#before the other mechs but tbh it could be any time

[saym0-0]

i know she's technically younger but nastya has SUCH big sister vibes

[house-of-daena]

I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED 🔥🔥🔥

random assorted thoughts. imma just ramble about dotty tbh.

like teaching him how to kiss, spending time alone together in the remains of some khaenri’an mech, his body pinned between yours and the moss-covered walls, lips locked together in a slow, shy dance as you move at his pace. there’s little he can complain about, his face dusted with an adorable blush and knees damn near useless by the time you push your tongue against his, the cute thing that was your nerdy boyfriend absolutely head over heels with the way you claim everything about him as yours. he’ll probably scold you later for how you have him fucking drooling at how good it felt. make sure to kiss him again when you get back to your dorms, just to see him chase after your lips from expecting another looooooong makeout session. maybe get him so used to it that you can kiss him to sleep, something so soft and loving and comforting that his eyes flutter shut as you hold him in your arms and keep your mouths together.

get him obsessed with you!!! pretend to ignore him to get him craving the moment he shoves you into some empty room, clothes discarded around you both as he possessively tightens around you, ignoring the growing burning of his thighs as he slams himself down again and again. take him with you to the library just to see him press his thighs together as he remembers how well you fucked him the last time you both were there— so why not sneaking your hand down his pants and shamelessly start stroking his leaky cock or coax his sex to grow wetter, get fucking soaked before plunging your fingers inside. push his face into your bare neck when he sits on your lap, get him to finally put some bite behind his cute bark of claiming you for the world to see that you’re his, feel him nick at your neck before finally sinking those sharp teeth into your skin, feel him moan at your taste and start rutting against your thigh as he laps up your blood.

even as the mad doctor, don’t hesitate to bend him over a cold operating table, make the nerd from ages ago reappear in the way he stutters as he begs for all of your attention on him, mask falling off and eyes rolling back as you sink yourself into him like you’ve done so many times before. use a flimsy excuse of it being too cold in your room to get him under you, pale legs thrown over your shoulder as you pump him full of your warmth and love again and again, listen to how he mewls and begs for more even when he can’t even hold his head up to look at you and his legs are shaking from the overwhelming pleasure. get him riled up after you flirt and bed some of his clones, get him possessive all over again as he makes them all watch how well he takes you, how he’s the original and your whore, pull him back down to fluster him and to see the others blush from the lewd, wet slapping of your bodies not made any better with your release now dripping down from his hole and adding to the filthy liquids and the scent of sex that absolutely permeates the room now.

and now imma get ready for sunday church ✌️

AHHHHHHH OH NH GOSHHHHHH this had me screaming 😭 all of this... omg... im on my knees...

you had me locked in at the word 'teach'. nothing like teaching your poor inexperienced boyfriend who's all too smart for his own good! he's always sososo cute when you kiss him, bc he's trying to get used to it, but his heart is pounding so hard and he's blushing ashhdkgkdhcs... he still refuses to admit that u make him feel sooo good 💞 he just loves loves loves to make out like he developed a habit where he'd just stare at ur lips for a long period of time wondering when will u kiss him again (u just kissed him a few minutes ago)

getting him obsessed omg.. whether it's intentional or not, he's so into u that he's thinking of u all the time... he loves u so much his heart could burst and at the same time he needs u so fucking bad allll the time. you've turned him to be such a whore for you.. just insinuate smth lewd to his ear and he's glaring at you with his cheeks completely flushed, crossing his leg and biting his bottom lip. he gets sooo possessive when u pretend to ignore him like hello?? ur being rude to ur one and only bf?? you should be paying attention to him!! look at him!! and if u still ignore it ooo he's gonna make u, choking on your dick, slobber all over it, his chest and covered with this saliva and bits of ur cum after sucking u for soo long, loving the way you moan his name, eyes only on him, just the way it should be 💞

reminding him allll the nasty stuff you've done outside. especially in the library where you took his virginity 💕 he will never forget that no matter how long he lives.. omg and he loves biting u all the time!! all the marks he gives u is a testament that yes!!! he owns you!!! you're his lover and anyone else tries to get with u with their grubby hands will be faced the wrath of zandik 😤😤 he will whine and complain if u conceal his love bites with make up or a turtle neck..

AND YESS reminding dottore of his place, of how your relationship came to be, by fucking him so hard he's crying and sobbing. he's not il dottore, the second most powerful person in the fatui... nope! just your nerdy husband who likes to get fuck until he can't walk anymore, pumped with cum to the brim and leaving his hole all puffy n abused 😊 no one can take u like he does! centuries of being his lover has made his body into the most perfect fucktoy you'll ever have, his segments can't even compare! he gets sooo jealous when u fuck another segment but oh he can't do anything about it bc it's his punishment, all tied up with a vibrator at max intensity deep inside him, but his cock was left out, neglected as he's forced to watch u wreck his segments instead of him :( oooo he'd be crying and begging for mercy, cursing at his segments...

also zandik used to wear rope under his uniform all the time to impress you... to feel like he belongs to u in such a salacious manner 💕 he had to stop bc it would make his skin burn after a while so! you gave him something far more ethical and better for his sensitive, scarred skin! the ones u see him wearing now, with cyan silk stitched onto it bc ur so thoughtful, your name on the one around his neck! he absolutely adore it 💕

[suethesocks]

Ascalon Redesigns!

Ive always bashed Ascalon alot (still do) but watching kuro's breakdowns i coudnt help but wonder about how cool it wouldve been if it was actually executed well

My main gripes with it is that it didnt look like technology, made no sense to look the way it does, and felt very poorly thought out overall like the lore for it was a complete afterthought

As you can see here (and in my george design) Ive made ascalon alot more technological-looking and like something azmuth would actually build

So whats the deal with this device? Ascalon is a weapon that uses the incomplete DNA of powerful beings (such as celestialsapiens) to harness their power and manifest it into a superpowerful suit of armor and weapon that, if used correctly, can be used to dissect and study the fabric of reality.

This way Ascalon contrasts alot more directly to the omnitrix, being both DNA devices of sorts. And both made for the purposes of knowledge, but one is alot more destructive and obviously made for offensive purposes than the other

I gave it those weird vertical circle thingies to sort of look like the star alignment we saw in the flashbacks with Zennith. Always found it weird how that never came up and the design didnt evoke it at all apart from simply.. being long?

The armor and weapon are based off of the user and what their mind sort of understands as "combat gear." This is why it looks like a knights armor for George and how it manifests into a sword (or rather one of those cartooonishly large claymores). I tried to give it white tubes and some green dots to evoke the omnitrix more. Also slapped on a cool big cape because every robot armor should have a cape tbh. I didnt intend for that at the time but this ended up being a motif throughout the designs, finding a way to incorprate cloth into them

Here we have a hypothetical design for azmuth if he were to wield it. For galvans i imagine they probably go into battle in giant mechs, so thats what his ascalon is. Gave ascalon that 1 zigzag that his staff in soto has, but tried to move away from the soto mechs design for this bc i never imagined that one was used for serious military combat

In the azmuth flashbacks we saw that he gave Ascalon to an incursean warrior which is what led to their homeworld's destruction. I think DJW later said that the warrior was not an Incursean but idc !!

I drew this in the same pose that the warrior had in the shot we saw him in. Gave him the classic incursean helmet as well as some more incursean-y elements to his armor. He has a normal sword that looks more like canon ascalon's than george's (i wish i could pretend it was because hes the technical original wielder of ascalon so he gets to have the design match the canon but no it was a coincidence)

We saw Vilgax wield Ascalon for a brief moment in the show so i had to! This ascalon was a very easy choice for me since i made up my mind ages before i even got the idea. Vilgax should never ever wield any sort of weapon, because hes simply strong enough on his own that he can pure muscle and brain his way out of any conflict. Brute force is his fortei, not becasue hes dumb but because he just doesnt need to do anything else. BUT if you were to give him a weapon, it shouldnt be a sword or a gun (both things UAF had lmao) it should be something like a hammer or a mace or gauntlets. Brute force sort of weapon

Vilgax is a already warlord so it was simple to work off of his canon OS design (the coolest one) and come up with an armor for him. I also took some inspirations from Eva Unit-02 for the helmet and the cape (specifically its debut where it was covered in cloth)

Of course, for ascalon i had to go with hammer. I mean his ship is called the Chimeran Hammer so you gotta! Also i think its the most fun visual with vilgax

Last but not least, the last person to wield ascalon in the show, Ben himself! I originally wasnt planning to do this, but then i got the idea of giving him these 2 designs to represent his change in mindset he has in the finale

In the beginning hes mostly influenced by how he saw george wield ascalon and stuff,and hes kinda losing it in the sauce a little. So he has an armor similar to that of goerge. Then as he remembers his friends and his humanity, he comes back down to earth (metaphorically?) and his armor itself shifts to represent this, being a mostly cartoonish armor based off ultra ben who i assume is like bens sona or something lol

The cloth is a menacing badass cape like George's, but then shifts into this sort of bubbly friendly skirt. His weapon also shifts from daggers wrapped around the omnitrix (representing using the omnitrix as a wepaon) to a shield wrapped around the omnitrix (representing using the omnitrix as a peacekeeping device)

These weapons dont actually interact with his omnitrix in anyway, theyre mostly just wrapped around it so he can still access it. The aliens would probably have george's armor but with slight changes to fit each alien better

Bonus!!

