#my Megatron is 100% based on their works

[scourgeofmyownbrain]

More "Bumblebee and Optimus meeting as ✨Adults✨ but still being Father and Son" stuff I came up with, plus extra because I can't get these chuckle-fucks out of my head.

Link to my prev. post for context. incase yall missed it bc I'm not explaining myself, we're just diving right into the deep end

Edit: i entirely forgot but i have a third one.

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Bee knows Optimus isn't one for physical affection, and he fully understands and accepts that. He doesn't want to make Optimus uncomfortable by disrespecting one of his boundaries, that's just a shit thing to do. And Bumblebee is not a shit person. But... he's also desperate. Look, being deprived of physical parental affection your whole life fucks you up something good, let Bumblebee tell you, it makes you do some odd shit just to get a taste of what you've been missing out on. And! And most of the stuff Bumblebee has done are perfectly normal things to do! Plenty of casual stuff, leaning against his chair to look at what Optimus is working on, high fives and fist bumps (Optimus rarely, if ever, does these but for Bee he'll do anything just to make him smile, see Optimus acting totally normal about his feelings what are you talking about), leaning against him for a second when he's tired, totally normal! There are, less normal things, like when one of Bee's legs nearly got torn off on a mission and Optimus had to carry him back to base and Bee curled up close in Optimus's arms the whole time- because of the pain, totally 100% definitely only the pain that was Not mostly taken care of by some field anesthetics. It felt nice to be carried like a kid, sue him.

Getting injured is a special case with giving and taking affection. For example, when Bumblebee had to drag Optimus to a med bay after he passed out from a mission. They were walking into the common room together; Optimus was telling Bee he was fine when he CLEARLY wasn't because he didn't want to wake the medics for something as Trivial as THEIR LEADER and FREIND'S HEALTH (Bee is this close to strangling him) when Optimus just pitched over onto the floor.

Optimus, clearly tried and hurt: I will be fine, there is no need to wake the medics, I just need some energ... *faceplants*

Bumblebee: What did I say? What did fragging I say?! *Hefts Optimus's limp body onto his shoulders* fragging, stupid, slagging, moron, 'I don't need a medic, I'll be fine' he says, if I had been the one doing this, you would have torn the base apart getting the medics up, fragging idiot. *drags Optimus's body out of the room*

Optimus: *Mumbles something about not wanting to bother anyone*

Bumblebee: Too fragging bad, big man, you are going to take care of yourself and you're going to like it!

So now Bee has to drag a bot much bigger than him back down the hall and into the Medbay, just because Optimus was being fucking stupid. Yes it looks as funny as you're thinking. Optimus is semi-conscious but delirious as they make their way down the halls of the base and says "I don't want to take anything that would be better served helping any of you, I care about all of you so much I don't want to see you hurt. I love you." and Bumblebee's like Optimus, I feel so loved and so angry right now, but fuck what you want you're getting taken care of. No, you did not just make my fucking day, I lOve yoU tOo dAd-. He gets Optimus into the medbay on a berth then goes to forcibly wake the medics up to calm himself down because he is seconds from crying.

Optimus eventually gets better with affection, and now Bee gets a hug whenever he asks. He has yet to come down from this high.

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Bumblebee calls Megatron his "Shit Ex-Stepfather". The entirety of team prime thinks this is hilarious. Even Optimus can't help but smile, though he tries to hide it. Someone, probably Jazz, changed Megatron's file name to "Worlds Worst Stepfather". After the war, if Megatron is still alive, he will mysteriously acquire some kind of award saying "Cybertron's #1 Worst Stepfather". He is very confused.

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If you could get Optimus drunk, he would become such a sap. Like, insufferably soft and emotional. And he would be talking about Bee damn near the whole time. He would be so annoying.

Optimus: *Drunk* Did I ever tell you about Bumbl-bee? He's, he's my boy, my bumble boy, my gold'n boy, my buzzy boy, my sweet cheese. An, he's really yellow, you'll know it's him, he looks like- he's really yellow, it's hard not to see him, but he's really really good at sneaking. Even though he's so yellow. He can sneak around so good, no one sees him. I can see him, 'cause he's my boy. He can sneak around and nooo one finds him, 'cept me, 'cause he's my boy. He can hide so good, he hid under sshockwave's chest once. Riiiight under his eye, his big purple eye. Bee's so funny, he tells such funny stories. He tells his stories better then me, they're a lot funnier. I'm not good at funny stories. He's really good at it. He's really good at lots of things. Bee's so cool. I'm so happy he's here, he's so cool and funny and nice and cool. And he fights real good too, he's so cool. he once- Bee once punched my ex once, right in the face. Riiight in the kisser, just, boosh. My ex sucks, Bee's so cool. I like him, he's my boy. An-and he taught himself how to do aaaaall the cool things he does. He didn't have anyone to teach him, he did it all by himself. All alone... I wish I met him sooner, when he was small. He says he was really cute when he was small and I want to see him small. I like him big though, he's really fun when he's big. He's- *Sobs* He's my booooy, and I love him so muuuuch.

This continues for hours. Luckily he never drinks so no has to suffer through this.

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If you thought Optimus was the Serial Adopter, you'd be wrong. It's Bumblebee. No bot is safe from his clutches. He scoops up family members like a pelican scoops fish. Optimus is barely aware of how many family members he technically has, he stopped keeping track a long time ago.

Bumblebee: *Bursting into the room dragging some bot he was on an extended mission with* OPTIMUS, I GOT ATTACHED AGAIN YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER FAMILY MEMBER

Optimus: *Not looking up from his data pad* That's great, son, go put it with the rest.

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Optimus would be such a good grandparent. In the future, after the war ends, Bumblebee comes into possession of a kid; whether he finds someone and takes them under his wing or he just fucking makes one, I don't know nor care, but he gets a kid. And when he introduces them to Optimus, Optimus just fucking melts. He was already a huge softie before but he's so much worse now. He goes full grandma mode. He has snacks in his pockets (or whatever bots have) that he sneaks to the kid every time he sees them. He gives them money at random. You best believe he would destroy anything that even looked at his grandbaby wrong (Bee: Optimus, stop attacking the door. Optimus, the door just bumped them, they're fine. Dad stop, omp(rimus))

The "Bee finds a kid and both of them get attached and now are a family" is the funnier option. Because the kid knows who these guys are, they saved Cybertron. The kid's still getting used to having Bee as their guardian, so when they meet the 13th Prime: Holder of the Matrix of Leadership, Savior of Cybertron, they don't expect Dotting Grandparent Extraordinaire.

Bumblebee: and this is Optimus Prime. He's your Grandpa.

The kid : *nervous* He's my what?

Optimus: *on the verge of tears* mY grAnDbABy-

The "Bee made a kid" version is still pretty funny.

Bumblebee: *Exasperated* Optimus, give me my child back.

Optimus: *violently crying* nO, It'S mY bAbY nOW.

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Imagine, if you will, Optimus and Bumblebee sitting on a roof together, not talking, not touching, just watching the sun set. Just enjoying the silence together, maybe with some energon to go with it. Because they get it, oh they get it. Sometimes you just need to be alone with someone. That good mutual respect and love from a found family that understands you. this is why I need bee to be an adult, I need both of them to be hurting and find some comfort in each other, to find solace in each other, to be a family and to be equals, is that too much to ask?

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A list of things Bumblebee is allowed to get away with:

Interrupting Meetings to Tell Optimus Something, important or not (hi dad)

Casually touching the Usually Touch Adverse Optimus (Physical affection ftw)

Calling Optimus out on his self-sacrificial bullshit (you're going to see the medics and you're going to like it, old man)

Using the three points above to drag Optimus into the Medbay by force (Ratchet is so smug about this)

Getting Optimus to do something fun and relaxing (father son bonding time, as Bee says.)

Swearing aggressively (for everyone else it's unprofessional, for Bee its therapeutic. He stretches this excuse as far as it goes)

Making Insulting comments about others to their face (look they deserve it if the Perpetually Friendly Bumblebee is saying it)

Talking about Megatron (Usually team prime avoids talking about Megsy outside of war related convos out of respect for Optimus's history with him. Bumblebee does not give a shit, Megatron is a bitch and he's going to make his opinions known (Everyone thinks it's funny dw))

Illegal activities (this fucker street races in every universe, you think he isn't doing shit like this on the daily?)

Murder

Stealing/Sneaking snacks (he shares with Optimus)

Making jokes about Optimus being his dad (he thinks it's funny bc they're not related and they met like 6 years ago. Optimus explodes with emotion every time bc you consider me good enough to be your dad?)

