#inVID

[casside-sionnach]

[transformers-mosaic]

Transformers: Mosaic #356 - "Conquest"

Originally posted on March 18th, 2009

Story, Art - Jessica Segaard Consultant Dude - Invid

deviantART | Seibertron | TFW2005 | BotTalk

wada sez: The girl in the first panel is a “self-cameo” for Jessica Segaard. Her sibling, Invid, had some input on the strip, and posted a commentary explaining the story; I’ve mirrored it below.

I talk somewhat frequently about Transformers, but I haven't mentioned that the large, active fan community has embarked on a project called Transformers Mosaic. It features fan artists and writers creating small pieces exploring characters and moments in the Transformers multiverse (warning-site currently down). Why wait until now? Because my sister's Mosaic, "Conquest," went up today.

A few people have expressed confusion (on comments pages where it was posted) as to the time period and continuity of the piece, so I think I'll provide a bit of commentary. Yes, that's more-or-less G1 Megatron. It's kinda mixed continuity. See, in various continuities, Megatron is a gladiator. In other (similar but unrelated) continuities, early Cybertron was ruled by the Quintessons (the tentacle thing, although most Quints don't look like that), and they had Transformers fight in gladatorial combat for their own (and here, their paying customers') amusement. This is not set in post-Beast Machines continuity. The Mechannibal (the huge demonic thing) in the crowd is a G1 creature, and the three crowd members who resemble Beast Machines protagonists are actually just crowd fillers, used because Sis wanted something easy to draw that would amuse people and fit in a bit. (Note that the one that resembles Black Arachnia is actually wearing clothes which aren't part of the original character model.) The others are mostly just random alienish things. There is an exception, if you look closely. (The one in the middle at the bottom of the second panel.) And Megs is "holding tentacles" with the Quint because it's the referee, and is declaring him the winner. Because he totally just killed some guys. (And once again, I put "self-promotion" in the tags, even though this isn't mine, though I was credited as "consultant." Funny how I do that.) -Signing off.

[cantsayidont]

March 1992. Probably the most interesting change the ROBOTECH storyline makes to the plots of the three Japanese anime series from which it's derived is that in ROBOTECH, the Invid, the snail-like alien race that conquers the Earth at the beginning of the NEW GENERATION/GENESIS CLIMBER MOSPEADA storyline, are a colonized people, interstellar refugees. As explained in the Jack McKinney novels and later dramatized in the six-issue miniseries ROBOTECH GENESIS: THE LEGEND OF ZOR, based on Carl Macek's story notes, centuries ago, the Tirolian scientist and explorer Zor visited the Invid homeworld, Optera, and discovered that the Invid "Flower of Life" could be used as the basis of a potent form of bio-energy he called Protoculture. Zor stole the secrets of the Flower and took them back to Tirol, where Protoculture soon sparked a technological revolution that created space fold travel, reflex weaponry, and bioengineering. The lords of Tirol, calling themselves the Robotech Masters, used this power to annex their neighbors, and created the giant Zentraedi to police their new empire. The Masters then ordered the Zentraedi to defoliate Optera to monopolize their control of the Flower. The surviving Invid split into two factions: one, led by the Regent, fixated on vengeance against Zor and the Masters, and the other, led by the Regiss (or Regis), determined to find a new home and a new evolutionary form that would enable their survival. The Invid later killed Zor, but not before he sent the last Protoculture factory to Earth (as shown in the 1986 ROBOTECH graphic novel), hoping in vain to put it beyond the reach of the Masters.

When Zor Prime, a clone of the original Zor, destroys that factory at the end of the ROBOTECH MASTERS/SOUTHERN CROSS segment of ROBOTECH, it effectively seeds the Earth with the Flower of Life and draws the attention of the Regiss, who invades in hopes of finally reclaiming what had been stolen from her. (This isn't the case in the original MOSPEADA storyline, where the Inbit simply invade Earth because it seems like a habitable spot for their eugenics project.)

This is a clever amalgamation of ideas from the original shows, and it gives ROBOTECH a very different perspective on colonialism than the original series. MACROSS says explicitly that the devastation of the Zentraedi holocaust makes the colonization of other worlds a moral imperative for the human survivors; the original SOUTHERN CROSS storyline is about defending a human colony world (established after a nuclear war devastated Earth) against the return of that world's weird and malevolent original inhabitants; and MOSPEADA ultimately suggests that the Regess has been a more-or-less benevolent, religiously motivated colonizer who leaves the Earth better than she found it. The ending of ROBOTECH is a series of moral reversals: The Invid Regiss has gone from refugee to conqueror, doing to the humans what the Masters and the Zentraedi did to her, but at the same time, the human survivors of the war with the Zentraedi have in effect become the new Robotech Masters (something the Regiss says pretty explicitly in her final monologue), prepared to replicate the devastation of Optera and the Zentraedi holocaust to keep the Regiss from winning. Her ultimate departure, which also destroys the attacking REF fleet, is driven by shame, and a desire for a very literal kind of restorative justice that seeks to redress the humans' sins as well as her own, which makes for a morally complex and bittersweet finale for the saga (the misbegotten SHADOW CHRONICLES notwithstanding).

