#reread this a million times bc yes!! so interesting and fun

[imissthestarswhenicry]

Hey it’s blucifer anon again!

I saw your newest Satan drawing and just aaaaaaa thank youuuu so much!!!!! :3 I’m so incredibly flattered and just like struck/pos /gen ( shook? The right word is escaping me at the moment lmao) that you drew that for me (side note I’m also fairly certain that you’re the first person to unironically call me cool which has me wheezing/reeling/lh/pos because that’s great, I’m like: new status unlock cool✨ BD) I also saw your other tags in some of your other recent posts wanting some angsty theories so I thought I’d come ramble some more :3 (side note 2 the only reason I actually anon these is because my om writing/fan blog is a side blog and I can’t send asks with it :c also if you do get a discord server set up I’m very excited to join it!)

Putting a break here so it’s not all lumped together and because things could get semi spoilery (aka I’m gonna talk about Michael alot and “season 2” of the games events) and I’m not sure exactly what you have and haven’t seen/know of the game. Anyways theory stuff time. My fav source of inspo for fantastic 3 angst is actually ace attorney case 1-5/the skye case I won’t go into details as I’m not sure if you’ve played it but 10/10 recommend, a lot of the themes and different character dynamics work so well for me atleast to get my idea-ing brain running, gant gives so many ideas for how intimidating Diavolo could be. Not gonna specify more than that but like I have so many thoughts on the parallels…

Next (still not an actual theory more of a headcanon) theory is that Beel and Belphie are meant to be foils/representative of how Lucifer and Michael used to be. Michael has a lot of traits in common with both of the twins: loves the stars, loves sweets/is a bit of a foodie, socially awkward and apparently a bit of a weirdo, kind of obsessive, in charge of the guard (Beel used to be Lucifer’s main bodyguard). He also apparently looks nothing like Lucifer and the twins don’t really look like twins. Honestly with how the game has so far described Lucifer and Michael’s former bond especially with it being a friendly brotherly rivalry I think it’s going to be very Deathnote Light vs L esque (Light being Lucifer and L being Michael) but more well brotherly (less spying y’know lmao) Either way am very excited for him and still have more thoughts on him in sorta my next blurb.

Story telling/foreshadowing and symbolism theory: so y’know how in like season 2 (I guess is what I’d call it of Om) there was all that foreshadowing with the play and Lucifer? I think that something like that is going to happen again but with Solomon’s background specifically. I find it very interesting that it’s in the high tension of that moment that we learn about Michael, Lucifer is acting like his more “angelic self” and has memory loss, we get the ring, we become Solomon’s apprentice, etc. basically I find it suspicious that that’s when we get more of both Solomon and Michael/they become more relevant especially the ring thing it absolutely reeks of foreshadowing/symbolism and I have a couple theories/headcanons out of this. 1-Solomon is meant to be our foil, it makes sense him being the other human exchange student that he’s our foil. Right from the beginning he’s set up to be opposite from us, he has pacts, knows demons and magic, is not trusted in the kitchen when that’s ironically enough the first thing we’re trusted with even our bedroom is by the kitchen/j on that last bit lmao. Anyways Mc originally is making pacts with all the bros to “earn Lucifer’s respect” right? Well I think that in a way that’s how Solomon started making pacts it was to earn someone’s attention/respect who? Michael’s. I think that like how Solomon is our teacher, Michael was sort of a teacher figure to Solomon. I think that’s why he wants Lucifer’s pact so much he reminds him of Michael in contrast Michael genuinely really really wants to meet Mc. Michael was involved in one way or another too with both Solomon and Mc getting their rings which were Lucifer and Michael’s ring. It’s all mirroring there’s definitely something going on with all of them it’s all being set up in a really interesting way and I’m eager to see how it plays out. Even in actions Solomon and Mc are opposites the one demon Solomon refuses to make a pact with us Mammon and he was Mc’s first pact, Solomon’s only pact so far with a brother is Asmodeus and Mc is the only person able to resist Asmodeus’s charms. My brain buzzes like so much about all of this to the point where I can barely like phrase it coherently lmao I get like this: https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/022/524/pepe_silvia_meme_banner.jpg Over it all lmao. I’m gonna send my angsty Satan theory(ies?) in another ask at some point soon I gotta eat dinner now lol but ye! (Also I’m so so sorry if I spoiled anything for u like genuinely I’m so worried about doing that it’s part of why I tried to make the spaces/disclaimer but I’m not sure how well it’ll work as mobile sucks with asks sometimes) Happy to ramble with you again! ^_^

yes!! another blucifer anon message 🙏🙏 forgot about the discord server actually but i will probably definitely post tmmrw excited to talk to u without the anon one day :b also im on season 4 i believe the newest one with all the other side chars only at the very beginning tho cause all my cards are kinda weak :( but yes! trying to get to lesson 80 as fast as i can

definitely have to play that ace attorney case cause the the fantastic 3 dynamic is SOSSOSOS INTERESTING so much stuff that can be done to them..... hopefully nightbringer can show us more crossing my fingers so hard rn

and yeah im really hoping they make a micheal sprite or like and actual appearance in game or even introduce him in nightbringer because hes actually such an important character and is mention too many times for the devs to just leave us hanging like that. also im thinking since this is usually how it goes theres gonna be some problem between micheal and sombody and itll be up to us as mc to solve it (maybe solomon and micheal conflict?! since it doesnt really make sense for him to have conflict with lucifer or any of the brothers since he basically adores them still but with solomon there is a possibilty im just not sure what could be the trigger) THE PARALLELS BETWEEN MC AND SOLOMON!!! so good i never really noticed too much since solomons actions were always kind of mysterious and sometimes just for laughs (also hes one of my faves so i let him do whatever he wants really) but the way barbatos asmo and basically anyone avoid talking abojt anything solomon related especially how they made pacts is....... also how they always talk about how he does everything for a reason and has everything planned out so the fact that he chooses us to be his apprentice is soooo suspicious to me sure we might say that he just really likes us cause hes a love interest but still hes like a million years old lol do we really think hes just going to forget all the stuff hes experienced and ultimately his goal in life ,if he has one, just because he likes us??!!! he's definitely hiding or planning something...... -_-

SATAN <3333 love him and im sure ur theories are gonna be super interesting to read!! hope u have a good meal and hope to talk some more with u ;bbb

#obey me #blucifer anon #reread this a million times bc yes!! so interesting and fun #adding all of this to my obey me collection in my head #the space on the last oaragraph looks huge but i hope when j post it goes away 😥😥

[jellifysh]

I’ve read getting back into the swing of things a million times now and I’ve always wondered if yoongi constantly telling oc to go hang out w the maknaes bc she would prob have more fun with them was his insecurity? like he thought they were better than him and hence she would prefer to spend time w them rather than with him? also when in the story is this resolved or is it just resolved as time goes on

let me tell you, the asks I get about this story make me literally have to reread my own chapters because you readers are all so incredibly perceptive like omg,, you guys pick up on details and foreshadowing hints and everything so well I sometimes doubt if I really wrote it that way or if you all just have amazing imaginations

but yes, one thing I really set out to do when I was writing gbist was I wanted to make the boys feel like real ppl, and ofc real ppl have real insecurities, one of Yoongi’s being that he often felt that most people who got close to them as a group were really drawn in by the nature of the younger members as they’re typically regarded as more attractive, more fun, more interesting, etc

so yeah like, Yoongi in the story is a very quiet person, like he very clearly enjoys having his own space and room to talk and just get lost in his work and art and he often worries that he’s boring you 😔 it’s resolved as time goes on, but it’s definitely a more subtle realization that you also enjoy just quietly existing in his space and you have just as much fun listening to the quiet sounds of him working as you do with the other members :)

#thanks for the ask! #anon ask #when I say it’s been so long I really mean it #has it been a year yet?

