When the Decepticons evacuated Cybertron, they left one of their own behind. Now the Autobots have a problem lurking beneath Iacon as Ravage tries to find a way back to his faction.

It's the Ravage vs Wheelie fic that the fanbase has been clamouring for! With support from Arcee, Rewind and Steeljaw.

As it's close to an hour's reading time, you may wish to consider the nicely formatted version available here: https://velvetfanfic.wordpress.com/2024/03/17/set-a-thief/

Or just read on. Entire fic is pasted below for your commenting convenience.

Set a Thief

“What’s the procedure for Decepticon seizure?” Wheelie asked as casually as he could.

After another shift of mapping Iacon’s conduits and tunnels, he had come to the command centre to log his safe return—he didn’t know if this requirement was because the Autobots were worried something would befall him or because they were worried he would run away. Regardless, after millennia of isolation, Wheelie was determined to keep his newfound position in society and scrupulously followed the rules he had been given.

Only Perceptor was in the command centre, and by now, he had grown accustomed to Wheelie’s non-sequiturs. “The protocol for Decepticons is greatly dependent on the situation, Wheelie. Did you have a specific location in mind?”

“Iacon, Cybertron.”

Perceptor looked up from his comparison of their daily energy consumption records. “Wheelie, would this be a theoretical question, or have you *seen* a Decepticon?”

Wheelie had realised something else was in the tunnels two days ago, although he had not bothered to inform the other Autobots at the time—he might be *following* rules, but he was not going to ask for more.

They were only a skeleton crew anyway: the Dinobots, Springer, Arcee and Blurr, all left in Perceptor’s charge to hold Cybertron while Rodimus Prime was dealing with affairs on Earth. One week earlier, Wheelie hadn’t known any of them, and it might have been a million years since he had needed to get to know anybody. He wasn’t certain of his own timeframe; by habit, he avoided memories from a time before Quintessa.

Perceptor was useful in that regard as the peaceful and disciplined scientist couldn’t remind Wheelie of anybody from his past. The others sometimes did—Springer and Arcee’s ready banter or Blurr’s nervous energy would have fit right in with a past life if Wheelie had cared to make the comparison. He didn’t, but fortunately long solitude had left him with several eccentricities. Once he discovered that his rhyming speech disrupted conversation attempts, he decided he wasn’t going to break that habit.

However, he did like the novelty of being around people who didn’t want to kill him, of shutting down with the confidence of coming online again and of having a right to his own supply of energy. Wheelie understood that all these things were privileges, and so he noticed something was living beneath Iacon who had none of them.

Accustomed to a lifestyle of stalking and hiding, Wheelie was confident in his own abilities to figure out what sort of creature was there without putting it on alert. It had been stealthy, so until today he had never seen more than flickers of movement, tracing it mostly by scratches on surfaces that he pretended not to notice. There had been even fewer sounds, but for most of Wheelie’s life, survival had depended on sketching an intuitive picture of activity from minor changes in air pressure, in echoes, in electrical fields.

His first suspicion that it might be a Decepticon had come when he had realised *it* was tracking *him*—and that had been the advantage he needed today. Unfortunately, he couldn’t risk going further without checking in with the authorities.

“Hunter found, lurk around, underground.” Exposition was not in Wheelie’s skillset; talking to himself had never required context. “Wheelie trap sneaky cat!”

Perceptor looked back at his records, at the mysterious spikes in energy consumption coming from different devices on different days, and with great composure, he brought up a reference image of a feline Decepticon. “Do you mean to say that you have apprehended Ravage?”

Wheelie brightened in recognition. “Yes!”

“While I recognise that this is quite an achievement, Wheelie, I must insist that in future you alert a senior officer prior to attempting capture.”

Perceptor was more flustered than appreciative, but Wheelie merely nodded, offering neither repentance nor explanation. Back on Quintessa, he had frequently trapped Sharkticons and Allicons for spare parts or simply mental stimulation; like much of his past life, he was not sure how ethical the Autobots would consider such behaviour.

He maintained silence until Perceptor broke it with a sigh. “If you can give me the coordinates for Ravage’s present location, we can arrange for retrieval and… proceed from there.”

In Rodimus Prime’s absence, Springer was currently responsible for Cybertron’s defence and the Dinobots represented their army, but that had been on the assumption that any hostile activity would be coming from above; neither Springer nor the Dinobots were small enough to reach Ravage’s location. Perceptor had Arcee accompany them instead, and both the veteran Autobots came armed.

“Ceasefire expire?” Wheelie asked, curiously. He had thought they were avoiding combat.

“Technically speaking, we haven’t had any Decepticons agree to the ceasefire yet,” Arcee told him. She was more serious than usual, either due to the mission or because she wasn’t around Springer and Blurr.

