#meanwhile what do we get in mtmte???

[quetzalpapalotl]

It's really funny that JRo is the guy with the (very valid) fixation on inserting birth imagery everywhere, but it was actually Barber who wrote about parenthood. Like, once the allegorical birth happens, JRo doesn't care.

[pinkanonwrites]

Who do you think would be the best partner for a human? It's already hard to date in different cultures, the sheer amount of communication that must go into an alien relationship must surely be astonishing. Different cultures, upbringing and general bodily functions. Rung does immediately come to mind, but what do you think?

I like to think that humans have a "relationship" culture that is very different from cybertronian. What view do you have on that front?

There are a couple different bots that I think would be good partners for a human, based on a whole variety of factors like general demeanor, willingness to learn and communicate, and level of curiosity and comfort with humans. Rung is and excellent choice, but others that immediately spring to mind include G1 Hound, Jazz and Beachcomber, TFA Prowl and Bumblebee, IDW Swerve and Misfire, RID 2015 Fixit, Knightverse Bumblebee and Mirage, and Skybound Optimus Prime (from what little we've gotten to see of him so far!) All of these bots exhibit a curiosity and fascination with humans and Earth that would definitely help them get a foot in the door when it comes to making friends, and though they all have different demeanors they all veer on the side of more gentle and respectful of the average human than a lot of other Cybertronians.

As for my thoughts on Cybertron's relationship culture, it tends to shift depending on the continuity being discussed. Transformers Animated strikes me as a very harsh society where public displays of affection would be frowned upon. Meanwhile IDW (especially MTMTE) seems much more open and comfortable with the concepts of both platonic and romantic love, as well as couples. Save for the comic series we don't really get much of a peek into the relationship cultures of different iterations of Cybertron, so the few thoughts I do have are purely speculative based on what glimpses of Cybertron's atmosphere we get.

[in1-nutshell]

Hello!! I hope you're doing alright. I was wondering if I could request for cubertronian! Buddy whos a fox and has a sly personality, and wondering if you can make it as a one-shot in TfMtmte with drift, ratchet, and rodimus! Thankyou

I was slightly picturing The Pet wen I saw the fox alt mode.

Hope you enjoy!

Bot Buddy with a fox alt mode with Ratchet, Drift and Rodimus

SFW, Platonic, Cybertronain reader

MTMTE

To be fair, Rodimus did tell them that there was going to be running involved.

But he never told them how much running.

Earlier that day…

Rodimus had recruited Buddy to help prank Drift.

Why them?

Easy, because they could get out of the splash zone quicker than he could.

And he needed someone who would play bait for a couple of shanix.

Rodimus sets up the bucket of oil and rope.

“Rodimus, why are you doing this again?”--Buddy

“Drift bailed out on our hang out to go be with Ratchet. We had planned this hang out for cycles! He needs to know that there are consequences to his action.”--Rodimus

“Just putting that out there Captain, but aren’t there going to be consequence to your actions?”--Buddy

“Not if I run fast enough.”--Rodimus

“…Fair enough.”--Buddy

The plan was simple.

Lure Drift to the door, Rodimus would see him and let the giant bucket of oil land on his helm.

Get a few laughs out of it and maybe go to Swerve’s when this is done.

So far, the plan has been going smoothly.

Until someone new came into the mix.

Buddy walking with Drift in their alt mode in the hallway.

“Hey Drift, do you mind standing there for a second? I have a trick I want to show you. You’ll see it better from there.”--Buddy

“Okay.”--Drift

Drift happily stands in the splash zone as Buddy does some flips waiting for Rodimus to pull the rope.

Rodimus meanwhile had gotten distracted by the rope fibers.

Ratchet walks up to Drift.

“Move a bit, I have to get some equipment in the room.”

Drift smiles and moves to the side letting Ratchet get into the splash zone.

Buddy mid flip looking in horror.

“WAIT!”--Buddy

Rodimus flinches and pulls the rope letting the bucket fall down on Ratchet.

Drift tackles Ratchet down, and they both get covered in oil.

“…”--Everyone

Rodimus comes around the corner with a huge grin on his face.

“That’s what you get—oh.”—Rodimus

Rodimus takes a step back.

Buddy hightails it out of there.

“…Rodimus… did you do this…?”--Drift

“To be fair I had help from Bud—and their gone.”--Rodimus

“Drift if you catch him in the next 5 minutes I will take the next 2 cycle off.”--Ratchet

Drift already on his pedes ready to start sprinting.

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”--Drift

And that’s how Rodimus ended up taking a dip in the oil reservoirs and Buddy paying for the pair’s drinks for a full month.

And they still didn’t get their shanix!

What a rip off…

From now on, if anyone was going to ask them to be the bait, they were going to take payments first then the work.

[sweet7simple]

I apologize but a part two my last dratchrod ask where you said rodimus has breakdowns.

Maybe he can be himself around another mech *cough cough* megatron *cough cough* or maybe dratchet get a feeling and catch him breaking down or notice something?

Or maybe its both and they see how easy it is for roddy and *cough* megs *cough cough* to work with each others terrible or hard parts and maybe they want that? Or Maybe its too late & *cough* gray mech *cough* won’t give roddy up because he knew the moment the change happened

I am a slut for when others write Megarod, but I can't personally think of a way to expand upon what you have already written. It summarizes the situation quite well.

Either Drift and Ratchet gets their slag together (which they did in another ask I answered), or someone else swoops in and takes Rodimus off their servos.

The thing is, Rodimus is terribly lovable. Even when you don't want to love him (and I personally found him insufferable for most of the MTMTE/Lost Light series; I prefer the version of him I see in fandom and didn't like his canon characterization until the last few issues), you eventually realize that you're willing to die for him because he is equally willing, if not more so, to die for you.

So if Rodimus can be himself with Megatron where he can't be himself with Drift and Ratchet... If he can look at Megatron and go, "I don't have to be perfect because he's already so fragged up, I can't mess him up even more," then that's good. That's great.

Losing Rodimus would hurt Drift and Ratchet and they'll be angry at him and themselves for a long time, but they would never want to force Rodimus to stay with them if he isn't happy.

If he's happier with the mech he feels is just as imperfect as himself (arguably worse, we all know that), if he's more comfortable being mouthy and selfish and lazy with a bot he knows can handle it and not walk away, than Ratchet and Drift will let him go and they'll work toward rebuilding a friendship when the spark wound isn't so fresh.

It helps that Megatron is medically trained and can keep up with Rodimus's self-injurious shenanigans and self-sacrificing plots.

EDIT:

Not mutch to do with the ask, but I was still thinking about why Rodimus would be more comfortable with Megatron than Drift and Ratchet and the short answer is because Rodimus can't really hurt Megatron.

Yeah, he can get Megatron really, boiling mad and annoyed, but there's not much he can say or do to make Megatron lose faith in him or abandon him. Meanwhile, he can absolutely say the wrong thing and lose Ratchet and Drift so fast, or create wounds so deep just by not thinking before he opens his big mouth.

If Drift says, "This is a bad idea, Roddy," Rodimus can't snap back with, "Oh, like taking boosters was so smart?"

Boom. End of relationship right there. Rodimus has joked about rehabilitating Drift in the past and revoking his rights and no one, I repeat, no one found him funny. Bringing up Drift's history as a drug addict or as an assassin or as a decepticon any time Drift tries to talk some sense to him? Not cool. Drift gets upset, sometimes angry, but it's Ratchet who absolutely will not stand for it.

For Rodimus, Drift's past is just part of Drift, part of what makes him who he is, part of why the way he is and the story to how they met. It's nothing bad, it just is. Which is probably why he doesn't treat Drift's past with the delicacy he should.

Meanwhile, there's Megatron.

Megatron can say, "That's a stupid plan," and Rodimus can snap back, "Oh, like starting a war is a bad idea? Or is it like how forming the DJD was a bad idea? Or is it a bad idea like how -" and the list can go on and on down the entire list of Megatron's crimes, but his co-captain is just waiting him out with the most deadpan expression possible.

"It's because of my mistakes that I can say this is a stupid plan."

"Says the failed warlord," Rodimus mutters sourly because he's losing this one-sided argument and he hates that.

But Megatron isn't even hurt. He's smug because the best Rodimus can do is try to distract him by hurting his feelings so he can go risk his life on some suicidal mission. Megatron has dealt with soldiers and officers speaking sweet things to his face and trying to stab him in the back for millions of years. He's dealt with the Senate and the Functionist universe and war and so many endless cycles of victim impact statements - Rodimus's temper tantrums are nothing to him.

He knows what he is. He knows what he's done. He wants to do better, be better, even atone, but he isn't going to get upset by Rodimus's big mouth (the feelings and thoughts Rodimus's mouth inspire in him are a separate matter, but they are not upsetting things).

What matters to Megatron isn't what Rodimus says - except for those instances when he says something truly inspiring, something so awe-inducing and humbling and empowering that Megatron can't help but be impacted - but what Rodimus does.

One time, Rodimus lost his ship and most of his crew because he wouldn't betray Megatron.

One time, Rodimus reached out to him when he was about to give his life fighting Tarn and saved his life even when he didn't want to be saved.

There's a universe where Megatron dies with a Rodimus star in his servos. There's a universe where Rodimus smuggles him out of their own universe for wild adventures across many others.

Rodimus is so easy to love for someone like Megatron. It helps that Rodimus is a brat and Megatron is Into That (See: Orion Pax before he took on the responsibility of the matrix and the entirety of Starscream).

What I am getting at here is, while Drift and Ratchet would have to work hard to forgive Rodimus - and maybe not even fully forgive him - Megatron sees nothing that actually has to be forgiven.

Megatron says, "Do you even possess a brain module or is there only room for your inflated ego in your helm?"

And Rodimus says, "Talk about egos, pal, I'm not the one who thought Cybertronians were soooo superior that every organic in the galaxy had to die."

"Like recognizes like."

"Ex-squeeze me? Did you just compare my awesome stars to genocide?"

"Even I had to start somewhere."

"I think I'm a long ways off from planning a mass murder of a governing body and then conquering whole planets."

"I am not so sure. You were quite efficient against the Functionists."

"How dare you, that's not the same thing. At least I've never killed a boy by throwing them into a giant smelting chamber."