[beggingwolf]

omg I would love for you to break down that scene from TKK where sid goes into heat unexpectedly and geno rescues him from the Czech alphas!! (yes I have read and reread it a million times bc it is absolutely delicious.) (also this is jes @ticklefighthockey - can’t send from my hockey sideblog!)

hi jes!! thank you so much for asking!! I love that scene too

this is, uh, a behemoth. be warned: 

He’s being led on a tour of the rink, after the Russians have embarrassingly lost to Finland and before the Canadians are set to battle with the Czechs, when Zhenya stumbles upon him. 

I enjoy, in retrospect, how Zhenya and Sid’s emotional states are so different coming into this interaction. Even going back further than this specific day, Zhenya-in-Helsinki is bored and understimulated and out of his area of expertise and his alphaness is chafing at him. Meanwhile, Sid is overstimulated and anxious and fearful and in denial about/trying to hide his omeganess. Their designations are really on display here: Zhenya is brashly an alpha, Sid is shamefully an omega, and I Just Think That’s Delicious. 

It’s a flash, something deep and slumbering in his brain that alights like gas touched by a flame. One moment he’s listening to a very calm scout for the Superleague talk to him about Ovechkin and the potential a future Team Russia has, and the next there are yells echoing off the hallway’s walls and a figure racing towards them. A hook nestles into Zhenya’s intestines and his long leg moves, jerked along with the rest of him as he trips the running blur. 

The omega falls; Zhenya reaches for them, and before Zhenya can stop himself, his big hand grabs the omega by the back of their neck. The omega seizes up, and Zhenya can’t breathe as his grip tightens and then shakes. 

This is the, like, one part of the fic where Zhenya’s alphaness overwhelms him in the same way Sid’s omeganess overwhelms him. Sid is repeatedly at the mercy of his biology in the fic, and though he works to overcome it (and eventually settle into it), Zhenya doesn’t share that struggle—except for in this moment. I like how it equalizes them for a fraction of a second. Immediately after, the power imbalance flares to life and they’re on unequal ground, but for this moment, they’re both at the mercy of their bodies. It’s a huge aspect of what I enjoy about a/b/o.

Sid likes Helsinki. 

I love this jump cut, personally. I think it’s cheeky of me and fun and, after hooking the reader with Zhenya’s side of things, allows me to do what I enjoy most: babble on about juniors!Sid. Let’s fast forward to where the narrative catches up with Zhenya’s POV:

Sid is last out of the showers after practice. He doesn’t normally linger, but he had spent so long staring at how Carter’s traps and deltoids flexed as he washed his hair that he stalled and told everyone he’d catch up.

Sid’s discomfort with his designation almost takes precedence over his relationship with his sexuality in TKK. They’re inextricably intertwined, but Sid really spends more time thinking about being an omega than he does fantasizing about alphas—perhaps largely in part due to his first ~meaningful~ physical interaction with alphas ends up being a near-assault followed by a formative, if unhealthy, scruffing at the hands of Zhenya. I hope I put in enough to show that Sid is eyeing the alphas around him with intent and that it’s disrupting his routines. Builds the tension. Primes us for what’s about to happen. 

“Get out of there soon, Crosby, the Czechs are going to need the locker room in ten!” Durocher had called out to him, and Sid had made a sound of acknowledgement.

He’s not proud to jerk off in the empty communal showers. Once he’s come, he desperately tries to forget the fantasy of being shoved up against the cold tile, the slickness between his thighs being put to good use. His cheeks are flaming red and he’s mortified at himself as he washes the evidence off of his hands. In a rush he towels himself off and gets dressed in his team sweats, grabbing his bag of gear and jogging for the doors. 

Yeah I’d be mortified too, Sid.

He opens the door and runs face-first into a chest.

He chokes on his own spit as he smells it, the sharp, overwhelming scent of alphas, plural, and looks up at the huge Czech defensemen that he’s spent two afternoons watching tape on. 

The big one he ran into looks at Sid with vibrant blue eyes, and Sid stills as he watches the guy’s nostrils flare with a big intake of breath.

Sid forgot the cologne. 

“Crosby,” the alpha says, his accent strangely shaping Sid’s name. Sid heard plenty of Czech at the U18 tourney, when Canada had gone down against the Czech team and the players and their fans had drunkenly gathered outside of the Canadian locker room to howl shit at them until the Canadians muscled their way out.

He’s never heard anything like the way this enormous alpha drawls his name, and his eyes go wide. 

The alpha next to the blue-eyed one, a beefy blond guy that has a huge nose, takes a step towards Sid and says something. Sid can’t understand the words, but the message behind them is clearer than fresh ice in the winter, and all Sid can think is that he’s never been in this much danger. 

Some disgusting, traitorous part of him whispers in his ear that maybe he’d like it if he stayed and listened to what they had to say.

Sid runs. 

Sid’s sexual immaturity is really on display here. I don’t say anything about what the alphas smell like, and though Sid catalogues what the alphas look like (this was mostly so I could make them distinct in their actions), none of it is appreciative.

He’s a prey animal realizing he’s in danger, and regardless of his fantasies and recent jerk-off session, he has almost no desire to “be an omega” in this moment… except for the part of himself he hates, the part of himself he isn’t at ease with yet. EVEN THEN, he’s not interested in, like, being thrown to the ground and Taken in the biblical sense, but he’s interested in “if he stayed and listened to what they had to say.”

It’s that teasing at wanting something, that teenage impulse to want to explore what you’re feeling but not willing to go all the way because you’re afraid and unsure and still young! But his prey instinct wins out (smartly).

He hates himself for it; he’s a fighter, and he doesn’t run from boys who are bigger than him, but he knows as deeply and intrinsically as he knows his own name that the instant one of the Czech alphas gets their hands around his neck, he’s done for.

That first line could be interpreted 2 ways before you get past the semi-colon: does he hate himself for running because he wants the Czechs? No; it’s because he wants to fight. Sid’s incorrectly performing being an omega here in multiple senses: he’s running from alphas and wanting to avoid his heat, and he’s also wanting to fight them.

He drops low, bending his legs so he can ram his shoulder into the blue-eyed one’s stomach, shoving him back just enough so Sid can elbow past the blond alpha and push through. He feels the blond reach for him, and a shout builds in his throat as the boy’s big hand grazes Sid’s wrist, nearly gripping him before Sid can twist out of the way. 

He takes a step before the strap across his body gets yanked back, and Sid chokes as it digs into his Adam’s apple. The Czechs are gripping onto his hockey bag, and Sid only hesitates long enough for a hand to snake up and reach for his damp hair before he grits his teeth and slips out from under the strap of his bag and leaves it behind him, running in his untied sneakers down the hall.

The mention of his Adam’s apple draws attention to Sid’s age, I feel. It shows he’s physically mature but BARELY, because pointing it out draws attention to it in a conspicuous way. Then Sid being willing to ditch his hockey gear as he sprints—well, it shows (for once) he has his priorities straight. He tried to keep his omeganess hidden for the sake of hockey. Now he has to abandon hockey to keep himself safe. 

The Czechs yell, their voices loud and reverberating off of the walls in a way that feels like it can physically pummel Sid. He still has the scent of them in his nose, and he can feel his untrustworthy body responding. He runs blindly, as fast as he can.

HERE we get some sense that the alphas are having a physical impact on Sid. And yet it’s not eroticized at all. It’s made violent and scary and he’s stripped of his own senses. 

He rounds a corner and sprints, not remembering which way is which in the Helsinki rink. Sid barrels towards two figures in the hall, and his overwhelmed senses can tell that one of them is an alpha, the tall one, the dark one, and he sucks in one last desperate breath to hold so he can sprint past, so he can just get away from the heady scent and go somewhere safe.

