WinkWonk and the Cling Clongs - A TF Thread

Hahahaha, well I literally just thirty minutes ago finished reading a miniseries that's like... 90% about Prowl being a dick. As far as the IDW comics go, Prowl is an intelligence officer, very scheming, very much a control freak. He's big on behind the scenes manipulation, and while his ultimate intentions may be decent, he's willing to do a lot of asshole stuff to make it happen. A LOT of asshole stuff. He's a pretty central character in the exRiD ongoing series, though he does feature in mtmte too! He's important to the backstory of one of the main characters, and we see him both on the page (very first chapter, even) and in flashback. Also he looks significantly different and he's GORGEOUS



He's such a fucking dick, and I love him so much I can barely function

 

I will say that the Prowl difference was maybe the most jarring thing for me about watching TFA. Either that or Optimus's luscious lips, though the lips definitely grew on me. I spent most of Prowl's screentime metaphorically throwing popcorn at the screen and whispering stop being a decent person, you're making me uncomfortable

 

No, no worries at all! It takes like NOTHING to get me to generate a giant wall of text, so take as much time as you need. I'm glad it looks like you're enjoying TFA!!

And! TFA trivia! So, Lugnut is totally married. He's a big dumb lunk, but his wife is a super strong, super smart general and he loves and respects her so much!



She doesn't get much screen time in the series, but she's a major player in that one fic coldstars and I keep bringing up, and she's the BEST. Like Knock Out, she's also gotten introduced into the idw comics universe recently, and I couldn't be happier :D

(also in that fic, she's an unabashed sadist and that part of her character doesn't take up much screen time, but it's written really nicely. And also she's a total momma bear who finds young soldiers with potential and takes them under her wing and trains them for command. I LOVE HER SO MUCH)

 

I've been having one of those weird phases lately were everything I draw is hideous (hideous!!), even though it probably looks totally fine, plus transformers art takes me a while still while writing fic is pretty fast, so I've been skewed towards the writing side of things. Of course now I managed to stall out while I was in the middle of three separate wips, so I may be swinging back towards art? But I still don't like how things look when I try to draw, so I'm not sure :P I'm planning to try to draw some TFA art soon, because it should be faster and it should be cartoony, but I'll have to see. The only thing I've done much of lately is a giant Starscream cross-stitch because it's like color-by-numbers embroidery, and takes relatively little mental effort. I want to draw lots of art, because faces and body language are my favorite favorite favorite, but I've also been covering a lot of exciting sexy ground with a giant kink bingo fic collection, and when I slip too hard to one side I can't get myself to focus on the other, so it's a tricky balance!

To a certain extent, a combiner is their own distinct person! In practice, hm. It's a LITTLE loosely defined. But it seems like when you get a combiner group together that's synced up really well and in tune with each other, that's when you get a stable, independent combiner personality. If you get people who are fighting for control or upset with each other, you get people trying to take charge and drive the robot, and it's all a big mess. When you get a stable combination, sometimes they won't want to un-combine, because then they stop existing. In a lot of ways, it is really like fusion!! I kind of wonder if that was one of the inspirations the SU folks used when they were coming up with ideas. That would make me really, really happy.

Combiners come up here and there in the IDW phase one comics. There are rumors of combiners existing in the past. Monstructor is a dangerous, violent, unstable medical experiment who sometimes pops up. And for a while, the Constructicons (Devastator) are the only naturally existing combiner team out there. The exRiD series in phase two does a lot more with combiners. I don't want to go into too much detail, because talking about combiners means talking about SO many people, and it's all a huge mess, but it eventually becomes a central plot element. I have mixed feelings about that part of the series. I don't think it's bad, but it's not nearly as good as mtmte (but being as good as mtmte is a LOT to ask of a series). They do some interesting stuff with it!

The background guys!! Okay, so I think that so far you haven't sampled any continuities where this comes up, but awright. So classic Soundwave transformers into a cassette player. Those little guys are his cassettes. The lineup varies, but core of the team is... probably Ravage (kittycat), Laserbeak and Buzzsaw (birds), and Frenzy and Rumble (humanoid). The way this works is different between continuities. In the eighties cartoon, they were just naturally cassette-like. Soundwave's creation in TFA is a bit unusual, and I... can't remember if the cassettes were actually a thing there? In TFP, the only one you see is Laserbeak, who's just a drone (the one attached to his chest) instead of being an independent person. And in IDW, the cassettes were independent cybertronians who were medically modified to be compatible with Soundwave.

