#keep spoilers to a minimum

[moonjump65]

TFP S.A.R.I. Time Skip

This is sort of an amalgam of Knowledge I have lf transformers, and it’s a bit loosey goosey so I might come back to this later and edit/rewrite it when I get caught up to MTMTE, and LL. Going off on sooome info I was told on certain bots like how Rung is a therapist and Megatron gets a redemption arc. I uhh also gotta finish season 3 of prime and watch the beast hunters movie. So we’re going off that and a bit of cyberverse here, skybound there, idw here and there whereever. Just gotta fit the vibe. It’s very informal for right now but it will be tightened up later as I get caught up with the comics and Prime TV Show.

This takes place 10 years after Prime so Sari would be 18 at the start of this iteration. And being a young adult/alien after being part of an intergalactic civil war is a nightmare with all the stuff you gotta unpack.

After the events of Prime, Sari attempted to go to human school, thinking she got her powers under control, she did not take into account people would go out of their way to bully her. Having lead to an incident where she defends herself but lead to a situation where some people got hurt and she decided to finish her education on Cybertron, feeling that if she was on Earth it might put others in danger.

Post Prime she is distraught over Optimus’s death. She very much picks up a grouch personality from Ratchet and gets very jaded. She has mandatory visits to Rung, and each appointment she is very avoidant or makes lite snarky jokes through them and is very aware of her problems. Though Rung gets her to stay the full session by offering her Earth snacks and she can only deal with the flavor of Sprite for so long. It wasn’t until a new leader was selected by the Matrix of leadership being Rodimus, that she actually discussed what happened.

In her time in Cybertron most times often than not, Sari would isolate herself and be a loner. And she would often try to hide the fact that she’s part organic, feeling that her first experience with school and not being diligent enough with her abilities caused people to get hurt, and she over corrects by isolating herself and thinking if she’s the best medic maybe she can reverse or mend the harm she caused or maybe she just does not want to be hurt again. Though Hot Rod would find Sari to be really interesting and actually wants to be her friend. And he’s actually quiet persistant.

The matrix of leadership chose Rodimus in the Sari AU, and it is because Hotrod reminded the matrix/the allspark/optimus’s soul of Sari and how kind and willing to be a friend to anyone no matter what. And Sari would warm up to Hot Rod, and get in touch with that side of herself again. And just Ratchet would be so happy that Sari is having fun again and being a dumb young person. They would have a Bumblebee/ TFA Sari Dynamic where they share the same brain cell or a sort of Brother/Sister Relationship.

When Sari is on Cybertron, she uses her alt form mostly and on rare occasions and privacy takes on her normal mode. Mainly to have people not think differently of her, and for Cybertronians not to recognize her. After the incident in High School she sort of exiles herself to Cybertron thinking to herself she does not belong with humans and completed her education with the high guard academy.

As a sort of an high guard academy graduation present for Sari maybe Jack and June make a necklace for Sari being a pendant that looks similar to the Key to Vector Sigma. As a sort of nod to her and Jack’s adventure when she was little and a thing to hold close to her when thinking about Optimus.

She is especially critical of Rodimus when he becomes a Prime because he reminds her of herself when she was younger and she hates how she was when she was that age despite being a child and in a very strange situation. And Rung calls her out on this saying “This new Prime…when you criticize him you use similar language to when you tell me about your years on team prime and criticize your younger self” and she is shocked and horrified at this revelation.

She would have alot of first and secondary trauma, and hold a lot of resentment to the reformed Megatron, to a point where she picks a fight with him ON SIGHT. Though this ends up being bridged over and they would talk to each other about Orion/Optimus. With Sari knowing about his Optimus days and Megatron on his days as Orion and she realizes “Holy crap YOU GUYS TOTALLY LIKED LIKED EACHOTHER”

Homegirl as soon as she would turn 18 would get a tattoo of the autobot insignia on her shoulder. Much to Ratchet’s shagrin.

Rodimus would learn what kind of person Sari was when she was on Team Prime when they visit June, and June gushes over Sari and is like “I get you are busy with your medibot studies but it doesn’t kill you to stop and visit??” And June goes out of her way to show pictures of Sari as a kid and even showed pictures of Sari in her Optimus costume, saying “She was such a Daddy’s girl when she was little. Always wanting to help out and make Optimus and Ratchet proud.”

Sari post timeskip had this reputation of being this straightlaced no nonsense medic, but then in secret have a secret career in a more tamed version of the cybertronian gladiator pits. Like wwe wrestling. And has like the alterego of Malpractice or something and saying “Just because I can put bots together doesn’t mean I can’t take them apart”. And like she would channel her younger self in the arena not being above biting and all. Putting on a damn Luchador mask.

