“The Drift Person”

Lil or Elle | sideblog, follows from @softergoth | TF Big Bang Mod | Minors do not follow | Ao3 @ wallflowers | header by rusthands

[weapon-up-wallflower]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Flowers from a Sidewalk Crack & Two Cents from a Dead End Skiv [addendum: Obituary for the Poet Miner]

Drift thought he'd seen everything down in the Dead End. What he hadn't seen as a skiv he'd seen as a streetmech, and what he hadn't seen as a streetmech, he'd seen as a gun-for-hire. Then he receives a job offer with a bounty too large to ignore. The mark? Megatron, as in "electron", as in the bomb. A miner, from Tarn. The crime? Poetry. Or: Four and a half million years ago, a bounty hunter from the Dead End met a miner who fancied himself a poet, and that alone changed everything.

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Fandom: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)

Relationships: Drift | Deadlock & Megatron, Drift | Deadlock/Ratchet, Drift | Deadlock & Ravage, Impactor & Megatron, Drift | Deadlock + Original Character(s)

Characters: Drift | Deadlock, Megatron, Ratchet, Ravage, Impactor, Orion Pax, Missit (OC), Chromantic (OC), Fuse (OC)

Additional Tags: Character Study, Pre-War, Alternate Origin Story, The Dead End, Poetry, The Origins of the Decepticons, Implied/Referenced Drug Use and Addiction, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Bounty Hunters, Platonic Sex, Queerplatonic Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, Neo-Noir, This is set before Megatron met Terminus so it's very early on

Note: Two Cents was the accumulation of my pandemic-project of re-examining Drift's character arc. It's an alternative depiction of how Drift and Megatron first met and an intimate look at life in the Dead End pre-war. The fic takes place in the span of three panels from Drift's standalone mini-series, and follows Drift as he endures the events that lead him to decide to join the Decepticons.

(Pretty much me asking the question "if Drift was a bounty hunter while Megatron was still hiding under tables during bar fights, shouldn't it have been Drift to inspire Megatron to violence instead of the other way around?" and running with that idea. Its also where Missit, Chromantic, and Fuse first came into existence. Please heed the mature rating -- this fic is a heavy read, given where and when it's set).

[ju33e]

bunny

[robotclownindulgence]

The fact that the transformers fandom is so huge and has literal decades worth of stories to choose from makes the fact that there has literally never been a single piece of transformers media to choose from that was just. unquestionably. good. is so funny to me

[robotclownindulgence]

oh so you like transformers? do you mean

the old corny as hell cartoons for children

various forms of media that has its strong points but has aged poorly in some aspects (*cough* beast wars *cough)

the newer corny as hell cartoons for children

the multi million dollar movie franchise made for us military propaganda purposes

the other multi million dollar movies (that may or may not be part of the same franchise im still unsure of that) that are just. decent i guess

the comic series that comes close to being good but is riddled with cringy ass mcu-ish dialogue and gets really rushed at the end

whatever is happening in the comics now

welcome to car robot hell

[dumi719042]

20251225

drew this months ago, couldn't stop thinking about the Perfect Blue poster and Megatron

[mordhiobhail]

megatron

[valtsv]

im one of the angels assigned to guard god's throne and i keep shaving a piece of wood off one of the legs so it gets progressively thinner and weaker until one day it will snap like a matchstick and the big man will topple from his seat of power to grace the ground with his holy ass. of course he's omniscient so he already knows this and will have to banish me from heaven when it happens, but because of free will he has to give me the option to repent right until the very end. we both know i'm not going to do it but the rules that define our very being won't let us take any other course of action and besides he made me this way, so really the joke's on him no matter what.

[cachelet]

my silly murdermachine princess deadlock how i love you <3 maybe i will start posting more doodles here because i have A Lot. of dratchet/ratchlock doodles. just sitting around.

