#cog talk

[crystaloregarden]

behold: what happens if you make @boigameista 's frog pattern when you 1) have never sewn a plush before and 2) didn't read the instructions because you sewed it while watching a stream with your partner

my server has named him "the boppie" and he is now an emoji that shot to the most frequently used tab in mere minutes

Long live the boppie

[animesickos]

The Sickos remembered that we have a form we shared a long time ago where people can submit horror stories from their workplaces, and we finally read some of them! Then, we discuss if Joe should get a Vespa so he can fit in with all the Italian guys.

Submit your own cog tales here, perhaps we'll remember to read them one day: https://forms.gle/aBFBueBAGQr4xtcx6

[crystaloregarden]

hey op I'll trade you that thing for one of my boppies

(I have several more of them because I turned out to just love sewing them like that lol)

i followed a sewing pattern that didn't have any irl finished pics of it, and the whole time i was like 'yknow this doesn't seem like it'll work very well, but i'm the novice so i guess i should follow the pattern' and well.

[vivianvixen]

The two extremes of looking up used books on Amazon:

amazon.com: math textbook from 2005, ten thousand dollars

amazon.co.uk: original Gutenberg bible, three quid

[songinabottle]

I tried to switch my calendar/s to start with Monday because, "Yeah, I guess it does make more sense." But then my clever brain rebelled. It said if my calendar starts on SUNDAY, it looks like I don't have two days in a row off. But in practice? Oh ho! I've tricked them now!

For unnecessary context: I live in the USA (on Shawnee land), and I coordinate a lot of calendars for M-F/9-5 work reasons. Even if those aren't always my hours.

[yuukirita]

wow- Did Optimus Prime know Pre-Empurata Bee?????? or maybe He knew OF him? I wonder what Bee did to deserve Empurata? C:

[crystaloregarden]

Us too us too!!!

(location is east TN!)

Wildflower season is here!!

I love spring 🥰

[paper-lilypie]

something something gaining perspective

[olive-man]

early years

and more stuff down here

just doodles, and a very stressed out me. thought this was a perfect time to post since i’m actually going back to school tomorrow for my last semester of high school lol. happy late new years btw (oh and brony headcanon i got from @bonkerbuster69 . you are cooooollll)

[witchlingcirce]

I don’t think we talk about Isabelle Lightwood literally ripped Sebastian Morgensterns hand off.

and the fact that his wrist is still SCARRED.

Everyone say thank you Isabelle !

[crystaloregarden]

made a visual bingo sheet for doing @batmanisagatewaydrug 's 2025 book bingo since my memory is a lot better with images + I'm not a person who remembers or pays a lot of mind to genres so I'd just forget anyhow B)

also, a few of my friends and i are doing this book bingo together in my server, if any of my moots want to join in!

book titles & my reason for choosing them under the cut:

Literary Fiction: If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio (blind pick from storygraph)

Short Story Collection: The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl - Roald Dahl (roald dahl is on this list already so i figured i'd read some of his other stuff, too!)

Sequel: Two Hearts & The Way Home - Peter S. Beagle (sequels-ish to the last unicorn which is one of my top fav pieces of media of all time I NEEEED THESE)

Reread a childhood favorite: Matilda - Roald Dahl (LOVE THIS BOOK & MOVIE SO MUCH!!!)

20th century speculative fiction: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin (i've been trying and failing to read Wizard of Earthsea due to lack of time + its juvenile tone so hoping i can find something i like in this book instead!)

Fantasy: Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao (been on my TBR forever and finally have an excuse to prioritize it)

Published before 1950: The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux (ALSO been on my TBR forever, attempted to read it once via audiobook but the audiobook reader was so bad at reading that i had to put it down. hopefully my library has a print copy!!)

