#when you were bees

[beautysnake]

@linkerbell and I decided to start a new save for co-op and it's already off to a great start

[quibbs126]

Okay, I think I’m FINALLY done with these designs. Well okay, I said Megatron might need some reworking, but shush, I’ll do that another time

I was not expecting this to take as long as it did. Apparently I started making this at 9 in the morning, and it is now 9:30 at night. Optimus, I am almost certain this is your fault

Anyways, as mentioned prior, the idea here was to give the Earthspark Cybertronians protoform designs like the Terrans, what they might look like when they were in this stage, because I haven’t seen anything to claim Cybertronians in this series don’t also have this stage, unless I’m wrong

I mean theoretically, Cybertronian protoforms could look entirely different from Terran protoforms, but we don’t know at this juncture, so I used the Terrans as my main references

Pretty much the main thing was trying to turn their blocky features smooth, while also taking out a bunch of their little details, like their antenna and horns

Honestly I still think Elita turned out the best, which is maybe a bit sad considering she was the first one I finished, but oh well. I don’t think everyone else was horrible, but I think she just looks best

I think Bee’s design is fine, and it was honestly refreshing after struggling so much with Optimus, but I can’t help but feel like his eyes are still wonky

Like I’ve said, by the end of things I think Megatron came out the worst. He was the second one I did, so I wasn’t sure, but by now I think he is. The real struggle with him is that his entire helmet is comprised of angles, when I need curves. And then there’s his side things, which I still do not know how to translate here. The idea I was trying to go for here is the top half goes around his head, while the bottom half is attached at the ends, but it’s the bottom half that looks weird. But ah well, hopefully I can fix it later

And then there’s Optimus. The majority of the time I’ve spent on this was him. It was mostly the struggle of his vents and trying to make them un-blocky. It was getting really frustrating particularly because I couldn’t think of anything new to do with them to change them, drawing the same thing over and over

But then I remembered, this Optimus was once Orion Pax, a fact I was planning to omit. But that meant I had something else to draw on

And it’s what finally got my brain to make his side things into the curves you see now. It’s also why his middle thing is solid black, like how it seems to be in the picture above

But yeah, I wouldn’t rate his design as the absolute best, but it’s serviceable and I’ll take what I can get

But aside from trying to change their designs, I think I had fun. I noticed by the end of it that they all have different face and eye shapes, and that’s pretty fun

Speaking of which, I notice with this how small Optimus’ eyes are here. They may not look it in my drawing but they’re a lot smaller than the others in the show. Is that one of the reasons his design looks so off? Like I know it looks weird, I just can’t place how exactly

But yeah, take these designs, the culmination of my drawing abilities for the day. I’d like to do more with them, I just don’t know what. Best I can think of is like, a fic premise where the Cybertronians somehow get reverted back to these protoform stages, and the Terrans now have to help them out

[crossbackpoke-check]

blessed be (lorscher bienensegen) | telling the bees (wiþ ymbe)

"Bees" [remixed, abridged], Claudia Emerson // "Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now" [remixed. abridged], Matthew Olzmann // "Letter to my Great, Great Grandchild" [remixed, abridged], J.P. Grasser | Len Redkole, Nina Weiss, Brian Babineau, Christian Peterson, Mitchell Leff, Dave Isaac, Megan DeRuchie

[sciderman]

Hope you're doing well Sci!

thank you!! i'm doing much better!! i'm still getting used to how goddamn different everything is for me, but i'm a lot healthier and sexier than i was!

[kandavers]

What are you headcanons for the relationships in LADS? Are they a big poly group or do you just like MC with Rafayel alone?

This is an interesting question.

I love MC with Rafayel, Xavier and Sylus, and I was thinking of making them a poly group but I haven't figured out how that would play out yet, so for now I just draw them separately!!

As for Zayne, I'm okay with Zayne x MC because they were childhood friends until he moved away, and they weren't raised together or anything, so at most he'd be a "distant cousin thrice removed" /j LMAO green light from me 👍

but as for Caleb, they were raised together and they even call Grandma "grandma" and not "your/my grandma" so they basically share a relative. I also found that they call each other big brother/little sister in other dubs so that felt sibling-y (rather than calling your lover "oppa" or "nii-san") for me, so I wouldn't ship them romantically. no hate or judgement to people who have Caleb as their fav, its just not the way I personally see it ^_^

Hovewer on another hand, while me and some of my friends were joking about LADS, we decided that Rafayel and Sylus had a situationship once in the past 😭 mostly because my fav is rafayel and their fav is sylus, but also! I've played until the Onychinus arc in the game (slow player bc i'm poor and cant upgrade my memories 😔) and we found out that Rafayel has 'relations' to the underground or whatever, and that was coincidentally a good set up for Sylus x Rafayel WAHAHAHA

