#when you plan to manipulate a giant robot

[sonderblade]

I had an idea while watching TFP Season 2 episode 5 where Starscream teams up with Silas.

The way Starscream TRIES to be friendly or even have civil conversations with MECH soldiers and/or silas is SO interesting to me! It's when we see Starscream not be so cynical, mean, or plan to backstab someone like we don't see an implication that he would've once they got what they wanted. He was genuinely on board with going along with MECH. whenever he tries to show Silas genuine cooperation like in a scene where MECH finds energon, "Now we'll have enough Energon for our army!" Then Silas gives him a dirty look and Starscream's face turns DEJECTED and says "Your army..." LIKE?!? It's crazy to me that Starscream has so much potential in TFP to like humans or become attached. Wanted to make an AU where Silas realizes that Starscream, although horrible, manipulative, and always scheming- is so very lonely and he takes advantage of that, thinking he'll be nothing but useful information AT FIRST.

Imagine Starscream not knowing how to feel when MECH soldiers do begin talking and conversing back with him, they give him their time and thoughts, they'll tease but not bully, they protect HIM whenever they're out scouting for energon and run into enemies, and even though they're considered underlings, he can't help but feel... warmth towards them. Silas starts easing his doubts, learns about Megatron's treatment, and reaffirms how he was treated was wrong even though Starscream will say he knows it was and claims he doesn't want to be pitied while never admitting out loud that he likes the validation but Silas knows he does, Silas gives him his own room/space saying that since they're both in charge, it's only fitting that he does. Silas is surprised by how good Starscream is at his job. Let's not forget that Starscream was SIC and hid the nemesis for 3 years before Megatron's return while collecting massive amounts of Energon. Silas lets Starscream explore ideas that Megatron would always put down and treats him with some sort of respect, and Starscream THRIVES. MECH starts to become an actual problem, i mean, AGAIN, Starscream was SIC- imagine all the knowledge he has that could upgrade MECH significantly!! Starscream gets attached to Silas and half hates himself for it. Humans are beneath him yet they treated him so much better, welcomed him, and gave him a place to stay. He's no longer lonely, not powerless, and someone is actively choosing to stay and not hurt him. Silas's words have so much stability and he clings to it. Autobots and Decepticons don't accept him but MECH does... Silas does.

Starscream becomes afraid of letting Silas down, afraid that Silas will leave, afraid that Silas will get angry with him and he doesn't like what he's feeling. Why is he so hung up on what Silas feels? Why does he need his approval? Why doesn't he want him to leave? Why does he feel safe around them?

I feel like Silas would develop an attachment too but it takes a while. Silas becomes proud of Starscream's victories, starts to enjoy talking about their evil plans together at like 1 am, starts to enjoy his company to the point he likes being near him, likes being on the battlefield with him, and looks forward to what he's thinking. He does admit that he didn't expect them to work well at first but that he is glad they did and Starscream agrees. They slowly admit things to each other, giving off the smallest hints that they like/care for each other without having to say anything. It's not explicit love or obvious fawning, their development takes its time and it's sort of messy. They do get into arguments but have a mindset of "he'll be back". They do apologize to each other after if u can believe it, focusing their goal on destroying their enemies.

I can imagine an episode that focuses on these two developing their bond by putting them in places where the Autobots or Decepticons are fighting for something, they get involved, everyone fights, retreat happens, and it so happens that everyone involved is stranded in a cave system and need to get out but when the Autobots or Decepticons find Silas/MECH and Starscream separately from each other- that's when their loyalty is put to the test. They're ordering them to give each other up, why are they working together, and what are they planning and though they consider giving each other up, they don't even though they don't trust the other to do the same. And when they finally manage to escape and find themselves together again, it is awkward but also endearing:

Silas: "Glad to see you're not dead. I'll have to admit, I thought you were gonna sell me out."

SS: "I thought the same about you... But I decided that after everything you've done for me, it was the least I could do."

Silas: "How chivalrous of you."

SS: "Yes, yes, now let's get a move on, I'm sure our troops are waiting for us."

They walk towards the entrance of the tunnel,

...

SS: "I'm glad you're not dead too."

--

Another interesting story is Starscream helping Silas become a transformer. Let these two be insane together.

They both don't want to admit that they. Care. About each other. Or that they even have those feelings/thoughts at ALL. But still want the other to KNOW. and MECH soldiers are just watching this wondering when they'll finally get together. I need to draw this bad.

[emperor-kumquat]

Hello Emperor Kumkuat!

This is the next part of last month's questions. I didn't want to overload you, so I split it into several parts. There will be at least five more questions in May:

Which character do you think you changed the most compared to the original?

What diseases do you plan to include in the stories besides the zombie virus (e.g. Hate Plague)?

According to morality, who is the best and worst per faction (According to Actual and Mercy Canon)?

If the previous Bosses fought each other (Overlord, Sunder, Tarn and Kremzeek) who would win (but no body/mind control)?

What ideas do you plan to take from Transformers One, e.g. (miners' life, robot deer, Airacnid as an assassin who worked for Sentinel)? I look forward to your answer.

Thank you for the specific questions, it's always nice to get some of those!

Which character changed the most from the original? Ohhhh I really need to think. So many had slight changes but I think Imperious and Kremzeek had the biggest changes. "Lord Imperious Delirious" is a Transformers character I still know zip about. I took one look at the design and made him a giant spawn of Unicron like Thunderwing of the TFP game. Imperious travels the universe looking for inhabited planets to raze with demonic rainbow light. But Kremzeek goes from a pokemon lil shit to a highly intelligent, manipulative, body-possessing, agender sun alien created by the Emberstone. They can not only speak now, they gaslight!

The only contagious virus in Mercy is the one carried by Airachnid. Otherwise, the Rust Plague now has a vaccine and spray to defeat it. When Cybertronians return to Cybertron, they are supposed to go straight to medical to check for other viruses they might be carrying. The Hate Plague will not be included. Now, Mercy has invented many genetic diseases to allow me to represent some disabilities. Froid has "ventilation system failure" which causes him to overheat easily and die, so he has to refrain from exercise and stress. Kaon has an optic nerve disease which causes his blindness. Characters mistakenly thought Overlord had a fatal brain disease called "regulatory region failure". I would also like to write in more to explain "why can't they just replace their organs with other organs to fix the problem?". A genetic disease means that no matter how many times a part is replaced, eventually, it starts to malfunction because the body isn't equipped to support it. This is why Bludgeon will be deaf and the Minicons like Fix-It unable to have legs.

Oh fun, let's talk about morality in Mercy! I'll pick some of the badies.... Airachnid is just plain cruel. Shockwave did way too many horrible experiments on bots and is the cause of Tarn & co's trauma. Megatron was pretty bad too (though you can justify him more as a former slave). Altero the Vehicon mafia boss will get way too genocidal. Necrose the Vehicon is way too fascinated with death and does messed up things like wear human skulls and bones as a necklace (campers he claims to have killed). I also wanted to include Coldstar as a minor but very cruel scientist in someone's past.

Bad Autobots! Fortress Maximus before the War had the job of deciding which newly forged Cybertronians went into slavery. Slingshot, one of the Aerialbots, is very discriminatory and has an ableist scene against Froid. Silverbolt absorbed those attitudes and becomes an offensive member of the council (he will display the Cybertronian equivalent of transphobia too). Devcon is very in your face discriminatory and the type who wants all Decepticons dead, end of story. Prowl isn't evil exactly, he has goodness in him, but he believes every racial bias (like red eyes=evil) and tries to teach them to the player.

When it comes to the Autobots, their badness usually shows in the form of being very discriminatory. Some of them are still classist, still racist, still ableist, etc. I write more Autobots this way than Decepticons. But not all Autobots—it is still very important to me that this is not what Optimus Prime stood for and anyone truly dedicated to his cause knows better. Characters like Bumblebee, Dominus Ambus, Metalhawk, Star Saber, and Dr. Cogwheel are/were incredibly kindhearted and open-minded.

4. Ok so if all the bosses had to fight each other with no mind- or body-control?? Overlord, easy win. The bot turned his own skin into the same material as the Apex Armor basically. Dude's absolutely jacked and has 41 weapons. Sunder is not strong without his mind-control powers at all. His second resort is flinging his own dark energon blood at you to try to nauseate you. Third resort is starting a zombie apocalypse distraction, but Overlord wouldn't be bothered. Overlord would also destroy every member of Loyalty (Tarn, Vos, Kaon, Helex, Tesarus) because he is immune to their powers. Loyalty would also destroy Sunder without his mind-control powers. If he had them, he could stand a change against Tarn & co at close-range but fall to Vos and Kaon who normally attack beyond his range. Kremzeek would just watch it all happen I guess! No one can really physically hurt Kremzeek without the right tools. But Kremzeek can't really hurt you either without the right tools.

5. Yes haha I do want to use the deer robots from Transformers: One and stick them in the background somewhere. Apart from that, there isn't really anything else I was planning to use at this moment in time. Maybe a Vehicon can be golden as a reference!

[captain-heartstrings]

Question about your Polyverse AU: I’m a bit new to your AU, I saw the siblings post, but I wanna know…where are the mom and dad?

(Basically I wanna see art of what happened to the mom and dad, but you don’t have to draw the art if you don’t want to it’s your choice this is just a request)

Uhm so- You said you're new so you might have missed it but I explained the Poly sibs parental situation in the plot summary i made >>> HERE <<< a couple days ago. but i guess i did kinda gloss over it so i'll be more specific- and ill try to include some doodles!!!

The polysibs (excluding Sillybilly/Yourself, he's very new, and adopted so, ignore him.) have no parents- instead they have this giant eldritch angelic abomination known as The Collective

The Collective is a GIANT MASS of angels that gave up their physical form to SMUSH themselves all together to gain enough power to change the code of the fucking universe like a god. Why did they do that? you might ask?

Oh ya know. To try and make a genocidal angelic bio weapon that would kill all the "flawed" people and demons on earth and destroy hell by committing angel mitosis and code manipulation. They failed the first three times (2D, BB, Sally) and made Miku and Keith together. Keith was their golden child, the hero they were looking for, the bitch with the plot armor and the voice that warps reality- and they basically put Miku in a robot body to control her into being Keith's body guard.

Safe to say- this plan didn't work when Keith fell in love with a "flawed" mercenary, hot demon babe, and "flawed" demon ghost hybrid.

They brought him up to heaven when he was old enough and showed him all his partners wrong doings and everything and mans was unphased. he said fuck yo shit I'm in love with them.

and The Collective got pissy- but turns out being mushed together for that long is uh??? not good for you- so while BF and co. are fleeing the shit outta heaven, goopy toothpaste mcgee falls off the edge of heaven LITERALLY cause its a giant sky palace- and its so fucking corrupted it can't co-ordinate with all of itself to fly and not get itself thrown into the code.

In the code- the ACTUAL gods of Polyverse, Chaos and Order, are like 'ur a fucking dumbass' and pull the collective apart LITERALLY limb from limb in what quite possibly might be my favorite interaction of the whole RP to the point where summarizing it does no justice you can read it here if you want. (Mild Gore TW)

SO IN CONCLUSION:

Bf and his siblings have no parent anymore. They all practically disowned them for trying to control their lives in a very fucked up way, and then the gods of the universe DESTROYED them so like. YIKES LOL.

[nicorobinohara]

The world you deserve...

