Transformers Fanfic: Tales of the Intermezzo
Last Updated 4/9/2020
"Sale of the 24th Century Epilogue" added.


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The revamped LEXICON is now online! Go there and rate my stories!

    These are short fanfics I've written that tell the tale of a single character or small group of characters during the period between the Great War of the Autobots and Decepticons and the start of the Beast Wars. They share a number of common themes, but no strict continuity, so don't be surprised to see contradictions between one story and another. They're listed in the order they were written.

    While I feel free to have one story contradict the continuity of another, I do tend to revisit themes or storylines every so often, leading to some "sub-universes" that are linked together. I have added some color-coded notes to each entry to let you know which ones have some links. If I miss one, let me know. "300 Year Gap" refers to stories set between the end of G1 and the start of Beast Wars, and includes those I used to call Retrieval Stories. Not all 300 Year Gap stories are in the same sub-continuity, it's more of a thematic catch-all bin.

Tales of the Intermezzo - 1998

  •    "Decoy" - A character from the Machine Wars line goes from a nobody to a somebody. 300 Year Gap
  •    "Sky Link" - Not every Autobot hero got a hero's welcome on returning to Cybertron.... Picture now available, but read the story first. 300 Year Gap
  •    "S&H" - Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you. This tale is lighter in tone than the two above, and stars Defcon, a character who appeared in one episode of the cartoon. 300 Year Gap
  •    "I Am" - The war is over for Omega Supreme.... 300 Year Gap
  •    "Time's Blister" - What about the humans during all this? This somewhat dry story starts to paint a picture of what they might have been up to. Metatime Story
  •    "Planet Brawn" - Come with a couple of Cybertronians to visit the original location of one of the most famous restaurant chains on Cybertron! 300 Year Gap
  •    "Sunset" - For some Autobots, the War never ended. 300 Year Gap
  •    "Night Watchman" - They also serve.... Skyjack Trilogy
  •    "Ethos" - A young Scuba ponders what makes Maximals and Predacons different. 300 Year Gap plus BWII.

Tales of the Intermezzo - 1999

  •    "Sentinel" - A hundred years after the events of "Time's Blister," the past catches up with Adrian Witwicky. Metatime Story
  •    "AKA Primal" - The adventures of our favorite Boss Monkey when he was a young protoform.... 300 Year Gap
  •    "Parable" - The Predacon storyteller Aki-M entertains the masses with a tale from the very beginning of the Great War.
  •    "POW" - Most died. Some joined the Predacons. But what happened to the other Decepticons that failed to avoid capture? 300 Year Gap
  •    "Pairbond" - A Nebulan walks into a bar.... Incorrect Continuity Guess Story
  •    "Face" - It all began and ended with Nucleon. A tale set in the intermission between the G1 and G2 comicbook titles. Actionmaster War
  •    "Perchance" - What is it that makes you who you are? Brain? Body? Spark? The ever-logical Prowl has reason to consider this question as I splice together bits of G1 cartoon, G1 comic and Beast Machines. Actionmaster War
  •    "Name" - On a seemingly insignificant world, the first creature capable of naming things awakens to the concept of names. And then her world is destroyed.... Elements of the Furman issues of the comic and the Beast Machines show are employed here. Incorrect Continuity Guess Story

Tales of the Intermezzo - 2000

  •    "X" - What really happened to Megatron after Unicron found him? This story ties in elements from Battlestars, the Japanese "Return of Star Convoy" series. Battlecross
  •    "Second Seed" - So, the story of Beast Machines is over. What next? This story speculates about what might happen to Cybertron aeons after the Great Reformatting. Post-Beast Machines Speculation
  •    "Repro Men" - After the Great War, a group of Maximals tries to find Vector Sigma in order to start restoring the population lost to the conflict. Along the way, they discuss alternatives in case they don't find Vector Sigma.... 300 Year Gap
  •    "Freedom" - Sometimes, the revolutionaries aren't who you'd expect. Post-Beast Machines Speculation
  •    "Goons" - Unless you share a lot of interests with me, you're likely to find this totally inexplicable. It's a crossover with The Goon Show, a 1950s radio humor show on the BBC.

