#damn I hate this man more than airachnid and megatron | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nevis-the-skeleton · 2 years

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Airachnid is a dangerous character who deserved more apparition (even if I don't like her, I think that she was a very good vilain)

Once, with a friend, I did a recap of everything Airachnid had done, and then I was like: "Damn, she's super dangerous and badass in fact… "

Here, the little summary of everything she has done ^^ :

She's a Decepticon, well she was. She's not on either side now. She is Arcee's arch nemesis, guilty of murdering Arcee's former partner: Tailgate. After torturing Arcee for information. She led a rather solitary life until her arrival on Earth. She has a passion for collecting rare species, slaughtering all a species and keeping one of the member in collection. She attempted to do this against Jack.

She later allied with the MECH, and kidnapped Jack's mother, to trick Arcee into falling for the MECH's trap.

She finally returned to the Decepticons, after a run-in with Breakdown and the Autobots. And had to team up with Starscream to retrieve a weapon. But, she imprisoned Starscream in cobwebs, and abandoned him to the Autobots, before going to find the weapon on her own. (The reason why Starscream goes neutral afterwards).

She tries to dethrone Megatron, by fomenting behind his back, but gets screwed by Soundwave who immediately puts her in her place. Megatron subsequently orders Breakdown and Dreadwing to get rid of Airachnid. But she manages to escape. Not without killing Breakdown in the process.

She has the power to control the Insecticons, in a rather unexplained way ^^', but I think they are some kind of clones of her, that she can control. Anyway (I will maybe try to answer this question another day), she met Starscream in a cave, as well as an Insecticon, and orders this Insecticon to kill Starscream (mainly for fun… The heck girl… Anyway, Starscream manages to get away with it). She challenge Megatron for a duel, and leaves the Insecticon to deal with it (Megatron wins).

She captures Arcee in her webs, mostly because Arcee foolishly pursued her on her quest for revenge. She is about to kill her, but Starscream intervenes to save Arcee, firing a missile at Airachnid. Airachnid manages to flee again, hurt and with a painful taste of defeat. She comes across an army of Insecticons in stasis, underground. She subsequently orders this army to attack the Nemesis, to kill Megatron. But, Arcee ends up finding her in a cave while the Insecticons attack the Decepticons. The two engage in battle, and Arcee manages to push her into one of the stasis cells in which the Insecticons were locked up. The Insecticons, no longer under Airachnid's control, once again become loyal to Megatron. And the Autobots are keeping Airachnid in the stasis cell, glad they don't have to deal with her anymore!

Just wow! She is only there for 5 episodes of season 1, and 2 episodes of season 2, that is to say 7 episodes in total, and she just mess up with everything and everybody so easly! Personally, I think she's a good villain, because as soon as you see her, you know that it will be a mess, and that she will f*ck up!

I don't like her, I admit, but I can't take away the fact that she's a dangerous villain, and I think it's a shame that she wasn't exploited to her full potential, because it there was really something to do with her. Just having her appear more often would have been nice.

I mean, if you look closely: It's because of her that Starscream became neutral, and ended up do things on his own side, put a spoke in the wheels of everyone (sorry for the joke). It is because of her that Silas can have Breakdown's body and therefore become CYLAS. It's because of her that the Autobots also find themselves dealing with the Insecticons on the side of the Decepticons, one of whom ended up disabled Bulkhead for a long time (5 episodes in all, it's a lot). And all this she did more or less indirectly! Oh, also, it's because of her that Silas understands how robots transform, so indirectly, it's because of her that Bee's T-cog is stolen… (-_-) Do you realize the impact this character had on the series? I think it's a shame that we don't notice it enough… There was so many things to do with this character…

I mean she would easly be an enemy of the season 3, she's dangereous and deadly alone, but she also have the possibilty to have her own army! Plus, we would have for sure more scene of fight with Arcee, and maybe also with KnockOut (who knows). She also want to kill Megatron. And Starscream too! Because, you know, he shoot a missile on her ^^; (oops)...