My own takes on Vilcubra and Dagax

Always really really really disliked both of these designs in the show, they felt like they went through zero drafts before the final design and they just kinda did whatever (which isnt far off from how the rest of this arc was handled lol)

I tried making vilcubra look more creepy and like his body was indeed transformed to be a servant, and also closer to how the lacubras actually look so i SLASHED off his toesies and took out his eyes and put them on his shoulders so they dont look like eyes (leaving room for the teeth to overtake the face) also gave him a tail

I think the idea behind having Dagax be a floating vilcubra head vilgax was because they thought a floating normal vilgax head would look goofy (theyre right) but i think they failed to realize that the floating vilcubra head is equally goofy even if indeed you give it red eyes. So i just tried to make my design be something of a mix between the actual Dagon and vilgax

I admit i ran into some trouble trying to do that as vilgax was the OG cthulu inspired design, so trying to mix him with other cthulu presented trouble. I tried to at least slant his eyes the same way they looked in OS and give him the OS yellow spots, as well as the 2 big tentacles he has in the back of his head in OS and OV

[bambeptin]

OK... SO... BODYSWAP THOUGHTS™... that may or may not be coherent

both of them instantly do not enjoy being in each other's bodies. other than the logistical nightmare of what the hell is happening, Rex and White Knight are very physically different! there's the adjustment period where WK suddenly is much smaller and Rex is suddenly much larger. Rex is more built than most teens but like. WK is a slab of a man. bouts of vertigo are common.

that's on top of being an EVO vs. not being an EVO. I've briefly touched upon it in the fic itself but Rex has been in constant communication with nanites and technology for his entire life (that he remembers) and that's 100% normal to him. he knows "people can't communicate with technology" but he doesn't really understand that, you know. suddenly he's in a human body, everything's quiet, and that specific human is likely the most isolated human in the world.

UH. the rest under a readmore.

(White does send his rubber ball through the magnet into his office which Rex initially thinks is a rude sarcastic gesture but he thinks WK might actually be trying to make his own office more? livable??? but then Rex is like oh! he's in a prison as well. just like my room was. on another note White does keep his exosuits in a room attached to the office but that's behind a lock and he refuses to let Rex use them bc it's a major security breach. + the Consortium would know something is up + WK doesn't want to smuggle him out. honestly it wouldn't be too difficult to but it's not like WK ever had a reason to look into how to escape, other than to wrangle Rex)

Rex is going to get stir-crazy in there. he's got nothing to do. there IS nothing to do in there. ends up reading a bunch of the books White has stashed away in there but tbh there aren't many books. at least they somehow have a similar taste in books. ends up logged back into the system somehow if only to requisition more reading material! and anything else entertaining that can survive the magnet! and another blanket! and like, a chair maybe.

he's lucky that 80% of the time I hc that WK has a room attached to the office and I didn't hit upon the 20% of the time I feel like he doesn't and he sleeps on a mattress right next to the desk when writing this fic

and you know... while he's there in Providence with WK's credentials and looks and boss power... may as well snoop around... maybe even try to make things better...

body language-wise Rex is much more open and cheery (sometimes forcing a smile), but also is more unsure of himself at certain points. he wouldn't be able to nuke a city block basically, even when he had to. when Six sees White's body on the screen, smiling and joking around, suddenly he sees pre-bleaching WK.

and NO. he is too stubborn to do things like "TALK TO PEOPLE". Rex in his body creeps him out anyways. he's all... happy. he is not taking this time to reflect on what that means for Rex's life, much less his own. for now at least.

White is in a sensory nightmare where his panic is also telling his nanites to help him and that freaks him out even more. before bleaching he's always been much more social and tbh way more like Rex but now? he's used to being alone. he's fine with being alone, even, he tells himself. in Rex's body, he flinches from human contact, he's nauseous from nanite communications, he can't make any of his builds bc his mental state is a mess, he's overworking himself, and he's losing control. he can barely cure anything since he can feel the nanites being extracted.

Rex communicates with nanites but WK tries to control them.

he COULD likely build exact copies of Rex's builds if Rex jotted down his mental blueprints, or if WK studies his builds through old footage hard enough to get a grasp on how they work. turns out White has a knack for engineering (his exosuit, his mechsuit, King's Road, etc). HOWEVER this is a lil spoiler for the fic 🤫 but since he made his own mech and he knows it like the back of his hand it's actually easier for him to make parts of his mech as builds instead. I'll probably draw this sometime. Rex with WK's mech arm!!! cool!!!

for his body language he's VERY closed-off. and trying to be intimidating in a body very different than what he's used to combined with his general scowly-ness makes him sort of read like... an extremely moody and rebellious teenager to people not in the know. puts up with some of the soldiers treating him like garbage too.

(Rex expects White to be living it up out there, indulging being able to be outside of the office again...! instead he's still isolating himself. Knight's like there's no point. I'm going to be back in the office. I don't want to get used to it.)

OKAY I ALMOST FORGOT TO PUT IN: White is very aware that Rex's body can get amnesia again and he will forget everything about himself. in that case he doesn't want Rex to be trapped in the office so he's ready to have his amnesiac self swapped anyways.

Rex is very aware of that too and is like, it would be unethical to stick a complete amnesiac into WK's position. he's ready to take the hit!!! they butt heads over this.

White Knight being freaked out all the time is not helping re: his nanites going into overdrive. gotta calm down, WK!!!

I do have a scene in mind for Knight at Noah's house (ordered by Rex)(so WK can go outside) and it is so awkward. Noah going on Reddit to ask what the fuck to do if your ex-boss for a shady job that you got fired from but you still kinda hang out with your ex-coworkers is like. at your house scowling while watching cartoons. (but he's still watching???)(intently???????)

might have more thoughts about this later. this is definitely only scratching the surface!!!

[cozzzynook]

May i squeeze some ProwlBee out of you? I'm curious cuz you usually write Bee with Decepticons. If not then a short fluff post with BlitzBee is fine.

Oddly enough between the two its Prowl that makes a move first.

No one saw it coming since Prowl and Bee are so different and every bot thought Prowl wasn’t the type to court.

It’s when they get back to Cybertron after winning the war ( Sari comes with them and Prowl lives idc its canon ) and beginning to work on gaining Decepticons equal rights after Optimus becomes a full fledge Prime. That the others walk into a fuel suite and see Bee on a date with another mech.

They’re all watching, trying to hide while being so painfully obvious as Bee’s date progresses. Bee likes the mech but there isn’t this flame, no passion. He can’t see himself with this mech for a long time more like a few fun nights with some wild interfacing and nothing more.

He’s a grown mech with some needs okay. He works just like any other bot and after a long shift as an open scout and spy in secret training, something he’s very proud of after a bit of growing, he can’t help but want to blow off some steam and find his conjunx while doing so.

He’s been in love with Prowl since the mech smirked a joke he told before they came to Earth and from there it only grew.

Yeah he knew they were different but he couldn’t help it, he was in love with the stoic nature loving mech.

He was just too afraid of ruining their friendship and rejection that he never said anything.

He didn’t think in a million stellar cycles Prowl would return his feelings especially when he saw how well he got along with Jazz. It hurt but he wanted Prowl to be happy so he figured he should move on too, even if he would never love another like Prowl he could try.

So its to his ( & literally every bot else tbh ) surprise that it was Prowl who growled and revved his engine dangerously when the mecha leaned over and kissed Bee on the cheek. Stalked over and grabbed the mecha by the neck cables and frame slammed him onto the ground with a blade half way through an important cable that Bee figured maybe something was up.

It was to the bots luck Ratchet was there to perform surgery on him and it was to Prowls luck that Optimus was able to have the whole thing covered up and swept under the fuel table.

