facts from the transformers comics that sound fake but are completely canon
god started the 4 million year decepticon/autobot war by knocking over a guys drink while trying to get a curly straw
megatron is a communist who wrote poetry and after the war becomes an autobot
cybertronians are a homonormative race, not that they really care or are actively aware of the significance of it
there an instance mpreg, which was written in for no reason other than the author likes mpreg
optimus made megatron the captain of an autobot ship on a journey to find a mythological group of explorers that optimus doesnt even really believe existed
shockwave went back in time and made god, so technically shockwave started the war too
for a while starscream actually was the ruler of cybertron, and he wasnt the worst leader they ever had
there are tons of other aliens besides cybertronians but you dont see them as often because they hate cybertronians and also megatron killed millions of them
cybertronians have the robot equivalent of most drugs (steroids, cigars, weed, vapes, hallucinogens, some sort of addictive substance, dont question it)
transformers is in the same continuity as g.i. joe for no reason other than…..hope for a hasbro extended cinematic universe? idk
in an older series megatron gets sent to the my little pony universe and he hates it
tumblr exists in transformers
transformers had slavery and they had to have a civil rights movement to get rid of it, and this wasnt even a major plot point
there is also racism in transfomers of function vs. form (ex. if youre a jet you have to be in the military, sport cars have to be racers) which was a major plot point in many issues and also caused the war
transformers who dont transform into cars, trucks, or other automobiles will often ride scooters or trains for transportation
theres a toaster transformer who everybody is obsessed with but has no active role in any of the stories other than being a toaster
at one point it was implied that two transformers tried to fuck in the trailer of another sleeping transformer. yes, it was weird. no, there was no good reason for it.
You know what fantasy writing needs? Working class wizards.
A crew of enchanters maintaining the perpetual flames that run the turbines that generate electricity, covered in ash and grime and stinking of hot chilies and rare mushrooms used for the enchantments
A wizard specializing in construction, casting feather fall on every worker, and enchanting every hammer to drive nails in straight, animating the living clay that makes up the core of the crane
An elderly wizard and her apprentice who transmute fragile broken objects. From furniture, to rotten wood beams, to delicate jewelry
A battle magician, trained with only a few rudimentary spells to solve a shortage of trained wizards on the front who uses his healing spells to help folks around town
Wizarding shops where cheery little mages enchant wooden blocks to be hammered into the sides of homes. Hammer this into the attic and it will scare off termites, toss this in the fire and clean your chimney, throw this in the air and all dust in the room gets sucked up
Wizard loggers who transmute cut trees into solid, square beams, reducing waste, and casting spells to speed up regrowth. The forest, they know, will not be too harsh on them if the lost tree’s children may grow in its place
Wizard farmers who grow their crops in arcane sigils to increase yield, or produce healthier fruit
Factory wizards who control a dozen little constructs that keep machines cleaned and operational, who cast armor to protect the hands of workers, and who, when the factory strikes for better wages, freeze the machines in place to ensure their bosses can’t bring anyone new in.
Anyway, think about it.
Construction wizards to turn back time to root out wood worm and strengthen old buildings.
A wizard tailors who transmutes cloth into fully made clothes without seems and leaving behind no scraps
A wizard who works in public transit, timing out teleports with detailed schedules, time magic, and enchanted communications, sending dozens of people to far away cities for a day or work or leisure
A team of wizard gardeners tend to trees grown far outside their native range, and ideal climate, encircled with runes and fed potions to grow none the less
A wizard sits in their office in the aqueduct, re-casting the spells that allow its precious water to flow to the city uphill
A wizard fisher casts water repelling spells on the sailors and the stairs, keeps the hoist on the anchor from rusting, casts balls of heat that keep everyone warm below decks. Their real job is to herd fish together so they can be caught in single huge nets, and keep them cold as the boat returns to land.
There are so many possibilities outside of “stodgy academic who wears ugly robes” and “Very good holy man who helps everyone and the fact they’ve never had a job is never brought up” and “evil wizard toiling away on great evils in his evil tower in the evil country.”
Wizards who come out and ward your home for you, like the magical equivalent of a home security system.
