koilungfish | Unfinished Fics: The Banner of the Landwaster

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: The Edge of Reason
Current Music: ASP - "Schwarzer Schmetterling [Remastered]"

Entry tags:

Unfinished Fics: The Banner of the Landwaster - The Aeon Dreamers

Unfinished Fics: The Banner of the Landwaster - The Aeon Dreamers
The Aeon Dreamers
Madness descends upon the Earth, ancient terror rises from the deep, and the Transformers are trapped on a planet that's going rapidly and perhaps literally to Hell.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh you just completely made my MONTH! I love that series of works!

Sorry that I haven't been commenting lately. I got back from Botcon but I must have caught SOMETHING there because I've been sick almost non-stop since :S Bleh As a result, please pardon my spelling/grammar mistakes, I tried to catch them, but I'm having trouble thinking straight (being allergic to most medicines is VERY annoying)

So I'm trying to get caught up on your posts and I figured I'd start from the most recent and work my way back ^^

As always, I love how well rounded your characters are, although I can see what you mean about things being heavily 'purple' at the time you wrote this. I will admit that I like your later rendition of Megatron better than this one, however, I love the tie in with Guardian, and that's why he's so protective of Cybertron^^

Interesting concept with the carrier (and Optimus waffles back and forth, yay!^^) Nice to see the concept behind the 'Ultamite Weapon' finally put out in the open and the like!

Also, I do like how you mixed in the Great Old Ones mythologies and carried on the theme of 'this planet is farking weeeeeiiiiiiird'!!

I also really do enjoy your 'director's commentary' as it were, as to me at least it adds further to the work... but then I listen to most movies with the commentary, so I'm weird. I also really like the datumshrek concept, it sounds cool and it's a logical concept too.

---------
Thanks for giving the quick summaries of the Landwaster series proceeding this, it really helped line everything up prior to reading Aeon Dreamers.

I love your opening line of 'are you DRUNK!?' I just burst out laughing at it^^ I also like how you use that to lead into something is fundamentally WRONG, Starscream was up to something (and apparently crashed into the ocean after a bad re-entry or the like' and the ending line of the sequence 'It... awakens.' A very nice shift from comedy to dark drama. Also I love the continued loyal relationship between The constructicons and Megatron and the convoluted relationship between Screamer and Megatron.

I love how you focused on Soundwave's abilities (more sound than thought though, I noticed?) and brought in the 'titan song' to the workings of it

Poor Grapple, to dream of building something great and... yea, whatta nightmare. Very poetic in your rendition of the dream too^^

And Megatron's formidible will comes crashing into the play and runs right up into the will of a elder god possessed being. Point to Megatron! (side note, I like the 'flanging sound' note for Soundwave)

Poor Blaster, now he's caught up in this mess! (I like how you had Jazz acting in the sequence, very in character for him) 'Me Sludge want to wrestle too!' ...dear heavens THAT won't end well for the two smaller parties.

Very purple prose for Starscream, that is certain, however it works overall and helps add to the mood of the piece, and I do actaully also like the concept behind fuel saturation and the like, instead of feasting on energon alone (also I like how the more 'suppliments' in a fuel, the less often the mech needs to refuel, a nice piece of work. ...and that explains the crumpling Starscream had, but not his super heated state... Was he hit by lightning and I missed the scene, or is his reason for being super-heated yet to come?

Hmmm. If Soundwave is aware, even subconciously, that it is the song/sound that is the primary problem at the moment, then his deafening his cassettes was not trying to kill them but instead to protect them? (Not a hundred percent sure, given how far around the bend Sounders is) Also YAY! Rumble and Frenzy be twins! *cheers*

I love Megatron's reactions to being told the various status reports of his crew, it's just so perfectly in character for him (also, continuing to LOVE your constructicons) ...Also I end up feeling so sorry for the seekers as Megatron confronts them. I like how they still feel like CONS instead of 'wooby wooby babies', yet I still feel sympathy for them. (and you're right, they're going to have to buy new doors wholesale at this rate)

heee 'Soundwave! Blast him!' 'Is that an order?' BWAH! great sequence, and nice use of Optimus to establish what's happening outside the base when the Cons would be focusing inwards and thus would likely have missed the outside situation until it was even further out of control.