Hot Rod would learn of this and use that as blackmail-essentially karma for Sari’s antics with Jack and Smokescreen as a kid

When Sari tells Jack about this-he cracks up laughing

And Megatron seeing the straight laced no nonsense Sari is just like “If you were to tell me that scraplet and this medibot were the same being I would have assumed it was another of Starscream’s games.” But then when Hotrod shows him her in the arena-he is like “NOW THAT IS THE SCRAPLET THAT WAS THE BANE TO THE DECEPTICONS”

I just imagine her going for the cybertronian equivelent of the achilles tendons and just biting and ripping them out like a feral animal

Essentially using her medical knowledge to pin point where to take bots down

And just Hot Rod/Rodimus being horrified and Megatron being impressed

I just imagining her screaming to the mic “THE DOCTOR IS IN, AND SHE IS PERSCRIBING 33 CCS OF GET FRAGGED.”

She’d probibly scream into the mic after she won saying “IM A VIRUS YOU CAN’T GET RID OF”

I could see her after beating a contender pulling up a pen and paper writing a perscription and it being written on it “COPE”

I could see her doing this after Rung suggest her getting an outlet for the pent up emotions she was feeling.

[lucabyte]

heres your highly requested fluff you fucking animals

[jackaranda-art]

(GTN Spoilers) a locked tomb animation/amv i've been working on for uhhh.. you know what just roll it

[appleciderjulie]

woagh siffrin sketchy doodly page. i finally made it to act 3 yesterday btw!!

[woolenhumpbackwhale]

Please tell me we all heard Tim's "I don't mind"?!

Timothy, do you like being bossed around behind closed doors?!

[knightwhoisni]

"It's daft eh? I was just thinking about Ordis, actually. What he'd look like if he was a person again. Little fella in a butler coat. Like a penguin."

[romans-empire]

I think we all need to talk more about how Siffrin dissociates by thinking that this is all a play as implied by their flavor texts. Follow the script, enter the stage, enters a character, all of this is make-believe. We all have our roles to play and parts to act. Everything is fine.

[angelsndragons]

hi, veilguard peeps, can we take a moment to talk about rook mercar? because rook mercar is possibly one of the most batshit rooks in the game and they deserve to be recognized as such.

but not only that, mercar's backstory shades the shadow dragons and venatori conflicts in very interesting ways so let's talk about them.

so first, the nessus job.

i don't blame you for forgetting (or not knowing, i know the shadow dragons aren't everyone's cup of tea) so here's your quick refresher from the shadow dragon background blurb found in the character creator:

Breaker of Bonds

“Rook risked everything to liberate the enslaved people of Tevinter, even knowing it would anger the ruling elite. The foundling Rook was adopted into a military family and joined the Shadow Dragons to fight from the shadows for change in Minrathous. While guarding a visiting dignitary who was investigating a slavery ring in the nearby city of Nessus, Rook concluded that the mission would fail without throwing caution to the wind. Alone, s/he(/they) sneaked the dignitary deep into Venatori-controlled zones and brought him back, along with the rescued slaves. These actions brought Rook to the Venatori's attention, and the Shadow Dragons decided to keep Rook out of sight.”

that is the nessus job.

except this doesn't quite square with what the game has to say about it.

the background:

first, here's the viper's letter about the job:

so right away, note how weird it is that the viper's writing mercar's letter. i say this is weird because, with the other factions, the person writing rook's letter is someone they're familiar with, usually in a position of leadership. antoine and evka are the notable leadership exceptions here, having actually been involved in thorne's backstory actions.

here's the rub: mercar doesn't know the viper. they've heard of him, certainly, but when that little popup telling you that you've worked with these faction agents before appears, mercar doesn't have the option to act like they know the viper.

the lines mercar gets are:

it's an honor to stand beside a legend

i know he likes to make an entrance

i know he gets things done

now, i will grant you that some of the responses to mercar's comment indicate tarquin is familiar with both rook and ashur (his response to the honor line is 'well, that'll go straight to his head' while the entrance line earns the viper's comment 'no one watches the rooftops' and tarquin's exasperated 'sure, that's what he says') but the point is, for a character mercar is "supposed" to be very familiar with, neve still tells them about the name ashur. like, seriously, it's the same dialogue tag every rook gets.

which is weird because veilguard is actually pretty good at keeping track of rook's faction and seamlessly changing up the conversation while still getting across the relevant information.