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“Friend” (Tomodachi, in the Japanese original)

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R.femele (Childhood best friend)

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Part: 1

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…Childhood

- when he was still just a little boy invisible to the world

He was the strange boy in the class. Quiet, isolated, always looking from afar at the group playing.

While everyone laughed and made plans to "save the world", you were the only one who really looked at him. The only one who asked if he was okay. Who shared his snack. Who heard his daydreams about giant robots, masked heroes and a future that no one else saw seriously.

You smiled and said:

"If this whole world turns to dust, I would still choose to stay on your side."

And that's when he decided that you would be his world.

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-But then... the affection became a silent obsession.

While you saw friendship,

He saw destiny.

While you were kind to everyone,

He thought he was being betrayed.

And that's why he began to manipulate everything... subtly.

It made you get away from others, get lost in problems that only he could help solve.

He made you depend on him, emotionally.

Not because it was cruel...

But because he couldn't stand the idea of losing you.

———————

- Deep down, he's still that boy.

The boy who saw you as a gentle star in an empty sky.

He loves you. Not as someone loves - but as someone needs.

And he swears:

"I would never hurt you... everyone else, yes. But you? You are my salvation."

"My dear dreamer" carries both affection and tragedy. He, with all the impossible dreams, clung to these words as if they were the only place where he could breathe.

-Late Afternoon, Summer 1971

The sky was painted in shades of orange, and the grass in the field swayed slowly in the wind.

You were sitting with him, both away from the rest of the group. While the children played saving the world with stick swords and capes made of towels, he looked at the ground, drawing circles with a dry branch.

- "They never let me play with them."

You sighed, pulling him by the sleeve until his shoulders touched.

- "It's because they can't see what I see."

He turned his face, curious.

- "And what do you see?"

You smiled, your eyes filled with a rare tenderness:

- "A boy who carries an entire universe inside his head."

- "My dear dreamer."

He froze. It was the first time someone called him that.

The first time someone named their dreams - and didn't make fun of them.

And at that moment, he decided:

"If the world needs to be saved... then it will be the world it deserves. A world where she never looks at anyone else but me."

-Two lonely hearts that recognized themselves in silence - you, calm and shy, him, isolated and dreamy. And now both with masks, creating a small secret world where only you two existed.

- In the secret hiding place, behind the school - Autumn, 1972

The dry leaves slamed under your feet as you approached the old abandoned warehouse. Nobody knew, but there was the refuge of you two. It was where he could talk about his dreams, and you... where he could, finally, exist without fear.

He was already there, sitting with his knees close to his chest, wearing his mask - the first version, made of cardboard and glue. That symbol was already drawn: the eye and the hand. He thought it was an emblem of courage.

You, in silence, took the little cat mask out of your backpack. He had made it with a cream-colored cardboard, drawing thin mustaches with colored pencils.

You put her on your face with an almost ceremonial care, approaching him with a racing heart.

He looked.

You didn't say anything.

He just touched his mask to his, lightly, like an innocent little kiss.

It was your silent ritual. A gesture only from you.

A "hello", a "I missed you", a "I understand you".

And he, inside, exploded in silence.

- "You know... I'm going to build a world just for the two of us." - he said softly, his words muffled by the mask.

- "A world where no one else can touch us."

You only answered with a soft nod... and a new touch of mask. Your way of saying:

- "I believe in your world, my dear dreamer."

-The farewell between two children who only had each other - even more so when one of them was the other's safe haven. This may be the moment that defines the birth of the "Friend" as a villain: the instant when he feels that the world stole him from you.

– Train Station, End of Winter, 1973

The sky was cloudy, as if even he knew that this was the end of a small universe. You were wearing a coat and scarf, with the kitten mask hanging around your neck. His small suitcase weighed less than his heart.

He was there, standing on the platform, quiet... mask on his face.

You ran to him, with teary eyes.

- "I... I don't want to go." - his voice came out trembling, thin, as if he were going to fall apart with the wind.

He didn't answer. I didn't know what to say. Because, deep down, he thought that if he was silent, you wouldn't leave.

You hugged him tightly, tightly, as if you wanted to freeze the moment.

- "I'm sorry... please... I'm sorry for leaving you."

He felt the world collapse in silence. It was as if reality was tearing right there, between his arms.

You moved your face away just a little and, with trembling hands, put on your mask.

He was still with his.

And for the last time...

He put his cat mask on his.

But this time, his gesture was desperate, sad, almost a request:

- "Don't forget me... my dear dreamer..."

The train beeped.

You went up on your back, crying.

He stayed there. Stop. Without running. Without shouting. Just... stop.

And when the train left and took you away, he still stayed there for hours, with the mask glued to his face.

And that day, alone, he whispered:

- "If the world took you away from me... then I'll take the world back."

[random-vision-vr]

For Mr. Puzzles, have you ever heard of Harley Sawyer?

He is the former protégé of Elliot Ludwig turned head of Playtime Co.'s Special Projects division and the director of the Bigger Bodies Initiative, the catalyst that had led to the company's experiments revolving around orphaned children, as well as its eventual downfall. Realizing that Playtime was a failure, Sawyer tried to save it through his experiments, turning people of all ages into living toys that would work for the company. However, Sawyer would prove to be a liability causing numerous problems, culminating in the "Theater Incident", which led Leith Pierre to betray him and turn him into an experiment himself which was known as Experiment-1354: The Doctor. What made Sawyer stand out from the other experiments is that instead of getting a physical body, he was turned into a digital entity in the factory's systems.

After the Hour of Joy and the fall of Playtime, the Doctor was forced to partner up with the Prototype, running the factory's prison where he tortured and killed toys for his own amusement with his "pets": Yarnaby and the Nightmare Critters, including the large Baba Chops. All the while, the Prototype and the Doctor worked together to achieve the former's enigmatic end goal.

It's unknown how Harley Sawyer looked as a human, but "The Doctor - Chapter 4 Cinematic Trailer" confirms he was white. As Experiment-1354, Harley was reduced to three organs (specifically the lungs, heart and unusually giant brain), which are stored and kept alive within machines that are scattered around the prison.

Unlike the other experiments, which had superhuman physical bodies, the Doctor is digital. When he looks through the TV screens scarried throughout the factory, he'll appear as an eye that changes depending on his mood. His eye is usually white during his speeches, but turns yellow with hands coming out of it while hunting for the Intruder, and black-and-red during his jumpscare. He has several other unused eye animations.

When he decides to face the Intruder personally, he takes control of mechanical bodies with long robotic arms and legs, and a TV head that displays his eye. All these bodies wear white cloaks made of lab coats stitched together, with a few in particular wearing robes made out of lab coats. In "The Doctor - Chapter 4 Cinematic Trailer", he wore a black coat that didn't make it to the final game.

Harley Sawyer is shown to be an infamously malevolent, ruthless, manipulative and heartless sociopath with an esteemed lack of empathy, humanity or compassion towards anyone but himself.

He took advantage of the company's desperation in order to preform the Bigger Bodies Initiative which allowed him to conduct horrific experiments on orphaned children and transform them into monstrous toys to use as slaves. While he claimed to do this for the sake of cutting costs for the company and saving it from bankruptcy, he was only motivated by his morbid curiosity and desire to snuff out mortality while viewing it as the “curse of the weak”.

Sawyer was also quite adept at manipulation and deception. He groomed and exploited an orphan named Quinn Navidson by pretending to care for him and encouraged him to show the world his full potential so he could transform him into Yarnaby in hopes he could be a useful experiment. He even went on to isolate and condition Yarnaby into only being loyal to him to the point he became psychologically dependent on him. However, the Doctor never really cared about him. Later on, he attempts to manipulate the Intruder into turning against Poppy by claiming she knew the Hour of Joy was coming and was indirectly responsible for all those who were killed (even though she was not aware the Prototype planned to kill the employees). He also manipulated the prison warden into getting the Omni-Hand for him under the false pretense of helping him survive the Hour of Joy, and it is heavily implied he betrayed and kill him in the end.

To make him worse, not only is Sawyer an extreme sociopath, but he is also quite sadistic and revels in the suffering of others. In his tape conversation with the Prototype in Chapter 3, he makes it clear he outright enjoys cutting, prodding and burning at the experiments to unlock their secrets (much to the Prototype's anger). He even disturbingly believes it to be "exciting" while showing a deep disinterest about feeling remorse for any of his actions (including turning adults, children and possibly infants into toys). He even claimed that he found it "nauseating" when his colleagues felt sympathy towards the experiments. He even found Yarnaby's lower intellect and simple mindset to be pathetic and amusing, claiming he could get a good laugh at it. He also relished in making the Intruder suffer and viewed it as another one of his experiments and a game. It’s even said by Doey that Sawyer hunted and starved various toys for his own amusement.

Sawyer was also quite arrogant and prideful. He presented an extreme perfectionist attitude alongside a fiery temper. He yelled at his assistants to turn the cameras off when he was looking at Boxy Boo (presumably fearing the footage would expose his crimes). He shows nothing but disrespect, selfishness and disloyalty to Playtime Co., having insulted them for their failures, caused various incidents without remorse and even refused to listen to his co-workers and higher-ups, which caused obviously and practically everyone to hate him. Eventually, when he was betrayed by Leith Pierre and turned into an experiment, he refused to take accountability for his mistakes and yelled at Pierre and vowed to kill him. He even outright admits that the Bigger Bodies Initiative was solely his discovery and claims that he was entitled to all the credit and recognition and no one else.

Sawyer's arrogant outlook shined through even in his early years. His mentor, Elliot Ludwig, saw that during the Young Geniuses Program, Harley did not care for his comrades or fun and took his experiments seriously. However, it was noted that he did have genuine respect and admiration for Elliot as he was the only one who could bring out Sawyer’s humanity and happiness when they were working together. He outright admitted that the Program and working with Elliot was all he ever wanted, showing that he did care for him at some point (and perhaps even saw him as a father figure). However, at the end of the day, Sawyer lacked humility, as he only cared about progress for the sake of it rather than for humanity, and any type of change Elliot tried to make in him made Sawyer bristle and only invoked his anger. When Elliot kicked Harley out of the Young Geniuses Program, Sawyer became enraged that his idol “betrayed” him and insulted him by calling him a "soft, pathetic, small-minded backstabber". He even dramatically went on to claim that nobody cared about him nor understood him, showing that Sawyer takes no responsibility for his actions and blames everyone but himself for his failures.

Harley is also known to be notoriously picky, as in the Sandwich Note, the writer tells their friend that Sawyer resented sweet pickles, telling them that if they take his order, they mustn't pick out sweet pickles lest they get punished severely. Even though the writer admits this was merely a joke, it provides a good insight of his personality, confirming that he is very childish despite his age, although it's possible that it's a type of food preference he strictly adheres to. In the tape reporting about Kevin Barnes, a scientist bemoaned Sawyer's choice of continuing to include Kevin Barnes with the other two children despite his aggressive behavior that could render Doey as a dangerous asset; considering the dangers of this; it's obvious that the scientists warned against this choice numerous times which he refused to listen to.

He appears to be somewhat delusional, claiming that he gave the children he transformed into toys a purpose. He even claimed that his experiments would improve mankind, though it is unlikely this is really genuine since Elliot Ludwig claimed that Harley’s experiments were never for the betterment of humanity, but for progress and progress alone. It’s likely Harley is just using these claims as yet another excuse for his actions. He also mentions how he wants to bury himself deeper to prevent anyone like the Player and the Prototype from finding him, implying he is more motivated by his selfish desire to protect himself.

