Title: start()
Fandom: Transistor
Pairing: Red/Transistor, unrequited Red/Sybil
Categories/Genres: Pre-Canon, Romance, Fluff, Drama
Length: Long (27655 words)
Warnings: N/A

Author on LJ: N/A
Author Website: pseudocitrus

Summary:

For some time now a gold triangle has flashed at her every performance, always at the back of the audience, just before the curtain falls.

Review:

If there's one thing about Transistor that gets me raging in both good ways and bad, it's that the game leaves far, far more open to the imagination than it gives you. Every little scrap of worldbuilding they throw at you only opens the world up wider to curiosity and speculation. But in that same way, it lets the player fill in the gaps with their own imagination, their own headcanons and backstories.

start() is one such backstory. It takes the few vague and mostly between-the-lines hints that canon gives us and expands upon the relationships between Red, Sybil, and the eponymous Transistor. The game's setting is fleshed out in wonderful detail, giving rise to a more colorful, and more startlingly transient world than the one that the player guides Red through. And yet, for all that pseudocitrus' imagining of the city of Cloudbank is quite literally created from their imagination, it still fits within the frame canon constructs neatly enough to be believable to someone who's played the game through.

However, just like any heavily headcanon-based work, your mileage may vary.

start()