Other Vengeance 2.0

Taratron · Unread post by **Taratron** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 10:38 pm

So....with this geography lesson, it could be perfectly plausible for someone to happen upon a nest of Japanese hornets?

I kid, I kid.

Wayward · Unread post by **Wayward** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 11:16 pm

Dude, by cartoon geography, they're lucky they didn't run into polar bears.

Overall, Beast Wars was fairly good about what critters were around. Things can be fudged - like, maybe Silverbolt isn't a typical gray wolf but an Ethiopian wolf? Blur those lines! But sometimes ... well, sometimes all you can do is throw up your hands and shout, "Vok like to move tigers around!"

( Yes, we heckled the bananas in 'Feral Scream pt II'. We are nitpicky. )

Taratron · Unread post by **Taratron** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 4:42 am

Well, maybe the Vok were playing a game of "Musical Animals" and did like tigers around everywhere.

I mean, we ended up with a darn dragon, why not put in a unicorn too? Though a jackalope would have been awesome.

Bah, way off topic now, my apologizes.

Waspi still needs to check out those Japanese hornets. Yowza!

"Wazzpinator all pretty and will EAT YOUR SOUL!"

Wayward · Unread post by **Wayward** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:09 pm

Bickering about local critters in OV is never off-topic.

There was a unicorn.

( But don't even talk to me about dragons. Most overused critter ever.

)

Enormous doom hornet of huge!

( I still like that there really are metallic green bees out there. Wrong side of the planet, though. )

Taratron · Unread post by **Taratron** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 5:28 pm

Hypocrite that I be, years ago when I was doing that Mary Sue terrible series, I was planning on tossing a unicorn in---I had the psuedo-science explanation of parallax universes and portals and....don't ask. (I think it was in one of Archi's fics that she mentioned the most overused mode was a Beastmode + Wings. I'm still waiting for a Fuzor bird with an extra pair of wings.)

So when is Tigatron going to be brave and see about eating an amphibian? I know there are those halllucinogenic froggies around Madagascar and other rain forest areas, but I doubt there's many around the Axalon. Termites would be great snack foods, though I doubt most of the bots would look forward to them. Ten energon cubes to whoever gets Inferno to eat chocolate covered ants first!

Wayward · Unread post by **Wayward** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 7:05 pm

Heck, unicorn could just be a horse/narwhal fuzor or something. There's the elephant/orca, so why not?

Also, agreement: Slapping wings on does not a fuzor make. Even Silverbolt had bird feet and a bird tail. And I totally support the idea of a fuzor bird with four wings.

Tch, you're basing your food preferences on your culture. Some people find things like termites delicious. Braving it? It's not bravery when nobody's imposing their standards of what's disgusting and what's not on you.

Pick up a book on wilderness survival and boggle at how much of the world is edible!

( Not that I'd eat a bug, but they are fantastic sources of protein. )

Taratron · Unread post by **Taratron** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 8:29 pm

You're right, I do base a lot of "EW not eating that!" on where I'm from; that said, I'd take grubs over scorpions any day, and if the zombie end of days ever comes, I have a room stocked of mice, that will mostly go to ME and not my snakes.

The orca/elephant fuzor always boggled me. I know there are orca pods worldwide, but the sheer size of that guy...I want to see a narwhal/horse fuzor, with the telltale horn, AND a nice layer of blubber/whale tail. The first aquatic Arctic horse!

Wayward · Unread post by **Wayward** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 11:57 pm

I thought elephants were too inland for a pod to scan one and an orca, but apparently it's actually feasible for Indian elephants at least ( I don't know elephants well enough to be able to tell what kind Torca is. I know there's differences in build and ear shape, but I'm not sure what they are. ) Scary, scary looking dude. Wouldn't want to be the Predacon facing him down.

Hee. I know I'm hugely picky myself, foodwise. I suppose the challenge will be to write eating odd things like grubs in such a way that the readers will find it appetising ...

... Naaah. I wanna hear screams. ^_^

I have a room stocked of mice, that will mostly go to ME and not my snakes.

