I'm sure this response made sense in your head?
The jankiness of TF lore: a feature, not a bug
- Thread starter Jackpot
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I'm sure this response made sense in your head?
What, exactly, is your problem?
No, I also had a bit of trouble parsing it as it seemed to go back and forth a bit.
What I'm saying is this...
I doubt the people behind Prime would have gone to a (then) official convention and taken the piss out of their own show.
So I think it's quite fair to treat "rightfully huge" as something of a sincere statement, given that I doubt they'd say it with the intent to mock their own project. Even if it was said jokingly, it seems sincere.
And that seems doubly so when you see how hard Prime as a show tried to achieve a feeling of epicness. I don't think it's unfair to hold that up as an example of what they were hoping to achieve.
Thanks for that!
A name that, every now and then, I'll hear get mispronounced in about three different ways, lol.
And according to Arcee's entry in the Glossary section of Beast Wars Universe, there was a pre-final draft of the script for the BW Season 3 episode "Crossing the Rubicon" in which Blackarachnia says to Cheetor (not Rattrap), "I'm not your Great-Aunt Arcee!", further suggesting the phrase "Great-Aunt Arcee" was meant to be kinda like how Uncle Sam isn't literally anyone's uncle.
Here's what's wild to me...
The new leader thing? Sure, that makes plenty of sense. Using the same toy as the States? Ditto.
But the thing is, he didn't have to look like Optimus Prime in Japan.
Flip the colors, Powered Convoy style or something. Or make him green instead of red. They already remolded the arms, why not the heads, too? You could probably even get away with a partial on the Super mode head, since it's reminiscent of OP, but different as well. Give him a face without a face plate.
I know they changed colors for other characters in the line from what they were in the west, and didn't they remold someone else in the line, too?
They really could have changed him up more to not be Optimus redux and have to come up with an explanation, and made him just another Transtector that follows in the basic mold of Optimus and Ultra Magnus.
I like that a lot, actually. Bob may or may not be your literal uncle, either!
I will never forgive fans for turning The Darksyde into the name of a ship. Not every word spoken in that show had to be literal.
That and assuming Tarantulas was related to Unicron because Megatron called him "the spawn of Unicron," despite it clearly being an insult, were the worst excesses of the BW fandom.
Heh, if the fandom had instead taken literal a certain jokey quote Larry DiTillio made back in the day on ATT, the name of the Predacon would have ended up becoming the "Othership".
In fairness, the show had set up the mystery of Tarantulas and the Tripredacus Council having "other origins" that would make them immune from timeline changes if the Ark-bound G1ers were destroyed. In the absence of any other information, taking that to be a clue wasn't unreasonable.
Back on the topic of the Quints and FFoD, it occurred to me that there's another odd thing that could be related to the question of what they were up to for all those eons: Why did Quintessa look so much worse for wear in FFoD than it had in TFTM, and why were the Quints so ready to blow it up? For the record, here's how it looked in the movie:
And here's how it looked in FFoD:
Plus the Quints weren't only willing to destroy it; they had the means to do so and bug out ready to go in a heartbeat. There's less than two minutes of screen-time between "Now we must escape" and "Activate the core bomb." In fact, their dialogue leading up to that strongly suggests that they'd expected the Autobot rescue attempt and were planning on destroying the planet in response all along. Were they just looking for an excuse?
In my headcanon where they'd been in another dimension for some time, I like the idea of something from there following them back. And maybe it did a number on Quintessa. The Quints' post-FFoD nomadicism might not be just because they lost their homeworld, but because that made it easier to stay one step ahead of the threat. Admittedly, them seeming to want to resettle on Cybertron doesn't jibe well with that... but what if their desire is about more than having a stable base? What if something about Cybertron (perhaps involving its old interdimensional portals) would give the Quints an edge? That could go some way toward explaining why they chose that particular point in time to finally "go for the gusto."
Really I just want to inject some more - dare I say - Lovecraftian energy into their whole weird deal.
And here's how it looked in FFoD:
Plus the Quints weren't only willing to destroy it; they had the means to do so and bug out ready to go in a heartbeat. There's less than two minutes of screen-time between "Now we must escape" and "Activate the core bomb." In fact, their dialogue leading up to that strongly suggests that they'd expected the Autobot rescue attempt and were planning on destroying the planet in response all along. Were they just looking for an excuse?
In my headcanon where they'd been in another dimension for some time, I like the idea of something from there following them back. And maybe it did a number on Quintessa. The Quints' post-FFoD nomadicism might not be just because they lost their homeworld, but because that made it easier to stay one step ahead of the threat. Admittedly, them seeming to want to resettle on Cybertron doesn't jibe well with that... but what if their desire is about more than having a stable base? What if something about Cybertron (perhaps involving its old interdimensional portals) would give the Quints an edge? That could go some way toward explaining why they chose that particular point in time to finally "go for the gusto."
