#Shockwave has no mouth but Soundwave perceived his reactions this way

[absoluteminimum]

hello!! HUGE fan of ur fic, the way you write how soundwave traverses shockwave’s mind, with all the water and color and noise, is just so beautiful, I legitimately cried when I first found your fic lolol. It’s just, such an amazing way of describing the mind and its intricacies, especially in shockwave’s case, I fear this may stick with me forever. What inspired you to write the mind in such a way? I’d kill to know your thought process :DD

wow! I'm honestly so thrilled and flattered my fic seems to have made an impact. I'll admit, I'm fairly proud of what I've put up so far, so I'm glad you've enjoyed it.

As for the thought process that went into crafting the mindscape scenes? Honestly, most of it came about partly by accident– a happenstance tumbling of words which led to associations with other words and phrases.

I initially described Shockwave's mind as merely multilayered, imagining something like an armillary sphere. Then, on my third attempt at writing the first chapter, I described other minds as churning seas, and Shockwave's by comparison being a placid surface, and the metaphor just snowballed from there.

So I doubled down on the water vibes in the second draft. I wanted the telepathy to feel physical. It's not some vague conversation expressed with italicized dialogue, it's an expedition into uncharted waters, it's diving into an endless sea of starry lights that wink up from the black.

Describing Shockwave's perception of Soundwave came easily. There are traces, I think, of 'The Properties of Sound' by Decepticonsensual, which I haven't actually read in like 7 years but I can just taste its influence in the fact that I chose to describe Soundwave as both color and music. Heck, I think there's even a scene in it describing Soundwave's visor in the mindscape as a multicolored shifting, which I briefly emulated in Shockwave's dream in chapter 3.

Anyway, describing Soundwave as music and color just felt natural, and also it gave me a way to express his inner reactions when Shockwave can't really label all of them. How can I say "Soundwave feels compassion for Shockwave" when Shockwave can't even identify it? But giving it a color, or an instrument, now there is something Shockwave can perceive, but not quite parse. It's almost the same mechanic as describing someone's expression but not identifying it– a furrow of the brow, a quirk of the mouth, a momentary curl of the upper lip. Except that these expressions are being beamed straight into the noggin and also the receiver has had his 'Raw Unfiltered Expression' Translation Centers smashed up.

All in all, simply a wild tumbling storm of ideas that eventually settled into words. A bit of critical thinking that boils down to "I'm going to be writing them doing this a lot so it's gonna have to be at least somewhat interesting, it's pretty much the pivotal mechanic for half the fic"

I'll admit, I fear my metaphors may wear out their welcome by the end of the fic, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Uhhh I hope that you got something of an answer amidst that word vomit essay. Thanks again for reading, and also engaging, I quite liked trying to analyze my own thought process (though I'm not sure I succeeded)