Bee is a fucking menace, Optimus loves him so much.

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Misc. funny word vomit I came up with that have no context, reason, or sense

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Optimus is working at a desk focusing on some data pads. A tiny energon cube flies into frame, bouncing off Optimus's forehead and landing on the desk. Optimus grabs the cube and eats it without looking up from the datapad. A few minutes pass, another energon cube flies and bounces off Optimus's head. He eats it without looking. Bumblebee is sitting off to the side in the room with Optimus with a bag of energon snacks, periodically throwing one at the distracted Prime. This is Bee's and Ratchet's newest scheme to get Optimus to actually eat, and it's working splendidly. (Actually, Bumblebee originally was throwing the energon onto the desk, but over time he got bored and started just throwing the cubes directly at Optimus. He hasn't noticed any of the cubes hitting him at all, so Bee's started trying to do trick shots.)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Bumblebee?"

"Absolutely, now throw me."

"Alright... Three, two, one- Ngha!"

*distant loud metal slam*

"..."

*distantly* "I'm good! We're in business!"

*quietly* "oh thank primus..."

*distantly* "Okay, I'm done. I'm coming back down."

"Wait-"

*distantly* "Hup!"

*loud crashing metal noises*

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's early morning, everyone got back to base late the night before. Everyone is tired. Optimus is sitting at the table in the common room, slowly drinking a cube of energon. His eyes are half open and bleary. Bumblebee is beside him, head in his hand, dozing. Bee's head falls from his hand and slams onto the table. Optimus doesn't even blink at the noise, just takes a sip of energon.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Bumblebee takes a lot of pictures. Mostly of his team. He's pretty sneaky about it too, usually just taking a capture from his visual feed and saving it to his personal datapad. And at a glance none of the pictures are all that special, captures of a group of bots hanging out between missions, selfies of Bee and company on missions, drunken mishaps, quiet moments, he's got this really funny one of Cliffjumper stuck in a storage closet, but Bee keeps all these photos out of sight. The others are aware of his habit but they never see most of the photos, they never ask. Bee only opens his photos folder when ever he has a quiet moment alone and just scrolls through, reminiscing. His favorites are the ones where he caught someone's genuine smile. Sometimes they're in the background of a larger group shot, or it's just them smiling at Bee in conversation. He's got a lot of Optimus's smile. Optimus doesn't smile a lot, but he always seems to smile when Bee's around. Bee's proud that he can do that for him.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

this could literally be anyone on team prime: *teasing* You playing favorites, Prime? Giving Bumblebee all this special treatment is making the rest of us feeling left out.

Optimus: You all treat him the exact same way I do.

again, literally anyone on team prime: ... Touché, Boss bot, touché...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

After spending an extended period of time in close proximity to Megatron (for what ever reason), Bumblebee and Optimus talk.

Bee: You had terrible taste in partners.

Optimus: *sighs*

Bee: Physically, I can see the appeal, but everything else is a wild thing to say yes to.

Optimus: ...

Bee: His personality, his interests- just why none of that clocked you onto how fragged up he would be is beyond me.

Optimus: ........

Bee: You're not stupid, I hope that your next partner will be leagues better than him. Ratchet maybe, oh or Elita, they would make great partners (and even better step-parents), or maybe-

Optimus: CanwePleasestoptalkingaboutmylovelife??

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Bumblebee: If you get back together with Megatron I'm disowning you.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

BB: This is... so dumb.

OP: The higher I am the better I can see.

BB: You can- You can fly.

OP: Hush now Bumblebee! I am searching...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk man, brain rot hits something different when I think about it for long periods of time

[yes-i-write-fanfiction]

Some opinions down below on why I think these specific characters would be funny to see in this scenario;

-Nightbeat is a detective. Gotham is full of crime. See where I'm getting at? Also, it would be funny if he just casually figured out the batfams secret identities, went "neat" and then just moved on to the next mystery.

-Rodimus would 100% try to become a vigilante. Creates a heroic looking holoform (that looks way to flashy for anything in Gotham) and uses his alt mode as his own batmobile. Batman would find out about his true identity by the end of the week.

-I want to see Megatron accidentally create a criminal empire. Like, he tries so hard to appear like a normal human while trying to find a way home, maybe even opens a cafe or some shit as cover, but he keeps on attracting the attention of criminals. Suddenly he's got hundreds of goons devoted to him, following his every order. Call that warlord rizz.

-Whirl for the same reason as Megatron except he does it on purpose. He wanna do crime! Be a rogue (but one of those cool ones like Poison Ivy and Catwoman)! And punch the Joker. Fuck, he really hates the Joker.

-It would just be funny to see Prowl in this hellhole of a city. Gotham's crime rate is 100%, the cops are corrupt, the law is upheld by vigilantes. Look me in the eyes and tell me that he wouldn't have a fucking seizure. Would kill the Joker for stress relief.

-Look, Starscream would hate the city but he would make it work. He'd make his own place, forge connections, create his own criminal empire. And totally try and seduce Bruce Wayne. You know, for the money and power.

-Grimlock gets found by Robin. Robin sees giant, fire breathing, robot t-rex and goes "hmm, yes, you're mine now" and keeps him a secret from the rest of the batfam.

-Brainstorm would fucking thrive in Gotham. He's a mad scientist, he would have so much fun taking apart the weapons and equipment of Gotham's rogues and vigilantes. Not to mention creating his own. He'd steal the batmobile only to return it two days later, upgraded and decked out with the most insane tech.

-Soundwave has an adoption problem. Batman has an adoption probem. You see my vision? Also, I want him to adopt Robin. And Robin just accepts it because now he gets to hang out with Ravage, Buzzsaw, Laserbeak and Ratbat. Alternatively, just Ravage in Gotham because that would be funny too.

-Rewind thinks Gotham is fucking WILD and he's planning on getting it all on tape so he can show his friends later. He stalks the batfam on their patrols, sneaks into the secret bases of rogues, just to get those good action shots.

-Similar to Prowl, Ultra Magnus would be so fucking vexed by Gotham but while Prowl goes "I FUCKING HATE THIS CITY AND EVERYONE IN IT!", Ultra Magnus has a major case of "I can fix them".

[weenwrites]

Cooking A Meal: Part 2

Summary - You ask one of the cons to cook you a meal, but honestly it goes about as well as you'd expect. Characters - Megatron, Shockwave, Starscream, Soundwave, Dreadwing, Knockout, Breakdown, Airachnid, Predaking, Darksteel, Skylynx Content - Crack Category - Headcanons Trigger Warnings - None

✎ A/N: This is an un-revised shitpost, not something too serious.

[ Please do not repost, plagiarize, or use my writing for AI! Translating my work with proper credit is acceptable, but please ask first! ]

Megatron

Don't even bother having him try to cook you something, he can't cook at all. More often than not he'll just send some vehicon off to fetch you a meal, but when he's actually put in a kitchen and told to cook a meal, he'll probably serve you a plate of charred... Stuff.

It reeks and honestly you can't even tell what it used to be. The most he knows about cooking is that humans always heat up their food. He doesn't know how cooked a piece of meat or a slice of bread has to be, and despite knowing how useful patience is, he can't bring himself to wait a couple minutes for a slice of bread to turn golden brown.

Even with some instructions he doesn't understand a single word on that page. What does "fold in the cheese" even mean?! All in all, the food tastes awful, the presentation is awful, and it's not even a nice experience, he somewhat cleans his mess, but still, it's an awful experience. Even your local fast food restaurant would serve something better than what he could make you.

Shockwave

He wouldn't be too bad at cooking... However the meal he's served you is most likely made from some artificial substitute... It's not bad, per say, and it has a higher nutritional value than everything in your kitchen combined, but... He didn't stand in a kitchen to make it, he stood in a lab and fabricated it. That aside, it's plain and has a bit of a weird taste, the presentation sucks, and it's not naturally made, it was fabricated in a laboratory. It counts as science. Not cooking. So nevermind, he'd be bad at cooking.

But if he were to cook, he'd get into the technicalities of all, and spout food science facts at you. He'd tell you all about how proteins in meat force out moisture through coagulation, and that's how meat cooks. Or how amino acids and simple sugars are rearranged to change the color of meat as it cooks. Unless you know about food science yourself, all it may sound like some scientific garble to you. Whether you implore him to continue or not is all up to you.

