#but he feels so different and with such an inherent connection to optimus and to revolution there’s a million different ways that can go

[they-bite]

i’ll be the first ass in the seat if they make transformers: two dgmw but at the same time, if this is the end for transformers: one, i feel like it’s a real high note to out on. i know some fans were annoyed that it wasn’t as lore-reliant as other transformers projects, but as someone whose introduction to the franchise is tf1, the conciseness of that world is a feature to me instead of a flaw. it invites a lot more creativity than much denser projects, while still encouraging viewers to engage with the rest of the transformers universe. and i’m reluctant to give that freedom up to a studio tbh

[beemochi-art]

Does the Matrix do any fuckery with Prime's mind or body at times? Is the Matrix even sentient?

The matrix unfortunately does create some fuckery in primes life. But not as much as you’d think, it’s more ambitious than straight forward. it’s other… factoids related to it to Op’s deteriorating mental state.

The power of the matrix

The matrix is like the key to primus (cybertrons.) spark (Aw). It creates a deep connection with the holder and the planets core. The Matrix will attach itself to the new Primes spark, where then they will get a unique feelings and a special power. Feeling that come from the matrix is usually a calming sensation, some says it’s like a powerful fire, other primes reports an endless supply of energy. It depends on the person I guess. In Orions case, the sensation he got from the matrix was calming and gentle, the feeling of absolute comfort. He ended up sleeping. (Of course he woke up depressed but that an thing Orion probably.)

But in dire circumstances the Matrix will let’s out extreme burst of energy that can cause the older to become feral and incredible violent. This is pretty rare but as of recent times Primes have made it a focus of their training to harness this power.

Not only that, but the planet as well as it’s creatures seem to bend to the will of primes. The surface of cybertron is always shifting. At times the environment will change for the prime, and other times it falls completely still. Some primes have the ability to connect with some of the most dangerous creatures on the planet. It works in mysterious ways but will never be completely tamed.

It also connects all the primes to each other, both dead and alive.

A prime doesn’t have to actually die to have the matrix passed to another. If a Prime were to die and just anyone pick it up and tried to use it, the matrix is a glorified paperweight. No one really understands how the matrix chooses and when it leaves. How long all this is or anything for that matter. It’s a mystery. It is said to come at dark times.

Even tho the Matrix is gone from the holder the bond formed with planet and past/present primes will never go away. Leading a curtain level of entitlement.

The point is the matrix never had any specific rules of in place except a description that reads till all are one. The matrix isn’t inherently a good or bad object either. It chose both sentinel and zeta at one point, but it also chose Optimus.

Right of passage

Any Rules and Rituals set in place have all been written by past primes. Shuttle interpretations her and there over millions of years just became law.

In cybertron society to be Prime is to be the emperor of the whole planet. It is the highest class system you can on cybertron. But a prime must prove themselves worthy to the people first.

One of Sentinels lessons was, if you can conquer primus creatures you can conquer her people.

So he’ll take his knights to Uraya for a lil field trip. The idea is to find the biggest baddest creature and tame it. Normally these trips are unserious and unsuccessful. But when he took Orion he was completely serious.

Conquering different cities and cultures being the main focus of most of a primes training. A prime cannot be a stranger to killing.

A prime is supposed to be a representation of cybertrons strength and strike fear to their lessers. So before they are presented to the public modifications must be made to not break this belief. Optimus is heavily modified. Most of him was reconstructed.

Older primes will share parts of themselves with the new prime. Allowing them to have pieces of their own frame. Optimus eyes are not his.

By the time a prime has been presented to the public, they have killed, dominated and changed into something else entirely. Leaving their old weaker self behind.

In Optimus quest to become strong he realized he lost his way. He never really committed to being as horrible as Sentinel classest and a complete psychopath. But he has killed.

(I really didn’t do some of these rules in order but oh well!)

[transformers-fan-continuities]

Spotlight: Ties That Bind

This one’s a doozy folks! If you missed the last spotlight you can go read it here, but strap in for The Ties That Bind, an absolutely brilliant take on humanformers. It’s hosted here at @tiesthatbind-tf​ created by @artsy-hobbitses​!

Q) Give us a run down of your cont! What's it about, what's it called, what's it like?

Ties That Bind is a humanformers-based original continuity which is part Science Fiction and part Alternate History where the invasion of Quintessons and introduction of their technology to Earth in 1920 sets the world and humankind on a completely different trajectory. The active narrative spans a period from 1920 to 2070, covering the First and Second Quintesson Wars, the interplanetary Antillan War (leading to the creation of Unicron on Mars) and the Great War which involves the Autobots, Decepticons and Functionist stalwarts, and how it affects the characters.

