#transformers from a to z

[churino]

Design for slipstream

She lives by the motto "Adapt or die" one of the very few paradronian decepticons she rose up the ranks to become the air commander, megatron's right hand, and secretly an agent for the decepticon shadow government, aboard the tidal wave she commands her air warriors with utmost efficiency and remains cold and above it all at all times

Slipstream is the decepticon air commander, essentially the second in command of the entire nation of the decepticons, on the surface, behind scenes she's a low ranking grunt of the decepticon shadow government that actually runs things, but she craves more power

Born in the neutral colony world of paradron slipstream was a race car that never truly jelled with the greater culture of the planet, living up in a mountain somewhere she left as soon as she could into decepticon territory, where she made a name for herself as a competent and observant fighter however, her paradronian heritage started to bother her

As she earned more and more merit in decepticon society she could never shake off her internalized prejudice of paradronians being seen as being limp wristed and naive, so she uses a voice synthesizer to hide her accent (her beauty spot). And changed into a seeker body even though cars are such common alt modes no one would've assumed she was paradronian from her alt mode alone

After becoming air commander she was handed the reigns of an elite seeker squad who knew how to bring that body type to it's limits and surpass them, and for years her air warriors haunted the nightmares of autobots everywhere but with shockwave's discovering the secrets of flight the seeker body became obsolete and slipstream and her air warriors had to transfer into new unfamiliar rigs they're struggling to adapt to.

And to make matters worse, she's forgotten to pull the ladder up from under her as she rose up the ranks and both the power hungry starscream and the envious thrust have their eyes on her possition now that she's weakened from her new body

[soapbbox]

I like that Megatron is essentially leading a bunch of senior citizens

[agentc0rn]

I was meant to protect and nurture life, not destroy it.

[qkmlh]

A silly and fun question, if you were a human character in the Metal Cardbot universe, what do you think would be your first reaction to seeing a Metal Cardbot?? Could be any Cardbot and situation.

[mgarmagedon]

Guys do you remember when I was talking about polish VA of Starscream TFone is also Skipper from Penguins of Madagascar?

So basically I got thought today... what if rest of the main decepticon team share them too???

Like what if Kowalski was Shockwave and Rico was Soundwave????

After all Shockwave got his silly lobotomy, so it should suit him uwu

+ I want Soundwave puking stuff from his boobs like Rico, like hammer, gun, pieces of gum or his own children

Believe me guys there is a REASON why it's legendary series here... this is more influential peace of art than any disney work to us

[swordbreakerz]

My experience going back to college has been going from 'how can you write 10 whole pages on an essay, let alone 20' to 'im not sure if 10 pages is going to be enough for all I have to say on this subject'

[kaxtwenty]

It feels weird to me that there are people who get genuinely peeved when you call Transformers a mecha series.

[louderfade]

from Is deep brain stimulation a treatment option for anorexia nervosa?

[blackicekills]

my dad probably has the ability to mecha he just uses it for cruise ships and houses instead

[shomixremix]

YOUR DRAGON LOVER ♡︎

i NEED more dragon! zhongli and dragon! neuvillette content, so i decided to make some. hope you lovelies enjoy <3

tags: Zhongli, Neuvillette, dragon! zhongli, dragon! neuvillette, human! female! reader, fluff, cuddling, smut, monster fucking, overstimulation, breeding

-> your life turns upside down once you find out the man you're in love with is a dragon. however, this only betters your relationship in many different aspects, the bedroom being one of them.

reqs open ♡︎ | minors DNI!

-> zhongli

being a mere mortal and dating the rex lapis, morax himself, had it's perks. for example, you had seen for the first time in your life what a dragon looks like up close.

everyone knew the god, skillfully masked as the businessman zhongli, had a dragon form. yet you didn't fully believe that he could transform back and forth between his mythical and human form, no, that was silly! you were too shy, perhaps even to embarrassed, to ask him in the first few months of you two dating wether this was true.

there were signs that the legends were true, of course. the way you would catch him slightly growl at unpleasant strangers in public, the sound coming out unhuman, animalistic even. his teeth were unusually sharp, too. whenever the two of you would find yourself kissing the night away, you'd slide your tounge against his larger fangs, always wondering why they were so pointy.

one day, after about 2 months of your relationship, you had decided to surprise him and make him some dinner before he returns home. you made your way over to his place, sliding the spare key he gave you into the lock and heading inside. to your surprise, someone was there - deep, loud snores were coming from the master bedroom.

"zhongli? love, are you in there?"

your grip tightened on the woolen basket in which you carried your ingredients for the dinner you planned. the snores were very loud and deep, and something about them told you it wasn't your boyfriend making them. the door of his bedroom was slightly open, making you take a little peek.

you're eyes shot up wide open as you saw the creature lounging on morax's bed, stepping back in shock. a mortified look spread on your face as your heart beat loudly against your chest like it wanted to escape. the creature was lizard-like, a dragon perhaps, with a long brownish body and golden scales. in shock, you yelped, which stirred the creature awake.

"z-zhongli..?" you ask, unsure if it was actually the man you love.