But just because he knows about the chemical composition of a cracker doesn't mean he knows how to make things taste good. He chooses things based on their nutritional value, not their taste. Everything from meal portions, to seasonings, to even the temperature it was cooked at is all carefully measured to ensure that you're getting your healthy fill of nutrients. He doesn't even allow you to season it afterwards, because any more seasoning would disturb the healthy balance.

Still, while it may be nutritious, it certainly isn't delicious, but at least it's 100% edible and extremely healthy.

Starscream

He didn't know humans cooked their food, he thought they just ate it as is. So you'll have to explain a lot of stuff to him before either of you actually get anywhere. But once he gets the basics down, he'll be off to a rough, yet good start!

He's very particular about the way things are organized in a kitchen, and he'll get real annoyed if you moved something like a spatula or a spoon he was using. He's sorta set up this organization system in the kitchen that works specifically for him and no one else. While it may look like a mess on the outside, it works really well for him.

He'd never touch raw meat, even if it were to cook for you. He just hates the feeling, so you'd basically have no luck at getting him to scrub a chicken down with salt and seasoning unless you gave him a pair of gloves or a brush. But even if he's a bit squeamish, he's very thorough with his work, and very patient too. But he does complain about how long it takes for things to prepare things and then cook.

Might be a bit burnt here, and a bit bland over there, but if you pick some parts out and sprinkle some salt, pepper, spice, or hot sauce on it, it makes for a solid-ish meal! Which is pretty impressive, given the fact he once knew nothing about cooking a few hours ago.

Soundwave

They're actually a really good chef, better than everyone else, that's for sure. Soundwave knows where and how to learn what he needs to know, so it wouldn't take long for him to research and grasp the bare bones of cooking. And after a couple of tries, they could definitely whip you up a 5 star meal that tastes like something the best chef in the world would make.

It's almost scary how fast he learns, but hey at least you're getting like one of the best meals in the world using cheap ingredients from your fridge. Like who knew ketchup could taste so good in place of fancy marinara sauce!

And because of the amazing meal he made, it's without a doubt that he is the undisputed best chef aboard the Nemesis and everybody else's skills immediately pale in comparison. If it were a competition, it would've been over the moment they joined.

Dreadwing

Like almost everyone on this list, he has no idea what to do, and he has no idea what humans eat, so it ends up being a bit of a lecture before he actually starts cooking. It might take him a bit, and he'll stumble here and there, but he's always quick to ask good questions to ensure he has a solid grasp on what he needs to do.

He's quick to pick up anything you teach him, like about cutting vegetables, or seasoning meals, temperature, et cetera. And in a while, he's able to follow a recipe rather well, only occasionally coming to you to ask a question about what "folding" or "basting" or "al dente" means.

He'd serve you a pretty solid meal all in all. But on the off-chance that what he made for you had caused you to get sick, he'd immediately and sincerely apologize to you, and most likely never make you a meal ever again.

Knockout

He has some knowledge around human cooking thanks to the internet, and it helps the slightest bit, but for the most part he'll be bugging you with all his questions about human cuisine and cooking.

And all the while he's cooking, he'll ask you to fetch him things like that kitchen knife over there, or that measuring cup—no, not that one. That one was used for wet ingredients, he needs the other one that was used for dry ingredients, now chop chop. The clock's ticking. Or he'll holler at you to come and help hold the bowl as he scrapes the mixture into another pan.

Surprisingly, the kitchen actually remains rather nice and orderly throughout it all. He fills your sink with water and just leaves the dirty dishes in there to soak, and cleans messes the instant they're made, which greatly helps with clean-up afterward! But he won't touch the dishes. He just hates the feeling of scrubbing grimy food off, so you're on your own unless you give him a pair of gloves.

But as for the food itself? It's... Semi-decent! He may have burned it a little, or messed up one of the steps, but it still tastes good and it's still edible. He even decorates it nicely! He'd chop any vegetables into cute little shapes, and he has a good eye for presentation. So it's pretty nice.

Breakdown

He doesn't know anything about human cooking. He does question where the heck human food comes from though, and the most he knows is that humans consume other organisms, which he finds really weird. So in the beginning, the whole cooking session might be more of an educational session than anything, but only so he understands what humans can eat and what he should be doing.

He technically doesn't do any cooking since he just makes you things like instant noodles or instant mac n' cheese. But he'll need a bit of supervising because with the noodles, he'll put the seasoning packet in the water while the noodles are cooking, and then drain the noodles because he thought that the noodles would absorb the flavor (same goes for the mac n' cheese), but it turns out that the cheese water just goes down the drain. So it technically isn't completely his fault that the food may taste off (because instant food doesn't always taste that good...) but he does mess some of the steps up which contributes to that.

But with a little guidance here, and a little trial and error there, he'll actually be able to whip up something pretty decent using the instant stuff as a base! He'll add things like chopped up vegetables or spice for some flavor in some instant ramen, or cook the macaroni in milk and add some mustard for mac n' cheese, or perhaps crack an egg and add some garlic into some insta-soup.

All in all, it's a pretty solid meal for his first time cooking. But does it really technically count as cooking if he used an already pre-made thing to make it?

Airachnid

If she didn't care about you as much as she does, she would've fed you something poisonous if she didn't ignore your request first. She's... A questionable cook... To say the least, but one thing's for sure, all the meat she uses in her cooking is fresh. And I mean fresh as in "she dragged that animal into the kitchen and slaughtered it on the spot" kind of fresh, which is ideal if you're eating something that requires super fresh meat like oysters.

She doesn't burn the food, but she most likely under-cooks it. As for seasoning, well, she doesn't add any, so whatever you're eating will need a whole lot of salt, pepper, and spices either to taste like something, or to distract from the horrible taste the food already has.

But while the food may taste weird, the presentation's interesting. It's something of an art, made from something you don't even think you can call "food" anymore, but it's interesting to look at.

All in all, the food tastes horrible, the presentation's neat, and you're 100% guaranteed to get food poisoning if you scarf the entire meal down (which you won't, the stench is bad enough to kill even flies).

Predaking

He can't cook at all—actually, he doesn't even know what humans eat, so you'll have to explain to him quite a lot. Even then, he'll probably just bring you a dead animal and assume that's enough. You'll actually have to lecture him on cooking meat, preparing ingredients, and whatnot. So this whole thing turns into a cooking lesson as opposed to doing actual cooking.

He soaks all that knowledge up like a sponge, and with his newfound knowledge of cooking he's able to make something relatively decent for you, if not leaning more towards mediocre! The meal is something simple, probably from a cookbook you have at your house (or on the internet...)

All in all, while it's below average, it's probably above-par by your standards, given the fact you just taught him how to cook a hot second ago. The presentation is simple, the food actually tastes good, so all in all it's a pretty average meal.

Darksteel

Surprise, surprise! He is the worst cook out of them all. And here you might have thought that Predaking or Airachnid would've been the worst, but nope. It's him. He'd most likely burn your kitchen down, if not trash everything you have, and waste everything you have in your fridge. The best he does is bring you a dead animal that he "cooked" by spewing fire at it. Then again it's most likely either overcooked or undercooked and would definitely give you trichinellosis, E. coli, BSE, salmonella, or whatever other horrible disease you risk contracting by eating what he's served you.

But what about vegetables? He doesn't even know what a vegetable is, and unless you give him a really thorough description of what counts as a vegetable or not, he'd most likely just uproot a tree or pluck a bush out from the ground and give it to you, mildly scorched, because he remembered that you have to cook it.

If you were to ask him about presentation, he'd probably pose the scorched cattle or chicken he got his claws on, set the crisp "vegetables" upright, and think that's good enough "presentation".

Bottom line? Do not eat anything he gives you, it'll absolutely destroy your stomach.

Skylynx

Yeah he doesn't want to. He'd hate cooking so much because everything takes so long to do! He's sensible enough to do some research and learn, or ask you questions for clarification, but waiting for water to boil just drives him crazy.

He tries to work diligently and be patient, but you might catch him cutting corners a little bit. How so? Well, he'd raise the temperature of the stove to get something to cook faster, or if he needs to carefully ground something into a poultice, he'll just smush it into paste. If you're having something simple like mashed potatoes, then he has absolutely no problem preparing that.

He doesn't pay much attention to how it looks, so while the food he serves looks unappetizing as he straight up slaps it onto your plate, it actually tastes pretty decent... Ish... Decent-ish. Sure your food may have come out a bit burnt, or you might find some weird chunks in it, but it's better than what Darksteel has to offer, that's for sure.

