(aaaaaaaalsooooooooo i haaaaaaaaaave more DC to get throooooouuuuugh............... witness my boundless excitement and motivation *coughcough*) Spoiler: DC vol. 2 (Lllllllast time on the transformers! I got conspiracying over OP and Unicron I got extremely sad over and proud of starscream because that is my life now. I shipped Starscream/Rodimus with renewed passion! I want Whirl, and Arcee to hang out and be friends and also the Dinobots too while we're at it! Stuff happened!) We start with a cover of Shockwave and Megatron yelling at eachother dramatically on top of a pile of dead mechs and I feel the #confirmed about my dumb theories wrt Megatron not having much influence from Unicron rn~ "Oh I don't know your name..." "SERIOUSLY?" "Oh! Is it Rung?" dfghk Crosscut plugging his plays in the middle of battle is oddly adorable :3 "... I said of course too quickly, please explain the arrows, Skids." THIS. MAKES ME. SO SAD. FUCK. Brainstorm actually pressing his finger to Skids' lips to shut him up, I am so sad, this hurts my feelings so much. SO MUCH. "If he needs help disposing of a body tell him I'm not bailing him out again!" Brainstorm you are awful. I LOVE YOU. I love Swerve so much. So Much. Underappreciated metallurgist genius. .... I feel kind of bad for Kup, yknow. He doesn't deserve getting cut open and set on fire for.... reasons? I think he was used as a beacon to center the dead universe around for easier spacebridge calibration? Maybe? blah blah blah god Nova Prime is annoyingly overacted-fake-menacing-evil in these parts. I'm not even sure if it's the art or if he's genuinely written this boringly. Galvatron is trying to have an evil general of evil and destruction moment, Shockwave is like "Um can u not?" Me too, Shocks, me too. "HMPF. A world ruled by scientists..." That is the most 'rained on alpha male' thing I have ever read and I am genuinely laughing at Galvatron's little bratty pout there. "In what must be attributable to pure chance, Galvatron alone emerged from the Dead Universe." That's an oddly specific denial, Shockwave, my mech. "Because I don't trust your generation." HUH. The same bigotry as Sentinel Prime shows later or? Something else? Is it just 'Everyone is forced by universal law to be mean to poor Waspinator' again? "I think you're reaching." Cy stop being mean, let Roddy have ideas omg. People need to encourage Rodimus to think for himself more he is not stupid! He can be smart! Maybe not booksmart, but!! People have to stop acting like rodimus is an idiot!!! I... I mean I could jsut accept this as Nightbeat's mindcontrol being broken just like that but... hmmmmmm........ it seems too weak? If that makes sense? -huddles a little- I hate when Rodimus is so sad and people are mean to him about it............ "I CAME HERE TO GET MEGATRON AND I'M SICK OF NOT GETTING WHAT I WANT" There's my bratty boy, Welcome back Bee. Galvatron is such a fucking ass tbh. He totally deserves getting defestrated or something. "This era of yours never fails to amuse me." "YEAH? Well let me get to the punchline." Bee! Making Good One Liners! Is So Good! And Important! Galvatron.... calls four million years of war a skirmish? How long was the first civil war? For how long did the Thirteen bahs eachother over the head for petty bullshit? Galvatron was so busy punching a tiny because reasons, he totally lost track of everyone else. Because of course. Galvatron is an idiot but I still kind of feel bad for him over that tiny detail. Why Transformers, why... ............ Okay i am really offended that I only just now noticed how Megatron literally smashed poor darling waspinator's face into the ground in order to keep him down, hard enough to leave a dent/hole???? in the ground, holy hsit (In case anyone didn't know I am part of the local Insecticon Defense Squad. All Bugs are Good Bugs. Please protect Waspinator at all cost) "This scratch? I've had worse. Now grab my legs Bumblebee..." I kidn of... love this panel... a little too much. He's so casual about it. Grab my legs, bumblebee. Like that's nothign unusual at all. "My World Needs Us." ......... yyyyyeah I am glad Megs got a lot of character developement wrt the whole "thinking of himself as the center of the universe" thing. Because wow that's kind of (non-clinical usage) of him. ALSO! WOW! FUCK YOU MEGS! STARSCREAM IS TRYING REALLY HARD! YOU FUCKING AFT! HE DESERVES PRECISELY NONE OF THIS SUFFERING!!! Oh fuck you Scoop. What was he supposed to do, become a literal god to stop this?? He tried everything a normal person was even remotely capable of! Stop fucking setting up Starscream for failure by expecting him to perform miracles holy shit it can't be that hard!!! HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN HIM!!!!!!!!! And even when everything around him burns and he is on his knees, looking like he's about to cry... Starscream cracks a weak joke in an attempt to save face. My poor son... God! FUCK YOU SCOOP! WHAT THE FUCK!!!! LOOK AT ALL THOSE THINGS TAHT DIDN'T FUCKING HAPPEN!!!! