#tf torchbearers

[dividingcosmos]

Cool shots of the Torchbearers and Victorion (One of, if not my favourite, Combiners)

[ultramagnys]

THEYRE DONE. PHEEEEW GOLLY

victorion and windblade (colored) for @womenintransformers

[indragonsaur]

Transformers: Cybertron chronicles: Rust dust and Dustup

[pyrotechnicdarts]

can we please have a tf continuity with more than 1 or 2 returning female transformers in the main cast again please

[missriyochuchi]

The Torchbearer and the Flagbearer

Summary: The Torchbearer and the Flagbearer meet in the Jardin des Tuileries after the Opening Ceremony and commiserate about the Olympic Games.

Word count: 1.7k

Warnings: Established relationship. Mentions of death.

Notes: I imagined these two like otherworldly beings blessing the games, what with the Olympics being invented by ancient Greeks as a partly religious event. As such, I would have preferred to keep them gender neutral, but because I’m writing this in a pinch and want to be able to distinguish between them without constantly using their names, I opted for gendered pronouns. But nothing about their physical descriptions are particularly gendered; I’m just leaning on the old linguistic quirk lol Also, how tf is there no video of the Flagbearer!? I wanted to gif her/their entrance but couldn’t find a damn thing! She/They deserves more love!

Read on AO3 - Part 2 - Part 3

Darkness cloaks the Jardin des Tuileries. Even the cauldron floating above its center offers little illumination on the ground. Shadows play along the perimeter, tourists passing in the midnight hour, their idle conversations lost to the humid air. The soft patter of rain echoes across the masonry scattered throughout the empty park. Only the occasional creak of metallic plates and restless hoofbeats betray the garden’s solitary visitors.

The Flagbearer looks up at the orange orb in the sky. She marvels at the city’s ingenuity. Decades of oil and gas have finally given way to an electric fire. Only with such technological advancements could engineers even dream of safely flying the eternal flame above the City of Lights. If only the future was as assuredly bright, the Flagbearer thinks. Her gaze drifts back down to the darkness below, the surrounding chill creeping back into her senses. Her horse stirs beneath her and jostles her mind back to the present.

“Easy, Zeus,” she murmurs as she presses her legs to the animal’s sides in an attempt to soothe both their anxieties. “Patience.”

No Olympic Games are ever truly free of political problems, an inevitability of any gathering between disparate peoples, but they weigh heavier on the Flagbearer’s mind now more than ever. Her part in the Opening Ceremony is small but significant, and though she spends less time among the crowds than her eternal counterpart, she catches enough to gauge that tensions are higher than ever before. The darkness of the night seems to encroach and bleed into the darkness in her mind as she ponders human history and her role in it. Before her resolve could lurch under the gravity of her thoughts, the light crunch of gravel announces his arrival.

“You are late,” the Flagbearer intones harshly. She steers her steed to turn around and face the approaching footsteps.

Enough ambient light creeps across the park to distinguish the Torchbearer’s silhouette, catching on the gauzy pieces of his attire bobbing in the breeze. His stride is sure, his stature straight, betraying neither weariness nor arrogance. Only a few meters away, he shrugs and raises his palms out at his sides, teasing, “I did not have a ride.”

The Flagbearer is unmoved but in no mood to quarrel. “How are you, my love?” Her voice floats soft and light through the misty drizzle.

“Exhausted.” His shoulders slump fractionally, perceptible only to his eternal flame facing him. “And you?”

“Concerned.”

The Torchbearer reaches for the horse’s muzzle and runs a familiar hand along his nose. “I hope you are not as troubled as your rider, mon joli cheval.” Zeus bows his long head and huffs in response. His palm runs along the animal’s left flank, lifting once he reaches the Flagbearer’s side. He extends both hands to her gloved ones and helps her to the ground.

“What ails my sweet?” He pinches her chin.

She hums and takes one of his hands in both of hers, squeezing hard enough to convey her worry. “In all our years shepherding these games, did you ever know the atmosphere to be this—”

“I know. The world is—”

“Restless.”

“Yes, and—”

“Not at peace.”

“Never has been, my love.”

“I do not remember it ever being this—”

“Your worries are not unfounded, cherie, but you must redirect your attention elsewhere.”

They circle the base beneath the cauldron, hand in hand. Zeus follows close behind, his reins tied to the saddle. While the nightlife bustles beyond the park’s pocket of silence, the few security guards on duty watch the hooded figures from a distance.