"Rodimus, you can burst into flames. You have absolutely burned a fair number of bots yourself."

Rodimus can't hurt Megatron the same way he can accidentally (sometimes on purpose when he's being self-destructive) hurt others.

It means he can relax and be himself. Even the not-so-good parts of himself. Even the nasty bits that made him use Rung as bait to catch a sparkeater. Even the nasty bits that once made Ratchet vote to remove him as the Lost Light's captain. Even the nasty bits that made him agree to take Overlord onto his ship. Even the nasty bits that made him let Drift take the blame for Overlord and exile him without a fair trial. Even when he left Ratchet behind on Luna 1 to Pharma's not so merciful tender mercies.

He has fragged up so, so bad. And that's all just since he got on the Lost Light.

It's comforting to be with someone who has messed up worse than he has. They're growing into better captains together.

[autobots-and-their-crazy-kids]

One of Transformers Prime’s biggest problems is that it acts like it’s dark as well as edgy and it looks that way too... 

But it never took any actual risks, unlike some other Transformers Shows: 

*The Original Transformers Series (G1) took a risk by permanently killing off half of the original main characters... (Not the best move I will admit, but it’s still pretty gutsy of Hasbro to do that!) 

*Beast Wars took a risk with like... changing almost everything we once knew about Transformers... and yet it’s still an interesting and unique show! 

*Robots In Disguise 2001 took a risk by taking things from G1 as well as Beast Wars and then making the show it’s own thing! 

*Armada took a risk by trying to redeem Starscream and properly calling out Megatron on his abuse! 

*The Bayverse Movies took a risk by making their Optimus have the guts to actually kill his Megatron! 

*Transformers Animated took a risk by making Optimus a rejected Autobot warrior, instead of the well-respected and beloved Autobot Leader he usually is as well as making some other interesting changes in this show! 

*Even Transformers Cyberverse took a risk by making Windblade one of the 3 main characters (the other two being Bumblebee + Optimus), considering that even though there are some people that like her, half of the fans dislike Windblade, or at least have mixed feelings about her! 

But TFP... it took literally zero risks, it acts like it will, but it never truly does: 

*The Main Autobots of TFP have been almost completely copied off from TFA! 

*The only Autobot to actually die is Cliffjumper and that’s near the beginning and all we know about Cliffjumper is that he’s Arcee’s partner/best friend and that’s about it! 

*None of the humans characters (except for maybe Agent Fowler + Jack’s mom; June) get any proper character development and/or proper character depth; we only get bits of backstory about what Jack’s, Raf’s and Miko’s lives were like before they met the Autobots from what they tell us, but we’re never given any details nor are these bits of backstory expanded upon! (However, Sari Sumdac’s backstory from TFA gives us more hints and shows us what Sari’s life was like before she met the Autobots... she was lonely, most kids around her age didn’t like Sari cause of her quirkiness, her genius and caring father was usually too busy to spend time with her, the closest thing she had to friends was non-sentient robots, she was usually isolated from the rest of the world and probably lucky to have any social skills at all if you think about it!)  

* If you count Predacons Rising and Robots In Disguise 2015 as canon, the ‘Optimus dies and then gets revived’ cliché happens again! 

*If you count Predacons Rising and Robots In Disguise 2015 as canon, then Megatron basically becomes one of the biggest easily-forgiven, karma-houdinis in fictional history! 

*Starscream never becomes an Autobot, even though it would’ve so great and risky if he did!

*TFP even baits us by making it seem like Bulkhead might never fight properly again after a mission went wrong, but after a few episodes, it’s like the whole event never even happened! 

*The closest thing we got to a risk is having Bumblebee be the one to kill off Megatron in the final episode... but that’s more of a shock, then an actual risk and in doesn’t really matter in the end, cause Megatron comes back to life later! 

The saddest part is that TFP has so much potential... probably more potential then any Transformers show before or after it (and this is coming from someone who prefers TFA...), but the creators of TFP barley do anything with that potential! 

I think part of the reason is because Hasbro probably rushed to get the show made! (Considering that TFA ended in 2009 + TFP later started in 2010...) If TFP’s creators were given more time, TFP’s story arcs probably would’ve become as epic as it’s animation, but who knows... 

Also, let me say one last thing about how they handled Optimus and Megatron in TFP: 

I do like TFP Optimus... but he probably has the most boring and flattest personality out of all the versions of Optimus and it’s sad cause he has the potential to be so much more! 

Meanwhile, TFP Megatron is probably the craziest, stupidest and most hypocritical out of all the Megatrons (well, second most hypocritical, if you count MTMTE Megatron from the IDW Comics)!

And yet he gets a second chance, while Starscream and Soundwave don’t! 

TFP Megatron is also the lamest Megatron, cause he not only treated Starscream like a slave, but Megatron also wanted to willingly become Unicron’s servant, he even begged in a similar way that he forced Starscream to do! 

And TFP Megatron is also the wimpiest, cause he can’t handle a taste of his own oppressive medicine for less then a day, courtesy of Unicron! 

Sorry for getting off track for a bit, but I believe that all my points still stand! 

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #32 - Nobody’s Ever Actually Dead in Comic Books

Our band of merry guys-who-weren’t-on-the-Lost-Light-in-issue-#1 approach the shattered husk of the Lost Light, in a gruesome scene that is only slightly marred by the graphic design.

Font doesn’t really suggest danger, does it? Here, for comparison, is something I slapped together in fifteen minutes (including recreation of background) using a font I got off a free font site.

Now, one could say that my version is rather derivative, flat, and arguably cliche, but you know what else it is? Appropriate for the fucking mood of having found a destroyed, hemorrhaging ship after everyone you knew disappeared.

I’m available, IDW! Hit me up.

Theorizing that this is the ship that the Coffin Rodimus came from- remember that? It was a few issues ago- the gang flies in for a closer look. The ship blood is actually something called quantum foam, which allows for quantum space travel to happen. It’s not supposed to be outside of the quantum quills, but the ship’s pretty junked up, so it is.

Because the ship is so very full of holes, the gang can set down for repairs pretty easy. They land in Swerve’s, finding it in less-than-pristine condition. They also find evidence of Crosscut having gotten creative, as a poster for the play he was working on is hung up in the room. Considering he was still writing it when he disappeared, this might seem a bit odd. But then you remember that this is a ship from the future, and it stops being so odd.

Because this is a future ship, with evidence that Crosscut did some stuff, it stands to reason that, at some point, everyone is going to come back from being disappeared.

Just to die.

Which is a bummer, but one crisis at a time.

Megatron disembarks the Rod Pod, with Ravage following, and everyone is just a touch put off by the duo. Everyone but Nautica, who proceeds to commit a microaggression.

Nautica, that’s Soundwave’s father you’re petting like a common animal.

Ravage, angered by this over-familiarity, swats at her. Skids questions letting an active Decepticon roam around, but Megatron brushes off these concerns, saying that finding any still-living crew members is more important. With that, the search begins.

The gang splits up to look for clues, despite Riptide thinking this is a horrible idea. They’re on the clock for this one- the quantum foam is liable to explode if it touches anything, and there’s an awful lot of the stuff floating around right now.

Nightbeat and Nautica leave the rest of the group to their own work, seeing as Nautica has the most appropriate alt-mode for traversing the gaps in the ship.

Man, that’s pretty cool. Wish Nautica hadn’t been regulated to being “girl best friend” for her character arcs, I would have loved to see her do some neat stuff for her own development. Guess that’s what happens when you get introduced as main cast late, and have to compete with all the faves who had dozens of issues to be established and who also don’t have to deal with the whole “token girl character” thing.

The rest of the gang- Megatron, Ravage, Riptide, Skids, and Getaway- start looking in the area they’re already in. Seems a little lopsided, but whatever.

Ravage finds someone almost immediately, identifying Ultra Magnus through smell alone. Only, it isn’t just Ultra Magnus.

The Magnus armor lays not terribly far away, having had its hands cut off to prevent the recall signal from being activated before being gut-murdered.

Gut-murdered wiTH A FUSION CANNON, MEGATRON

Of course, Megatron was forced to destroy his fusion canon after it was decided he would be joining the Lost Light, but you can buy these things off the black market like it’s nothing. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brainstorm had a few stashed in his lab.

As it currently stands, nobody can trust the guy who has a storied past of killing Autobots, on a future ship where the only folks who could stop him are dead. Megatron, at least, has the good sense to not argue this fact, and suggests that the boys lock both Ravage and himself up until they suss out exactly what happened.

Meanwhile, over with Nautica and Nightbeat, we run through all the weird shit that’s happened in the last day or so.

Nautica, you’ve been on this ship for months now. How did you miss the fact that the only couple within 800 miles got annihilated by way of Phase Sixer? I feel like that attack might have come up at some point.

Since they’re on the subject of spouses, Nightbeat asks Nautica if she’s married, or if she has friends. Though noting that such a direct line of questioning might get him slapped with someone else, Nautica reveals that she is single, though she does have a best friend. Nightbeat is also single, probably because he pulls shit like this.

While this conversation is going on, Nautica uses her Sonic Screwdriver wrench to open a door with the literal push of a button. Brainstorm tricked out her wrench so hard it turned into a magic wand, which is good, because they’re going to need all the help they can get now that space is literally warping around them thanks to the quantum foam.

Nautica kicks something on the elevator, and that something turns out to be Brainstorm’s mysterious briefcase. Too bad Swerve is gone, he was so invested in what it contained. Luckily, Nightbeat is just as interested.

Back over on the other side of the ship, it seems as though Megatron kept his word about not resisting, as both he and Ravage have been locked in a cabinet. Wonder how that’s going for them.

Oh, better than I expected.

Ravage is fucking pissed that Megatron joined the Autobots, thereby turning his back on everyone who supported his cause during the last four million years. Despite this grievous betrayal though, the Decepticons haven’t stopped moving. Turns out, Galvatron’s in charge now.

But only if Autobot Megatron isn’t some sort of ploy.

It’s at this point that we learn just why Ravage is here to begin with- to see if Megatron’s truly given up the Decepticons, and if he has, to murder him. But first he’d like to know why this is happening.

