#Rung/Skids

[scraplette]

This is random but I noticed you mention you were a big Rung/Skids shipper and I'm curious about something. I wasn't active in the fandom where MTMTE/LL were coming out and I feel like I missed huge discourse or something, because I'm really confused about why I have always seen Rung/Fort Max and Rung/Whirl and MegaRung everywhere but nobody seems to ship Rung with the guy he was super close with from the beginning and committed suicide thinking about and coughed up crystals over? I know it's not because it's wrong for therapists and patients to date because all of those people were Rung's patients. Do you know why this is?

Hello there! Sorry for the late response, I wanted to do this on desktop and just hadn't found the time.

You've sent a really interesting question but, I'm sorry, I'm not sure I have an answer for you. Heck, even at the time the comics were coming out I was always surprised by the lack of content for the ship. There was some discourse about Rung dating paitents but, funnily enough, Skids was never really a part of it. He wasn't really considered by the fandom as one of Rung's paitents so it wasn't an issue. The storyarc we the readers found out that Rung was treating Skids, was also the same arc where Rung quit. You did have some folks producing some excellent content for it(@littlestowl is still hands down my fave writer for this pair and @herzspalter did some hecking good fanart!) but never to the same extent as other ships. Not gonna blame people for that, we all have our preferences! Live and let ship and all that! So, since I had no anwers of my own I decided to counsult THE COUNCI(my friends who like Transformers) for their opinions and they came up with the excellent points. We even gathered DATA(we looked at Ao3 XD) Nothing definitive, of course, because obviously we're just a group of robot fans and can't speak for every TF fan on the net. These are just our thoughts and general vibes. 1) Rung is just so darn shippable. He potentially works well with a lot of characters and was pulled in lots of diff directions. Speaking as the main Rung/Skids shipper of the group I sort of get this(stupid sexy Rung) but even with all the diff ships sailing Rung/Skids still seemed oddly small in comparsion. 2)Another friend brought up a good point, Rung/Skids are a lovely ship but they're very wholesome and nice. Now, there is nothing wrong with that but you can't deny that spicy ships oozing with, as they put it, DRAMA just get folks excited. Lots of the other ships had this in spades. 3) Another friend had a lovely thought to add to this and I agree with it 100%. I'm just going to quote them directly "Which is kinda a shame because they have other kinds of cool drama - Rung basically compromised his position for Skids! Skids revived Rung's memory! The non-goodbye! But not conflict -drama." 4)Perhaps the venn diagram of Skids fan and Rungs fans didn't neccisarily crossover. Looking at the DATA, we can see that the most popular ships for Skids(in order) were SkidsSwerve, SkidsGetaway, and SkidsRung. I'm not sure if the Getaway fics were written pre or post betrayl.

5) Not really important but something I thought was a cool detail. Rung/Skids was really popular in the Japanese side of the fandom. I even own a physical doujin anthology for the pair! I can't remember any names of the top of my head, it's been years, but there were lots of lovely pieces of Rung/Skids fanart on the JP art sites.

I'm always a little sad about Rung/Skids. I always thought here were always lots of hooks throughtout the story that could lead the pair to more. Lots of little quiet personal moments just for the two of them. Like, Skids defending Rung against Getaway's snide comments. Ratchet sending Skids to Rung because he things the little chap is lonely. That final weirdly tense exchange between them will always sit a bit oddly with me. I know at the time there was a theory that Skids might've been into Nuatica at the time but nothing seemed to come of it, so I geuss we'll never know. I think I remember reading that Alex Milne didn't realise that would be their last interaction together, otherise he would've done the panel differently* Thank you for your ask! It was lovely to look back on old fandom memories ^_^ I hope I gave you some insights. As for myself, I'm hoping to get back into fic writing so no doubt I'll be adding to my collection of Rung/Skids drabbles.

*IMPORTANT UPDATE EDIT THING! I couldn't drop the final goodbye between them and the Alex Milne thing(it was nearly a decade ago so I was worried I'd misremembered) so I hunted down the original tweet and I've misremembered!

Sigh, what a shame that the final on-page interaction of my fave ship is forever off key and weird because of Writer/Artist miscomunucation :<

[bloominglegumes]

all at the same time

[hellopuns]

I realized I never posted ALL the colouring book illustrations, and since I no longer have any stock, I figured I'd share.