Tales of the Intermezzo - 2001

  •    "Soul of the City" - Gleefully mixing together bits of continuity, this story answers the question "What happened to Metroplex?" Skyjack Trilogy
  •    "Full Circle" - The final part of the "Skyjack Trilogy" (Night Watchman and Soul of the City are the first two parts), set in the far future as humanity reaches a turning point that could affect the entire universe. And it's up to the Last Decepticon to stop them! Skyjack Trilogy
  •    "Regret" - You can't keep a bad spark down.... 300 Year Gap with Masterforce link.
  •    "Virus Warning" - Metal Mental Fatigue. Actionmaster War

Tales of the Intermezzo - 2002

  •    "Head and Heart" - Years after Masterforce and Victory, Minerva seeks to find herself...or at least flee from reminders of her old human half. Battlecross
  •    "Holes" - Late in the final days of the Beast Wars story, Rattrap finds a few holes that need plugging. Beast Wars/G1 link (non-300 Year Gap).
Tales of the Intermezzo - 2003

  •    "Old Flame" - Set between Armada and Energon, a short character piece as one of the kids from Armada deals with some issues. Probably going to be contradicted something fierce, but hey. Armada/Energon link
  •    "Alert" - Set after the Actionmaster War, this explains the entry of a few characters into the Transformers: Universe storyline.
Tales of the Intermezzo - 2004

  •    "Elseworld" - A departure from "pure" Transformers fanfic, this looks at what happens when more than one alien life form ends up on Earth in 1984. JLAutobots
  •    "League" - A followup to Elseworld, merging more of the two mythoses (mythoi?) and forming the Justice League of Autobots! JLAutobots
  •    "Meister" - A foray into the Alternators/Binaltech storyline, explaining why Jazz changed his name. Among other things. Heh.

Tales of the Intermezzo - 2005

  •    "Jolted" - Due to various reasons that don't bear going into here, Energon didn't flow very smoothly into Cybertron. Which means plenty of gaps for me to exploit, starting with the take of Jolt heading off for ComiCon International 2020! Energon/Cybertron link.
  •    "Ripples" - Jetfire starts to find that his memory is playing tricks on him. He remembers things that no one else does, bits of the past that are no longer part of history. So he sets out to try to get his head together.... Armada/Energon/Cybertron link.

