"Oh come on! I didn't even say that outloud!"
—-Salvage, after having mentally taunted Murphy with predictable results.
A Transformers: Prime Self-Insert Fic, Canonfodder follows the adventures of Salvage, a one-time human who, thanks to the intervention of a bored omnipotent being and a one-in-a-million shot to the Spark of a Vehicon, finds himself in the Transformers Aligned Universe - stranded on a lifeless Cybertron, and quickly finding himself with plenty of reasons to doubt his sanity...
Started as a Journal Fic on SpaceBattles.com, but after a debate over whether it qualified as a fanfic or a Role Play became a more standard work of fan fiction. It has the occasional Rouge Angles of Satin but is a very worthwhile read, and an index can be found here
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This Transformers fanfic contains examples of:
- Always a Bigger Fish: Galactica arrives at Earth just in time to intervene in a duel between Wheeljack and Dreadwing. Unfortunately, due to Lickety's modifications to increase the ship's speed, this attracts the attention of the Nemesis...
- Ascended Extra: Shrapnel, the Insecticon sentry at Vector Sigma (who, in the series, remained unnamed before his gruesome death by scraplets), gets woken up early by Shockwave and Salvage.
- Attack Drone: Salvage builds a small army of mini-minions during Galactica's trip to earth, which he then uses Zerg Rush tactics with in combat.
- The Berserker: In combat, Salvage becomes a bloodthirsty borderline psychopath, who thinks throwing an Energon bomb made out of a collection of nearly-dead Vehicon corpses, that screams as it explodes, through a GroundBridge at Airachnid is a marvelous idea.
- Broad Strokes: While the fic takes Transformers: Prime as the main source of its canon, it takes certain elements from the rest of the Transformers Aligned Universe - and the Transformers universe as a whole
- Canon Immigrant: Lickety-Split, who in Transformers: Animated was an extra in all of two scenes note , becomes Salvage's sidekick of sorts.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The result whenever Shockwave joins Salvage and Shrapnel in a "training session".
- Human Popsicle: Lickety-Split was put in a stasis pod in Maccadam's Old Oil House at the very start of the "serious" part of the war, and stayed there until Salvage thawed her out. This results in her being a bit out of touch with current events.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: The fate of virtually every Vehicon who fights Salvage - and only "virtually" because he lets some get away to spread tales among their fellows.
- Fragile Speedster: Lickety. She has to rely solely on her speed for defense on the run to Galactica from the Old Oil House. Salvage works to avert this somewhat by fabricating flexible and durable armor to replace her fragile plating.
- Genius Bruiser: Wheeljack gets to show off his technical skills more than he did in the original.
- Grumpy Old Man: Kup, who wants the young Decepticreep whippersnapper to get offa his moon.
- Heel–Face Turn: Salvage originally sides with the Decepticons mostly out of convenience, Shockwave being the only other (known) functioning 'bot on Cybertron. He winds up deciding he'll defect at some point prior to encountering Megatron, but is forced to accelerate his plans after his encounter with Kup.
- Hidden Depths: Lickety-Split, being a Velocitronian, instantly (and casually!) recognises the Synth-En Salvage has reconstructed from scratch. She also winds up becoming Galactica's pilot.
- Impossibly Cool Weapon: Kup's "musket laser". That shoots acid balls.note
- Jump Scare: While under sedation and being "upgraded", Salvage has a bad dream, and his shouting "Scraplet!" as part of it makes Shockwave freak out and pull out his gun.
- Klingons Love Shakespeare: To kill time on Cybertron, Salvage creates a Cybertronian version of Minecraft. Shockwave of all bots becomes addicted to it.
- Mad Scientist: Shockwave; Salvage shows a talent for scientific endeavor as well, managing to reconstruct a workable form of Synthetic Energon.
- Million to One Chance: A random Vehicon, shot in the Spark by Arcee while she and Cliffjumper escaped Shockwave's lab, has the shot empower him instead of killing him, changing him into a "Point One Percenter" (and replacing his consiousness with that of an alternate-universe human, but that's hardly important).
- Mook Horror Show: The result when Starscream sends a squad of Seekers to Cybertron to investigate Shrapnel's activation signal, and they encounter Salvage.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Salvage's reaction to his berserker moments.
- Mystery Box: When preparing to leave the moon of Cybertron he had been stranded on, Kup loads a large crate into one of Galactica's cargo bays. We still haven't learned what's in it...
- No Fourth Wall: Early on the fic was a "journal fic" in which comments by posters in the thread were "sent through" to Salvage (leading to nightmares of scraplets at one point...). Later became a more "straight" Fan Fic that occasionally leans on the fourth wall instead of playing with it like Deadpool with his health bar.
- No Mouth: As an upgraded Vehicon, Salvage's faceplate is the super-economy model.
- Omake: Some readers of the story have written their own additional scenes for the fic from the viewpoints of other characters, a few of which have been
accepted into canon. - Only the Worthy May Pass: Played with. Vector Sigma will only open for a Prime or someone with the Key to Vector Sigma, but Salvage manages to hack his way partially in. This is possibly a Chekhov's Gun.
- Past-Life Memories / Split Personality: It's heavily hinted that something like this may be responsible for Salvage's combat bloodlust, and that his visit to Vector Sigma might be at least partially responsible.
- Paint It Black: If Salvage spends too much time in 'battle mode', his color scheme starts changing...
- Reluctant Warrior: Salvage would really rather have a desk job, and that's even without his going Ax-Crazy in combat.
- Retroactive Precognition: Utilizing The World as Myth instead of time travel. Due to Salvage having been, originally, a human from "our" universe now Trapped in TV Land, he knows how canon is supposed to go. Of course, this makes him a Butterfly of Doom...
- Right Behind Me: Despite Salvage taking every precaution not to get shot at by Kup while negotiating - including literally engraving an invitation to talk using his ship's lasers and then launching back into orbit - Kup still manages to get well within range before opening communications...Salvage: Kup, are you sitting on my ass in a gunship?
Kup: Maybe. - Rock Beats Laser: Downplayed and discussed. Salvage notes how over the course of the war personal energy shields were downgraded to plate armor, due to said shields gradually becoming Cool, but Inefficient.
- Seen It All: Ratchet isn't surprised in the least at Salvage's combat breakdowns.
- Shout-Out:
- Deliberately invoked when Salvage names his salvaged transport ship Galactica, and he winds up deciding his drone assistants should be called DRDs.
- Lickity-Split claims installing retractable gun turrets would make Galactica 20% cooler. Incidently, Lickity-Split herself is a shout-out to a My Little Pony character.
- Shown Their Work: The author captures the 'voices' of the canon Autobots, especially Optimus Prime, extremely well.
- The Swarm: Many areas of Cybertron are too dangerous to visit due to wandering swarms of scraplets, who will Zerg Rush any Cybertronians who approach. It's speculated that the scraplets have become so vicious due to a lack of natural prey in the blasted landscape.
- Take a Third Option: Discussed Trope. Salvage would rather not ally with either the Autobots or the Decepticons, being disgusted with the actions taken by the Autobots' predecessors in the past and, at the same time, recognizing that the Decepticons' original cause - which he actually believes in - has been so perverted by Megatron that the two sides have basically switched causes over the millenia without even realizing it. He would rather identify as a Cybertronian, but unfortunately, Megatron's faction would destroy any non aligned Cybertronian out of spite, and joining with the very much heroic Optimus Prime is his best bet at both surviving and not being forced to commit atrocities like he would have if he stayed a Decepticon.
