#this would not have been an out of character thing for drift to do. jro ended up deciding to make his character more washed out and

[prime-wars]

i know its only been a day but can people please shut up about the drift notebook stuff already. if i see one more post talking abt how drift would have been acting ooc/uncharacteristically evil if jro had gone thru with his plans im going to start ripping shit to shreds

#undefined.txt #i know this is like asking a baby to do calculus but can mtmte fans show a modicum of critical thinking #like im sorry but in the context of canon for drift up until that point...it would have made sense. #i think people forget a lot that the time between deadlock's defection and the lost light taking off is like. what. barely 10 years? iirc #his time at ncc with wing takes place over a span of like a month #this would not have been an out of character thing for drift to do. jro ended up deciding to make his character more washed out and #goody two shoes but if he had decided to go the other way it would have made just as much sense. idk. i thnk ppl need to stop letting #fandom characterizations of characters blind them to their actual canon #drift has done fucked up shit ! he could have continued to do fucked up shit very very easily ! shut the fuck up about how #he would never do anything to hurt anyone ever when up to that point he has more history as a mercenary for hire than anything else ! #sighs. ok sorry tantrum moment over <3

[arceespinkgun]

I'd love to hear your opinions on IDW Rodimus. I personally thought he was one of the better characters in that comic, but I have not read the Marvel comics so I have no point of comparison.

Just to clarify: I hate this character as he is in MTMTE and Lost Light. Not Rodimus as he appeared in IDW before those series. I'm not familiar with all his appearances, but his origin story seemed pretty strong to me. What I'm about to say isn't the fault of the character, it's the fault of the writer, James Roberts, who I resent for throwing out all the characterization that came from other writers before him in this and many other instances.

I don't really know what to say. Rodimus is a monster. I can't recount every horrible thing he did, there's too many. A few egregious ones are:

Punishing Rewind for having a snuff film collection, but then telling him to project a record of Fortress Maximus being tortured onto a wall to trigger Maximus during a hostage situation, then telling Swerve to shoot Fortress Maximus after Swerve repeatedly protested. Swerve said he was a bad shot, that Maximus was too close to Rung, that Maximus was already calm... Rodimus had so many chances to reconsider.

When Red Alert attempted suicide, Rodimus lied to Rung about it. You know, Red Alert's therapist? And not only did he lie about that, but he called this person who'd just tried to take his own life a bunch of ableist slurs. And Rodimus smeared him like this to cover his own ass and hide what Red Alert had found.

Bringing Overlord onto the ship because his ego is so fragile it couldn't handle Prowl calling him a wimp, then lying repeatedly about it, including during Overlord rampaging around killing the crew.

When Ultra Magnus is presumed dead and Drift is exiled by Rodimus, one issue after they're gone, Rodimus goes to Rung and Cyclonus and is basically like, you two are the new Ultra Magnus and Drift, really showing how disposable everyone is to him.

Rodimus's treatment of Drift in general was especially gross. Please keep in-mind that Rodimus is the captain, so he had direct power over him. Rodimus got possessive and impatient any time Drift was doing anything other than attending directly to Rodimus, including calling him some horrible, undisclosed thing, and threatening to have the law changed specifically in order to punish Drift for his Decepticon past (this is during peace time). He claimed to Thunderclash that he'd "rehabilitated" Drift. He had Drift take the blame for Overlord, kicked Drift out of the Autobots, and didn't intervene when Drift was assaulted for this. And we learn that Drift only hadn't told the crew the truth about Overlord in the first place because he'd felt "beholden" to Rodimus. The way Rodimus treated Drift almost felt to me like Drift was his courtesan or something, along with the racist tropes that implies... it's really bad. EDIT: oh, and it was even worse because Rodimus exiled Drift right after Drift had his legs torn off by Overlord, and because when Rodimus eventually did confess to bringing Overlord on board, he didn't look for Drift or even send him a message.

Now I know what fans might say. But he came clean/apologized/grew so it's an arc! But that's not the case. As I've reread most of MTMTE just now, I saw that this character is basically written as a complete monster until about issue 18, and then suddenly starts behaving heroically and saying the right things after no growth at all. It's not an arc, it reads like JRo just reconsidered this guy's entire characterization, but you can't do that! You have to commit! Plus, I do not really care that Rodimus did better eventually, because "making amends" should have included stepping down as the first act. No, there absolutely should not have been a vote over his captaincy. He should have been removed or better yet, removed himself. (Also, what kind of a sadistic choice was that vote? Because if Rodimus had been voted out, that would have meant Megatron would've been sole captain of the Lost Light, and there was no vote over that! That was just unilaterally decided by Optimus Prime!)

A really great example of how Rodimus doesn't really grow or change genuinely is issue #36. In that issue, he and other crew members go back in time, and Rodimus keeps trying to find a way to prevent Trailbreaker's death. He shows a lot of concern for him. But this comes out of nowhere. As I've just reread a large chunk of MTMTE, I can tell you that Rodimus and Trailbreaker had no connection whatsoever before this. And again, none of this is the character's fault. This is the writer's fault. Because Rodimus doesn't actually grow, I wouldn't blame people from being like, "Well, I prefer to think of Rodimus as the version who behaves better and says the right things." But that would be the reader's choice, not something the writer or series should be credited for.

When it comes to Rodimus in the Marvel comics, what sort of things did he do that made him a flawed, complex character? Hiring a bounty hunter to take out Galvatron, which went poorly, but the intention was to try and keep people safe. Giving in to being goaded by Galvatron and losing his cool, but he gets talked down by Arcee. As Hot Rod, he was especially impulsive, and make mistakes like getting bored and going for a drive when he was supposed to be keeping watch at a diplomatic summit, which gave the Decepticons an opportunity to attack... but he then tried to redeem himself as soon as possible by immediately going one-on-one with their leader and putting himself at great risk. This basically applies to any of Rodimus's or Hot Rod's errors in judgment. He always tried to address them ASAP, and often they were made with good intentions (in one of the annuals, he disobeyed orders because he thought Kup was being hurt, for example), not to cover his own ass or spite people.

I also want to mention Rodimus from the 80s cartoon as well. He is known for saying absolutely deranged things and being so depressed, he took any opportunity to be rid of the mantle of leadership.

But the thing about this is that his actual actions were still almost always for others' benefit. I think that's the other biggest thing that JRo ignored.

#my analysis #transformers idw #Rodimus Prime #transformers g1 #transformers marvel #negative #rant

[polyhexian]

I'm creating a few rules for the gay shelf. I have to create rules or these things spiral out of control. The girl shelf is already difficult enough, deciding what counts as a girl is infinitely more difficult than you could ever imagine.

1. Boys only (Im not taking anyone off the girl shelf)

2. Must be able to argue that character has canonically been established to be attracted to men. If a wiki admin would slap me for putting him on the gay page I can't do it

So obviously anyone with a husband is on the gay shelf. This is easy because of mtmte. Thank you mtmte. So Chromedome, rewind, dominus, drift, ratchet, tailgate, cyclonus, knock out, breakdown. Anyone who has explicitly discussed being attracted to men. First Aid, pipes, getaway, prowl, tarantulas, brainstorm. Cosmos because of idw2.

Some funky ones. Tigatron can be on the shelf because the Japanese dub of beast wars made air razor a boy. Airrazor could be on the gay shelf but girl shelf takes priority.

I don't know if I can get away with rampage and depth charge. But Jesus fucking Christ.

Limiters then. All my obviously idw based drift's obviously. But what about other drift's? Cyberverse? Bayverse? They are different, not gay drift's. Ratchet is hard to say which ones count. I will ponder this carefully.

Rodimus, as much as I want to include him because he is a flaming homosexual, never ACTUALLY kisses a man. Whirl, as much as I want to include him, never gets to be gay on page because Jro is a coward.

[decepti-thots]

I always wanted to ask JRO why he ended up choosing Ambulon to be the one to die, and along that end, I wonder what would have happened if First Aid died instead (would love to hear your ideas on both accounts)

Oooh, that's an interesting proposition.

FWIW, I assumed that Ambulon was the one to die for a couple reasons. Maybe partly because JRo perhaps felt more comfortable at that point quite unceremoniously killing off an OC rather than an established, recognised G1 character, since that death was less its own conclusion and more an obstacle for Ratchet; easier to justify that sort of thing with your own character versus a G1 old favourite, tbh. And then likely more significantly because of the Agent 113 stuff already being in play for later down the line. Both in his intro on Delphi in the comic itself and, for people reading other IDW stuff, in the story Bullets. It's very clearly established to be Aid who is the one checking badges.

But an AU where it's First Aid and not Ambulon who dies is a fascinating idea. Ambulon, bless him, didn't get a huge amount of time or attention in canon, but we do know a few things and JRo has given us some word of god stuff we can choose to incorporate if we like. And I do like, so I will!

JRo said that despite Pharma hating cons as much as he did, he and Ambulon had a "grudging respect" for each other. So I would assume that like FA, he took the Delphi stuff pretty personally, even if he and Pharma weren't exactly BFFs; plus Pharma tried to pin his own crimes on Ambulon to avoid detection, which must have been pretty fucking galling! So between that and now FA being killed, I imagine Ambulon would find himself in much the same "oh FUCK this guy" space as Aid did in canon.

But. Ambulon's position is inherently way more precarious than Aid's was when it comes to wanting to kill Pharma. We see suspicion levelled at him right from the Delphi arc as an easy scapegoat because he used to be a con. I can imagine that as potentially being a fork where no matter how much he wants to, Ambulon, unlike FA, does not kill Pharma. Which... Pharma's death turns out to be pretty important by the end of LL, albeit not in a way anyone would ever have guessed at the time, so there's a big sticking point for you. (Would he try to incapacitate him? Is this how I make the "Pharma on the LL as a prisoner" AU of my dreams at last?)

But also, Ambulon just isn't going to fill the same role post-Luna 1 for the ship or Ratchet. What we know of Ambulon as a medic is that he's a ward manager, which is to say, he's a nurse. (Actually a nurse, unlike FA.) He's not someone Ratchet is realistically going to be looking at to potentially replace him like FA was. He's not a surgeon, he's not in line to take over as CMO. That throws a huge wrench into Ratchet's later plot, because a) he now has an ironclad excuse not to retire and to not think about why he's refusing to do so and b) he can't go after Drift later because he has nobody to leave the medbay in the hands of now FA is gone. (No reason to assume any other background medic or w/e would be in line tbh, FA seemed to be the one person he was gonna choose, so I'll happily rule that out as a workaround.)

Mmm. I wonder what the relationship with Ambulon he'd have would look like under those circumstances. I can see it being... very tense, not antagonistic, but tense for reasons outside both of their control.

I do also wonder how much, over time, Ambulon might have come out of his shell a bit. He's not especially sociable from what we do see of him, is he? It's interesting to consider him making actual friends over time. Especially since once the mutineer stuff comes, that would likely be the make-or-break in terms of who he sided with; FA, of course, initially sided with Getaway and regretted it, but escaped getting nudge gun'd because he left before anything went down. I could see Ambulon going either way, though.

Plus, of course, the 113 stuff. That whole thing goes completely sideways without Aid there.

Anyway, it would actually have a surprisingly large impact on the plot, I think. It's a neat concept.

#long post #idw #ambulon #first aid

[shikai-the-storyteller]

I absolutely didn’t go back through and edit this at all and hardly any of this is verbatim but I tried to take notes on some of what Mae Catt said during her stream if anyone is interested!

EDIT: Here’s a cleaner post with most of the Q&A.

She says she doesn’t want to yuck anybody’s yums re: ships. She seems Arcee and Grimlock more as friends, but she didn’t say they can’t be in a relationship

They fell in love with Perceptor so they wanted him on the “End of the World fighting the Quintessons” team

They had to dedicate a lot of effort into Dead End b/c it takes time to send in info for modeling a character and deciding on their alt mode

She was pitching Obsidian from Beast Machines really hard. She didn’t know what his personality would be it was just a “Look how cool he is!” sort of thing

Thought it’d be fun to have someone pessimistic like Dead End be on the team

“According to us, Drift did not make it, but I fully endorse whatever you want”

“The brand team had grown up on the toys as we had grown up on the toons, so we just wanted to make the best thing imaginable.” That’s nice 

Rodimus was never considered for the show “it’s been covered to death”, but they were adamant about portraying Hot Rod as someone who wanted to be a leader

Hot Rod is someone who is learning to be a leader

“Please don’t tell JRO I forgot about Whirl” re: talking about why they chose each character for the “Anti-Quintesson” team

Q: Re: Why did Drift try to kill Roddy A: They said they needed a double-agent and they needed someone who would (seemingly) kill Hot Rod

She loves that Optimus is just trying so hard to rebuild Cybertron, I just want society to start rebuilding

Q: Since you mentioned Optimus's death... he didn't seem to have a plinth in "our" Matrix realm. Does that mean the list of Primes works differently? Like are the 13 more of a dynasty, rather than all being a group together?  A: They decided Optimus would be in the Alt! Universe matrix because they wanted to show he was dead. Logical backflips because he needed to be among the 13 to talk to Windblade. 

She says Starscream’s death hurt her most

They didn’t want to kill people off willy-nilly for shock value

"The audience will fall in love with Slipstream so she has to die" LMAO

She almost wanted Starscream to emerge from the Judge heads untouched but she’s ultimately glad that idea got shot down

Dead End’s eyes are white

She’d love to have a MTMTE Magnus / Minimus included. She wished and prayed to have Frenzy and Rumble

They wanted Jazz to be a lady!!!!!!!

These characters are like grown ups (kinda) with their own lives that we don’t see. Lots of stuff happening between episodes

“Rumble and Frenzy are always considered in my heart, but there wasn’t enough time or space or assets to do so”

“Alt Soundwaves also had their own Laserbeaks. I wonder if the scientist would’ve taken them out. He might’ve just gotten rid of them.”