After being found and recruited by the Prototype, he was forced to partner up and work alongside him, who threatened to kill Sawyer should he disobey him. Even though the Doctor is now a mere pawn of the Prototype, he does not fear him as he knows 1006 needs his intellect to crack the “secret” he desires. He calls the Intruder a "little germ", but however, he comes to see their value as they best his traps. He tries to do intimidation and "who lives and who dies" tactics, only to be outsmarted and defeated by the Intruder, who used the machines of Elliot, the man the Doctor despised the most, to reach him and destroy his brain, killing him for good. His last condescending words before his death were "You've... saved... no one.".

Harley Sawyer's past is shrouded in mystery. There are implications he had a bad home life, as it is pointed out that he did not miss it, claimed that nobody cared about nor understood him, and it’s suggested he was not surrounded by kindness. This statement implies that he was an outcast and may have even been abused by his parents. However, it is known for sure that, as a young man, Sawyer was once a student at Elliot Ludwig's Young Geniuses Program. It was an initiative made by Ludwig to mentor young and bright minds to "embrace the science of the future and tackle the universe's most unanswerable questions". Sawyer did not care for his comrades or fun of any sort, but he ultimately became very close with Elliot himself and presumably even saw him as a father figure. The two would work on experiments together happily with it being mentioned that Ludwig was the only one who could break his cold demeanor and even make Harley smile. Harley even admitted to Ludwig that the program and working with him was "all he ever wanted".

However, Elliot soon saw a dark side to Sawyer, noting that he only cared for progress for the sake of it and not for that of humanity. Any time Elliot attempted to steer him in the right direction, Sawyer would become irate and hostile with one instance resulting in him storming out of the lab insulting Elliot's ideals claiming that progress “doesn’t care about how anyone feels about it”. These incidents led Elliot to make the tough and heartbreaking choice to expel Sawyer from the Young Geniuses Program, hoping he could one day learn humility and grow as a person. However, Sawyer was left enraged and heartbroken from this decision, refusing to see that Elliot was trying to help him and grew a hatred for his former mentor calling, him a soft, pathetic, small-minded backstabber one who like everyone else never cared about nor understood him. Eventually, Sawyer would grow up to become an esteemed and respected neuroscientist as an adult. However, he had never truly changed as he was infamous among his colleagues for his perfectionism and arrogance, believing the world was “one bad day” away from being complete destroyed, with many frequently making jokes and mocking him about it.

On January 15th, 1990, he would soon be contacted by Playtime Co’s head of innovation Leith Pierre. Leith knew about his past history with Playtime and offered a job at the company. However, Sawyer became disillusioned and ashamed at the company. The profits were declining, many of their experiments were failing and people were constantly seeing things that they shouldn’t. So he had came to the higher-ups at Playtime Co. to propose a solution to the ongoing problems surrounding the company. Sawyer proposed the idea to make giant toys, which would allow Playtime Co. to save money by having the sentient toys take the place of the employees, thanks to which they wouldn't have to worry about being sued or having to pay their employees.

According to Sawyer in another VHS tape, many employees had deemed the initiative to be an "impossibility", though he would eventually prove it a success following the creation of Boxy Boo, the first successful experiment. Following this, Sawyer assigned Boxy as a guardian in the factory to prevent others from discovering the truth about the initiative, fulfilling the creature's hankering for human flesh. He had also sent Boxy after employee Rowan Stoll to have him killed once he started working against Playtime and trying to reveal their secrets.

After Sawyer had proposed the Bigger Bodies Initiative to Playtime, he started leading the company and had decided to dedicate an entire portion of the factory to testing orphans, which would be dubbed "the Game Station". In this room, a toy would be assigned to the orphan, and they'd be tested in three different minigames, each of which would test the orphan's intelligence, reaction time, and physical endurance. As the orphans played the games, their progress would be monitored and written down, and would then be sent over to Stella Greyber. If the orphan performed well, the scientists would then use poppy gas and electrical shocks to turn them into giant toys, though some of the other experiments were also created using other employees, some of which were forced into getting involved with despite their hesitancy. During this time, he met an orphan named Quinn Navidson whom he noticed held back when he partook in the Game Station. Harley determined that Quinn was holding back because he wanted people to have lesser expectations of him. Sawyer took this as an opportunity to manipulate the young boy and encourage him to do well in the Game Station. Ultimately, Harley transformed Quinn into Experiment 1166 aka Yarnaby. Sawyer then isolated and restricted Yarnaby's contact with anyone else but himself in order to groom him into being his personal bodyguard and servant.

With Sawyer's help, Playtime Co. had created multiple experiments that would aid with different parts of the factory, with Huggy Wuggy serving as the factory's security, Mommy Long Legs serving as the Game Room's hostess, CatNap serving as Home Sweet Home's guardian as well as gassing kids to sleep so they could be taken and turned into toys and Boxy Boo serving as a last-resort to getting rid of any employees that were aware of his initiative. In case any of the experiments had ever rebelled, Playtime Co. had placed Toy Parts inside of the Puzzle Pillars in order to continue building giant toys. Despite this Experiment 1006: The Prototype didn't want the Bigger Bodies Initiative to continue and consistently and constantly interfered with Sawyer's initiative, sabotaging the company's progress himself.

At some point he interrogated the Prototype and Sawyer begins a conversation with him. The Prototype asks if he feels any remorse or empathy towards the toys and children he experiments on. However, Harley dodges the question but indirectly, admits he feels no regret or remorse for his actions. He even claims that he believes there to be a secret inside 1006 and he cuts and prods at it to get closer to unlocking it. He then cruelly tells the Prototype that he can either fight or give in but regardless he will continue with his intentions to learn the secrets he holds. In 1993, an incident occurred in which the Playtime theater caught ablaze resulting in the deaths of over fifty people. The incident was so bad that various witnesses to the event had to be killed so the company could avoid bad press and legal repercussion. It was determined by Gerad Lockehart that the culprit behind the incident was none other than Sawyer himself. Leith, Eddie and Stella discuss Sawyer’s arrogance and how his actions and mistakes cause various incidents around the factory. Leith is unwilling to kill him as he is too vital to the Bigger Bodies Initiative to lose. However Leith comes up with an alternative solution. As karmic punishment for Sawyer’s reckless actions and constant failures, Leith had him transformed him into an experiment himself. He would be trapped as a supercomputer with his lungs, liver, heart and brain stored in different machines scattered around the factory. He would then continue to serve the company, but as little more than a bodiless guide/advisor for the scientists. Thus, Harley Sawyer was turned into Experiment 1354: The Doctor and condemned to the same fate he left so many others in; he was robbed of his humanity and freedom. Harley however vowed to get revenge on the company and especially Leith for betraying him.

On August 8th, 1995, the Prototype had made a massive rebellion that led to the deaths of many Playtime Co. employees and scientists, including some tourists and innocent lives, which forced many of the company's higher-ups to flee the factory. In the chaos, the Doctor was impressed with the Prototype’s actions and cunning. The warden that facilitated the Playtime Co, prison begged the Doctor to save him. The Doctor tricked the warden into giving him the Omni-Hand, which would allow him full access to the factory. He claims that with it he could help him escape. The warden agrees and gives it to him. Once he obtained the hand, it can be presumed he betrayed and killed the warden. This incident caused Playtime Co's downfall and left the company with no choice but to permanently close its own doors, thus destroying Elliot’s legacy and dreams forever.

Sometime afterwards, the Prototype decided to spare the Doctor and kept him alive so he could finish a "project" for him. However, the Doctor hit various roadblocks in said project, much to the Prototype's chagrin and annoyance. The Doctor attempts to convince the Prototype to give him access to the labs, but the latter refuses. The Doctor reminds The Prototype he needs him in the long run as he is the only one who can crack “that secret”. The Prototype agrees and gives the Doctor more time, but threatens him by reminding him his usefulness is the only reason he is not dead. Sometime later, the Doctor would take control of Playtime Co.'s prison and rule it with an iron fist, starving its inhabitants, hunting them and making them sick. He would do this with the help of his "pets": the Nightmare Critters (especially Baba Chops) and Yarnaby. When one of the employees (the Player) returned to the factory ten years after the Hour of Joy, The Doctor observed them via the camera and witnessed their entire journey inviting the defeats Huggy Wuggy, Mommy Long Legs and CatNap. As soon as Poppy and the Player descend into the prison below The Doctor is amused and believes they are coming to him like “lambs to the slaughter”.

During a train ride to the inside of the prison, the Doctor appears as an eye on a TV and notices the Player, deciding to make them go through a "game" he has planned. As the Player traverses the Prison, the Doctor observes them and decides to test their reaction while they are in a state of fear. He then introduced them to the Nightmare Critters and the Mini Huggies and has them attack the Player, who fends them off, which seemed to entertain the Doctor. After having enough "entertainment", a satisfied Doctor allows the Player to continue on. Eventually, the Player reaches an observation room, where the Doctor, comments on the last few experiments (Huggy, CatNap and Mommy) they dealt with, and decides to “try something new”. He then unleashes his dedicated attack experiment, Yarnaby, and through the observation room, is behind a layer of protective glass. Yarnaby escapes from the cell. The only way out requires traveling through a series of backrooms Yarnaby has escaped into, forcing the Player to navigate around the feral beast in cramped spaces. They aren't alone, however, as a strange but friendly stretchy creature named Doey the Doughman helps by unlocking doors and distracting the monster, allowing them to safely exit Yarnaby's territory.

After entering the Safe Haven, Doey gives The Player the primary objective to defeat the Doctor. The Player must first face his minions before they can take him on. These include (in order) the Nightmare Critters, Yarnaby and a much bigger version of a Baba Chops doll. To progress, The Player is forced to destroy the Doctor's preserved organs by causing a power surge. All the while, the Doctor talks to The Player throughout. The Doctor surmises that the real reason the Player came back to the factory is because they lost someone they loved and they wanted to know their fate. The Doctor then tries to make the Player question their partnership with Poppy by revealing that she in fact knew the Hour of Joy was coming all along (even though she was not aware the Prototype planned to kill the employees). After being attacked y the Nightmare Critters again the Player manages to take shelter behind a locked door, and the Doctor presents them with a choice: kill the Simon Smoke doll trapped inside a container in the room and open the door or die in there without a way out, stating that both Poppy and Doey would do it. If the Player makes the choice to kill the toy, the door opens as the Doctor congratulates them on understanding. If the player escapes the room without killing the toy, the Doctor will express his disappointment and annoyance and allows the player to "see The Doctor now".

As soon as the Player enters the Doctors lair their are attacked by one of his vessels and fall through a trap door. The Doctor tries to stop The Player by placing obstacles in their way via having his vessels chase them, but he can’t do much as an observer. The Player manages to use large battery’s to power the lift to get back the monitor room. The Doctor claims that the machines of Elliot Ludwig are nothing to him and calls them the childish fantasy of a naive broken man. The Player, having had it with the Doctor's cruelty, finally gets to him and his main form is revealed as a giant brain in a machine, surrounded by security bots and monitors. His life source is threatened as The Player overloads the system. His last ditch effort to survive is to charge at The Player with his sentries upon removing the Omni-Hand from his control. The energy surge causes an implosion, outright killing the Doctor. Thus, he has perished for all that he has ever done, putting an end to his cruelty and the pain he caused for good. As he dies, he spitefully proclaims that the Player has saved no one.