[lizardsister]

[decepti-thots]

really funny that there's this fanon idea of mtmte rodimus as a constant flirt or whatever when in reality a very decent number of his casual social interactions involve him not realizing he just insulted someone or insulting people on purpose. i'm gonna level with you all even if rodimus was inclined to try i genuinely think he would be terrible at it

[shovelwareyaoi]

sometimes i'm reminded that people actually still get genuinely invested in top/bottom discourse in the big 2026

[shovelwareyaoi]

when you read fanfic do you have a strong preference for tops/bottoms/switches?

yes and i won't read anything outside of my preferences

yes but i'll read outside of my preferences depending

no i dgaf

Voting ended onMay 5

[lovesongs4robots]

the unfortunate thing is some of you think you did a character analysis, but what you did is an over-identification where,

instead of the logic of:

*a character says/does/feels something* -> I wonder why they did/say/feel that way? what is the subtext of that? what does it say about their beliefs and values? about other aspects of their personality? is this inherent or conditioned? what does it say about their past? what does it say about the world around them? how do they define/conceptualize xyz? is this the same as the rest of their world does? as we do? what happens when the boundaries of xyz are disturbed/recontextualized/troubled? how does that (re)shape their worldview?

it becomes the logic of:

*a character says/does/feels something* -> i do/say/feel that way too! and I do it that way because of my (personal and culturally specific) identification/understanding of xyz. therefore, the character does that because of the same shared identification/understanding of xyz, which is now a fixed feature, because my pleasure of the text is predicated on this identification.

which is fine, whatever, i'm not one to stay in the way of your pleasure, but it does become an issue when it turns you into a self-appointed cop on a path of righteousness to defend the character against (sometimes entirely imagined) infidels who are "disrespecting" or "misreading" them (because that means they are disrespecting and misreading you) and then turning it into some kind of overarching and targeted judgment of "well it's because fandom hates people like me," and looping the over-identification more and more into a knot. no one else understands this Character like you do! no one can touch them but you! woof-woof-woof!

but it's not about you. it's about the Character. And I'm not saying it in the sense of, "you can't hurt a character's feelings, they aren't real," because that's beside the point, but what I mean is that the character is embodied within a particular world - and I'm talking about speculative worlds specifically here - and you're completely disengaging with the fun part of unpacking that rich world because you jumped to a conclusion based on a solipsistic analysis. and yes, that includes when you bring in the undead author arguments of, well canon says-- no it doesn't. the Character says. the Author says about what the Character's perspective is. see point A.

and also, none of it negates the validity of your interpretation! but the problem is, because you didn't actually look at the thing on its own terms, you have deprived yourself of a different kind of pleasure of textual engagement, and multitudes of experiences that might also make you understand where other people are coming from.

and also you've given me carpal tunnel from making me use the block button so much. my god.

[phillip-bankss]

my transformers comic 8

[bean-with-a-knife]

hey guys its deadlock thursday

[dmbakura]

do u ever see someone elses headcannon for ur fave character and its like….. i completely respect that u have the right to that headcannon, i will not confront u at all and start needless bullshit over that headcannon…. but i will silently sit here and give you the sideways glance of the century

[sharkfish]

me, out loud: hey that’s cool we all have our own interpretations and i support you as part of fandom regardless 

me, in my head: ….but you’re wrong 

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

I would just like to remind everyone that this is the mature, reasonable, and sensible response.

[fang-emblem]

[noicouldnevergiveyoupeace]

do yall ever wonder what you’re best known for in the fandom ?

[quetzalpapalotl]

I keep seeing posts that confused me, so I just want to clarify that in IDW1 empurata and shadowplay are two different things. Empurata is the removal of the face and changing the hands for claws as a form of humiliation for displeasing the Senate or Council. Shadowplay is the use of mnemosurgery (already morally questionable on its own) to alter one person's personality, opinions, etc. Both are tools of those in power but they serve different purposes. Empurata is meant to be seen by everyone, shadowplay is done in secret and the only person we know that was subjected to both is Shockwave.

We can see that Whirl was made to do the Senate's dirty work after his empurata, but this was under threat of further violence and there's never any indication that they directly messed with his mind, though obviously the trauma of the whole thing messed him up and resulted in his current personality. Empurata does make one appear less expressive because well, you don't have a face to emote with, but it doesn't mess with the emotions themselves.

Even then Shockwave's shadowplay is pretty unique in that they usually change specific things about a person to further their own goals or even make the victim a sleeper agent, but Shockwave had his emotions removed. Most shadowplays don't go this far and Shockwave doesn't even gain any sort of directive that benefits the Senate in the long run (in fact, he still turns against them just for different reasons).

In fact both the rarity of getting both procedures and the extremism of Shockwave's shadowplay are noted on the same page right before the Senator's identity is revealed

[mintaikkcorpse]

Transformers Prime truly is amazing bcuz whaddyu mean that Knockout's introduction is him walking onto the Nemesis like he's Cuntatron 5000 and the FIRST thing Starcsream does when he sees him is complain about him being "one of those..."