keyboard smash

19, i do whatever | twitter: qexmie | ao3: Justawriterthatreadsmostly

[welltumlbrforgotme]

pinned post

[itwashotwestayedinthewater]

[itwashotwestayedinthewater]

happy decade to the horrible beast i have wrought

[welltumlbrforgotme]

i might have small goals and dreams, but it’s the spices that better the meal

[knightofleo]

😾

[jackdawsfavorite]

bonus

[feiramie]

Totally not related to anything poll.

which do you prefer

Past tense

Present tense

Voting ended onJul 4

[welltumlbrforgotme]

“totally not related to anything”

[kaijuno]

[kittykattaffy]

Yeah, that doesn't prevent pregnancy.

[kaijuno]

Dfgajagakala it’s so you don’t get a UTI 😂

[jabberwockypie]

*facepalm* So, given that sex ed in the US is a tire fire:

Vagina-having people have a shorter urethra, which means we’re more prone to UTIs because the bacteria doesn’t have to travel as far to get up into your bladder and cause a problem.

Which means if you’re exposing your bits to bacteria (as with sex), peeing will flush out bacteria in the urethra. (Urine isn’t actually sterile - that’s a myth - but you’re *supposed to* have a little bit of bacteria - that’s how bodies work. But it still flushes things out that shouldn’t be there.)

Oh! You should ALSO pee after you masturbate, especially if it involves penetration with fingers/toys/etc

[jabberwockypie]

So I’ve blocked like five transphobes on this post, which I feel should have been relatively uncontroversial.

If you’re one of the people saying “You meant ‘women’”, fuck you. I meant “people who have a vagina, regardless of their gender or lack thereof”, and you can go fuck yourself with a cactus.

And you should pee afterward, so you don’t get a UTI.

[silveryoasis]

Lmao! That last line! 😂

[thotsoflore]

Keep this in mind if you recently started having sex again after vaginoplasty. It's a super important habit to get into. Especially if you weren't super careful about it preop.

[goofballproximitysurveyor-deact]

[a-maiz-ing]

The voice acting didn’t have to hit like that

[macademmia-deactivated20260103]

you have to unmute the voice acting is Oscar worthy

[slashercatz]

he sounds like an anime villain

[ralzei1997]

this is just the guy from that game slave 2 episode of invader zim

[do-not-u-dare]

oh my god

[xmajordumps]

guys,

[melancholygirls]

I passed a flower shop next to a tattoo shop and at first I laughed because I thought it was ironic and then i freaked because IMAGINE YOUR OTP IN A FLORIST/TATTOO ARTIST AU

[stillalittlekid]

OMG I COULD TOTALLY IMAGINE THEM LIKE THAT IT WOULD BE SO PERFECT

[christ-with-a-why]

[melancholygirls]

I cannot BELIEVE a post I made when I was 13 is circulating! And also apparently started this trope? I thought somebody had the idea separately and it blew up that way😭

[parakavka]

Today a very friendly Golden Retriever came up to me and I said "hey buddy :D" and the owner asked "do you know each other?" like his dog had a social life he didn't know about

[fellator]

this fetish stuff is getting out of hand what the fuck is word play

[glowwormcentral-deactivated2021]

[lawyer voice] mothers and fuckers of the jury-

[hellenhighwater]

DO YOU KNOW HOW OFTEN I THINK ABOUT THIS POST??? IM IN LAW SCHOOL THIS POST IS GOING TO RUIN MY LIFE

[toontwink]

reblog to ruin a law student’s life

[balloonarcade]

Rescue Mission

1. Describe yourself how you would describe a character you’re introducing: @weewoo-and-go-go-go-bot-rangers

*INSERT BALLOON CACKLE*

//It’s so…// Sideswipe wiggled and flopped his arms around randomly from his position laying on his front next to Sunstreaker. Tilting his head to the side while he squinted his optics, he finished searching for the word he was looking for //…Floppy.//

Sunstreaker continued his scan of the human they had stumbled upon.