The cast is pretty sprawling and the narrative is mostly centred around human drama with bits of humor interspaced and a dash of horror (mostly centred around how the previous government often chose to utilize the technology left behind from the Quintesson Wars to create new systems of oppression, which affected many of the characters, in the name of worldwide rebuilding efforts).

Q) What characters take the lead here? Any personal favorites?

I will admit to this continuity being very much heavy on the relationship between Old Bastards  Optimus Prime and Megatron, which is given considerable weight as they were best friends who had known each other since childhood and were deeply intrinsic to each other’s growths as individuals, which makes it all the worse when guilt and betrayal enter the party. Despite being captains in two corners of this battle, there’s a part of them that just cannot let go of their pasts together and they need to reconcile with how this will affect their agenda (Megatron) and how they lead their team (Optimus) who don’t necessarily share their history.

Other characters with significant development include:

Starscream, a Cold Construct in a toxic working relationship with Megatron with whom he is hiding a dark secret, who struggles to balance the underhanded viciousness he believes he needs to gain power and his innate desire from his Senate days to make the world a better place. 

Windblade, a Camien native who fights her government’s apathy concerning the situation on Earth which they see as unsalvageable compared to their more Utopian society. 

Prowl, a Cold Construct raised from childhood to be a cop in a police state, who finds out that he was brainwashed several times  to ensure his obedience and efficacy as a government asset and is now working to reclaim some semblance of the humanity he was never allowed to feel and figure out how much of him is who he really is and how much is programming.

Hound, a sheltered Beastman who joined the fight to ensure that Beastmen the world over would have the same rights he did in his homeland of Shetland Isle, but is forcefully stripped of his humanity and faced with his animal side during the war and has to relearn what personhood means amid his trauma.

Q) Is there a bigger point to this, like a theme or some catharsis? Or is it just fluffy fun?

God with the amount of time I spent sleepless trying to figure out how the logistics of this or the semantics of that were supposed to work in universe, I cannot for the life of me say it’s fluffy fun, but I can’t exactly say it hasn’t been pretty engaging either!

There’s elements of war being messy for everyone involved where there doesn’t seem to be a clear line between friend and foe at times, but I think for most part it prescribes to  Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s belief that people are inherently good, but are corrupted by the evils of society. Despite its dark themes (Including but not limited to child abuse, torture, illegal experimenation  and brainwashing), love and friendships do prevail, kindness does beget kindness, found families are made, even the smallest actions matter, and things do get better because there are people on both sides who genuinely want to, and strive to make it better.

With Cold Constructs and Beastmen, it also delves heavily into what it means to be human; to have agency and personhood.

There’s also a strong undercurrent of taking responsibility for one’s actions, even if they were made with the best of intentions (Avoidance of this is what eats up Starscream and Megatron from the inside, and what Starscream eventually embraces).

Q) How long have you been working on it?

There’s two answers to this!

I’ve had a Humanformers-related universe going all the way back to 2007 around the time the first Bayformers came out---basically I had a choice between learning to draw cars or draw people (I was an anthro artist back then) and I immediately chose people.

The 2007 draft however had no worldbuilding or connective storylines and was mostly a fun little venture into character design and practice which were actually instrumental to me experimenting and learning how to draw humans properly.

I left the fandom for about a decade and when I came back to it in late 2020 around September via the War for Cybertron series on Netflix, I immediately got hooked on the 2005 IDW comics I missed out on and wanted to get around to updating my old designs as well find a way to translate several of the concepts I wanted to explore in a human sense, so the 2020 update became its own full-fledged original continuity with detailed worldbuilding and history.

You can see the artistic evolution of several characters from their original incarnation below!

Q) It’s incredible to see your artistic improvement too! Give us a behind-the-scenes look! Show us a secret ;))

Say hello to my workspace! I’ve been working exclusively on the Ipad Pro since late 2016, which is fantastic because I can basically whip up concepts and sketches on the go anywhere. Nowhere is too out of bounds to work on TTB!

Also, do enjoy this sneak peek at true!form Rung, whose synthezoid human body took years to perfect.

Q) YESSSSS alright I must admit this is one of my favorite Rungs, and certainly my fave within TTB. Amazing. Phew, anyway. Where did you draw inspiration from? What canons, what other fiction, what parts of real life?

TTB was initially conceived as a faithful retelling of the IDW 2005 narrative before it was transformed into its own continuity and as such, it borrows heavily from concepts and mirrored plot lines introduced in that run! I chose to have the series inspired off it specifically for the amount of history and worldbuilding it introduced to the franchise.

Anime like Gunslinger Girl and Beastars inspired the depictions of Cold Constructs, especially the more harrowing aspects of their upbringing as government assets instead of children, and Beastmen (Beastformers) in TTB.