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!!!!!! HOLY SHIT!! Starscream looks so angry and I don't like it at all when people basically try to force him to become a bad person again when he's TRYING SO HARD! TO BE BETTER! I feel kind of bad for the Ammonites int his whole mess HELLO MY GIRLS!!!!! Megs. Megs. Shut the fuck up Megs. Don't go all "You neverunderstood~" on Bee, he's a smart boy and he's trying, okay. Starscream sounds so defeated and sad, my heart bleeds... STARSCREAM IS SO SHOCKED TO SEE PROWL AND SOUNDWAVE. He actually genuinely like. Thinks of himself as utterly alone. He is shocked that anyone would help him, even if it's just incidental to helping everyone else. I... Guys I want someone to hug Starscream, he needs it badly. Please someone hug Starscream and mean it. "Well that's a start, the enemy of my-" "Silence Starscream." This... hurts.... please don't cut my boy off when he is trying to talk himself into feeling better... Don't be mean... On the other hand Soundwave probably didn't mean it as being mean he's trying to streamline Starscream into getting active again instead of taking another half hour to mope. The was he is holding Starscream's hands and pulling him to his feet... oh no so gentle.... I ship it....???? Please??? Soundwave being gentle to Starscream is sweet... "Enough. We have to be Rational- because that's how Shockwave's been playing it[...]" Let me stop you right there, Prowl because pfAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAhaHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH no. "Starscream- Either lay down and die or get your city in order!" wow fuck you prowl. Arcee is so afraid of being forgotten.... :c "Now as Optimus once said to Megatron 'Why can't we all just get along...'" Getaway please... Nautica shotgunning four million years of history and VIPs in a single week is incredible. Annnnnd there is Windblade! The important wife!!! (They all are important wives but still) Cyclonus is dying, Rodimus tries to say cool one liners, Nova Prime is not there, blahhhh The dead universe parts are so annoying. I! Hate! This! Part! Don't be mean to roddy, Pax!!!! Gotta hand it to them though, the comedic timing of throwing a dying Cyclonus at Kup right after he finished his whole "I CAN TAKE EVERYTHING SON" speech is perfect. ... I don't know if we ever heard what the fuck Alpha Trion was even looking for. Presumably we get told in exrid? Maybe? FIXIT, FLATLINE, FUCKING... STOP FIGHTING!!! YOU HAVE TO WORK TOGETEHR!!! .... Those sweet Prowl <3< Soundwave feelings tho "He had me waiting there for like twenty seconds for a dramatic entry" is still on of the best lines in this damn crossover. Snarky Bee is Best Bee. "... In the name of a cause you'd forgotten, except when you needed an excuse!" ... wow. Starscream's look in that panel. Just cements the thing where it's kind of implied that Starscream did the backstabbing thing not just for selfish personal gain, but also because he genuinely is pissed off that megatron lost his way. "When I was in charge, I stared into the darkness so long... I let it consume me..." Poor bee :c Poor Starscream D: Wow Scoop can you like. stop being a fucking dick for one whole minute and stop trying to take cheap shots at Starscream? Please? Is that so hard with the world literally ending right now? "Naive Autobot. Since when does anyone stay dead." I feel simultaneously called out and am laughing at the set up for brainghost bumblebee. Everyone is frustrated and in over their head and helpless and angry. And OP is getting punched "... Sorry Autobots and Cyclonus..." i love these small lines tbh. "... Wait What?" me 2 bumblebee. Blah blah blah more crazy primes saying crazy bullshit. I'm ust going to skip over all of these fight scenes honestly, because they're boring and parts of them are pretty badly drawn and I have nothing witty or insightful to say about them. "If I'm