“A lot of intelligent life is inherently mechanical” explaining why so much of the life we saw in the show were robots

She would’ve liked to have the other shows show up (TFP, TFA, G1, Shattered Glass) but they don’t have those assets or budget. “This will quickly become unclear to audiences who aren’t (you people).” They couldn’t have all these references when some of their audience wouldn’t get it

“Why does anyone collect what they collect? That’s a really angry dad who’s got five children and he plays music. Gotta have that” --re: the Scientist and Soundwave

Knock Out was considered but every Transformer under the sun was discussed at some point in the Writer’s room. 

Developing Sky-Byte’s character was simultaneous with Jetfire’s character, "We knew we wanted Sky-Byte to be a poet, and we wanted him and Megatron to be chummy”

From the getgo they didn’t want any humans distracting from the Transformers

Q: Is Megatron dead? A: “In discussions we wanted to kill him. Wanted to do a reverse Optimus death. However, in the final product, I kinda enjoy the ambiguity rather than the final decision. Can’t remember if we were decisive about that in the script.”

She wanted them to have IDW Tarn in there “OBVIOUSLY (the perfect decepticon) should look like this guy. A faceless mindless Decepticon that only serves Megatron”

Q: Is Dead End a good boyfriend? A: Dead End is a work in progress, but maybe Percy is patient enough to get him there

Q: Is Astrotrain a good boyfriend?” A: “No, no...he’s not a good person, really”

“When I was desperately trying to save Starscream’s life even though I brutally murdered Slipstream--” LMAO She wanted Starscream to have amnesia and she says she wanted to have a redeption arc. She wanted him to have a Windblade shard and have it be kind of like Castaway, where he only talked to it (and the shard only had 5 phrases it could say) and eventually Bee would befriend him Wanted to write Starscream as an abuse victim who expected the worse of the Autobots, but she wanted him to warm up slowly

Wanted a Starscream and Optimus episode where he’s like “you did your best and that’s what counts”

Q: Is Percy a good boyfriend A: “Absolutely--WAIT HOLD ON. He’s very blunt, he doesn’t mince words, if you can handle his bluntness then you’re good. He is what he is and you have to deal with him.”

Q: Is Soundwave a good boyfriend? A: Soundwave is not a good boyfriend. He’s a good casual romance but he’s not a good boyfriend. Soundwave would be a terrible listener. He hears a lot but he’d tune you out.

Percy did permanently take over Mac’s bar

She really wanted Obsidian and Transmutate to be in the show.

If Thunderclash was in the show he and Jetfire would HATE each other. Thunderclash would be a rival reality star (maybe) to Media Fire

Fave Episode was “I Am the AllSpark” b/c of that Megatron and Starscream dialogue Also S2 04 Soundwave and Shockwave

Transmutate would be more like the uprising version (?) but modeled more on the BeastWars version

The Starscream & Megatron beatdown was super severe and they were like “holy frick they’re really going for it” when they saw the boards for it

She likes the Windblade / Slipstream ship

Her favorite VA is Jeremy Levy, he’s a really cool guy

She thinks Starscream and Cheetor could become (not necessarily friends, but connected?) because of their connection to the All Spark 

Describes Starscream as an “Awful gremlin” several times

They say Megatron didn’t actually kill Starscream, just really beat him down hard

“Don’t take things I say as the end all be all”

She doesn’t think Bee would be a Prime, Windblade and Hot Rod would be a better Prime. He wouldn’t want to be a Prime. He’s the #2 to Primes!

With unlimited budget combiners could’ve been included, but it doesn’t seem like they thought about it

Astrotrain and the Insecticons are from Megatron X’s universe

Megatron’s priorities changed when he saw his doppelganger. Realizing he was a horrible tyrant, that scared him enough to return and not kill Optimus and make peace no matter what.

She thinks Cliffjumper and Bee wouldn’t get along, solely because of the IDW2 comic stuff

Got 26 episodes for season 3 because they got the 4-part movies

Megatron cares about his troops but not in a way that we would notice that care

Wasn’t a HUGE die-hard TF fan when she got into the series but she was a bigger GI Joe fan, she reread a bunch of things and did a lot of research

Cut joke: S2 E5 Megatron and OP finds the All Spark Decepticons and Autobots popping all over the world, Soundwave pops into Brazil where there’s a music festival and he’d crash the concert and hang out. He likes EDM the most?

The Titans want to be cities. They want citizens. They want to be lived in, that brings them joy (ouch)

Q: How did the Decepticons learn to stream? A: Because they’re deceptive! He knew he should dedicate some time to winning the hearts and minds of humans. Starscreams’ funeral was not the first time they streamed Optimus would use the official media channels, not a streaming service. Megatron would try to speak more directly to the people.

From the conception, the show wasn’t going to have humans

She thought people would ship Dead End / Percy but it wasn’t until she saw art that she started shipping them

Q: Is Optimus the type of streamer who would take 10 minutes to figure out how to un-mute his microphone A: Optimus is a dad. He has no idea what’s going on re: streaming. Optimus would say embarrassing news while Bee and Hot Rod are in the middle of streaming

Doesn’t ship Bee with anyone, she sees him as a little brother

Randolph put Rack ‘n Ruin in the show.

AcidStorm is genderfluid

Cold Construction doesn’t exist in this show. Maybe there’s one jet mode all the seekers really like

We have Mae Catt to thank for Whirl

Percy didn’t transform because not a good time to turn into a microscope while you’re trying to save your planet from Quintessons

If she were a transformer she’d want to be a stealth bomber. She’s 5′3 so she says she’d probably actually be a motorcycle like Chromia

They killed Prowl because it was Shadow Striker doing the killing and he’s a self-sacrificing lieutenant.

Enjoyed writing Starscream most, Clobber and Hot Rod became a joy, S2 E4 was her first one, it was fun getting into Hot Rod’s voice. She said it was hard doing Optimus’ voice, she’d always pass it off to someone to look at it.

She loves the idea of Wild Wheel robbing Astrotrain in train-mode, totally wild west-style

One of her proudest things was turning Lugnut into a gal

They wanted to include more female characters

They love Cosmos, she has a little toy of him. R2D2 but a transformer! They loved having her in the show

Blurr really was the fastest

Maccadam looking like a buff Rung was just a strange coincidence 

Q: Megop rights?  A: “Oh absolutely, duh”

Says we absolutely SHOULD write fanfic. Fanfiction made her into the writer she is today, she says you should write it

There’s a lot between episodes, people living their lives and characters living on the ship that don’t pop up in the show

She wrote non-stop Matrix fanfic from 12-20 years old, she learned a lot thanks to writing fanfic

Uses “They” pronouns for Rack ‘n Ruin but they both use “he”

Sad that Skywarp didn’t get a speaking line

Re: Starscream’s redemption arc: She wanted Starscream to have amnesia if they went the “he comes out of the ruins of the judge totally fine”. “A redemption arc needs to be facilitated by a character acknowledging that what they did was wrong. He would have a laundry list of excuses for everything, even if there was all that evidence to the contrary, but needs to acknowledge that reasons don’t matter because people got hurt. Needs to intend to do better. Let them try and let them fail, they don’t need to 180, it’s hard work to be a better person.”

Shadow Striker is taller than Optimus or is his height. She loves the gender-neutral designs for a lot of characters

She’s not going to say whether Ratchet finished medical school or not Laughed at the  "i don't believe that man has ever been to medical school" comment

Q: How would you feel about a female Optimus Prime? A: [GAY LAUGHTER] “So do you turn Optimus Prime into a woman, or do you take characters like Elita One and uplift her? I would want to lean more into giving Elita One more oomph, I do love how Optimus doubts himself and if he’s worthy of being a Prime.”

Says Rack ‘n Ruin are probably the Prime in that one weird universe lmao

Loves the idea that Transformers have siblings / families

She doesn’t think Cybertronians celebrate birthdays. “Why would you celebrate being alive for 4 million years that sounds like a nightmare.” She says that people would be celebrating milestones if nothing else

She’d kill to have Perceptor meet the other stunticons

She says she doesn’t post fanfic as much anymore. Sends them to Natalie as love letters (Ghost Busters fics specifically)

In a world where you had unlimited budget it’d be fun if Cybertronians were constantly shape-shifting and changing their forms, they’d like having Transformers who “grew a beard” and decided to “shave it”

Re: Ratchet and Medical school: she wants a “I choose to believe Ratchet has never been to medical school” shirt

Natalie (her GF) said hi 

She doesn’t understand cycles or astrocycles, she doesn’t understand the weird Transformers time stuff. (mood)

Natalie explained how ghost traps work and it was a delight "You're basically making a pocket dimension, that's how you capture ghosts" “The Technology for a ghost trap is like magic and science” 

Maecatt's bringing all her TF toys over to the camera 

Q: Elita prime when? A: All the time, in my heart! 

Q: Why are you so mean to Percy? A: He's so mature and pragmatic that he can take it, and is willing to take one for the team bc he understands that it's what he needs to do. Yes, he’s calmly feral.

Yes to the hurt/comfort Deadceptor fanfic joke answer

She jokingly says she's willing to buy Cyberverse fanart prints

“Arcee was fun to figure out because there’s an extra bit of pressure to develop a female character, there is extra pressure to do it well since it’s representing a different community (not that women are different species) more representation is needed. “What kind of woman can our Arcee be?”” Scared to write her poorly, but they realized she could be a fun dynamic duo with Grimlock, someone who could keep up with him, not a “girl” version of him, but someone who could stand on her own two feet

Collecting Soundwave because Soundwave is COOL. Wouldn’t you collect a single father of 5 who carries them around in his chest?

Shockwave altered his vibes to have maximum bad vibes to destroy the All Spark

Rebooting the franchise: she’d maybe do beast wars or something

Skullcruncher is a lady! She misses Mac but Percy takes good care of her

She loved Beast Wars Inferno, she loved that Inferno called Megatron a Queen. It was played as a joke because the 90s weren’t very socially conscious, but she liked that Megatron never corrected him or beat him down

She wanted to have Lightbright and Nickle in the show 

"Maybe Drift is alive, maybe he's rethinking his decision and he'll come back later" 

She said it's hard talking about writing a show because you're designing the experience and you have to make sometimes what sounds like cold and pragmatic decisions (eg: "we need a cold and spunky female") which sucks, but they need to balance out the show. She says she'd never do that just for the sake of doing it, but it's part of something that they do need to be aware of while working on a show “Starts from a weirdly cold pragmatic place, but we try and put truth in it”

Q: Is Skullcruncher Percy's bouncer now that he's running Maccadam's? A: Oh totally

She felt bad about the writing thing because she says "you could throw a rock in California and you'd hit a writer / director or whatever" but she says she really likes being an authority on things now, even if it’s weird

She said Drift would've been helpful in S3 for sure, maybe he'd come up with Repugnis

Q: If Tarn is the perfect Decepticon who's the perfect Autobot A: Someone with a Firetruck alt mode, Autobot insignia as a face. Nat and her talked about it a lot. She says Optimus SHOULD be a fire truck, it makes the relationship between him and Ratchet a little more fun since Ratchet is an ambulance, and Optimus has an AX. It just makes sense! She agreed that the perfect Autobot would be Thunderclash after the chat said that

“If you put the proverbial budget-gun to my head, I’d keep Unicron in planet-mode because it’s more mysterious, but I want both alt modes”

Her favorite Megatron is Beast Wars Megatron

They didn’t want to go the Unicron route because everyone goes that route

Q:  What sort of documents DID Optimus work on in the archives? A: Probably historical archives and working on all the Primes. Something like the French / American revolution equivalent, which informed his speech writing for Megatron and his own ethics. (NICE)

She doesn’t like Sky Lnxy’s design, it’s creepy. “He talks in the G1 episodes and the voice makes it worse.” She can’t get over his face

“Found” the social awkwardness for Optimus. Optimus depicted as a father figure in S1 because it’s from Bee’s perspective, S2 / S3 they were able to explore more and found the limits and found it was hard to maintain that level of heroic dialogue. Optimus would feel awkward about it too. Randolph did an impression of Optimus’ speech. “He can’t not be in war-mode” :(

Q: Were Optimus and Megatron friends ever, or did they just work together on the speech stuff? A: Oh hell yes, I think [the story] is always enhanced when they’re friends and when Optimus really believes in what Megatron was working on. Optimus’ rejection of Megatron is what pushes him over the edge, his best friend rejecting him pushes him into a place where he becomes a tyrannical person.

Q: Does Maccadam know we love him? A: *puts hand over heart and looks into the distance* Yes

“Who knows where Dead End ended up” then backtracks and says “Wait that sounds flippant”

Soundwave’s favorite Earth song is Despacito

Q:  What's the best selfie Arcee's ever taken A: Mae Catt loves the one with the giraffe. She likes the idea of Arcee having a bunch of human friends

Q: What do the Transformers think of the Florida Man? A: They can’t really tell the difference between humans, they don’t really get it. It just sorta looks like all the normal stuff they see on Earth (or something)

Q: Who's the Florida Man of the Transformers A: Rack ‘n Ruin or Skybyte. But he’s too nice hmmm.

Leaned into the wackiness of Wheeljack because of the VA

Q:  What does Optimus do when he's not giving speeches / being a leader when they were all hanging out on the ARK? A: I think he reads, he seems like a heavy reader. It’d be cute if he read really bad Earth romance novels. He seems like a guy who needs a break from everything.

Q: Does Optimus have hobbies? A: Not to borrow from Rung, but doesn’t it seem like Optimus would make model ships? Very quiet, very focused detail-oriented hobby. Oh duh, he also plays basketball.

“I’d love to see more jets [who aren’t our usual gang] and find out all jets are kinda snobby”. Kaon and Tarn would be fun, it’d be cool to make up places.

(Someone asking if Optimus would read 50 Shades of Gray, someone else saying “They’d take it the wrong way because Transformers turn gray when they die”)

Everyone on the Autobot side are friends with each other.