[transingthoseformers]

Something wholesome to wake up too :D. I remember stumbling upon your post about both Megatronus and Orion being clerks/librarians/archivist thanks to the TF One movie making them both miners sooo have like my spin on it/headcanons based on the idea? -Megatronus and Orion met when Megs was still D-16 aka a miner. When Terminus managed to get a break from the mines, which was so rare, he would sneak Megs with him so the young miner could experience more. He took him to the Iacon Hall of Records since D-16 mentioned being curious about the history of Cybertron, there he met a young Orion.

-Orion and him would bond over data pads Orion managed to smuggle to the mine site, lots of them being old poetry and history that excited D-16. It is also how D-16 gets his name of Megatronus

-At some point, Alpha Trion catches on, and instead of being anger, decides "Eh fuck it, Orion needs someone around his age to talk to" //proceeds to yoink the young miner and giving him a better life

-Now a proper clerk for the Hall of Records with Orion, it is kind of chaos. It's basically "An introvert and ambivert become friends and they have to play rock, paper, scissors on who deals with people". Megs always loses, he hates it.

-Orion has def snuck Meg's poetry and writings into the records because he is so proud of Meg's work. Megs gets flustered.

-I lowkey just picture this AU being more chill. Yeah, Megs still wants the caste system gone, but is less violent about it, trying to use his words and peaceful protests first before being forced to go to more extremes. Orion maybe backing it up too because maybe the council just straight up ignored Megs because they see him as low-caste still and he's just "Ayo wtf".

-When maybe Orion becomes Optimus, Megs backs him up, helping archive everything while helping him connect with the low-castes who are wary of OP. Also def acts as OP's scary dog without realizing it lol

-Honestly i cant see clerk!Megs becoming the con tyrant warlord we know him as, I feel like he would be more calm and chill, preferring to spread his message while also like keeping OP in check so he doesn't become a tyrannt

-Would still call OP "Orion", and no one can stop him. Not even OP. As revenge OP scatters Megs poetry. In summary: Megs helps break the "serious and cold" prime act alot and helps a lot of the team connect with Optimus on a personal level

Sorry that this is long, but these ideas plagued me i hope that is okay!

YES

Ooo on Terminus and Megatron sneaking to the surface, and that being how Orion met him

Yes on the smuggling of datapads to D-16, and makes sense he'd get his new name from them

Alpha Trion just... Taking Megatronus has to have consequences, significant consequences

Sfsgd yes, "you do it" "no you do it" "you lost, you do it" "🤬🤬🤬"

Yes on Orion and Megs sneaking the poetry into the records, preserve it yes

100% this is a more chill au idea, always was meant to be a more chill au idea

Interesting way it changes Megatronus

We really "the power of friendship"-ed this up, it's v cool. Megatronus has grown into himself in a different direction, and I bet their friendship being earlier and arguably closer effects Orion in an interesting way

I am a SUCKER for characters calling Optimus "Orion" as a sign of closeness, oh it's gotta have fun moments

OO on the team part? Does the war still happen and Op and Megs are on the same side, or does the team unite in a different different way?

[jack-o-cel]

Watching g1 rn and here are my thoughts so far (Episodes 1-8)

Completely out of order btw

—————

[sees Cliffjumper]

Oh, wonder when he’s gonna die

—————

[Starscream about to do something painfully stupid]

Babe, no-

—————

[Upon witnessing Shockwave’s enormous bodonkers for the first time]

godDAMN-

—————

Megs: For once Starscream, I agree

Well that’s never happening again

—————

[Cliffjumper still alive]

This gotta be a world record

—————

Ratchet, I appreciate the effort, but you’re not beating Shockwave in the tiddy category

—————

Megs: I need assistance

Star: lol

Not sure what you were expecting, Megs

—————

[Megatron turns into a literal gun]

LMFAO this is almost as funny as your head being visible in a vehicle alt

—————

I’ve only had Jazz for a few hours, but if anything happens to him-

—————

[Skywarp taunting Rumble while in an ice cave]

I don’t think now’s the time-

[gets covered in snow]

See??? Oh it worked out lol

—————

Omg Skyfire!

Omg Starscream searched for him 🥹

He’s so nice to him🥹🥹🥰🥰

“And you’ll be my second in command”

BABE, YES❤️❤️

—————

Jazz: not a snowman, a snowbot!

❤️❤️❤️

—————

>:O no shoot at Skyfire

—————

Soundwave is just that guy, y’all don’t stand a chance

OMG look how cute Laserbeak is ❤️❤️

RAVAGE ❤️

RUMBLE ❤️

—————

Screamer shush, leave cinnamon roll Skyfire alone- NO! NO SHOOT >:O

You deserve better, babe

Optimus adopt him, please

—————

Megs, babe, he failed the first hundred times, why are you sending him to do it again???

—————

[Chip on Cybertron]

How are you alive-

—————

[Skywarp missing multiple missile shots]

Babe, how??? They’re not even trying to dodge???

—————

SKYFIRE NO!!!! 🥺🥺🥺😭😭

—————

[Spike finds a random ass cassette player in the mountains]

Spike: yeah this is normal

—————

lol he’s a camera

—————

Oooo! Underwater base, nice!

—————

Dinobots! Dinobots! DINOBOTS!

—————

Starscream being a former scientist is like a wizard with absolutely no wisdom whatsoever

—————

[Mishears Slugs name]

Who????

—————

Just a thought, maybe next time activate the Dinobots outside, away from important computers

—————

[Megatron, gone for .02 seconds]

“MEGATRON HAS FALLEN! I STARSCREAM AM NOW YOUR LEADER!!”

—————

100% convinced Megs only keeps Screamer around for entertainment

—————

“You’re too slow, rusty pants”

—————

“It’ll make them smarter”

Wheeljack, pretty sure you only made one brain cell between all three of them, and Slug never has it

—————

“YouRe sUpPosSeD to kNoW eVeRytHiNg??”

Babe-

—————

[Megatron trips]

“I STARSCREAM-“

[ogurizz]

my magnum opus: metalocalypse x transformers crossover

aka the most metal death metal band in the galaxy

separate designs + a bit of lore under cut

it's geared more towards metalocalypse fans, but if you haven't watched the show or don't feel like reading just enjoy the designs :)

it would be weird if they still had human names so 60% of my creativity went into making up new ones

au is based on idw 2005 comics, i'll put the canon lore into square brackets

[short history summary:

cybertron was ruled by functionists. they believed you must live according to your vehicle mode. so if you're a cement mixer, you will mix the damn cement until the end of time or else

eventually, a miner-turned-gladiator megatron said: "guys this is bullshit, everyone should have equal opportunities in life". a lot of people shared his opinion, so he gathered an army, named them decepticons, assassinated the government and the civil war broke out. it lasted four million years, a whole bunch of war crimes was committed on both sides. also megatron stopped giving a shit about equality and turned into a tyrant but that's irrelevant

post-war cybertron population was like.. 100 times smaller and had a hard time adapting to civilian life. maybe death metal wouldn't fix them but it would sure be cathartic]

SCRAGMUG, being a humble cement mixer, really vibed with megatrons ideas about equality and emancipation and all that. in reality decepticons assigned him on construction work again, with the only difference that he could get caught in artillery fire now. he compensates with making up heroic stories about losing his arm every chance he gets

war was kind of a social lift for DETONATE: he went from odd security guard jobs to elite decepticon storm troop. while he never cared about ideology, end of war still leaves him confused on what to do with his life now. therapy is for pussies, so he pours his ptsd into gory poetry on his secret datapad

he met scragmug once in a prison cell before the war, they both got into a mass brawl. the cement mixer talked his audial off while detonate stoically listened. decepticons soon opened the prison gates and scragmug left thinking they are besties for life (he didn't even get yelled at!)

DOUBLEKICK is from junkion, a literal garbage-dump of a planet where all fauna will try to eat you! its culture is 15% scavenging, 15% cannibalism and 70% earth tv. he had a pretty good relationship with his twin triplesnap, until this rat accidentally burned down an important storage building and blamed it on his bro

conveniently, decepticons were recruiting junkions at the time, so doublekick escaped the ostracism by enlisting as a mechanic. he became fast friends with scragmug and after the war they went to cybertron together, where he set up a workshop.