Party at Taratron's! I'll bring the dip!

Taratron · Unread post by **Taratron** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 1:20 am

Hey, did I ever say I would SHARE?

I also have some (at the moment, two molt-old) asexual scorpions, so I should be set for protein there as well, as hard to eat as those may be. Then there's the livebearing snakes too, and the egglaying turtles....hmm. I'm set!

Maybe I can be tempted to share.

Oh, and if my African Giant Millipedes ever start spawning, THERE be some nice fat grubs!

As for the pods, I've often wondered (and toyed with the idea for a fic, but it's gone nowhere) about the exact location of them dropping. I don't know how many the Axalon had, but it's logical that some pods might have landed and activated in the water (DepthCharge, of course), OR activated continents away. So it's quite possible there were a lot of bots who were wandering around, not seeing a ship anywhere, and if they lacked a beastmode capable of flight or swimming, they'd be going nowhere fast.

Wayward · Unread post by **Wayward** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 7:36 am

For OV purposes, there were twenty pods ( and I know who's in each one and what I'm going to do with 'em ) and they all landed within 500 miles of the Axalon because they had tracking beacons that made them seek out the Axalon and try to land near it.

Without tracky bits, unless the things were in a geosynchonous orbit and came straight down, they could have landed anywere on the planet, and underwater is likely just due to how much of the stuff is around. And I suppose there could've been more pods. They are hard to count.

Wayward · Unread post by **Wayward** » Sat Nov 29, 2008 11:36 pm

Here at In Space, we listen to the people. And wheresoever people are discussing Transformers-as-humans fics, the complaint comes up: "Nobody ever has to go to the bathroom. And nobody ever gets really sick, just pretty hurt/comfort sick. Everything's always so sterile and unrealistic! I demand bathrooms and realistic illness!" And we listened. But we have very short attention spans, so we tuned out the next sentence, which is invariably, "But I don't want to read that because it's icky!"

We listen, then we go ahead and do whatever it amuses us to do. We are Insecticons, after all.

Summary: Three days after the change. The Predacons' evil plan ... is to be helpful. Megatron retrieves the alien disc and confronts Dinobot about the reasons why he left the Predacons. Meanwhile, Quickstrike and Silverbolt get sick, and one of the alien sites shows activity.

Sex warnings for those what need 'em: Tigatron and Airazor insist on remaining a couple despite both being female, and they're sharing a room though they aren't actually doing anything sex-like. Rattrap makes a reference to Cybertronian strippers ( I don't know how that works, either. I can only assume he really likes wires. )

The chapter starts here and goes on for forty pages, yikes.

Haystack · Unread post by **Haystack** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 10:25 pm

Hello, it's me, Haystack, with your not-quite-annual review! This chapter made me laugh, gasp, smile, and, believe it or not, at one point almost made me cry.

First off, ILOVEQUICKSTRIKEILOVEQUICKSTRIKEILOVEQUICKSTRIKE! He is officially, as of this chapter, my favorite OV character. Scorponok, Tarantulas, Waspinator and Inferno are pretty high on my list as well.

Inferno, standing close enough to Megatron to look official but not as close as she used to, said nothing. She'd said hardly anything in the last few days, ever since she ran out of Megatron's quarters shouting that he was no longer the Queen. She still followed after Megatron out of habit. Inferno worked because she couldn't do anything else but she worked like an automaton.

Wow, I can see that clearly in my mind's eye and it sounds so sad, though that wasn't what almost made me cry.

"Personally, all I know of the species is that it is small, soft, and produced Dinobot's favourite writer.

I wonder who his favor--

never mind, I get it. I should have gotten it sooner, since Dinobot quotes him all the time.

Dinobot's already decided to play Maximal, I will not lose Inferno to them as well, no!

Hold on, Inferno might be a Predacon, but wasn't she also a Maximal protoform? *le gasp* Perhaps being around the Maximals will remind her of that!

You'd better be careful Megatron!

