#transformers stardrive

[cyber-rivet]

kinktober day 10[day 30] CNC/teratophilia/spanking

reminding y'all of your favorite monster girl from halfway across the galaxy! brought to you by me, your favorite artist who is so so good with keeping up with schedules and getting art out on time 👍

now i'm gonna sleep for two days and think about my life :]

[rungapikattohikattara]

the family who has never met eachother lmao

(Partially)

[coalballbaby]

One thing I've noticed when people talk about Prowl is that they tend to have a very black-and-white attitude towards liking him. The most common two things I've seen are either a) people feel too guilty about actually enjoying the character that they shy away from going beyond summaries of his actions + a vague feeling of treating him as just a morally-corrupt-character-they-enjoy, or b) they really, publicly like him, but tend to make extremely individualistic takes that reduce his character from a nuanced part of a larger narrative to a guy misunderstood by the cast around him. Of course, I'm not saying individualistic takes are inherently bad-- it can be fun and thought-provoking to think about the more personal elements of character, what they believe, why they might do it-- but it's easy to come up with excuses for a character this way.

I think it's important to consider that Prowl's just... not written as a likeable, glup-shitto-ifiable way. He's not meant to be taken that way, and he does genuinely shitty things to innocent people while wrangling his own sense of responsibility for the future of all things Cybertron. Of all depictions of Prowl, IDW's version is the clearest criticism of the police force and how easily power can be misused under beliefs of serving a "greater good"-- I'm not saying that you can't like him because of this, (for one it be massively hypocritical, as I am. a notorious and huge Prowl enjoyer), but I am saying that this is something important to keep in mind when engaging with the character critically, especially if you're going to talk about him publicly. Prowl isn’t just morally gray or "misunderstood", he’s a deliberate allegory for institutional rot, for what happens when someone fully buys into the idea that the ends justify the means, that it may be necessary to endanger innocent people if it preserves a controlled future. His actions aren’t accidents or unfortunate side effects of good intentions; they're the result of a belief system that values control, hierarchy, and long-term strategy over individual lives. When people detach Prowl from that context-- when they talk about him purely as a burdened tactician doing his best-- they risk replicating the same logic that real-world systems use to excuse harm. I know saying this kind of sounds insane from a Transformers IDW standpoint, but IDW itself is a very political story, and sometimes, well. I like to think about it. (I also realize that I'm taking a lot from specifically Roberts, Roche's, and Barber's interps, which are a lot more focused on this morally complicated Prowl-- but those just happen to be my favorite takes on him, and I tend to focus on those a lot more. Personal bias, I know, but I do have thoughts on the many other Prowl portrayals in the IDW run.)

Okay er. I'm getting distracted. Liking a character like Prowl doesn’t mean you have to soften his worst actions or reframe his motivations into something more sympathetic. He isn’t compelling in spite of being deeply flawed, he’s compelling because the narrative doesn’t let that shit slide lmao. Things/people bite him in the ass for it and that's awesome. He's boiling in his own sweat and fear and anger after putting the onus on himself to make a thousand contingency plans with him in control, because he's a deeply paranoid man who tends to use others' inaction as an excuse. We can all hold hands and think about it... promise?

[elfdragon12]

So the results from the "Build A Team" polls! (And a little bonus being.)

Leader: Jazz

Kid appeal: Cheetor

Medic: First Aid

Scientist: Skyfire/Jetfire

Warrior: Sunstreaker

Girl: Nautica

Brute: Ironhide

Dark Horse: Stardrive

So! What kind of story fits this group of characters thrown together by a popular vote? The way it worked out: this is a team put together post war to journey amongst the stars and do ambassador work... And figure out what roving Cybertronians are involved in with their intergalactic neighbors to reign them in, if necessary.

