#satellitesoundwave

Not Down on Any Map by @lyresnake, featuring art from @xenotechnophile and @shapeofmetal

[fic link] - [xenotechnophile art link] - [shapeofmetal art link]

When Thundertron and his Star Seekers converge with deadly force upon a battle between Autobots and Decepticons, Megatron and Optimus find themselves shipwrecked and separated on a far-flung and desolate planet. Half-dead and cut off from their respective forces, subject to the elements and wildlife of this strange and watery world, the only way to survive may be to don the alien shapes of its denizens.

Reshaped and reborn in strange hybrids of metal and organic flesh, Megatron and Optimus strive to rejoin the battle, and take revenge on Thundertron. But their new forms present new challenges, isolation brings with it unwelcome memories, and as the days stretch on with no sign of rescue, meaning begins to slip away, and strange longing to take its place...

Dawning of the Light by @warlordenfilade, featuring art from @decepticondragon, @ralloonx

[fic link] - [decepticondragon art link] - [ralloonx art link]

On Necroworld, the stage is set, the players are in position...but a fledgling relationship between Deathsaurus and Tarn spurs Deathsaurus to follow Tarn to his meeting with Megatron.  With their bridges burning under them, Tarn and Deathsaurus have no choice but to make the impossible decisions set before them.  Alternate universe - canon divergence for "The Dying of the Light."

Choices and Chances by @darkdanc3r, featuring art from an anonymous artist

[fic link] - [art link]

Life is a series of chances and choices. And sometimes the choices aren't made by the ones most affected by them. So when a semi-sentient hunk of metal decides it wants something, everyone around it is taken along for the ride. Follow a trail of choices and the chance occurrences that take Challenger of Ways from where it is now hopefully to where it wants to be.

(Re)experience by @satellitesoundwave, featuring art from @nbhomo and @cerkowah

[fic link] - [nbhomo art link] - [cerkowah art link]

12. favorite character to write about this year

Ooh, I think this has to go to Onni from SSSS. Just by virtue of sheer volume if nothing else, haha. Honorable mention goes to TFA Drift for sure, because thinking through the mechanics of how one goes from being a decepticon to being an autobot in TFA and trying to integrate into that society and considering that TFA has a very sharp delineation between autobot and decepticon frametypes… I already love Drift to pieces, and TFA Drift specifically was an absolute delight.

But oh my god, Onni. I wrote… so many words. And that still doesn’t even come close to covering how much screaming I’ve done in other venues about my favorite sad finnish boy. I love him!!! He is absolutely perfect in every way, and by perfect, I mean he is tied in knots with Anxietie, almost all of his family died when he was sixteen and he was left with trauma, anxiety, and the job of parenting two children, and oh my god he didn’t leave the Keuruu fortress for eleven years. The only thing that dragged him out of there was the possibility that he’d be able to somehow protect Lalli and Tuuri, since he knew the job they signed up for was unprepared and underfunded and insanely dangerous. He was so terrified, but he went to Sweden! To try to protect them!!!!

A thing I wrote once, that I’m still very pleased with and still want to format for sharing on a social media platform, is that okay. Onni is like a bird huddled under a thornbush. It’s not an ideal situation, the space isn’t large enough, and it hurts. But when he went there, it was a safer, less painful option than staying in the open. And he’s got two little birds under his wings that he’s shielding from the thorns. And.. it does hurt to exist there. But it’s a familiar pain, and it’s going to hurt even worse extracting himself. But then the two little birds bolt out from the bush, leaving him behind, and he can see them in danger but he can’t protect them from where he is, and what is he going to do about that? THAT is my best boy. I love him.

21. most memorable comment/review

God, this one was tough. And this might technically be sorrrrrt of breaking the rules, but I received it right at the very end of 2018, less than a year before now. And when I saw it, I knew this had to be the winner. Regarding We Share The Same Cold Meal and Pharma being Pharma all over the place while also having a valid point:

Unfortunately garbage robot is right. Promote him to garbage boss

AMAZING!!!!!

24. favorite fic you read this year

Oh no, this is so hard. My memory is borken. And for once in my life I’ve been doing better at reading book-books than fics, so let me see what I can dredge up out of my memories. I don’t think I’ll be able to pick just one, but let me see if I can limit myself to one per fandom? And to things that were new to me this year. Partially because otherwise, oriflamme/sunderedstar would dominate this list :V 

As it is, I highly recommend folks go consume everything in these tasty oriflamme archives, but I’m recommending how river learned to stop worrying and love the moon (Books of the Raksura) and…. fuck, I think if I was forced to pick one SSSS fic, it would be the Ensi one. So, hidden in deep sedge and reeds (Stand Still, Stay Silent) is my pick, but that was agonizing. Because sunlight through deep moss-water made me cry, the ace emil fic is a fucking DELIGHT from start to finish, and the last emilalli language barrier fic is the sweetest, cutest thing and absolutely murders me.

RODIMUS! My boy! 

First impression: I dove into mtmte 1 as my transformers starting point without any knowledge of the characters taking center stage in that series. I was starting from ground zero. So at first, I pretty much took Rodimus at face value, as he presented himself. That started to come apart later, probably around the tyrest arc, but it was still a little while before I had all the character context to look at Rodimus and see exactly what he was performing and what he was covering for.

Impression now: Oh, this is a complicated one. He’s a complicated character! There’s layers to him. There’s his hype, there’s the way the hype is a front, there’s a way the hype is exactly what it looks like, all at once. But it’s interesting, my first impression was pretty much exactly the way he presented himself at the start, and my current impression is basically... the way he describes himself later. ‘I’m heart over head, every time.’ I’ve got all kinds of feelings about the way he approaches leadership and responsibility and the validation he seeks, but that’s the biggest core element in my perception of him. ‘Heart over head, every time.’

