#but like i kind of get people relating to that i guess…

[cutekittenlady]

Darn you all. I'm just trying to finish the next chapter of Reviving a Wreck and then not only do you guys drop this killer update to a killer fanart but when I check the replies its filled with people begging for fic.

So whatever guess ol' Cutekittenlady's gotta do the lords work and, at bare minimum, give us a start.

Remember you guys asked for this.

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Ratchet had seen a lot of things over the course of the war. A lot too much in fact. Even now that the war was over, the decepticons were (supposedly) disbanded, and the reconstruction of cybertron was well underway there were nights when his systems would struggle to shift into recharge.

It was being medic.

All the bots he'd treated who'd never come back online. All the berthsides he would stand at that would be emptied and just as quickly filled again. The number of difficult conversations he'd had to have with spark siblings, sworn brothers, Amica, and even conjunx over all that time had given Ratchet a crusty surface.

His time on Earth had, well, maybe not softened him, but certainly given him a long needed refresher into the softer things in the universe. Arcee had once half-jokingly said that the earthlings had only scrapped off the thing layer of rust that hid the soft spark underneath. Ratchet had bristled at that, but not exactly outright refuted it.

Even so his reputation as a medic, his relations with the humans on earth, and his long hard won experience of being the bearer of rough news resulted in him even now getting some... interesting calls.

Though the most interesting yet had to be this call from Earth's government to come and "check out" something they'd found in their arctic ice.

Ratchet had braced himself for another relic. Or a decayed weapon from the war. Some ancient alien asteroid. Or, primus forbid, another stint involving Unicron.

What he wasn't expecting was for a familiar face to be staring out from him from the ice.

-------------------------------------------------

Skyfire was big.

Really big.

Frighteningly big to the small humans who had come across him.

Ratchet had scolded one or two of them before he reminded himself that it was only from personal experience that he knew what a gentle giant the ancient seeker actually was. That was why it had taken him forever to get the humans to agree to thaw him out once Ratchet had detected the traces of a spark signature in his system.

It was a long and grueling process.

Thawing him out too fast would risk causing fissures and other complications in his system, but once started they couldn't stop or else what little warmth they had start would fade away.

The only blessing in regards to all of this was that it gave Ratchet a bit of time to decide what he was going to say to the big guy once he actually woke up.

It would be too much to say the two had been friends. Colleagues was more accurate. Despite being a flight frame Skyfire had a keen mind and an almost endless thirst for knowledge. He'd fought hard to get what position he could as a scientist and remained diligent to keep said position.

He and Ratchet had rubbed elbows on the occassions when Skyfires research had required a medical mind or when a particularly difficult medical situation required a potentially innovative solution.

Ratchet eventually developed a healthy respect for Skyfire, and he had returned that respect in kind.

If Skyfires desires had been kept in checked it likely would have stayed that way.

Unfortunately they weren't.

Skyfire's desire to know more about the universe eventually proved his hubris.

Ratchet had heard, after not having seen the mech for years, that after being approved for a space expedition, Skyfire had left Cybertron only to never return. The remaining expedition had apparently returned without him. Reporting he had been lost on some far unnamed planet.

Apparently the "far unnamed planet" had been Earth and Skyfire had gotten himself frozen in one of their glaciers.

Now Skyfire was laying, mostly thawed, on a slab in front of Ratchet who was watching as his life vitals slowly came online. Even as his optics began to flicker to life, Ratchet was still having a hard time trying to come up with a comprehensive way to sum up the last, oh, four million years of Civil War.

-------------------------------------------

Skyfire handled the news rather well, Ratchet thought.

At least better than most in his position would have.

After all Skyfire was only sitting with his face buried in his hands and inaudibly weeping.

Ratchet had been at least partially prepared for a bigger mental breakdown involving a greater deal of violence. Even so he remained vigilant. A delayed reaction was always possible, One never knew.

Eventually after a few moments Skyfire raised his head.

"Wait, wait." He raised a hand gently hoping for attention.

"Yes?" Ratchet asked as gently as he could.

"Please, my conjunx..."