I think that she would be easly a main vilain... I don't do it in my novel, but because I didn't want that my characters have to deal with a vilain so dangerous like her... They have enough problems like that... But in the original series, that would have been very interresting and awesome!

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youngerfrankenstein · 6 months

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Alright, who wants to hear me talk about my thoughts on a show made for 9 year olds? Part 2!

I’ll admit, I think part of my issue with Prime is just that I set my expectations fairly high. Need to stop doing that. Ever. Part of it was remembering little about season 1 beyond I liked it as a teen. But as it seems this franchise will forever be, kind of a mixed bag, but glad I watched it.

I will say that bar a few I quite like the designs for the bots in the show. The style was clearly taking inspiration from the Bay films while still keeping the designs clear and distinguishable. That said the animation can be pretty janky at times and the locations often quite bland. The latter of which was probably for budget reasons and the former for both budget reasons and the tech of the time.

I also generally like most of the bot characters. I wish Arcee got more focus, especially as she’s introduced to us first, but she’s fun. Kind of a grouch but there for people when they need her. Bulkhead is generally a lot more likeable in this incarnation than Animated, though I don’t think he’ll ever be a favourite. Bumblebee can’t talk here either but they do a decent job of still making him feel like part of the team. Optimus is generally wonderful, a bit distant but clearly intended to be, someone you immediately understand why people would follow. And I fucking love Ratchet in this show, he’s marvellous, more Ratchet please. Wonder why the main team was almost identical to Animated?

Not sure I liked what they did to Wheeljack, did quite like Ultra Magnus. And holy shit if Smokescreen isn’t the worst character in the franchise so far. I hate him so. much. and he brought down any episode he was the focus of. Is this partly because he’s written more than any other character to appeal to 8-year-old boys, something I am not? Yes. But that’s hardly all. He feels like either the pet character of a writer or a studio mandate, I’m not sure which is worse. (Or if either is true, don’t quote me)

The Decepticons, as per usual, are the highlights though. I don’t think there’s one of them I don’t enjoy watching. Starscream and his sniveling, Knockout and his vanity, Airachnid and her sadism (for science!) and the rest are still so much fun to watch for their evil and, even more so, their dysfunction. That said this show also drove something home for me, and that is DAMN do I love Frank Welker as Megatron. Like it’s been clear the man has talent for a long time but wow. The way he can be both quietly sinister and a raging monster is EXCELLENT.

The voice cast is generally quite good, if a bit odd. Peter Cullen and Frank Welker coming back to the roles they made iconic (twice for Welker technically!) but you also get names like Gina Torres, Jeffrey Combs (who I suppose DOES voice The Question) and even Dwayne Johnson in the first episode.

I will say, as seems to be the usual, I am in Fuck Them Kids mode when it comes to the main human characters, who come in Brat, Kid Genius and Blander Than Gruel flavours. Then again by the later seasons it felt like the showrunners/writers didn’t even want them around much either. Will say they have different amounts of believability in their relationship to their assigned bot. Miko and Bulkhead honestly feel like friends who care a lot about each other. Raf and Bee are fine, but honestly by the end I was mostly thinking of Ratchet as Raf’s bot. Jack and Arcee don’t feel like anything really, and you would think that would be the most important one.

Really the writing is the thing. Some of it is VERY good, clever ideas or scenes that leave me on the edge of my seat. And some of it is very bad, comedy that falls flat and “as competent as the plot needs”-itis for all. Not to mention some of the weird stuff with seasons 2 and three, like putting multiple villains on ice and then bringing them back to not… do much in season 3. Part of me wonders if there were issues with the studio and no one was ever sure if/when they were getting renewed. But I must be clear, I am just guessing and could be way off.

Will say I generally enjoyed the wrap-up movie, cute ending, some nice character interactions. Even if “Satan taking over my body made me learn oppression is bad. I’m heading out.” Is a very silly way to wrap up Megatron. Nothing special (and let’s face it, was probably a rewritten and repurposed three-parter) but fun.