Tall and dark, eh, Sidney? Our first hint of romantic descriptors. 

The tall alpha moves faster than lightning, faster than a goalie adjusting to block a shot, and Sid feels an ankle connect with his shin and he panics. 

Sid makes it about hockey. Ok bud sure you do you. (But like for real this represents a connection back to something Sid knows, something that is safe[...ish] for Sid, something that he loves).

He tripped him. The alpha tripped him, and maybe he’s in on it, and maybe Sid’s mom was right to be paranoid for all these years, and Sid’s hands come up to brace for the impact of the carpet when a hand as big as the span of his entire neck comes down on the back of it. 

Everything stops. 

Anxious stream-of-consciousness interrupted by an abrupt two-word sentence? Slap me silly with cliches, eh? But, hey, if it works...

The hand is enormous, the long, powerful fingers digging into the sides of Sid’s throat, and Sid’s jaw opens in something he hopes is a scream but by the way heat curls in his gut, he knows it’s something much, much worse.

Okay so HEREEEE we get yanked closer, again, to the erotic. The focus on hands (#TheFemaleGaze) as something salacious, enormous and long and powerful [hm. Freud is calling]... and even though Sid is terrified and refusing to put a specific name to what other emotion he’s feeling, his body betrays him yet again and we then fully slip into The Erotic with a heat—a heat—curling in his gut. 

The hand yanks him up, pulling him away from the floor, and Sid fights against the instinct to go limp with everything he has; his trained muscles seize up instead, and Sid has never been so grateful to be an athlete. He balls his fists, sliding his foot on the ground to try and right himself, and then his world ends when the alpha scruffs him.

Sid resorts to athleticism (his only other use for his body before Being An Omega fucked it up, according to him) in order to fight back. And then the line “and then his world ends” hits. Melodramatic, sure, but he’s 16.

And moreover, objectively, the world Sid knew before this interaction is indeed over for him. Zhenya later thinks in the fic that alphas and omegas feel fated, like something out of a fairytale, and that line of fate—that this was inevitable, that once Sid and Zhenya met, Sid would be lost to “normalcy,” does ring true by the time the fic ends.  

The alpha gives Sid a firm shake, just from the hand gripping his neck. Sid feels it down to his bones, reverberating through him harder than any check or hit he’s ever taken. Sid feels like he did when he was in 7th grade and one of his buddies tripped him while playing street hockey. This feels like when Sid’s head hit the blacktop; he’s not sure where all his limbs are anymore, and when he collapses, the alpha catches him.

This whole first chapter is just a major tease in regards to maturity, puberty, sexual awakenings, etc.

Sid acknowledged his physical response to alphas a few paragraphs ago, but now we’re back to Sid: The Child, to his middle-school self who is hurt and injured and vulnerable. By scruffing him, Zhenya ironically reverts him back to his child self; had Zhenya not scruffed him, who knows what Sid might have done or said to an alpha he was attracted to while he slips into heat?

By scruffing Sid—by making him no longer a viable partner [according to Zhenya’s instincts/hindbrain]—Zhenya actually keeps Sid safe here without even realizing it. 

Sid lets out a sigh that sounds pleased, and he wants to heave instead. 

And oop, we’re back! Tug and pull, back and forth. Will-they-won’t-they. Fun tension. The confusion of sexuality. Now that Sid is safe (even if he doesn’t know it), he can slip back into that pleasure state, even as he’s repulsed by it. 

The alpha says something. His voice is deep and rich. Sid’s head lolls back so he can catch a glimpse. 

He was right about the alpha being tall. His eyes go up and up to see the guy’s face. He’s older than Sid, but maybe he’s a player here. He could be 19, Sid hazily reasons to himself. His wide mouth is open in a concerned, surprised expression, and Sid’s eyes catch on how pink his lips are. He wonders how those lips would feel on his skin, but then his gaze is tugged upwards as the alpha’s eyebrows furrow over deep-set, dark eyes.

He’s handsome, and Sid is in his arms, utterly limp.

This part makes me smile even now while reading it :) Sid’s hazily like “Uhhh he could be my age right? Yeah it can definitely be acceptable to want this guy. Totally. Also he can totally play hockey. A dreamboat… Just For Me. Look at those lips. Also I’m totally helpless right now and for the FIRST time instead of terrified I am the human embodiment of the 👀 emoji.”

The alpha asks something of Sid, and Sid just stares up at him, dazed. He doesn’t know the language; it isn’t Czech. Maybe… Russian?

The hand still around his neck flexes, and Sid’s lips part. The alpha’s dark gaze drops to them, and Sid’s frightened by the emotion that blooms in his chest, a pride that’s twined with the adrenaline of his run. He can taste the alpha’s scent on his tongue, and it’s woodsy and deep and it makes Sid think of sex. He can feel his tongue poke at his lower lip, and the fingers around his neck tighten. 

Then the noises from down the hall get louder, and Sid can’t move to look, but the alpha’s head jerks up. Sid watches as the alpha’s lips curl back and he snarls loudly at the Czechs.

Sid can smell them, the way their scents slide from hunter to hunted. There are rude, ineffective words spat at Sid before they retreat. He doesn’t understand a whiff of it, though, and all he can do is watch the alpha clinging to him. The alpha bares his teeth at the Czechs even as they scamper away. Sid can see the alpha’s teeth aren’t fully straight, but they’re sharp and a swooping sensation bottoms out in Sid’s gut.

It’s nothing like Parise’s hit, nothing like Tambellini’s command to leave the ball alone. Sid stares up at his alpha and he knows that if this guy took him to the ground, Sid would roll over without a second thought. 

Fear rages through him again, even as his body hangs still from the scruffing.

Now we’re just really in the sauce, eh? We’ve fully entered into The Erotic and though Sid has that taste of fear in his chest, it’s not fear of alphas. It’s not fear of Zhenya.

It’s fear of himself. He isn’t scared at all of what Zhenya could do to him; he’s scared of what he wants (or what his body wants? He isn’t sure where that distinction is, because he’s been trying to divorce himself from his omega body since it started Making Problems).

Spicy! Delicious! I do, in fact, love it! His body is acting without his control (his tongue) but Sid is naming what he’s thinking of: sex. He hates himself over it. I am thoroughly enjoying myself!

The alpha looks back down at Sid, his lips coming together to cover his sharp teeth. He says something softly, glancing over Sid with obvious concern in his eyes. His grip loosens and his hand slides up into Sid’s wet hair to cradle his head instead. 

“Crosby,” Sid can hear the other man, the beta next to his alpha— the alpha say in surprise, and Sid’s chest tightens. 

“Crosby?” the alpha murmurs, squinting at Sid. He asks something else, and Sid still can’t get his throat to work, the scruffing clinging onto his voice box like a crushing fist. 

The beta says something and the alpha grimaces, but he gently starts lowering Sid to the floor. Sid gasps in a breath, because no, not in the middle of a hallway, but the alpha just lays Sid down, bracing a careful hand on Sid’s shoulder, still cupping the back of his skull as he crouches down next to him. 

“Crosby? Omega?” He hears the beta say in a thick Russian accent, and Sid’s eyes swivel to look at him. 

“Help,” Sid finally begs, feeling weak and shameful.

Here we actually lose some of the erotic tension because

1. Zhenya looks at Sid with concern, not lust

2. His grip loosens on Sid, and

3. Zhenya puts Sid down not to have his way with him, but to make sure he’s okay.

The power dynamic is starting to shift; it isn’t so much about a/b/o as it is age right here. Zhenya is taking care of this kid, as he notes in the next section, and since Sid’s hangups over his immaturity will haunt him in the fic, his perspective sort of neuters Zhenya here because he thinks their ages will be a barrier to Sid getting Zhenya.  