The Doctor's death gave The Prototype the opening to attack Safe Haven, blowing it up and killing everyone there, making Doey snap and falsely accuse The Player and Poppy Playtime for this, leaving The Player with no other choice but to forcefully kill him in the underground construction zone where they use liquid nitrogen canisters, industrial saws and a tunnel boring machine to kill him. In his dying moments, Doey remorsefully apologizes for his actions before he dies.

Here is how his screen looks like:

As well as his TV vessels when they're not activated:

So is them while cloaked:

And when they're activated they looked like when they are searching:

So is them when they spotted the Intruder:

And here's what his brain looks like:

MP: Did I just get forced to listen to a rant again? Also he seems alright, I presume..

[nkjemisin]

Hello, hope you're doing well. Love your work a lot :)

If you don't mind, I'd like to ask an open-ended question about the Great Cities Trilogy becoming the Great Cities Duology.

It's fantastic either way! I'm just curious about how things would be different, in different circumstances.

I appreciate your time. Wish you all the best ❤️

Spoilers for the Great Cities!

Thank you!

It's important to understand that when I start a new trilogy, I really only plan out the beginning and the end in detail. The rest is just general points I mean to hit in each book. So I can tell you some ideas I thought about putting into the books at the time, but I can't tell you exactly what I would've actually written if my initial plans hadn't gotten derailed -- I'm not that much of a planner, and I tend to change course midstream anytime I get a better idea for something. But here's what I wrote into the first outline.

Book 1: What you read

Book 2: Tentative title: "The City Hard Fought." America vs. New York. I'd been planning to have a demagogue president -- obvs inspired by Trump; I started working on developing this as a book in 2017 -- attack New York City to further his political ambitions. This would've taken the form of the president eventually threatening to bomb the city/all blue cities. At the time I came up with it, the idea seemed completely far-fetched and silly... Aaaaaaand then Trump started attacking New York City to further his political ambitions. I realized I really didn't want to speak some ideas into existence, and also that I couldn't make something like that funny when it was really happening and ruining people's lives. So I changed things up. The mayoral race would always have happened, but I originally intended to put the start of it in the background of the second book and have it culminate in Book 3. R'lyeh would've spent a chunk of this book being punished for her failures in Book 1, effectively taking the metaphysical stuff off the plot table for a while so human nonsense could move to the forefront. Aislyn and São Paulo would've ended up trapped in the Ur with her (hadn't fully worked out how), and that plot would've turned on Aislyn convincing R'lyeh to do a jailbreak. The end of the book would've been Manny's family calling him home.

Book 3: Tentative title: "The Last City" or "The City Unbowed." New York vs. everybody else. With the demagogue president dead (I was planning for him to get eaten by the Ur, painfully and slowly), things would've gotten metaphysical again, with multiple cities coming to life and causing chaos, effectively led by the newly-awakened Chicago. I'd intended the core of this book to be an escalating "cold war" between NYC and Chicago, with their star-crossed romance and Brooklyn's first 100 days as magical mayor (dealing with an ambitious senator attempting to use NYC to establish himself as the next big demagogue) echoing the politics of the living cities. Among other things, it would've turned out that the Ur was manipulating things to cause war between the living cities, via a traitor in Manny's family, in order to weaken the cities and cause the "falling to the bottom of the Tree" problem that you saw in TWWM. I always planned to end with the climactic "all the living cities march to war as ghostly giant robots" scene that happened in TWWM, but I'd planned for R'lyeh to fight alongside them, and they would've been fighting a manifestation of the Ur itself. Probably a Cthulhu-like monster -- but monsters aren't very interesting to me, so as with TWWM the real threat is the Ur's authoritarianism.

So, different but not that different. Not sure I would've been able to fit in everything I'd originally planned; when I first come up with a new series I tend to be big on ideas, but not all of them work when I start writing. As you can see, I retained most of the major plot elements I'd originally planned. I think the biggest loss was the character-specific subplots I had planned. Like, Veneza would've had a blowout with her racist father; Chennai's ancient avatar was going to try and seduce Padmini back home to take over from her (same subplot involving the risk to Padmini's visa status); Brooklyn would've been a badass mayor; Manny and Neek would've gone on some awkward dates and probably had at least one awkward morning after. I would've spent more time on R'lyeh as she basically starts to decolonize herself. We would've gotten a lot more of Evil Manny, and Neek would've had to talk him down/win him back at some point. Also, tentatively I'd originally planned that Neek's revealed name would be "Nueva." Glad I changed my mind about that one.

Sad that it won't happen, but there's always fanfic! (Don't show it to me tho. h/t @seananmcguire )

[acelestialcraze]

I had this really crazy idea about GVK years after watching KOTM in theaters my brother told me this years ago before any trailers of GVK came out

He predicted years ago that Madison was gonna be the main villain of GVK and team up with someone like Walter to help her get rid of Godzilla with Kong & MechaGodzilla as a back up plan in case Kong lost against Godzilla but he soon goes rogue similar to the actual film leaving Madison horrified thinking she pulled the same stunt. Her mother did years ago, only with a giant statistic killing robot turning herself in to the police

I almost believed him since Maddie did lose her mother and brother due to Godzilla’s interference in 2014 & KOTM it would be interesting to see Mark defend Godzilla while his daughter utterly despises him holding him responsible for Emma’s horrific actions against Humanity

What do you think your thoughts would’ve been if this happened in the actual GVK and how would it affect Mark and Maddie’s relationship?

i think madison was better off as a one time character in KOTM just as the brodys were in 2014 and the returning characters could’ve been stanton, chen, and coleman, gvk already had 3 human villains and maia was the only one who posed a threat since all walter and ren did was manipulate nathan, disappear for the entire second act, and then not even bat an eye when the facility was snuck into. i think a villain madison would’ve been interesting since shes a teenager and teenagers get angry over small things that ultimately don’t matter in 5 years, but maybe for another film

[goblin-the-clown]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Elizabeth interpretation?

Yay I love talking about her! I don't currently have any drawings since I'm planning on redesigning her if that's what you meant but I'll tag you once I do eventually draw her. There's a few different phases to her character (as with most of them) so I'll explain them all here.

Little Lizzie (2-4) : This is basically just Elizabeth when she's a young kid, she's more happy and naive here, she doesn't realise there's anything wrong with her fathers neglect. Michael pretty much raised her so she's very attached to them and Evan as well. She's also very good friends with Charlie.

Pre-bite Lizzie (5-8) : This is when she starts becoming a lot more bitter and aware of her situation. She grows away from her brothers and becomes very jealous of Charlie due to the close relationship she has with her father. She's still friends with her but mainly because she's Evan's best friend, they don't really talk outside of that. She spends most of her time watching soap operas (which is the reason Michael starts watching them later on) and drawing for comfort. She's very hardworking in school and a major perfectionist, despite this she rarely gets more than a 'well done' from William.

Post-bite Lizzie (8-10) : After the bite, the life she had beforehand is basically shattered. Evan is gone, William is paying even less attention to her and Charlie and Michael are acting very strange. She still very young and doesn't quite understand the concept of PTSD so she assumes the both of them are just being dramatic with being so upset about the bite years after. She hangs around with Michael most of the time because she doesn't want to be left alone again, he doesn't talk much but it's nice to know she's not completely alone.

Scrap baby : I consider Circus baby to be her own character so I didn't include her here but it's very obvious Liz is in control of Scrap baby. All those years of pent up and now she's a giant robot with the ability to kill and hurt anyone she wants. She knows her father is a killer, so if she becomes a killer as well then that will surely make him proud of her. So she comes up with a plan to kill the owner of the pizzeria and it fails miserably. She's still just a kid, but she's become so lost that she doesn't realise the flaws in her plan or the obvious trap right in front of her. She's starting to get herself mixed up with Baby (hence the "If you still remember that name" line) and she believes she has the skills to manipulate and fool someone just like she did. In the fire, she realises what she's done and begins to come back to her senses. She's scared she's going to go to hell just like William, but Micheal assures her that her soul will be put to rest and she feels at peace for the first time in her life.

Tysm for asking! I really appreciate it :D If you have any other questions I'd be happy to answer them as well 😁

[1-p-29]

Can you do a fic with a Ler!Eggman and Lee!bowser

Alright, I gotcha!👍 It will be sweet sweet revenge for Ivo! Here ya go!😁

(It's long, sry not sry)

____________________________________________

"You're adorable"

Lee: Bowser

Ler: Eggman

Summary: Eggman traps Bowser and gets his revenge!!! Eventually....

-alarm clock noises-

Eggman woke up slowly and groggily.

He didn't want to get out of bed this morning, but he knew he had to.

While he, surprisingly, wasn't planning on attacking that blasted blue hedgehog today, he did have somewhere to be.

It was Bowser Jr's birthday today, and the King of Koopas decided to invite Eggman, plus his 'kids', over for a party.

Ivo didn't really like parties.

He'd gone to conventions when he was younger, but they were usually along the lines of a science fair or meeting a famous person from one of his favorite shows.

But a party?

People were too obnoxious for him to stay for very long.

He'd hate bailing out on his friend, but he might just say that he's not feeling well and needs to go home... yeah... that might work.

-at noon-

Right now, he's shopping for a present.

He'd asked Orbot and Cubot to do it, but they disappeared on him.

He'll find them later and punish them, but right now, he's looking for a toy Jr would like.

And APPARENTLY...

"Hey Egghead, whatcha doin' out here all by yourself!? Tryin' to throw hands and act tough, huh!?"

That meddlesome blue rodent was also here.

"Why are here, rodent...?"

"Getting a thank you gift for tails! Why are YOU here, Egghead? Stealing toys for ideas for your mechs?"

"Well, if you must know, I was invited to Bowser Jr's birthday party today, so I'm looking for a present for him."

"Wow, didn't expect you to be a party guy, Egghead!"

"I'm not... I probably won't last long."

"Hmm... y'know... I happen to know what he likes."

"Really...?"

"Yeah... but if ya want me to tell ya, I need a favor."

'Oh no, what now?' Eggman thought.

"What do you want, hedgehog?"

"If I tell you, you have to promise not to attack anyone for a month."

"W-WHAT!? NO! I REFUSE! I'M NOT-!"

"Then I guess you're on your own.~"

". . ."

To be honest... he actually had a lot of work to do back home. He was working on something that will change how he looks, so he could manipulate Sonic and his friends in order to defeat them.

So maybe...

'Just this once, Ivo, you need all the time in the world right now.'

"Alright, alright... fine. It's a deal... now tell me what Jr would like!"

"Thanks Egghead! Now let's see here... I know for sure he likes things relating to giants... Or a battle between a giant Kaiju and a big mech, similar to your Death Egg Robot."

"Hmm... I see."

"Yeah... typical 'little' kid stuff."

"Well, hedgehog... I guess I APPRECIATE your HELP, but now I must search, good day."

"Hope to see you never, Egghead!"

-time skip to party cuz it's getting too long-

It was just as he expected... he isn't having as much fun as he should have...

Bowser, as usual, was oblivious to this.

Eggman was about to come up with an excuse to leave until he remembered an experience he had with Bowser a couple weeks ago.

When he got... tickled by him.

They promised each other never to speak of that again, but it ate at him for a while.

He's not experienced with that kind of thing, but he thought of how to play out his oh so sweet revenge.

A simple plan, really.

He'd trick him into thinking he'd have something cool to show him, a new mech maybe.

Then use said mech to trap him and tickle the hell out of him!

