Nanni

Maelstrom and Gyre, Transformers G1

Maelstrom and Gyre are a pair of twins who got the bad and creepy end of what should have been a fairly routine labor contract. They broke it the first chance they got and, through a complex series of misadventures the details of which I am still pretty hazy on (I have several ideas about what might have happened, but I haven't pinned down any solid thoughts or written anything) they ended up in a position to get fished out of the path of an oncoming storm, refuelled, and put up for the night by Cheerly. Maelstrom, who is their self appointed spokesperson and also the one who's more likely to break your fingers, took the night to think and talk it over with Gyre, and in the morning told Cheerly that they had no where to go, no prospect of anywhere to go, and no job or any prospect of one.

( Cut for length )

Moraine, Transformers G1

Okay, let's talk Moraine.

...I honestly didn't intend Moraine to turn up so often in my fic. She was initially just a walk on to move the plot (such as it was) along. She walked on. She walked off. She went backstage and metaphorically made cocoa and refused to leave.

( Weird little alien robot academics unite )

Agape of Chalcis, Doctor Who

Agape is that much maligned being, an original Companion. But she's not the Doctor's companion, she's Susan Foreman's! She and Susan wander around time and space, generally extremely lost, often with other people along as well, attempting to tend and nurture and heal an underage, undersized, and extremely traumatized former child soldier TARDIS, one of the few survivors of the Time War. There is a lot of tea drunk, a lot of places to stay begged (when the TARDIS panics it tends to kick them out and then shrink so small no one can get in), and a lot of weird mysteries to be investigated and days to be saved.

( More under cut )

It is amazing how many narrative problems you can fix just by adding more women.

Works on other axes as well.

...Oh thank goodness, this First Aid/Rodimus Prime thing I've been working on for over a month is half as long as I thought it was, the link up scene where Roddy's dream self is, of course, Hot Rod and it's deeply distressing all around and then the morning after thing that was giving me so much trouble because the timelines wouldn't mesh is a different story entirely PHOOSH good good good. That was why I was having timeline problems! The whole thing happens a goodly while later!

This is just Oh Okay We ARE Still Dating Guess Who's Got A Massive And ENTIRELY UNSURPRISING Service Kink Yeah It's Us (note: neither of them have figured out that that's what's going on, First Aid because it's basically nonsexual and none of his human patients/friends/colleagues who gossip about stuff like that gossip about the nonsexual stuff, Roddy because he's actually kind of clueless in general about a lot of things - teeny tiny tiny tiny social circle'll do that to you). *kerflumps* That means I'm almost done.

Which is good, because I want to finish this before I work on the various bingos. Also I was beginning to despair of ever getting the idea out of my metaphorical sock drawer.

*face in hands*

Why did I think writing this stupid thing would be a good idea? This is so awkward. So awkward and so weird. This is why I didn't write this before. Ugh, no one is gonna wanna read this.

I am at the I Suck And I Can't Write stage of writing, but it's dragging out uncomfortably long. this is so awkward. I am so awkward.

leave me to die of writing embarrassment.

I picked up a hc_bingo card! Let's see how this goes.

( Card under cut. It's um. Kind of flowery. And sort of mildly NSFW )

I've been contemplating on Transformers ocs again. I really need to figure out what Moraine actually looks like, since after I decided not to kill her off while I was writing In the Low Places, I pretty much stuck her permanently in my mental conception of G1-verse and Beachcomber's personal circle therein. (Which means also Perceptor's circle, poor mech. I don't think he's ever going to find her any less disquieting.) I know she's a smidgebit taller than Beachcomber, and about the same mass, so miiiiiiildly less cobby. Single optical sensor band like a visor. Last time I was thinking about this I was trying to figure out her alt mode, and I pretty much got to "....basically Curiosity, only the wheels are more elliptical, almost oblong, and are basically like little mini tank treads, instead of wheels and they let her go up very steep slopes safely." I figure you can //definitely// see all six treads in her robot mode.

I'm very fond of my worryingly solitary geologist.

And I've been thinking about Cheerly, again, who I haven't put in any stories ever, and I'm not sure sure where to start. Although, really, I think she could make an excellent piece of supporting cast for a dockworker origin Early Optimus Prime story.

Cheerly's a tugboat, who works as tugboat and sometimes as a longshoreman or stevedore, around docks and harbors. I pretty much have her around not for any of my usual reasons - usually I create characters because I have a narrative slot that needs filling, and then they kind of expand - but because I was reading Patrick O'Brian one day, and he had Jack Aubrey say in a crisis to his crew, "All together cheerly now! Cheerly!" and it struck me that there could not be a better name than that for an autobot, and an autobot with a name like that would absolutely have to be a tugboat. There was just no other choice.

...Interestingly, and which I did not know till rather later, there actually was a rescue tug named HMS Cheerly that operated in the Atlantic during World War II.

The thing I can't figure out is why I have an easier time with titles for academic non-fiction than I do with titles for little short stories.

Nanni, the world may indeed need Jack Aubrey, folk rock violinist and officer in the coast guard meets Stephen Maturin, punk cellist in his (highly limited because being an old fashioned small town GP is hard work) spare time, but you don't actually have time to write it, even if the very idea makes you roll around cackling and it would allow you to put Clarissa in combat boots and a gorgeous red silk dress.

I wonder what form Mrs. Williams' attempts to make Sophie into a trophy child would take in this world.