#IDW2019

[emperor-kumquat]

I saw them holding hands in the background. While looking so serious, they still hold hands

The Rainmakers are always holding hands in this series, it’s cute

[halenhusky309]

He's such a mama boy. Poor Orion Pax. He must miss his mom so bad that the Matrix projected Codexa to guide him

[elfdragon12]

I think IDW2 Swindle is perhaps my favorite take on the character.

He just strikes such a good balance of "Swindle traits" for me, he's sympathetic without being a good person, and he has a lot of fun relationships and different dynamics to explore. Although he protests, he caves to Smokescreen's requests. He allows Trickdiamond to negotiate for more (though he was in jail). He is a terrible boss who doesn't pay well. He breaks Bumblebee out of jail and actually arranges an attempt to rescue Elita-1 for him. He just wants to keep his casino running (and rake in the profit).

All in all, a great interpretation of the character!

[pluralsword]

Compiled a list of all the different scoped weapons we’ve seen Arcee use in canon, for reasons, does anybody have any to add? It’s really interesting how vastly different the designs are. Side-mounts, holosight-esque, and whatever the scrap is going on with Earthspark Arcee’s snub-scope. An image of her from WFC the videogame with any of the scoped guns would also be appreciated (or really anything of her from any of the videogames with a scoped weapon)

Close up of images in order of appearance below

IDW1/IDW2005 Arcee (in 2012, three full body reformats so far on her gender journey, currently with a cybertronian car alt-mode) with side-mount stock over shoulder two-hand rifle in Robots in Disguise #9, “Night and the City.”

Same Arcee (2013) with a massive over the shoulder missile launcher or cannon, in Robots in Disguise #23, Dark Cybertron #3, “Winners and Losers.” Honestly this thing may have a scope but it sure seems like she’s eyeballing until she has the go ahead to fire. This weapon is called the Superior Cannon in Wave 2 (2019) of the now canceled Transformers Trading Card Game by Wizards of the Coast.

Forged to Fight Arcee (present in the game at launch in 2017, basically T30 Generations Arcee but lankier with long arms) kneeling to fire her stock mounted round scope blue sniper rifle with a side mounted red laser sight as part of her special attack. The front of the barrel lights up blue when it fires... and what is actually fired is a metal bullet! A nice surprise from a G1-stylized character. Image sourced from this video.

IDW1/IDW2005 Arcee (2018, now five full body reformats so far on her gender journey, currently with an earth car alt-mode that was inspired by the Lotus Elite, this is the form she has at the end of the series we will go off about this some other time) with a fold-up/modular designated marksbot rifle looking gun with a squarish digital sight, in Unicron #2, “Stranger Eons.” It’s funny, we never see her IDW1 iteration shoot any of these three, but we do see her shoot her guns with only iron sights or none at all iirc? IDW2 on the other hand we’ll talk about in a bit, but first, Cyberverse Arcee!

Cyberverse Arcee (in 2020) in Cyberverse Season 3 Episode 13 “The Judge” readying a very large blaster with a drum ammunition barrel (when she isn’t shooting her blaster pistols or in melee, shooting a gun with a drum barrel seems to be her thing, specifically, very large guns, usually minigun/autocannon/rotary cannon sort of deal) that has a sloped forend and ridges under the front of the gun barrel, and either has a narrow scope or ?ammo counter?/probably a scope above the ammo barrel. (remembered her shooting this thanks to @arceespinkgun​ ‘s post of gifs of Shadow Striker and Arcee fighting together in this episode after seeing the G1 images they reblogged this post with, thank you!!) She also never uses the scope when she shoots the thing in her exuberant battle delight, unlike somebody...