a Prime I'm no better than Nova, no better than Sentinel and Zeta. By perpetuating the Primal Lineage..." I am going to mark this down as ominous foreshadowing and you can't stop me. ... Actually, I am gonna shove Roddy's pep talk in with it too. More ominous foreshadowing. "My name... is OPTIMUS PRIME!" and that, my dear friends, was the beginning of his descent :) Retaking the title of Prime in the Dead Universe too, yknow. Suspicious. *Royalty Free Music Suspiciously Similar To The X-Files Theme Plays In The Middle Distance* I have like negative sympathy with glavatron's splitting headache. Poor Waspinator :c TELL THEM BEE!!!! Awwwwww the Constructicons immediately assuming prowl must have saved theeeemmmmm.... God Starscream's relief when the sickness goes away is... giving me emotions. ... You could almost feel bad for Galvatron given that he's been... thoroughly played. It's clear he's never been an intellectual and was massively exploited by Shockwave. .... That one chapter cover with Whirl and Arcee armwrestling in the background in Maccadams. I love it. Oh right there was this detail of them actually killing the dead universe with this. AWWWW I LOVE THE CONSTRUCTICONS pls stop trying to pressure CD into doing Mnemosurgery. It is bad. Pls stop. Rodimus losing his patience with martyr complex bullshit is my fav thing. "And we all end up in a bar." You bet your aft you do, my friend. Swerve's fanboying over Blurr is so cute. ... Blurr calling him annoying is way mean tho shame on you Blurr >:c "Your minds are all so small" Shockwave says while throwing a literal baby tantrum for reasons hardly explained and pretty much impossible to divine beyond "Mech put through hell succumbs to influences from Malevolent Forces already shoved onto him via his mentor" and like... okay... Arcee done up in whites and reds is still such a #look. Though I liked her in the classic pink. ... I wish Megs actually realized that maybe, just maybe he should never have contact with Starscream ever again and leave him alone here, but noooooo... Well at least here he realizes he should have never made it a war. That's something. CHARACTER DEVELOPEMENT. IT WILL COME. God Chromedome throwing Prowl off a fucking cliff is still the most satisfying thing ever The constructicons cheering Prowl on like little hooligans is giving me liiiiiife. Ultra Magnus literally towering so hard over Prowl that he has to crouch slightly to press his forehead against Prowl's to properly yell right at his face is hilarious. Ultra Magnus just throws devastating burns left and right and the only counter prowl has is threaten to our Magnus and that is sad. SCOOP IS A FUCKING IDIOT! GOD! I mean no one could have really expected that Shockwave has been setting this shit up since even before the shadowplay shit but! STILL! Oh gosh Starscream trying so hard to make nice with both Metalhawk and Skywarp immediately. This whole "attempt to pull on positive relationship which may or may not be there" as a first defense mechanism is really hurting me Again: The Dark Cybertron thing definitely (probably very deliberately) pulls on Unicronian symbolism! Heavily so! "Don't worry, I'll live" except that thing of course shows "ONE" now :P sneaky writing is sneaky. "You'll become unstuck in time" "Lol yolo-... wait nvm this was a bad idea" <- the tldr of this entire sequence with all the backflashes. Dreadwing you idiot. fucking... Starscream tries so hard not to get left in the dust by all of the other people rushing in and being big damn heroes all over his city. And not only does Metalhawk cut him off (which... okay fair it would be selfish of him to lie and pretend this was his idea when it was Metalhawk and Skywarp.) but Megatron scraping his fusion cannon over Starscream's chest plate is... a pretty serious threat... ... The Constructicons also just up and immediately drop any and all concerns about Bumblebee's trustworthyness the second Prowl claims he's trustable and I'm... How long have the Constructicons been orbiting around this emptyness where their dead teammember is supposed to go? How off balance was this Gestalt the whole time until they got Prowl bruteforced into their group? "WASPINATOR MADE IT!!!" my poor baby for once not left right in the line of fire to be sploded. He's so pumped! He's not getting kicked into the smelter for once! I lvoe this bug so much holy shit. And of course then he immediately gets stabbed. Poor Poor Waspinator. "Rattrap did- did you