In General:

 

BLACKOUT IS FUCKED UP (literally.)

 

 

 

 

Er, I mean.

 

 

The Decepticon Blackout (death_chopper) is a relatively evil mech, and this particular version of him hails from the 2007 Transformers movie. His player is Philomel-mun.

 

He's big, tough, and relatively badass (those who've seen the movie--or even the trailers--may remember him as the guy who took out an entire Air Force base in Qatar by himself). His alt-form is an MH-53 Pave Low IV helicopter, complete with identification numbers of the original model, which he shot down after copying its form.

 

When he's human and male, he looks uncannily like a scruffy Richard Armitage, only without all the leather. When he's human and female (don't ask, don't ask), he (or is that she?) resembles Chandra North.

 

Blackout's known as the hound of Megatron, a particularly loyal Decepticon who's found himself at odds with Starscream numerous times in the past because of it. Like most Decepticons, he's arrogant, convinced of the inevitability of Decepticon rule, and disdainful of anything and anyone who isn't a Decepticon, especially if they're organic. What makes him different from most others of his kind is that his arrogance (and instinct for self-preservation) extend to his leader to an extreme degree. He would gladly die if Megatron commanded it of him, without complaint...though it would take a direct order.

 

He has a robo-minion, a drone called Scorponok, who's been recovered from Qatar and repaired. Scorp has limited sentience, but has still managed to figure out Livejournal.  When Scorp's squishy, he's usually some kind of dog, the size and fluffiness of which is directly related to how much he's annoyed Eros recently, although occasionally he's a blond little kid with a resemblance to Max Pirkis.  Mentally, he's very like a little kid--naive, curious, eager to please--and this contrasts strangely sometimes with his intrinsic Decepticon-ness.

 

Official Canon:

(Spoilers for Ghosts of Yesterday, the prequel comic, and the movie itself)

Blackout was one of the Decepticons on the Nemesis--he and his comrades were part of the main task force searching for both the missing Allspark and the incommunicado Megatron. His primary function seemed to be opposing Starscream and reminding the others that they were looking for their leader as well as the Allspark.

 

He was there when the Nemesis discovered Ghost 1, the stranded human ship developed from reverse engineered tech from Megs and the Cube, but he didn't actually have much to do with them because he was too busy fighting Autobots, and later having his aft handed to him by Starscream for questioning his authority just a little too much. He didn't learn his lesson, though, and was quick to resume his role as Starscream's bring-down.

 

He was one of the first 'Cons to come to Earth as well, following the same trail of Allspark radiation that led Bumblebee there before them. With Starscream and Barricade, he dropped in on an ambush set up for 'Bee by Sector Seven, busting the trap wide open by accident. It wasn't all bad, though--he got to shoot up some more helicopters, and tried his hand at that "hacking the human systems for info" trick.

 

Blackout got a lovely bit of screen time in the beginning of the movie where, as mentioned above, he trashed the SOCCENT base in Qatar. He killed everybody except a squad of Army Rangers, who of course managed to catch a shot of him on a thermal imager. He dispatched Scorponok to deal with the humans, and continued with his task of hacking their database mainframe and downloading information. (He was thwarted by a human with an axe, who took out the main data hardlines.)

 

He's next seen responding to Frenzy's call to the Hoover Dam, adding "All hail Megatron!" to the handful of standard responses, and then again at the battle in Mission City, where he went after Sam before attempting to sneak up on Optimus Prime and take him out with a handheld-rotor blade. The same squad of Army Rangers that Scorponok had failed to eliminate called in a strike on him, and he was offlined by a motorcycle-assisted crotchshot from Captain Lennox.

 

He was dumped in the Laurentian Abyss with all the rest of the 'dead' Decepticons.

 

(Scorponok, by the way, was MIA as of the end of the movie. He was last seen in the desert, getting shot up by the American military.)

 

Head Canon:

(That is, the stuff I made up)

Blackout was one of the first Decepticons--not among the first to ally himself to the Megatron, but the first to actually "submit" to the implementation of Decepticon programming into his drives (though Megatron didn't exactly tell him what was going to be done to him when he did it). The software, developed by Megatron, was experimental; meant to instill loyalty to the cause, it was flawed, and instead caused him to become incredibly, incredibly loyal to its leader instead. It was too much--his autonomy was lost, and though he is able to act on his own initiative, it's always in the framework of carrying out the orders assigned to him.

 

(I like to think that Starscream was a response to this, an overcompensation in the complete opposite direction. Blackout probably recognizes this, which is why he hates him so much. That's totally head-canon though, which is why it's in this section, and will be adjusted for duly should anyone ever submit to the urge to play a movie!Screamer for us.)