[short digression on spark bonds since this pair of fruits has one:

sparks are transformers' souls and hearts simultaneously, extuinguished spark = death. it's located in a spark chamber in the middle of a chest and powers the body.

there are two kinds of spark bonds: conjux endura and amica endura. first is similar to spouses, second - to best friends. to become amicas, you must perform a ritual: bare your spark to your friend, invite them to share your light and tell them how much you appreciate them :]

the guitarists are from camian, cybertron's long-lost distant colony, so the war didn't touch them at all. luckily for them, camian places a lot of value into art and culture. unluckily, it is also required to find an amica in 10 megacycles (about 93 hours!!) or face ostracisation. it's a religious thing

WINTERSUN has a total of three interests in life: flying fast, playing guitar fast, and fragging. social stigma would significantly limit the pool of sexual partners, so he chose his amica based on guitar skill. turned out this doesn't make a solid foundation for a healthy relationship. after a particularly nasty fight wintersun compulsively left for cybertron

SCRAPFANG has always dreamed of flying, he used mountains as springboards so he could get into the air for a few seconds. with this comes fangirling about planes, so he was ecstatic when a magnificent white jet became his amica, and making music together was amazing! he's determined to find wintersun, apologise and fix everything

... ok i also have a 1000 word google doc on how they all got together but no one will read that shit so i'm planning to illustrate some highlights from it. and design charles and maybe some other characters too. follow me for more robot art

+ bonus height chart, they're big boys!

[blueikeproductions]

Some CyberWorld stuff cropped up.

…Kinda.

Prices were revealed for the line.

Of note is the Scorponok toy that’s roughly 100 bucks. The price has led some to guess it’s similar to the Hot Wheels playsets with the car eating monster and assorted Batman and Paw Patrol transforming playsets.

It’s thought that if this is a transforming playset of some kind, presumably that means this Scorponok is likely based on the G1 version.

And it Transforms from base to scorpion, no robot. Of course the toy could also be based on Bay Scorponok…

At this point it’s hard to say without photos yet, but something similar to G1 Scorponok seems likely.

The other prices seem … ok. Toys are still expensive but these seem manageable? Unless Cyber Changers are more One Steps like Cog Changers, $14 bucks seems a little steep for that though. Hopefully they’ve retired that as the Cyberverse and EarthSpark One Steps clogged shelves my way for the longest time.

The Cog Changers aren’t moving much here either so maybe it’s time for a different approach. Fans do seem more intrigued at what all these toys will be and are hoping Hasbro is learning better lessons after the failure of CV & ES.

Another thing that sticks out is Megatron is indeed part of this toy line, but whether that means he evolves to Galvatron or Galvatron is a separate character we don’t know yet. For that matter we still don’t know if Megatron’s a bull or bulldozer, lol. Both would be funny. It seems then it’s only a matter of time before Bumblebee is also revealed if Megatron’s still involved.

The original listings didn’t explicitly name Megatron, leaving us confused if Meg Bull was Megatron or was a separate character, so this is new information.

Another thing that’s cropped up are the Swapticons.

It’s unknown if they’re related to CyberWorld (both this and CW DO make use of Grimlock and Snarl specifically), but the mention of a Jungle Mission implies a larger return to animals all around from this, CyberWorld and Wild King post ROTB.

The gimmick seems to be a revival of an aborted toy considered in the 80’s.

It’s still just as bizarre now as it was then, but at least the pairs for the Swapticons make a little more sense.

The weirdest pair though are Nemesis Prime and Clench.

Both that Hasbro seems hellbent on making Nemesis a proper character (RiD Scourge aside), and that Clench is remembered. At all. He’s incredibly obscure, and certainly a unique choice.

Hazarding a guess the toy might use the “Laser Prime” body type since that fits what Clench usually turns into the best.

Shadow Panther and Ravage is also funny because depending on the continuity, they’re the same character!

The Beast Wars versions are, unsurprisingly, usually repaints of Cheetor. Apparently Shadow Panther is supposed to be a separate character in Japan, but some Beast Wars stuff in America tried to make him into Ravage to tie into his role in the cartoon.

How this Swapticon version works I don’t know, as I would think G1 Ravage would be the dominant one, but I don’t know if I see this turning into a cassette. Maybe it’s loosely based on BW Ravage?

Or it’s just a Cheetor/Tigatron repaint and I’m overthinking it.

The aforementioned jungle pack is probably the Dinobots, the cats and maybe Nemesis and Starscream?

Hopefully the Swapticons have better luck than the EarthSpark Tacticons, as those finger puppets keep clogging pegs my way. No one wants Hashtag and Arcee that badly it seems.

Also can we go back and use Swapticon and Tacticons as actual factions? They sound cool by name alone.

[mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune]

Why Am I The Last To Notice That Soundwave (from EarthSpark) Has Large-Hips...?

[Note: Don’t Reblog This Without Permission] 

I can’t help but have the word “Mom-Hips” pop into my head when finally noticing how large Soundwave’s (from EarthSpark) hips are....

okay even though not everyone who has such large hips, will automatically be a “Mom” but after seeing some fan art of Soundwave from EarthSpark, and then I had to double check from a image of Soundwave from the show to see if his hips are in fact like that........and well, it seems to be true.

why is it I’m the last one to finally notice this, even if I did see the episode but this....oh my gosh, the whole “Mom-Hips” comes to mind and I know that is just me being weird, and well I can’t help but view TFA-Soudwave as not being 100% the same as the Original Soundwaves like from TF-G1, TFP and even Earthspark, because TFA-Soundwave is more of a Soundwave Jr. to me now, like Soundwave Sr. could be like a Dad figure to him....

wouldn’t be surprised if Megatron based Soundwave Jr. on a Decepticon he use to know who had the same name as him, like some of Soundwave Jr.’s blueprint designs being based on the Original Soundwave, and the Original one could look like a TFA version of the Soundwave from TFP...

well Soundwave from TF-G1 and TF-Earthspark, is technically Frenzy, Rumble, Laserbeak and Ravage’s Dad/Sire...

and given how the IDW had made Scorponok the whole Fanon “Carrier” into Canon....

seriously, I can’t be the only one who had figured out that even if I had to look it up and find it out myself and sometime I need to read the full comic sometime...

that Scorponok had just made the fanon into canon, the Transformers becoming Carriers has become canon, I repeat, it has become canon people, this is not a drill! XD

well at least Soundwave doesn’t have to worry about some people pointing out how big his aft is, I mean that can be a bit embarrassing to some who don’t want it be point out.....it’s one thing when it happens in a fictional movie or show or a book, but it happening in real life can probably be real life embarrassing...

it’s like even if I did end up losing a lot of weight thanks to that first depression that happen in 2015, why couldn’t I.......no, never mind...forget it...

but the point being it might be possible that some Mech and Femme will have large hips, that I guess could be seen as “Caretaker Hips”...           

Scorponok has already made the whole “Carrier” thing canon, so we know the hatchling/sparklings will be carried and be visible by the chest area of the Cybertronian...thanks to Scorponok....who shouldn’t be confused with the one from Beast Wars. 

and of course the thing that pops in my head, after finally realizing and noticing that Soundwave from EarthSpark has large hips, is that the whole he has “Mom-Hips”.........which once again, I know not everyone who has large hips are automatically Moms.......but it fits Soundwave, since his technically a parent.

a Caretaker in theory, is the Sire/Dad or Carer/Mom who takes care of the young ones, like the hatchlings or cassettes.

while their life-partner is off at work, and if they both have work, then the Caretaker will find someone to babysit, but they are still the Caretaker.

no matter if they are the Mentor, Sire or Carer.

and yes I am very much aware it’s weird to view Soundwave having “Mom-Hips” I’m weird enough to have that thought pop into my head...XD

I already talked about in another post on my view on Megatron and Optimus from EarthSpark, technically being Eon-Boomers. 

and don’t misinterpret the whole “Mom-Hips” thing, like I had pointed out before.

I don’t like it when some of the things I say gets misinterpreted in a very wrong way....and depending on how it is, there can be hurt feelings on both sides.

which is why I want to try a bit better to make sure my words don’t get misinterpreted....at least I am trying to.

well my having the whole “Mom-Hips” pop into my head when finally realizing that Soundwave from EarthSpark has large hips...

isn’t the weirdest thing to pop into my head...

that would be calling Optimus from EarthSpark, a Himbo Prime.

and maybe me calling Megatron from EarthSpark, a Sweetie Energon-Pie.     

[novafire-is-thinking]

For Character Ask Game: mtmte Megatron :)

one aspect about them i love

How well his reflective nature complements his ruthlessness. Prowl could learn a thing or two.