see what Scoop did for- for me? He stayed behind! He- he's gonna get himself killed!" This fucking hurts me. Starscream is so confused. So confused why anyone would do this kind of thing. Starscream is SO DONE with being told what he supposedly did wrong. He is angry. My poor boy, I can't even remember if he gets to kill the fuck out of Jhiaxus or not. "Farewell elemt of surprise, it was nice knowing you..." Bee is 100% done with everything all the time in this arc and he pulls no punches and I love him. I love Snarklebee. it'S ACTUALLY EXTREMELY UPSETTING THAT BEE DIES RIGHT WHEN HE DOES TH ONE THING HE IS REALLY GOOD AT WHICH IS MOTIVATING PEOPLE TO BE GOOD. POOR BEE! POOR POOR BEE!!!! And Megatron, who has like four million years of seeing Bee specifically as nothing but an enemy is devastated. Because Bee is that fucking good at being likeable. pooooooor brainstorm and his chest portal. "You know what Whirl? We really should've hung out more." Yeah i am feeling it. I am feeling Whirl/Arcee. it's a great ship. A great friendship too. Poor Starscream. poor Metalhawk. And here Roddy makes a really really right decision. Because he's a good captain deep down. ... Oh huh. I suppose the implication here is supposed to be that Shockwave is actually breaking through the Shadowplay here because he got unstuck in time a little. That's interesting. ... Roddy's profile is veeeeery handsome in this panel. Metalhawk uses his dying breath to call Starscream out and on the one hand yeah okay fair, on the other hand... he was having a breakdown.... Metalhawk... Basically just: Some people murder??? to cope??? ..... how did you not know you had swords in your body, Starscream. How. Did you not design your own body??? WHY??? Also! Roddy knowing about Brainstorm's crush slash rivalry with Perceptor! I mean sure it's not hard to see, but Roddy still knows exactly what strings to pull to bring Brainstorm back on track and that takes some skill and intimate knowledge of his crew!! Basically I am incredibly proud of my son!!! ... Megs and Optimus being ridiculous married people is still ridiculous and kinda cute. "My friend Bumblebee" NOPE HERE I GO, THE ACTUAL WATERWORKS ARE HAPPENING BYE They're finishing eachother's sentences that is the level of married they are OH HEY! A singularity! Like my favorite pluggable plot point when it comes to Unicron! I don't have a problem, you have a problem ..... Soundwave looks so betrayed over the badge :c ... The worst part when Starscream gets like this is he has a point. HE HAS A POINT KIND OF! But he is also reframing things REALLY unfairly and- .... Starscream's bodylanguage here hurts me. Pls don't be so aggressive at him Roddy and Windblade and co..... Bird friend is judging you, Megatron. Laserbeak, she is judging you, as you walk out here. PHEW! That took me basically ALL of today holy shit.
Spoiler: Re:Constructicons and Prowl In most continuities, it's generally assumed that Scrapper was the leader of the Constructicons. None of them are terribly bright to begin with, but Scrapper's death probably didn't do them any favors.
Yes! This!!!! So much this!!!! He's super brusque and direct, but Soundwave is blunt, that's who he is. And he still makes that supportive gesture, and takes both of his hands like oh my god. And this is when Starscream was at rock bottom, when he's basically given up, and when nobody really cares how badly he's doing, not even in terms of working together with him. And Soundwave breaks the despair spiral and actually gets him up to his feet and takes both of his hands, I am still not over this Also, there's maybe something to be said about how in Megatron's big three officers, Starscream is pure emotional expression, Soundwave is about intense emotions that run beneath a calm exterior, and Shockwave is all about blocked/repressed/stolen emotions. I don't know where to take it, but that's interesting to me. But anyways, Soundwave being able to understand Starscream because they both do feel things very strongly, but having a more measured approach to life and being able to smooth out some of the ripples in Starscream's approach. Starscream being able to express himself loudly and openly with someone who can handle that kind of intensity without worrying the person he's talking to is going to lash out at him verbally or physically. There are a lot of really, REALLY fascinating places to take this dynamic, and I am fascinated Also Ravage getting scritches, mark two!
