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shikai-the-storyteller · 5 years

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I absolutely didn’t go back through and edit this at all and hardly any of this is verbatim but I tried to take notes on some of what Mae Catt said during her stream if anyone is interested!

EDIT: Here’s a cleaner post with most of the Q&A.

She says she doesn’t want to yuck anybody’s yums re: ships. She seems Arcee and Grimlock more as friends, but she didn’t say they can’t be in a relationship

They fell in love with Perceptor so they wanted him on the “End of the World fighting the Quintessons” team

They had to dedicate a lot of effort into Dead End b/c it takes time to send in info for modeling a character and deciding on their alt mode

She was pitching Obsidian from Beast Machines really hard. She didn’t know what his personality would be it was just a “Look how cool he is!” sort of thing

Thought it’d be fun to have someone pessimistic like Dead End be on the team

“According to us, Drift did not make it, but I fully endorse whatever you want”

“The brand team had grown up on the toys as we had grown up on the toons, so we just wanted to make the best thing imaginable.” That’s nice

Rodimus was never considered for the show “it’s been covered to death”, but they were adamant about portraying Hot Rod as someone who wanted to be a leader

Hot Rod is someone who is learning to be a leader

“Please don’t tell JRO I forgot about Whirl” re: talking about why they chose each character for the “Anti-Quintesson” team

Q: Re: Why did Drift try to kill Roddy A: They said they needed a double-agent and they needed someone who would (seemingly) kill Hot Rod

She loves that Optimus is just trying so hard to rebuild Cybertron, I just want society to start rebuilding

Q: Since you mentioned Optimus's death... he didn't seem to have a plinth in "our" Matrix realm. Does that mean the list of Primes works differently? Like are the 13 more of a dynasty, rather than all being a group together? A: They decided Optimus would be in the Alt! Universe matrix because they wanted to show he was dead. Logical backflips because he needed to be among the 13 to talk to Windblade.

She says Starscream’s death hurt her most

They didn’t want to kill people off willy-nilly for shock value

"The audience will fall in love with Slipstream so she has to die" LMAO

She almost wanted Starscream to emerge from the Judge heads untouched but she’s ultimately glad that idea got shot down

Dead End’s eyes are white

She’d love to have a MTMTE Magnus / Minimus included. She wished and prayed to have Frenzy and Rumble

They wanted Jazz to be a lady!!!!!!!

These characters are like grown ups (kinda) with their own lives that we don’t see. Lots of stuff happening between episodes

“Rumble and Frenzy are always considered in my heart, but there wasn’t enough time or space or assets to do so”

“Alt Soundwaves also had their own Laserbeaks. I wonder if the scientist would’ve taken them out. He might’ve just gotten rid of them.”

“A lot of intelligent life is inherently mechanical” explaining why so much of the life we saw in the show were robots

She would’ve liked to have the other shows show up (TFP, TFA, G1, Shattered Glass) but they don’t have those assets or budget. “This will quickly become unclear to audiences who aren’t (you people).” They couldn’t have all these references when some of their audience wouldn’t get it

“Why does anyone collect what they collect? That’s a really angry dad who’s got five children and he plays music. Gotta have that” --re: the Scientist and Soundwave

Knock Out was considered but every Transformer under the sun was discussed at some point in the Writer’s room.

Developing Sky-Byte’s character was simultaneous with Jetfire’s character, "We knew we wanted Sky-Byte to be a poet, and we wanted him and Megatron to be chummy”

From the getgo they didn’t want any humans distracting from the Transformers

Q: Is Megatron dead? A: “In discussions we wanted to kill him. Wanted to do a reverse Optimus death. However, in the final product, I kinda enjoy the ambiguity rather than the final decision. Can’t remember if we were decisive about that in the script.”

