My focus is shot so it's time for more TFP liveblogging :P Spoiler: s3e7 okay Knock Out's on the preview card this'll be good yesgood, sway wheeljack with Science Salt oh gosh lookit how jackie immediately goes to shield his smol teammate man I still love the updated opening tune ....nnnno. no. n o. I ship june with all of team prime (Wheeljack and Smokescreen included) more than I ship her with Fowler, Can We Not "I'll have you know, miss Darby, I was an Army Ranger--" [dubs the Navy Seals copypasta over this entire uncomfortable brag monologue] ...I know it's probably not what they intended but the framing makes it look like dragon!Predacon is ogling KO's ass with the rest of us I hate Fowler more with every word he says against archae- and paleontology [happy sigh] hiiiiiiiiii, knock out ...knock out. baby. you're gonna suffocate your captives before you get to play with them. ...raph. raph. people stop for dinner for reasons besides dates. like. eating. Miko is shipping the robots why am I surprised ..."interfacing" is fucking TFP canon for robot sex. Thank you blessed writers. ...kiddies. kiddies you're gonna get caught again. I mean, obviously not, because Rule Of Plot, but. aaaaaand june isn't trained for hostage situations. Welp. I'm going to chalk it up to that instead of the stupid (un)romantic subplot. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA MY DARLING IS SAPIENT I WANT TO MEET ONE MORE THAN EVER
did you hear though "So go on, big M, tell me you love me more than Starscream." that episode is the gift that keeps on giving in KO-related matters.
That episode and the next, apparently! Give me all the KO-related shenanigans >:D Spoiler: s3e8 I keep trying to up the season number instead of the episode. Why this. Fingers, pls to stop Anyway, the episode summary involves "Knock Out and Starscream's rogue experiments" and a picture of them smirking at each other and I am. So entertained. (And also worried about what this means for our boys when Megsy finds out, but.) Mad scientist pitch boyfriends. Open to Starscream and KO sassing and bitching at each other thank you based writers ...holy shit he's. still keeping that dude alive. uh. wow. #0kay Have fun with your revengetorture buddy ...screamer. screamer do not feed Rage Juice to my darling dragon. Do Not. She will eat you. I really wish they'd keep the focus on the robot shell, the human flaps don't match what he's saying and it's distracting. talk science to me baby ...knock out. knock out that's not "a few drops" what the shit hello body horror ...congrats, boys, you've made a vampire. Was this a Halloween episode? ...why are you running. Your alts are much faster. thank you screamer is ko locked? ...knock out has no inside voice starscream you overestimate the average genericon OH SHIT IT SPREADS knock out watches human movies I am in love ....this is totally the moment in any horror movie where they start making out instead of doing anything productive start making out boys "I have always admired your lustrous finish" knock out are you admitting to ogling starscream they literally had that scene just for the feels, there was no other purpose to going in that room oh my god thank you writers BLUFF LIKE YOU'VE NEVER BLUFFED BEFORE oooooooooooooooh did he just send her to luna 1 ...I mean. I'm glad the beating wasn't on-screen this time, but. that little whimper just before it cuts to Airachnid. Ffft. whoashit ...there was an infected insecticon, wasn't there. SO. "There's a planet moonbase of alien robot bug vampires just chillin' out there somewhere" is an excellent idea. Spoiler: s3e9 mhhhrrrrrrr opening on megs and screamer is not what I wanted damn if megs' sacral joins don't look gr8 tho mmmmmmhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh if this is going to be another half hour of "megatron physically and emotionally abusing starscream" I am Out to play more shooters ...we're not gonna get to see what most of these grow up into, are we? HIII BAAAABY I am a little disappoint that darling dragon is a dude but hey at least he's pretty ...what is his accent, this is going to bother me. He has a really nice voice tho ...does this mean we get to see how Cybertronians get names in TFP Wheeljack doing machine science ...I wonder if Predaking's a title, or if he just picked the word out of the histories he read. Meeeeeeeeeeeeeegs Aaaaaaaaah Screamer, back in strategy and politics where you shine <3 ...the animator who loves robot pelvis apparently does not love human pelvis, that was the worst-animated run sequence I've ever seen smokey bb Scream♠KO remains excellent ...guys. All of these are taking a looong time to drain. Might wanna call your backup team. ...OR blow everything up. Fair. A+ jackie damn Predaking's fast in bipedal mode, this is nice there's no way that's gonna stop him guys ...I know it's because we Can't Kill Magnus, but why bother going back for the hammer when you've got him down and off-kilter already HOW DARE YOU PUT THAT RELIC BACK TOGETHER OR SO HELP ME ...OP. OP you're gonna bring the whole damn cavern down. Intentional or not, you're going to squish yourself with that stunt too. And Wheeljack and Magnus, who are much less acceptable casualties. well. that works. At least they got the energon boost. HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT YOU COULD USE THIS TO REBUILD CYBERTRON HOLY SHIT
Does anyone know what happened to Sarah Stone? Her Patreon hasn't been updated for six months, and everything else was abandoned long before that. The Wiki says that she's an artist for GaiaOnline, but I couldn't find an employee list or staff page anywhere on that site.