Spoiler: dark cybertron God, that panel where Megatron scraped Starscream's paint always kills me because Starscream DOESN'T REACT aside from shoving his gun away. On the one hand, it's awesome that he doesn't give Megatron the satisfaction of flailing, but at the same time, Megatron has fucked with his body enough (what with beating him nearly to death and blowing his head off) that he doesn't react to Megatron scratching him / marking him.
I am so very tired. But I have accidentally finished a (sfw) art thing, and have given myself a powerful hunger for more before-the-war-turned-everything-even-more-awful cybertronian shenanigans
I mentioned I was watching the 2007 Transformers movie last night and drinking some vodka. I don't drink very often and I forgot that if I drink slowly I get sleepy. I was gonna write more of a thing, but I went to bed instead. Whoops. So I wrote the thing tonight. Spoiler: movie spoilers I had a good time watching. Thoughts are in no particular order, and possibly slightly vodka-shaped: I like the humans. These are very acceptable humans. Helicopters are the coolest looking robots in movie format. I like how one of the first things Megatron does when he wakes up is try to make Starscream feel inadequate. "I'm never giving you this AllSpark!" is my new favorite defiant action movie shout. Awww, why you gotta do that to Jazz. :( Uh, Sam, Mikaela, are you really gonna make out literally on top of your new best alien friend? I guess you are. Also the other Autobots are watching for some reason? Seems a little awkward, but if you're good with it, good for you? Lennox the soldier dude has some amazingly durable pants. We're talking near Indiana Jones levels of road rash prevention. Is it just me and my visuospacial processing deficit and my drink, or is it kinda difficult to differentiate many of the robots during action scenes? There's Ratchet who has decided to go with a day glo yellow this time, and Bumblebee who is a more regular yellow, and Barricade who is not Prowl, and Optimus Prime who is large and red and blue, and Frenzy who is tiny and made of spikes. Everyone else registers as variations on silver and confusing when in robot mode. Oh well, I get the general idea. Bumblebee seems to compensate for his communication difficulties by acting slightly crazed. And it appears to be effective. Good job. And that's about all I got.
Hey guys! We are going to be starting transformers armada this week on the stream if anyone is interested! Go over to the thread and weigh in if you are interested. I'm willing to start the stream earlier then 5:30 pdt. https://kintsugi.seebs.net/threads/kintsugi-rec-room-group-activities.3757/page-50
Okay, I think I can now distinguish the six Constructicons in robot mode visually. Well, Long Haul, Mixmaster, Hook and Scavenger aren't too bad, if you can remember their names; look for truck bed on the back and general hugeness, nozzles above the head, crane arm along the back, and jointed digger arm along the back respectively. It's really just Bonecrusher and Scrapper, who turn into a bulldozer and front-end loader respectively, so that their main kibble in robot mode is some form of big scoop. But! I finally figured out that Bonecrusher has treads for legs in most G1-derived continuities, while Scrapper has big wheels sticking off of his limbs. Also Scrapper has a facemask and Bonecrusher doesn't really.
Man though, I am dead curious about what the functionists could have possibly done to baby overlord. This intro sequence doesn't serve all that much purpose in the plot beyond establishing that point one percenters are a thing. That could have been done in another way. But also the series mentions at a couple points that the functionists did of sketchy experiments with hot spots and such. And here we see them taking a spark. Would anyone even claim they might have raised that little baby to be a happy, healthy, well-adjusted mech? And what the heck is "the nurturing", because that sounds extremely ominous. (fake edit: or based on the phrasing, maybe they're running experiments on the hot spot and wanted to salvage the point one percenter spark beforehand so they didn't fuck it up with mad science. but either way, I'd kill to know what's up with this nurturing business) (double fake edit: just barely later, Perceptor talks about how insanely risky/complicated it is to harvest a spark like that. even if there was mad science being done to the hot spot and not overlord, maybe the premature excavation could have still screwed him up in some way. or, y'know, just being raised by functionists) I wanna know what they did to baby overlord
If you consider the Functionalists AND Megatron, it makes you wonder how much freedom Overlord had EVER had until he finally told Megatron no.