“In absence of current data, we should infer from previous interactions with Soundwave and his cassettes that it is advisable to proceed with the utmost caution,” Perceptor explained. “However, our objective is indeed to execute our mission without ballistic discharge.”

For his trap, Wheelie had chosen a long duct that had been showing some wear, pretending to reinforce the stressed sections so that his observer would assume this was a simple repair job. It was a squeeze for Perceptor and Arcee to get there, but Wheelie had had the foresight to position the trap at the point where the duct ran through a wider space—whatever machinery had once been housed there had long since been recycled—so the other two Autobots could comfortably stand and assist him in cutting out the relevant section.

“The mass is surely insufficient…” Perceptor muttered as he lifted it down.

Wheelie had already realised it felt wrong. Instinctively, he scanned the area, fearing an ambush, detecting nothing. Arcee had drawn her gun at Perceptor’s words, so he left her on alert while he checked the trap. As suspected, it was empty, the front barrier collapsed without any sign of being forced.

“Pressure plate, hmm?” Perceptor was distracted by his handiwork. “Spring-loaded barriers… triggered by Ravage’s weight—an ingenious use of resources, Wheelie. Let’s see, the ceiling is too low for him to feasibly escape by jumping… ah, he must have braced himself against the walls to push the barrier back to its horizontal position.”

Wheelie had already seen the scuffs Ravage had left on the sides of his prison, and he was furious with himself. It was such an obvious vulnerability, but Sharkticons and Allicons had never been that smart. He found he did not like being outwitted.

“Do not be discouraged, Wheelie,” Perceptor told him with absent kindness. “Ravage is no fool, and you did well to detain him in the first instance—”

Wheelie wished he would be quiet. Ravage had watched him the past two days; he was certain he was watching them now. He took a step away from Perceptor, trying to sense anything from the shadows.

Arcee laid a hand on his shoulder. “Wheelie, don’t try this again on your own. He’s going to be on his guard now, and he’s more dangerous than he looks.”

“Absolutely, you must refrain from any further attempt!” Perceptor agreed fervently. “We shall alert Rodimus Prime to the situation and await his orders.”

Saving Perceptor the bother of worrying about it, Wheelie thought, angry with everybody now.

Arcee looked keenly at him and then back at Perceptor. “I’ve seen that expression before… on Hot Rod.”

Wheelie might not understand her meaning, but Perceptor plainly did. “Ah. Well, while I cannot sanction further attempts to engage with Ravage, Wheelie, you may assist in researching a solution by installing a surveillance system down here. With Arcee’s assistance.”

Wheelie looked dubiously up at Arcee. She was slim in build but nearly twice his height and would have to crawl through most of the ducts and conduits. “Must be covert so as not to alert,” he pointed out.

“Stealth operations are part of standard training for all Autobots,” Perceptor assured him.

Arcee was less confident. “We might have covered stealth in training, but I can’t say I’ve had a lot of practice.” She gave Wheelie an apologetic grimace. “I’ll try.”

‘Try’ rhymed with ‘die’. Grimly, Wheelie reminded himself that cooperation was the price of society, and he left the couplet unsaid.

Wheelie was not the only one angry with himself. It took every bit of willpower Ravage possessed to keep his optics dimmed as he glared down at the Autobots from his hiding place in a broken pipe. The unfamiliar one was plainly a new recruit which made falling into his trap all the more humiliating.

For now, he had no choice but to stay where he was and wait for them to leave. It had been four days since he had lost his connection to Soundwave; never in his life had he been so alone.

VelvetGlove wrote:

> It's the Ravage vs Wheelie fic that the fanbase has been clamouring for! With support from Arcee, Rewind and Steeljaw.

So, I will confess that, when it comes to the G1 cartoon, I tend not to think very highly of the tiny characters. Wheelie flat-out annoys the living heck out of me, Rewind and Eject seem to have the same problem as the 1986 Mini Autobots (they all have serious mental defects), and half the cassettes don't talk so I've never really gotten a handle on them as characters. Generally speaking, I like the bigger characters more, because they can all talk, and they transform into useful things, and they are actually a threat to the other bigger characters.

However, with all that said, I was fully invested in this epic Wheelie vs. Ravage fight. You made Ravage a real threat unto himself. I tend to think of the tapes as more or less extensions of Soundwave ("Operation: Go Do A Thing, Then Come Back") but this might be the best depiction of Ravage I've ever come across. You made him interesting to me, and non-speaking characters are usually very uninteresting to me.

Makes me wonder what you could do with characters like Laserbeak or Ratbat!

> Only Perceptor was in the command centre, and by now, he had grown accustomed to Wheelie’s non-sequiturs. “The protocol for Decepticons is greatly dependent on the situation, Wheelie. Did you have a specific location in mind?”