Event organizers had explicitly and numerously instructed personnel not to approach or engage with the Torchbearer and Flagbearer. They were both host and blessing to the festivities, and decades of tradition dictated that a respectful, neutral distance be maintained between the host nation and the two Olympic guardians so that there would be no suspicion of impropriety or favoritism during competition.

The Flagbearer recoils, incredulous. “How can you be so indifferent to the violence and rhetoric—”

“I am surprised that between the two of us, you, in your glittering armor, are the first to lose hope and declare defeat.”

“I have not!��� She stops them in their orbit and shoves his hand back to his side.

The Torchbearer laughs. He crooks a finger under her chin and raises her gaze. She sighs and closes her eyes as the backs of his fingers graze her cheek. Her hands come up to open and press his palm to the side of her face, his pressure more than his warmth a soothing balm to her inner turmoil. Her voice is low and leaden when she continues.

“I merely wonder if the gods have not tasked us with an impossible mission.”

The Torchbearer falls silent as he contemplates the Flagbearer’s concerns. She did not interact with humans as much as he did, a natural consequence of their separate roles. While the Olympic torch exchanged hands with every kind of man and woman, the Olympic flag exchanged hands with a significantly select few. As a result, the Flagbearer’s opinion of humanity often leaned towards the optimistic while the Torchbearer’s leaned towards the pessimistic. He had come to know, better than she, the complexities of human nature, their heavenly highs and their hellish lows. They spent decades arguing about the tenuous balance. Now, as he watches his partner’s shoulders sag with the weight of the world, he finds himself despondent that she seems poised to concede to his viewpoint and knows it, knows that she lost this one important battle. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and guides their walk away from the cauldron.

“Plus vite, Plus haute, Plus fort.” The Torchbearer rattles off the Olympic motto.

“Citius, Altius, Fortius, my dear. Latin may be dead, but it is still your mother tongue.”

“‘Ensemble.’ C’est la partie importante. And that is precisely what they are doing and continue to do.”

“But for how long? We do not have a future if they do not, and my darling, I do not see—”

“We cannot predict the future any more than humans can. It is none of our concern. The gods will take care of us.”

“The gods have abandoned us, just as the humans have abandoned them.” The Flagbearer catches the ice in her voice and does her best to warm her vitriol. “We do not exist outside these games, my love. And if these games end, if the world can find no purpose to these communal competitions—”

Silence. The specter of death looms large in their periphery. Every Closing Ceremony marks the end of their days on Earth, a return to a darkness beyond darkness. And every two years, they are reborn and reimagined back into existence to inspire and perform and protect the Olympic Games. Despite the constancy of this cyclical event, the eternal guardians find humans increasingly less hospitable to the ideals they represent. What is sportsmanship to a world where even the rules of war no longer hold?

“Steel your heart as this city has steeled your form.” The Torchbearer steps close enough for the edge of his hood to kiss hers. “The next host cities have been decided, their venues under construction. We still have a future. There is no reason to despair.”

“For now.”

“For now.” He sighs at her obstinacy, but knows not to push further or risk wasting precious moments on a fruitless fight. “In the meantime, the games have begun, and we do not have much time together.”

A smirk plays beneath the Flagbearer’s hood. She perks up at her partner’s motives. “Sixteen days is not enough to spend with you.” She steps closer and brings her forehead to his. She squeezes his biceps, and he rubs her elbows in return. They exchange breaths for a moment of eternity.

“Come.” The Torchbearer takes her hands and swings her in circles. Their laughs echo as they near the horse. “Much of the city has changed since we were last here, and you will not see them if you continue to sulk beneath the cauldron.”

The Flagbearer mounts Zeus and extends an arm to help the Torchbearer take a seat behind her. He presses his front to her back, unbothered by her damp cape. He slides his arms along either side of her waist and rests his hands atop hers on the horn of the saddle. The horse ambles forward towards the city streets.

Buoyed by the Torchbearer’s embrace, the Flagbearer regains a sliver of her hope and optimism. “The Italians will call on us next. Perhaps we will meet a changed world by then.”

“We always do. I wonder what forms they have planned for us.”

“I quite like this form on you, my dear. The cut of your jacket complements you well.”

“As does this armor on you, mon amour.” His hands find the edge of her cuirass and sneak nimble fingers to the suit underneath.