Jazz is the charismatic leader who can charm his way through the galaxy while having the cunning to see through smoke and mirrors. Cheetor was added to the team by way of the cat distribution system, as Jazz likes to joke. He was constantly lingering near wherever Jazz was and always got away when chased, so Jazz took a liking to the kid and wanted to mentor him. First Aid, though having plenty of work to do on Cybertron, yearned for a break from the constant reminders of the war and so agreed when Jazz asked for a medic to accompany the team to space. Skyfire has a history of working around alien planets with their inhabitants, plus being a shuttle, made him the perfect candidate and he felt the call to return. Sunstreaker was urged into this by Ironhide, though he was honestly itching for something different as Sideswipe was pulled into Prowl's reorganization efforts. Nautica had met Skyfire during her studies and, after Jazz asked him, Skyfire invite her. She had been hoping to return to space herself. Ironhide was urged by Optimus to help Jazz with this endeavor as Optimus knew that his old friend was becoming restless by having little to do than hover at his elbow. Stardrive was a lost Cybertronian the team found early into their journey. She had very little memory of Cybertron before ending up on this alien planet. Curious about her heritage and with both Skyfire and Nautica taking a strong liking to her, she asked to join them.

There we go! The leader and dark horse polls were the most fun to watch as they were the closest! Jazz and Prowl were constantly neck and neck until Jazz finally pulled ahead, only for Rodimus to sneak in! All the female characters in the dark horse poll were in good competition, which was fun to see. And then Big Daddy too. XD Shows the power of a fun name.

This team is pretty interesting! I do like how it turned out!

[titanousdepths]

can someone compile a list of prowls weird kids. It’s getting a little hard to track

[marcheriest]

stardrive

[rwac96]

Are there any Transformers that appear only in a TV show or comic that you would like be part of the overall universe like how Hotshot from the Unicron Trilogy did?

The one that comes to mind is Stardrive, though the Rom rights are complicated.

Another is Gauge from the short-lived IDW2/IDW (2019).

[cybertron-smash-or-pass]

IDW Stardrive

Half wraith form under the cut for original requester

[dragonmane]

I am still alive 😭 🙏🏻

[transformers-bold-bright-brisk]

Oh yeah! Did I forget to mention i totally ship Starclaw?… Sharpdrive??… Sharpstar???… Clawdrive????

There are just so many possibilities, like you wouldn’t believe…

[rungapikattohikattara]

triplechanger babies

[amebanworld]

The funfact is both of them are right. In IDW and Alignated continuities, Decepticons are a political movement faction that actually thinks Cybertronian society is sick, and politics such as Nominism and Funtionalism mean to be destroyed in order to archive equiality (just like Scream says).

But along the way, things turned quite "messy" and Dcons movement become a genicidal horde. And it's even more ironic b/c Starscream actually is against genocide.

The poor Stardrive just found out too much in a short time.

I feel like this should be on a recruitment poster or something.

“The Decepticons: We’re all about Equality!*

*plus genocide.”

[elfdragon12]

Let's build an Autobot team!

"The Dark Horse" is to refer to a character that fans weren't expected to be familiar with that the creator is trying to give some limelight to or a brand new character! Like Bulkhead in TFA or Flamewar and Geomotus in IDW2019! There are some lesser known characters throughout the poll, but let's have a guaranteed. So!

The other polls: Leader, Kid Appeal, Medic, Scientist/Engineer, Warrior, "The Girl", Brute

For more info: Scrounge

Flip Sides

Windy

Big Daddy

Ironworks

Stardrive

Skram

Sureshot

Vibes

Artfire

Roadhandler

[goldmanguyperson]

i will be the one and only person online making ocs for the 2013 4x rts game StarDrive. nobody else but the tiny community of modders knows shit about this game but i love it

[ckret2]

Decided to shake up the constant Gravity Falls asks on the blog (even though I adore them). What is your favorite transformers continuity? And what's your favorite character from that continuity?

Tough call, but probably IDW1. The comics had room to get expansive in ways the show-based continuities couldn't, and I like that feeling of bigness to the universe. It introduced a lot of my favorite Transformers lore: forged vs cold constructed bots, Functionism (especially as a critique of marrying religion to conservative politics), empurata, really creative uses of holoforms, conjunx endura & amica endura (and queer bots, let's give it up for queer bots!!), the complex network of lost colonies, the idea that the gods definitely officially existed BUT they were just guys, the DJD...