You write dialogue really well. I can hear all the characters' voices in the dialogue, and not once did I stop and go, "Wait, x character wouldn't talk like that." Your stuff fits seamlessly within the cartoon universe, and I love it. Perceptor's dialogue rang especially true for me.

I am also really enjoying this largely unexplored gap between The Transformers: the Movie and season three. Obviously a few of the chess pieces had to be moved between the movie and "Five Faces of Darkness" (Autobots take Cybertron, Decepticons flee to Chaar, Dirge and Ramjet hide on Earth, etc.) but I guess I never realized just how much had to actually happen to set up season three proper.

Perceptor seems comfortable in his role, but I like how Wheelie (and some of the other Autobots) are still struggling to adjust.

The idea that Wheelie has been traumatized by his time on Quintessa and actively tries not to think about it actually makes a lot of sense. It adds a really interesting dimension to the character. I might have felt a little bad for him when Ravage cut him up. And I have gone on record as HATING Wheelie.

The notion that Wheelie tried to trap Ravage in a snare that would have worked on a comparatively dumb Sharkticon is clever. Wheelie didn't know Ravage is a smarty cat!

You say that Wheelie "trapped" Sharkticons, sometimes for fun, but... he killed them afterwards, yes? The "Wild Boy of Quintesson" storybook shows him wearing a necklace of Sharkticon teeth, I'm pretty sure. (Not sure if you accept that as canon, of course.)

I'm not sure if you have plans for the other Decepticon cassettes, but it occurs to me that we never see Buzzsaw during season three...

Oh! I remember you asking here about how the cassettes stored information. It's neat to see what that research ended up being used for.

So, I love Wheelie's observations about the Autobots' personalities. It's stuff that never really occured to me, but it all tracks. Springer never had to ask Perceptor for translations the way Ultra Magnus did. Arcee does use a lot of quick-witted banter when Springer is around. Really keen observations on your part. You know these characters so well.

I suppose it makes sense that Steeljaw can talk, since Ramhorn can talk and it would be weird for one of the Autobot animal tapes to have the power of speech, but not the other. But now you need to tell me which voice actor you would cast in the role of Steeljaw, because he's the only one whose dialogue I cannot "hear" when I read this story.

Also, I was preparing myself for the idea that Ravage was going to start talking at some point. I like it better when he's silent... but I was getting ready for it, just in case!

Rewind didn't spout nearly enough random trivia for my liking. He doesn't really do it that often in the cartoon, admittedly. If I have any criticism for you at all, it's that he only knew some stuff about Iacon because Ultra Magnus told him about it. I would absolutely expect him to just know a bunch of stuff about Iacon right off the top of his head.

I love the idea that Wheelie would want to befriend Rewind and the other tapes because they're tiny Transformers like he is. (It's a little hard to get a sense of scale sometimes. We know Rumble is only slightly taller than human-sized, and I assume Rewind's height is exactly the same as Rumble. So the idea that Wheelie has to look down to meet Rewind's eyes is actually perfect.)

Also, the idea that Arcee is the strongest weakling in the room, so to speak, is kind of funny to me for some reason. I love that she notices this and enjoys it.

I hate that the story ends with Ravage all sad, and not even knowing if Soundwave is alive. (I mean, WE know Soundwave is alive, because he's around for season three. But poor Ravage doesn't know that.)

You write the characters very differently than I do. With somebody like Rewind, for example, trivia is his thing, so I lean into that HARD, almost to the point where he becomes a caricature of himself. But, there are also hundreds of canonical Transformers and it's a struggle to differentiate them without relying on quirky personality traits or speech pattern gimmicks. (I have an entire file with speech pattern notes for the G2 characters when I was writing "Children of Cybertron," and it's almost embarrassing how I managed to reduce dozens of characters to being a dialogue gimmick. Space Case only uses single-syllable words, Motormouth always trails off with an ellipsis and never actually finishes a sentence, Turbofire only utters one word at a time...)

Anyway, my point is that I like that you give all the characters a lot of heart. It's easy to care about your versions of Arcee and Ravage and, yes, even Wheelie because they're all fully-fleshed out characters with feelings and goals and desires. I was a little disappointed that Blurr didn't show up, despite him ALSO being a character who tends to annoy me, if only because I knew you would do him justice.

I will need you to explain the title of the story, though, because I don't get it.

Zob (all in all, very enjoyable read, and thank you so much for sharing)

I can't decide which I enjoy more, the excellent characterization or the insightful observations - fortunately, I don't have to choose. Another well-written and thoughtful fic. Thanks for posting!

Zobovor wrote:

> So, I will confess that, when it comes to the G1 cartoon, I tend not to think very highly of the tiny characters. Wheelie flat-out annoys the living heck out of me, Rewind and Eject seem to have the same problem as the 1986 Mini Autobots (they all have serious mental defects), and half the cassettes don't talk so I've never really gotten a handle on them as characters.

