two trucks holding hands

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Transformers: Resonance

In the Earth year 202X, a lone boy discovers the Ark's crash site and accidentally reactivates its stasis-locked inhabitants. Friend and foe alike are reformatted and rise again, marking the end of the Era of Silence. ... Far off in space, Hot Spot discovers by chance the Enigma of Combination, despite it long being thought to be a mere myth. With High Command back online, a group is assembled to escort the powerful Enigma to Earth and into the waiting hands of Optimus Prime - a group quickly nicknamed the Protectobots. The conditions for success are simple: keep the Enigma in friendly hands and provide backup to the meager Earth forces. But when the Enigma of Combination is activated for the first time in recorded history, the mission becomes a lot more than what the so-called Protectobots signed up for...

surprise (not really)! i also have a fan continuity! it's not... too story or theme heavy (as in i just did whatever and ran with it) but it's my precious little side project 🤍

you'll see any posts related to it tagged as #tf resonance

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Team Relations (and other relevant issues)

a g1 cartoon-adjacent but definitely divergent series focused mostly on combiner teams, with the main pairing being Onslaught/Scrapper

when i posted earlier i was mostly thinking about my coup scenario from pre-war where onslaught thinks he's got one over on megatron, but i like this a lot better. especially because you worded it so well. for such a strong and experienced commander, he can't control what happens when someone else gets in his processor, so to voluntarily give up that control to someone not of his team is a huge gamble for him. trusting is a gamble.

(if we wanna take the scrapslaught lens, or even without it, there's pretty much no one else in the faction ons can turn to. scrapper is pretty trustworthy and hook, one of the few qualified surgeons in the vicinity, would do anything for scrapper. uhhh and i'll talk more on the specifics of ons trusting scrapper in another post sometime maybe??? bc i actually had a fic idea with this very premise)

but. you know, if it means not only getting back at the one who's humiliated him and who should have been taken out of the picture a long time ago, i think onslaught is willing to take some calculated risks. provided he has absolute control on everything apart from the operation itself, or at least tries to have it... hopefully he can keep a handle on his behavior before it pisses off hook too much

anyway! i think it's up to interpretation whether such an operation is painful or not, especially when cybertronians likely experience pain differently than we do. (i guess it depends on if the loyalty programming is solely a software thing or mixed in with the hardware of their brains.)

so i thought of two scenarios. one where the operation is completely painless, and it freaks onslaught out, because if there's no sensation he won't be able to tell if something is going wrong with the operation until it's too late. just a vague idea that there is poking and prodding going on in his processor. but if he's too vigilant, they won't be able to get to the loyalty programming ... or worse. the other scenario is one where the removal operation hurts and they know it's going to hurt like hell, but onslaught still refuses to go under or anything because he would rather suffer through any pain than drift off into unawareness again.

and this is just ons by the way... we still have to undo the programming in all the combaticons, plus i'm pretty sure bruticus is suffering under it too. (though i imagine if onslaught goes first, and it goes smoothly, everyone has a little less to worry about.)

as for the constructicon side... if you'll let me yap a little more. i think anyone who's been on this blog long enough knows what i'm about to say. definitely of the opinion that yeah, the structies would knowingly assist in this and onslaught is right to trust them (even if it's not a sunshine and rainbows "we'll do it with the power of friendship" thing).

first of all, they naturally take pride in their work as constructicons. they're loyal to the craft. if they deliver anything less than what's agreed upon (and i can totally see onslaught trying to frame this as a contract just so he feels like he has some control over the situation), then that reflects poorly on them, whether it's construction or medical matters. and they're not going to do a lousy job, hook of all mecha isn't going to do a lousy job, when an ally's life is on the line.

secondly, it's a mix of sympathy and pragmatism. because the constructicons are so autonomous, the fact that megatron could forcibly control his own mecha by way of loyalty programming does not remotely sit well with them. besides the fact that it is just plain terrible to do that to someone, not that the structies are paragons of morality, it could be them next if they don't mind the very way they breathe. ("The Secret of Omega Supreme" isn't 100% canon to my little universe, so no brainwashing happened to the structies for them to join the cons, but. you know. "The Core" is, i think that's the episode where the autobots use the dominator disks on them. so something might have hit a little close to home there.) also, they are loyal to megatron and technically bound by contract there, but they have their own agenda.

also tbh why would you not go behind the back of your shitty boss who's gonna be dead by the end of this if you play your cards right. i mean there's no guarantee there but let's be honest

i think this all works anyway because unlike the combaticons who i imagine work way better when completely unleashed, the constructicons have never been the type to proactively threaten megatron's reign. whether in canon or in my interpretation. they are generally passive opportunists who - as long as you deliver on your part - will help where they can. so there's a balance there.

as for what happens when megatron is actually dead? well... that's not my problem anymore ;) that's for the two gestalts to work out and wrangle the decepticons, but surely if onslaught can trust the structies with going into his processor, he can trust them to back him before someone unfavorable seizes power?

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