She wanted them to have IDW Tarn in there “OBVIOUSLY (the perfect decepticon) should look like this guy. A faceless mindless Decepticon that only serves Megatron”

Q: Is Dead End a good boyfriend? A: Dead End is a work in progress, but maybe Percy is patient enough to get him there

Q: Is Astrotrain a good boyfriend?” A: “No, no...he’s not a good person, really”

“When I was desperately trying to save Starscream’s life even though I brutally murdered Slipstream--” LMAO She wanted Starscream to have amnesia and she says she wanted to have a redeption arc. She wanted him to have a Windblade shard and have it be kind of like Castaway, where he only talked to it (and the shard only had 5 phrases it could say) and eventually Bee would befriend him Wanted to write Starscream as an abuse victim who expected the worse of the Autobots, but she wanted him to warm up slowly

Wanted a Starscream and Optimus episode where he’s like “you did your best and that’s what counts”

Q: Is Percy a good boyfriend A: “Absolutely--WAIT HOLD ON. He’s very blunt, he doesn’t mince words, if you can handle his bluntness then you’re good. He is what he is and you have to deal with him.”

Q: Is Soundwave a good boyfriend? A: Soundwave is not a good boyfriend. He’s a good casual romance but he’s not a good boyfriend. Soundwave would be a terrible listener. He hears a lot but he’d tune you out.

Percy did permanently take over Mac’s bar

She really wanted Obsidian and Transmutate to be in the show.

If Thunderclash was in the show he and Jetfire would HATE each other. Thunderclash would be a rival reality star (maybe) to Media Fire

Fave Episode was “I Am the AllSpark” b/c of that Megatron and Starscream dialogue Also S2 04 Soundwave and Shockwave

Transmutate would be more like the uprising version (?) but modeled more on the BeastWars version

The Starscream & Megatron beatdown was super severe and they were like “holy frick they’re really going for it” when they saw the boards for it

She likes the Windblade / Slipstream ship

Her favorite VA is Jeremy Levy, he’s a really cool guy

She thinks Starscream and Cheetor could become (not necessarily friends, but connected?) because of their connection to the All Spark

Describes Starscream as an “Awful gremlin” several times

They say Megatron didn’t actually kill Starscream, just really beat him down hard

“Don’t take things I say as the end all be all”

She doesn’t think Bee would be a Prime, Windblade and Hot Rod would be a better Prime. He wouldn’t want to be a Prime. He’s the #2 to Primes!

With unlimited budget combiners could’ve been included, but it doesn’t seem like they thought about it

Astrotrain and the Insecticons are from Megatron X’s universe

Megatron’s priorities changed when he saw his doppelganger. Realizing he was a horrible tyrant, that scared him enough to return and not kill Optimus and make peace no matter what.

She thinks Cliffjumper and Bee wouldn’t get along, solely because of the IDW2 comic stuff

Got 26 episodes for season 3 because they got the 4-part movies

Megatron cares about his troops but not in a way that we would notice that care

Wasn’t a HUGE die-hard TF fan when she got into the series but she was a bigger GI Joe fan, she reread a bunch of things and did a lot of research

Cut joke: S2 E5 Megatron and OP finds the All Spark Decepticons and Autobots popping all over the world, Soundwave pops into Brazil where there’s a music festival and he’d crash the concert and hang out. He likes EDM the most?

The Titans want to be cities. They want citizens. They want to be lived in, that brings them joy (ouch)

Q: How did the Decepticons learn to stream? A: Because they’re deceptive! He knew he should dedicate some time to winning the hearts and minds of humans. Starscreams’ funeral was not the first time they streamed Optimus would use the official media channels, not a streaming service. Megatron would try to speak more directly to the people.

From the conception, the show wasn’t going to have humans

She thought people would ship Dead End / Percy but it wasn’t until she saw art that she started shipping them

Q: Is Optimus the type of streamer who would take 10 minutes to figure out how to un-mute his microphone A: Optimus is a dad. He has no idea what’s going on re: streaming. Optimus would say embarrassing news while Bee and Hot Rod are in the middle of streaming

Doesn’t ship Bee with anyone, she sees him as a little brother

Randolph put Rack ‘n Ruin in the show.

