Hey do you have any knockout x Megatron relationship headcanons because their very interesting
Oh, so, so many (mostly dependant on the situation I've wrangled them into this time).
I like the idea that Knock Out is a night owl and as late to rise as he can manage, whereas Megatron has a touch of insomnia (at least, in as much as Cybertronians have a human-like sleep schedule) and that can lead to odd conversations happening at unreasonable hours.
I want them to encourage each other's worst behaviours while finding comfort and security in the ways they don't have to be nasty to each other. A certain amount of rough edges is to be expected (and looked on with less suspicion than a perfectly polite person) and their particular brands of unpleasantness don't bother the other hugely.
I'm very attached to the idea that Knock Out is a self-taught medic and Megatron likes that. Megatron likes competence and while Knock Out isn't always successful, he's got a fairly good track record and (possibly more importantly) doesn't usually screw up in spectacular ways. Conversely, Megatron learning how easy it can be to meet the demands Knock Out actually wants is fun.
I also think it would be hilarious if Megatron was the younger one out of the pair. TFP!Megatron being one of the youngest Cybertonians in the show is something I desperately want to write but haven't found a good enough plot to hang it on yet. Let Knock Out try an "age before beauty" line only to have it blow up in his face XD
Knock Out has a taste for expensive fuels (he claims its a race car thing) and it's fun to picture him trying to ply Megatron with different flavours, but Megatron has a very fuel is fuel is fuel attitude.
(I'm trying to come up with more specific relationshipy things, but I'm the type of writer who doesn't know what any specifics are going to be until I write them, so a lot of character interaction moments are up in the air until I get them down -.-).
So I decided to give Cyberverse a whirl and suddenly War For Cybertron is looking even worse. They already did the ‘Optimus throws the Allspark through an exploding spacebridge - despite the main female character saying it’d kill the planet - because Megatron was going to use it to reprogram everyone’ plot. But in Cyberverse they don’t bang on about it for full episodes, making Optimus look even worse every time someone raises a valid point.
Windblade and Bumblebee’s relationship is good so far. The writers actually feel like they know who Optimus Prime is supposed to be in that episode with the energon bugs. The change of focus to the relatively unknown characters is nice. The art style is bright and fun. 10 minute episodes are working in its favour as they have to introduce and solve problems quickly.
On the other hand, the humour is fairly childish, the fight scenes aren’t amazing (Thundercracker has twice been defeated by being thrown off a cliff, despite the fact that he can fly), and I really dislike Bumblebee’s use of recorded phrases instead of his voice. Also Megatron’s voice - why?
Thoughts on Transformers: War For Cybertron - Earthrise
My thoughts on this are less cohesive than last time, so I hope you're ready for a long ramble as I try to figure out exactly what I think about the series.
Tl;dr - still looks really pretty, but Siege’s weak writing hasn't improved.
Spoilers below the cut.
Earthrise generally suffers from being part 2 of 3. It's focused on getting characters from point A (Cybertron) to point B (Earth) and doesn't really do much in the meantime. You could've cut episodes 4 and 5 and it wouldn't have affected the plot all that much.
Megatron and Optimus
They need to stop having fights. It'd be best for their characters and the plot if they hadn't spent several minutes pointing guns at each other and saying that *this* time they were actually going to kill them. Just follow through already and if you can't then keep them apart until the climax.
Optimus getting distracted by Cog running up and going 'Optimus! What are you doing?!' was stupid. Cog should've been glad that Optimus was finally at the point where he wouldn't sacrifice every last Autobot to save Megatron if given the opportunity.
Them being trapped together was pointless and stupid (aside from that one screenshot we all made). Megatron's point that Optimus keeps screwing up and it's Megatron who pays the price was interesting - but it was surrounded by so much nonsense that it fell flat.
Speaking of…
Autobot Decepticon teamups
Are they trying to lean towards ending the series with mutual cooperation and peace? Their 'we all need to work together' moments were always horribly shoehorned and the Autobots didn't once try to put measures in place to defend themselves when the Decepticons inevitably betrayed them.
I like hero/villain teamups, but it doesn't work if the heroes are stupid about them.
Scorponok fight
There is a big room with a big enemy in. The Autobots have shut themselves in a corridor on one side of the room. They need to reach the other side of the room without getting killed. Whose idea was it to try and kill Scorponok instead of just evasive maneuvers to the other side of the room?!?