Megatron views himself as a monster, having perpetuated a war that ended the lives of billions, destroyed the Cybertronian way of life, ostracized his race from the rest of the universe, and killing just to have something to do. He doesn’t like feeling this way about himself, so he decided to walk away from that life by joining the other team.

Don’t think it’s quite that easy to do, but okay.

Ravage isn’t so sure that this change of heart is going to stick, still convinced that Megatron will snap back to his old self with just a bit more time. Problem is, Megatron may not have a ton of that resource left.

Didn’t they build that body in like an hour so you wouldn’t die? Yeah, no wonder it feels as ill-fitting as a twenty-dollar suit. Thing’s probably made out of pig iron and duct tape.

The lights come on before further self-reflection can be done, and the duo realize that they’ve had guests this whole time.

Someone put the kettle on.

Obviously some fucked up shit happened on this ship. Megatron isn’t so sure that it’s him who did these dirty deeds, however, as he reaches into Ratchet’s mouth and pulls out his brain. Which feels like something that doesn’t really absolve one of guilt, but okay.

Also, ew.

Back with Nautica and Nightbeat, things are getting weird.

Now, this sequence might seem confusing at first blush, but this is because the laws of reality are collapsing around them. Going by clues in the background, we can find the proper, linear progression of time, and thus is conversation. This is what is actually happening:

With the mystery of Brainstorm’s briefcase eluding us once again, we move on to see more graphic aftermaths of violence. Poor Tailgate has been nailed to the wall with a chunk of a metal beam that’s almost as big as he is. The mood lighting for this scene is gorgeous, but I’ve hit my limit for exposing y’all to gore for this issue, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one. Then they find something even more interesting.

Who’s ready for Under Cold Blue Stars… 2!

Back over on the opposite side of the ship, Riptide’s found something nasty. It’s a bunch of dead bodies!

Including, uh, Pipes.

Who already died a while ago.

Hm.

All the bodies in this room are in their alts, and it looks like they’ve all been shot and drilled into, for some reason. Skids brings up that he had a friend who could identify the placement of any robot’s brain module just by knowing what they turned into. Then he reaches into a corpse to see what the drill-hole’s all about. It makes him sick, though maybe not for the reason you might think. He gets on the phone with Nightbeat, who’s called to tell them that they’ve found Overlord.

Still locked in his weird body harness.

And decapitated.

Megatron is on the other line, calling because he’s figured out the same thing Skids has. Someone paid a visit to this ship. Someone nasty.

The gang regroups, and Nautica gets the basics on the DJD, because I guess nobody’s mentioned them even in passing in the last six months, either.

God, what do they even talk about on this ship? Certainly not their feelings.

The reason that one room was filled with alt-modes was because of Tarn’s addiction to transforming; t-cogs are easier to remove when they’ve been used recently.

We get a quick 4/5ths-page gore-fest, then it’s back to making it all about Megatron.

Maybe you should have thought about that before you FUCKING DEFECTED, YOU POOL NOODLE.

Nightbeat’s beginning to put two and two together. There’s an Overlord in the basement. That shouldn’t be, because Overlord got exploded by Chromedome when he mercy-killed Rewind. Something is off about the past of this ship.

Before he can establish his MTMTE everybody-lives-but-then-dies AU though, the quantum foam fucks with the ship. These sons of guns need to get the hell out of here, pronto.

Oh god, what now?

Ravage smells someone inside the Magnus armor, someone who isn’t a part of the usual nesting doll lineup. Megatron reaches into the Crackerjack box and pulls out one hell of a prize.

HE LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES

Chromedome would be so thrilled, if he still existed.

[decepti-thots]

there's often a huge disconnect between "mtmte/ll/idw phase 2 fandom (that often got into tf through that comic, which only occasionally ever tried to sell toys, under duress)" and "tf toy collector fandom", both of which i am definitely a part of, and tbh it's wild to me we STILL haven't had MMC, the only third party toy company out there trying to bridge that gap by doing high quality toys very specifically of beloved mtmte/ll characters (they did a cdrw two pack! jeez!), do an idw ratchet toy.

It appeals to EVERYONE. despite being a g1 og evergreen character, for various reasons ratchet has VERY few g1 style toys of note, even after tfa and tfp made him a staple. the ones he DID get were almost all limited releases. the folks out here collecting good g1 representations of the character are STARVING for it. meanwhile, the folks who don't consider themselves big toy collectors overall but who DO want figures of their faves from cult hit mtmte/ll would LOVE a ratchet. he's an obvious fave and if you are a non collector trying to hit up ebay to get a few faves, you're unlikely to get anywhere.

I'm like, on the one hand I would LOVE your beautiful idw Getaway, but also what are you DOING

(i also super want that mmc rewind but.... the chromedome does not impress and noone is selling that boy separately so........ sigh.)

[polyhexian]

I am so FUCKING sad about this name thing

But it only reinforces what I've been saying and it's that the funeral at the end should not have been ratchets. It should have been Whirl's. The age related death for ratchet is an interesting concept, but it didn't really work when there's characters older than him here that are fine, and more tragically it means that drift only got decades with him. Not even a century. They're 6 million years old. That's an instant. That's nothing. They deserved better than that. And ratchet had so many more people that loved him that weren't there...

The themes man. The themes.

It should have been whirl. Whirl post lost light is on the exact situation he was at the beginning of mtmte. He's got no friends, no home, no job. Nowhere to be, no one to turn to, no one to notice if he's gone. No one looking for him. He has no prospects, no goals or aspirations. He's in a post war world with no room for traumatized war vets who don't know how to do anything but pull a trigger. At the beginning of mtmte we see his solution to the problem was to check out early. He was giving his goodbye speech when we met him.

We cut to the funeral and it's for whirl of polyhex. The only people who cared about him at all are people from the lost light. They all show up, but no one has seen him in years and none of them were especially close anyway. Attendance is sparse, and people have mixed feelings. But it turns out whirl killed himself the same day the lost light was dismantled, but no one noticed, cuz he went into the rust sea. It was only when tailgate and Cyclonus came back and went looking for him that anyone realized he'd died and no one noticed. So people have come because they feel this lingering guilt that they didn't notice, they didn't even think about him but apparently they meant a lot more to him than they even realized.

Everyone's awkward and uncomfortable. It's the bad ending timeline. It's the ending where everyone drifts apart. It's the ending where rodimus becomes a miserable friendless drunk and he never gets better. He never learns to ask for help. Rewind's permanently disabled, Swerve's lost almost everything. All these relationships that meant so much once are broken and this is the ultimate personification of that. Those relationships broke and they were the only thing keeping whirl alive, because over the course of mtmte/ll whirl learned to value the lives and feelings of others but never his own. A bitter funeral for someone no one really misses at this point and only showed up because they feel guilty they don't.

Meanwhile back in the good ending timeline on the ll3 whirl and Cyclonus and tailgate are paling it up excited about the new universe shenenigans. We got tailgate plopped on Whirl's shoulders and a smiley Cyclonus next to him and theres friendship and connection and love and a future! It's the good ending.

But anyway it should have been whirl

[comp-lady]

It’s Transformers Prime Time ep2

So last time shit went down. We got introduced to the characters and the setting (which I should note, especially for Cin for whomst is the main reason I am doing this, all this take place in the tiny ass town of Jasper, Nevada). Starscream killed Cliffjumper. Meggles came back from deep space. Optimus droppped the lore that the war was over energon (not mentioning the bid for autonomy? okay)

Also also I forgot to mention that the opening specifically has Optimus mentioning that he and the other autobots are the only autobots remaining on earth. Like this will come to play later but this show really does enforce the perception that like, we are witnessing the end of the war. All these battles we watch are the last, scraping, desperate attempts to win.

Onwards and forwards!

We start with Starscream showing Meggydoodles the energon mines he has seen set up in Meggypoo’s absence. I would like to emphasize how uuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh what’s the word?? Ah, yes, how UNERRINGLY VITAL energon is to their continued existence. It is their literal food and lifeblood.

This episode also start my extreme #doubt that Megatron is a competent leader in TFP. Oh I can believe it in MTMTE and LL, I’ve read them and we are shown that Megatron in the comics is a capable leader.

What TFP’s Meggyfuck do first thing? Scold Starscream for ordering a vehicon to bring him a sample of energon.

Bitch? Nani the fuck?

Though the shaaaaaade, we stan. He’s so sarcastic in this bit.

Starscream: surely after spending 3 fucking years in space you’ve brought back an army.

Megatramp: Nope, but I found this dope ass space!meth

Starscream: um.... space!meth is bad? it is said to raise the dead

Megatromp: yeah die so I can test it

Starscream: SO I KILLED AN AUTOBOT

the IDW comics had this very cool little feature where the color in a bot’s plating would fade when they died. I like that. I wish they had utilized it in this show.

Agent Fowler: we need to alert the pentagon that the decepticons are back

Optimus: nah bad idea

me: UM I THINK HUMANS SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO HAVE A SAY IN THEIR WORLD?

Back with the deceptibois

Megadoodles stabs Cliffjumper’s dead af body with the space!meth (technicaly name is blood of unicron/dark energon, but space!meth is funnier) and Starscream is not okay with this. Or robo!zombie. Or robo!zombie just casually slaughtering SEVERAL OF THE VEHICONS.

I really cannot emphasize how utterly unimpressed I am with this Megatron. Like he leaves to collect an army, comes back with space!meth, gets offended that Starscream hands out the most innocuous order ever, uses said space!meth to rez a dead autobot and get at least 2 vehicons killed

his design is great but like

I have seen people describe him as a stone cold baddass and I just do not see it. He’s a stone cold moron, and later asjdlkglk ugh *waves hands* This is going to be a consistent bitch of mine, so if you don’t like just hit the back button now.

anyway

First “Autobots, roll out!” of the show

Off to go slaughter vehicons indiscriminately!

y’know I have seen multiple people frustrated that a human kid could fix the computer where Ratchet couldn’t. But it honestly kind of makes sense. I mean Raf is, as established, a really smart kid. I caught the implication when he made it apparent that he can understand Bumblebee. He’s familiar with the technology, would have grown up with it. Meanwhile Ratchet, no matter how long he has been on earth, is not familiar.

