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WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS!?

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“The beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite”

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Mmmmm freakycopter 🖤

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Reposting for the knitblr crowd. Finished my Goldenfern sweater! It took me a whole semester, mostly because I hurt my wrist and couldn't knit for 6+ weeks, then I had to frog because i forgot to alternate skeins and it was obvious. And THEN I had to force myself to stop knitting during dead week and finals. But once I got home after my last final exam, I finished the sweater an hour later.

Pattern is Goldenfern by Jennifer Steingass, yarn is Friendly Products Variations Fingering, 75/25 superwash merino and nylon in Burnt Amber and Sunflower Topaz.

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i want what david cronenberg has

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wyd when you’re driving & see this on the car in front of you

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i think one of the reasons i get mildly annoyed about worldbuilding threads that are 200 tweets of why you should care about where blue dye comes from in your world before saying someone is wearing blue is that so few of them go up to the second level of "and that should impact your characters somehow" - i don't care that blue dye comes from pressing berries that only grow in one kingdom a thousand miles away if people are casually wearing blue

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Henry Clerval and the creature

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The Secret Life of Squadron X IDW Transcript

Inspired by @decepti-thots​ transcribing Zero Point a little while back, I decided to transcribe another text feature only available on the Last Stand of the Wreckers hardover collection. Unlike Zero Point, this is less relevant to the rest of the IDW universe, since I believe only Ferak ever appears outside of LSOTW. But I think it provides interesting and sometimes moving character notes for these characters. So without further ado, have The Secret Life of Squadron X by James Roberts.

When the time came to introduce Squadron X in issue four, Nick and I realized we had a problem: we still hadn’t decided which characters were going to make up the team. All of the big name G1 Decepticons were accounted for by this point, and using famous faces was out of the question anyway because the entire squad died in issue five. There was still a handful of makeweight Decepticons like, say, Snapdragon, who had yet to appear in IDW’s Transformers continuity, but in this context their relative fame caused a problem: fans wouldn’t believe that they were powerful enough to pose a serious threat to Impactor and his team. We could have made them up, but there was something a little anticlimactic about them being a bunch of generics.

In the end, we decided that Squadron X would be comprised of genuine G1 Decepticons, albeit phenomenally obscure ones—characters who had appeared in the UK or US Marvel comics, if only for a panel or two. This way, they would be more than generics, they could be as powerful as we wanted them to be, and they would make hardcore fans do a double-take.

MACABRE

FIRST AND ONLY APPEARANCE. TRANSFORMERS UK #88 (PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 1986)

The crazed, insecure Macabre made his debut in the last part of “Target: 2006.” when he attempted to assassinate Emirate Xaaron. He failed when Impactor took the fatal blast instead, and seconds later was destroyed by the Wreckers. Of course, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to turn the tables and, nearly 25 years later, have Impactor assassinate him.

In the IDW Transformers Universe, Macabre was the leader of Squadron X. He succeeded Valve. a founding member of the Wreckers (and Spark brother to Springarm and Wheelarch) who defected to the Decepticons. The badges he wore around his neck were collected over several years. and were all torn from the dead bodies of high-ranking Autobots.

TORNADO

FIRST OF TWO APPEARANCES: TRANSFORMERS UK #15 (APRIL 1985)

Compared to his teammates Tornado is a veritable superstar, having appeared in not one but two Transformers stories. He cropped up in “The Enemy Within!”, Simon Furman’s first TF story, in flashback: he rebelled against Megatron and died fighting a fellow Decepticon, Earthquake. Before the war broke he out he worked as a saboteur in Vos. In “State Games!”, a text story from the second Transformers Annual, his plan to bomb Tarn’s power plant and frame lacon was thwarted when he was caught in the act.

In the IDW Transformers Universe, Tornado was Macabre’s right hand robot, and of all Squadron X had the highest number of kills to his name. Starscream had secretly promised him a place on Decepticon High Command “come the revolution.”

EARTHQUAKE

FIRST AND ONLY APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS UK #15 (APRIL 1985)

Another Decepticon rebel. Earthquake tried to get off the hook by opting for trial-by-combat. Unfortunately, he ended up fighting Tornado. Although, in his words, he could “warp the very surface of Cybertron,” he couldn’t gain the upper hand: neither robot survived the fight.

In the IDW Transformers Universe, Earthquake was famous for being the Decepticon who brought down Sherma Bridge. Prior to his death at the hands of Impactor he was suffering from dementia and, after exhibiting disturbing signs of primus apotheosis, had been earmarked by Macabre for termination.

FANG

FIRST AND ONLY APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS UK #82 (OCTOBER 1986)

Another character who made his debut appearance in ‘Target: 2006,’ Fang was a bully who got his kicks terrorizing weaker robots in Maccadam’s Old Oil House. Studded with spikes—or fangs—it’s impossible to tell what he transformed into. Whether he was able to transform after being punched to bits by Twin Twist is unknown.

In the IDW Transformers Universe, the mute Fang lost the power of speech when Impactor shredded his vocal processor during the Wreckers’ infamous nine-second attack on the Decepticon Penal Colony, Styx (see Wreckers: Declassified 97: The Wreckers’ Lightning Strike). He subsequently communicated using a form of aggressive sign language, and at the end of conversations was inevitably the last person standing.

