steven Moffat's Doctor Who Why Pamper Life's Complexities? Essays on the Smiths The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart (Morrissey) Retromania Enemy Within: history of the British miner's strike
Vaguely Getaway song. Spy work! Spoiler: Lyrics Please now, just hear me out, before you kill somebody now Listen to what I say, before you go and kill yourself Somehow you've been exposed Headquarters thinks the case is closed You need to hit the road, they're on your trail Again I've become someone else, someone new It's up to you if I live or die too I am your guardian, I am the only one who knows Gonna get you to a safe-house where nobody goes They know your face, they know your names That was our deal They've put the borders on alert so don't get hurt Again I've become someone else, someone new It's up to me If I live or die too I did this to you, yes I did I had my own life to save I did this to you, yes I did Again, I've become someone else Someone new It's up to them Will they let me through Running on rooftops now The great escape
@WinkWonk, I don't want to derail the cdcf thread too bad with ramblings about toxic robot dynamics, so I figure I'll do it over here where it fits better! I don't know if any of these are ideas I'll follow through with on the fic front, but I'll probably toss a slightly edited version of this in my writing ideas tag for later consideration :D edit: part one, I ran into character limit problems :V Spoiler: sketchy sexy things, abuse, length Okay, just for my own reference purposes, let me list (fake edit: let me list some of) the IDW comic robots that I'd be playing with to attack R&R: Megatron, Ultra Magnus, Drift, Shockwave, Brainstorm, Ratchet, Whirl, Optimus Prime, Blurr, Starscream, Cyclonus, Fortress Maximus, Rodimus, Tailgate. Additional restriction that these are only stories that appeal to my sense of I-want-to-write-it, not only that I know they'd hurt R&R. First of all, a shameless plug! Frankly I was worried about getting some kind of pushback against this story, because it has to do with canonical abuse by a popular main character, but I haven't seen anyone say anything negative (probably because nobody has read it, because it is a depressing little story), but Whirl is one of Rhett's comfort characters and one of Ray's most-neglected headmates. Spoiler: and all in spite of you All In Spite Of You. Background: Under the old functionist government on Cybertron, your job was pretty strictly determined by your alt mode. As a flying type pokemon, Whirl was drafted into the aerial division of the military. He sought (and received) official permission to go be a watchmaker instead. The politician who gave him permission was pretty liberal, so the rest of the government was like haha no, looks like we're going to make an example of someone. Through an organized crime front, they saw his shop destroyed, and Whirl was put out on the streets. He was good at fighting, which eventually caught the government's eye. They were like 'UR GONNA DO OUR DIRTY WORK NOW,' and Whirl was like '......no,' and they were like 'oh would you look at that, we've totally got your face and hands. are you going to do our dirty work now, or do we have to get mean?' (and by that, I mean they literally removed his face and hands) Eventually, the government was like 'okay, so this Megatron fellow who's been writing about reform is a Problem. We have him in prison, you need to go murder him, 'kay?' Whirl got caught before he did the act and dragged in front of the Senate by a Good Cop and was eventually thrown in prison even though he was just following orders. There's some nice meta out there about how he actually trying to act as decently as he could while being strong-armed by the corrupt government. Meanwhile, Megatron wrote a thing about this one-eyed guard with claw hands who totally tried to beat him up, and everyone who cared was able to connect it back to Whirl. So he spent his prison term being beat up by Decepticon sympathizers in the prison, with the guards denying him medical care. Smash cut to Rotorstorm. He was a character in the Last Stand of the Wreckers miniseries. He's kind of a vain douche and makes bad jokes, but he's very good at doing his military thing. In-comic, there's not too much content for him. But in the accompanying text stories, you find out that he has some massive ptsd-flavored self-loathing issues. When he was just a cadet at the Iaconian Aerial Academy, he had a certain instructor who was pretty horrible to him. It started with verbal abuse. Rotorstorm tried to joke about it, because he figured that if he could joke, it couldn't be that bad, right? Well, it eventually escalated to physical abuse. And Rotorstorm says that the worst day of his life (worse than the Simanzi Massacre, a battle that halved the Cybertronian race and gave Rotorstorm intense ptsd) was the day that a healing