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in fact, now i'm curious enough after all these asks that i'm gonna make a tagbait post: transformers fandom, please tell me what you think the rarest rarepair that you earnestly ship is. i'm talking 'this has no fanart no matter how deep into twitter and pixiv you dive' stuff. the ones you made up at 3am when you couldn't sleep and now they are real To You.

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My fav shakespearean chicken

more BW fanart

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Just another brick in the wall.

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*grabs the tf fandom by the shoulders* the people writing for official media are not doing fanfiction, what they are doing is different and in fact, if they approached it like fanfiction that would be bad. Often they are just doing their own take on things according to what works better for the story they're trying to tell, which may or may not be in conversation with previous entries to the franchise. But they have no obligation whatsoever to reference fandom and it is foolish to expect this from them. In fact, most of the writers participated in different spheres of fandom than the ones favored by the tumblr crowd, if they even participated in any fandom at all. When they were hired they were not aware of whatever fanon characterization/lore/ship/etc you think is obvious and universal. Please.

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Transformers #22 cover by Simon Parr

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u ever wonder if ur associated with a character forever to someone else. like. when ur scrolling ur dash and u see a url u don't recognize and after going to their blog ur like ohhh this is the Character person. yeah ok i remember now.

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Generation Mechs - a favour

Sorry for being AWOL for a while:

Gen Mechs, my new book about the earliest days of Transformers fan culture, is going to print in a few weeks. It’s all new content. Part critique, part reference guide, part oral history

I’ve interviewed over 50 creators, industry execs and fans (especially fanzine editors) and dug up very rare new info about the early days (83 to 99). I’m really happy with how it’s turned out.

I’ll be selling and signing copies at @tfnationltd, and then later in the year I’m going to make it available to order, as I’ve done with the MTMTE notebooks

Normally, I do a small run of notebooks for the cons then wait until I’ve taken people’s orders before doing a second print run. That way, I know exactly what the global demand is and I don’t over-order

I’m doing things differently with Gen Mechs. It’s a large format, 500 page hardback book with glossy inserts, a dust jacket and an embossed spine. It’ll be expensive to produce. The cost-per-book is greater the smaller the print run, to a more pronounced extent than the notebooks

For this reason, I’m only going to do a single print run. Gen Mechs will therefore be a limited edition (I *may* do a softback second printing in a few years, depending on demand). Thing is… I’ve no idea how many copies to get printed. And this is where you come in

I’m not inviting pre-orders/payment, but I’d appreciate it if those of you who intend to buy a copy would let me know by liking this post. I say “intend to buy”, but there’s no obligation. If you change your mind, fine. I just need a rough idea of demand

I’m still waiting on final costs (which will of course be determined in large part by the size of the print run), but I think I’ll be selling each copy for around £40 (plus shipping). I’ll be signing them and sending them out in bespoke packaging

So if you think you’ll be ordering a copy or picking one up at TFNation, please like the first post. “RTs” (or tumblr equivalent) to maximise the sample size are also appreciated.

I’ve posted a similar message on BlueSky, Insta, Facebook and Tumblr — **please do not Like more than one**. Thanks x

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remember this pride month that YOU 🫵 have the ability to make every character you love more transsexual. the world is a wonderful place. never miss a chance to do the right thing folks

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Went back into this blog's archive only to be slapped in the face by the passage of time

What do you mean most of my notable contributions to this fandom were 4-5 years ago

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a bit of pride themed doodling,,

(hcs/flags are largely just me being goofy dont take them too seriously)

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Sat down to write Two Cents, this happened instead. Have a vaguely Two Cents-based drabble inspired by @soundwavereporting​ ‘s comment about Soundwave probably being really young. I always enjoy writing Drift and Ravage interacting. 

“So, who’s the kid?” Deadlock — as he’d been newly renamed, something Ravage kept having to remind himself — asked around the cy-garette shoved between his lips.

“He’s going by Soundwave,” Ravage responded.