Ratchet sucked in air and braced himself. He could already get the general outline of where this was going.

"He was with me in the crash. Is he okay?"

Over the years of Civil War Ratchet had experienced many methods of addressing such question.

False hope. Gentle redirection. Immediate and abrupt departure.

In his experience there was really only one way for a proper disciplined medic to behave.

"I-I'm sorry." He spoke softly and as comfortingly as he could. "I-I'm sorry there was no one with you in the ice."

After all perhaps there was still some hope. Many of the unaffiliated bots had fled Cybertron at the incitement the war and subsequent death of their homeworld. It was still... possible for Skyfires conjunx to be amongst them. Even if they weren't exactly here there was still some hope.

"Oh, Primus... He's just a little seeker. He doesn't cope with the cold as well as me..."

Well so much for hope. The Seekers were pretty much gone. Even if this one had landed with Skyfire on Earth chances were high they hadn't survived.

"But he's alive! He has to be! He's the smartest bravest most brilliant mech I know. I have to contact him. He must be so worried."

Ratchet let the other finish. Allowed the silence to eek in between them. It was, in his experience, best to allow the patient or family member a moment to absorb their own feelings and collect their thoughts before properly giving the inevitable bad news.

Primus how many times had he had to deliver this bad news?

Too many to count.

A conjunx was a lifelong partner. A connection not easily formed or replaced. To lose someone so important to you on top of losing four million years of your life was not something he envied Skyfire of anyone.

Finally he could put it off no more.

"I hate to be the one to tell you this Skyfire." Ratchet closed his eyes with the weight of inevitability, not able to look at the others broken face, "But a lot has changed since you left Cybertron. The seekers are all but extinct."

"No..." The anguished cry and he once more buried his face in his hands broke Ratchet a little.

This was no hardened warrior losing someone on the battlefield or as a casuality on a mission. Skyfire was still, well, more or less a civilian. This suffering was unearned and undeserved.

Evidently whoever it was who had won Skyfires spark was clearly dear to him. Ratchet hoped they had gone quietly early on in the war and not been made into a casualty of brutal conquest, or forced into being one of Shockwaves brutal experiments, or forced to serve under under that wannabe dictator Star-

"No. Starscream." Skyfire called pitifully.

Ratchet snapped the datapad in his hand in half.

"Starscream... My little bird... My sweetspark."

Ratchet nearly hurled. The idea that anyone could call Starscream, Starscream, 'little bird' and not get mauled to death was insane. Even so he collected himself sucked in air through his nose and then said, trying to keep a straight face, "Okay."

He leaned down and looked Skyfire in the face.

"Do you want the good news? Or the bad news?

tfp autobutts gain a new recruit...

[v-arbellanaris]

veilguard, to me, is what happens when you place all of the systemic issues in your worldbuilding on the shoulders of one single individual. because guess what? these issues will never get resolved - killing loghain didnt magically solve slavery, killing meredith and orsino did not magically resolve mage/templar issues, killing corypheus did not bring about any real change, because they were never the fucking issue. they were ALWAYS products of their systems, a product of thousands of years of sociopolitical histories and constructs that have made them the persons that they are.

with dragon age in particular, there are SO MANY really important stories rooted in representations of systemic oppression, of deep religious conflicts, of racism and classism and colonialism... but the writing room itself has little diversity that reflects that. so you have people are writing about issues they've never really experienced, and there are no voices of anyone who might be able to give any kind of insight. and it shows bc their writing is always noticeably stronger when it comes to queer stories (again, with glaring flaws, but it's important to note!!) compared to their stories related to being. well. any other kind of minority - religious or ethnic.

their solution to the quantum, their solution to the "problematic" writing around different factions - like the qunari, like the dalish, like the mages - is to essentially stamp out anything that previously existed without discussing it in any detail (HOW DID THEY LEAVE OUT THE MAGE-TEMPLAR WAR WHEN DISCUSSING THE DAIRSMUID ANNULMENT? THE CODEX ENTRY YOU GET ABOUT IT ISN'T EVEN ABOUT THE DAIRSMUID CIRCLE ANNULMENT?!) and then just gaslighting you into going 'well thats just not true' or 'no THIS is how it is', or to replace it with EVEN WORSE racist caricatures, like in the case of the antaam.