[artapir]

Human attempts to reverse-engineer MOSPEADA's Inbit ("Invid" in the Robotech continuity). Scout Trooper ("Eager"), Ghoss, and Garmo, respectively. Bottom shows exposed HBT/Protoculture cells. Midjourney v4-5

[libraryogre]

I mean, the rest of the group is fairly cishetero (except for the drag queen), but you want your reliable hunk of dad vibes mechanic?

Jim Austin aka Lunk from Robotech.

mech fans are so funny. what if there was a guy who was normal and doing just fine

[chupate-esa-mandarina]

[matt0044]

Been on a Robotech kick and The New Generation still messes me up.

The opening scene of The Invid Invasion is my favorite in how it sells the Invid as a threat and breezily establishes a whole new time skip. We're not dealing with an attacking alien force trying to reclaim lost Protoculture but one who's already taken over Earth and establish a new order.

This is obviously a new Anime, Mospeada, being rewritten as part of an ongoing saga but in terms of changing the game to guerilla warfare against alien colonists, it really makes it clear that this really is the final saga. There's no military structure to fall back on like Rick had with Gloval's command or Dana had with the Southern Cross. Not until the finale.

There's also what the still image visuals tell us. The Southern Cross had to resort to old fashioned tanks after their resources were exhausted. The multiple rockets show that those who survived had to flee into space, most likely to hook up with Admiral Hunter's command.

You also see Mars Base here as a relay station for the REF. Though I often though of it as Space Station Liberty itself.

[flamingpudding]

How to NOT find out you're adopted

The fun thing about dying was that it messed with your mind. Well it wasn't fun perse but well it was an expirence. It was espacially fun if you have died twice.

And the best part was. Finding out through dying that you're adopted. Really Danny wanted to sarcastically applaud someone for that.

Because when he stepped into his parents portal and turned it one by pretty much dying through electrocution and then getting revieved by the portal that opened on top of him, life decided that wasn't enough drama. Because at that time a whole set of apparently lost memories reopend.

Good point. In the months after his portal accident he had been to busy to deal with that. Bad point, once he had the time to think about it he wanted to rip his hair out cause apparently that portal accident had not been his first death but second death.

Like it wasn't enough that he didn't have any memory's of anything before the age of five before, got some freaky but awesome ghost powers, no his memories has to return too.

And he didn't like it when they did.

Because that meant he now had to remember his oh so gracious grandfather killing him by throwing him into the Lazarus Pit as sacrifice. Really getting drowned wasn't fun as a first death.

Because that meant he was the son of a crime fighting furry. Someone he barely knew anything but his vigilante name and all the praises his bio mother used to brainwash him with.

Because that meant he had a brother that was likely still getting brainwashed by probably both their bio mother and the lunatic of a grandfather.

Because that meant a realization that the Lazarus Pit was nothing more than a ecto-variant. Which, screw that he now got revived two times through that shit too.

But most of all that meant he was fucking adopted and his parents didn't bother to tell him at all. Now, he really didn't feel bad anymore about not telling them about Phantom.

Really as if being half ghost wasn't messing with his life enough now he was starting to get worried about this grandfather's cult and the crime fighting Bat.

At least they wouldn't come to Amity Park, right?

[kintatsujo]

me: oh awesome I've got this all figured out time to finally get my clean laundry under some semblance of control

less than an hour and a half later: oh I am FULLY penned in

[acrazybayernfan]

I just discovered that I have two new obsessions

[casside-sionnach]

Cyclone Visor

[kisiel-z-kosmosu]

Finally setteled on one re-design for the Venus spy i was roleplaying as since 2019-18? on jeja.pl meme site. And my friend asked me to again draw the dream his brother had about them in maid dress and brain-controlling snail on head .

I used to draw them every month heh :p Down part was supossed to be more alieny since the start, but i never designed it before. Overall new design is more Venus worldbuilding and story heavy then for silly drawings, but personality stays the same, the drama-loving dumbass who seriously shouldn't work at the research station with soft spot for human humor.

some discarded concept sketches, the first thing i knew was to remove eyes since they are useless for species living only in caves. I decided to go with ability to walk in all directions as the main goal insted mashing earth creatures together..

<image link image> skeleton ghost shrimps were a cool inspiration.

[alexthealien007]

Grr I wanted to make something more interesting in meaning of composition and something new to me(or forgotten old) in meaning of my own style, so here it is

[negreabsolut]

El cec liderant el cec, per Pieter Brueghel el Vell. Tremp d'ou sobre llenç, 86 x 154 cm ; 1568.

[arolesbianism]

Working more on the local group of Synchronized Light and hoo boy. There's smth wrong with these guys.

[tired-twili]

Me: has a really hard couple of days and stuggles to do basic tasks

My parents: it rlly upsets us when u don't eat dinner with us:(