asfdasdds blast off (as discovered on a search for hints about space shuttle anatomy, because reasons) (also, dow my boy have ankle guns?? that's even more ridiculous than knee guns, good for u)
Spoiler: Optimus Prime new issues So, I was wrong about Onyx Prime being the real Liege Maximo in disguise, I was right about Onyx Prime being in league with Liege Maximo, and I absolutely did not see coming Onyx Prime being time-displaced Shockwave recreating history as he was taught it in order to study people further and also the reason Soundwave couldn't read Maximo is because it's the shadowplay that does it. It's not that Shockwave doesn't have emotions or thoughts, obviously. It's that the level of shadowplay he underwent puts him on a wavelength Soundwave can't tap into, and he then did the same to Liege Maximo. Pretty fucked up that the guy Soundwave jacked the Onyx name from ended up mentally stunting his charges. Oops I guess. But it's also not like Shockwave cared to ask what the cause was, like, maybe they'd just banded together recently. I'm starting to see how this all pulls together into a resetting or rebooting event, though.
Spoiler Me, not caught up on exRID at all except for gratuitous abuse of TFWiki, but very invested in Liege Maximo and Onyx Prime's origins/motivations/current plans and the history of the Primes' civil war for the sake of my own TAAO spinoff headcanons: .............. /rests head quietly on the desk and starts thumping it/ I'm just...gonna go work on a ways of the stars sequel, now. Oof
Eyyyy, it's my Reasons for looking up Blast Off's anatomy. Starscream/Blast Off, 7.8k, nsfw, dubious consent and two mechs basically using each other for mutual emotional self-harm. Everyone is making horrible decisions and self-destructing and it's so very much my jam. True story, I started this, like RIGHT after the taao issue with the mindfuckery dropped, and most of this was written in one go (last... summer? i think so, because i think i was on fambly vacation), and then I wrote most of the remainder today. GOSH, would have been nice if this was timely, but just think, what if..... Starscream/Blast Off/Onslaught? Also just for kicks, anyone who read those last two soundwave mini-fics is free to imagine they take place in the same universe and around the same time, and then you can stop imagining because they definitely do and I'm giving serious thought to reworking the idea/relationship into a single cohesive standalone fic.
Spoiler: OP I kind of like how while the mask was on, "Onyx" was all pretending to be a haughty, pro-Autobot, pro-Prime, anti-Decepticon/colonist/alien bigot purist, and then as soon as the mask was off he just switches immediately to his standard "I don't actually care about anything except eternity." Also the whole thing with Alpha Trion.
No, no, you’re fine! Spoiler Shockwave being Onyx just kind of shoots my whole “understand Onyx and the other Primes better” plan, though, because oh look! Their war is basically just a meaningless experiment, because “Shockwave felt like it.” Also, it’s incredibly silly.
Hey. Hey. Guess what. Guess who edited a certain e%cessively large pair of lips out of LL 14/15. Lost Light 14 Lost Light 15 The Nickel's-lips-won't-yank-you-out-of-the-story-every-two-panels edition :D
I don't think the twist in the latest OPs is so silly. Spoiler I mean, yes, it does heavily recontextualize everything we know about the Primes, but it also doesn't make the Primes any less people striving for what they thought the right thing was at the time in a much earlier period of Cybertronian history, it just means one of them was acting in bad faith. And we've known for a long time that something was up with Shockwave and Bumblebee since Bumblebee has been visiting Starscream. The fact that Shockwave was doing a self-closing time loop also means there's still quite a bit of mystery to certain things... like, with Starscream being the Chosen One. Is he going to actually do something important in the upcoming issues as the Unicron rebooting event approaches? I think so. I think he'll be vital. So even though as far as we can tell now Starscream is the Chosen One because Shockwave knew he would be called the Chosen One so he set things up so that Starscream would be called the Chosen One, it doesn't mean that's null, and if it does and Starscream is amazing anyway, that's even more of a cool thing... choosing yourself, or something. And I liked what we learned about the other original Primes. It hit me hard the way that Prima blamed Megatronus for the violent atrocities of conquering when it was Prima himself who decided that the rest of the galaxy had to be forcefully enlightened by the Cybertronians. Prima blamed Megatronus for it being brutal and violent, but was unable to see that the very thing he was proposing was the root of the brutality and violence. Conquering, subjugating, and replacing other people's culture with your own by force is always a brutal and violent act, and Megatronus shouldn't have had to bear the brunt of that ugliness when the other Primes were approving of the basic act of cultural genocide already. Just because Megatronus was the one on the battlefield and Prima and Solus were safe in their tower, Megatronus is the evil one? That's bullshit! They were all fucking complicit! And that's the point, and I love it. And Alpha Trion was complicit too, in how he just observed. He can try to justify it by saying he has to not participate in order to accurately observe and retell, but that's bullshit too. If he felt something was wrong about what they were doing, he didn't stop it, he just watched. And sure, Shockwave as Onyx Prime actively pushed for that stuff to happen as part of playing the role he felt he had to play, but it only worked because other people agreed with him. It doesn't all come down to one person.
