@seebs which relationships between which arcs? (disclosure: I've only read mtmte, dark cybertron, chaos theory, all hail megatron, lsotw, and parts of exrid. (Edit: and the drift miniseries, and the terrible eos miniseries) But: I have an approximate knowledge of many things)
SPECULATION by which i mean a couple screencaps and me making incoherent but urgent noises about Mysteries for several paragraphs VERY LONG, VERY DISJOINTED, VERY STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS Spoiler: spoilers up to 51 SO the pods!!! there's a post going around tf blogs comparing the pods on censere's planet to the pods under demus's office (and their respective occupants) and!!! vs so THAT sure is a thing! GRIMLOCK TIME!!! apologies for how disjointed and rambly this is, i've just been thinking about this all day and i need to ramble!! considering that the mechs wearing the gear symbol in 46 are working with demus and using worldsweepers for transportation (ex-decepticons?) and considering that grimlock 1) was found in a crashed worldsweeper filled with unfortunate experimental things in pods and fun stuff like ceiling-brains and wall-skin and 2) drew the gear symbol on the wall of his room in the WAP along with the delightfully ominous words "prepare, confront, repel" it seems fairly obvious that These Fuckers are the ones who Done Grimlock Wrong. i think it's interesting that the words and the symbol are neat and clear when that same day grimlock struggled to write a single letter, and what he did manage was shaky and messy, AND that the first instance of grimlock speaking clearly happens riiight before we're shown the symbol he's drawn. so we're pretty obviously supposed to link his sudden burst of clarity to the gear symbol. which is. i have Feelings about that. they are not Good feelings. i can't articulate exactly what i don't like about it but ANYWAY in last stand of the wreckers a decepticon whose name i forget mentions that grimlock apparently went mad during overlord's reign of terror, and by the time the wreckers get to garrus-9, grimlock is gone. at some point between his escape(?) from garrus-9 and mtmte #7, grimlock was picked up(?) by Those Fuckers. there's a window of about. what, a few years? where this could have happened? grimlock was found on clemency, which as far as we know last saw battle in second cycle 1874. i have no idea why Those Fuckers would be flying over clemency in the first place. the only unusual things about clemency, as far as we know, are that megatron put his nightmare engine there (what's the nightmare engine? we just don't know), that pious maximus was involved in the battle (fate unknown), and one of the ultra magnuses died there. anyway anyway anyway! the ship crashed, the experiments were abandoned, and so was grimlock. assuming that the gear organization (Those Fuckers) owned the worldsweeper grimlock was found on, why was he left there? the scavengers don't find any signs of a dead crew on the ship, so either the crew survived and were able to GTFO of clemency or someone came and cleaned up. either way: if grimlock is valuable enough to offer a bunch of nobody decepticons half a billion shanix each for him, why was he left to rot on clemency in the first place? ???? mysteries AND!!!! okay. so at least two of Those Fuckers are cybertronian, and possibly ex-decepticons, but the symbol itself is ancient, according to #50. it's not necessarily cybertronian, and the Magic Energy Balls that talked to skids mentioned it, and thunderclash dreamed about it, and blah blah blah. why are Those Fuckers using that symbol? all that we've seen of them so far is that they are involved with ex-decepticons, they keep creatures both organic and mechanical in pods and possibly conduct research and experiments on them, and they have a motto that is similar to the DJD's (find, kill, cleanse vs. prepare, confront, repel). god this is so stream of consciousness-y, but ONWARD if the similarity between the pods that are explicitly linked to Those Fuckers and the pods on censere's planet are not coincidental, what does that mean about censere? why are they there? how long have they been there? unless mainframe's equipment was wrong, in issue #44 there was only one life sign on the planet. back to pious maximus being on clemency for a second, i just remember something that has bugged me from the get-go. pious maximus's whole deal was that he was super religious and all about the knights of cybertron and he hated ratioism. ratioism was the precursor to functionism and functionism used this symbol which has ALWAYS made me think of the mysterious gear symbol because. i mean. look at it. it's basically the same symbol but inverted. i don't know. the mystery gear being strongly associated with the knights of cybertron and therefore the guiding hand, and the functionists being all about adaptus..... i would be disappointed if there wasn't a connection!!! OKAY THAT'S ALL I GOT I'M SO SORRY FOR THIS WALL OF TEXT i just. I LOVE THIS WEIRD MYSTERY
i'm v v conflicted about EOS because on the one hand it has some absolutely brilliant comedic moments, like A+++, but on the other i thought that it fell very flat emotionally, and the plot was kind of eh. plus it was very obvious how much mccarthy dislikes jro's take on drift, and so a lot of what made me like drift in mtmte was absent in eos. but on the other other hand: "and that guy's not even dying. look at him, he's fine." "you don't know!"
So I got up to 22 in MTMTE and swapped over to RID where, frankly, Arcee was the only thing keeping me invested for a while. I'm about halfway through Dark Cybertron now and Cyclonus has basically cemented himself as My Favorite next to Arcee and Tailgate. Rodimus, Rewind, and Ultra Magnus are probably my runner up faves though. Magnus hits me in the feelios something fierce. Spoiler: RID #12-onward Though with a little bit of context, I now understand a) why Rhett clings to Starscream so hard and b) why prior to heavy leaning, he wanted Starscream/Megatron tagged and blacklisted. I mean, I was having a pretty joyous romp around with Starscream and my god did his reaction to Megatron coming back scream "Battered Wife". What a ridiculous douchebag but also somehow I feel really bad for him leading up to Dark Cybertron. Can't catch a fucking break!
Spoiler: issue 8 god dammit that was a close call Poor Flywheels tho. Poor poor flywheels :( But Fulcrum is metal as fuck taht was an epic attempt at murder suicide. Everythign about how Mnemosurgery is done is hitting me in the kinks :') Chromedome being surprisingly attractive for a very geometrically shaped bot doesn't help in the slightest. Also I am super curious what the hell Skids repressed that hard it must be TERRIBLE.
*high pitched squeaking* 1) just you wait, there is such a good mnemosurgery scene. i can't remember what issue it's in but that's probably for the best and 2) chromedome is a babe, look at his fancy legs
he got good legs *nods* (big giant robots have no right to be actually kind of hot? rodimus too. rodimus booty is off the charts)
I forgot to mention that Whirl is pretty high up on my list, but given that the cast is fuckoff massive I think that's forgivable. Arcee remains solidly in co-ownership of spot number one, with all of her interactions with everyone basically cementing her position further and further. Also Windblade. Windblade. Nautica and Chromia also but I'm very [adoring hands gestures] at Windblade right now.
i have three (3) different versions of this picture in my Robot Folder, all of which are named some variation of "rodimus and his sweet ass"
Spoiler: an embarrassing demonstration of my file naming habits it would take some determination to be spoiled by these tiny pictures but TREAD CAREFULLY ANYWAY
"BRAINSTORM I LOVE YOU" "brainstorm is the light of my life" "brainstorm you are SUCH AN ASSHOLE" "BRAINSTORM YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THAT" ....how do you have 2 files named "handsome" does one have a space or something WHAT IS THIS dARK MAGIC also, i got to the cleanse and control panel and was just like "haaaw, sanitation worker MY ASS"
Spoiler: Dark Cybertron OH WOW.......... OKAY............. I WAS WONDERING WHEN SENATOR FRIEND WHO GOT KIDNAPPED WAS GOING TO COME BACK INTO PLAY BUT NOT LIKE THIS.............. ;n; This hurts me on the inside.
