How did afterburn get those tongue piercings? And did autoclave ever get revenge on the senator who had her empurata’d?
Afterburn liked to hang with a lot of unsavoury characters. He had some rando mech do it to him while high off his ass and doesn’t remember when, who did it, or why he decided to do it.
But hey, he went with it anyway, and at first tried to hide it from Prowl, but... well, it’s hard to hide things from Prowl LOL. He was very grounded. Not that Afterburn actually listened to said grounding...
As for Autoclave - no, sadly, she never did personally get her revenge on the senator - something she tries not to think about too often, but the fact that she never got any closure wears on her greatly.
🥀 Megatron is, er, well, was from the long-standing noble house of Ascent, the rulers of Tarn since the Primal Age! They were considered to be among some of the finest military leaders and producers in all of Cybertronian history, and were instrumental during the Golden Age’s campaign of expansion and colonization of other planets. During the golden age of expansion, the leader of the house- Magmatron Convoy -was one of the few Predacons who held a politically recognized noble position.
These days, he’s mostly known as the guy who made everyone suspicious of Tarnish houses for a good millennia after he tried to assassinate his fellow members of the Convoy Council in order to stage a coup against the ruling Iaconian Primes. It went poorly and he was publicly executed by the rest of house Ascent when he attempted to return to Tarn to hide.
🥀 Many pre-war military and political titles are indicative of an overarching phenomena of Cybertronian culture, which is that on a historical level individuals have held very little power while groups are considered a single entity. Titles such as Convoy aren’t just indicative of leadership, but also of everyone that someone with a Convoy Title is considered to be in command of- they are treated as a singular unit...as a convoy, if you will. This is the same with the title of Emirate- used to refer to a political territory but also to the individual chosen to speak for everyone in that territory as one.
Most of these titles have fallen out of favor after the Autobot-Decepticon war due to a large-scale rejection of pre-war culture and political dynamics, but lots of historical figures are referred to as Convoy or Emirate or even hold titles like Polity and Squadron, just because of how they were regarded as the speaker for entire groups. (As you may be able to guess, this meant that it was very easy for lone voices to be overpowered and lost when leaders had their own goals...)
🥀 Cybertronians had actually visited Earth multiple times over the course of a few million years, but for much of history the planet held little interest to them. Organic oil/fuel is a novelty, but was considered too time-consuming to drill out, treat, and transport back to Cybertron. Instead, Earth was largely observed by religious devotees who believed that alien worlds with life-forms similar to Cybertronian life forms were somehow connected, often times believing they were the abandoned “first projects” of Primus or the original Primes. Cybertron is a relatively young planet, by cosmic standards (and by the standards of most TF settings) only having a few million years of evidence for physical history.
In part this was fueled by the fact that concepts like convergent evolution had never been discovered by Cybertronians, who do not experience sexual reproduction or advantage-based evolution, but it is a little eerie how close many earthly life-forms have parallels upon Cybertron (as well as other planets...) At some point, approximately eight to ten thousand years ago, Earth was prepared for cyber-forming but the process ultimately never began for unknown reasons, leaving large amounts of inert raw sentio metallico and energon crystal seeds buried deep under the planet’s magnetic poles and imbedded in the planet’s crust in other key locations, which would eventually draw the Autobot-Decepticon war to the planet, seeking desperately needed resources.
Which actually turned out pretty well. Earth was instrumental in ending the Autobot-Decepticon war, but we’ll explore that later...
Cog: show a design or personality detail about x character that you really like!
Oh man, I think design-wise Cyc is the one I like the most! My only goal for him was “make him look as emo as possible” and I think I achieved that lol. As far as details go I really like that I was able to incorporate a hood; not only does it make sense for the aforementioned emo look, I think it’ll also be a trait he shares with his dad, Sparkstalker (that guy already has a big chunky kibble thing over his head in canon).
Personality-wise I think my favorite thing about him is that under his grumpy, brooding exterior you will find... a weeb. Like this dude loves anime, and he collects figures both to display and to customize. His current favorites are The New Relic Masters of Cybertron and the generation-spanning Super Convoy franchise, which consists of Super Convoy Trio (the main series), Super Convoy: City Scouts (a sequel/spin-off show), and a shorter prequel series Super Convoy: Prelude to War. Relic Masters, being a series with Loads And Loads Of Characters, has its own gacha RPG and Cyclonus doesn’t care HOW many hours he has to sink into it he WILL get that 4-star Superia-5 card so help him—
Roster: where is x character in this AU? Who are they, what are they doing?
Ah, good ol’ Blurr. When the story takes place, Blurr is with Autobot Intel’s Iacon branch! He’s one of their hardest working field agents and personal favorite of the boss, despite the fact he’s kind of a huge jackass with his head up his own aft. Arrogant as hell, a gossipy jerk, and overall just has a complex where he refuses to really work with people or let himself accept help from other people, he’s not got a lot of friends- only Cliffjumper and Longarm. But that’s fine! He has work instead.
d-does minimegs being bowluigi mean that ultra magnus is just lUIGI WITH THE BOWSETTE CROWN--
oh.. perhaps... 🤔
though i’d think maybe magnus is minimus with the mega mushroom? irreducible mims is regular tiny mims, then he goes up to regular ambus armour minimus with the super mushroom, then magnus w/ the mega mushroom.
