altraviolet

[altraviolet]

".... Thundercracker had barged into the cold, empty apartment demanding to know what the hell was going on. His horrified face when he had seen Skywarp's bleeding eyes, ringed with white scars from the little whips of electricity"

This was super super sad ,poor skywarp

it was, our poor beloved 😢💜💜

[altraviolet]

if you're writing and find yourself thinking 'this is too weird/gross/offputting/esoteric/ambitious/catered to my specific interests + sure to push away a broader audience' that is the devil speaking and it is a lie. you are already firmly on the right path and you need to double down

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lol evil and intimidating rizz. thank you!! :D :D

@altraviolet BEST FANFIC I HAVE EVER READ IN MY ENTIRE LIFE OMG I LOVE YOU ❤️❤️❤️

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If Soundwave was to hate any character across any series(Prime, Cyberverse, comics, ect) who would he hate the most? And who would he like the most(Rodimus not included) Also: do you think there is a chance, if he met a bad megatron, would he possibly think about going back into his older ways? I dunno if these have been asked before, I'm just a silly lil guy :p

hmm... the first question requires a lot of thinking, and I am knee-deep in a spider monster romance book right now, lol, so instead of directly answering, I'll give you this:

assuming you mean an "end of TEG SW," he would greatly dislike and distrust mechs who display these characteristics: cowardice, weakness, cruelty. He would probably hate anyone who hurt Rodimus or his LL favorites

he'd like mechs who have the characteristics of Rodimus and his friends: strength (physical and otherwise), cleverness, kindness

TEG SW met the very biggest, baddest Megatron and didn't go back to his older ways, so I don't think there's an outwardly bad, cruel, physical-might-is-all Megatron that could convince him to do anything he didn't want to do. he might be susceptible to a Megatron who radiates compassion and concern, but slowly slowly twists SW's views or actions. a very sly and manipulative character. not unlike Getaway in MTMTE

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Hello! Speaking of the medical scenes/content in TfP, how did you go about planning those concepts and executing them? I’d love to work with robo-anatomy concepts. I always feel like I’m pulling stuff out of my ass when it comes to trying to give mechs believable ailments + navigating how to assess for and potentially heal those ailments

Hi!

Yeah... I know what you mean. There's definitely an element of yolo to it all xD

So I do have a Biology background and I have worked with a lot of different kinds of tissue/vectors/diseases. I can draw from this knowledge and cobble together robot-y sounding stuff in the shape of the Real World stuff, if that makes sense. I'm not sure what your educational background/specialty might be, but if any of it is medical, engineering, computer science, etc, draw from what you know. (either real viruses or computer viruses, is what I mean here haha)

If your specialty lies outside those fields, you can try reverse engineering what you need. If you know the medical thing you want, work backwards to what caused it, and then see how that fits with what you know of TFs.

In FtP, I took the canon fact of Mirage's disease and expanded on it- what caused it, how did it cascade out into various symptoms, how do those manifest in his actions. His diagnosis ends up being really complex, but still explainable. Using the canon-given mnemosurgery meant just about anything to do with the mind/memory was up for grabs. It all kinda came together as I wrote it. I wish I could be more specific for ya, but it's been a while since I wrote it.

I guess the best advice I can give you is: research a little of what you want to do, and then see how to robot-ify it. The deeper understanding you have of medical things, possibly the more realistic you can portray it. But also, most of your audience isn't deeply, deeply acquainted with the medical field (I'd wager) and are there for the fun of it :) Don't put too much pressure on yourself if it takes the fun out of writing ❣️

Thanks for the ask! I hope that helps 💪✨

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Same anon as the approaching writing differently one lol clicked send too quickly.

What would you say were the hardest scenes to write in TEC and FtP? Alternatively, which were the ones you were really excited about writing?

The hardest scenes to write in TEG... yes, there were quite a few chapters that were difficult to write, for various reasons. Here are some I remember off the top of my head:

-Megatron talking to SW after his blue screening

-Aquafend's arc and everything about the Irradion

-the Megatron, Drift, and SW scene in the darkest part of the LL

Megatron, actually, I find difficult to write. so most of the scenes where he's in it and contributing in a very important, meaningful way, were hard, haha

Hardest scenes in FtP... hmm, it's been a long time, now since I wrote that one! I know it was a challenge at the time... but nothing's sticking out at the moment, I'm afraid

TEG scenes I was excited to write:

-the echo garden chapter :D

-the first Enceladia chapter

-Movie Nights, or other little 'one shot' scenes where SW is interacting with a 'new' crew member. writing the crew's various responses to SW was one of the funnest parts of the fic, hehehe

-rounded corners >D

-Mirage and Skywarp together on the shuttle going back to the LL. it's only a paragraph or so, but where Mirage disarms Skywarp and talks to him and kisses him askldfasl

FtP scenes I was excited to write:

-a lot of the medical stuff! I love medical stuff and anatomy stuff

-the flashbacks that get more and more sensual

-the scene where Mirage is in the coma and Skywarp shows up and it's SUPER TENSE and Flatline has to talk him down

-the chapter after/before that, with all the little memory scenes from Mirage's life

-the scenes of Mirage and Skywarp on the cliff, getting to (re)know each other

-the scene describing when Mirage bared his spark first ;A;

It's interesting how, for FtP, it's very easy for me to remember the scenes that make me excited, verses the scenes that were hard xD I guess 6 years leaves only the best memories haha

thanks for the questions :D

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If you had to rewrite TEG, is there anything you would have approached differently?

