#flipsides tf

[netdraws]

girls who are soooo nice and trustworthy

[knight-a3]

I loved the idea of Rumble and Frenzy being similar to tfa Soundwave's toy form. But with more expression options. They're so small compared to my OC Smokestack. They fit in his cab.

More words under the cut

I understand the whole who is who debate, but I went with Rumble is Blue and Frenzy is Red, because that's how it was in the English G1 show and it feels right to me. K? K. Either way, they're both idiots and I love them.

Then I added Blaster cuz I can. I didn't want him to have an alt too similar to tfa Soundwave, so I made him a news van. Funny enough, I wasn't aware he was a news reporter in one of the various iterations until I skimmed over his wiki later. He likes rock n roll.

His cassettes are Rosanna, Flipsides, Steeljaw, and Ramhorn. Currently contemplating a way to include Rewind and Eject that doesn't seem like too much. I'm wondering if it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to rename Rosanna to Rewind for streamlining purposes. Then Eject can either be renamed to Playback because I like that name better, or Bolts because Eject and Rewind were originally going to be one bot named Bolts. He likes sports and making sports references.

[clownswithshoes]

The “has no story relevance in the fan continuity but the artist thought they were cool so they drew them anyway” gang

[pinkavtomation]

Sona stuff

[raidensharkgun]

went to see transformers one a few hours ago and OH MY GOSH IT WAS AMAZING! ABSOLUTELY PEAKED TRANSFORMERS EVER!

ehem... sorry. so yeah I'll give this movie a 9.9 out of 10

[transingthoseformers]

Yes, I'm working on the tfp au reference for Rung, but: in this, he's considered an unaffiliated neutral medic. You can argue up and down about whether a psychiatrist is a doctor or not, but I'll always consider them doctors of the mind. He's lightly hired, but a nice portion of him agreeing to work in tandem with the Nemesis is hope and curiosity. Soundwave and Knockout are expecting a medic who's shitty at his job and can't get work elsewhere (which is wrong, and they're gonna be pleasantly surprised)

What they don't know is that Rung is a minor deity of sorts, of what i mentioned above: a god of the mind. This is where his amnestic qualities originate: best if he does his job, and leave his patients with little more than the beneficial effects. Slip in, do your job, slip out, and you can avoid the questions about you knocking on the door.

[shootstyleheroine]

Izumi dreads Valentine's Day (and by extention White Day) without fail every year because of awful experiences she's had. Guaranteed days she would even go as far as to feign illness to avoid

[callmearcturus]

oh my gd that would be INCREDIBLE- the character building alone would be Fantastic, but fitting ethan and benji into a world where mutants are a thing??? i want to se how they each navigate that social strata, how ethan might try to use his mutation to disguise himself more, and how benji relates to his mutation (does he know? is it coincidence? is he just the luckiest sombitch alive?). anyway im in neither of these fandoms but i have been adoring your writing and now yearn for this fic.

oh lmao punct gave me the thumbs up to share a bit of what if mission impossible/x-men fusion

we have been watching the good xmen movies and obvsly were like "okay what would the mutations of the IMF team be" if this were an AU where they were, like, International Mutant Force or something less stupid

(well nothing is as stupid as Impossible Mission Force so--)

anyway right away: Ethan is a telepath, but we're kind of obsessed with telepathy as a power but also a disability that has to be constantly managed and accounted for. so:

Ethan is not an omega-level mutant like Charles Xavier or Jean Grey, but he's pretty powerful. His telepathy is tangled up in the way he falls a little in love with everyone he meets and is categorically unwilling to accept collateral damage on a mission. He finds it astonishingly easy to let his mind drape gossamer connections to everyone in his vicinity and is buoyed by the feelings he picks up on.

