Members can now download Blitzwing Bop!

New character spoilers:

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Shattered Glass Blitzwing (obviously) paired with Will (Billy from Armada). Will installs an O-Pod in Blitzwing. Oh, Blitzwing knows "jet judo!"

Shattered Glass Thunderwing. He's the Universe Ultra Silverbolt body with a new head and body color based on the G1 Thunderwing Pretender Shell. His personality is based on Robocop or Judge Dredd, and he hunts Cybertronian criminals.

Shattered Glass Bombshell appears, he's ehobby Slavo, very soothing voice.

Shattered Glass Star Saber is a low ranking Autobot who always gets overlooked for promotion. He's a klutz who drops his weapon a lot. Movie Skyblast toy.

Elita One is a black and white female Autobot... not sure what toy if any (maybe movie Fracture?) supposed to be a sniper. Possible Natasha Fatale accent? Sniper.

Ratchet, Swoop and Slugslinger from previous stories also appear. Slugslinger is an Autobot sharpshooter with a strong sense of fair play.

Astrotrain found burried in the ice in the arctic! (G1 jetfire style!)


First error report:
The first page is numbered 1, the second page is numbered... 1???

Minor cameo characters mentioned:
Arachnolord (SG Spiderman?)
Senator Shore (SG Blackthorn Shore from the Inhumanoids?)
President Fakkadi (in G1, ruler of Cambombia!)
A joint concert by Cold Slither (the Zartan Dreadnoks) and the Misfits (the rival band from Gem tv series).

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I really do like the choice for SG Star Saber. Movie Skyblast works well!

The first page is actually the cover. The second page is page #1.

...So from a certain point of view, they are both page 1

I realize that, but I don't think that's the way the other club fictions have ever been set up.

Very cool! I'm going to have to do a lot of reading to catch up and read this!

Another good addition to the SG prose library. I really liked the zany Saturday-morning cartoon feel to this one. Great to see the 'Bots and 'Cons having some Earth-side adventures. I'm really enjoying the character of Side Burn, mostly because he seems so out of place in the Autobot ranks. HIGHLIGHT to view:
Thunderwing was a great character addition that really picked up the story just when it seemed to start to flounder.

Speaking of which, I can't help but wonder if a more developed B-story wouldn't have helped the plot here. Blitzwing and his music-related antics just didn't hold my interest for long.

Have to say though, the art didn't really work for me as much this time around. It's something that I've really enjoyed from the last few stories, but this art just didn't seem to rise to the same level. Similarly, I've found Blaster's unique speech pattern to be a fun little quirk in previous stories, but it just became irritating here. Over-exposure, I suppose.

I'm still confused as to HIGHLIGHT to view:
which toy Elita-1 is based on. It's said she's red, white, and black and has a double-barreled gun. Cybertron Override?

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Overide GTS, if I had to guess.

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Which was my first thought, but that mold is black, red, and grey. Not white.

The description says white and black sleek car with red highlights. Override has the double barrel gun, but isn't she more red and black with grey?

http://www.tfu.info/2006/Autobot/OverrideGTS/overridegts.htm

It was described as not being like "any earth car"... maybe that would be it.

Sounds like Override GT.

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OOooh, any new Thunderwing is cool, even if the mold is overused. Love to see a digibash of how the toy would look.

Is it REALLY wrong that the most exciting part of this for me was the appearance of the Misfits?

Oh, and Blackthorne Shore as well of course. Any recognition of, and use of, other "Sunbow Universe" characters RULES, IMHO. I'd give an ear for Hasbro to bring back JEM and Inhumanoids.

-ZacWilliam, wants someone to do an easter egg that ties Synergy's hologram powers to the Transformers. What? Yes I'm male!

I did notice one minor glitch when reading. There are at least 2 references to Astrotrain being burried in ice in the Antarctic - Sadly when Blitzwing calls for help Soundwave reports most of the Decepticons are busy digging Astrotrain up in the Arctic! No wonder it took so long to dig him up! Then again maybe Soundwave just messed up, he's a communications officer not a geography expert.