To be fair, Optimus did try and run distraction, but Bumblebee decided that was a stupid plan and standing still and shooting at the enemy - that none of their blasters had even scratched - was a better one.
It was a stupid fight. If they wanted a Megatron/Optimus moment so badly then, hey, the Autobots have rigged the station to blow and the Decepticons don't know that - have Megatron set off an explosion by accident and trap him and Optimus (who could've been diving forward to try and stop Megatron, thereby getting close).
The Dead Universe
You could've replaced this with Optimus getting a vision from the Matrix and Megatron having a short visit from future!Galvatron. It wasted time that could've been spent on actual character development.
Skylynx had about 3 lines that he just repeated variants of the whole episode.
Was it clear to anyone who hadn't seen the 1986 movie exactly what the Megatron/Galvatron link was? They were pretty vague about it.
Also, if Skylynx's advice made Optimus go 'hmm, yes, I should stop looking back and actually kill Megatron to prevent my own death', then Galvatron's advice to Megatron should've made him go 'I don't hate Prime this much/if he’s dedicated all his effort into stopping Prime and still failed, there must be another way'. I suppose, he didn’t kill Optimus when given a perfect opportunity, but that also just felt like an extension of their endless *points gun* “one-liner” *tables are turned* cycle.
Elita
Poor, poor, badly written Elita. She can't get anything done without Jetfire - the big strong man - questioning her or being the one to save the day, or making a desperate plan to try and fight their way out of captivity when they're going to be sacrificed, but we never see their escape attempt.
I don't think she acts like someone who is on a doomed planet. Breaking into prisons camps makes less sense than trying to find a way to fix things. Let her fail, fine, but give her a fighting chance to try and reignite Cybertron or, say, find someone who is rumoured to be able to create synthetic energon - which could've been a reason for prison breaks at least.
And it was probably meant to be read differently, but Elita's silence over her name when Megatron called her Ariel to her face, versus Optimus snarling that ‘her name is Elita-1!′ when Megatron used 'Ariel' around him, kinda makes me wonder whose decision it was to rename her.
Cog
They don't get to make me sad about a character death when that character had previously stopped Optimus from finally trying to kill Megatron and also failed to just bloody shoot Deeceus. And had he really taken the enemy ship? Really?
Misc
We never found out why the station was trapped halfway through the Spacebridge.
Optimus's voice actor still sounds like a bad Batman when he's angry, though he might've gotten away with it if Megatron's voice actor didn't have such a good "Prime" snarl.
Everyone is miserable, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in a series about the struggles of war, but when it's aimed at kids you have to ask the question: are they enjoying it? It is fun to watch?
Ultra Magnus's head was sort of flagged up as important - specifically its location was noted by Elita - but never appeared again once Megatron left Cybertron. Did he take it with him?
For having such a hard-on for the 1986 movie, their decision to have Megatron beg for mercy (something quite out of character for this version of Megatron) and not include Optimus's 'you who are without mercy now plead for it?' line was a weird whiplashy moment.
Showing Glavatron and Unicron in the trailer when they literally appear for one episode and five second respectively was seriously false advertising. When did people forget that watching a trailer is supposed to give you an idea of the type/style of plot the media is supposed to deliver?
The editing is bad in several places. There were often moments where there would be an explosion in place A, then it'd cut to a battered character in place B getting up in a ruined room, making it look like they'd been in said explosion. Confusing in a series where palette-swapping and similar character designs already make it difficult for newcomers to tell what's going on.
The velociraptor-bot at the end looked like 90's CGI and I really hope Kingdom doesn't all look like that.
If Hot Rod doesn't show up and get the Matrix in Kingdom I'm going to be severely disappointed.
Starscream really likes speechifying to a tiny audience. He makes his bid to become leader in front of a nameless Decepticon, Soundwave, Ravage, and an injured Megatron - who promptly shoots him. I have to admit that he’s probably the character they did best by, his coup moments were pretty good and captured Starscream as we all know him.
Like the question of what exactly was under siege in Siege, Earthrise only gets to Earth at the end of the last episode.
Wheeljack felt weirdly useless. He didn’t get to go through with his plan of blowing up the station and couldn’t open a pair of blast doors that Soundwave had 0 problems with. After not being the one to fix the Spacebridge in Siege, he’s not feeling much like an engineer.