To rag on Megaowo again: he is really too blase with the concept of blowing up the energon mine. The mine that Starscream had described as basically being the most fruitful.

Yes, great decision, blow up the fucking mine.

At least Starscream’s takeoff was A+

Optimus didn’t consider Earth customs, amazing. Almost got the kids in trouble because of curfew.

Starscream: plz stay away from the dark energon

Megglebub: imma stab myself in the soul with it

Starscream: CAN YOU PLEASE FUCKIGN NOT?

And to boot he sounded pretty gfoddamn earnest about wanting Megaboop to uuhhh NOT partake of the space!meth

Also I call it space meth because like.... the wear and tear and such on his face, especially his mouth, reminds me of a methhead I once knew in passing. So y’know.

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 30

30 issues wow...forget the fact that I skipped like 5 issues of crossover event nonsense

another big ole swerve recap omg

this trial is so messsyyyyyyyyy lmao 

hvbajdfbahsjkfdbhjs starscream listening to meagtrons speech looking like ‘hmmmmmmm I may have miscalculated’ 

prowl looks pissed af meanwhile optimus just looks dead inside lmao

I mean. megatron kinda does have a point. this is like, the most biased, conflict of interests lookin trial of all time, in that all the major participants have some sort of long, complicated history with each other. what a mess

optimus, listening to megatron’s speech: wow this is worse than divorce court was

oh shit I totally forgot that those decepticons attacked the trial 

MAGNUS HAMMER AYYYYYY

a guy saying ‘objection!’ as optimus prime punches half his face off...that pretty much sums up idw op lmao 

op: oh thank god, I can punch shit now. I'm not cut out for this bureaucracy nonsense

megatron: thanks, random decepticon, for the attempted rescue, but I'm super old and I just want to nap so no thanks

random decepticon: wtf- [gets murdered by optimus prime]

I love op’s big ass antennae 

meanwhile, brainstorm goes to a bar and instead of buying anything, pulls out his own drink. I feel like that isn't allowed in most bars, or is at least frowned up vbsjdhfbhjdkfn. ily brainstorm 

also? big ass mood I was so broke last time I was on a barhopping vacation w/friends that I brought a cheap giantass bottle of mixed drink in my backpack and just drank that at all the bars lmao

WHIRLLLL I love his humansona sm. and also I love that whirl is into artsy french movies or w/e omg

brainstorm, drinking thru a wrist funnel: sorry I cant take my mask off rn it isn’t plot relevant yet

‘earthlets’ lmao

I love that rung is like, too pretentious to care that much about movies and would rather read earth books lol

and then bluestreak is like ‘yeah they have books...comic books’ can this man not read

I still cannot fuckign believe that the argument that got megatron out of a for-sure death sentence or w/e was ‘its not a war crime if we’re on the moon’ liiiiike what the actual hell lmao

also I love that, once again, we see magnus’s strict adherence to the law, technicalities and all

magnus: you cant really stop a trial and move it somewhere else where the laws are better suited to the outcome you desire

prowl: what are you, a cop? fuck off

also op being like ‘ok whatever all that doesn't matter...what DOES matter is that it would look bad for us to move the trial to cybertron in an obvious attempt to circumvent the rules, and public perception is what’s most important, fuck all that ‘morality’ bullshit’

meanwhile, rodimus is dead! and ambulon is also dead, which makes first aid sad, which makes ME sad

ayyy, rodimus is still alive! well, one rodimus is alive, at least 

rodimus and megatron really have the vibes of ‘stepfather and stepson forced to work together on a family road trip gone wrong after dad decided to sit this one out’ lmao

ah yes, ‘malaise’ the medical diagnostic term for ‘I don't feel so hot and idk why’ that practitioners like to throw under the ‘diagnostic notes’ section of lab orders to explain why they're ordering every blood test under the sun for a patient 

I love medical terminology. ANYWAYS

BE NICE TO MY BOY MEGATRON. 

rodimus: listen I have to come to terms with the fact that there's another version of me right here, and he’s DEAD, which means we can’t fuck, which is super lame 

I firmly believe that rodimus would be team ‘hell yeah id have sex with my AU self’ tbh 

I find it interesting that megatron is often casting blame for his actions onto others - here, he says that rodimus made him realize he doesn’t want to stop doing stuff w/his life, and then says that starscream forced his hand w/the whole ‘luna 2 law’ thing, and previously he’s said how whirl beating him up in jail is what led to him abandoning pacifism - take responsibility for your actions and decisions dude!

though he goes on to say here that he resorted to violence because he realized that the system that was in place could withstand everything else he would have tried to use to change it, which is super interesting 

megatron: okay, yes, I MIGHT have murdered billions, but I could help find us a new planet, which would be baller, sooooo...how about you co-opt your lame son’s frat boy ship and put me in charge? 

op: sounds fair to me. now how about we do some more Big Speeches before I make you somebody else’s problem

vbhdjskfbhaskdjf the ‘team rodimus’ lineup setup reminds me so much of the ‘together we make the ______’ meme with the different members being like, ‘the power’ ‘the gay’ ‘the awesome’ ‘the guy with no ears’ hbvhjdkfbs

chromedome: if I do this I could die

rodimus: that sounds like a you problem bro

‘this one time’ YEA RIGHT c'mon cd honor your dead husband’s wishes

omfg I forgot abt brainstorms ‘early early warning system’ lmao

I love nautica soooo much oh man

ooooof drift :( :( oh no

dead future rodimus!! uh oh is right

rodimus, known himbo: I'm sure I can defeat the inevitability of future events! all I have to do is cut my own arm off!

tailgateeeee he’s so cute...I love that he can tell stories of his daring escapades, just like at the beginning of mtmte, but this time its actually TRUE

OH SHITTTT GETAWAY

he looks so fucking sinister there lmao how are we NOT supposed to realize he has bad intentions from the get-go

‘you’ll make a prime one day’ well, getaway, you’re right about that at least...

cyclonus in the bg like 🤨🤔 at getaway

seriously I cant get over how getaway has such a slimy kinda vibe to him, like specifically in his interactions w/tailgate - this is before things even really take off but I'm still like TG GET AWAY (lol) FROM THIS GUY

cyclonus: somebody flirting with my crush? better go stare out a window instead of communicating absolutely anything to said crush about my feelings!

honestly I feel like, while megatron renouncing the decepticons and becoming an autobot is certainly interesting, it would be equally interesting for him to remain a decepticon but try to change the philosophy of the movement 

like, I get why op had him give that speech - to prevent the cons from trying to free megs again/thinking that he was being coerced into things (ironic considered he WAS coerced into giving that speech) - but it’s kinda the easy way our for megatron - being able to completely abandon the decepticon cause and not deal with it at all, and start over anew as an autobot

it would've been a lot harder to remain a con and try to reform what he has broken in the decepticon movement - but I think that would've been really interesting

though from a writing logistics standpoint, I get why jro didn't go for that bc we don't get a lot of other decepticons in the cast for that to work, and also megatron still definitely DOES have to face down all his mistakes w/the decepticons w/the djd and overlord and whatnot

anyways. I cant believe that all megatron had to do to join the lost light was make ONE speech denouncing the decepticons. like, they should've at least had him do a tiktok dance too or something, just to make it a really tough deal

I love the rodpod vbhjfsdkfbjaskjndfj

ok but I still don't really get the logic of making megs CAPTAIN like ouch. poor rodimus 

I feel like making megs a bartender at swerves or st would've been WAY more useful in showing him humility or w/e. OR it would've made him evil again, which, fair, 

ratchet: don't worry, we’ll medically poison him, it’ll be fine

ok but rodimus is right, this is SO messy, op wants to prove his ex husband isn't 100% evil so he’s like ‘ill let my rebellious son deal with him’ lmao god. I love this setup so much, its so wild

ratchet is also right, rodimus’s fuckup definitely pales in comparison to megatrons All That 

OH BRUTALLLLLLLL when ratchet says the list is fake ‘because my name’s not on it’ FUCKING OUCHHHHH

‘only bad guys say ‘unhand me” rodimus ily

omfg ‘we’ve practiced this’ of course they've done evacuation drills...magnus ily

lmao it’s the panel where it looks like rodimus and megatron are doing karaoke or having some sort of rap battle

and the lost light is GONE! oh shit!!!!

and there closes issue 30! once again we’ve gotten a lot of setup and exposition - which, while definitely necessary, means I don't have too much to say

I will say, throwing megatron onto the lost light has definitely mixed things up, and it’s interesting to see new dynamics already forming

so, until next time!

[littleteatimestories]

[MTMTE] Prowl x Fem! Reader x Fortress Maximus:  Just Your Friend (There Could Have Been More)

A/N: Phew! Here’s another reader-insert for all ye MTMTE fans! I had this story in mind already ever since I read the last issue of MTMTE. The story is basically the same; just added some tweaks of here and there so that we could insert ourselves in the story, hehe. Enjoy this one! I still have a few stories in the works and, this time, all of them are in the TFA continuity.

GREAT NEWS! I created an AO3 account: moreteatimestories. This is for easier navigation and reading in case Tumblr decided to go haywire on you.

-

“You care for him so much. That only means you may be his... sparkmate,” Sentinel Prime said, peering at you holding a now dead Prowl in your arms.

Cerebros remarked worriedly, “Sentinel, he’s your friend, for Primus’s sake! Aren’t you even bothered that he’s dead?”

Sentinel only laughed devilishly. “I don’t care even the slightest if he’s dead. He’s a fool, anyway.”

“How dare you!” you shouted angrily. “How can you be so cruel! I don’t even know how you’re still alive!”

“Yeah, Sentinel,” Cerebros concurred. “You were supposed to be dead. What happened?”

“Oh? Now you want to know? I’m more than happy to tell you.”

Meanwhile, Fortress Maximus and Red Alert were having a scuffle with one another, Fort Max being too distracted. He can’t help, but look at you holding Prowl in your arms. He admitted to himself that he felt... jealous.

When he decided to come back to Cybertron on his own (and be stationed in Luna-1), you became his new psychiatrist. While he commended Rung for being a great one, he felt more at ease with you. You were always smiling and you wouldn’t push him to answer if he seemed uncomfortable with some questions. It was like you treated him as a trusted friend. You were patient, too. These qualities what made him fall for you.