"Synergy Music Ltd." - Synergy, Gem and the Holograms. Loving it.

I'm still wondering about the identity of Elita One, as the movie Fracture actually as a "1" number on it. Would fit for Elita ONE right?

Finally got a change to read this myself. I agree that it had a very zany Saturday Morning Cartoon feel to it. ...perhaps a little too much so for my tastes, admittedly; I honestly kind of more preferred the pulp adventure feel that the previous three stories had, as opposed to the unabashed goofiness of this one.

Still, considering I said I wanted to get back to the light-heartedness of the prose stories, I can't complain that such was delivered. And it was awesome to see a music-themed story (even if I do increasingly feel like the only geek who doesn't have a major taste for rock music... *shifty look*). And there were a lot of fun character moments here.

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Thunderwing was definitely a hoot. Hrm. I'm guessing that Sephie's mysterious "Stormbringer99" (*snerk*) was him and she was crabby at the end of the story because she felt "used"?

...is "crime boss Beta" the SG version of Beta from "Forever is a Long Time Coming"?

It was great seeing Sideswipe again, and Bombshell finally making a real appearance. I love his friendly neighborhood therapist personality.

Great seeing the humans get to play crafty again in taking down Beachcomber.

Loved the ref to Aquarius at the epilogue. I had guessed that Heatwave's little accident might somehow be related to Aquarius' summons...

It was good seeing Whisper again, too. Here's hoping for a story about the Cybertron-stranded crew?

Man, writing up the References section for the wiki page is going to be major on this one.

I like the art personally, but then, I've always had a predilection for cartoony art. It was nice to get some usable pics of the humans, especially (though I have to admit I wasn't expecting Sephie's look somehow, though I suppose in retrospect I should have...)

I do agree that Blaster's speech quirk got a little too much after a while, though... it's just kind of hard to read. Blaster himself was hilarious, though.

(Side note: ...how old are the interns exactly? I had thought they were all college-age, but a bit of the dialogue in this story makes it seem like they might be high-school age instead.)

Uh... I think that's it for rambling first reactions at this point...

Quick question re: style. Haven't they said (at BotCon and on the club boards) that they're actively experimenting with different styles, both in terms of the artwork and in the stories themselves?

Artwork, yes. Writing, I don't recall.

I greatly enjoyed the story, and while at first I was a bit put off by the art, I quickly adjusted. Granted, I was rushing to read it before I had to go to work, so I barely noticed anything until I got to the group pic that included people. XD

Oh, and after reading the lyrics to Thunder Hammer, I now want two things:

Shattered Glass GI Joe fics and a club exclusive Album. The latter would probably be hard to do right, but boy would it be a good way to promote the Club at the conventions.

I like Cold Slither as a radical Jeffersonian metal band.

First error report: Carbombya, not Cambodia. Jem, not Gem.



(Hey, the joke was there! ...although it's probably only funny to me because I haven't had my coffee yet...)

And now to address the questions:

Mignash:


It's always interesting to see how different influences get interpreted differently. The 'voice' I had in mind for him was HIGHLIGHT to view:
Joe Friday from Dragnet. But those others work too.

By the way, you also win the no-prize. Soundwave's understanding of Earth geography, and his care in word selection, is limited. It's all the 'big icy place' to him.

Shattered


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It is Overide GTS.

ZacWilliam



Nope. They were one of my favorite things to include. They're in exile for sedition.

Jeysie


Hmmm... Couuuuld be...



Yes, yes she is.



Blaster's speech is hard to write, too. We wouldn't have made him quite so over the top in his early appearances if we'd realized he was going to basically star in a story, I think.

Will and Rick are High School Seniors using this as college prep, Sephie is in College and is more or less Prof Arkeville's TA. (Heads out of the gutters, people.)

