Awkward situations I find uproariously funny: 1. Mishaps arising during inappropriate corpse transportation 2. This
Spoiler: LL22 Okay again considering what it would mean if legends hold any truth. If Mortilus holds some sort of responsibility for robot mortality: Megatron was overcome when he saw the number of the deaths that could be laid at his feet. Censere has an entire planet for his. Either way, Nightbeat challenged the god of death, and upon consideration, the god of death chose to put his finger on the scale in favor of life.
Spoiler: fic with LL22 spoilers Pharma! Ratchet! Adaptus! Awkward conversations!!! Sfw, 2.7k, warning for suicidal ideation and medical talk
It's been ten million years, but the next installment of the rodimus/starscream nonsense! 4k pesterlog, nsfw, passing mention of past abuse (and now i can let myself start thinking about how to write the next irl segment, which covers INTERESTING GROUND and i'm delighted)
Big spoilers for LL22 and Larry Niven's novel Ringworld Spoiler Rung really really reminds me of Teela Brown. Teela Brown turned out to be the result of a breeding program, selecting for luck. This is a scifi future where population control limits the number of children people are allowed to have. But there's also a lottery, and the winner gets the right to have an additional child. Teela is not only a lottery child, she's like a fucking sixth generation lottery child. She's never really had to grow up. Even the way she walks, once people are looking for it, is like someone who has never actually needed to worry about falling. She ends up being part of an expedition to this weird, extremely dangerous place, an entire world engineered as a ring around a sun. And suddenly she's in situations she's never experienced before. She actually gets hurt. Like, hurt for real. This world is just so fucking dangerous that her luck can prooobably keep her from being killed, but sometimes the luckiest possible situation is still gonna be pretty seriously bad. Finally, for the first time in her life, she is forced to think about what she's doing before she does it, and actually learn and grow in a way she's never had to before. The trip to Ringworld is the luckiest possible thing that could have happened to her. And that's why they're there. That's why the whole trip happened. Every single person on that trip is pretty much a puppet to the luck of Teela Brown. So. It's amazing how much Rung has avoided harm in his life. And then he shows up for this fucking quest and doesn't even make it onto the ship before losing an arm. But extremely cleanly. It's a very lucky break. Also he's in amazing health. He was the lone survivor of a previous ship crash. He has a history. On the Lost Light he manages to get shot in the fucking head. Ratchet says he would call his survival a miracle if he believed in those. The Lost Light is an environment where "extremely lucky" means you still get shot in the head but just spend a while in a coma instead of dying. And that's why Rung reminds me of Teela Brown. Maybe he needed this.
Spoiler: LL22 DFAFSDFAD IF PHARMADAPTUS IS TELLING THE TRUTH-- this was already a funny line, but i'm laughing so hard right now
Spoiler: Unicron 3 I like Monstructor's Wraith form. Spiky. I'm glad that Arcee called out the Camiens about the "you Cybertronians" thing; the colonies exist(ed) because of Cybertronian expansion. It's all imperialism, Windblade. All of it. I really have no idea why Shockwave would think that Unicron wouldn't go and attack Earth if the Cybertronians relocate there. At least his "turn the entire universe into a supermassive black hole" plan had a little thought put into it.
We are going to be starting Transformers Animated from the beginning in the Transformers stream in about 15 minutes. if anyone wants to jump in, now is a good time. https://www.rabb.it/mizushimo I think you'll have to make an account with rabb.it, the service used to allow guests but :/
I bought a RiD combiner toy on a whim because it had wildbreak, little did I know that I has an amazing feature. He goes 'sproing' Transformers dragbreak goes pop https://imgur.com/gallery/WzmIVfR
So we made fun of Rodimus for his new paintjob, but there are a bunch of third-party toy companies making gothy black-and-purple repaints of their combiners and it's actually kinda Aesthetic. https://www.thechosenprime.com/GTGBBV https://www.thechosenprime.com/TFCPN https://www.thechosenprime.com/MMCNeroRex If I hadn't already bought the regular green-and-purple not-Devastator from Generations Toys I'd be definitely tempted by the black-and-purple not-Devastator. The fact that these are all independent companies doing this is kind of hilarious. I think MMC was the first.
haven't Black Repaints been an infandom joke for quite a while? even before the TP ones, there were things like various nemesis primes, shattered glass versions of characters, "dark" versions...