but it doesn't stop there, oh no.

during mercar's unpacking scene, we get these default shadow dragon lines:

now, these right here ping for the following reasons:

varric isn't the "visiting dignitary" that rook was guarding, given that rook had to get to nessus before meeting varric

the fact that rook's backstory happens dao style, where all events are true but only one has duncan varric available to pluck rook out of the immediate consequences

minrathous slaves, specifically, are mentioned as being freed here, even though we're supposed to be in nessus. now i'm not saying that minrathous citizens can't be enslaved and sent elsewhere, i'm just pointing out the phrasing here

the magisters who were financially benefiting from the nessus ring (aka venatori and their backers) knew enough about rook to put a name and a face on them. the structure of the sentence here is that everyone knows who is "too much trouble" to keep around and that is fucking wild kids. no, seriously, that is wild. there is so much wild here, put a pin in it.

no, seriously, this matters and matches the backstory blurb that the job "brought Rook to the Venatori's attention." put a fucking pin in it.

whatever rook's feelings, they always take pride in freeing those slaves- impulsive rook just dislikes that it comes at the cost of putting the shadow dragons in danger (put a pin in it), righteous rook thinks that the shadows should have used the crackdown to start a full out war with the venatori and their magister backers mind you while finally stoic rook just hopes that the shadow dragons weathered the storm safely.

okay, so ready for more batshit mercar?

the next solas conversation is the one where rook tells solas why they're going to stop the gods and here's what mercar has to say about that operation:

i just want y'all to marinate in that little gem of a line for a sec.

done screaming yet? it's cool, take another minute. no one's doing it like mercar.

okay, so finally a fuller picture of mercar's backstory comes into focus, if you ignore the weird bits. like the fact that the shadows made a plan with varric to rescue a friend, which does not appear to be the original nessus job, mind you.

mercar met varric, something went screwy, and mercar and varric decided the only way they had a chance was to start an armed rebellion in the city of nessus. the slavery ring is busted, said rebellion is (apparently) put down, the venatori and the magisters know who to blame for it all, and mercar hightails it out of the country with varric. simple and straightforward, right?

wrong, we have so much to work through.

the fallout:

like why the fuck are ashur, mae, and dorian squatting in dock town, exactly? tarquin lives there but those three surely have a high town shadow dragon cell they can go bug, right? and why is ashur the only one of the three making any cell decisions? i mean, points to mae for being a decent house guest, i guess, but what exactly is going on here? why are the venatori breathing down the shop's neck, to the point that they knew its location well enough to deliberately target it in the save treviso route?

remember those pins? it's time to pull them.

i repeat: this is real fucking bad for the shadow dragons. unlike the rest of the origins, the shadows are a covert operation. they don't want anyone knowing who their members are, who their backers are, any of it. the people in power being able to identify shadow dragons is how you lose shadow dragons: to arrests, targeted killings, beatings, destruction of their livelihoods, etc. ya know, like the viper mentions in his letter.

the fact that the first warden can not only link rook's face and name to the shadow dragons but to very specific crimes, crimes for which rook can absolutely be arrested, should set off all the alarm bells. as dorian says, the man is more politician than warden and as charter's letter from marnas pell states, "Assume every noble Tevinter family not with Shadow Dragons has Venatori pulling strings." this is extremely bad.

after nessus, the venatori had rook's identity as mercar and what did they do? they started looking into every single person mercar had known contact with, every path they took, their home, their family, the bar they stopped in for breakfast that one time. that's how resistance cells die, by the way. including, potentially, mercar's. this is why the shadows were more than happy to see mercar out of the way for a while where they couldn't cause any more trouble; so long as they're not around, they can't compromise more of the various cells' activities and members. it's the safest move for literally everyone involved.

because the damage has been done:

mae's related to varric via marriage, by the way, if the full picture hasn't come into focus yet.

mercar and varric were id'ed in that rebellion, the venatori were pissed at the lost revenue streams and suddenly mae's knocked out of the magisterium?

yeah.

my guess is that there is no high town cell anymore because of the nessus job. for all that mae worked to ensure that dorian was out of the line of fire and squeaky clean, the shadows and their backers couldn't stop the venatori crackdown after nessus, as mentioned by ashur's letter. ashur and mae are here specifically because there is no other cell to go to.

this is why tarquin is snippy, by the by. mercar and the highbloods are drawing attention to him and endangering all of his people just by being there.

hang on, it gets worse.

