AIR! BORNE! INTESTINES!
Oct. 18th, 2007 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koilungfish10/10/07 - Day Off
11/10/07 - 542 words on The Other God of Charr
12/10/07 - Ill
13/10/07 - 851 words on The Other God of Charr
14/10/07 - 856 words on The Other God of Charr
15/10/07 - Day Off
16/10/07 - 508 words on A Death Like This
17/10/07 - 693 words on It's Not Funny
18/10/07 - Bad Press
[Starscream!]
Startled, the Air Commander dropped what he was holding, and cursed as it fell screaming into a container of liquid nitrogen. [What is it, Megatron?]
[Explain this!]
Starscream mentally blinked. [Explain what?]
[This!]
[Did you have a total cognitive array failure, or am I supposed to have installed long-range wall-piercing sensors recently?] Starscream asked, using tongs to pull his now frozen experimental subject out of the hydrogen. He held the humansicle up and turned it this way and that, examining the odd shape it had torqued itself into, and the expression of rudimentary agony on its rubbery face. There goes that experiment, he thought.
[Get over here now, you sarcastic dolt!] Megatron yelled.
Tossing his head in exasperation, Starscream flicked the dead human into the waste-to-fuel incinerator and went to find out what the fuss was about.
Entering Megatron's quarters, he found the Decepticon leader standing over a large computer console. Megatron was fuming and Starscream was faintly surprised, given the old glitch's expression of barely-contained rage, that the console wasn't as well.
"Explain this!" Megatron shouted, pointing to the console's screens.
"I didn't do anything!" Starscream protested as he moved closer, wondering whether he was being blamed for something Skywarp had done, or if it was just Megatron using him as the world's most handsome scapegoat, and whether or not he should just skip the shouting and run right now.
"When you were an explorer, you were a xenologist!" Megatron said, still shouting, as if it made sense of everything. "You specialised in xenolinguistic analysis!"
"Well, yes, amongst other things," Starscream said, reluctant to admit to something that seemed liable to get him battered. "What of it?"
"Look at the blasted screens, you fool," Megatron said, scowling.
Starscream glanced. The main screen was full of text - human text, written in a language developed from but distinct from English - and all the subscreens displayed similar contents. "It's human writing. They call it ... " he began, then stopped in mid-superciliousness as the actual substance of the text filtered through his processors. " ... lubricated ... rubber ... balls ... ?"
Megatron nodded, still scowling. "Explain."
"I didn't write that!" Starscream exclaimed immediately, more keen to distance himself from the disturbing words than out of any sense of being blamed.
"I credit you with better translation skills than that," Megatron said, the anger starting to fade.
The danger dormant for the moment, Starscream slipped into the seat before the console and examined the main text more closely. Four paragraphs down, the words "I - you - up my thrusters?" exploded from his vocaliser.
"Check the one on subscreen four," Megatron said, leaning on the back of the chair.
Starscream did. He read. His optics widened and he pushed himself away from the screen, deep into the seat, fear on his face. "What new lunacy is this, Megatron?" he asked, voice low.
"Soundwave found it, trawling the humans' 'internet' for power source data," Megatron said. "He said it is called 'fan fiction'."
Starscream flipped through the subscreens, reading with a morbid interest that bordered on nausea. " ... oil there? ... Optimus Prime? I would never - "
"I had often suspected it," Megatron said with leaden sarcasm.
Starscream snapped at him, ruffled to see himself stretched out across reams of bad prose, twisted into unrecognisable beings - a wanton flyaway with no interests beyond sensual promiscuity, an emotional wreck dependant on a traitor's smothering comfort, a masochist begging Megatron for cruelties, a soppy xenophile coddling humans from their petty problems, a pompous clown with the intellect of a cleaning drone, a fragile psychological disaster-area clinging to Megatron for emotional support. "Who is responsible for this wretched nonsense? I need to express my displeasure with high explosives!"
"They're scattered all over the globe," Megatron said, waving a hand at the screen. "Hunting them down and destroying them for their crimes against our reputations would take months. A waste of fuel and time."
Starscream continued to flick through the texts. "I can feel my higher cognitive functions shutting down in self-defence," he said. " ... oh, it's just Autobots in this one, that's a - what? Me? A female Autobot?" He jumped up from the chair, wings pulled up like blades, shoulders tense, fists clenched. "I'll rip the plating off anyone who dares say such a thing about me!"
"Good luck finding them all," Megatron said, more amused than angry now that someone else was suffering humiliation by amateur prose.