A collection of little Pokémon teams for Lost Lighters, drawn in 2021! There's a bunch of details I forgot about, but I still consider Ultra Magnus + 10% Forme Zygarde to be the biggest brained choice lol

[peeppq]

Gang, ive finished them.

[margaritaduck]

That one issue

[xyangblog]

Some baseball boys

I drew this because I thought it would be cool for them to wear the baseball players' livery

[byfulcrums]

mtmte is the best comic ever and i can prove it to you

There is, of course, the canon mpreg

Grimlock, known Decepticon killer, gets adopted into a group known as The Worst Decepticons Alive, has a baby with them

The bloodthirsty, mentally ill guy that lowkey caused Megatron to go all evil adopts a bunch of red scraplets

Ratchet steals his ex-coworker's hands and keeps them for himself

On the hands: Before that, he would hit his with a hammer because they didn't work properly. Right before a surgery

Man experiences police brutality, decides to take over the universe

Rodimus' nonsensical doodles turn out to be a map leading to heaven

Rodimus also gets crucified

The therapist of the ship, also known as the most forgettable guy ever, is actually God with a capital G

God befriends a guy doing everything in his power to prove the existence of the afterlife

God befriends an atheist

God almost gets sacrificed

Remember the Worst Decepticons Alive? Their dumbest member (who genuinely believes squirrels live in minds) created the cure for lobotomies

There's a random man's corpse sticking out of the engine and also a kinda-vampire

To turn vampires back into regular people you have to hit them real hard in the head

The leader of the DJD runs his group of bloodthirsty killers and torturers like an office workplace

They get scolded by the tiny medic they could squish and are terribly afraid of her

You get to know how the war actually started! It was because of a curly straw

Character goes back in time to stop the war because he's gay and ends up accidentally causing it

Multiple transfem characters!! All of the girls are trans!!!! And most of the boys are gay!!!!

They made STARSCREAM the ruler of the world

There's an entire chapter dedicated to that one time they were chased by a planet

Local Girl's Best Friend Dies, Responds To That By Putting His Brain In Her Eye Socket

They steal a guy's corpse, increase his size with an experimental thingy an amoral scientist created, and use his alt mode as a spaceship when theirs gets stolen

There's an Autobot spy that communicates to them by shooting a crew member

Even the serious panels have meme potential (see: Overlord and Rodimus)

Whirl's general existence makes the world a worst place, which makes the comic even better

"What gives? I'm normal again! Well, relatively speaking."

[Singing] "No one cares! No one cares what you have to say~"

Whirl making a depressed Rodimus so angry that he goes to get by by lighting (I actually can't remember if this is how it went lmao, it might've been the other way around)

When he told everyone about the time he "killed" someone in their sleep and shoved their wand up their ass

Brainstorm creates a button that allows the characters to break the fourth wall. Swerve presses it and becomes a narrator

One of the most painful slow burns EVER. Jesus

Their first actual interaction consisted of Cyclonus dropping Tailgate because he was annoying

Then: "I knew you'd find me"

Violent warlord that has destroyed multiple planets and planned to conquer the universe gets legally mandated into becoming the ship's captain, much to Roddy's despair

At some point, Megatron starts to sound just like Rodimus when talking to Magnus and it makes him want to kill himself

OP gives Roddy and Meg the shared title of "co-captain" so Rodimus wouldn't get upset

Oh, here's a thing: Tumblr is canon in TF IDW

The Scavengers (Worst Decepticons) go to the real world as TF toys and it's never mentioned ever again

Warriors who have endured six million years of war, powerful and feared, freak out when the light goes out

Space Jesus 2 demands an audience with God, gets hit by lightning and disappears

Character survives a terminal illness by dying

Ultra Magnus gets drunk. He's a giggler. He also starts crying

And more!!!!

[yuzudonut]

Sweet Dreams, Low Tides

[1244950]

Bay! Optimus spending five minutes with the lost light crew

[lovinglonerhybrid]

It’s game night at swerves and there’s a bunch of games to play! Brainstorm and Chromedome are playing darts with a picture of prowl. Rewind,tailgate,and, swerve are playing Mario kart. Ratchet,thunderclash,megatron,drift,and Rodimus are playing cards against cybertron. Blaster has just-dance set up. Cyclonus and whirl are playing air hockey. Ultra Magnus is running a game of DnD with skids,nautica,ten,and velocity. Rungs doing mad libs with ravage and nightbeat. Every one lives nobody dies and the lost light crew is one big happy family for the rest of time!