Tales of the Intermezzo - 2006

  •    "Shift" - Downshift is a complicated bot, and no one understands him but his woman. Armada/Energon/Cybertron link.
  •    "Howl" - Some time in the past, as Lugnutz enjoys brief freedom from Crosswise's prison, he engages in a little poetic homage. A/E/C based.
  •    "Kiss" - Sometimes one life isn't enough, but two lives may be too much. And sometimes you can go home again, in a way. 300 Year Gap.
  •    "Documentary Hypothesis" - Bud interviews some people who had previous contact with Transformers to get the story on what happened to them...in the current timeline. Picks up from Ripples, contains spoilers for the last episode of Cybertron. A/E/C based.
  •    "SB-1" - A crossover fanfic, involving an alternate origin of the Space Bridge technology, and a different reason for Micromasters to have been made.
  •    "CDGR" - Another crossover fic, this one very short. Mercifully so.
Tales of the Intermezzo - 2007
  •    "PsyOp" - A piece of Classics fiction, tying into my review of the "Battle for Autobot City" set. Sometimes a Skywarp-shaped rock really is a threat....
  •    "Scale" - Another Classic story, this is a vignette about Terrorsaur's first trip out into the wild on Earth and the strange and wondrous things he finds.
  •    "Rush Hour" - Fireshot, one of the older RoadBots on Earth, runs into a little trouble on the highway. RoadBots story.
  •    "Z" - A crossover fic, in which the Ark crashed in the world of Mazinger Z, and got tangled up in the schemes of Doctor Hell.
  •    "Dinosaur Tech" - A short piece set between Scramble City and Headmasters, featuring a couple of the Cassette Autobots who got toys but never showed up in the cartoons. Winner of the April 2007 AllSpark Fic Challenge.
  •    "Two Autobots Walk Into A Bar" - During the Actionmaster War, Grimlock accompanies Jazz on a covert contact mission, disguised as a human thanks to some modified Pretender shells.... Winner of the May 2007 AllSpark Fic Challenge.
  •    "Scars" - My first piece set in the 2007 Movie continuity, focusing on Ironhide, and how the scars worn on the outside can reflect the scars carried on the inside.
  •    "Small Parts" - A minor character in the 2007 Movie does some publicity on opening night. Contains some spoilers.
  •    "Org Chart" - I work out a little of my job stress via Signal Lancer, the intrepid traffic signal TF. A/E/C based.
  •    "Plot Device" - A tie-in with the System Corruptors Annual below, it turns out that Traumastar doesn't get away quite as cleanly as he'd hoped at the end of Chapter 3, and Channel has to deal with the aftermath! Yes, it's a crossover tie-in story written 13 years after the original crossover. Hey, DC did Crisis on Infinite Earths #4.5 after an even longer gap than that....
  •    "Reject Moonbase" - When Megatron left Cybertron in Shockwave's care, there were a lot of holes in the chain of command that needed "temporary" filling, and Shockwave's the sort of thorough character who'd ensure all the holes were plugged. This is the take of one of the smaller holes, and the Decepticon who fell into it and was lost.... Winner of the November 2007 AllSpark Fic Challenge.
Tales of the Intermezzo - 2008
  •    "Cleanup": An early shot at the Transformers: Animated continuity, looking at an event stuck somewhere between the opening sequence of the pilot and the "fifty years later" main action.
  •    "Opt Out": A tale of culture shock in the 2007 Movie setting, in which we see that it's not always the differences between cultures that cause dismay.
  •    "Consumer Protection": A courtroom drama in one of the possible ancient pasts of Cybertron. Sometimes a EULA isn't good enough to shift all the blame.... (Only entry in the August AllSpark Fic Challenge, so kinda the winner by default, I guess.)
  •    "Mythos": Rewind doesn't like to look at the sky over Cybertron, but why? And what does it have to do with the Transorganics?
Tales of the Intermezzo - 2009
  •    "Youth Is Wasted On The Young": Possibly my longest story title, and my second Transformers: Animated story. This time focusing on an old scientist who's seeing the world start to change around him, and wondering about the choices he made.
  •    "Fire Season": A short Revenge of the Fallen story about a pyromaniac toaster, written for an AllSpark Fanfic Challenge.
Tales of the Intermezzo - 2010
  •    "Night Call": A year before Sam Witwicky's world exploded, a young woman's world got turned upside down by a mysterious caller. 2007 Movie setting.
  •    "Hazy Days": A vignette showing what happened at the Smithsonian after Jetfire took everyone to Egypt. Revenge of the Fallen side-story.
Tales of the Intermezzo - 2011
  • "Closing the Barn Door": After the defeat of the Decepticon uprising at the end of TF:A Season 3, a few leftover Decepticons have gotten their hands on a top-secret space bridge research facility, and a small group of TransTech officers and Autotroopers have to stop them from unleashing unthinkable horrors on Cybertron!
  • "Why?": A pair of "comic book science" specialists at NEST wonder how Earth could have survived the events of Dark of the Moon, and come to a rather stunning realization....
Tales of the Intermezzo - 2017
  • "Reformatted": Months after the events of Age of Extinction, Megatron has remade himself once more, shedding his Galvatron disguise and gearing up to search for The Last Knight. But why give up such a versatile and powerful body?
Tales of the Intermezzo - 2020
  • Beast Wars Movie Idea: Not so much a story as a pitch for one, in the wake of finding out a BW movie was in production. Almost definitely incorrect continuity guess, Movie continuity.

Other Fanfic

    This section is basically for a few scattered pieces I've written that are relevant to Transformers, but aren't Tales of the Intermezzo.