tank thing got installed at the Academy. Because he doesn't remember what set it off, but his instructor beat him to a fucking pulp. He describes his face as a shallow bowl of oil and shrapnel, and says his spine was at a right angle. His instructor put him into the CR chamber, and he passed out. He woke up in the morning without a scratch, and his instructor had left the school. The only time he saw him again was when he was receiving a medal for his part in the Simanzi massacre, where his instructor was there and cheered louder for him than anyone else did. There's a couple odd things. One, his instructor went by the name Jetstream instead of Whirl (though the wiki page leads explicitly back to Whirl), and was mentioned as having hands and a face. Plus, that kind of behavior in general seems out of line for Whirl. So I decided to see if I could make it all match up for me! I think coldstars was the one who thought that maybe the government gave him back his hands and face as an incentive to fall into line? And I took the approach of trying to figure out how Whirl could be abusive without realizing it. He really thinks he's teaching as well as he can, and he thinks he's doing a decent job, but he doesn't realize how much he's fucking up. And I made the addition that once the physical abuse starts, Rotorstorm figures out he can sometimes derail the physical abuse via physical affection. Whirl thinks they're in love, Rotorstorm is just trying to placate his abuser. I upset myself pretty good writing that story, but in the best way. I'm pretty sure R&R haven't read it, or they'd probably/definitely get pissy about it. Because it's from the abuser's perspective, and it's sympathetic ???? ????? ??? ??? ??? DOES NOT COMPUTE. You're supposed to feel worse for Rotorstorm, but you're supposed to feel bad for them both. This is actually one of my favorite stories I've ever written, and I think I did a good job of balancing how out of line Whirl's actions were vs. the sympathetic aspects of his character vs. the psychological place he was in at that point in canon. I could totally write more about Whirl exploring similar issues. I have a sequel barely started that's set just before the beginning of MTMTE, but in some ways it will be even more upsetting, so I've been putting it off. Maybe not as upsetting, but it will definitely be sadder. AWRIGHT. Let's start off easy, with Megatron and Starscream. So I just read Megatron's spotlight issue earlier today, and oh my god, it hurt me. Background for anyone who hasn't read it: as far as most people knew, Megatron was dead, Starscream was leading the Decepticons. They'd just been routed by the Autobots and were basically stranded on a near-barren asteroid or something. Starscream was in charge, but nobody really respected his authority, and the Decepticons were in a super bad spot and he wasn't able to turn it around. Soundwave and Shockwave rebuilt Megatron behind his back, and pretty much the first thing Megatron did was go after Starscream with the explicit goal of abusing him. This isn't the first time he's treated Starscream in pretty awful ways, but oh my god was this bad. So Starscream hasn't done anything wrong here. He failed, but he played things pretty straight, for fucking once, and he wasn't able to turn what was already a disaster into a success. And nobody respected him at all. He's pretty crushed. So Megatron starts berating him over everything he's done wrong and just how worthless he is, and it's pretty hard to read, and Starscream is just standing there and taking it. Megatron is pissed he isn't reacting, so he ups the ante until finally Starscream lashes back at him. He shoots Megatron a bit, realizes what he just did, and tries to run for it. Megatron chases him, beats him up a bit (and this is a super one-sided fight), until Starscream stops fighting back and lets Megatron just lay into him. Lather, rinse, repeat. Starscream even asks Megatron to just stop playing with him and finish it, and Megatron is like haha fuk u. It's pretty vicious. So there are a LOT of cool ways to take a story like that. What we have in the comic is Megatron's POV, but since it's a comic format, the internal narration isn't that extensive. I couuuuuld retell that, or something similar, from Megatron's POV...... or I could retell it from Starscream's. There's a lot of pain in there to tap into. Oh my god, the self-loathing, first of all. It's hard watching it from the outside, writing it from the inside would be completely heart-wrenching. But you also see Starscream and Megatron going through cycles of abuse, where Megatron cuts Starscream down for absolutely no reason, then gives him an uplifting talk about how Starscream will someday lead the Decepticons... then berates him for being so pathetic that he'd take charge after Megatron died, because ???? They've got four million years of history between