Brainstorm helped optimize the LL holoavatar programming so that it was more intuitive, but that suggests anyone else who wanted to customize their holoavatar wouldn’t have that advantage Tumblr/Twitter Spoiler: nsfw, large
Hey, The Sims is a perfectly valid way to learn about humans, and incidentally what they look like naked,
@coldstars this is really useful thank you! unrelated, here is a transformers tabletop rpg that a friend & I once spent a night trying to create characters in
Every sentient being has a right to draw a line somewhere in the 80’s G1 cartoon sand and declare, “This is too ridiculous.” My line has traditionally been Cybertronians thinking making antimatter was some big new scientific secret in 1984. It just always cracks me the fuck up. How did any of you get to space?! I was ranting about this again, and a friend mentioned Megatron’s fusion cannon. That’s when my brain broke. His fusion cannon doesn’t seem to give off any notable heat. Everything nearby doesn’t meet a sudden fiery end. His shoulder doesn’t melt. There don’t seem to be any heat problems at all. MEGATRON HAS COLD FUSION. HE USES IT TO SHOOT PEOPLE AND STEAL THEIR ENERGY. I really don’t know what to do anymore. There aren’t enough clumsy Dr. Strangelove references on this earth or the sad dead husk of Cybertron to express my feelings.
It’s like drowning people in the fountain of youth so you can steal their wrinkle cream. That’s my best effort so far.
No real spoilers, in how I'm going to say this, I think, but I'm getting frustrated with maybe.... the pacing? of idw2. There have been some developments I strongly disagreed with, from the start (cough COUGH brainstorm cough) but I'm still interested. I still want to know more. And I feel like the writing is much more decompressed than any of the ongoing series in idw1. Which is killing me, because I'd like! to get! to the meat of this!!!!! and you'd think that setting up a whole new verse there'd be some urgency in laying things out, but the pacing here feels closer to reading a manga than it does to reading an american comic. And I do love me some manga, but I don't enjoy following manga on a week-by-week schedule, because the story is very spread out. Like here. And with the setting being new and everything getting all established, and presumably laying the groundwork for a massive society-destroying war, I get that there are going to be downers. But we're seven issues deep, and there have been down moments and there have been up moments, but I feel like there haven't really been up moments that are a response to the down moments, so I get hit with an unpleasant development and it just... sits there. I'm still very interested in what's happening, but the story is making me sad without providing any assurances that it's going to ever arc in a way that makes me satisfied. Like, mtmte isn't a perfect parallel, because it was already building on a lot of continuity, but in less than half this space, they covered the sparkeater. Which happened, was D:, and was resolved. There was rising and falling action within the larger story. And this isn't really doing that, and I would very much like to enjoy it, but I'm getting really, really frustrated. (i'm also torn between the interesting worldbuilding in pre-war society, very VERY in love with the idea of megatron and optimus both having stronk female mentors, and... depressed by the canon-based inertia that I assume means no matter how people struggle, their whole entire world is fuckt. I'm still interested, but it would be nice if the story we're getting was a little more dynamic to counter that :[ ) eta: like, the characters, events, and world that this story is giving me? On the whole, I love it! The act of reading the story with these characters, events, and world? Why! Is it so!!! Frustrating!!!!!!!!
Haven't read it yet because what is reading?? And also We Fear Change. Spoiler: compulsory animated gif Anyway, thank you. It's good to have some idea of the level at which to set my expectations.
I'm so torn!! I like a lot of the ideas, and even the ones I'm not sure how I feel about (like there are miscellaneous organic aliens on cybertron, some refugees, some invasive species, some traders, etc) are new enough that I'm interested. And it's starting to look like Optimus and Megatron have both been shaped by stronk female mentors (and one is a superengineer, which hell the fuck yes), which I'm incredibly on board with. There are lots of ladies in general. Whatever they're doing with Cyclonus is EXTREMELY interesting. The history is cool, and the present has subtle shades of dystopia without making it too overt, and with a very different flavor from idw1's functionism. Things haven't been overtly gay, but there's a character who really, really looks like she has two moms. OH, and froid. it also has froid. i'm love. That said, I would recommend either reading issues 1-6 or waiting until issue 8 to read, at a bare minimum. Issue 7 was.... frustrating. Issue 6 is an interesting one, and you could read it on its own pretty much, because it's almost entirely flashback material about megatron and orion. They've got an extremely strained relationship in the present and are both senators, and this goes back to when they were younger and closer, or when the disconnect between them was just starting to show up. It isn't really plot-driven, but it's an interesting taste of the world. Spoiler: baby spoilers Megatron's mentor is named Termagax and is an engineer who converted the moon into an energon harvesting system, to ensure that Cybertron never has a fuel shortage crisis again. She also founded the proto-decepticon movement, and is still around somewhere, but withdrew from public life into seclusion. Orion's mentor is named Codexa and is still.... kind of around. She was head archivist, and at some point choice to be like, reabsorbed into the planet. She's half-swallowed by a crystal wall, and in the present she has a semi-awake conversation with Orion, though she's not entirely with it. I desperately need to know more about both of them, including whether they kiss. What else. Cyclonus