It was Bee’s job to get Prowl out of there and away from the public that he finally asked Prowl just what the pit he was thinking and why he almost offlined a mech for no reason that he got his answer.

He knew how to speak Prowl so seeing his visor flash and his denta clench and his silence consuming them that he figured it out.

“Were you…jealous Prowl?”

“And if i was?”

Bee was taken aback by that but in true Bee fashion he simply said, “ya coulda told me instead of trying to offline my lunar cycle interface bot.”

That was not what Prowl wanted to hear and Bee paid for it that night.

On the good side when the others finally saw them a few cycles later they were conjunx and mated.

🥰 hope you enjoyed

[decimadeathing]

Which of the Snakes, if any, could defeat Walpurgisnacht?

How easy does Ocelot make it look in comparison?

Ooh, good question! It has been A While since I last touched Metal Gear, I still need to finish TPP lol - as a result, your answer might take a bit! I'm gonna assume our heroes can see Walpurgisnacht since it's boring to say "they all get blindsided and die the end"

I get the feeling that with BB being able to bench a fucking mech that one time in Peace Walker, at the very least he'd have the durability to just out-endure Walpurgis and beat her with brute force, if anybody - man might be a massive himbo but he gets results!

Considering Solid was able to defeat BB not once but twice (yes I know about the technicality there but Venom is pretty formidable too) I figure he might have a decently good shot of being able to beat Walpurgisnacht like BB, if he can figure out some sort of force multiplier!

Liquid is... well, Liquid. Man's got an IQ of like 170 just like Solid, but considering basic genetics is enough to defeat his brain somehow, and he lost to both V and Solid, I get the feeling Liquid alone is not gonna have a great time trying to save Mitakihara.

Solidus, it feels like it depends - On one hand, he lost to Raiden ultimately, on the other, he was the president at one point, but then the question would be if he's in office at the time of the Walpurgisnacht disaster so he can call in like, a nuke on the witch - From there the question becomes "will a nuke stop her?" and tbh, I actually don't know! (Before you say "well but what about those Scud looking thingies Homura used", those seem to be anti ship missiles used by the JSDF so they're likely an order of magnitude below a nuke)

Raiden is technically a snake too, and he's also a pretty interesting case because he displays similar durability to BB - in MGS4 at least he was able to stop a fucking boat with his cyborg powers after all not to mention the slicing a plane in half thing, so honestly he might be able to do it, especially with his katana from Revengeance!

Venom, again, I haven't completed his game (and especially considering I switched default V out for a girl because I interpret TPP as basically Deci Writes Dumb Fanfic: The Game, and a mostly-female Mother Base is basically my fantasy of being treated like a princess by a small army of lesbians) but like, he seems decently close to BB in terms of capabilities. I feel like he might have more trouble though, but like I haven't gotten to the Sahelanthropus fight so who knows! Maybe he can just caber-toss her into orbit or something!

Last but not least of our snake roster, we have The Boss! I know she's not technically a snake but she's my fave so I'm gonna include her! Obviously she'd win easily, since she is a girl and girls are magic, so being a Magical Girl in the first place is easy!* She's strong enough to beat Big Boss too, so if he could beat Walpurgis she could too by my reckoning!

Ocelot honestly strikes me as the kinda guy who would be smart enough to not get involved in the first place - his whole thing is trying to save BB after all, so a single city doesn't necessarily feel like something he'd be interested in saving in the first place unless it benefited him somehow. Since BB can probably defeat Walpurgisnacht, Ocelot would probably wind up just doing what he did in MGS3 where he supported Snake from the sidelines, in my opinion. On the other hand, if he had to save BB because he was incapacitated or something, we all know that six shots are more than enough to kill anything that moves, and Walpurgisnacht does move, so perhaps he'll find a way to ricochet his bullets for maximum damage!

All of this changes though, if you add in their allies - Liquid might be weak to suspicious heart attacks, but Liquid in REX becomes the same question of Solidus if he calls in a Minuteman III, but I think this answer is long and rambly enough already tbh

Thank you for the ask!

*(@ my fanfic mutuals, particularly degen, feel free to use this as inspiration lol)

[plokoonsdisapprovingeyebrows]

for probably a little different fare from what you get for these things: Alpha Trion and Smokescreen?

This was a character headcanons meme of some sort but i forgot which one and im not going back to look so have some random smokey and a3 headcanons!

Smokescreen━

Smokey is babey. He's literally one of the last generation of sparks coughed up out of the Well before Cybertron went all disastery and passed the fuck out. His spark, and those of his generation, are all fairly dark, slow-burning sparks - M and K spectrae, magnitudes under IV. (This was the first clue that things on Cybertron had gone desperately wrong.)

Smokescreen's spark is M-spectra, magnitude III. He's probably going to live a long life, provided his overbuilt processor doesn't get him killed, but that sort of spark isn't a very generative battery.

He was enframed and trained for the Elite Guard, at a point in time where the Elite Guard was composed of all the warm bodies it could get. The name still had a sparkly reputation, but it wouldn't have for much longer, if the Exodus hadn't gotten in the way.

Smokey likes to be called by nicknames! He always interprets them as affectionate, even if they're not particularly so. When he was a newspark, his mentor was prone to giving out random nicknames, so now you can call him literally any random word like three times and he'll be like :DDD "That's me!"

Alpha Trion━

Alpha Trion has been working in the Iacon Hall of Records for as long as there's been an Iacon Hall of Records (because where else does a retired demigod of scholars go?). Everyone knows he's the oldest mech in the clade. They just don't realise how much older he is.

His artifact, the book that shows him futures, is a fucking pain in the ass. He's had it for four point five fuckin three billion years and it took him maybe a hundred to figure that one out. Took him the first billion or so to realise that it isn't just a pain in the ass, it's often functionally useless. Each future depends on so many tiny choices and chances spread across such a large range of spacetime that trying to pick one and make it happen is basically going to end in disaster. These days, he mostly just looks at it for... ideas, motivation, and occasionally entertainment. He considers the stories it shows him barely more than fiction.

Why did Primus make it for him? Alpha Trion shrugs, and says, "Perhaps the future was simpler when there were only thirteen of us."

He's still alive on Cybertron. He's gone down inside the planet, met up with Alchemist and a couple of the other surviving Thirteen. They spent a thousand vorn or so surveying the Well of All Sparks, but tbh they don't really know what they're looking at there. But you have to occupy yourself with something, right?

[meandmyechoes]

Kingohger ep13

gosh does anybody die in this show

!! Himeno in brown ponytail!! ♥♥

okay already get the amount of rita from the op shot (scarce)

Jeramie's in the op now!!!!

i saw the choco in store the other day and pass on it because there's no rita, turns out there's only the prime 3 😂

Stop bullying Shiokara 😭😭

Baby Yanma Baby Yanma

Workshop?? New location 👀👀

Shiokara: What is personal space

THAT DRESS IS AMAZING

BABY YANMA BABY YANMA

okay new song 🤣👍

tbh i like it

Ahh i love this montage

are we getting origin flashback with Jeramie visiting every country?

ooh so the gun is from his mother and the dagger his father?

Yanma's ringtone is the cheer he held for Gira 🤣🤣

GAWD Yanma two minutes ago I was moved by how you climb to the top and stay considrate for your people can you NOT play an excrement prank

NO TAKANO-SAN STOP WRITING EXCREMENT GAGS 🤣

("don't you want to know what happened more than 2000 years ago? Before the war?") SHIRITAIIIIII!!!!!!

So are the kingdoms built before or after the war?? If five "kings" defeated the bugnaroks there has to be kingdoms before that? Is Papa Brasieri a prince or a king?? (if he's a king he shouldn't have to fear exile...)

They HAVE to tell us why Rita is hanging out with Kagu that often other than the Sentai numbering system

wait is Rita just responding to a Bug Distress Call and Kaguragi waved them over as if there's a spare seat at their table out on a Sunday brunch

(okay after listening to the raw more clearly Sebastian called them together)

yeah… so that's Rita's best shot this ep…

so surreal to hear "Stop arguing" coming out of Yanma.

omg…

RIP Yanma Gust

That Mirage bug taking the fall for Yanma again 🤣

Love the action going through with the setting that Yanma sucks at swordfighting and would avoid it any means possible (would explain why he invented an extra weapon)

Gira has to have exposed himself this time…?

*claps* Rita designated floor time!! (wait why am i so happy about this)

So if Gira hear Sasorinu from not its God Soul but its mecha, then its consciousness is actually in the mecha, contrary to the literal meaning? But it would fit how Kabutan is controlled against its will with its God Soul in ep4. That would also answer why Gira can control God Kuwagata without a soul stone.

ugh this year's Sixth is so cool

TOLD YOU I DON'T TRUST HIM hmmmm 🤔

ookay Jeramie got himself a retainer (?)

