Starscream x Prowl hear me out please please please I've got THOUGHTS I've got OPINIONS I technically even have like half a fic but uhhh (shoves that away).
I'm gonna start trope-y and 'why not' and gradually touch on other reasons. First off, they match. 2nd in command, 2nd in command. There's jokes about sets to be made because megop and Soundwave x Jazz isn't super uncommon.
There's similarities with each other they'd never want to confront but it'd be kind of fun to force them to anyways. Both of them have complicated relationships with their boss (if not explicitly hostile, IDW) and are schemers. They've got plans for their plans and no one else needs to know about them.
I do genuinely think they'd hate each other. Could very much be an enemies to begrudgingly cooperative to Something situation. I'm pretty sure they'd dodge working together, but if their work ever fell into the others orbit they'd be annoyed by it working so well.
Prowl's opinion of Starscream is.. bad. After the war, he tracks every little movement he does to predict when everything is going to fall apart again, and that forces him to realize that Starscream is, ugh, competent at some things.
Starscream thinks the idea of Prowl cooperating with him is hilarious because it's so stupid it's no longer even insulting. But Prowl, I think, has kinda got a need to be involved. Why would he sabotage something he's benefiting from?
That's the point where you throw in some conflict that throws Starscream and Prowl off their pedes for a moment. Neither of them are happy, and depending on what you choose they'd be trying to desperately shove their walls up around each other so they couldn't find another weakness.
If this post does well and some of y'all tell me your thoughts about the ship, I'll make a second post with my filthier thoughts. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I honestly really love looking at Brainstorm next to other characters. He's got kinda, all bark, no bite, small dog energy. But then he stands next to Perceptor in a panel standing up straight and guh.
The size difference isn't a big, overtly noticed thing. Brainstorm is off the ground, or hunched over something, taking dramatic steps that don't actually like.. hm. He's cultivated his silly guy energy successfully. But I want Perceptor to just notice. At some point. Brainstorm, standing up straight next to him on level ground.. he's so often sitting or perched, isn't he? Not much of a looming mechanism.
At least in IDW. In TFA Simpatico, the size difference is so big that it's blatantly a fucking kink. They have arguments about how to interface. Once they get past the emotionally repressed assholes stage.. which takes a moment, because Perceptor's deal in Animated is complicated. I can see them in like, pre-established relationship but they got seperated by the war for bigotry reasons. Which means they are both, honestly, old.
I do also find the lab partners (complicated) (gone sexual?) (not yet) dynamic fun. I've got like three main backstories I prefer for them. Perceptor is the narrator for all of them- because Brainstorm is. Well. His emotions are tangled up, and it's less like an exclusive POV and more of a 3rd person deal. Perceptor's not doing well, but he doesn't have any fucks left to give. His opinion of Brainstorm is less tainted by the decepticon badge he's taken, but what they did do and possibly could have been.
There's a plot somewhere in my head where Optimus Prime beats the shit out of the conflict in the background, and Perceptor and Brainstorm reunion has people anticipating these two very different personalities to mesh horrifically. Very, very few people knew anything about Brainstorm.
Perceptor treats Brainstorm like his conjunx endura. Brainstorm treats Perceptor like the lab partners they used to be and kind of strains his face awkwardly when anything else is implied. Sure, Percy is kinda of more drone like than anything, but he kinda.. shifts around Brainstorm. Not necessarily trying to one up him, but to catch him up to date on everything. And then he wants to go speedrun domestics and shuffle Brainstorm into his life throughly enough to actively difficult to leave. And why would he ever need to leave again?
Y'know when I was reading IDW I didn't really care for Prowl that much but I did feel insanely bad for him, he was an ass most of the time sure but I couldn't really hate him since I got where he was coming from (most of the time)
Now I lowkey like Prowl, he's not a favorite but Prowl fans have somehow converted me
I think Prowl deserves something nice every once 'n a while, I just want to take care of him and his problems
Also I like it when people headcanon any transformer acespec cause I'm also on the ace spectrum and it just makes me feel more connected to them
Thanks to Prowl I now have a thing for cattle guards on vehicles
-wife anon
Prowl is a really interesting character, and IDW Prowl is a nightmare who is still utterly enrapturing. Many people have said it, but to be a Prowl fan you must hate him. And then you must be a Prowl fan anyways.
(Reason #41 why TFA Prowl is not 'Prowl'--)
Prowl cares too much. He cares too much about everything else but himself. I've paralleled him to SG! Prowl like that because SG is self-preserving. He schemes for the sake of himself. Prowl schemes because he has the delusional fantasies that if he builds up the right sets around the people he cares about, they'll be happy there. He destroys things to preserve them. He himself is not worth preserving. But he'll stick around, because who else is going to make the decisions people don't want to?
In the IDW run, someone signed him up for bad things happen bingo when he was constructed or something and (stares) no one told him how to quit. He is 100% the culprit to a lot of unspeakable tragedies occurring to Cybertron and its populace due to his influence and planning, but he is also not an evil megalomaniac with an active desire to kill everything. Killing is just a really efficient way of clearing up his problems.