She giggles at the light pressure below her ribcage. “I will miss hearing you speak this city’s language.”

The Torchbearer tightens his hold on the Flagbearer, impressing his being into hers. “You worry about community and forget that we are in the City of Love.”

“Paris is not the world, my dear.” They sway in sync as Zeus carries them towards the edge of the garden.

“Perhaps, but the Olympic Village is, or at least, as close an approximation as the humans are capable of producing. If it is unity you seek, we will surely find a certain kind—”

“You said you were exhausted.” Amusement lightens the Flagbearer’s tone, her heavy mind now fizzy with thoughts of the Torchbearer’s amorous intentions.

“Never enough to deter me from you.” He presses his chin to her shoulder, his words vibrating down the expanse of her armor. “Would you waste the energy of the players’ liaisons?”

Her hood whips to the side as he squeezes the unarmored flesh of her upper thigh. Before she can answer, he takes the reins and brings Zeus to a gallop towards the Olympic Village.

“No more talk,” he heaves with urgency. “I need you before the sun rises and our duties begin again.”

Footnotes:

mon joli cheval - my pretty horse cherie - dear Plus vite, Plus haute, Plus fort (French) / Citius, Altius, Fortius (Latin) - Faster, Higher, Stronger ‘Ensemble.’ C’est la partie importante. (French) - ‘Together.’ That is the important part. mon amour - my love

“The 100% electric flame burns no fuel. The ring of fire uses 40 LED spotlights to illuminate the cloud created by 200 high-pressure misting nozzles.” (source)

According to the engineers who built the mechanical horse, its name is Zeus.

[waltzovr]

heres my tf idw/mtmte oc Lunaris ^_^

Shes an outlier + ex-torchbearer from Caminus who ended up running away with a group of bounty hunters!! I need to draw the rest of her old crewmates sigh, you can find her toyhouse here

Voiceclaim atm - Nilin (Remember Me)

[syscultureis]

System culture is watching the Olympics opening ceremony after being stressed tf out and. oh no. pk;m new Torchbearer

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[hype-old-posts]

excuse me, how tf does torchbearer have clancy's mask at the end of navigating????

where'd he get that from

[arceespinkgun]

I wish the Rust Renegades had appeared in the TF media I really enjoy... like imagine in G1 getting to see a moment in which Rumble goes, "Victorion? We're gonna turn ya into... Loserion!" and then Stormclash strangling the diodes out of him while her sister Skyburst tries to tell her it's not worth it. Or Stormclash and Blades sparring! Or Rust Dust and Moonracer being friends! Or Pyra Magna and Thunderwing clashing over the Matrix!

Because I really hated how the conflict between Autobots and Decepticons was written in IDW and IDW2 and Pyra Magna's character especially is so heavily linked to that and her conflict with Optimus Prime depends on how he was portrayed (and I also didn't like how he was written) it makes it hard for me to enjoy the stories where the Rust Renegades were most heavily featured... and I think that's too bad. ...Although a lot of people really enjoyed the IDW comics and how those elements were handled, so what's the excuse of the rest of the fandom...? lol

This team is so cool and I love the idea of a combiner who's full of religious zeal and has the power to invert gravity! If only the Rust Renegades were in something like Cyberverse, I think seeing some kind of clash between Windblade's form of belief and theirs would've been really interesting. Also, hot take, but I think the Rust Renegades should remain neutral, too. I think that would make them + Victorion especially unique and stand out a ton (though because of the Torchbearers' role I think they would definitely work much more closely with Autobots instead of the group destroying and conquering all the time).

[dustbunny105]

Title: Hold Me Closer Fandom: IDW1 Ship: Pyra Magna/Rust Dust Word Count: 100 Rating: G Summary: The Torchbearers have all gotten a little clingier since the change but some show it more than others. A/N: For TF Femslash February's prompt "height difference"! I knew from the moment I saw this prompt that I was gonna write this ship. Bit fluffier than what I had in mind but I'm not mad about it. While you're here, consider donating to Care for Gaza.

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Pyra Magna eases herself into a doze, engine purring as her team settles effortlessly and without fanfare into place around her.

Well. Most of them.

The huff of Rust Dust's vents is loud even over the storm. She climbs none too carefully past the twins, ignoring Skyburst's good-natured grumbling and the swipe of Stormclash's claws, and drops heavily-- as heavily as she can-- onto Pyra's chest. She tucks her face into Pyra's neck and wraps her arms and legs around her, jostling the others.