“Can’t say I had you pinned as the carin’ type,” Deadlock commented, watching Soundwave as he quietly conversed with Megatron, Laserbeak perched on his shoulder. Ravage’s plating prickled — but the bounty hunter’s gaze was one of idle curiosity, nothing else, and Ravage forced his agitation down.

Drift was a bounty hunter — a professional killer among their ranks of fumbling idealists with revolutionary ambitions. He may have a new name, a new frame, but Ravage had met him years ago, sought his advice and cast his chips accordingly. Drift — Deadlock — was possibly the last person Ravage needed to worry about harming Soundwave. Despite knowing this, Ravage had found himself reacting to the very idea of a threat. It was… telling. Deadlock glanced down at him, and Ravage looked away.

“He’s helpful. He needed help,” Ravage explained shortly. “It worked out.”

“He from the Dead End?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. He’s damn lucky you found him then.”

As though that very thought hadn’t crossed Ravage’s mind.

“I thought you were quitting,” Ravage commented as Deadlock took another drag.

Deadlock parted his lips and released a curl of smoke, taking the obvious redirecting of the conversation in stride. “Yeah — syk. Life ain’t gonna get any easier to deal with just because I decided to stop slowly killin’ myself. Gotta have some vices left to turn to if I wanna actually stop usin’.” He snorted. “Feels a little stupid, considerin’ we’re all gonna get ourselves killed like this anyhow.”

“Regretting throwing your lot in with Megatron now?”

“Nah. I’m just not an idealist. I’ve seen how this shit ends. You might regret it though, ‘cus of the kid.”

Ravage’s tail flicked. He tucked his pedes more firmly beneath himself.

“There’s not much to lose,” he said, as though that would justify it.

“No way outta the Dead End but up. Gettin’ killed while fightin’ is the best death you’re gonna get,” Deadlock stated. “Like I said — he’s lucky.”

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Here, have a drabble from further along in Soft Memory Errors. Having come back to the Lost Light with Ratchet earlier than he did in canon, Drift meets the artisan who created the base of the little figurine of him that Ratchet had carried along, and realizes he has something he can give Ten in return. 

“You made all these?” Drift asked, looking over Ten’s impressive menagerie of Lost Light crew-member figurines. 

“Ten.” A nod.

Drift looked at Ten, considering. “Do you like drawing more, or sculpting?” he asked.

Ten paused. Drift realized he didn’t leave the legislator a way to answer.

“Sorry, I didn’t make that very easy for you. Let’s try this.” Drift lifted his right hand in the air. “Do you like drawing more, or—” Drift put down his hand and lifted the other, “sculpting more?”

Drift left both of his hands on the table, palms up. After a moment, Ten tapped the center of Drift’s left palm.

“Sculpting, huh? Well you’re certainly skilled at it.”

“Ten.” The word hadn’t changed, but Ten’s inflection was happy. He looked happy.

A thought occurred to Drift.

“Ten, do you know what chirolinguistics are?” Drift asked.

Ten shook his head immediately.

“Give me your hands,” Drift said. Ten seemed startled when Drift slotted their fingers together, palm-to-palm. Drift gave him a smile that seemed to reassure him. “Chirolinguists is a touch-language. Where I’m from, we called it “speaking hand”. Here—” Drift released one of Ten’s hands so he had it free to gesture with, “—point to something you want to learn how to say the name of.”

Ten looked around the bar excitedly. He seemed uncertain of what to ask. After a moment, Drift realized he was weighing his options, trying to decide what he wanted to know more.

“I’ll show you more words after this first one,” Drift said with a laugh. “Just one at a time.”

This seemed to ease Ten’s conundrum. After a moment, he pointed to Drift.

“My name?” Drift asked.

Ten nodded.

“Alright. This is how you say my name in hand.” Drift showed Ten the gesture — names were never a direct translation, each being their own unique gesture that denoted the person in question. It occurred to Drift how long it had been since he’d gone by this name. “Now you try.”

Ten mimicked the gesture easily — just as Drift suspected, Ten’s skill with his hands made him quick to pick up on hand-speak.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Drift said with a grin.

Ten repeated Drift’s name again, then pointed at Ratchet, where he was lingering near the bar, speaking with First Aid.