"hello, my dearest" he yawned, stretching large paws as he sat up. "what are you doing here?"

completely ignoring his question, you step closer, reaching out your hand to him almost as if you were checking what was before you was real.

"it is me, my love. i did not mean to startle you with my dragon form, you simply caught me off guard"

your hand makes contact with his nuzzle, petting him gently. even though this monstrous creature was certainly frightening, the eyes were like big pools of honey, sweet and warm and inviting.

it was him, you knew in your heart.

♡︎

two years have past and you have gotten more than used to your dragon lover. you didn't just get used to zhongli's dragon form - you loved it. he was so glorious and dignified, proud and gorgeous, yet fuzzy and cute, like a little puppy. anyone else would probably be mortified to be cuddling with a dragon adeptus as powerful as him, but zhongli wasn't a powerful adeptus to you; he was simply your boyfriend.

"awww... do you feel good, Li?" you ask as you pet his head, massaging around his two, golden horns. he awards your actions with a vibrating purr emerging deep from his chest. you were laid on your bed together, enjoying a simple afternoon of cuddles and pets. his much larger, although scaled down, dragon body laid behind you, his underbelly making a perfect headrest for your head.

the adeptus continued purring as you petted him some more, leaving a few kisses along his snout. to think that he looked this scary and mighty but behaved like a kitchen cat...

"i feel as if i'm floating, my dear. you truly know how to care for an old dragon like me.." he sighed, pushing his head in your lap. your plushy, half-exposed thighs made much better of a pillow than any silk one he ever tried, he remarked.

suddenly, you felt a soft sensation on the top of your head. you raise your gaze and realize his fluffy tail tried returning the favor and petting you back. you smile at the feeling, dragging your fingertips from the top of his head down his spine, following the growth of his golden scales. he shivered under your touches, visibly enjoying himself.

"oh, sorry" you mumble, immediately removing your hand from his back, thinking you had done something wrong. even though you were already used to his dragon form, you still hadn't learned by heart where you could touch and where you could not.

he grumbled low as soon as your hands were off his scaly skin, his tail wrapping around your hand and returning it to his spine.

"don't stop" he growled, as if he was desperate for more of your pets, "i have been alive for eons, beloved, and nothing in those few eons has ever felt as good as what you're doing to me. i am a god, my dear, and your touches are my heaven"

♡︎ (NSFW ahead)

one of the best parts of zhongli was his dragon form, you thought. how protecting and caring he was, how soft and affectionate he was, and most importantly, how good he fucked you.

it took a long time for you to get over your embarrassment and ask him to make love while he's in his dragon form. since he's an adeptus, the dragon form was more familiar and comfortable for him than the human form (no matter how good he looked in the human form). besides, the talk around town was that rex lapis' body was anatomically different than a human male one.

as you were now under him, you finally understood what they meant by "different".

"ahh! li! LI! oohhh, archons, please!" you cried in overstimulation as his two cocks filled your holes, each significantly larger than anything of a normal male.

"there aren't any archons here except me, beloved. they can't help you nor grant your wishes, only i can. so why don't you beg your archon, my dear?" the smirk on his snout was almost sadistic as he growled these words in your ear, each followed by a hard thrust. he was big even in his human form, but this was just impossible - he wasn't even halfway in, and you were pretty sure you could feel him in your lungs!

"ahhh! oh, zhongli! z-zhongli! AH! please! rex lapis, ohhh, please! MORAX! MORAX, I NEED YOU!" you cry and writhe under him as he fucks you. it feels so good that you can't help but move around and shake, almost as if the pleasure was too much for you to bare.

"such a good follower... my most devoted follower is asking for me and as your archon, i'll happily answer your call..."

he nipped at your soft body, leaving little bite marks as he went along.

"what is it that you want, my dear?" he asks, splitting you in half with his dicks as you come for the nth time tonight.

"need you... all of you... please, zhongli... ohhhhh, please.."

being consumated by an adeptus was an honor. and being bred by an archon? well, that was just unimaginable. yet here you were, under the geo archon, begging to give him heirs.

"i shall give you what you need, then..." he sighs as he buries his head against your bosom, resting as he suddenly stills and buries his cocks as deep as they could possibly go. he started coming, breeding you until there wasn't a drop of sweet release left in him.

when you finally caught your breath, zhongli curled his long body around your smaller one, soothing you to slumber with his fluffy tail.

you knew at that moment that he'd have to be in his dragon form more often when the two of you are being intimate.

-> neuvillette

finding out your boyfriend of many years was the great hydro dragon came as a surprise. when he told you the secret he's kept for years, you sat in silence, wondering how to process all of this. you felt confused, decieved, and most of all, scared. even though this was still neuvi, your neuvi, he was also the great hydro dragon, a powerful, significant beast.

"i don't want anything to change because of my other form", rasped neuvillette, his poolwater eyes begging for reassurance, "....i hope you know i love you just the same, my love. and i cincerely hope you can forgive me for my lies over the past few years"

you stayed quiet, wondering what you should say. this was definitely not how you imagined this tea in his living room would go.

"can i... see it?"

he blinked once or twice, processing your question silently.

"your dragon form, i mean." you offer him a reassuring smile, as he shakes his head in disbelief.

