Jame Roberts’ Instagram Q&A -November ‘18
- Back in MTMTE #15, when the original Rewind got locked in the Slow Cell with Overlord, he suddenly learned how to shrink while he transformed. This was not an ability he previously had, as shown in, for example, MTMTE #2, when Tailgate sees Rewind for the first time (before Swerve introduces him to CDRW) and remarks that he can see a “giant memory stick” in the distance. However, the fear that Rewind felt in that moment triggered his ability to shrink to the size we see him in, like, LL #25, for example. This helps him survive both Overlord and the shots fired off by Chromedome, and so he, along with Overlord, is recovered by the Galatic Council. Overlord is seen as too dangerous, so Rewind is chosen as the guinea pig for an experiment the Galatic Council are trialling; an experiment that would allow them to “punch holes” into alternate universes. Since they want to use Rewind as a weapon against the Black Block Consortia (and other enemies of the council, such as other Cybertronians), the technology is built into a suit of armour meant to resemble Primus (this suit of armour was built in the same vein as the Magnus armour, in that it made so that a small robo could pretend to be this big, famous robo and not, like, the sentai suit dealio I had originally envisioned when JRo was describing this. this was done because they rightly assumed that seeing Primus land in the middle of a battlefield would scare the royal shit out of everybody, most especially other Cybertronians, who have the cultural context to know who the fuck he is.)
So, then, it worked, and Rewind made it into the past?? of another dimension (that wasn’t the Functionist universe), but then it malfunctioned and he got trapped there. He had fight his way back to the original universe by travelling through a bunch of other alternative universes (there would have been an interlude during the Mutineers Trilogy where we saw Rewind 1 travelling through the Marvel 2006 universe). At first, he was travelling back to the OG universe was so he could be reunited with his conjux (he met other Chromedome’s along the way, but he wanted to find his Chromedome), but as he was travelling, he discovered Chromedome’s secret; that he had helped in the cover-up of Dominus’ murder, and so it became more complicated (he kinda wanted to avenge Dominus.) This would’ve all culminated in an issue where Rewind 1 finally made it back the original universe. As has been previously established, only one Rewind can exist at the one time, so Chromedome would’ve had to decide which Rewind would be cancelled out, all while Rewind 2 (and by extension, the audience) would’ve learned from Rewind 1 what Chromedome did to Dominus, which would’ve complicated things even further.
JRo came up with this idea before he began writing MTMTE, but by the end of season one, he was starting to become uncertain about this particular storyline, as Rewind, Chromedome and their relationship began to develop. Having Chromedome do this to Rewind started to feel wrong. After talking to his editor at the time (Carlos, I believe?), he decided to leave in the scene with Chromedome and Prowl, where Prowl threatened blackmail and Chromedome used Shadowplay to erase the blackmail from his memory, just in case he still wanted to go through with it. However, by the time it came to the final stretch of issues, he already so many other plot points to introduce, explain and tie up, he didn’t have time to do all three for Rewind 2 and his ultra-complicated, high concept adventures, and deal with the complications it brought with it to the cast, so he was forced to drop it.
So, with that out of the way, here are the more breezy answers:
- Megatron didn’t have a mentor who taught him medicine in the Warren, he taught himself everything he knows about treating people because he’s “the most ferocious autodidact.” (i stan a legend)
- Ratchet would still be the better medic though
- Megatron specialised in neurology
- Flame survived the events of LL #24
- The only reason Functionist Universe! Orion and Terminus were killed was because of time restraints
- Making Drift and Ratchet’s relationship a romantic one started feeling right around their return in the Remain in the Light arc, but JRo didn’t really decide that they were definitely conjux endura until he began writing LL #25
- Rewind’s colour changing pants are now (dubiously) canon (”Chromedome is fascinated; he might be an outlier.”)
- Admitted a couple of times, once again, that he wished he hadn’t killed Trailcutter
- If a Cybertronian is gifted a vial of innermost energon and survives whatever near-fatal injury or illness they had, they have the option to either keep it, as a reminder of the love they and the donor share, or they can regift the donor’s innermost energon to them. If they do indeed die, the most common practice is to donate the innermost energon (as Ratchet did posthumously in #25)
- “Sorry, I’ve seen ‘Chromedome is a bottom’ on the screen and that’s thrown me.”
