Another Meme:
Jun. 5th, 2008 02:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dunmurderinThese things are like popcorn. Or funnel cakes. (SPeaking of which, I found funnel cake mix at the grocery store and they're only 23 carbs/serving BOOYEAH!).
The Hypothetical AU Meme: Take any one of the fandoms you know I write in, and give me a type of AU (space opera AU, pirate AU, superhero AU, Ancient Rome, etc).
I will then explain what story from your chosen fandom I would write for your chosen type of AU.
Fandoms I write in: Transformers, GI Joe. I'll also open this up to my original vampire hunter novel for those who've read bits of that.
The Hypothetical AU Meme: Take any one of the fandoms you know I write in, and give me a type of AU (space opera AU, pirate AU, superhero AU, Ancient Rome, etc).
I will then explain what story from your chosen fandom I would write for your chosen type of AU.
Fandoms I write in: Transformers, GI Joe. I'll also open this up to my original vampire hunter novel for those who've read bits of that.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-05 12:42 pm (UTC)Teenagers-working-at-McDonald's AU.
You can do it! I believe in you!
Fast Food Transformers!
Date: 2008-06-06 12:49 am (UTC)I'm gonna use the Combaticons 'cause I just want to, damnit!
Night shift at the local 24 hour McD's:
Onslaught's the shift manager, and ridiculously proud of this lofty title. Give him a few years and he'll own his own franchise. He's got his plan for it all laid out in a three ring binder, if you're interested -- and even if you're not.
Brawl and Swindle are the cooks; Brawl runs the deep fryer because he's the only one who can be trusted with it who is willing to do the work. Brawl also gets to be the one to carry all the trash out as necessary and deal with the punks who try to start crap in the restaurant.
Swindle works the grill and assembles sandwiches -- at least when he's not skiving off in the back or making himself something to eat. He's not allowed near the reigisters or drop safes, since Onslaught is not stupid.
Blast Off is the standard issue 'too educated for the room' guy. He's a perpetual graduate student who is in year five of his dissertation project which he's going to finish any day now and be out of this job so fast he'll leave skid marks. Until then, he serves as the occassional voice of reason and sometimes as the instigator of true destruction. He covers the front registers and the drive through.
Vortex is assistant cashier and does other general work about the place -- he's the one who mops up and wipes tables and runs like someone . He is NOT allowed near the deep fryer ever since the 'Incident' -- in fact, it's considered wise to keep him as far a way from any kitchen utensile as possible. Subsists on apple pies, milk shakes and
BlizzardMcFlurry toppings.Possible plot lines include a rivalry between the night shift crew and those assholes on firsts and/or a slobs vs. snobs fight against a better fast food place opening next door.
Re: Fast Food Transformers!
Date: 2008-06-06 01:34 am (UTC)Re: Fast Food Transformers!
Date: 2008-06-07 11:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-05 02:23 pm (UTC)Outrageous Combaticons
Date: 2008-06-06 01:28 am (UTC)But that's neither here nor there. If I were going to put the Combaticons into the Jem universe, I'd turn them into a band. Because everybody in the Jem universe is in a band, knows someone in a band or works for a band. Or is a little orphan girl -- and I just can't see the Combaties as little orphan girls. Well, maybe Vortex.
Anyway, they'd be some kind of heavy metal/glam metal band ala Poison, Guns 'n Roses, Twisted Sister, etc.
Vortex: Lead vocals, soudning something like Axl Rose from GNR but looking like one of the guys from Poison. The rest of the band would be glam metal, but not as glam metal as Vortex. Nobody's as glam metal as Vortex.
Onslaught: Lead Guitar and off-stage leader of the band. Occassional front man.
Blast Off: Keyboard/Keytar player; backup vocals.
Brawl: Drums. Just drums. No singing, no dancing, no nothing but hitting the drums.
Swindle: Rythmn Guitar, backup vocals. Pyrotechnics.
And I'd have Starscream in there as the band's manager -- at least until Eric Reynolds steals them away to help bolster Misfits Music's stable of musicians.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-05 03:51 pm (UTC)Steampunk TFs
Date: 2008-06-06 02:02 am (UTC)If I were putting Transformers in Girl Genius, I'd make all the Combaticons Jaegers because I love me some Jaegers. And considering that the Jaeger bar has a nightly bar fight, I think the boys would fit right in there happy as clams. Clams with really sweet looking hats.
Otherwise, I could see a Transformers Steampunk world working like this:
Imagine a world where the first part of More than Meets the Eye happens as it does in canon -- the Autobots and Decepticons leave Cybertron and crash on Earth, only to end up taking a four million year long nap. An erruption causes them to awaken one hundred years early in 1884 in a world where technology is farther along than it was in our world at the same time -- but also slightly backwards, since instead of using microchips and transistors, they're using steam engines and H.G. Wells and Jules Verne write non-fiction books (Wells about the invasion from Mars and Verne about the first trip to the moon).
