#voice-over services

[killjoy-prince]

House M.D. but it's when a character says the name of the episode

[yardsards]

i needed to express a sentiment in the creative stylings of @dunmeshiminimumwage

[jasonsbruce]

original text post

[katabay]

wahoo! my uncle had heart surgery (thankfully dodged the open heart surgery bullet) and so far things are looking alright, so I’ll be taking the weekend to just. do stuff. and then get caught up on emails and whatever else starting monday!

[toffeebrews]

The voice in my head for Delta is weird, my brain associates him with Natsu so much I imagine his voice like him.

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

Deprecare Deum pacis, ut conterat Satanam sub pedibus nostris, ne ultra valeat captivos tenere homines, et Ecclesiae nocere ✝️✝️✝️

John Ward from hit New Blood game Faith: The Unholy Trinity in my inbox

Am I saved? Am I free?

[welcometololaland]

The first chapter will be posted Sunday, 13 August 2023.

Borne of our actual hatred of business development and networking events, @rmd-writes and I have created (Un)professional Services: 6 chapters and 60,000 words of corporate-Tarlos chaos, to be posted over 6 weeks.

This project was the result of many many hours of no one telling us "no", including each other, and the answer to everything being "yes, and then what if...":

There are hot people at networking events?

We make Owen the most chaotic he’s ever been?

Gwyn lives and roasts TK at every opportunity?

Carlos spirals like a zoodle?

TK has to endure seeing Carlos in a suit all the time?

A law firm makes corporate branded condoms?

Fire safety training is an ongoing and slightly unexplained theme?

Stay tuned to find out the answer to some of these and more.

A thousand forehead kisses and fruit baskets for @celeritas2997 for letting us derail the gc over this so many times and for beta reading!

Summary below just because we like to tease:

TK Strand has been an attorney long enough to know that networking events with accounting firms offer little more than terrible wine that he doesn’t drink, uninspiring small talk and a stack of identical-looking business cards.  Until he takes Nancy up on a bet and winds up having all of his preconceived ideas about business development being challenged by an accountant who is very far from boring. The Tarlos Professional Services AU.

[avoteforme]

[fricklefracklefloof]

ur telling me they wrote a whole ass six of crows spinoff and netflix didn’t greenlight it…..

[horromcom]

i luvv imagining my f/os w me when im just goin abt my day nd plankton i think is th msot fun. he jsut sits in my pocket or on my ehoulder voicing all my thoughts nd yellitn at anyoen who makes me upset itz rly cathartic

[x-for-a-y]

"Hey, Jake! Would ya help a curious guy out and answer a question for me?" Guptill hits him with a smile- one landing more on the side of appraising than friendly, but hell if he's one to judge people's social skills. "What landed you in this diary anyway?"

Now there's something Jake hasn't given thought to in a hot minute. "Oh, it was... weird. Like, uh, not explained very well." But here he is trying to do it anyway. "I just was on... the night shift at my job, and a client's, uh, wife, said some weird stuff to me. I wasn't even trying to be funny, but... then I guess word got out about that-"

He's heard enough. "That's it? He got mad at you over just a workplace incident?"

"I don't know if 'mad' is really the word for it." He's a teenager or something, right? He probably knows nothing about insurance.

Guptill's indignation is so righteous it somehow slips right around into being charismatic. "Still, that's nothing! Boy, it really drives me up the wall the way people make mountains out of molehills."

Jake extends a lazy glance from side to side, calling attention to their surroundings too subtly to do much good. "I'll say," whenever he has anything worth saying.

[lord-squiggletits]

Something I keep seeing when I speak to others about MTMTE Megatron is basically the idea that he's going on a personal journey to become a better person, that the point isn't for him to be "redeemed" but for him to get a chance to do good and die as a person he can live with again. That MTMTE presents a unique take on this because being away from Cybertron gives Megatron a chance to be a person rather than a political figure and this is how it gives him more depth as a character. Or just generally pointing out in a narrative sense that Megatron being in MTMTE limits his story options so of course his story is going to be more focused on a personal journey than on politics of him dealing with the Decepticons/Earth/etc and that just because JRO made a choice to take that path with Megatron doesn't mean that it's inherently bad.

And I'm just, mmm like I understand all of those points and acknowledge that they all contributed to the MTMTE Megatron we got. I even think that without JRO writing Megatron we wouldn't have had his lore be as fleshed out and 3D as it ended up becoming.