- When asked if he’d change anything if given the opportunity to rewrite the series, he admitted that there were “a bunch of things”, which included:
* Spacing out events more, most especially near the beginning of MTMTE, where so much was happening that it all felt “a bit busy”, and the Crucible arc
* Writing more stories about the tertiary cast (eg. Spotlight: Hoist) to really sell the fact that this was a ship with 200 mechs on board (the main cast would still have had their own quirky adventures going on in the background)
* An example of such a story would’ve been having an issue focusing on the writer behind the Lost Light Insider
* More stories with the Mutineer’s
* Give the Scavengers an entire tradeback to themselves in Season 3, encompassing an entire arc he’d had planned for them
* He wouldn’t have “decapitated Red Alert like that”
* Having the charisma parasites being followed up by Swearth “didn’t do him any favours as they were three very high concept issues one after the other”
* Would’ve seeded more mentions of the Guiding Hand in MTMTE (though not in Lost Light, which had enough, he felt)
* More Star Saber (longer fights with different characters)
* Show Cyclonus’ recovery from his injuries in #47 more as more of a slow, arduous process instead of an “Oh, he’s fine now” dealio
* Would’ve liked to pull off the Troja Major two-parter better
- [SPOILERS FOR IDW’S UNICRON SERIES]
When asked who’s death Megatron would be most cut-up about, Optimus, Soundwave or Starscream, JRo said he’d take Stasrcream’s the worst, as the two had “unfinished business” (the new Pacifist Megatron wanted to reconcile with Starscream). Though Soundwave was listed last on the “who’d Megatron would mourn the most” list, he also said that he’d be “proud of what Soundwave did”
- On a more lighthearted note, he said that Stan Bushs’ Dare was playing in Rodimus’ head during his “Til All Are One!” montage in the 2012 annual
- Cyclonus is, unfortunately, no longer rich, because much of his wealth came from Tetrahexian real estate (as stated in the prose story Signal to Noise, packaged in Volume 4 of MTMTE), and the value kinda dropped after Unicron, you know, destroyed the whole planet (though he also said it’s more than likely he and Tailgate invested in real estate on New Cybertron)
- Said that if Rodimus and Drift had been amica endura “no one would’ve batted an eye,” (and that they would’ve completed the ceremony off-screen)
- Rodimus was originally going to sacrifice himself in Crucible to stop the Omega Guardians from using the Warren to enter our universe and take it over. (”Even saying that is making me yawn”) Everyone would’ve thought Rodimus was already dead, and as such, another, unnamed character would’ve gotten credit for his sacrifice. Rodimus would’ve known this, and sacrificed himself anyway.
- “You’re all [unapologetic] shippers and I salute you.”
- As he stated on Twitter before, he’d have liked to include a scene between Cyclonus and Drift, where Drift proclaims his new respect for Cyc after seeing his Great Sword. This scene would’ve happened around the Remain in the Light arc.
- “Are you guys still talking about Chromedome being a bottom? Oh my god.”
- In a fight between Drift and Cyclonus, Cyclonus would win.
- When asked who he’d ship Rodimus with, he said that Rodimus was an interesting case, as he’d actually be quite well-versed in the area of romance, unlike the rest of the cast, and that he “wouldn’t pine for people.” In the end, he ended up choosing Roller.
- Getaway didn’t make up the Conjux rites; they’re real
- Rodimus’ flame abilities are not an outlier ability, but an upgrade he got along the way (he compared it to getting a really excessive tattoo). The ability is really painful and uses up a lot of Roddy’s energy.
- When asked what he hoped from the next continuity, he said that he wanted it to continue to be inclusive “in every sense of the word”, specifically pointing out the LGBTQIA+ representation as something he wanted to see continued.
- “Yeah, Springer’s pretty hot.”
- First Aid has a crush on crush on Springer (as does JRo)
- Cyclonus is legitimately a great singer. It’s that his abilities are more of the operatic kind, meaning “he is not always appreciated by the uncultured”
- “[A fan] says that Lost Light is a love letter to fan fiction, which it absolutely is”
- When a fan asked why (to paraphrase) Roller was just so dang hot, JRo said that “Roller just has that effect on people thanks to Jack’s lascivious designs” (and before you go off and google it, lascivious is defined as “feeling or revealing an overt sexual interest or desire”)
- Drift’s wealth was made through bounty hunting
- Brainstorm and Chromedome might have been amica endura, but that Chromedome felt “burnt out” from his various failed relationships, both platonic and romantic.