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm the only thing I can think of is that I would've spaced Trailbreaker and Ambulon's healing out a bit more. iirc the resolutions happen in the same chapter or neighboring chapters. perhaps a bit too fast, there

there are some scenes that I might change a little bit of, but not much in the way of content. TEG is written in such a way that if one thing is excised, it would require a LOT of other rewriting.

uummmmMMMMMMMMmmmmmmm... yeah I can't think of anything else I can specifically point to, haha

[altraviolet]

What does your editing process look like?

Also, when you’re writing different characters how do you keep track of being accurate to their personalities or characterizations in order to avoid them all sounding the same or even inserting your own reactions by mistake?

>editing process

ooooohhhhhhh it can be a mess. because I write chapters out of order, I have a .doc for those and a .doc for the ongoing story (and many others, but I'll try to stay focused on your question, here). as the story progresses, I bring in the already-written chapters, and they may need some editing to fit in properly to what's come before them

developmental editing doesn't proceed as it does with published works (as far as I understand it) because once the fic's done, it's done. I don't go back and developmentally edit. what you see on AO3 is technically the first draft

on a line level, I try really hard to get everything grammatically correct the first time. I reread every chapter a zillion times and try to catch as many errors as possible

so, overall, editing is on individual chapters. it's usually a mix of stitching scenes together, squooshing them into the right shape, and scouring the hell out of it all on the line level.

these are the things I look for in my own writing:

-does the writing flow? I write varied sentence lengths naturally now (comes with practice, yay!) but I do sometimes check to make sure things aren't stagnating, flow-wise, with word counts and individual word usage. this is also important for dialog. I have a specific way I do dialog, because I think it prevents confusion and makes things easier to remember as each person speaks

-does the writing impart the information I want it to? every scene needed to contribute to the overall plot. did that happen?

-does it all make sense? from the blocking of the scene to staying in the same point of view* to the literal wordage not being confusing. it's important to check all of that

(*side note on point of view: TEG does break this rule in a couple of places. I knew I was doing it and decided to keep it in, but it's technically not correct haha)

I hope that answered your editing question- please let me know if you have a more specific question about it :D

>tracking characterizations

always a good question! I struggled with some characters a lot, and others felt much more natural/easy to write

I have a bunch of files where I've screenshotted people talking about characters, or comments about them, or even, sometimes, I ask people to tell me about their favs and I save the conversations (I tell them I do that!). I refer back to those files, or canon, when I'm not sure. sometimes you really don't know how a character would act in a given situation, so you have to do your best. you can ask yourself questions like:

-has the character been in a similar situation before in canon? can you glean anything from that?

-if it's a wholly new situation, what elements of their character can you lean on to guess their reaction? do they have a "core" element that you can extrapolate from? JRO actually did a great job of giving us the cores of a lot of characters, especially at the beginning of the comic. they get a bit more complex as you go ;) but the starting point is as good as any!

and lastly, give yourself some grace to stray a little bit, if you need to. as long as you could argue their characterization supports XYZ action in the fic, I think it'd be ok :) bonus if the 'argument' is given in the text, via their actions/thoughts/dialog, etc

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What were your main inspirations for TEG? Like what committed you to creating this behemoth of a fic?

There's a section in the Afterword where I answer the 'inspiration' side of this question, so here's a few points from there, copy pasted:

Inspiration for writing style: I love the strong characterization and intricate plotting of MTMTE. I already strive for that kind of writing, because I really like it, but in terms of those story building aspects, they were definitely inspired by MTMTE itself. JRO's attention to detail is amazing.

Inspiration for the tier one chore cycle: Literally no one has asked this but since I actually have an answer, I want to share it! It was inspired by calls to activism I had seen: that different kinds of people are more likely to help each other and be tolerant/understanding if they work together to improve their community.

Inspiration for the crystal stuff: The crystal aspect is intrinsically linked to Soundwave's character arc. He needed something to center around so he could be an active character and change himself. I was talking to a friend about how Soundwave needed a hobby or something because I didn't want the story to just be the romance - I truly want it to be the story of TFP Soundwave on the Lost Light - and she said crystals were a theme in my writing so why not that? And I said ok, cool. And in thinking about how Soundwave and crystals could relate, I thought of "the meaning of Soundwave" thing.

As for the commitment question, here are the main reasons I powered through the dang thing:

to see if I could. getting TFP SW realistically from his canon self to a self that could be compassionate was a huge challenge. was I a good enough writer to do it?

to bring a crackpair to life ❤️💙

I reeeealllllly missed MTMTE. I mean, yeah, it's still there (kind of. could we get a reprint, already??) but the canon adventures had ended. and I missed the characters so much. I wanted to be with them again

Thanks for the questions :D

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If you have one--What's a scene that you've written that makes you slap your own knee (literally or figuratively) every time you think about it?

hehehe oh man, I know I do, right now this is the only thing that comes to mind tho [readmore for TEG spoilies]

The scene where SW has intricately plotted Rodimus being able to hear various crew members talk about what kind of junk he has - which is pretty funny on its own, but which is extra funny to me because I wrote it because people kept asking me what kind of junk SW had while the fic was being written xD and so that's also the reason SW gives for setting it all up ahahaha

Rodimus's whole frame shook with laughter. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. .:why did you tell them about your junk?:. .:they kept asking:.

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Have you read the Murderbot Diaries?

Hi anon! I've read the first book twice. I, unfortunately, didn't love it (that's why I read it twice, to make sure), and I really wish I did. I'm glad it makes so many people happy though!

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any writing or TEG questions? I could use a distraction. anon is on :)

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We got my Rodimus design bean :DDD

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LOL

don't worry, she survived. that was Arcee.

@altraviolet The Echo Garden is going very well so far.