Also, another line I love: “no, not in the middle of a hallway,” because it’s SUCH a major slip on Sid’s part. His problem isn’t that he thinks Zhenya is about to go to town on him; it’s that they’re in a hallway and he has standards. (Or, rather, reasonable concerns over privacy, safety, and general comfort). 

“Who is Crosby?” Zhenya asks as he stares down at the omega he’s cradling. 

He’s about to be a very big thorn in your side for the next forever, Zhenya.

The omega is so young. He looks half-baked, especially with his head held at such an angle, making his chin disappear into his neck. His face is still round, and he has curly hair that hangs boyishly into his eyes. Those huge eyes are stunned and Zhenya can see the panic in them.

We’re still in that de-sexed space; readers can think “Hmm okay so maybe Sid was right, that Zhenya doesn’t really want-”

Zhenya closes his mouth and tries to take in less of the omega’s scent. It’s hot and jabs at Zhenya’s brain like a spice; Zhenya can smell the slick on him and swallows down the saliva flooding his mouth. 

“Oh.” 

Yep. Still wants ‘im. Has a moral compass to stop himself about it. Barely.

Also, Zhenya eats a fair amount of food in this fic—shitty food, like his McDonalds meal and bad American coffee, and good food, like the ribs and coco lardo in Moscow and the pelmeni and soup with his mother. Sid’s scent is like a spice to him—this appeals to his emotional senses, not just his physical ones. 

“This is Crosby,” the Superleague scout says, dumbfounded. “He plays for Canada, he’s an omega—”

“No shit,” Zhenya grunts, and he can’t stop his thumb from stroking across the kid’s shoulder where Zhenya is pinning him down, the thin Team Canada shirt shifting under his touch. “Crosby, who’s here with you?”

Oops, crack in the facade there, Zhenya. Watch your hands. Still, it’s not made clear if this is a gesture meant to be comforting (to Sid) or selfish (for Zhenya). Ambiguity!

The omega, Crosby, gapes up at Zhenya, and Zhenya curses himself for scruffing him. 

He hadn’t meant to; he’s only scruffed an omega once, and it was in a very different context, where a buxom omega named Svetlana had wanted Zhenya to lay her out and make her limp with it in bed. Crosby certainly hadn’t asked, but Zhenya had felt the panic in Crosby like a guillotine rising over his head and had needed to stop it. 

More cracks. Relating it to sex with Svetlana and then pulling himself back by a VERY sharp image of a guillotine. Feeling like you need to cut something off, there, Zhenya? 

His hindbrain had made the decision for him.

Zhenya thinks about alphaness in terms of his hindbrain—a hidden prey drive he’s got in his head, an old evolutionary instinct. Part of him, but... not all of him.

It’s very distinct from Sid, who refuses to even consider his omeganess as something other than, like, a personal failure and/or a physical impediment that’s fucking with him. When his omeganess comes for him, it takes him over.

Zhenya THINKS about his alphaness as divorced from himself to justify his actions; Sid ACTUALLY divorces his omeganess from himself as a survival instinct (until it stops working, and then until he figures out it’s more advantageous to work with it).

Crosby’s pulse still rabbits away. Zhenya swears he can feel it through Crosby’s scalp, and he says softly, “It’s okay, Crosby, I’m here to help you. I’ll help you.”

Rabbit :) Prey animal. Zhenya touching him carefully, not like a wolf chewing on its prey, but like a human soothing a scared animal.

He hears the Superleague scout say something in ugly English, and Zhenya frowns, wishing he had spent any time at all working on English like Viktor had asked him to. He only knows scraps he’d picked up from the ridiculous Americans the Magnitogorskaya bratva worked with. 

“He’s almost in heat,” he snaps at the scout. “Ask him about suppressants, does he have any?”

“His team should, they…” the scout starts, and he moves like he’s going to leave in search of the Canadians, but he hesitates. 

Zhenya watches the scout’s eyes rove over Zhenya’s long, powerful frame bent over the crumpled omega beneath him.

“He’s a child,” Zhenya bites out, even as his body tells him he’s an omega. “I won’t do anything. Get help. Now.”

:) Spicy!

He puts real force behind the words, and even though Crosby doesn’t appear to know Russian, he shakes under Zhenya’s hold. 

“Shh,” Zhenya murmurs, looking down at him. Those big amber eyes focus on Zhenya’s, and Zhenya’s hand on Crosby’s shoulder slides up to cup the side of his face.

“It’s okay,” Zhenya tells him, and he knows at least that in English. “Okay.”

Zhenya immediately comforting Sid even though he’s addressing the scout! We have not seen much of Zhenya being caring before this point; is this who Zhenya is? Is this what alphas do for omegas?

Truthfully it doesn’t matter because there’s no discord between Zhenya and his designation. He’s comfortable as an alpha. He is what he is, and no matter where it comes from, he comforts Sid in this moment.

Fuck the blonde women of Finland; Zhenya doesn’t want anything except the chubby-faced Canadian teenager he has laid out on the floor of a hockey rink, and since he can’t do anything about that, he needs to keep Crosby calm. 

“You’re going into heat,” Zhenya tells him, knowing Crosby can’t understand. “You’ve done this before, yes? You’re old enough to know. It’ll be okay, we’ll get you suppressants, you’ll make it through. It’ll be just fine.”

Zhenya: “I will rationalize this. Yes. I can do that. Sure. Great. I cannot let myself YEARN. But I’m definitely going to give him command-sounding reassurances that definitely aren’t any alpha impulses leaking out of me.” 

Zhenya’s eyebrows shoot up when Crosby moves a hand; it’s weak, but he manages to lift his arm enough to grip onto where Zhenya’s holding his face. It had taken Svetlana the better part of ten minutes to lift a finger, and he can see that Crosby, while young, is strong.

And, by the heat in his eyes, angry.

Zhenya grins at him, and he can feel Crosby’s pulse jump under his hands. 

“Don’t be angry, kitten,” Zhenya croons at him, unable to help himself. “I kept you safe, didn’t I? I’ll get you back to wherever you belong, yes?”

Zhenya, you flirt. Also he’s like “Cool I’ll call him Crosby I’ll be professional and—oh wait he’s pissed off and cute about it haha hi Kitten :) hi :) I’ll take care of youuu :)” 

Crosby recognizes the tone in his voice, if the way his eyes tighten is any indication. He opens his mouth to make a discontented sound that sends Zhenya into laughter. 

“Come,” Zhenya tells him between giggles. “You’re fine, let’s go find your team.”

When he scoops Crosby up off of the ground and into his arms, Crosby makes a sound so undignified it makes Zhenya lean against the wall to catch his breath.

Honestly I’m not happy with the emotional tone here and had I not been writing 50k words in a fugue state and needing to publish them by fest time I think I would’ve changed this. But alas! Its imperfections make it unique… or whatever. Hopefully someone likes it. 

Crosby is heavier than Zhenya expected; he’s dense, and Zhenya can glimpse how much of that density is dedicated to his ass. While Zhenya doesn’t lift weights with Metallurg anymore, he brawls enough to have very functional muscles. He can handle Crosby. He would like to handle him very, very much.

Yeah you do, Zhenya.

#careful everyone this is Very Long #anyways! i enjoy this scene too and this was fun! #ask game #😁 #tkk notes

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 36

time travel arccccccccccccc yessssssssss

I have been waiting SO LONG to reread this arc hhhhh yessss

starting off strong with the sexy roller cover. nice

I love the disconnect of ‘orion pax: outlaw’ compared to the last time we saw him in shadowplay where he was orion pax: supercop

he’s still punching people for JUSTICE or whatever so I guess not much has changed

oh my god this is the issue with the many many two-page spreads...the first time I read this issue I didn't realize that was a thing and GOD I was SO fucking confused. there's already a lot going on in this issue/arc but this made things so much worse hvbhjkdfbsk. I powered thru and still managed to understand most of the arc despite reading half this issue out of order (essentially) bc the website I read it on split the pages up and I couldn't tell they were supposed to be doubled (and also I'm dumb so I didn't figure it out)

anyways, the actual issue...windcharger is out here using his powers to rip a dudes arms clean off. wow!

and there's skids getting punched in the face. Ls

and glitch! a totally minor character of course...