- No one even has a “Rung-shaped gap” in their memory after LL #24. They honestly can’t remember where the various matrixes came from, as is the case with all the things Rung was responsible for. They all blame it on memory creep and have each come up with their own contradictory explanations as to how and why these things happened.
- When asked if Swerve liked The Big Bang Theory, JRo replied with a swift “No, he has a brain”
- Instead, he said Community was Swerve’s favourite show
- Cybertronian weddings are “very long”
- There was a lot singing at Cyclonus and Tailgate’s wedding
- Brainstorm and Perceptor’s wedding, meanwhile, “would be very complicated” because “they’d be trying to outdo each other in subtle ways”. It would “make for a good sitcom episode.”
- Roddy’s favourite meme is “the butterfly one”
- Rung’s favourite meme is “the woman looking confused with algebra in front of her face”
- “[Drift’s thighs] are certainly impressive”
- Swerve is “destined to have many friends”
- Whirl and Cyclonus most certainly became amica endura after LL #25
- Swerve got Misfire’s number in the end
- Though he said many times in the lead up the end of this continuity that this was his last time writing for Transformers, he said he would like to write a 12 issue series centred around a character he didn’t name, and then later admitted that he wanted to try to convince IDW to let him write another series. He also said that is there was ever a Grand Collecter’s edition of the series (that collected all the issues, prose stories, additional stories from other series etc into one or two hardback editions, for example), he’d write an additional prose story to make it worth people’s money
- Hoist confirmed the Lost Light’s resident furry
- “Tailgate is the cutest? Yes, he’s a little marshmallow.”
- In his final days, before his execution, Minimus would’ve taken his poetry to Megatron so that he could read it (he would’ve also read Minimus’ poetry on the Alt! Lost Light, though assumedly under far less tragic circumstances)
- Getaway was considered the hottest mech on all of the Lost Light, with Skids as a close second. Together, they were “a hot duo.”
- Functionist Universe! Anode was a brilliant war general
- Nickel had a girlfriend before her homeworld was destroyed
- Rung can’t dance (we been knew)
- Crankcase and Con4Eva did hook up in the original universe
- “Does Rung know we love him? No - he’s very lonely”
- No one in the cast likes all of the Shrek movies, but all of them like the first one.
- Chromedome and Brainstorm met each other the New Institute (which was my question answered :D)
- Roddy would eat Doritos if he could
- Not a single Transformer (in the IDW-verse) would like Trump
- The worst film that Roddy likes is Caddy Shack
- Terminus would’ve never admitted that he was lying to Megatron
- Unfortunately, the song Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind & Fire never made it to the Lost Light
- “Who would make the best romantic partner? Depends on your taste.”
- JRo’s favourite superhero is Spiderman, his favourite TF toys as a kid were Hot Rod & Sandstorm and Nautica is his favourite character (from MTMTE/LL)
- Megatron, does indeed, both give the best hugs and deserves hugs!
- “You’re a tactile, compassionate, thirsty bunch, aren’t you?”
- Tailgate, Swerve and Rewind would all play Fortnite
- Drift and Ratchet would’ve opened a “clinic” together (the question asker was unintentionally vague, so JRo was intentionally vague with his answer)
- Drift thinks that Ratchet was the one who made the first move, while Ratchet thinks Drift was
- Ratchet and Drift would’ve been together for “decades and decades” before Ratchet died
- While Nautica/Skids still isn’t canon, he did confirm that Skids’ feelings for Nautica were romantic in nature
- While Jack Lawrence bases many of the characters’ mannerisms on his own, he bases Rung’s mannerisms off of JRo’s, which doesn’t help his “anti-mary-sue argument.”
- I can’t remember the exact quote, but when asked what it’d be like to have Whirl as a roommate, he said something along the lines of “you’d have a crush on him even though you’d hate him.”
- In case it wasn’t clear enough in the text itself, Whirl rejected Ratchet’s hands because of a shift in how he saw his own disability. He no longer saw it, and by extension, himself, as a “deficiency” that needed to be “fixed”
- JRo pronounces “Omega” as “Oh-me-gah”. This is important information to include.
And then the livestream ended with JRo saying we all “need a cold shower” after all this “fervent shipping” and went off to finish his half a pint of Corona. (what a legend)
Feel free to add in any answers or details I missed.
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