However, the pining was the only thing he can give. You and Prowl are sparkmates (not yet a Conjunx) and Fort Max knew he can and will never have your spark (heart, in your case).

He was still lovingly gazing at you. Prowl was one lucky mech...

THOK!

He fell on the ground, his optical vision fizzing temporarily.

“Why aren’t you fighting back?!” Red Alert taunted.

Fort Max grunted. “Maybe because I didn’t want to hurt you, obviously. You’re a friend, Red!” He partially lied.

Red Alert flew another punch, but Fort Max was able to take hold of his fist. However, he didn’t counter an attack and instead pushed him forcefully.

Going back to your case, Sentinel finally explained his ‘reincarnation’ and his grand scheme of taking Cybertron to a new form of glory.

“Actually, I don’t mind taking a queen with me as I mold a new Cybertron!” He held your arm tightly.

“What?! No...! Stop! I am not yours to take!” you screamed as he tried to pull you away from your lover.

“Sentinel, be reasonable!” Cerebros coaxed. “Whatever happened, this is not you.”

Sentinel ignored him as he pried you away from Prowl. You thrashed, pulling yourself from him. “Let me go!”

He shifted his hold to both of your wrists as he closed the proximity between you and looked at your eyes.

“This would be easier if you’re not struggling so much, sweetspark.”

“I hate you,” you muttered loudly.

Suddenly, Sentinel groaned painfully loud as he released your wrists. You moved backwards to witness the ex-Prime falling on his one knee joint and a medium-sized hole on his shoulder plate.

“First of all, she is NOT your sweetspark. And secondly, if you want a bot to actually die, make sure they’re DEAD. For REAL.”

You could shed some tears of contentment as you heard and saw Prowl. “Prowl!” You ran to him and enveloped him in your embrace. He returned it, but more protectively.

“Prowl! Thank Primus it worked!” Cerebros cheered.

“Ah, so you lived? No matter. I’ll just finish all of you!” Sentinel growled fiercely.

Prowl shot him again and this disabled Sentinel for the time being. He then announced, “We’re going NOW. Fort Max! Let’s go!”

Said Autobot pushed Red Alert forcefully. “But, if we go, Sentinel will-“

“Just trust me and let’s go. He won’t do anything for a while.” He peered at you with his now one optic. “Ride with me, sweetspark.” He got hold of your hand and used the still functioning M.A.R.B.S. to flee for the meantime.

***

“Are you alright, Prowl? You looked like in pain,” you worriedly said.

“It’s just my helm. I don’t know why I’m having a processor-ache,” he answered.

“Oh! Lemme explain that!” Cerebros briefly explained how he ‘revived’ Prowl and this made the latter feel resentment.

“Do you want to know how much I HATED being controlled?! Being manipulated?! I have mental and physical scars when it comes to that. Give me one good reason that I won’t kill you right now!”

You interrupted him by gripping his arm plate. “Prowl, enough! Cerebros was just trying to save you. He didn’t mean to do it. Just calm yourself down. You know I’m always here for you if you feel those scars again.”

He shook and composed himself. He removed your hold and went to one side for now. He spoke, “Give me a few nanokliks to process everything.”

You huffed quietly and shifted your attention to Fortress Maximus. You weren’t able to notice him since your mind was occupied by your lover being dead (and thank Primus he wasn’t). You approached him in another room, seemingly tinkering on some device with Beak on it.

“Hey, Max,” you called.

His spark jumped upon hearing your voice. He turned to you at once.

“(Y/-Y/n)...!” he stammered.

“Just wanted to check up on you. I know Red Alert is a friend and it must have hurt you seeing him fighting all of us.”

Well, yes, it did, but what was more hurting for him was the fact that he could be protecting you from Sentinel instead. Plus, the fact that he can’t have you. Just witnessing you worrying Prowl like that made his spark ache. He wished that you would fret over him like that of Prowl. But, of course, that was just wishful thinking.

“Max, are you sure you’re okay?” you tried to coax him to answer.

He gazed at you for a moment. You were so beautiful in the optics (well, in his optics, that is) and all he could do was just the pining.

He replied nonetheless, “I’m fine. I’m sure there’s a way for Red Alert to snap out of it.”

You gave a small smile and that warmed Fort Max’s cheek plates. He always loved that upward curve of your lips.

“I’m your friend, Max. If you need me, I’ll be there no matter what.”

Right... Friend... You two were just FRIENDS and that was as far as your relationship can go. Fort Max, once again, wished there was something more.

All he ever said back was, “If you also need anything, I’ll be there. ALWAYS.” He emphasized the last word. No matter what he was doing, be it fighting Decepticons or any other life forms, he’ll be there. Because it’s you whom he will protect and take care of. Because if he was to admit, he LOVES you too much. Be damned if you and Prowl were together. He will never stop loving you because you made him feel safe. You made him feel HOME.

Prowl’s vocal chords echoed in the room. He was panicking as he entered. “Red Alert shot me! He shot me! That damn double-crossing, hypocritical bastard shot me!”

You hushed him. “Prowl, again, calm down.”

He held his helm and grumbled. “Sorry, sweetspark. It’s just that... All these catching up is making my processor hurt.”

“How’s about I make it simple?” Cerebros presented. “All you need to know is that Sentinel is planning to open a portal to Cybertron. And the plan is to commandeer this Titan we are in so that we could stop the other Titans passing through the portal.”

“Except there’s only one problem,” Fort Max declared. “This device won’t budge. It’s a release mechanism. I can’t flip it over. It’s stuck.”

Prowl growled. “Step aside.”

Fort Max raised an optic ridge. “No offense, Prowl, but if I can’t move it, I don’t think-“

“You just haven’t had the practice.” The police officer flipped the switch with ease.

***

“You stay here, sweetspark. I’ll be more at ease if you’re here,” Prowl stated.

You frowned. You always hated being left behind and being able to do nothing. “But, Prowl...”

“(Y/n), no. I’m not letting that bastard Sentinel have his servos on you.”

“Alright...” you finally gave way as you bowed your head.

“Hey.” Prowl lifted your chin. Before you can even look at him, his lips gently crashed onto yours. It was a surprise to you so you couldn’t react as he removed his lips and gazed at you adoringly. “I love you.”

You were able to register his words as you whispered back, “I love you, too.”

Fortress Maximus, sadly, saw the whole action. His spark, once again, hurt. He always wondered how your luscious lips would feel on his own. That would be so comforting. He snapped on his thinking when Prowl called at him.

“Fort Max, I’ll be leaving (Y/n) here. Make sure she’s not hurt while you’re trying to control this Titan.”

Now that was like underestimating him. If that glitch-head knew how much he loves you more than his life, he’ll definitely finish the job without having a scratch on you.

You assured the both of them, “I know how to watch myself, thank you very much. You don’t need to worry over me. I’ll make sure to hold onto something when things get rough.”

“I’m going now.” Prowl kissed your forehead for the last time.

‘Lucky bastard,’ Fort Max mused.

***

“You’ll be fine, Red. Judging from your answers so far, you still seemed unease, but eventually, you’ll be able to overcome it,” you shared to Red Alert.

Said mech ex-vented. “That’s good to know, (Y/n).”

It had been three solar cycles now ever since Sentinel finally met his demise. Prowl and the others were able to save Cybertron from the Titans.

Speaking of the police officer, he and Fortress Maximus took Sovereign back to Earth. It hadn’t been that long, but you already wanted to see him. Your mech has been through a lot, even losing his one good optic.

“And, we’re back!” Prowl announced.

Your smile widened upon hearing his voice as you quickly approached him.

“Welcome back!” you happily exclaimed as you hugged him.

Fort Max diverted his optics away from the two of you as he walked away to a room. Red Alert followed him.

“So... Did you tell her?” he asked.

“Tell her what, Red?” Fort Max replied with a question as if he knew nothing what his friend was referring to.

“You know what I mean, Max.”

The large Autobot ex-vented. “There’s no point, Red. She’s already taken. From the way I see it, she and Prowl deeply love each other.”

Red Alert raised an optic ridge. “So, what now? You’re just going to do the pining while they canoodle here and there?”

“Do I really have a choice?” Fort Max turned to face him. “I’m not some bot who’ll break their relationship just because he and I love the same femme.” He lowered his helm. “She was already with Prowl the moment I came back in Cybertron. I’m contented to be just there for her whenever she needs me.”

“Well, I guess that’s good enough. But, word of advice, don’t get too attached. Don’t want you get hurting again.”

“I’m already hurt, Red. Emotionally. Seeing the love of your life being whisked away by another mech…”

Red Alert patted his friend’s large shoulder plate. “‘Least she gets a guardian to protect her no matter what.”

Fort Max just gave a small beam.

[sleep-swell]

MTMTE Swerve X reader {how to be failure 101} chapter 2. Cue the beat drop

You would be lying if you said you were comfortable and relaxed. Memories from the last couple of hours started floating back to you, or was it days? How long have you been out?

Groggily, you sat up and started rubbing your eyes. The tiredness was making you want to go back to sleep.

You looked around, taking in your surroundings. It looked like a normal room, but made entirely from metal. There were tables, and beds with no sheets, and some things that looked like torture devices. No wait, repair tools. Yeah these two things were the opposite of eachother.

God, you were so confused right now. It was warm, but you were also laying on a cold surface, one of those beds.

As your tiredness faded, you stood up and jumped off the bed onto the ground.

'I have to find out where I am,' you thought.

Not so long after  you found a place closed off with a curtain. Curious as to what was behind it, you opened it.

Your blood ran cold as you looked at what you assumed was a corpse of another of your team members, her name was Osh.

~•past•~

"Okay, so you clearly like Fred." Osh pried.

"Dude! Why would I like him, he makes everyone uncomfortable."

"Fair point. I like Mike."

"So you assumed I liked Fred just so you could tell me you like Mike?" You chuckled.

"Shit, you got me there."

"Yeah I am 100% sure that was planned."

You both broke into a fit of laughter.

~•present•~

Quickly, you covered your mouth and started sobbing and silently creaming. She was such a fun girl, selfish but really fun to hang around with.

'She's dead.' you thought.

The others their death didn't affect you as much cuz you were panicking and trying to survive. Osh was the first to disappear, everyone thought she got killed, but apparently she survived.