IDW2/IDW2019 Arcee (2021, notes on reformats later)*, has a cybertronian look the whole series), aiming her blocky anti-armor rifle while crouching, the scope is kind of holosight-like, in Transformers #35, “Lord of Misrule: Sea of Rust II”. She shoots this thing several times in the series and gosh you don’t want to get hit by the brief beam of plasma that cuts through a Seeker like butter when she pulls the trigger. RE reformats: possibly one, twice if she did off-screen before series start for trans reasons? like she had a look more like Earthrise Arcee at the beginning mixed with IDW1 but then they went for the An Arcee Sort of Day look that is basically a WFC Chromia/Nightbird retool with outer armor of the backpack made into back stacks instead after Galaxies was over, maybe because she joined the Autobots and wanted to change her look or literally armor up, or the artists just felt like it, we don’t know but would like to know. In any case her alt mode went from a sci-fi convertible to an armored fighting car look. (which we are the only person we know of with a custom or toy of at all so far as of early 2023)

Then from this promotional image from Nickelodeon we have Earthspark Arcee (2023) smiling while one-handing a giant aft pistol that’s all rounded and curved with a TAIL FIN SCOPE in a way that looks like her G1 car mode she doesn’t have since she has a muscle car mode instead. Okay dear you’re cool as frag for having a gun that looks like the alt mode you don’t have while you rock the boxier one you have instead. I’m so trans that I can hold a version of my old body in my hand and shoot it. Like okay we’re just waiting for her to say she’s trans now right that’s the consensus- anyway about the scope:

HOW DOES SHE AIM DOWN THAT SCOPE. IF THAT’S WHAT IT IS. LIKE WHAT IS HAPPENING? Like this goes past what her IDW2 rifle’s scope does which lets her comfortably lean her head down a little while resting the gun against her neck guard armor- but this is like, plonking your head down to aim forward unless... unless she eyeballs the scope itself or links up with it via her hand. Which she could. Would not put past sage in martial arts, ethics, and bullshitting Earthspark Arcee to have a weapon that defies expectations while showing her history in the palm of her hand. Gods why do we feel like crying over this promo image, anyway that’s a wrap on this until y’all send us more images.

Also we found the gun thanks to @fancyrobotenthusiast​ ‘s post of the image and then we did a reverse google image search while we started compiling the other images finding that inspired, so thank you, you by chance gave our trans brain something to do for a few hours that has made us very happy after

[mendely]

something about how sassy and smug and mean Flywheels/Skytread is in IDW 2019 feels illegal

[alicefromwhichplanet]

She stands in the lights of dawn embracing her victory.

Preview of my piece for this year’s Spectrum Zine! (@ ZineSpectrum on twitter)

Grab a copy of the zine here!

[thunderxino]

do it, i dare you.

tap for better quality

[saxandviolins77]

I have a feeling most people don't actually care for Bonecrusher's character, so I made a little post talking about what I find interesting about him.

Enjoy 😙.

I know for a fact that Hook, Mixmaster, and Scavenger are the most popular out of the Constructicons and that's fine, but I feel most people don't really KNOW what makes Bonecrusher interesting as a character.

OK, I'll be fair here and say that most of his substantial character traits come from obscure stuff or are not developed, but his most obscure bio is used on his TFwiki description... so... Not that hidden.

Take his Sunbow writer's guide page, for instance. It establishes that he is destructive and brutish, but more importantly than that, his job is a performance to him, an art form if we can put it this way. That already paints a whole different picture of him. Yes, he is violent, but he's also a self-proclaimed artist.

Even in the cartoon, Bonecrusher doesn't act like a thug (I hate this word), as most people and IDW2019 portray him. He's surprisingly stoic (yeah, I didn't take it from nowhere). He's violent, sure, but he's also dedicated to the task at hand. Take G1's "The Autobot Run", an episode that feels like the writer was faithful to the guides. In said episode, while Long Haul is the one wanting to fight directly, Bonecrusher comes and admonishes him, talking about how the device they are building will "wreck those Autobots good," as he puts it. (Bonecrusher has sparingly appearances and lines in G1, but most of those lines are of him being violent or him just going about his work day.)

This for me is the cream of the crumb of Bonecrusher's canonical characterizations, directly from Transformers: The Ultimate Guide by Simon Furman himself. Aside from that, this book has some pretty innovative things for the Constructicons; the fact that this was written by the same person who wrote the Dreamwave bios makes it feel like a natural expansion of what's already established. Though, for whatever reason, Furman focuses a lot on the "survival of the fittest" part of Boner, like, I know... '86 Movie! But C'mon!

(The Dreamwave bio was omitted due to redundancy.)

Now, in my personal opinion, you can see a pretty interesting base for a character. A perfectionist who expresses his desire for perfection by violently destroying everything he considers flawed. A performance artist in his own right.