"if you wish. i don't want to frighten you, mon cherie."

he changes into his dragon form, leaving you breathless. the final result of the whole thing was much less scary than the transformation - watching the man you love grow scales and wings was a stomach-turning experience. finally, the handsome man before you was gone, and a very large dragon appeared.

you stayed quiet, reaching your hands to hold his large nuzzle. he leaned into your touches, closing his eyes as your hands made contact with him.

"hello" you whispered, as if greeting a new person in your life, as if it wasn't someone you loved for the past four years.

"hello, dragon sovereign"

his ears twitched at those words, his spine tingling at the feeling. oh, so he liked being called that.

"hello, mon cherie" he grumbled in return, nuzzling his head against your torso.

"you're beautiful" you whisper in his ear as you pet him gently. "your scales are so pretty, like the ocean... you're one gorgeous dragon, neuvi. there is no reason to hide this side of you."

he smiled warmly, enjoying your warm words and touches.

"why did you hide this from me...?" you ask quietly, scratching his underchin lovingly.

"i was afraid of how you will take it. not many would be okay with having any kind of relations with a dragon", he murmured into your embrace, "let alone romantic ones."

"i don't mind" you humm as you pet him.

"you're not scary at all, love"

♡︎

"how am i not heavy?!" you ask through a chuckle, spread on top of your dragon lover's back as he lounged in his bedroom.

"you weight like a feather, my love. what are you even doing up there, hm?"

you laugh as you play with his mane, twirling it around your fingers and smoothing it out.

"petting my favorite dragon"

"are you implying you know multiple dragons, mon cherie?" he chuckled as well, swaying his body a little and trying to shake your smaller body from his back. finally he shook you off him, your frame losing balance and rolling from your spot on his back. you fell right next to him, and he instantly repositioned his body to hold you.

neuvillette had so much work, always, that all he wanted to do in his free time was lounge and sleep. that's why he repositioned you slightly so you could lay on his arm, covering your body with one of his wings.

"mmm, neuvi..."

it was so sweet and funny to you how he held you. you had read in books and stories that said dragons were hoarders - teriorial animals who'd cherish their treasures and hold them tightly in their nest. which was exactly how neuvillette held you in your bed.

he may have been sleepy - but you weren't; and quite frankly, you were bored. you decided to turn a little more to him, kissing at his chest and underbelly while soothing his wings with your palms.

"how am i supposed to take a nap with you caressing me the way you are, my love?"

"c'mere, neuvi..." you softly murmur, manouvering yourself to sit up, and moving his head to your lap. "there, love, rest there."

and he did, falling asleep peacefully as he was petted in your lap, getting many kisses and praises in your safe arms.

♡︎ (NSFW ahead)

the best part about finally knowing this side of your lover finally happened once he got comfortable showing his dragon form to you. even though you initial reaction was that he's scary, you had second thoughts...

"neuvi, love, i know how uncomfy being in your human form all the time is... you don't have to for me, you know? i don't mind your true form..."

you said as neuvillette laid you down on the soft pillows in his bedroom, shirtlessly towering over you and ready to make love to you like there's no tomorrow.

"no, little one, you don't even know what you're asking for. i'll be too much for you to handle in my dragon form, darling, and i could never put my selfish needs and wishes before your safety"

your hand reaches for his face, gently caressing his cheek with your thumb. you blush at the thought of him taking you in his dragon form - was it wrong for you to think that was kinda hot? many would be disgusted by the idea of being consumated by a beast, yet you loved it; he was your beast, after all.

"please, hydro dragon sovereign...", you whisper as you touch him, "be a little selfish, love. you deserve it. and don't worry about me, i can take it!"

his whole body shudders at the way you said his name, his self control holding on by a thread.

"i love your confidence, mon cherie, you are so adorable. yet, i'm afraid you can't handle all i'm able to give. my whole body is much bigger when i'm a dragon, you know that very well, and i wouldn't be able to fit you.."

your arms wrap around his neck, pulling him so close your noses were touching. he could feel your warm breath on his lips when you whispered:

"i'll make you fit.."

and his self control went flying.

so here you were, hours later, getting fucked into the matress by a large dragon. you lost count on how many times you came, your head hazy from all the pleasure. neuvillette held you in place in a mating press, fucking you like his sole purpose was to breed you. yet, he hasn't come yet, even after hours of your lovemaking.

"mmmphrr... neuvii~ ohhh.. ple- ahhh.."

your moans were uncoherent, your words slurred. at this point, you didn't even know your own name - you only knew his. your boyfriend smirked at the way you whined under him, nuzzling his snout against your neck.

"shhh... you asked for this, little one. now you will take all i'm giving you, hm? you will be good for me?"

"mhmmmm!!" you whine as he fucks you, your vision blurry from all the pleasure. your hands reach for his back, and you start caressing the area around his wings, massaging his back.

"fuck, little one.." he curses as he stills, pushing your legs to your chest and thrusting in you as deep as he'd go. he started coming with a long groan, fucking you through his high with shallow little thrusts, untill your womb was completely filled with his release. you felt full, hazy and warm, and he felt incredible, eyes filled with lust and adoration watching how your stomach bulged with his seed.

one day, he's gonna get your body swollen with more than just sweet release and give you a baby. a beautiful, half-dragon baby.