Q: Does Megatron do anything for fun or is he too angry? A: I want to say he’s too angry, he has fun beating people down but I don’t think he’s had fun for a long time

Q: Were you surprised that Jake Tillman was in his 20s listening to his Optimus the first time? A: Jake Tillman was a vine-r she listened to a ton. She’d heard him when he was in his teens

MaeCatt loves that Shadow Striker saved Windblade’s body and kept her safe

Q: what was most important to you personally to put out in each episode? like humor/characterization/arcs A: Wanted to make sure she didn’t write dialogue that was condescending, wanted to be true about the character. Needs to be true to the characters (and gay) 

Transformers probably don’t know what memes are. They know what they ARE, but they don’t get it. They wanted Hot Rod to be super into Earth culture (winning races and driving off before humans could realize no one was in the car), but they never had time to really get into that.

Wound up in the Cyberverse writer’s room thanks to her agents, says she was the only person who gave a crap about GI Joe stuff, the executives were so sweet and let her chat, and they said she wasn’t a good fit for the current live action project so they sent her to the animation side, they sent her to Michael Howzer and they hit it off talking about GI Joe stuff. She was a post PA, someone who helped editors finish things for TV, got a call with an offer. 

#i talk #Cyberverse #Mae Catt #I'm watching Cyberverse #Transformers #Cyberverse Spoiler / #Primordial Robot hell

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 9

back at it again, and its time for the shadowplay arc, HELL yeah

oh I'm so excited i love this arc lets DO this

oooh its nightbeat and quark!! way before they become relevant, which is so cool

‘one of those recepticon fanatics’ lmao imagine if they were...the recepticons. just doesn't have the same ring to it 

god i fucking love all the politics of mtmte. i love how they’re talking about the senate here before we really get to See how bad they were (we heard a bit about it from whirl a few issues ago, and now here)

love how nightbeat is pretty much agreeing with the decepticon ideology here, even if its clear that he isn't Actually a decepticon - it just drives home the fact that, in this story, The Decepticons Were Right About A Lot Of That Stuff (or at least, they had a reason other than ‘destruction’ for rebelling). 

AND THEN THERES RUNG!!!!!!! WITH HIS MODEL OF THE LOST LIGHT....god i fuckgin LOVE the continuity in this story bc the first time reading this ur like oh ok rung is old yea makes sense...but then later all the time travel stuff happens and then its like OHHHHH 

damn poor rung nightbeat can rlly tell he's lonely just by looking at him vbhjdkdfhbjsjkdf geez. also nightbeat that's ur mystery stick bf from the future js!!

quarks extreme POV on all of the stuff is so interesting, and makes so much sense bc of Course he would think that as a non-combatant scientist who, due to his functional value in current society, wouldn't really benefit much from a revolution - in fact, he’d probably lose a lot. and that’s the sort of thing where you’re like, ok well think about everyone else dude, have some perspective - but at the same time, quark did suffer a pretty terrible fate, so his fears weren't entirely unfounded...augh, its so fascinating...im sorry I'm not gonna shut up about space robot politics this Entire time

HOW did nobody notice that dead body before now

ratchet spray-painting the hands he stole from pharma to match his own paintjob is like...kinda gruesome if you think about it hvbhsjkdfbkjdf

i love rewind sooo much oh my god 

he rlly stashed rung’s comatose body in a wheelchair behind the bar hbkjdhfbshjkdf rewind 

rewind and chromedome’s tag-team explanation....ough hhhhh THEM 

wait a sec, rewind, you have medical records in your database? that is, at least according to regular medical laws, very illegal lmao. my favorite long-running theme in mtmte: the fact that hipaa and osha laws on cybertron are either basically nonexistent, or just universally disregarded 

what the actual fuck is up w/cybertronian time units. that shit is wack as hell 

ooh i love how chromedome looks different in the flashback - no shoulder tires! - that's a cool detail

how come prowl just said ‘minute,’ rewind was busting it up w/all the wack ass fantasy time units just a second ago. geez

also goddd i love the scenery of pre-war cybertron, its SUCH a cool setting like, visually and aesthetically and politically

like, i adore details like the sign in the bg that says ‘everyone’s shape serves a purpose.’ really adds to the ‘society on the precipice of civil war currently controlled by an increasingly-desperate faction who are doling out propaganda like crazy in an attempt to maintain their image and control over the populace’ vibe

good ole murder mystery setup. love it!

pre-war prowl is such an interesting character. actually prowl in general is such an interesting character...I kinda wrote him off during my first read of mtmte (and even a little during my second readthru) as just this dude who’s an asshole (espec bc my prev tf experience involved watching tfa as a kid, and this prowl is very different from tfa prowl lol)...but prowl is SUCH a multi-faceted and interesting character, even in the relatively little we see of him in mtmte 

plus it was interesting to learn later that prowl was one of the characters that jro wanted for mtmte and didn't get, and MAN i wish he got prowl bc I would've loved to see what jro would've done w/prowl on the lost light, that would've been amazing. like, just imagine the arc he would have...I have no idea what that arc would BE, but I know it would be awesome. plus I’d be really interested to see how prowl would factor in, relationships-wise, amongst the crew of the lost light. so much potential!

anyways. I'm in a very talky mood tonight it seems. its currently 4 am so that kinda explains it. ok, moving on!

chromedome and prowl bantering....in their own morbid forensic-cop way...

skids bvhjdbsfjasf. speaking what we’re all thinking: is prowl gonna keep showing up in mtmte despite not technically being part of the cast??

swerves drawing of prowl lmaoooo

AND THEN REWIND IN SOME OF MY FAVORITE MTMTE PANELS....fuckgin cracks me up every time god. rewind was rlly about to flip their entire ass table just to demonstrate that prowl is a serial table-flipper...and then he cant even make the table budge and he just stares at his hands like ‘how could you betray me like this’ hvbajkhhsfdhksdf PEAK hilarity

drift hvbshfdjbasdfj his forcibly cheery expression even tho he’s being harassed by rodimus, who is a big whiny toddler w/drift lmao 

rodimus is the type of guy who, upon drift not replying to one of his texts, would post a whole twitter thread being all like ‘these days u cant trust any1 to hav ur back...u think u kno someone and then they just ghost you...(1/14)’

again, rewind, HOW and WHY do you just Have medical reports, oh my god, somebody please call a hipaa agent I’m scared, 

ratchet interrupting the story to give a quick medical PSA....that's Such an on-brand thing for Me to do that I feel like jro is assigning me ratchet kin as I read this

also, hey, its sonic and boom, those two decepticons from delphi! nice little continuity there

AND HERES ORION PAX SUPER COP

can’t believe idw made my dad optimus prime into a cop. smh. shouldn't be that shocked tho, I feel like half the idw characters are cops

orion rlly hit them w/the omae wa mo shinderu arrest strat

orion: I cant believe you're beating this guy up. anyways, now I'm gonna beat YOU up,

when ratchet puts his hand over drifts mouth and then gets spray paint on drifts face bhjdfsvsdjhfgbjdskf

pre-war ratchet and drift ;_; ratchet’s little inspirational speech...the fact that he tells drift that he’s special...the fact that drift remembered all of this even after 4 million+ yrs...it gets me bro it GETS me

ALSO the layers in the fact that drift then goes on to become a well-known murderous decepticon...so this little scene of him and ratchet in the past gives a lot of context to ratchet’s general attitude towards drift - ratchet clearly feels at least somewhat responsible for all the blood on drift’s hands, since he saved drift’s life way back in the day

the whole relinquishment clinic thing is such cool worldbuilding, bc of course that's the kind of thing that would develop in a society of robot aliens who are only allowed to work within the rigid confines of their alt mode 

I love the whole matrix thing bc its kinda like being the pope or st but also you have a ton of political sway, so its a super important position, so of Course the corrupt senate would want full control over that power, and would assassinate the current prime to try to get their own guy in 

god vhbhjsdkbgshjdf rodimus is such a dick lmao poor drift

HHHHH I love that the cybertronian version of an autopsy is taking the dudes body apart into the smallest components and laying them all out. that's so fucking cool

hmmmm chromedome maybe you should Not be interested in mnemology, how about that,

oh god. time to start being sad about op and senator shockwave. oh god

senator shockwave more like senator sexy 

also the first time I read this I thought I had just missed his name and like halfway thru the story I went back and scoured the pages looking for it hbvhsjdfbshgfdsbj then I was like oh ok so we’re maybe supposed to just know who this guy is from another comic? but NOPE it was very deliberate and I only realized very close to the end that they were setting up some sort of reveal

its funny bc normally I'm not a huge fan of stories where politics play a huge role but I fuckgin love it here, the politics and worldbuilding is all so interesting and also balanced out with a healthy dose of cool sci-fi hijinks, so

lmao there's chromedome being obsessed w/people making the ‘pfft’ sound 

also wow yet more hindsight, maybe you Shouldn’t be so interested in the Institute, chromedome, 

OHHHH shit I forgot abt the red alert stuff happening at the same time as this :( :( :( 

AUGHHH what a fucked up situation. god 

oooof i gotta continue now!! what a solid issue, I love the shadowplay arc

#lj rereads mtmte

[speedfreak01]

As the undefeated world champion MTMTE Megatron Roaster, how do you think you would portray an actually good Megatron redemption? Besides the obvious getting rid of Jim Bob’s Nazi imagery and such.

thank you for giving me such a lofty title! and this is a great question! i think it deserves a thought-out response, so sit tight

first things first yeah, getting ready of the heavy-handed imagery. it’s not my lane to allude to the holocaust and it certainly isn’t james roberts’

the cack-handed allusion to jo cox in the mutineers arc legitimately makes my blood boil

-let the readership come to their own conclusions

one thing the narrative of more than losts the light was pretty guilty of was insisting you liked megatron and his character arc, and very subtly throwing shade at you if you didn’t

i think the optimus prime series handled this kind of thing pretty well by acknowledging upfront that optimus prime was a complex character and embracing multiple interpretations of him, positive and negative. that story invites you to come to your own conclusions about him, and importantly doesn’t actively compare you to a skeevoid brexiteer if you don’t

like, at the mtmte 50 signing jro compared that issue to an episode of community where it turns out all the background characters can’t stand the main cast. thing is, the Bit in that kind of episode is that the background cast are justified in not liking the main cast, because the kind of people who make up the cast of a sitcom would be absolute assholes in real life

the comic seems to not understand that, and presents the background characters (the sole dissenting opinion in the story) as this single amorphous blob of assorted irrational shitheads, led by a guy who canonically groomed one of the main cast and rattles off tory catchphrases like it’s his job 

i think a good megatron redeption arc would have to accept that there are some people who will never accept his redemption, in-universe and in the readership, and work that into the story instead of complaining about it

-make megatron the core of the story without making the story about him

one thing that really grated me about season 2 of mtmte and lost light was that the great ensemble cast found family of season 1 was more or less ignored to make room for Robot Atrocity Morrissey and his manpain. like, there were so many interesting character dynamics that could have been explored that just got thrown aside because we needed to see a mass-murderer look sad and rattle off poetry for a few more pages

characters DIED and we didn’t get any time to explore them because we needed to see That One Dude In Your English Class Who Has More Of A Statement Than A Question But A Robot shove his head up his interdimensional portal ass some more!!!

basard

again, i think some lessons could be taken from the optimus prime comic, as well as elegant chaos, which i maintain is the absolute peak of mtmte/ll. 

in the optimus prime comic, optimus prime isn’t the moral core or the protagonist of the story- rather, he’s the discussion point around which the other characters in the story are able to develop. it’s a story ABOUT optimus, not the story OF optimus. i think using megatron as a springboard to develop other characters would have been a better use of the ensemble cast of mtmte, and would have actively_ used_ one of the main strengths of the series rather than working against it

elegant chaos does the same thing! this is a story about a character going back in time to kill megatron, but the narrative space of Autobot Megatron is instead used to give the characters we know and love additional depth. you did it SO WELL this one time, james!!! why couldn’t the rest of it have been like that!!!!!!!

EATS THIS SHIT UP WITH MY HANDS AND MOUTH!!!!!

-more focused theming

one of the strengths of mtmte season 1 imo is that despite the varied ensemble cast, there was a pretty clear and focused story with consistent themes.

for example, broadly speaking the Theme of mmtmte s1 was emotional honesty and the personae we put on to hide parts of ourselves-rodimus, drift, cyclonus, whirl, swerve, tailgate, brainstorm, etc, all their arcs resolved around this general question. 

 this focus gave reveals and moments additional weight and changed the way we viewed this principle guiding question, and in turn the story as a whole

issue 15? rewind's final message? a beautifully crafted moment,but one with a particular emotional power due to how it cuts to the core of the narrative and the questions it asks, both about its cast and about its audience. that "I love you" speaks directly to the heart of the story 

going back to megatron, with mtmte s2 and ll i couldn’t really pick up on what story the comic wanted to tell me. was it about atonement? because there were plenty of avenues to tie into that theme (developing characters like chromedome, or whirl, or i don’t know RODIMUS PERHAPS JAMES ROBERTS) that didn’t get used, and megatron certainly didn’t atone for shit. was it about violence? because the whole final act of dying of the light was megatron going hog fucking wild with violence without consequences

the ending of dotl, with megatron’s brutal unmasking of tarn, implies the Theme is "violent people dress their ideologies in grand narratives to disguise and justify their cruelty" but that doesn’t track because megatron doesn’t change his behaviour at all, and the narrative doesn’t mention how megatron has done and is still doing the exact thing he condemns tarn for doing

this unfocused storytelling also means the shock reveals don’t have the same impact that they do in season 1. things like minimus ambus and everything about overlord had the punch they did because they directly tied into the theme of emotional honesty, but things like DOMINUS AMBUS IS THE PET AND AGENT 113 or TARN IS GLITCH or THE NECROBOT IS JUST A GUY OH WAIT NO HE’S A GOD AND SO IS RUNG fall flat because they don’t change the way we view the characters or the story, they’re just kinda. there

also doesn’t help that they don’t get any oxygen in the story itself because of the megatron dick vortex

basically, if megatron’s redemtpion tied into an over-arching question or topic in mtmte s2 and directly challenged or answered it, it would have felt more like an organic integration into the story and less like something i have to push out of the way to find the few slivers of character development for the cast i actually give a rat’s cock about

thank you for coming to my ted talk

#saperion #LONG POST #it's not letting me put it under a readmore for some reason

[amegatronfan]

Jame Roberts’ Instagram Q&A -November ‘18

Right. 