Most alt modes are going to be trains, ships or steampunk style flying machines, rather like the IDW Transformers Hearts of Steel AU. Probably more animal altmodes too (it'd be neat to see someone based on Babe, the Blue Ox) and the Dinobots would be the same.
Sparkplug would likely be a blacksnith and Spike would be his son. Carly would be a lady engineering student and Chip would be a difference engineer.
Re: Steampunk TFs
Date: 2008-06-06 04:59 pm (UTC)Re: Steampunk TFs
Date: 2008-06-06 05:36 pm (UTC)I wish I could figure out how to make videos, because I'd do one to We're Not Gonna Take It (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyu7nN3kBnw) by Twisted Sister for the Combaties.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-05 05:50 pm (UTC)Jim Henson's Combatie Babies!
Date: 2008-06-06 03:32 am (UTC)If I were to write the Combaticons as actual children, they wouldn't be cute or sweet. I don't like the idea of Transformer children who are simply human children in robot suits. The Transformers have been fighting a war for millions of years and canonical evidence (i.e. Wheelie) shows that even the Autobots think nothing of allowing a 'youth' of their own species to fight and kill alongside adults. Not to mention the fact they don't seem to have a qualm in their heads about letting Spike and Daniel join their fight. Decepticon children, at least in my world,. would have things a little better since they'd have more access to food and a more stable society to live in but many of them would be growing up to be warriors.
For child!Combaties, I'd probably stick with the same origin I have for them in my regular fics: where they're experimental prototypes created by a renegade neutral scientist named Wrench, who tries to get rid of the failures (Blast Off, Brawl, Vortex and Swindle) and who is murdered by his own creations when Onslaught leads the others against them, rather than lose the people he considers to have been built for him to lead.
The main difference would be that instead of being the equivilent of late teens/early to mid 20s that they are in my fics now, the Combaticons would range in equivilent age from around 12 for Brawl to 15 or 16 for Onslaught and Blast Off, with Swindle and Vortex being 13 or 14. Which to me, just makes the whole murder of a parent thing all the more creepy.
'Course, considering they killed Wrench because he was trying to sell the 'failures' into slavery, bastard kinda deserves it.
Other than that, things wouldn't be *too* much different from how they are now. The Combaticons would be physically smaller and, if they were still children when Starscream rebuilt them, would be at a decided disadvantage around other Decepticons. But their personalities would largely be the same. Onslaught would be the protector of the team, Blast Off would be aloof and a loner, Brawl would be a teeny little thug, Vortex a spaz and Swindle a conniving little Artful Dodger sort.
That's an interesting idea, there...the idea that Starscream freed five children's personality components from room 217. Eesh...creepy! They'd likely be slightly more dependent on him than they were in the actual canon -- and probably not quite worth sending up against Megatron. I mean, a gestalt half the size of a normal gestalt just wouldn't be that dangerous, I wouldn't think...
If I were to write the Combaticons as actual TF children, I'd probably be a bit more sympathetic to the characters -- writing them as adults, it's easy to be mean to them because the characters themselves more or less deserve what they get. I mean, we're talking about guys who tried to immolate an entire planet just to get rid of Megatron, for crying out loud!
As kids...it'd be interesting to write a story set back in the pre-Ark days about the Combaticons as a pack of half-feral neutral kids who are being courted by both the Autobots and the Decepticons. Since, in my world the Decepticons control Cybertron right up until the end of the 1986 movie, the Combaties would most likely follow the 'cons since they have the most food and the shiniest guns.
What would really be ironic is if Streetwise was one of the Autobots trying to encourage these street rats to come join with him.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-05 06:47 pm (UTC)Pirate Transformers
Date: 2008-06-06 04:06 am (UTC)But, getting away from the Combaticons for a change, it'd be neat to see Autobot privateers, going after Decepticon energy supplies. Maybe this is what Springer and Arcee and Hot Rod were up to before they came to Earth? I mean, c'mon, Springer's essentially Han Solo and it's not too far to go from Han Solo to a swashbuckling privateer. Hot Rod would make a good swashbuckler in training and I like the idea of Arcee as a lady pirate, sudden death with both hands. And, of course, Kup gets to be the old salt who has done it all, seen it all and is in the process of doing it all again.
Not sure who they'd be going up against, I want to say the Stunticons because for some reason I can see them as an anti-pirate force, particularly if the Autobot privateers were land-based rather than sea-based.
Re: Pirate Transformers
Date: 2008-06-06 05:31 pm (UTC)NavyArmy? Be still my pounding heart.*mwahs happily*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-07 03:24 pm (UTC)Daddyicons -- Part One
Date: 2008-06-10 01:09 am (UTC)The problem with the Combaticons as parents is that, as I write them, they're not exactly the nurturing type. I mean, hell, they gunned down their own creator and they'd quite happily do the same thing to Starscream if they thought they could get away with it.
On the other hand, they're also fairly loyal to each other, at least when the chips are down. If they're tearing each other down, that's fine and dandy but the minute an outside force moves against one of them, it is ON. So while they might not be the best dads in the world, pity the fool who tries to hurt someone the Combaticons consider their own.