[churino]

Design for shothole

the offspring of kickback, these are the largest insecticons around, disturbingly they're also the most mobile and opportunistic, they act aloof and harmless if your guard is up but the moment you try to rest thats when they attack,

The nature of cybertron's rot wasn't just scarcity or vague societal decay, a very real mutagen started being spread throughout the planet after the Allspark's removal, on another planet this would've brought about a mass extinction only comparable to earth's great dying, but this event came far too late. Cybertron's environment was already collapsed, leaving only one coddled species to finally suffer the consequences of their actions, the transformers themselves

But from death comes life, abundant life, cybertron's ability to grant life to inanimate objects was known for bilions of years and many neighboring alien civilizations would transport machines and relics to cybertron in order to animate them, and this practice didn't end when it died. It simply changed. Cybertron became a dumping ground for galactic trash, making it unreconizable by the time the insecticons were unearthed.

But even before that. Barely functional robots and organic remains harboring bacteria were among the trash that would find itself on cybertron's surface. In time, they would evolve into the junkions, and life would come to cybertron once more. Though unaware of the planet's history, they would encounter the stasis pods holding the mutated cybertronians and unleash them to spread ruin once more.

Today, cybertron is forgotten to all, but the cybertronians who've mythologized their homeworld to a level only the devout would find palpable, where it once stood, is now the inhospitable, insectcon infested hellhole called the planet of junk,

[fiercynn]

yes i'm talking about otw/ao3's finances again, sorry not sorry

the director of the nonprofit i work for in the u.s. just announced that we have $1 million usd in our reserves at the start of 2025, and that that is a big amount for us to have. we have 35+ full-time employees and several contractors, all of whom are paid good salaries, and we have numerous other operating expenses, including but not limited to running a website, advertising, employee travel, conference registrations, and paying legal costs (we're an advocacy org and often get involved in litigation).

and all i could think about was how the last time i checked the finances of the organization for transformative works (@transformativeworks), which runs ao3, they had almost three times that amount - $2.8 million usd - in their reserves, and zero paid employees, contractors or otherwise. Z E R O.

but that's just normal nonprofit math, right?

and to be clear when i say reserves, i mean money that is not allocated for any specific purpose in the yearly budget. this is just the extra. my org invests that extra so that we can generate additional revenue from it; the last time i checked, otw had only put $10,000 thousand usd of it in an interest-bearing account, which meant they were only earning about $150/year in interest on it. no, i didn't miss any zeroes there. only $150 interest on TWO POINT EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS

anyway i am not going to go check the more recent numbers because any time i try to put any effort into this kind of research, like @manogirl and i did in 2023 and i updated in early 2024, we get so much shit that it hardly feels worth it. but anyone is welcome to follow the process outlined in our previous posts to find the latest numbers yourself. and if you do please tag me! i'm happy to share

but bottom line: remember this when the next otw/ao3 fundraising drive comes around! they don't need your money, and they don't even know how to manage it properly when they get it

(oh, and for anyone who's been following along, no, i still have not received a reply from the otw finance team in response to the one-line question i asked them about their reserves in may 2023. 🙃)

[agentc0rn]

Arbordrasil = arbor (tree in latin; arbor - garden alcove with trees/vines over the framework) + yggdrasil

Here's a little roughly made concept of the "A mon" based on the fan theories for fun. Tried to emphasize on the "A" motif through its contour. I could not help but give it a hooded figure design because they're cool. Besides that, I'm no good at making stats lol, I'm more into the designing and lore compartment.

If you want to check out more of my works, feel free to visit my kofi!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“The Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets”

This week only, Barnes and Noble is offering 25% off pre-orders of my forthcoming novel Picks and Shovels. ENDS TODAY!.

While we truly live in an age of ascendant monsters who have hijacked our country, our economy, and our imaginations, there is one consolation: the small cohort of brilliant, driven writers who have these monsters' number, and will share it with us. Writers like Maureen Tkacik:

https://prospect.org/topics/maureen-tkacik/

Journalists like Wired's Vittoria Elliott, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman are absolutely crushing it when it comes to Musk's DOGE coup:

https://www.wired.com/author/vittoria-elliott/

And Nathan Tankus is doing incredible work all on his own, just blasting out scoop after scoop:

https://www.crisesnotes.com/

But for me, it was Tkacik – as usual – in the pages of The American Prospect who pulled it all together in a way that finally made it make sense, transforming the blitzkreig Muskian chaos into a recognizable playbook. While most of the coverage of Musk's wrecking crew has focused on the broccoli-haired Gen Z brownshirts who are wilding through the server rooms at giant, critical government agencies, Tkacik homes in on their boss, Tom Krause, whom she memorably dubs "the Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets" (I told you she was a great writer!):

https://prospect.org/power/2025-02-06-private-equity-hatchet-man-leading-lost-boys-of-doge/

Krause is a private equity looter. He's the guy who basically invented the playbook for PE takeovers of large tech companies, from Broadcom to Citrix to VMWare, converting their businesses from selling things to renting them out, loading them up with junk fees, slashing quality, jacking up prices over and over, and firing everyone who was good at their jobs. He is a master enshittifier, an enshittification ninja.