AcidStorm is genderfluid

Cold Construction doesn’t exist in this show. Maybe there’s one jet mode all the seekers really like

We have Mae Catt to thank for Whirl

Percy didn’t transform because not a good time to turn into a microscope while you’re trying to save your planet from Quintessons

If she were a transformer she’d want to be a stealth bomber. She’s 5′3 so she says she’d probably actually be a motorcycle like Chromia

They killed Prowl because it was Shadow Striker doing the killing and he’s a self-sacrificing lieutenant.

Enjoyed writing Starscream most, Clobber and Hot Rod became a joy, S2 E4 was her first one, it was fun getting into Hot Rod’s voice. She said it was hard doing Optimus’ voice, she’d always pass it off to someone to look at it.

She loves the idea of Wild Wheel robbing Astrotrain in train-mode, totally wild west-style

One of her proudest things was turning Lugnut into a gal

They wanted to include more female characters

They love Cosmos, she has a little toy of him. R2D2 but a transformer! They loved having her in the show

Blurr really was the fastest

Maccadam looking like a buff Rung was just a strange coincidence

Q: Megop rights? A: “Oh absolutely, duh”

Says we absolutely SHOULD write fanfic. Fanfiction made her into the writer she is today, she says you should write it

There’s a lot between episodes, people living their lives and characters living on the ship that don’t pop up in the show

She wrote non-stop Matrix fanfic from 12-20 years old, she learned a lot thanks to writing fanfic

Uses “They” pronouns for Rack ‘n Ruin but they both use “he”

Sad that Skywarp didn’t get a speaking line

Re: Starscream’s redemption arc: She wanted Starscream to have amnesia if they went the “he comes out of the ruins of the judge totally fine”. “A redemption arc needs to be facilitated by a character acknowledging that what they did was wrong. He would have a laundry list of excuses for everything, even if there was all that evidence to the contrary, but needs to acknowledge that reasons don’t matter because people got hurt. Needs to intend to do better. Let them try and let them fail, they don’t need to 180, it’s hard work to be a better person.”

Shadow Striker is taller than Optimus or is his height. She loves the gender-neutral designs for a lot of characters

She’s not going to say whether Ratchet finished medical school or not Laughed at the "i don't believe that man has ever been to medical school" comment

Q: How would you feel about a female Optimus Prime? A: [GAY LAUGHTER] “So do you turn Optimus Prime into a woman, or do you take characters like Elita One and uplift her? I would want to lean more into giving Elita One more oomph, I do love how Optimus doubts himself and if he’s worthy of being a Prime.”

Says Rack ‘n Ruin are probably the Prime in that one weird universe lmao

Loves the idea that Transformers have siblings / families

She doesn’t think Cybertronians celebrate birthdays. “Why would you celebrate being alive for 4 million years that sounds like a nightmare.” She says that people would be celebrating milestones if nothing else

She’d kill to have Perceptor meet the other stunticons

She says she doesn’t post fanfic as much anymore. Sends them to Natalie as love letters (Ghost Busters fics specifically)

In a world where you had unlimited budget it’d be fun if Cybertronians were constantly shape-shifting and changing their forms, they’d like having Transformers who “grew a beard” and decided to “shave it”

Re: Ratchet and Medical school: she wants a “I choose to believe Ratchet has never been to medical school” shirt

Natalie (her GF) said hi

She doesn’t understand cycles or astrocycles, she doesn’t understand the weird Transformers time stuff. (mood)

Natalie explained how ghost traps work and it was a delight "You're basically making a pocket dimension, that's how you capture ghosts" “The Technology for a ghost trap is like magic and science”

Maecatt's bringing all her TF toys over to the camera

Q: Elita prime when? A: All the time, in my heart!

Q: Why are you so mean to Percy? A: He's so mature and pragmatic that he can take it, and is willing to take one for the team bc he understands that it's what he needs to do. Yes, he’s calmly feral.

