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So I'm not a superstitious person except for comedic effect, but today's one of those days I hope every coffee cup that I forgot about that inadvertedly became a tribute to my house spirits guaranteed safety from at least one disaster, because I need to leave my half-finished washing machine program that is too far along to interrupt on while I leave the house to go to the doctor's.

Please don't puke water all over my bathroom while I'm gone, is what I'm saying.

Just do your 20 min of program safely and allow me to come back to fresh, clean laundry and no disaster.

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Wait, does the HTML writer also take markdown?

Because comments sure don't D:

(I don't know how to DW, this is a disaster.)

Comment policy & open forum

Inspired by silveradept 's comment policy post, (which captures my extended thoughts on comments to the letter) let's jot down a few things potential new subscribers and friends should probably know out the gates:

1) This blog is 99.8% public, and the only way to get access is to quite literally Be My Friend and someone I talk to on almost a daily regular. (Actually, if you have access without feeling like you should? That's me being friends with you through the mere exposure effect. HMU.)

2) I will lock posts I don't want to talk about. I'll hide posts I don't want linked around. The only time I don't like links/comments is when commenting is disabled. Outside of producing content, I see it as my job to keep my journal clean, not anyone else's who might wanna engage me where my words happen to be at the moment.

3) Just like on Ao3, I give full permission to remix, podfic, translate, create art for or create secondary fanwork of any fanwork I have posted. I also give blanket permission to reach out and comment and engage with me or my stories by commenting or on other platforms by discussing, recommending or using my works in a critique. However, I reserve the right to choose my own form of response, and I do not blanket agree to accept or engage with comments or criticism of me or my work.

DW doesn't have an ask box. It only has DMs, which I'm fine with and like receiving, BUT in case people DO want to interact with me anonymously, this post is their chance to do so. Also, doesn't have to be anonymous -- you're free to identify yourself and use this as a public conversation channel if you're simply not fussed about making a DW account. All comments are screened, unless you have access -- at that point I trust you enough to Not Make My Journal A Mess.

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Probably the best TF related interaction I've ever had was when I was talking about Sins of the Wreckers with Kay, which

obviously turned into me yelling about how frustrated I am with Prowl and how much he configures into everything when I simply find him intolerable to think about, let alone discuss

followed by the exchange "but HE'S HOT" "ALLEGEDLY"

x'D

My deepest apologies, assorted Prowl Fuckers(tm) in my circle, but I will probably never get his appeal.

While I'm thinking about it, lemme write down one of my favourite TF headcanons.

The best-kept secret of Team Prime is the bonkers good aim Bulkhead has.

The reason it doesn't come up much is because a) he's primarily a close-quarters fighter packing enough firepower that just hitting in the vicinity of where you aimed is enough and b) his poor reflexes -- the actual reason he's so accident-prone -- end up playing a much larger role in battle situations.

But in the event that he gets to show off, his throwing aim (and as a corollary, his ability to catch stuff thrown his way) is pretty much pinpoint accurate. The reason for it is that as a construction worker, he has a sensory array that prioritises the kind of spatial information required for three-dimensional reasoning -- normally used for figuring out the stress profiles of different structures, but also highly useful for working out trajectories. He also has better fine motor control than he ever gets credit for -- not graceful on the level of, say, Optimus, but way less clumsy than anyone thinks.

More self-indulgently, the mechanical basis for it is that Bulkhead's sensory systems experience significant overlap in the radio-IR spectrum and while the internal resolution/focus speed of his optics might not be any better than anyone elses, the range of radiation and the resolution of the spectrum he can perceive is much higher.

He and Ratchet are also the only two in Team Prime who have native UV/near-UV vision, and Bulkhead has the highest colour/brightness distinction out of all of them. After all, it would be advantageous for a constructor to see/sense what parts of a building are likely to form radio wave "noise traps", and have access to IR and even x-ray vision -- although "seeing" in x-ray (or more accurately, shifting his range of vision into the x-ray spectrum) and "seeing" in radio wave is disorienting enough that Bulkhead rarely uses them outside of when they're absolutely needed.

(This is also one of those headcanons I will smugly point the canon support out for. Bulkhead having Anti-Stormtrooper Aim is legit a consistent aspect of his characterisation, although in TFA his spatial awareness isn't nearly as good as it is in Prime.)

Also while I'm busy having Bad Taste Over Robots, here's a Classic Useless Headcanon:

(Reposted from Tumblr.)

Optimus is not a bad-looking truck. He’s very classically handsome, and his charisma helps to elevate him into Quite A Catch for those into his frame type.

Ultra Magnus, however, is basically the standard of beauty for his frame type. He’s a bona fide Fine Specimen, impossibly handsome for a truck, a legit case of “have you ever seen a mech so beautiful you started crying”. He could have easily been a model, if he didn’t have the charisma of a rusted nail.