stunt_muppet

I get that online application is more economical and saves trees, but it also means I have to keep track of way more logins and passwords and am geometrically more likely to forget them and end up wasting everyone's time trying to get a new one every time I visit X site.

Oh, and they request a resume and cover letter and then, on the next screen, tell you to fill in by hand all your academic and work information and write a reason why you're an ideal candidate. What is the actual point.

So, taking a break. Here is a meme quiz thing, even though I've never actually read the Golden Compass books (of which I am deeply ashamed):

Your result for The Golden Compass Daemon Test...

Shy Friendly Soul

 

Take The Golden Compass Daemon Test at HelloQuizzy


Surprisingly accurate, though that might be because this quiz provides middle-of-the-road answers rather than super-extroverted vs super-introverted. Hm.

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Is anyone else having problems with uploading photos, or am I just being really incompetent? I had a couple more pictures that I wanted to upload, but every time I try to import a photo the loading window slows way down and then never actually loads. Maybe my computer's just over capacity.

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Last entry or so I mentioned that I'd gone through and read most/all of the prompts on tfanonkink  just for the heck of it (and because I was laid up and didn't feel like doing much else. And while there are a couple that I might like to try writing (if I ever finish my enormous backlog of Stuff to Write, which given the status of that list and my current stifling writers' block will basically never happen), there was one that gave me yet another idea for a Big Huge Crazy (and mostly gen!) AU. I think of those a lot, really.

So I kind of like this prompt - it's OP/BA hurt/comfort, and I have to admit I occasionally have a big shameful Thing for h/c if it's done right - but I don't think I could actually write it, or even really read the resulting fic, because sexual slavery and/or rape is usually a pretty big squick for me and I don't like reading or writing it. But for some reason the idea of Optimus as the Decepticons' prisoner in a dark post-series AU with Blackarachnia as his only tenuous ally really appealed to me. And because I enjoy dreaming up scenes that I should be able to write but can't, I ended up thinking up this scene where she feels sorry for him and releases him back into the remains of Cybertron - but he's the only one left, and so he questions why she bothered because he'll just die somewhere else.

Except the possibilities of a postwar AU are just too good for him to really be the only one left, so I started thinking up what the rest of the Autobots would be getting up to if their side had lost the war. Originally I intended to keep as few of them alive as possible, because, well, it's not exactly a dark AU if too many people are left alive, is it? But then I kept thinking up things I wanted to do with them and I couldn't leave them dead when they've got a plotline to work with, now could I?

I wanted to do something with Bulkhead, because he so rarely gets a plot to revolve around him and I think that's sad. I thought about killing off Bumblebee, but instead I thought I'd leave him catatonic, not even speaking anymore because that's how bad the war messed with his head; Bulkhead, who's in slightly better mental health, has to take care of him, and that means figuring out how to survive in the postwar world. He builds shelter, salvages what he can of the energon harvesters (since he already knows how they work), and even builds weapons for self-defense. Of course, since he's doing all that anyway, he ends up becoming an inadvertent leader to the few survivors. Word gets around that he's got food and shelter, and so people cluster to him and look to him for help on not getting killed. 

I wasn't sure what I wanted Ratchet to do, since it probably makes more sense to have him die too, but then I got the other brilliant idea - I could totally tie this in to yet another Big huge Crazy AU! See, if I tied the postwar AU in with that idea I had about Sari being some sort of "key" herself to Primus and Cybertron - the thing it needs to reformat into a technoorganic planet and possibly fend off some other unspecified threat, e.g. Unicron. So, if I'm going to go with that, then what I can do is have Sari make a Heroic Sacrifice offscreen, before the fic begins; Ratchet, after the war, is trying to find and rebuild a rudimentary spaceship so he can fulfill his last promise to her - to take her body back to Earth and to her father, so he'll at least know what happened to her. Meanwhile, Sari's ghost or soul or whatever "wakes up" within the AllSpark, with a strange voice telling her that it's almost time for her to realize her purpose. And once she understands or accepts what she's supposed to do, then her body can "re-awaken" and start talking to Ratchet, who can then help her get to the core of the planet and communicate with Primus.

Of course, the problem with that BHCAU is that it relied on the idea that Blackarachnia had been transported back to prehistoric Cybertron and basically caused the Beast Wars in that universe, whereas with the prompt as it is (and thus the verse as it is), Blackarachia is back in the present day and under Megatron's command again. I'm sure this could be quickly resolved with a handwave or two (maybe by stating that Cybertron is indeed or is supposed to be technoorganic, referencing Beast Wars, even without Blackarachnia's intervention, or that the Transformers that currently reside on it have forgotten its hybrid origins) but it's still a problem.

