#jackrods

[marryabhram67]

Just like the kites in the sky, may your dreams soar high this Makar Sankranti! Happy Makar Sankranti 2024 !!!

[dontpetmeibite]

urgent comm to Impresario (@dancerhythm)

::Hey bestie, I just had a talk with Rung where I explained to him that maybe he's aro like Howlback.:: ::If you need either me or me and Howlback to join the conversation, I'm willing, and so is she--she is a security officer, and she got married, and she is glad she got married, but it was her freely made decision with rational reasons behind it.::

[cleverthylacine]

It's WIP Wednesday

from a fic with a working title of "child soldiers win stupid prizes":

“I just got kicked off Twitter.”

Jack stared at Raf. “Then why are you laughing so hard?”

“Because it’s funny. And misplaced revenge. Edison Muskrat got kicked off the Big Conversation and he thinks that I doxxed him because we have beef.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“Are you kidding? My grandchildren will be senior citizens before the end of an Esmeral ban. I know who did it, though, and it’s funny as fuck.”

“Why?”

“Because his last act was to thoroughly antagonise Eucryphtid.” Raf giggled, which made them sound twelve again, because Raf would never risk their account by actually saying so, but they both knew Eucryphtid was Tarn.

“Anyhow, today he was making dumb noises about how sad it was that one of Earth’s greatest heroes had succumbed to the woke virus—which, by the way, some of his alt-right circle jerk buddies think is an actual virus and coded by Soundwave—and he told me he used to think I was cool.”

“And?”

“I told him I never thought he was cool, but I used to think he was useful.”

(Context: I'm pretty sure SpaceX--I used to know someone who worked there--would have been involved in the Resistance during the Occupation of Earth. I'm also sure they'd have taken very few 'unnecessary' risks....unless EM thought they were really really cool or something)

from Recovered Light, which I should have known would have more than one chapter:

I hadn’t spoken to Rodimus since I left his ship, of course—but a lot more had changed than the colours of his paint.

“I like the purple,” I said. “Does it mean something?”

Rodimus laughed, but there was a nervousness in it that I hadn’t expected. “I hadn’t considered that,” he said. “That makes this weird.”

“Rodimus,” I said, “what about any of our lives isn’t weird?”

He looked down at the ground and shifted his weight from one pede to the other, and I could see him doing it even though all I could see on the screen was his bust.

“Ravage. I said something silly to Minimus and Esmeral, and they told me it wasn’t silly. I’m not sure I want to do it, especially not with this paint, but…I’m also not sure I don’t have to.”

I cocked my head and looked at him from a couple of different angles, thinking.  “Okay, this has got to be good. Tell me more.”

Rodimus frowned. “You know Optimus commandeered my ship and made Megatron my co-captain…”

“I am, surprisingly, very aware of that fact.” I smiled. Hopefully in an encouraging way, and not just with all of my dentae.

“And then Getaway stole it.”

I nodded.

“I’m still an Autobot—”

“You’re from Nyon. Why the Pit are you an Autobot?” I clapped my hand across my muzzle, mortified that I’d said it out loud.

Roddy just sighed. “Sometimes I wonder these days.”

I nodded.

“I told people—and I was joking—that when we got to Sanctuary, I was gonna register this ship with the Station so that Autobots would stop stealing it from me. It was a present. From Drift. I didn’t even buy it myself. It was a gift to me from my amica.”

I nodded again. I knew that.

He looked up at me. “But then Esmeral said I should do it, and Minimus said it would work, and I wouldn’t have to change my badge, it could just be a flag of convenience.”

I frowned. “Sanctuary doesn’t grant flags to people who aren’t willing to help us defend ourselves if we are attacked,” I said. “As much as I’d like to help you—” I shrugged. “I mean. If you became a citizen you wouldn’t have to swear to Destron either, and while we take a portion of your wealth to buy in, we could classify your ship a personal transport because we don’t count them against your initial buy-in cost. But. Whether or not you joined Sanctuary, formally, if you carry our flag you have to defend us.”

Rodimus chewed his lower lip plate.

“I could,” he said. “I would, as long as you weren’t being gratuitously violent colonialist jackrods. Which uh, I know you’re not. But you know. I might enjoy helping you kick Galvatron’s skidplate, because he sure is.”

