TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

By the way, also, has anyone in this thread read Eugenesis? Not that my attention or focus skills have returned from the war, but I am very curious about this thing. I adore JRO as a writer, and I'm even inclined to trust babby JRO to write some gripping stuff. But it seems...... really depressing. It seems like it might just end up making me sad.

Spoiler

and I really, really don't know if I can deal with Prowl killing himself

But did people have like... general opinions whether it was a good read, or if it was a thing you're glad you have read but won't be rereading anytime soon, etc?

 

Because i am nothing if not a massive sperg

HAVE SOME GENERAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS YOU DIDN'T ASK! :D

Spoiler: not that long but still

Okay, the default setting for a transformers story is that you have autobots vs decepticons in a war where some members of each faction are chilling on earth, all 'robots in disguise', that kind of thing. Which varies a lot by continuity. There are four main players:

• G1 eighties cartoon: A decepticon and autobot ship both crashed on earth, spent manymany years unconscious, eventually revived in the present the eighties and got down to fighting. There are big groups on both sides, who barely bother with the 'in disguise' part of things. Plots are wacky/optional, everyone is goofy as fuck, people are vaguely fighting over energy resources without much urgency. In the middle there was a movie that killed off 90% of the cast so they could introduce all sorts of new toys. With Orson Welles' very last role before he died.
• Transformers Animated: An autobot ship (and megatron) crashed on earth in roughly the present, the autobots spent fifty years unconscious, and woke up to a future earth shaped by cybertronian tech. Nobody bothers much with the 'in disguise' thing here either, and the setting is DRASTICALLY different from what you see in pretty much every other continuity. It tends to play by itself just because it's really hard to mix these details into the other settings.
• Transformers Prime: A small group of autobots vs a small group of decepticons (+ an army of mooks) on earth, robots are in disguise for a change, and the autobots are nominally allied with the US military. They're fighting over energy much more urgently than before, and megatron is trying to find a world to rule because they done killed cybertron with their 'war' thing.
• IDW G1 comic: GIANT, GALAXY-SPANNING, FOUR-MILLION-YEAR WAR, with so much plot and scope, holy shit. Robots used to be in disguise, until Megatron had the decepticons take over NYC for a while. Humans have harvested various cybertronian tech (/cybertronians) and tend to be very hostile to giant alien robots and mmmaybe hunt them down and murder them a little. Because of big Plot things, the war is ended, and people are trying to rebuild cybertron and/or jet around the galaxy having Adventures. This is ongoing, and the continuity we spend most of our time wailing about.

Umm what is direction and why would I want any

Something you'll run into (like the constructicons going to town on ratchet) is combiners. These are teams of robots that can combine to form an EXTRA GIANT ROBOT. The original is the constructicons, who turn into Devastator. But in Coming To Terms, you'll also run into the aerialbots, who turn into Superion. Fanon varies on how in-tune these teams are, whether they're just buddies or whether they have a bit of mind-link going on even when they aren't combined. Coming To Terms has the buddies flavor of fanon, These Games We Play has a mind link that's probably just a notch or two below telepathy. You'll also see them called a gestalt group, or the combiner they turn into being called a gestalt.

Another term you'll run into is 'trine'. In the original cartoon, this was a way to say 'uhhhhhh no we didn't recolor this character twice as a cheap, lazy way of expanding the cast, they're, um, a MATCHED SET, that's right.



Again, fanon varies on what exactly 'trine' means. It goes between platonic allies through all sorts of shades of physical/emotional involvement, right up through being a romantic triad. Pretty much anyone who's working with trines, you just have to wait for them to explain what they mean when they use the word :P (Coming To Terms will go into fascinating detail).

And a related term is 'seekers'. I don't perrrrrsonally have much use for this term, but I think the original cartoon had it being short for 'energon seekers', which was nominally what Starscream and company had as their jobs. It's generally applied to fast bots who turn into jets.

Let's see, let's see. Soundwave one, turns into a cassette player (in the original cartoon, other continuities justify/update this in various ways) and has cassettes-- who turn into little robots who share some sort of symbiotic link with him. They're generally connected to spy/intelligence work. Soundwave is also telepathic, though not all continuities go into detail about how telepathic he is, or how hard it is to stop him. In IDW, he specifically has to learn how to shut other people's voices off in his head, but in These Games We Play, he has to go out of his body to go poking around in someone else's head. Soundwave is also basically the best in every continuity ever, sorry, I don't make the rules. (he's amazing)

And thaaaaaaat is all I've got for the moment because attention span what? But ask me any questions that come up, and I'm happy to answer! :D

 

Eyyy, I gotcha! Reading order right here :D

Most of this is on viewcomic, but there are some significant holes in what's been posted online in phase one, including most of the concluding story arc, which is unfortunate. But I have links to everything I could find, and I think most of the strongest stuff is in phase two anyways. The quality of the writing/art/pacing in phase one is unfortunate, so especially if you have a rough grasp of who the biggest legacy cast characters are, I think you could dive into More Than Meets The Eye without too much trouble! There's a crossover event thing at issues 23-28, but other than that, you can pretty much go 1-7, annual, 8-22, 29-55, and it's a GREAT time. Alternately, Last Stand Of The Wreckers is a phase one 5-issue miniseries about redshirts and propaganda that stands pretty well on its own, and is lower commitment than diving into an ongoing.

 

Hahaha, it's only because I've gotten so much practice at writing up a YES PLEASE READ THE THING I CAN HELP paragraph over the last few days XD I know exactly the fastest way to dig up the shortcut to winkwonk's thread and the reading order post, and I'm finally no longer second-guessing myself on issue numbers for the Good Shit (tm). I could be spending my time on cleaning up my apartment or untangling my life, but why would I do that when I can shove robots at people??

 

For thundercracker in particular, he shows up in All Hail Megatron in phase one, pops up once or twice after that, but mostly drops off the radar for a while, and then shows up big time in phase two's exrid ongoing (used to be named robots in disguise, got renamed to 'the transformers') after that one crossover event, around issue 29 or so. I found exrid harder to follow than mtmte, because the writing wasn't quite so tight and there was a lot of complicated politics stuff happening, but it's also a very good series.

edit: ahhh, and this time, twas *I* who was ninja'd!