#THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A DOOMED YAOI JOKE WHY IS IT ACTUALLY INFECTING MY BRAIN

[chopprface]

giggling to myself knowing ive infected a small amount of the beast wars fandom with my dinocharge (depthcharge/dinobot) brainworms so here we go

depthcharge starting out very skeptical of dinobot’s allegiance to the group even despite the other maximals sharing stories with depthcharge on the rare occasion where he decides to socialize with them.

BIG BIG MASSIVE spoilers for both depthcharge and dinobot's arcs coming up, id advise finishing beast wars before diving into this cause otherwise youre going to be so lost. /srs

they’d avoid eachother at first until theyre completely cut off from the rest of the maximals and are forced to work together, similar to the episode where rampage is introduced and blackarachnia and silverbolt start getting closer (possibly replacing them in that episode?). more arguing and less cooperation with each other, but they come out of it with an odd amount of trust in each other now that they’ve gotten out of a tough scenario together.

with the tension between them cleared for the most part, dinobot gets depth charge to open up about his information on rampage, thinking that getting firsthand experiences from someone who oversaw his containment might help them find a weakness to eliminate a major threat like rampage.

depth charge's initial distrust is replaced by a surprising amount of transparency, possibly because he feels he failed his fellow maximals and can no longer relate to them as he let them down on omicron. something about their similar feelings of lacking belonging among the other maximals (at least initially) draws him to dinobot.

both dinobot and depth charge lie in that odd middle ground where they don't feel like they don't belong with the maximals no matter how much their colleagues insist they do, but fight with them regardless. they have their different reasons for fighting, depth charge wanting to take revenge for omicron by killing rampage and dinobot's reasons slowly shifting over time as his priorities and the scope of his goals change. (i could make a whole post purely about dinobots development and goals changing as his arc progresses, alas this is about the both of them so i'll stop here.)

depth charge slowly starts coming to dinobot more and more as their pool of info on rampage expands with new battles with the predacon, though eventually they run into dead ends and reflect about their lives back on cybertron- something barely anyone on the axalon has time to do anymore with megatron growing increasingly aggressive. the two of them develop a very quiet romance together, talking late into the hours of the night. dinobot gets depth charge well and truly out of his cold shell, having allowed him to see through his obsession with rampage to the bots around him who care about him.

a few of the other maximals notice the change, of course. mainly primal, who gets in a comment or two about how depth charge seems to finally be moving on a bit from omicron, with pieces of his personality before rampage came into his life seeming to shine through occasionally.

they'd both be very standoffish about being affectionate around the other maximals, to the point where none of the others are truly aware how close they are. they're both sad old men who bottle everything aside from their anger up, and wouldn't fess up about their own feelings unless it was literally tortured out of them. this is particularly true for depth charge, as in the show he never really goes into detail on omicron, perhaps due to his guilt around being the only survivor.

the events of what depth charge saw on omicron after rampage's massacre were probably supposed to be expanded upon in the show, but depth charge probably didnt have any time dedicated to that because of how late into the show he was introduced. at least, that's how i imagine it to have gone considering other characters like tigerhawk who were nearly cut last minute but made it into the show for toy sales. either way the vagueness of what happened on omicron and how it effects depthcharge is truly up to interpretation by the fandom as i doubt we'll get anything close to an answer any time soon. as i imagine it, and lining up with how the show characterizes him, id like to think his survivors guilt makes it hard to talk about his own thoughts on omicron, though he's regurgitated the events of what happened enough for it to be ingrained in his brain module forever. (maybe ill write a whole ass post about this too who knows)

i think if depth charge had been around much earlier in the series and and had been allowed to build a relationship like this with dinobot in the 90s, code of hero would have made the most gut-wrenching angst ever, especially if rampage had had a much bigger impact on dinobot's death.

depth charge is there to see the only bot who'd gotten him to talk about omicron truthfully die, taking whatever thoughts and memories depth charge had shared with him to the last flicker of his spark without so much as a parting word about what depth charge had meant to him.

rampage- still functioning, of course, can practically see and feel the feast of emotion tearing through to the weakest flickers of the manta ray's spark, even blasted halfway across the valley where dinobot had made his last stand. these feelings were something he hadn't experienced since the first time he'd seen depth charge after omicron.

depth charge, a few cycles after code of hero and still reeling from the loss of dinobot, ends up in battle with rampage, his spark still aching and tinged with grief. Rampage, now the only one to know what dinobot had meant to him, is shamelessly gloating about having killed the *one* bot he'd been able to get close to after omicron, mocking depth charge just to see how it makes him tick.

despite all his anger, he comes back to the maximals seeming no more than merely frustrated at the fact he's yet again failed to kill rampage, though over time he begins to withdraw from the others, totally regressing back to where he had started as an uncooperative mess, utterly obsessed with killing the one person who's taken everything from him. its only when depth charge completely relapses into his obsession that dinobot's impact on him becomes well and truly obvious, but by the time that happens there's little any of them can do to stop him from completely self destructing. only he can do that for himself by killing rampage.

anyway now that i've given you all with a brief glimpse into my sick and twisted doomed yaoi mind i'll leave you with the tags