Overall impression:

fairly relaxed. Yanma and Jeramie didn't outright fight because Jeramie is too OP at the moment, but a lot of decent character moments. Shiokara is MVP honestly. Love the whole mood in Yanma's flashback as conveyed by the camera work and insert song. Rita shots are scarce but (4, as I exactly expected). I've been watching stage shows lately (just to fill the void) and with how tight the plot in KO is, kinda miss the MOTW format and this ep is refreshing to see.

ep14 preview:

! yes wanting to know how Himeno's revenge plot would resolve ever since learing about Jeramie's cicada mech!

is this gonna be the same structure of individual focus like the prologue arc...? No...?

MOFFUN TO ISSHO OOOH MOFFUN WE ARE REALLY IN IT NOW

bro don't tell me Jeramie wrote Moffun or IS Moffun

I have no words I'm too excited for next week's episode

I thought 14 is going to be a Nichijou episode like 9 being pre-arc-finale, but the pace adjustment is already done in 13 so 14 is going to have big reveals that lead to all them working together by 15.

What's the next arc if God's Anger is resolved in 14??

We may or may not get Rita origin (but I think their story is more complex than Yanma's flashback this ep, so that could come back again.)

Magazine scans say Jeramie will be in the spotlight but I have no idea what to expect. Some more games with Racles?

[super-kristuff]

I started playing Kingdom Hearts III recently, and I wanted to throw down a bunch of my thoughts so far. For some context, I replayed kh1 not too long ago, but I haven't played kh2 since middle school. I've played 358/2 and a bit of chain of memories and birth by sleep, but I haven't touched re-coded. Tbh, I thought re-coded was just a way from them to retcon the old games to make the plot more consistent.

Anyway, I've just finished the second world based on Toy Story, and like, the homoerotic tension between Buzz and Woody is crazy. Like, it is clearly an unintentional consequence of placing characters with a leitmotif of "You've got a friend in me" in a world built around the power of friendship. There are so many scenes where Buzz and Woody talk about their feelings and how much they trust each other to have their back. Its a major plot point that Xehanort steals Buzz, and Woody rescues him. Woody tells Xehanort off, and I quote, "Whatever you're talking about, I don't care. -- My guess is no one has ever loved you before."

Like, I can also go on about how Buzz, from the beginning, is like, we should just go home and wait it out. So in many of the feeling sessions, Buzz begs Woody to just go home with him. And how home is clearly a symbol of safety, normalcy, and comfort. And how Buzz wants Woody to be there. And in the rescue scene, Woody is the one talking about bringing Buzz home.

It's the second world in the game, but honestly it felt like a complete game in and of itself. God, the game has so much whimsy. There was a fight in a ball pit. There were toy mechs that you could pilot. One of the treasures was in a thumb-war mini-game. At one point, you're teleported into the video-game that the mechs are from, but they're real mechs instead of toy mechs with different abilities to match. One of the bosses is a creepy possessed anime girl figurine.

It's such a good game. And like, I could write pages on how the gameplay feels. Obviously, I've seen the kh4 trailer, and I had my doubts about how the parkcore floaty gameplay would feel. But playing kh3, it honestly seems like a natural extension to the current gameplay? LIke, the gameplay does have its weaknesses. I feel there are just too many options in combat. They game absolutely should have split the combat mechanics into unlocks that are worlds apart. Like, the game starts with form-changes, team-attacks, AND attraction attacks? And each of these will completely change how your controls interface with the environment. Most absurdly, is the shift from classic third-person kh controls to first-person microsoft flight simulator controls.

Which, like, isn't to say any of these are bad additions per-say. I just feel it gives the game a completely avoidable steep learning curve. Which in that vein, I also wish some of the combat mechanics could be turned off. It's just too much to keep track of.

But also, the game is amazing. Like, as long as you never press triangle, none of the above things happen, and you can enjoy a classic kh experience. Which, the game nails. I'm definitely thinking about trying to 100% it. Or at least playing through it a second time at higher difficulty.

Replaying kh1 made me realize how absurdly deep the game was. I found 4 secret bosses? And in preparing for them, I learned how the mushroom guys worked and how to properly farm for synthesis items. And I think it would be sick if kh3 had those mechanics as well. Obviously, I'll have to see, but here's hoping.

I'll try to post any more absurd details, but the Woody/Xehanort confrontation was too good to not write about.

[jordantheehennessy]

I’m so curious since you like Niall even before this book (same) what were your thoughts on how the mór niall route this book took? (Really different from anything I saw predicted) also the whole thing about declan being niall’s favorite and hating him as a defensive mech is a move I didn’t see coming but the Niall apologist felt vindicated. He was overly hated in the fandom without the full story

omg hiiiii

i really really really loved it and i felt it was very fitting. idk anything about how the fandom is vibing with niall post-greywaren (tbh the only people i know who've read it are all niall enjoyers or adjacent to begin with) but i found his story to be satisfying. tbf i never fully formed my theories re niall and mor but the thing i kept coming back to was that niall was young and stupid and maybe didn't make the best decisions. like. imagine if declan or ronan suddenly had a child to take care of. ACTUALLY you barely have to do that because they're both so shitty to both matthew and opal respectively. good parents they would not make as they are in the books and i have no reason to believe niall was any more mature by the time declan came into the picture. and? well, I feel im vindicated.

i didn't expect niall to love declan so deeply and explicitly but it was such a lovely surprise. he's literally Just Some Guy and his cows were enough and mor was enough and declan was enough!!!

absolutely ENTHRALLED that mor was the absentee toxic bullshit parent!! deadbeat bisexual milf representation!! finally!! in my dreams she and niall had a much messier relatinship. just. the two of them dragging their bloated, rotting corpse of a marriage through the halls of their co inhabited home so they could beat it into unrecognizable submission..... but!!!! time contraints and other loose ends etc etc i will begrudgingly allow it.

most of my disappointment comes from the implications and repercussions. so. okay, niall is not a total piece of shit but the rest of the story remains! the fairy market and the black market spending and the never ending secrets!!! how do the characters move forward knowing this??? do they even know this??? i want to chew through drywall when i think about how we dont get to see the fallout of this between declan and ronan. actually, just the apologies and making up part felt extremely lacking. like. i feel like there's still so much left to unpack before we can say everyone is hunky dory ????? but. okay. whatever. fine. i can imagine it in my mind's eye.

but who knows maybe my thoughts will change as i think about it more but for now the niall and mor chapters were such a high point of the book for me. easily one of my favorite parts.

[realtalk-princeton]

bse cos frosh: is MAT203 and PHY105 doable? I'm interested in math and took multi last year so I def want to take 203, but I'm not convinced about physics. I took ap physics c last year, but didnt take the exam (prob would have got 5). I'm a little sketched out by the phy103 course evals. I'd rather put in a little extra work to understand the material, but if 105 is much harder, then maybe not. thx

Response from Heisenberg:

203 is much harder than 201, and 105 is much much harder than 103. I would estimate around 40-50% of frosh taking MAT 201 in the fall semester have taken multi in high school and the course is still difficult af for some of them. I also know a lot of physics majors who thought AP Physics C: Mech was baby food and then drowned in 105, even dropping to PHY 104 in the following semester instead of continuing with 106.

Now, you can def start off in 203/105. I would actually probably recommend this. But be extra cautious if you feel like the courses begin to creep above your comfort zone since they will strictly get harder after shopping period. I was also in a similar boat as you in terms of wanting to learn more, so I took 204/106. It's funny because I remember asking RTP (before I was a contributor) and the Physics Dept Discord for advice on whether to take 204/106 or not. I think they both said for me to chill and not take 204/106. I went against their advice anyway. 204 was okay, maybe even enjoyable at times, but 106 was not and it did not provide me the extra illumination that I had hoped it would have. 204 is actually pretty useful and relevant for the COS major but 203 not so much if at all. PHY 103/104 are basically just mental exercises for BSE COS, so there's no point in taking 105/106 unless you want to have significantly less time on your hands for a slight increase in understanding of the physics relative to 103/104.

Tbh, I think college will be a lot more enjoyable for you if you took 201/103, and then maybe 204 in the spring, especially since you're COS. This sequence will be easier, so you'll have more time on your hands to understand the material (and the material of your other classes as well since you'll have more time) at a way deeper level (which is better than having just a general understanding of the more advanced material), have more time to spend with friends, have more time to work on side-projects, and overall just have less stress. The single disadvantage is that you won't learn some of the more intricate nuances in PHY and theorems in MAT, which most people forget about anyway after 2-3 semesters.