TRITON

FIRST AND ONLY APPEARANCE: 1989 TRANSFORMERS ANNUAL (SEPTEMBER 1988)

By the year 2510 Triton had been masquerading as an Autobot for ninety years, and was technically the last surviving Decepticon. Determined that the Autobots should not win the war, he caused a fight between Rodimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, and the Wreckers, during which Roadbuster was killed by Scattershot. Triton himself was killed during the ensuing shoot-out.

In the IDW Transformers Universe, Triton served as Violator’s second-in-command aboard the Fatal Consequence and its predecessor, the Rash Action. He was invited—then ordered at gunpoint—to join Squadron X after singlehandedly murdering a 20-strong Autobot boarding party.

FERAK

FIRST (AND ONLY?) APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS [US] #17 (FEBRUARY 1986)

A mid-ranking Decepticon who enjoyed hunting and killing Empties, Ferak and his fellow hunter-seekers helped Lord Straxus keep Polyhex under control. He was incapacitated after Blaster smashed him into a tower, but—according to some sources—resurfaced in 2007. soon after the battle against Unicron. commanding an airborne hunter squad. He was killed by Rodimus Prime after unsuccessfully begging for mercy.

In the IDW Transformers Universe, Ferak is a talented engineer who came to Megatron’s attention after designing the Nightmare Engine. Prior to his death he became increasingly disenamored with life as a member of Squadron X. and was intending to quit once they’d finished ferrying munitions to a Decepticon outpost on the other side of the Redan Quadrant. He harbored ambitions to rekindle his friendship with Wheeljack, but deep down knew this was impossible.

CROSSCUT

FIRST APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS [US] #18 (MARCH 1986)

Crosscut’s chief contribution to the Decepticon war effort was to demonstrate the fatal effects of a faulty space bridge.

In the IDW Transformers Universe, Crosscut was often mistaken for a member of the Decepticon Justice Division—something that invariably worked in his favor. There wasn’t much room for friendships within Squadron X, but Crosscut and Triton bonded after Springer forcibly welded them together in battle.

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fanfic writers what font do you write in

i know on ao3 it's all in verdana but when you're drafting the fic in word or docs or whatever

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Rereading: Transformers: Heart of Darkness, #1-4

Good to see Gorlam Prime again, it’s nice to see a civilisation that actually suffers more than the Cybertronians.

The art for Heart of Darkness is really not my favourite and, from what I can tell, there are quite a few other people who feel that way. I don’t think the artist had ever really worked on anything Transformers-related before and perhaps that’s what is showing through in a lot of his work. Essentially, I think there’s an inconsistent level of detail across different parts of each panel, with a lot of hyper-smooth gradients on buildings and landscape features and hyper-detailed sections of machinery done in quite heavy lines on characters. Combine that with some slightly bizarre colours and a lot of flame/smoke effects for backgrounds, and you end up with some very busy and very visually confusing panels. A lot of the faces are also quite inconsistent and generally just a bit… off.

It seems a bit of a shame, as this plot actually creates a bunch of opportunities for ambitious or imaginative artwork (Please, please do something else with the D-Void!). Other weird details, like energon suddenly being green, or Cyclonus’ colours swapping from purple to lilac to blue, really don’t help the impression that there wasn’t really a cohesive goal for a comic that ends up relying a lot on its visuals to carry the narrative weight of its story, or a lot of editorial oversight.

Similarly, the dialogue is very vague and awkwardly-worded. I think Arcee’s ‘You must do nothing except die’ and ‘What kind of monster have you become?’ might take the prizes for the most uncomfortable-sounding and confusing lines in context. I suspect the writers were trying to give Arcee a more archaic-sounding type of speech in order to make her more distinct, but if anything she sounds older than even Galvatron and Jhiaxus and just rather strange in general. 

Now, I don’t think that Heart of Darkness is entirely bereft of any good ideas. I think the idea of Gorlam Prime’s entire population simultaneously stopping what they’re doing and turning to walk into the portal to the D-Void is actually intriguing and potentially quite spooky, even if it’s not a purely original idea. Honestly? I think I might have focused on that, perhaps started with comic with Hardhead and Arcee trying to survive on Gorlam Prime, then realising that everyone around them is succumbing to mind control. Likewise, I’m not averse to seeing new species and settings, I just feel that the random alien ship that is the focus for the beginning of Issue 3 is not the wisest use of panel-space. I also don’t hate the idea of an existential threat potentially forcing the Autobots and Decepticons to work together, even if they already skipped over an example of that with Stormbringer. However, moments of decent execution are just so few and far between here that it’s difficult to present any of these ideas as strong-points.

I will also complain a little bit about Nova, because the way Nova/Nemesis gets plonked into the middle of this series leaves him feeling very vacant to me. I just don’t think they built up enough of a sense of the general timeline, who Nova is/was, what his relationship is to other characters in order for it to feel truly meaningful.

This cursed cover also haunts me. Why is it a pulp fantasy cover? Why is it vaguely Liefeld-esque? Why is Arcee clutching her brother’s leg like that?

So, yes, Heart of Darkness is really, really, really not good. That said, I don’t think it’s quite as mind-bendingly horrible as I’ve seen some things suggest. It’s absolutely riddled with problems, but compared to the comics being published alongside it, I’m not sure it’s even that severe a drop-off in terms of quality. That said, i think this would definitely be in the running for worst entry in IDW1 so far.

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Pink-spotted Fruit Dove (Ptilinopus perlatus), family Columbidae, order Columbiformes, found in New Guinea

photos: Irawan Subingar, Ekhardt Lietzow, Dubi Shapiro