And now you're looking at her, not running away, you got to see all the details. The scars running along her arms and... It's too much.

Your sad sounds made their way through the medbay, catching the attention of the medic. He looked at his companion, and signed, "She's awake."

Preparing himself for your outburst, he made his way towards you.

"Hello." You heard behind you.

To hear someone else here was already a surprise, but after turning around, finding out what they looked like was an even bigger surprise, making you uncover your mouth and scream.

Your screaming caught the attention of some bots in the medbay, and some close to it. Luckily, they assumed it was just a patient.

"Shhh!" Non-whispered the person.

"I am Ratchet. The medic of this ship."

Surprisingly you stopped creaming, but were unable to speak out of shock. You decided to communicate with your hands instead, and pointed towards Osh.

Ratchet caught up what you meant, and said, "She's not dead, I am keeping her alive. Although, she's not very stable and might die any moment."

She's not dead? Tears were forming in your eyes as you approached Osh again, this time you sat next to her and stroked her hazelnut hair.

"Th... Thank you," you managed to squeak out.

The fact that she might die was depressing news, you were gonna be alone. A lonely human far away from home, unable to ever see another one again.

Ratchet, on the other hand, was glad that you were easy to calm down, and that you thanked him in place of hitting a tantrum.

He quickly commed Ultra Magnus to come over to him and deal with this human problem.

While Ultra Magnus was on his way, you didn't change your location. You still sat calmly next to Osh, refusing to believe you were gonna be left alone without her if things got wrong, if she were to leave.

Soon enough, Ultra Magnus arrived. Behind, or rather next to him, were Rodimus, Drift, and Brainstorm. Brainstorm saw the 3 running somewhere and just decided to tag along. It had to be something interesting if Rodimus ran with the others, right?

"Ratchet!" You heard.

"Where's the human?" They sounded very exited, and noticeably male. The fact he used the term 'human', you assumed it was also an alien.

But if this whole ship is full of aliens, aren't you the alien?

The curtains around the bed were opened wider open, and in front of your nose was a giant face with a huge grin.

The person put his hand in front of you, wanting to shake yours. You grabbed two fingers and he began shaking his hand violently.

"My name is Rodimus, the captain of The Lost Light. Which is the name of this ship by the way."

His grin didn't leave him until he was shoved away by another person. He, was also male. Was everyone here male?

The person who shoved Rodimus away looked way more serious, and didn't invite your personal space. Instead, he just talked.

"My name is Ultra Magnus. I'd like to move forward into who I am but it's not relevant. You and I are going to discuss who you are, and why you're here, together with your past experience."

"And i am Drift, you can always talk to me about anything if you'd like." Waved another person at you.

"If you would just follow me," said Ultra Magnus.

You looked towards Osh, not wanting to leave her behind, and then back at Ratchet, who said, "She's gonna be fine, don't worry. She'll still be alive when you're back."

Ultra Magnus saw that you stood up and took his leave, expecting you to follow. Drift wanted to offer you his servo, but before he could make a movement, Rodimus snatched you up and placed on his shoulder, still grinning and following Ultra Magnus.

After a while, you arrived at a door that opened automatically and we're set down on a huge desk.

"So," started Ultra Magnus, "Let's begin with who you are exacly and what happened on your ship."

"My name is (y/n) (l/n) and I come from earth. I was send into space with my crew to see if our ship worked. We were with 5, then suddenly an alien wolf-like thing was on board after a landing break."

"He started killing everyone, I was the last to survive. My friend, Osh, who's now on board this ship too, was the first to get attacked."

"And what did the creature look like?"

"He had fluorescent yellow eyes, and..."

You continued your storytelling, until everything was clear. After that, you were given a sheet to sleep under in Rodimus's hab-suite. Offcourse, you went to see if Osh was fine at first.

After confirming that everything was was, you went to sleep. You needed your rest, since tomorrow you'll be introduced to the rest of the ship.

"Goodnight (y/n)!" Whisper-shouted Rodimus.

"Goodnight Rodimus. Thanks for doing this."

"Offcourse! You're one of us now," he beamed.

Meanwhile, a certain bartender went to recharge, obnoxious to anything.

--------------------------------------------------------- Hello y'all, AGT here!

Sorry that Swerve isn't mentioned much.. BUT! He will be in the next chapter~

[shikai-the-storyteller]

CYBERVERSE WATCH: Season 3, Episodes 15, 16, 17, and 18!

MAN IM SO SAD THERE’S ONLY 4 EPISODES LEFT IN THIS SEASON....I’m really glad we got confirmed for a Season 3, but the thought of this show ending period makes me sad. I’m having so much fun watching it

Episode 15: Wiped Out

Alright enough moping around, let’s get down to business and actually start this episode

The Ark looks like Samus’ ship!

Omg Roddy and Bee complaining about their chores, they’re so cute....”I can’t believe Dad is making us scrub his car, ugh”

“I’m gonna buff the ugly out of you!” THERE IS NO UGLY, THERE IS ONLY CUTE

Optimus with his hands on his hips is so cute

Oh no is Rodimus going to go surf on the asteroids like in MTMTE--HE FRICKIN IS IM SHRIEKING!!!!!!!

RODIMUS PRIME ID DIE FOR YOU, YOU BIG DUMB JOCK

I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t want to join them though lmao, that looks fun as heck

Seeing Roddy flame out is so soul-soothing, Cyberverse was absolutely made with me in mind

OMG CAT ON A SURF BOARD “Behold! I am awesome!” YOU SURE ARE BUD

Oh no is that a sharkticon THEYRE TOTALLY SHARKTICONS

THEY’RE CALIFORNIAN IM SOBBING

CHEETOR IS SO NICE “Is this all of it?” PFT that dramatic zoom was great, I love the humor in this show

This means Bee and Rodimus probably got picked up by the other gang huh

“Yeah our world got destroyed but at least we still have this sick skate park left”

Omg it’s the Californians vs. the New Yorkers, I’m cryin

RODIMUS COME ON BUD, HAVE YOU GUYS LEARNED NOTHING FROM YOUR OWN GIANT CIVIL WAR

I love that Cheetor gets recruited and he’s like “Um I really don’t wanna”, Bee went with and even got painted all fancy but went “Cheetor! :D” upon seeing his bud, then Rodimus zooms in decked out in paint like he’s the king of the gang like “Yo back off from our skate park noobs” Hot Rod you’re terrible and I love you

“Wait was that one of my snouts” RODIMUS

LMAO WAY TO BE RACIST CHEETOR

They’re gonna get back to the Ark and Rodimus is gonna be like “WHAT’S UP OPTIMUS guess what we did? We joined a gang” and Optimus is going to be like [deep sigh]

Uh Cheetz what are you doing OH SNAP HE’S FIXING THEIR WORLD aw way to go Cheetor

Episode 16: Ghost Town

Oh no are they going to get to Cybertron finally and find it empty...or wait Cybertron is dead in this show already isn’t it. Are they gonna find out the ‘Cons already got to Cybertron and shoved Percy in a locker?

Oh snap what’s up with Windblade Oh no is this Starscream in disguise or something WHAT’S GOING ON

LMAO TELETRON X IS SERIOUSLY OUT HERE GIVING STARSCREAM THERAPY IM SCREAMING

“HOW DO YOU THINK THAT MAKES ME FEEL!?”

Where is Rung when you need him

Is some kind of MetroTitan speaking to her or something, calling out for help?

oh absolutely this city looks like it’s part of some giant Titan, I AM LOVING THIS PLANET man whoever does the background drawings in this show does an awesome job

I I love that Optimus specifically says “We must help her” and not “we must stop her” or something, nice distinction

GO RODDY GO!!!!!!!

“I’ve determined you have an emotional need for someone to trust you” JUST STAB ME THROUGH THE HEART WHY DON’T YOU CYBERVERSE, IT’D BE LESS PAINFUL

*Flashbacks to Starscream on one knee, offering Jetfire his hand* GUHHHH

LMAO Teletron gave him more cell space and Starscream is immediately like “Haha IDIOT”

Well that can’t be good

YEAHHHH HOT ROD AND BEE WATCHING EACH OTHER’S BACKS, I LOVE THAT

METROTITAN METROTITAN METROTITAN METROTITAN!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! I KNEW IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Croatan!!!!! YOOO

“My citizens were taken from me” QUINTESSONS???

THAT BACKGROUND HISTORY ANIMATION IS SO PRETTY

AHHHH I CANT STOP GRINNING, I CAN”T BELIEVE THEY ACTUALLY HAD A METROTITAN IN THIS SHOW, THAT”S SO AWESOME, THIS IS SO COOL I”M LEGITIMATELY GETTING SHIVERS

Just goes to show not all red-eyed things are evil

Oh yeah Starscream escaped OH SHOOT HE’S WITH A TITAN NOW OH MAN??? OH MAN!?!?!?!?! I don’t know who I’m worried about more, Starscream or the Titan--well no, the Titan, Starscream is a menace and there’s no way he’s not gonna show up 10 episodes later using it as his latest new death machine to kill Megatron 

Episode 17: Perfect Storm

Optimus sitting in his chair looking bored.....cute......

AW ARCEE IS SO CUTE Finally we get to see her do something. And she and Grimlock are buddies!! That’s sweet

Gosh that red nebula is GORGEOUS

Oh no is this going to be like some kind of storm that knocked everyone out while they were all gone

LMAO I love that they’re not even worried, they’re just like “UGH something happened while we weren’t here! >:/ ”

I LOVE ARCCEE SHE’S SO CUTE

OHHH I don’t know what those things are but they look pretty and dangerous

LMAO SHE JUST SHOVES HOT ROD OVER

ARCEE MIMICKING THEIR CRIES...THAT”S SO CUTE

LMAO THEY REALLY CANT CATCH A BREAK CAN THEY

GRIMLOCK AND ARCEE ARE JUST STANDING ON TOP OF THE SHIP FRICKIN MACHINE-GUNNING THESE COMETS DOWN IM CRYING

PEAK ARCEE CHARACTERIZATION RIGHT HERE I love that she’s snapchat girl AND machine gun warrior girl

They’re just hitting Cheetor on the Allspark....I love these morons....