 

Because of the flawed overwrite, a lot of his memories of Cybertron and his life before the war are corrupted. He can remember events and recognize mechs he knew before, but not well, and he is wholly incapable of conceptualizing the way he used to think and, especially, feel. The programming also served to suppress a lot of the "unsuitable" subroutines while enhancing those Megatron considered beneficial in one of his warriors. This severely crippled Blackout's ability to express--or even understand--any emotion that isn't related to aggression, paranoia, or loyalty.  Blackout is aware of these deficiencies, though he doesn't usually count them as such.  He's also aware that he's a flawed model, a failed experiment, and this he denies wholly.

 

Despite this, the original program remains, somewhere deep under the Decepticon overlay. Theoretically, if faced with too many situations his protocols aren't equipped to handle, his processors will break into the repressed code searching for suitable instructions, and he'll be able to recover some of those lost subroutines. The real question is not whether it can happen--it's already started, in-game--it's how far the breakthrough can go.

 

As he's said himself (in the game, that is), "Programming can evolve."

 

Blackout wasn't always known as Blackout.  Before Megatron changed him, he was Capacitor, an electrical engineer created by the mech Powerarc.  Powerarc sided with the Autobots when the war began, and fell under Blackout's hand when they met in a battle, early in the progression of the war.  Another mech Blackout lost early in the war was his original drone, who was little more than a mobile extension of himself, a particularly dextrous tool.  He found Scorponok at the site of a successful Decepticon attack, and when he realized the drone was compatible with him, "adopted" him.  Scorp is more intelligent than his original, and because he wasn't designed for Blackout, he isn't as much a slave to his will.  Scorp is about as autonomous from Blackout as Blackout is from Megatron.

 

Game Canon:

(What's happened on DDD)

Blackout's introduction on the comm was a thinly-veiled distress call, posted on DDD because his integral broadcasting equipment was malfunctioning and all he could do was hack the human internet. He did his best to keep it quiet that he was barely functional, with little more than his central processing core and his self-repair circuits operational. He was reduced to using his LJ to take notes on himself and his condition, lest his memory files corrupt again.

 

Bumblebee was, ah, good enough to inform him of the destruction of the Allspark and the death of Megatron--Blackout refused to believe that Megatron's been offlined permanently, and continues to maintain that Decepticon science can rebuild or recreate the Allspark.

 

Since his first post, Blackout has had some interesting conversations with Bumblebee and Sam Witwicky, and was warned by Optimus Prime that any shenanigans on his part when he escaped would be met with his utter destruction. Oh dear. He's also clashed with both Frenzy and Starscream, and was able to briefly re-establish contact with Scorponok, though the drone soon went incommunicado again.

 

He was incredibly vindicated by the return of Megatron, and not too long after the two of them repaired themselves enough to get out of the ocean. Excellent. For some reason, though, he was not ordered to attack, and in fact separated from his illustrious leader. He took to hanging out in the deserts of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico, which is where Bumblebee found him when he went looking. They Didn't Fight. This is notable.

 

That's also where he was when Freyja turned him human.

 

He came to a couple of conclusions about being human, while he was changed; they all mostly boiled down to IT SUCKS. Surprisingly, though, people tried to help him, even though he's a Decepticon scumbag! And he even accepted their help, because, certain pleas to Megatron notwithstanding, he never really wanted to die. He wanted to die so little, in fact, that he finally broke down and asked Freyja for assistance in learning to be human (because he refused to apologize for insulting her, which was what she required to turn him back). She took him to a bar in Santa Fe, and once he was all liquored up, he found himself apologizing. She restored him to his porper form.

 

Somewhere in there, Freyja sent Eros to give him some sweet lovin'. He actually enjoyed it while it was happening, but then Eros went and Megatron-voiced at him when it was over before disappearing, so he decided he hated him. And then Eros came back for him when he took sick, and brought him to his apartment to take care of him in more ways than one ahahaha , and while he was there he may sort have conceded some measure of command over him to Eros.

 

He also got to go to the Swiss Alps to beat the god up fierce, but that was after both of them dancing around that they might actually like each other so it was sort of creepy and lovey even though Eros was pulling a Tyler Durden. Even when he's human, he throws a mean hook.  After that, they started seeing each other somewhat frequently, getting together for sex and Uncomfortable Revelations several times.

