#2938

>peculiar and original yessssss this is a huge compliment to me >D thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed!

If you mean specifically the fate of his Cybertron, I talked about it in the Afterword (last chapter of the fic) so I'm gonna yank the answer from there :D

...the original plan for 2938 Cybertron. Originally it was going to be an insecticon-riddled wasteland. The video game that Rodimus plays with Soundwave, Hostile Planet II, had his game character running away from insecticons as foreshadowing for this original idea. But as I got closer to the Firelove arc, I thought it would be more interesting to go the “stark wasteland” route, instead of the “insecticons are eating everything” route. I did a twitter poll and “stark wasteland” won, so I thought… let's try it.

here's a screenshot of the poll!

in terms of how did I get to "sterilized world"? I... don't remember :'D I might have the train of thought written down somewhere in my hundreds of pages of notes. I think I was trying to think of 1) something that hadn't been done before, but was 2) still really horrific despite being "clean."

Now if you meant the whole "crystals determine everything about their society, including their language," that grew out of thinking A LOT and really hard about what it would mean for that to be so. Crystals were a huge part of the fic, so I just... leaned super hard into it, haha.

2938 Megatron shows the reader what Soundwave could become. That grotesque hunger for knowledge... idk, it just feels natural that it could come from a society bound up in layers and layers of meaning and expression.

I hope that answered the question. Was there a specific part of the dimension you wanted to know about? If I didn't cover it, feel free to shoot another ask :)

Triangles (1928) by Imogen Cunningham

I love that even at this early stage, Karkat keeps forgetting that he's supposed to be 'mad' at John.

CG: I MANAGED TO STAY AWAKE FOR SEVERAL WEEKS STRAIGHT, I DIDN'T WANT TO LET MY GUARD DOWN FOR A SECOND. [...] CG: AFTER IT WAS ALL OVER, AND WE RETREATED IN FAILURE CG: I FOOLISHLY DID. CG: AND THAT'S WHEN I SAW HIM. [...] CG: JACK.

Poor Karkat probably thought he was back from Alternia with a vengeance - which would be doubly painful, since Karkat liked Jack, and was completely against Exiling him.

CG: HE WAS WEARING A RING I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE, CERTAINLY NOT ONE BELONGING TO OUR QUEENS. [...] CG: HE WORE IT ON HIS ONE HAND, WHICH WAS COVERED IN OUR MUTANT BLOOD.

If Jack had got that blood from the troll session, we'd have a pretty good idea who it belonged to.

But Jack arrived with that blood. It came from the human session, and could have belonged to anyone there.

The narrative is giving it a lot of focus, though - even in Jade: Enter, the camera kept lingering on Jack's arm. This is 'important' blood, which will be shed in a pivotal moment later on.

Move over, Bilious Slick - there's a new god in these parts.

CG: I PRETTY QUICKLY DETERMINED THAT HE WAS FROM YOUR SESSION, NOT OURS. [...] CG: AND I WAS SORT OF RELIEVED CG: RELIEVED BUT ALSO ENRAGED CG: I'M SURE YOU KNOW THE FEELING. [...] EB: not really.

This is how you can tell John's not a programmer yet.

Get back to me when you've been debugging for two hours, and you realize you missed a free(). Then you'll know exactly what Karkat is feeling.

CG: I'VE GOT TO REWIND THE TAPE ON THIS CLUSTERFUCK AND FIGURE OUT WHAT WENT WRONG. EB: yeah, i should get going too. EB: my friend is pestering me, and i doubt she likes to be kept waiting. EB: (she is sort of the bossy type!) CG: WHY WOULD I CARE ABOUT YOUR DUMB HUMAN FRIEND AND HER PETULANT, MEANINGLESS DEMANDS.

'What went wrong' is the girl who's messaging John right now.

I cannot wait for Karkat to figure out who actually caused the Mistake, and confront Vriska directly. It'll be cathartic, I think, for his rage to be directed to someone who's deliberately responsible for their problems.

Karkat is no match for Vriska, of course - but he doesn't necessarily have to be. He's a leader, and once he starts yelling about who actually got them trapped in the Veil, the other trolls are sure to take his side, no matter how annoying he is.

Vriska is extremely resourceful, but if Karkat rallies all the surviving trolls against her, her victory is far from guaranteed. She'll be up against Terezi, Kanaya and Sollux - not to mention Feferi, who's recently proven she's not as much of a pushover as you'd expect.

o mar nun lugar solitario