-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-Introduction-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

After reading a bunch of Firefly and Transformers fanfiction here and on Firefly fan-sites, I followed folks from here over to livejournal and joined a community (or ten). Then a plot-bunny found me, I started entering challenges, and my life has not been the same since.

Please do review my work. Love it, hate it, find spelling errors? Let me know.

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-Chronology-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

All but one of my stories to date (04DEC2008) take place in the same universe. Most of them are tied together pretty closely. For example, What to Live For takes place on Cybertron in the same timeframe as the beginning of Prowl's reminiscence in Primary Mover.

Why Stay? is my only foray into the movie-verse. Take it as the Optimus Prime seen in my other stories trying to figure out why he would be so easily persuaded to stay on the planet that saw his entire race’s hope destroyed along with one of his few remaining friends and long-lost co-ruler.

All the rest are pretty clearly set in the Earthside Generation One 'verse that exists in my head-space. Skimming the Surface, aka chapter 1 of The Faction that Sparked Him, kicks it off (that's pretty much all day one Tuesday at the Ark - I have the watchbill). It is immediately preceded by the identically-titled first chapter of Anything You Like, which starts on Cybertron weeks before and ends as the Decepticons involved depart for Nigeria; it is immediately - within hours - followed by Break from Habit (now chapter 1 of Devoted Service). Break from Habit closes in the morning hours at the Nemesis; Something About You (Anything-2) takes place that afternoon and into that evening, enveloping the time when Primary Mover happens, back at the Ark (17 hours separate the two time-zones). Primary Mover overlaps Under the Plating (Faction-2), which starts at zero-dark-thirty Thursday morning, Ark-time, and wraps up that afternoon. Next come Everything For You (Anything-3), on Sunday, and Down to the Casing (Faction-3), the following Monday. Down to the Casing closes early Tuesday morning (about one week after we started) and the first scene in Approaching the Origin (Faction-4) describes the occurrences between then and the following Tuesday (yes, there's a full week there). The second scene in that chapter takes place late on the Friday night of the lost week, overlapping Secondary Concerns: Reason, Sense and Logic. Faction-4 does not wrap up until sometime after 0400, the following Thursday morning. Just over two weeks elapse in The Faction That Sparked Him.

What Moves the Sun, now the first chapter of Focus of the Sun, takes place about a week and a half after the end of Faction-3. Focus of the Sun, now Focus-2, occurs about a week later and makes reference to some of the events in Faction-4. Love Shared Is Multiplied, chapter one of the identically-titled story, happened a few months before all of that; its second chapter, Company Gladly Kept, takes place only a few days after Faction-3.

What You're Not Doing, the first chapter of A Question of Model Year, takes places a few months after Faction and Focus. They may eventually overlap, but I expect Faction (and Focus) will have been considered complete by then and I'll have to start a more strictly-rated series for Starrunner.

To Be Sparked occurs sometime before the battle that is the culmination of Down to the Casing (Faction-3), I think. I won't know for sure until I get to write the sequel, that should see Ratchet battle the virus the Robo-Smasher planted within Omega's processors. Skyfire didn't 'catch' it, but he didn't completely eradicate it from Omega, either. By the time we see Omega Supreme in the welcoming party, waiting for Skyfire to return in Just Call Me (Question-2), he is recovered and enjoying life as a fully self-aware being.

I think Exercise in Translation (chapter 1) occurs sometime between Faction/Focus and Question. I am ninety percent sure that when we see Bumblebee in Just Call Me (Question-2), he is on restriction for his indiscretion. (In case the term is unfamiliar, 'on restriction' is military-speak for being 'grounded': cannot leave the base for anything other than duty, must be in uniform anytime not in quarters - not applicable to 'Bee, I guess - and under a curfew limiting him to quarters during specific times.) Bumblebee got ninety days because thirty is literally nothing to a Cybertronian and, let's face it: even Prowl knew 'Bee would be on the internet while he was on restriction, anyway. His punishment was mostly to remind everyone that orders are orders and not to be flaunted. Preferred Means of Communication (Exercise-2) spans the gap from Bumblebee's first face-to-face meeting with Mitzi York to the second, Universal Concepts.

Know the Mystery (Meetings with the All Mother-1) is ... indeterminate. (I spared you the pun!) Hound has a similar experience of the Goddess, Joy on Earth (Meetings-2), which occurs concurrently with Skimming the Surface (Faction-1), but he and Mirage haven't yet compared notes for me to know which came first. Their conversation will help me place Mirage's encounter in the overall timeline.