Of the five of them, Onslaught would be the one most likely to probably want to reproduce, if for no other reason than to swell the ranks of his 'army'. The rest would likely be largely indifferent if not actively hostile to the idea.
Scenario #1: Fatherhood:In a fic set in a universe where TFs can get pregnant, breaking the news to a Combaticon would involve some advance preparation:
Onslaught: would be planning the kid's educational and career paths and be trying every single crazy 'educate them in the womb' trick possible to ensure his offspring would be just as much of a tactical genius as he is.
Swindle: would be a rapidly disappearing dust cloud on the horizon.
Vortex: would probably be given the news that he was a father and the restraining order requiring him to stay five light-years away from the child at the same time. More convenient that way.
Brawl: would just add another one to the list. 'Cause Brawl's studly like that. Aww yeah.
Blast Off would, considering I've made him a xenophilic perv, be happy that this proves he's 'normal' -- or at least as close to normal as Combaticons ever get.
Scenario #2: Generation 2: Technically speaking, Onslaught is canonically a parent. (http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Onslaught#Generation_2) It was never really explained in the comics, but he felt the death of Mindset, a G2 Cybertronian. The G2 Cybertronians reproduced by budding -- which once again shows that no matter how crackheaded fandom becomes, canon whips our asses.
Going by the idea that Onslaught -- and potentially the rest of the Combaticons -- are G2 Cybertronians, capable of reproducing by budding, I could see a huge twist for the future stories I've done where the G2 Cybertronians are attacking the post-Rebirth cartoon world. In those stories, Onslaught and Blast Off are missing in action, presumably killed and Swindle, Vortex and Brawl have been taken in by the Autobots and put under First Aid's care.
But, what if the whole "Onslaught and Blast Off are gone!" thing is just an act? What if Swindle, Brawl and Vortex aren't refugees but the vanguard of a G2 invasion force -- a force the three of them are supposed to breed. Maybe Onslaught and Blast Off are already on Cybertron, deep in the bowels, preparing the birthing area... Think Gremlins, only less emphasis on cute and fuzzy...
Re: Daddyicons -- Part One
Date: 2008-06-10 11:36 pm (UTC)BTW, sry for asking but what really is a xenophilic? Is it some sort of weird fetish for Blast Off?
Re: Daddyicons -- Part One
Date: 2008-06-11 12:36 am (UTC)In the context of the fics I've written about it, Blast Off is sexually attracted to non-Cybertronian aliens -- something that he is supremely ashamed of since he lives in a xenophobic culture. I've written two fics dealing with the subject. They're available at FF.Net under Dirty Little Secrets (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3817904/1/Dirty_Little_Secrets)
Re: Daddyicons -- Part One
Date: 2008-06-11 01:35 am (UTC)The writing is fantastic and you capture everything in fine detail. Thank you for sharing this :D
Re: Daddyicons -- Part One
Date: 2008-06-13 12:16 am (UTC)In my fic world, it goes back to the idea that the early ancestors of the modern day Autobots and Decepticons were once slaves of the Quintessons and were sold to alien species, many organic, across the galaxy.
After the Quints were driven off, the Decepticons' ancestors were the group that were more actively hostile toward those alien, organic species who had formerly enslaved them. These days, this attitude survives largely as a dislike/distrust of non-mechanical species.
Of course, there is often a difference between how a culture says someone should act and how they do...which is why Blast Off is stuck loathing himself for feelings that he simply can't help having.
Autobots, at least in my world though this is partly based on canon, are more willing to accept non-Cybertronian species as equals and are less likely to have taboos about interspecies romance. It's not that everybody accepts it, but it's not quite the shameful secret that it is among the Decepticons.
Daddyicons -- Part Two
Date: 2008-06-10 01:10 am (UTC)So, finding a new method of reproduction is simply a part of the on-going war effort.
Someone, let's say Shockwave since he's a) smart and b) had a LOT of time on his hands, has come up with a method that involves copying desired aspects of a personality component and assembling them into a working individual mind. The system needs to be tested so Megatron orders the Combaticons to submit to personality duplication -- since being able to replace gestalt components is always a huge plus. (This works best if you go by the idea that gestalts require just the right combination of personality components to be able to fully function -- ala B.O.T.)
The Combaticons submit -- not having much of a choice -- and the tests are successful. Their 'kids' are, like most of the newly created TFs in the G1 cartoon, fully adult and independent upon first coming online. They're similar to their 'fathers' but not exact duplicates since part of the process involves being able to select desired traits -- such as the ability to form Bruticus -- and leave out undesired ones.
Since the Combaticon toy molds were some of the most reused in the Transformers toyline, this allows for bringing in some of those variations or even bringing the RiD Commandos into a G1 style universe. Bringing in the Commandos could be a lot of fun since, if you look at their stats, they are essentially better versions of the Combaticons -- particularly Ruination.
And since I'm all about the Combaticons bringing the 'fun' back to 'dysfunctional', I could see them ending up trying to take out their own 'kids' to protect their place in the empire.