So yeah thats my headcanons as of Today

[kevingorg]

the convenience of the nhl's conservatism can't be removed from this whole thing either. one of the things north american conservatism strives to do is equate action with identity, thus creating easily categorized groups that can be sorted into tiers of goodness or importance. for this to work, individual actions MUST equal holistic qualities of a person's identity, and in a similar vein, someone's identity must be reflected in every single one of their actions. if bennett's hit on stolarz is taken in the first vein, and the hit is acknowledged to be a Bad Action, this means that bennett is a Bad Person. but if you flip it, like bennett does in his 'apology' from this morning, bennett argues that he is a Good Person, so the results of his actions are less important than the fact that his action was done with Good Intentions. this obviously creates a really easy scapegoat for all sorts of bad actions taken by the nhl and people employed by it. bennett didn't MEAN for that to happen, so his action wasn't Bad, so he's not a Bad Person. and obviously the category of Good Person is informed by a whole fuckton of other categories, like how differently the league would've reacted to this hit if it were thrown by a player of color or even a russian player. you qualify to be a Good Person based on other inherent qualities which are useful to american conservatism, and being a Good Person means that you don't face the consequences of your actions, because it is impossible for a Good Person to do Bad Things. nuance such as 'bennett isn't necessarily a bad person because the system he exists under encourages this behavior by rewarding dangerous hits and he is simply abiding by preexisting norms created by the nhl itself, but also, those norms are evil and he should, as a person, know that' is dangerous and destabilizing to the pedestal of blamelessness the nhl has managed to build for itself.

[luthientinuvielss]

Heroin chic and cocaine cigarette ozempic thinness coming in with a fury but combined with the 2020s thing of "you're NOT allowed to be worried about anyone" is gonna send so many of the girlies to mandatory hospitalizations, I fear

[tezzbot]

Was thinking abt the fact that IF Vector and Espio found Charmy when he was a baby, taking their "canon" ages into account, Vector would have been like mid-teens and Espio like. a preteen at the time and I love a good 'You're the age I was when we met/I did [X]/etc.' Soooo woe! That upon you Espio, it's always fucked up and evil the passage of time LOL

[losver07]

hey hey hey :) i've not been very active lately (sorry) buuuut i have a fic planned and started, so i just wanted to know if you guys would be willing to read it?

i've mentioned it here sometime but basically it's a canon compliant fic that covers both hogwarts years and probably some years after that. so, knowing me, it's gonna be long. anyway, ummm.... you get wolfstar, jily, a bit of jegulus, gilderat..... yknow, the usual mix

oh and it's slow burn

oh and lycanthropy is a metaphor for sa

oh and regulus is trans

idk there's a lot of stuff to say about it but if you wanna read and you have doubts abt something, just ask ig??

oh apart from that, if anyone wants to beta read, BE MY GUEST. i have to warn you that the draft is currently a mess, though

anyway thx baes ily <3

[suguwu-archived]

seemingly indifferent but incredibly possessive sae you make me insane

[lord-squiggletits]

i know i’m late to the conversation—i just watched the movie this month—but i feel compelled to say this because i was genuinely shocked (still am) to see that the overwhelming takeaway for many viewers was the "d-16/megatron was right" bs. while it’s understandable to sympathize with his anger and grief, justifying his actions in the end or framing them as entirely right feels so deeply misguided. what surprised me even more was the tendency to shift the blame on orion/optimus, as though he was solely responsible for d-16’s downfall. it’s disheartening to see orion/optimus being villainized so much. his efforts to reason with d-16 came from a place of desperation and hope, as he tried to prevent the escalation of violence. at that point, d-16 had already begun to spiral into his unchecked rage, disregarding the safety of those around him. to see that nuance overlooked, with orion being faulted for a situation that was far beyond his control (the whole "don't be like sentinel" thing is often used to shit on op lol), is genuinely baffling.

while i love that the movie showed the tragedy of d-16’s arc and even empathize with his situation, painting his actions as justified—and vilifying orion/optimus in the process—feels like a misreading of the movie’s core message. sorry but i was so happy to see your post about the movie, it was tiring to see so many 'megatron was right about this and that' comments.

Oh man if you're new to this fandom, you really ought to know that this place is full of people who glorify terrorism and war in the name of "justified revolution" and it doesn't really matter what Dee/Megatron does or how horrible/over-the-top it is, he's oppressed or he's mentally ill or he's just plain upset which means that everything he does is justified and questioning him makes you evil.

It's so funny because I hoped for sure that a continuity where both OP and Megatron were working class individuals before the war would reduce this kind of shit take (compare to something like archivist/librarian OP and gladiator Megs in TFP or CBV, or cop OP and miner Megs in IDW1), but unfortunately this fandom literally still found a way to blame Orion for everything even though he suffered the exact same things Dee did..... and furthermore Orion literally was the rebel challenging the system compared to Dee who wanted to keep his head low and not cause trouble so honestly at this point I just think the fandom (and somehow new fans whose first exposure to TF is this movie) purely sides with Megatron on everything as either a knee-jerk reaction or some misguided attempt at being counterculture and intelligent.