//The human appears to have harvested the tendon of another human and grafted it into its knee joint, and its lower spinal strut is in need of massive repair.//

//Yea I get that.// Sunstreaker knew Sideswipe hadn’t done an internal scan at all but it was pointless to argue //That’s why I’m saying it’s creepy that it keeps its armor inside. It obviously got injured.//

//It’s organic. It’s how some of them work.//

//The insect that landed on me earlier had the decency to be armored.// Sideswipe grumbled.

//The one you shrieked at?//

//It crawled under my plating Sunny! And it was red and black, what if it laid eggs and I hatched them somehow?!//

//I don’t think that’s how it works.//

//You don’t not know though.//

Sunstreaker huffed and pinged at Sideswipe in irritation. It was true. Sunstreaker couldn’t say for certain that the insect he had identified as a “lady bug” could successfully breed with Sideswipe or not.

Shockwave has successfully bred hybridized mechanical and organic Insecticons…it might be probable…and they laid eggs. Sunstreaker knew that for certain.

Sideswipe’s plating shuddered then clamped tight, obviously at the memory of the rogue insect infiltrator he had screamed about. After a few moments Sideswipe peered out from behind the hill they were crouched behind and “rust slugged” closer along the ground.

//What is the human doing?//

//It appears to be attempting to use augmented optics to capture light with different focal positions of glass.//

//…//

Sunstreaker sighed along the bond. //It’s trying to take image captures of the terrestrial mammal to its left.//

A sudden spike of -

//No.// Sunstreaker attempted to cut it off before it started.

//Yes.//

//No.//

//C’mon. It’ll be fun.//

//We aren’t suppose to interfere with the natives.//

//It’s not interference…it’s injured. It’s a rescue mission! What does the Autobot Code state about rescuing organics?//

//…//

The wave of vibrating excitement shot straight to Sunstreaker’s spark and the melody Sideswipe was beginning along their bond indicated Sunstreaker had already lost.

//HA!// Their bond spiked with vindication. //I’m right aren’t I? I bet it got injured doing something fun too. Think it likes free falling and parachutes?//

Sunstreaker pulled his plating in tight as he considered the injured human, and he wasn’t fast enough to hide his uncertainty from the bond.

//Oh…Sunny. It’ll be fine. I promise, humans don’t have EM fields. This one is no different. I’ve been jabbing my field at it for a reaction since we got here just in case.//

Sunstreaker narrowed his optics as he considered the human’s odd behavior he hadn’t been able to figure out. He simply thought he had been reading the human’s expression wrong.

Then he huffed in exasperation along their bond.

That would explain why the human had been scowling at it’s image capture device since shortly after they arrived, and kept switching out the battery.

Sideswipe had broken the device by attacking it repeatedly with his EM field.

[herzspalter]

Horror, Robots and Sunder, or Some Good Unique Fictional Threats

When you’re into a specific genre and you consume media of said genre for over a decade, chances are that it becomes hard to surprise you. Tropes can become embarrassingly obvious, you can predict absolutely everything that happens next and sometimes, no matter how open-minded you are, you can’t seem to get as much enjoyment from something you know you would’ve probably loved ten years ago.

For me, that genre is horror. And MTMTE fucking nails it.

I’ve said before that I believe a lot can be learned from how MTMTE does character development and world building, and today, because I feel like it, I’d like to give my opinion on something that is especially important to me: Unique threats.

I will use More Than Meets The Eye chapters 48 and 49 as an example, so spoilers for those two. This will contain body horror, mutilation, robot gore, brainwashing, death and so, so many unhealthy relationships and treatment, so please be cautious if you’re interested in reading this but sensitive to any of these topics!

Alright, so.

Sunder.

Keep reading

[balloonarcade]

Trailbreaker's Theme

a theme consists of a recognizable melody or a characteristic rhythmic pattern. 

The theme may sometimes be called the subject.

----------------------------------------------

This is a finished future scene of Hypothesis, and contains some spoilers, but it's been what? 8 years? I can feed you a scrap.

----------------------------------------------

The boom holding the surgical light shifted as Sunstreaker pressed his ped down on the pedal. The white light moved into position overhead until no shadows remained.

He had the black leg of the groaning Autobot spread out before him: a tattered ruin, torn at the knee. 

The separation wasn’t clean. Fuel, coolant, and pneumatic lines had all been stretched past their elastic limit. Most of them were snapped. Some still clung like long drawn out tubes amid the mess of sparking tattered wires.