Well heavy sparring doesn't fully work given the crisis, however it's been proven time and again in teh comics and cartoons that Megatron thinks best in combat, probably due to the way he's programmed/built, hence him sparring to try and sort this out does work.

Miskatonic University in Arkham! *fist punch* Whoo!
Hmmm, I've missed what you use in place of the cassete/host bond, if it's up on your koipedia.

Niiiiiice techtalk for the idol, although I do agree that the communications issues work better than Tracks not telling/forgetting to tell him. I do like that not everyone is clueless about the materials except the Cons, Smokescreen keeping up with the proceedings and all but, well, why did Percy go quiet so suddenly?

The Dreams In The Witch House!! Yay again!!

Question. given the importance of the issue, after his bluff was called, would Smokescreen have taken out the humans? I doubt he would have let them pass. Then again I'm moe of a comics fan, where the Autobots didn't always bow to humans and their orders, as they most often did in the comics

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice techtalk about space-bridges and 'warping!!

[Ironhide to Prime. A miracle's just happened.] and [He must be. He's so spooked he's forgotten to declare himself leader.] Heeeeeeeee^^
Also, I like how SENSIBLE Screamer is being. He knows, sort of, what's up and thus it's time to cut losses and haul tailfins outta there.

I love Cosmos and blast Off! Cut off from everyone, not enough fuel to get away so... afte a check that the cat really is away... let's play I-spy. I wonder if they played that until the skies below cleared...

Nice jump in events, and I like how bad in condition the Decepticons are (Thunder sure has bad luck with this... Mayhaps he, like TC2, would have become the seekers that get kicked out in the movie, as the voices don't fit the 'real' Thunder or Warp?

Annnnnd Soundwave's back and helping the Decepticons again. It isn't entirly clear what the Maurader was, would that have been elaborated on before this fight scene?

Hmmm, Soundwave can suddenly read Starscream and Megatron's thoughts? I thought the earlier works of Landwaster said that Soundwave could no longer read their thoughts?

I like the memory share overall (although you're right it doesn't quite fit with Aeon Dreamers) Although Megatron is a bit... uber. I love the guy and he is a powerhouse but... he seems almost Galvatron powerful here?

Again, I like how you delve into transporting and how your brought in Cybertron being in Earth's orbit in the list of referances.

Ah, I see now! Alright, Soundwave's uber hearing from before now makes more sense. I like the idea of him being audio domiant instead of optic. Very nice

And... ah, NOW the Marauders make more sense, also, they work very well visually ^^

MirageIsaSniper Yay! ^^ Also, powerful shot to cleave Warp's wing clear off. Yow

*raises hand* I'd vote in favor of the con ship from 'MtMtE' as opposed to the carrier, if only because my naval training goes OUCH when thinking of a gov't GIVING a carrier to anyone, that's a LOT of money that was just handed off. (Maybe hitch a ride on the Joe's souped up Carrier? The Flagg was stated to be far faster than an average carrier)

Has to be byakhees, Nightgaunts dislike or are unable to fly over bodies of water if I remember my mythos correctly. Hmmm, maybe Megatron went with Starscream to be a more imposing figure to the Autobots and thus help insure more time spent going to help his Decpeticons and less time blustering with Starscream? Also, nice way of showing the sheer numbers of the situation involved and letting the Autobots have a fairly cool moment as well.

I like the astringint as opposed to using water, which supposidly was all but unknown on Cybertron. Also I love 'Prime allowed himself a tinge of amusement as the Decepticon sent Sideswipe back twice.' YEP, that's Siders.

Hmmm, I'm not sure of Megatron's dislike of the Matrix, however it does work overall, although I'm surprised that Megatron implies that it is not powerful in an of itself, given the power the Matrix throws around, and that if he's guardian, he saw Prima using it (Also, green? So it's the creation Matrix not the movie Blue Matrix?)

