my niche version of “he would not fucking say that” is “he would not fucking carry that baby to term” for mpreg headcanons. sometimes there is power in recognizing that a fictional man WOULD get a mabortion
we need clobber back in transformers. we need her Henchwoman Energy in the franchise so bad. we need her Lovable Mook Vibes. she was literally the perfect character and we NEED her back
Never forget that he sets up his secret Dead End clinic – not because he has a burning need to help the poor, not because he wants to Fight The System – but because he’s BORED AT HIS DAY JOB.
That’s right. Ratchet is just so incredible and awesome as a doctor that being chief medical officer to the Primes isn’t challenging enough. He needs a side hustle that’s exciting because it’s forbidden and maybe a little dangerous. It’s actually Orion Pax who suggests starting the clinic.
I think a lot of people miscast Ratchet as a bit of a rebel because he famously almost flunks out of med school, and then he runs this clinic. He’s also in Prowl’s bad books as a loose cannon known for “breaking rank.” But it’s a mistake to think he does these things because he wants to piss off people in power or challenge an overly rigid system. He does them because he’s arrogant. He is so confident in his skill and value that he believes he can do what he wants and the universe will give him a pass. (He’s actually a lot like Prowl, in this respect. I wonder if the commonality ever occurs to them.)
His saving grace is a good heart and sound moral compass, which generally direct his overweening ego to do the right thing. But that is literally why he runs that clinic. He’s making challenges for himself because he’s confident in his own exceptionalism. He’s the best asshole you can hope to meet.
To be clear, I am not dunking on Ratchet. I love him! And it’s because I love him that I feel the need to remind people not to shade him in pastels! He is not Drift’s submissive wifey and he is not some starchy freedom fighter out to take down a corrupt system. He’s a cocky, privileged, arrogant bastard. Who is very gentle and thoughtful and genuinely kind to his patients.
Tbh i think the disabling nature of a lot of work is sort of criminally overlooked by a lot of otherwise excellent labor analysts
Like im a janitor, I clean all day, and at 23 I am developing serious upper back pain that is echoed in my older coworkers ten-fold. It’s a job that demands you to be up and moving constantly and often bent over or scrubbing something. We (janitors) have much higher rates of back, joint, and muscle problems and injuries compared to the population average, as well as significantly higher rates of sickness and chronic illness. It’s a job that literally destroys your body.
But whenever people talk about my profession, it seems like their main concerns are the (accurate) ideas that the labor we do is wildly devalued and invisibilized and that it is a gross and thankless job to clean up after others. While this is a major aspect of the work I do I feel like it undercuts the serious physical toll of the work itself and the ways that impacts our ability to experience life out of the workplace.
Obviously this doesn’t just apply to janitorial work, and tbh its perhaps an issue of imp-core labor and its failures to understand itself given that the most dangerous jobs with the most disabling effects have largely been outsourced to the periphery at this point, creating a sort of buffer for the modern imp-core worker where the largest problem with most jobs truly isnt the literal material effects of the work upon the worker
the thing about d/s is that for virtually any ship i can be sold on either character in either role. arguments about whether a given character could or would dom are virtually always deeply silly and tend, when they lean into the idea that a given character could never dom because they’re just too weak-willed, incompetent, naive, or helpless, to be the product of unexamined biases percolating up.
would this character dom (or sub) is almost never an interesting question. how would this character dom (or sub) is much more interesting. what do they get out of it? how do they feel about it? how experienced are they? are they confident or awkward? what kinks do they enjoy? what are their limits and how do they communicate them? what is the dynamic with their partner like? does it shift in the bedroom, or does it stay the same? et cetera. the same as any good erotica, it’s got to be about these specific people, not faceless automatons filling the prescribed roles, or it’s boring
I really do miss TF stories focused on the smaller characters during the war. I loved Ironfist’s arc a whole lot and Last Stand of the Wreckers is honestly where IDW peaked for me. I really enjoyed having Autobot High Command seem more like a distant force than individual people to the average soldier, where we move so far away from a familiar cast that we see who their actions affect, and directly see how. It makes the universe and by proxy the war seem so much bigger. (at the function dinner) Can I have more stories of figures like Optimus and Megatron seeming almost fantastical in how far up the ladder they are in command. Can I have more of how characters (one of many. one of implied millions) engage in hero-worship of figures like Optimus but ignore the parts of him that don’t suit their ideals (Pyro). Can I have more of the grim reality of how difficult it is to attract the attention of the like five total mechs in Autobot High Command and how many hoops you have to jump to get an audience with them and only then through a phone call.
This is sort of in an unrelated tangent but I would love to see more of people’s interpretations on the decline of Cybertron at the beginning of the war… there’s something very visceral and grim to me about a planet slowly shutting down when the reality of war starts to hit. Closures of businesses and schools, what it must’ve been like for newly graduated medics, for pilots, for people who have never held a gun before arranging a leaving date. I’m going to stop talking before this becomes a Pharma or Prowl essay. Or Springer considering the Last Stand thoughts
i appreciate the sentiment behind ‘stop writing characters who exclusively talk in therapy speak in your fic, they do not talk like that’ but let’s be real. if you introduced getaway to therapy speak he would weaponise it IMMEDIATELY. i know this in my heart.
there are characters for which it is in character to use therapy speak! it’s just that it has to be their character. minimus would go to therapy and grab onto the idea There Is A Correct Script For Talking and regurgitate everything word for word forever. getaway would use it to emotionally manipulate people and act morally superior. rodimus would try and fail to use it for less emotionally manipulative reasons than getaway, but still because he thinks this is a shortcut to like, Winning At Being Emotionally Stable. drift would occasionally break it out specifically to wind ratchet up
