First of all I definitely have to thank @elfdragon12 for selling me on the G1 humans and the potential they have for good storytelling!
So here are Spartacus 'Spike' Witwicki, Carlita 'Carly' Castellano and Charles 'Chip' Chase as they appear in TTB!
Spike mainly works off-base with his father Stanislaw 'Sparkplug' Witwicki as mechanics on Autobot missions, while Carly and Chip are mainly on-base working in R&D and tech respectively.
Witwicky is a name that exists IRL, and it's specifically an Americanised version of Witwicki, which is Polish, so Spike is a second-generation immigrant to the US with Polish---specifically as a member of the Lipka Tatar minority---ties through Stanislaw, and Turkish ties through his mother.
Lipka Tatars are predominantly also Muslims who usually keep to a Polish naming convention/don't usually sport Arabic names, so Spike here also joins the the rising ranks of Muslims on the Autobot side!
Mexican-Italian Carly is a bottle blond who goes back to her original brown tresses near the end of the war.
She runs on coffee and Monster Energy, and is what one might call a Type A personality. And for good reason—she’s a scholarship kid from an impoverished barrio, the first to ever get into MIT, and she’s determined to make a name for herself to bring back support and funding for her community so other kids like her have that opportunity too. She was a student in Dr. Harding’s lecture classes, and interned under Harding before graduation—the two still keep in contact with each other across the Atlantic.
And Chip. We gotta talk about Chip (and the other two) under the cut.
Chip got the bad end of the deal here and his background is as messed up as his general health is on any given day.
Energon hotspots exist in TTB and they’re still being studied and often irradiate local wildlife and extremely unlucky scientists conducting field research; one of them was Chip’s mother, while she was very early into her pregnancy (she believed she was properly kitted out, but this hotspot was more potent than the others).
He grew up sickly, but still relatively active and as Spike’s childhood friend, would still be able to play football with Spike.
Spike and Chip’s relationship was extremely tight when they were children (Spike protected Chip from bullies and played with him since other boys avoided involving him in their games as he had problems keeping up due to his health issues, while Chip would help Spike with schoolwork and stood up for him if someone decided it’s pick-on-the-immigrant-kid day).
It was to the point that, when Sparkplug was imprisoned for a short stint after being charged with inciting a riot (he was spearheading a workers' protest), Chip's residence was a second home to Spike, while his mother picked up extra shifts to make ends meet.
However, when Chip was around 10, the radiation flared up/became aggressive in both him and his mother, and while his mother's condition deteriorated faster than his, it still wreaked havoc on his body and caused paraplegia through spinal metastasis.
When his mother died, he had no blood family willing to take him in (as a child born out of wedlock who was piling up medical bills and was not expected to see his 18th birthday).
The Witwickis, who saw him as family now, wanted to adopt him but could not pay for the care he needed as lower class blue collar immigrants.... at which point Zeta Prime stepped in as a benefactor who wanted to sponsor the child prodigy.
This however, meant Chip had to be moved to New York, ostensibly for better treatment, and he and Spike last saw each other as children when they were 12.
They’d promise to write to each other, but Spike never received anything from Chip no matter how many letters he sent (Zeta had been intercepting them since he wanted Chip to be fully dependent on him/cut all ties to his past, and to focus on his tutelage under Dr Alcazar)
The two reunited as adults when Spike and Sparkplug were enlisted as part of the team working on a top secret government project (Metroplex) on which Chip was the lead programmer and Carly was head of the R&D division.
Chip however, started having doubts about Zeta Prime's motives for Metroplex's creation, and feeling both helpless and terrified for what he'd gotten himself into, confided his concerns to Spike that what they were building was not a space research titan, but a weapon and the US' largest mobile base capable of levelling small countries--which is exactly what Zeta plans to do with it.
Carly eavesdrops, and is drawn into the situation.
All three of them struggled with breaking off their relationship with Zeta Prime, whose project brought the, together:
Chip knows that going against Zeta means he likely loses all access to the medical aid and experimental treatments keeping him alive. (He is lucky that he kept notes and an extensive medical record of himself, and that them fleeing across the Atlantic brought them right to Ratchet and Co.),
Spike knows going against Zeta means burning the olive branch of government acceptance Zeta held out to his father and their diaspora after their lifelong struggle to get the same compensation for their work as native-born workers, and better/safer projects.,
Carly knows going against Zeta means a stain on her record as a ‘model minority’ , and it will destroy Zeta’s promise of a scholarship fund for her community as well as government goodwill for them.