Hmmm, not sure if I like the 'I'm a martyr' sequence all that much. while it gives a nice argument between Optimus and Megatron, both feel slightly out of character (Megatron more so) and I do believe you were right in thinking that the length of time spent chatting on the carrier about things not related to, y'know the world dooming them all ^^, is slowing the plot overall.

Also, I must wince a bit on the 'Cons rule and bots drool' segment, just as i wince when I see the opposite in Bot based fics. The two factions MUST be equal for the most part, given that the war has to all apperences been a stalemate for as long as it has. I do like the referance to how 'odd' the Cons act when over-energized, also I continue to love your poetic style of writing^^

Don't like martyrMegs, but I do love the delving into Cybertronian religions. Perhaps this could have been used during a different fic, there have been other truces, or opportunities for such. Also, I love how well thought out your Koipedia was on religions and languages, LOVED reading every second of it

*dances around* Xaaron! Xaaron makes EVERYTHING better, even if it's just a case of referenced by proxy! ^^ Perhaps the 'Emirate of Primus' is related to both making him the opposite of Builder-tied Trion and his later 'avatar of primus' status?

I like the con slogan, but again, I do think much of this would have been better served in a seperate fic, as it is very interesting and does advance the characters, however it doesn't quite fit in the 'time limit/elder god' plot and slows the travel time down (sorry)

Interesting development on Megatron, and this does fit in to this concept, and without the proceeding (and some of the following) truce 'talks' would fit well in the 'time liiiiiiiiiii-miiiiiiiiiiit' subplot going on.

oooooooooo, more info! I like the idea of Dust, junk and Skyscraper psychoses! Not sure I agree with how you portrayed the cons in this sequence, but I like that overpopulation became a problem for them, and some of the side effects that occurred.

*nods* You are right about Megatron being the movivating point and pivoing point of the war. Again, I'm not sure if this argument (and Optimus reveal/you rebuilt me) really fits in here, however it would have to be included somewhere in Landwaster in order to lay the groundwork down for the 'Guardian' reveal at the end.

Again, I want to restate that I like the idea of one of the reasons, though hardly the only one, that Megatron kept Screamer around was to have Starscream pilot a 'warworld'

"Just as the sun goes down behind the mountains, so too shall we go down. Hand-in-hand and singing shall we go down into the darkness, and the mysteries of Cybertron shall be revealed to us. We will go down into the dark, and dwell forever in the place beyond the end of time," Prime recited. No idea what's up either, but niiiiiice use of language and a rather poetic flair.

Hmmm, interesting. I'd noticed that in the comics (and to a lesser extent the cartoon) that Optimus seemed to dislike and almost fear the seekers/flyers the most (and that was likely the cause for how poorly he treats the Aerialbots in comic-canon). I see I'm not the only one to notice it? For some reason, Optimus fears/hates Vosians, more than he even hates Megatron. Such a fun bit of oddness to try and sort out a back story for ^^ Also, I like that treachary is considered 'normal', it's one of the elements of the Decepticons from your koipedia and fics that I really love, and find really fitting to the Decepticons. (Bab5! YAY!!)

Hmmm, I like the interaction with Prime and Megatron over the dinobots, although I think Megatron is erring into uberland again, while yes he's more experianced, Grimlock is a powerhouse and he has beaten Megatron before (I think... I re-read the comics more often than I rewatch the series...)

'Prime waffles and is heroic, so at least he's in character.' eeeeyup, that Optimus all over^^

Transformers sinking like stones is a very common plotpoint, and I'm glad to see it mentioned, even if it's not used right now (that could be easily worked out, or just have it where they're dragged up occasionly by events in the fight, I guess)

'The merge room catches fire because apparently nobody's heard of circuit breakers.' BWAH!! ^^

While the getting along plot point is pointless, it does provide a bit of a break from what I assume would have been a slightly longer battle sequence and thus would give readers a chance to catch their breath and mentally go over what's happened so far and lead up to this point as well as beginning to guess what yet lies ahead... or should I say below?