(Post starts out as a sort of meta analysis or at least me giving a reasoned explanation for my interpretation of the story, ends up being petty bitching in the last 1-2 paragraphs)

I just..... I just personally don't agree with the "he's becoming a better person by getting a chance to relax and experience happiness and trust after a life of trauma" as being the best choice for his character? Because the problem is that maybe if he were a random Decepticon foot soldier that would be appropriate, but he was literally the leader of the Decepticons that made them Like That and has political/cultural/societal responsibility for why things are the way they are? To be completely frank, I don't care about him going on a personal journey for self-peace, I think that he should become a better person by helping to un-fuck all the things he actually screwed up???

Like idc about the debate of whether he can be "redeemed" or if he should've been killed/imprisoned/etc at the ending. It just comes down to the fact that for me personally, I feel that since Megatron's wrongdoings were at a social level, him "being a better person" would've been better shown by him engaging with those people who he wronged instead of just going on a frigging personal journey for his legacy and self-peace???

Especially since in other series (exRID, possibly Windblade) we literally got plots like "the neutrals hate Autobots but they hate Decepticons even more" and "the Decepticons have been taken over by Galvatron and are now invading earth 2 electric boogaloo" and "yeah the Decepticons are literally living in slums because people hate them so much and won't give them any work." It just leaves me wondering why in the hell people are like, "oh Megatron got to be happy and have a chance to be a normal person." I don't want him to be normal! I want him to repay his debts to the people he actually wronged! Like if you want to cast Megatron as a hero of the people so badly (which so many of his stans do as if he actually cared about the Cons) then how do you reconcile the fact that Megatron just fucked off and left the Decepticons to suffer on Cybertron? Including some of them attacking during his trial and getting killed and Megatron is basically like "sorry, I'm not coming with you and this isn't going to work." And then Megatron complains about "toxic Decepticon loyalty" as if he didn't literally make them that way? Like I get that MTMTE Megatron is still an asshole but if you've read something besides MTMTE and know what the Decepticons are going through, it just ends up being really grating.

I just don't see Megatron as being a particularly good hero or having a particularly fulfilling story if he's completely isolated from all the bad things he did on Cybertron/the way the Decepticons are suffering until LL#25 where it's like "ah damn I'm going to trial now, well this is what I deserve so it's fine." Why could we not have seen something like Megatron trying to deradicalize the Decepticons or change their public image so they could integrate into normal Cybertron again? They were living in SLUMS and getting gunned down by Starscream's badgeless enforcers!

The best we got was the Functionist Universe but like.... I'm sorry, but JRO inventing a whole alternate universe for Megatron to save doesn't do jack shit to save or fix the people he left behind in this one. It was especially grating to read because JRO literally wrote in someone saying "you saved billions of lives from the Functionists" as if he was trying really hard to show how good Megatron is because he saved people (and also if not for Megatron existing Cybertron would be even worse and half of your faves would be enslaved or dead, also the Functionist Council was going to genocide organics too so technically they're WORSE than Megatron since they hate organics AND want to enslave their own race).

I read Barber's, JRO's, and MScott's series concurrently using the omnibus + a release order list for phase 3, and after all that I'm kind of puzzled why the fandom seems to ardently love MTMTE Megatron and think he's so well written but then also shit on Optimus for things that he did during the same points in the story? Because, and I know this is a blazing hot take, I honestly think that Optimus makes a better hero of his story than Megatron does for his, and Optimus' personal journey combines his personal and political identities into a narrative that's a lot more gruelling and questioning of his goodness than we got for Megatron in MTMTE. Which is fucking saying something considering Megatron committed crimes against sapient species and Optimus is the guy who tried to stop him from doing that and has always been pro-equal rights for all beings. But people pretty much just cherrypick things like Optimus annexing Earth or beating up Prowl and go "he's bad" and I'm like no??? IDW OP isn't a bad person or a bad character??? It's just that unlike MTMTE Megatron he's placed in a narrative that actually suits the nature of his actions and has themes that match. To the point that IMO sometimes Barber's narrative shits on Optimus excessively or paints him mainly in the most unflattering ways.

But like. It's just funny to me because Optimus spent his entire part of the story doing things like trying to stop Earth from being invaded/colonized yet again. Grappling with his identity as Prime and dealing with the fact that people literally worship him vs. the fact that his upbringing made him see the Primacy as nothing more than a facade of authority/leadership. Having people get mad at him for prioritizing politics over friendship/relationships with other people. Even getting shit on for being a cop a decent amount so people can STFU about IDW OP being "copaganda" or "not held responsible for his actions". The problems that Optimus dealt with were personal because they had to do with his self-doubt, culpability for the war as a leader of one of the armies, distance from his soldiers, etc. But all of these are also POLITICAL struggles. Because Optimus gave up on the chance to just be a normal person having personal struggles when he chose to become a LEADER, which also means that he's held to extremely high standards that he regularly fails at in the eyes of others.

