#cog creates

[vaunted-and-vilified]

poor aiglamene

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[tongues--and--teeth]

Post-War Golden Cheese and Dark Cacao my beloveds <3

[themagicalghost]

When I first fought the Prethinker I forgot that the Desk Jockeys were used in the tutorial and thought that he created them himself like some sort of mad scientist

[loversys-x3]

Yolopark's B-127 arrived today. I don't have a spot on my shelf for him or anything like that. His panels are a pain in my ass when I pose him. And the fact the faceplate was screwed in caused me some grief. But overall, he's a really cute and accurate depiction of Bee from Transformers One.

[ghostinthetumbchine]

thinking today about all the fatherless and motherless characters in tolkien legendarium. about how the first of all species did not have parents. how tolkien specifies that though there are fundamental differences between ainur, eldar, dwarves and men, psychologically they all function in a similiar way.

thinking on how it must feel to wake up, parentless, and then watch all the next generation with their families and wonder what it is like to have that safe haven - even if they die or are separated, you know someone was there, that there is someone you can relate to or hold onto.

[ariadne-mouse]

I love the tranquil, haunting music in Scavengers Reign that sometimes plays even when there is something scary or combative going on. The planet is just being the planet, creatures being creatures, circle of life etc. It's almost scarier when the whole environment is just telling you this is normal, this is fine. We're already playing your soft outtro, thanks for playing your part in the ecosystem. You might be an interloper here, but don't worry, a decay-loving flower will bloom from your corpse all the same.

[eegasleega-will-change-this-l8r]

-OUR FOUNDER-

⚙ THE CHAIRMAN ⚙ OF COGS INCORPORATED EST. 2003 ---------------------------------

So I've never talked about this on here before, but Toontown was one of my absolute FAVORITE games as a kid (despite never having membership so being locked out of 99% of the actual game jlkjfsakj) Like it was absolutely formative for me, I drew the cogs a bajillion times and they inspired a ton of my own stuff later on (and still absolutely do) Then the game closed and Rewritten came out so I could actually play the whole game for the first time (haven't gotten anywhere close to getting to the end though) To this day I have an on again off again interest where once or twice a year I'll suddenly get absolutely smitten with it again haha

So, if you're also into Toontown, you'll obviously be familiar with the mysterious, unseen overarching villain The Chairman This is my own take on his design that I came up with a few years back ^^

We don't have much to go off of from the original game for what the Chairman might've been like, so I had a couple of different inspirations

Obviously the giant head in the Sellbot Factory, since those old Chairman pics with that head pasted onto a cog body were absolutely what I was most exposed to as a kid, but it's also not a 1:1 lift

In some of my earliest sketches trying to come up with the ideal design I tried making him look like he had the giant robot from the old installer video underneath his suit, so he had like lanky, cartoonish proportions, toonier hands, etc It looked really bad though and I couldn't do what I wanted with the head since it would've had to fit over the shorter, wider robot head, so I just ended up scrapping it (i do take some inspiration from the video for my vision of Toontown's story, but i've just scrapped the robot entirely) Oh I also gave him the eyes from the Field Office since I thought that could be neat, but it looked out of place so I simplified them to what he has now (they're still stylistically similar to the eyes on regular cog buildings, so i don't think i'm really losing any of the meaning behind them at least)

By far the biggest inspiration was when the FY11 plans got released

Holy FUDGE did this blow my mind when I saw it for the first time All those years as a kid of the Chairman not even being ACKNOWLEDGED except by the CEO's final words and a couple odd references in obscure magazines and whatever Desperately speculating and grasping onto all those tiny pieces of some mysterious, horrifically evil entity behind everything And then this??? This awesome, ominous silhouette?? Plans for something huge??? Seeing it is what drove me to go and draw him in the first place, it still gives me chills just looking at it

So yeah, I wanted mine to have that same aura of cold evil, that striking silhouette, while also having a bit more character to him Like most cogs are frozen in the same screwed up scowl, where there's not much room for expression If I could, like, make an actual model for him, I'd want him to have the same sort of capacity for different expressions as the toons have (even some you wouldn't expect from the head of the cogs)

He's ruthless, calculating, doing everything he can to maximize the profits and efficiency of Cogs Inc and expand their operations to the entirety of Toontown, with no regard for ethical business practices or the wishes of the people he plans to subjugate (But does it work? Is he happy?)

I'm absolutely gonna do an analysis of the cogs as a whole at some point (as long as my interest doesn't plummet for a little while longer), there's a ton of stuff I wanna get into about my interpretation of them as villains because oh my god I love them so much

OTHER STUFF - He's not as massive as the other boss cogs, but he's still absolutely huge (iirc the highest level cogs are all canonically like 8ft?? and he's got a LOT of height on them) - He's drinking oil in the pencil drawing - I happened to watch this video where one guy talked about the way the villain in Tarzan held a glass of wine and how it left a huge impression on him, so I just arbitrarily decided to emulate it in my drawing XD - Oh yeah a big reason for the main drawing in the post was that I really felt like I was getting too attached to a single style in my digital stuff (literally just using the same default pen tool for everything, never changing the size), so I wanted to force myself to try something new - I drew the frame myself, just kinda winged it so it's. not as good as it could be but it works fine I think

[timeclipsed]

Taking the bait. What's the beef with the Freedom Fighters?