I KNOW, RIGHT? Okay okay so I've been getting all freshly invested in him and excited about his character, all.... after writing the meta post for some reason. But I'm actually getting SERIOUSLY fascinated by what is up with him. (ps before I get distracted, I spent my whole evening making tarn and soundwave sparkly) Okay, Overlord. Okay. God, he was introduced as such a flat-seeming character that I should have known better. I should have known JRO was going to tuck some humanizing things into him. And I was tricked! I was so taken in by all the horrific violence that I forgot to really slow down and consider the character moments as they passed me. But oh my goodness. I thought I was tired of him, I thought he was a one trick indestructible torture pony. I was too distracted by 'waugh rotorstorm' and 'no not ultra magnus' and I never really noticed the CRAZY amounts of damage Overlord has taken. Spoiler: I got an overlord tangent in my overlord tangent Which is so fascinating! It is so, so fascinating! He's nearly impossible to kill unless you're way, way overpowered like the DJD is (oh my goodness, imagine a universe with two copies of overlord running around). Heck, it's hard to even significantly damage him, even before you get down to the adamantium ununtrium endoskeleton. But in terms of psychological damage? Wow, um. It's hard to rank characters, because the hurt is so personal and is expressed in different ways and heals differently, etc., etc. But I'd put Overlord way, way near the top. I think... Overlord isn't exactly hurting in a way that he would describe as hurt. But for all but his last few moments of his screen time, he's doing some of the worst coping I've ever seen. Like, holy shit. Starscream is coping better than Overlord, even in his unguarded moments with brain ghost Bumblebee. Whirl is coping better than Overlord is. I'm having a whole lot of trouble picking out anyone who's coping worse besides maybe like... Tarn. Just. Goddamn. I can't even properly articulate how intense this makes me feel. It's like when I stumbled onto the secret Rotorstorm backstory and a whole new world opened up. From running your robot GHB murder carnival, effortlessly in control and having a good time, in no time at all, going all the way to having a complete collapse when you're told that Megatron is dead, so you'll never get to fight him. That thing he says, when he falls to his knees. That slays me. "But... But he owes me! He owes me." If you look past the way he just spent five issues murdering lots of decent people, that's so intensely sad. We've had his strength and power shoved in our faces ever since he showed up on screen, without a single thing to break that image. Until this. This little pitiful moment where he just gives up on everything, and the only thing he can say is that Megatron owes him. Owing things isn't exactly how social interactions really work, but I think most people have had that little moment where it knocks the breath out of you because you deserved that thing, and now it's been snatched away. And honestly, taking the four million years of brutal fights, the ununtrium upgrade, and the invasive brain shit, and boiling that all down into 'you owe me one fight,' that's... that's not that unreasonable. And Megatron promised that if Overlord stepped out of line, Megatron would come and force him back to where he was. Overlord had every reason to expect that fight, and all the reason to think it was a fair thing to want. Guhhhh words are hard. But it's such a little thing, in the grand scheme of the universe. One fight, that Megatron probably thinks he'll win (because that's how all the others have gone), and a fight that he promised you. And then he died, without any indication that you even registered on his mind. Ahh, this isn't even what I meant to be typing about. It just hits me right in the gut that he loses that fight, and the will to live just... evaporates. Just from then until Chromedome screws up, asking someone to kill him. Just. DANG. Why is this character hurting me I never signed up for this ANYWAYS. What I was going to say is that whether the council is experimenting on Overlord or just letting him pop into existence before they do anything about it, there are SO many opportunities for shit to get sketchy. Rung clarifies that the council has been experimenting on hot spots for ages, so hopefully at some point they maybe possibly locked down something that would get them results. What results? Well THAT'S an interesting question! I don't have answers, but it's an interesting question. I don't think the council would find a super-ultra-rare point one percenter spark and totally fail to take advantage of that opportunity in some way. I think the most benign thing they might have done is like........ to filter his education, filter the information that gets fed to him at his formative years, shaping him into the sort of person that suits their needs. I'm too lazy to look up alt modes, but he's at least a triple changer, which I would think places him way up high in functionist society. What would they do with him, that's the real issue. I'm too tired to think that through, other than 'government-controlled thug', but that is a lazy boring answer. SO, Functionists being what they are, I think whatever they tried to do with him probably involved keeping him under tight control. And oh my god, Overlord is the WORST about being