OH, also, here's the Bayverse Ravage. One of the other few design choices I really, really like. In some continuities the beast-type cassettes can talk and in some they can't. But apparently supplemental material for the Bayverse movies says that everyone thinks Ravage can't talk, but secretly he just thinks they're all assholes, so he only talks to Soundwave. I love that.



Soundwave's an intelligence/communications type, and he's often big on the spying thing, so I think the way they dock inside him is usually justified as being for data transfer (and protection, because the cassettes are smol and precious). In the eighties cartoon, there's also an Autobot, Blaster, who does the same thing with his own cassettes, but in every other continuity I've consumed, Soundwave is the only one we see who acts as a carrier model.

SORRY, that was a big digression. In that picture, Jazz is Soundwave's slave, but Soundwave and his cassettes are basically a giant found family! You've got Soundwave and his five cassettes living together, and like... I don't want to write three more paragraphs explaining, but it's a very intimate family, where they share experiences and emotions over their data links, and Soundwave is programmed to love and protect his cassettes, and the cassettes are programmed to love and need him. Jazz is a very irreverent, dangerous ex-fighter, who was badly abused by his previous owner (Soundwave genuinely cares for Jazz but is basically trying to train Jazz to love him because Soundwave is really bad at people and boundaries), and one of the ways they bond is playing robochess. The cassettes are not interested in that game, so they'll either make fun of Jazz and Soundwave for enjoying it, or if they had to pick a side, they'd totally cheer for Soundwave to win. (or at least, that would have been the case before? I'm not sure now. all of them are falling in love with Jazz as Soundwave does, and even though Jazz is fighting to hold on to the last shreds of his independence, he's totally falling in love with everyone in the family too)

ROBOT PORN! Okay, so as far as I can tell, robot porn comes in three main flavors: valveplug (basically dick+vagina combo xeno, a lot like homestuck, just usually without tentacledicks), plug and play (basically data transfer as sex), and wireplay (basically getting under someone's plating and directly stimulating sensor wires and such). There's also sparkplay, which involves touching sparks, touching the other person's spark, etc., though that can show up in any of the other flavors of porn.

Valveplug is pretty straightforward, just with a new set of xeno terms for everyone's anatomy. Dicks are spikes, vaginas are valves, and clits are nodes. Instead of having sex, people interface, and instead of orgasming, they overload. Usually the robocrotches look like they do in the comic, until the person's plating retracts and their spike pressurizes. Sometimes you run into ass aft sex too, even though there is really no reason for robots to have assholes, mostly people just have a whole lot of fun with whatever they can think up! There's usually fluids of some kind involved, which may be called lubricant or transfluid, and may come from whatever part of the anatomy the person making the porn wants. Sometimes you get interesting extra touches, like sometimes robots have a ceiling node inside their valve, which gets stimulated when someone is filling you alllllll the way :3 Or, one of my favorites that I've mostly seen from one porn author (enfilade, though her writing is very heavy on spoilers for the comics), where there's a data jack on the tip of your spike and inside your valve, and if someone jacks into you when you're interfacing, they can upload data (memories) directly into your processor.

But usually, when you see the data transfer, it's plug and play. That's pretty straightforward (and also upsettingly rare?). Using some kind of built-in cable and port, the robots jack into each other and share... something! It can be physically euphoric or it can be more mental/emotional. When I wrote it, I had the two characters being basically able to navigate through each other's brains like a computer directory, and experience those memories with the same viewpoint and emotions as the other person did when they lived through it. I love this a lot, because it's so intimate. I had a solid story-based reason to write my one plug and play story, but I really want to start coming up with fluffy nothing excuses to write it.