Reaching carefully around Jumpstream and Dustup, Pyra settles a hand on her back and purrs louder.

[millidew]

shattered glass torchbearers or regular megaempress’ 4 guards + a rust dust recolor? you decide!

[ID: colored sketches of the torchbearers, all cutting off near their middles. clockwise: dust up is colored like flowspade and nightbird, being black and purple with yellow optics and headlights. jumpstream is colored like trickdiamond, being black and yellow with red optics. pyra magna is colored like megaempress, being light grey and black with red optics and detailing. skyburst is colored like moonheart, being black and bright blue with red optics. stormclash is colored like lunaclub, being black and warm pink with a red visor. rust dust in contrast has red “skin,” a yellow-green visor and lights, and pale blue and black colors, resembling kneesocks from panty & stocking with garterbelt. every torchbearer has at least one M shaped mark on their body in their main color.

the second image is a close up on pyra magna with alternate colors, similar to rust dust, with the blue replaced by pale green, so she looks like scanty from PASWG. End ID]

[ultramagnys]

victorion and windblade for @womenintransformers Day 5: TEAMWORK!!!!

had to do a combiner for the teamwork theme but it’s taking me Much longer than usual for obvious reasons. so here’s linework and here’s the colored version!!!

[indragonsaur]

Transformers: Cybertron chronicles: Jumpstream

[thenamesblurrito]

remember that wip i posted a million years ago well IT’S DONE

much like Sweeps, the Torchbearers are a series of drones created with a relic from Solus. unlike Sweeps, they were created on accident, with interference from multiple parties. the Mistress of Flame, Scourge, and the Elite Guard weren’t expecting their tussle to turn into this, but hey, at least they’re cute!

there’s only six of them, and they’re all individual models with different skills, in contrast to the theoretically infinite number of identical Sweeps. they’re also weirdly large for drones, Pyra Magna is larger than a minibot adult. she couldn’t pass for a person though, all of them have a weird combination of adorable and uncanny valley vibes to Cybertronians. they’re much stronger and smarter than Sweeps, which would be great, if they ever actually fought. much to the consternation of Missy and Scourge, both groups of drones refuse to fight each other, and instead spend their time together playing fetch and cuddling

[naaaaaaaaaash]

「Rust Dust」

I love her small design so much !!!

do not repost without my permission.

[pluralsword]

Definitely agree that Aligned has stuff going for it, the Covenant of Primus tripped through what it was trying to say but by gods was it interesting that they framed pre-Quintesson Cybertron as not having a punitive justice system and the Wreckers were just defenders of various polities and peoples and fought off raiders (to make an IDW comparison because we think comparing context from EXRID, Windblade, and Lost Light in context with Aligned is good actually, MTMTE doesn't translate as well) is just like the fuck'n Torchbearers defending low resource consumption Camien villages in the Transformers Annual 2017 "Ghost Stories" and the Quints show up and deliberately impose a punitive justice system that stratifies and enslaves transformers and pits them against each other while the Quintessons reap resource extraction and self-reinforce their toxic behaviors and Cybertron thereafter has to deal with what happened, with pre-contact histories, knowledge systems, and ways of life deeply but not entirely lost.

We don't think the writers of the Covenant of Primus quite realized how writing Aligned this way is just another part of the saga of how subaltern transformers stories get across 'prison and capitalism are bad actually' (see IDW1 Arcee, Axiom Nexus's neoliberal stratification, and later the stories of Anode and Lug, and now Earthspark has actual prison abolition discussion in it between Megs and Op who are both war survivors unable to go home, quietly struggling against a human national security regime, among other examples) and so it's just something that makes the War for Cybertron videogame so fucking sad... (please note that the videogame is really also easily just readable as in tune with Bob Budiansky's The Transformers (Marvel US with the Autobots as valuing autonomy and the Decepticons as valuing hierarchy they say it themselves in the game and the alt-mode hierarchy stuff from the Aligned novels and such doesn't really come up, so videogame WFC, early Marvel US, and IDW2 hit very similar notes except that IDW2 is also a story where gender variation and same-gender love is depicted all over the story on and across both sides and frankly when you look at Galaxies #7-#9 and that Arcee, Greenlight, and Gauge join the Autobots after facing the Reversionists shows that the Autobots to them were the only side that could be trusted to protect their autonomous family structure and not doing a colonialism. WFC has it's flaws but there is a clear conduit between it, the beginning of Transformers and where we are now) The videogame is so sad because the Autobots at that point are clearly trying to uphold a new re-imagined dream of caring for one another while the Decepticons have doubled down on a genocidal military prison-industrial complex. It makes less sense when you try to combine WFC and Prime with the 'bad revolutionary Decepticon' stuff that plays out in CoP itself because then you just get IDW1 Autocracy except this time the Autobots are much less shitty by the time the videogame happens compared to the Autobots at the start of IDW1's Great War.