MANNNNN I SO adore the panel of all the lost lighters appearing in a cloud of purple smoke, all posing epically....SO fucking good, peak sci-fi coolness vibes, A++

as usual jro killing it w/the titles, ‘elegant chaos’ is such a great name for a time travel arc

also reading the tfwiki has shown me that many of jros titles are song or album titles, to which I say - that's epic and I love it. with jro doing it, I feel like it straddles the line between referencing music and the very fanfic-esque ‘title things after music’ vibe. I love it

oh god I forgot they use bs cybertronian time units in this sometimes lmao...I mean of course they do but still like, what the fuck is a cycle. is that a day. I feel like these words all have no meaning/the meanings change drastically depending on continuity. I cant keep up and also I'm lazy and don't care enough to try

I love rodimus did u know

poor riptide looks so confused lmao

IS....IS REWIND PIGGYBACKING TAILGATE...THATS SO FUCKING CUTE....I cant fully tell bc of the page layout but ooomg so precious. minibot buddies

whirl saying ‘chuff’ just reminded me how british jro is hvbhakjhdsfbs sometimes it just Jumps Out in mtmte and I'm like Oh God Britain Is Real

I really like the mtmte approach to time travel and paradoxes and whatnot. its just complex enough to be interesting but not too convoluted that it bogs down the story. perfect sci-fi fun!

mannnn chromedome talking abt brainstorm :( I'm sad abt those two hhhhh

and I love how at this point, nobody in the cast ACTUALLY knows brainstorm well enough to know what he’s really doing - including chromedome, who’s ostensibly his closest friend, somebody he’s known for a while - and even the readers don't really know what he’s up to...I like the mystery tbh

cant believe rewind wrote orion pax’s biography, omg. completely forgot abt that detail

cd saying ‘I love it when he talks history’ about rewind....hhhh I love cdrw so muuuuch

godddd the line rodimus says abt whirl - how they need people like whirl around who are ‘happy to get in the way’ of danger and death - that shit haunts me man like...rodimus is basically saying that he’s bringing whirl along to potentially die in place of someone like orion pax (nevermind the fact that whirl dying would ALSO fuck up the timeline)...like, how deep does it go?? is he saying that bc he knows whirl has been trying to get himself killed for a while now, or just bc whirl likes violence? mannn I cant...the character intricacies...man

anyways...I love rodimus he’s such an interesting character. you have that fucked up moment and then in the next panel he’s saying ‘if you want to call it a time phone, I wont stop you’ about the quantum walkie-talkie. he has the RANGE

oh and then rodimus casually volunteering chromedome to do mnemosurgery on anyone who might accidentally find out about them time traveling, which is again fucked up on multiple levels. the raaaaange

vjaksbhdhfusajbfdjk that panel of the lost light squad just standing there like idiots reminds me of that post where someone said abt that panel ‘these characters have a collective 3 brain cells’ or something hvbjadkfnksfdl

rodimus IMMEDIATELY breaking his own rules by trying to reassure pax that they're good guys by pointing at his autobot badge, even tho the autobots DONT EVEN EXIST YET at this point...my boy PLEASE go purchase some brain cells from the store 

and the fact that rodimus introduced himself to pax w/his real name...shouldn't he go by an alias or st??? that seems like a good time travel rule since optimus and rodimus definitely know each other later 

and like, did they not anticipate that some of the people in the past would recognize some of the lost lighters hgbajkhdjfnjksf like cd and whirl get Instantly recognized...great job guys

they are all SO bad at this hvbahskjdhfbasjkf I cantttt luckily for them the orion crew is handing them easy alibis 

‘the dugout’ is that a baseball reference????

also I love the scenery here, the bg looks like rock but there's metal piping and stuff running thru it, its so cool...really adds to the whole ‘cybertron biomes are made of metal’ thing

‘ancient history’ rodimus are you KIDDING ME-

cyclonus time travels to the past and IMMEDIATELY finds a window to stare broodingly out of. icon

tailgate thinking orion pax is SUPER COOL continues here from shadowplay and I love it...tailgate is so cute

and the tg saying ‘don't you think that's awesome, cyclonus?’ hhhhh so cute

one reason I love this arc so much is that this is the arc where the gay Really amps up 

TRAILBREAKER.... oh man ;_;

are you telling me that this outlaw base they're in has ONE bed for all of these people. what the hell vhbaksjhfnsal

cant believe rung sampled roller’s steroid juice box

also cant believe robot steroids exist. except yes I can and I love it

oooh roller’s a 0/1%er? I forgot abt that 

cant believe orion pax just grabs some random phone that belongs to these weird new people and answers it. WHO does that

goddddd megatron and orion’s conversation....destroy me

HHHHHH like...the HISTORY....the regret...the missed opportunities...its all so palpable....goddddddd

and of COURSE, the whole thing is steeped in tragedy...the ideological differences that will become the foundation for a 4 million year long war...megatron, who believes that you need to burn things down and start again to really make change stick, and then orion, who says ‘reform is the answer, not revolution’....AUGHHH the intricacies. mannnn

‘you sound lost’ 😭😭😭

‘its tragic.’ yeah, that about sums up their relationship, especially at this stage and in this continuity 

anyways. [cries about old man megatron talking to young naïve orion pax] goodbye

AUGHHH and then we jump to rodimus ONCE AGAIN breaking his own rules and trying to save trailbreaker...IT HURTS MAN...god I love rodimus, I feel like him being broken up about crewmembers like trailbreaker dying is one part regular sadness over people he knows dying for tragic reasons, and one part personal guilt at someone under his command dying, even if he’s not involved/at fault. I love the dichotomy of this emotional reaction that comes only partially from empathy/emotion, but also comes from a kinda self-centered need for success as measured by people under your command staying alive. and taking into account rodimus’s life it totally makes sense that he’d act like that...GAH I love it. the complexity of it all!

orion pax saying ‘you should read [megatron]. it’s powerful stuff’ I'm screaming, so many LAYERSSSSS

I fucking love time travel AHHHHHHHHH like the opportunity for interactions like these....chefs kiss

‘hey, best friend! miss you!’ rodimus is such a shit hvbdajkfksjhfd 

‘very sus’ rodimus ahead of his time w/the among us lingo

oooh and then they realize that the senate is trying to kill the sparks...gotta save the babies!

tailgate scolding cyclonus for bluntly stating that you'd wanna be subtle when killing newborns...hhhvbhsdfhhhhhh I love them sm

ooooh and rewind has an interesting suggestion - that the senate is actually trying to irradiate the sparks into being outliers...rewind is so smart I love him

and the fact that he’s using history from his database...love it

rodimus sending cyclonus and whirl out like pokemon

ROLLER NOOOO DONT GO OUT THERE

also wow this is literally the 5th (I think) double page spread in this issue...the confusion I felt the first time I read this...lmao 

and now this is literally one of my favorite issues so I'm glad I know what's going on lmao

oh man rodimus telling cd not to erase trailbreakers memory even tho that could jeopardize the entire timeline... :( 

oh man I didn't even notice but roller getting debris blasted into his face like that makes the whole ‘roller is tarn’ theory even more legit considering tarn’s face scars....