bioware has shown that they CANNOT write follow up on the story they've put down - they're not capable of it. they don't have answers to the big questions they've posed in the story around ideas of social justice, of war/peace, of social cohesion vs progression, of legal rights vs morals, etc etc, and i feel like that's deeply linked to the politics of the team that produces dragon age, and to the politics of western, white liberals, which bioware's writing room is populated with.

over the last decade, they've written themselves into a corner. i've described the situation to my friends where i've said bioware has this tendency to write these big structural issues of power and systemic oppression only to then turn around and bottle all these issues down to A Single Bad Apple. people will talk around the situation and factions and their culpability for whatever went wrong but then at the end of the day, they pin the "blame" or responsibility on a singular character - anders, lord seeker lambert, lucius corrin, corypheus, samson, calpernia, hell idk fucking sahrnia's mayor. there's always a single individual person to blame for things going wrong, rather than an entire system that failed - and even the few chances you have to suggest that the system is an issue is met with the most bullheaded, aggressive disapproval, even if your own pc was ostensibly affected by those systems. mark darrah also mentioned the narrative shift, and so i suspect that placing the "blame" for thedas being the way it is at solas' feet, rather than allowing the chantry or orlais or tevinter or literally fucking ANY systems to be held accountable for their actions, reflects their own understanding of "high fantasy", where there's a simplistic black-and-white, good-and-evil, with-us-or-against-us paradigm.

what this inevitably ends up leading to is... what i describe as kishimoto-ing lmao. where you need a Bigger Bad to uproot your Last Big Bad. and as long as you defeat that Big Bad, all your world's troubles will be over... but then they still need to keep making video games, so GASP, the next big bad is responsible for everything that went wrong. BUT WAIT. there's an EVEN BIGGER bad behind that guy. AND ANOTHER BIGGERRRRRR BAD. and so and so forth, until you get to a situation like kaguya having engineered everything that went on over the last thousand years of ninja history for her own goals, except we've never even heard of her before, and she feels disconnected from the story and it's central themes. which is the case in point with that fucking last secret epilogue slide - a story that apparently is centered around decisions, and regret, and big stories around personal responsibilities we have to try and do the right thing, which is supported by the fact that the REAL antagonist of the game is someone secretly manipulating everyone else to do evil things. MAKE IT MAKE SOME FUCKING SENSE.

it sucks. it really sucks. it's a failure to engage with the themes of your own narrative. bioware put the topics on the table to discuss, and in the last second, simply do not have the courage to actually address it in any way that matters.

most of anyone who worked on any of the previous games is gone - we have new writers who... don't really care about dragon age. i don't think they've played the previous games - they don't seem to recognise characters from the previous installments, don't seem to understand the themes or narratives or characters from previous installments - and that lack of deep, real love for dragon age - which is where my criticism and disappointment comes from, because i wanted this to be more - shows. everything from the endings of the game, to the character dialogue, to the characterisations of reoccurring characters, to the lore drops, to the scrapping of all of the worldstate decisions and the quantum, to the marvel-esque soundtrack and weird companion opening reminiscent of a marvel title slide when opening the game... you can feel it.

and i'm sorry for it. i think we all deserved better than this.

[inchidentally]

hey new landoscar! (sorry tum mobile is being weird so I have to c&p into a new post)

so as per usual, Lando went straight to Max F for support and has been gaming w him - Max even made a little statement to chat and fans in general about how he just wanted Lando to totally forget the race and relax and be distracted:

🧵fray_f1

as far as Oscar, we truly do not get coverage or report of the downtime they spend together! we get mentions of it occasionally or if they're somewhere that other ppl take videos or photos then we see those. but Oscar is an intensely private person and his off-duty time with Lando is included in that.