"There's more than one?" Starscream asked aghast, turning to face the gunformer.
"I saw seven before I called you over," Megatron said, straightening up. "And worse."
Starscream tipped his head, optics so wide they were almost round. "How can it get worse? As if I'd ever -"
"The Autobots must be seeding the human population with deliberate misinformation, perhaps some sort of allegiance by propaganda," Megatron said. "According to some of these things, we reproduce the same way the humans do - via internal parasitism."
" ... ick," Starscream said, flinching at the thought and ignoring Megatron's ignorance of organic biology. "That's disgusting." He saw Megatron's smirk. "Oh no. Not me."
"Yes, you," Megatron said, nodding his head, expression stretched between amusement and horror. "Two of them were mine and one was ... "
Starscream stared, too revolted to ask, shaking his head in disbelief.
"They invent new Decepticons," Megatron said, grimacing. "Very strange ones."
"If they believe we do ... " Starscream looked over his shoulder at the screens, " ... those things, I cannot begin to imagine what they conjure up."
"Nobility," Megatron said, spitting the word. "Honour. Compassion. Mercy. Paperwork."
Starscream leant against the console. "What was it you wanted me to explain?" he said, voice softened by confusion.
"Why?" Megatron said. "What are these flesh-things planning? Do they hope to defeat us by embarrassing us into deactivation?"
Starscream frowned at the floor, kicking his higher cognitive processors into overdrive and activating his xenoculture analysis routines. "It's hard to process this babble," he said, wincing as he re-assessed the texts he'd read. "It makes me want to wash my brain module out with acid." He heard Megatron hiss. "Whatever disgusting thing do they have us doing now?"
"Declaring undying love and devotion," Megatron said.
"Oh, for Cybertron's sake!" Starscream shouted, throwing his arms in the air. "Will they leave us nothing of our Decepticon programming?"
"Apparently not," Megatron said, looking disgusted. "Well? Analysis?"
"They fear us," Starscream said. "We have absolute power at our disposal and nothing to restrain us from unleashing it upon them except the Autobots." He started to smile. "At some deep level, not fully processed by their primitive wet brains, they realise and understand that we are more terrible and more awesome than anything they can ever hope to be, that we are gods to them!"
Megatron turned a hand towards him, gesturing for him to continue.
"Your lack of an education is a disgrace to the Decepticons," Starscream said, shaking his head.
"There's little time for sociology when you're being hunted by Guardians," Megatron said. "Keep explaining."
Starscream sighed. "In order to quell their pathetic little terrors, they write this - this drivel - to make us small, make us weak, to bring us down to their miserable level. They depict us in relationships familiar to them because that is all they can imagine. They show us performing those revolting acts together because they have no idea what our highly advanced and vastly superior technology is capable of."
Megatron frowned, folding his arms as he thought. "So this is not a coordinated attack on our collective dignities?"
"Oh no," Starscream said. "It's nothing more than the frantic scrabblings of vermin who know but cannot admit that their time is over."
Megatron nodded. He lifted his head, and Starscream felt a twinge of fear and anticipation at the High Commander's smirk. "So, you'd never consider using lubricated rubber balls -"
"Not a chance!" Starscream shouted, tossing his head huffily and crossing his arms as he turned his back on Megatron.
"Not even if I were to -"
Starscream could feel the heat of Megatron's gaze on the back of his wings. He could almost see the old glitch's smirk, the familiar glint in his optics promising dents and sensations that made the dents worthwhile. "Well ... maybe ..."
Final Version Posted
11/10/07 - 542 words on The Other God of Charr
12/10/07 - Ill
13/10/07 - 851 words on The Other God of Charr
14/10/07 - 856 words on The Other God of Charr
15/10/07 - Day Off
16/10/07 - 508 words on A Death Like This
17/10/07 - 693 words on It's Not Funny
18/10/07 - Bad Press
[Starscream!]
Startled, the Air Commander dropped what he was holding, and cursed as it fell screaming into a container of liquid nitrogen. [What is it, Megatron?]
[Explain this!]
Starscream mentally blinked. [Explain what?]
[This!]
[Did you have a total cognitive array failure, or am I supposed to have installed long-range wall-piercing sensors recently?] Starscream asked, using tongs to pull his now frozen experimental subject out of the hydrogen. He held the humansicle up and turned it this way and that, examining the odd shape it had torqued itself into, and the expression of rudimentary agony on its rubbery face. There goes that experiment, he thought.