On the flipside: he is absolute dogshit at untangling himself, and it takes much longer for him, like fighting against some innate nature of his mutation. One way this manifests is sleeping; if Ethan is alone and sleeps, his unconscious mind will just drape over everyone in the vicinity and he has to untangle that for a while when he wakes. One way of dealing with this: early on, he asks Luther if he can hitch a ride in Luther's mind as he sleeps, so his telepathy will octopus around Luther while he sleeps, and it's much easier to untangle that in the morning.

On the scale of What Is He Capable Of: Covertly skim through minds for specific information: max one or two people at a time if he wants to keep hidden. any more and he can't be sneaky about it. Converse with people telepathically: 4 to 8, any more and his coherence frays badly Broadcast to people around him (maybe to alert to danger): CANNOT do so subtly, has been pushing this over the years from 20ish to double that to even more, but as he pushes himself more and more, he's more likely to just pass tf out or get a nosebleed Range?: The longer he's connected to someone's mind, the further away they can be and still be in Ethan's reach. Luther could be on the other side of the world and if Ethan really focuses, he can transmit an image or emotion or 'hey i'm alive.' Nothing beyond that but still.

Speaking of Luther, his mutation is extremely high perception of electricity and sonic fields. This manifests in several ways:

Luther can tell when something is powering on, can feel devices and machines around him and has an affinity for them, able to read them via touch or from hearing them when power is moving.

As he gets older and more honed in his work, he can grip a cable and get a sense of where the data is going/coming from, tracing things. The data moving through the air is tangible to him. He's a beast against any and all security systems, able to just feel where motion sensors and cameras are.

I think maybe he can learn to hold and redirect energy over time. He's never going to have lightning powers, but I can imagine him placing a hand on a wall outlet and pushing and shorting out a specific device in the room with an overcharge. But primarily, his power is observational.

BOY it has downsides. Luther is constantly struggling with overstimulation, and because it's not exactly sound or light, it's energy he can ambiently detect, he struggles a lot with controlling it and avoiding getting overwhelmed. Once he and Ethan are buddies, Ethan tends to just hitchhike in Luther's mind. When they're off the clock, he'll filter out all the extra stimulus. When they're on a mission, Ethan helps Luther cut out the superfluous information and humming energy so he can narrow in on what he's working on.

Those people who have Smart Houses where every device is somehow connected to wifi, Luther hates them so much. Just SO much. The proliferation of Google Homes and Connect With Alexa shit is going to turn him into a terrorist someday.

okay so Benji. lmao. here's where shit gets wild.

the thing about Benji is he doesn't know he has a mutation until he's an adult and working in the IMF as support analyst and tech. sure there's been some odd moments in his life. when he was a kid, he was in a car crash and somehow wound up outside the car and fine. and once he was riding a bike through his village and accidentally went down a hill, but managed to land the bike instead of winding up in a crumpled pile of limbs at the bottom. but maybe he was got lucky!

then an actual threat happens at the IMF and a gun goes off at Benji, and the world slows to a crawl. he can just... step out of the way, and the bullet eases by him. turns out, Benji sets off-- okay. it's either a time dilation effect or its superspeed. both are functionally the same, and i think the effect is undetectable to other people so no one knows for sure. but it only happens when Benji perceives himself to be in a life-or-death instance.

he also can give it to people by touch. if Benji's panic switch goes off, he can grab another person and move them and they'll perceive the same dilation he does. the IMF is overjoyed because this is extremely exploitable, and Benji gets rushed into the field because if a mission goes tits up, just shoot at Agent Dunn and he can cheat time.

Eventually, Benji gets assigned to work with Ethan bc the handlers figure Ethan is a telepath, he can just reach into Benji's mind and give him a shock and make him think he's about to die. Isn't that so much nicer than just shooting at him? But Ethan is a fucking telepath and clearly sees the extreme stress all of this has put Benji through. He never sets off the panic switch and more often uses his telepathy to soothe Benji's nerves than anything. Like with Luther, Ethan rides-along in Benji's head a lot.