The joint was a loss: suitable now only to be melted down for scrap and recast. Sunstreaker’s temporary repairs weren’t holding. He could hear a faint, sputtering, hiss of air escaping a tear in pneumatic lines farther up the leg.

It took Sunstreaker less than a klick to make the decision to sever the leg just above where he could hear the pneumatic breech. 

As predicted, as soon as he made that first slice, his subject’s line pressure began to drop.

He worked fast. His servos, slicked and coated in energon, found purchase on spurting, bubbling lines: clamping and cauterized them. The familiar warning beeping pattern of the spark rate monitor gave him focus. Almost like a timer. Sunstreaker’s plating relaxed from his frame. This was familiar. There was no other pressure to perform other than solving this puzzle.

It should have been easy: a simple amputation until his subject was stabilized enough for Sunstreaker to cap off the end. It would help keep the contaminants out until he could salvage a suitable replacement.

But even as he cauterized the final line and fuel pressure continued to drop, he knew he had missed a puzzle piece.

The beeping from the spark rate monitor changed, increasing in pace: the beginning stages of spark failure. Sunstreaker didn’t waste time plugging in to access medical override codes to brute force his way into initiating transformation. With four, clean slices he cut straight through the Autobot insignia and severed the connecting leads of the mech’s chestplate.

As he pried back the plating, he froze.

The cooling glow of a green spark shone up at him from within a specialized triskaidecagoncrystal casing.

His mouth went dry and his emotions reflected back at him from the block he held tight in his spark. With Sideswipe blocked, his shock diverted up his tattered, partial bond to his Creator instead.

“You’re an outlier,” Sunstreaker said, with barely a vent.

With the unexpected sight of the green spark, it was like he was stuck. He couldn’t look away as he stared down at that rare, flickering spark cradled in a custom spark chamber cast within Trailbreaker’s chest. 

Whoever had installed this, it looked... complicated. Sunstreaker’s fuel pump increased in tempo. It looked like some kind of emitter. But how did it work? Was there a latch? How did Trailbreaker’s spark get in there? Sunstreaker’s processor was already spinning out hypothesizes.

His left servo drifted out to hover over the rare find. His digits twitched aching to hold it in his servo. He could almost feel the heat of it on his plating.

The mech on the operating table shifted, halting Sunstreaker’s servo in place. A weak laugh made it out of Trailbreaker’s vocalizer. There were so many different kinds of laughs. Without Sideswipe here to translate, Sunstreaker didn’t know why Trailbreaker thought dying was funny.

Sunstreaker’s energon slick servo clenched into a fist before he withdrew it back to his side. Droplets fell across Trailbreaker’s plating.

“So now you know,” Trailbreaker said as a spark tremor wracked through his frame. “I guess this is it then, isn’t it? It has a kind of circular irony I guess.”

His visored face stared up at Sunstreaker as if he expected Sunstreaker to perform and say the right words that flowed out of other’s vocalizers so easily. Sunstreaker averted his optics to Trailbreaker’s mouth so he didn’t stare too long as he tried to determine what kind of laugh it had been. Trailbreaker’s mouth was lifted up on the side. Should Sunstreaker have laughed too?

Instead of responding and looking like a fool, he ignored Trailbreaker’s social prompts and focused on the readings from the monitors. The green glow emanating from Trailbreaker’s chest was hard to ignore. But Sunstreaker had worked in more distracting circumstances with Bit - Sideswipe singing and poking in his spark. As Sunstreaker took Trailbreaker’s readings, and cross referenced them with the charts he had committed to memory as a youngling, he couldn’t find his error.

Based on his calculations Trailbreaker’s fuel pressure should be stabilizing, but instead he was still rapidly losing fuel. Had Sunstreaker missed an internal injury? 

He looked back to find Trailbreaker silently watching him, laying flat and still on the rusted out table with pretty green spark flares erupting within his iridescent spark casing. 

His chestplate was spread open; his severed leg lay farther down the table, the rest of his wounds had been sealed in the hallway, none of his plating was straining with internal pressure from a leak and —

Why had he laughed?