them, and both times we see Megatron return from supposed death, Starscream reacts like a battered housewife. Thing about a lot of battered housewives is that they think love their abusers. What delicious things could I do with that? Starscream getting all twisted around in love and hate is good enough, but it seems awfully in line with canon for him to outwardly blame the things that go wrong on Megatron, and to inwardly blame them on himself. That part of the comic implies some pretty solid suicidal ideation, and if you draw that out into something persistent and lingering, there are a lot of really vulnerable places to take his character while staying solidly in his head. Feeling like you aren't good enough sucks. Having someone in a position of power over you, someone you respect (even if you sometimes hate him) telling you all the ways you aren't good enough is even worse. Then having all your comrades and subordinates confirming through their words and actions that he was right, that you were right, on a fundamental level you aren't good enough and you never will be, that's... bad. Add to the mix that it's really hard for Cybertronians to kill themselves. Really hard. You almost have to count on someone else to get the job done, but how can you even do that, how can you even stand to tell anyone else that you're giving up on life when you know how little any of them respect you? How isolated are you when you can't even ask someone to please just kill you with any expectation of being respected or treated seriously? And then when you do ask someone, the person who should want you dead who is literally beating your face in right at that moment, to kill you-- still nothing. He laughs at you for not being committed to it. God, I really do kind of want to write that scene from Starscream's POV now. Never even mind all the baggage between them other places, that scene was really insanely tough to read. Or I mentioned in the cdcf thread that I'd be interested in a fic where Megatron is an accidental rapist. The whole Decepticon personality thing turning into a setup like with Henry VIII and his marriage proposals where you aren't allowed to say no. Does he realize his partners are unwilling? Maybe, maybe not! There's interesting stuff to go either way. Having him take full advantage of outward consent, even with full awareness that the other person doesn't want to be there is fascinating on its own. Accidental rapist Megatron is more tricky, but there's a lot of cool emotional ground to mine in there. How does the person he's sexing up reconcile their respect for Megatron as a leader with the fact that they'd really, really rather not be there right then? Are they afraid of him? Is this just... a thing they try not to think about? Do they have someone else they love that they fantasize about while it's happening? How awful would it be if they said someone else's name while they were in the berth with Megatron? As much as Megatron has calmed down by the time current canon rolls around, his interactions above with Starscream didn't happen that long ago. He's fucking terrifying when you've crossed him, and he can do ultraviolent destruction or cold calculating fury. If you annoy him or upset him (or do anything you think might get a negative reaction), that's a really tense, frightening situation. I could enjoy practically any Decepticon in this position. Starscream would be a really emotionally loaded option. Megatron would be more likely to know this is rape, but if Starscream is openly consenting, maybe not! Maybe Starscream is even willing to wax eloquent about just how badly he wants Megatron to fuck him! Sure, it's because he's terrified of the guy, but still! Or, hahaha, I could go with Blitzwing if I was feeling extra petty. Soundwave could be another interesting option. If there's anyone in the series who I'd say is Just Not Interested in sex, Soundwave would be way up there (I like writing him as a sexual person because my life philosophy is maximum self-indulgence all the time always). He's also telepathic, though it isn't quite clear whether Megatron knows the full extent of his abilities. He's also one of the most objective and detached characters. Him agreeing to sleep with Megatron when Megatron doesn't realize that Soundwave is not into it is interesting. But man, imagine Megatron taking him as a partner and being aware that Soundwave doesn't want to be there. Maybe Megatron can put on a convincing outward performance that he thinks Soundwave is totally into it, but Soundwave is right there in his head. Soundwave struggling to balance his personal desires against the importance of pleasing the leader of the entire movement, the guy who holds the whole mess together, that's interesting stuff. Bonus points if Soundwave decides that keeping Megatron happy takes priority over his own wishes and his cassettes know how miserable