This throws a wrench into Rogue Nation obvsly because Ethan hears "the IMF has been absorbed by the CIA" and he does not wait 6 months to reach out to the guy who can fuck with time if you threaten his life. because of course the fucking CIA starts experimenting, seeing how they can reliably set the panic switch off. they come up with a device like an epi-pen that can be used to basically give Benji an almost-heart attack but then Ethan breaks Benji tf out of Langley's grasp and tows him across the globe bc no one else can be trusted not to traumatize the shit out of Benji.

As Benji gets older and more adept at his power, he discovers a side-effect of Ethan being tied to his mind more often than not; Benji starts 'going off' when Ethan is in peril. ETHAN IS NOT AMUSED BY THIS because he risks his life all the time and now Benji's going off because of that where it gets tres interesting is that Benji has spent so long talking telepathically, he knows how to direct a thought at Ethan to get his attention (as does everyone who works with Ethan more than a few times). and if he telepathically taps on Ethan, he can pull Ethan into the dilation, even if they aren't touching. it's kind of all Ethan's fault; he's the clingiest telepath ever, and having accumulated years of connection to Benji has just urged Benji's mutation to expand in that direction.

anyway that's that

WE ALSO HAVE BEEN DELIBERATING ILSA POWERS, mostly along the lines of mimicry

one of the ideas I super liked was Ilsa being a power-mimic but she doesn't luck into innate understanding of how a power works, so it's very dangerous for her to borrow someone's power. like, an example we were kicking around was Ilsa accidentally picking up on Ethan's power and, not understanding how his telepathy grabs ahold of people, she accidentally ties her mind and Ethan's together the moment she gets his power, and they're Stuck for a while because Ethan can't untangle her knot and she is figuring out how tf it even works. it's a nightmare.

another idea was the Rogue Powerset, touch-based connection with its own pitfalls. Ilsa able to subtly touch a human and glean some information from them, but she has very little control over what info she gets. and once she touches them, they black out a bit, losing about a minute of time, which is just long enough for her to get out of there. but if she bumps into a mutant, she gets their power for a while instead, and it's messy and awkward and well, she wears long sleeves and gloves a lot is what I'm saying.

and Punct liked how Ilsa might self-select into spycraft because she needs to learn all these skills to protect herself, so she follows the career path and just keeps her power very very quiet, only using it when it's too useful to avoid. or on accident. for instance: when she meets Ethan and Ethan hurls himself into the fight and she touches his skin, Ilsa gets the telepathy juice. while Ethan is dazed from the contact, Ilsa uses the telepathy to sneak him out the back tunnel, then makes the other Syndicate members trust her so her cover isn't blown.

we also came up with a VERY FUN ONE for Grace, which is matter teleportation. Grace cannot teleport herself, but she can move things around when she focuses on them. There's huge limits on this:

smaller items are easier than larger, lighter is easier than heavier.

she doesn't have to see the object to move it but she does need to know about it pretty thoroughly and have a strong idea of its shape and the space its taking up.

example: if you set a closed, empty box in front of grace and told her there's a snowglobe inside, she could try to retrieve it, but it won't work (obvsly, it's empty) and she won't know why and might keep trying to 'grab' the object.

this would make her and Ethan extremely potent, as he can get eyes on something and transmit the information Grace needs to her, and she can grab the object.

because of how her power works, Grace has fun skills about guessing the weight of things. toss her an object and she can probably tell you pretty accurately how heavy it is. this isn't a mutation; she is just hyperfocused on that sort of info because it assists her power.

ANYWAY I THINK THAT'S ALL

[indigosabyss]

not to go on another crossover brainrot. but consider. dr stone x jujutsu kaisen crossover, w the base premise of ryuusui and kento being cousins.

ikik nanami is a very common surname. but they also both have blond hair, brown(-ish) eyes, and pale skin. Nanami (Kento; sorry im more used to calling him Nanami 😭) also thinks a lot about money once he quits being a sorcerer. Which is obvs meant to talk about real world issues, but also would be in line with Nanami upbringing.

ok this got way longer than i thought, so read more for a major yap session.