Persephone: it pisses me off that people ignore the hymn to my mom that talks about how great we are together and instead believe this is against my will
Persephone: I mean I have you tied to the bed how would I not be into this
Hades: please can we not talk about your mom during sex it’s really uncomfortable
Yall can be edgy and talk about how much you hate tumblr all you want but I will be real chief I value my undeserved clout on here and its also the only place that shoots all my niche interests directly into my brain at the speed of light
The idea behind Tumblr, namely the dashboard, how posts and reblogs work (kinda like mini-threads that stream endlessly onto your dash), and the tagging system, is actually superb and I have yet to find another social media site on par with this format. Hence why we all stay here.
But then there’s also the incompetent staff and the extreme cultural madness of the website, hence why we hate it despite staying.
Protagonist, after being turned into a monster: Don’t look at me!!! I am hideous!!!
Love interest who is secretly a teratophile and has been waiting their entire life for something like this but is torn between being totally ecstatic and being sympathetic to the protagonist’s emotional distress:
I’ve seen a lot of people on my dash who are justifiably upset with some of Tumblr’s recent changes (argh, reply function gone, argh argh) and talking about moving to another site. This is a good thing (and also more or less inevitable at some point; fandom activity never stays in one place forever, or else we’d all still be on like, Usenet*).
But one thing I will say, for those of you who have not lived through a fannish migration or six, is that fandoms don’t jump in an organized or coherent way. It tends to be a trickle, not a dam burst. So for instance, almost ten years ago now (yikes, can it really have been that long?) there was Strikethrough on Livejournal, which is a long story that doesn’t bear getting into right now but the short form is that LJ made enemies of a lot of fans. And there were various attempts to jump to InsaneJournal and GreatestJournal and a bunch of other LJ clones, but they mostly didn’t ‘take.’ Dreamwidth, when it came along a couple of years later, did better at attracting people (and does have a comparatively small but active user base–and specific communities, like certain RP comms, did make an organized jump, but they were actual communities and not an amorphous blob the way ‘Dragon Age fandom,’ say, is an amorphous blob), but the thing that actually finally dragged a ton of fannish activity away from LJ seems to have been Tumblr–not any of the “like LJ but different/better” alternatives that people were floating and promoting, but something entirely different.
The main thing is that communities or groups of friends may coordinate a move together, but fandoms in a larger sense are about as coordinate-able as a bunch of cats. And also, the place they end up going generally isn’t “like X but better” but a whole new Y (mailing lists to bboards to LJ to Tumblr, just to name a few–and each of those changed the “shape” of the fandoms within it quite a bit).
The reason I am saying this is not to discourage people from seeking out alternatives, but to say: fandom is going to move, if not now then at some point, but it ain’t going to happen in a way that necessarily makes a lot of sense from the outside. Like a bunch of cats, we’re going to wander around for a bit and then land somewhere and pretend we did it on purpose. And it’s easy to lose track of people when that happens. So my advice is: let people who you care about not losing track of know where to find you and how to keep up with you, whether it’s a new site or even just “hey, here’s my email, let’s stay in touch.” I have friends from old, old fannish days, who never ended up on Tumblr, but we still occasionally send each other a silly link or something… and who knows, maybe when fandom saunters catlike over to something new, we’ll reconnect there.
* – Inevitably when I say something like this someone feels obliged to note that they are still on, e.g., Usenet. And it’s true that Usenet still sees activity. But I think it’s safe to say that fannish activity is not there in the way that it was in, for instance, the early 90s.
This post was from 3 years ago, but it’s still holds true. I’ve managed to find many muturals after my old account was deleted, but not everyone, like smaller blogs in fandoms I don’t frequent often or ones with long, hard to pronounce names.
Get emails. Signal boost posts with people’s contact info so if the original blog goes dark that others can find them. There’s a good account called @find-me-at-x that’s doing the Good Fandom Lord’s work of boosting announcement posts and asks for missing blogs. I’d recommend following them if there’s someone you’re trying to find.
I love the clothes from Volante Design (“Superhuman Streetwear”); their latest is the “Starfleet 2364” line of men’s and women’s jackets inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation uniforms.
The jackets are made of heavy denim and are basically extremely well-styled/tailored biker jackets (like Volante’s excellent Hacker
jackets), partially or fully unzipping them and folding down their
lapels takes them from “cosplay” to “cosplay adjacent” in an instant.
They’ve got loads of interior and exterior pockets, and are
double-stitched and come in “Command Red, Operations Gold, or Sciences
Blue,” sized 37 – 51, 55 (men), and 33 – 45 (women). They’re made in
Chicago, retail for $315, and will ship by December 14th.
The-Lounge 