‘tighter the better’ hhh don't say that orion. but also, that’s the companion phrase to megatron saying ‘the deeper the better’ hvbhasjkhdfbaksjlf

I do love the semi-campy action hero antics that orion pax gets up to. its just so fun, even when the stakes are high and things are serious

‘this is the greatest thing I have ever seen’ tg ily

THE REVEAL THAT THE SPARKS WENT TO NYON...so rodimus just saved himself, basically...time travel is so trippy

GODDDD ND THEN TRAILBREAKER...HVHHHHHh 😭😭😭 THATS SO CRUEL MAN

oh man that last panel of trailbreaker holding up roller’s juice box...iirc the first time I read this I thought that was roller (cause of the juice box I guess? idk I'm an idiot) so I was like oh ok he must've come back or something. very much related but I didn't really think about tarn being a particular pre-established character and totally didn't read the whole ‘roller is tarn’ thing that was going on 

which in my defense ruth also didn't pick up on any of that while reading this and eventually like 2 issues before the reveal I had to prompt her like ‘you should maybe be wondering WHO tarn is’ vhbahjksdfbaksjdf

so! issue 37! this issue is a solid favorite of mine, id say definitely top 5 or even 3. I'm super biased bc I fucking LOVE time travel, it’s seriously one of my favorite tropes ever, and this issue hits all the time travel beats I love. characters traveling to the past and interacting with people they know! conversations that have multiple meanings bc of TIME TRAVEL! trying to save someone who meets a terrible fate in your future! fun time travel action! the time traveling characters being generally terrible at hiding the fact that they're time travelers! ITS SO GOOD. 

and I love the clever way everything is tied together here - where we get a nice continuation of shadowplay, with this taking place shortly after that with a lot of the same cast, and time travel classics like the good ole ‘if we hadn't travelled back in time and done what we did, the future we came from wouldn't have existed at all,’ in the flavor of ‘rodimus saving his baby self’ and ‘rodimus NOT saving trailbreaker’ and ‘everyone forgot about roller :(’ 

ok but like, did the lost lighters just go ‘oh well, guess rollers gone now.’ like they DID realize that the outlaw crew would have no idea what happened to him if they got their memories erased, right?? did the lost lighters figure that since roller never reappeared after this time period, that was how history was ‘supposed’ to go and they shouldn't mess with it? am I overthinking it? as usual: yes, probably. I love overthinking about comics, in case that wasn't obvious

basically...I love this issue soooo much. so so good and a bunch of fun tropes that I love. I mean the whole arc is like that for me since I love time travel so much. so I cant wait to (re)read more!!

#lj rereads mtmte

[inhalingwords]

janbeans replied to your post: janbeans replied to your photo: Book Discussion Challe...

I tried reading Hamlet before, it was a miss for me. Maybe I would try Romeo and Juliet. Can you recommend some Shakespeare or any classic stories in general that I could read?

oh boy here we go

first of all, out of the Shakespeare plays I have now read (I have not yet read many of the works which are considered Shakespeare’s best!!!), I’d rec these (purely based on my own enjoyment lmao):

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (you’d already read this one)

Love’s Labour’s Lost

A comedy about four guys who vow to fast, avoid women and sex, and sleep as little as possible so they can study and become intelligent/renowned. Cue the arrival of a French princess with her three lady attendants.

“Wise fools”, a witty pair of lovers, poking fun at artifice and pretense, sexual jokes -- this play’s got it all.

Romeo and Juliet

This is the play I finished most recently. I know there’s a lot of debate about a lot of things, especially about how young the main characters are and how quickly they fall in love and blah blah blah, but I loved it. Yes, they fall in love immediately (”love at first sonnet”) but it’s so. beautifully. written. Like, I’m the first in line to complain about instalove but. The point is, if it’s well-written and there are symbolical meanings and shit, I don’t see a problem. (And it’s not like the play itself glorifies what happens to R&J??? Like, none of it tries to say, “look at this, how great, this is what love’s supposed to be like, killing yourself over someone!!” Like there’s a bigger plot and point re: feuding btw the families and pride and how it’s all so irrational and ridiculous and pointless and R&J’s tragic deaths are what finally(!!!) seem to get through to the parents (maybe??? do the parents really understand what’s what in the end??))

There’s some really elaborate and deliberate use of language throughout the play and the theme of opposites (light/dark, bawdiness/love, young/old) is pretty cool. My favourite thing is probably how the play is structured as a comedy (with lots and lots of foreboding remarks) that turns to tragedy halfway through (Marjorie Garber calls it “a comedy gone wrong, a comedy turned inside out” in her book Shakespeare After All).

Henry VI tetralogy (1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI, Richard III)

History plays! I’ve gathered not a lot of people care for these that much(?) but I really liked reading them, especially 3 Henry VI and Richard III, mostly because there are some really interesting female characters in these (Margaret, Joan of Arc, Elizabeth, Lady Anne).

Basically, these are dramatic retellings of the Wars of the Roses; there’s lots of corruption and infighting at court and civil war.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

For some reason I have a soft spot for this very early (and slightly weak) romantic comedy. Maybe because it’s filled with tropes that Shakespeare would refine in his later plays, so it’s just fun to read it and see how it anticipates his later works idk.

Anyway, The Two Gents is about two guys who fall in love with ppl and shit happens; there are love triangles, cross-dressing, horrible dominating fathers, horrible men in general, elopement plots, friends made rivals in love, clownish servants, and A DOG.

And now, to some non-Shakespearean classics I’d like to rec (fair warning: I haven’t really read all that many, especially recently TT____TT also, the total lack of female writers on this admittedly short list is very distressing to me!! pls someone rec me some classics written by women!!):

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Art for art’s sake, the most important thing is The Aesthetic™.

Dorian Gray is a philosophical meditation and a Victorian thriller about an exceptionally handsome man whose portrait starts to age while the man himself stays young and good-looking.

The Iliad by Homer

I don’t even know how to sell this tbh. Just, there are heroes and heroines, gods and goddesses, and war, and the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus pretty much made me cry.

I read a beautiful, lyrical Finnish translation of this last year -- it was superb!!! and I can only thank Otto Manninen (the translator) for making that experience possible for me! (the descriptions of achilles’s grief killed me)

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

I’ve been planning a reread of this ever since I first read it in like two years ago. I read it super quickly so I don’t have much to say except I loved it and that it’s so much more than most film/theatre adaptations lead you to believe (so many side plots and side characters and side stories and shit that just don’t fit into a couple of hours).

I seem to really gravitate towards super long books with a million different characters... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Täällä Pohjantähden alla 1-3 (Under the North Star 1-3) by Väinö Linna

Probably interesting to us Finns only, idk, thought I’d rec it anyway.

This trilogy is a sprawling family saga about the Koskela family (and some of the other inhabitants of the Finnish small town in which they live) from the 1880s to the 1950s. It explores the major historical events and social changes during that time in Finland (e.g. language strife, nationalism, socialism, WWI, Finland’s independence, civil war, WWII, etc.) through the perspectives of ordinary people.

I cried buckets. My favourite part was the second book (”The Uprising”), which centres around the civil war between the Whites and the Reds bc I’m very very very interested in that part of Finnish history (and it was also probably the saddest book and I apparently live for tragedy and death who knew???).

#janbeans #(tumblr won't let me tag you in the actual post btw CURSES) #reply #book recs

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 33

[sees rewind cover] time to be emo

swerve giving us a nice lil recap of the wild events of slaughterhouse thus far

and then the roll call page...I love how the last one is ‘rewind?!?’

OUGHGHGGHGHGH REWIND TINYYYYYYYYYYYY

I adore that nautica has a list of in-jokes to check off 

ohhhh man I forgot that alt-lost light rewind doesn't really know skids?? bc the alt lost light never picked him up....

