#prowlrantulas

I can't decide which WIP I should try to finish first.

I’m so glad I just received and answered a question about auspisticism so that I can point to it as an explanation for why I am absolutely opposed to and disinterested in ANY framework for auspisticism that would lead to “nobody really wants to get in that situation” being something someone could reasonably say about it.

On the contrary: based on auspisticism as “two rivals that could either inspire each other to be their best possible selves or else destroy each other; having a referee in between prevents them from escalating to murder and keeps them on track with inspiring each other’s best selves instead,” Prowl and Tarantulas as presented in SOTW are absolutely perfect candidates for auspisticism and they’d both flourish within one.

We already know that Prowl inspires Tarantulas to reach his most brilliant, inventive, creative potential. If that inspiration is channeled into productive avenues—rather than into elaborate “vengeance and/or seduction, I’ll decide based on his reaction” plots—Tarantulas could be an invention-building juggernaut.

To some extent, Tarantulas inspired Prowl too—although we don’t know how much, given that we hear about it from Tarantulas’s very biased perspective; and from what we can tell, what he inspired in Prowl was generally very bad ideas. But in SOTW, even as he’s waxing poetic about how wonderful Prowl is, he’s also constantly calling out Prowl’s flaws and hypocrisies: the way he strives for an ideal simplifed black-and-white morality while willingly letting his actions sink into murkier and murkier shades of gray, the unequal justice he applies to wrongdoers based on their utility to him, his wavering back and forth between idealized morality and utilitarian morality, the secrets he has to keep covered up because of his position, etc.—not all of his jabs and criticisms are applicable or accurate, but enough are that Prowl could stand to improve by listening to them and absorbing them.

As allies, Tarantulas and Prowl would combine forces and lose morality and ascend/descend into a villainous science-god dangerous enough to rival even Shockwave. As enemies, unless one killed the other, they could rip the galaxy apart trying to destroy each other. As auspisticized rivals, Prowl could both inspire Tarantulas’s science and critique his complete absence of moral compass, and if Tara’s morals didn’t improve, at the least they wouldn’t get worse; and Tarantulas would have room and inspiration to call out Prowl’s worst flaws without simultaneously feeling the need to destroy him and Prowl would be in a position to actually listen, think about them, and see whether he could find a way to do his duties in a less morally questionable way. It’s just about the best possible outcome for them.

Surtemps (Chapter 3) Fandom: Transformers Rating: pg (Mad science mechpreg, depression, extremely  ill-considered 'cures' for depression, co-dependent and obsessive  behavior, and considered termination of a pregnancy. Just as a blanket  statement, Tarantulas pov.) Relationships: Prowl/Tarantulas Wordcount: 2000ish Summary: Tarantulas wants Prowl to be happy. Prowl needs fencing to be happy. Prowl needs fencers. Tarantulas has a solution.

Read it on the AO3!

They chitter and chirp and screech and people flee in terror, running right out of Prowl’s office. Prowl pets each of them and praises them for being such good bebs and gives them goodies. (2/2)

Oh my god.

Prowl’s back among the Autobots and nobody knows about Tarantulas, much less that Prowl met up with him and got knocked up, so even the people who know “oh those aren’t alien monsters, those are Prowl’s actual children” are still like “but where in the hell did they come from and how did he have them they’re COVERED in FUR they are CLEARLY organic, what weird-ass alien did our stick-in-the-mud second-in-command fuck and where did he even FIND it??” The Autobots are just. So confused. 

(someday a towering technorganic horror made of chitin and fur and writhing limbs is going to shamble its way up to the Autobot base and whoever’s on guard duty is gonna go “WHAT ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT” and it’s going to say “I’m tarantulas and i’m the father” and the guard’s going to go “primus below… that explains everything”)

Meanwhile, as the Autobots are feeling like they’ve fallen into a horror movie, Prowl’s busy unreservedly adoring every one of his children. They’re sweet and fluffy and have the biggest most innocent eyes, and they keep getting tripped up on their own little legs because they haven’t figured out how to walk, and if prowl stops moving for half a second in their vicinity they’ll all try to climb him and nuzzle into his arms or settle on top of his chest where they can get kisses and he’s like, “I love you but I can’t see.”

He can already see bits of himself in them. Most of them are black or white or black and white, a few of them have red stripes along their cephalothoraxes that obviously must be derived from Prowl’s chevron. A few of them can already use their spinnerets (they like to decorate his office with webs, and it looks awful, like kids drawing on the wall with crayons, but Prowl finds it charming and is reluctant to take it down), and a couple like to use plaques on the wall or light fixtures or desk decorations for target practice for their web and Prowl’s like “they clearly learned how to calculate trajectories from me.”

When he sleeps they fight to see who can fit under his arms, and the others pile on top of him. It’s warm and fuzzy.

The Autobots who don’t know where they came from think that Prowl must’ve got like 500% more paranoid and decided he needed to buy a swarm of alien monsters to serve as his guard dogs. But rumor has it the first time somebody with a grudge against Prowl tried to attack one of his spiders to get through to Prowl, Prowl flying kicked straight over his spiders to the attacker’s face and thrashed them half to death; which not only doesn’t make any sense if the spiders are suppose to protect PROWL, but also displays a level of hands-on violence the likes of which has never been seen out of Prowl, so surely it’s not true?