If you really wanted to, you could take MAT 203 over MAT 201. However, I would not recommend 105/106 over 103/104 in any circumstance.

[tornsuits]

mechs timeline... or something

good evening gender identities! i’ve been thinking about the order the albums might have happened in, chronologically, and how events from some albums might have affected others! and now i have a whole long theory/headcanon about it, because i’m insane. so. here we are!

(obligatory disclaimer that i did make some assumptions about events that happened offscreen, and while they’re all based in actual canon, they are still, y’know, headcanons that shouldn’t just be taken as fact.)

so, typically the assumption is that the albums take place in the same order that they were released (ouatis udad hnoc tbi, with ttbt songs wherever they fit) which is possible (and probably correct tbh)! but this line from ‘ulysses’s will’ caught my attention:

Doesn’t matter there’s nothing beyond the City save the automated colonies that feed it and the empty black.

which could be interpreted a couple different ways, but the most literal being that there really is nothing beyond the city- there are no more habitable planets, & the city has taken over the last planets and is using them for maintaining the city (presumably). which, considering we know that there are many planets and other Things In Space in the mechsverse, probably means that udad is actually the last of the albums to take place, timeline-wise.

the only piece of evidence i could find directly contradicting this is that nastya went Out right before tbi, and was present (though offscreen) during udad. but time travel is an established thing in the mechsverse that we know the mechanisms have access to, so:

yes, udad happened last in linear time, but that doesn’t mean that it happened last in mechs time- in fact, if i were newly immortalized & could travel through time, the last human civilization is probably one of the first places i’d want to go. so the album release order is probably the order that the mechs visited these planets, even if that’s not the order they existed in, like, human history.

anyway! so what order did the albums take place in, then?

i’m gonna go out on a bit of a limb and say that i think tbi actually took place first! i know it’s usually considered to take place last because it was the last album to be released, (+ the thing in out i talked about already). but hear me out!

tbi took place first, after a good portion of, like, other things had already happened. what other things? i don’t know! the mechs probably didn’t write about them because they were actually happy, or unsatisfying, or whatever. so tbi is actually the first step to the destruction of the rest of the universe, and i’ll explain how that might have happened in a moment. (which actually explains why lyf saw notes that the mechs’ technology seems so alien- it was pretty early along in the timeline, compared to the rest of the albums).

so i’m working under the headcanon that the bifrost managed not only to destroy all of the yggdrasil system, but a good portion of the rest of the universe as well. it’s pretty easy to guess how the sudden disappearance of a whole system would lead to people going to investigate, which would lead to more people getting killed by the Rainbow Shit, and if anyone survived they’d probably bring bits of the Rainbow Shit back to their home planets, ect, ect. (also, not to delve too far into forbidden lore, but the void spreads.) so, the bifrost probably wiped out most of the civilizations in the universe.

but a few planets/systems survive- ones far enough away that they weren’t immediately affected, and were able to get word that Maybe Investigating This Is Not The Best Plan. which brings us to ouatis, which i think happened sometime after tbi (possibly around the same time or after as hnoc- i’m putting it first for organizational purposes, but it could go either way).

so the system from ouatis survives, & this is probably how old king cole was able to establish himself as an immortal tyrant, since there was a sudden lack of other governments to keep him in check/send support to citizens starting an uprising. this basically leaves old king cole free to colonize a good portion of the planets that weren’t destroyed by the bifrost. presumably the government collapes after king cole dies, (to quote the fiction, it most likely suffered ‘the most horrendous power vacuum and subsequent bloodshed the universe has ever seen’ which probably killed a good amount of the remaining citizens) and that’s another mass civilization down! fun times.  

which actually ties very neatly into alice. it’s unlikely that the ouatis system (does it have a name? i can’t keep calling it the ouatis system i can’t) was able to completely escape the horrors of the bifrost, and might still have some residual effects in the areas that the void touched. the planet/moon from alice was probably an area heavily touched by the void, which might be why it’s Like That.

and then we get to hnoc, which, again, could have happened at any time around when ouatis was taking place. we know that they were never able to finish building the station, & that contact with the outside world was abruptly cut off in holder of the grail. so it’s not unlikely that the civilization, or at least part of it, was killed by the bifrost. (i mean, the other option is that they just, like, got bored with the station and ghosted an entire colony). the station survived due to previously mentioned lack of contact with the outside world, although this doesn’t last long.

which brings us to udad! unlike fort galfridian, i don’t think it was completely cut off from the rest of the universe- just far enough away, or relatively untouched, enough that it was still habitable. which is probably why it got so crowded- so many people were moving there after their home got destroyed by cosmic horror rainbows. there’s also something to be said about the fact that the city is modeled after the ‘roaring twenties,’ which was a time of innovation and celebration after recovering from disaster, but that might be reading too far into it.

but, while the city was mostly sheltered from the bifrost attack, it probably was still at least slightly touched by bifrost, similar to alice. which might be how we get things like orpheus being able to see the future in his dreams. hm! sounds familiar! it’s almost like someone else also apparently saw the future in their dreams and was connected to the void!

[ODIN] When I first built this train, this snaking engine of change, I could not have guessed that this is where the songs I dreamt of would lead.

haha. yep.

also, taking the epilogue into account and how ashes burned down the acheron, effectively killing the last life in the universe... and how they died at the very end of the universe, briefly the brightest thing in the universe... well. i’m not saying that when ashes died they were cast back forward to when they burned down the acheron for the first time but maybe that’s what i’m saying.

so, to recap: during the bifrost incident, the void leaks through into our world and destroys most of it. fort galfridian and king cole’s empire are some of the few surviors, due to lack of contact, although king cole couldn’t completely escape the bifrost. both of these civilizations fall, leaving the city as the only habitable place left, although also slightly touched by the bifrost. the city also eventually falls into ruin, and with it, the last humans in the known universe. and that’s how the world ends, i guess! woo.

again, don’t take this as canon or whatever- i’m just taking the vague scraps that the canon did give us and turning it into a story that makes sense, at least from my perspective. so, yeah!

[sparklingpax]

A Different Side (2/2)

Summary: Optimus comes back from an unsuccessful mission and seems to be out of sorts…but there’s more to that story.

///

A/N:

-Part 1 arguably where I should have ended it :’)

-Literally been a year and I apologize so hard sdjdj ;w; also this part is too long asfsksdjfl aaa 

-BEFORE YOU ATTACK ME, this is not “the first time optimus ever makes a joke!!!” kind of story, despite how much it looks like that. It’s just. something,,,

-as usual, there are definitely typos and mistakes; hopefully I get around to fixing them aha ^^’’ Also please don’t mind the weird spacing, for some reason the way I type things out never seems to translate well to when I put it here so,,,

-please I’m literally not funny, my humor is broken 😀 Like, I didn’t quite know how to continue or conclude this, and it’s not creative or interesting at all and it highkey doesn’t make sense tbh?? so aaa qwq I just hope it’s not too cringe,,,,but I did say I’d finish it so rather than keep y’all waiting any longer than I already have, here it is....part 2....

-I just. wanna apologize again that it took so long and this scrappy second bit is all I have to show for it. hh. 

///

             “At last…” Ratchet sighed contentedly to himself.

             He carefully placed two pieces of metal together and wielded them to one smooth shape.

             Stepping back to admire his work, smiling a little, he then picked it up and started towards the supply room. 

             After a long day of work, Ratchet was pleased to finally be able to place the repaired tool back on its shelf and retreat to his room for a few hours of quiet reading.

             Maybe three at the very most, he wagered his bet with a slight grimace. 

             After all, it was commonplace for commotion to interrupt his every attempt to enjoy himself quietly.

             Such is my fate. 

             However, hearing a familiar set of footsteps thumping slowly down the halls, Ratchet paused.

             “Optimus? Is that you?”

             He leaned to the side and peered down the hall.

             Said mech emerged from the corridor and into the medic’s view. He had a funny look in his eye as he came to a stop quite abruptly. 

             He placed his hands on his hips and regarded Ratchet for a strange few moments of….awkward silence…before speaking.

             “Ratchet,” his voice tremored almost imperceptibly, “Would you consider me…humorous?”

             The medic blinked at him. He was officially more confused.

             He had been just about to ask what had happened to upset him so much earlier, or if there was anything he wanted to talk about, one-on-one.