Oh, wow. I knew you hated Wheelie, but I didn't realise you didn't care for the others either! I'm grateful you read this at all in that case! Fortunately, (and with all due respect to Mr Welker), Wheelie is a lot more tolerable when you don't have to listen to the voice...

> I tend to think of the tapes as more or less extensions of Soundwave ("Operation: Go Do A Thing, Then Come Back")

This made me laugh because this is how I have Soundwave see his own relationships with the cassettes. It really is the case in the cartoon and it's why I've always avoided writing these guys before. Obviously, it doesn't come out in this fic, but I'm leaning into this pretty hard for the next one.

> You say that Wheelie "trapped" Sharkticons, sometimes for fun, but... he killed them afterwards, yes? The "Wild Boy of Quintesson" storybook shows him wearing a necklace of Sharkticon teeth, I'm pretty sure. (Not sure if you accept that as canon, of course.)

Definitely not writing to the Wild Boy of Quintesson canon! But, yes... when I said he trapped them for spare parts (as well as fun), I meant to imply that he killed them. Wheelie's idea of entertainment on Quintessa probably involved mutilation, honestly. One of the reasons he doesn't want to talk about his past is because he hasn't exactly been following Autobot ethics.

> I'm not sure if you have plans for the other Decepticon cassettes, but it occurs to me that we never see Buzzsaw during season three...

Wait--what? I thought they all appeared on screen at some point in season 3. Dear god, this is a *game changer*. I can say he's dead! Think of the reduction in word count I can make just by deleting every 'and Buzzsaw' (Insert Schuyler Sisters gag here).

Yeah, I know you're suggesting I actually *feature* Buzzsaw in his own death scene, but nope! I'm drawing a line! There are just *so many* Decepticon cassettes... I've already decided I'm not going to write Overkill and Slugfest into events yet. (Ratbat will feature, but only because I wrote his origin when I did the Autobot Cassettes.)

> Oh! I remember you asking here about how the cassettes stored information. It's neat to see what that research ended up being used for.

Probably plays more into the next story, but yep, this is where it started! I do make an *attempt* at consistent in-universe technology. A very ropey attempt, but the thought's there.

> So, I love Wheelie's observations about the Autobots' personalities. It's stuff that never really occured to me, but it all tracks. Springer never had to ask Perceptor for translations the way Ultra Magnus did. Arcee does use a lot of quick-witted banter when Springer is around. Really keen observations on your part. You know these characters so well.

Oh, that's exactly what I was going for, that kind of second-level characterisation rather than the obvious--but I didn't want to just make up random quirks--I'm so pleased you got what I wanted out of it! (Yes, it does require knowing the character appearances really well. I'd struggle to do this if Wheelie had been hanging around the season 2 minibots, for example. What *does* Warpath do other than "Bang! Zoom! Zowie!"?)

> I suppose it makes sense that Steeljaw can talk, since Ramhorn can talk and it would be weird for one of the Autobot animal tapes to have the power of speech, but not the other. But now you need to tell me which voice actor you would cast in the role of Steeljaw, because he's the only one whose dialogue I cannot "hear" when I read this story.

To be pedantic, that's because Steeljaw doesn't *have* any dialogue in this story, and I'm not sure if I'll have him talk in the next one either. But as Ramhorn can speak, it always feels weird to me to say Steeljaw can't.

I can't think of a comparative TF voice offhand, but I imagine Steeljaw's to be throaty enough to have that sort of resonant gravitas without being super deep. Kind of Liam Neeson-esque without the Irish accent? You've got a much better voice memory than me, so I'm sure you can assign him something.

> Also, I was preparing myself for the idea that Ravage was going to start talking at some point. I like it better when he's silent... but I was getting ready for it, just in case!

Pleased to confirm that Ravage will always be mute! He doesn't even use the written word.

> Rewind didn't spout nearly enough random trivia for my liking. He doesn't really do it that often in the cartoon, admittedly. If I have any criticism for you at all, it's that he only knew some stuff about Iacon because Ultra Magnus told him about it. I would absolutely expect him to just know a bunch of stuff about Iacon right off the top of his head.

Rewind is a good boy who cites his sources! I didn't mean that Ultra Magnus was telling him this stuff on the shuttle ride to Cybertron--Rewind probably grilled him for everything he knew a decade ago and now knows this stuff better than UM does. I cut the paragraph talking about how young Rewind and Steeljaw are, but in Velvetverse this would be his first time in Iacon, so he's working from secondhand information.

The flipside of knowing loads of random trivia is that you need to spend a lot of time gathering that info. That's the side of Rewind we're seeing here.

