#The brainworms they're contagious

[graylinesspam]

Ahsoka spoilers

I know for a fucking fact that outer space dual with a squad of fighters was a fucking Skywalker plan.

That is the definition of Skywalker bullshit.

When I saw that scene I vividly imagined the role reversal with little 15/16 yo Ahsoka popping her head out from under a panel in a panic looking out the viewport to see if Anakin just died in an explosion only to see his dumb ass slowly floating away in a space suit like "Ahsoka, have you fixed the ship yet?"

I fully believe with my whole heart that happened.

I need fanart. Immediately. It's not a want. It's a need.

[localplaguenurse]

chex... i am so eepy but stricken with visions of neuvillette... truth be told i started writing a neuvi fic while i was on vacation and augh i cannot stop thinking of the Scenes™... of gentle neuvillette, draping a blanket over your shoulders because you fell asleep on one of the sofas in his office,, making you coffee when you wake up... of kissing his forehead and suddenly the clouds both metaphorical and literal disperse. neuvillette, neuvillette, neuvillette!!! neuvillette brain disease

I diagnose you with brainworms. They're fatal. And also contagious apparently because hhhhhhhhhhh too soft for the soullllll. I am not immune to men voiced by Ray Chase.

[muzzlemouths]

@doofnoof activated my brainworms so I'm making sure they're contagious by showing all of you too

[landwriter]

For the fic ask: 1, 6 and 13 if you haven't answered them already! For Oaths, my most beloved fic with the best setting and premise and gorgeous writing ✨ thank you!

Ahhh you're making me blush!! Thank you Haz!

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way? 'This way' could have a lot of connotations here, i.e. 'insane', 'with too much apple research', 'given to sporadic bouts of verse' -- but I think the answer for all of them is sort of the same:

I got brainworms over Tam Lin + Dreamling, which were blessedly contagious and caught by @that-banhus, who did And Ask Not Leave Of Any (read it! it's SO good!!). Those brainworms plus that Brand New To Fandom Energy plus having just (entirely unintentionally) been in that part of the world a couple months prior, and listened to approximately 20 hours of the Stories of Scotland podcast whilst driving around said part of the world -- including a history of Border Reivers -- left me frankly no other choice but to be super extra about it all and decide to myself that I would try and do a Tam Lin x historic Borders retelling that was Poetic And True And Beautiful. By then I was already innoculated with the gateway drug of Middle English from works like @moorishflower's gorgeous Maybe sprout wings, so I had also become aware that a) I loved stories that borrowed from older language, and b) there's actually fabulous dictionaries out there that will let you find said words and when they're from and how they were used. Which is to say: when I started Oaths, I don't think I was capable of writing in any other way.

It was really just this like, perfect storm of thirst for research, existing knowledge, energy and time, and some slightly unhinged convictions about making it Feel Real. Wiser people than me have advised that it's generally helpful to not be precious about ideas, but the fact I was just hopelessly, helplessly fuckin' precious about it undeniably shaped how I wrote Oaths.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics? Oh thank god, I've answered that above, I think, so this doesn't have to be TOO long hahaha. Just the sheer level of madness, geographic and historic detail, verse, etc. Also maybe something that's not in any of my other fics: describing my absolutely gut-aching love for land. One of my favourite compliments is that it's got a sense of place as a story, because it does, and I want it to be FELT. I want to evoke emotions not just from relationship angst or tender friendships, but from descriptions of landscape and how we move among it. I want everyone else to feel BODIED by a sunrise or a walk in the woods in early spring. I'm insane about it, in truth. There's lines in Chapter 2 taken directly from my journal when I was traveling in Scotland earlier that summer hahaha.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading? While I don't listen to music while writing, I actually DID make a playlist (first and only time I've done so) for the mood of it; it's a lot of folk song, ballad, and oral histories from both English and Scottish sides of the borders. I would also be remiss not to mention @mathomhouse-e's INCREDIBLE and beautiful Oaths playlist. There's some songs on there I think I listened to like 20 times in a row while editing scenes!

(behind-the-scenes fic asks)

[shirajellyfish]

i blame ur fanfic for making me love the song ''absentee'' aa lol

listened to it so many times now, one of my fav chaptors ngl!

That makes me so happy to hear! Infecting you with the music brainworms. They're contagious.

It's a great song, and the fact that the guy who made it gives it (and another great song, What it Takes) away for free is a big plus.

[transingthoseformers]

Ik we've got the personality ticks and rust (would rust from cybertron count as a fungus like parasite? I've seen the term rust infections before that are contagious so there's that), but the way you're right

We need more cybertronian parasites. A cybertronian equivalent of a tapeworm would be so interesting because it means the eggs/larvae/source would have to be ingested and stick around in the fuel tanks. Which, honestly? Typically would be a lot harder to clear, so I think fuel tank worms would be a fairly serious issue. Naturally because they're cybertronians, these fuel tank worms (mechano-tapeworms? Cyberworms?) would be able to grow much, much longer.

You can argue some parasites would live in the actual energon lines and can easily be spread by energon(blood) getting into another mech's system. I can see there being parasites that function more like ticks that grow root like structures into the protoflesh or plating of a transformer (honestly it'd be such a task to remove them if they're attached to the actual protoflesh as typically that's in hard to reach places and you can't just scrape them off. This does follow the cybertronian fungus idea, mayhaps

I'm reminded yet again of the personality ticks, but specifically the one we see in rid15 which has much more control over his host (Grimlock) than the mtmte ones did. I am reminded of the term brainworms and how tapeworms can accidentally their way into your brain, and it'd be so horrifying if it also brought along a worm as in the computer virus with it.

With mind control often being very, very literal in Transformers, I'm reminded of mnemosurgery and well wouldn't it be horrifying if a wayward biologist were to join the institute and engineer a physical but small parasite that can absolutely rewrite you remotely.

I wonder if there are any cybertronian wildlife that isn't quite as mechanical as say the transformers, mechanimals, or the scraplets.

Like, we see an energon eater in rescue bots but I wouldn't say that's cybertronian wildlife, rather an extroplanetary organism finding energon in the vacuum of space (somehow?????)