The black repaint thing, at least in the Nemesis Primes and Shattered Glass context, was that they were evil Autobots, who thus got the black-and-purple treatment to show that they were evil, e.g. this guy: https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/64627 These guys are all Decepticons to begin with, so painting them black doesn't really signify much in that sense. Also I don't think black combiners have been a thing, although I don't really know the details of the pre-IDW fandom. But at least scanning through the toy selections on various Transformers merchandise sites, it doesn't appear to be a thing to take non-black-and-purple Decepticons and make thing into black-and-purple Decepticons, except for in these few cases. Mostly I thought it was funny that Generation Toys and TFC both decided to make a black version at roughly the same time, and given that these things do take time even before announcing it must have been independent to some extent (assuming that they aren't just fronts for a single company).
FIC! Starbladejack verse, but just starjack, sfw, with reference to past abuse and consent issues, 3.3k. It follows pretty closely on the heels of the last two fics in that setting. (i inch ever closer to being able to have the Big Fic when megatron pays a visit) (i'm never going to be able to do it justice XDD) (but then once that's done one of my other faves will get to come to play)
Spoiler: DOTL Dominus Ambus and Minimus Ambus have a turbofox alt mode @applechime and I were talking about the ship name for Ultra Magnus and Megatron, and to quote: Now, remember that alt mode? ULTRA MEGAN FOX
Spoiler: long? probably long I think we've talked about it before! It's basically taking a look at the combaticons and how they're doing after everything falls apart, because I'm still obsessed with that XD I'm already digging hard into Blast Off and Onslaught in the onstarblast, even though that isn't fallen APART, but it's an unsustainable situation and constantly getting worse :p But okay. Dwindle. SWINDLE, GODDAMMIT. You'd think my phone would learn eventually, but no, here's Swindle's unsuccessful brother who can't hold onto money to save his life. Just gives every penny away to charity. Swindle is so offended they haven't spoken since before the war. Swindle. He's a pretty slimy guy, in general. He's always out to cut a deal and make money, he's not trustworthy, he's not really loyal to anything but himself, and he's totally up for doing unsavory things like selling snuff films to Rewind. But one, that level of shamelessness is something I personally adore in a fictional character. And two, when Blast Off demands proof that Swindle is alive and gets taken in to visit him, Swindle is so surprised and so happy to see him!! I'm sure Swindle is aware of why lots of people don't like or trust him, but also, we see lots of other characters with bad habits and coping mechanisms who are struggling with social isolation (cough cough starscrean prowl cough). Swindle is so surprised that the other combaticons liked him enough to try to save his life. Which isn't really what happened, which also makes my heart twist. And Swindle is being kinda sorta open and emotionally vulnerable there, which is so DIFFERENT from his usual act, and hurts me even more. Like, god, Starscream has that one outburst about how Bumblebee has no idea what it's like to be hated by everyone in the universe. Swindle doesn't work in a position as prominent as Starscream's, but I really, really want to play with the way he's so ruthlessly self-serving, versus how every social interaction becomes a cold, untrusting transaction. I'm betting it's a lot like how Starscream worked his way into his own corner, where it's a mounting cycle over a long period, and now his only options are to take a fall or to dig his hole even deeper. That really gets to me! But okay. That was a long detour. The other players are Brawl and Vortex. I haven't had much to give me purchase on Vortex yet, but Brawl has that one GLORIOUS (tiny) conversation with Windblade. We see SO MUCH about robot mental health in this series, but the combaticons? As of mid-TAAO, what we see is almost entirely about Blast Off falling apart while the others are... mostly okay. The combaticons as a group have always been oriented towards casual, unrepentant ultraviolence, so this seems normal enough. Then there's that moment with Swindle. Then Brawl sneaks in to see Windblade and opens up about how he'd never had an issue with the war before, but now he's afraid of dying, he's afraid of the fighting starting again, he doesn't want that to happen-- But he also can't let his teammates know about any of this, and Windblade had better not tell anyone he was here. When the secret comes out about the combaticons.... that changes the emotional playing field a LOT. Onslaught is furious at Blast Off and the trust between them is destroyed, that's the biggest one. But I'm trying to feel out the surrounding dynamics. Swindle has a whole new context for what happened with saving his life, that's a big one. But that's.... complicated. They didn't save him because saving him was the main goal. But they still did save him. And Blast Off was worried about him afterwards. And came to visit and check up on him. The beginning of it all was sketchy, but does that invalidate the happier end point? As far as Onslaught is concerned, yes, absolutely. But Swindle.... he's more used to casual betrayals and mercenary intentions. I feel like he'd hold less of a grudge, and really value the positive interactions that resulted, even if they were built on a dishonest foundation. I'm fascinated by that. A lot of my faves are much more rigid and prone to taking these things hard, and I want to see how this plays out. I can totally see Swindle tentatively