So.

- Back in MTMTE #15, when the original Rewind got locked in the Slow Cell with Overlord, he suddenly learned how to shrink while he transformed. This was not an ability he previously had, as shown in, for example, MTMTE #2, when Tailgate sees Rewind for the first time (before Swerve introduces him to CDRW) and remarks that he can see a “giant memory stick” in the distance. However, the fear that Rewind felt in that moment triggered his ability to shrink to the size we see him in, like, LL #25, for example. This helps him survive both Overlord and the shots fired off by Chromedome, and so he, along with Overlord, is recovered by the Galatic Council. Overlord is seen as too dangerous, so Rewind is chosen as the guinea pig for an experiment the Galatic Council are trialling; an experiment that would allow them to “punch holes” into alternate universes. Since they want to use Rewind as a weapon against the Black Block Consortia (and other enemies of the council, such as other Cybertronians), the technology is built into a suit of armour meant to resemble Primus (this suit of armour was built in the same vein as the Magnus armour, in that it made so that a small robo could pretend to be this big, famous robo and not, like, the sentai suit dealio I had originally envisioned when JRo was describing this. this was done because they rightly assumed that seeing Primus land in the middle of a battlefield would scare the royal shit out of everybody, most especially other Cybertronians, who have the cultural context to know who the fuck he is.) 

So, then, it worked, and Rewind made it into the past?? of another dimension (that wasn’t the Functionist universe), but then it malfunctioned and he got trapped there. He had fight his way back to the original universe by travelling through a bunch of other alternative universes (there would have been an interlude during the Mutineers Trilogy where we saw Rewind 1 travelling through the Marvel 2006 universe). At first, he was travelling back to the OG universe was so he could be reunited with his conjux (he met other Chromedome's along the way, but he wanted to find his Chromedome), but as he was travelling, he discovered Chromedome’s secret; that he had helped in the cover-up of Dominus’ murder, and so it became more complicated (he kinda wanted to avenge Dominus.) This would’ve all culminated in an issue where Rewind 1 finally made it back the original universe. As has been previously established, only one Rewind can exist at the one time, so Chromedome would've had to decide which Rewind would be cancelled out, all while Rewind 2 (and by extension, the audience) would’ve learned from Rewind 1 what Chromedome did to Dominus, which would’ve complicated things even further.

JRo came up with this idea before he began writing MTMTE, but by the end of season one, he was starting to become uncertain about this particular storyline, as Rewind, Chromedome and their relationship began to develop. Having Chromedome do this to Rewind started to feel wrong. After talking to his editor at the time (Carlos, I believe?), he decided to leave in the scene with Chromedome and Prowl, where Prowl threatened blackmail and Chromedome used Shadowplay to erase the blackmail from his memory, just in case he still wanted to go through with it. However, by the time it came to the final stretch of issues, he already so many other plot points to introduce, explain and tie up, he didn’t have time to do all three for Rewind 2 and his ultra-complicated, high concept adventures, and deal with the complications it brought with it to the cast, so he was forced to drop it.

So, with that out of the way, here are the more breezy answers:

- Megatron didn’t have a mentor who taught him medicine in the Warren, he taught himself everything he knows about treating people because he’s “the most ferocious autodidact.” (i stan a legend)

- Ratchet would still be the better medic though

- Megatron specialised in neurology

- Flame survived the events of LL #24

- The only reason Functionist Universe! Orion and Terminus were killed was because of time restraints 

- Making Drift and Ratchet’s relationship a romantic one started feeling right around their return in the Remain in the Light arc, but JRo didn’t really decide that they were definitely conjux endura until he began writing LL #25 

- Rewind’s colour changing pants are now (dubiously) canon (”Chromedome is fascinated; he might be an outlier.”)

- Admitted a couple of times, once again, that he wished he hadn’t killed Trailcutter 

- If a Cybertronian is gifted a vial of innermost energon and survives whatever near-fatal injury or illness they had, they have the option to either keep it, as a reminder of the love they and the donor share, or they can regift the donor’s innermost energon to them. If they do indeed die, the most common practice is to donate the innermost energon (as Ratchet did posthumously in #25)

- “Sorry, I’ve seen ‘Chromedome is a bottom’ on the screen and that’s thrown me.”

- When asked if he’d change anything if given the opportunity to rewrite the series, he admitted that there were “a bunch of things”, which included:

    * Spacing out events more, most especially near the beginning of MTMTE,            where so much was happening that it all felt “a bit busy”, and the Crucible           arc

    * Writing more stories about the tertiary cast (eg. Spotlight: Hoist) to really            sell the fact that this was a ship with 200 mechs on board (the main cast            would still have had their own quirky adventures going on in the                          background)

                * An example of such a story would’ve been having an issue focusing                    on the writer behind the Lost Light Insider

    * More stories with the Mutineer’s

    * Give the Scavengers an entire tradeback to themselves in Season 3,                  encompassing an entire arc he’d had planned for them

     * He wouldn’t have “decapitated Red Alert like that” 

     * Having the charisma parasites being followed up by Swearth “didn’t do              him any favours as they were three very high concept issues one after the          other”

      * Would’ve seeded more mentions of the Guiding Hand in MTMTE (though             not in Lost Light, which had enough, he felt)

      * More Star Saber (longer fights with different characters)

      * Way more Roller!

      * Show Cyclonus’ recovery from his injuries in #47 more as more of a slow,          arduous process instead of an “Oh, he’s fine now” dealio

      * Would’ve liked to pull off the Troja Major two-parter better

- [SPOILERS FOR IDW’S UNICRON SERIES]

When asked who’s death Megatron would be most cut-up about, Optimus, Soundwave or Starscream, JRo said he’d take Stasrcream’s the worst, as the two had “unfinished business” (the new Pacifist Megatron wanted to reconcile with Starscream). Though Soundwave was listed last on the “who'd Megatron would mourn the most” list, he also said that he’d be “proud of what Soundwave did”

- On a more lighthearted note, he said that Stan Bushs’ Dare was playing in Rodimus’ head during his “Til All Are One!” montage in the 2012 annual

- Cyclonus is, unfortunately, no longer rich, because much of his wealth came from Tetrahexian real estate (as stated in the prose story Signal to Noise, packaged in Volume 4 of MTMTE), and the value kinda dropped after Unicron, you know, destroyed the whole planet (though he also said it’s more than likely he and Tailgate invested in real estate on New Cybertron)

- Said that if Rodimus and Drift had been amica endura “no one would’ve batted an eye,” (and that they would’ve completed the ceremony off-screen)

- Rodimus was originally going to sacrifice himself in Crucible to stop the Omega Guardians from using the Warren to enter our universe and take it over. (”Even saying that is making me yawn”) Everyone would’ve thought Rodimus was already dead, and as such, another, unnamed character would’ve gotten credit for his sacrifice. Rodimus would’ve known this, and sacrificed himself anyway.

- “You’re all [unapologetic] shippers and I salute you.”

- As he stated on Twitter before, he’d have liked to include a scene between Cyclonus and Drift, where Drift proclaims his new respect for Cyc after seeing his Great Sword. This scene would’ve happened around the Remain in the Light arc. 

- “Are you guys still talking about Chromedome being a bottom? Oh my god.”

- In a fight between Drift and Cyclonus, Cyclonus would win.

- When asked who he’d ship Rodimus with, he said that Rodimus was an interesting case, as he’d actually be quite well-versed in the area of romance, unlike the rest of the cast, and that he “wouldn’t pine for people.” In the end, he ended up choosing Roller.

- Getaway didn’t make up the Conjux rites; they’re real 

- Rodimus’ flame abilities are not an outlier ability, but an upgrade he got along the way (he compared it to getting a really excessive tattoo). The ability is really painful and uses up a lot of Roddy’s energy.

- When asked what he hoped from the next continuity, he said that he wanted it to continue to be inclusive “in every sense of the word”, specifically pointing out the LGBTQIA+ representation as something he wanted to see continued. 

- “Yeah, Springer’s pretty hot.”

- First Aid has a crush on crush on Springer (as does JRo)

- Cyclonus is legitimately a great singer. It’s that his abilities are more of the operatic kind, meaning “he is not always appreciated by the uncultured”

- “[A fan] says that Lost Light is a love letter to fan fiction, which it absolutely is”

- When a fan asked why (to paraphrase) Roller was just so dang hot, JRo said that “Roller just has that effect on people thanks to Jack’s lascivious designs” (and before you go off and google it, lascivious is defined as “feeling or revealing an overt sexual interest or desire”)

- Drift’s wealth was made through bounty hunting

- Brainstorm and Chromedome might have been amica endura, but that Chromedome felt “burnt out” from his various failed relationships, both platonic and romantic. 

- No one even has a “Rung-shaped gap” in their memory after LL #24. They honestly can’t remember where the various matrixes came from, as is the case with all the things Rung was responsible for. They all blame it on memory creep and have each come up with their own contradictory explanations as to how and why these things happened. 

- When asked if Swerve liked The Big Bang Theory, JRo replied with a swift “No, he has a brain”

- Instead, he said Community was Swerve’s favourite show

- Cybertronian weddings are “very long”

- There was a lot singing at Cyclonus and Tailgate’s wedding

- Brainstorm and Perceptor’s wedding, meanwhile, “would be very complicated” because “they’d be trying to outdo each other in subtle ways”. It would “make for a good sitcom episode.”

- Roddy’s favourite meme is “the butterfly one”

- Rung’s favourite meme is “the woman looking confused with algebra in front of her face”

- Swerve is over memes

- “[Drift’s thighs] are certainly impressive”

- Swerve is “destined to have many friends”

- Whirl and Cyclonus most certainly became amica endura after LL #25

- Swerve got Misfire’s number in the end

- Though he said many times in the lead up the end of this continuity that this was his last time writing for Transformers, he said he would like to write a 12 issue series centred around a character he didn’t name, and then later admitted that he wanted to try to convince IDW to let him write another series. He also said that is there was ever a Grand Collecter’s edition of the series (that collected all the issues, prose stories, additional stories from other series etc into one or two hardback editions, for example), he’d write an additional prose story to make it worth people’s money

- Hoist confirmed the Lost Light’s resident furry

- “Tailgate is the cutest? Yes, he’s a little marshmallow.”

-  In his final days, before his execution, Minimus would’ve taken his poetry to Megatron so that he could read it (he would’ve also read Minimus’ poetry on the Alt! Lost Light, though assumedly under far less tragic circumstances)

- Getaway was considered the hottest mech on all of the Lost Light, with Skids as a close second. Together, they were “a hot duo.”

- Functionist Universe! Anode was a brilliant war general 

- Nickel had a girlfriend before her homeworld was destroyed 

- Rung can’t dance (we been knew)

- Crankcase and Con4Eva did hook up in the original universe

- “Does Rung know we love him? No - he’s very lonely” 

- No one in the cast likes all of the Shrek movies, but all of them like the first one.

- Chromedome and Brainstorm met each other the New Institute (which was my question answered :D) 

- Roddy would eat Doritos if he could 

- Not a single Transformer (in the IDW-verse) would like Trump

- The worst film that Roddy likes is Caddy Shack 

- Terminus would’ve never admitted that he was lying to Megatron

- Unfortunately, the song Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind & Fire never made it to the Lost Light

- “Who would make the best romantic partner? Depends on your taste.”

- JRo’s favourite superhero is Spiderman, his favourite TF toys as a kid were Hot Rod & Sandstorm and Nautica is his favourite character (from MTMTE/LL)

- Megatron, does indeed, both give the best hugs and deserves hugs! 

- “You’re a tactile, compassionate, thirsty bunch, aren’t you?”

- Tailgate, Swerve and Rewind would all play Fortnite

- Drift and Ratchet would’ve opened a “clinic” together (the question asker was unintentionally vague, so JRo was intentionally vague with his answer)

- Drift thinks that Ratchet was the one who made the first move, while Ratchet thinks Drift was 

- Ratchet and Drift would’ve been together for “decades and decades” before Ratchet died

- While Nautica/Skids still isn’t canon, he did confirm that Skids’ feelings for Nautica were romantic in nature 

- While Jack Lawrence bases many of the characters’ mannerisms on his own, he bases Rung’s mannerisms off of JRo’s, which doesn’t help his “anti-mary-sue argument.”

- I can’t remember the exact quote, but when asked what it’d be like to have Whirl as a roommate, he said something along the lines of “you’d have a crush on him even though you’d hate him.”

- In case it wasn’t clear enough in the text itself, Whirl rejected Ratchet’s hands because of a shift in how he saw his own disability. He no longer saw it, and by extension, himself, as a “deficiency” that needed to be “fixed”

- JRo pronounces “Omega” as “Oh-me-gah”. This is important information to include. 

And then the livestream ended with JRo saying we all “need a cold shower” after all this “fervent shipping” and went off to finish his half a pint of Corona. (what a legend)

Feel free to add in any answers or details I missed.

#tf #transformers #maccadam #idw #idw comics #idw transformers #mtmte #lost light #ruby speaks

[transphormers]

the thing that bugs me the most abd the reason why i keep putting off rereading mtmte is. megs really doesn't deserve a redemption, but jro didn't even try. literally two issues after he's introduced into ll we have ravage telling him "you're not a monster"??? excuse me????? we're just conveniently forgetting every single thing that's happened in the past 4 million years?