Yes to the hurt/comfort Deadceptor fanfic joke answer

She jokingly says she's willing to buy Cyberverse fanart prints

“Arcee was fun to figure out because there’s an extra bit of pressure to develop a female character, there is extra pressure to do it well since it’s representing a different community (not that women are different species) more representation is needed. “What kind of woman can our Arcee be?”” Scared to write her poorly, but they realized she could be a fun dynamic duo with Grimlock, someone who could keep up with him, not a “girl” version of him, but someone who could stand on her own two feet

Collecting Soundwave because Soundwave is COOL. Wouldn’t you collect a single father of 5 who carries them around in his chest?

Shockwave altered his vibes to have maximum bad vibes to destroy the All Spark

Rebooting the franchise: she’d maybe do beast wars or something

Skullcruncher is a lady! She misses Mac but Percy takes good care of her

She loved Beast Wars Inferno, she loved that Inferno called Megatron a Queen. It was played as a joke because the 90s weren’t very socially conscious, but she liked that Megatron never corrected him or beat him down

She wanted to have Lightbright and Nickle in the show

"Maybe Drift is alive, maybe he's rethinking his decision and he'll come back later"

She said it's hard talking about writing a show because you're designing the experience and you have to make sometimes what sounds like cold and pragmatic decisions (eg: "we need a cold and spunky female") which sucks, but they need to balance out the show. She says she'd never do that just for the sake of doing it, but it's part of something that they do need to be aware of while working on a show “Starts from a weirdly cold pragmatic place, but we try and put truth in it”

Q: Is Skullcruncher Percy's bouncer now that he's running Maccadam's? A: Oh totally

She felt bad about the writing thing because she says "you could throw a rock in California and you'd hit a writer / director or whatever" but she says she really likes being an authority on things now, even if it’s weird

She said Drift would've been helpful in S3 for sure, maybe he'd come up with Repugnis

Q: If Tarn is the perfect Decepticon who's the perfect Autobot A: Someone with a Firetruck alt mode, Autobot insignia as a face. Nat and her talked about it a lot. She says Optimus SHOULD be a fire truck, it makes the relationship between him and Ratchet a little more fun since Ratchet is an ambulance, and Optimus has an AX. It just makes sense! She agreed that the perfect Autobot would be Thunderclash after the chat said that

“If you put the proverbial budget-gun to my head, I’d keep Unicron in planet-mode because it’s more mysterious, but I want both alt modes”

Her favorite Megatron is Beast Wars Megatron

They didn’t want to go the Unicron route because everyone goes that route

Q: What sort of documents DID Optimus work on in the archives? A: Probably historical archives and working on all the Primes. Something like the French / American revolution equivalent, which informed his speech writing for Megatron and his own ethics. (NICE)

She doesn’t like Sky Lnxy’s design, it’s creepy. “He talks in the G1 episodes and the voice makes it worse.” She can’t get over his face

“Found” the social awkwardness for Optimus. Optimus depicted as a father figure in S1 because it’s from Bee’s perspective, S2 / S3 they were able to explore more and found the limits and found it was hard to maintain that level of heroic dialogue. Optimus would feel awkward about it too. Randolph did an impression of Optimus’ speech. “He can’t not be in war-mode” :(

Q: Were Optimus and Megatron friends ever, or did they just work together on the speech stuff? A: Oh hell yes, I think [the story] is always enhanced when they’re friends and when Optimus really believes in what Megatron was working on. Optimus’ rejection of Megatron is what pushes him over the edge, his best friend rejecting him pushes him into a place where he becomes a tyrannical person.

