Completely genuinely, why Transformers? I'm so curious how you ended up here (in a positive way, no shade I promise) What have you been enjoying about it?
A fascinating question with a very funny answer, honestly.
Way back when we first started to know each other, back around 2015ish, my now-fiance began telling me about Transformers. Specifically about how she was utterly delighted because Transformers had just managed to canonize a gay relationship.
And so she began to recount the story of More Than Meets The Eye to me, late into the night. I was enraptured by her telling, and soon after set out to read the comic myself.
Now, the funny thing is, Transformers was a complete cultural blindspot to me. I'd never seen the Michael Bay movies, I'd never watched any of the cartoons, I knew absolutely nothing about it. So I went into the comics blind.
I had a fun time, reading More Than Meets The Eye (I have no memory of reading Lost Light, but I did own a few issues when I checked my comixology account, so I probably made a go at it at some point). I read a few fanfics, and then shortly after the Red vs Blue hyperfixation really took over and I put Transformers into a box and proceeded to mostly forget about it. My good friend and long-suffering beta @sroloc--elbisivni got into the robots for a good while, and used to try to lure me back, as did Rena, who had a deep and abiding love of the fandom that went far beyond the comic.
Well, of all things, the answer is Naomi Novik and the Scholomance trilogy.
I read that trilogy and I loved it. I was obsessed. I was telling Sroloc that I was thinking of rereading it immediately, it had caught my brain at just the right time. El was the kind of protagonist genetically engineered for me to love.
And then Sroloc said, very coyly "oh, you know she wrote Transformers fics, right? There's this one that I think is the seed for Scholomance, here's a link."
And I read it, and I went "wow that's super good, let's see what other fics in her Transformers works have characters I recognized. Well, okay, now that I've read the ones with characters I've recognized, let's try the ones I don't. Okay let's try the fics inspired by hers. Let's go back and read what sroloc's working on. Let's read their bookmarks. Let's---"
I was hooked. It was the right combination of things; right place, right time, right level of compelling vs poorly executed so I want to fix things. I found characters I loved, I found ship dynamics I enjoyed, I found world building concepts I could really sink my teeth into... and I found a community.
I try not to say this with any bitterness towards anyone in DC, but I was tired. Certain people in my comments sections were being weird and pushy and demanding or complaining about the flavor of the cake I was baking, I got extremely rude asks that just would take the wind right out of my sails, and I was just kind of. Spinning my wheels. I was writing, but I wasn't loving writing. I wasn't having fun, and I hadn't even realized how much that was the case.
But maybe it's because I'm still new, or because I've just been lucky, but Transformers fans has been welcoming, encouraging, and kind to me. I've made friends, I've written more than I've written in years (I wrote 391,360 words last year, as far as I could tell), and I've just had fun.
It's also been a fandom that has latched me and Rena at the same time, which means it's become something we do together. We watch the cartoons, we make spreadsheets tracking character appearances, we craft lore bibles, and we create extremely elaborate AUs.
The long and short of it is...it makes me happy. I'm creating and enjoying my own output, I'm finding community and friends, and it's been fun.