it's making him and they try to offer him what comfort they can. Double bonus points if Soundwave and his cassettes are a happy poly family, and Megatron is pulling him away from that to claim him as a solo prize. OH, also Starscream and Megatron, set during current canon. Megatron trying, really really trying, to be a decent person. But he can't stop himself from slipping into the same old abusive patterns with Starscream. Now, Starscream has legitimately come into some power of his own, has found his footing (somewhat), and is more confident. I can see him agreeing to see Megatron in a private, one-on-one setting, especially if someone implied that it's a bit weak of him to say he can't face the guy solo. And Megatron knows all of Starscream's weak points, all the most painful ways to belittle his accomplishments. Starscream might be more confident, but less than three years of success isn't very much to set against four million years of being beaten down. I don't even care what direction this goes, emotional abuse, physical abuse, or sexual abuse, they're all interesting. Just for the way Megatron slips so easily from all the ways he's tried to better himself back into that old familiar abuser territory, just for the way Starscream's shaky confidence crumbles, the way Megatron just effortlessly shreds him. It wasn't easy for Starscream to get to this point. He's still got lots of insecurities, paranoia, and self-doubt. How hard would it be to rebuild himself again if Megatron got to him now? Speaking of longstanding abusive superior-subordinate dynamics, Cyclonus and Galvatron. Someone refers to Cyclonus as Galvatron's 'favorite bodyguard', so there's a clear power dynamic already in place there. And then Galvatron took everyone on an adventure to the Dead Universe and turned Cyclonus into a semi-mind-controlled semi-zombie. Now, that partial mind control is a really interesting thing to play with. Cyclonus does have some measure of autonomy, but he's also furious when he finally breaks it entirely. Being used is bad enough, being aware and conscious as someone is using you that way is even worse. Especially depending on how loaded you want to make their past. It isn't that hard to find stories where a person and their 'most trusted bodyguard' share a super deep emotional bond. A sexy emotional bond. Basically, either mind-controlled sexual abuse or not, all kinds of ways to mix and match these elements. BUT. If that's the case, how could that going to affect Cyclonus in the present canon? No matter how it went down, Galvatron is a pretty dreadful person, and I'm sure Cyclonus had a lot of opportunity to absorb toxic habits from him. Oh man, I kind of hate to say it, because I ship these two like burning, but imagine an accidental abuser situation between Cyclonus and Tailgate. It would take some thinking to sort out the best way to make it happen, and it would have to be subtle. It would be in the vein of emotional controlling stuff, rather than anything physical. Some of this is even stuff Whirl called Cyclonus out on, that he's emotionally distant, that Tailgate doesn't owe him for anything, that Tailgate is allowed to like other people, and that it shouldn't be a surprise that he does, because Cyclonus acts joyless and cold. And Tailgate is desperate for affection and approval. It wouldn't be hard to get a toxic dynamic going where Cyclonus has Tailgate reshaping himself to chase after scraps of positive feedback from Cyclonus, even though Cyclonus isn't trying to do it on purpose. There's a lot to be said about the effects of quiet, understated jealousy. Tailgate doesn't want to cut people off, he just... doesn't want to make Cyclonus sad. I don't know if I'd ever write this one, because it's upsetting me, just like this, but it's really interesting to play with these ideas XD
part two, much shorter Spoiler: sketchy sexy things, abuse For something a bit less subtle, let's go with Fortress Maximus and Overlord. When Overlord took over Garrus-9, he tortured Fort Max. That's canon. But he had control of the facility for three years! There's so much interesting to be done in that much time! Consider ASOIAF, with Ramsay and Reek. Imagine how badly you can torture someone, in a way that forces them to love you. Oh no, I can already tell I'm not going to be able to break this down too coherently, my mind is already going off in ten million excited directions just thinking about it. Okay, so the biggest thing that Overlord wanted out of Fort Max was a password. Fort Max held out, even in the face of some major physical torture, plus Overlord threatened to kill his men in front of him (no evidence whether that happened or not, but it's overlord. it probably happened). Doing this right would take some patience, which may be a little iffy for Overlord, but it's so cruel that I could see him getting into it. Okay, so first of all, the torture