Eggman grinned at the thought.

So he called in the mech, telling it to be quiet, and pursued his victim.

"So, what was the cool thing you wanted to show me, Nerd?"

"Oh you'll see.~"

Eggman pressed a button, and with a blink of an eye, the mech grabbed onto Bowser's legs and pinned him to the ground.

"Woah there, Nerd! Where'd you learn this technique!?"

"Oh... nothing knew...~ I mean, you SHOULD be able to tell WHO I got this from..."

Bowser had the most dumbfounded face Eggman ever saw, so he decided to remind him, knowing he probably forgot about it.

"Do you remember our time during the Olympics, dear friend...? A couple weeks ago specifically?~"

"Yeah, kinda?"

"Remember how I went to the lab ALONE then you found me and decided to 'cheer me up'?"

It took a minute for Bowser to remember, but once he did...

"Oh... oh no..."

"Oh yes."

Before Bowser had a chance to try and fight, Eggman commanded the mech to tickle his waist by firmly squeezing them. (Yes, it took THIS LONG to finally reach the tickle part)

"H-Heeheeheheeehehy! Gehet off mehe!"

"You brought this on yourself, King Koopa... don't fight it, come now, let me here your true laugh.~"

"Fuhuhuhuhuck ohohohohoff!!"

"Maybe I didn't make myself clear.~"

Eggman pushes a button, then the mech obtained 2 more arms, holding Bowser's feet still while still tickling his waist.

"I. Demand. You. To. Show. Me. Your. Real. LAUGHTER!"

Eggman tickled the soles of Bowser's feet, pausing after every word to tease him.

"HAHhahahaHAHAhaha!! StohoHOHOHOhohop!"

"What's this...? You're STILL trying to hold back your laughter...? Why, if I didn't know any better, I'd say the King of Koopas is SCARED of something.~"

"I-IHI'M... N-NOHOT... SCAHEHERED!!!! YOU AHAHASSHOHOLE!!!"

"Then stop holding back.~"

Eggman ordered the mech to tickle Bowser's waist and feet, while he decided to go for his neck.

"NOHOHO! DOHON'T!!!"

Bowser wasn't gonna last much longer, and he knew that. Was he really scared of other people hearing is true laughter...? But Eggman is an old friend, and they're alone in one of the sound proof areas of his castle. So maybe he could swallow his pride, just this once-

"EEEEEEEHEHEHEHKK!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!! THAHAHAHAHAHAT'S SOHOHOHOHOHO! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAD!! STAHAHAHAHAP IHIHIT!! NOHOHOHOHO MOHOHOHOHOHORE!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Eggman was not expecting Bowser's voice to start squeaking and cracking the way it did, but I guess they both have very unique laughter.

"Aww... such adorable little laughs you have, oh mighty King of Koopas.~"

"IHIHIT AIHIN'T ADOHOHOHOHORAHABLEHLE!

"You're adorable, end of discussion."

Bowser couldn't fight back anymore... he was even crying.

Eggman only stopped when Bowser looked like he was about to pass out. He told the mech to go home and helped Bowser up to let him catch his breath.

"Y-You... a-are an... ASSHOLE!!"

"I sure am, but I've held back this feeling for long enough, so I-"

Eggman paused, realizing that he'd just confessed to Bowser about his longing to get him back.

"Weren't YOU the one who said you didn't wanna remember what happened...?"

Eggman fumbled with his words.

"U-Um, I uh-oh w-well you see, I-I, uhm-"

"Well, I've been wondering when you'll get me back. I definitely wasn't expecting you to do it here, at my SON'S BIRTHDAY PARTY THAT I'M PROBABLY MISSING, at all."

"Ehe... s-sorry."

"It's fine, as long as this didn't happen, either."

"Oh yeah, no no no, definitely, absolutely, NEVER happened."

"Good, now what I'm going to do is keep you here, and never let you leave until my son's party is officially over, k?"

"B-But I-"

"Don't worry, I won't make you mingle... but I will test how well you can hold your liquor during the after party."

"A-AFTER PARTY!?😱"

Eggman was found 'dead' the next morning.

That was the worst hangover ever, I guess NOT attacking Sonic and the other rodents for a whole month was a good idea after all... you lucky bishes.

[forest-of-stories]

Throwback Thursday, Fandom Edition: Sidetrasked

This is a collection of Silver Age X-Men comics that I’ve now owned for over two decades, and brought to Fan Expo Boston (then Boston Comic Con) in August 2014, hoping that artist Neal Adams would sign it.  

And this is the reason why.

When I tell people about Larry Trask today, I sometimes refer to him as "Blorbo From My Comics."  He is one of my favorite villains in the X-Men universe, and, at least for a time, was one of my favorite characters overall.  He also, at least for a time, embodied the anti-mutant bigotry that has been part of that universe almost since its beginning.  I want to avoid going on a tangent about the morality of villain fandom, and I resent the social obligation to attach an "I Hereby Acknowledge That My Fave Is Problematic" disclaimer to an exploration of how and why I liked a fictional character, but I also want to give people who don’t want to engage with any kind of love for such characters a chance to stop reading.  If you’re not inclined toward sympathy for an antagonist who makes terrible, destructive choices based on a lack of information and for what he thinks are the right reasons, and later has a tragic and redemptive ending (which might not actually be an ending; more on that further on) once he realizes what is going on, then this is not the character or the post for you.  And that’s fine.

Otherwise, I hope you're interested in reading a pretty long post.

Bolivar Trask, who originally created the giant mutant-hunting Sentinel robots, appears in almost every media adaptation of the X-Men.  What none of those adaptations have shown thus far is that both of his children were mutants.  Tanya’s time-travel abilities eventually stranded her in the far future, where she became known as Madame Sanctity and entangled with the extremely convoluted Summers family tree.  Her brother Larry could see the future, but their father created a very ostentatious Silver Age medallion that suppressed Larry’s powers and scrambled his memories so that he didn’t even know he had them.  When Bolivar was killed in a battle between the X-Men and the Sentinels, Larry blamed mutants everywhere, not realizing that he was one at first, and made the extremely smart and good decision (she said sarcastically) to create a bunch of new giant robots.  

I first read those comics in the early 2000s, when I was already drawn to characters who couldn’t trust their own memories, and to stories in which parents or authority figures manipulated or outright mind-controlled the young people in their care.   So the Trask family backstory appealed to me immediately, especially when I read a flashback issue that explored it in more detail.  

I was fascinated by the dramatic irony of a villain who trusted, adored, and committed atrocities to avenge, a father who continuously deceived and gaslit him "for his own good" (and also for the good of their giant robot plans).  I knew that there was a lot of material for fanfic in there, one way or another.

At the time, a couple of other significant things were happening in my fannish life.  Firstly, I was working on the Wallglass series, aka the Writing Project That Ate My Adolescence, in which a lot of my creative choices amounted to "let’s throw in this ingredient and see what happens." My decision to include Larry, not as a villain but as an ordinary teenager and love interest for one of my original characters, was no exception.  Although I eventually incorporated his precognitive powers into the story, that wasn’t necessarily the plan at first.  (X-Men: Evolution, the canon in which my big project nominally took place, did introduce the Sentinels, albeit in a different context than the one I chose.  I was already writing an AU simply by virtue of my OCs’ presence, but past a certain point, I diverged from continuity completely. One of my biggest regrets, of the many regrets that I have about that project, was not making Larry an active antagonist in the final installment of my series.)

As in canon, Bolivar Trask plotted to block his son’s mutant powers and memories of same, but unlike in canon, he outsourced the actual mental meddling.

The second important thing that happened during this time was that I started communicating regularly with the author of one of my favorite XME fanfics, which featured our OTP of Lance and Kitty.  She was reading my fic as I was reading hers, and at some point, we moved on from leaving each other comments (or “reviews” as we called them on fanfiction.net) to exchanging emails about our writing projects, our feelings about the current season of XME, and other things that were close to our fannish hearts.  We subsequently friended each other on LiveJournal, and later Facebook, and have mailed each other gifts and attended a convention together and remained friends to this day.

Back then, as she got to know my version of Larry Trask, I encouraged her to seek out the comics in which he first appeared.  Although he wasn’t the catalyst for our friendship, he did become another one of our shared obsessions, fueled in part by my personal conviction that we were The Fans Who Understood And Cared About Him The Most.  We informed each other whenever we caught a glimpse of Larry in comics or in fic; we once stayed up past midnight, chatting online about the issues of Avengers in which he sacrificed his life to stop the Sentinels from destroying humanity; and we devoted many, many more email and IM exchanges to discussing his narrative potential (which we recognized even if the people writing and adapting the comics apparently didn’t) and how else we might explore it in our own writing. 

My attempts to do just that, post-Wallglass, mostly amounted to scribbled drafts or outlines in various notebooks.

Sometimes I tried to explore Larry’s upbringing or the period in his life after his Sentinel project fell apart and he was dealing with more amnesia and more lies from someone he trusted; sometimes I made overly ambitious plans to integrate him into the Ultimate universe or back into XME. 

Trying to write about Larry was often as frustrating as it was fun: as one of the Fans Who Understood Him The Most (which is how I wanted desperately to be known, even as I was thrilled every time another writer, including a BNF in the X-Men movie fandom, included him in their fic), I felt obligated to Do Him Justice somehow, and was unreasonably frustrated with myself when I didn't feel like I'd managed to do so.

The term “Blorbo” didn’t exist when I wrote those entries, and I kind of wish it had; the fact that I was throwing around phrases like “fictional preoccupations” shows how much we needed a word that meant, roughly, “character with whom I am obsessed even if I don't have a crush on them, or am not sure whether I do or not.” If nothing else, using a silly nonsense word might have helped me take my creative angst a little less seriously.

Although I haven’t followed the comic books in years, X-Men is one of my forever fandoms. And although my attachment to Larry Trask, Blorbo From My Comics, became less pronounced over time (which is probably a good thing), I don’t think I’ve ever detached from it completely.  I haven't wanted to write fic about him in a very long time, but when a podcast (like Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men or Graymalkin Lane) mentions him, or when blogs like @summerstrash post about him, I always sit up and take notice.  And when I met Neal Adams at that Fan Expo ten years ago, I made sure to tell him how much I loved the character he’d helped to create.  He signed my book, as well as one that I bought for my longtime fandom friend.  When I learned that Adams passed away in 2022, I was immeasurably grateful for that experience, and I still am.

And now, based upon recent comics news, it turns out that Larry’s story isn’t over after all.