Honestly at times a little awkwardly pro-military but it’s an American action show, what do you expect lol. Could have been a LOT worse.

And now to Earthspark! …Which looks to be focusing even more on humans… Oh well. Guess we shall see what it’s like!

#Frare watches the silly robot show #Frare’s Transformers writeups

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whatudottu · 3 years

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Because I've held this off for too long, once again it seems that @nukeli has beaten me to the punch with colour schemes. Damn my procrastination or whatever, but I only just realised that I didn't put any mention of the 'fodder' classes (Vehicons, Insecticons and I suppose Autotroopers since I'm including them) and wanted to put down my thoughts before writing this up.

An added bonus here is that certain character have different alts (based on character changes and even the heavier focus of 'robots in disguise' that these Decepticons are after) so it's not just me ranting about colour schemes.

Yes, this was why I was complaining about the wiki altmodes, so deal with the vehicles I found instead. May or may not be due to me using images as references haha.

The Autobots (you are here)

The Decepticons Part 1

The Decepticons Part 2

Going in order of my notes, we begin with Cliffjumper. He’s obviously a 1970 Dodge Challenger and what colours I’ve given him are on the image below. Nothing much to say about a definitely dead character other than I didn’t just wanna make him blue.

Next on the list is good old Doctor Ratchet. I’ve had it in my mind ever since Nuke’s one post that SG!Ratchet was like Medic from TF2, so I guess I took it and ran.

To play an opposite to regular Ratchet, he comes across as affable and friendly but is really just doing the things he loves to people he hates. Autobots, Decepticons, hates everyone. He despises Optimus Prime too, but he can’t do anything unless he wants to be cooped up in his berthroom reattaching his limbs for it. Believe him, he tried.

As for altmode and colours, I spent way too long finding that he resembles a Mercedes Benz G-Class ambulance that I was ticked to find out he wasn’t at all. I special looked for the green coloured ambulance because Synth-En, duh!

Breaking in after the Doctor comes our local wrecker Bulkhead. I don’t have much of a read on this guy, other than the fact that I thought it’d be a cool idea for him to lose a lot of his memories after ‘TMI’, ya know, from the Synth-En recipe? Certainly not set in stone, but it could very well contribute to my accidental theme of memory (which only has some small links in the posts I actually created).

With the help of my car enthused cousin I have given our not so loveable mech a Terradyne Gurkha, a little more military than the wiki’s off-roader Lamborghini that I’m too annoyed to bother to look at. I thought that the military origins and the black colour scheme sorta allude to something something mindless military man. yada yada.

Following him is our ever wonderful Optimus Prime, or maybe Lord Prime? Haven’t thought too much about that. What I have thought of is this master manipulator who mayhaps also be a little bit delusional idk we’ll decide in the car.

I always loved the idea of a smiling SG!Prime, as if there’s still hints of this benevolent leader that the original has, but it’s warped and meant to add fodder to the war, encouraging mechs to fight to their deaths all in the name of not only the Autobots, but their Prime. Also as a warped version of the original, I wanted Shattered Glass Optimus to be deluded in the fact that Megatron will change, change at least, to submit to the real leader. Ain’t happening. That’s sorta there with Ratchet too, but well, you read Ratchet’s piece didn’t you?

SG!Prime is consistently purple and black, and whilst I have found a Peterbilt Semi Truck with that wonderful colour, it comes with white instead. Think about it, this typically evil colour paired with often innocent white, that’s like perfect for what I’m going for.

Fitting that he’s next, it’s time for Prime’s Second In Command Ultra Magnus. I’ve... really got nothing for him. Maybe he’s still by-the-books but like he finds loopholes just to commit atrocities? I don’t know.

I’ve given this boy a Mack Trident alt instead of Prime’s Peterbilt, just for differences sake.

After Magnus, we got our little bug Bumblebee... or is it. Because I wanted to change his colours a bit without going into Beast Hunter territory, I wondered if bees come in different colours and, low and behold, they do!