[cleverthylacine]

I understand the motivation but that frankly is a little terrifying--it’s one thing when people sell things from endangered species, nail those jackrods to the wall, but as a kid I picked up things I found in the woods near my house all the time and the only thing my parents were ever concerned about was germs.

Though I suppose if a person has one (1) feather and they are a kid/teenager that’s not going to be taken in the same light as if they have 50 of them that they swear they just found and are making etsy stuff from them.

Please tell me in that situation they just take it and explain! My parents had no idea that it was illegal. (I don’t *think* I still have any found objects of this nature.)

You may think it cruel but when a white witch pisses me off I go through her etsy listings for native bird feathers and forward it to fish and wildlife services

[marryabhram67]

We deal in the equalizer pins of Bharat Benz for commercial vehicles at best price. Size :50mm x 184 mm

[dontpetmeibite]

OOC: Sideblogs of Ravi's family & friends

In order to avoid constantly tagging posts "Drift NPC" and "Glit NPC", Ravi and I have placed these two miscreants in their own sideblogs.

@i-am-drift-locked can be either Drift or Deadlock as needed, in the VOS AU, or IDW proper, or your AU where you are.

@doctor-glitterbomb is Glit, and as needed, can thread with you from the KP-verse, the IDW verse, or the VOS AU, or wherever (currently, he is actually on the Nemesis trying to help figure out why Motormaster keeps beating on @notabadcon--protip, Glit, it's because he's a jackrod!)

[dontpetmeibite]

Have you ever felt disgusted with Megatron? Or any of your partners. Bad things happened in the War.

I think that in most relationships, even where people haven't committed any war crimes, there might be moments of disgust. (Also, war--any war--involves bad things.)

I was absolutely disgusted with Megatron when the Lost Light and its alternate counterpart came into the same space and the ship started disappearing around us, and he allowed us to be locked in a storeroom together, and we had the first real talk that we'd had since the end of the war.

I actually attacked him, you know, and he let me. I drew blood when I slapped his face, and all he did was take my wrist in his hand and hold it until I calmed down.

I've never felt more like a fraud in my entire life. See, Megatron and I used to argue a lot about things, but he was almost always able to convince me to go along with things that I wasn't really comfortable with, because the mech has charisma, and a way with words, and because we have known one another almost all of our lives. I used the arguments on him that he had always used on me--and also on Deadlock, except Deadlock snapped and I didn't. "Everyone wobbles." "This is just part of being a Decepticon." "You'll see what I meant on the other side of this." And so on.

But none of them worked when I used them on him.

And for him to turn to the Autobots for decency, when Soundwave had been standing there right next to him for four million years, and we had made it clear so many times that we didn't like the new versions of the infiltration protocols, and that we'd rather have administered the populations of our client worlds than obliterated them, and I'd even asked him once why, if it didn't matter what shape or size or form people were, it should matter what kinds of chemicals we were made of. We were community organisers back in Rodion. We never used violence then except as a last resort. I was never a freaking pacifist because I knew we were going to have to kill off most of the Senate just to fucking survive, let alone do any good, but I didn't use violence against people who had less power than I did except as needed for self-defence.

And because Megatron loved us, he didn't have us taken out and shot. But he did remove us from any and all decision making and authority over subject worlds. Soundwave was particularly upset about all of the time he had spent setting up class warfare on worlds so that we could drive people like the Senate out of power and arrange for badly needed revolutions...only for Megatron to decide after a few million years that after that, he'd send in Phase Sixers instead of a planetary governor.

So yeah. I was furious. Angry. Disgusted.

I can't tell you why I didn't stop loving him then. Why I never have, even though we are not together like that anymore. I will say that I was very relieved when I found out exactly how much damage Trepan did to him before Rung stopped him, and why, and that Sunder had pulled out all the staples and stitches and threads without touching him on the Lost Light. I won't say that it excuses everything or even anything he did that was wrong. But it was very enlightening to discover that the original plan of the Senate had been to break his mind and turn him loose only to have him destroy his own revolution, and that it had actually worked, except it had taken four million years and they all died at our hands not knowing that it had succeeded.

Megatron and I have always had a very tangled, enmeshed relationship and I wouldn't say it was ever a 'healthy' one--whatever the fuck that actually means. I've come to feel, especially after meeting the jackrod, that Terminus to some degree groomed Megatron, and that he passed some of that on down to me. I used to laugh about the fact that people would misread some of his old poetry and come to the conclusion that he was Parvilla's parent/mentor rather than her lover. (Parvilla was my pseudonym as a poet and also the name that he gave me as one of his muses.) But it's actually a little creepy, and we've both acknowledged that in recent years.