But anyway. If I do choose to make Unicron the threat that Primus requires Sari for, that also gives the remaining Decepticons something to do - something big is on the horizon, and they don't know how to deal with it. In the meanwhile, I also thought of having Lockdown encouraging discord amongst the Decepticons, particularly in regards to their leadership, because now that the war is over Lockdown's kind of out of a job and he's bored, and the quickest way to fix that is to start off another war. So there's already unrest among the Cons because people are fighting and splitting into factions over who should lead the planet now that they control it (which gives me an excuse to bring in some of the Decepticon Commanders from the comics and the Japanese series, like Overlord, Scorponok/BlackZarak, Straxus, Thunderwing, etc. Although technically Straxus already exists in TFA continuity as per the Almanac but bla bla bla fanwank that's why it's an AU.)

So, we have the two ways to start the story. At the beginning, Optimus is a prisoner and trophy of Megatron, occasionally handed off to whichever lieutenant is most in his favor that day (because for some reason I'm perfectly okay with implying noncon so long as I don't have to actually write it), and Blackarachnia ends up with him. She takes enough pity on him to fix him up a bit and let him go, explaining away his absence somehow - maybe stating that he'd finally died? Or, alternately, Blackarachnia is back in the past starting the Beast Wars and Optimus stays locked up in Decepticon HQ.

Either way, somehow word gets out to Bulkhead that Optimus is still alive; Bulkhead, understandably, wants to rescue him as soon as possible, but he doesn't quite have the resources or the fighting force required to steal Megatron's prisoner from his own fortress. So, instead, he hires an expert: Lockdown. Much as he hates to do it, especially when (because he really has nothing with which to pay Lockdown) the bounty hunter insists that he gets to take whatever trophy he wants off of Optimus once he retrieves him.

(Alternately, Bulkhead has to barter with Swindle for a suitably impressive weapon by building transwarp drives, energon harvesters, etc - and Swindle's similarly discontent with the slowdown in business. Lockdown still has the same provisions, though.)

I have a vague idea of where to go from there, as mentioned above, but mostly I just have that setting. I'm not sure if that's really bleak enough to be a "dark" AU - all the core cast save Prowl are still there, and Prowl was dead before the series ended - but I have no idea how dark this fandom typically goes in its darkfic, so maybe I wouldn't come across as too much of a lightweight. And it gives me something to do with that "Sari is the key to Cybertron" idea, whereas previously it was sort of a free-floating plot point with not much of a place to go. I could do the alt!Beast Wars idea later.

And if I really felt like going in for inter-fic continuity, I could try to explain how Sari's protoform came to be on Earth by saying that that was one of the things that Nexus Prime and Aquarius had to do after the Shattered Glass story "Reunification" was to drop her past self off on Earth so she could defend Cybertron in its darkest hour time of need, and the interdimensional ripples from that transfer are what allowed the Megatron in the Holy War AU to peek into Axiom Nexus and see just how central he and Optimus were to the multiverse! HOLY SMOKES I COULD BUILD A WHOLE FREAKING SAGA HERE.

Of course, there's still that other multi-Doctor saga that I still want to do if I ever figure out a plot. Why do I always end up thinking up these sprawling things that I'll never get the chance to write? It's very frustrating.

On a less ambitious note, I've already expressed my sadness at the paucity of Optimus/Ironhide prompts on the kinkmeme, but there are hardly any OP/Elita or Ironhide/Chromia either (which I should have anticipated, really - and an OT4 fic is right out, I suppose). Which is why someone needs to fill this prompt right the hell now. I think I could actually write that one fairly quickly myself, even, if the prompter hadn't requested Bluestreak (who I've hardly encountered and don't know how to write), but really, I just wanted to share that prompt with everyone because it's awesome.

I actually took a crack at writing this one, but it turns out that much as I love Bulkhead I can't seem to write anything suggestive about him. And I felt really terrible about that until I realize it had nothing to do with his size - it's the voice. Whenever I hear him speaking I associate it with Patrick Star from SpongeBob, and if I even accidentally think about thinking about Patrick in a sexual context my brain turns itself inside-out in self-defense. But would it be really bad form to write it as a PG-13 or lower fic, maybe? Because I've been shipping Bumblebee/Bulkhead kind of a lot lately, and I love the idea of Bulkhead painting Bumblebee and Bee loving the attention, but I just don't know how I'd do with smutty stuff. I wouldn't post it as a response, obviously, because that wouldn't be right, but it's definitely on the list of Things To Write. And I don't know why I felt the need to type that, but oh well, I'm basically thinking out loud by this point.

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On a less perverted note, it would seem that The Rock has been cast as the voice of Cliffjumper in TF: Prime. To which I say HELL YEAH. :D Unfortunately, it would appear that Gina Torres is not in fact voicing Arcee, so the series just became 75% less cool, so it almost balances out.


Good night, flist. It's even later than usual, but that's what I get for finally deciding all these ideas need to be put on paper Right Now.