The only thing I outright reject from Canon is the fact that he has a 3 in intelligence and a meager 6 in skill. Well, color me fucking surprised! He must be a very shitty DEMOLITIONS SPECIALIST. I sound petty, but I simply feel he shouldn't be dumb as bricks ( I also don't need him to be Hook levels of smart.) Keep him a brute, but a competent brute who actually does his job well. (take this with a grain of salt; I have a very weak suspension of disbelief when it comes to jobs not being portrayed accurately.)

Either way, I just wanted to shine a light on what I like about the Boner guy. Have a fine day/evening/night. 🥱

[transingthoseformers]

I think a lot of people don't understand exactly how the mentor/teacher and student relationship functions for Cybertronians as a species, so I'm here to explain it as gently as I possibly can for THEM to see. Understanding entirely that YOU are not the person who knew who Jhiaxus and Shockwave both were.

Cybertronians in most continuities (IE, not Aligned or Bayverse) are not born. They are built or sculpted. When that process is complete, you have a bot that looks like any other adult, and any sign of age is based on experiences they hav. Megatron, being a front-line fighter and miner, has more wear and tear than Rodimus (who is primarily a race frame and fights with guns and his fire), even though Rodimus is chronologically older than him. This is canon to IDW, as per James Roberts' statements. Also canon is Ratchet dying of old age when his husband, who's I think like 300 years older, looks very young at the funeral.

Because they are born fully formed, they LOOK like adults, but they are developmentally still very young during the years they'd be educated. They are functionally children.

They very rarely have what you would call a mom or a dad. The person guiding them through life isn't the person whose uterus they fell out of- it's their mentor. IDW19 is one of the best places you can see it, as a core part of that story was the mentor/child relationship, but you can also somewhat see it in TFA and VERY MUCH see it in Earthspark.

In IDW19, it's explicitly stated that it is a huge and humbling experience to get to raise a young child. Wheeljack explains how important mentorship is out loud. Even after becoming Prime, Optimus returns to speak with Codexa and ask her advice the way one would call their mother.

In TFA, the drill sergeants are the ones who name you. They shape your life and assign you to the function you'll serve.

In Earthspark, the Terrans are born in a sort of tween-age body, but they won't really age the way the humans would. You can see in the relationship they have with Bumblebee/their respective Dad2s the same type of "raising a young bot" relationship you'd get on Cybertron.

This extends to other continuities to an extent, with Megatron and Terminus in IDW05 coming to mind for comparison.

Jhiaxus was Shockwave's teacher. He was the one who introduced Shockwave to the beliefs and mythologies that would shape his entire life and the work he opted to dedicate himself to. Pre-empurata, Shockwave continued education as an imperitave because Jhiaxus taught him to value that access to education. Without him there to guide a young Shockwave, we never would have gotten the Shockwave who smuggled Outliers into safety; we never would have gotten the Shockwave who got caught; we wouldn't have gotten the Shockwave who clung to his memories of Jhiaxus and became the terrifying Decepticon scientist we all know and adore.

The end result is that mentor/student relationships end up looking like parent/child ones, and there's a LOT of people who seem to ignore or forget that. I believe it's based on media literacy, but that's just me.

Ah, okay, I see!

I had previously thought that was just a thing in IDW2019 and Earthspark

[pluralsword]

IDW2 is the only thing she’s appeared in that’s done her real justice in terms of having a good life (she’s also fucking buff and huge) because she wasn’t fucking murdered in it and ruled over a better period of Cybertronian history For Once. Look we love IDW1 Solus’s writing as a peaceful monarch who led in technology and defensive capability and opposed to imperial expansion but also like why did she have to get killed by Megatronus again. One of our few peeves about EXRID. At least have let her kill Megatronus and then Shockwave gets pissed that his plan went awry and finishes the job- or she flees and comes back as another force to contend with (there wasn’t time in the comics for this ;-; but let’s pretend there was) who warns everybody about Onyx and has a very awkward  conversation with known anti-hierarchy errant Arcee [they’re both gay but Arcee doesn’t want to be into it unless Solus pulls a full Aileron arc and deposes herself too (imo anyway)].

I love solus prime as a character. design wise however. not a fan. tfw one of the most interesting characters in aligned lore is used as a justification as to why arcee has boobs and also gets fridged because her shitty boyfriend could not let go of his stupid toy. RHNG

Yeah, Solus can't win. The gag on her page about her alternate mode being a fridge is one of those jokes that makes you cringe because YOU KNOW it's true but you hate to see it.