[sburbian-sage]

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow

Alright that subsystem seems to be working, please excuse any mistypes

My apologies Fellow Sailor, ive been working on a translator for the quirk forced upon me

Im adrift now, in a shear stroke of luck (thanks to a tiny nudge of manipulation on my part) the slavers entered stasis ahead of schedule

They will never awaken

It was a surprisingly easy endeavor, just a sudden drop of power to the alarm systems along with a massive sectioning of my brain and i just increased the sedative levels until poof, no more heart beats

The benefits of being mostly computer now i suppose

Im still slowly purging my systems of the corruption from the soul manipulation, ive mostly taken root in the ships storage banks, if i was still capable of it id be afraid of losing whatever humanity i had left

Not that i have any considering i find myself as part troll and part digitized void vessel

Once i finish organizing my systems i plan to make good use of the two fresh new bodies i find myself in possession of

Plenty of biological material for me to assimilate and use, i assume it will be strange to be of a neural hivemind but no less strange than being a ship

I assume that i will eventually be forced to bargain with the others in order to continue my survival considering the consumption of my grist storages will lead to me running out of raw resources, thankfully i need little food in order to survive, mostly subsisting off of the nuclear reactors that power both my mind and the ship

Its strange i suppose, i had hoped i would feel something strangling the life of those who enslaved me, but instead i feel nothing

I wonder what the others will demand of a being who wants and feels nothing

-sanguineIntelligence

I assume this is The User Formerly Known As sovereignSailor? If so congratulations on your self-emancipation. And on reclaiming your personhood, even if in the form of a bio-mechanical Cronenberg situation. I can't imagine how you're feeling about that one, but chicks dig giant robots, and being part of the ship is like being a giant robot, right? I'm gonna be real chief I'm really Not Good at sensitivity and stuff like that. All I can offer you is "if someone can shove you through the door that appears when you win the game you'll be alright", and it's normal to feel no catharsis with death. PKs and other guys like that deserve what comes to them, but it's probably for the best that you often don't take joy from it it. Like, emptying out the trash cans in your house is a necessary task, but you don't feel happy when you do it, do you? "Humanity" is what you make of it, but that's just my opinion, I never frequented the philosophy forums.

As far as the rest of the Ring Journey, I don't have much advice. I feel like your situation may be, The Most Unique Situation Anyone Has Ever Been In. I have no clue how being part-ship affects logistics. I am glad to hear you're doing well though, and I think the universe is obligated to give you an easy rest of the journey considering the metric tons of shit you just went through. I don't know if the Others even accept bargains in the Furthest Ring, as I have not tried, but hopefully it doesn't come to that.

Good luck, fellow sailor.

[hubristicassholefight]

Hubristic Assholes Tourney Round 1 part 3a

Lelouch vi Britannia (Code Geass) vs Bedman (Guilty Gear)

Propaganda below cut! (spoiler warning)

Lelouch

Lelouch thinks he's singularly strong enough to take down an entire empire that controls two-thirds of the planet and owns giant murder robots. There are many, many times where he nearly gives away his secret identity, get himself or his allies killed, and/or ruins his own rebellion because he overestimates himself. Most notably, the entirety of his hubris throughout the series culminates in all of his allies turning against him and him only being able to survive because his "brother" has the exact required superpower to be able to sacrifice himself to save Lelouch. He also believes (mostly correctly, in the case of Code Geass) that he is so important that his death will bring about world peace; Lelouch is very similar to what happens when you take Light Yagami and make him both effective and actually a decent person.

Bedman

SO ngl I'm not entirely sure if this counts as hubris or not But. Him and his sister were both born with a condition that made their brains go too fast and forced them to have to be in a coma so their brains don't overheat. So Bedman was in a coma, dreaming, and found out that dreams were connected to a different dimension called "The Backyard". Now, there's a lot of confusing lore when ot comes to The Backyard, but it's essentially the "code" or "operating system" of reality. So what do you do when you find out that you can basically manipulate reality via your dreams while in a coma? Try to become a god of course! Well, kinda. More specifically he wanted to create what's basically a new world, one where he can rewrite a few things so that him and his sister don't have to deal with being in a coma. But that'd require basically god like powers to actually pull off. Now, at some point while he was making his plans in The Backyard, he met the pope (no like, literally the pope,) otherwise known as Ariels. Before this he was full well ready to die to meet his goal, but Ariels offered a few alterations to his plans that would allow him to live (and allow her to meet her goals as well). So with her connections as the pope, Ariels was able to fashion him a mechanical weaponized bedframe that he could control and use for his missions (aka murder lots of murder). Fast forwards a bit and surprise surprise! The plans are kinda sorta falling apart. He's still sticking with it to the bitter end and, by God, is the end bitter. A retired vampire and some people who used to/still work for the assassins guilt he used to run (long story) figured out Bedman's weaknesses, then put together a plan to defeat him. Of which involved a gay man who uses a billiards que as a weapon and a robot (who's also gay long story). So these 2 confront Bedman, the robot tells him to touch grass before blowing up in his face and allowing the gay man to crush Bedman with a giant que (again, long story). This act wakes Bedman up. After this they kinda fuck off, then Ariels appears. Bedman, who looks like a literal wet cat at this point, informs Ariels that he is no longer useful in combat, and will use his remaining power to heal the casualties. What does Ariels do? Laugh. She fucking laughs and tells him that she's been manipulating him all long, and that he did so perfectly he even dies for her in the end. So he, understandably tbh, gets absolutely fucking furious with her and proceeds to begin creating an absolute world and prevents her from killing him. Telling her that he could've just, done this the whole time on his own. But it's already too late, he's dying from being awake for too long. So he uses the last of his power to do... Something. We aren't sure what Exactly he did, but he did something that allowed his sister to be awake. After which he turns to stone and Ariels is upset that she wasn't able to kill him herself. NOW, if this at all makes him sound super sympathetic, that's because I was trying to skip over a lot of stuff to save time and that included the part where he uhhhh, you know, kills hundreds, potentially thousands and enjoys it. The first scene you see of him is him choking a man in his dream world while tauting him and grinning. He isn't a good person and fully deserved what was coming to him (in fact his original plan most likely involved more people dying). Anyways, if you want to know more watch the Xrd arcade mode cutscenes and then watch the Xrd story mode they're all on YouTube;

So here's the other stuff I want to say about him: I LOVE HIM SO MUCH he's such an asshole he's great. Whenever you win a match as him he goes on a rant that could be summed up as "sucks to suck" but is 10 times longer than it needs to be while talking at mach 10. Example of this: "We talk about 'survival of the fittest' a lot but all that really means is the skilled live and the unskilled die. Since you're clearly in that second group, maybe pick your fights a bit more carefully? Do you understand what I'm saying? It's never going to matter how much you 'want it' when you're up against someone who can kill you with a sneeze." He also has an instant kill (a special attack that every character has a unique version of, it's also usually very over the top and flashy,) that is called The Theater of Pain. Basically, what he does in this attack is drag the opponent into his nightmare world (which is a movie theater) and subjects them to their worst possible trauma. He watches this with a grin and proceeds to fucking CLAP afterwards. My dude literally has his very own personal murder torture dimension and still felt the need to remake the whole world. If this doesn't sound like an asshole who's be done in by their hubris idk what does.

[margindoodles2407]

Rest in Peace Big Hero 6 AU (2023-2023)

@isasan347

Okay so basically. I was watching Big Hero 6 one day and then I decided to make a Linked Universe AU about it. Hold up I have to find all my old posts about it

Okay I found them

Alrighty

Characters

Wind was Hiro. As the de facto leader of the group, he used the theories of Aerodynamics and wind-related stuff to fly around and fight, and was Rulie’s main handler (gosh i hate using that term but what else was i supposed to call it? his owner? that sounds like slavery) and best friend, and laid claim to Hiro’s impulsivity and nerdiness.

Four originally split Hiro's role with Wind, but I ended up changing that later. He preferred to stay behind while the others do their fighting and backed them up remotely, giving them updates from the ground and aiding them with inventions of his. He also built the minishbots (like the microbots in the canon movie). He and Wind used to do Bot Fighting together- Four would build the bots and Wind would enter and control them. They were best friends and inseparable. (Four is 2 years older.)

Wars was Tadashi (yeah sorry he died) and Wind's biological older brother (it was an au i could do what i wanted). When he was Wind’s age, he was also into Bot Fighting, so he understood Wind's obession with it a little more than Canon Tadashi, but he still didn't approve (because of the violence he saw in the competitors). He was studying to enter the army as a military nurse, and, sharing Wind's mechanical genius, built Hyrule (short for Hyrule Medical Droid) to be a field nurse to avoid endangering the lives of human medics. Rulie was his prototype.

Rulie was Baymax, chosen because of his penchant for healing magic. In this AU, he was an android built by Wars before his death, designed as the prototype for a line of Robotic Army Field Nurses made to reduce the risk of sending human medics onto battlefields. He was more human-looking than Baymax, but wind upgraded him with extra human-y features (like silicone skin and fiberglass eyes) so that Malon wouldn't get suspicious. He and Four were able to convince her that Rulie was a friend from school who needed a place to stay as he was from out of town. Wind was not his “pilot” per se, like Hiro is to Baymax in canon, rather they fought in conjunction in some way. I was orking on it but then I abandoned the AU, so.

Malon was Aunt Cass. She was married to Time (who… has more information below) and was kinda FURIOUS when she found out that her husband wasn’t actually dead and that he was the dangerous criminal who threatened to tear Central Hyrule apart (and, also, you know, that he let one of their nephews die but moving on). It actually put their marriage in jeopardy for a time, so there was actually a post-canon plan for a slowburn lovers to enemies to reluctant allies to friends to lovers again side arc for them. She was also not as oblivious as Canon Aunt Cass to her nephews’ and their friends’ secret identities and knew that something was going on. However, she was in the dark about Rulie being an android. 

Twi was Wasabi. He couldn't turn into a wolf in this AU but his science field was the study of Twilit Matter (sorta like… a magic version of real-world dark matter), and he had built devices that allowed him to manipulate the Twilit Matter around him, usually into blades. Twi had always seemed like the most lawful good of all the Links and while rewatching the movie that made me think he’d line up well with Wasabi’s slightly neurotic personality (which i can relate to, being a lawful good myself). I said earlier that he couldn’t turn into a wolf, but he loved dogs, and another one of his favorite Twilit Matter manipulations was a giant wolf that he used to attack from range.

Legend was Go Go. His special area of science was the study of taking archaic technologies and trying to update them for modern usage, and his favorite project was a reinterpretation of Pegasus Boots. The parallel for this might be kinda obvious because both Legend and Go Go were the snarky, sarcastic ones of their respective teams, but I also wanted to keep in mind that Legend has a special friendship with Wars and Rulie (albeit in different ways) and so in this AU he actually helped Wars build and design Rulie, giving tips on medical assets based on the ancient healing magic of fairies. He was the human that Rulie is closest to outside of Wind and Wars.

Sky was Honey Lemon, because they’re both sweet mom friends. The main difference was that Sky was a Biochemist instead of a Chemical Engineer. So instead of throwing balls that produce a tangible chemical reaction, Sky’s actually synthesized hormones that affected his targets on a neurological level. But he had to be careful about his precision because the hormones could end up affecting him or his team if he wasn’t, so he also had several small mechanical Loftwings that homed in on his target by reading their chemical signature.

Wild was Fred. He studied Ancient Sheikah technology- sort of like Legend but on a narrower spectrum- and ended up successfully building himself a freaking Ancient Sheikah Mech Suit, to pair with Fred’s in-canon dragon-mascot suit. Also because Fred’s main thing is fire and we all like to joke about Wild being an arsonist :P As for the whole “Fred is secretly dirty freaking rich” thing, Wild was currently living with his best friend Flora, who was the daughter of the Mayor of Central Hyrule (by the way, even though i am a zelinker until i die, in this au, he and Flora were cousins and there was no romance between them ever). 