Q: Does Maccadam know we love him? A: *puts hand over heart and looks into the distance* Yes

“Who knows where Dead End ended up” then backtracks and says “Wait that sounds flippant”

Soundwave’s favorite Earth song is Despacito

Q: What's the best selfie Arcee's ever taken A: Mae Catt loves the one with the giraffe. She likes the idea of Arcee having a bunch of human friends

Q: What do the Transformers think of the Florida Man? A: They can’t really tell the difference between humans, they don’t really get it. It just sorta looks like all the normal stuff they see on Earth (or something)

Q: Who's the Florida Man of the Transformers A: Rack ‘n Ruin or Skybyte. But he’s too nice hmmm.

Leaned into the wackiness of Wheeljack because of the VA

Q: What does Optimus do when he's not giving speeches / being a leader when they were all hanging out on the ARK? A: I think he reads, he seems like a heavy reader. It’d be cute if he read really bad Earth romance novels. He seems like a guy who needs a break from everything.

Q: Does Optimus have hobbies? A: Not to borrow from Rung, but doesn’t it seem like Optimus would make model ships? Very quiet, very focused detail-oriented hobby. Oh duh, he also plays basketball.

“I’d love to see more jets [who aren’t our usual gang] and find out all jets are kinda snobby”. Kaon and Tarn would be fun, it’d be cool to make up places.

(Someone asking if Optimus would read 50 Shades of Gray, someone else saying “They’d take it the wrong way because Transformers turn gray when they die”)

Everyone on the Autobot side are friends with each other.

Q: Does Megatron do anything for fun or is he too angry? A: I want to say he’s too angry, he has fun beating people down but I don’t think he’s had fun for a long time

Q: Were you surprised that Jake Tillman was in his 20s listening to his Optimus the first time? A: Jake Tillman was a vine-r she listened to a ton. She’d heard him when he was in his teens

MaeCatt loves that Shadow Striker saved Windblade’s body and kept her safe

Q: what was most important to you personally to put out in each episode? like humor/characterization/arcs A: Wanted to make sure she didn’t write dialogue that was condescending, wanted to be true about the character. Needs to be true to the characters (and gay)

Transformers probably don’t know what memes are. They know what they ARE, but they don’t get it. They wanted Hot Rod to be super into Earth culture (winning races and driving off before humans could realize no one was in the car), but they never had time to really get into that.

Wound up in the Cyberverse writer’s room thanks to her agents, says she was the only person who gave a crap about GI Joe stuff, the executives were so sweet and let her chat, and they said she wasn’t a good fit for the current live action project so they sent her to the animation side, they sent her to Michael Howzer and they hit it off talking about GI Joe stuff. She was a post PA, someone who helped editors finish things for TV, got a call with an offer.

#i talk #Cyberverse #Mae Catt #I'm watching Cyberverse #Transformers #Cyberverse Spoiler /#Primordial Robot hell

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tfw-no-tennis · 4 years

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mtmte liveblog - spotlights edition

yeah imma be real w/you chief i don't remember these at all so a reread is definitely in order. so: spotlights trailcutter and hoist

so first ill do trailcutter cause i think that one comes first? maybe?

so this one takes place between 5 and 6....whoops

so here we have: shield man

the introduction of the rodimus star! very crucial worldbuilding

hvbhjskhdfjkd rodimus is so self-congratulatory lmaoooooo

also brainstorm looks rlly cute standing up there holding his briefcase aww

‘wear it with pride, chromedome’ hbsjkdhfghskdf rodimus is so funny

tailgate. did u know ily

is. is that a headmasters joke

whirl hvbdusfbjasjdf that's so fucking funny

im so bad at elaborating on things in these lmaooo I'm sorry I'm lazy af

of COURSE whirl drew a mustache on his rod star lmaooo

whirl is such a dick hvhfsdjbsdkf i love him

actually, rodimus is kind of a dick too. i love him also

ok I'm sad abt trailbreaker. especially knowing what happens to him later. oof

whirl is so goddamn entertaining

is that KILLMASTER??? it must be, i see a wand LMAO

i just want to quote half the lines from any given mtmte/mtmte-adjacent issue but alas that's not really how liveblogs are supposed to work

whirl and brainstorm is an underrated dynamic tbh

oh, tb, never make wishes like that before bed

can’t believe there's really a tf named huffer

oh no! everyone's had a blue filter placed over them!