Kento is also a really disciplined guy, which fits into the ideals of what the Nanami household wanted Ryuusui to be. Makes him fit perfectly into the Dr Stone world. (also we know ryuusui canonically has a bunch of cousins/siblings he doesn't talk about at all so there's precedent for the family connection too)

On the flipside, Ryuusui has learnt, through real world experience, that he can get anything he wants with enough hard work and money to pave the way. Except jujutsu sorcery. He'll never be capable of that, no matter how much he wants it.

In my mind, the two universes first intersect when Ryuusui sneaks into Jujutsu Tech to see Kento, some time in the guy's second year. Since both universes use the real world calendar, its easy to pinpoint Ryuusui as being eight years younger than Kento.

Nanami Conglomerate isn't a Jujutsu clan. They really are just a regular rich-ass family company, who had a sorcerer randomly. There's some discussion about that. A lot of "damn, nanami's loaded??? why tf can't he get a better hairstylist then" type of shenaniganry.

[Side plot: At that point, Ryuusui isn't the heir at all. (I think if you refuse to let your child into family photographs out of shame, then you are not leaving a trillion-yen company to him) so there's going to be some politicking about on Francois' end to make him heir, with the two cutting a deal for Francois to be his main assistant in everything if they get it done.]

Kento and Ryuusui's relationship is strained, bc Kento has been raised to keep his distance from the black sheep of the family - even tho all Ryuusui has done so far is mess around with the stock market a little bit, so Kento doesn't really get it and talks to him anyway sometimes.

To Ryuusui, however, Kento is like his third-favorite person. (First is Sai, second is Francois) bc his 7-3 ratio technique is very useful for model building and this boy has a talent for sniffing out gifts he can exploit.

So anyway, Sai is off being tutored in economics, moving up several grade levels above his age, and Ryuusui was stuck at the Naval Academy, so he sneaks out to get to Kento, who does not speak about his school and is understandably confused when Ryuusui sneaks in and is discovered by the students.

Gojo in particular is entertained bc at that age he hasn't interacted with many young children before, and he is considering adopting the Fushiguro kid, so he kinda wants to see what he's getting himself into.

Ryuusui is having the time of his life. Everyone treats him so nice! They listen to his stories about his regular life. And then have to take Nanami to the side and break it to him that the entire family was kind of purposefully neglecting these two kids. Which makes him rethink some things about his life and the structures he upholds.

Ryuusui really wants to be a sorcerer. But he can't. So of course he finds an S-tier scientist who may or may not be called Ishigami Senku to science out a solution for him.

Francois - even though I love them with my heart and soul - will also be non-sorcerer here. But armed with cursed tools to defend Ryuusui in case something goes bad on his adventures.

And on top of all that, in the horizon, there looms a Special Grade curse, almost primordial in its age and strength, capable of affecting the entire world in one fell swoop. The Medusa.

[maxthesillyy]

why tf does class of 09 the flipside suck so bad and im only 20 minutes in

[netdraws]

drone operator flip sides

[your-local-town-hearer]

Dude fuck the flipside, what tf happened to class of 09?? It went from good to yet another edgy slopfest like the rest of them.

[typekiku]

TSUKIHIME FASHION REVIEW 3!!!

under the dark crimson moon, i write this newest entry of the much awaited much beloved tsukihime fashion review.

it's a duty i must carry out for the sake of the generations of lost sheep both before and after my time that have yet to truly appreciate the true depth of style that is contained within the single greatest visual novel known to mankind (according to me)

yet, i feel as if i am not doing my duty to its fullest... how can i possibly adequately sum the glory of todays fashionista? how can i dare attempt to sum that up?? no! i cannot waver in my faith in my incredibly lacking writing skills nor fear people figuring out this barely has anything to do with fashion... I WILL PERSEVERE!!

on with the show as the youth say!