Just a heads-up: this is going to be mostly nonsense cause I'm writing it all on my phone & I can't leave this unanswered cause I won't be able to focus on smth else untill I do, but tonight I'll try to write an actual coherent answer. Añyway...

I think the thing with redemption arcs is that they don't necessarily mean forgiveness, you can have a character that learns & accepts their wrongdoings and ends up doing smth to at least (if only a lil bit) try to make up for them while the rest of the cast can be like 'this is good, but it does not erase all the shit you've done' and the thing with m*gatron is that, aside for a couple instances, they forgive him before he really does anything (they almost seem to forget he's done anything at all, which i could understand with characters not native to Cybertron (key would: could) or characters that died & came back before the war truly started) and I feel like a good end for M*gatron would have been to die alongside T*rn. I really do think so, but Jro didnt dare (or maybe wasnt allowed) to do so.

I understand that maybe Jro wanted it to be a story about forgiveness and growing from your past and what not, but it felt more like an easy out than anything else (Also, we...already have Drift. And like his story isn't perfect either & it's not the same structure, but it's similar enough), which is a shame cause considering idw1 (i don't remember the exact writers) dared to show the decepticon/autobot war as smth complicated rather than as a black&white conflict where one side was 100% right and the other 100% and Jro could have used that instead of trying to paint M*gatron as the poster child for personal change (specially considering some of the real life parallels(idk if thats the right expression to use here sorry :( ) he choose to use as a way of showing just how terrible the decepticons could be. (Which is also a whole other story considering the inspiration (again idk if thats the right way to put it) they used for m*gatron's backstory, but idk if im the rights person to talk about that)

It doesn't help that later on we had the whole mutiny ordeal which, not gonna lie, I was in favour of before it went from complicated to nightmarish, but that's another entire story.

Also, the ending..... Like yeah. Ok. He got executed in one of the ends, and? It doesn't make me feel anything, it doesn't tell me anything and I feel like, even if we argue that he did have a good development and that he changed for the better, he still deserved to get some kind of punishment, and to put that in the "bad ending" is just..... I have no words.

#no idk the actual definition of redemption arc. no im not gonna google it rn. #yes i spoke about it without being sure of the terminology but yall knew i was clown so 😴 #asks

[spockandawe]

Anonymous said:

in light of recent Pharma info from the con and F!Cybertron ending up in the original timeline permanently, what do you became of your Pharma/Ratchet from your Functionist oneshots? survived to the present day? killed by the people in power? joined up with Megatron's resistance?

OH MAN. OKAY. Pharma time. First I forgot to answer this, and then I was putting this off while I frantically archived tumblr content, and THEN I was putting off answering this until I published yesterday’s Pharma fic, so this is SUPER LATE, apologies. This is also almost definitely going to detour into main universe Pharma content too, because picking apart the pieces of why things went sour for him was already fascinating even before we got extra information, and the new info that we got really solidifies my characterization choices for me.

(for anyone who missed it, JRO said at tfcon that delphi and tarn definitely changed pharma and played a major role in where he was at mentally/emotionally when ratchet came to see him)

(behind a cut, because I have talked forever, as per usual. part general pharma meta, part noodling about what might happen in my story universe, 3.2k words.)

So, awright. I hadn’t gone into specifics at all, but I definitely split my personal characterization for main universe Pharma and functionist universe Pharma at a point where like... in my head, he’s a doctor, busy and well-respected, at the top of his field, but working/stationed in a central location, and probably working in close proximity with Ratchet. Then they diverge when one Pharma is pulled away to Delphi, and one Pharma is sucked in by government work for the functionist council (that’s not a perfect divide, but I’m leaving out any ways the war would have impacted his well-being)

The way I characterize main universe Pharma, he is CHOCK-FULL of maladaptive coping mechanisms. Some of that is down to his personality, some of it is down to circumstances. Just by the fact that he’s still ALIVE despite having been in close contact with Tarn, he’s learned to adapt in ways to survive the DJD. He’s learned to adapt in ways that let him preserve his whole facility, even if I personally place self-preservation ahead of plain altruism in his priority queue.

And this is really interesting, because the ways he’s adapted to survive the functionist council aren’t all THAT different. Both these survival tactics are about... performance, more than anything. Everything with Tarn falls apart if Pharma stops looking like the perfect autobot medic, and I’m sure that Tarn is ready to take advantage of any sign of weakness or fear on Pharma’s part. He’s walking a very delicate line there. In some ways, he has more breathing room on functionist Cybertron, because he’s a part of a valued profession, near the top of his field. But he’s also having to toe an evolving party line in an environment where lack of conformation risks death, and there are many, many more eyes on him, and since he’s got no choice but to be involved in politics, there are people who would potentially stand to benefit from his fall.

But ahhhh, my favorite part. On Delphi, Pharma... is very alone. He has colleagues, he seems to have gotten on decently with First Aid and Ambulon. Everything that happens as things deteriorate later comes as a surprise to them. His last experience with the person he loved was Ratchet bailing without saying goodbye in a conversation where Pharma was trying to ask him his opinion about taking the Delphi position in the first place. And then he was stuck having to go toe to toe with Tarn and the DJD. In my functionist setting, I still don’t see him as like... a person with that many friends. But he has Ratchet, and he’s had time to get secure with Ratchet.

Okay, my characterization for Pharma shares some things with the way I characterize Prowl and Starscream/Loki. I write him as a person who prioritizes himself above a lot of other things. He works as a doctor, sure, but the way Ratchet transformed to save one person’s life even though it meant the rust plague starting to work on him? That is not a very Pharma move. I don’t write him as a person who puts the well-being of other people ahead of his own well-being. But that’s not an absolute! The characters who are like that, what I find the most, MOST rewarding is finding the ways that they’ll open up those walls and redefine the boundaries of their central world that they will not sacrifice.

So, with Starscream, I write a lot of shippy content. Finding ways for new people to keep trust with him and work their way into his life until he has no choice but to love them. I write Prowl more as someone who has... had those people who are His. And (in his eyes) that trust was betrayed, he’s been hurt by letting them inside, and he still cares a lot, but he wishes he didn’t, and he’s angry at them/himself for the way he cares in the first place.

Now. Pharma.

God, even before we got confirmation about ‘my beloved ratchet’ and tarn helping to break him, this is really nicely in line with how I felt about things. In the main universe, Pharma hasn’t been positively-definitely betrayed by Ratchet. He’s been hurt, he’s definitely hurt by the way Ratchet left so casually when Pharma was trying to lean on him. But that wasn’t a forever injury. It’s something that stings, but something that can be repaired.

The trouble is when he lands on Delphi right as he’s still hurting from that. The danger from Tarn and the DJD, that is significant. Even for mechs in a large group, it’s... hard to even survive the DJD. They absolutely butchered the alternate Lost Light, and that wasn’t a mining/hospital facility. I don’t know if I’m phrasing this right, but it’s an atmosphere where priorities narrow from winning down to surviving, and the question of protecting other people along with yourself is so implausible it’s almost funny. If the DJD moves against them, they’re all going to die. It’s an atmosphere where it’s very plausible that Pharma would not just give Tarn the t-cogs from corpses, but where he could be pressured into killing his patients himself to meet that quota. If some people are surviving, that’s better than none of them surviving.

And then, afterwards? I write a lot of where he goes from there as stemming from anger over the way people seem to ignore the pressures he was operating under that took him to that point. In the main universe, I write him as someone who’s made awful decisions and is aware of that, but is also bitterly furious that nobody is looking beyond those decisions, at everything else. I write him as... not casually seeking out people just to hurt them, but wanting to hurt people back. Going after the sore spots for people who hurt him first, or who failed to recognize that he was hurting at all. At any point after Delphi, I’m pretty much writing him as someone who’s willing to go down in flames as long as he can take other people out with him.

Functionist universe! None of that is a factor. In the functionist universe, at a bare, bare minimum, he has Ratchet. And Ratchet still may not be good at recognizing the softer emotions in other people, but he’s a rock-solid, steady force in Pharma’s life. The functionist council doesn’t want to send either of them anywhere else, they need to stay right here, right at hand for the government to use them. It’s possible that Ratchet would have taken a station away from Pharma, if it was asked of him, but just by virtue of being there and not making a move to leave, Pharma’s definition of my-central-world has had lots and lots of time to centralize as ‘Ratchet and I’ instead of ‘just me’.

And here’s what I find so fascinating about his character in that universe, no matter what angle I take in thinking about him, he will go to all kinds of lengths to preserve that central world. Some of that echoes what I see from him in the main universe, but the main universe, it’s only Pharma, just himself, just self-preservation. Having Ratchet as something he’s completely unwilling to sacrifice shifts his priorities dramatically, and the longer he has to fall in love, him deciding to protect Ratchet’s happiness shifts them a lot more. Ratchet being more about the... ideals of doctor-hood than Pharma is means that Ratchet values things Pharma doesn’t have much patience with/interest in (like the charity clinic), but the fact that Ratchet does value it so much, and the fact that it’s not very in line with functionist philosophy does DELICIOUS things to how Pharma tackles self-preservation under this particular stressful scenario.

This is already crazy long, so I don’t want to ramble too-too bad, but a lot of it comes down to functionist Pharma being much more practiced at putting himself into other people’s shoes. Not just in a practical way, but specifically he’s made a point of tackling it from an empathy perspective. If he wants to keep Ratchet happy, he needs to really, really understand what it is that makes Ratchet happy. Which isn’t that innovative as far as relationships go, but I do tend to characterize him as one of my lower-empathy characters, who’s attracted more on the basis of you-are-like-me than on the basis of, say, how Drift is drawn to Ratchet when they’re very different personalities. So that’s one.

And then the other is that the threat posed by the functionist council is... much more decentralized and loosely defined than the threat from Tarn. With Tarn, Pharma had a laser focus on what he needed to do to stay alive. Give Tarn all the t-cogs he wants. Bam. In the functionist council, he’s needing to make himself valuable and toe the party line and play politics and avoid drawing any powerful player’s displeasure. AND needing to stretch himself even further to cover the ways ratchet doesn’t play the perfect little functionist doctor. AND. Stretching himself far enough to cover the things that make ratchet happy, even though the charity clinic is specifically something that this government is going to be very opposed to.

Functionist Pharma is much, much more flexible than regular universe Pharma. He’s had to be. The game he’s playing is drawn out much longer than the business with Tarn, and the rules are a lot more complicated and mutable, plus this is a Pharma who has something outside himself that he isn’t willing to sacrifice. They’re both forced into high-stress survival games where if they die, it won’t be easy or pretty, and in my mind, those games do the bulk of shaping the people they become.

Main universe Pharma is a lone operator, he wears a mask that hides what’s underneath, his priorities are a mystery because now that he’s free from Delphi and Tarn, what is LEFT for priorities? He leans into the worst people think of him because he’s bitter and angry and his world has already fallen apart, so let’s go ahead and burn everything down. Functionist universe Pharma is a highly-social manipulator, who has to control people to control the playing field. His mask is there so that people can’t see what he’s doing or control him in return, because the majority of what he does is to protect his one glaring weak spot, Ratchet. Everything for him is still about the long game, and making careless moves could destroy everything he cares about.

Which is so many words to take me back around to your original question, oh my gosh XD

What happens to functionist universe ratchet and pharma? It’s a fascinating thing to think about, partly because I’ve tried to come to a decision before and didn’t get anywhere with it!

Okay, now. The most likely way their story goes is that as the planet gets increasingly dysfunctional, Ratchet and Pharma are increasingly at risk. Even if Pharma is trying to be as cooperative as possible, it’s difficult to stay that close to the center of power without being killed for some reason or another. As the functionist council escalates, with things like the implanted eyes or the brain chips, they’re making mass-murdery medical-flavored moves, and it’s increasingly likely that Ratchet will hit a point where they tell him to do something and he says no, which will not go well.

But that’s depressing. I wouldn’t want to write that ending for them unless there was absolutely no other choice.

Joining up with Megatron... that is an interesting one. First of all, I don’t think Pharma will be a fan of the idea, at least not until it looks like Megatron’s eventual takeover of the planet is inevitable. Pharma has done a lot of work to get them into a position even as dubiously secure as where they are now, and he’s not going to be happy at the prospect of abandoning that to join up with a rebel group that the council is determined to destroy. If Ratchet went, Pharma would probably go with him, but Ratchet... he’s more likely to go for it, but it would still take something BIG to push him out of his groove. He was an autobot from the start, with the line of thought of ‘the government is broken, but we should repair it from the inside’. Going to join up with a military force and escalate the conflict and fighting is going to run counter to his ideals. Not to say he wouldn’t do it, but it would be... tough.

I can see a few interesting story ideas in here, though they’d all be pretty hefty things to tackle. One is that the council does make that move where they order Ratchet to do something he’s unwilling to do. That could be the splodey brain chips, could be something else. Pharma begs him to just go along with it, they can’t do any good if they’re dead, but this is clearly not a tenable situation. Something something, Pharma finally agrees to go with Ratchet to find Megatron because it’s the only way he sees forward where he can keep Ratchet alive without also losing him, but it’s a decision he’s very unhappy about.

Potentially going along with that one, it would be AMAZING to see a setting where as things escalated, Pharma and Ratchet both disarmed the chips in each other’s heads, which is a very dangerous move if anyone checks up on those, but given the ways the council has been behaving, it feels... even more dangerous to leave them intact. Things get set in motion when the council does try to execute one or both of them, and they have no choice but to run.

(maybe they’re ordered to convert rung/rung’s body into a crystal-making factory or something? developing chips to let them remotely control any given mech? it’s gotta be something suitably horrifying that pharma can justify in the name of survival, but ratchet can’t)

Oooooh, on the note of them running. MEGATRON’S INTEREST IN MEDICINE. Okay, yeah, no matter what else happens, that universe has gotta have them meeting Megatron. I.... hmmm. Ratchet was one of Megatron’s favorite mechs on the LL back before things got crazy. I don’t usually go for jealousy fics, but I could really go for Pharma being jealous over how much he’s sacrificed to keep Ratchet safe, but now Ratchet is letting Megatron monopolize all his free time. Being able to justify legit heartache for a character as cold as Pharma is a WONDERFULLY fun time XD Megatron teaching himself medicine is awesome and I love it, but Megatron searching for memories of his old friends on this different world is also gr8.