[Get over here now, you sarcastic dolt!] Megatron yelled.
Tossing his head in exasperation, Starscream flicked the dead human into the waste-to-fuel incinerator and went to find out what the fuss was about.
Entering Megatron's quarters, he found the Decepticon leader standing over a large computer console. Megatron was fuming and Starscream was faintly surprised, given the old glitch's expression of barely-contained rage, that the console wasn't as well.
"Explain this!" Megatron shouted, pointing to the console's screens.
"I didn't do anything!" Starscream protested as he moved closer, wondering whether he was being blamed for something Skywarp had done, or if it was just Megatron using him as the world's most handsome scapegoat, and whether or not he should just skip the shouting and run right now.
"When you were an explorer, you were a xenologist!" Megatron said, still shouting, as if it made sense of everything. "You specialised in xenolinguistic analysis!"
"Well, yes, amongst other things," Starscream said, reluctant to admit to something that seemed liable to get him battered. "What of it?"
"Look at the blasted screens, you fool," Megatron said, scowling.
Starscream glanced. The main screen was full of text - human text, written in a language developed from but distinct from English - and all the subscreens displayed similar contents. "It's human writing. They call it ... " he began, then stopped in mid-superciliousness as the actual substance of the text filtered through his processors. " ... lubricated ... rubber ... balls ... ?"
Megatron nodded, still scowling. "Explain."
"I didn't write that!" Starscream exclaimed immediately, more keen to distance himself from the disturbing words than out of any sense of being blamed.
"I credit you with better translation skills than that," Megatron said, the anger starting to fade.
The danger dormant for the moment, Starscream slipped into the seat before the console and examined the main text more closely. Four paragraphs down, the words "I - you - up my thrusters?" exploded from his vocaliser.
"Check the one on subscreen four," Megatron said, leaning on the back of the chair.
Starscream did. He read. His optics widened and he pushed himself away from the screen, deep into the seat, fear on his face. "What new lunacy is this, Megatron?" he asked, voice low.
"Soundwave found it, trawling the humans' 'internet' for power source data," Megatron said. "He said it is called 'fan fiction'."
Starscream flipped through the subscreens, reading with a morbid interest that bordered on nausea. " ... oil there? ... Optimus Prime? I would never - "
"I had often suspected it," Megatron said with leaden sarcasm.
Starscream snapped at him, ruffled to see himself stretched out across reams of bad prose, twisted into unrecognisable beings - a wanton flyaway with no interests beyond sensual promiscuity, an emotional wreck dependant on a traitor's smothering comfort, a masochist begging Megatron for cruelties, a soppy xenophile coddling humans from their petty problems, a pompous clown with the intellect of a cleaning drone, a fragile psychological disaster-area clinging to Megatron for emotional support. "Who is responsible for this wretched nonsense? I need to express my displeasure with high explosives!"
"They're scattered all over the globe," Megatron said, waving a hand at the screen. "Hunting them down and destroying them for their crimes against our reputations would take months. A waste of fuel and time."
Starscream continued to flick through the texts. "I can feel my higher cognitive functions shutting down in self-defence," he said. " ... oh, it's just Autobots in this one, that's a - what? Me? A female Autobot?" He jumped up from the chair, wings pulled up like blades, shoulders tense, fists clenched. "I'll rip the plating off anyone who dares say such a thing about me!"
"Good luck finding them all," Megatron said, more amused than angry now that someone else was suffering humiliation by amateur prose.
"There's more than one?" Starscream asked aghast, turning to face the gunformer.
"I saw seven before I called you over," Megatron said, straightening up. "And worse."
Starscream tipped his head, optics so wide they were almost round. "How can it get worse? As if I'd ever -"
"The Autobots must be seeding the human population with deliberate misinformation, perhaps some sort of allegiance by propaganda," Megatron said. "According to some of these things, we reproduce the same way the humans do - via internal parasitism."
" ... ick," Starscream said, flinching at the thought and ignoring Megatron's ignorance of organic biology. "That's disgusting." He saw Megatron's smirk. "Oh no. Not me."
"Yes, you," Megatron said, nodding his head, expression stretched between amusement and horror. "Two of them were mine and one was ... "
Starscream stared, too revolted to ask, shaking his head in disbelief.
"They invent new Decepticons," Megatron said, grimacing. "Very strange ones."
"If they believe we do ... " Starscream looked over his shoulder at the screens, " ... those things, I cannot begin to imagine what they conjure up."