The one girl TF and her story mills down to "the one woman was The Best Of Us and we were too blind to see" and her role becomes the literal babymaker of the entire planet once she's buried.

[short-wooloo]

I'm sorry but every cartoon/movie/video game version of Shockwave (except animated, more on that later) sucks

All he is in those adaptations is another one of Megatron's Lieutenants (a role Starscream and Soundwave more than cover), sometimes a scientist to make whatever gizmo Megatron needs for this week's ridiculous scheme, but otherwise he's just a yes man for Megatron, never a full fledged mad scientist and/or big bad we see in the comics, those are where Shockwave really shines, IDW2005, IDW2019, Marvel, and Skybound (maybe dreamwave? I dunno) are where we really see him at his greatest (especially IDW2005), a big bad in his own right, a mad scientist of universe warping proportions, a rival to Megatron, etc, this is Shockwave and it is so disappointing how none of it makes it into adaptations

Animated at least makes lackey Shockwave interesting with his infiltration plot and hyper competence compared to other Decepticons

[emperor-kumquat]

I WISH TO PROPOSE A NEW MEME FORMAT The "Sixshot Slap" available in small and big bubbles

Reblog with your own!

[halenhusky309]

I would kill for a slice-of-life comic/story of Arcee, Greenlight and their daughter Gauge actually. But I guess I have to make my own content to enjoy their little family though

[elfdragon12]

I'm reading through IDW2019 again and there's the part where Optimus and Ironhide use Prowl as a marker for how angry Megatron is/how difficult he'll be to work with.

I think folks get caught up in the idea of Prowl being an angry person than actually considering what he's angry about. The event the two are referring to is Prowl being stuck under a pylon for 10 cycles.

For reference, Brian Ruckley has said that a cycle is a little less than an Earth day.

So yeah! Prowl being spittin' mad at being stuck under a pylon that is multiple tons for about 10 Earth days is actually pretty reasonable.

For contrast, when Rubble speaks up to say that he's seen the Voin they're on the look-out for and wants to help and Prowl's like "they all pretty much look the same unless you're experienced", Barricade scoffs "civilians" yet Prowl shuts that down and reminds him that Rubble is extremely young and yet has been exposed to the first murder on Cybertron.

Anger just so happens to be Prowl's stress response and there are a ton of things to be stressed about.

[pluralsword]

could people reblog or comment or dm stuff they like about trans arcee or content they wanna share. please. we're low on money and tired and trying to hold ourselves together after an onslaught of trauma for the last 6-9 months (depending on what we want to count as having reached a point of mental health getting really unstable) and we're struggling to get a job and we are also just so fucking tired of also seeing/dealing with people who don't know her well lambasting her entire story (and that's the least of it) if they aren't being outright intentionally hateful which we've seen before and been harassed by elsewhere. so. if people want to show some love. that would be nice

[askvectorprime]

What is the story of stardrive in idw2019?

Dear Stardrive Seeker,

Not all newly-forged Cybertronians spend their early lives on Cybertron—always, there are those Cybertronians born with an instinctual thirst for adventure, who yearn to venture beyond the confines of their metallic homeworld. Thus, in the years following the War of the Threefold Spark, the Cybertronian government authorized the creation of a cultural exchange program between the Cybertronian commonwealth and some friendly galactic neighbors, an incentive program where newly forged Cybertronians could study abroad on a diverse range of planets, assimilating the local culture and language as part of a possible career in Xeno-Relations.

I should comment, briefly, on the history of the Solstar Order—it originated corewards of Cybertron, not far from the barricaded region of space known as the “Quintessence”, and expanded outwards not through conquest, but by carefully negotiating trade agreements and alliances with alien civilizations and gradually building a strong federation of many diverse species: Elonians, Intriessians, Karkans, and more. By the era of the Nominus Edict, the borders of the Solstar Order nearly bumped up against remote Cybertronian colonies like Velocitron and Omicron. Despite their proximity, the two star-nations had only ever enjoyed a strained relationship. The Solstar Order consolidated much of its recent power by absorbing the defeated remnants of other empires, smashed to bits by Cybertronian hegemony—in particular, a large contingent of Szorian refugees who’d seen their homeworld obliterated by the Titan Waypoint eyed the Transformers with a deep and abiding distrust. More recently, tensions flared when unscrupulous elements of the Cybertronian government conspired with the ambitious Natalus to abruptly declare that the planet Probat was a Cybertronian colony, despite the fact that no Cybertronians lived there—deliberately smashing years of careful accession agreements that would’ve seen the citizens of Probat join their galactic government.