Iirc someone here mentioned a few weeks back she's been having health problems? Couldn't source that for the life of me tho so grain of salt and all that.
I actually do have further Transformers questions. Who is Hot Rod and what is all this Prime stuff? Attempting to gather this information from the googles has so far shown me a variety of likely ways to acquire a headache.
Hot Rod! And Primes! Yes, we're getting into the more complicated parts of the backstory there. Okay, Hot Rod/Rodimus was part of the eighties cartoon cast lineup. He was the RAD YOUNG DUDE who was HIP TO THE GROOVE. When the eighties movie hit, the literal goal was to kill off as many autobots as possible to make room for new characters toys. When Optimus Prime died, the matrix of leadership chose Hot Rod, and he became 'Rodimus Prime'. NOW, that begs the question, what is the matrix of leadership? Okay, so... cybertronian mythology is complicated, frequently vague, and varies between continuities, so it's really hard to lock down. But rrrrroughly if Primus is god, the Thirteen were the first few cybertronians, and the first primes. You've got Onyx Prime, Micronus Prime, etc. Some of these were reportedly responsible for various traits in the cybertronian populace, like Onyx Prime was responsible for beastformers, Micronus Prime was responsible for minibots, all that jazz. I linked the wiki page up above, and it's not that easy to parse, but it's a pretty interesting read. Now, the legacy of the primes got passed down at some point, because [train roars past]. There's some soap opera drama in there with one prime betraying another, etc. But in current comics canon, there's only one survivor we know of for sure from the original Thirteen (Alpha Trion, he is sketchy af and I hate him), and there's one successor, Optimus Prime. The prime (who has also been Nova Prime, Nominus Prime, Zeta Prime, and Sentinel Prime, that we know of) is a semi-religious leader of cybertron chosen by.... sorta-kinda-divine mandate. Now, the way a Prime is nominally selected is that they're chosen by the matrix of leadership. What is this thing? GOOD QUESTION. It's a mysterious device that goes in your chest and... selects the next prime. For a while, Cybertron was run by false primes (the ones in parentheses up above), who weren't actually chosen, but had fakey fake matrixes so they could pretend like their rule was religiously mandated. Optimus is the first Prime chosen by the matrix in millions of years. But there's also some sketchy stuff going on, because he was medically reconfigured to be matrix-compatible (they made a matrix-shaped hole in his chest without bothering to ask him first), and he says that bonding with the matrix hurt. Smash cut to Hot Rod/Rodimus. He's been fighting for the autobots for a long time, and even though he's got seniority and experience, he still acts fairly young, and tends to be the flashy solo adventurer type. Some of this is down to some past Bad Experiences where people he was in charge of were betrayed and ambushed and died, so he prefers to work alone so that he's only putting himself at risk. HOWEVER, he still does things like infiltrating a military base by riding in on a meteor shower and crash-landing into the ground and hoping he survives. At one point, on earth, Optimus Prime... hadn't died-died, but the matrix had been ripped from his chest by Megatron and the decepticons temporarily took over NYC. The autobots eventually rallied and booted them off the planet, but Starscream took the matrix with him, and it wouldn't bond with him, but he was wearing it on a chain around his neck (it was actually pretty sad). The humans were still feeling fairly hostile towards giant alien robots, and some autobots were doing appeasement things and letting humans exploit them, but Hot Rod got increasingly frustrated and eventually decided to ollie out (this is when someone egging him on convinced him that rodimus was a super cool name, much more mature than hot rod). He stole a visiting supercop's spaceship, immediately headed over to find Starscream, and crashed his ship on the asteroid where the decepticons were holed up. He yoinked the matrix, and... promptly stumbled across Megatron. Megatron shot him in the chest, as you do, and Rodimus's apparent corpse when floating off into space, with the matrix. The matrix bonded with him and probably saved his life. In contrast to Optimus, who was forcibly reconfigured to be compatible and says that the bonding hurt like whoa, Rodimus says it felt amazing. Rodimus got rescued and did some space adventures, and eventually returned to earth, and the FIRST thing he did was shove the matrix back into optimus's hands. At the end of phase one, Optimus is kinda burned out on being the boss, but he feels responsible for the matrix. Rodimus is allergic to responsibility, but he wants to achieve things, and is still optimistic and fired up. They end up splitting things, and each of them taking half of the matrix. That's where phase two starts. There's some stuff that is still making me side-eye it, like the way thirteen primes somehow boiled down to only one current prime, or the way the narrative keeps doing a nudge-and-wink thing about how this character might be matrix-compatible, or that character thinks you'll make prime one day. Plus there are some significant mythological parallels that they've only just started poking at in the text. I'm holding out for a whole new thirteen, and dividing up the power of leadership so it isn't one fallible mech who's treated as the ultimate, flawless authority.