And finally, wireplay! I'll be honest, I haven't seen much of this. Valveplug dominates the physical porn front, at least in current fandom. Okay, so the idea is that for a robot to be able to move, there have to be gaps in their armor plating. And if you can get a finger (or tongue) in there and stimulate the wires and such, it feels really nice. In a lot of ways, it's kind of like porn without genitals? I'm going to mostly be referencing TGWP, the fic applechime dragged us to hell with. But awright, so you start from scratch with touching and kisses at sensitive parts on someone's body. So the underside of Jazz's bumper and his headlights are especially sensitive, though any kind of sensual touch on less-exciting body parts works too. As you get aroused, your armor kind of fans out, not too much, but enough to give your partner easier access to the wires inside your joints, giving them more room to work with, more things to touch. As you keep getting aroused, you start running hot, electrical charge builds in you, and if your partner is in a similar state, you'll get little tiny bits of charge going back and forth between you. But when you hit overload, you vent all that extra charge. Which feels exciting if you're with a partner who you want to sleep with, and feels less exciting if Megatron knows you don't want to be there and is holding your face right against his hip joint so you don't pull away. It's kind of a shame it's so rare, because it can be really hot. One of the most erotic moments in TGWP was just one person on his knees in front of the other, only using his mouth on his partner's wrist joint. It was so, so hot.

There are other interesting things you can do too. I mentioned sparkplay up above, which can be either physically overwhelming, or just an intimate gesture of ultimate trust. Or sometimes you get sparkbonding, which is when two mechs who love each other very, very much touch sparks and like... it's a temporary merge, but also you keep a part of them inside you. There's variety in how authors treat this, but it's SO intimate and cool. Another thing you see sometimes is 'teeking,' when mechs can sense each other's emotions by brushing their EM fields against each other. I haven't done anything with that myself, but I definitely want to.

FWOO. Okay. I think that's most of the basics? If I've missed anything big, people can feel free to ping me, and it will take like NO effort to persuade me to sperg out more.

He does play a smaller role! I wouldn't necessarily call him a minor character, and he does stick around (by god does he stick around), but he's much less important to the plot. And he's... kinda bland compared to the other versions. He's not as effective or dangerous as TFP, and he's not as hilarious or screechy as G1, so it's kinda ehhh. He's okay! But he just doesn't make too much impression on me :P

Oh man, when I started following her videos, that was one of the most recent ones. So I was aware of it for years and didn't care about any of the deaths at all! Wheeljack died in the opening scene? Who cares!! Who's Wheeljack? And then I went and watched it again recently and it was SUCH an emotional roller coaster. Noooo Ratchet you can't kill Ratchet stop stop stop. Is that Kup?? THAT'S KUP!!! HEY BB HOW U DOING???? Springer too?? BLURR???? Don't make fun of the way Blurr talks, he's perfect the way he is. And Rodimus??? WHAT FRESH HEAVEN IS THIS??? Except then yes, also, everyone is soooo so so dead.

Oh! Actually! I don't know where you are in the series, but! Do you remember Wreck-Gar from her review? He was the Eric Idle robot who danced to Weird Al Yankovic. He also gets to show up in TFA! Voiced by Weird Al Yankovic. I love him a lot :')

...you know, that sounds creepily familiar, though I can't place it right now

Now, unfortunately, These Games We Play (Soundwave/Jazz slavery fic) and The Brave Shall Heed The Call (post-finale TFA fic) are both pretty long (edit: I realized I'd never actually put links to these fics I keep talking about :P ). I don't have the word counts at hand, but... yeah, pretty long. I'm in a similar boat with regards to fic-reading spoons, but I downloaded them in case of surprise spoon availability and managed to get lucky! I read TGWP when I was on a weekend trip out west for a friend's wedding, and I read TBSHTC during my downtime when I was at a convention in DC. But other than that, the only longish tf fic I've read was an accident (one weekend I went on a quest for Starscream/Optimus porn, and figured I'd pick the sexy bits out of a long fic, but then I got sucked in by forced breeding and parental emotions and trauma and oh god where did the last three hours go). So I feel you!! No pressure on either of those recs, they're just out there if the urge ever strikes you.

They've actually been playing even more games with mass displacement lately in the comics!! The miniseries I just finished yesterday had mass displacement as part of a series of confusing plot points (they basically had a base inside of another transformer? the guy was pretty large, sure, but he was also bigger on the inside, I think?). There's a LOT of combiner-related shenanigans going on in exRiD right now, but somebody screwed with a combiner's processor and made things go all wonky with the combiner's control of their own mass displacement. Soundwave shows up in a pre-war flashback as a teeny tiny alien recording device being used to spy on the senate. OH, and there are several robots who transform into cities. They're huge as robots, sure, but I'm pretty sure they're even bigger as cities.

 

Oh, and because I'll take any possible opportunity to link people to this, have this GORGEOUS piece of robot/human(ized robot) porn. It's so soft and pretty, and I could just look at this art forever.