You had to guess motivations and plans and fairly often piece things together backwards after the fact. Having an idea of who everyone was made that easier for me than for non-fans, but I still ended up running on incorrect assumptions about what people were going to do and why.
...
So, there you go. I guess I’m still going to watch Kingdom when it comes out, but I think I’ve lost all my optimism for it being any good.
Last year I put together a d&d 5e Transformers halloween one-shot. I’ve run it twice now (to very different results) and figured someone else out there might be interested in the premise.
Soundwave has crashed on Earth and been badly damaged. As a short-term solution, his cassettes (I used Ravage, Laserbeak, Rumble, and Frenzy) have installed him in place of a supermarket’s security system and have spent a few nights trying to figure out how to repair and fuel him to get him back online (hiding in plain sight during the day).
Enter the PCs who are trapped in the shop overnight for various reasons.
The key thing is that the PCs don’t know that it’s Transformers until part way through. At first they find a blood-stained nametag of an electrician who was called in to repair Soundwave (and never left). Then lots of small encounters like noticing a panther stalking them, or damage in the electronics/tins/fresh meat aisle as the cassettes are trying to build a meat-to-energon machine (with things like hoovers or other electronics Rumble and Frenzy could turn into always nearby the scene of the crime), a cry for help whenever they get too close to the security station (Laserbeak playing a recording trying to lure them away from Soundwave).
Then things come to a head as the PCs get directly attacked (I always liked using a T-800 as a descriptor for Rumble/Frenzy’s robot modes) and the display car that was the grand prize in a raffle the store is running turns out to be an Autobot (I used Hot Rod, but Bumblebee or someone else would work just as well). Then Soundwave wakes up.
Depending on the PCs, the fight could go either way. Maybe the Autobots lose a front-liner, maybe the Decepticons lose their third-in-command.
The only major difference I made to 5e was replacing the Arcana skill with Electronics. The PCs were all very basic characters, the focus was more on trying to gain advantage to make their rolls work than having initially good stats.
The characters I used were:
A new employee, they don’t want to get caught or they’ll be fired.
A high-schooler sneaking in on a dare, they want to get a copy of the security tape to show their friends.
A gamer who wants to steal a copy of Doom Eternal before it’s officially released (this makes the plot a bit dated, but I’ll explain more in a sec).
A youtuber who is trying to make the video that’ll get them famous.
A homeless person, who just wants a night off the streets somewhere warm now that the weather is turning.
Someone who just got lost in the clothing aisle, but who loves a good mystery and wants to figure out what’s going on.
All the characters had 10 in every stat, bar one which was at 12. 1 proficiency in a saving throw. 2 proficient skills. 3d8hp. They are very breakable humans, but if they all team up they should be able to take out 1 cassette on its own.
Back when I first wrote this, Doom Eternal was scheduled to be out in November 2019, which lined up nicely for a halloween one-shot. Then it was pushed back, feh. However, the gamer character is there to provide a red herring. Should the PCs come across an alien attempt at building something out of electronic parts with blood being fed into it, while someone is talking about Doom a bunch, they’re going to be thinking it could be demons behind it all.
(Hopefully, despite running it twice, no one’s picked that character yet).
So, there you go. I’d love to hear if anyone wants to give running it a go, or if anyone has any further thoughts/questions on the whole thing.
Thoughts on Transformers: War For Cybertron - Siege
General conclusion: Very pretty, though the writing isn't fantastic. I had fun with it. If you're a Transformers fan (and if you’re on this blog you probably are), you'll probably enjoy it. If not, you might have some trouble knowing who's who, but you should still enjoy the visuals.
(Coming at this from a background of mostly TFP and MTMTE/LL.)
Under a cut because this got long. Going through The Good, The Bad, and The Spoilers.
The Good:
It's really pretty. There's an almost claymation quality to the animation and I really like the heavily scratched but polished look everyone has. The lighting is really well done too.
With a few exceptions (coughProwlcough) the G1 character designs work pretty well.
For some reason, I find Shockwave tapping on his datapad with his gun-arm very funny.
The voice acting is mostly good. Megatron's good, and I have to give Starscream and Wheeljack credit for actually putting a voice on rather than sounding like generic Autobot #3.
I liked their approach to Starscream. And Ratchet's backstory is a bit more interesting than just "the medic".
If you're a G1 fan, there's a good chance you'll see your favourite character at some point.