 

Megatron has been MIA since before the initial 'human' incident, failing to respond to Blackout's pleas and any of his transmissions after. This is difficult for Blackout, and in his Lord's absence, he made the decision to fly to Qatar and recover Scorponok, which is...pretty significant, actually, since his orders were to stay where he was. He picked the drone up and took him to Russia for repairs--easier to steal military salvage, you see.

 

While there, Hades (that's Greek, not Disney) made a rather drunken post to the community announcing, among other things, that Eros and Blackout were totally doing it on a fairly regular basis, which they were. While he didn't say it explicitly, it was fairly obvious, and Bumblebee and Mikaela both figured it out. This led to Bumblebee basically bitching Blackout out for hypocrisy, and Blackout, uh...taking it, really. He made no real attempt to defend himself or his actions, which is probably because he knew he couldn't (though he wouldn't admit that).

 

He packed up Scorponok, who'd just been returned to working condition, and headed off to see Eros. Decepticon and drone were both turned human, and Scorp didn't take it well, attempting to attack Eros. The god turned him into a Pomeranian in retaliation, and in doing so exhausted his power. The two of them were stuck organic until he recovered.

 

The Valentine's Day virus hit the next day--though Blackout wasn't affected, Eros was, believing himself to be in love with Apollo. Blackout actually took it relatively well--but made the mistake of getting snarky to Hades, who decided he wanted to have a drink with his grandnephew's lover and killed him dead to bring him down to the Underworld.  He got Blackout got completely smashed and played video games with him, including Transformers: The Game.  He was brought back to life the next day, hungover, and then had to deal with Eros' angst over what Bumblebee and Mikaela had said to him while Blackout was dead.

 

Not too long after that, Eros turned him into a girl on a whim, just in time for him--now her--to be hit by the pregnancy virus; she wasn't actually pregnant, but certainly thought so. She asked the community how to get rid of it, since she refused to "spawn", as she so charmingly put it.  This didn't make Eros particularly happy, as Blackout was firm on the decision and Eros felt like he had a say in it that Blackout wasn't willing to give him.  She had Eros bring her to a clinic for an ultrasound; she and the nurse saw the baby, and Eros didn't.  The god was relieved, realizing it was a virus, and turned Blackout back to himself almost immediately after.

 

Then an accident on Cheetor's world caused him to get stuck in Aladdin world with Bumblebee and Sam, for...some time.  He was actually good and behaved himself!  Eros eventually figured out where they were and gave all three a hop back, and then took Blackout to Vegas to celebrate his return.  They got super smashed and Eros decided to get a Decepticon tattoo, for Blackout, and then, still super smashed, they got married.  By Hades.  Who was dressed up as Elvis.  Eros didn't tell him 'til, like, a week later.  He...was more unhappy that Eros waited so long than that the marriage had actually happened.

 

He then got into a fight with Grimlock, whom he severely underestimated, and had an arm forcibly removed for his troubles.  It took him, like, a week to fix himself.

 

He was recruited into a demonstration of vibrators for Alphonse, and when I say recruited I mean Eros waited until he had him tied to the bed and then brought Al in.  It all turned out okay, though!  Good times were had by all, Al got a neat new toy, and there were some awesome orgasms.

 

And then Apollo found out.  And he was very unhappy.  So unhappy, in fact, that he came to demonstrate the precise extent of his wrath to Eros.  Blackout couldn't just sit back and let that happen, though, and attempted to intervene.  He wasn't very successful, and when Apollo had finished with Eros, he took out his, ah, dislike of the Decepticon on him.  Epically.

 

Alphonse convinced Apollo to bring him to help the two, who were very, very badly off.  Apollo healed Eros entirely, but left when he awoke and had a minor freakout, leaving Alphonse to try and keep the badly damanged Decepticon from, uh, dying.  When he was stabilized, Eros took him with him to Africa, hired a couple local ladies to care for him...and realized the damage was too bad for that to be acceptable.  At the lovegod's request, Seymour came and healed Blackout.

 

It was around then that Guy of Gisborne introed on the comm.  This caused some major WTF, since, ah....he kind of looks exactly like Blackout largely because that's who his human PB is.  It would have been a minor annoyance for Blackout, except Eros thought it was a joke on his part, and world-hopped Guy to Africa for sexytiems.  Because he didn't know where Gisborne came from, and Guy himself hadn't been on the comm long enough to have gotten a good idea of what made his home dimension unique, they...couldn't send him back.