Krause has an unerring instinct for making people miserable while making money. He oversaw the merger of Citrix and VMWare, creating a ghastly company called The Cloud Software Group, which sold remote working tools. Despite this, of his first official acts was to order all of his employees to stop working remotely. But then, after forcing his workers to drag their butts into work, move back across the country, etc, he reversed himself because he figured out he could sell off all of the company's office space for a tidy profit.

Krause canceled employee benefits, like thank you days for managers who pulled a lot of unpaid overtime, or bonuses for workers who upgraded their credentials. He also ended the company's practice of handing out swag as small gifts to workers, and then stiffed the company that made the swag, wontpaying a $437,574.97 invoice for all the tchotchkes the company had ordered. That's not the only supplier Krause stiffed: FinLync, a fintech company with a three-year contract with Krause's company, also had to sue to get paid.

Krause's isn't a canny operator who roots out waste: he's a guy who tears out all the wiring and then grudgingly restores the minimum needed to keep the machine running (no wonder Musk loves him, this is the Twitter playbook). As Tkacik reports, Krause fucked up the customer service and reliability systems that served Citrix's extremely large, corporate customers – the giant businesses that cut huge monthly checks to Citrix, whose CIOs received daily sales calls from his competitors.

Workers who serviced these customers, like disabled Air Force veteran David Morgan, who worked with big public agencies, were fired on one hour's notice, just before their stock options vested. The giant public agency customers he'd serviced later called him to complain that the only people they could get on the phone were subcontractors in Indian call centers who lacked the knowledge and authority to resolve their problems.

Last month, Citrix fired all of its customer support engineers. Citrix's military customers are being illegally routed to offshore customer support teams who are prohibited from working with the US military.

Citrix/VMWare isn't an exception. The carnage at these companies is indistinguishable from the wreck Krause made of Broadcom. In all these cases, Krause was parachuted in by private equity bosses, and he destroyed something useful to extract a giant, one-time profit, leaving behind a husk that no longer provides value to its customers or its employees.

This is the DOGE playbook. It's all about plunder: take something that was patiently, carefully built up over generations and burn it to the ground, warming yourself in the pyre, leaving nothing behind but ash. This is what private equity plunderers have been doing to the world's "advanced" economies since the Reagan years. They did it to airlines, family restaurants, funeral homes, dog groomers, toy stores, pharma, palliative care, dialysis, hospital beds, groceries, cars, and the internet.

Trump's a plunderer. He was elected by the plunderer class – like the crypto bros who want to run wild, transforming workers' carefully shepherded retirement savings into useless shitcoins, while the crypto bros run off with their perfectly cromulent "fiat" money. Musk is the apotheosis of this mindset, a guy who claims credit for other peoples' productive and useful businesses, replacing real engineering with financial engineering. Musk and Krause, they're like two peas in a pod.

That's why – according to anonymous DOGE employees cited by Tckacik – DOGE managers are hired for their capacity for cruelty: "The criteria for DOGE is how many you have fired, how much you enjoy firing people, and how little you care about the impact on peoples well being…No wonder Tom Krause was tapped for this. He’s their dream employee!"

The fact that Krause isn't well known outside of plunderer circles is absolutely a feature for him, not a bug. Scammers like Krause want to be admitted to polite society. This is why the Sacklers – the opioid crime family that kicked off the Oxy pandemic that's murdered more than 800,000 Americans so far – were so aggressive about keeping their association with their family business, Purdue Pharma, a secret. The Sacklers only wanted to be associated with the art galleries and museums they put their names over, and their lawyers threatened journalists for writing about their lives as billionaire drug pushers (I got one of those threats).

There's plenty of good reasons to be anonymous – if you're a whistleblower, say. But if you ever encounter a corporate executive who insists on anonymity, that's a wild danger sign. Take Pixsy, the scam "copyleft trolls" whose business depends on baiting people into making small errors when using images licensed under very early versions of the Creative Common licenses, and then threatening to sue them unless they pay hundreds or thousands of dollars:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

Kain Jones, the CEO of Pixsy, tried to threaten me under the EU's GDPR for revealing the names of the scammer on his payroll who sent me a legal threat, and the executive who ran the scam for his business (I say he tried to threaten me because I helped lobby for the GDPR and I know for a fact that this isn't a GDPR violation):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

These people understand that they are in the business of ripping people off, causing them grave and wholly unjust financial injury. They value their secrecy because they are in the business of making strangers righteously furious, and they understand that one of these strangers might just show up in their lives someday to confront them about their transgressions.

This is why Unitedhealthcare freaked out so hard about Luigi Mangione's assassination of CEO Brian Thompson – that's not how the game is supposed to be played. The people who sit in on executive row, destroying your lives, are supposed to be wholly insulated from the consequences of their actions. You're not supposed to know who they are, you're not supposed to be able to find them – of course.