Sunstreaker supposed there was no more danger of trying to pretend.

“I don’t know what that means,” he said in a single octave above a whisper.

“What? My readings?” Trailbreaker arched up as another tremor shot through his circuits. 

“No,” Sunstreaker said, looking the mech straight in his visor, “What does circular irony mean? Why is it funny?”

The half-smile from Trailbreaker returned to neutral and Sunstreaker forced himself to look away. He focused on the rotating, pulsing green plasma ball in the mech’s chest. He gripped is left servo on the table to keep from reaching out to take it.

“It’s like the irony of an irony,” Trailbreaker said, and Sunstreaker tried not to scowl. 

“You cannot define a word by using the word I do not understand! I know what circular means, what is irony?” He snapped out, perhaps a little too loud.

His voice echoed off the empty walls of the large operating room and into the empty halls. The joints of his servos creaked on the edge of his old lab table as he swore he could hear his Creator in his spark reprimanding him for a similar outburst in this very same spot.

Part of Sunstreaker almost just walked away: it was useless to try to understand normal mechs. But the same need to know and learn, that kept him listening to his preferred Experiment 7241, locked him in place.

No reprimand came from the Autobot: Sunstreaker’s outburst was deemed neither Acceptable or Unacceptable. Trailbreaker’s expression remained neutral. His visor didn’t reset. And there was no way for Sunstreaker to know if he should have said it quieter.

“Forget I —”

“Irony is similar to sarcasm,” Trailbreaker said, coughing out his main intake, his systems now struggling to cool.

“I rarely pick up on the nuances of sarcasm,” Sunstreaker said, as he increased the temperature of the coolant lines hooked into the mech.

“Really?” Trailbreaker asked, his voice raising in what Sunstreaker estimated was surprise. “But Sideswipe is sarcastic all the time.”

“Not with me. If you pay attention, he always gives me a clue to know what he really means.”

“Huh.” Trailbreaker wheezed out another vent. 

A line to the spark burst, spurting out energon under the force of another of his coughs, and Sunstreaker quickly moved to isolate it. That shouldn’t happen. What had caused that? A crack. There was a crack on the crystal casing. Thin graphene wires spider-webbed out like a cracked windshield to reseal it.

Trailbreaker’s fuel pressure dropped further.

Sunstreaker almost reached into his subspace. He had extra rations. He had already depleted Trailbreaker’s by injecting them into the mech’s lines. But why give them to Trailbreaker if it was unlikely the mech would survive anyway. It was a waste of resources. Sunstreaker still had to make his way out of here and back to Sideswipe.

“I could end you painlessly in a nano-second,” Sunstreaker offered as he watched a second crack form on the specialised crystal spark casing.

“And miss out on learning how sweet Sideswipe is to you?” Trailbreaker said, his vents laboured. “Never. Just that you’re here... is enough.”

The mech — Sideswipe’s friend — smiled at Sunstreaker of all the incomprehensible things to do as he lay dying. And he wanted Sunstreaker here? Even though he was staring at the mech’s spark like some kind of weirdo who wanted to lick it?

Sunstreaker was far too nervous to smile, but he gave small talk a chance. Trailbreaker was dying anyway. What did he have to lose if he messed up?

“Sideswipe’s spark is not very sweet, and I estimate it will take you approximately 20 painful breems to deactivate,” Sunstreaker said, knowing Trailbreaker didn’t have all the data to make an informed decision.

“See there is... that circular... irony again,” Trailbreaker’s remaining plating vibrated under the force of a weak laugh. Another small crack formed across his spark casing.

“Explain,” Sunstreaker requested.

“I’ve been living in 20 breem cycles most of my life,” he said. “Just another 20 breems, I’d tell myself. Just hang on for another 20 breems.”

“Hang onto what?”

Trailbreaker’s visor flickered.

“My drink, my hope... my life,” he said with another small smile. “The circular irony is that I’m only alive because of Shockwave, and here I am, hundreds of vorns later offlining in one of his old Primus forsaken mad scientist labs from the servos of his psychotic creations.”

Sunstreaker’s servos froze on the temperature settings as he heard his Creator’s name. All of his attention snapped intently at Trailbreaker. He stared hard at the mech’s face, as if he could will himself to feel Trailbreaker’s field to decode any deeper meaning as he said that.