> I hate that the story ends with Ravage all sad, and not even knowing if Soundwave is alive. (I mean, WE know Soundwave is alive, because he's around for season three. But poor Ravage doesn't know that.)

Yeah, the next story will follow up on what happens when Soundwave gets his message, but it would have been hard to get a clean breaking point if he had two-way contact, so I went with a message-in-a-bottle style instead, which was very downbeat. Poor Ravage.

> You write the characters very differently than I do. With somebody like Rewind, for example, trivia is his thing, so I lean into that HARD, almost to the point where he becomes a caricature of himself. But, there are also hundreds of canonical Transformers and it's a struggle to differentiate them without relying on quirky personality traits or speech pattern gimmicks.

There's already a lot of repetition in Transformers, even with speech pattern gimmicks (Highbrow taking over from Perceptor, for example). It's a bit of an odd balance between honouring their canon portrayal/gimmick and developing them as *your* story needs. Arcee becoming bad at stealth is a good example of this. No canon source and it doesn't really add anything to her personality, but it helped the dynamic between her and Wheelie.

That's mostly how I operate: I research the broad strokes of the characters, and *then* I figure out how they interact with each other--where they get along, where they conflict, etc. It's the latter that drives their ultimate characterisation.

> I was a little disappointed that Blurr didn't show up, despite him ALSO being a character who tends to annoy me, if only because I knew you would do him justice.

I should have found a role for Blurr, because he actually does buddy up with Wheelie on a semi-regular basis in the cartoon! But he's claustrophobic--not something that appears in the cartoon, but I've used that tech spec quirk as a plot point before, so I can't backtrack on it now and that ruled him out of all the action. Maybe I can find a way to pair him and Wheelie up in the future.

> I will need you to explain the title of the story, though, because I don't get it.

I don't think this saying is as well known as I thought: "Set a thief to catch a thief."

Basically, the title implies that Wheelie and Ravage have a lot in common--and casts a light on Wheelie's moral ambiguity.

Velvet Glove

VelvetGlove wrote:

> Oh, wow. I knew you hated Wheelie, but I didn't realise you didn't care for the others either!

I find Rewind as a character interesting because he loves trivia, and that's a personality trait I share with him. (It's possible that the Rewind entry on the Transformers wiki is written the way it's written because of me. Shh, don't tell.) But Eject's whole personality is "sports" and I find that utterly bland and uninteresting. (My least favorite character from G.I. Joe: the Movie is Big Lob, who is basically "the sports guy" and is therefore just like Eject in my mind.)

I guess what I'm saying is that I never really gave a lot of thought to Ravage (or any of the other animal tapes) having a personality or wants or desires, but you did a good job of fleshing out Ravage and making me care about him.

> Wait--what? I thought they all appeared on screen at some point in season 3. Dear god, this is a *game changer*. I can say he's dead!

Yep! Laserbeak appears in "Five Faces of Darkness" and "Webworld," but Buzzsaw's last appearance is actually at some point in season two. "Auto Berserk," maybe. (In my fanfic universe, he gets damaged and rebuilt into Ratbat.)

> Oh, that's exactly what I was going for, that kind of second-level characterisation rather than the obvious--but I didn't want to just make up random quirks--I'm so pleased you got what I wanted out of it! (Yes, it does require knowing the character appearances really well. I'd struggle to do this if Wheelie had been hanging around the season 2 minibots, for example. What *does* Warpath do other than "Bang! Zoom! Zowie!"?)

I know you were being rhetorical, and I agree, Warpath's whole thing is basically sound effects. I think if you strip that all away, though, Warpath is your standard-issue all-around-hero type, like Brawn or Ironhide or a lot of the first-season Autobots. But, Warpath is a fun character. Allan Oppenheimer's voice is such a treat, and the sound effects add a lot of color to his speech.

> To be pedantic, that's because Steeljaw doesn't *have* any dialogue in this story

You did give him *one* line of dialogue. Which was one word. He said Ravage's name. It's not a *lot* of dialogue, but it's not nothing!

> I can't think of a comparative TF voice offhand, but I imagine Steeljaw's to be throaty enough to have that sort of resonant gravitas without being super deep. Kind of Liam Neeson-esque without the Irish accent? You've got a much better voice memory than me, so I'm sure you can assign him something.

I wish I knew which voice actor did the "hrr-oooow, hrr-ooooow" voice characterization for him. Assuming that wasn't some kind of Marvel archive sound they dug up.

> The flipside of knowing loads of random trivia is that you need to spend a lot of time gathering that info. That's the side of Rewind we're seeing here.

Okay, that's completely fair!

> There's already a lot of repetition in Transformers, even with speech pattern gimmicks (Highbrow taking over from Perceptor, for example).

Very true. Though, while the characters are the same in broad strokes, Highbrow is clearly more haughty and self-impressed. I think he uses big words so everybody will think he's smart, while I think Perceptor might actually struggle *not* to use big words, because he really is that intelligent. It would actually be interesting to get the two of them in the same room.

