oh my god. okay, so, from the very first time I read TGWP i've been reading starscream's dialogue with a VERY specific voice in mind. sort of smooth and disdainful and pretentious sounding. it was definitely from something but i could not for the life of me figure out what. also it's weird, because assigning voices to characters is not really a thing that I do. my reading experience is very silent. but every single starscream line comes out in that one voice. it was driving me fucking nuts, trying to remember where I had heard it and I FINALLY realized JUST NOW that it's the voice of several characters in Skyrim. GO FIGURE. no matter how often I remind myself that starscream screeches like a banshee, his voice in my head is now permanently, for some fucking reason, a shady dunmer store clerk. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Some thoughts on Devisiun from the rp ooc thread. Basically, I think a landing rough enough to kill the metrotitan fucked a lot of stuff up, and just a dead metrotitan is enough to severely mess up colony plans. Devisiun seems to be doing pretty well from the, like, two panels we see of it in canon, but 10 or 9 million years has passed since the landing. It probably used to be very different.
Watching some TFP because WHY NOT? It looks prettier than the RID cartoon anyway. Spoiler: liveblog 1 This guy's voice sounds familiar. Red car? Arcee :D I wanna drive Cliffjumper, he's a pretty car Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh I've been pronouncing "energon" with a hard G this whole time, "enerjon" feels WRONG. Also my first thought when I saw them was Khaydarin crystals, proving I am still a Huge Nerd. THAT IS A REALLY PRETTY TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE, I AM JEALOUS ...come to think of it, why's the energon black in crystal form? fffffffff the animation's still pretty I'm not getting over this. (Why do the three 'cons all look identical, are they MTOs from the same template?) MORE THAN THREE CONS I MISCALCULATED. And so did cliffjumper, heh Again with the pretty transformations :DD OPrime sounds a lot... gruffer? More gravelly? than my headcanon voice and it's throwin me off here aaaaaaaand ya blew up the energon, good goin' boys the con ship continues to be pretty. why is everything so pretty. I love it. Well, that's two out of what, six? eight? surviving... good on ya, cliffy :D (but why are they capturing him? [chinhands]) Who is Triangle Man? also NO SHIT IT'S USELESS, your ground crew blew it up! Good job, commander! the transformation sequences were so pretty and now Triangle Man (is he a jet? those look like wings) just... swivels. like he's on one of those rotating platforms for stage productions. No actual movement of those legs. Sadface. OH Triangle Man is starscream :D Hello starscream :D ...he still sounds like a grumpy Dunmer (thanks for that correlation, applechime :P), which clashes with the Megamind voice I headcanon-adopted for him earlier :P the animation continues to be really pretty fgffffffffff I take it back were those supposed to be FLUID DYNAMICS? A+ guys, you blew all your efforts on making the robots look pretty and forgot how to physics. blaaaah. I realize he's probably supposed to have just killed Cliffy but come on, no spark damage, unless he just got his t-cog irreparably smashed he's fine. AVENGERS-- uh, I mean AUTOBOTS ASSEMBLE!! I dunno who Green Tank is but he looks cute. Also Grump Doctor, Arcee, and Bee :D ...too bad you're too late to save cliffy, guys. Oooh I like that faceplate retraction, I'mma steal it for Art Purposes. At least THESE robots have Alien Writing :T [continues grumping about comic art] oh come ON there's NO WAY cliffy's dead. I mean, yeah, it kinda fits the trope of "Fridging The Friend To Start Off A Revenge Plot" but. That's such a cop-out, especially by Transformers standards! They're not that breakable! What happened to "literally removing everything except Ratchet's head and Trinity so I can monologue at him about my Evil Plan," courtesy of Pharma? :T [grump grump] I want More Trauma Potential, dammit! It's still really weird to see Scream in purple-and-silver. He's such a RED mech to me, hehe. SOUNDWAVE, MY SON! those are some really nicely-rendered robo-abs if the drive-through kids are Rumble and Frenzy I'm gonna die that would be precious "twins," Arcee says. I'm still hoping for R&F. kid do NOT try to steal arcee that will go BADLY FOR EVERYONE. just get your hands all over (presumably) Someone Else's motorcycle. Someone Else who may or may not be a customer. That doesn't look SUS AS FUCK AT ALL ARCEE YOU'RE GONNA DUMP HIM OFF. Which. Might feel great because wow Do Not, but what happened to PROTECTING humans? why does the fake ferrari have a better turn radius than the motorcycle, what the fuck [bill-nye-style chanting] BEE BEE BEE BEE BEE BEE BEE BEE bee. bee no. Arcee was trying to blend in and you just fuckin hip-checked that con and caused at least a three-car pileup. GG man. Okay so general consensus