But even more importantly, you're not supposed to be angry at them. They pose as mere software agents in an immortal colony organism called a Limited Liability Corporation, bound by the iron law of shareholder supremacy to destroy your life while getting very, very rich. It's not supposed to be personal. That's why Unitedhealthcare is threatening to sue a doctor who was yanked out of surgery on a cancer patient to be berated by a UHC rep for ordering a hospital stay for her patient:

https://gizmodo.com/unitedhealthcare-is-mad-about-in-luigi-we-trust-comments-under-a-doctors-viral-post-2000560543

UHC is angry that this surgeon, Austin's Dr Elisabeth Potter, went Tiktok-viral with her true story of how how chaotic and depraved and uncaring UHC is. UHC execs fear that Mangione made it personal, that he obliterated the accountability sink of the corporation and put the blame squarely where it belongs – on the (mostly) men at the top who make this call.

This is a point Adam Conover made in his latest Factually podcast, where he interviewed Propublica's T Christian Miller and Patrick Rucker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_5tDXRw8kg

Miller and Rucker published a blockbuster investigative report into Cigna's Evocore, a secret company that offers claims-denials as a service to America's biggest health insurers:

https://www.propublica.org/article/evicore-health-insurance-denials-cigna-unitedhealthcare-aetna-prior-authorizations

If you're the CEO of a health insurance company and you don't like how much you're paying out for MRIs or cancer treatment, you tell Evocore (which processes all your claim authorizations) and they turn a virtual dial that starts to reduce the number of MRIs your customers are allowed to have. This dial increases the likelihood that a claim or pre-authorization will be denied, which, in turn, makes doctors less willing to order them (even if they're medically necessary) and makes patients more likely to pay for them out of pocket.

Towards the end of the conversation, Miller and Rucker talk about how the rank-and-file people at an insurer don't get involved with the industry to murder people in order to enrich their shareholders. They genuinely want to help people. But executive row is different: those very wealthy people do believe their job is to kill people to save money, and get richer. Those people are personally to blame for the systemic problem. They are the ones who design and operate the system.

That's why naming the people who are personally responsible for these immoral, vicious acts is so important. That's why it's important that Wired and Propublica are unmasking the "pubescent sovereignty pickpockets" who are raiding the federal government under Krause's leadership:

https://projects.propublica.org/elon-musk-doge-tracker/

These people are committing grave crimes against the nation and its people. They should be known for this. It should follow them for the rest of their lives. It should be the lead in their obituaries. People who are introduced to them at parties should have a flash of recognition, hastily end the handshake, then turn on their heels and race to the bathroom to scrub their hands. For the rest of their lives.

Naming these people isn't enough to stop the plunder, but it helps. Yesterday, Marko Elez, the 25 year old avowed "eugenicist" who wanted to "normalize Indian hate" and could not be "[paid] to marry outside of my ethnicity," was shown the door. He's off the job. For the rest of his life, he will be the broccoli-haired brownshirt who got fired for his asinine, racist shitposting:

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5289337/elon-musk-doge-treasury

After Krause's identity as the chief wrecker at DOGE was revealed, the brilliant Anna Merlan (author of Republic of Lies, the best book on conspiratorialism), wrote that "Now the whole country gets the experience of what it’s like when private equity buys the place you work":

https://bsky.app/profile/annamerlan.bsky.social/post/3lhepjkudcs2t

That's exactly it. We are witnessing a private equity-style plunder of the entire US government – of the USA itself. No one is better poised to write about this than Tkacik, because no one has private equity's number like Tkacik does:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

Ironically, all this came down just as Trump announced that he was going to finally get rid of private equity's scammiest trick, the "carried interest" loophole that lets PE bosses (and, to a lesser extent, hedge fund managers) avoid billions in personal taxes:

https://archive.is/yKhvD

"Carried interest" has nothing to do with the interest rate – it's a law that was designed for 16th century sea captains who had an "interest" in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Trump campaigned on killing this loophole in 2017, but Congress stopped him, after a lobbying blitz by the looter industry. It's possible that he genuinely wants to get rid of the carried interest loophole – he's nothing if not idiosyncratic, as the residents of Greenland can attest:

https://prospect.org/world/2025-02-07-letter-between-friendly-nations/

Even if he succeeds, looters and the "investor class" will get a huge giveaway under Trump, in the form of more tax giveaways and the dismantling of labor and environmental regulation. But it's far more likely that he won't succeed. Rather – as Yves Smith writes for Naked Capitalism – he'll do what he did with the Canada and Mexico tariffs: make a tiny, unimportant change and then lie and say he had done something revolutionary:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/02/is-trump-serious-about-trying-to-close-the-private-equity-carried-interest-loophole.html

This has been a shitty month, and it's not gonna get better for a while. On my dark days, I worry that it won't get better during my lifetime. But at least we have people like Tkacik to chronicle it, explain it, put it in context. She's amazing, a whirlwind. The same day that her report on Krause dropped, the Prospect published another must-read piece by her, digging deep into Alex Jones's convoluted bankruptcy gambit:

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-02-06-crisis-actors-alex-jones-bankruptcy/

It lays bare the wild world of elite bankruptcy court, another critical conduit for protecting the immoral rich from their victims. The fact that Tkacik can explain both Krause and the elite bankruptcy system on the same day is beyond impressive.