BlackRock
Yes, different art styles and different story styles. Blitzwing Bop was designed to be a Shattered Glass Sunbow episode, Dungeons and Dinobots was a fantasy adventure, I, Lowtech was a psychological thriller, we're trying a lot of different approaches.

I'm glad everyone seems to be enjoying the story.

-Trent

No problem. I saw these shows 20 years ago. I feel lucky to get the insider jokes, much less the spelling! ;-)



The quirks are so alike, and I never realized. I bet Dredd is somehow based on Friday then, at least in part. I kept having him voiced by Stalone in my head.

As for Override GTS vs. Fracture, they both are female, both the same 3 colors, and Fracture has a big "1" on her. I think that's partly why I figured she was Fracture. Now I gotta go dig through my closet for Override GTS for my SG Autobot display! :-)

What the heck is Blitzwing Bop? Is it some sort of collector's club only comic? I kinda want to see it.

A club-only prose story.

It's 30 or so printed pages with a couple pictures. The story comes some time after after the comic from 2008 Botcon's Shattered Glass, but it's set on mirror-universe Earth.

Sweeeeeeeeet. The original character is one of my fave characters, so it's awesome hearing about an SG version of her.


Aah. That makes sense now, the way I was reading them. Thanks.

I wanted to say I've been enjoying the different art styles so far. I think my favorite so far is Tom Whalen's work (Jack Cade said he was sort of Hutchison-esque, which I'd agree), though the adorable art here comes a close second.

Well, the perfect body for SG Beta might be 2007 Movie Scout Arcee. Blue female with a crossbow!

One question... how does the Decepticon Elite Guard relate to SG Thunderclash and the Autobot Elite Guard? Were they once one cross-faction group with both Autobots and Decepticons before the war?

oh, and on the plot itself:

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If putting someone in stasis lock temporarely disables them from the emergency frequency, then why not put BLITZWING in stasis lock instead of EVERYONE else? Yeah, I know Blitzwing ran off, but shouldn't Soundwave just say "Hey dude, go in stasis lock, so I can wake up the other Decepticons!"

Also, aren't a big portion of Cybertrons population neutral? Would they be immune to the Blitzwing Bomb? (not having any emergency frequency at all)

BTW - Points to the author for working the word "garboil" into dialog.

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I'm missing something here. As I see it, no one talked about putting anyone into stasis lock until after Blitzwing ran off, and he ran off just as Soundwave was looking to find him so he could have "surgery" on page 16. Where's the problem?

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If putting someone in stasis lock temporarely disables them from the emergency frequency, then why not put BLITZWING in stasis lock instead of EVERYONE else? Yeah, I know Blitzwing ran off, but shouldn't Soundwave just say "Hey dude, go in stasis lock, so I can wake up the other Decepticons!"

Also, aren't a big portion of Cybertrons population neutral? Would they be immune to the Blitzwing Bomb? (not having any emergency frequency at all)

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To address the second part first: Maybe? A large number of the neutrals will have been press-ganged into service by now. I'd expect that's where the Scrounges come from.

As for the second part, rational behavior is only to be expected from rational beings. Blitzwing isn't in a rational place through most of the story.

-Trent

Mmmm... good story and explanations for the bits where I am a bit thick or not otaku enough to know the references. XD

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By the way... I might as well give everyone as laugh by asking who the interns are counterparts to? Yes I still haven't figured it out or if they are new, they seem so familiar...

Sephie = Josephine Beller, a.k.a. Circuit Breaker
Will & Rick = Billy & Fred from Armada

Well, one's named William, the other Frederick. Now, what's another name you can call someone named Will?

nickname Will =full name William = Billy from Armada.
nickname Rick = full name Frederick = Fred from Aramda.



Basically they are the two bad kids from Armada, keeping with the bad=good theme. It was a good way to make the characters different from their counterparts by giving them nicknames different from their Armada counterparts.