These are not good things. Do not be mistaken. This is not praise. I kind of just want to tear him off of his watchtower built out of favors and mania, dead frames, and atom bombs. What would he be like if people took their eyes off of him? Is there a single way to 'help' him that doesn't have resonating consequences?
Institutions of power that build people like Prowl are despicable.
..but yeah, that cattle guard is hot. That's why Deepstrider has one, besides it actually being situationally appropriate.
I could talk about Prowl for so long, really. Fanfiction often explores the angles that action media and storytelling don't strictly have the time or desire to. A significant portion is about romantic relationships and a large number of those relationships between people who experience romantic and sexual attraction.
I'm somewhere on the aroace spectrum myself, which I'm sure doesn't make sense to a lot of people due to just.. You're on my blog. You probably know what I post here. Prowl resonates with me, and so a part of me wants to take those similarities and drag them closer.
Transgender, dsyphoric, disabled, neurodivergent. Queer, confused, frustrated. Antagonists are often embedded into the narrative so throughly that when they encounter their failures, they flinch. A lot of traits we associate with them are normal things that people experience. A societal disconnect? A feeling of exclusion? One of our biggest differences is that Prowl is so incredibly ambitious. It's fucked up what he's doing with it, but Primus- I love admiring terrible, beautiful things.
I see Prowl as acespec. In the way that his sexual attraction is diminished, attached to certain things. The actual act can be pleasurable, provide all those feel-good chemicals for the parties involved, but I think he'd be perfectly content in a relationship without it.
When shipping him with Jazz, I see him as kind of arospec! Physical attraction does it for him, sure. I think Jazz is endeared by the idea of romance, but it just doesn't click with him a significant portion of the time. Fragging is separate, physical- it can be fun, stress relieving, enticing.
These types of dynamics are so fun to write and to think about. Jazzprowl has a dynamic teetering on unsteady trust exercises and then eventually falling face first into realizing this guy would kill a man for you because you're you. And that's just platonic! If I expand upon that, I usually just start loosening boundaries first.
Prowl has abandonment issues and is waiting to be left alone staring down at every failure he's ever made. Jazz can sit in a corner and chatter away at him every once in a while.
Jazz's brain is basically an exposed live wire, and he wants to make choices for himself that feel good without orders to. Sometimes he wants to burn it off carnally. Prowl, blood wrought trust in hand, will allow Jazz to use his frame for his pleasure as he likes because he knows that way he's safe, he has an outlet.
The idea of Rodimus literally being Primus’ favorite is insane. I don't think Cybertronians have ever been human normal about exhibiting affection.
If Rodimus Prime wasn't a coward he could bend over and tempt god to fuck him. But he's also kinda got perma-virgin energy. I think he has a sex drive, but Hot Rod was treated as a younger bot, even after and maybe because of destroying Nyon. There was his stint with the Wreckers, but that's no good way for a 'bot to get his seal broken.
..stupid, but transforming into Rodimus Prime after the Matrix incident has a NUMBER of consequences, and I think one he doesn't notice until everything dies down is. He's got seals again? After all those millenia of jacking off and having mediocre interface, his array is brand new?
He would be teased if anyone found out! It's lame! Rodimus isn't in his thousands anymore! What kind of bot like him is a walking disaster and a relationship-less loser?
Drift probably would offer to frag him but it feels inherently wrong. They're friends, amica. And Drift's never really expressed an interest in interfacing. The sports car isn't a prude, but he's largely unfazed by the purposefully seductive or lewd callouts, advertisements, or any dirty jokes. It'd probably be fun, something they could laugh about later, but it wouldn't be.. real.
Not that Rodimus is a romantic. It's cute, but he wants to feel sexy, you know? Squishies find his sleek curves and pointed edges hot, but gets passed over by the company he wants. Was Hot Rod cuter? Is Rodimus too much, now, too big, too dumb, too arrogant? It's looking like he's gonna find a mirror and try to unseal himself.
Consider,, barbed penises on Cybertronians to penetrate through valve seals and hook into the gaps between calipers. As a treat. Roddy's just gotta track himself down a 'virgin-killer' and maybe pregame it with a little engex. He remembers what it was like the first time. It was completely shredded, more than the stories of tearing off in one piece or more uniform holes. He was picking the scrap of his seal out of his valve for two days, because he didn't notice.
Hot Rod, of course, still had marching orders despite all the whining he wanted to do. His array hurt, his backstrut ached, the engex hit him in the morning, and even willingly doing his warm-ups didn't make the overcharge fade fast enough.
He had better standards than that now, obviously. It didn't take more than a week and a few suspected moments of privacy for him to touch his array for something other than maintenance. And if, for some reason, he just couldn't reach overload, he'd resign himself to playing lighter. He got scolded a few times for wasting fuel, but the amount of charge running through his lines was enough to start a flame with a fast enough servos over his own Primus-damned wounds.
I don't think his interface life really improved. He hides behind the rumors people start up about him even though no one close to him really believes them, doesn't accept pity well, and is so stubborn that the idea of actually asking someone doesn't occur to him. He's hot, right? Surely someone wants to clang that?