> I don't think this saying is as well known as I thought: "Set a thief to catch a thief."

Oh, okay. I've not heard the saying before, but that could just be because I'm culturally illiterate!

Zob (might actually finish "Children of Cybertron" at some point, but don't hold your breath)

Just starting this… so far, loving it.

On your Wordpress site, I wonder if you should have your cute little preview image before the story. It really is a cute image.

> by habit, he avoided memories from a time before Quintessa.

Wheelie is a man of mystery. There’s a lot to him that is never explored in the G1 cartoon, where he is glossed over as a kid, despite clearly not being a kid.

> How very like the Autobots: they would benevolently grant him asylum in the hopes he would lure other Decepticons to the humility of their peace talks. Ravage smothered the snarl that rose in reply, and he edged closer.

You probably want “humiliation”. Typos and autocorrect…

> Springer sighed, leaning back against a counter. “Would it be the craziest idea to leave him for now? It’s not like he’s got opposable thumbs… What do we expect him to do?”

It really must be frustrating for Ravage to be so limited in form. Surely someone could install opposable thumbs on the little guy. Still, Tarantulas and Skorponok manage well in BW. Hmmm. RID 2001 Megatron transformed into a hand, so now I wonder if there were a few small handy hand bots scurrying around outside of the cameras focus on the Dark Side, for when there’s a job where you need a hand.

> Obviously, their commanding officer needed to know the details of any Decepticon presence; another, equally valid perspective was that a full account of her mixed performance against a Decepticon less than half her size would be sent for review to the guy she had been flirting with for the past three years.

Nope. Not going to let Arcee talk down her accomplishments like this. Bad Arcee! Bad! She saved an Autobot’s life, when they darted into a space she couldn’t easily follow and fell into a trap. She did great fixing Wheelie’s mistakes.

I don’t know if this is really out of character for her, since she only had speaking roles in a handful of episodes, but it feels off to me. I think of her as confident in her abilities and performance but not cocky, and not judging herself harshly. Certain that Hot Rod would have teased her about her injuries without judgement, but not sure how Rodimus Prime would react.

I think we’ve filled the gaps in her character differently.

Also, your Perceptor is not a lunatic magician who just baffles people with technobabble, so they think he’s doing science when he’s doing things like creating a working space ship out of a model rocket in “Child’s Play.” Everyone thinks Wheeljack was a mad scientist, but at least he *did* science, and didn’t somehow alter reality. Ahem.

Anyway, a valid Arcee that doesn’t match the Arcee in my head.

> “Come on Rewind, or be left behind!”

This line leaps out at me. I can’t quite fit the Wheelie sing-song to it in my head.

Just a suggestion — come along Rewind, or be left behind — Wheelie’s speech is a touch more playful, and he tends to keep a regular meter on his couplets when it is easy, so rather than 4-5 syllables with “come on”, you can get 5-5 with “come along”. It also helps the sing-song, since it’s an even number of total syllables.

Now I want to go through every line Wheelie ever gave. I think each side of the couplet is more often even syllables, so the first part ends on a stressed syllable.

Come on along Rewind, or you’ll be left behind?

Wheelie is hard, and there are constant cases in the source material that break the patterns.

Ok, tiny nitpicks aside, I loved this. Wheelie going through the motions of teamwork, and just beginning to see it as valuable is great. Not a full lesson learned, but the seeds of a lesson, like in real life.

Ravage is great. I assume he has put a secret code in the message he is transmitting.

It’s a little odd how much damage Ravage can do, but this is right after TFTM, during that brief window when Transformers were actually able to do damage. I don’t know if the armor was turned into butter, or what, but it is canonical. Just weird.

Zobby tippity-tapped upon his keyboard:

> Yep! Laserbeak appears in "Five Faces of Darkness" and "Webworld," but Buzzsaw's last appearance is actually at some point in season two. "Auto Berserk," maybe. (In my fanfic universe, he gets damaged and rebuilt into Ratbat.)

I have been very aware of this. He could get killed before the movie if someone wanted to kill him.

I have not done a full inventory of who stops showing up when. I know Mirage vanishes, but he might just be invisible.

Slightly random question: do you think people would make use of e-book versions of fics? Mine tend to run long and would probably be easier to read on an e-reader.

Zobovor wrote:

> You did give him *one* line of dialogue. Which was one word. He said Ravage's name.

Oh, duh. Yes. I was going to have him say something else and changed my mind, but I forgot this bit stayed in. I'm kind of shocked I did forget, considering how often I re-read this in the editing stages. At some point my brain must have filtered everything out but grammar.

GustavoWombat wrote:

> On your Wordpress site, I wonder if you should have your cute little preview image before the story. It really is a cute image.