"Nobility," Megatron said, spitting the word. "Honour. Compassion. Mercy. Paperwork."
Starscream leant against the console. "What was it you wanted me to explain?" he said, voice softened by confusion.
"Why?" Megatron said. "What are these flesh-things planning? Do they hope to defeat us by embarrassing us into deactivation?"
Starscream frowned at the floor, kicking his higher cognitive processors into overdrive and activating his xenoculture analysis routines. "It's hard to process this babble," he said, wincing as he re-assessed the texts he'd read. "It makes me want to wash my brain module out with acid." He heard Megatron hiss. "Whatever disgusting thing do they have us doing now?"
"Declaring undying love and devotion," Megatron said.
"Oh, for Cybertron's sake!" Starscream shouted, throwing his arms in the air. "Will they leave us nothing of our Decepticon programming?"
"Apparently not," Megatron said, looking disgusted. "Well? Analysis?"
"They fear us," Starscream said. "We have absolute power at our disposal and nothing to restrain us from unleashing it upon them except the Autobots." He started to smile. "At some deep level, not fully processed by their primitive wet brains, they realise and understand that we are more terrible and more awesome than anything they can ever hope to be, that we are gods to them!"
Megatron turned a hand towards him, gesturing for him to continue.
"Your lack of an education is a disgrace to the Decepticons," Starscream said, shaking his head.
"There's little time for sociology when you're being hunted by Guardians," Megatron said. "Keep explaining."
Starscream sighed. "In order to quell their pathetic little terrors, they write this - this drivel - to make us small, make us weak, to bring us down to their miserable level. They depict us in relationships familiar to them because that is all they can imagine. They show us performing those revolting acts together because they have no idea what our highly advanced and vastly superior technology is capable of."
Megatron frowned, folding his arms as he thought. "So this is not a coordinated attack on our collective dignities?"
"Oh no," Starscream said. "It's nothing more than the frantic scrabblings of vermin who know but cannot admit that their time is over."
Megatron nodded. He lifted his head, and Starscream felt a twinge of fear and anticipation at the High Commander's smirk. "So, you'd never consider using lubricated rubber balls -"
"Not a chance!" Starscream shouted, tossing his head huffily and crossing his arms as he turned his back on Megatron.
"Not even if I were to -"
Starscream could feel the heat of Megatron's gaze on the back of his wings. He could almost see the old glitch's smirk, the familiar glint in his optics promising dents and sensations that made the dents worthwhile. "Well ... maybe ..."
Final Version Posted
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-10-20 04:40 pm (UTC)That seems to imply the existence of some form of Cybertronian paperwork.
Not to mention such things as watch rotations and patrol assignments (which you've used as plot elements in fics in the past) fall under the realm of "paperwork" if you're in the military. They do routine inspections, which at the very least requires a 'done/not done' or 'passed/not passed' mark in a box somewhere, unless it's the top dawg doing the inspection, and even then the top dawg needs to alert his subordinates that it's been done so they don't do duplicate work. And then there's the follow-up reports from inspections to make sure that any discrepancies found are being taken care of. That sort of thing.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 09:19 am (UTC)There is some evidence for Cybertronian paperwork - Spinister and Snarler do something with sheets of something and small hand-held computers in the Wolf Saga - but not the 'crippling piles of forms to sign and reports to read' that get written.
Routine inspections are something I've never seen written and would actually rather like to see. Patrols are canon, and presumably someone has to arrange a rota/schedule for that. Not sure about keeping watches. The Autobots seem to be lacking in vigilance at times.
The reason it bothers me is because of the ludicrous over-abundance of computer terminals in pretty much every room in every TF base. What those things for, if not for doing things like paperwork? When everyone in the base has a wireless/radio connection to everyone else and there are computers smart enough to run colonies [Deceptitran], why shouldn't the workflow be massively streamlined? I'm not saying there shouldn't be *any* 'paperwork', I'm just saying it seems silly for there to be truckloads of it, and none of it on computer.
That's aside from at least one very silly fic I saw wherein Optimus Prime kept his reports in *paper folders*.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 06:52 pm (UTC)Like paperwork itself, I've used all of these things as backdrop for RP, but I do that a lot more than fic.
why shouldn't the workflow be massively streamlined?
Well, I gave at least one excuse for not having it streamlined below. Not a good excuse, but it's still one I could easily see the character doing.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be *any* 'paperwork', I'm just saying it seems silly for there to be truckloads of it, and none of it on computer.