That's why, to me, MTMTE Megatron falls flat in comparison and really as a "hero" or heel-face character in general? Because he also made a decision to be a leader, and IMO once you do things like become the commander of an army and start your own galactic empire, you lose the right to prioritize your personal problems and instead are obligated by the power you've chosen to wield to focus on your POLITICAL problems. If Megatron's power, influence, and crimes are of a social-political nature, then his heel-face turn arc and ways of showing that he's a better person/helping to heal what little damage he possibly can should have been shown with actions that help on a social-political LEVEL. That's why I'm not particularly impressed with his character arc and feel as if it was overhyped by other people in this fandom: sure, the extra character depth and emotion is nice, but I'm not really going to see him as extraordinary or even particularly good when the extent of him "becoming a better person" happens entirely on a random road trip to fuck-off nowhere. Especially not when the ending of LL tried to sell me a "they lived happily ever after" ending while basically leaving the freaking MUTINY as just Rodimus going "oh it's okay you're forgiven, we're all together again" and I guess everyone was fine with Megatron and wanted to spend an eternity on a ship with him just because Getaway died.

This is why I like (the concept/themes of) exRID/OP and the way Optimus' character arc was handled a lot more. Because for Optimus, the personal and the political were as one. He was held accountable for his actions towards others and the disruptive effects they had on a social level, sometimes to a ridiculous extent (the fucking "oh Megatron is an Autobot so now that makes the Autobots colonizers" plot and that stupid colonist screaming about how Optimus is "literally fascist" my beloathed). Even his very personal issues like his relationship with Zeta were still cast in a wider lens of, yeah this is a personal struggle that Orion faced, but he was still part of a Society TM and his actions were sometimes ill-informed or harmful to others. Even if I had a lot of problems with the way Optimus' story was written by Barber (plot holes, little meaningful character interaction, forced conflicts), at least the BASELINE of it was way better than Megatron's in MTMTE. Especially since Optimus' struggle was explictly about things like struggling with responsibility and how he feels he HAS to intervene in political affairs because has to save people/make up for his past mistakes. That's something that a good leader/good person actually does, so I found Optimus to be a better hero (even if his actions weren't all "good") because he was trying to be a good person by actually getting involved with Cybertron/Earth and subjecting himself to something he hates (leadership, war) and dealing with a shitload of criticism instead of just going on a fuckin "personal journey" lksdlkfsd.

Which just makes me extra salty that people hold up MTMTE Megatron as the pinnacle of Megatrons and literally the best Transformers writing evar! while turning up their nose and ignoring or outright despising IDW Optimus. Like okay. I guess since Megatron got handled with silk gloves on while Optimus got put through the wringer of being shit on by every other person in the story, it's easier for you to pretend that Megatron is a poor uwu boy who just needs friendship and love while Optimus is literally the worst bastard to ever exist. Or maybe it's just that since Optimus' story involves him sometimes fucking up, being criticized, or making things worse, that makes him morally bad. As opposed to Megatron who disrupted a lot of other characters' stories in MTMTE, had to have an entire alternate universe invented so that he could "save lives," and got to sail off on a quantum Lost Light happily ever after, so since he's happy and the story says he saved people that means he's a good hero.

[roadyblr]

oh yeah, i forgot they share a birthday. well then.. it's not my fault 😅

and pardon me if i just scratched the surface. so yechan would be the member who posts not as frequent as the others. in pictures he looks like a quiet, shy kid, careful with what you say type of vibe. in a video i saw he's just an excited kid who wants to show you what things he can do or is capable of doing

how am i doing?

Twinz Things

Uuuh frequency wise he is one of the ones that doesn't post as much, on par with yujun (hyuwnoo and jinsik beat them out by a bit, junghoon beats them out by a country mile for reasons)

Id say that's a pretty apt description; yechan always tries to assert that he's older than some of them (because his trainee years outnumber them by a lot) but he is in fact a sufferer of little guy syndrome like he's still their baby at the end of the day (even if he tries to fight the cute allegations)

he is actually careful with what he says a lot of the time but he's also the one that says trying to write sentimental things toward is hard for him ("when I write too seriously I get super cringey")

I fear I'm veering off course tldr I support this view-

[fanvoidkeith]

me, helping out my mom at a bazaar, like i've done for years, attempting stuff while she walks around to take a break and maybe get some xmas gifts: *vibing enough that some people want to buy some things*

my mom, about half an hour later: *comes back to be the more charming of the two of us, because she has more experience being a salesperson and is not autistic*

the nice lady at the table next to us, talking to my mom: your boy did a good job while you were gone!

my brain, upon hearing that sentence come out of another person's mouth while i'm feeling somewhat dysphoric in my body today:

B O Y ! ! !

(good job!)