I considered it, but I really couldn't get it how I wanted. Like, back in the day when I knew how to use various photoshop programmes, I might have tried to add Ravage's shadow to the wall behind the group. But I haven't done that sort of thing for years, and now I don't know where to start with all these new-fangled apps.

That said, I'm tempted to put the image in the scene break right after the foursome have got together for their mission.

>> How very like the Autobots: they would benevolently grant him asylum in the hopes he would lure other Decepticons to the humility of their peace talks. Ravage smothered the snarl that rose in reply, and he edged closer.

> You probably want “humiliation”. Typos and autocorrect…

Hmm, 'humility' was deliberate since humbleness is a desirable trait in Autobots and notsomuch Decepticons, and peace talks require a certain amount of it. But I wonder now if I should have been more explicit with 'humiliation'.

> It really must be frustrating for Ravage to be so limited in form. Surely someone could install opposable thumbs on the little guy. Still, Tarantulas and Skorponok manage well in BW. Hmmm. RID 2001 Megatron transformed into a hand, so now I wonder if there were a few small handy hand bots scurrying around outside of the cameras focus on the Dark Side, for when there’s a job where you need a hand.

As Zob said, usually the cassettes are an extension of Soundwave, so Ravage can just rely on SW or Rumble or Frenzy to do the opposable thumb stuff! That said, I love the idea of hand-bots. Maybe they can capture a few humans or nebulans, and start up a Handmaster subgroup.

> I don’t know if this is really out of character for her, since she only had speaking roles in a handful of episodes, but it feels off to me. I think of her as confident in her abilities and performance but not cocky, and not judging herself harshly. Certain that Hot Rod would have teased her about her injuries without judgement, but not sure how Rodimus Prime would react.

> I think we’ve filled the gaps in her character differently.

Yeah... that last part is about right. This isn't how she is in the Movie and it isn't how she is in Five Faces of Darkness, so it's a blip in between which is entirely my own creation.

Basically, Arcee is in kind of a weird situation where her peer has suddenly shot to the top of the career ladder: he's now leading all the Autobots and she's still a general soldier. He destroyed Unicron and she can't even contain Ravage.

(Plus, they had this semi-serious mutual crush going on and they haven't formally broken up, they've just sort of defaulted to that and she is doing everything she can *not* to talk to him and generally handling the whole situation really badly.)

I shouldn't have to explain this outside of the story, and I did consider cutting this paragraph, but it's a plot point I want to circle back around to eventually. Besides, self-doubt about the Ravage-encounter gives her an incentive to join in with Wheelie's vendetta.

> Also, your Perceptor is not a lunatic magician who just baffles people with technobabble, so they think he’s doing science when he’s doing things like creating a working space ship out of a model rocket in “Child’s Play.” Everyone thinks Wheeljack was a mad scientist, but at least he *did* science, and didn’t somehow alter reality. Ahem.

*snerk*

>> “Come on Rewind, or be left behind!”

> This line leaps out at me. I can’t quite fit the Wheelie sing-song to it in my head.

> Just a suggestion — come along Rewind, or be left behind — Wheelie’s speech is a touch more playful, and he tends to keep a regular meter on his couplets when it is easy, so rather than 4-5 syllables with “come on”, you can get 5-5 with “come along”. It also helps the sing-song, since it’s an even number of total syllables.

The problem for me is that you're then matching 'come' to 'or' instead of 'be'. This was one of Wheelie's lines where I went over it in my head a few times, and I decided I need the parallel inflection on the verbs, even if it means 'or' ends up existing outside of the meter. I.e.

Come On Rewind,
(or) Be Left Behind!

I could make it 'Oh, come on,' to fit the 'or' into the scheme, but Wheelie doesn't tend to use those extraneous words at the start of sentences. He's very concise.

Wheelie's speech patterns are a royal pain.

> Now I want to go through every line Wheelie ever gave.

I endorse this project and eagerly await your findings.

> Ravage is great. I assume he has put a secret code in the message he is transmitting.

Not quite, but we'll find out what he sent in the next story. Which I am officially working on, so you might get it in a month, you might get it in two years when you've forgotten all about this one....

> It’s a little odd how much damage Ravage can do, but this is right after TFTM, during that brief window when Transformers were actually able to do damage. I don’t know if the armor was turned into butter, or what, but it is canonical. Just weird.

It's mostly superficial. Wheelie was most injured by the electric shock (which is also something that canonically doesn't do a lot of damage to be fair), plus Ravage got one of his optics. But yeah, the cartoon rarely showcased the Decepticons as actual threats, so I tend to put them on steroids in fanfic...)

Velvet Glove (who is also guilty of weakening the Decepticons as a plot convenience)

VelvetGlove wrote:

> Slightly random question: do you think people would make use of e-book versions of fics? Mine tend to run long and would probably be easier to read on an e-reader.