People get sooooo mad when you tell them that unbridled rage and killing everyone who disagrees with you isn't a good social/political strategy, but then again this is a problem that is universal to humanity and not just the Transformers fandom. It's just a shame that so many people looked at a movie that blatantly spells out what the moral of the story is, and has all of the protagonists be working class oppressed people fighting against a tyrannical system, and their takeaway from it is still basically "fascism is okay if you're mad enough about it and if your friends try to stop you it's a sign that they're centrist liberals who think punching Nazis makes you as bad as a Nazi." It's childish black-and-white thinking masquerading as critical literary analysis.

And at this point people pretty much just don't give a shit about Orion/Optimus and will find a way to make him the villain no matter what the context is, no matter if he also has feelings or if he also deserves to be respected/listened to/validated as Megatron's long-time (possibly lifelong) friend. If ppl look at the way Dee treated Orion and their other friends and DON'T see what was concerning about that then there's really no saving them until they deradicalize a little and learn what usually happens when "kill all the bad people until society is a utopia" is implemented as a governing party's primary strategy.

[kinokoshoujoart]

the coolest kids in forgotten valley!!☆

(…it seems there may have been a stretch of time where rock and lumina were the only kids in forgotten valley…🥲)

poseref

[kevingorg]

today's insane concept to keep my mind off of other matters: will smith hockey getting a gay little earring.

i think it could go something like: mack's just fucking rambling again, of course, always going on about something, and will tunes in just in time to hear, 'would look good on you, smitty, like hot i think. girls love that pretty shit.' and will has to do a little mental reset before he can laugh awkwardly and go, 'mack. what.'

mack's like, 'i'm telling you dude, you've got the face for it i swear.'

'no,' says will, 'what the fuck are you talking about.'

mack rolls his eyes. 'you're such a shitty listener. you should get your ears pierced, dude.' frowns. 'or ear. less --' waves his hand around as if to indicate the broad, nebulous idea of homo that he doesn't like to actually put into words. will appreciates that about him.

'hmm,' says will. 'i don't know.' but mack starts up right where he left off -- it'd be so hot, smitty, and what's your problem anyway, no way you're afraid of needles, lmao (pronounced luh-maow). and will's like prepared to just forget this entire conversation happened, and mack forgets about it pretty much as soon as he gets on the subject of their boston game, which is coming up, and he's got ideas for how they should be on the same line for it. but will catches himself in the mirror a couple days later and thinks, mack said it'd be hot. and, he reasons, he can always just take it out if he doesn't like it. duh.

cue will showing up to practice with a diamond stud because he thought it was like, showy but not too feminine. it's like, a classic. diamonds are always classic. and mack's like HOLY SHIT DUDE. I TOLD YOU. will has to stop him from poking at it, because now that he's got it he's at least gonna make sure it heals properly, and mack's hands are all grimy like a toddler's. but when the rest of the team starts filtering in it's this weird mix of guys who think it's neat, guys who don't bring it up at all, and maybe one or two guys going 'what the hell's this all about, dude?' which is, you know. will's not insecure or anything, that's a girl thing, but he doesn't love that reaction.

so will revisits himself in the mirror later and thinks aw shit, maybe a hoop would've been better. maybe the diamond IS gay. maybe it's too sparkly and i fucked this up and i should just take it out and be done with it and, oh shit, what happens if i get hit in the fucking head and my ear starts bleeding and everyone on the ice knows that i went out and got a PIERCING on PURPOSE which is just SUCH a gayass thing to do, oh my god. and will's like convinced himself fully to take it out, it was a stupid idea anyway, but there's a very, very small part of him that's thinking about mack reaching for him in the room that morning, mouth open in this fascinated little o, going, 'did it hurt? can i -- it looks so good, bud, wow, just like i thought. sick, dude, i --' like he's trying to figure out how to ask for something he doesn't even know he wants. so will leaves the earring in.

[numberonetribble]

Stuck at my mom's house until the 27th, can't finish the comic I was working on until then :( here's a rough Cowboy!pinup sketch of Bumblebee and some Breakbee + Piston angst:

[femmefitz]

I need the context for Nettle and Fitz's relationship still being so distant in Fool's Quest. Bc I cannot imagine Molly just letting them miscommunicate so so much for so long...

Like I do think for a while she'd be like "I'm only going to be as involved as Nettle wants me" but probably after a decade or so of Nettle and Fitz not talking about anything that matters she would feel the need to step in.

Similarly it just doesn't really make sense to me that Molly didn't try more to have Fitz be involved in Bee's life. She essentially just resigns herself to raising Bee mostly herself with Fitz having little moments every once and a while. Why? What in her prior characterization makes this make sense??

Molly wasn't a great communicator but she was never like. Hesitant to bring up hard things. Sure, she avoided the reality of her relationship with Fitz for a while, but only after they had talked about it extensively.

Can you imagine if Robin Hobb wrote Molly like a person and not a plot device past the Farseer Trilogy. God.

[hana-bobo-finch]

why do honeybees love me so much, like I’m not complaining but I need personal space buddy