We've got a lot of work ahead of ourselves. The people in charge of this system – whose names you must learn and never forget – aren't going to go easily. But at least we know who they are. We know what they're doing. We know how the scam works. It's not a flurry of incomprehensible actions – it's a playbook that killed Red Lobster, Toys R Us, and Sears. We don't have to follow that playbook.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/07/broccoli-hair-brownshirts/#shameless

[lunawagner]

Study Results (1/??)

I'll post some of the results now! Firstly, I'll write about how I processed the data for those interested in details. (Please inform me if you see anything wrong or want to suggest a different method. I'm just an average person with an undergrad degree...)

If you just want to see the analysis, skip the data cleaning and test assumptions part! As a disclaimer, I don't know if this is all for now or if I can bring myself to work more on it soon 😭 

Special thanks to @xavieslittlestar and @m00nchildwrites for sharing this on bluesky and twitter

Data Cleaning

I realized that some of you guys didn't do the test and wrote the numbers by yourself 😊 And it took me hours to clean the data

As expected, there were some typos, and I corrected them before deciding which participants to exclude. For instance, some wrote 29/20, and since the sum of the subfactor scores is equal to your main factor score, I was able to confirm that it should be 19/20 by doing main_factor_score—other_subfactors = target_subfactor.

After dealing with typos, all participants who entered random values like 0000 and values that didn't align with the main factor scores were excluded.

In the end, the sample size was reduced from ~2600 to 1929.

Test Assumptions

The normality and homogeneity of variance were checked. Most of them fulfilled the homogeneity of variance(Levene's Test), but normality was problematic. I assessed normality based on Kolmogorov-Smirnov(KS), kurtosis, skewness, and Q-Q plot. There were some outliers, but most of them were a natural part of the data, so I didn't change anything about them. Although KS values were lower than .05 , I assumed normality if kurtosis and skewness seemed average (-2 to +2 for kurtosis, -1 to +1 for skewness). For others, I tried trimming, LOG, SQRT, Z, and LN transformations, but still couldn't normalize... Winsorizing would probably work, but there are too many participants(yes, I'm lazy). So, I'm gonna be relatively liberal about normality.

Results

Please note that all of them have small effect sizes (0.2 Cohen's d or 0.1 η2). So regardless of the p values, the actual association between your personality based on the big five and character choices in lads might be small in degree. Also, this is an observational study, which means you shouldn't try to infer a causation or a strict relation (so use it just for your enjoyment, not for fandom chaos~). But I'll put my personal comment under them because I need to enjoy myself too lol

Also, I realised that some of those are changing or disappearing when I compare poc(people of color) and non-poc within themselves. Therefore, the effects might be moderated/mediated by cultural differences as well.

===Trust====

Sylus mains had the lowest mean score in terms of trust(M=11.2, SD=3.42). Yet, they significantly differed only from Xavier mains who had the highest mean(M=12.1, SD=3.28).

Personal comment: I don't know what to make of it. But let me put those here as well.

==Conscientiousness and Agreeableness==

I'll write this together because I have a theory about these results.

Caleb mains' scores were the lowest in terms of conscientiousness (M=74.3, SD=13.7) and agreeableness(M=84.4, SD=13.8). For conscientiousness, they significantly differed from Zayne and Sylus mains. And for agreeableness, they significantly differed from Zayne and Xavier mains. [Agreeableness showed unequal variances, so I used Kruskall-Wallis test]

Personal comment: Honestly, I'm surprised. (Caleb and his girlies not beating red flag/villain allegations)

If anything, I would expect Sylus mains to have lower agreeableness and conscientiousness (first impressions don't disappear).

Then I thought, what if it's related to Caleb being MC's adopted brother? Listen before shooting me. To feel at ease with this setting, you should have higher (but healthy) dissociative tendencies to detach yourself from its real-life associations. And guess what— low agreeableness and low conscientiousness are related to high disassociation [refer to:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1130527417300373]. Secondly, having a lower need to conform(related to agreeableness and conscientiousness) with others might be making it easier for some people to choose Caleb as their main love interest.

(But as I said, these results are liable to change. For instance, for the non-poc sample the lowest mean value of conscientiousness belongs to Rafayel mains)

===Emotionality===

Caleb(M=14.7, SD=3.49) mains had the lowest emotionality score, and the difference between them and Zayne(M=15.6, SD=3.04), Rafayel(M=15.5, SD=3.11), and Sylus(M=15.5, SD=3.33) mains was significant

Personal comment:......Babes lolololol. Is Caleb's robot alter taking over his mains?? Did they get a Toring chip as well? It's so funny omg

===Self-Discipline===

Rafayel(M=10.1, SD=2.96) and Caleb(M=10.1, SD=2.97) mains had similarly low scores of self-discipline, and they differed from Zayne(M=10.8, SD=2.87) and Sylus(M=10.8, SD=2.79) significantly.

Personal comment: As a Rafayel main, I can confirm this.

=Second Love Interest=

Most of Zayne mains chose Sylus as their second love interest. The other most preferred second love interest was Caleb, but since this test was done just before Caleb's new myth, the results might be affected by our excitement for it. Also, Zayne mains showed low preference for Rafayel.