That said, he was one of the first people I ever met who cared how much I was being hurt back then. We are still amicae, but we are no longer sexually involved.

The worst moment in my relationship life, though, was with Soundwave, who is also the person I love and have loved the most. After Megatron's public and embarrassing abdication and betrayal of the cause and of his people, Soundwave (after a lot of goading from Galvatron) ordered me to go after Megatron, and find out if he was serious about this Autobot business, and kill him if that was the case. I was furious with Soundwave and angry that he wouldn't step up to the leadership himself when he's a better person in every way than Galvatron, and I was also really angry that he thought it was acceptable to set me on my amica. I knew it was a sort of test and a cruel one--because I hadn't fully recovered from cassettification, and I couldn't really properly refuse the order.

But I also knew he was out of his mind with grief at the time, mourning the illusion he'd had of who Megatron was, and the damage that Megatron had done to us together and separately, and to our relationship, and the way in which he'd manipulated us both to get us to cooperate with him. I knew that Megatron had hurt him deeply, and more importantly, I knew that there had been times when Megatron and I (together) had caused him a lot of pain; and on the Lost Light, it became apparent that between him and Megatron, he was the one who actually loved me the most.

Riptide asked me once whether I'd choose Soundwave over Megatron and I told him to stop trying to commit suicide-by-cat in the heat of the moment but later I told him that the choice I had made was to choose myself. I let both of them know that they couldn't manipulate me anymore and that I wouldn't put up with it from either of them.

Megatron pulled one last stunt that cost him the benefica part of 'amica benefica' after that. But shortly before I left the Lost Light, Soundwave rescinded the order, and while I had had all the cassette protocols overwritten by Ratchet, I also forgave him for giving it, because I understood the stress that he had been undergoing at the time, and because I knew he knew why it was wrong and regretted it.

I love Soundwave more than anyone and Megatron more than most, but I've been disgusted with things that they did. What matters to me is that they, too, became disgusted with those things. You know, we were all horrifically mistreated in our early youth. We knew what we knew. We knew the way we were being treated was wrong, but we had to figure out how and why on our own. At the time, every moral authority we were aware of was telling us that we were in the wrong because we refused to submit to our superiors in caste and obey the orders we were given. And Cybertronians committed genocides before the Decepticons did, and if you don't think the Autobots committed atrocities, I will be happy to introduce you to my sister, who survived Garrus-9, or to point out to you that the MTO programme was nothing we would ever have come up with on our own if we hadn't had to fight an enemy who was already using it. We were enslaved by the Quintessons, and the Iaconian culture which led the rebellion overtook and attempted to eradicate most other Cybertronian cultures, and out from the centre it spread, like a plague.

I don't believe there's a single living Cybertronian over the age of one hundred (years, not vorns or millennia) who has managed to avoid becoming complicit in some atrocity or other. But I also don't believe that executions solve problems. All execution does is make a few people (not all of them) who got harmed feel a little better emotionally, at the expense of the mental health of the person who is ordered to kill a helpless prisoner, and at the expense of every possible act of atonement or expiation that person could ever commit in an attempt to repair the universe. Revenge shouldn't be outsourced.

I've had a lot of conversations about imperialism and colonialism and conquest with people in recent years, especially Marissa Faireborn, and Charlie Watson. And I'm sorry that the evolution of our culture came at the cost of so many other peoples and worlds, but at some point you just have to stop what you're doing and do better. Letting yourself be stuck in a singularity till the heat death of the universe, or letting yourself be murdered in public, doesn't fix anything.

And in the end, Optimus Prime's solution to the problem of Earth was to try to become a coloniser himself, and Soundwave and I are proud that we helped Earth's inhabitants stop and resist and apply to the Council of Worlds on their own, with Sanctuary providing encouragement and assistance but not attempting to trespass their sovereignty.

I've rambled a lot. Thanks for your patience. I do that.

[dontpetmeibite]

Is anyone out there missing a Terminus?

He definitely isn't ours; ours is a jackrod.

He says he's Megatron's father--not his mentor, his father--and that Galvatron is his son's mother.

Our local Galvatron is a) male and b) dead.

We've told him we'll help him to find his way home, although he's perfectly lovely and he's welcome to stay at the Station as long as he likes.