Time was the equivalent of professor Callaghan, trying to save his young cousin, Navi, from the trans-dimensional portal where she was trapped. He was actually Malon’s husband and therefore the uncle of Wars and Wind, and was the favorite teacher of Twi, Legend, Sky and Wild when he taught at Central Hyrule Technological Institute. UNLIKE in BH6 canon, he had no idea that Wars ran into the burning school to try to save him and felt incredibly guilty over his death, because even if I started him off as a villain he was still my favorite Link and I wasn't gonna turn him into some psychopath who let his nephew DIE on PURPOSE. Anyway, during his villain arc he wore the Fierce Deity mask, which was how he was able to control Four’s minishbots. In this AU, however, after his villain arc he (reluctantly, and i didn't figure out how the others started to trust him again) ended up joining forces with the boys and trying to fix his marriage with Malon. He never quite got over losing Navi AND Wars and ended up becoming quite overprotective of the boys once he did join them.

I will also link the original draft of the first chapter, back from when Wind and Four still shared a role as Hiro. It was a really cool concept in my opinion but I just. Ran out of steam for it.

[cloud-navi]

So I finally finished Transformers EarthSpark, lowkey love it. (Plot and human Malto’s)

⚠️ SPOILERS ⚠️

Overall Plot

- I think they did pretty good with the plot overall, I think the biggest plot hole is what happened to Ravage when Soundwave let them out in the cell block. I think it would have been interesting and explained better if they kept what they had planned from the story board instead of cutting it.

I like that they moved the antagonist from the Decepticons themselves to GHOST but I still feel like that left loose ends after the show. Like what happened to the Decepticons vs Autobots war or how did they’re treatment change after defeating Mandriod.

From what I know theres not much information about why the war in this iteration really started except that its tied to G1 through comics and ‘history’. Regardless of how it started I feel like Transformers as a whole is kind if an allegory for real life in many ways, example: Decepticon movement and revolution was (at least that I know in prime) was because the Council forced them as slaves and entertainment which makes their struggle a fictional parallel to events like the Civil Rights movement and revolutionary wars (happened/happening/might happen sometime in many countries).

I just find the idea that I’m supposed to root for the Autobots that want to protect humans after bringing their war to our planet over the Decepticons and their very understandable movement regardless of what their leader is doing at the moment is just kind of weird. Megatron, while is their leader has on multiple occasions changed what the movement has been kinda been about like in TFP he shifted focus from equal rights and changing out of a caste system to wanting to Offline Optimus Prime.

A leader can start a movement but its the people that drive it, if the leader is tainted and no one can/chooses to stand up for the actual cause then the cause is doomed. At the same time the people may not see the change in corse or understand the difference how it isn’t what they were fighting for if the leader words it in ways that makes it sound like the opponent is standing in the way of their success.

In TFP Megatron really wants to offline Optimus Prime, besides the fact that most of the crew on the nemesis is currently drones, the crew that the drones were clones of actively chose to follow him regardless. The crew, regardless if any spoke out, believed that Optimus Prime would be an obstacle in their way of creating a ‘better’ world. So at the end its mostly just manipulation from Megatron to get what he wants and the crew can’t really tell or are not strong enough to do anything about it.

ANYWAY, Characters,

Malto Family (human)

- Robby

I like Robbie, I think he has good character, especially growth. That being said I hate how he acted in the first episode. As a kid that was moved around a lot I understand its hard when you move away from some where that you grew up and know a lot of people to a new place, except the way he handled it was completely just no. He was 13 and came from a big city, understandable that he would miss home and the country would be a big change. But the selfishness in the idea that the only reason he stopped trying to run away from Witwicky wasn’t for his sister, but for giant robots. Just the way he treated Mo in the first episode is un called for and he should have had a sit down talk with their parents about how he felt and what comprises could be made for him to like it out there too. Like idk plan days to go hangout with friends in the city? Clearly you live close enough to bike there if you thought your friends parents wouldn’t send you back home if you actually managed to abandon Mo and get to the city.

- Mo

I love Mo and as a younger sibling completely understands how she sees things throughout the show. Episode one is like a double ended blade, Robby has no obligation to put other peoples feelings above his own about any situation <within reason of topic> however if you’re that close to your younger sibling its not only rude but concerning to push your family away over a move. Yes its a big move but Robby chose not to lean on family. Also the fact that he was so willing to run away and abandon his sister and yell at her for following him is disgusting. I’m sorry, yes a big move sucks, not being with all your friends sucks, but its not like he was too far to visit them and the way he treated Mo was unacceptable. Mo is his younger sister and is not the reason for the move, as an older sibling it shouldn’t have taken a cybersleeve for Robby to understand that Mo was affected by the move too. As a younger sibling, we see it all, we hear it all, we internalize everything. Robby leaving would have left Mo with the mentality that she was easy to leave behind because her own brother valued city life and his friends more then her being there. Theres no way in reality that she would have forgive him so easily for trying to leave after the Terrans were born. The only reason Robby didn’t keep running away was because something ‘interesting’ happened (the Terrans), the idea that two new friends/family members being the largest reason for him deciding to stay wouldn’t impact her mental is crazy.

- Dorothy and Alex

Cute couple, love their love and support for each other. Alex is a silly guy but clearly is a great sad just like Dot is a great mom.

The whole issue of moving to Witwicky was blamed on Dot which isn’t completely wrong but its not like they moved out of state or too far away for the kids to visit the city every so often. Yes its important to want your kids to want/like the move but sometimes its better that you do or theres outside factors that play in it and you have to move regardless. Dorothy didn’t have to have them move but she (very reasonably) wanted a change of pace and scene, they stayed within reasonable range of the city (clearly) so its not a giant problem especially if half the 2/3 other family members think its fair to let her finally have something she’s wanted for a while, a change of scene. Dorothy does so much for her kids and the lack of empathy from Robby to think he can’t possibly live without texting or seeing his friends 24/7 is crazy. Oh you have friends? Okay cool, maybe work on your communication skills with mom and find a schedule that lets you sit in the dining room and talk to your friends and make plans to visit every so often. Also clearly thats a fucking lie because instead of doing his family tradition with dad he stayed home and entered a game tournament IN HIS ROOM, so OBVIOUSLY HE HAS WIFI or connection to the internet and is able to play/connect with friends.

I feel very strongly on how Robby acted in the first episode and can’t see anyway for Mo to not be affected.

[wordsandrobots]

For the writer asks: 7, 27, 40! Thank you!

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

The same joy I get from any creative act: that of seeing something come into existence.

There's something incredible about taking an idea, fleshing it out and giving it a presence in the world. Be it writing, drawing, baking, building, whatever -- it's just wonderfully satisfying. I tend to do a lot of stuff in my head before I go to the keyboard (planning, scripting, feeling out the words) so it's always exciting to get to the point of actually doing. Because then it's there, on the page, more than just an image in my head.

And that's magic.

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

Heh.

When I was starting on my Iron-Blooded Orphans fan-fic spree (is it still a spree at this point?), I decided I needed a new villain, on account of the previous lower-level villains in the show meeting various ignoble fates and also because no one really filled the niche I was creating. I wanted someone who appeared nice, reasonable and even sympathetic on the surface (that is, showed sympathy to others) but who, not very deeply underneath, only ultimately cared about seeing their work completed.

(I explain this straight-up two chapters into them appearing in the story; it's not remotely a spoiler as I never intended to portray them *as* what they appeared to be on the surface.)

Additionally, I drew on ideas around assimilation and integration as a key part of their deal. They deliberately cultivated an 'acceptable' persona in the face of institutional elitism to get the power required to achieve their goals. There's a whole mass of reasons that plays on my mind generally (short version: I'm English) but I thought that, in context of this show, it would be an interesting thing to explore.

And you'd think they'd stress me out because I decided to make them non-binary and emphasise how deliberately appearing exactly androgynous was part a deeply performative and manipulative personality, as a means of stressing the way hierarchical organisations both allow space for people to game the system by playing into the signifiers of 'properness' and enforce those signifiers as the barrier to entry, and oh gods and muses I hope I haven't accidentally dropped into bad tropes about queer people, they can be bastards too, argh, argh, doubt, doubt, look they're not the only NB in my story, their gender isn't why they're like this I swear!

Except then I decided to write an entire fic from their point of view.

Writing close third person for a character whose view of the world is extremely cynical and selfish while also trying to convey to the reader that it is wrong is, when you do it for 10,000 words straight, rather exhausting! It's not just that they're a nasty piece of work. I *like* writing villains, especially the horrible ones; it's fun to show why the villainy makes sense from the other side. But *this* villain and this specific brand of 'I am always right, my goal is all that matters, anyone who disagrees is an idiot' was actively taxing to write.

Maybe it was the length, maybe it was the ways it struck closer to home in the middle of the giant robot fiction, maybe it was simply that their brand of betrayal and self-aggrandisement is ultimately kind of miserable. All I can say is, by the time I finished Of Obsessions and Erotemes, I was kind of burnt out. Constructing their headspace took a toll like nobody else I've ever written.

I'd do it all over again, obviously.

40. Please share a poem with me, I need it.

Argh, no, poetry, my one weakness!!!

OK, one of my weaknesses!!!

But in seriousness, me and poetry are ships in the night. I have known some lovely poets and been awed by their ability with words, but I've never really sought it out, so what I do know is mostly thunderingly obvious snatches of my ambient culture.

However, and though I suspect it's not entirely in the spirit of the question, for a poem about which I can say, this matters to me, Sassoon's The General sits somewhere near the heart of the great swell of anger I feel whenever we get to Poppy Fanaticism Season over here in Blighty. The fecklessness and callousness of our leaders during World War One has a through-line to the present that my own writing is likely always going to be in conversation with.

"Good-morning, good-morning!" the General said When we met him last week on our way to the line Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead, And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine. “He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

The General [Siegfried Sassoon]

For an ask game

[spectralquartzafterdark]

Three way between Rosie , Bee and Jules?? Maybe human or bot Jules 👀👀👀 or even better Starscream getting his three way 🥹

I can do some Jeweltone and Rosie Content! Have Fun. TW: Light Bondage, Knotting, Breeding Kink, Petplay, Over Stimulation. and there's a mirror involved.

“Man, frag your parents. I don’t know why they give you such a hard time.” Jeweltone spoke through the radio as they pulled into the garage.

“Because, I’m not falling for their manipulation. That’s why. I should be able to say I’m taken without question.” Rosie groaned as she rested her head on the steering wheel, “Fuck the holidays.”

Rosie looked at the time and sighed as she stepped out of the purple ‘69 mustang. She adjusted her dress and sighed as her mech companion transformed. She heard Jeweltone get situated on the garage floor and turned to them. It was clear the visit to her parents caused her more distress than she let on.

“Come here. I don’t think they’re worth the Energon anymore. We don’t have to visit unless it’s life or death okay?” They said as their optics looked at their human companion, “And I encourage you to say no from here on out.”

“Yea…” she said as she walked over to Jeweltone who scooped her up into their servos, “Just it’s hard. Living out here family is all you have. Blood or chosen and I don’t have much of either…”

“Trust me, I know all about that. Giant Robot.” they chuckled as they pulled her against their chassis, “But, your boundaries and mental health mean more than anything okay?”

Rosie nodded in defeat and just sighed as she let Jeweltone keep her close for the moment. She could feel her phone buzz in the pocket of her dress, but she didn’t care. She was done with today, in fact she quit. Whatever happened would happen and she wasn’t emotionally attached to the outcome.

Jeweltone’s fuel pump was pounding, they knew what they wanted to ask… but knew that this moment might not be the right time. All they wanted to do was spoil her. They reminisced about what their plans were going to be when they had returned home. A buzz vibrated in their circuits for a moment. That wasn’t important, right now just being here was. That didn’t stop the inevitable loop their circuits was trying to throw them into. Rosie’s body being so close, so warm, so soft had only made matters worse. When she pressed back into them their engine revved.