  • Broken Down: My oldest "free standing" Transformers fanfic, a short vignette involving the Mechanic during the G2 comic. The only older TF fanfic by me is an epilogue to Lizard's "Sale of the 24th Century" which I left out for the longest time since it really doesn't stand alone, but I found it doesn't seem to be on Lexicon so I dug it out of a.t.t archives. Here's Lizard's story on Lexicon. it here.
  • Fighting Fire: A short piece dealing with a battle for one Transformer's soul.
  • Boredom: What happens when a godlike being gets bored?
  • System Corruptors Annual #1: This is the aftermath of a crossover storyline I did in the Legion of Net.Heroes, using RoboMACs characters of my own creation...although with close ties to G1 Transformers. In this piece, the RoboMACs meet their Transformer counterparts in a series of short stories. Note: back in 1994 when I wrote this, I didn't make a habit of proofreading my work before posting it, so there's a number of typos and weird errors here and there.
    • Section One: Prelude (Talking Heads), Chapter One (Something's Not Quite Right), Chapter Two (Reality's Gone In The Blender) and Chapter Three (Opposites React).
    • Section Two: Chapter Four (Making Waves/Lord of the Files), Chapter Five (Survival of the Fittest).
  • A SuperDeformed Christmas Party: A fumetti (photo-comic) using various cute little robots at an office Christmas party. And, in a similar vein, here's the true story of Rhinox's conversion to Tankor and Scourge finding a new power source.
  • Tribarrel Techspec: An AEC-continuity techspec for Tribarrel, the Autobot I designed based on my new car. :) His presence in the Armada and Energon conflicts is part of the retcons discussed in "Ripples" above, but he was always a background character there even in the new history.
  • Channel Techspec: An old MUX character of mine. I've redesigned him for various settings, but since lost the original background info. So here's a new writeup, in the More Than Meets The Eye form.
  • Chironax MtMtE Page: After one too many black Bumblebee redecos, I decided to make up a new character who was the true identity of the Black BBs...Bumblebee's brother the spy.

Essays Etc.

    I've written a number of pieces worth putting online that aren't fiction, but deal with fiction. Aspects of Transformers mythology, or meta-reviewing of toys, or whatever. They go here.

  • Transformers: the Gathering: Written back in 1994, a way to play Third Edition Magic: the Gathering with a regular deck of playing cards and Transformers characters.
  • The Three R's Of Transformation: An essay on three distinct styles of transformation, as far as the toys are concerned. 2000.
  • The Three D's Of Transformation: A companion to the previous essay, this is concerned with why the character transforms. October 26, 2010.
  • What's In A Name?: An essay about the topic of reused names in Transformers. 2001.
  • Response to reviews of the Skyjack Trilogy: Bobbi Carothers runs a semi-organized review board on alt.toys.transformers.fanfic, and in June 2001 she asked me to submit a piece to the "FFR" (FanFic Review) process. I submitted the Skyjack Trilogy, and four reviews came in. This file includes all those reviews, plus responses of mine to some of the points in the reviews. June 2001.
  • "It's a Mythology, Not a Canon": An essay about the Transformers Mythos, and how it's better seen as a tapestry than as a thread. Note: Hasbro has since taken something like an official stance on the continuity of future seasons, adopting a "Final Fantasy" style of non-continuity, where characters and themes repeat from season to season, but not actual history. If you read my essay here, you won't be surprised to know I'm pleased with this approach. 2001.
  • "Toyhacks": An examination of an underlying cause of One True Way-ism in fandom, especially toy fandom. TOIHAAK = The One I Had As A Kid, pronounced "Toyhack". Updated May 30, 2006.
  • TF Fancharacter Archetype Test: I've seen that fan characters (be they subjects of fanfic, art, or MU*s) tend to fall into one of ten common categories. This test will help you figure out where yours falls. Updated June 11, 2008.
  • Transformers: Spark Hunt: An idea for a Transformers series that would use only Deluxe pricepoint toys and rely on combiners to get bigger characters. February 28, 2008.
  • Transformers Are Gendered: An examination of what gender roles even mean in asexual giant robots. January 8, 2014.
  • Song Parodies - In the tradition of Weird Al (to me, if it doesn't sound like folk music, it ain't filk).
    • "Decepticon Radio": A song parody (I suppose some might call it a filk, but I come in from the Weird Al tradition) based on Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio".
    • "Sweet Transformer": Another song parody, based on "Sweet Transvestite" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's about Override/Nitro Convoy. :)
    • "The Beast Wars Line": Written in 1996 to the "tune" of Green Eggs and Ham, as part of a project that got shut down by a Cease & Desist letter. The matter came up recently, so I dug this up and added it here.
    • "Iacon": To the tune of "Allentown" by Billy Joel, inspired by IDW's deep backstory. Written at the end of 2014.