You know how to reach us!

Ravage Parvilla of Stanix Lord High Protector of Destron Primax 1020.27 Iota

[cleverthylacine]

4, 5 and 7!

Playlists or fic questions? I've got 2 ask games running.

For playlists,

4. I do enjoy writing with music.

5. Yes. I had "One More Day" running over and over with Chapter 17 of "Every Day is a Winding Road" because even though Getaway is an evil jackrod, he thinks he's a righteous revolutionary. And I had "South Side" (the theme song for the first chapter) running off and on while I wrote "love & darkness & my sidearm" although I did mix it up a bit here and there with Gorillaz' "Kids With Guns" and the Weep cover of "Shut Up and Drive".

7. I have soundtracks for my fics, so when I finish each fic it has a soundtrack with about as many songs on it as there are chapters. I have ship, character and wip playlists that are between 8 and 150 songs long. There's a lot of overlap between them, but some songs that are perfect for a character don't correspond to a ship--Ravage's playlist has songs on it that represent her feelings about situations, that have nothing to do with her love affairs, plus there are different songs for her relationships with different people.

If you wanted the fic questions ask game, I'll do that too, but give me a fic to do it about! <3 <3 <3

[doctor-glitterbomb]

"I care," Glit says firmly, and he actually finds himself enraged. He catches Megatron's hand as it slips from his chest and lifts it back up, puts both their joined hands over Megatron's spark chamber.

He sits there for a moment, fuming, before venting out his indignation, slowly. He doesn't want to start ranting about how much he wants to punch that Optimus in the face.

"There are a lot of things I would like to say about that, but I think I should say them later, because this conversation is about what we mean to each other, not what a huge fucking afthelm that jackrod is, and not the level of violence I might be capable of after all."

Glit finally manages a little smile. "You don't need to reconcile anything. I decide who I love, and it doesn't matter whether anyone else thinks you deserve it, because fuck those guys. I get to decide who matters to me, who I love, who I fuck, who I want to take care of. It's not fair to me if I can't be with a mech I love who loves me because somebody else thinks he doesn't deserve it!"

He swallows. "And if you're happier with me in your life than without, it obviously doesn't go against who you are. It just goes against what some slagaft who thinks his opinion counts because he was given a Matrix thinks. I want to be with you. If you want to be with me too, then everyone else who thinks they should have an opinion about it can all go fuck themselves."

He leans forward and moves their hands to the side, so he can kiss Megatron's chest right over the spark chamber, and then he pulls himself up into Megatron's lap.

"Nobody's ever made me feel more loved than you," he says in a much smaller voice. "You love who I am, and not because of my morals or kindness to everyone else or my reputation. You want me to be happy more than you want anything else for me. Nobody else has ever offered to kill your namesake in my name, or told me that my happiness is more important than vows or duties or family or..."

His voice trails off. "Ask me for what you want. You are very likely to get it, as long as neither of us is diminished by it. You have to ask, because not asking will deprive you of the pleasure of hearing me say yes to you. But I think your chances are good of getting what you want, whatever it turns out to be."

"She considered it a sort of psychological warfare, I believe," Glit says with a look of faint but obvious distaste. He wonders if he should explain why Thunderblast thought it would work--the generational gap in Decepticon culture between the libertines of the Conclave and Thunderblast's generation, for whom claiming meant possession as well as protection. But he wasn't sure it needed to be said, and thinking of claims took his mind in a different direction, anyway.

Glit leans closer to Megatron. "You asked me once," he says, "if I'd consider powerlinking, and that it created a bond, and I told you I didn't know what that was. And you never explained it.

"I looked it up for myself, and it sounds enough like cassettification to be an absolute 'no'. I'd be willing to combine with you if there were advantage in it for you--I'm not much of a warrior--but I wouldn't let anyone ever put subservience coding in me again. I put up with way too much aftslag from Pharma. And I saw what it did to Ravi's relationship with Soundwave, and Soundwave hadn't even wanted to have control over her."

Glit smiles wryly. "But I think, now, after spending more time with you, that this is not the kind of bond you want with me. You never brought it up again. Whatever you want with me...I think you want me to choose it, freely--and that is the way I want to give myself to you. I have noticed that when I choose to be obedient in berth, it really excites you, and that, my love, is because it's a choice. If you ask me for what you want, you are likely to get it."