Like, @coldstars , I'm really genuinely sorry that my contextless explanation made it seem stupid and meaningless but I promise it's not, and I promise that if you want to understand the individual Primes better you'll love the stuff that is gone into. It just upsets me to get hit with a 'haha that's so stupid' about something I'm actually finding interesting and cool.
Spoiler I don't mind the Primes all being horrible people. That's great, actually. That's basically the entire point of IDW: your idols are false, your ideals were betrayed from the beginning, putting your faith in gods and leaders is only going to lead you astray, pedestals are made to be broken. But really, Shockwave, again? Why couldn't Onyx just have been a bad guy like all of the other Primes? I mean, what is this, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure? "You thought Onyx Prime was destroying your society, but it was me, Shockwave."
So I'm doing a 'make my decisions for me' fic-writing meme whatsit on tumblr (pick one or more wips/empty waiting word docs, I write 150 words), if anyone to enable me and/or push their own fic agenda in my inbox. I've got wips and ideas piling up and loads and loads of passion, but I was tragically born without an executive function, so I have to steal other people's Spoiler: the selections Blast Off/Onslaught/Starscream: The doubly disastrous sequel, or ‘look, it got worse’ (0 words) Brainstorm/Whirl: The functionist love epic we’ve all been dreaming of (3,270 words) Breakdown/Knock Out/Starscream/Windblade: Gratuitous Sex For All (0 words) Bulkhead/Starscream/Wheeljack: Siphoning and fun times for all (796 words) Cyclonus/Starscream: Starting to ease away from “complete disaster” to “only mostly a disaster” (0 words) Jazz/Soundwave: The gratuitous music AU (186 words) Jazz/Soundwave(/Optimus): So imagine those last two kink bingo fics took place in the same setting (85 words) Liege Maximo/Starscream/Vigilem/Windblade: The mental hitchhiker clusterfuck I know we’ve all been dreaming of (287 words) Megatron/Prowl: Another Blank Page Waiting pseudo-sequel, to do with megatron and hands (0 words) Rodimus/Starscream: Just a cute and sexy pesterlog as we ease our way towards a legit disaster (0 words) Skyfire/Starscream: Functionism and Starscream don’t get along well (1,012 words) Skywarp/Ratchet: Look I Swear It Makes Sense (1,805 words) Starscream/Wheeljack/Windblade: The sequel to the worst sleepover ever (0 words) don’t look at me okay look if you want to make me see if i can make robots kink on organic breastfeeding, be my guest (0 words) with the additional option that anyone who slogged through that ridiculous ask is free to toss a kink bingo ficlet idea my way, whether it's a ship or concept or kink or whatever.
Spoiler Liege Maximo/Starscream/Vigilem/Windblade: The mental hitchhiker clusterfuck I know we’ve all been dreaming of (287 words) Starscream/Wheeljack/Windblade: The sequel to the worst sleepover ever (0 words) Breakdown/Knock Out/Starscream/Windblade: Gratuitous Sex For All (0 words)