we know they spent at least part of the night after the race in Vegas last year together and considering that Oscar basically couldn't sleep (he said he rarely can after races) and ended up scrolling a bunch of Lando-related content and left some likes/comments until the early hours - and with Lando being extremely groggy/weak/achy from his crash and hospital visit, a theory some of us have had is that the "shared commiserations" was possibly mutual support rotting in one of their hotel rooms. (side note, Oscar wasn't told until after doing press about the aftermath of Lando's crash.

so that's a solid precedent of them being able to help each other out with these disappointments, especially since Lando had not just Max F there at the same hotel but also Ria and Aarava. so it's not like Oscar was helping out in place of other friends!

but while it's anyone's guess how much or often they spend time together after these mixed/bad races, I do have to point out the group photo

where they omitted the board with Oscar's name and podium position, put Andrea in the middle with the trophy, arranged the Sprint plaques around them while Oscar sat off to the side so that everything looked equal between the two of them. like. whoever's idea that all was, what we saw from Oscar was extreEMELY mellow/subdued about that podium (just a few sad dribbles from his champagne bottle aslsalfjah) and made a hasty exit. even down to the very calm head pats and high fives of the little group from his garage in parc ferme. McLaren didn't force Lando into a post race video and did no real media at all - and all of this Oscar, as always, is happy willing and in some cases fully complicit in doing <3<3

tbh the fact that he's never made Lando or his relationship with Lando a part of his own personal PR (and vice versa) is all part of this easing up on the immense pressure placed on Lando's shoulders ever since McLaren's trajectory hit a sudden and rapid upward trend. the PR load placed on Lando has always been bordering on exploitative of him being a people-pleaser and the suggestion that he's this non-stop party person who is seen as up for any kind of media or publicity... when he simply is not. the little something we've all noticed (and some people are mad or upset about) since pre-season this year where Lando has a calm and self-preservation type reserve sometimes is him learning that an increase in status and success does NOT need to be paid for with giving away any more of himself than he does. Max F has been mirroring that a lot in their streams when he draws firm boundaries during his streams!

but back to today's post-race content: it's nothing to do with giving Lando special treatment, it's acknowledging - as Oscar himself said before they were even teammates- that expectations for Lando are set extraordinarily high and will remain so compared to Oscar for a very long time. and let's remember that Oscar doesn't have to be aware or considerate of any of that !! he could just do his own thing and expect to be treated as any driver would be after a podium! it would not be wrong to view his own career and performance and celebration as separate from his teammate's so long as he isn't rubbing it in or being inconsiderate!

but Lando is special and unique and the stakes for him remain higher for many reasons, not just fighting for second in the WDC! Oscar knows that! Oscar is a good person whose kindness and affection glows softly in the ways he is consistently considerate and knows when to not force something and to be a quiet observant presence who can give people space to determine what they need! it's why literally almost every race weekend has him supplying the word Lando needs or helping him with the GCSE knowledge Lando missed out on bc of being poached so young - and simply the way he stands that little bit behind during press and media and watches Lando rather than letting his gaze and mind wander.

and as someone who knew Max before knowing Lando, if what Lando needs is to escape everything McLaren and F1 related - even Oscar - and return to just being a mate who plays Tarkov, then we know Lando will never have to worry about what that might mean to Oscar or how it will affect him bc it won't. Lando needs to do what makes him feel safe and okay and I don't think it's reaching at all to say Oscar will have a good concept of what that is <3

[fuchsiasea]

the second hand embarrassment i get when reading the lyrics of any ts song 😮‍💨

[chirpsythismorning]

Watching Wayward Pines for potential ST5 inspo bc the Duffers wrote a couple episodes in s1, and when I got to their second (last) episode and their name crossed the screen, I noticed a visual parallel that might already exist on the show…

Recognize it??

It instantly reminded me of that last shot for the opening of s3, with the landscape peaking out behind the Russian base. But when I went back and actually compared the two, holy shit it’s near identical, and not just the landscape.

I didn’t even remember the helicopter being there on the left, not to mention the pillar-esaue contraption at the center. Like… they’re the same picture.!

With them being credited right at that moment, it’s obvious this was an intentional nod to their previous work.

I just thought it was cool so I wanted to share, but in terms of my watch overall, there is a LOT going on that they could pull from. I’m only halfway through s1, though I’ve heard the show goes downhill in s2 so we’ll see how that goes 😂

[naamahdarling]

.