As for the boy himself, I think he was one of the bots manipulated by Prime himself to join the cause and, given his almost rewritten personality, has only lived through to this point in the war by sheer luck. This mech is an absolute menace, feral and powered by the need for Prime’s approval, tearing others with denta and servo more often than with stingers and blasters.

Now you’ve noticed I haven’t been using his name? That’s because he’s now Blue Band (I just realised he’s still bb haha)! He gets his name from the Blue Banded bee, and I found a Chevrolet Camaro to match.

In line with BB’s younger status, feast your eyes on Shattered Glass Smokescreen! Oh boy isn’t he a delight. His hero worship has essentially turned him to a prime (pardon the pun) candidate for Optimus to form into his perfect super soldier, who already would die for this deranged mech even before laying optics on this grand Prime.

So, he’s an absolute suck up, a straight up spoiled brat that has it harder than Blue Band for Prime’s acknowledgement, and is actively showing off and bragging that he’s Optimus’ favourite (he’s not, he just encourages it because that’s the easiest way to get Smokey to do what he wants).

Almost to reflect that (perhaps another pun) I found this gaudy Chameleon Chevy Corvette that absolutely SCREAMS show off.

Regrettably partnered up with him after the passing of Cliffjumper, Arcee has run out of patience. Not everything she does is motivated by Airachnid (what kind of character would that be? not a fun one) but she does often enjoy killing those connected with her. After Tailgate, she’s gotten a little mad, but her effectiveness otherwise increased so others never bothered to ‘fix’ her.

Having lost both of her partners, when she absolutely hates another (read; Airachnid and Starscream because he still kills Cliff) the best kind of revenge is putting her opponents in her own pedes. Oh, that mech’s growing attached to one of his comrades? Slice and dice them before their optics. Oh, that femme is finally coming out of her shell and making friends? Gore out their spark and hope that humans don’t decide this would be the perfect time to practice what they preach and save the life of that same mech with a hard to perform surgery that may or may not have been lost to time.

Okay so she’s obviously a Kawasaki Ninja (haha that’s kind of fitting) and I was tempted to make her pink like other Arcee iterations, but look at this fancy stuff right here. He hoo glowy look pretty!

Almost in leu of an Airachnid archetype, Wheeljack comes in. Though still quite the wrecker and ever the bomb enthusiast, instead of actively celebrating his impacts and going solo to stop the rust settling in, he’d rather be offed whilst mechs are distracted by his pretty explosion and lay forgotten in the dirt.

I may have accidentally rooted the unintentional memory theme deeply with the wreckers (Breakdown included) and maybe just took it and ran, giving everyone else a little connection, but Wheeljack is probably the most explicit in this idea. He hates nicknames (which i super Ratchet uses to mock him here in Shattered Glass) because that’s like... naming something you’re going to keep to quote that specific fic which, honestly, I can’t remember. Wheeljack split from others to stop them from remembering him and put himself closer to a situation where he can die alone, as morbid as that sounds. No grand death, no stupid death and no straight up suicide (generally that’s a VERY impactful kind of death) so just a mediocre end is what he’s been looking for for a little bit too long.

As for his colours, I apparently have no taste and should not have a car because I really like what this image has going for it. This C3 Corvette is probably one of the few cars that fits the straight up box of a sports car that Jackie’s got, so I’m sticking to it, so no, don’t show me the wiki I’m ignoring it this was too painful to give up dang it!

Okay, finishing off the bots, I have the Autotroopers. Sure, I’m not using a reference of a car to show off the colours, mainly because there’s also going to be flier troopers too, maybe... surely... definitely. Most depictions of them are white, you know, goodie goodie, and I’m tempted to just laze around and do just that. Instead, I think a goldish colour would be fun.

Aside from sharing a key colour with Ultra Magnus, essentially a war lawyer, which is perfect for subjects made to obey, a nice glimmering finish almost feels like they’re all manipulated by Prime to believe in the Autobot cause. I suppose the special devision, if there is one, would be a nice Prime purple, sorta like if it’s Optimus’ personal guard if he actually had any belief they would do their jobs.

