(no subject)

[yvannairie]

*has an idea* Oh I can't write that, the Ratchet fans would eat me alive. He's far too popular for me to go poking that bear.

Comments

[sexytronians]

I would read the thing. I like Ratchet but he’s a fictional character and I’d not get hurt feelings about him being shown or analysed in any particular light.

I wish to know the potential poking.

(If you are okay with that, don’t feel obliged just because I a nosey.)

[yvannairie]

Haha don't worry, I love talking about things that would get me in hot trouble with the wrong people.

Basically, I have a terrible sickness where I will look at ships I don't like and eventually just go "god. Fuck. Okay let's do this" and make them work for myself, and I was thinking about how I could write some extremely trainwreck-y TFP Ratchet/Bulkhead where Ratchet's functionist holdout opinions cause him to do some medical malpractice that results in Bulkhead becoming permanently disabled due to an injury (whether I'd use his canon injury or something else, I haven't decided! I definitely tend to interprete the ToxEn plotline to have worked out this way) mostly because I thought it would be really fun to make Ratchet get more upset when Bulkhead automatically forgives him for it and make Bulkhead extremely uncomfortable when he doesn't get Ratchet to accept him brushing it off and has to deal with his guilt.

It would also be a nice opportunity to write Wheeljack having more of a "I changed my mind -- you're an asshole and clearly not willing to change so I no longer even wanna be friends with you" attitude towards Ratchet. One of my pet peeves with TFP Jackie is that people play up his affection towards Ratchet and antipathy towards Ultra Magnus at the expense of literally all his other relationships. I also just like writing Wheeljack as an angry class traitor who has never gotten over the shock of how the functionist attitudes other people have cause actual, often physical, harm to his friends.

[sexytronians]

Oh! I like that.
TFP Ratchet having a big nasty functionalist steak is very fun to me as a concept. And that having relationship consequences. Bulkhead having to deal with Ratchet’s guilt about the injury Ratchet caused is just…wow I wanna see more of that dynamic and it’s issues.

Wheeljack as an angry class traitor who has never gotten over the shock of how the functionist attitudes other people have cause actual, often physical, harm to his friends.

That take on him makes me like TFP Wheeljack. I was never quite interested in him. But him simply having that conflict with Ratchet elevated him just now to character I’m interested in.

[yvannairie]

I keep saying it but people ignore all of Wheeljack's most strongly emotive moments b/c they revolve around Bulkhead and as a result any interpretation of him without the context of those moments is just hopelessly boring and shallow. And I don't even mean this in a "he only works as a character as a part of my OTP", I mean that if you ignore his one positive relationship, you have literally no way to tell how he treats people he actually likes outside of fifteen seconds of shared solidarity with Arcee... in a moment all about his relationship with Bulkhead XD

Also thank you! Honestly, it's not even too hard for me to imagine the Ratchet/Bulkhead dynamic as something natural and positive until the revelation/realisation that Bulkhead is deeply ill and Ratchet has only made it worse with his callous disregard, I'm just not sure what I'd do after getting to that point of conflict. Because Bulkhead would never hold it against Ratchet if he'd fallen in love with him by then, even if he really should.