Favorite moment: Oh my god, DOTL when he’s holding his hand out to Megatron and for a moment, it looks like Megatron isn’t going to take it. Rodimus is... so, so good at forgiveness and compassion, even if he’s not consistent early in canon, and despite occasional vindictive streaks even later on. What he says to Minimus Ambus at the end of the tyrest arc, and the way he takes Ultra Magnus back despite everything that went sour there. And later on, the way he tries to even extend that compassion to Getaway. That’s all golden. But the DOTL moment with Megatron, where this is Megatron, where they’re all there because they were too forgiving towards Megatron, where at first it looked like Megatron was leaving them to fight alone, and then when he went to sacrifice himself for them. And Rodimus still scrambles to help him, and he jumps into the middle of this (post-)fight despite the danger and extends that hand. And Megatron’s pretty much ready to give up on himself, but Rodimus still hasn’t given up on him. That moment destroys me.

Idea for a story: I’ve written a number of short sexy stories for them, but there’s something about that format that just lets me explore their dynamic in ways that I love. And I’d love to do something short and sexy for them where it’s after the return from the functionist universe, where it’s after Rodimus thought Megatron abandoned them, and where Megatron has gone centuries thinking he’d never see them again, and somehow they’ve managed to reunite. Something sexual and intimate, because sex feels like a safe physical distraction, more than anything, an excuse for Rodimus not to talk about feelings, but the feelings bleed out anyways and however much they are/aren’t talking, the sex becomes about how they value each other, missed each other, thought the other one abandoned them, and thought they’d never see each other again. Either that, or I’d want Rodimus jailbreaking Megatron in the non-quantum-duplicate setting, but I have no idea where I’d go with that one, I just want it to happen :P

Unpopular opinion: Hm. Hmmmmmmmm. Hm. I don’t know what the unpopular Rodimus opinions are :P  Is it unpopular to say that OP should stop prime-ing and Rodimus should prime instead, where instead of matrix of leadership it’s a creation matrix? Or what about that Rodimus should’ve managed to save Getaway? (not that he did anything wrong, but that the story balance should have shifted so that Getaway survived and Rodimus had to deal with more direct aftermath) I don’t actually know what the opinions are. Ultra Magnus is one of the few bots Rodimus defaults to a dommy role with?

Favorite relationship: Fuck, this is a brutal character to make me do this for. If I had to pick one ship.............. rodimegsmags. I think that would have to be it. It has such delicious dynamics for all three of them, and all the opportunity to bring out the best in them. And Rodimus deserves ALL the love and support I can lavish on him, and if Megatron and Ultra Magnus are both devoted to him, that’s a pretty good start. But honorable mention goes to drift and to thunderclash. And starscream. Even though that only makes sense in my nichey little au XD

Absolutely! Ahh, these are all tough ones, but in really fun make-me-search-my-memory-banks ways :D

6. A character that’s taken over a story/scene when they weren’t supposed to.

HM. I think I’m not going to be able to pick just one in here. Let’s see, You Caught Me In The Tide (the TFA dratchet fic) was supposed to be a beeline to porn and that was that, but Omega Supreme played a much larger role than I was expecting. And if Rodimus hadn’t been unconscious, he would have absolutely been all over the place. Even in a coma, he kept trying to inch further to center. Ohhh, and Pharma. I wasn’t expecting Pharma to be relevant at all, I just wanted him there, but then I forgot that I love him with every bit of my heart?

What else. In my Black Panther series of fics, I didn’t have any plans for doing something with Queen Ramonda, but an idea came to me out of nowhere and this story wrote so easily, and it’s one of my favorite out of the lot. And then in Your Face Becomes The Sun (starbladejack verse, wheeljack’s worst sleepover ever), I wasn’t expecting Jazz to be this relevant. Which is good, because I have future plans for him, but I am not the best long-term planner, and it was delightful to have him show up and have relevant emotions all over the place while enhancing this story and future ones XD Originally Wheeljack was supposed to get handed off to Optimus pretty quickly, but I’m very pleased with all the cameos that worked their way into the fic before Optimus actually showed up.

15. A fic of someone else’s that you’d like to try remixing: what would you do with it?

Ohh, you know what? I don’t know if this qualifies as a remix, and I first said ‘yeah, I’m totally gonna do the thing’ literal YEARS ago, but I still haven’t given up on writing horrorterror tailgate porn. My trouble is! I really want to capture the feel of the PROSE in white ink between dark stars, or I’m losing so much of the flavor that it seems like I shouldn’t bother. And the like, dreamy nightmare-y feel when Tailgate’s existence breaks the rules of physics is intimidating as hell to imitate, hahaha. I still want to buckle down and DO it, and really lean into the nightmare+affection mashup in cyclonus’s head while he’s getting physically overwhelmed in pleasant and pleasant(????) ways, but it’s been hard to find time to work on pinning it down. This probably qualifies as an answer to question 17 too, tbh

17. A fic of someone else’s that made you want to try something new in your writing

Okay, I don’t know if I have good answers for either of these but I’ll try

18. (Do you have a fic reading/writing routine?)

…not really? Definitely not a reading routine. Mostly my writing goes like this:

realizes it is after dinner and I have not written yet and this chapter is never going to get finished

sits down to write, runs into some question, sends it to @choomchoom

chats with choomchoom whilst writing till they go to bed

go to bed way too late

…but that implies that I’m not skiving off and goofing on the internet every few minutes and that’s definitely happening most of the time while I’m writing

19. (What’s your favorite character headcanon?)