because the venatori are obsessed with the viper and proving that he's the divine (he is the divine, for the record, there are too many ambient dialogues, codices, and missions pointing in that direction). and to that obsession, i say, what the fuck? how did they come to that conclusion, exactly? what trail did the divine leave behind that first got the venatori on his tail?

well, he's related to and has close ties with mae's family. secondly, the divine is known for being quietly supportive of slave liberation. but the real reason, i think, is the original nessus job.

because again, why were the shadows in nessus originally? why was mercar in nessus to meet varric in the first place? who was the "visiting dignitary" that mercar was guarding?

yeah, i think the dignitary was the divine. and i think he was there in his official capacity. it would handily explain the discrepancy that ashur knows mercar but mercar doesn't know ashur. while the divine might not have a lot of actual power, the power of the press and drawing attention to issues and plights should never be discounted. especially when it's a plausible excuse to get several minrathous shadows in place to shut down the nessus slaver ring.

the divine being guarded by a now known shadow dragon (the viper likely made an appearance, ashur is known to pop up when slave rebellions start) combined with his anti-slavery views and ties to anti-slavery politicians turned the venatori's eye on ashur's night job.

remember, the shadow dragons are officially labeled as insurgents; if the venatori can tie the divine and all his people to them? that would be a death knell for any political support for liberation. the checkmate for the anti-slavery cause for the next age.

tldr: mercar exposed their ties to the shadows (and possibly the divine's) by starting an armed rebellion with varric to free slaves and shut down a slaver hub. in response, the venatori sniped several cells using mercar and varric's likely contacts, which led to ashur, mae, and dorian squatting in the dock town shadow dragon cell instead of some high town cell.

lucky the gods show up to cause trouble, huh?

god i love this game.

[vampire-crimson]

Dungeon Meshi is one of the funniest series to not rush through because day fucking one everyone was obsessed with Kabru and shipping him with Laios and everything and it's like. You read the chapter that introduces him and he's just kinda there. Like his first like four appearances are all as a side character that exists basically to contrast his group with Laios' to show that Laios' group being weird is actively contributing to their success. And then when Kabru is properly introduced you find out he's Like That. There's an entire page dedicated to "man I hope the Touden siblings are secretly problematic (just to be petty)" and another page dedicated to "I don't want to eat monsters so I have to kill Laios (does not do that)" and both of these are before Kabru's background are thoroughly explained. All of which is way more entertaining than what Tumblr did with him.

[rimatsu]

'if you don't damage him, who will?' was a crazy line btw 💀

[deadrocks]

After this post, I did end up poking around to find out what Majima's response was in Japanese to Goro if you had him answer that he thought he'd loved a woman in the past:

斯くに愛した女が居ったような気もするな。思い出そうとすると何や心が波立つ感じがするなぁ。あれは確か―

kaku ni aishita onna ga otta you na ki mo suru na. omoidasou to suru to nan ya kokoro ga namidatsu kanji ga suru na~. are wa tashika―

"I think there was a woman I loved that way. When I try to remember, I feel like...like my heart beats faster. Surely that person―"

Not much difference from what it is in English. The translation just pads it out a little and emphasizes how much time has passed, probably to make it clear that Majima's referring to Makoto. Still, it's a sweet little reference.

[mimicmerchant]

2020 vs 2024

I think the most important takeaway is that I learned to draw elf ears bigger correctly.

[pinkfey]

finding out harding comments on the age gap between you and emmrich when they write her to get with taash of all ppl is crazy

[loopnoid]

2019 vs 2023

[totalmarvelnerd]

I’m seeing a lot of discourse about ep 6 of Agatha All Along rn and I want to throw my unsolicited opinion into the mix:

• As much as I love AgathaxRio, it’s important to remember that they’re not the focus of this show!!! I ship it too, and I’m glad for (and hoping for more) lesbian representation from their characters, but Agatha All Along is allowed to be about more than shipping characters

• Billy and Eddie are cute together! Why do I see people trying to gatekeep this show to a lesbian/wlw audience??? The LGBTQIA+ community is still marginalized and we should be glad to see representation so openly displayed no matter if it’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, etc. Reminder that this is a Disney+ show, so tbh I’m just grateful they’re not queerbaiting us entirely

Less important point, but also:

• I know there were a lot of people rooting for Wanda to come back at the end of the road, but Billy is looking for his brother and imo that’s more meaningful than any other motivation ever could be for his character

[eliasdrid]

SHIN KAMEN RIDER (2023)

✨ TokuWrap2023 #6: Most (Re)Watched Movie ✨