             After all, from time to time, Optimus would reach a point where he could no longer bear whatever was troubling him. And of course, Ratchet was right there for him, ready to listen and help. In the end, he was able to get Optimus to say what was troubling him, and they would talk about it or they wouldn’t. But something about the way Optimus walked away each time told Ratchet he’d done at least something to help.

             “…Ratchet?” Optimus prompted him gently, eyes showing a little concern.

             Scrap, I still haven’t answered his question—Ratchet, focus!

             Still, the thought drifted through the recesses of his mind: had Optimus…not been upset in the first place? 

             If so...what had it been all about? 

             Or was he simply reading too much into it?

             At a loss as to how to answer, the medic fumbled for a word to say in response. 

             He actually didn’t know, now that he thought about it. 

             Optimus—or Orion, even—had never really attempted to be funny before as far as Ratchet knew...which Ratchet was well aware that he didn’t know everything. It couldn’t be a yes or no. Of course, there were moments Orion was humorous, everyone has their moments.

              No, he means funny—as in, on a regular basis, as something part of his personality, even. And to that....

             A more appropriate response was ‘why?’ 

            But Ratchet knew better than to snark at Optimus like that. It was uncalled for, at the moment.  

             Perhaps Megatron would be more likely to know.

             After all, it had been him Orion had spent the most time with back in those days.

             As if I could just call him and ask! 

             “W-well, Optimus, I wouldn’t really know that!” Ratchet paused, feeling slightly guilty for his tone of voice just then. “You’ve never tried to be…that I knew of, anyway…”

             Optimus just nodded slowly. That weird glint in his optics remained. It hit him that something seemed….different. Like the Prime was planning on...doing something. 

             Just then, footsteps alerted the two of Jack’s arrival. He came into view, leaning against the wall and panting. He pointed wordlessly at Optimus for a second, trying to catch his breath. Ratchet stared at him, somehow growing more confused as the seconds passed. Then, finally, Jack straightened, managing to say what he’d wanted to.

             “Optimus was…not upset…”

             “What?!” Ratchet practically squawked. “What?!”

             Optimus glanced from Jack to Ratchet, looking surprised for all of a moment, then simply nodded. Just then, Arcee, Bumblebee, and Bulkhead returned to base. Their engines could be heard from all the way down the corridor. They skidded to a halt in front of Optimus and Ratchet, transforming a backing up a bit.

             “Oh no,” Bulkhead murmured to his teammates. “Cue pissed-off Ratchet.”

             And pissed Ratchet was. 

             He had been worried for his friend.

             “Wh—then—why on earth did you go off to your room in such a huff?!” The medic exclaimed, setting down the newly-repaired tool not-so-gently.

             “That is—”

             “AND WHY WOULDN’T YOU OPEN THE DOOR?!”

             “I—”

             Just as Optimus was about to answer, a proximity alarm went off. Everyone gathered wordlessly around the main computer screen as Ratchet pulled up the video feed. He rolled his optics, sighing heavily.

             Instantly everyone knew it could only be Agent Fowler.

             Jack took this opportunity to attempt to get Optimus’s attention and pull him aside for a second. He waved and whispered the Prime’s name.

             When Optimus finally heard him, he departed from the group and made his way over to Jack, kneeling down when the human motioned for it.

             “Hey, Optimus,” Jack started, a bit awkwardly. “Sorry—uh……so....I saw what you were watching…”

             “Oh…” Optimus instantly looked kind of embarrassed. “Well, I was….admittedly….curious.”

             Jack tilted his head.

             In the background, their liaison to the government was shouting something about Bumblebee and a burger joint parking lot, to which Ratchet was defending his teammate and annoyedly asking how it could be his fault or problem.

             “After yesterday,” Optimus began to elaborate quietly, “Miko said...something to Ratchet. It dawned on me that Earth humor is much different from Cybertronian humor—which, in honesty, I never knew much about anyway.”

             “You mean when she yelled ‘in this world, it’s yeet or be yeeted’ to Ratchet after he asked why Bulkhead decided to throw that guy he was fighting?”

             “Yes.”

             “So…” Jack sighed. He looked so confused. “You looked up vines?”

             “No, Jack,” Optimus responded rather seriously. “I used the Google Engine program you children seem to enjoy so much—”

             Enjoy…not when you have friends like mine, Optimus. I’ve seen some things...

             “—to find the meaning of ‘yeet.’ Through my research, I came across the concept you humans refer to as…” his optics flicked to the ceiling for a second as he held up a hand and air-spelled the word, trying to remember the pronunciation. “…Memes.”

             “You…you found memes?” Jack repeated, as if he couldn’t process this. 

             “Yes, Jack,” Optimus affirmed, looking very pleased with himself. He had that same sparkle as when he watched his teammates laugh, when he was tired but relieved everyone returned from a mission alive.

             Except. It was for memes he found. On the internet.

             Jack was about to ask another question when Optimus abruptly stood up again. He put a finger against his lip in a shushing motion, smirking ever so slightly. A twinkle in his eye told Jack all he needed to know.

             “O-Optimus, which videos did you exactly—”

             “Vine is no longer dead!!” Optimus whispered a little too excitedly.

             And then he winked.

             “This is a dream,” Jack murmured in disbelief as he heard Optimus walk away.

             He was apparently going to try to make vine jokes.

             Jack knew it would be hilarious, but he was also worried for the Prime’s dignity. 

             Oh, Lord.

///

            “Oh, YOU want to hang up on ME?!”

            “THAT’S DAMN RIGHT,” Ratchet hollered back, “YOU CAN TAKE YOUR COMPLAINTS AND SHOVE THEM UP YOUR—”

             ‘Ratchet!!!’ Bumblebee cut in, looking rather uneasy. He hated it when people were shouting at each other like that.

             The medic whipped around and Bumblebee flinched a bit. The older mech was fuming.

             He had been in a generally awful mood after the events of the day, and as the seconds of silence passed, he realized just how angry he was—or at least, how he seemed to everyone else.

             Can’t vent frustrations like this, Ratchet—you have to talk it out. He stared back up at the computer screen and watched Agent Fowler straighten his tie as he started up again.

             “Now you listen to me, Ratchet. Neither I—nor my superiors—will tolerate your—”

             Ratchet decided he’d had enough of dealing with others’ foul moods, because they were only making him even more upset.  

             “Agent Fowler, I’m frankly not the bot you want to talk to right now. These are not my doings, you in fact have no qualms with me. All you do is call us up and gripe at us, and no one here appreciates it,” he hissed at him, having toned his voice down to a mild stern one.

             “HEY!! DON’T YOU DARE—”

             “Goodbye.”

             And with a simple tap, the base fell silent again.

             “Well….that’s that,” Arcee said.

             “Yup,” Bulkhead agreed.

             ‘Why is Fowler so aggressive all the time?’ Bumblebee buzzed, annoyed. Arcee shifted her weight and shrugged.

             “He wants what’s best for humans, and he’s concerned for the planet. I mean, yeah--he has the right to tell us to be careful and all,” she made her guess. Then her optic twitched as she, too began to look rather irked. “But he’s so….”

             “Insufferably rude,” Ratchet finished for her. Arcee nodded.

             ‘And…loud.’

             After a moment of attempting to compose himself, Ratchet turned to Optimus, who had discreetly drawn up beside them.

             The medic was about to ask him what the scrap he’d been doing and why he left Ratchet to fight with Agent Fowler on his own. It was usually Optimus who took the calls, and that’s why there wasn’t always an argument like this. Fowler would yell at Optimus, but not for long.

             They had some kind of interesting mutual respect for one another. Of course, all the bots respected Fowler—even when he was being overly aggressive—but Optimus seemed to even get along with the government agent in a special way.

            Even more of a reason he should have been the one to talk to him.

            So, Ratchet was annoyed. Or he was.

             It was then he noticed the grin on his leader’s face. His first question was understandably, why.

             Before Ratchet could speak, Optimus put up one digit and tapped it against his lips, as if to signal for quiet.

             “I apologize,” he said solemnly, leaning a bit closer to Ratchet. The medic felt his spark begin to pound, and was sure that some color was heading to his face. He swallowed.

             “That’s alright….but, uhm…what were you doing instead?”

             “I was discussing with Jack a rather important finding…” he responded quietly. Ratchet tilted his head at Optimus.

             Arcee and Bulkhead exchanged confused looks. Bumblebee debated leaving the room or asking what exactly he was talking about.

             It was at that moment, Optimus bit his lip, visibly trying to hard not to laugh. He then took a shaky breath and stood straight.

             “Ratchet, I have but one question.”

              Tentatively, Ratchet moved the conversation forward. 

             “…yes?”