[incesthemes]

hey girlie it’s me, sam winchesters gay lover, your mootie 🥰🥰🥰 i just wanted to let you know, that your tags on the post about that wincest video are based and i agree with every word, hashtag slay couldn’t agree more i loved reading your essay in those tags heart ❤️

omg thank you!!! i'm basically only capable of talking in essays whether people want me to or not, unfortunately

i just have a lot of feelings on this topic and the whole "canon or not canon" argument is weird to me; the themes are pretty darn clear in supernatural (it is NOT known for its subtlety) so idk man. they don't have to kiss to be canon. and they don't have to have a romantic relationship to be canon either. how many times do they get into relationships with other people only for it to be treated as cheating/betrayal/abandonment, only for them have to give up that relationship in order to reaffirm their devotion to their brother

that's just what the text says. i'm not under any kind of delusion that they have some secret sexual or romantic relationship, but that doesn't change that sam and dean are each other's most important person regardless of that. which is really awesome imo, that romance isn't treated as more important than whatever horrible thing they have with each other, and that they don't have to consummate their relationship with romance/sex in order for it to be the most important one they have

(and of course there's romantic/sexual subtext, like parallels and metaphors and misunderstandings and jokes, but to me that just provides a solid foundation for presenting this relationship between them as the most important even though it's not romantic or sexual—because this language of romance is the only one we know, really, when it comes to writing important relationships between characters. it's the only one we know in our own personal lives, to a large extent. so you use the romance/sexuality to symbolize the actual bond they have. which is so much worse lmao)

anyway i think spn is fairly unique in this way because of how no other relationships can really ever stand parallel to the one they share; even in other shows that center male friendship, romance is allowed to coexist with brotherhood. for sam and dean, it's not, and that becomes a point of tension and conflict and resolution many, many times over the course of the show. so like yeah!!! just because it's not romantic or sexual doesn't mean it's not canon, in the sense that their relationship is the point of the show, and it is the most important relationship they have. they chose each other above all else, every single time. yknow, it's "the epic love story of sam and dean" and all that

[goldenpinof]

.

[s1ithers]

wish i knew the forgotten realms lore better...how am i meant to make my little ocs in this state of ignorance

[anxiously-sidequesting]

To me personally malistaire is the funniest and most pathetic villain wizard101 has ever had AND I MEAN THAT SINCERELY!!! Between doomed children who have been manipulated, groomed, and isolated into becoming products of their environments, someone scorned who has been punished unfairly by having your biological heart torn out your chest and turning your children and all of reality against you to satiate their own ego, a nonhuman entity so powerful and so clueless they unintentionally threaten the lives of everyone around them, Malistaire FELL DOWN BRO. Like yeah you're bitchless now. You and me both. Get in line. Everyone in this room is bitchless. We are ALL living that ✨💅🏾💃🕺 Single Life™. You are a middle-aged man. Cope

[ikana-graveyard]

genuinely so put off by all and any form of romance at this point like... I just want money and free-time and to be alone

[m00ngbin]

I'm trying to pick a major that I would be the most interested in just because it would make my life so much easier and right now I have like three ideas and they all have a million problems

[sonknuxadow]

they werent lying that knuckles series barely has knuckles in it

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

it's like. everything happens so much. it's all happening right now but at the same time nothing is happening whatsoever. it's a liminal space of an existence. it's slowly crushing me under the weight but when I look up there's nothing actually bearing down on me. there shouldn't be any weight. something is wrong but nothing has happened. I'm simultaneously overwhelmed and utterly bored. nothing is happening and maybe that's the everything that's happening. maybe the everything is the nothing. we aren't there yet but it's all so imminent. either everything is going to crash down or nothing is. I'm just waiting to figure out which.

[samarecharm]

Cant believe they wont let me farm that fucking teddy bear

[theygender]

This has been on my mind for weeks and I talked to my therapist about it today and told my girlfriend about it too so now it's time for me to update the gay people in my phone: I may have schizotypal personality disorder