He wanted to have an actual story this time if he was going to be forced to deal with this slag again.
-
Hot Rod, angry little twunk: how the FRAG does a bot get laid around here
5 bots who'd probably do him if he asked:
Rodimus Prime, twitching: Ahahhahhaha, not this again, nope nope nope-
We've got 'bots being possessive over humans, abuse of those size and powder dynamics. But. Like.. do we have anything the other way around? I'd say the biggest advantage you could leverage is human resources, cultural knowledge, and such. Unsure how you'd stretch that, but it's not my objective at the moment.
If you had Cybertronians that craved attention, praise, you- why couldn't a human be just as obsessive? Asking for their time, heavy petting, and other touches you attribute to human social bonding. Do you really have to go? I think they'll be fine without you today.
A constant problem I see in the world of transformers pregnancy (porn or not) is bitties too big. TFA has the biggest size differences for factions, so it's a pretty common culprit there. However, if you were, say, dunno, a TFA Ratchlock/Dratchet fan with reformatted or bigger mech Drift, then I think the obvious solution is to simply knock Drift up, right?? I mean- if Ratchet got Deadlock pregnant, what's he supposed to do about that? They're Ratchet's sparklings. And sure he's got like- a job, and a few dozen contracts to fulfill but- Ratchet's sparklings.
Endangering himself is one thing, he probably doesn't have a sense of self preservation, but. Ratchet. They're supposed to be on different sides but saving his life once was enough, and Deadlock downright imprinted on him like a feral street cat.
And he's bigger. He's got the frame for a few sparklings. He's doing Ratchet a favor, really, having his bitties. Ratchet's got a much more important job than running around the galaxy and killing people.
I've alsoooo got thoughts on TFA simpatico with (I am not immune) Perceptor's derth of ethics and emotions included, but Brainstorm feels like he'd be much more reluctant. No confidence in himself to be a carrier. (No one really has confidence in Perceptor to be a sire, anyways, there's something wrong with him.) I don't know why they'd have sparklings, but my idea is Perceptor baby trapping Brainstorm so he can't suddenly run off (again).
If collabing post war and Percy's put some steps into place to maybe fix the emotional processing.. lack, there's probably a bit more wiggle room. But that honestly just makes it worse when Brainstorm starts getting flighty and thinking he's going to frag things up again. Because Perceptor would have the memories and emotional depth to realize just how much he hates the idea of Brainstorm leaving him again. If genuine emotional development and a job back in the science field doesn't seal him into place, he'll figure something else out.
I have. So many many more thoughts about this. Hrngh.
Read some fics for the first time in a while, and my brain returns to thinking about unhealthy relationship dynamics and Dratchet / Ratchlock and how I think the assumptions when you put those together being.. a little different than initial thought.
I do think Drift/Deadlock is kinda more sappy and a bit possessive, kinda clingy even if he's distancing himself, but that Ratchet when he realizes what kind of fixation he's got is.. magnitudes more intense.
Deadlock wants Ratchet. He wants to have him and protect him and make him happy.
Ratchet will be plenty happy when he gets to fix up his 'special' patient, is what he says. Not the time, not the place, but getting to touch him all over like how only a medic could.
You ever see those Deadlock temporarily abducts Ratchet to keep him from being useful to the autobots scenarios? They made be not as common and actually in my head. But kinda.. inital protests and a little verbal fighting, maybe some manhandling, but somehow it turns into Ratchet turning Deadlock into a mess. Non-specfic but.. eh.
I've seem heat/rut stuff and I'll be so real I just wanna see old, experienced Ratchet sound all composed while his frame is high strung and ready to frag the living daylights out of Drift. Drift just ages like an angel, so he's got his own level of ability to keep that under lock and key, but they're emotionally compromised for each other. I feel like he's the type of mech that feels guilty when he's needy and in contrast I kinda want Ratchet obsessed with the idea of Drift being in like. Constant need of him, in some way. Emotionally, physically, sexually.
He's a bot designed to take care of mechs. But taking care of Drift isn't really 'work' to him. It's what's he built for. Ratchet truly doesn't really get exhausted of it. His code says so. There's a kind of thrill and satisfaction in knowing he's good at his function, and Drift is kinda constantly hitting that dopamine when he dares to want a little.
Anywayyyys thinking of dubcon-y old man babies. Drift can't believe he's being a burden or get his processor entrenched in so much conflict that he dares leave if Ratchet puts his sparklings in him, would he? Maybe he could try, but Drift's a softer spark when he can be, doesn't he wanna make Ratchet happy? Let him take care of Drift and all those fussy little details?
Drift's interface array was probably brand new or half broken. Either way, Ratchet fixed it up to standard. It was meant to be sweet- and was. He just.. didn't install any birth control at all.
I have a document dedicated to rambling about them. Boils down to you should top Drift/Deadlock more and can I have some Ratchet being the possessive one please. If you got fics among these lines, toss em in the comments.
Not a very good, long, or coherent post, but just. Can Ratchet be the weird little freak about Drift.