             Optimus pointed to his tools lying on the metal surface behind the two, and with the most level tone, spoke.

             “...What are thoooooose?”

             There was silence before Ratchet slowly and rather confusedly glanced back at the desk. He answered Optimus just as slowly. 

             “They’re.....my…reparation tools….”

             And with that, Jack lost it laughing so hard from the corner. Optimus looked on the verge of bursting into laughter himself.

             But Ratchet wasn’t laughing. He just stood, blank. 

             Very quickly, Optimus realized no one else was laughing either—except for Jack, of course—because they also looked like they were trying to process this.

             He felt a pang of worry.

             Even if gradually, Optimus had been hoping for a long while that he could show his teammates that Primes do laugh, lose their cool, cry, and party. It was a silly notion, he would often chide himself. Nonetheless…it was a hope.

             After all, it was the only reason he had gone to the Google Engine and decided to try and figure out what exactly humor entailed.

             But…I might have approached this incorrectly.

             Now looking just a little annoyed, Ratchet backed up and picked up his tools. He had no idea what had just happened and wanted some time alone in his quarters. 

           Optimus gently grabbed his shoulder, causing him to stop and look at him again. The Autobot leader looked rather abashed, obviously regretting the last five minutes of his existence. 

            In the background, Jack had gone over to the other Autobots and started explaining what had happened, the vines, the context of what Optimus had just pulled…

            “I…apologize, Ratchet…” Optimus looked away for a moment. “It seems I…lack the ability of timing…”

             Ratchet blinked a few times, then setting down the tools, he sighed.

             “Optimus…”

             “I know now that it is not my place to attempt humor.” He looked quite sad, but at the same time, resigned to it. Ratchet was about to tell Optimus that not everyone was cut out for everything, and that he was rather amusing in his own way.

             But he was interrupted for a second time by laughter. Ratchet and Optimus instead turned to see behind them, the other three team members absolutely losing it.

             Optimus was taken aback.

             He wondered briefly if they were laughing at how pitiful his attempt at humor had been. Then Bumblebee spoke up.

             ‘Jack just told us what that actually meant!’

             “Yeah!”  Bulkhead chimed in. “And now I wanna know what vines are!”

             Arcee, giggling, added, “Yeah, and what crocs are.”

             Ratchet felt Optimus next to him, struggling to contain his pride, and himself began to laugh. At this, Optimus let a little of that joy show, smiling and standing straight again. 

            What a funny thing to be proud of…

            But, then again, that had been the Prime’s intent.

///

*dies* I’m sorry I even wrote this please forgive me--

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Back at it again with the DC solicits because there have been some neat Super-related announcements recently! And this blog is the only place I can geek out about ‘em at length and in peace. XD

ONWARDS.

Alright, so, first! The stuff I couldn’t grab cover images for! XD

Action Comics will presumably continue to be excellent; the newly solicited issue reveals that Clark is still on Warworld as of July, BUT! I think starting in...June? The backup story will focus on Lois and Steel helping Thao-La back on Earth. Woo!

Dreamer’s making the leap into the DCU for real for real this time, teaming up with...*pause for long sigh over the fact that there’s no ongoing Supergirl title for her to appear in RN* Jon Kent.

A new Elseworlds title starts in July! DC: Mech. Really hoping that this is *actually* Superman-centric, and not just another bait-and-switch Batman story in disguise. *Glares at DKoS*

Aaaand now for the stuff that I COULD grab covers for:

DARK CRISIS: WORLDS WITHOUT A JUSTICE LEAGE - SUPERMAN

So, I’ll be honest, I’m primarily interested in this because Tom King is back at writing Superman, and after Up in the Sky and Woman of Tomorrow, I ABSOLUTELY want to read his take on Jon Kent as a Robin-type figure to Superman. 

Can’t believe I’m gonna pick up a book based solely on the WRITER and not the ART TEAM, what’s this world coming to! XD

...Okay and we’re immediately back to a title that I’m interested in based solely on the art. XD

SUPERMAN: SPACE-AGE #1

I mean, the premise is very cool: Superman aging in real time through the decades, a la Spider-Man: Life Story.

The reason I’m not as gung-ho about the writer side of this is because Russell...kinda dropped the ball with Fantastic Four: Life Story, so. *shrugs*

The real draw (ha, ha) here--for me, at least--is Mike Allred on art, doing a prestige format Superman story. It’s gonna look awesome. 

BATMAN/SUPERMAN: WORLD’S FINEST #5

Nothing revealed in the solicit text honestly, it’s a very vague, “END OF THE FIRST ARC! DRAMATIC THINGS OCCUR!”

Mostly including this because DAN MORA SUPES AND BATS!

And also Robin hitching a ride with Kara and clearly having...a time. XD

So this was kind of a surprise! I’ve not been keeping up with DC vs. Vampires but APPARENTLY--

DC VS. VAMPIRES #7

--will feature a resistance force fighting back the undead hordes, and said resistance includes Batgirl, Green Arrow, and Supergirl!

Not a horror/gore/vampire person, but I’m sure I’ll see some of the pirated Otto Schmidt art that shippers will spread around on twitter.

Not sure if there’s other ‘Super’ stuff necessarily but this is what stood out in the July Solicits this time around.

And NoooOOooow...

Some stuff that isn’t from the solicit but still of note, IMO!

First up, some old news, but good news:

Sampere is the main artist on the Dark Crisis event, and he confirmed that he’ll use the Evely design, if/when Supergirl appears.

WOOOOOOOOO!

Though TBH I’m taking this with a grain of salt--not because I don’t trust the guy actually drawing the book, but because editorial weirdness has resulted in stuff/characters being removed before.

(See: The double page spread from Superman: The Truth wherein Kara was swapped out for Jess in the final art.)

So like, cool, but also...I’ll believe it when I see it.

Alright, now for the FINAL bit of...well. Not news exactly:

TOM. TOM DON’T DO THIS. DON’T TEASE US SO. XD

Okay, anyways. 

Some context: This is a QT reply to a comment left on some Woman of Tomorrow art that King shared recently.

Now, look. I am not suggesting that he’s actually teasing a direct sequel/prequel/midquel/what-have-you to Woman of Tomorrow. 

There’s just. Way too little to go off of, here.

(Bolding that to make it EXTREMELY CLEAR that this tweet really amounts to zero concrete info. About ANYTHING.)

(Also, the comic industry being what it is: Even if there WAS some kind of project--of any kind!--in the works, it can be canned/altered/shelved for any number of reasons.)

(See: the current mess with the WB slate of films and the movie tie-in comics.)  

Anyways.

The ONLY takeaway I’m allowing myself to even be REMOTELY excited about here, is that he’s open to/wants to work with Evely again.

To which I say: I’m in. I’m sold. BRING IT ON, whatever it may possibly one day be.

(...Watch it be, like, a Harley Quinn book, or something. To really test my devotion. XD)

SO IN CONCLUSION: DC is still a veritable sea of Batman titles right now, but! There are cool Superman projects on the horizon! Definitely looking forward to ‘em! 

[punkrockbuttrfly]

So I got tagged by @electrick-indigo to answer some questions about the fanfics I write

How many works do you have on AO3? 68. Most of those are things I write during Fictober challenges, so I’ll need to write something before October this year so I can have it be a nice number for a while

What’s your total AO3 word count? 152,901

What fandoms have you written for? Doctor Who, Classic, New and Big Finish (including Gallifrey and Bernice Summerfield), Kingdom Hearts, Power Rangers (show and comics), Star Wars, Metal Gear, Red Dwarf, The Mechanisms, Among Us, Undertale, and Untitled Goose Game. Most of those fandoms I’ve only written one or two fics for, most of them are Doctor Who related and also that one anonymous fic we don’t talk about but if you’ve read it you Know

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Somehow Untitled Goose God is my most popular (for Untitled Goose Game, obvs) despite it being probably my shortest piece written in like 20 minutes inspired by a piece of friend art. After that is Revelation of the Laundry (New Who), The Standards of Trust (Star Wars, probably ongoing assuming I ever finish it), Time and Space to Study (New Who) and finally The Sevateem’s New War Cry (Gallifrey).

Do you respond to comments, why or why not? I try to, because I thrive on validation and am desperate for people to prop up my considerable ego. I like it when people tell me what they enjoyed about my story, and also half the time inspire an even better idea that I can write later. I’m really nothing without an audience to crib jokes from.

