#vortex & buzzsaw amica goodness

[cleverthylacine]

Chapters: 30/31 Fandom: Transformers - All Media Types Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Ravage/Soundwave (Transformers), Marissa Faireborn/Thundercracker, Howlback/Grimlock (Transformers), Rosanna & Glit (Transformers), Miko Nakadai/Rumble (Transformers), Jazz/Soundwave (Transformers), Optimus Prime/Starscream, Ravage/Soundwave/Jazz (Transformers), Vortex & Buzzsaw (Transformers), Cosmos & Soundwave (Transformers) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Behavior, Substance Abuse, Transformer Sparklings, Human/Transformer Relationships (Transformers), Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing (Transformers), Sticky Sexual Interfacing (Transformers), Spark Sexual Interfacing (Transformers), Energy Field Sexual Interfacing (Transformers), Mood Whiplash, Colonialism, Fix-It, Transformers Spark Bonds, Functionalism (Transformers), Genderfluid Ravage, Hate Crimes, In-Character Poetry, In-Character Political Essays, Primax 1020.27 Iota, Past Sexual Assault, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Neuroatypical Characters, Starscream being Starscream, Decepticon cuddle piles, Ridiculous Robot Pig Latin Series: Part 4 of The Voice of Stanix (Primax 1020.27 Iota), Part 12 of All Hail Ravage Summary:  Operation: Sanctuary--if you can't go home again, make a better one.

Chapter Summary: Vortex and Buzzsaw take Howlback out for a drink before she and Grimlock go to the registry; Rattrap wakes Starscream up at an unholy hour; Cosmos and Soundwave say lots of things that they needed to say and are still going to regret having said.

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(I’m sorry Cos.wave fans, but even before Ravage died in IDW canon to make me grouchy about it, the first thing I noticed about Cosmos and Soundwave was that Cosmos was constantly questioning Soundwave’s motives.)

We are getting close to the end of this third split arc. There were supposed to be 30 chapters in each of the arcs but I think there might be 31. People keep having conversations that they shouldn’t be having in the middle of an interstellar crisis, and since the bullets aren’t actively flying, I have to keep letting them.

[cleverthylacine]

back at you...

19. A character you love that no one else seems to

33. What your alt mode would be if you were a Cybertronian

36. Favorite TF universe(s)

38. How did you get into transformers

19. This is a hard question because even the most generally repulsive characters have their fans and their stans. There are people who love Getaway. I don't get that at all. And of course there are people who are really into Overlord, or Tarn, or Galvatron, often because of the aspects of their characters that most people don't like.

And then there are characters that I love, but there is also so little lore about them that anyone who writes them is basically creating a character who's mostly an OC, like Howlback or Blackcat (Viridian).

I think I would have to say Buzzsaw. You would think that the same people who love Vortex (I made them amicae for a reason) or Scrapper or Wildrider -- and yes they are all very different characters but they all have personality aspects in common with Buzzsaw -- would also be all about Buzzsaw, but he gets overlooked and I honestly think it's because he's a bird. There are people other than me who write about the cassette cattes, but the birbs don't get as much screentime in canon OR fanon.

He really came together for me while I was writing A Few Small Repairs and he was the sarcastic voice of asshole reason who refused to let Soundwave sink into despair over this or that, and would not allow him to sabotage himself when he and Ravi reconciled.

33. Oh, I don't think anyone will be surprised when I say "cat" (or possibly thylacine, but the way the cougaraiders are built is kind of thylacine-like anyway).

36. Mine. It's like IDW, but without all the stuff in IDW that pissed me off, lmao. And also I loved TFP and there is a lot of TFP influence in it. Plus I get to steal the good stuff out of Victory and Kiss Players and Unite Warriors and ignore all the stupid shit, especially the stupid vaguely smutty shit in KP.

38. My gaming group in college watched G1 together and it was a fandom I would get into, then nothing much would be happening so I'd go off and do other things, and return to it when it got interesting again, for years. IDW made me really incredibly freaking mad and then in the worst of the pandemic I started writing fic. And collecting figures.

[cleverthylacine]

thoughts about texaid (in my universe)

So I watched G1 in the 80s because I was in college and all of my gamer geek friends liked it too. We’d watch it in each other’s apartments or the student union or whatever. It was really fun.

There wasn’t really much of an internet then.

I got back into it through the IDW comics although I ragequit when Ravage died because I am that Ravage girl and it took me a while to come back and write my fix-it fic, which turned into a Whole Damn AU.

When I first started reading TF fics I kept running into TexAid everywhere, so much that I thought it was canon. IDW had made so many robots actual canon gay that I thought given how huge IDW was that it must have happened in one of the books I hadn’t read yet.

Therefore, it really never occurred to me when I started Voice of Stanix in 2020 that it shouldn’t be one of the background ships, although I’d already written the little bit where First Aid asks all the right questions to piss Ravage off beyond measure, and I realised unbeknownst to her, there had to be more to it than “First Aid thinks all Cons are freaky and allergic to consent and bodily autonomy because he knows nothing about us,” because of course First Aid knew better than that! There had to be something that made him specifically think Ravi was being abused. What....?

Annnnnnyhow. I got to thinking, now that I knew there was no actual canon for this, how they must have met, and I was talking to @bitegore about it. And there are some usual backstories, many of which are kind of obvious (sex for freedom, you healed me so I let you go and omg I like you) ... but none of them were FUNNY.

And the thing I liked about TexAid was ... it’s just so hilarious that First Aid is this sweet little Autobot medic who really does believe in all the high minded and wonderful Autobot beliefs...

But he’s also so damn kinky that the only person who can really make him happy is a fraggin Decepticon interrogator.

I mean. That is comedy gold. And while VOS is a serious story about Decepticon politics and saving the world from yourself and yourself from the world as much as it is a story about how Ravage and Soundwave fell in love at first sight twice (actually 3 times if online counts), and it’s also an answer to the questions Astolat posed in Victory Condition, there is a lot of humour in it because it would actually be really bleak if there weren’t. And I am the queen of mood whiplash, but in a good way. I hope.

So my HC for how Vortex and First Aid met is that they both have really hard kinks and most of the bdsm clubs in greater Cybertronian space don’t let them in, and they met in the back room at a really notorious underground place. And kept meeting in places like that, till they fell in love.

Because that is SO. MUCH. FUNNIER. than any war-crime-adjacent explanation of how they met.

Also the reason that Aid pissed Ravage off was his misinterpretation of something he’d heard from Buzzsaw (another interrogator, and Vortex’s amica) about the relationship between Megatron, and Ravage and Soundwave together and separately, but I wrote a fic about that.

(Neither Ratchet nor Glit have any idea that First Aid is this much of a freak. When Glit finds out it will be the most hilarious thing ever.)