ohhh and there's rodimus laying into rewind for having those snuff films

so this definitely takes place at the same time as spotlight hoist, then

magnawheels is dope af. he should be magnawheels guy instead of forcefield guy

so whatever froze everyone WASNT the cons doing...interesting

brainstorm being frozen cowering in fear is a nice touch. i love all the early-mtmte stuff that subtly paints him as a big coward, especially considering everything we later learn abt him

ayy its lockdown! i remember him from tfa as a kid

and then tb - tc? - gives whirls Epic Beatdown Speech. love it

some classic ‘bad guy explains his business’ stuff

was metroplex the titan in the annual? or is he the one back on cybertron? the name is familiar but my memory for continuity is horrible

very nice persuasive deception there, tb

‘how come we don't all have [magnawheels]?’ yknow that's a very good question rodimus

HBFSKJDGDSKJF the really big rodimus...medal...plate...thing lmao

did this come out right before mtmte 16??? why did it come out so late if its set so early lmao

anyways, that was fun! i never have much to say abt spotlights hvbdahkjfbs sorry. i like tb and this was a cool kinda ‘greatest story never told’ tale!!

next up: spotlight hoist!

is that tarn??? bro i totally forget what happens in this spotlight augh

i do like seeing tarn get trees thrown at him, tho. even tho iirc that isn't actually tarn, or something. ok we’ll see

oh yeah swerves in this one! and sunstreaker, who is a character that exists and is on the lost light, but is also someone we basically never see. same with hoist, actually, i feel like we don't see him at all after this, unlike TB

no offense but sunstreaker looks mildly horrifying in this art style. why is his mouth Like That?

HGBSHJKFHSHGSUDJKF PERCEPTOR IS HERE TOO AND HES MASHED INTO THE CEILING. OR THE FLOOR BUT UPSIDE DOWN. LMAOOOOO POOR DUDE

so hoist must’ve been hailing them just as shit started going down in spotlight tb

also why does percy not have his microscope scope or his eye thingy. he looks weirdly symmetrical

bob..................

i love the implications of an offscreen superlatives award ceremony, what with swerve apparently being voted ‘ships coward,’ and whirls profile saying he was voted ‘autobot most likely to defect’

oh, you're scared of overlord, swerve? well you're not gonna be too thrilled to hear about a certain upcoming plot,

poor hoist, being sidelined then roasted in his own spotlight

hoist really said ‘I'm just a normie, unlike all you psychologically damaged main characters’ and yknow what? he wasn't wrong

ok so hoist was rlly like ‘I'm normal, i don't have any trauma unlike you fools. anyways [talks abt the time he was the sole survivor of a plane crash and almost died]’ like oh honey

oof swerve, being hilariously, concerningly flippant about dying, especially for an apparent coward

so perceptor is still lodged in the ceiling I'm assuming...im sorry that's just really funny hvbhfsjdkufbsjk

and there's all of swerves fears...and they even combine into a giant scary decepticon lmao

‘phobia shield’ is so in line with that particular Brand(tm) of mtmte sci-fi technology, i fuckgin love it

WHERE THE HELL IS PERCEPTORS LOWER BODY. THATS FUCKED UP I THOT HIS LEGS WERE JUST STUCK IN THE CEILING WTF

oh damn it latched onto bob

OH GOD WHATS THIS ENDING WTF. that's fucking depressing, jesus. i mean ik they get rescued and everything's fine but what the hell

anyways, i liked this one a lot too! nice episodic feel, with a coolly poetic ending. i do feel bad for hoist bc this felt like half his spotlight, half swerves lmao AND hoist doesn't really show up in the story much after this, from what i remember. either way this was still a fun read!

#lj rereads mtmte #so i did read these later than i was supposed to whoops

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