Megatron refuses to yield, VERY in character and a nice point, although Optimus should have perhaps gotten a 'refusing to yield' scene as well? While this is Megatron's show, Optimus is tough and willful, and that is why the war has lasted this long, at least in part. Or so I feel but you might feel differently ^^

'induction hold' niiiiiiiice use of the fact that we've seen TFs transfer energy via their hands a few times!! Also, I continue to adore the constructicons^^ We need more lime green love, darn it all.

Megatron again is uber, however it mostly works, and I like that you've kept him strongly adverse to the Matrix.

Hmmmm, the sequence is out of place, and the cons seem a trifle too down-trodden, however you are right, it would have worked well in Falcon Amongst the Doves.

Hmmm, the Insecticon segment as a teaser ending for the fic proceeding this would have been a nice tagline to draw readers on, cool idea ^^

I like the referance to The Shadow Over Innsmouth, as it's one of my favorites, and again, I love your poetic style.
Optimus in Megatron withdraw doesn't really work though, I'm afraid (sorry) I do like the reference to the Decepticon crown, though

I still like the "ultimate weapon" thread, as it explains several minor things and adds to the back story, as well as making Megatron one hell of a long term planner.

Nice use of Optimus' speech, and a very well written one at that^^

The battle has a nice overall flow to it, and again, I do love me the concept and word of 'datumshrek', so kudos again for making random words for concepts and thus making me a happy reader^^ I like the ending of the fight (and that poor carrier, navybrat is sad to see it gone). Also, antimatter in use, whoo!

I like the Epilogue and how the loose ends with TC1 and Guadian are tied up, in fact to me that is a high point, and I think it would be even more so had the TC-in-the-past plot been there as you'd intended.

The notes at the end also help explain everything and wrap it up well, and again, I must admit to loving the author notes, I wish your other fics had them, though I know I must be the minority (I like commentaries, I'm weird, I know!!)
---------
*looks around for a moment.
Khlûl'-hloooooooooooo.... Argh, I always mentally get that stuck in my head to the theme of 'the loooooooooove boat'
...
as previously mentioned, I'm weird, especially when on medicine for illness that I'm allergic to.

Thank again for posting these fragments, and I'm sorry to see you go. I'll try to go through and review the other fics you've been posting, though I will be going slow.

Optimus is *murder* to right. He's so good-hearted and positive that I desperately want to slap him. At least I can drop comicverse depression on him.

I guess the Decepticons could use their flight tech - the Seekers "flew" underwater in jet mode in Atlantis, Arise! - and I think they were flying or swimming in Sea Change. I forget what the Autobots did.

Yeah, that was a fail for the sake of FX.

A break was indeed necessary, but this was WAY too long and pointless.

Quite probably. I should have avoided the whole Optimus Annoys Me problem and written that scene from someone else's POV.

Yes, although that's not precisely what I was referring to. Induction hold is rather like a Vulcan nerve pinch only the other way around; the energy transfer via the hands I refer to as a virtual circuit.

I'm not sure how that got there. Perhaps it was mispasted at some point.

Yeah. I'm sure I wrote it but I'm damned if I know where it is now. Probably got lost in the cutting and pasting when I was reorganising the Landwaster series.

Likewise. It had to be there, especially with Atlantis, Arise!

No, it doesn't work, and shouldn't be there. I'm not sure why I left it in during the reorganisation at all.

Megatron only used his antimatter production ability *twice* in the entire canon, and once was aborted before it got anywhere. The other time wasn't actually him. It's a bit sad he never got to really break that one out. I've always liked the idea that the weird reaction he has to Raoul spraying paint into him at the end of Make Tracks was a malfunction in his antimatter system, hence why the Decepticons bailed him out so fast - they didn't want Megatron going supercritical and blowing up half the planet.

Yeah, I do wish I'd gotten the TC1 & Guardian subplot in better condition, but it got mauled around due to the rearrangement of the series.