For us it's less about 'not entering with preconceived notions' as it is about 'considering things for what they are in context with where Transformers was and is going. Like, from a gender perspective, Aligned as it is deeply sad if CoP's 12 to 1 binary gender structure is applied to everything and that's part of why we struggled to connect with it even though as a kid we read all of the novels and really enjoyed Prime... it's part of what turned us off to Transformers for a while combined with our first interactions with IDW being Autocracy (see above) and Windblade Volume 1 (too much of a mess regarding mental health and trying to figure out gender and hungry for they/them pronouns in fiction to try and enjoy chromeblade and without a tumblr or twitter to do so further, but we liked the latter for what it was and love it much more now and do have a way that we enjoy Autocracy that we think our IDW1 fanfic speaks for in that it's part of our getting high on reading robot trans folks dunking on androcentrism mythos).

So... this is all to say that representation as a deep part of the world really helps with a story just as careful considerations of how to frame a worker/slave revolt and if one has left any anarchists depicted well in the picture or not and so forth. Shitting on Aligned or IDW1 for the same flaws and claiming the other is better for not having them is just going to go around in circles. Transformers was in a weird place in the 2010s okay but there were things that came out of that era that have permanently marked things for the better too, like stuff mentioned above (including stuff mentioned by the OP :3) and IDW1 Arcee actually becoming a central part of a story that would reveal itself to be about building love and the end of empires. Okay now we need to stop transformers posting for today lmao but yeah Aligned indeed has more than meets the eye and should be considered with care, just like everything else we mentioned here. :3

Maybe this is a hot take but I’m always a bit disappointed when people read the part about Orion Pax lamenting about Six Lasers and not being allowed inside as only a 'haha' moment and use this to paint him as privileged and out of touch, and completely gloss over the fact that he’s openly talking about an arbitrary form of segregation he is beholden to.

Like this is a genuine plea: I would really like to encourage you all to approach the Aligned Continuity - the novels, the games, TFP and Covenant - all as parts of one big story and read about them, at least a basic summary, all in some capacity. Transformers Prime is only one part of a bigger story and its the one that deviated the most and I think if you engage with all the material with an open mind and DON'T import any ideas from IDW or other continuities, what you will get is a story that is distinct and tragic and rooted in Cybertronians being a colonized people and how they deal with the repercussions afterwards.

And listen, colonization, imperialism and slavery are in the fabric of Science Fiction: most stories you engage with in Sci-Fi, especially older ones, have elements of this and its not always progressive. I think its become so codified that people will gloss over it and not think about what that means. But I really want to encourage you to read the Aligned Continuity through a non-Americanized lens, and really think about whats going on. Because this isn't new to Transformers, but we rarely ever see them on other end, and I personally believe that their societal issues being rooted in Quintesson ideas is important. I think that their world slowly losing energon and stagnating and on the precipice of self-destruction is important.

And I want you to think about this, and this language, and the actions they take as a previously non-ultra violent race into who they become during their war, and think about which characters choose to perpetuate that same colonial violence. And I also want you to acknowledge that no one in Aligned is SO privileged that they were somehow untouched by any form of violence, there is NO ONE in this universe who doesn't, at the very base of their character, understand that something is wrong and that their collective choice to not face that trauma head on is a big part of that. That the layers of shedding those held ideas is a difficult and ugly process.

And I want you to think of the parable of the War of the Primes and how Alpha Trion laments that in the end, the notion that any Prime is somehow 'eviler' because of some arbitrary belief that some of them were 'closer in spark' to Unicron was, in fact, wrong, and that truthfully ALL the Primes had been traumatized by Unicron but they allowed themselves to become divided and didn't communicate their growing anxiety and apathy and rage and it resulted in all of them participating in some form towards their tragic downfall. And I want you to think about Cybertron and the Quintessons and the war they have later on