TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

Okay okay but also consider

This lovely disaster of an alternate trine: Starscream/Windblade/Wheeljack

Okay so it's the best-best because PITCHROM, first of all, also femdom, and also because these three losers are practically running Cybertron together, and a trine between them would have all four quadrants in the mashup, and I can't even count the paragraphs of shrieking about these three I've done in PM. Also it would be a sexy, sexy disaster with femdom and also emotional support all over the place. Just lemme throw a few example panels at you, and I'll be on my way. I didn't screencap any panels of Windblade/Wheeljack, because they have a chill/positive/healthy relationship, which makes for boring screencaps. BUT.










All that delicious starjack potential comes from one singular issue, and pretty much that every moment Starscream and Windblade are on screen together is classic pitch

Also, as I was collecting panels, I noticed this flying hammerhead shark robot (presumably) and I thought I should definitely share it with the rest of the class.



Well, I've found MY fursona

 

If you do decide to go for the comics, there are links and reading orders scattered here and there for reading them for free online! If you ask whenever you're interested, I can dig up a good link to a post (probably one of the more complete, easy-to-find posts is in the winkwonk cling clong thread) I definitely read them for free first, and bought irl copies more slowly, as money came into my life.

 

STRIKA!!!!!

Oh my god, she's so LARGE! So intelligent!! Apparently in season four of TFA, if that had happened, she would have been the one masterminding the attempts to free Megatron from Autobot prison. There's a script called 'the stunticon job' that was never animated, but was read aloud at a convention once. It would have featured Decepticons going undercover on Cybertron, and we would have seen THE MOTOR MASTER and also Sky-Byte, so I mean. Not having this episode is a tragedy of the highest degree. I learned this only tonight too. GOD. I'm so sad about TFA.

PS, anyone who hasn't read The Brave Shall Heed The Call, it is CHOCK-FULL of prime Strika content, including her being a momma bear mentor for Slipstream and some PRIME-ASS INTERACTIONS with Megatron and Ratchet and Optimus, plus some unbelievable depth being given to her relationship with Lugnut. I love her so much.

Look look look, I even have a Strika dragon, and she looks like the first one right now, but soon she'll look like the second, and I already have a Lugnut for her and I need to find an Obsidian too.



SO LIKE, a recurring thing with her character is that she is consistently portrayed as being unbelievably, incredibly huge, but ALSO she's always portrayed as a dangerously intelligent lady, and one of the most effective commanders on whatever side she's allied with. I belieeeeeve her main appearances are in Beast Machines (married to Obsidian, who is also lorge and intelligent), TFA (married to Lugnut, who is also lorge, but less intelligent, though I have seen him characterized as protective), and IDW (not openly married, but she's serving as one of Elita One's top commanders, and so is Obsidian, and they're classically a couple, so Ima just assume she has herself a fine-ass conjunx with a funky bug thorax and shoulder propellers and freaky awesome hologram hands).

SO, I still haven't watched Beast Machines (I have dvds, but the animation hurts my head), but she's specifically known there as 'one of the greatest generals in cybertronian history.' And I'm a little weak on the plot, but at one point she and Obsidian were both pretending to be dumb as a a stump, with vocabularies consisting of 'terminate' and 'obliterate,' respectively. And these two are both so physically KICKASS that the people this act was being put on for totally bought that their reputations as dangerous military commanders was based on pure physical strength alone. That's even without factoring in their minds, they kick so much physical and mental ass that I'm just. AAAAAAAAA. Over both of them.

(also this beast machines 'terminate' thing got an awesome callback in her first IDW appearance)



And even though this is the artist with the most cartoony style, by a long shot, Strika is still so! huge!!!!



Though honestly, nothing compares to how massive she is in TFA. Liek if u swoon every time



Also, random trivia, in that scene, she's totally got Cyclonus there as part of her crew. He doesn't really do anything, and his color scheme here is super dark and he kinda disappears into the bg/sky, but here, have a fanart of the scene in lieu of an actual screenshot



I wanna see her applying her command skills to cyclonus he's restrained and dour but she's blunt and to the point and straightforward and I think she'd really have his respect as an officer but I wanna see it happen why must everything good be denied to me

Also at one point in IDW she totally almost executes Starscream, so that's pretty awesome

And now, she's in the mix in TAAO! But she's barely done anything yet, and she barely gets to even feature in the group shots so far. Probably because Obsidian is doing a lot of the talking, and overrepresenting Carcer would be kinda boring considering that Cybertron being a mixing pot now is a big thematic thing. But she is there on the Council. Also, I like that we've got one colony represented by a split-spark pair, plus two represented by a (presumably) married couple. Caminus doesn't have anyone who's married or paired off in some other way, and neither does Cybertron. (oh, right, and velocitron, but knock out references how moonracer is/was his assistant, plus he's already married to breakdown, so they just have an awkward professional relationship instead, which totally counts). Come on, Windblade and Starscream, get on top of that :DDDD

But! Here's Strika in TAAO 1



And here she is in TAAO 2!



Isn't that tragic? Those are basically the only images of her in either issue. BUT! She's there! And if she was never meant to do anything, well, the colonies were originally only supposed to send one representative each. They're only allowed to have multiples if the representatives vote together. So one, I think Strika might have things to do as the tensions in the city escalate. Because she's got a tactical mind, sure (that's such an established part of her character I really doubt they'd toss it), but she's also got some BOMB-ASS PHYSICAL STRENGTH at her disposal. If things with the badgeless or combaticons start to come to a head, she is a force to be reckoned with.

Alternately! There are definitely some Shenanigans going on with Carcer and his crew, because... that is not the titan that Metroplex thought he'd reconnected with. Carcer is the name of a different titan altogether, and not the one whose signal Metroplex recognized. And Elita definitely fed Windblade a lie when she claimed it was the same titan with a different name. So given that Carcer is the most militaristic (and organized) of the societies they've encountered, it sure is suspicious that both of Elita's most competent, dangerous generals are chilling on Cybertron! Now, there really hasn't been enough revealed to make good guesses at what direction the story will go. We've already got lots of plot flying around even without them complicating things. But okay. Elita's first reaction to Starscream suggesting the alliance was to accuse him that he's going to basically enslave and subjugate the colonists. Why is that your first thought, Elita? Are you just suspicious after years of hard living in space? Or could it be that that's what you do to any other Cybertronians you encounter? Also, the business with Metroplex thinking it was a different titan. I'm kind of thinking that maybe Carcer and his crew found Tempo. And maybe took Tempo out and cannibalized him for parts. They make a big point of how tight resources are and how they recycle bodies. If they found Tempo when he was already dead, wouldn't they be fine with openly admitting it? In their view, it's the most honorable way to treat the dead. But if they found another titan and killed him to harvest his body, well... who knows what kind of interesting ways that could play out in the future.

(also anyone who hasn't read the brave shall heed the call, you should definitely do it. fall in love with strika! it is inevitable)

 

Oh my god, that's hilarious. I can't take him seriously like this. I just can't.