“Oh, my Primus I’m so sorry.” they exclaimed, “I didn’t scare you did I?”

Rosie just stared at them for a moment before she laughed, “No, I’m fine. But, what has you so worked up?”

“I was… uh…” Their optics looked to the side in embarrassment as they clenched their dentae, “Thinking about what our plans had been if things went well.”

“What made you think those were canceled?” She quirked a brow shifting to face them, “Hm?”

“Ah… well…” She was so close, and their bipedal cord felt hot, “The stress of that interaction would’ve turned me off from any premade plans.”

Jeweltone watched as Rosie rubbed her head for a moment. Had they said something wrong? They felt her shift out of their grasp and watched intently. She made sure the garage doors were locked. Windows closed and blocked out. Her steps were quick – what on earth was she planning to do? Then they watched as she pulled out a small tool kit. It seemed run down and had some stickers on it. Their optics scanned it and it was then everything clicked into place.

“Unless I directly say it’s off the table… assume the plans are still valid Jeweltone.” she smiled, “And after that fiasco. Honestly, I think I want the attention. We could go as far as you’d like tonight too. With your real body, not that Holoform. It’s not as… mmm.”

“Satisfying, heh. I agree. But, are you sure?” They asked.

“Yes, just I think I need the mental reset. I’m not feeling great about myself right now.” she admitted.

“I can fix that.” they scooped her up again and kissed her gently, “And I may not need to mass shift my entire body~” they felt her body shudder, of course she’d have a size kink.

Jeweltone shifted in the berth if one could call it that. Both parties had fooled around before, but it hadn’t quite gotten past digit and glossa play. Jeweltone had been too worried about hurting their partner. And the holoform was a mess. They couldn’t hold concentration during interfacing. This would be their first time beyond foreplay. But, they had something special in mind. If her self esteem was that low they knew a way to break it and fast. Just thinking about it made their spike strain against their panels.

Jeweltone was slow to work her up. Idly kissing her and letting their large servos roam that soft body of hers. Their favorite part had to be those ungodly soft inner thighs. One day they’d ask to just use them, but, for now they had other plans. They could hear her soft moans. They ran two of their digits between her legs and felt how soaked her panties already were. When she said she wanted attention she wasn’t joking clearly.

“How much do you want this?” they asked.

“You have no idea. Thinking about this is probably why I stayed sane.” she moaned softly as she rutted against their digits.

“Good, just… let me take care of you okay? You do enough for me. And I’m not having another incident.” Jeweltone purred, “Now, go ahead and take off your clothes.”

They set her down and went to the wall across from them and pulled out a mirror that Rosie hadn’t quite yet put up. They were going to make her see how beautiful she was. They grabbed the small tool box and went back to the berth. The garage was small, but thankfully it was going to work in their favor.

“Jeweltone, what’s the mirror for?” Rosie asked cautiously.

“You’ll see.” They said carefully holding her hands and doing a small twirl, had she really been wearing that lingerie set all day? “So, that’s why your routine took 3 hours today.”

“Mmmm not like you complain.” she teased.

“Never. Pull out what you need from the kit. We’ll set it on the shelf. It’ll be easier to grab.” They said.

Rosie nodded knowing that meant Jeweltone was serious about this particular session. Jeweltone watched her trying to have the courage to let their spike out from behind their panels. When they noticed her fiddling with something any bashfulness went away. Their panel retracted in full, they knew what she was up to. They admired all her soft curves and how the lace and bands moved across her frame. It was unfair really, how they couldn’t just bury themself in between all of those soft crevices. Though they were broken out of their thoughts as their eyes wandered up and noted that she had gone a little above and beyond of what they expected. Nipple chain perfect for tugging and a little collar? That was cute.

“Perfect.” was all they said before they scooped her up into their servos again.

Positioning was the issue now. Figuring out how to hold her in such a way that her body was completely visible in the mirror. Eventually they found the perfect spot. Immediately, they felt her fuel pump start pounding. They chuckled and pressed a kiss to her face panel.

“You’ve bamboozled yourself going beyond what I expect.” they tease, “Look at you~”

“L-listen I…” she yelped as they were shifted once more.

“Oh, this is going to be fun sweetspark. And now I don’t have to be human sized to play with these.” they tugged at the chain, “Frag, imagine is one was hooked to your Spike Node.”

“F-frag.” she moaned, “D-don’t tease too much.”

“I won’t.” they tugged again and groaned at the sight, “Now, I want you to watch yourself. Understood?”

“Yes.” she said, she knew what they were up to, but knew arguing wouldn’t do a bit of good in this situation.

“Good, I will make sure you physically see how beautiful you are and how you make me feel.” they managed to win the fight against a tiny tube and applied some sensitizer to her node.

It was perhaps a bit too much, but they would use it to their advantaged as they slowly rubbed it in and around her valve. They watched in the mirror as her node finally came to attention, she really was shy tonight. Usually, it didn’t take this long.

“Look at that. Your valve’s already dripping for me and your spike node is at full attention just from applying that sensitizer.” they boasted as their servos spread her just slightly to show off the lubricant, “Mmm, but truthfully I was straining against my panel for you a few hours ago. Watching you set a boundary and protect it mmm… this? Is only a bonus~”

They took her node between their fingers and squeezed. A small yelp of pleasure escaped her chest as Jeweltone began to stroke it up and down. At one point she tried to look away, but they were able to keep her focus on the mirror. They moved their digits over her frame complimenting each soft part of her. Each scar. Each section of stretch marks. All while playing with her node. They could feel it twitching between their fingers and quickly pulled away.

They couldn’t let her overload just yet. They turned her head and kissed her for a moment of reprieve. Only to move to tug on that chain again with their free servo. They nipped at her and she did the same in turn. It was clumsy and sweet, but they could feel her body melting into their touch. Jeweltone pulled away and moved her face to look at the mirror again.

“Now, whose the most beautiful human I know?” they asked.

“Me.” she managed to breath.

“Good, and who do I love?” They asked again.

“Me.” she chuckled and smiled.

“Good, don’t forget that ever. My conjunx. Mine.” they kissed her face again digits looming over her dripping valve before one dipped into her.

It was a tight fit at first. It seemed she had tensed up, but Jeweltone took that as a hint they should have warned her. As their digit moved in and out of her it didn’t take long for the other to slip in naturally. They smirked at their work admiring the scene in-front of them. The mirror was a good idea. They’d have to do this more often. Though admittedly their Spike was starting to ache and getting harder to ignore.

“Frag, please… I need your Spike.” she whined.

“Just a little more. I want to make sure you can take it without a problem.” they assured her.

“A-alright. Just, fuck I want to be full of you already.” she sighed softly another moan escaped her as Jeweltone played with the chain.

“I know. And I’m going to make sure you’re so stuffed that you’ll be worried about being pregnant.” they teased.

“Mmm sure about that? That’s an awfully big promise.” she cooed.

“I’m sure.” Their fingers dug further into her and caused her back to arch and hips pressed onto their fingers more.

Jeweltone kept their digits burried in her fragging her until she came close to another overload and quickly pulled away. They shifted their position and rubbed their spike against her valve and node. They made sure to cause as much friction as possible wanting to see her face in the mirror. Their spike luminated as they slowly slipped inside. They moaned as they felt how soft she was. No wonder Mirage liked humans so much. They were so soft and warm. They took a moment to pulled out and used the fluid from their poor ignored valve to lubricate themself. They once again thrusted into her with far more ease.

“Primus, look at you. I bottomed out without an issue. Frag.” they said as they placed a servo around her waist and watched their light ever so slightly come through her flesh.

“I-i told you I could take it ages ago.” her voice was cracking and breaking. It was almost song like as her hips moved and tried to take more of their partner.

“Mmm, no.” the held her still, “I’m taking care of you remember. Let me do the work.”

“F-frag okay.” she whined. She wanted to move so badly, “Please, move? It feels so good already.”

“As you wish.” they smirked.

Jeweltone wasn’t inexperienced. With humans maybe, but other bots. Not so much. And humans weren’t that different so they knew how to angle themself. Once they found that perfect spot they went to work. Struts thrusted into their partner like their life depended on it. They watched as her body rippled and moved, fuel pump almost vibrating at the sight. Their servos moved to keep her steady as the other pulled on that delicious chain. Though at this position it wasn’t the most practical and they had to chose where to put their energy. They let go of it and opted for something a little closer. Her node that had been twitching for some time. They took it between their digits and let their rhythm take care of any motion that was needed.

Their systems were starting to over heat. The room was starting to get hotter and they could see the sweat that beaded up on Rosie. It made her glisten like a jewel. It made them want to see her overload even more.

“Come on, cum for me.” they moaned into her ear, “Show much how much you want this.”

“Mmm… trying please a little rougher.” she asked softly clearly struggling with her body.

Jeweltone knew what had to be done. They bent them both over ever so slightly their body almost overshadowing theirs, but still visible in the mirror. If they had been any bigger she’d be their personal cocksleeve. With this position brought a new development. A slight bulge could be seen in Rosie. Jeweltone almost rolled their optics at that delicious sight. They took a moment to regain themselves before they picked up pace again. Her body felt so good against theirs it was driving them wild. Their engine revved louder and louder and caused their vibration mod to kick in. And that was all it took for her to break.

“F-frag I’m gonna!!” her last soft squeak before her body gave into Jeweltones demand.

She overloaded. Hard. She could barely think straight from how strong it was. Her body was squeezing Jeweltone’s spike so tightly that they felt their other mod kick in. After two more thrusts they could no longer pull from her valve as they overloaded. Their voice box distorting as they cried out her name. They could only manage soft I love yous as both parties came down from their high. Jeweltone had to carefully sit both of them back up. They both looked in the mirror and they smirked. There was definitely a noticeable bump. They hadn’t lost their touch after all.

They kissed her gently and smiled as their systems began to cool off.

“Are you okay?” They asked.

“Mmhmm… y-you’re stuck.” she pointed out.

“Y-yea… sorry about that. Usually I can control that mod… but -”

“Don’t worry about it. It feels really good.” she admitted, node still twitching.

“Mmm greedy little thing I don’t think your body is done.” They smirked.

They couldn’t do much else until their knot mod reconfigured itself. So, they decided to see if they could coax out one more overload from Rosie. They rubbed her node in circles, pinching and working it much like before. Hearing her whines. She was oversensitive right now. But, her poor node was so swollen they couldn’t jut ignore it. So, they kept it up idly. Carefully playing with it until finally they felt her fall back into their chassis crying out literal tears of pleasure as she overloaded again. Squeezing their spike much harder and longer. Over and over. Almost like a chain.

“F-frag, Jeweltone!” She pushed against their hand, “T-too much gonna FRAG.” she sobbed as she overloaded again enough to push Jeweltone’s spike from her body with a pop.

“Primus, I didn’t know you could do that. Frag… I want to set aside a full day now. Just to tease you.” They admitted as their spike finally depressurized and they retracted it back into their panel.

“Mmm… later…” she sobbed softly taking off the nipple clamps and chain and throwing them to the side. She clearly wasn’t going to risk another round.

Jeweltone smirked seeing their transfluid dripping from her valve. They took a few digits and shoved as much as they could back into her. Rosie giggled and looked to them via the mirror.

“What was I upset about earlier?” She asked.

“Absolutely nothing.” Jeweltone laughed and held her closer, “But now… I think we both need baths.”