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

It’s okay to hate Megatron’s redemption arc.

It’s okay to love it.

It worked well for the story. Period. minus Ravage being fridged, but that’s a whole other can of worms

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

Poetry transcends pain and imprisonment. Megatron found ways to continue writing, up until the day he was executed.

That is all. *cries*

one character i love seeing them interact with

Ravage, hands down. Until I read the rest of Soundwave’s arc, Megatron is my favorite character to see interact with Ravage.

one character i wish they would interact with/ interact with more

Besides Drift, I’m gonna say Nautica or Velocity. Neither fear him the way the rest do. Enough people see him for his past, and while that’s 100% valid, I think it would have done his spark good to interact more with those like Nautica or Velocity who saw him with fresh eyes.

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

During one of Megatron’s checkups, Velocity was talking to herself��speaking aloud the steps of a procedure to help herself keep track of the process. Megatron began listening intently, and when Velocity noticed, she mistook his intrigue for annoyance and began apologizing.

He assured her he wasn’t bothered in the least, but had been listening carefully. He went on to admit to her that he once wanted very much to be a medic.

Velocity listened as he shared, and after he was done, she offered to teach him some of what she’d learned.

Megatron was surprised, but touched. And even though he knew medical knowledge would likely be of no use to him after the quest’s end, he gladly accepted Velocity’s offer.

When he had spare time, he’d head to the medbay, and Velocity would light up, ready to teach him something new. The two of them would discuss procedures and such, with Velocity answering his many questions. He caught on quickly, and when Velocity was unable to answer one of his questions, it didn’t take long for Megatron to come up with a theory for the best way to go about solving the medical issue in question.

Overall, Megatron found Velocity easy to talk to, and Velocity found him to be an excellent student.

Some of what Megatron learned from his lessons with Velocity came in handy during his time in the Functionist Universe where good medics came to be in short supply as things got worse. Megatron was forced to test some of his medical theories on the field—some of which were successful while others were not.

Thankfully for Drift, by the time Megatron returned to their universe, he’d had time to develop his own treatments based on the foundational knowledge from Velocity and the theories they’d discussed ;)

[classychassiss]

Mentally constructing a thesis statement and intent in my head that the Aligned Continuity was a confusing experiment in multi-media story telling that ended up, ironically, very unaligned. However, the stories it was trying to tell (or rather the ones it COULD have told) in the long run offered a unique POV on Transformers that later properties like IDW2 and Cyberverse expanded on.

Comparisons with IDW1 on the surface make sense, but the closer you look into the threads and wires of whats going on, the more obvious it is that even some of the common elements are fundamentally different and I'd argue that many concepts aren't interchangeable with each other as a result of that (and I maintain honestly that the perspective of Aligned being through a VERY claustrophobic colonial/post colonial lens with intraspecies conflicts and wounds and crises versus the vast/expansive and more class and function based IDW1 mean that a lot of things that work in IDW1 dont translate well in Aligned and vice versa) This is citation needed x 100 because I need to read more IDW1 but I feel like people view IDW1 through a very Americanized lens and I think Aligned in contrast is different, but I would need to go into detail with more research lol

Aligned did a lot of things wrong or just didn't do them at all, and a good portion of that was due to corporate meddling and the very jumbled and out of order way lore and backstory came out before ultimately undoing a lot of it by RID15. But Aligned had some really great ideas and character studies to offer, including a unique take on Optimus Prime and Megatron, and I think its worth exploring the details and get into the nitty gritty as to why that is and why people keep coming back to it in the long run!

[deliriousbug]

Tfa decepticons with an s/o who's absolutely ruthless in combat

(crushing heads, tearing off arms, ripping sparks out, knocking over buildings, flinging cars, doesn't even bother taking hostages)

Basically on-sights anyone who gets in their way

For their reactions, this is the first time they see their s/o (the reader) go fucking ham in battle.

Megatron: He used to wonder what you would look like in battle but this. . . You had already proved yourself an impressive ally and a capable lover, but this just sends the point home. He swears the sparks flying when you smash that telephone pole onto an Autobot’s back are actually rose petals. He could watch you all day, quietly admiring your battle prowess. Primus he thinks you’re stunning when your face is twisted with pure rage and wild focus. 

Starscream: Does he have a type? Yeah. . . yeah he does. . . Large, strong, and aggressive. But at least you know when to stop the violence, and the gentleness you offer him makes the current explosions and destruction all the more thrilling, all the more exotic. Oh, and he wants to remember to ask: “Wanna overthrow my boss together, baby?”

Blitzwing: He can’t settle on a personality. Not that that would matter too much, since even Icy is having a hard time keeping his cool. He’s blushing and stutters when he tries to speak. Hothead hollers encouragement and starts smashing everything closest to him; this is an ideal date night for him. Random is. . . well let’s just say drooling. Like, a lot. Blitzwing just can’t get enough of you, and the energon splattering your frame is the perfect shade to complement your paint.

Lugnut: He may believe that no one is greater than Lord Megatron, but --by Unicron-- you come close. So close even a hawk couldn’t see the gap bc it’s so small. He wants to devote his entire existence to you if Megatron ever leaves the picture. 

Soundwave: Surely there’s a less messy way to dispatch an Autobot? Do you really have to rip their sparks out with your bare servos? He is marginally concerned because he has seen the toll that violence like this takes on a bot’s mind. But he’s also supportive if it means getting home earlier than planned. He will 100% help scrub you clean when you get back to base. And maybe check in on how you’re feeling. 

Shockwave: After so long holding back and hiding among weak, morally suffocating Autobots, he couldn’t be happier. It’s like you’re putting on a show just for him and it’s getting him all worked up. He wants you to use some of that violence on him once you’re done slaughtering the autobots.  

Blackarachnia: She is all for your dark side and loves that such rage lives inside of you, always waiting for a chance to escape. If she’d known before, she would have set up a fight long ago just to see it. You’ve claimed before that you would protect her with your very spark, but now that she’s witnessed this display of yours, she actually believes it. It makes her spark flutter with a joy and safety she hasn’t felt in ages. She’s definitely watching from a safe distance tho.

[decepti-thots]

welllll, since that funny ask got me thinking about him and all.

my take on tarn... and for the record i don't think this is some unambiguous "correct" reading of the comic as a text so much as it's one of several valid interpretations, tarn is a messy character who changes tack a lot in the narrative. but anyway, my read on tarn is that he doesn't actually care about the Cause TM at all.

to be clear, tarn thinks he does. he genuinely in his heart believes not only that he cares about the Cause TM, but that he cares about it the most, and in the purest way. he goes to his grave believing that and nobody could EVER have persuaded him otherwise.

but i always feel like what tarn actually cares about is belonging to something bigger than himself and using that to prop up his sense of identity, and since he uses being a Decepticon to do that, since he bases his entire sense of self on being a Decepticon, he is invested not in the Cause TM for what it actually is but simply in it continuing to exist in perpetuity. the Cause TM could have been anything, it could have followed any ideological path and gone down any road, so long as:

his place in it was well defined and consistent enough for him to subsume his own identity under it

his place in it was somehow essential to its continuation

the thing Megatron was able to offer him over, say, what Optimus could have... it wasn't really anything that had to do with their ideological differences, I don't think. it was how the Decepticons worked, not what they believed. tarn believes in how the cons work above all else, divorced from all the rest of it. (this is why it makes sense to me that he runs a torture squad like a beauracracy, frankly. it's funny, but it also feels 100% consistent to how he thinks.)

like, okay. tarn collects 'first editions' of Megatron's writing, right? but he doesn't collect them for their content. he doesn't want to talk ideology with you. he collects them for what they represent. his understanding of belonging to the Cause TM is not an intellectual one based on conviction, it's an emotional one based on belonging and his own identity hinging on that belonging, and actually in its way a very surface level understanding based on what it represents symbolically more than anything meatier.

tarn and soundwave both reject megatron's defection in very different ways as people presented as extremely loyal to the cons even after the war ends. tarn rejects the defection because it upends the way in which Megatron symbolises the Cause TM continuing to exist and disrupts his sense of place and identity, so he has a temper tantrum about it and tries to find a way to perpetuate things exactly as they were so he can continue to define himself the way he has done for the entire war. he needs the cons to keep operating the way they always have, and without Megatron, without the war, they objectively cannot.

soundwave, meanwhile, rejects it because he thinks Megatron is an ideological coward to turn his back on something he let go astray, and so his reaction is to try and actually take control of what the cons should be because he thinks the ideological basis is more important than any given leader or symbol. it doesn't matter if the way it works changes so long as the ideology is still being carried out. he's able to overcome his previous idea that megatron IS the cause and continue it himself.

there's a LOT to think about re: what this might say about damus/glitch, but i've already gone on wayyyy too long. but anyway. did i write all this bc i was thinking again about how tarn and magnus make really good, uncomfortable foils? mayhaps. ahem.

