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?
The episode one ship scene where Megatron was trying to get the all spark.
It goes mostly the same, by this point the entire team knows about Optimus' situation. Megatron gets pissed off when he sees his old lead scientist Brainstorm there fighting with the autobots. When it's just Megatron and Optimus in the storage bay, being so close to the Allspark and being attacked causing Optimus to lose control as he tries to eat Megatron's spark revealing himself to the enemy. Megatron was winning and was about to kick Optimus out of hatch until Brainstorm came in and pushed him out and grabbed Optimus and pulled him back in, then had to stop Optimus from eating his spark.
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.
Found your blog and you have me OBSESSING over TFA Simpatico. I have so many questions.
1) Are Percy and Brainstorm actually conjunxed? Did Brainstorm leave Percy cause he was hurt by his actions? Or was it onesided, with them actually completing the rites but Brainstorm not realising it?
2) What kind of discrimination did Brainstorm have to deal with? In what ways was he restricted as a warframe? Does your TFA-verse have its own caste system? Were Brainstorms talents that undeniable that he was granted leeway/a higher status in order to server Cybertron as a scientist?
3) Did Brainstorm join the Decepticons because of increased discrimination and scutiny? And then get pushed over the edge when Perceptor decided to mess with his own personality matrix? (Have you considered Percy doing that to himself in response to Brainstorm leaving him for the Decepticons, in order to prove a point?)
4) How do Brainstorm and Perceptor reunite? Does a Decepticon delegation get send to Cybertron, with Brainstorm being one of the scientists on the Decepticon side? Or does Brainstorm go to Earth to either deliver a new shipment of weapons to Megatron or maybe he was summoned in order to build something on earth, The terrifying (according to rumors) engineer who created some of the most destructive and dangerous weapons that the Decepticons used? (He has such a cheerful and bright paintjob tho, would Perceptor even allow people to speak ill of Brainstorm?)
5) Brainstorm seems to have a lot of attachment to morals and sentimentality in your verse, what would his reaction be to the Jet-twins? They used to be factory worker grounders after all, before being chosen to be reformatted into being autobot flightframes. Would he have opinions about that?
6) I'm a sucker for a good baby trapping plot, but how do you think Perceptor would get there? From what little you've written till now he still seems a little too on ice to be able to make it under Brainstorms panels XD.
Anyway good day!
This is such an awesome ask, thank you! I really wish I had more of this verse coherently written down so I could share it with you, but it's largely chunked together at the moment and I don't want to publish the next piece because I decided to make Perceptor suffer a bit more. I originally posted it as a kind-of April Fools joke (as I'm mostly writing other content on this blog) but it is a genuine passion project of mine and I'm delighted in your interest in it.
1) I originally scrapped this piece together with all the whimsy of a CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) novel. I used to read them when I was young, namely one of the pieces by R.L. Stine, and I thought all the ways the plot could go was super interesting (but, with all the viciousness of a autistic kindergartener, I hunted down the 'best' ending.) The idea of writing something a bit like that seemed fun. So in one of those iterations, they're conjunxed and mutually aware of it, another they're "lab partners," and if I hated myself, I'd do another where they were pining pathetically.
2/3) Basically, yes! The autobot faction got gradually more hostile as propaganda turned (more) against warframes in response to the Decepticons, up until the point it wasn't really safe for Brainstorm to stay in his position. He's a very dramatic and very intense mech, though, so he didn't take losing his job well. He was, indeed, very, very good at it. Which some people hated, admittedly. He didn't have a 'good' personality to match his talent, so he wasn't considered an exception socially.
Joining the Decepticons wasn't his favorite option, but Perceptor is still a relatively loyal autobot (it's veering on dubiously) and Cybertronian's seem to have a deep hatred for weak willed political parties. Decepticons gave him a job, going Neutral gave him three dozen headaches including not exactly having the personal shanix to relocate.
The fact that you bring up Perceptor's personality matrix right then is actually very ironic, because in what I have written, he did! After Brainstorm was ousted, Perceptor lost a few dozen reasons to keep caring and a voice to tell him that maybe D.I.Y brain surgery is a terrible idea. He became utterly manic in a bad way. I may have been slowly killing off his friends. No comment.
4) The original concept was more of the first, since we don't really see Perceptor leave Cybertron. He's technically government, so he doesn't have as much freedom of movement. Boundary pushing by being an aft excluded, of course. Autobots and Decepticons begrudgingly met up by sending some delegates to the Decepticons, but no one really wanted to volunteer for that.
I like to imagine Brainstorm's paint job is pretty much identical, except for a few things where he wasn't able to get a perfect replacement shade. He's old in TFA standards. He keeps exploding himself. It's gotten scuffed. Perceptor's relationship with Brainstorm isn't public, so no one is really treading on that landmine on purpose, but he is a prominent engineer and gets the OCCASIONAL mention. The Decepticons have much more famous mechs, and he's- not playing it safe, per say, but laying a bit low.
5) I think he's very pro-body modding. But I also think he's an old warframe who has experienced a lot of fucked up shit he doesn't talk about, and this refomating kind of reminds him of MTO armies. Maybe they're not being made in dozens and have some sort of semi-competent handler, but it still doesn't resonate well with his spark. He's familiar with double standards even if he wasn't very good at sanitizing himself for the public, so he's not too hurt by them being flight-frames in the physical sense.