Also I would really, really like Pharma loathing Terminus on first sight because they are very similar in a lot of ways and it makes him uncomfortable :3c

Oh my god, and if Megatron shares the truth about knowing Ratchet before, it’s a PERFECT setup for a parallel to him telling rewind that him and chromedome are inseparable. It would be hard to justify lying that they were that intimate, but a gentler lie, maybe. Something something same side in the war, respected colleagues, affection. Something about them not being together but still valuing each other highly that’s bittersweet to hear, not as painful as the truth about what Pharma went through and did, and how badly that poisoned everything. I could see Pharma recognizing that Megatron is holding something back, and being unwilling to push harder because he’s afraid of what he’ll learn.

Hm. A fic like that... Bringing Pharma and Ratchet back into the main universe. That probably wouldn’t be workable. Just because of all the baggage, plus other Ratchet in his relationship with Drift. It would take a whole nother novel just to sort that mess out.

But I could see them staying behind in some capacity. The way the LL2 got back to the main universe... I know there’s no indication that it was anything outside the ship/planet that opened a portal for everything, but it would be plausible if there was. And if I was being super duper self-indulgent, I would totally want to pull functionist universe Killmaster into this hypothetical scenario. Now, Cybertron comes through the portal. But Cybertron was a planet in contact with the rest of the universe, even if the functionist council gradually choked that off. Citizens exist who are spaceworthy themselves, never mind that plain nonsentient ships are a thing. In the main series, we get the return of scattered Cybertronians from all corners of the galaxy after the war ends.

This sounds cheesy writing it out like this, but I’d totally be down for a fic where someone has to stay behind, and Ratchet volunteers and Pharma stays with him. If the council’s gone, well-- The planet might be gone too, but still, there’s potential to rebuild again, and now they have the ability to at least try (adsfdsa wow this really would need an extra novel of material, but bringing in functionist universe unicron at that point and building a NEW cybertron, i kind of really really really want to see that happen)

So. That’s not at all plotted out coherently, I’m not sure if it’s what I would ultimately settle on, but there are bits and pieces of that which I like a lot! It would be easiest by far for them to die along the way, just given the setting, but I really like characters managing to survive. And the differences between this Pharma and the main universe Pharma mean that he has the skills to make that survival at least possible.

And now I have talked for ten million years, so I’ll leave it there :PPP I just have so many feelings about this disaster robot and the ways external factors broke him down and the bad decisions he made to make it all worse, and the way he just commits to a complete nosedive because he can’t see any way to pull up, and I love him as he is, but am also obsessed with imagining the circumstances under which he could have been better

#pharma #ratchet #pharma x ratchet #ratchet x pharma #spock replies #transformers #maccadam #meta

[stlplaybox]

The Home Stretch

This week marks the beginning of the end. The crew that we’ve come to know and love will careen into into their final story arc. But instead of conjecturing about the mountain of questions that remain unanswered, I want to spend some time honing in on the key pieces on the elaborate chessboard that James Roberts has setup. After all, what is MTMTE/Lost Light other than the sum part of the characters it has woven together?

The question I want to explore is this: who are the key players that will shape this final story arc? If we can guess who, we have an idea of what’s at stake, what to look out for, and, most importantly, how are hearts are going to be broken. 

Like my write up of who was likely to survive the Dying of the Light, I’m going to give the odds of each character playing a big role as I expect (hope).

Naturally, before we proceed, a heavy SPOILERS reminder. If you haven’t already caught up, please don’t proceed past this point. 

The Set Pieces

Rodimus: This is Rodimus’ story. This is his quest. This is his ship. These are his friends. Lost Light has always been about the story of how the unlikeliest of bots banded together on the unlikeliest of journeys and became the unlikeliest of friends. Deep down Rodimus has always known this wasn’t about the quest. He made this concession early in the opening salvo of Dark Cybertron before Getaway or Megatron came aboard. Deep down this is all that matters to Rodimus. At it’s core, this is why Rodimus hates Getaway. Their confrontation will be brutal as Rodimus must come to terms with the damage that Getaway has inflicted. 

Odds: A Sure Bet.

Getaway: There is no Getaway without Rodimus. A bot who has lost his way and committed to his dark path, he must come colliding with the bots that he resented and displaced. We may not be certain of what fate the rest of the Lost Light has succumbed to, but Getaway’s confrontation with Rodimus and crew will be a chilling contrast to what life used to be aboard the Lost Light.

Odds: A Sure Bet.

Ratchet vs Pharma: Apart from the foreshadowing in Lost Light #1, you don’t reveal Cyberutopia as being an eerie science fiction take on euthanasia and palliative care without these two characters clashing again. Ratchet has been a big heart of this book and there’s no better way to raise the stakes than forcing a confrontation with the bot that resents him more than anything else in this universe. If you think back to Ratchet’s story arc at the start of season one, this surely comes full circle.

Odds: A Sure Bet.

Drift: One of the key players from the start, we know there has always been, pardon the pun, more than meets the eye with Drift. Issue #18’s revelations will undoubtedly have an important impact on Drift but there’s still too much about Drift that’s been left vague. On a ship of misfits who were always looking for anything else but the reality of post war life, he’s always had an angle. Now we’re going to get to find out exactly what.

Odds: A Sure Bet.

Rung: He’s been primed for this. If there was ever a moment he was going to shine, this is it. All the pieces are in play. The sparks, the blacksmith, the whole forged vs constructed cold. The Lost Light’s opening arc was a vehicle that set up Rung’s potential and there’s no way JRo is letting this one through to the keeper. Rung prime must star.

Odds: A Sure Bet.

The Grand Architect: the identity of this bot is the biggest mystery. I have a few loose theories but nothing that’s convincing but we’ll leave that for another time. I’m convinced whoever they are revealed to be, it’ll be critical to shaping the final trajectory of the our beloved crew.

Odds: A Sure Bet.

Nautica: The themes of memory, revisionism and identity have been core to MTMTE/Lost Light since the beginning. Skids was a key exponent of this and his death triggered something in Nautica. In trying to save one of her dearest friends, Nautica lost her memories of ever loving him and this is biggest note that can be sounded to tell this story. The consequences have been tragic for us the reader to watch but it does not come full circle until Nautica herself realises the price she has paid. Strap yourselves in. This is going to hurt.

Odds: 95%

Anode: Brought on at the start of Season 3, the obnoxious and brash blacksmith’s skills clearly have a key part to play. How? I’m not sure, but that the Grand Architect was responsible for sending her on the quest in Lost Light #1, means she has a large role in the coming conflict. 

Odds: 95%

The Wildcards

First Aid: If there is one character who owes so much to the Lost Light, it’s First Aid. Rescued from the dreariness that was Delphi, he found his identity and home  onboard the Lost Light. From the companionship of other minibots who he watched movies with to being anointed the Chief Medical Officer, First Aid is mortified by his role in enabling Getaway to assume control of the Lost Light. It’s personal now and I can’t see First Aid not coming back to make things right.

Odds: 90%

Megatron: Will Megatron return in the darkest hour? A la Drift and Ratchet in the Dying of the Light? I believed this with full certainty at first. But I wavered on this after a great debate with my dear friend (@SeanV2) but then my memory went back to some of Megatron’s own words: 

“Sometimes, you look back on your life - on your life’s work and you realise that it’s unsalvageable.  And if you’re brave enough - or desperate enough - you throw it all away and start again. On Luna 2, I threw it all away. And here on this ship, I started again.” 

Megatron never wanted to stay in the Functionist Universe. It was Terminus who entrapped him. For Megatron to complete his arc, he must come back. He may never atone for the atrocities he’s committed but coming back means that he’s desperate enough to salvage his second lease on life and make it count on the ship that gave it to him. 

But what about the mechanics of getting him back, you say? Let’s not forget the liberties that are afforded to a writer when said titular character carries around an inter dimensional wormhole in his gut.

James Roberts has also on the record said that he needed to move Megatron from the board to focus on the core characters. He also said that this was the last we’d seen of the Scavengers. Go figure.

Odds: 85%

Grimlock: The big bad of Autobot fandom has been simmering away in the IDW universe and this is his moment to shine. He’s been there since the beginning and we’ve watched as he’s slowly pulled himself back together with the help of the Scavengers. We’ve seen him take command of a situation already but he’s also carrying the child and I can’t see Grimlock role not having a pivotal role in all this.  

Odds: 80%

Deathsaurus: With Nickel’s role in helping him realise the bigger picture, I can’t see Deathsaurus not coming for her. And in doing so, Deathsaurus brings a disenfranchised arm of the Decepticon cause in this post war environment back to the chessboard. This is important as a core component of the MTMTE lore has been to question the black and white roles of Autobot and Decepticons. Bringing them to the fold in this finale offers an x-factor in the moral quagmire that is MTMTE/Lost Light.

Odds: 60%

The Dark Horses

Overlord: if there is something brewing in the Transformers Universe, the Galactic Council will no doubt have their eyes on this. What better way to bring a loose cannon into the fold than this? There’s an unsolved mystery here as well. The Galactic Council has been lurking in the shadows since the early days of MTMTE and I think it’s high time we got the answer to how they tamed a Phase Sixer that Megatron could barely keep in check.

Odds: 40%.

Roller: Why bring back a character who has contributed so little? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved his appearances in the flashbacks but there’s been nothing potent and imposing about his presence yet. I refuse to believe James brought him back purely as eye candy (and that he is!). That said, I’ve looked hard but I’m unsure how he fits in this end game so all I’m going on is that he had to be brought back for a reason.

Odds: 10%

Fortress Maximus & Red Alert: These two were pretty much there at the beginning. That they went to Necroworld where things have gone awol, will have give them a trail to follow. Realistically they maybe will have a cameo at best but I think I speak for a lot of us when I drool over the prospect of the newest Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord confronting Scorponok. 

Odds: 10% 

So there it is. My hypothesising about who would die in Dying of the Light was pretty good. Will I be as lucky this time? Let’s strap ourselves in for the final ride and see how we go this time.

#transformers #lostlightfest #lostlight #more than meets the eye #mtmte #mtmte rodimus #transformers idw #mtmte megatron #tf mtmte

[decepti-thots]

Ultra Magnus for the meme?

How I feel about this character: Magnus is my joint fave character (not just in MTMTE, either- across most TF franchises), but IDW Mags is my favourite Mags especially. For like, a LOT of reasons, but especially because I relate to a lot of stuff that IDW puts him through in very specific ways, so. 🤷 (OCD having Magnus fanclub president right here!!!) I do actually think that after "season one" of MTMTE he's kind of not written consistently, however, which can give me a right headache sometimes. (To put it briefly, the more "in-focus" he is, the more he acts like Magnus is set up to be immediately post his arc on Luna-1, and the less in focus he is, the more he acts like none of that ever happened and he's been the same since issue #1, before we knew anything about him.) Anyway, I fucking love him, whatever, I'd die for that boy.

All the people I ship with this character: i am beginning to realize this is a bad meme question for me because i just, i will ship anything at least once, i literally go out of my way to try and create absolutely baffling pairings and try to Make Them Work. But if we're going with stuff I like really actively ship I guess Rodimus (anyone who has seen my blog knows this lmao), Rung (i will make this ship a thing if it fucking kills me), Nightbeat (DITTO), Rewind (everyone stares judgementally), idk Drift? ask me about my many mags ships i just love forcing him into awkward interactions its so FUN

My non-romantic OTP for this character: Ten! I wanted more Minimus and Ten actually!!! I wanted to SEE THEM interacting more, I love and am very soft for them.

My unpopular opinion about this character: uhhhh actually i'm not sure what IS popular/unpopular re: him because I think the strong opinions come out often more for characters people relate to directly, and I don't think Magnus is a character nearly as many people relate to as say, Rodimus or someone. I guess my main one is that I really do not vibe, at all, in any way, with Megatron/Magnus, which is like, THE main ship for his fandom. I actually specifically dislike a lot of the way their interactions shake out in canon narratively, even, for long complicated reasons I won't get into here. So. (No hate, just personal taste.)

One thing I wish would/had happened with this character in canon: i have said it before and i will say it again, going out of your way to connect the driving force of the CDRW conflict and a major series run-long subplot to a character who you make related to one of your primary characters and then never doing anything meaningful with that either plotwise or really even as relates to his arc is a really weird choice. i at LEAST want to know if this is something where something either got dropped or turned out not to fit like jro originally expected it to or something, it feels a really, really odd choice to me.