All the work that went into immediate pre-war culture with the turbulent corrupt senate and the corrupt Primes was terrific. LSOTW and SOTW are just so damn good, MTMTE up through Remain In Light was brilliant, and Getaway's coup was great. I'm thrilled we got a look at Cybertron's relationships with the rest of the galaxy and it turns out they're hated, because that makes perfect sense but we never really see that. The post-war politics on Cybertron were really fun. I was skeptical IDW could pull off writing about a post-war Cybertron—I assumed within a year they'd default back to restarting the war—and then that ended up being when the whole series really started to shine.

Introduced some characters I love—Drift, Tarn, Stardrive, Windblade, and Pharma stand out off the top of my head. Amazing artwork, especially whenever Milne had the pen. ABSOLUTELY LOVED seeing Starscream get to rule Cybertron. Even though they had trouble committing to it, I appreciate that they had the balls to make Optimus morph into a well-intentioned villain. Love the tragic former senator Shockwave characterization. Love the lonely logical Prowl who can see the Autobots' flaws too clearly for his own good and in his desperation to compensate for the rest of the army morally compromised his way into becoming the villain. Love horrible amoral Tarantulas with his small shining moments of love and tenderness.

Although by the end it was getting really bloated with other Hasbro property crossovers, I did like some of the crossovers they introduced: GI Joe slid in pretty seamlessly—probably helps that TF & GI Joe crossovers have an established history—and I was surprised a how much I liked Rom. And even though the sheer quantity of crossovers got tedious, the concept of going "they've all been dragged into this story because they were all affected by Cybertron's past colonialism" is GREAT.

Love that they ended the story by swinging from "yay look at all these fun new colonies for us to play with!" to "oh my god the Autobots are colonizers." LOVE that they ended with Unicron—every longform Transformers series could end with Unicron and I probably wouldn't complain—and that they let him eat some planets, let him eat half the cast, LET HIM EAT CYBERTRON... and characterized him not as some random bogeyman but specifically as the karmic vengeance for Cybertron's past colonial crimes. Love that the only way to stop him was not by killing him, but by acknowledging that Cybertron was wrong and showing him compassion.

IDW didn't always get things right with their attempted grand messages about politics and injustice and oppression and colonization—but, hell, even when they didn't quite hit the bullseye I love that they were playing with that dartboard.

Favorite character from IDW is Prowl (albeit not without stiff competition). I'm a gleeful Prowl apologist. Yeah he did those terrible things but he was right tho. I started picking up RID & MTMTE right when Prowl got Devastatored, and that was both the thing that made me go "oh hold on the comics are doing something interesting" and the thing that made me take notice of Prowl as a character for the first time in my life lmao. BIG fan of his messy lovelife. (Personally I go "he's too good for Chromedome" and then ship him with the Constructicons and Tarantulas, who are objectively far worse than Chromedome.) He's endlessly fascinating to me, one of my favorite characters to read and one of my favorite characters to write.

Right up there is Starscream—averaged out across all continuities, Starscream's probably my #1 favorite Transformers character, and IDW Starscream is my favorite Starscream, a perfect blend of the bombastic G1 campy villain and the wary, competent, resilient TFP schemer. And Tarantulas rounds out my top 3, I loved him in Beast Wars and then SOTW 3 happened and I had to stop at nearly every panel Tarantulas was in to go "oh my god, this is canon? They got away with that??" Read like a fanfic in the best possible way. "We were each the muse to the other" still has an iron grip on my heart. "I want YOU. I want US." God. SOTW 3 is a masterpiece of literature. Here, do you want a 130k no-war AU where Prowl and Tarantulas are paranormal investigators together? You can have it. For free.

I just spent a lot of time singing the praises of IDW but shoutout to Armada and Energon/Super Link (I preferred the fansub over the dub) for getting me into Transformers, wouldn't be in this fandom today if not for Starscream's beautifully melodramatic redemption arc in Armada. I'm not saying they're good. I'm saying I love them. Totally different thing.

[amebanworld]

Very nice coloured version.

It's very interesting the relationship between Stardrive and Starscream. They both learned a lot about their respective species thanks to the other.

Stardrive and Starscream lines by Savvy_Bot on twitter/jackspicerchase on dA [not sure if they have a tumblr]; colors by me