6) It takes a while! But the big plot hasn't even shown up yet and it's probably gonna involve letting another mech do stuff to you that could probably end up with you dead if they fucked it up. Perceptor gets kind of. Clingy. Life is hard enough, he refuses to question his trust in Brainstorm and consider any doubts.
Whew, that was a lot of typing, and I gotta go eat something and stab myself now. I'm really glad my brain felt like answering. I'd love a response, even if it's just an anon ask going !!!!!.
Two million, five hundred thousand solar cycles since the first riots. Three million, two hundred thousand since meeting him. It had been five hundred since he'd last bothered to leave Cybertron.
Perceptor was aware of how difficult he was to argue with. Once he had chosen a point, he wouldn't budge without being outsmarted. When it did happen, he could accept defeat gracefully. It wasn't, after all, as if he could be angry.
He rooted his choices in statistics, alliances, feasibility. It was a simple structure to follow, one that had been crucial to implement once his processor had no longer been able to make quite the same number of inspired quick decisions it once had.
Numbers were easier than mechs. He'd made a way to interpret them, true, but his processor was lacking in ‘appropriate’ response. Some mechs swapped so quickly between their feelings that they'd become indecipherable.
This was not an argument that he could be persuaded to give up. The councilors had irrational fears. He could be replaced, negotiating had so far yielded no casualties, and not one of them wanted to take his place.
If it was anyone but the Decepticons that they were dealing with, they likely would've been offended by the presence of Perceptor at the initial meeting to discuss the alliance.
It wasn't a secret how much talent the scientist had at interpersonal discussion. That is, to say, that he had none.
This alliance was important. He could accept that and use his applicable skills to assist Optimus Prime in whatever way was needed. But he had a selfish motive in this.
Before the Perceptor of millenia past had decided that his emotions were more hindrance than help, he was already considered quite detached. It was with that detachment that he had sufficed previously.
There were few exceptions, and one of them was glaringly vivid. He only had the irrational memories of his mistakes and emotional confrontations now.
⇒His conjunx.
Many people didn't believe Perceptor could get legitimately upset, not even some of his squadmates, until they saw him supervise Brainstorm. He can't recount how it felt, but he remembered the mischievous glint in the optics looking back at him and the many, many incidents.
There were similar rumors he couldn't love, either.
Brainstorm had never intentionally tried to press on that button like he had his nerves. It was, without his knowing, something that had just slowly stuck in his chest with every high flutter of those wings, mad cackling, and the look of concentration on Brainstorm's faceplates as he soldered.
It shouldn't have been so easy to fall in love with him when he despised him so dearly at times, but he'd never pried at the things that stuck out about him, and they both had the same nightmares.
Cybertron, burning. A rebellion spread into war. The endless expanse of space.
For a while he hadn't been sure that Brainstorm loved him back. He had an objective eye now, that he could use to review the memories with true detachment; he could now look at the younger version of himself and realize that he had been more than infatuated.
He'd never gotten a handle on Brainstorm's emotions. He was the burrowing type, and Perceptor couldn't make out any of those faint emotions more now than he could've then. He hadn't cared at the time, because he knew, at minimum, that Brainstorm was a poor liar.
Being shuffled into sharing a lab due to the logistics of no one else (being able to) wanting to put up with Brainstorm had been enough to skyrocket a crush to obsession. A collaboration, a proper one, was plenty sufficient motivation for that younger him to contemplate his Acts.
The acceptance was one of the most well trodden memories he had in storage. He could see Brainstorm's seams glint, remember the grease that was stuck on Brainstorm's back without him knowing. He could read the linked reports that said Perceptor's sparkrate had become alarmingly high.
He could remember the press of the jet into his smaller frame, lips that covered his awkwardly, but so, so sweetly. He had accidentally stuck his servos into that patch of grease and slid it down Brainstorm's skirt armor.
Brainstorm cackled and told him to slow down first.
Perceptor no longer felt love, lust, anger, sadness- there was nothing in him that cried out and reeked of jealousy anymore. There was the objective knowledge that his conjunx had been gone for seven hundred thousand years.
To believe that the decepticons had faded into nothing was to, in a small way, believe that his conjunx was dead. He knew logically through data, proof after proof, that Brainstorm was generally quite adept at not dying, but very adept at getting in situations that would kill him.
So Perceptor held the controversial opinion that the Decepticons were hardly gone. It was easy to believe, because he could support it with more than vain hope.
He had to.
-
Hey, thanks for reading this little preview of my TFA simpatico WIP fic Splinch Theory! It's not exactly a prank, but happy April Fools anyway. It's some SFW about something other than OC's for once.
It's written out in my doc as a kind of CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) style, but that's kinda difficult to publish and I think if I just gave you three paragraphs, I'd be killed. It might be (probably will be) getting a rewrite in a different style.
I'm still busy with life, and I'll be honest- I haven't written a word on any of my fics since like. Early February at the best. Splinch Theory hasn't had an update since January, and it was born on google docs back in December of 2024. I've got a little more, if I'm enticed to share, but it's only like 4k at the moment. Proton doesn't have a word counter. I might move programs.. again.
Almost shared my horny Simpatico cannibalism fic, haha.