See, even when I'm using paperwork as RP backdrop, I tend to assume it's done on computer, or at least 'datapad' (which are rarer in canon than they show up in fic, but do, at least, exist in canon; Spinister has one), unless there's a good reason not to assume it. I can see getting tired of it in fic, but these days, I do more RP than fic, and it's as useful a tool as any others for my purposes.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-23 11:49 am (UTC)Yeah, that makes some sense, although when it gets to forms filed in triplicate ... remember Cyclonus and the paperwork from Torqulon? I think we know what *he* thinks on the subject. Then again, he's 2IC, he can do whatever the hell he wants.
I thought Spinister had a little mini-laptop sort of thing? Could just be different definition/perceptions. In any case, yeah, there's stuff like that going around - but not a lot of it.
I now have a mental image of someone [say, Spike] turning up when Prime's doing his paperwork, and the speed of the data flashing across the screens triggering an epileptic fit or something.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-23 12:43 pm (UTC)Actually, I've been accused of being too military, with the arguement that a lot of sources really don't seem much like a real military, but that... really varies strongly from canon to canon. Marvel included military style trials, court martials, and all sorts of similar details. Heck, at one point Hot Rod, while disobeying orders, thinks about how Kup will "probably have [him] drummed out of the Autobots for this." The idea that Kup has enough authority that Hot Rod would even think something like that was pretty odd in and of itself. (BTW, the story was "Ark Duty," which is also a canon example of Transformers being required to stand watch, since we're on the subject.. :) )
I don't know. I think military-ish elements are kind of neat, and don't really get why so many people don't like them. Granted, they do hold different standards and stuff, but still... *shrugs*
no subject
Date: 2007-10-23 01:49 pm (UTC)Kup has hella clobber. Somewhere in the late issues he threatened to relieve Optimus Prime of command, and Prime took that very seriously. Not sure why him specifically.
Yes, you're right about Ark Duty, forgot that one.
Possibly a lack of exposure to the concepts?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-23 03:40 pm (UTC)There are a lot of good reasons for not wanting officer/subordinate intimacy going on, and given how... human the Transformers' emotional make-ups are usually portrayed (yes, in canon), most of those reasons would still apply to them. It's difficult to really say what sort of rules or traditions they'd have in place, since in-faction romance is covered so rarely, but I know I, personally, have always been inclined to think that the reason Rodimus gives up on Arcee so completely when he becomes Rodimus might suggest that some of the rules or traditions do apply to Autobots, at least. That said, I couldn't see Optimus kicking two Autobots out for being in love; it's far easier just to assign them to different stations.
Kup has hella clobber. Somewhere in the late issues he threatened to relieve Optimus Prime of command, and Prime took that very seriously. Not sure why him specifically.
Because Kup = Awesome. Though seriously, it is interesting, given that, based on Kup's Story, he's only been back with the Autobots for a hundred or so years (after recovering from his burn-out). Maybe it has to do with the fact that he recovered from burn-out at all, since it's strongly suggested that that's all but impossible?
Possibly a lack of exposure to the concepts?
Maybe, but it's pretty sure the writers of canon themselves never had any more exposure than what ends up in the popular media. You don't need to have even my level of experience to write stories that toss those sorts of things in!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-24 11:07 am (UTC)Kup is rather awesome, yes. I forget if there was any data given for when 'Kup's Story' happened, but no bother. Your point is good.
True, true. So it's back to bad writers just not trying to create a convincing mileau. Meh.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-24 11:47 am (UTC)Well, to me, the fact that they appear to be at different duty stations, and choose to remain that way, is... significant, at the very least.
I forget if there was any data given for when 'Kup's Story' happened, but no bother.
I believe there's a text box at the start of the story marking it at about a hundred years or so prior to present events. Another one I read multiple times when doing my Rodimus app.
S'almost embarrassing to admit this, but going back and reading those, even if Blurr is usually relegated to the background (it's hard to get much attention when your co-stars are Kup and Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime), it really hit me just how inseparable those three were... right up until the point when Galvatron threw Blurr's head at Rodimus's feet in Aspects of Evil. And when that hit me, I kind of got a bit choked up for him.
Silly me!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 09:54 am (UTC)Arright. That makes things a mite interesting on where the hell Hot Rod came from, but that's entirely another matter.
Yow, yes. When Kup and Hot Rod got dragged back through time to deal with Galvatron, Blurr's the one who went with them, not Springer. Springer was off getting zombie sex. Dunno where Arcee was.