What is the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? Honestly I can think of a few but the one that I’m going to promote is actually my most recent fic, Who commands, a Toy obeys (Doctor Who, The Mechanisms) where the Twelfth Doctor meets the Mechs’ own Toy Soldier and ends up having yet another emotional crisis, as 12 tends to do a lot.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what’s the craziest one you’ve written? Well I did just talk about my Doctor Who/Mechanisms crossover, but I’ve also written a couple more. I wrote a Gallifrey/Red Dwarf one and a Power Rangers Time Force/Doctor Who one and that’s the extent of my crossovers, though I’m not opposed to writing more.

Have you ever received hate on a fic? Not really. I’ve had a few people comment to say they disliked an integral part of the story and then say nothing else, but I don’t think that qualifies as hate. Though tbh if they did I’d just laugh, like, how do you not have anything better to do? I know my writing isn’t good, that’s why I’m writing fanfic for fun to get better at it so that eventually I might be able to be good at writing.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Not so far, though I’m not opposed to the concept. I just wouldn’t really know where to start.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? No, and I doubt I will, although again if it did happen I’d just laugh. Like, of all the wonderful creators you could be stealing from, you picked me? Surely you must have better taste.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not yet. I’d like to, mostly because in theory it will get me to stop procrastinating and do a thing, and also I’d love to develop a concept with someone else with a different perspective and ideas. In theory I’m meant to be planning a co-written fic with someone, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut spoons are in very short supply and it’s sort of not gotten off the ground yet (sorry!)

What’s your all-time favourite ship? I don’t do favourites really, and half of my “favourite” ships are canon anyway and I haven’t written much or anything for that ship. Based on the shipfics I have written probably my most prolific one is either Narvin/Leela or Liv Chenka/Helen Sinclair (which is now definitely not canon as of Stranded).

What’s a WIP you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? Considering that The Standards of Trust (linked above) is supposed to be a series of stories across Ahsoka’s life but I’m taken a huge amount of time to watch The Clone Wars already and also I refuse to watch her solo spinoff series because of bullshit casting decisions, I don’t think I’ll ever “finish” it.

What are your writing strengths? I have absolutely no idea. Why do you people read my writing? This isn’t even self-deprecating, I genuinely want to know what y’all like about my writing because I have no idea.

What are your writing weaknesses? Second verse, same as the first. But also my spoons deficit and tendency to procrastinate hard, but that’s hardly exclusive to me, that’s something most writers struggle with.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? Never done it, probably won’t do it in any substantial capacity. I’ve tried learning languages before and I’m spectacularly bad at it, so I’ll most likely never have the proficiency to do it well enough to confidently publish something like that.

What was the first fandom you wrote for? Doctor Who. Also Gallifrey. The Macqueen Master battled Narvin. The Resurrection of Fear was the first fanfic I ever wrote after not having applied myself to writing fiction for a very long time beyond a couple of drabbles as a teenager, so it’s not very good, but hopefully it can serve as a demonstration of progression.

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written? Beyond the Stars, the followup to the Beyond the Grid arc of the Boom Studios Power Rangers comics that I wanted so much that I decided to write it myself, enough that hopefully soon I’ll get back to actually writing it, but this is one WIP I am determined to finish. By the end it’s going to be novel-length, and while it’s based on a non-original IP, it’s meant to be standalone enough that hopefully anyone can read it without needing context. Besides, do you need more context than “gay superhero found family space opera”?

Tagging @being-of-rain, @alison-is-a-lesbian, and @floptopus

[bronanlynch]

(bi)weekly media update

apparently I just. do these every two weeks now huh. sorry to the tuesday again no problem extended universe crew for being unable to keep to a consistent schedule

listening: Curses by The Crane Wives, a band that I just started listening to but I like their sound, nice and fun and folksy, lots of songs with ominous lyrics that are good on fanmixes

honorary mention to the new Lil Nas X song because we are all love the new Lil Nas X song, it’s a bop, it’s been stuck in my head on and off ever since I heard it, and I am not immune to sexily blasphemous music videos

reading: finished Smoke & Ashes, the most recent book in the Kate Kane series that I talked about last week, and I enjoyed it a lot but there sure is a cliffhanger and afaik no set release date for the next one. it’s pretty angsty but does have lots of nice moments of hope, and some discussion about recovering from both depression and alcoholism that I appreciated.

also read more romance novels, and I appreciate that Cat Sebastian, like KJ Charles, knows how to write about rich characters while making it incredibly clear that hoarding wealth is morally indefensible. it’s like the “wow, cool robot” thing where I want to be told that I’m right for disliking capitalism/imperialism/the military industrial complex, but also I do very much want you to show me the cool robot (hot rich prettyboy in nice clothes)

also finally started Harrow the Ninth today, so I’m sure I’ll have more to say about that next time

watching: speaking of “wow, cool robot,” watched a little bit more Turn A Gundam, which sure does have some cool robots. also some gender. the main character crossdresses to like, hide their identity for fun complicated spy reasons and it’s not treated as a joke or anything? it’s just a thing that they do? and no one comments on it beyond when they were like “hey you have to wear a dress to this event because the people from the moon think our mech pilot is a woman and they can’t know it’s actually you because they still think you’re working for them”

absolutely hate that the guy on the right is just wearing a normal boring suit though like. c’mon man

Zan and I have been watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier aka the sambucky show each week and my review so far is. well it’s about what I expected. the first episode was incredibly slow and kinda disappointing (Sam and Bucky never interact! the fact that Bucky might maybe miss Steve is never brought up, not even by his therapist, who tbh gives me incredibly bad vibes! if my best friend and the only person I knew from my past fucked off and left me alone to deal with my trauma in favor of ruining the life of a woman who’d moved on from him, I’d be pissed!) (for the sake of not being angry all the time I pretend Steve died instead of did That).

the second episode was more fun, more happens, there’s some incredibly heavy-handed corporate queerbaiting mixed in with some actually nice emotional moments (this article and this thread by the same person have a pretty good summary of All That). the handling of race, uh, could be better tbh. I appreciate what they’re going for, and to be fair the whole show isn’t out yet so it could get better (since some of the problems are tied to, y’know, the overall political problems, i.e. the fact that the villains are a group of people, led by a Black woman, who hate borders and illegally deliver medication to refugees which is somehow a bad thing, I kind of doubt it). but there is something about the way they’re making a Black man the mouthpiece of American imperialism, and the way that the new (white) Captain America who takes the shield when Sam doesn’t want it has a Black girlfriend and a Black best friend who, so far, have mostly just given him motivational pep talks, that doesn’t really inspire confidence. (this article and thread are a good overview of that aspect of the show)

also, I think it’s very funny when people are like “well you can’t say anything about the show yet, only two episodes are out” like. first of all lads it’s a six episode show, a third of the content is a decent chunk to use to form an analytical opinion, and second of all, if something strikes you as Not Great, you’re allowed to feel that way and say that, you don’t have to wait to see if there might be some twist or context that makes the thing you didn’t care for great and fine, actually,

that being said,

(when we watched the first episode, the immediate next thing we did was watch Winter Soldier and I was pleasantly surprised how well it holds up. not perfect obvi but still a solid movie, and the music does fuck)

also watched this very neat little video essay on Victoriana costuming and like, why so much media is set in the Victorian era, and started the c-drama Word of Honor which I’m sure will either be in a future post or just. something I start blogging about normally

playing: the weekend before last was the Beam Saber season finale, which I’ve already posted about quite a bit because it was fun and I love to play games with my friends. played a very fun game of Things, Eldritch and Terrifying by S. Gates this past weekend. it’s a very fun game, with very easy-to-follow rules and lots of helpful adjectives and scene starters, and also just conceptual it slaps (one person is an eldritch terror, the other person is the human that they’re courting. there’s a variant where you play as a vampire. it slaps). we made it uh, more of a rom-com than a horror story but I had a very good time, we told a very cute love story, and we’re gonna try again to make it more horror-y next time.

also I finally started Brigmore Witches and it’s very good and fun. my one complaint is that I want the Whalers to have names, because I enjoy the bit at the beginning where you can eavesdrop on them and some of them are concerned for you and some of them are fucked up about the Overseers invading their home and some of them want to fucking betray you. also, I didn’t realize that the very beginning when you fight Corvo is a dream sequence so I spent the whole fight being like “wait why does he get a gun and I don’t, where are my powers, wait aren’t I supposed to lose this fight for Plot Reasons why is he dead.” also, fucking love the favor that lets you dress up as an Overseer to get into the prison. I do love a good disguise mission

making: citrus chicken (from a cookbook so no link), plus some citrus-y root vegetables. very good if you like orange.

writing: nothing I can share yet for ~zine reasons. yes I have several fandom event weeks coming up that I want to participate in, no I haven’t written anything for any of them yet