Really I just want to inject some more - dare I say - Lovecraftian energy into their whole weird deal.
That was only "set up" one episode right before the "Unicron spawn" insult, though. Up until that point (49 out of 52 episodes), we had no reason to believe that the four of them were anything but ordinary Predacons.
In fact, in the Tripredacus Council's debut episode, they said, "Generals, ever since the Autobots defeated our Decepticon ancestors, we Predacons have worked secretly toward the day when we might rise up and take what is rightfully ours."
The notion of Tarantulas and the Council having other origins came 13 episodes after that, only for Tarantulas to die in that same episode before ever getting to elaborate on what he meant by that.
Because TFTM's gorgeous artwork was produced by Toei while FFoD's hideous artwork was produced by AKOM.
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And IIRC, the planned explanation for Tarantulas and the Council having different origins from the rest of the Predacons was going to be explained by them being tied to Jihaxus' Cybertronian Empire. The idea that they were tied to Unicron was just out of control fanon centred around one misinterpreted line.
All kidding aside, Flint Dille apparently said something along these lines about Quintessa at a TFCon panel in 2016:
So, if they were busy colonizing planet after planet, that would explain what they were doing since getting kicked off of Cybertron 11 million years ago.
"Withdraw to the ship. Prepare to activate the core bomb."
"With all due haste. It-- wait, ALREADY? AGAIN? Who did you piss off THIS time?"
"Whoever this Jehovah is, their witnesses have reached this sector of space. Based on this morning's encounter, possibility of frequent repetition, 98.2 percent."
"... Let us withdraw. And wait until one is at the door before activating the core bomb."
"Then shall we celebrate with--"
"NO. I had barely begun to unpack."
"With all due haste. It-- wait, ALREADY? AGAIN? Who did you piss off THIS time?"
"Whoever this Jehovah is, their witnesses have reached this sector of space. Based on this morning's encounter, possibility of frequent repetition, 98.2 percent."
"... Let us withdraw. And wait until one is at the door before activating the core bomb."
"Then shall we celebrate with--"
"NO. I had barely begun to unpack."
Insurance scam?
WRT the Darksyde being its name, in lieu of anything else... it works well enough for me. Why should the Maximals be the only ones with a ship name?
Besides, I like to imagine Terrorsaur kicking back when off-duty and singing to himself "Welcome to the Darksyde, we got fun and games!"
Hmm. I should offer some sort of bounty to anyone who can get Doug Parker to sing that.
Besides, I like to imagine Terrorsaur kicking back when off-duty and singing to himself "Welcome to the Darksyde, we got fun and games!"
Hmm. I should offer some sort of bounty to anyone who can get Doug Parker to sing that.
One coming on the heels of the other was part of what made it seem significant. I remember seeing those episodes when they aired - first being intrigued by Tarantulas' claim, then the next time having a "wait, what?" moment at Megatron's line. This was right in the middle of that final handful of episodes where everything was being wrapped up rapid-fire, with barely a spare line or action. Megatron - who through the whole series always seemed to have more secret knowledge than anyone else with the possible exception of Tarantulas himself - dropping a phrase we'd never heard before that sounded like an answer to the question that had just been raised in the previous episode? I certainly wondered what it might mean.
But at the same time, yeah, we'd heard plenty of TFified curses - "kiss my afterburner", "son of a glitch", etc. - and "Unicron's spawn" didn't have to be any more literal than when people say that someone they hate is "the devil". If any fans ever said the line had to be literal, especially after we'd heard from a showrunner about it, I would've thought that was ridiculous. But purely going by what's onscreen, I don't think it's obviously obvious that it has to be nothing more than a meaningless insult either.
You say that like Bob and Larry weren't making everything up as they went along.
You are correct! Here's the source, hat-tip to @Sabrblade and his handy-dandy reference page linked earlier:
The post was dated June 12, 1999 - just a month after the episode had aired. They were quick!
Well sure, but that's no fun. In fact, since you brought it up, it does seem curious to me that the planet design got more detailed in the hands of a cheaper studio. Normally I expect the opposite. I mean, I don't think there was any hidden narrative intent here, but I do kind of wonder what happened behind the scenes to produce the discrepancy in that particular way.Because TFTM's gorgeous artwork was produced by Toei while FFoD's hideous artwork was produced by AKOM.
Well that could account for the first 7 million, maybe. But it still doesn't really address why, if it was their intent all along to retake Cybertron, they didn't do anything about it while it was comparatively low-power and lightly-guarded for so very long. Surely they could've spared some time from colonizing other planets to recolonize Cybertron at some point before 2005.
I like to think the answer is more dramatic because, with their insanely advanced tech and lack of conscience, what other race in the Sunbowverse would be more likely to, as it were, delve too greedily and too deep into the far reaches of spacetime? Convincing themselves at every step with their statistics that they've got it under control? Let's get some space balrogs in here!
Heh, I'd thought of that joke and then forgotten it. Thanks for picking up the slack