#i have so much more about them to ramble about but i'd be swerving off the cliff of the topic so i'll hold my tongue for now

[yakool-foolio]

oooh, do you have any songs that might fit real zilch? (or both?) :3c

I may not have anything for real Zilch directly, but I do have songs involving both Zilches! In the few seconds they'd see each other off-screen, I have scraped out so much from their short-lived dynamic.

I was first introduced to Predator & Prey by Griffin Puatu and Jonah Scott by one of my buds who said it'd fit Hitman Zilch, and I realized there's even more to it! Real Zilch comes to terms with his death to the hitman, trying to reason with his untimely demise as just the natural order of things. He was caught unaware by the apex predator and the circle of life continues on without him, maybe even getting a sunlit glimpse of the animal that the hitman truly is.

Brutus by The Buttress is definitely the most unique instrumentally of the bunch, as heavy as a song literally titled 'heavy' can be. This reads as a take on Hitman Zilch and Yomi's dynamic actually, where the hitman is in constant agonizing conflict with his devotion to Yomi, reassuring he loves his director but at the same time wishing he could share in the same power he wields and hating that he'll never be loved as much as he loves Yomi. And so, the hitman takes out all this inner turmoil on the unfortunate target of the real Zilch, hoping that the Amaterasu Express Massacre will earn him the love he obsessively desires from his director.

The Actor by Everything Everything has formed yet another of my strange speculations on the Zilches dynamic. This falls into the same idea of 'real Zilch accepting his fate' that I mentioned before, but this goes deeper into that concept. The real Zilch wants the hitman to carry on with his shared identity, perhaps hoping that he could live vicariously through him in whatever afterlife awaits him. The real Zilch remains optimistic no matter the absolute horror of the situation and what the hitman will carry out using his identity. A blind trust when he has nothing left. Choosing life over death despite it all.

[anghraine]

I don't know why, but I've been thinking about my f!Tarrlok fic this afternoon. It's very much more about Noatak and, iirc, told entirely from his POV.

One paragraph summation: it's about Noatak's evolution from sweet kid to Amon, mediated by his shifting dynamic with his sister Taraka over the years. The first fic is a version of their childhood influenced by Taraka's gender, but ending the same. The second skims over the years between Noatak leaving and his arrival in Republic City, then goes over his rise as Amon alongside Taraka's as councilwoman and his unwitting enemy. I drifted into other fandom obsessions shortly after he takes Taraka prisoner per the canon scenario.

It turned out quite differently than I'd planned originally, in fact.

[much longer rambles below the cut]

I meant the B1 storyline to go much further off the rails. But I couldn't really justify it with no other changes than Tarrlok -> Taraka. I mean, I definitely thought that Yakone's fury over Tarrlok's "weakness" as a son would be still worse with a daughter, esp in the Northern Water Tribe of 30+ years earlier. That's the premise of the fic, basically. Their dynamic as children is a bit different, because Yakone's amped-up hostility reinforces Noatak's view of himself as Taraka's only protector, even as bloodbending changes them and Noatak grows more remote and calculating.

I could see this Noatak being slower to turn his back on her after Yakone tries to make them bloodbend each other. Noatak might even try to convince Taraka to leave with him, which under pressure, I could actually see her doing. But that wasn't the story I wanted to tell, and I could see the canon separation happening just as easily. So he still ditches her in the end, and it fundamentally breaks his sense of himself as her protector; it breaks him on a level he can't really process.

And he spends over 20 years trying to get away from his past, but he's unable to ever really move on. He subconsciously tries to "make it right" by saving people the way he couldn't or didn't save Taraka. He does genuinely think non-benders are profoundly oppressed and he cares a lot about that. But part of the reason it's so important to be this outsized glamorized protector figure to them, while calling them his brothers and sisters, is that it (sort of) fills the "Taraka" space in his psyche with a narrative of heroism and self-glorification that distances him from the messier and nastier story of being abused.

That's one thing, but it gets far more emotionally complicated when the real Taraka shows up in the city and turns out to be—well, Tarrlok. My original idea was that the story would swerve here because the childhood dynamic was different, and protecting her was more essential to his self-image. I'd meant him to gradually maneuver things in order to recruit her as a stealth Equalist (a scenario I'd briefly written but never explored, and which I still really like the idea of).

But in this scenario, I couldn't believe it would happen, not without something else to push them. Even given the changes in their dynamic, I couldn't see him as self-aware enough to consciously try and make things right with her, much less to put in the work that would honestly be required to subvert Tarrlok of all people, especially after such a long separation.