I haven’t depicted the world itself in my art all too much, but the architecture from Tiger and Bunny, which has sort of a futuristic Art Deco feel to it, is what you’d usually see in major cities. There is an in-universe reason for that---with a Point Of Divergence set in 1920 followed by 25 years (an entire generation) of progress basically being kicked to the curb due to the Quintesson wars, mankind was basically in a time-locked bubble until the end of the wars, and by then their heroes were 1920s-style rebellion leaders, which lead to 1920s fashion (especially among the Manual Working Class---Megatron, Jazz and Optimus all rock 1920s fashion at some point of their lives) and architecture being celebrated and retained as sort of a reminder of how things were before The Invasion. This anime’s background design is also where I adopted the tiered system TTB’s major metropolises are often built on (with each tier being designated to a different working class) from.

The main artistic style itself is a love letter to 90s cartoons, in particular Gargoyles’ deep and drama-driven character narratives and designs as well as The Centurions’ take on body armor logistics.

I also take inspiration, especially armor-wise, from the characters’ given heritage and background. As an example, Hotrod who is depicted as Irish has the flames on his armor done up with Celtic knots. Welsh aristocrat Mirage’s armor bears olden knight-style filigree and has his Autobot logo designed as a coat of arms. Indonesian Soundwave’s armor and Decepticon logo takes cues from Batik and Wayang Kulit while their mask is based off the Barong.

Q) They are absolutely gorgeous! Show off something you're really proud of, a particular favorite part of your cont.

The worldbuilding in general! Most Humanformers I’ve seen tend to treat it like a fun exercise which it is and is definitely valid, but I found myself wanting a full-fledged world to lose myself in and I sought to try and make that world myself by drafting a detailed history and timeline of events which would affect ongoing narratives, having indepth worldbuilding to include almost all societal aspects of the universe and  expanding on the concept of Beastmen and Cold Constructs existing in a human setting.

I’m not so secretly proud of the research and diversity included to make the cast look like the multicultural, globally-based team that they were meant to be instead of being locked to a single region! My original draft from 2007 was, to put it simply, quite culturally monolithic and I wanted to improve on that aspect with TTB.

I’m also proud that I’ve kept to it this far! I’m a notoriously flaky person jumping from one idea/fandom to another and to have kept at this continuity for the better part of ten months is honestly a personal feat.

Art-wise, this scene depicting a young Megatron working alongside Terminus and Impactor (cameo by @weapon-up-wallflower​‘s OC Missit!)  is definitely one of my favorites since it helps build up the world they live in and plays to familial bonds and comfort found in one another despite their less than ideal circumstances.

Q) Everything has come together so beautifully, you absolutely should be proud. What other fan canons do you love and why? Would you like to see them interviewed?

I am dying to hear more from @iscaredspider​’s Sparkpulse continuity! Her designs are MIND-BLOWINGLY GORGEOUS and I want to hear more about what inspired her to work on it!

Also YOU. Yes YOU BLURRITO. LET ME HEAR MORE ABOUT SNAP.

Q) [wails and squirms away in the mortifying ordeal of being known but in a very flattered way] I WILL SOMEDAY I PROMISE aflghsdjg thank you QwQ

Well that was fantastic, Oni, thank you muchly! A magnificent continuity with so much to look forward to! Coming up next is another personal fave of mine, the first inspiration for SNAP, so stick around...

[justanotherperson1]

@robosideblog I will agree with you that Micheal Bay did not do well with the characters at all, and it was a whiplash to see these movies again.

I went years without seeing these movies and during that time, Optimus became a completely different character in my mind. The one that I had come to love was a a once noble leader whose diplomacy and gentleness lost him his world, and he failed his planet. At some point he didn't realize he wasn't pulling his punches or considering the choices he made. He was tired, ashamed and and fell into his rage. As someone mentioned and i agree with, I don't think this Optimus was necessarily inherently more violent, but one stuck in an endless cycle of rage, sorrow and death. A darker version down the road of TFP. There was still hope him, but he was not the Prime he used to be. We just see the darkest part of that spiral.

Tfp I feel like operates more out of the idea, 'war is war, but you must ne able to live with yourself afterward.' Yes he did become more steeled by the end of the show, but I feel that the connections he shared and the hope of the relics set him on a different path. He was just less as far down the road as my version of the Bayverse was.

Possibly two sides of the same coin. These are the characters I considered when making this. I'm not arguing anything, just adding to what you said andsharing my thought processes and interested in what you all think.

I don't think either are right, I just feel that this is how the two would interact.

This was was rant and I hope it makes sense.

But yeah.

I have LOVED the convo around this little comic, and you guys are so cool!

I am back at it with the sketches!

Bay Optimus is not pleased with how Tfp Optimus operates. The moment he found out Tfp spared Megatron on multiple occasions- he had to ask a few questions.