(SPOILER ALERT: i should mention ill probably end up spoiling a shit ton of oghime and whatnot here so watch out)

so without further ado todays subject is:

drum roll

MORE DRUM ROLL

thanks uhh whatever you are from

MICHAEL ROA VALDAMJONG

yes the one and only roa

BROA

the legend himself, the Serpent of Akasha, Uroboros, the founder of the burial agency, the infinite reincarnatior, and professional Arcueid simp.

we have gathered here today to judge his design and uh fashion ig and whatever else i feel like ranting today about.

lets get right to it.

look at this dude all shirtless and shit like cmon so shameless... cover em up damn. seriously tho this man has a thing for showing off his (or should i say others) bodies like you will see soon.

i guess this comes down to him enjoying the freedom of being fully in control of whatever body he is currently occupying actually?

maybe this is some super deep look into the merits of semi nudism or whatever idk im not smart.

probably takeuchi just wanted an excuse to draw some seriously ripped abs actually i mean this might seriously be the most abby abs we ever see in any TM work. its fucking shredded and roa probably knew that. weirdo

on the flipside that majestic hair is simply incredible. DAMN thats some 10/10 hair. only other hair in this series that compares is my wife arcueid's long hair before her mean little (Older actually but idc) Altrouge got all mean and shit.

umm who is this? what happened to my incredible haired roa?? TAKEUCHI WHERE ARE YOU??? someone please give me back long haired roa... this isnt funny...

do you see what we lost? long gorgeous haired roa should've stayed and im genuinely upset we lost him to this admittingly much better dressed roa. im ashamed of you serpent of fraudkasha

fr tho where tf did he even get this rockstar ass drip anyways? we know SHIKI has been locked up in the outside house for awhile before released thanks to a certain maid... did he just drop by the local hot topic or whatever? did he manifest it through sheer willpower and arcueid simpery?

understandable tbh i too acheive things through arcueid simpery such as dirty stares and social exclusion!!

for reference, here is SHIKI

yea

i guess he just uhh changes him which in hindsight is really fucking sad to think about so lets not

uhh ANYWAYS

ok so ignoring ciel on the right elesia or should i say roa decides the very first thing hes gonna do in poor elesias body is to strip it naked

huh?

yea roa is definitely a weird one. no wonder the other ancestors hate him (besides nero because he is #HIM)

sick cape tho

why is he so hot here actually? what the hell? i underestimated his looks like damn

no really why is he so hot anyways he should look like an absolute freak like he actually is. i see you roa. i see you got that long braid wrapped around your neck like damn son... you may have fallen in love with a literal killing machine and never even got to speak to her till the very very end but i see you.

rizzless bastard.

well thats enough from me so ill drop this classic mahoyo line because i found it very funny without context.

ciao!

[pinkavtomation]

Trying to get back into the swing of things :]

Namely making refs for my characters! Their artfight profiles are painfully sparse right now. Flipside's probably gonna get drawn a lot more in the future :]

[doodlebloo]

bro dude, i was an early-ish boober (followed them like dec 2020/jan 2021 i think?) and i was in a relationship then and he literally babied tf out of tubbo and ranboo and was so so sure they were together and it weirded me out sm…. anyways we aren’t together anymore and they still OPENLY support all of the assaulters after everything came out, like fork found in kitchen!! be normal omg (anyways you violently reminded me of this cause ur posts kept popping up and making me giggle)

EUGH. Very glad to hear you're out of that relationship now anon...

Everyone talks about how quarantine is what afforded the DSMP its insane rise to popularity in an incredibly short amnt of time but the flipside of that is that quarantine aka isolation made young fans so very parasocial.