[haifischkivenchy]

shameless self promo but i need people to be fully aware that i also draw The Robots and not in fact just yap!!!! i don't actually properly upload my art here though and I don't think it's necessary to reup them on my art blog

[scraplette]

Random Rung/Skids AU Ideas

I've recently seen a little upsurge in Rung/Skids interest. First of all, hello! So happy to see you! Hope you're having a lovely time pickling through all the tags and content ^_^

It's made me want to throw my hat back into the ole ring, it's been a while.

I've been thinking about an AU where Skids survives. Ratchet was able to get Skids to the medlab and stabilise him, and things play out as they did in the comic but there are some massive differences. Nothing concrete atm, I'm being very loosey goosey with this as ideas form and I decide what I like.

+Skids is alive. Obviously. The poor guy is not in a good place mental wise. He's absolutely riddled with guilt and shame over what happened at Grindcore.

+Once Rung returns from his mission with Nightbeat he's furious! He understands that things were dire but how could they let Skids go through with this after last time.

+Before Ratchet left to find Drift, he sent Skids to hang out with Rung. Since then their little friendship has deepened they realise their on the cusp of something developing between them, but neither are quite ready to word those thoughts and feelings.

+Skids hears about Nightbeat's investigation into the hollow planet. He takes Nightbeat aside and all but begs him to take Rung with him.

+If I wanted to go down the really angsty route I could have Skids die as he did before but Rung brings him back. It's a complete accident, Rung isn't even sure how he did it. He saw Skids' corpse and he just rejected that reality with every fibre of his being. There's a bright flash of light, and then Skids is gasping awake whilst Rung is trying to comprehend what just happened. It should be a moment of celebration but Skids isn't the same bot he used to be. He has his memories back and, just like the first point earlier, his got all these emotions inside him that he has no idea how to cope with. He was dead but now he's back, and he's not sure he deserves it. He's lashing out at his friends and Amica, Rung in particular because he's the reason he's alive. Rung, dealing with his own issues(his own hazy memories of Primus are starting to resurface and he's reeling from the fact that he brought back someone from the dead and what do you mean I'm a freedom fighter in another universe!) is feeling particularly vulnerable and isolates himself. It's a mess!

[pritong-baboy]

the sillies <3

[legyt]

Reading Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye (MTMTE) #13

THEYRE BONDINGGGGG

Poor big guy, he doesnt kno how to relax 😭

COOL HUMAN HOLO DISGUISES

Whirl is such a little shit

Skids: "This is Weapons-grade Nucleon!"

Whirl: 😲🫢 "Is it? Well, I never." 😏

Read the wiki a bit so ik that Whirl is a fckin liar

I just love to highlight and bring interactions between characters into the spotlight lik this, bcuz I LOVE seeing how they converse with each other. It helps me see their characters in different lightings.

This conversation between Ultra Magnus and Swerve was just also just very funny as it was interesting.

Also, Verity mention and sort of cameo cuz of Ultra Magnus using her as his holo avatar 🥺

[subiehasissue]

additional characters ( blaster minimus ambus and bluestreak) also redos of few

[chefbeepo]

MTMTE FRIEND DYNAMIC INFOGRAPH (before lost light 25) according to my headcannons

I also have each color catagorized for your convenience here

Percy is acquaintances with Brainstorms friends by proxy

Everyone hates Cyclonus tm

Everyone in Nauticas group are buddies 5 ever

*technically* simpatico isn't cannon yet according to tne timeline but idgaf

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

I'm not joking there's spoilers here so WATCH OUT

MTMTE freindship dynamics post lost light 25 (aka new universe)

Pretty much entirely different layout tbh? 3 of nauticas 5 bffs died. But here she also doesn't remember skids, so she feels somewhat indifferent, and the old feeling of grief mingled with guilt remains

Percy is considered friends, dare I say, even CLOSE friends with Brainstorms bffs

ALSO I MEANT TO ADD A GRIEF LINE BETWEEN SKIDS AND BRAINSTORM TOO WHOOPS

I have like, 1000 billion headcannons for their friendships all together but I'll elaborate on that jn another post