Oh boy this is so long...

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brandxspandex · 7 years

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How and when did you get into Transformers? What are your favorite characters and pairings so far?

I was always vaguely aware that Transformers existed viacultural osmosis; I saw the toys and car decals and the like around the placeoften enough. When I was a teen I had some friends who were getting into G1,Beast Wars and Armada at the time, and would tell me stuff about it that got meintrigued. The information I got about Armada Starscream was particularlyinteresting to me because this was at the point where I had started to developa fascination with redeemable villains. I saw the first couple of episodes ofG1 with these friends when their older sister took us to her university towatch a screening by the sci-fi club there. It was fricking hilarious; by thescene where some Autobot was rubbing a guy’s back, looking like he was drillinghim from behind, everyone had lost it. I had already lost it by the bit where twoasteroids improbably crashed into each other right near the beginning; for some reason thatwas really funny to me at the time. This was all shortly before the firstBayformers film came out, so I was getting pretty pumped to see it and get aproper introduction to the modern franchise. I went to see the film with the aforementionedfriends, pretty excited to see interesting robot characters embedded infascinating sci-fi space fantasy lore. Then I left having more or less lost myinterest in the franchise.

Seven years later I had another good friend who was gettinginto Transformers who told me some stuff about Transformers Prime and the IDWcomics here and there. It occasionally sounded vaguely interesting but notenough to make me want to investigate it any further. Then that friend hosted amovie night where they insisted on showing the G1 Transformers film, which Iwas actually pretty pumped for because I was keen to relive thatmagical night watching G1 with a bunch of rowdy uni students from all those years ago. Ohboy, the G1 movie did not disappoint on that front. Everything about it wasjust a glorious succession of 80s-flavoured wut.My favourite part was how the 80s power ballads were absolutely non-stopthroughout the entire damn thing. Just…glorious.

My friend took my enthusiasm over the utter ridiculousness ofthe film to be enthusiasm for the franchise itself, so they decided to make mewatch Transformers Prime, which I was initially kinda grumpy about because Iwanted to keep watching Space Dandy, but then that first Vechicon appeared and Iwas just “oh well hello there 👀”.Then Starscream showed up with that voice, and those legs, and heels,and claws, and that scene where he transforms mid swan dive, and thoseexpressive animations (which only got better when they started making his wingsemote), and his general ridiculousness interspersed with moments of genuinely cool/terrifyingbadassery and hints of character depth. I loved him. I think I was somewhatpredisposed towards being interested in Starscream from the get go because of theseeds of intrigue that were planted when I was a teen, but even though myfriend told me that this version of Starscream didn’t go through the redemptionarc of his Armada counterpart, he happened to hit pretty much every other villaintrope I loved anyway. Also, he may have remained a villain, but he did havesome interesting moments that suggested that there was more to his character.

Starscream is definitely my favourite character in TFP but Ilove pretty much all the Decepticons. The Autobots are good too, but man, Ilove me dem ‘cons; they look evilly gorgeous, all have magnificent voices, andare all their own special flavour of ridiculous. My favourite stories are usuallythose with complex characters and plots, that stray far away from black andwhite portrayals of morality, but I’ve gotta be honest, sometimes I just reallywant a completely ridiculous, over-the-top tale featuring utterly absurd andnutty villains, and that’s the main button TFP hit for me (that and thosegorgeous robot designs). That being said, like TFP Starscream, TFP itselfshowed a lot of hints at a potential to be more complex and interesting than itwas, which was both super intriguing and super frustrating. Ultimately there area lot of things I loved about TFP, but I could never bring myself to call it a great show overall, because it wastedway too many great opportunities in terms of both plot and character development.If it had taken half of those chances it could have been amazing.