[dontpetmeibite]

"I may have said that, to you, but it's usually Soundwave who says that, actually. But the squishies are voting on all of us, which in itself is bizarre."

Ravage shrugs. "I've met two Optimi who would make good husbands and I'm sure there are more, but if you look at the things they're saying...they usually vote Soundwave every time, and the reasons they give are better than the reasons they give for OP. Who, in our universe, is absolutely a jackrod. As he generally is in all the ones where he was a cop instead of a dockworker or a librarian."

OPTIMUS?

He's not even married! His divorce caused a war!

Soundwave has both me and Jazz!

[dontpetmeibite]

"I don't care if your gross friend is upset," Ravage says, with the hint of a sob in her voice. "Laserbeak told me what he said the morning after you and I first..."

She shudders. She's been absurdly overemotional lately, but this really is bad news. "I don't want you to live in Kaon and send me money, which you wouldn't get, because they would own you. I don't want you to have to murder prisoners and other poor people so that the people we hate can get off on watching us die. I don't want you to die in there. I don't want other people to use your frame after the fights if they pay for the privilege. I don't want the Kaon arena masters finding out that you have a lover and bringing me there, so some jackrod can challenge you to fight with me as the prize if he wins. What did Impactor say you'd be doing?"

"I like your frame," Ravage says, patting the space next to her. "I like cuddling up in it."

Yeah...that was a hint, wasn't it?

[doctor-glitterbomb]

"Right decision, bad reasoning," Glit says gruffly. "If you go straight to Megatron over this it's Motormaster's word against yours and a lot of our so-called fellow freedom fighters will judge you for getting your leader in trouble, even though you're in the right. You come to me instead, and I go to Megatron. Then you don't have all the other jackrod commanders staring at you, because they will all be staring at me, and they've done it before. Everyone knows I meddle in command decisions all the time, and they put up with it because I'm the only one that'll fix some of their crusty afts."

While he spoke he was fixing the wound.

"Anything else? I'm Recording the images so that no-one can say you lied, but only the still images, nothing you're saying, because kid, you talk like you rolled off the line ten minutes ago. Hitting you with a sword is not the correct way to respond to a request of that nature even if it is inappropriate at the time--and it may have been, because you didn't say what else was going on when you asked. But I know that jackrod knows how to say no in words, so he has no excuse."

"Ow ow ow why does motarmaster bully me!" The younger stunticon whimpers to himself thinking he was alone

@notabadcon

"Because he's a fucking afthelm, are you okay?" Ravage, who has just had a shower, knew there was someone in that washrack even before she heard him speak.

[doctor-glitterbomb]

Glit nods and allows himself to be pet. He doesn't get enough physical contact, really. Not since Naoko died. He has fans--hell, he has an OnlyFans on Earth, subscribed to by furries and robot fetishists and people who remember Kiss Players--but he doesn't have lovers, and he and his sisters are awkward around each other, even though they used to be oversized kittens who slept in a pile.

"The thing about badges is that people take them for all sorts of reasons. Some of them good, some of them not so good. That is true of both badges, I think, though in my youth I hated the red badge and all that it stood for. And as for him? He was a gladiator in Kaon, along with Megatron, Lugnut, Strika, Scorponok, Grimlock, and so many others. And he was always cruel. We had a lot of jackrods in our army, but so did the Autobots. Armies attract them."

Then Glit looks up at him thoughtfully. "Do you really want to keep talking about this? If you need to, we can. Or we could talk about other things. It's easy to get stuck in the past, but then you start thinking there's nothing else left of you."

He closes his optics, slowly, and then opens them again.

"I might," Glit allows. "But I should maybe quit while I'm ahead. You might not like me when I'm drunk. And yes, I'm serious. What I've seen here does bother me; I might could use the affection myself."

He sighs; that admission did cost him.

"I will never understand why they hate us so much. They bred us for looks, they hunted us, they sold us, they shoved us in cassettes, they made us entertain them...all because our alt-modes can't be used as tools? It's so stupid. I don't have the energy to hate like Ravage and Howlback do, but I was lucky, too; I ended up with Pharma as a master, and not Ratbat or Prowl. And Ratchet trained me, even though he wasn't supposed to. I was mentioned multiple times by multiple lawyers during their disjunction, you know."

He sighs. "The humans do something similar. They hate each other because of their skin colours. That's even stupider than hating someone because of their alt-mode."