sees ghosts. Like, brain ghost bumblebee... times a LOT. And they appear to be casualties of old wars, still with the damage they took that killed them. So one has a half-melted head, another has a gunshot through their helmet, etc. It's still not clear what is up with that, but Cyclonus lives alone in the desert, scraping out a subsistence living with his own energon harvester. Also Windblade tackled him out of the sky at one point :V OH. And the latest issue. Says that Sentinel Prime has a group off-planet doing whatever thing, but they're going to come home, and this group includes.... Starscream. And Nautica. Starscream and Nautica totally know each other. I need ten issues of just them interacting, please, i will sell my firstborn. And this dystopia feels overall like a sensation of.... strictly-enforced peace. There have been some hellacious wars that are comfortably in the past, but which many people alive participated in. One character is described by Froid as never actually adjusting to peace, and being a danger to society, especially in a pseudo-military role. There's a big fuss over the idea that people aren't dying, and there have been severe energon crises in the past, so making baby cybertronians is VERY restricted. It happens like, once per century. But... Megatron is spreading a message about how restrictive this society is that's catching a lot of support, and in the brief period since the first violent death in bluh bluh sooooo many centuries, 200+ cybertronians have apparently gone missing. There are also some other religious factions agitating over stuff too, though I'm blanking on what exactly their angle was. Some weird and sketchy things going on, and I'm extremely interested. So far, it feels like it'll be a universe where Megatron has a very valid point, and also one where I can see why Optimus is pushing against outright revolution, which is nice. This is also the universe where I've seen the most attention paid to their past relationship. TFP shows a little and says some things in the tie-in novels, I think, but this is front and center from the very start. I don't think any other canons have really built up that angle so strong and early, so I'm very interested to see how it plays, instead of fans filling in gaps after the fact :P There's a lot about this that I really like, and it's raising lots of plot points where I'm like 'and then what??????', which is very good and intriguing, it's just the issue-by-issue reading that has been strangely frustrating. I really, really wish I could pin down exactly what's bothering me XD
I think it's that it's very contemplative, but not very emotive. It's a lot of people pondering about the world that they live in and nobody's doing anything except talking to other people who have been pondering about the world they live in.
^^^ I think you hit the nail on the head. That, plus the extreme slowness of the story. There are so many wasted panels, wasted pages even, where nothing really happens. Breathing space is fine, but so much could be condensed into half the space.
Well darn. One of the things I absolutely loved about LL/MTMTE was how amazingly efficient it was with how it used the amount of space it had for the story.
Last night I dreamed that I found a toy of Optimus Prime (G1) but in the Optimus Primal color scheme: black, white, grey, red highlights and a blue head. Whereby "found" I mean that I somehow accidentally ordered a plush version when trying to preview the figure. Probably a sign that I should spend less time on TFSource. It was pretty cool, and was almost certainly inspired by this Optimus Primal-colored Optimal Optimus.
I mentioned a while ago I got into a decepticon zine - it's on kickstarter at the moment if anyone's interested Here's a preview for my piece; I admit it looks a bit low on detail but that's because it's at full size and the actual piece has 8 characters in it
I'm catching up, I'm on idw2 3 rn, and like... the worldbuilding is so fascinating, but the reason I waited so long after idw2 2 to move on is the story is sloooow. What I think is super interesting about this setting is initially it's presented as perfect peace (and perfectly staid, which is a fair balance and I can see why that would chafe so badly at certain people). But then as more details come out we learn that there was a huge war before this! That this peaceful, tranquil society is a response to upheaval and devastation, that the firm boundaries placed on advancement and procreation and energon usage are a response to something that... well, I don't have a lot of details about but it's a fair guess it was pretty horrific. That's interesting! And I'd also be interested in knowing how many Ascenticons are veterans of that war and how many are new enough that they've never actually had to live in any society other than the one they're railing against. Hmmmm. I wonder if the pacing is partially a reflection of the worldstate? Like right now things are bubbling under the surface but things are essentially calm, it's more of a mystery setup and also showing us the dominos that I'm guessing are going to be tipped later. But you don't need a ton of action to make a story dynamic.
On the other hand it's such a pretty comic and there's so many cool shit dropped in worldbuilding/contemplation spaces that even when it's slower paced I find I really enjoy it, I just hope it gets more emotionally intense later on. Like, one of the things mentioned is just... a cybertronian who decided to be a gigantic metal-harvesting mechanism all the time, slowly drifting across the planet, presumably socializing remotely. That's so fucking cool. I love and support Leviathan and her desire to actually not be humanoid at all, thanks.
Also if u mentally correct 'mentor' to 'mom' or 'dad' or 'parent' a lot of stuff gets funnier and sadder. Spoiler how DARE you imply megatron's mom would be disappointed in him, ironhide!! Spoiler: idw2 issue 6 'Mom, I need advice.' 'Shit, son, I'm Cybertron now.'
It seems that as of issues 7 and 8 stuff is starting to happen, which is good. Still lots of talking about the past, though.