on animation: really pretty robots, really awful everything else. y/n? that ten-year-old nerd just jizzed in his pants I'll bet ya $10 AYYYYY SMART CIVILIANS! Run, tiny humans, run! Arcee. Arcee, darling. Your alt-form is faster, why are you running at them on legs. bee is a fuckin magical girl, that was a beautiful transformation BEEEEEEEE 8D Bee speaking in droidnoises! Unexpected, but... kinda cute? Bee: [stops to apologize for collateral damage] [gets his ass handed to him] Help I'm adopting another son TINY HUMAN YOU'RE GONNA GET SHOT, I THOUGHT YOU WERE SMART oh my god, random con #2, you have a BLASTER, why are you Stalking Forward Menacingly, just SHOOT HIM dang, arcee, are you robo-concussed? get your head in the game! ...then again, everyone seems to have a terminal case of The Stupids in this series, so. Who knows. Tank-Bro's time for a dramatic entrance! all the beautiful metal textures... and OP's eyebrows look like construction paper :'D okay but how does Smol speak... y'know what, headcanon, Bee is just Bad At Languages and speaking Neocybex while the others have English downloaded Obligatory Girl Sidekick: get! At least she's a Cute Punk "Look, I get it! 'The first rule of Robot Fight Club is you don't talk about Robot Fight Club'!" Okay I kinda like Tol Human ...I was questioning why Arcee was blue, but wait, wasn't Cliffy bleeding blue earlier? Eyyy murderprincess is still blood-colored! Arcee this is why you don't go to your roboform in the middle of cities :| Dunno what you expected. "Rules," Arcee says, as she and Bee drive on the divider between lanes :T ...if all the bots have HMAs as their "drivers" when necessary, why does Bee have seatbelts. Did Bee manifest seatbelts specifically for Human Safety purposes. [dramatic Music of Discovery as the humans see all the autobots for the first time] okay yes but every single one of them is a giant nerd. "Haven't you heard? Humans multiply." snrk. See? Giant nerds. Giant nerds making sex jokes at each other because they're all trapped on this Primus-forsaken organic-inhabited rock. MIKO YOU CAN'T JUST ASK SOMEONE'S ALT-FORM DAS R00D. (It's okay Bulkhead, everyone's a little confused. Go get some cuddles.) "If you guys are robots, who made you?" [Ratchet has flashbacks to FUCKIN DRIFT AND HIS FUCKIN RELIGION] OP, if you really want to Not Loom, you could. Y'know. Sit down. this Cybertron intro looks like a bad video game cutscene. "Megatron lost his way" nah, bro, I'm pretty sure he was pretty damn open about wanting to tear down the senate and start anew. That's not losing his way, that's throwing a revolution. ...I kinda liked Bulkhead's intro better than Megs' :T Space bridges are pretty tho. Spoiler: TFP 2 Narrator/OP still sounds more like my headcanon for Ironhide than OP :T Okay there is NO WAY the animators aren't referencing Starcraft with the energon crystals, they're even in the same cluster-patterns as map-Minerals Do Megatron got the booty? He doooooo! And also some rad pauldron spikes. OH SHIT UNICRON "dark energon" the Starcraft parallels just don't stop I am choosing to believe Cliffy's t-cog was in that particular part of his chest, because otherwise his death still feels way too cheap and easy :T also, starscream Conveniently Has A Corpse. Please tell me you at least drained his energon if it's such a precious resource, guys. Grump Doctor looking out for the smol squishy humans Ah yes, time for the Collateral Damage lecture. At least it gets acknowledged! Ratchet is still Best Dad And here we see the birth of a Dark Archon! I'm kinda getting an Overlord feel from this revival. Hmmmmm. Why is it always Ratchet stuck babysitting humans. Why is Grump Dad a General Scientist now oh my god you fucking idiots why are you all moving in a cluster, "don't split the party" doesn't mean "make yourselves a giant target"! Okay so we have Tiny Child Genius, Grumpy Teenager, and Genki Girl. Wwwwelp. At least they're in small doses still. Cybertronians are just Bad At Tactics apparently Okay, I can take Religious Megs, anything In The Name Of Power, but. You have an R&D team, presumably, let them do their fraggin jobs. For once, I can believe Monologuing Egotistical Villain! ...because it's Scream. Oooooh Starscream. At first I was kind of at Arcee swooning over having found (half of) Cliffy's corpse, and then: But What If Dead Universe infection? All I want for Christmas is continuity and good characterization At least Ratchet's smart enough to touch Weird Decepticon Goo. Thank you, Grump Doctor. Arcee and Ratchet grumpily parenting this entire group of Weird Tiny Organics The Con ship just keeps getting prettier! At least Megs knows "it ain't dead til you put your hands in the body" :T Scream why you so bad at this. UH MEGS ARE YOU OKAY oooooh that was a really nice transition! Also, do I spy a matrix counterpart? raaaaaaatcheeeeeeeeeet what happened to being careful! Also why are you using a basic flat slide to inspect a liquid sample :| Come on bro at least teeny spider friend is cute!