controlled. Like, we don't see much of him when he's properly young, so it's hard to say. But we never, ever see him at a point where he's actually any good at doing what anyone tells him. If you tell him to do something, he might do it, if it sounds fun. But we see and hear about Megatron having to fight hard to keep him in line, he casually kills a decepticon officer who is like 'oh my god what no we're not deserting our posts to go on your personal mission, he puts both his middle fingers up at the preps in the Galactic Council who nursed him back to health. When Shockwave tells him this Garrus-9 thing is stupid, he's like 'haha yeah whatever, nerd.' It's Megatron trying to cut back on his freedom that makes him bail in the first place. And that's not about physical constraints, he was fine with chilling in the prison that couldn't hold him, he was fine cooped up on Garrus-9. It's more like people giving him orders that rubs him the wrong way. We don't have enough info to make any definite conclusions about what the functionists could have done to him. But man, it seems so very much in line with how they work, that they held him in a tighter and tighter grip until it was finally too much and he was like 'fuck all y'all, I'm out' Anyways, I'm wondering where his character is going to go now. Because he's set aside the grudge match thing. Okay. Good for him! Now.............. what's left? Seriously, Megatron has been the core of his existence for a long time, and that is extremely not healthy and he shouldn't do that thing. But now that he's made the conscious decision to set that aside, what is left for him? The murder circus was fun... maybe. Kinda. It killed the time while he was waiting for Megatron. He liked fighting in the war. The war is mostly down to little bitty skirmishes, if anything (unless he wants to take on a bunch of titans ;P). Does he have any hobbies? Anything he's wanted to do? Anything he wanted to learn? Anything at all that he uses to entertain himself? Like, this was definitely a good move on his part. And Overlord is a significant enough player that I seriously doubt he's gone forever. But what is left for him to fill his life? He just yanked out the entire core of his existence, and I want to know what's left and how he's feeling. Anyhoo, final note: The timing on the spark-harvesting flashback, that almost means that there's probably an Overlord in the functionist universe. Tell me your secrest
They would have probably half-killed each other fighting to see which was the superior copy, then made out a little, and then finished killing each other. One maybe ends up a little more dead that the other I'm actually very interested, but too tired to go hunting down exact panels for what has been said in regards to hotspots and functionists messing with them :C Were they experimenting because hot spots were slowly disappearing/fading, or were hot spots slowly dying off BECAUSE functionists were messing with the sparks in some fashion? What does the nurturing mean in that context? Doing something to encourage sparks to form useful alt modes? Alien robot genetic engineering? Trying to enrich the hot spot so it'll produce more sparks and not die? Why was there a reward for reporting .1%ers, again? Because that's super creepy, in retrospect. There's some interesting room for AU worldbuilding, there... (We've probably got answers or hints about all this already in canon, but I'm off to the races, now)
I really need to get to the current comics so I can appreciate all these thoughts and conversations properly. But I have strong completionist tendencies and a mild preference for doing things in order. Must read faster, I suppose. :D But there is absolutely nothing preventing me from marveling over how sparkly those robots are! They are so sparkly! My entire evening just became more charming by several orders of magnitude.
Very little was actually said! It's in 36, one sec, I'm too lazy to crop the page, but here we go. Also, trivia! Spoiler: large Hmmmmmm. The phrasing is a little tricky. Rewind's new history records say that when the functionists seize control of the government, they find records of experiments dating back millions of years. Which kind of implies that it was like... the senate or the prime ordering the experiments? But it was three-of-twelve who came to verify Overlord and say ominous things about ~the nurturing~. And I guess maybe some of the experiments were about trying to artificially create outliers, but it isn't clear if that's ALL that was being done. Waughhhh, this page is difficult @_@ Anyways, trivia! I'm not sure when the business with Megatron and Whirl happened, but it was before Messatime for Megatron. Megatron was just a shade under 500 when he was on Messatine with Terminus. Which is also when Trepan happened. And he's still around the same age when Senator Decimus comes to shut his new station down, and things get bloody. Which is when the gladiator business started. It happens so quickly, Megatron really sliding out of poetry and nonviolence and off onto the road of what he eventually becomes. Also, Megatron's conversation with Optimus in this issue is so good, so remarkably open for Megatron, and so painful. And Roller got poofed at a point before Megatron and Optimus were opposing each other, and Optimus just finished recommending to Roller that he check out Megatron's writing, because it's powerful stuff.