[artsy-hobbitses]

If possible, what was Brainstorm's early life like as an MTO? Does he still have feelings for Quark in the TTB universe?

I'm currently still piecing him together in my head tbh so what I have for him is not 100% concrete yet, but here are some snippets I've been able to mine:

He's South Korean and his name is Sun Byeong-ho.

He would have been one of the earliest M.T.Os, likely a 'prototype' who was 'brought online' a few years before the war for a government project.

He was also raised in a facility, similar to Prowl, but initially he doesn't talk about it (they were 'pruned' based on intellect) and, unlike Blaster who came out in the open as a CC at a time where they were fighting for better rights or Starscream who did hide his CC background best as he could but did not turn a blind eye to that fight, he did not have a good view of the 'knockoff people' and tried to distance himself as much as he could from being associated with the political aspects of it.

He buried himself in his work as a result, quite determined that even as a 'knock-off', as he and his batch were called then (he internalizes this in a bad, bad way), that he would succeed as the smartest of them all and outdo even 'regular' humans, which accounts for his insufferable attitude in the beginning. Knowledge is power, and he intends to mine that for everything its worth in the very narrow field he was created for as a measure of control in the only way he knows how. By medical school standards, he's what you'd call a 'Gunner'. He wants to be 'to smart to die', that is actually his goal to increase the value of his purpose and, hopefully, his expected lifespan.

He has some form of internalized classism. He knows he's just a knockoff but hey, at least he's not a knockoff working in manual, can't even imagine and don't want to imagine. They made him specifically for the science department so even if he is a knockoff, at least, he tells himself, he's got more worth (even more so than 'regular' manuals) in that aspect. This carries into his early days with the Autobots where he runs right into a wall with this thinking, in a group made up of a lot of Manuals (including the Chief of Intelligence!!!).

He's terrified of and harbors a hatred for the Decepticons, and he does have SOME legitimate reasons as to why, as his department was one of those that Megatron purged, having identified it as a cog in the CC/M.T.O/Mnemosurgery machine. He already didn't have a good view of them (remember that he's infatuated with Quark---someone who voiced out concern that Manuals wanting rights would end up in violence against them, the 'Intellectuals'), and then his dept gets swarmed and half his colleagues are murdered on the spot as the other half gives them up as those involved in those shady practices. He was lucky to have lived (he was confirmed to have not worked in those divisions--he had higher aspirations--and wasn't shot on sight) when the Bots broke into the prison he was being held in, but had suffered twin Glasgow grins thanks to wardens who were tired of his 'insufferable' attitude and wanted to teach him a lesson.

He's like Prowl in that he's realising how fucked up his situation was and how he was complicit in that system, and is desperately trying to reconfigure the way he sees the world and make connections that aren't mandated for work reasons or to get 'ahead' in the rigged rat race he was hurled in 5 minutes into existing.

Also trying to reign in the "Can it be done??" over the "Should it be done?" bc Wheeljack tryin'a explain to him that it does matter if what he does affects marginalized people. Knowledge isn't an "I do what I want card" as he was taught. Still, if it's just his ass trying to escape an explosion that's fine!

People skills? What people skills???

Still too smart to die, sorry. Cry about it.

He starts out as a bit an ass! But he does get much better as time passes by and ends up becoming Nautica's (a Manual!) BFF and working with Wheeljack and Percy on tech that actually helps people instead of govt projects/weapons.

[daisyachain]

drift and/or drachet for the ask?

ah!!

Drift: overrated little twerp

Dratchet: binary stars trapped in orbit for 4 million years drawing ever-closer until they combine with the light of a supernova

On a more serious note there's been plenty of good Drift analysis out there re: the way his character shifts from McCarthy to Roberts, the way he was written out of MTMTE season 2 to accommodate Megatron, etc. and I have nothing to add to that. Rather, my take is that he's just not that important! Nor that deep! He's a character that serves a purpose and he serves that purpose, he doesn't get the rhaposodic inner monologue of the standouts (Chromedome, Cyclonus, Whirl, Megatron, Magnus), he's a foil character to s1 Magnus/Rodimus before their character arcs kick into gear and he's a supporting character to Ratchet's arc. Reading him as anything more can be fun and interesting but is fundamentally wrong for the story-as-is (if not the story-that-might-have-been)!

Drift the other extreme in the trio of Magnus-Rod-Drift but not in the pessimism <-> optimism way that it seems on the surface. Rather, Magnus is the lawful extreme, he believes that the Law (the Tyrest Accord) is morality and anything that does not match the Law 1:1 cannot be ethical. Rodimus is more pragmatic, he earnestly wants to Do The Right Thing In The Right Way but he sticks to his own vacillating moral code rather than the Law. Drift is the opposite extreme to Magnus because there is nothing he will not do in order to aid the Cause. Why, when he only recently switched sides?

The answer is another aspect of his character that I feel gets overlooked--Drift does not truly have faith. He's had some supernatural experiences which he believes 100% are visions of the future. In other words, he doesn't have faith in a greater power, he specifically trusts the hard evidence of his own senses that tell him there is a real greater power. Cyclonus and Swerve, the two other religious characters onboard, do not have these supernatural experiences. They believe without proof, they need no convincing, their faith encompasses everything in the world.

Drift, on the other hand, believes only what he has seen. He's seen supernatural and inexplicable things, but he doesn't convert out of a sense of peace and understanding, he converts (to Spectralism, to the Autobots) out of a conviction that things are going to go horribly wrong and that connecting with that greater power (the supernatural, Autobot High Command) is the only way to stop it. So, where Magnus embodies procedural justice, Drift embodies consequential justice--Magnus believes only things under the Law can be right, Drift believes that any action is right so long as it brings about the specific future he has seen. He manipulates Chromedome into doing dangerous work by dangling his spouse's life over his head. He drives Red Alert to suicide. He kills a sick, defenseless patient. He's as amoral as Whirl in his actions, but all of this he does because of a belief that Rodimus and the crew have to stay alive.

In short: Drift does believe in auras, life energy, the call of the universe, etc., it's not all a lie because the things he sacrifices to follow his visions are too much for anyone to give up who doesn't believe. He canonically puts on the hippie persona in s1 to be less threatening and insinuate himself better into the crew, the persona is fake but the beliefs are real. So far, so standard. However, his beliefs are...more godfearing than religious. He is pragmatically following a plan to fix his past mistakes and achieve a better future based on evidence which is concrete to him. He has no life philosophy. To treat him as genuinely religious or as fully cynical is incorrect.

Which leads me to Dratchet!! They do not hate each other, they are not enemies (or at least they have no known interactions during the time they are enemies), Ratchet doesn't treat Drift cruelly or even unfairly, if I have to see one more take that says 'Ratchet is so mean to Dwift uwu' I will scream.

I think I've said it before but Drift/Ratchet hinges on them being the only living people able to understand each other. Because they met before the war, Ratchet is the only one who can understand just what drove Drift to become a murderer and join the Decepticons, while Drift is the only one who can understand what has driven Ratchet to passive suicidality. Ratchet is not just a grumpy person, he's a loving idealist who wants to die rather than live in the world and not be of use/not be able to help people anymore. Drift is not just a weirdo who had a change of heart, he's bloodthirsty by the standards of a 4 million year war and has decided use his skills for the opposite side instead.

The lives Drift took are on both their consciences. Ratchet wants Drift to acknowledge the carnage he caused and the hurt he did to him, specifically. He needs Drift to understand what he did to him, Drift is the embodiment of everything in his life that went wrong--he started saving lives (he became a war medic), and because he started saving lives, he caused millions of deaths (he became a key figure in the war). Ratchet desperately wants to get rid of that weight and the only way he can think to do it is a) make Drift feel it, b) die. So he tries! He hates that Drift relies on platitudes because that negates his own role in the story, if Drift comes around to being a good person because he got a ticket to heaven, then that's just him being shallow and selfish. If Drift has changed sides because he recognized that he'd been doing evil, then that's an acknowledgement of the suffering he's caused Ratchet.