He couldn’t tell. So he braced himself — steadied his spark for the accusation of being an abomination. He waited for the moment when —

“You have beautiful optics, you know that?” Trailbreaker said.

Sunstreaker’s stare wavered. 

“No.” Sunstreaker responded. He had not known that. “They function acceptably, but… I do have them calibrated above average for the observation of fine details.” 

“Really?” Trailbreaker’s mouth tilted down a fraction. “Siders has never said you have beautiful optics? I’ve caught him smiling and winking at you when he sees you staring at him from across the room.”

“Sideswipe is not normal,” Sunstreaker said, intentionally ignoring that stupid nickname Sideswipe’s friend group had given him. “Others don’t enjoy when I stare at them, I have been told my staring is creepy.”

“Really? Well, I’d love if you could stare at me for the rest of my life,” Trailbreaker formed the biggest smile Sunstreaker had ever seen from him and his visor flashed. 

Was that a joke? Was he mocking Sunstreaker because he only had 18 breems left to live?

Sunstreaker couldn’t take the uncertainty, so he looked away from Trailbreaker’s visor and back to the fading green glow of the mech’s spark.

“Aw, sorry Sunny... can I call you Sunny in the end? Final wishes and all?” Trailbreaker didn’t wait for an answer as he continued, “I’d never have the bearings to flirt with you if I wasn’t dying. Primus, I can barely work up the nerve to talk to you.”

“Because I am… unsettling?” Sunstreaker asked. 

“No, because you are stunning, and smart, and sure definitely scary, but that’s just because you scream danger. It’s really hot.” Trailbreaker tried to vibrated his engine in a purr, but it just ended up in a cough and he burst another line leading to his spark crystal.

Sunstreaker was uncertain how to respond, but he granted Trailbreaker’s request. Once he sealed the line, and attempted an adhesive seal on the cracks of the spark casing, he stared unwavering at the mech’s visor and asked what he wanted to know. 

“How are you only alive because of Shockwave?” 

“I thought it was obvious,” Trailbreaker frowned, slightly. “I’ve got an outlier spark.”

“That is obvious,” Sunstreaker huffed, a little irritated. 

“It’s just, I learned early on in the war not to bring him up around others. No one wants to remember the good things he did before... you know,” Trailbreaker said. “He didn’t deserve what the senate did to him — no one deserves that.”

“How are you only alive because of Shockwave?” Sunstreaker asked again.

Trailbreaker tried to arch his head up and look in his open chest plate. He struggled more to bring in cold air from his vents. 

“He’s the one who figured out my EM field… control issues were because my spark… was trying to harden and shape it into my force field.” Trailbreaker turned his servos over to show his emitters. “He designed these… hardwired them into my spark, allows me to control my field.”

Sunstreaker’s spark raced along with his fuel pump. He had always thought Trailbreaker had some sort of forcefield device installed, one that consumed his fuel, but this — his outlier ability — the excess fuel consumption —

A new variable.

There was a connection there, a solution just out of Sunstreaker’s reach. 

“How much of his procedure do you remember?” Sunstreaker stared harder at Trailbreaker, mentally rearranging where he had assumed the components for his emitters lead. 

“All of it,” Trailbreaker said as another tremor wracked through his frame. “I was online the entire time.”

“If I breach this crystal, what happens?” Sunstreaker was already removing plating from the mech’s arms. 

“My field will destabilize.” Trailbreaker watched him remove the first plate, Sunstreaker had already stopped processing his expressions. “It might flare out and hit yours like a battering ram, I’ve knocked mechs offline with a field flare back in the —”

“That won’t be a problem,” Sunstreaker said as he rushed over to wash his servos with a solution of anti-static solvent. 

He returned back to the mech’s side with a second spark rate monitor, he dragged the second boom over to illuminate Trailbreaker’s spark chamber.

A strange electric tingle shot through Sunstreaker’s frame as his processor raced with possible solutions. He found one.

And there was only one mech here who could tell him no. He locked his so-called ‘beautiful blue optics’ onto Trailbreaker’s visor and asked for his permission.