I love TFP a lot!!! Cliffjumper us voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson! As far as animated Starscreams go, this is definitely my favorite. Also his heels are to DIE for and I need them in IDW asap. Whenever they try to animate fluids, things are... not ideal. But I ADORE their animation on the robots, and I was begrudgingly, eventually charmed by the humans. This is the only version I've seen where I don't mind seeing Optimus Prime without his mask. Bumblebee's vocalizing ways will be explained eventually, but in terms of real life, it's maybe the only positive thing to come from the Michael Bay movies! BULKHEAD IS THE SWEETEST SWEETHEART AND I LOVE HIM SO MUCH And this Ratchet is FANTASTIC. I can't hardly read him in mtmte without overlaying this voice actor. I think JRO might have even said something about how he thinks this is the definitive Ratchet? But yeah, I really really enjoy this story. The squishy humans can be frustrating, but of the continuities I've seen that try to balance humans and robots, I think this series does the best job of it.
I've definitely picked up TFP Starscream and Ratchet's voices as my headcanon for IDW variations. The humans are mad annoying in the beginning, but they get a pretty massive reality check... five episodes in? Something like that. And things get less annoying from there. And then you meet Knock Out!
YES, KNOCK OUT!! He's the actual best. He's sooooooo good. The abduction episode he gets a few seasons in, when he phones megatron, that's one of my FAVORITE moments in this series. Also knock out/breakdown, a most excellent ship!! I love them so.
And I totally ganked a combination of KO's sexy shoulders and SS's sexy heels for an OC, because I am a parody of my goddamn self.
So I just sent this via PM, but I'm copying it over here too because TRINES i am full of emotions about ALL TRINES ALL THE TIME and I'm very sad that there hasn't been much of them in IDW, plus Skywarp/Starscream/Thundercracker falling out with each other extra badly. So: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh hey So... IDW Starscream not having a trine What if Starscream and Wheeljack and Windblade surrogate trine Oh noooooooooooooo I need this now I burn with need for this AU. Starscream slowly falling apart because no matter how fucked his trine was, it was still THERE. And no matter how toxic it got, it's still so much harder having absolutely NOBODY, nobody at all, hardly even a mech on the planet who's willing to call you your friend. With super-sociable seeker nature plus that hardwired trine instinct, PLUS all the other stressors that we get to see on the page, imagine how much he must be struggling T_T Fuck, that just got added to the kink bingo pile. I don't know if I'm going to manage anything tonight, but BY GOD am I going to manage a whole lot of things sometime very soon.
In addition: he thought he was going to have a surrogate trine with Bumblebee and Metalhawk, but alas.
Oh noooo all of this makes me sad in the best way. I don't need more reasons to be sad about Starscream. :(
Also, uh. I guess if anyone is still interested, I have made my own poorly researched contribution to the Dominus/Kaon trash pile for...reasons
Awwww, but imagine him trying to make trine moves at Marissa and the other FBI lady! But they're even less equipped than the average cybertronian to read the body language in his wings, or have the cultural context to know that he'd be looking for that sort of bond. And Thundercracker... knows what he gave up by ditching the Decepticons. Really, he does. He knew it would be hard, and he's prepared to endure. But it's so hard sometimes not to open his spark to them, because even if they're aliens and don't make any sense and don't even seem to like him all of the time, they're-- there. He'll catch himself asking Marissa to read his latest screenplay, and Thundercracker's screenplays come in two flavors: overdone cliches, recreated with intense amounts of love and care, or thinly-veiled ways for him to work through his own emotional turmoil. Even if he tries to just show her the-- the less personal ones, it aches to create something and labor over it and know you're never going to share it with anyone ever. And he's lonely. Maybe if he-- if he just slips this manuscript into a pile of other manuscripts, maybe she'll read these ones, and maybe she'll understand. He talks to Buster sometimes, and he's always careful never to say trine. Because he already knows it's never going to happen, and he knows that it will probably never happen ever again, and if he says the word, that makes it real. So he'll have whispered conversations with Buster at night when he can't recharge, asking her if she thinks Thundercracker has made any progress in making some friends.