“Ratchet,” Drift sounded out as he went through the motions of Ratchet’s name. Drift wasn’t sure how Ratchet would say his name in chirolinguistics — the motion Drift made was one that the residents of the Dead End used for him, built of pieces of the gestures for doctor and trustworthy and safe. It choked him up a little — he hadn’t expected to find himself thinking of people and places that hadn’t crossed his processor in millennia when he offered to teach Ten some words.

Thankfully, after testing the motions to Ratchet’s name a few times and repeating Drift once more for good measure, Ten pointed to the table, letting Drift turn his thoughts to sounding out more innocuous words. Ten learned the gestures for table, engex, figurine, bar, cup, chair, sword, hand, and flower, with Ten pointing at the ones painted on his own plating to indicate that last one. With each new word, Ten would run through the last few he’d learned, determined to commit each to memory. At the fifteenth word, Drift suggested Ten continue practicing those for the evening.

“I can show you more words tomorrow,” Drift offered. “And we can work up to full sentences from there.”

Ten paused for a second, then seemed to become flustered, even though he had no EM field that Drift could feel. He gestured with his free hand, pressing it to his mouth, then holding it out, then back to his mouth. After a moment, Drift realized he was trying to work through how to say something — and what it was he was likely trying to say.

“Thank you,” Drift sounded out as he pressed the words for the sentiment into Ten’s hand.

Ten immediately repeated it, then again, then again. 

Thank you thank you thank you thank you—

On the fourth repetition Drift covered Ten’s hand with his other hand to still it.

“I’m happy to help,” Drift said. Ten’s pure happiness was infectious, drawing a genuine smile out of Drift.

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A drabble I found in the depths of SME’s working document.

GO

They’d taken to playing by Perceptor’s CR chamber. It was unknown whether or not Perceptor had any awareness, stuck in a coma. If he was, they figured being a blind observer to a strategy game might give him some entertainment. Drift had, apparently, picked up the game during a stint at Howling Town, on Troja Major. He explained the rules of the game and described the appearance and layout of the board in great detail to help Perceptor picture it in his mind and follow along, if he could hear them. 

The game was slow, meant to be carefully considered. Blurr’s tendency toward multitasking ended up making it a catalyst for small talk. 

It was fairly inevitable that the question would come up as they played, really. 

“What did I do before the war?” Drift repeated.

“Yeah.”

Drift cocked his head. “Not really a fair question. It’s not like I can ask you the same. You were a celebrity — everyone knew who you were before the war.”

“You want to know something in return,” Blurr stated.

“Tit-for-tat.”

“Alright, ask me something then.”

“Anything?”

Blurr shrugged. “Sure, why not.”

Drift considered, chin propped on his hand, watching as Blurr placed his next game piece on the board.

“What’s something you regret?” Drift asked. “Something important.”

A few things came to mind when Blurr thought about it. None of them good, really. But he was talking to an ex-Decepticon, so he supposed they’d both seen and done some pretty terrible things by this point. Even so, he chose the most outdated, just in case.

“I saved Zeta’s life before I knew the whole situation,” Blurr offered.

Drift raised an optic ridge. “Really?”

“Yeah. Stopped an assassination attempt.”

“He ended up getting sniped anyway,” Drift said, in a way that made Blurr wonder just how much he knew about that.

“Sure, but Nyon happened before someone took him out.”

“Right.” Drift scrutinized the game board and took his turn. “Well that story makes mine seem not very interesting.”

“So?”

“I was a gun-for-hire, for an operation called the Underground. Very, very illegal.”

Bounty hunter, not racer. Huh.

“Huh,” Blurr said.

“Expect something else?” Drift asked.

“No, it makes sense that you got practice whereas the rest of us were just thrown into it.”

Drift laughed. Blurr thought — not for the first time — that he had a strange sense of humor.

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I did not have any more Ten snippets on hand, but I have heard the voice of the people, and it says you all really want more Ten so I wrote more Ten

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“You just let him get shot,” Drift said.

“He wanted to be helpful,” Ravage replied. “And he was helpful.”