“You have an estimated 13 breems remaining. If you will not allow me to terminate you prematurely, are you opposed to allowing me to try something more…  experimental?”

“Promise me I won’t be alone in the end, and I’m yours, however you want me, beautiful,” Trailbreaker said as another tremor wracked his frame.

Sunstreaker couldn’t hold back the fraction of a smile that formed on his face as he hauled himself up to straddle Trailbreaker’s large waist. Without taking his optics off the mech’s visor, he stared down at his own reflection as he retracted his chestplate and attached spark leads to his own spark casing.

“Stay as still as possible,” Sunstreaker warned. “This will hurt.”

“A little pain doesn’t bother me,” Trailbreaker said. “Always thought I’d go out alone: holding the lines as soon as my force bubble failed. This is already better than any death I’ve imagined.”

“I won’t let you die, ’Cutter.” Sunstreaker’s optics began to rapidly flicker as he calculated the refractive angles of the interior of that custom spark casing. “You’re going to live. While I test my hypothesis I want to listen to every one of your stories about your life with Shockwave, starting with everything you remember about your surgery.”

“Won’t my talking distract you?” Trailbreaker frowned.

“I’ve worked with less in louder conditions,” Sunstreaker said, and wondered if that counted as irony.

He left that he’d worked as a youngling in this very room every cycle since his first upgrade, unsaid.

“You really did want to know my story?” Trailbreaker coughed out. “That first day I met you and Sideswipe, in the sim?”

“I enjoy hearing the stories of mech’s lives.” Sunstreaker evened out his vents, concentrating on feeling the erratic pattern of Trailbreaker’s failing spark “I just, hear them differently sometimes. Listen, as I hear you tell me yours.”

As Trailbreaker started to talk, Sunstreaker listened.

There was a common pattern between their sparks, a recognizable melody of loneliness, unspoken words and hiding behind false smiles. Sunstreaker seized it, copied it, and reworked it into a stronger rendition until he changed the vibrations within his own spark to match it.

Then, much like how Sunstreaker had done in the early days with Bitlet, Sunstreaker started to project a pattern along the wires leading to Trailbreaker’s spark. As Sunstreaker sang Trailbreaker’s story of his life back to him as he heard it, his subject arched up and gasped. The spark rate monitor beeped rapidly, indicating a crash, Trailbreaker’s frame started to seize —

But Sunstreaker kept singing to his spark, slowly working on luring Trailbreaker into a stabilizing sync with his, lacing the notes with determination. The harmony of a running clock.

Just another twenty breems.

Tired. The returning pulse was weak and nothing like Bitlet’s had ever been.

Keep talking. Just give me another twenty breems.

Why? The ping was out of tune, dull and lifeless.

Sunstreaker dropped his helm down and rested it on the top of Trailbreaker’s as Bitlet had taught him.

Just Because we have patterns in common, Sunstreaker said, weaving his own emotions into Trailbreaker’s theme. And I’d like the chance to get to know you.

Outlier? Trailbreaker’s spark only seemed capable of communicated back with single tones. He was weak, fading, but he found the strength to run his digits softly up the side of Sunstreaker’s thigh.

Through the melody Sunstreaker laughed at the irony as he answered.

My spark is not even on the charts.

[dirtydragonthoughts]

(Keep Reading cuts are still borked. Clicking through the cut should fix it, or view on mobile.)

Part 6. Part 1 is here.

Twenty minutes later, Jack stood in the conn-pod glaring at Sy. The engineer was dressed to the letter of the PPDC’s safety code, if not the spirit: his steel-toed boots were mostly hidden under his baggy fleece pajama pants, which were covered in little printed wrenches.

“This had better be good,” Jack growled. “It’s two in the morning, and I gotta be up early.”

Sy gestured up at the HUD. The words from the earlier conversation with Sun Streaker had faded, but the holographic screen remained lit. “I was just talking to Sun Streaker here, and I wanted a witness to this.” He ignored Jack’s skeptical look. “Either I’m imagining this, or someone’s playing a prank on me, or… the jaeger’s really talking to me.”

“So I take it you don’t think I’m the prankster anymore.” Jack stifled a yawn. “In that case I’m betting on you imagining it.”