@spockandawe, thank you so much. That explains so much, like why a flashy new guy in a role that already seemed rather occupied. I probably should have guessed, but suddenly distracting lore and ow the infodump. I do love crunchy lore but wow. I was having some difficulty making heads or tails of it. This is incredibly helpful. That Thirteen wiki page is indeed a bit hard to parse, but I have discovered I understand it fine if I read it out loud. Which is pretty much my first fallback strategy in case of dense material or concentration issues, so it's not at all a surprising discovery. It just means that I am sitting in the dark by myself softly whispering a detailed history of transformers mythology, which is a life experience I would recommend to almost anyone. And it is a very interesting article. I'm pleased that entropy was a domain that they had. And that there's a Decepticon named Bugly. I love your explanations of Transformers so much. Besides being informative, they're hilarious but still read as sincere and not derisive. Absurd humor is my favorite, and an ascended children's show/line of toys featuring giant robots has so much to offer. The holy grail for me is appreciating the absurdity of a thing while also appreciating the thing. It's no fun if the humor spoils the seriousness. This is perfect. @Petra, thank you for the link! I am learning to use the wiki. I just figured out the thing about multiple pages for the same characters, which I'm still having some trouble wrapping my head around, but at least that explains the odd impression of browsing several similar but different wikis. That was pretty confusing. In my defense, those tabs are super tiny on mobile. XD
I'm glad you're enjoying my explanations! It's hard to get me to shut up once I get excited about something, so it's good I'm at least being entertaining, hahaha. This series is so silly, but I also love it so, so much (and on the note of silly robot names, one of the autobots is honest-to-god named Big Daddy. I'm... blanking on a lot of the other good ones, but there are some real gems tucked away in the corners of this universe after so many creators have added onto the cast)
I am a very happy audience! I love listening to people talk about things they love. It makes shiny things even shinier. Transformers is a very shiny thing! One of my favorite things about being an adult is the ability to place the entire weight of my personality firmly upon the unironic enjoyment of a ridiculous thing whenever I so choose. Not that I couldn't do that before, it's just a lot more effective now. (I'm the sort of person who somehow ends up with a small but flagrant Bugly figurine that is mostly there to allow me to enthuse to people about how it is Bugly. Hahaha, Big Daddy though, damn.)
Wow, TAAO7 and All New Wolverine 17 are going to be released on the same day (February 8.) That's gonna be a fun day for my feels. (also, less than a week till Lost Light 2!)
I am too sleepy for a proper photoshoot RN, but I felt like y'all should know I blew 20 bucks on a Starscream that fits in the palm of my hand (the packaging says he's from "Combiner Force" but he looks decently close to g1 screamer?) and a marginally larger Titans Return Laserbeak I don't know if all the cassettes got punny packaging because I didn't notice til I got home (I Regret not getting Ravage too but I need gas money :<) but the back of Las's box reads "The only point this Interrogator likes in AUTOBOTS: the melting point" and I think that's beautiful. She turns into a "spy tablet" that looks an awful lot like a cassette still and also an undefined "vehicle mode" that I swear is just a walkie talkie with bitty wheels on the sides
Titans Return Laserbeak is beautiful isn't she? :P Mine still sits on Soundy's shoulder up in the living room.
(can i just say..... it feels Right and Good when people use she pronouns for laserbeak..... it feels like such a silly headcanon to be fussy about but i Need for this one incredibly minor bird character in particular to be A Girl.....) (she's my bird daughter and i love her)
There are a couple of fics that use she pronouns for Ravage. too, and I'm not sure why I like it so much but it's gr8