Ravage glanced over as Drift gave him a disgusted look.

“What? He’s not one of mine. Besides, his armor is battle-grade, and then some. He’s a big lug, he’ll be fine.” Ravage returned his attention to piloting, tail flicking irritably. The defensive tone in Ravage’s voice told Drift he felt marginally guilty, which Drift supposed was as good as he was going to get right now. His attention was turned elsewhere anyhow, as Ten stirred beneath Ratchet’s touch.

“Easy,” Ratchet ordered kindly as Ten shifted around.

Drift shifted closer to give a hand as Ratchet helped Ten sit up. Despite likely being in pain, the big mechandroid seemed delighted to see Drift and Ratchet.

“Ten,” he said.

“Hi, Ten,” Drift replied, with a smile. He was pissed, but he wasn’t about to turn that on Ten. Not when Ten was so attentive to expressions, given he had no EM field.

Ten held out his hands to Drift, shyly. Drift sheathed his sword to free his hand, then pressed his palms to Ten’s.

Helped? Ten asked, hopeful.

“You did help Ten,” Drift told him. “Thank you.”

“Ten, ten, ten,” Ten said, in that way he did when he was happy about something.

Drift glared at Ravage again, who rolled his optics.

“Softspark,” Ravage muttered.

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Have a snippet from the bit of SME that's set during MTMTE that might not see the light of day for a while. I liked this exchange quite a bit upon re-reading it (premise of this is that Ambulon has clocked that Drift is Deadlock).

“How did this even happen?” Ambulon asked as he began work on reconnecting the severed lines.

“Broke up a bar fight at Swerve’s. Didn’t see—ow!” Drift flinched, sensation suddenly returning to his arm. He grimaced. “Hate that feeling.”

“I’m surprised someone managed to land a hit on you."

Drift sighed. When Ambulon glanced up at his face, he saw the speedster looking around conspiratorially, ensuring they were alone.

“I got distracted,” Drift muttered. “Sprocket got drunk and started spouting Functionist slag.”

“Sprocket did this?”

“Pff, no. Grotusque did. And then said ‘sorry’ more times in under a minute than I’ve ever heard any Autobot apologize to an ex-con. He was aiming for Sprocket. They’re both having a time-out in the brig.” Drift shook his head, clearly annoyed. “To think that we can fight a war against Functionism for four million years and almost destroy ourselves over it, and somehow that shit still permeates.”

As far as Ambulon’s experience went, the war had been about many things, but Functionism had never quite been on the list. Ambulon had been built for a purpose, and had fulfilled it; the entire thing had always struck him as somewhat hypocritical to the tenants espoused in Towards Peace, but he had enough self-preservation to know to keep his mouth shut.

He reconnected the last of the severed lines and stood, only to find Drift staring at him intently. Immediately, Ambulon pulled his field in tight to not give away his anxiety.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

“You were an MTO,” Drift commented. “Operation Split Infinity, right?”

“I am an MTO, yes.”

Drift didn’t comment on his correction of tense. He leaned back on his good arm, head cocked as he watched Ambulon move to retrieve weld patches from the cabinet.

“What was the war about, to you?” Drift asked.

Ambulon’s frame felt suddenly cold. He chanced a glance at Drift, and something in his expression or posture must have given him away, because Drift gave him a sympathetic look.

“I’m not Conclave anymore, Ambulon. I’m not going to rat you out to Megatron. I doubt he’d even take my call.”

Rumor had it that Megatron would take it in a sparkbeat, but Ambulon wasn’t about to say that out loud. Between the potential for invoking the wrath of Megatron and the thoroughness of Deadlock’s kill record, Ambulon always thought the ‘cons who dared gossip about that relationship in hushed tones were idiots. Particularly after Deadlock’s supposed ‘death’.

“Besides, we’re both already on the DJD’s list,” Drift pointed out.

Ambulon would give him that.

“It was about winning, mostly.” Ambulon said, as he brought the tray of supplies over and placed them on a rolling cart near the medberth. “And supremacy.”

Drift huffed out a sigh, clearly irritated.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Of course it was.”