There are a lot of nods to Transformers lore.
Megatron's propaganda moments were pretty well done (and his portraits were amazingly ridiculous).
Megastar shippers will be happy.
The Bad:
There are a *lot* of characters, very few who are named clearly. I'm coming to this from knowing a lot about Transformers and I'm still struggling with the 2nd-3rd tier characters at times. I can make a guess and it's usually right, but I think a newcomer would have a hard time of it - especially given all the palette-swapping.
The writing is pretty mediocre. The plot makes very little sense and everyone's kinda trope-y. At least once it sounded like Optimus disagreed with himself during one conversation, but it turned out he was making a weird reply to Elita.
Speaking of Optimus, his voice actor isn't the best. It's a very Batman-y take on Optimus and it's plagued with weird pauses in his speech that muddy his meaning. Not helped by his vague motivations.
Ultra Magnus. Just, Ultra Magnus. I can accept him making poor choices (ones that are kinda justified in fairness), but he doesn't follow through in any meaningful way. Then his arc makes even less sense as the series unfolds. Plus, he didn't quote a regulation once - if you can shoehorn in Soundwave saying "inferior", why not have Magnus do what he's well-known for doing? It's worse than Shockwave not getting to say "logical".
The fight scenes are a bit confusing at times, weird cutting mostly.
Can we stop coding the Decepticons black? Please? The former-slaves-who-rose-up-but-then-grasped-power-and-turned-evil narrative is pretty uncomfortable these days. Yes, I know this is coming from a cartoon in the '80s, but there's only so far you can mitigate things with Optimus's stance on revolution.
It could've used a few more episodes to let things breathe and maybe show some of the consequences of Decepticon and Autobot choices.
The Spoilers:
If you'd lined up the main Decepticons and asked me which one was going to switch sides, I wouldn't have needed previous knowledge of SkyJetfire to know who it was going to be. It's a bit bad when you colour-code their optics, even if it is staying true to G1.
Speaking of Jetfire, someone needs to slap the word "honour" out of writers' hands until they can figure out what they're actually trying to say. The only reason Ultra Magnus didn't shoot Megatron in the back when given a chance should've been because he still thought there was a way to reason with Megatron, *not* because his honour couldn't allow him to shoot someone in the back.
People "die" offscreen way too often only to reappear and have other people surprised. How durable are Cybertronians? It's a bit plot-armour-y and the Decepticons have quite a bit of generic mook stupidity that's a bit frustrating when they fail to check bodies. And even when they do and find Impactor's arm, he's still alive? But Skywarp didn't survive despite being good to fly for a while after being shot?
My goodness, who could this mysterious cloaked stranger with Ultra Magnus's distinctive shoulders be? Ultra Magnus?!?! I never would've guessed.
If Ultra Magnus had the Alpha Trion Protocols and *still* ended up doing a wishy-washy surrender (it could've been so much better if he'd actually had any kind of leverage against Megatron and truly attempted a peace treaty, but it ultimately felt like a drawn-out suicide by warlord) what's to say that him passing on the Protocols to anyone else would work better? Why would Optimus listen any better to someone new?
(I would've liked it if Bumblebee had kept the Protocols and then they could've leant towards Hot Rod showing up to get passed the Matrix of Leadership too, get a new generation of people who can actually make use of the things and not spend their time waffling about faith.)
Optimus is such a bad leader. I don't think I can stress this enough. Especially when you've got Megatron on the other side who's mostly decisive (if evil) and it's clearly working for him. Optimus feels very impulsive and always falls back to "just have faith in me" when he can't find a good reason for what he's doing. I shouldn't come out of this thinking that if I was in Megatron's position of having to work with Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus during the initial revolution, then I would've snapped too.
Optimus's decision with the Allspark made so little sense. Yes, keep it out of Megatron's hands, but it seemed highly likely that he was going to kill *everyone* left on Cybertron with his stunt. How is that better?
I recently got into your Halo fanfics and they’re honestly the best ones i’ve found so far. Do you ever plan on making more? I love how you wrote the dynamic between the Arbiter and Master Chief.
Thank you, but I'm afraid I don't really have any more ideas for that particular series. It was a lot of fun to write while I still had ideas at least!
I have hopes to one day figure out how to get my thoughts on a Halo/Transformers crossover into a short fic, but other than that it's up in the air if I'll find something in Halo to inspire me again.