Jam: what’s the hardest part of this AU, plotting, worldbuilding, drawing, or something else?
Well: where did the inspiration for this character/event/worldbuilding come from?
[X] <- click here for the ask meme
Short answer:
Jam: plot and character
Well: TFA and Homestuck
Long Answer:
Jam
The biggest problem with this AU is that there is no actual story. I have plans, and small fragments of events that comes between the beginning and the ending, but it seems impossible for me to put them together into plausible timeline. Okay so Autobots and Decepticons arrived on Earth, and their entire timeline has been destroyed in the process. Now what? What do they do on Earth? What will they do once they figured out that they have so start Cybertronian civilization all over again, and through what events do they decide to work together?
Infodumping looks cool on memopad, but it helps very little in terms of creating organic story structure, it seems.
Another major problem is the characters. As you have noticed earlier, they are slightly more than cardboard cutouts with some character tropes slapped on them. For example, TFMR Arcee. She's a bruiser who has giant shield and smithing hammer for weapons, but how does this out-of-ordinary role choice would contribute to making her a relatable character? Does she ever do anything? How would she interact with other characters?
Sure, I have some backstories for some other characters, but what about it? Ratchet and Pharma are holding grudges against each other due to the incident at Delphi outpost, but what does it tell about their personality? And how about Whirl? Why is he even here, and how would his amnesia shtick contribute to the actual plot?
There are also loads of other things that need to be dealt with (i.e. lack of drawing skills, lack of writing skills, procrastinating etc), but as of now these two are the major problems I'm dealing with.
Well
Since the character isn't specified, I'd write about the overall stuff.
The biggest inspiration came from TFA. To be more precise, I admire the twists they gave to each character in the show. TFA Optimus is a young military washout. Sentinel is an asshat. Autobots are ruling Cybertron with iron fist, and Elita is Blackarachnia.
This is what I tried to do with the cast of TFMR, although so far all that came out were muscle Arcee and green Starscream though.
Another great inspiration was Homestuck, which is glaringly obvious from this comic stuff I drew some time ago. Why? Because I liked its randomness and worldbuilding.
Do you know why minibots in TFMR have horns? Well, they reminded me of Trolls from homestuck, so why not?
Also, the entire "Cybertron is destroyed because some idiots traveled back in time" shtick? An homage to the part where beta kids entered the medium and destroyed Earth. The difference being that the 'Bots and 'Cons didn't enter a game world, but rather nullifying the future they came from by traveled way back in time.
Oh, and there's also this youtube channel. I take their advice by heart. -> [X]
I think I just mentioned it in Shockwave’s design post but I think Airachnid and Shockwave is the most unorthodox one that comes to mind...and it’s a major factor in the plot.
Admittedly, it comes from a reaaaally old ship I had back when I was active in the TFP RP community on this site but the basic idea has kinda stuck with me, since I always figured Shockwave and Airachnid would both be a good match for each other, being morally questionable bots with a shared interest in “experimentation” and what not. Especially with a Shockwave who regains his sense of morality and strays from what she found “interesting” in the first place.
Yeah, long story short, Airachnid is kind of a bad partner and an equally awful mom, having cut and run as soon as Shockwave started to ACTUALLY catch feelings.
Backdrop: what’s your favorite place or setting in this AU?
Oooof, I don’t have any specific images for this one but I’ve always been super keen on the “winter wilderness” setting for this AU and I’m really happy with the final setting of “Alaska” for the key four characters.
Admittedly, the decision was somewhat influenced by a trip that my girlfriend @moontruffles had made a little while back but I thought the wilderness there would be the perfect blend of a...well, isolated setting without being too obscure.
Plus the geography meant that the alt modes picked by most of the key five wouldn’t stand out as much, depending on the circumstances. Plus ya know, snowy/raining scenery is just my jam.
How in the heck have you figured out the weather patterns so well? That part's always my worst enemy!
It’s a step-by-step process and everything builds upon few but important foundations. Those are the basic properties of the planet (position within the habitable zone of its parent star, planetary size, axial tilt), shapes and sizes of the continents (including plate tectonics which drive orogeny), the composition and density of the atmosphere and the rotational direction and speed of the planet. The rotation dictates the general direction of the main winds, the axial tilt influences the ITCZand the pressure system it maintains, mountains block clouds and modify rain patterns, the distribution of land and sea dictates oceanic currents and their influence on global climate, and so on. It’s quite a bit to read and to learn, but it all comes together after a while and as soon as it “clicks”, it’s easy to understand.
From then on, it’s diligent but routine piece of work. I started with the base map of the continents, then added the ITCZ based on my data, then built the pressure system upon that, derived the rain patterns from the combination of atmospheric pressures and land/sea distribution, derived temperature from illumination angles and altitudes, and then mixed everything together to deduct the climate classification that’s used on Earth.
You have to want to understand and like the topic, though. If you find it interesting, yet intimidating, I really recommend watching student videos on those topics on YouTube. They explain everything well, and you get a good overview over the basics before diving into the meat of the topic. Does this help you further? :)
