TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

It isn't exactly a trine-courting soap opera, but Coming To Terms (nsfw) has a lot of super interesting courting stuff, which sometimes frequently includes trines, or at least bots who are part of trines. It gave me a lot of emotions about the command trine, that's for sure. Plus there are all kinds of delicious philosophical disconnects between autobots and decepticons to keep things messy and emotionally loaded.

The fic is a little bloated, plus it isn't done and will probably never be (sob), and ends on a table-flipping cliffhanger (sob) (it's funny because prowl), but the centerpiece of it.... oh man. OH MAN. You get a crazy-intimate, crazy-intense breakdown of what's going on with Thundercracker, a pretty good look at how Starscream is functioning, and a better look at Skywarp than I've seen almost anywhere else. It's G1, so not quite IDW, but it's still fantastic. Plus, omg, the Rainmaker trine, especially Slipstream/Sunstorm and Acid Storm flirting with Fireflight, and past!almost!Acid Storm/Slipstream/Thundercracker. And Constructicons/Ratchet. I NEED MORE.

A lot of the courting drama comes down to kink negotiations, but it's tied way tight with power negotiations, and the lines between professional/military relationships and personal relationships are super blurry. The autobots as a whole are pretty much just discovering their physical sexualities (but they are very much about that plug and play life), and even the power negotiation parts of this are usually sexy courting. This whole fic is so much my jam it hurts.

 

OH, RIGHT, I've been trying to remember to make this post for like four days.

Spoiler: taao 5

Soooooooo Elita was super sketchy with that whole 'oh, uh, this is totally Tempo, we just renamed him Carcer. That's definitely what happened'

And she just bailed on the whole alliance when she was told that Carcer needed to transform back to his root mode and fight.

It's not like she and her people were all that worried about death. They were right on the front lines, they sent out scouts that all died, and still kept fighting without any signs of reluctance. It wasn't until right when Starscream said she needed to use Carcer that she bailed.

So what's up with Carcer/Tempo? :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

My money is on a frankentitan, where Carcer's people cannibalized Tempo and used him to keep their own ship going. If Tempo had died of natural causes and they made use of his corpse, I don't think they'd be so sketchy about it. They take open pride in using their own corpses to keep their ship operational. My best guess is that they killed Tempo to use his bits, and that's why Metroplex thought that space bridge was Tempo's. If Carcer transforms back, I bet it would be pretty obvious that they'd been harvesting extra body parts to bulk him out. In the balance of breaking this big political alliance and getting called out for killing a titan... I can see how Elita would go for breaking the alliance.

 

Iiiiiiiiiii just want to say that since I started taking magic focus drugs (they are literally magic, I can't believe how much better my everything has been), I definitely hit my NaNo wordcount goal for the month. Even with the assistance of brain-altering chemicals, I still owe a lot to the lovely folks in this thread, who are always willing to yell about giant robots with me (๑°꒵°๑)･*♡

And originally my not-novel was going to be just general transformers fanfiction, but then it turned out to be literally 98% Starscream by volume, so it's been officially renamed 'How Starscream Got His Groove Back.' I thought people on here might appreciate that

 

I have not!! My reading spoons are only erratically there (which makes it double frustrating when I manage to get reading and things are getting hot and heavy annnnd the author calls optimus a truck-former), so it might take me a while to get to that, but I'll definitely check it out! Thank you!!

 

Hey hey hey, guys

So Starscream was cold-constructed. And it's probably safe to assume that the rest of that trio was produced at the same time, especially since they were recruited together and were recolors had identical frames right from the start.

Now, we saw what happened to Starscream when Tyrest set off his device.

So, imagine Thundercracker, alone on earth. He's all by himself most of the time, in a makeshift shed that's been converted into something like a home, out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe Marissa was around, but he's surprised to see her when she comes, so I think it's safe to assume he's usually there by himself. Just him and Buster. Imagine him getting hit with that painful, slow death out of nowhere, with nobody around to offer comfort or take care of him, not even knowing what's happening. For all he knows, he's about to die and leave Buster there all by herself. Hopefully somebody stops by before she starves to death or something happens to her.

Depending how much pain he's in, maybe he would have been able to call someone for help. But even then, his best bet is Marissa, and she isn't going to be able to do anything to help him. The best she can maybe do is to stay on the line with him as long as he can hold the connection, and offer him comfort while he's dying.

 

Thundercracker being lonely and missing his trine, tho :3c

Also, Marissa was pretty directly traumatized by the AHM attack on New York city. She still rags on Thundercracker pretty mercilessly, and it's friendly banter, but that's after like... months of thawing, at a bare minimum, probably longer. Imagine being so alone and just wanting someone to talk to, and your only semi-friend being this little alien who's still half-hostile to you and holds you at arms length for as long as she can.

Thundercracker spending time with Marissa and Ayana and he keeps slipping into trine courting before he can catch himself and stop, because it's not going to work, they're aliens, they don't even have trines. But he still keeps falling into those same old patterns, and he catches himself hoping before he can cut off that line of thought

Thundercracker saying goodbye to Marissa and not being able to keep it to 'bye.' He's like 'you're keeping up with your maintenance, right? you're oiling your joints? and sticking to high-quality fuel?' She's like 'yeah, haha, okay, I have to head back out now' and he's like '...........take care'

 

And another random thought, because I am apparently full of them today!!

So, Knock Out and Breakdown's honeymoon in the acid wastes. Adorable, right?

CONSIDER: because of Velocitron's sun, Navitas is constantly motoring around the planet at high speeds so the whole city doesn't burn up, and keeping pace with him for even a short while is almost more than Ironhide can handle.

ALSO CONSIDER: According to Moonracer, Breakdown couldn't break mach one if his life depended on it, and some Velocitronians consider him to basically be a cripple.

Before they made contact with the other titans, how often had Breakdown gotten to drive around under open sky? Had he ever gotten to drive around under open sky?

Knock Out took Breakdown to a wide open wilderness, nobody but the two of them and no reason to rush or worry, free to drive as long as they want. I'm pretty sure Knock Out just gave his husband the biggest, most romantic present he could have ever imagined.