UHHH ARCEE THAT SEEMS LIKE A BAD IDEA

LMAO “NO IM GONNA SACRIFICE MYSELF FIRST”

Wheeljack what were you doing back there

MEANWHILE THE SUPERNOVA’S ABOUT TO KILL THEM ALL gosh I love these dummies

I really hope they both just wind up powering it with botht heir sparks, that would be a nice middle-finger to the Soul Gem thing that happened in Endgame

LMAO I love the ominous music when Teletran X knocks on the window

That was such a cute episode :’)

Episode 18: The Crossroads

OHO SPACE BRIDGE

“I’m no Quintesson!” SO THERE ARE QUINTESSONS IN THIS SERIES....I BET THOSE ARE GONNA BE THE BIG BAD GUYS IN SEASON 3 also Wheeljack could you have said that in a way that was even SLIGHTLY less suspicious

CHROMIA CHROMIA CHROMIA CHROMIA!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHH

Oh so Cybertron is still alive GOOD TO KNOW

UNSPACE?!

GASP there’s another autobot ship!?!

OH MY GOSH IS THIS GOING TO BE THE SHATTERED GLASS VERSION OF THEM!?

“I wish that made me feel good” Grimlock you’re so cute

Wheeljack PLEASE don’t touch it

THIS IS JUST LIKE MTMTE IM SCREAMING

OPTIMUS NO!!!!!!!

Oh ok they’re fine

OK BUT WHY WAS THERE ANOTHER ARK THERE

HOT ROD AND OPTIMUS

Is this some kind of weird time-space thing going on where they’re stuck in an infinite loop

“Grimlock hurt Grimlock feeling :(” THAT MADE ME SO SAD???? GRIMLOCK BE NICE TO YOURSELF

“Are you my Bee, or are you the new Bee?” MY BEE...THAT’S PRECIOUS

CYBERVERSE YOU CAN’T KEEP THROWING CUTE STUFF LIKE THIS AT ME, I CAN”T HANDLE IT, I’M GONNA GET TOO USED TO QUALITY CONTENT

Rodimus please don’t hit on yourself

IT”S A MULTIVERSE IM CRYIN. THEY REALLY DID DO AN “INTO THE CYBERVERSE” GOOF, I LOVE YOU CYBERVERSE WRITERS

I’m still so worried a Shattered Glass version of them is gonna pop up

But won’t that mean all of them will pop out in the same universe?

THERE”S SO MANY ARKS

All of them saying “Autobots Roll Out!” is so sweet...

OH NO THEY HAVE CHROMIA.....CHROMIA WHAT HAPPENED

EXTREMELY RARE BLESSED OPTIMUS SMILE....HE LOOKS SO SWEET.....

Dang boy Cybertron looks jacked up

NOOOOO IS THAT IT??? AM I REALLY GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT TIL NEXT YHEAR FOR SEASON 3??? Man those were such good episodes though, I can’t even get mad I LOVE CYBERVERSE SO MUCH Y’ALL......... :’) I’m so glad we have a series like this

[in1-nutshell]

Moon streaker snapping and now everythings on fire

I have been waiting for this moment!

I have had several scenarios for this and just had to randomly pick one because I wanted to write them all.

Hope you enjoy!

Moonstreaker snaps

SFW, Platonic, Hinted Romance, Angst, Familial, Mention of injuries, Cybertronain reader

MTMTE

Moonstreaker was at Swerve’s talking to the bartender when the alarms sounded.

The alarm for an alien invasion.

As much as she wanted to stay with Swerve, she knew she was needed elsewhere on the ship.

Giving Swerve one last look and a reassuring smile, Moonstreaker ran out of the bar with a couple of bots behind her ready to go.

Getting used as hostage was something that she wasn’t too familiar with. Usually, she was the one who was doing the rescuing, not the other way around.

Even more embarrassing, she was tricked into coming on board the opposite ship after hearing cries for help, only to get knocked out with a pip to the helm.

The space pirates were now back on the ship and actively flying away from the Lost Light.

Moonstreaker glared at each one of the pirates as they spat and slapped her across the face.

The space captain walks in front of Moonstreaker and yanks her up by her chains.

The Bot can only glare at the captain.

“Aw, what’s with the glare little Autobot?”--Captain

She doesn’t respond.

“Fine, be that way. Soon we’ll be rolling in thousands of shanix after we get that transmission working. And, well, we’d defiantly get a lot more if you start pleading for your life.”--Captain

Moonstreaker spits some of the energon from her mouth into his face.

The captain throws her back into the ground and steps on her chassis.

Moonstreaker grunts at the sudden weight before getting kicked into some of the crewmate’s arms.

Wiping his face, the captain turns to the crew.

“Keep an eye on her. The little toaster is a feisty one she is.”--Captain

Meanwhile the captain was setting up the transmission, some of the pirates began talking about pillaging and getting rid of some of the bots on board.

One of them mentioned the captain of the ship.

She tensed hearing some of the details.

Her frame started feeling warmer than usual, but she brushed it off as her system being out of whack after all the beating to the helm.

Unfortunately, they noticed.

The nearest guard grabbed Moonstreaker by the back of her helm.

“Oh? Did we strike a nerve, you overgrown toaster? What? You didn’t like what we were saying? Huh? HUH!”—Crewmate 1

The guard slams her helm repeatedly into the wall next to her.

One of the guards stops him.

“Careful you dummy! You’re gonna damage the fuel tank with another hit like that.”—Crewmate 2

The guard holding her helm dropped her in front of the fuel tank in a crumpled heap.

Part of Moonstreaker’s helm was thoroughly soaked with energon.

Part of her vision color pink and the other is seeing double the amount of guards than before.

“Yeah, but that’s nothing compared to what I’M gonna do to the pipsqueak who shot my knee!”—Crewmate 1

The guard shows the bandaged knee to his friends.

“I swear, when I get my hands on that little red bot I’m gonna—”—Crewmate 1

“You…”--Moonstreaker

The guards turn back to Moonstreaker, who was shakingly trying to sit back up.

“Will Not…”--Moonstreaker

She nearly falls again but leans more against the fuel tank’s wall.

“Touch…”--Moonstreaker

She is now sitting on her knees, optics blazing with anger.

“Him… or anyone on that ship… that… I promise.”--Moonstreaker

Meanwhile on the Lost Light…

The pirate’s transmission had just been connected.

Rodimus glares daggers at the smug face of the captain.

“Why, hello—”--Captain

“Where’s Moonstreaker!”--Rodimus

“Rodimus, please, calm down.”--Magnus

Rodimus shoots daggers at Magnus.

“Roddy, you’re going to set something on fire if you don’t calm down.”--Drift

Rodimus looks down at his literal smoldering servos and tries to calm down.

“Where’s our crewmate?”--Megatron

The captain was about to talk when it was interrupted by screaming.

“What in the—”--Captain

“Admiral! What in the blazes is—”--Captain

“FIRE! FIRE NEAR THE FUEL TANKS! FIRE NEAR THE—”--Crewmate

BOO—BBBBBEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPP!

Magnus and Megatron had never seen the look of horror that fell across Rodimus’s face when the transmission abruptly ended.

Drift had to drag him back to his chair before he fell to the ground and called Ratchet in.

The Co-captain hadn’t made any movement or sound.

Just clutching his chassis with a shaking servo.

Magnus and Megatron took charge while Ratchet were checking on Rodimus.

It didn’t take long for the Lost Light to find the pirate’s ship.

Not when they could see where the fiery blast came from.

The ship makes it to the location in record time.

Except there was no ship.

Or one intact at least.

It was just burnt pieces of wreckage and parts floating around.

And one Autobot’s frame floating limply amongst it.

A team was sent out to get Moonstreaker’s body.

Rodimus wanted to go but was ruled out when he nearly collapsed again trying to stand up.

Ratchet ran to the med bay hearing over the coms that Moonstreaker was still alive.

Rodimus nearly bursted out of the room if Drift hadn’t talked him into waiting.

What good was he in the medbay if she was in critical condition?

The news of Moonstreaker’s return to the Lost Light quickly spread like wildfire.

More specifically, to a red minibot how looked like he was going to cry at any moment.

Swerve cursed and cursed for being small and having the others hold him back from running to the med bay.

He already felt awful for not doing more in the invasion and then hearing that Moonstreaker had been kidnapped by them.

Skids and some of the others helped close the bar early for Swerve.

The moment that Ratchet had given the clear for visitors after getting her stable, Rodimus and Swerve were one in line.

Swerve was in the room when Moonstreaker woke up.

Moonstreaker slowly opens her optics to see a surprised Swerve.

“’werve?”—Moonstreaker

The minibot gasps and the tears start rolling down his face.

“Moonie!”--Swerve

She winces at the sudden noise.

“Oh, Primus sorry!”--Swerve

Moonstreaker smiles at him, tears and all.

She carefully wipes them.

Swerve cries even harder holding both of his servos on the servo on his cheek.

“How? Where is—”—Moonstreaker

Harsh pede steps start getting louder.

Swerve instinctively holds her servo tighter.

“Rodimus calm down!”--Velocity

BANG!

Rodimus suddenly appears in front of the pair looking just as shocked Swerve had been.

Swerve slowly puts her servo back down, much to the pairs want.

“I’ll leave you two alone. Nice to see you online and all Moonie.”--Swerve

Moonstreaker has her servo extended a bit longer as Swerve leaves the med bay.

Rodimus takes her servo and lets out a vent of relief before the tears start prickling.

She squeezes her brother’s servo in comfort.

“Hey Roddy.”--Moonstreaker

He smiles letting a couple of stray tears fall.

“Hey Moonie.”--Rodimus

[spockandawe]

trinketsandtangles

  An acceptable alternative to the scavengers being...

PLEASE TELL ME THIS IDEA ENDS WITH CYGATE HAPPINESS BUT ALSO KILLMASTER/WHIRL BECAUSE I HATE MYSELF FOR SHIPPING IT BUT I DO

YES! Cygate happiness is extremely important! Especially if combined with, okay. So when they reunite, things are going to be emotionally Complicated, because Tailgate drove him away to protect him, but also hurt him a lot in the process, and then it turns out that if he hadn’t done that thing he wouldn’t have been trapped, maybe there were other ways around this, etc. And Cyclonus has been very thoroughly rejected, down to Tailgate trying to return his innermost energon and him sitting on their corpse ship marking up his own face. As upset as he was, Cyclonus was very delicate about not demanding things from Tailgate. No ‘let me stay with you’, but ‘I don’t want to leave you.’ Statements of emotions rather than requests, which is a subtle but important distinction. Meanwhile, Tailgate is aware of just how much he fucked up Cyclonus.