Instead, his plan is what I assume his canon plan was—capture her, keep her safely imprisoned until the city is under control, talk at her until she sees the light of revolution, and then they can be a family again. This is basically what he advises Hiroshi to do with Asami, while holding Tarrlok captive, so... yeah, I've always headcanoned that it was his ideal (detached from reality) scenario for how things would go.

But I did not write that much (especially of the story following their somewhat altered childhood) to just kill them off at the end. So while the major chance for changing the narrative would have been to have them leave together and be on the same side all along, I also thought it possible that what he tells Taraka might not be identical to what he presumably has said to Tarrlok in canon.

Tarrlok is very sure that Noatak is a true believer in his cause, which has always inclined me to think that they've talked (or at least that Noatak has) since his capture. I could totally see Noatak doing Amon monologues at Tarrlok to justify what he's done, which would be all the more psychologically urgent IMO when faced directly with the real Tarrlok (the only person Noatak seems to regret de-bending, or indeed, to regret harming at all). And I could also see those monologues differing somewhat between Tarrlok and Taraka since the dynamic was that bit different—just enough that she doesn't ultimately conclude that they're hopeless cases and too dangerous to live.

But actually writing those monologues, well. >_>

[actualbird]

ive been wanting to ramble bout this for years (like since 2019 HAHA) but i held off on it because i figured the fandom phenomenon i was seeing was gonna be a one off thing. something thatd fade with time.

it wasnt. it's still here and so i wanna articulate what i think about

the fast food-ification of fandom

here’s the thing about fandom right now; we operate on social media platforms that are inherently fast paced. social media platforms these days prioritize new and popular content, but more than that, it creates an audience that is always searching for new content very, very quickly. 

tumblr is a bit of a lesser evil, in terms of contributing to this (still does, tho, dont think im exempting hellsite derogatory, LMAO). but twitter, imo, is a hellscape with a system that hammers this in so so much: the lack of an explorable archive, no account specific tag search mechanism, a timeline algorithm that shows an account's followers the popular tweets first instead of chronologically and oftentimes even if you follow that account you will not be able to see all the tweets that account makes lest you go to the profile specifically. twitter is built for "new new new!" and it's not its fault, i guess, cuz it was not designed with fandom interaction in mind. still, it's become a very popular fandom platform and the "new new new!" mindset the system promotes ends up seeping into the members of fandom itself.

and there’s nothing wrong with wanting new content. but the problem here, i think, is the speed at which we consume fanwork. and the lack of memory for fanwork thats already been made.

fanwork consumption feels like it's going 100000000 mph with these kinds of systems and thanks to the lack of a navigate-able archive or tagging system, it's nigh impossible to find something from even last week. an incredible piece of fanart or fanfic or any fanwork gets attention for 3 days tops before it's lost and very very difficult to find. things are so fast and it's harder to remember them now.

swerve to another point: the trend of silence

im gonna bash on twitter again (SORRY KJSFBSD, like, i do have a twitter btw so im speaking from experience. i'd like to make it clear im not bashing ppl who do like/use twitter, im waving my hands frustratedly at twitter's systems) cuz tweet wc limits make it so that literally not much can be said! additionally, to add comments in QRT takes attention/notifs away from original poster, so if u QRT an art with praise, OP will see that! but if ppl reply more praise to the art on that QRT, OP will not get notified so that praise might as well have been yelled to the void

im a passionate believer that if youve got something nice to say about a fanwork and/or the creator of that fanwork, say it on their turf so they can see it. twitter makes it easier for this to not happen. positive attention and feedback matters so so much to creators and im p sure im not alone in saying that i cherish each and every comment (be it on ao3 or tumblr tags/comments or asks) ive ever gotten

and like, i know the argument to that is "make fanwork for yourself! dont make it for attention, do it cuz you enjoy it!" and "for every feedback you dont get, theres many lurkers who value and love what you do!"

i agree with that first thing very much but only the bit that says "do it cuz you enjoy it!" cuz yea! fandom is about having fun! but also like...isnt the point of fandom the fact that it's not just you alone, but you in a community?

a big draw of fandom, for me, is that it's likeminded deranged nerds all obsessed about the same thing. these are people on similar wavelengths and theyre people PLURAL. do fanwork cuz you enjoy it but the implication that a fancreator should be happy in isolation doesnt make sense cuz thats not what fandom is about.