The Mech Before Me (Devoted Service-2) also happens Earthside, and can really be anytime after about the first half-dozen battles, when the stress of being a commander far from home, with parsecs and millennia between him and Elita, and the constant guilt for human casualties, has started to take a toll of Optimus.

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-Defining 'Meiotronic Ratio'-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

The term 'meiotronic ratio' refers to the spark-energy-per-unit-mass of a robotic being. It comes from the term 'meiosis' which is the name of the process by which gametes (i.e., sex-cells, eggs and sperm) are produced in preparation for mating, for production of a new, unique being from half each of two donors' genetic material. In complex sexual creatures (all of them on Earth, outside of a few fungi which remain uniform and produce isogametes) there are two very distinct classes, female and male, the distinction being the investment the individual makes in gametes. Those who invest relatively heavily, producing few gametes with lots of nutrient and instructions for cell creation and division in addition to the donor's genetic material, are designated 'female'. Those who invest very little, producing abundant gametes with nothing but genetic material and a disposable cell to carry it, are designated 'male'. (See Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene chapter 9 Battle of the Sexes.) Since canon spells out the existence of specifically female Cybertronians, there has to be something that makes them qualify as such and it has to be connected to why they would have been driven nearly out of existence in the war. Vector Sigma, the source of original Cybertronian sparks, can be hidden, lost, possibly even destroyed, so there must be a way for Transformers to reproduce themselves; it must be sexual else there would be no need to designate male and female. Since fabricating a new frame is nothing more than engineering, the spark is the answer. Any set of Cybertronians, any number, can donate spark-energy to create a new one and when there is enough, that new one can live independently in a robotic body. How much spark-energy one can donate safely is dictated by one's meiotronic ratio: the higher, the more. There is a known quantity - Astrotrain referred to it as 'the break' - below which one is considered male and above, female. Technically, a female alone can contribute enough to spark a new frame and still be functional herself, but that spark would be identical to her spark: an identical twin soul, not a child. A male can contribute very little and still be functional, really only enough to differentiate the new spark from the mother's spark - but that's all that is needed if two beings have decided they are ready to pursue that creative process together. Willing and prepared, the pain for both is minimal and forgotten in the thrill of such an intimate, beautiful, creative encounter. Even several males cannot safely contribute enough total spark-energy to make even a tiny new Cybertronian viable. (They might be able to do it and survive, given immediate medical care afterward and sufficient time to convalesce and recover their spark-energy. That's not available in wartime.)

When the war escalated, Decepticon femmes strove for efficiency. They sparked as many shells as the technicians could produce, willingly giving of themselves for the cause. They simply wore themselves out, each one's spark-energy finally failing to recover to the original level. Some survived, but as mechs; others faded away completely, dying. (I'm sure they were mourned as heroes of the cause and the survivors given appropriate new roles and the respect their dedication and sacrifice commanded.) Autobot femmes went about their business as warriors and technicians and whatever-they-were, reproducing only at the usual (read: extremely low) wartime rate until the Autobots realized, too late, that the Decepticons were targeting them specifically, even hunting them, to prevent the production of more Autobots. The Decepticons believed female Transformers extinct after Shockwave reported destruction of the last known Autobot base on Cybertron - Iacon - sometime after Megatron left in pursuit of Optimus Prime. The Autobots hoped against logic that somehow some of their brothers- (and sisters-) in-arms escaped that attack.

So, why not simply transfer some mechs' sparks into smaller forms to raise their ratios above the threshold and get the sexes back in some semblance of balance? First, new shells are costly in all sorts of resources (time, materials, expertise that could otherwise be devoted to the war). Second, who's to dictate someone else undergo such a procedure? (Even Megatron would not go there!) Third, in war, bigger is almost always better and short-term survival trumps long-term stability. Meaning that if a new frame is sparked, it is going to be as massive as the spark intended for it can reasonably handle and so, a male. Also, meaning that truly massive individuals are not going to be 'reassigned' smaller frames just to drive their meiotronic ratios up. Even if such a measure were entertained, the only way to bring most males' ratios up high enough is to give them bodies several tens (or hundreds) of times less massive: turn an Omega Supreme into an Ironhide, or a Skyfire into a Cosmos. And that only if their spark-energies were high for mechs their sizes in the first place.

I didn't believe there was a definite purpose to sexes in Cybertronians until my OCs explained it to me. It took some getting used to. -:-21JAN2008