#ask meme #ultra magnus #long post

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 19

it’s 2021 now!! time for more transformers 

we start off w/a flashback showing tyrest retrieving ultra magnus’s body from the ship - and we get a look at magnus’s spark, which is the green color of a 0.1%er [eyes emoji]

tyrest punching magnus..... grrrrr leave my dad alone bastard man

‘the divided self’ what a good title 

rodimus is like listen man this is a lot for my poor thot brain to take in

in flashback land, we see tyrest immediately launch into a crazy person spiel about how he can and will edit the law as he sees fit to conform to the situation, because that doesn't seem like a blatant abuse of power or a huge conflict of interest or anything 

oooh the screen in the corner that says ‘thought warfare,’ I see that

oof, poor magnus. its gotta be rough to hear your boss rant about how bad at your job you are....especially bc this is right after overlord called magnus a joke and nearly killed him

its especially brutal bc as magnus says, his job is his life 

augh, I love the panel where the armor is falling off around minimus, and then the one where he’s holding the ultra magnus head...poetic 

its fascinating that there was an ‘original’ magnus who was an actual guy, and then tyrest chose to make him into this legacy symbol - I'm assuming the OG magnus had no say in this, and probably didn't even know that he was gonna become this lawman legacy figure

I do wanna know though - obviously everyone thought that ultra magnus was one dude, but how did the different guys wearing the armor deal w/that? like, did minimus have people coming up to him like ‘hey ultra magnus old buddy! remember when we fought those guys in that one place? good times!’ like, do they have to study up on the lives of the past armor wearers to prepare for the role of ultra magnus?

augh poor minimus, of course he’s been wondering about what happened with overlord after he was KO’d

oof, drift...I feel like minimus looks surprised and a little skeptical at the idea that drift was the one behind the entire overlord thing - which is interesting bc as we saw at the beginning of the story, he doesn't exactly trust drift, but it’s still pretty far-fetched that one person orchestrated the entire thing

tailgate :(

the concept of a load-bearer is SUPER cool, I love it so much

it also puts a much-needed limit on things - as in, there IS a limit to how much weight/mass a normal cybertronian frame can carry, which is why you don't see everybody upgrading to be Massive - bc they actually CANT

oof, the worst part is that tyrest is RIGHT, minimus essentially DID have a nervous breakdown after the war ended bc of the rigid way he views the world

mental health support is clearly in shambles for cybertronians, yikes. they literally have 1 therapist for their entire race, and he’s not even licensed anymore due to hipaa violations. what a mess

the ‘attention deflectors’ thing is so cool and clever and also a great explanation as to why ratchet or anyone else never said ‘hey wait a minute, you're actually a much smaller dude in a trench coat’ 

I love tailgate knowing all the stuff about the autobot code bc of magnus...my BOY

and THATS why minimus was asking about skids specifically earlier!

oh minimus, please don't put so much stock in tyrest being stable and resonable...

aaaand there's skids and swerve! brainstorm says it best - ‘because something unexpected hasn't happened for at least nine seconds.’ lmao ily brainstorm 

finally checking in w/whirl and cyclonus - god I love that. whirl asking cyclonus how many cons he killed and cyc is like psh I wasn't keeping count....................ok it was six

hhhhh cyclonus IS looking for a cure for tailgate, even though he told tg that there wasn’t anything to hope for....excuse me as I go be emo 

and now we flash over to the unethical medical conduct hell zone, where pharma is being weird and horny and ratchet is appropriately horrified 

I seriously love how unhinged pharma looks, the art & colors do such a good job conveying his feral energy 

ratchet has some massive dick energy for taunting pharma when he’s currently just a head and pharma has dual chainsaws for hands 

ugh, I love whirls speech about anger...and I feel like he really does see cyclonus as a peer, despite cyclonus wanting to kill him, which is why he tells cyclonus all of this 

I fuckgin love that cyclonus’s reaction to very suddenly getting stabbed thru the abdomen is to just glance down at the sword, looking mildly inconvenienced 

back over to ratchet - and at first its like oh wow I can’t believe pharma was stupid enough to let ratchet goad him into this contest....but then you see first aid and ambulon and its like UH OH this is gonna be BAD

the idea that getting sliced in half is no big deal for a cybertronian is wild

‘you're gonna let doctor djd cut us in half?’ yeahhhh that's an appropriate reaction, yikes

FUCKING LENGTHWAYS GOD

pharma you piece of shit

poor ambulon :( :( :( that's fucking brutal. amazing panel but....jesus

and like, to further my point from last issue’s liveblog - the fact that this very gore-y panel is okay, but swearing isn't...that's really funny honestly. I guess robo-gore is acceptable, while I'm guessing regular ole run of the mill human gore wouldn't be

then back to cyclonus, who is still looking only vaguely put out by the sword stuck right thru him

and then cyclonus just pulls it right out, which is a very bad idea for humans but probably not as big of a deal for big near-immortal alien robots

circle of light stuck in capitalistic urban hellscape cubicals 

poor skids, being asked to stand trial while having no idea what his crime is due to Big Amnesia 

OH SHITTTT I totally forgot that getaway shows up here

that is super clever though, with chromedome confusing the name ‘getaway’ with the concept ‘needing to escape’

cant believe tyrest is really dumb enough to tell minimus all his evil plans

BUT that means its time for some very important forged vs constructed cold lore

jro spelling ‘program’ as ‘programme’ made me remember when he said that he considers everyone on the lost light to be british, which is perhaps the least valid thing he’s ever said vhbghjsdbfjkhasbjk

the idea that they used the matrix - which is portrayed as kind of a holy object - in reproductive experiments is really interesting

AUGHHHHH this is all so good and interesting...im really fascinated w/this particular brand of like, alien robot racism/constructism/whatever you wanna call it - I feel like it does such a good job as a plot device, where many other ‘fantasy racism’ concepts from other franchises fail, bc there's not really a ‘human metaphor’ being used here (as far as I know/can tell) - as in, this isn't a thinly veiled metaphor for something that happened/could happen in human history

in fact, this type of bigotry (or w/e you wanna call it) isn't something that is even really possible in humans - I guess if there was a stigma against being born via ivf or something...? but there isn't, so there's no obvious real-world equivalent, which I take as a sign of good writing and worldbuilding - it makes the cybertronians feel more Real, bc of course they would have their own types of bigotry based off of completely different things than humans 

additionally - and this is crucial - tyrest is wrong: there’s no like, inherent moral corruption in cold constructed bots. there's no difference at all, other than method of construction. fantasy racism plotlines often flounder here, with the oppressors having a ‘valid reason’ for oppressing the oppressed, but tyrest is just operated on religious zealot bs and some biased science

like, dude, did you ever think that maybe there are other reasons why your trials only condemned cold constructed bots? like, maybe the trial itself was biased? or societal conditions were to blame? correlation is not causation, my dude, especially when the conclusion is ‘cold constructed bots are inherently SINNERS’ lmao 

like, tyrest rlly said ‘FUCK separation of church and state,’ huh

anyways I just think the whole cold construction vs forged thing is really interesting and well-done, and serves as a good precursor to the more fleshed-out functionism stuff we see later 

so tyrest is clearly off his rockers w/the whole drilling thing - dude, you accidentally gave yourself a lobotomy, okay - but I find it kinda funny that he’s right about a lot of that stuff he said at the end, about primus and the guiding hand and stuff being real 

cyclonus saying ‘tailgate and the others’...I see you, man, I see you

also cyclonus looks fine now??? didn't he just get stabbed??? 

ah, tyrest sprinkling a little light genocide onto his plan to find salvation. nice, dude!

MINIMUS NOOOOOOOOO

‘fully deserved’ SHUT UP BIIIIITCH

poor minimus is taking a lot of Ls this arc, geez

oof, great issue! again, as usual....I loved the lore we got this issue, its so interesting...and some good character stuff too. I love minimus, I feel like he’s gonna be my fav this readthru; my first read my fav was brainstorm, second readthru was whirl, and I feel like its minimus/magnus this time. I just love his character arc...

hype af for more B) 

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 16

here we go, the crux of the pain...

ok I'm not prepared for this but I gotta rip the bandaid off, lets go

oh!!! magnus flashbacks!! I honestly thought these were shown later...this is such cool setup for the next arc tho I love it

and the tieback to the scavengers ark, showing fulcrum’s flashback but from magnus’s perspective, as the guy labelled with ‘ultra magnus’ blows him up...

and like, I love that those flashbacks are so vague, and you don't even really know why you're being shown them - I feel like when I first read this I assumed it was to show a bunch of times where magnus almost died but didn't even though he was expected to die - like here w/overlord - but we’ll soon find out that's not quite the case...

and I like the little details that don't add up, like the second flashback-magnus having his autobrand at an angle (which current-magnus would obviously hate), and the ‘witty banter’ remark about 3rd flashback-magnus, which could very well be genuine 

oh god oh christ the shot of the lost light flying away from the wreckage of the pod and you can see rewinds broken camera just floating there...fuckgin kill me bro

tg wiping off mangus’s leg because ‘he hates dirt’ tailgate ;_; ily 

drift just chillin with 0 legs left

augh poor tailgate, he’s uniquely unprepared for the horrors of battle after sitting out the whole war

oh god, chromedome is standing on the outside of the ship being sad, I already cant handle this

ohhhh god cd talking about him and rewind looking at the stars together ;_; excuse me while I cry my eyes out

chromedome, you have the worst goddamn coping mechanisms

never over rodimus’s office having flames around the door. my guy

magnus invented a font? that makes so much sense somehow

rodimus is worried about his dad :( 

damnnnnn rung with that absolutely BRUTAL read on rodimus, oof. way to kick someone when they're down...ouch

but really, rodimus’s hero complex is so fascinating, especially bc he’s aware that he has it to some degree, and he’s not necessarily a bad person, so he tries somewhat to avoid playing into it, but that's a difficult thing to do...

 brainstorm hugging his briefcase like that at the funeral...hhhh

swerve, the ‘case quest’ sounds like a spectacularly bad idea

god I'm so sad this whole issue but rodimus giving this big impassioned funeral speech that seems like its about rewind, only for it to REALLY be about some guy who turns into a tripod....really funny

godddd chromedome and brainstorm sitting together, and cd staring at his (remaining) hand....bro :(((

super interested in the fact that rodimus is religious, even though he’s not really overt about it, and it’s not touched on much in the story

rung staring intensely and accusingly at rodimus....jesus that's intimidating

chromedome is clearly uh. Not Coping well, which anyone could see after his “speech” about rewind

brainstorm giving cd that Look :( oh man oh god

GODDDDDDDD the reveal that chromedome has been through this THREE TIMES before, and every single time has chosen to forget, and the whole thing w/the innermost energon...im fucking devastated m8. god

hhhhh and brainstorm saying that he knows cd will go through with it, because they've had this same conversation multiple times before...fucking kill me 

also brainstorm and cd’s friendship is so AUGHHHHH my heart man. earlier on they're friendly assholes to each other but now we get to see that they both have a lot of deep emotions

oh god and now the whole thing with drift. hhhhhh this issue HURTS man

thinkin abt how brainstorm, while talking to cd, said that he thinks that drift ‘has the urge to name names’ but really, drift threw himself on the sword and took ALL the blame, even though cd even said, a lot of it was on him for going into the cell without telling anyone...plus brainstorm (and as we later find out, rodimus) is involved as well....AUGH

and drift being cast out so harshly seems rough, even though we know what he (and the others) did was bad

also looks like magnus is reanimating himself over in the medbay...i love all the symbolism with magnus’s hand this issue

OH GOD OH NO I CANT HANDLE THIS. REWINDS GOODBYE MESSAGE IS SERIOUSLY THE BIGGEST TEARJERKER IN THE STORY

‘you and me apart strikes me as intensely wrong’ I'm literally weeping. hello. I cant fucking handle this 

NOOOO GODDDD I seriously cant deal with rewinds message overlaid onto drift leaving the ship, and being attacked as he goes, and then ratchet helping him up with ‘you're a better person now - stubborn and frustrating but wonderful!’ over the panels AUGHHHH my heart cant handle any of this. my organs are shutting down as we speak

god I'm just ugly crying @ the end of the message.... ‘one more thing - one last thing - because I don't say it enough...I love you’ AUGHHHH

and its rewind himself who says the ‘I love you’ ;_; LOOK HOW HARD I CAN CRY!!!!!!!!!!!

and the panels of chromedome retracting his needles...he was ready to go through w/it just like brainstorm said but rewind was able to convince him otherwise from beyond the grave ;_; its about the LOVE man

like...rewind might not have known about cd’s past husbands and all the bad coping mechanism nonsense surrounding all that (or maybe he did? unclear) but either way, he knows chromedome so well by now, and knows that he’d be devastated by rewind dying, and so he leaves him this final message....additionally, I feel like rewind, being an archivist, would loathe the idea of being erased from the memory of the person who cares for him the most, and his goodbye message succeeded in preventing that

next, to give us a break from extreme emotional devastation brought about by gay robots, we check in with magnus, who has decided he’s had enough of all of this nonsense and has vacated the premise, somehow

aaaaand right back to being hit by a metaphorical emotional bat, because it looks like tailgate’s gonna die posthaste! 

I really love how the character profile descriptions change periodically

SO...this issue...this ARC....GODDDD. I mean its clear from my liveblogs that this destroyed me emotionally, phew....