Making a shushing motion with his hand, Sy faced the HUD. “Sun Streaker, this is Jack Wheeler. He’s one of the engineers here.”

They stood in silence for what seemed like a very long minute. No words appeared on the HUD.

Finally, Jack turned back to the conn-pod entrance. “Right. I’m going back to bed.”

Keep reading

[balloonarcade]

“Number five is alive” —> it has been forever since I watched that movie!!

This AU is making me grin so hard.

When Sun Streaker calls Sy “one who promised” I squeak. I really don’t know why I love that so much but I do.

[captainsnoop-deactivated2020041]

i’ll never understand why we don’t call countries the names they actually call themselves 

like, i know this is a weeaboo-sounding example, but let’s start with Japan. They call themselves Nippon or Nihon depending on… i guess, the speaker’s accent??? or their level of formality while speaking??? I dunno. But we still called them Zipangu for like a few hundred years. And now we call them Japan. 

All because Marco Polo asked someone in China about that island over there and they said “oh that’s Cipangu” and Marco Polo was like “Oh, Zipangu, cool.” And then he went back to Italy and said “Y’ALL THERE’S THIS DOPE-ASS ISLAND CALLED ZIPANGU” and people back in Italy were like “An island called Giappone? Dope.” 

And this pattern of people mishearing people kept repeating until we got to “Japan.” 

And we still call them Japan even though we know better. Because fuck you, Marco Polo asked the wrong person 500 years ago and misheard them and we’re sticking to that, I guess. 

[toast-potent]

that was literally just the world’s worst game of telephone

[glitchlight]

Nederlanders: We speak Nederlander in the Netherlands

Duestch: And the Duetsch speak Duetsch in Duetschland

English: Great, so you’re Holland and yall’re Germany

[balloonarcade]

This has haunted me my entire life.

[balloonarcade]

Hypothesis: Death Sim

I’m currently doing death sims as part of financial planning which means I’m thinking through very morbid but realistic predictions of directions my life could turn and end. (One of which that has become strangely relevant lately involves flaming balls of airborne lava). In the process, I’m making decisions for my will: what happens to my remains, my funeral, and the allocation of my assets. 

Talking to @dirtydragonthoughts about a casket being lowered into the ground to the Mario Underground Theme made me realize Death Sims are an interesting character building exercise. She mentioned that we got to see something like this in MTMTE already as well and reminded me that Rodimus’ final requests were epic.

I’ve read the advice of take your character out for coffee: examine what they would order, how they stand in line, how they stir their drink etc.

I propose wondering how your character plans for their death. Do they ignore any plans? Are they emotionally able to handle the conversation with a loved one? Do they hold each other’s hands as they talk it out? Do they make jokes to cope? Are there tears? Do they shut down? Do they want a funeral? When is a loved one authorized to pull the plug? Do they have plans of what changes in lifestyle they have to make if one of them loses mobility? etc.

So I used Hypothesis as a test case and learned something fundamental to the twin’s characters about how Sideswipe and Sunstreaker view of their own deaths has been shaped and their own warped definition of what is morbid and what isn’t.

If you do this with Transformers characters or your own characterizations of them, feel free to tag me, I’d love to read it when I have some time.

Warning: I needed tissues, but neither twin dies in this.

Ratchet slid the document toward himself and suppressed a sigh as he skimmed it through.

It wasn’t the first time Ratchet had read Conjunx Endurae state that they hoped to deactivate at the same time, but he’d never encountered two mechs so unwilling to even entertain the thought of one dying without the other. In a relationship, tucked away and cuddled on a berth, such declarations were romantic – poetic even; a way to express one’s devotion. But in reality it blared warning alarms in Ratchet’s cortex.

He’d given them a list of questions to discuss with each other yesterday after his first attempt at running through Death Sims with them ended with Sunstreaker storming off. 

Neither Sideswipe or Sunstreaker would even consider functioning without the other; on that, they were a united front.

Still, he hadn’t expected them to come prancing into his office the next day eager to go through their plans – well Sideswipe pranced, Sunstreaker stomped.

“So we’ve given it a lot of thought,” Sideswipe shuffled his chair closer to Ratchet’s desk. “We wanna look hot — “

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