 

So Gisborne was stuck with Eros and Blackout, and Blackout refused to leave Eros alone with him, which caused a little more angst between them as Blackout began to realized just how devoted he really was to Eros.  (This was also the conversation that spawned the idea of stationing Scorponok on move!TF!world to monitor for Megatron's return.)  They eventually returned to Colorado.  At one point, when Eros was out, Gisborne and Blackout got into a fistfight that devolved into dub-con hatesex, and probably marks the exact moment their relationship blossomed into full-blown HAET.  All sorts of things were done to Gisborne while he was there that he was not happy about, mostly of a sexy nature.  He was reprieved only when Robin of Locksley joined the comm, and Eros used him to pinpoint where Guy belonged and sent him back, depriving Blackout of his toy.

 

Not too long after that, the Tied-up Virus hit.  Blackout himself wasn't affected, but Eros was...and he was tied to Mikaela.  It was incredibly awkward and uncomfortable for all of them, particularly because Blackout was convinced that Mikaela would bring the whole legion of Autobots down on them for kidniapping, and was terrified that Eros would get hurt in the cross-fire. 

 

There was one perk, though, in that a comment of Mikaela's forced Eros and Blackout to talk about what the hell they were doing together, exactly.  Blackout admitted that he hated it when he saw Eros with other people, that it infuriated him, drove him crazy, and finally, finally asked him to be exclusive.  A few minutes after that, he told him he loved him, something he'd denied even being capable of for almost as long as they'd admitted to feeling something for each other.

 

Not long after Mikaela was packed back off to where she belongs, Blackout went to visit Alphonse, primarily to ask about alchemy and the fact that  he has twinned soul arrays, and while he was there got into a spat with Eros on one of the secret posts.  They made up with much mushiness, and the next day, Blackout essentially told him that he was okay with being married to him, uncovering the wedding band he'd given to Eros for safekeeping and putting it on again, d'awww.

 

Then they moved!  Eros decided he didn't want to live in Colorado anymore and moved to Chile, taking Blackout with him, since at this point Blackout was essentially living with him full-time, save occasional excursions in his mech form.  Apollo, recuperating from the loss of his arm during the Tied-up Virus, moved in with them, something Blackout wasn't particularly happy about, but couldn't object to.

 

Eros gave them a scare one night while tipsy, winding his way out to the ocean without telling anyone, convinced his mother Aphrodite would appear.  This prompted Blackout to hide all the alcohol in the house, which led to a minor spat between them, which moved on to a conversation about families, something Blackout hasn't the faintest idea about.

 

Then, about two days after that, Blackout got turned into a Pokemon--a Houndoom, to be precise.  He was stuck that way for a few days, during which he accidentally figured out how to breathe fire, and virus affected him more than just physically; he started acting sort of like a dog, more affectionate than usual and eager to please (Eros, at least).  The first thing Eros did when Blackout changed back was return him to mech form.  He took Eros out for a joyride, showing off a number of his weapons and obliterating a big chunk of Andean mountainside, and then as they returned, it turned into one of those Serious Conversations of theirs, stemming from a conversation on why Blackout joined Megatron in the first place. 

 

Not long after that, Scorponok started hacking Blackout's journal, being generally adorable and revealing, without explicitly saying so, that he missed Blackout and it wasn't fair that Eros was always taking him away from him.

 

Around the end of May, Alignment Virus struck, and though not affected himself, Blackout had to deal with an Eros suddenly very, very like his father.  Blackout withdrew from him almost immediately, shutting down into "obedient servant" mode, which pissed Eros off.  He retaliated by fucking the Norse god Kvasir (also affected) and going off to slaughter some Chileans--but not before wrecking the shit out fo the house.  Blackout banged himself up a little cleaning up after him.

 

They got into a huge fight via IM, bad enough to actually crack the effects of the virus on Eros and convince Blackout he needed to leave him, right away, and he nearly did, too.

 

 

 

 

Pertinent Links:

(Further reading, or other stuff you might care about if you've made it this far!)

Critique Meme: Tell me if you think I'm Doing It Wrong.

Transformers Plot Page: What all our various Transformers characters been doing since connecting to this weird place

Information for Omnisicents: Coming soon, I promise.

10 Things You Didn't Know About Blackout: Uh. Just what it says. Some of this was incorporated into the headcanon section of this page.

Fundamental Dichotomy: Blackout's soundtrack, DDD style.

Profile Meme: More things you probably didn't know about Blackout, presented in profile form!

 

 

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Bumblebee thinks he is a jeeeeeeeerk. Jeeeeeeeeeeerk!

 

Hello? Decepticon, remember?

 

jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerk

 

It's in my programming!

 

overcoooome it

 

It's not that easy!