Well, you can always go and find the LJ posts for said fics and poke me with questions. You'll get about the same level of information.

Glad you enjoyed them - I didn't think anyone was reading them, given the absence of comments. I look forwards to the reviews :D

BTW, what did you think of the plot overall?

Thankee. It all just turned up and I wasn't sure what else to do with it.

Eh, "Emirate" is a political position, like President or Prime Minister. He is or was Emirate of Iacon. The phrase is out of date for Koiverse.

Entirely so.

Overpopulation was mentioned in "State Games" as being a problem ... well, energon shortages were mentioned as a problem, which amounts to the same thing. And given that the Decepticons were unknown to general members of the public like Orion Pax and Dion in "War Dawn" despite being a whole army prior to the Golden Age, something was definitely very wrong. It'd be like a modern European never having heard of Germans.

Yes, rather so. A lot of this is groundwork, me working out ideas, and should have been rewritten for greater elegance.

You do? I'm really not sure about it at all now.

Although it's not directly stolen from The Lord of the Rings, the structure is heavily cribbed from Aragorn's song. Compare with the original "They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow/The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow".

Optimus dislikes the Seekers/Vosians, and he's pretty harsh on all the spacer Autobots, especially Cosmos. It's a bit odd when you think about it, a guy with a cowboy accent treating a guy with a Mexican accent like dirt.

Yeah, they run on treachery amongst other things. See the bit about the "meritocratic hinge" under Decepticon law in the Koipedia.

He does that. I didn't have him sorted out properly when I was writing this. Although I don't recall Grimlock outright beating Megatron off the top of my head.

The Dreams in the Witch House is very much one of my favourite Lovecraft stories, and definitely one of the ones that inspired Aeon Dreamers.

Smokescreen most likely would have done everything he could to have avoided hurting the humans, but would have prioritised the safety of the friendly, cooperative, non-hostile humans in the university over the safety of the hostile, aggressive, non-rational humans trying to get into the university. He's one of the less moral Autobots, so he could well have taken some less-than-gentle steps if needs be.

Starscream does have an all-business mode - usually when he's in jet mode, he seems to think more and talk less that way - but he's a five million year old war leader in a sticky situation. He wouldn't be who and what he was if he cracked up under pressure.

They just had to be there. And I'm sure they did.

Yeah, one of the Thundercrackers would have accounted for either the wrong-voice Thundercracker in TFTM or the misplaced Thundercracker at Starscream's coronation. Not sure about the Skywarp.

Marauders kind of aren't. It's just a term I used to tell the difference between Transformers who've been perverted into serving Cthulhu and the ones who haven't.

That's a mistake and shouldn't be there.

As said, Aeon Dreamers has a lot of older scenes, and I did write Megatron as a saintly Gary Stu back then. Ow.

Well, the planet did get moved around rather ...

Once I thought about it, it just made sense. Of course he'd think with his hearing more than his sight. His hearing's far better than his sight. For him to be visual-dominant would be like a human being olifactory-dominant.

Assuming that was Mirage. It may not have been. It could have been just about anyone or anything.

I'd assume if the US government was going to give the Autobots a carrier, it'd be because it was on the way out anyway. And yes, using the Deepwater/Redemption would have made much more sense. And it would have to be way faster than an aircraft carrier anyhow, since it has to get from New York somewhere northwest of Australia in less than two days.

Where was it stated nightgaunts won't fly over water? I really have no idea why Megatron went, except, as stated later, that he's not really outfitted for dealing with swarms of enemies.

Yup. Sea of Rust and all that. After all, why would they use water? Water promotes rust; better to use a nice astringent that won't make you all itchy.

The green refers to the eyes of the Quintessons. The Matrix core, the blue-white glowy bit, is from Primus, and that bit Megatron's got no problem with. The orange shell around it is Quintesson work, and that's why Megatron's not happy with it. The Matrix has been ... messed with. Hence why there are Quintessons in it in FFoD. I seem to have forgotten to put that in the notes. Oops.