❝Ugh. The Freedom Fighters.❞

— ;; INFLECTION DRIPPING WITH VENOMOUS DISGUST at the very mention of the spirited group, Chronos' expression sours into one of unabashed hatred.

❝Where do you want me to start? Better yet— what do you want me to say? Should I talk about how they treated me as an accomplice to Robotnik's terror when I refused to let them destroy the Time Twirler? Or how about the way they tried me for accessory to terrorism? As an adult? Should I mention how the judge on that case was that Rotor bastard's uncle?❞

❝They locked me up in a maximum security prison with hardened adult criminals. I took a beating every single day in some of those places until I managed to escape on my own. And this didn't happen in just one universe, either. Three times. By three different groups of Freedom Fighters, I was treated like criminal scum. Like trash beneath their feet. They didn't care about what happened to me. Every time I was forced to live through that.❞

❝And what they did to the only person who defended me... what they did to Gambit... it still makes me sick to my stomach thinking about it.❞

[givingblood]

I truly wish Vi was the one to fight Ambessa.

There is just something so satisfying to see two strong women like Vi and Ambessa duke it out, both grew up in hard circumstances, equal on the battlefield, fighting blood sweat and steel and having VI be the one to land the winning blow. Ambessa would die with honor, bested by someone who met her Noxian principles and (imo) more. Vi who knows nothing but sacrifice and despite that still chooses her family to be the one to put Ambessa down.

It could so easily tie into Vi's character, it would uplift her because she got her win, she maintains her principles, her selflessness isnt portrayed as a weakness (FOR ONCE) and she can finally have a spot on the mural next to Jinx as a savior not just for Zaun but for Piltover.

Vi is the person to bridge the conflict, the most nuanced beautiful person in the show gets the respect she deserves. It would go so nicely in hand with Ekko being the one to disrupt Viktor and Jayce.

I know this leaves Caitlyn and Mel not tied up, but I truly think (at least for Caitlyn) Caitlyn's arc finished when she chose to step away from Ambessa, chose to stand on her principles, walk away from her hatred and grief and allow Vi to let Jinx go and stand by Vi in her decision to do so. (I am of the unpopular opinion that Powder choosing to be Jinx at the end of s1 was the conclusion of her arc as a character and this season would see her become the fully realized version of herself in the game, just chaos with no direction, but an evident soft spot for her sister. Sometimes a good character doesn't have a redemption and it makes her more interesting of a player in s2, like hell, make Jinx fight in the final battle for the sheer 'fun' of causing havoc)

Mel's arc was absolutely terrible, the Black Rose was garbage and It takes me out seeing it. Mel was the brain and the politician, I really think she should have bested Ambessa with her mind, not her magical powers (uno ... ambessa shitting on mages the whole show due to their 'absent accountability)

I know i'm hard focusing my lil 'what could have been' on Ambessa, but I really think she could have and should have been the BIG BAD this season, she is a Noxian general, she was seamlessly added to the cast in S1 and her and her army were so intimidating. Having Noxus be a huge overhanging threat while trying to maintain the conflict in Piltover/Zaun...man, we could have just had SO much juice. Mel outmaneuvering Ambessa, choosing to never be a wolf because as Viktor says in S1 'there is ALWAYS a choice' and Mel should choose to forge her own path. Caitlyn being seduced by the wolf but having a come to Jesus moment and realizing she's being played by (i dunno) going back to the memorial and using her detective skills to find foul play, have her use that sniper eye to unravel Ambessa's lies, give Mel the evidence and have the War be instigated on Ambessa's failing as a FOX.

and then have her fall on the battlefield to Vi, the best most idealized version of a wolf.

[vaunted-and-vilified]

John 1:20

this started as a much bigger idea but three days of sketching in i realized my brain-eyes were bigger than my hand-stomach could manage. i probably still couldve taken it further than i did but i think im still happy with what ive got for two and a half weeks worth of working on it.

also full disclosure the shot of johns politician puppet is almost entirely lifted from a photo of a white house meeting room (mirrored and with some people left out) and i straight up traced the city of melbourne from a stock photo because at that point i was afraid that if i didn't take some pretty extreme shortcuts id never get past it and id lose all my work up to that point. the original intent was for both images to show up for a second or less in an amv or an animatic or whatever were calling them these days so it would probably have felt like less of a big deal. so like, sorry to the original photographers for jacking your shit but also thank you for your service o7

[nanowatzophina]

:( trying to figure out choice script is hard…

[shieldsurf]

kind of insane that gaza is like completely scorched earth fucked right now literally post apocalyptic mass graves everywhere 80% of urban areas reduced to nothing but rubble and meanwhile israel is excitedly announcing their newest shake shack location

[eyepatchdate]

sorry about the continuing spammage.  i knew this would happen as soon as i started replaying arkham. sometimes i just need to get really into arkham knight again.  its mandatory.  jason todd‘s story in that game has imprinted in my brain since 2016.  every once in awhile i have to replay it

[starfiyah]

i finally watched transformers one and it was everything i knew it would be fuck i love those funky robots so much

[sparky-the-springbot]

"Sparky, what's your favorite genre of music? Do you have a top 3?" -saiiidmaybe (Hello!!)

Oh, it’s so hard to pick a favorite genre! Especially since I have a hard time telling what genre a song is…

If I had to choose a top three, I guess it would have to be rock, folk, and pop! Pretty basic, I know, but I think I tend to think about the artist more than the genre.