So when Tailgate shows back up with a new friend.... well........ Tailgate shouldn’t really be the one approaching Cyclonus, not when he just hurt him so badly, right? Or is it that Cyclonus shouldn’t be approaching Tailgate because it would be pressuring him after Tailgate very firmly told him no? Whoops, it’s a stalemate where this is a dynamic where I am honestly T H E R E for romantic ‘oh no he found someone else I will step aside and let them be happy’ tropes. But! Cygate is an unstoppable force of love and even if they’re slow to be willing to reach out to each other again, it’s going to happen. Especially since their hearts start pulling them into orbit around each other again almost right away, never mind that each of them is trying to give the other his space.

And! From that point. We have that electric, passionate Whirl+Killmaster dynamic out there again, and oh my GOODNESS do I ship it. If Tailgate and Killmaster do bond, then there’s a little bit of a buffer in the middle there, where Whirl has been trying to take care of Cyclonus, and Killmaster would be trying to support Tailgate, but once the cygate resolves, they’re free to go for broke, baby! But! From the opposite direction, Cyclonus doesn’t want Whirl getting hurt, and Tailgate doesn’t want Killmaster (or Whirl) getting hurt, and each of them has some leverage to lean on one of the prospective combatants and get them to chill out. 

Plus, once things are calm, I am dead curious about whether Whirl remembers the things Megatron said about him never getting a real fight through the whole war, and how that plays into his interactions with Killmaster. And Killmaster might be able to fight like whoa, but he’s also crazy smart, and I want to see what he’s like when he slows down enough to have a conversation. AND!! Both of them are creative types, where they have different areas of specialty, but they both make delicate, sophisticated mechanical devices. I want bonding, I want potential collaboration for reasons of [plot], and I want whatever sloppy alien makeouts are like when one person is missing a mouth and the other one is made of spikes.

(if the scavengers are there, please, please let them try to give anybody who needs it romantic advice. i need more of the mtmte revolution type content. one issue was not enough)

[notwhelmedyet]

TF Fanfic Census 2017 (pt. 4) : IDW Reader Response

Ever wonder what the ‘average’ reader response to fanfic in this fandom was? ...Well, that turns out to be hard to quantify, but I’ve got a lot of graphs and I’m gonna try.

Then we’ll look at the most popular IDW fics and see if they’ve got anything in common.

So, first off! If you have trouble reading the graphs, they’re also available in an image post here and here.

Now let’s look at IDW compared to some other Transformers shows. Shows that have aired on television recently have higher hits, which I’m taking to mean a larger readership. (The size of each bubble indicates the number of stories published) However, maybe readers reread those series more often.

IDW has a smaller median hits than any of the major sub-fandoms except Gen 1, but has the highest median kudos. Cool! That seems to indicate that IDW readers are really invested and active readers. (Or, possibly that all of the readers are also writers and they know how much their fellow writers appreciate kudos.)

I’m going to usually neglect comments and bookmarks for this analysis because they’re usually equal and somewhere between 2 and 5. Pretty boring.

Also, I should note that there are some things I can’t measure here. Presumably a lot of popular works are well written, by well-regarded writers, about characters or subjects people wanted to read about etc. I can only quantify data that is tagged and easily searchable.

Anyway, let’s look at Transformers compared to some other random fanfiction communities.

Yeah, I randomly picked a bunch of things I’ve read fanfic from + Harry Potter cause it’s big. Sue me.

Anyway, I’d say the interesting trend here is the lack of a trend. There’s no correlation between number of stories published and hits or kudos. There’s a general trend line: the more hits you get, the more readers are around to give kudos, which is what’s throwing the Marvel cinematic stuff up so high. IDW Transformers is a bit of an outlier for median kudos compared to median hits. 👍

Breaking It Down

Let’s get interesting - Does the rating of a fic (G, T, M, or E) impact its reader response? What about one-shots versus multichapter stories?

Looking at hits, we can see that readership is strongly stratified. If you want more hits, write multi-chapter works and write explicit fic. (There may be a wordcount bias here, we’ll explore that later)

But then, if we look at Kudos, we see that gap narrow. One-shots, G, and T fics get fewer many fewer hits, but only somewhat fewer kudos. This is borne out by my sample data, where we can examine median Kudos/Hits directly:

6% for explicit works, 7% for mature and teen works, and 9% for gen works

So if you’re writing explicit fic and have a low kudos to hits ratio, don’t worry - that’s apparently normal.

Comments is...weird. Overall, the readership here is doing a healthy amount of commenting, obviously most of it on works with lots of chapters and lots of hits. The other fandoms I looked at had between 1 and 7 as their median number of comments, while AO3 as a whole has a median of 3.

Overall, good work readers! Keep commenting! Us authors love comments, it literally makes my night when I get a comment. 😍

Bookmarks are less weird. They’re basically hits, scaled down by a factor of ten. No big surprises here. The AO3 median here is 2, so once again we’ve got some invested readers compared to the average. 👍

Now, I mentioned above that length and reader response are generally proportional. @toastystats has done some general analysis on this if you wanna check that out. I also pulled from our sample data to generate the median values for different wordcount ranges (we top out at 5000 because there were so few >10,000 word fics in the sample).

Here we can see response climbs with wordcount but that the increase from fics 2500-5000 words to >5000 words is fairly insignificant.This could just be due to the small sample size, however.

So is the link between response to M and E works just because they’re more likely to be longer? Remember that the median wordcount by rating broke down as such:

G: 857, T: 1509, M: 2600, E: 2626

Let’s graph it and see.

Not so much - M and E are nearly identical median lengths but have very different median responses. Meanwhile G and T have fairly different median lengths but have very similar median responses.

We see a similar trend in bookmarks and comments, though the G to T gap widens somewhat.

What does this mean? Well, presumably, readers come in knowing what sort of fanfiction they want to read and readers of different genres/ratings respond to fanfiction in different ways. *shrugs* You could probably do a whole post on trying to quantify this one trend.

Update Year

Well, that was interesting. I don’t know if we learned anything, but charts are pretty. Let’s look at another dataset that might not tell us anything - the year works were last updated. I’ve looked as far back as 2012 because before then there are a vanishingly small number of IDW fics.

Okay, so there’s a clear trend here. Newer works have fewer hits. Which makes a lot of sense; 2013 works have had years of readers tag searching and browsing to increase their readership.

This chart doesn’t necessarily mean that there are fewer readers now than in the past, though I can’t disprove that either.

Interestingly, while kudos holds with the general decline in hits when viewed by update years, comments and bookmarks hold steady. Either the vast majority of comments and bookmarks happen when a work is first published or...I haven’t come up with a second theory yet. Ideas?

‘Top 20‘ - What Defines the Most Popular Works?

To answer this question, I collected data on all works that fell in the top 20 / first page of works ranked by kudos, hits, bookmarks and comments. There was a lot of overlap: only 44 works occupy these 80 spaces. Let’s see what they have in common.

Well, the first thing we can see is that a top 20 fic is far more likely to be explicit and far less likely to be mature or gen rated. Surprise, surprise.

I had figured the majority of top 20 fics would be about the cast of MTMTE/LL, since that seems to be the most popular series. Ah...nope. This is partly due to crossovers - most of the works in that vague ‘other’ category are about Optimus Prime and other bots that were main characters in Gen 1.

If we look at common traits...there are a lot of crossovers (anything with multiple series tagged or where the author said they were combining IDW with G1) and there’s a lot of alternate universes.

Short story and/or drabble collections are much more common in the top 20 than in general - 18% here vs. 4% of all IDW fics.

This is a lovely chart that Tumblr has mangled. With a tiny sample set I was able to assess what the primary pairing was in fics with a singular focal relaionship. The frequency of these relationships is shown here: Megatron/Optimus Prime (7), Drift/Ratchet (5), Optimus Prime/Starscream (2) and Cyclonus/Tailgate (2) were the only focal couples to appear more than once.

Color indicates faction - red for Autobot/Autobot, purple for Con/Con and grey for cross-faction or other.

So, so far we’ve learned that to Top 20 are disproportionately explicit, featuring lots of crossovers and AUs. Also, they’re big into MegOp. When were they posted (and for how many years?)

This chart is showing us the start and most recent update for all the fics in the ‘Top 20′. Bubble size indicates number of fics matching those years, color indicates number of years the fics were in-progress (red=1, orange=2, green=3 etc.) We can see that the vast majority of ‘Top 20′ fics began in 2015 or earlier. A lot of them are still in progress or ended recently (36% updated in 2017).

General Stats

What else defines the most popular works? Well, length, for one thing. The median IDW fic is 1 chapter long, while the median ‘Top 20′ fic is 21 chapters. The median IDW fic is about 1743 words long, while the median ‘Top 20′ fic is 59,500 words long. While 86% of all IDW fics are currently complete, only 62% of ‘Top 20′ fics are already complete.

Just for fun, there are 24 writers represented in the 44 most popular fics. 24 fics showed up on only 1 ‘Top 20′ list, while 8 appeared on 2 or 3 lists.

4 fics showed up on every single ‘Top 20′ list: Turn of a Switch by spaceliquid, The Chemicals Between Us by SlimReaper, Domestic Electronics by Bibliotecaria_D and Locks to Fit the Keys by TF_Pratchet and Im_The_Doctor.

So congrats to those four authors (and everyone else on the ‘Top 20′ list)!

What’s Next?

Pt. 1 - Quantifying TF Fanfiction between Adaptations

Pt. 2 - Relationship Scoreboard (All Series) - A Quick Look at the Most Popular Pairings

Pt. 3 - Quantifying Properties of IDW TF Fanfiction

pt 4 - this post!

pt 5 - IDW Relationship Spectacular (½)

pt 6 - IDW Relationship Spectacular (2/2)