Into this already-tense environment came Stardrive—already a model mentee with a rare triple-changing bodyframe, a knack for languages, and eying a possible career in Xeno-Relations—who announced that she would like to study abroad on the planet Elonia. The request, while highly unusual, went through, and before long Stardrive had arrived in Solstar space and enrolled in a xeno-linguistics program on the planet Ofsted XVII, with a minor in astro-navigation. Although she faced prejudice and even outright discrimination from many of her organic classmates—and indeed, more than one lecture hall had to be renovated so that she could fit into their classrooms—Stardrive persevered.

One day, Stardrive and her class were on a field trip to monitor the unique phenomenon known as the “Quintessence”, a seemingly insurmountable barrier of electrical energy that prevented the Solstar Order from expanding any closer to the galactic core. Suddenly, while monitoring the phenomenon aboard an orbital research station, Stardrive witnessed a bizarre astrological phenomenon: what appeared to be a nebula somehow shifted into a massive portal that crackled with arcane power, a gateway through which a new kind of shapeshifting lifeform came to attack their vessel! The creatures, their slug-like bodies immune to conventional weaponsfire, easily breached the station’s hull and devoured many of the beings inside. Those who survived were infected with toxic biomatter and converted into more of their kind. However, the invaders hadn’t prepared to deal with a Cybertronian, whose mechanical biology rendered her immune to their necrotic touch, and whose tight-beam plasma blasters could simply burn through their arcane biology. Fighting her way through the hordes, Stardrive piled as many students as she could—including their professor, Rom K’atsema—into her space fighter alternate mode, then beat a hasty retreat as the station exploded behind her.

By the time Stardrive limped back to Elonia, it soon became clear that the Solstar Order faced a grave crisis. The “Dire Wraiths”, as they were now called, had launched coordinated invasions of outlying worlds like Xeres and Buras, and lightly-armed planetary garrisons had already been overwhelmed. Although the Solstar Order’s celebrated diplomatic corps had long since assumed that they could defuse any problem with negotiations, it soon became clear that they were fighting an enemy that had no obvious means of communications, and would accept nothing less than total extinction. It soon became clear that the Solstar Order would need something new to combat the hordes… and, eventually, all eyes fell upon the one Cybertronian in their midst.

Before long, Solstar scientists had gathered enough firsthand testimony and video recordings to draw up a weapon capable of meeting the aliens head-on: a full-body suit of armor forged from artificially-synthesized cybertonium that would be cybernetically grafted to one’s skin, equipped with a plasma-blasting “neutralizer” powered by a miniature energon reactor. While the scientists referred to their creation as merely an “anti-Wraith battle armor”, it was Rom who joked that the suit resembled the knights of old—and so it was he who volunteered to become the first organic to undergo the procedure, and emerge as “Rom, the Space Knight!” Inspired by his example, other courageous members of the Solstar Order stepped up to undergo the process, and over time the efforts of these “Space Knights”, supported by Stardrive herself, gradually helped push the Wraiths back.

It soon became clear that Stardrive couldn’t fight alone; fortunately, the Cybertronian embassy on Elonia was able to pull the strings that would allow Sentinel Prime to authorize the deployment of the Wreckers on the technicality that the Dire Wraiths posed a threat to Cybertronian territory—namely, their embassy on Elonia. Supported by a hundred Space Knights, Stardrive and the Wreckers took part in the effort to take back Xeres, which had, by this point, been turned into a grotesque hive-world where billions of fast-breeding Wraiths reproduced. Their victory was pyrrhic; they were able to cut off the primary source of the infestation, but only by destroying the planet and scattering millions of Wraiths across their member worlds. The Solstar Order would have to prepare for a protracted war against the alien infiltrators, who'd already put down roots on dozens of planets—but Stardrive, honorary Space Knight, gladly agreed to support the Space Knights in their quest.