My favourite ship in TFP is Megatron/Starscream, initiallyfor the same primary reason I enjoyed the TFP Decepticons in general - just theridiculous, campy, over-the-top villainy of their dynamic. If you view theirrelationship through a lens of realism, then yeah, it’s absolutely horrendousrather than entertaining, but if you view them as villainous archetypesinhabiting crazy vaudevilleland rather than realistic people, then it takes ona very different flavour. That being said, again there were suggestions of amore complex element to their relationship that once more got me more deeply intriguedwhilst leaving me frustrated at canon’s failure to plumb these depths. I alsoreally enjoyed Knock Out and Starscream’s relationship, although I think I’multimately more interested in it as it as was portrayed in canon, rather thanas a ship. The show itself laid groundwork between Megatron and Optimus that Ibecame interested in when it was explored in fanfic, and I gotta admit thatAirachnid and Arcee’s relationship intrigued me if only for how thoroughlyfucked up it was and how pretty they both were. But honestly, if there’s a TFP shipthat involves Decepticons being ridiculous then I’d probably be somewhatinterested in it.

After I finished TFP I was hungry for more Transformerscontent, which I went looking for on tumblr, and I think that’s how I ended up comingacross panels from the IDW comics. My reaction was pretty much, “Wait, these are the comics? They’re modern?And that’s not edited? That’s actuallyhappening??? What the hell I gotta readthe shit outta these!!!” So I did, and suddenly everything I’d wantedfrom the Transformers franchise since I’d developed my first preconceptions asa teenager was mine. The complex characters, the trippy space fantasy, the deepworldbuilding and lore, it was everything I could have hoped for. What asatisfying experience, my god.

My favourite character in IDW is Starscream, who is also myfavourite Transformer overall now, and with his recent development thatassociation that was implanted in my teenage brain between Starscream andredemption arcs is finally paying off (to some extent anyway). Megatron is alsoespecially interesting to me in IDW since he’s such a multilayered character(even if those layers don’t always synergise as well as I feel they could).Starscream and Megatron’s relationship is again deeply fascinating to me in IDW,although since they’re in what to me feels like a more serious setting I can’tenjoy it so much on the “haha campy villains” level, rather it’s much more about how darkly complex their dynamic is. Megatron’s relationship with Optimusis also especially engrossing to me in this setting since they’re very much anexample of really intense and obsessive arch-nemeses. Speaking of Optimus,whilst I wouldn’t go quite so far to call him a favourite of mine at thispoint, I do like the direction he’s being taken in the comics at the moment, where he’s making really contentious decisions for the greater good.

I would go so far to call Thundercracker a favourite of minethough; not only was he a villain with a redemption arc, but he became anendearing dork with a comical misunderstanding of humanity. I love everythingabout all of those things. I also love his relationship with Marissa; I wouldwatch the hell out a sitcom featuring such an odd couple. I also really lovethe IDW take on Shockwave; most Shockwaves are pretty great, but this one’s reallymessed up backstory, together with his batshit insane plan in Dark Cybertron,made him amazing. Arcee became an unexpected favourite of mine after she calmedthe hell down to become hilariously awkward and matter-of-fact under the pen ofJohn Barber.

Bumblebee and Windblade have also really been growing on melately, largely through their association with Starscream, which has broughtout more and more interesting aspects of their characters. For instance, I lovethe snarky smugness Bee has around Starscream, but I love the fact that he hascome to feel seemingly genuine affection for someone he hated for so long evenmore. As for Windblade, I love how her increasing ruthlessness culminated inthat smirk of approval from Starscream as she laid out her plan to seize Carcer;I can’t get enough of utterly opposed characters who grow increasingly similar(and increasingly close) as they’re forced to work together. Honestly I ship Starscreamwith each of them more and more every time they interact.

So anyway, this has been my backstory episode.

#Transformers #Maccadam #Transformers Prime #Transformers IDW #Starscream #MEGATRON #OPTIMUS PRIME #Knock Out #Arcee #Airachnid #Decepticons #Thundercracker #Marissa Faireborn #Shockwave #Bumblebee #Windblade #asks #Anonymous

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