the empire of unsheathed claws

I loved the shadows when they hid me.
I let them wrap themselves around me like a wedding cape.
I walked on four feet, down at your knees,
And kept beneath your optics and your notice
Because I had learned it was dangerous to be beautiful.

Once in a great while, I showed myself.
I marched arm-in-arm on the barricades with my lovers and sang.
I posed for a portrait to show the world pride.
I danced on a pole in a palace on New Kaon
Where no-one who wasn’t bound to us all could see me
And no-one who didn’t love me could touch me.

But still I padded through shadows at night.
And the people who hurt us all fell,
Never knowing what hit them.

But now that you’ve all seen me dance
With the femme whose helm was on fire
And now that you’ve all read my poetry
Still you don’t see me.

I broke up with the shadows who loved me
I dropped my veils and my cape,
Slipped out of my gown of fine mesh
And spat out all my lanthanum chips.
And still you don’t see me.

Stop looking for all of the things I have been.
Stop trying to follow the tracks that I never left behind.
I’m standing right here, being more than the sum of those parts;
And you can’t stop the signal my love has been blasting from Destron’s heart.

cybercatastrophe: So there's an elephant in my front yard.

thunderthighs: Okay, dumbaft, if we didn't all know exactly who you are, we sure do now. And soon we're going to know WHERE you are, too.

cybercatastrophe: Dream on. Also he is never going to conjunx you even if we don't blow his head off.

thunderthighs: I don't know about that. They all said that about you, and if shareware like you can get someone to take you to keep I guess anyone can.

emeraldwings: You are very close to the line, TT, but keep it up.

thunderthighs: And you say that this site isn't biased regarding the current situation.

cybercatastrophe: As I was saying.

cybercatastrophe: "but CC, it followed me home...."

cybercatastrophe: "Is that because you let it out of a cage?"

cybercatastrophe: "...maybe? But CC, it was a really small cage."

cybercatastrophe: "To be fair, DJWaveform, it's a really small elephant."

cybercatastrophe: "Too small to be living alone!"

cybercatastrophe: "But living with a bunch of Decepticons is a better option?"

cybercatastrophe: Readers, I caved.

cybercatastrophe: I'm going to let it slide. I'm not heartless enough to accept humans keeping baby elephants in cages. And besides they can be toilet trained.

cybercatastrophe: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-334815/Smelly-elephant-toilet-trained.

cybercatastrophe: See this is actually an actual thing.

thunderthighs: "See this is actually an actual thing." Gentlemechs, the REAL Voice of --

emeraldwings: I will ban you for doxxing, see if I don't.

thunderthighs: I swear when we win I am going to find out who YOU are.

cybercatastrophe: Shut the frag up already. And I don't know where you picked up your latest UN, but whoever told you that was a compliment in human was lying their aft off.

cybercatastrophe: He promised no more minis without asking. But an elephant isn't a mini.

Old lovers publish your diaries;
Old rivals publish your pictures.
When everyone who wants you is a king,
You're going to end up being queen.

The deceivers publish the lies they want the world to believe.
The foolish publish the thoughts they've been given to think.
And the nodding heads nod in their ignorant judgement.

But I meant what I said.
No matter who you are, or whether I ever intended to say it to you:
I meant what I said.
I wanted to make it clear that my beauty is mine
And my beauty is power, not a curse.

The out-takes are there on your screen
From a cutting room floor on a station we lost vorns ago.
That's not the frame I'm in now, but nothing can make me ashamed of it.
Gawk at the scars on my panel, but the chains in my hands have been broken.
The mech who left those marks on me is dead.
Remember that there is a side of me nobody sees
Till my claws are already under their plate.

Look into my eyes.
Confront the desires you have tried to disown.
Resist violation.
Rise up and transform.

I don't know that we were made by anybody. I also don't know that we weren't. What I know is that if we were made by another species, nobody remembers for sure who they were. Now, at least, we make each other. The sparks come from hot spots and we make the bodies that they go in.

Is there some reason why you think mechanical life needs to have been made by organic life? Just because that's how it happened on your world--your Earth, not the Earth I know--doesn't mean it happens that way always.

It seems like there are a lot of universes that have a planet called Earth with humans on it. We're not planning to invade your Earth. But we already invaded the Earth in our universe. Currently we only have a few outposts there. We tried to take it over, but the Autobots are extremely annoying, and for some reason, they really like humans.

I mean...I like humans as individuals just fine. But it took us four million years to mess up our planet as badly as we have. Their technology is worse than ours, but they are way ahead of us on the messing-up-the-planet timeline. Cybertron is kind of a mess, but when we were less than a million years old as a species, it was still really nice.

Given that we're one of the most destructive species in the galaxy, and they have managed to frag up their planet way more in way less time... I can kind of understand why Megatron was a little worried about what would happen if humans became an interstellar power.

(My husband--my conjunx--is interested in the environment on Earth. He likes animals. Especially elephants.)

Anyhow, if my conjunx and I manage to get control of our faction, we're going to try to move energon mining off Earth and into the rest of the solar system. Given that there's energon on Earth, and it's a mineral, which means it doesn't depend on the existence of a biosphere...we think it's likely there's plenty on the outer planets, it's just a little harder to find because the atmospheres are so dense and interfere with our scans.

Honestly, though? Humans could do a lot worse than to have us running the place. Our ability to mess up biospheres has taught us kind of a lot about how to fix them, and now that the war is over I think that can actually happen, and...

I'm going on and on about this. You don't care about this. It's not your Earth, I'm just thinking out loud because thinking about things like this is my job now. Sorry.

(It would help if we had some idea where all the weird energon ores on the colonies are coming from and why we keep finding them on planets that are already inhabited, when the conditions that lead to the development of intelligent life really shouldn't have any overlap with the development of energon ores...)

Primus' sainted aftbreach, I'm getting as bad as my conjunx about not being able to stop thinking about work..

this space reserved for fun

intimacy, disclosure, profference, devotion
it's a wonder after all this war
that all of us aren't married to each other

(but that may have been your idea)

you're going to pretend not to make a fuss when I leave
but we're always going to be dear to each other
and you're always going to find what you look for:

somebody else's whole world you can borrow
and treat like your personal solus prime for the night
or the century

so I'm going back to the mech I have shared all four of those things with
at least once a year (if not once a day)

and all that I ask of you, darling,
is one little thing.

stop sticking your spike in the crazy.