Oh, fine, go ahead and just come out and say it! I was playing it coy.

Something just occurred to me today about Beachcomber after re-reading "Eye in the Sky"...

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No wonder he didn't go (more) crazy after Blitzwing's assault... he already thought all of his speech in the form of song lyrics! ...yes I'm slow.

So...

We've established that I didn't learn much from the... two whole episodes I saw of Armada or G1 comics I never read. Things were intentionally changed up just enough to throw people, I assume (since those characters are from different franchises and if they had kept relative ages... Sephie should be old enough to be the boys mother). Silly me was too thick to get it... even after looking it up in the Wiki before posting. Probably because I never noticed the "Fredrick". Yes, ouch indeed. XD

At least I got Beachcomber... because he happened to mention like one lyric in his first appearance I actually knew and just assumed (correctly) the rest were ones I was unfamiliar with. XD

Now, due to one of the two episodes I saw of Armada, I have to ask: will it be the Autobots or Decepticons randomly dumping children in a ravine?

I'm not a club member, so haven't read any of these stories, but I have to ask, why use these guys in what seems to be a G1-based mirrorverse?

I've seen precisely zero episodes of Armada, so I wouldn't have gotten Will or Rick without being a wiki editor. I did recognize Sephie right off, though.


He got two lyrics in "Eye in the Sky", actually. But I only recognized the one, and figured the rest was just nonsense until this story made me realize it might be otherwise...


Good question... they both were evenly matched for blowing things up in "Eye in the Sky", after all. XD


Dropshot and Demolishor from Armada, Elite Guard Animated Bumblebee, and RID Side Burn also all exist in the SG-verse one way or another. *shrug* (In fact, Demolishor not being a G1 character is a minor plot point in "Do Over".)

Heck you might even say SG Starscream, Megatron and Blurr are physically based (partly) on Unicron Trilogy trilogy, not G1 versions of the characters. SG had elements of many universes, but mainly different G1s.

Funny you should mentioned Animated Elite Guard Bumblebee. When I first saw him in Around Cybertron, I thought (Hey, there is already a SG Bumblebee!) then just now I thought (Would be funny if he was SG Wasp!). Then I read the wiki.... it is SG WASP! Now I actually have to buy an Animated figure! AARRGGHH!

Now I'm just waiting for Atomic Lugnut to show up in Shattered Glass. He would be a Decepticon Explosive Disposal expert who is always second-guessing Megatron.

Does anyone else see parallels between the success of SG and Animated? Both seemed so wrong and first, but especially after getting into them, are simply so right!

Not really. The plot of Animated is Beast Wars set on modern earth - not a bad setup. The wrongness I find with it is I just don't like the style with a passion. SG is a sci-fi standard "twisted mirror universe" which is always fun. I haven't had this much fun since mirror universe Kira became a dominatrix on DS9.

That we have an SG version of TransTech Andromeda might be worth mentioning as well (I forget if TransTech is supposed to be a G1 continuity or not.)

And, I half agree, Otaku. I've always liked mirror universes, but I wasn't expecting this to be such a creative and fun mirror universe. (There actually is a fanon Mirrorverse project that's decent enough, but it's a much more standard Grimdark take with really evil Autobots and milquetoast Decepticons... I like this canon version a lot better.)

Now to check before I shoot my mouth of... or rather, make sure I am not shooting my mouth off:

How do the people responsible for Animated classify it? I ask because if they say "Animated is Beast Wars on near-future earth"... then yeah, you're absolutely right. XD

If they didn't, then... mignash just paired my least favorite Transformers animated series with my favorite or second favorite (yeah, I am wishy-washy). Besides personal bias, when you boil it down, most TF series have a similar amount of overlap: Autobots and Decepticons land on "alien" planet (well, to them), assume alt modes based on local stuff, and begin fighting each other all over again.

So I can of course see parallels between Beast Wars and Animated. And G1. And RiD. And Armada. And Cybertron. And SG. It really is a pretty common theme.