I vote for epub and/or mobi formats. I wouldn't mind a single e-book that collects all your work in chronological order.

VelvetGlove wrote:

> Slightly random question: do you think people would make use of e-book versions of fics? Mine tend to run long and would probably be easier to read on an e-reader.

> GustavoWombat wrote:

>> On your Wordpress site, I wonder if you should have your cute little preview image before the story. It really is a cute image.

> I considered it, but I really couldn't get it how I wanted. Like, back in the day when I knew how to use various photoshop programmes, I might have tried to add Ravage's shadow to the wall behind the group. But I haven't done that sort of thing for years, and now I don't know where to start with all these new-fangled apps.

Oh, I think you would want to cast the shadow the old fashioned way, with lights and a Ravage figure. I don’t know how you would get that lighting to work out so the foreground figures are not silhouetted.

>>> How very like the Autobots: they would benevolently grant him asylum in the hopes he would lure other Decepticons to the humility of their peace talks. Ravage smothered the snarl that rose in reply, and he edged closer.

>> You probably want “humiliation”. Typos and autocorrect…

> Hmm, 'humility' was deliberate since humbleness is a desirable trait in Autobots and notsomuch Decepticons, and peace talks require a certain amount of it. But I wonder now if I should have been more explicit with 'humiliation'.

I definitely didn’t get the notion that having talks at all was the problem, rather than having been beaten. Whether that was a problem with me reading or it was unclear to someone who didn’t have a cat meowing for treats, I cannot say.

Are Decepticons generally unwilling to negotiate from a position of power? I know that Galvatron was willing to form an alliance with Quintessons, although that’s not the same thing as negotiating a cease fire.

>> I don’t know if this is really out of character for her, since she only had speaking roles in a handful of episodes, but it feels off to me. I think of her as confident in her abilities and performance but not cocky, and not judging herself harshly. Certain that Hot Rod would have teased her about her injuries without judgement, but not sure how Rodimus Prime would react.

>> I think we’ve filled the gaps in her character differently.

> Yeah... that last part is about right. This isn't how she is in the Movie and it isn't how she is in Five Faces of Darkness, so it's a blip in between which is entirely my own creation.

> Basically, Arcee is in kind of a weird situation where her peer has suddenly shot to the top of the career ladder: he's now leading all the Autobots and she's still a general soldier. He destroyed Unicron and she can't even contain Ravage.

> (Plus, they had this semi-serious mutual crush going on and they haven't formally broken up, they've just sort of defaulted to that and she is doing everything she can *not* to talk to him and generally handling the whole situation really badly.)

> I shouldn't have to explain this outside of the story, and I did consider cutting this paragraph, but it's a plot point I want to circle back around to eventually.

It’s clear. It just doesn’t quite fit with my mental model of Arcee, but her characterization got the short shrift in the cartoon, so I don’t think it’s out of character for what’s there. I may also be influenced by Earthspark Arcee, who is a lot more aggressively confident — to the point where she seems out of character.

> Besides, self-doubt about the Ravage-encounter gives her an incentive to join in with Wheelie's vendetta.

I could see Arcee just annoyed that Ravage clawed her and going along with it for that.

>>> “Come on Rewind, or be left behind!”

>> This line leaps out at me. I can’t quite fit the Wheelie sing-song to it in my head.

> Wheelie's speech patterns are a royal pain.

I wonder if the G1 cartoon had a script doctor just for Wheelie.

>> Now I want to go through every line Wheelie ever gave.

> I endorse this project and eagerly await your findings.

I fear learning Wheelie’s patterns too well. And then feeling compelled to go through the tfwiki page on him, fixing the meter.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the next story,

CodigoPostal wrote:

> VelvetGlove wrote:

>> Slightly random question: do you think people would make use of e-book versions of fics? Mine tend to run long and would probably be easier to read on an e-reader.

> I vote for epub and/or mobi formats. I wouldn't mind a single e-book that collects all your work in chronological order.

It'd be epub. It seems that Amazon was the only hold out for that format but even the Kindle will accept it now.

The wordpress estimated reading time was a bit of an eye-opener for me. I'd like anything that takes more than an hour to have an ebook option. May or may not try to compile all of them... I'll experiment a bit.

VelvetGlove wrote:

> The wordpress estimated reading time was a bit of an eye-opener for me. I'd like anything that takes more than an hour to have an ebook option. May or may not try to compile all of them... I'll experiment a bit.

For what it’s worth, it did not take me an hour to read it, and I think I am a slow reader. Or at least it felt much faster than that.

I do think that reading it in the “courier light” that NovaBBS uses might have made me claw my eyes out, though, so I liked the better formatted Wordpress site.