orbiting Blast Off, but that's not enough framework for me to really take a story and launch. (and also in the middle of this all, blast off seems to be the only one who understands how to operate in a peacetime city setting where they need like.... real jobs, and to not kill people) Brawl has a much different angle, and he's less... call it less emotionally intuitive than Blast Off. Reading how other people are feeling isn't a skill he's bothered to develop much, and this is a complicated situation with a LOT of very tangled emotions and motivations in play. Brawl can understand Onslaught being hurt by the betrayal from Blast Off, and I'm sure he feels betrayed and upset by that too. But also, like... He thought he was the only person on the team feeling doubts about the war and the good old days. He thought the others would judge him hard if they knew he didn't want to fight anymore, or that he was afraid of dying. But the whole nature of this betrayal from Blast Off, it was a deal he cut to 1) save their lives, and 2) integrate them into peacetime. Writing this story, I'm torn on whether I want to write from Blast Off's perspective, because that's comfortable and familiar now, and I'm good at a pov that wallows in regrets :p But in terms of the important interactions in this story, he's going to be on the outside looking in. Okay, so let's say they're all in their one jail cell, with Onslaught seething in one corner and Blast Off drowning in regrets in the other. Everyone else is awkwardly caught in the middle. Choosing sides... might be hazardous, but the situation is full of emotions and it's hard not to choose sometimes. My personal thought is that the first person to break that stalemate might be Swindle. I can see him mmmmaybe trying to play both sides, but Onslaught just Does Not want to hear it, and Blast Off was the one who was honest to god worried about him, so. Then this story would be driven by Brawl, who is trying to work through some hella complicated emotions (and is not very good at it), who's upset in some ways, but who's realized he's less alone than he thought he was when he was talking to Windblade. He might be unsure/upset enough that he's not sure about committing to picking Blast Off.... But Swindle and Vortex were caught in the middle just as much as he was.......... What I've got for Vortex right now is that he's mostly like 'hahaha, what the actual hell, man' at both Onslaught and Blast Off, but I want to do better than that :/ But Swindle? Okay, it's going to take Brawl a little time to think through how embarrassed he's willing to be. But if he wants comfort. Swindle can ABSOLUTELY be paid for cuddles. And things move from there :V (What Brawl doesn't quite account for is that Swindle is also interested in this comfort thing, but is even less capable of initiating than Brawl is. And he doesn't realize that the exchange of money doesn't rule out the possibility of Swindle taking this sincerely. I'm going to make two mechs allergic to showing vulnerability cuddle for comfort and mean it) Lots of words to get to the basic premise XDDD The shape of the story is pretty clear to me, it's how to tell it that's the tricky part. Blast Off is going to be distracted by his own misery, but he's also the most aware of all of them of other people's emotions. Swindle will have trouble reading emotions, but he'll be right in the middle of thr dynamic, and i can show him being Moved by Blast Off's concern and being Moved when it turns out Brawl spent the last of his money paying him for hugs. Brawl: I kind of spent my last few shanix paying you.... Swindle, choked: You spent your last few shanix paying me??? But also in some ways, it feels like using Swindle's pov makes things too obvious. The calculation vs. emotion balance is clear to him, it's when other people are trying to read it that i get to build interesting tension. And Brawl's pov...... tempting, but getting in his head will be hard. He's not going to express his emotions verbally if he can help it, so getting that inside voice to understand where he's coming from will be hard. And it will be difficult for him to recognize what the reactions of the mechs around him mean. It's an interesting challenge, but i don't know how painful it will make the story to write :p And the setting is tricky. I want to start this thing in jail, because the confinement and lack of privacy are key. It would be good to end out of the jail cell, because that gives the characters a little more room to be open with Onslaught glaring at them :pppp Which is important for getting Blast Off involved directly instead of Swindle just meaningfully orbiting him. I've been wringing my hands over HOW to get them out and stable again, but i might just toss in a time skip, maybe something about a pardon :B And Vortex is a factor too. I'd like to bring him into the mix, and i think his personality lets him go with the flow reasonably, but I don't have a good picture of how to do it mechanics-wise without derailing the story. And there's something nice and bittersweet about the Combaticons reforming around Blast Off without Onslaught, especially if I can drive home how bitterly Blast Off regrets how it all played out. Probably i just need to pick a pov and go, and things will shake out as they shake out. But there's a lot of background character stuff driving the story idea where I'm not sure how clearly it'll come across in the fic itself, but now this writeup exists to tell it! XD
Spoiler: unbelievably unimportant SU spoiler I feel like all that awesome deserves so more than a shitposty response but my brain is not cooperating. So instead, here I am proposing the worst AU crossover in which Dwindle teams up with Tiger Philanthropist and Danny Rand to make infuriating naive financial decisions while fighting bad guys.