I will say, I think the writing here is so excellent - this little 3-issue ‘arc’ felt like it had been built up to perfectly from the very beginning, and it all came together in a well-paced and devastating conclusion here 

I mean, this isn't the end of s1, we still have remain in light, but a lot of plot points wrapped up here. I don't know much about comics but I feel like they can get cancelled pretty fast, and idek how many issues mtmte was ‘guaranteed’ at this point, so I really commend jro & co for being able to construct such a fantastic story with a solid conclusion, while also setting up a bunch more plotlines for what would hopefully be future issues 

I will say. I'm super glad rewind ends up coming back, and also that things get a lot gayer soon, bc this would have been devastating to read in a whole different way if it was just a bad ole str8forward bury your gays situation 

but since it isn't, then I'm free to be extremely emotional about it, oof

I feel like I've articulate a lot of my thoughts already so ill end here and say: this slaps, cant wait to re-read more

#ive read this series thru twice but it still Gets Me man #lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 15

death awaits!

oh god the cover. I aint ready 

the cover of overlords open mouth w/rodimus floating inside or w/e,,,,the overlord mouth fixation continues i see

and of COURSE its by nick roche. of course

oh god the tension and dread in the first page, as we get overlords sinister promise to murder everyone, starting with rewind, and then seeing chromedome rush over to open the door, and knowing that 30 minutes have passed already...

that full page spread of everyone vs overlord is amazing

also I always thought that ambulon was trying to kick overlord but now that I look closer he’s actually jumping away from overlord, having just crashed one of those hover...thingys....into him...which is honestly cool as hell. also I'm never over the fact that ambulon kinda looks like he’s smiling here, just having a grand ole time as overlord tries his best to murder everyone

and chromedome just seeing this and saying ‘rewind?’ is fucking killing me thanks

PIPES NO DONT DO THIS. YOURE JUST RUBBING SALT IN THE WOUND. PLEASE don't talk about how much fun you're having on your wacky space adventure oh god, that’s just asking to be murdered,

GOD AND THERE HE GOES, DRIVING TO HIS DOOM. PIPES NO

AUGHHHHHHHHHH AND THERES OVERLORD WITH HIS GIANT FOOT. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

PIIIIIPES ;_; 

his messed up goodbye thoughts are brutal...plus the final shot of him laying all busted up....god :( 

that guy seriously had some awful luck this trip. rip lil guy

BUT he sounded the alarm!!! so good for him!! that's a pretty amazing final act right there

oh my god I forgot abt this scene where rewind is like ‘so brainstorm why is my husband saying your name in his sleep :))))’ and brainstorm is like ‘haha idk its certainly not because we’re working on a secret project together, so jot that down!’ lmao brainstorm....

also dw rewind brainstorm is not fucking ur husband, just look at his evidentially extensive collection of perceptor-style microscopes...my man is microscopesexual 

I forgot abt the metabomb omfg

‘some of my favorite words are monosyllabic’ rodimus ily, himbo of my heart,

fort max :( rung :( 

oughhghghg I forgot abt the scene of tailgate making cyclonus a new horn ;_; and then cyclonus materializes menacingly bc tg dared to volunteer their room for movie night hvbfshdjkfbaskj cyclonus anti-social icon

AUGHHHH GOD THE PANEL OF RATCHET TALKING ON THE COMMS AND OVERLORD IS JUST, RIGHT BEHIND HIM, WITH HIS BIG STUPID LIPS, OH MY GOD

what the fuck, is drift a flying car??? hello??? what the hell????

seriously he’s got like, rockets and shit, what the fuck

anyways, the entire exchange b/w ratchet and drift here kills me, for multiple reasons.... ‘my faith and my sword’ lmao love it. and then ratchet refusing to leave drift and calling him his friend ;_; aughhh

rodimus w/the squad like ‘lets go gays!!!’ 

also I guess cosmos WAS on the lost light lol, totally didn't remember that, I'm guessing he left at some point to go be in the other series lmao 

I'm sorry but ‘amazing. you speak entirely in name’ is so fucking funny, but also like stfu overlord you're not allowed to be funny

MAGNUSSSSSSSS

now I'm confusing myself lmao, rodimus DID know abt overlord, didn't he??? wasn't that the whole thing???? I don't remember if he was involved w/the whole mnemosurgery plan but he at least knew that overlord was there...but we haven't been told that in-story yet so now I'm questioning that lmao

oh god I forgot that overlord almost kills magnus, jeeeeesus. good thing he’s a russian nesting doll otherwise he probably would've died fr 

also damn that's gotta be scary for everyone else, bc magnus is The Big Guy, and a renown fighter...plus drift got all fucked up...yall are in for a bad time 

tailgate gettin his panic on I see

swerve w/the meta narration lmao 

cyclonus ily sm.......

rodimus charging at overlord....ohhh my boy not your best idea

cd and rewind both saying ‘I thought you were dead!’ HHHHHHHH I'm destroyed fuck it all

rodimus (inadvertently) saving the day by saying ‘til all are one’...iconic!!

FORT MAX IS HEREEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

drift just casually chillin w/no legs

chromedome going into extreme detail about all the mnemosurgery he’s been doing on overlord for WEEKS while rewind is Right There....my dude.

this issue has a LOT of completely white backgrounds but I cant even rlly blame milne bc this seems like more drawing work than usual

oh god cd don't say ‘we’ll finish this conversation later’ at a time like this, that’s never a good idea,

rewind no don't do it :( :( :( 

that panel of cd’s arm getting cut off...AUGHHH

GODDDDDDD IM FUCKING CRYING. AUGHHHHHHHHHHH I.....

so incredibly fucked that cd does what’s best for rewind by blowing the pod up....hhhhh god 

and then that last panel of cd laying on the ground....fucking destroy me!!!!!!!!

also I love that at the beginning of the issue we see whirl with the missile launcher thing, and that’s what cd uses at the end here....good bookends. jro is really great about putting stuff in the story that just seems like innocuous filler/fun character building but turns out to ALSO be plot relevant later

HOLY SHIT I forgot about the cast page with the big red X’s thru the dead people’s profiles....jesus christ 

AUGH this issue was a rollercoaster, phew...and the emotionally devastating conclusion to this arc is still yet to come! 

I will say that it’s super interesting looking back on this, in the sense that rewind & chromedome are introduced as the first ever gay tf couple, and a few issues after we get told this explicitly, rewind is killed. this doesn't really end up being an issue representation-wise bc literally everyone is gay and there are a bunch of other significant gay characters/relationships later on, AND rewind comes back later 

but still! it’s interesting to think about how, at the time this came out, the phrase/concept ‘bury your gays’ wasn't really something that was talked about a lot (or like, it was, but not as often as nowadays, and not really under the term ‘bury your gays’ iirc), but at the time of publication this would have fallen under that trope (though rewind coming back later negates it imo). I think it would've been tough for this story to come out nowadays due to the backlash that would've occurred from rewind’s initial death (it also makes me wonder if there was any backlash when this DID come out) 

to be clear, this isn't a writing criticism - in fact, the reason this is able to work at all is because of the crazy amount of representation mtmte has. it’s like, youre able to kill off gay characters without it being ‘bury your gays’ if literally all your characters are gay by default, and there are a bunch of significant gay relationships happening - technically speaking, any death in mtmte is bury your gays lmao 

this is a completely disjointed rant but my point is like, if this issue came out in 2020 people would probably be pretty put off by rewind dying (understandably), but in the context of the series as a whole I don't consider this to be bad writing/bad representation/bury your gays 

and like, WERE people really mad about this in 2013? I am curious now, bc I would definitely feel kinda betrayed if I didn't know all the stuff that happens later 

but its pretty nice, because now I'm free to enjoy the writing and be emotionally devastated by rewinds death in a normal way, and not a ‘I'm angry at the writers for killing off one of the only gay characters’ kinda way

anyways I'm tired as hell so I'm going to bed, ill continue the emotional devastation later, phew

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 13

humansona time, hell yes

OH MAN I forgot about the stuff w/swerve and blurr oof

that panel of perceptor just saying random equations always kills me vhsdjhfkbjhksdfnka

also I love so much that they call perceptor ‘percy’ that's so cute

I love the implications here that people just Grab minibots and carry them around like luggage bc they are Tiny lmao

ohhhh my god I fuckgin love ‘I'm just wondering if there's time to expand my aura and cleanse the area of aggression’ ‘I...don't think so, drift’ hgbadjfjbaskdfs drift’s hippy nonsense delivered completely seriously pairs hilariously with his whole ‘violent guy with a bunch of swords’ thing lmao

also, IM NEVER OVER CYCLONUS SINGING TO TAILGATE, and also the security team mistaking it for cyclonus murdering tg hbhkjadfbjkhsdf cyclonus u icon

and tg looking at cyclonus all heart-eyes, omg 

drift showing rodimus how to swordfight...fellas.....

rodimus, being entirely ignorant to the irony in calling cyclonus and tailgate’s relationship strange when he and drift are Right There, being weird gay frat bros

did yall know, I love magnus so much. law dad

magnus saying ‘that's not even a word. id have heard of it’ about the word ‘relax’ is so funny god 

rodimus bribing swerve with a bar license to get magnus turnt is hbvhjakdbfhskf

never over rodimus portioning out drifts blood money to the crew for shore leave hubhjsdkhfdbjksd god 

despite tg lying about a good amount of his past, I feel like he rlly DOES see cyclonus as a link to a more familiar time, and that's a large reason why he’s so forgiving toward cyc

mannnn the stuff w/blurr and swerve is so depressing in retrospect. swerve is like, such a depressing character the more you think abt him vbhskjdhfbsk jesus

magnus trying to get in on the convo when swerve starts talking statistics oh magnus

idk what ‘the lube pits’ are but I Really do not want to know

‘the temple of the raging prism’ sounds fuckin bangin tho

I love seeing everyones humansona!! this art style is pretty simple, but I think it looks cute

rungs ‘human name’ being ‘mary sue’ lmaoooooo jro w/the self callout

also skids’ name being blank is a nice touch

still not over tg being a baby....poor guy

whirls humansona is so fuckgin good, also swerve looks like a hobbit

magnus basing his avatar on verity is so sweet ;_; I really should read all the wreckers stuff after I finish this reread

THE ABSOLUTE COMEDY OF MAGNUS JUST FUCKGIN PASSING OUT THE INSTANT THE ALOCHOL HITS...ICONIC

WHY would magnus accept a drink from whirl anyways lmao

tailgate is so cute

they rlly just left magnus facedown on the table and kept drinking huh. the irresponsibility....we love it

ARE YOU SURE THAT KILLMASTER IS DEAD, WHIRL? ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?

rung don't lie, froid is your nemesis

WHY do we never get to hear more about skids’ apparent beef with misfire

rewind calling the swerve/misfire This early, wow

literally Everyone abandoning swerve to deal with magnus hgbvhfjdskdfbhs I fucking love this issue man

GOD I LOVE MAGNUS SO MUCH!!!!!!!! he’s such an interesting and unique character and hhhh I love him and his development

like, he was probably the biggest surprise out of everyone who agreed to go on the quest - ostensibly it was to keep order on the lost light, but it would make sense that magnus would get tired of being the Only one who cares about that sorta stuff on board 

drunk magnus is such a delight oh my god

magnus rlly just wants everyone to be safe :( my daddddd

magnus: I love all my children equally...swerve, rodimus, [looks at smudged writing on hand] dirt

swerve: see, magnus, that’s where you’re wrong - I ALSO have crippling depression!

cant believe they bought rodimus a hat vhbhksdfhahsjkdf

HHHHH GOD I FORGOT ABT THATTTT when cyclonus goes bonkers in order to stop rewind from playing the ark 1 footage and inadvertently outing tailgate as a liar....AUGHHHHH THE FUCKING...THE FUCKING ROMANCE OF IT ALL

POOR MAGNUS LMAOOOO

oh rewind :( you should really wonder a little harder where chromedome is right now...oof

everyone jumping on magnus while he’s passed tf out is SO fucking funny 

RUNG, PLEASE, WE REALLY DONT NEED TO THINK ABOUT WHATS AROUND THE CORNER. REALLY DONT

hhhhhhhhhhh I love how cyclonus sat tailgate down and confronted him about lying, but did it privately and not in front of everyone - and he even saved tg from being exposed as a liar, too. AUGH 

I feel like cyclonus is kinda impressed at how effortlessly tg has managed to lie this whole time, and tbh it IS impressive, especially considering tailgate was basically teleported 6 million years into the future and has no idea how the world works anymore, but was still able to lie convincingly. even cyclonus only realized bc of his own past, and not until now

tailgate ;_; ;_; ;_; 

cyclonus: oh no...im soft

tailgate and cyclonus singing ye olde cybertronian tunes together...OUGHHHH my fucking heart bro mY FUCKING HEART.

on that note: the song ‘to noise making (sing)’ by hozier is literally about cygate. thank u for coming to my ted talk

UGH GOD SWERVE STOP MAKING ME SO SAD, ITS NOT EVEN THE SWEARTH ARC YET

magnus had to like, get the robot equivalent of a stomach pumping after that hvbskdjfbhskdf jesus they really did almost kill him huh

I consider this issue forshadowing bc it makes 100% sense that minimus would be a Mega Lightweight considering he’s like 3 feet tall

the real quest that swerve is participating in is ‘the quest to get friends’ and so far its going pretty badly. poor dude 

godddd the thing that says ‘next: Overlord!’ with a fucking exclamation point I DONT APPRECIATE THAT. 

OHO i forgot abt the canon fanfic at the end of this issue

rung kicking things off with some good ole bodily workings-based dread 

ok but being so awed by the construction of your species’ anatomy that you wanna fall on the floor in amazement? that's a whole ass mood and I do frequently stare at walls for long periods of time, thinking about the marvel that is the human body. so rung is valid 

FROID NAME DROP LMAO. also yet again, are you SURE he’s dead?? are you????

the name ‘froid’ cracked me up almost as much as ‘rigor morphis’ did when I first read this...robot-based science puns! woohoo!

rung rlly b out here thinking abt overlords lips.....

‘forced browsing is not the autobot way’ lmao skids

also fr tailgate defs thinks that whirls actually name is nutjob

the entire segment of cyclonus browsing and everyone watching him and commenting is just. golden

oh no. don't make me think of rewind and his tiny memory sticks that he carries around. I'm NOT READY

magnus’ brutal read on rodimus and the fact that he’s more suited, personality-wise, to wartime than peacetime? oof. love it

I ALSO love that a big part of this issue was magnus admitting, in less direct terms, that HE isn't made for the post-war life either - his strict adherence to the rules and constant vigilance isn't exactly the best mindset for peacetime, for him or the people under his command

magnus’s hatred of metaphors and similes and the like....hvbsdjkfbasjhdf I love him

MAGNUS ILY...he’s trying SO HARD cut him some slack. i think his jokes are. yeah!

oh goody this text used "rodimus’s" so I guess that's canonically correct and I haven't been using grammar incorrectly as I had feared 

rodimus sitting ON his desk and doodling on it...adhd icon

rodimus calling rung a psychotherapist, which was rung’s grounds for a nemesis hvbhjabfdskfnkks

rung: as I'm sure you know I take patient confidentiality VERY seriously

narrator: That Was A Lie 

AUGH this hurts...rung trying to get justice for red alert but rodimus is in on the overlord stuff :( ouch

so issue 13! I fucking love this issue. just some good ole funney space hijinks, with some nice relationship development for tg and cyc - plus a revelation about tailgate - and some characterization for swerve and magnus. plus we get to see humansonas, which is always fun. augh I love this comic, and I am SO not ready for the next few issues, good lord

#lj rereads mtmte