gets recontextualized as punishments. Punishments, specifically, for things Fort Max does or fails to do. Overlord has hit a brick wall in terms of getting the password he wants. So give Max littler tasks. Small things. Ask him something trivial that he won't mind answering, or at least that he's willing to answer to make the pain stop. And then reward him. Not just stopping the torture, but physical affection, treating his damage (has the extra side effect of keeping him alive for longer), praising him for cooperating with you. Maybe push at the big things more, punish him for failing you, but keep giving him those little tasks to succeed at. Tell him how sorry you are, every time he forces you to hurt him. Tell him you wish he wasn't making you do this. And gradually amp up the importance of the tasks you give him to succeed at. Let him compromise his integrity further and further. Wear all kinds of holes in his psyche, convince him that you care for him. Twist him all around in every direction until he starts to lose his grip on himself. If you hit him head on, he'll hunker down and you have to erode him away. Bend him back and forth and turn him around and around and he'll get weaker and weaker and let you snap him in half. I want a Fort Max who thinks he might love Overlord. I don't want just his body broken, I want his mind too. Mmmm, I'm starting to get tired now, so just one more. Rodimus. With who? With practically anyone! Rodimus, poor darling, he's so hungry for someone to approve of him. He tries so hard to keep himself puffed up with vanity, he goes for big, flashy missions because he can either succeed and get attention and feel good for doing so well, or at least if he fails, he fails in a big, exciting way (so more attention). He needs so badly that it wouldn't be hard to turn any relationship with him around into an unhealthily skewed power dynamic. Any of the dadly figures is an easy target for this. Optimus Prime or Megatron. The way either of them talk to him in Autocracy is just asking for a dynamic where Rodimus chases their approval, does things he knows will please them just so he can get another hit of affection and attention. I wrote a Megatron/Rodimus/Optimus thing that touches on some of this, where he's loving the way they're loving on him, and they start playing tug of war and competing for his attention, and he gets badly overwhelmed - but even then, he's berating himself for ruining this and screwing everything up, and doesn't even realize the other two were acting badly. Megatron and Optimus Prime are kind of easy targets. Let's look at Rodimus's second and third in command. Drift and Rodimus have an interesting friendship. Because they match up really well, but they're both coming from an intensely needy place. Rodimus has his past of blowing up his own city and everyone in it so they couldn't be used by Zeta Prime, plus other things like his quest for the Magnificence, where he did the best that he could and still carries the weight of a lot of guilt. He's so hungry for people to tell him that he's done well. Drift has had to fight against a lot of suspicion to be even somewhat accepted into the Autobots, and he knows what the Decepticon Justice Division will do if they catch up to him. In a lot of ways, that's a pretty isolated existence. Two lonely, needy people latching onto each other can carry a lot of interesting codependent dynamics. And speaking of lonely and isolated, Ultra Magnus. Especially given everything that happens with Tyrest, he's floating free, he doesn't have purpose, he's having trouble coping with peacetime, he doesn't have anything to center himself. Consider a push-and-pull dynamic between him and Rodimus, where they're each wanting the other one's approval, but there's still... a pretty fundamental values clash. Think how interesting it could be if they were intensely codependent, but also constantly frustrated and angry with each other because of those values. They can't let go, but they can't stop lashing out at each other. It's easy to play that relationship healthy, but I can see a lot of ways to play it unhealthy too. OOF, I am le tired. I could do more, but maybe not now. I can see some really fascinating ways to write ugly, ugly stories for most of these characters. Give me a dynamic, and my first instinct will almost always be to play it sweet. But it's really fascinating to turn it around and see how painful I can make it too. I could go on forever, but I am constrained by the limits of my teeny tiny attention span. I might actually return to that megastar dynamic, and the unhealthy cygate one is interesting too, even if I probably won't do much with it. But I love thinking through these things!
Spoiler: MTMTE 28 Not having a great handle on his character, I am still somewhat surprised that senator-turned-playwright Crosscut took part in Swerve's Crewditions prank.