and as for "there are lurkers who silently enjoy what you make" well...why?

why not say something when youve got something nice to say?

be it fanart or fanfic or fanmeta or anything, if the thought already pops up in your head, why not say it somewhere the creator can see it?

i totally understand if youre shy or if it's difficult to put into words whatever your thoughts are, like, huge mood. but also fandom becomes an infinitely funner space to be in when people are saying things

even a comment thats something simple and short makes the current landscape of fast paced churning out of fanworks feel less like we’re shouting in a forest alone, and more like we’re shouting in a forest and somebody yelled “I LOVED THIS” back. it’s really nice.

this is not a criticism towards anybody, but instead just kinda like, an inquiry to how we consume and interact with fanwork, these days. it’s really fast. like, so fast. tags update daily with new things every single day, every second, and it’s easy to just look and look and not say a thing. and that ease of fanwork consumption also makes it easy to forget just how hard it is to make things. how hard it is to make anything at all.

so much heart and effort is put into every work in fandom, and ive always seen fandom as a space for unapologetic enjoyment and community. treating fandom like a fast-food transaction where u get a thing in 5 minutes and drive off is...well, i dunno. but for me, among many things, it makes us forget just how much heart and effort is in all things.

[my-writings-and-musings]

I've also been thinking a thing alot lately

How would the cybertronians react to the fact that grief can physically kill a human due to broken heart syndrome? Would it be a thing in Cybertron too? Because I'd imagine a sparkbond breaking would be deadly too but like I feel like this'd also add a whole new level of fragility to humans in some Cybertronians because like

"Oh no!! I made human sad!! Human will d i e" while some others are like "pretty sad bro, u wanna grap some drinks and talk about feelings n shit? Like you'd tell me if someone broke your heart right? You know I'd beat up the shit out of the one who did that, right?"

I feel like, as it's occasionally addressed in the comics themselves, bots often have a habit of seeing themselves as immortal powerhouses. They struggle to comprehend the very idea that old age is a thing for their species, and despite the wealth of evidence there's an afterlife waiting for them, they clearly have a lot of issues with dying. What you've just touched on, and please forgive me for rambling a bit before I get to the good stuff, is that the problem is well beyond just their perception of the physical.

Because for the most part, they are physically invincible! They can survive lost limbs, stabbings, decapitation, poisoning, gunshots and pretty much anything else your average human would be eviscerated by. That's why they can live so darn long if they avoid those things, their ability to heal and laugh at time itself is innate. But that's where the consequences begin, where humans have one enormous advantage over bots; they're not built to handle loss, we are.

Humans go through life knowing their approximate end and that a lot of use are gonna be mashed up by the universe just doing what it does. Bots? Before their civilization went full dictatorship, most couldn't comprehend the idea of murder or violence, and to be fair we'd probably be in the same boat if it took a bazuka to scuff our knee. I think that even after everything though, all the war and violence, bots are still the more emotionally delicate species. Look at what extreme emotions have done in Lost Light and MTMTE; guilt has driven bots to insanity, fear has forced them to become walking powerhouses, grief has killed them outright, and anger has allowed them to defy reality... In short, they're a great deal more volatile than we are. But you'd be hard pressed to make them understand that.

From their perspective, humans are fragile in ways that shock them, to the point they often don't see that these little mammals are only physically fragile by comparison.

However, bless these emotionally repressed nerds, because hearing about broken heart syndrome also puts them on alert for the sake of well intentioned caution. How much sadness does it take for a human to die? Bots can die when powerful emotions overtake the spark, but what if all it takes is a cross word or a little disappointment? What if just asking you to clarify sets it off?!

They become a network of careful emotional support friends, doing everything in their power to shield you from sadness. Unhappy movies are banned from Swerve's. Should you ever look down a legion of supportive Cybertronians will hurl themselves in your direction. Those more comfortable with acting will "subtly" hint at their ability to destroy any sources of unhappiness in your life over drinks. It's all for the sake of their tiny friend.

You're absolutely baffled by their not at all subtle but also completely inexplicable behavior, which reaches a particular crescendo one afternoon when the bots spot you getting misty eyed over a sappy video. They start crying themselves and begging you not to be sad because they can't bear to lose you. A circle of crying and pleading bots surrounds you on all sides. You're absolutely lost. All you did was watch a dog adoption video. Why are the robots crying? Why are they pleading? Why are they babbling about duct taping your heart together at the last minute?!