Something more specific, we had a scientific exploration crew for Beast Wars, as a whole inexperienced at war and out of their element and a space bridge repair crew, as a whole inexperienced at war and out of there element.

Looking for differences, unless I missed it in Animated, we have a lack of time travel/time twisting on the behalf of Animated. It is one thing, but it is huge. Like, so huge Unicron doesn't even think he could eat the whole thing. Less huge, the cast was less restricted in Animated (I know why it was in Beast Wars, but that doesn't mean I liked it) and guest stars were fun in Animated, often feeling like natural parts of the story. In Beast Wars, they were also fun, but a lot of them felt like cheating given the whole "stranded on an alien world in the past" aspect of it.

Preds vs Decepticons also feels different. Both are dangerous, but at the beginning of Beast Wars their Megatron is a former criminal on his way to "the big time" while Animated Megatron is already there. The Predacons he has with him are either slightly smaller crooks than Megatron or traitors (like Tarantulus and Dinobot). While Animated has a traitor like Starscream, the original Decepticon crew (as introduced in the very, very first episode) are Megatron's best warriors. War criminals versus ... well, Predacons are mafia at best or a gang at worst.

...

So, what was my point about Animated and Shattered? Both are homage heavy... which is impressive since SG is supposed to be a twist on G1, yet both series are chock full of great homage characters so close and yet still seeming novel when compared to their G1 counterparts. Both at first were kind of odd seeming. I mean, SG is a sci-fi cliche. Animated had highly stylized art and at first glance seemed like a distillation of the TF Movie. In the end, both series were great at working in homages and references to several Transformers series, instead of just G1.

Guess if I'd said that right away, I'd have saved myself a post and known if anyone really agreed or disagreed. >_<

The set up is certainly Beast Wars:

Optimus Prime is Primal (competant young starship captain)
Bumblebee is Cheetor (young rash speedster).
Ratchet is Rhinox (older, mechanic, very serious, backs up the leader)
Prowl is Dinobot (competant, but a loner, doesn't listen to authority)
Lugnut is Rattrap.... no wait, never mind, the whole comparison just fell apart. Move on folks, nothing to see here!

Animated isn't specifically aping Beast Wars. They both fall under the "Five Man Band" trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveManBand

hehehe.. he said Aping Beast Wars... :-)

Speaking of comparing the two though, anyone else here wish they used Animated Prowl's origin for Dinobot? Dinobot is a brash young Predacon who won't listen to anyone, so the Predacon authorities arrest him and he ends up being taken under the wing of Master Bludgeon and trained as a Cyber-Samurai?

It would flesh his back story out a bit. As far as I know right now, he comes across as a Predacon who happens to be a wannabe Klingon. And one would expect the Maximals to try just about anything to raise a better "Predacon" (e.g. law abiding one).

Considering the context he was mentioned in, that is without a doubt the cartoon being referenced. However! This is the Shattered Glass universe, so the one in power may well be his sister.

hmmm... I figured I'd go with the normalverse bad guy being a good senator in SG, but since we know in SG the normal universe GI Joes are evil and in power in the US Government, it could be that Sandra Shore is evil and in the US Senate.

In SG, Blackthorn Shore is probably a humanitarian who works in the Peace Corps or something. Either that or he's an human ally of the noble Metlar, peaeful ruler of the center of the earth!

At the risk of revealing Author Intent, the Inhumanoids are Lovecraftian terrors. Metlar, Tendril and D'Compose are irredeemibly evil even in the ShatteredVerse. The good senator is Blackthorn, or his counterpart at least.

Their involvement in the Shatteredverse is hinted at throughout the Earth stories.

-Trent

That's funny as we have learned that polarities can be reversed in things in the SG Universe (embers instead of Sparks), and in the Inhumanoids episode Reversed Polarity we saw reversing the polarity of the Earth can make Metlar good.