A note about less significant/non-significant observations:

As a whole, we have low extraversion and average conscientiousness, as well as high openness to experience, neuroticism, and agreeableness

For subcategories, we have the highest mean for imagination and the lowest mean for gregariousness. (perfect combination to date fictional men)

Sylus and Zayne mains had similar mean scores in many main factors and subfactors of the Big Five test. Likewise, Rafayel and Caleb mains' scores were close to each other, and they contrasted with Sylus and Zayne(not always significantly tho). Xavier mains generally had balanced scores.

None of the groups differed significantly in terms of openness to experience, neuroticism, extroversion, and these factors' subcategories.

To check if the data gives standard results, I checked socioeconomic status(SES) and its relation to neuroticism since previous studies indicate higher neuroticism for low SES groups, and it was the same for this dataset as well. Anxiety, depression, and neuroticism showed a slightly decreasing trend as the SES increased.

Some studies suggest that people of color have lower trust scores, but in this study, poc had higher trust than non-poc. However, it might be due to the differences in exposure to discrimination between poc who live in the US and those who are natives of other countries.

Tag list: @dadddybangtan @gingers-random-junk @cloudyasteria @eoe-1379 @kwtdrn @punksausages @satorusfrontallobesilverhair @xanxann01 @dandellien @auraficial @fictionalmenlover5 @bundle-of-sunlight @starryfilled @cupcakefactory @rayamalaya @mandapanda16 @nouerzzz @jonggunkitten @fckkntired @dreamienebula @tiffyelefano @bbnique @maybeyougotmewrong @starrychxn @situationsheep @maimaily @irlsammy @meowumis @piranha-teeth @svnflowery @soapsoftheworld

[cerastes]

I still think it's really cool how Amuro starts as the shittiest pilot alive (because he's a 15-year old) that only gets carried because he's in the biggest, fattest stat stick in-universe at the time (a few retroactive additions made in the future notwithstanding), enough that even its crappy vulcan guns are tearing Zaku IIs apart, and when he starts getting a bit too cocky, Char and Ramba Ral show up in objectively inferior pieces of junk and absolutely deliver his pizza, they just drag his face across every available surface in Planet Earth like he's a Yakuza mook, all because they are simply that much better at piloting, and the thing is, Amuro takes that very seriously.

He goes from shitass kid in an unfortunate situation that doesn't want to get in the robot to the most unwell child soldier in the war, which is really saying something, but most importantly, becomes so good at piloting the Gundam that the Gundam physically cannot handle Amuro's piloting. They need to apply "Magnetic Coating" to its joints so they don't fucking snap away from the main frame because Amuro, one, moves too damn well but also in too extreme a way for the frame to handle it, two, despite being equipped with two sabers, a shield, a beam rifle and vulcan guns, Amuro is a stern believer in introducing most everyone in thagomizer range to his Rated Z for Zeon hands, the single most official pair of hands in the business, tax free. He KEEP going Ip Man on these dudes, he does NOT need to do a Jamestown on these mother fuckers but he INSISTS. Somehow even the Gundam Hammer, which is a giant Hannah Barbera cartoon flail-- Ok, look at this thing, words do not do it justice

Even this god damn Tom and Jerry prop is less savage that whatever Amuro decides to do the moment he's done throwing his shield to get a free kill on someone and it officially becomes bed time forever for the unfortunate sap at the business end of his ten-finger weapons of mass destruction.

The RX-78-2, "Gundam" for its friends and family, even has a top of the line cutting edge Learning Computer that 'learns' alongside the pilot and their habits. This data extracted from it was so absolutely fucked up that it completely revolutionized Mobile Suit combat afterwards, which is a wholesome thing to think about when The Best Combat Data Ever came from a really angry, really stressed 15 year old that doesn't even like piloting. He was 15! He made Haro with his own hands! Amuro literally just wanted to make funny cute spherical robofriends! Amuro was out there trying to make Kirby real, but fate had other plans for him. His cloned brain put in a pilot seat is one of the setting's strongest 'pilots'.

They made fucking Shadow the Hedgehog with his brain, god damn.

By the end, Zeon is rolling out Gelgoogs out of its mass production lines. These things are in the Gundam's ballpark in terms of overall specs (or "power level"). Amuro is bodying them as if they were episode 1 Zaku IIs.

AND THEN HE GETS FUCKING PSYCHIC SPACE POWERS. Not that he needed them, he bodied a couple Space Psychics without any of those powers before awakening to them. But heaven's most violent child was not done evolving, whether he liked it or not.

Char bodied him in a souped up Zaku II at the start, a machine objectively inferior to the Gundam. Amuro more or less one-sidedly beats the shit out of Char when he's in a custom Commander-type Gelgoog that you could consider to be equal spec-wise to the Gundam. Amuro is the embodiment of Finding Out. He is Consequences. You tell him he better make it hurt, better make it count, better kill you in one shot, buddy, he needs half a fucking shot. The complete transformation. One could consider the central 75% of the show as long drawn out training montage turning a kid into the Geese Howard of giant robots.