All three decide that they have to take a stand against him regardless, and they managed to sabotage Zeta’s control over Metroplex and allowed Metro to escape into the Pacific.
Fleeing Zeta’s wrath across the Atlantic put them on the collision course with the Autobots via an SOS signal from Prowl which Chip decoded and answered, and this set have been stalwart allies since
Chip still has a close relationship with Prowl here over many similar aspects of their life, quiet companionship and a love for strategy games. He is also rebuilding the relationship he had with Spike and Sparkplug, and Spike and Chip see each other more as brothers than friends these days.
All of this converges on the question of VISIBILITY. Visibility was a construct that the gay and lesbian movement invented to explain and excuse the cruelty we were experiencing. We denied that it was intentional. Instead we invented the idea that it was an inadvertent consequence of heterosexuals having a lack of information about what we are really like. If they would discover how we truly are, they would not want to hurt us. And since they were doing everything imaginable—using every social institution to make it impossible for us to be truly seen—we would have to subject ourselves to extreme violation in order to force a cathartic experience for them that would make them better. This process required shock troops of certain stupendously courageous gay and lesbian individuals to “come out” and be fully subjected to the force of punishment, thereby creating the inevitable social change that we felt would accompany recognition. Some of us forced them to see us, expecting that once they would see us, they would love us, and then realize that our disenfranchisement was morally wrong, and they would then join with us in correcting these structures of exclusion, both emotional and social. The plan was that the vanguard homosexuals, willing to take the punishment, would then make things easier for other, less courageous ones looking on from the wings waiting for this battle to achieve a more equitable field. These others could then enter the process with progressively fewer degrees of loss, but filled with recognition for their brave predecessors, and what we had done for them. Looking back at the way we created the issue of “visibility” as a strategy for change is a painful confrontation with the realization that it was an engagement with magical thinking.
We believed that straight people hate and hurt us because they don’t know us. If we could have visibility, they would realize that we are fine and would accept us. This theory has been disproven by history. Now we have enormous visibility and the hatred and overt campaigns against us ranging from commodification to constitutional amendments to dehumanizingly false representations in popular culture have intensified and become more deliberate. Clearly ignorance was not the determining factor in what caused homophobia. There is much more volition on the part of homophobes than we ever imagined.
Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, Sarah Schulman. 2009.
Rules: Send me an emoji in an ask, and I'll write 3-5 sentences and/or paragraphs from a WIP. No limits to the amount of asks you can send, please feel free to send multiple!
Having finally dug myself out of an emoji-filled hole, gonna open this up again but with a twist! Got a couple secret fics to work on, so this week folks will get to choose which non-secret fic they want a snippet from instead while I work on all four WIPs. The choices for snippets are from either the final Eddierotica chapter, or my expanded Selkie!Eddie fic.
🏔️ Steddie winter exchange - Gonna actually start to outline this fic this week now that I've finished up other stuff!
🖌️ Stranger things reverse big bang - Excited to eventually share this with folks, it's gonna be great <3
Underneath the cut enjoy a snippet from 🏴☠️'s cowboy chapter and tagging folks who might want to join in on the fun themselves
Sheriff Longdick grumbled and prepared to head out on another mission. Edgar the Outlaw might be the cock of the walk right now, but Big Steve prided himself on getting any parading poultry home to roost, no matter the size. This criminal would be no different.
He saddled his trusty steed RobinBlue Jay, and set out.
In the corner was a note: reminder to make another batch of apology brownies for Robin. Steve groaned. At least Eddie had never managed to show any of this to Jeff. He’d want more than dessert as payback for ruining Dracula. (“The brides were topless Steve, and all I could think about was Eddie’s stupid heaving testicles!”)
Now, Sheriff Longdick was a master at tracking many a slippery eel. But in this case, he didn’t need to try very hard. A trail of loose coins and bills fluttering around in the breeze led him straight into the lonesome desert as night fell. Luckily, the wide brim of his fifty gallon hat managed to keep the gold bullion from hitting him square in the face. As the stars twinkled up above in the sky, Big Steve caught sight of a distant campfire: the fearsome fugitive must have settled down, thinking he’d escaped undetected.
The sheriff dismounted Blue Jay a safe distance away. As sneaky as a stagehand in a kabuki play who secretly was a shuriken-wielding assassin, he crept ahead, darting from cactus to cactus. Finally, he got close enough to get an earful of Edgar’s boisterous singing. The criminal’s signature guitar accompanied his caterwauling as he praised his own cleverness.