Oh Oh oH I JUST Spoiler: mild spoilers for lotsa stuff but especially worldbuilding stuff in LL3 They harvested that spark, but did they harvest the sentio metallico with it???? For Overlord, probably, but the one Brainstorm took and stuck in Megs? That's interesting! Did Brainstorm take that too or did he mayhaps leave it behind, potentially.... widowing it... [X-FILES THEME PLAYS] (... I'm sincerely sorry for how I am being wrt theories currently)
I found a tidbit!! In Optimus Prime 1, Ratchet makes an aside about all the red tape he had to fight to get Jetfire involved with science instead of defense or transportation. So........ Pharma :3c Pharma is a pretty, flashy, flying-type pokemon, who is firmly entrenched in the medical side of life. We don't whether he dates all the way back to the true pre-war days, but it's not unreasonable to assume that's the case. We do know that he and Ratchet were close, close enough that when Optimus wanted to station Pharma on Delphi, he went to Ratchet to ask what he should do. And close enough that after ages of not seeing each other or talking, Ratchet still trusted him enough to become the new chief medical officer. So back in the functionist days, imagine Ratchet being Pharma's mentor and protector in a much more significant way than just as if they were both doctors, no problem. We've seen how hard the functionists come down on fliers who try to break away from the council's plans. But Ratchet was probably one of the few non-government mechs with enough clout to push back against the functionists, at least a little. Imagine them trying to railroad young Pharma into the military, when Pharma was like Whirl, and had a pretty clear idea of what he actually wanted to do with his life. And we saw how well that worked for Whirl, without a protector. But if Ratchet was Pharma's protector, like oh my gosh, the amount of respect and gratitude you could get out of that is just fantastic. And Pharma is a vain, vain creature (and I love him for it), but that just means I love him even more when someone else is important enough to him to register above the vanity. Plus, Pharma is a natural at medicine, he was meant for this and knows it, and he has to be aware of how bad a fit being a soldier would have been for him. Ratchet did him a massive, massive favor, but Ratchet isn't the kind of person to like... treat anyone as indebted to him. He does kind things, even if they're done with a Ratchet attitude, and he doesn't expect anything in return. Just... ahhhhhh, Pharma being aware of the unbelievable opportunity Ratchet is giving him, being aware of how Ratchet isn't holding that as leverage over him or anything, all of the things you can get out of that. And also, Pharma is a pretty field-specific name. If he was born in functionist times and meant to be a soldier, mmmmaybe he chose that name as a gesture of defiance. Or maybe he was born with a different name and chose this one later, and basically I'm angling for a super self-indulgent thing where he asks Ratchet if he thinks 'Pharma' will be a good name, and does Ratchet like it? PS, also, it just registered with me that Jetfire used to be a decepticon. His entire backstory is still so different from Skyfire in G1, buuuuuut..... I am a trash panda perched on top of a massive pile of ships and still trying to grab for more. That's enough backstory to support the idea that he and Starscream knew each other, even that he and Starscream were close, back in the day. And then Jetfire went off to be an autobot and Starscream went off to be repeatedly punched in the face by people he used to respect. There's so many things that could be done with this! Young Jetfire and Starscream bonding over the government wants them to become this thing, and they're not going to do it, they're going to find a way to break free of those constraints. Young Jetfire and Starscream off on a nice romantic flight over Cybertron. Starscream showing off in the air, because he's a vain, pretty bird, and Jetfire knows flying enough to really appreciate it. Jetfire coming back to Cybertron and helping rebuild the place and working with Starscream and everything being deliciously awkward. And that size difference tho .........jetfire being a large, pale, mostly monochrome mech, and all the ugly baggage that has for starscream :3c
So interesting fact about Overlord's altmode: he's not a triple changer. His altmode is a jet and a tank. He splits in two, with the jet part able to carry the tank part around. Wonder how the Functionists reacted to that.