"Then chopperface butted in with some story about how there's this legend that the first Transformers were made like they just grew outta Cybertron, and that afterwards it was like all Transformers always carried a bit of Cybertron with them no matter where they were. And I said what's that do for us now and he said we'd lost that connection, then he walked off. I don't get him."

"Maybe he was saying he feels homesick, too," said Rhinox.

Aww.

Interesting theory too, how Transformers always have a piece of home with them, and how they lost that connection to Cybertron when they were changed into humans.

Oh yes, the whole entire scene with Quickstrike barfing had me laughing out loud. I've been there, done that and bought the t-shirt for it. It isn't fun at all.

He had already broken up one game of I Dare You To Eat This between Rattrap and Tarantulas.

"Got two pretty girls fussin' over me," said Quickstrike, lying back on the table Tigatron was sitting at, legs bent to keep them out of her way. He had draped an arm over his eyes but lifted it to look at Rattrap. His face was pale and he was sweating despite the coolness of the room but he still managed a smirk. "Can't complain. 'Cept maybe about how 'Ranty threatened me with a probe."

I repeat what I said earlier: ILOVEQUICKSTRIKE!

Rattrap grinned. He rather liked Quickstrike.

An apparently Rattrap agrees with me.

Optimus felt something break inside him. The last four days had been a daze of survival and strangeness and saying the words made him realise how hopeless it all was. He ran his hands back through his hair and shook his head. "I don't know."

Poor Optimus.

He's already had a crash-landing and a war dumped on him, and now all this. You've really got to feel for the guy.

And here we come up to the part of the chapter where I almost cried. The part where Megatron is in his old chambers.

He climbed up onto his chair but didn't stay there for more than a few seconds. It made him feel uncomfortably small.

Megatron walked over to his bath - now the size of a small pool - and tapped his rubber duck on the head, sending it bobbing. It was quite possibly the only personal item any of them had brought from Cybertron. Given the circumstances of their departure it wasn't as if they could pack for the trip. But he had brought the duck, stashed in one of his compartments. It had been a present from Scorponok who had heard somewhere that a rubber duck was the thing to have if one took baths.

There were two pictures that were Megatron's, both of himself - a painting and a photograph. The photo had been taken on this planet, a still from a cyberbee's footage.

A rack on another wall held his spare tail-weapons, now as tall as he was. He managed to lift one down but couldn't wield it. Even if it wasn't too heavy, the handle was too big to grip. Megatron spent several minutes trying to fit his hand to it, toying with the connections, stroking the scales. Even those felt alien, memory distorted by too-soft fingers.

He returned to the bath and picked up the duck, careful not to touch the liquid it floated in, cool and inviting as it looked. The chemicals evaporated within seconds and he held up the toy to inspect it. Even the duck was too big now. Making it squeak involved wrapping both arms around it and squeezing.

The reason why all of this made me really sad is because, when I first started reading Other Vengeance 2.0, I only thought "Well, that must suck for them." It wasn't until I read these few passages that it truly hit me just how much the Transformers had lost because of the Vok's transformation. They can't go back to Cybertron, they can't do half of the stuff that they used to do, and they can't even use most of their personal possesions. It almost made me cry.

"Optimus! The Standing Stones are giving off an energy reading!"

HOLY...

Oh great, I've got to go. I'll finish my review later.

Wayward · Unread post by **Wayward** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 3:09 am

Oops. Never saw that anyone replied to my post and just happened to notice now.

Feel the scorpocobra love! He can weld with his tail! He yells funny things! He was never reprogrammed and nobody noticed!

I was taken by complete surprise that this chapter got as positive a reception as it did. I'm just used to hearing the, "Nobody's ever sick, they should get sick, ew I don't want to read that," people that it didn't occur to me that other people would be okay with it ( of course I wrote it anyway. One of the main Mission Statements for OV is 'If I haven't seen it in a TFs-as-Humans fic before, do it.' ) I am happy to be proved wrong. ^_^ And it makes me less nervous about some things that'll happen later.

Glad to hear that you're feeling the story. One of my big Areas I Need To Work on is getting the reader into the story. My writing style is mostly about brevity, so I keep losing emotion on the way.