What pulls Ratchet out of his spiral is Drift saving him--for once, his actions have a positive consequence, someone comes back for him, someone does for him what he's always done for everyone else. From that moment on he views Drift not just as everything he's done wrong, he also views him as the only thing he's done right, and as these two ideas struggle he grows to love Drift as the only person who ever saw him as a person and not a concept.

Contrariwise, Drift sees Ratchet as every failing of the old regime, he's the embodiment of systemic ills, he's a well-intentioned person who sacrificed everything he had...to achieve nothing. He knows he owes Ratchet his own life and thousands more, but he still blames Ratchet for leaving him in the first place. He desperately wants Ratchet to have saved him truly, not just given him up to the fate that awaited him, but he can't justify asking for that. He knows he doesn't 'deserve' it.

So instead he tries to pay back the life debt he owes. He's atoning for his sins (supporting the Decepticon cause) by achieving good (making sure the future he saw comes to pass) rather than by becoming a good person, so it only makes sense for him to stand by Ratchet and fucking hate it. His arguing with Ratchet isn't over whether Primus exists or visions or rationality or whatever, it's over whether his change of heart is genuine. Ratchet thinks he's just going through the motions for his own benefit, Drift thinks he's made a significant sacrifice to repay his debts for Ratchet's sake, they both resent the other for ignoring their own personal stake in it. Ratchet isn't cruel to Drift, he's calling him on using weirdo status to deflect responsibility for his crimes. Drift isn't defending his beliefs to Ratchet, he's defending the integrity of his new morals. It's a metaphor! If it were really belief vs rationalism, Ratchet would take it up with Cyclonus.

And in spite of this, as Drift puts in his mandatory lifedebt repayment, he gets to know Ratchet as a person and comes to realize just how genuine he used to be and how far he's fallen and how instrumental Drift has been in stamping out every bit of hope he had. When Ratchet comes to take him home, part of it is Ratchet making up for his previous mistakes. He is confronted with an outcast Drift again and he is making absolutely sure that he has a support network and a way back into a community. Yet also it is Drift realizing that Ratchet never really wronged him, that he always tried to save him, that 4 million years of resentment have pretty much come to nothing, and that he's been tormented by something (the systemic injustice of Cybertron) that was far bigger than either of them. So he returns with him.

This is all very incoherent. What I mean to say is: Ratchet is a character made of unconditional love and he extends that love to Drift as he does to any other. Drift is a character who works alone, without support and without restriction, without justification, without boundaries, and he comes to realize he has nothing except Ratchet's love because of the simple fact that it is unconditional. This loops around so that Drift becomes the only one who knows what that cost Ratchet, and the only one who can give that to him in return, secure in the knowledge that whatever Ratchet says doesn't convey what he means, and that he is putting a lifetime in the service of ungrateful causes somewhere where they will mean something.

[artobotsrollout]

Harbingers AU Q&A 2

Awesome questions and compliments from @evening-rose-309!

Aww thank you so much for the compliments! Seriously made my day! It makes me so very happy to know that you like my AU that much!!! ❤️

Questions and answers below the cut!

1. Will they take in former vehicons?

Some will join their fold, yes. Any vehicons/eradicons that wish to defect are welcomed. There are several who are loyal to, and follow Starscream that are disillusioned with Megatron's leadership. However, many eradicons/vehicons were created and trained under the Decepticon rhetoric of might=right and then dumped on commanders as they expanded their reach and numbers dwindled.

One of Starscream's bigger narrative points in this AU is that he doesn't fit with Decepticons, largely because he is a leader that prioritizes efficiency, minimal losses, and strategy. His seekers respect that. However, a large number of vehicons/eradicons raised under Megatron's showy, physical strength based, big impact but high loss leadership see Starscream as clever but the less devastating leader between the two which... Is technically correct but Megatron's devastating comes with the price of high losses.

Long answer short, some vehicons/eradicons DO follow Starscream but not as many as one would hope right away. More will join the pirate crew over time the worse Megatron gets.

2. Who is the 'Cap' n Jack' of the crew?

I'm not 100% certain how to answer this. Wheeljack and Starscream are probably the most chaotic, oddball, loose canons of the bunch so them perhaps?

3. Which one of the trine shares embarrassing stories about Starscream at the table?

Pick one, and it's not just embarrassing ones about Starscream. TC, Starscream, and Skywarp may not technically be split-spark brothers like Dreadwing and Skyquake but they may as well be with their brother-like dynamic of bickering but fondly.

4. Do the kids have flight rights?

TC is the first one to actually give them a ride. Miko asked Skywarp who agreed but that got a firm NO from Bulkhead. No flight rights until shortly after when Raf was doing an assignment on aerodynamics that Thundercracker took him for a flight. Miko actually convinced Starscream with a reverse psychology 'Are you going to let the autobots tell you what to do?!' and 'Psh I bet you fly like an old granny' afterwards. Skywarp was eventually allowed to take the kids for flights but only after they had painstakingly taught him about human limits and flight safety. Bulkhead, Bumblebee, and Arcee absolutely mother hen the heck outta their charges the first few flights.

Eventually when the rest of the bots get flight upgrades as they move to the Harbinger indefinitely they take the kids for flights too.

5. Does Ratchet still eventually go apeshit and almost kill Megatron by driving up the side of the Nemesis, knocking out a window, and bursting through at 1 am when he's high?

ABSOLUTELY. I was originally going to leave it as it was in TfP but this image is so frigging funny that this is now what happens in the AU.

6. If Starscream is genuinely respected and a good captain, which one of the crew almost throws hands with Arcee the first time they take the Bots on board?

While the atmosphere is tense the thing about this AU is some of the beginning is changed. I will detail it more eventually but essentially, there is a longer season one where Starscream is in charge and being a competent leader, and Cliffjumper is captured by Starscream but dies by Megatron's hand as a climactic "Oh shit Megatron has joined" narrative point to really nail home Megatron's devastation.

Basically where TfP actually begins would be bumped a season. So while Arcee and Team Prime still have a beef with Starscream, because he will have a whole season of doing crimes and overall being a major pain in the ass for team Prime, it won't be as revenge heavy from Arcee as it is in actual TfP.

7. Who's the worse night owl: Starscream or Optimus?

Optimus. Starscream is close though.

8. How will Ultra Magnus ever compute? working??? with pirates!?!?

With suffering and constant internal screaming. This man was not meant to be a part of a crew with so many loose cannons. Basically becomes the ship's equivalent of the 'Don't tell mom' role. Reportedly seen nailing up a 'NO fun allowed' sign.

9. Will Starscream get his original colours back or will he still be in the grays?

He will still be in the grays but I just may make the grays a little less patchy when he gets a minor frame upgrade! While I totally understand why people like the OG colours they aren't my favourite and I also don't feel like they fit with Harbingers Scream.

10. How many pranks a day?

The real question is have we found them all yet? Skywarp is a clever and patient little shit and can setup a prank that won't have a payoff for months. Nobody truly knows how many pranks could happen in a day except Skywarp himself.

11. How much Command Trine fluff will be served? Will we have a birb pile? Do the Bots come up to the brig to find Starscream passed out over a console with Skywarp snuggled to his side and Thundercracker with one arm around them both side-eyeing the others as the come in one morning?

There will be both fluff and angst with the trine. There is some initial struggle due to the very reason that we don't see any of Starscream's seeker armada in TfP. Megatron is manipulative and good at it too. They also will call him out for shit. But there will be fluff. And though Starscream frequently over works himself there will be times when Thundercracker and/or Skywarp drag him to bed or sit with him for awhile.

[starscreamwastaken]

Have I told you all what I consider to be a hilarious interaction between me and a former employer???

Okay, so I wont go into a ton of detail about the job but long story short I wrote a novel with this dude for this other dude. I ended up falling in love with the characters so I made some art for them and on our last day working together he said if I made any art and wanted to show him (because I'd made other art and shown it to him already.) I could show it to him.

So I showed him this painting between these two characters who I had admitted to him that I sort of shipped. The painting's pose was based on this IDW2 cover.

So after he sort of points out that he thinks my painting looks shippy (which, 100% honest, was not my intention.) I send him this cover and tell him that the painting is based on this.

And this man, this 48 yo man who has not read an ounce of tf media, knows almost nothing about Transformers, responds with.

"Ha.... cool ...i can hear Megatron saying "It IS a gun, Optimus... but i AM happy to see you just the same."

And for some reason I still laugh when I think about this?? I thought it was so funny??? What a great response?? I don't think anyone will find it nearly as funny as I do but I felt the need to share.