The fact that Tubbo and Ranboo went live daily meant that a lot of fans who had nothing to do and no one to interact with started to believe they truly KNEW them and to project like hell onto their friendship etc etc etc. Sucks so bad that they both had to deal with it

[decepti-thots]

knowing almost nothing abt the comics industry I've no idea how likely this actually is, but; is it possible Hasbro hasn't granted the the license to do tf comics to anyone else bc they're setting up their own in house comics company (Hasbro having their own in house animation studio sets just enough precedent for this thought to refuse to stop haunting me)

Possible? In the literal sense, sure; Hasbro are a multibillion dollar entertainment behemouth, and there would be nothing stopping them from doing so.

Realistically? No chance, IMO.

American comic markets of the sort Transformers naturally occupy given the assumed demographics at play- the ~22 page monthly release that comic shops have a near-monopoly on- are infamously a money pit that is dying by slow agonizing degrees, and even if you are the most successful non-big two publisher (so not Marvel or DC) out there, all that means is that you aren't actively going broke. (Hey, did we all see the news about IDW, by the way?) The average "successful" monthly release American comic sells jack shit compared to other industries, tbh. Marvel, in the 80s and early 90s, could leverage an issue of X-Men into sales of literally millions with the right PR boost*. Now, in a post-superhero movie world where superheroes are the default mode of pop culture, they're lucky to hit 100,000. Very lucky. You're more often seeing even some of the biggest names getting 50k or less shifted a month. For a non-big two company, you're looking at under 30k for your biggest hit a lot of the time. The exceptions are notable largely for being exceptions. (Skybound, I'll note, has had a couple: Invincible is the most notable.)

(*well, OK, the 90s also had the speculator boom which eventually caused many issues later on, which accounts for part of this. but big name comics were still selling much better before that becomes a factor, and it does not account for all of it.)

To make breaking into an industry in these dire straits worth it, you have to be sure you can compete with the biggest (non big-two) players, because anything less is a huge amount of time and effort and coordination for scant profits at best and losses at worst. (Comics are a pain in the ass to produce, at least comics of that sort; any given issue will have at least a writer, an artist, a colourist and a letterer. Many will also have some or all of the following: an interiors artist doing just pencils, an inker, a dedicated colour flatter, a layout designer, backup artists and writers...) And. Well. Why would you? That's a bad deal! Plus, Hasbro would have to pump out quite a few series to make it worth it, and while they do theoretically have the IP to do so, they've never focused that much on comics and would be starting from the ground up for most of those franchises in an industry where again, "success" does not look like a lot of money. (And they haven't even pulled all their licenses from IDW; many of their IPs still sit happily with other publishers with no sign of that changing.)

The flipside to this is the place where American comics are doing much better; publishing graphic novels in bookstores, not monthly releases in comic book stores. But if you have a big, recognizable IP, the thing is, now suddenly the traditional publishing industry handles that. Sure, there are dedicated comics publishers in that sphere, but if you have a guaranteed winner of a pop culture franchise, HarperCollins and the like are interested. And there is no reason not to go with one of the big five conventional book publishers then, because they have SO much infrastructure in place that it would take you years to even begin to catch up... and you won't anyway, because that infrastructure exists because they publish so many books a year that they can sustain massive publishing empires that make publishing those graphic novels comparatively trivial, which no specialist publishing outfit can hope to reach at a smaller scale.

What it boils down to is: getting into the comics industry when you don't have to is a bad idea and everyone knows it. Outsourcing to the people already established is overwhelmingly the better option. If you're doing monthlies, anything else has a 99% chance of failing, and even if you manage it, you now have a ton of work and minimal profits. (Marvel doesn't make money on comics. It makes money on Literally Everything Else. Its IP makes money, it's just that Marvel's IP is historically generated through comics.) And if you wanna do graphic novels and you have recognisability already, book publishers are the obvious way to go.

Nah. They'll charge a publisher money for the license and then, if it goes tits up, all they've lost is the hypothetical profit that success would have given them, and at least they can still pocket their fee. Film and animation are different because they can bring in big money on a scale comics can't match.

As always, I recommend the Twine essay "The Problem With Comics" for a deep dive into the historical issues that caused this situation in the American comics industry.