POOR REWIND he wakes up all elder scrolls style and then immediately autobot megatron is just There without explanation lmao this poor lil guy

love the casual gender stuff honestly

nightbeat: ayyyy rewind!! sup? what horrific slaughter happened here? spill the tea! 

hvakjdfbskdf poor rewind is going thru it jesus

nautica and riptide hvbhkjasdsfasdfn ‘are jokes not funny where you come from?’ immmmm

nautica is so cute I love her

ohhhhh I love the panel of the two lost lights going off in separate directions with the title right below 

‘I remember it well. kind of’ that's a really funny line actually hbvkdjfnasdfl

I really like how on the alt lost light, rodimus’s risky stunt with the sparkeater actually kills him - I mean I'm glad that didn't happen in the main story but that's such a cool jarring discrepancy 

ok but its inherently VERY funny that the djd like, murdered the entire lost light, but later in the story the lost lighters are obviously still around and not dead...that's so fucking funny, the djd were probably like ????????????????? what the fuck didn't we kill these guys?????? but also they were tripping so they cant be sure

isn't it brainstorm who called the djd on the alt lost light??? oof 

LOVE the continuity of the alt lost light being the place that the djd went at the end of the scavengers 2 parter wayyyy back in the beginning of s1

more horrific slaughter, as one would expect from an arc called ‘slaughterhouse’ 

jeeeesus I forgot how completely fucked up all the shit was for poor rewind 2. christ 

also the like, thematic irony of alt-chromedome refusing to erase rewind from his memory and choosing to die horribly instead....SCREAMS I cant handle it

ITS SO HORRIBLE I'm so sad. poor rewind

‘silly string’ I love riptide

nautica is so smart I lov her 

oooh skids going off on megatron is really good. I find the whole ‘cons are super anti-organic/alien life’ angle interesting, bc it like, Makes Sense that a race of robot aliens who live for millions of years wouldn't consider shorter-lived organic life to be on the same level as them, but its also like, not morally right, so the autobots are correct w/the whole ‘freedom is the right of all sentient beings’ thing...its LAYERED

rewind: ‘I'm tiny’

me, crying: yeah...

honestly I really really love the quantum duplication plot in this arc. its like, peak sci fi nonsense but it also like, Makes Sense, and is presented in a very understandable manner...plus its like, super entertaining and fun, so I just love it

love how they're perusing brainstorms lab and just stumble across a dead body. classic

aaaand the plot thickens, with the reveal that brainstorm is a decepticon????? whoaaaa

I love that twist too oh man. I cannot WAIT for the time travel arc yessss

oof nautica being in denial about brainstorm being a con :( 

I find it kinda funny that getaway is IMMEDIATELY like, punching walls and going full that-one-wack-storm-trooper-from-that-star-wars-movie abt brainstorm being a con lmao, like what's even ur beef dude

when nightbeat is all like, wait there's a Type™ for decepticon double agents? and megatron says ‘hm. have you never been approached?’ bvhjaskdfbaksfd

mannn tho, I love all the character stuff this issue...I love the panels of megatron where he looks mad and crushes brainstorms mask, bc like, he’s gotta be thinking abt the fact that the djd, his personal squad of bloodthirsty attack dogs, were the ones responsible for all of this, as well as overlords presence, and brainstorm secretly being a con....

ok rewind and megatrons interactions are fantastic

like, rewind IS the nice one, but the definition of ‘nice’ is probably a little different than it used to be due to Big Ole War 

how are they propelling themselves in space????

NOOOOOOO I'm so fucking sad, rewind 2 is literally like ‘I'm fine with being deleted from existence bc my husband and everything I knew is gone’ aughhhh

and then megatron lies and tells him that he and chromedome, on the og lost light, are ‘inseparable’ 😭😭😭 I mean I guess that's not a lie if you count cd rewatching rewinds goodbye video on loop...AUGHHH

‘let’s not drag out the goodbyes’ but rewind, what about one of the story’s themes, ‘how to say goodbye and mean it’? 

and we cut off right there for maximum suspense...

omg I love swerve like, fistbumping cyclonus in the chest, and cyclonus is just like ?

skids,,,,,maybe surprising chromedome with his not-so-dead alternate-version husband isn't the best idea...like, this isn't exactly a zero-explanation-necessary kinda situation...

I adore rewinds massive shoulder pads tbh

oh god. GODDDDD. the panels of rewind and chromedome sitting next to each other, not saying anything, and just slowly moving closer to each other while looking out at the stars....literally these gay robots invented romance, thank you very much

I'm so fucking tender guhhhhhhh

like,,,,the fact that both of them separately watched the other die horribly and could do nothing to stop it, and now they're reunited here, and they don't even need to say anything...AUGH.....

OUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I'm sorry I can’t. SO tender

and MANNNN I'm so so glad that rewind is back. I don't always love when characters don't stay dead but I'm completely happy w/it here for multiple reasons, like the fact that I really like rewind and chromedome’s story after this arc - like, I LOVE that they addressed the fact that rewind 2 is different from OG rewind, despite being fundamentally the same person, so he and cd cant just immediately get back together and pretend everything's fine, but also there's really only an 18 month (?i think) disparity between the 2 rewinds which is nothing compared to literal millions of years, soooo

ALSO I literally never considered this until this reread but it would've been kind of an L for rewind to die and stay dead considering that rewind and cd were The First transformers gay couple, and that's a really big deal! and I don't really consider it bury your gays bc like, rewind doesn't stay dead that long and also there are soooo many other gays, but STILL 

plus rewind and cd ended up having a lot of story left to get thru, which is awesome

also I just love rewind so I'm glad he’s back :) 

ok the fact that the suspense over brainstorm being a con still isn't resolved bc not everyone knows....spectacular tbh

don't knock the power of love, nightbeat! 

the briefcaseeeeeee

ok but I really don't remember jros explanation as to why rewind 2 and the briefcase didn't get deleted hvbhjsdkhfk I gotta go look that up again

OHHHHHHHHHH I FORGOT THE EPILOGUE IS THIS. OHHHHH MANNNNNN THIS IS ONE OF MY FAV PARTS 

BRAINSTORMMMMMMMMM ILYYYYYYYYY

I fucking love this scene bc this is basically the culmination of brainstorm being Completely Ominous for the entire story thus far, like, it really hit me this readthru that brainstorm was so totally sinister for like most of his screentime up until this arc...and this scene is the pinnacle, I love how everything brainstorm says is overlaid with so much tension for the reader bc of what we know now about him

like brainstorm saying ‘yes - here’s to fixing things’ is so fucking sinister even though out of context that sentence is just normal

and when atomizer basically voices what the entire audience is thinking as brainstorm opens the briefcase - ‘brainstorm, you can’t do that.’ bc yeah, what the hell, he’s opening THE briefcase, Oh Shit

AND THEN THE FINAL SHOT....brainstorm front and center looking SCARY AS HELL.... ‘I can do whatever the hell I like.’....everyone suddenly collapsed around him...the fantastic shadowy lighting...the ominously open briefcase...the clear segue Directly into the next high-concept arc....[chefs kiss] ART

seriously I love this issue so much. SO many good things. such good character stuff, really great interactions, some fantastic plot development, super creative sci-fi fun times...all around just an extremely solid and enjoyable issue, 10 outta 10

and MAN OH MAN I cannot wait to get into the elegant chaos arc, it fucking SLAPS, that arc and remain in light have always been my favs, I'm so excited to revisit it 

AND ruth bought the physical comic TPB for like issues 34-38 or something and I'm so so glad I can read that instead of braving the many split-up double page spreads on the online comic 

so yeah, cant wait!