Indie Publisher: Those We Do Not See - Angie Gallion (looked on the list that the tumblr post recommended, ended up at red adept publishing and blind picked)

Graphic Novel/Comic Book/Manga: Dragon Quest - Adventure of Dai (recommended to me by luca! he first recommended dragonball to me and i had to decline because that's is SO many chapters FHSJDFKL)

Animal on the Cover: The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World - Robin Wall Kimmerer (obsessed with all of kimmerer's works and need to read them all NOOOWWWWWW)

Set in a Country You Have Never Visited: The Fox Wife - Yangsze Choo (this was recommended to me right before i left kansas by the person who did my hair so it's only been on my TBR a short while, but i'm always super eager to read books that were personally recommended to me!!)

Science Fiction: Time Shards - David Fitzgerald, Dana Fredsti (was on my TBR in storygraph, i don't remember adding this so it might as well be a blind pick FHKSJDHF)

2025 Debut Author: The Woman In The Wallpaper - Lora Jones (blind pick!)

Memoir: Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy - Charles Busch (recommended to me by my coworker at my old job who was an elderly gay man who spent his life in theatre, extra excited to read this one!!)

Essay Collection: Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 - Nick Land (on my storygraph TBR, i think i saw some quotes from a tumblr post and added it?? i THINK)

2024 Award Winner: Dance with Me - Georgia Beers (blind picked from the Lambda Literary Awards since they focus on LGBT+ works!)

Nonfiction: Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair - Sarah Schulman (recommendation from a tumblr account i follow for book recs on activism and mental health)

Activism/SJ: Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights - Molly Smith, Juno Mac (same as above!)

Romance Novel: Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami (was on my storygraph TBR)

Horror: Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer (i am vaguely aware that the movie version of this book is dogshit and i've heard the book is LEAGUES better so i want to take a peek for myself)

Published in 2000-2009: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them - Francine Prose (ohhh i added this to my tbr recently-ish but i don't remember where i found it, i am SUPER interested in this though as both a writer and an avid reader!)

Historical Fiction: Babel - R.F. Kuang (blind pic, partially influenced by the fact that luca brings up the tower of babel so often that we have a spiritual "mentioning tower of babel" jar in place)

all i need now is the library rec (i'll be moving in walking distance from a library in a couple weeks), the read & make a zine (i'll poke around archive.org to find some interesting ones & potentially want to make one myself about my old cat who passed) and read & make a recipe (i cook at home rather than eat out most of the time so this is gonna happen prolly within like a week of 2025 anyways)

[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.

[addisong]

Forever defending Jonathan Morgenstern until the day I die. That boy was not wicked from the start. He wasn’t predisposed to evil. Valentine made him that way. He was literally raised being told that he was a monster and no one could ever love him. No shit he believed and embraced it! Anybody would if that’s all you were ever taught! 

If Jocelyn or literally any other decent human being had raised him, Jonathan would’ve been just like anyone else. The fact that he had demon blood would probably still do a number on his psyche (for obvious reasons), but it wouldn’t have had such a significant impact if he’d been raised with the free will to CHOOSE rather than being told he could never be anything but a horrible person who does horrible things. Not to mention, if there’d been people in his life other than Valentine (like…oh, I don’t know…a sister…or a mother….or a friend…perhaps all three??), they could’ve helped him through it and reminded him that he wasn’t a monster or any of that.

And also, just so we’re all clear on this - Jonathan would’ve absolutely hated Valentine if hadn’t been the only person to ever “love” him.

[ewwww-what]

Talking about cogs and gears and such.

[vivianvixen]

A big part of my job involves encountering various books of esoterica, often by people who claim to be in contact with aliens or angels or the spirits of the dead, and without fail they're all like "and they want to teach us how to move on to a higher spiritual existence of peace and love!"

Come on, be original! Be the first person to write about how the angels/aliens/ancestors want us to ascend to a plane of suffering and endless psychic warfare with powerful mind blasts and swords of astral light.

[crystaloregarden]

bro was shirtless picking the tomatoes

he WHAT [was paying too much attention to the fact there were so many raviolis in bigger raviolis]