No, the martyr sequence should've been removed.

I wouldn't say the War's a stalemate. The Decepticons seem to be winning at this point. The 'cons do act weird when they're over-energized; I think I wrote the reasons as to why up for the Koipedia.

It was getting necessary. I can keep what's happening in the series straight in my head because I've got all the notes up there, but I have no idea how clear I'm making things to the readers by this point.

I'm pretty fond of that for an opening line also :) I got into the habit of opening on dialogue because I found it very hard to come up with good opening lines otherwise. Since then I've read the Iliad and learned a little something.

I'm not sure why the song of Cthulhu came to Soundwave as sound rather than thought, now I come to think of it. More likely it *did* come to him as thought, it's just that he perceived it as sound.

Well, less a nightmare, more a set of instructions ...

His superheated state came from his dive from suborbital height. I'm guessing that would have heated him up quite a bit. That said, probably nowhere near as much as it did.

Yeah, Soundwave's in a flux state for most of the story; he's oscillating between being submerged in the will of Cthulhu and getting his head above water just enough to perceive everything as hopeless and heading unavoidably towards total catastrophe. He's trying to protect his cassettes in a very twisted and bleak way. Frenzy and Rumble being brothers is canon, so being twins is about okay.

There'd be something wrong with Megatron if he was going to pet and coddle his troops. After all, they just got psychically invaded by a powerful, hostile force. Megatron wishes to go kick its head in.

The 'cons would have gotten out of the base once they were pulled together; they were just busy sorting themselves out first. That said, there should have been a bit more "what's going on outside?" from them at this point.

The sparring is questionable. As you say, he thinks best in combat. On the other hand, that might not have been the best time for it. Third hand, he really needs to clear his head at this point.

Well, it had to be there :)

I don't. I never wrote it up. I think there's some mention of dubbing around, but the relationship is much more complicated than that.

Yeah, that scene's a mess. Perceptor went quiet most likely because I forgot he was there. Or he'd gone into the library to read the Necronomicon. Either/or.

Bouf! HUGE comment! :: faints :: Hope you get better soon, too.

I would have thought it would make more sense to start at the beginning with the Landwaster fics at least?

Yeah, Megatron here is in the early stages of how I understood him as a character. A lot of his motivations and reasons are broad strokes, placeholders until I got a finer hold on how he worked. You like the business with Guardian? As I was annotating Aeon Dreamers and Time Out Of Mind it struck me that, whether or not the reader was in any way surprised by the revelation that Megatron is Guardian, there didn't seem to be a lot of importance in it. It felt like I didn't attach the necessary weights of relevance to things.

The carrier was a thing of necessity; the Autobots had to be crossing oceans somehow. The Ultimate Weapon was based on a bunch of things from both comics and cartoons and taken to a natural extension.

Things just fit together very easily. It's fun that, even with a continuity such as Transformers, that spans millions of years and multiple planets, the norm can still be overshadowed by older, vaster, darker things such as the Great Old Ones.

Thank you. I like director's commentaries too, but I don't watch them that often since I've got enough trouble parking myself in front of movies most of the time. The datumshrek concept was one that worked for me, but ended up being boiled down to something smaller and less intrusive - you'll notice in later fics, like Lunatic Cabaret, TFs sometimes "click" computers or other TFs over their radios. That's the evolution of the datumshrek - a rapid data pulse sent over the radio, very unobtrusive.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Unfinished Fics: The Banner of the Landwaster - The Aeon Dreamers

Cthulhu!! squeee!! prt1

Cthulhu!! squeee!! prt2

Cthulhu!! squeee!! prt3

Cthulhu!! squeee!! prt4

Cthulhu!! squeee!! prt5

Re: Cthulhu!! squeee!! prt5

Re: Cthulhu!! squeee!! prt4

Re: Cthulhu!! squeee!! prt3

Re: Cthulhu!! squeee!! prt2

Re: Cthulhu!! squeee!! prt1