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 13

humansona time, hell yes

OH MAN I forgot about the stuff w/swerve and blurr oof

that panel of perceptor just saying random equations always kills me vhsdjhfkbjhksdfnka

also I love so much that they call perceptor ‘percy’ that's so cute

I love the implications here that people just Grab minibots and carry them around like luggage bc they are Tiny lmao

ohhhh my god I fuckgin love ‘I'm just wondering if there's time to expand my aura and cleanse the area of aggression’ ‘I...don't think so, drift’ hgbadjfjbaskdfs drift’s hippy nonsense delivered completely seriously pairs hilariously with his whole ‘violent guy with a bunch of swords’ thing lmao

also, IM NEVER OVER CYCLONUS SINGING TO TAILGATE, and also the security team mistaking it for cyclonus murdering tg hbhkjadfbjkhsdf cyclonus u icon

and tg looking at cyclonus all heart-eyes, omg 

drift showing rodimus how to swordfight...fellas.....

rodimus, being entirely ignorant to the irony in calling cyclonus and tailgate’s relationship strange when he and drift are Right There, being weird gay frat bros

did yall know, I love magnus so much. law dad

magnus saying ‘that's not even a word. id have heard of it’ about the word ‘relax’ is so funny god 

rodimus bribing swerve with a bar license to get magnus turnt is hbvhjakdbfhskf

never over rodimus portioning out drifts blood money to the crew for shore leave hubhjsdkhfdbjksd god 

despite tg lying about a good amount of his past, I feel like he rlly DOES see cyclonus as a link to a more familiar time, and that's a large reason why he’s so forgiving toward cyc

mannnn the stuff w/blurr and swerve is so depressing in retrospect. swerve is like, such a depressing character the more you think abt him vbhskjdhfbsk jesus

magnus trying to get in on the convo when swerve starts talking statistics oh magnus

idk what ‘the lube pits’ are but I Really do not want to know

‘the temple of the raging prism’ sounds fuckin bangin tho

I love seeing everyones humansona!! this art style is pretty simple, but I think it looks cute

rungs ‘human name’ being ‘mary sue’ lmaoooooo jro w/the self callout

also skids’ name being blank is a nice touch

still not over tg being a baby....poor guy

whirls humansona is so fuckgin good, also swerve looks like a hobbit

magnus basing his avatar on verity is so sweet ;_; I really should read all the wreckers stuff after I finish this reread

THE ABSOLUTE COMEDY OF MAGNUS JUST FUCKGIN PASSING OUT THE INSTANT THE ALOCHOL HITS...ICONIC

WHY would magnus accept a drink from whirl anyways lmao

tailgate is so cute

they rlly just left magnus facedown on the table and kept drinking huh. the irresponsibility....we love it

ARE YOU SURE THAT KILLMASTER IS DEAD, WHIRL? ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?

rung don't lie, froid is your nemesis

WHY do we never get to hear more about skids’ apparent beef with misfire

rewind calling the swerve/misfire This early, wow

literally Everyone abandoning swerve to deal with magnus hgbvhfjdskdfbhs I fucking love this issue man

GOD I LOVE MAGNUS SO MUCH!!!!!!!! he’s such an interesting and unique character and hhhh I love him and his development

like, he was probably the biggest surprise out of everyone who agreed to go on the quest - ostensibly it was to keep order on the lost light, but it would make sense that magnus would get tired of being the Only one who cares about that sorta stuff on board 

drunk magnus is such a delight oh my god

magnus rlly just wants everyone to be safe :( my daddddd

magnus: I love all my children equally...swerve, rodimus, [looks at smudged writing on hand] dirt

swerve: see, magnus, that’s where you’re wrong - I ALSO have crippling depression!

cant believe they bought rodimus a hat vhbhksdfhahsjkdf

HHHHH GOD I FORGOT ABT THATTTT when cyclonus goes bonkers in order to stop rewind from playing the ark 1 footage and inadvertently outing tailgate as a liar....AUGHHHHH THE FUCKING...THE FUCKING ROMANCE OF IT ALL

POOR MAGNUS LMAOOOO

oh rewind :( you should really wonder a little harder where chromedome is right now...oof

everyone jumping on magnus while he’s passed tf out is SO fucking funny 

RUNG, PLEASE, WE REALLY DONT NEED TO THINK ABOUT WHATS AROUND THE CORNER. REALLY DONT

hhhhhhhhhhh I love how cyclonus sat tailgate down and confronted him about lying, but did it privately and not in front of everyone - and he even saved tg from being exposed as a liar, too. AUGH 

I feel like cyclonus is kinda impressed at how effortlessly tg has managed to lie this whole time, and tbh it IS impressive, especially considering tailgate was basically teleported 6 million years into the future and has no idea how the world works anymore, but was still able to lie convincingly. even cyclonus only realized bc of his own past, and not until now

tailgate ;_; ;_; ;_; 

cyclonus: oh no...im soft

tailgate and cyclonus singing ye olde cybertronian tunes together...OUGHHHH my fucking heart bro mY FUCKING HEART.

on that note: the song ‘to noise making (sing)’ by hozier is literally about cygate. thank u for coming to my ted talk

UGH GOD SWERVE STOP MAKING ME SO SAD, ITS NOT EVEN THE SWEARTH ARC YET

magnus had to like, get the robot equivalent of a stomach pumping after that hvbskdjfbhskdf jesus they really did almost kill him huh

I consider this issue forshadowing bc it makes 100% sense that minimus would be a Mega Lightweight considering he’s like 3 feet tall

the real quest that swerve is participating in is ‘the quest to get friends’ and so far its going pretty badly. poor dude 

godddd the thing that says ‘next: Overlord!’ with a fucking exclamation point I DONT APPRECIATE THAT. 

OHO i forgot abt the canon fanfic at the end of this issue

rung kicking things off with some good ole bodily workings-based dread 

ok but being so awed by the construction of your species’ anatomy that you wanna fall on the floor in amazement? that's a whole ass mood and I do frequently stare at walls for long periods of time, thinking about the marvel that is the human body. so rung is valid 

FROID NAME DROP LMAO. also yet again, are you SURE he’s dead?? are you????

the name ‘froid’ cracked me up almost as much as ‘rigor morphis’ did when I first read this...robot-based science puns! woohoo!

rung rlly b out here thinking abt overlords lips.....

‘forced browsing is not the autobot way’ lmao skids

also fr tailgate defs thinks that whirls actually name is nutjob

the entire segment of cyclonus browsing and everyone watching him and commenting is just. golden

oh no. don't make me think of rewind and his tiny memory sticks that he carries around. I'm NOT READY

magnus’ brutal read on rodimus and the fact that he’s more suited, personality-wise, to wartime than peacetime? oof. love it

I ALSO love that a big part of this issue was magnus admitting, in less direct terms, that HE isn't made for the post-war life either - his strict adherence to the rules and constant vigilance isn't exactly the best mindset for peacetime, for him or the people under his command

magnus’s hatred of metaphors and similes and the like....hvbsdjkfbasjhdf I love him

MAGNUS ILY...he’s trying SO HARD cut him some slack. i think his jokes are. yeah!

oh goody this text used "rodimus’s" so I guess that's canonically correct and I haven't been using grammar incorrectly as I had feared 

rodimus sitting ON his desk and doodling on it...adhd icon

rodimus calling rung a psychotherapist, which was rung’s grounds for a nemesis hvbhjabfdskfnkks

rung: as I'm sure you know I take patient confidentiality VERY seriously

narrator: That Was A Lie 

AUGH this hurts...rung trying to get justice for red alert but rodimus is in on the overlord stuff :( ouch

so issue 13! I fucking love this issue. just some good ole funney space hijinks, with some nice relationship development for tg and cyc - plus a revelation about tailgate - and some characterization for swerve and magnus. plus we get to see humansonas, which is always fun. augh I love this comic, and I am SO not ready for the next few issues, good lord

#lj rereads mtmte