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My Transformers fanfic:

Chapter 1

And I've added a list of links to my blog, which includes a direct link to Legion World.

Have not watched Transformers in a long time, but I still could hear Welker's shrill voice coming through loud and clear.

Good job.

Thank you, Dev.

Chapter 2 this weekend.

I actually watched the first three episodes of Transformers last week for the first time in years.

I agree with Dev that you've done a beautiful job of capturing the feel of it.

Thank you, Eryk.

It was a truly special show, the kind that very rarely happens. I really connected with it on a deep level that I find hard to describe.

Yeah, I love the original cartoon. Haven't really liked any version I've seen since (especially the especially the live action movies), though.

The best (one of the only good) things about the first live action movie was when Optimus bent down and said "I...am Optimus Prime." Hearing the right voice saying that was soooo cool.

Hmm... just watched a couple of more episodes. This may lead to some retro-reviewing!

Double the fun:

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Very nice.

Thank you, Dev. It's a labor of love.

Chapter 4

Dev, thanks for becoming my latest follower.

Look forward to reading this a little later, once I get home.

My thing is moving along at a snails pace...as I want to get everything lined up right. Changing things from what I was initially going to do years ago takes a lot of coordination.

I've been on a fanfic-writing roll this weekend!

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9 - THE CONCLUSION

I look forward to finding out what you all -- Dev, Eryk, and everyone else who has been following this story -- think. Please post all your comments in this thread, not on the blog. Thanks.

I'll read this as soon as I can...I also need to work on mine...but time os not something I have a ton of these days.

Really liked the Forbidden Zone stuff especially! As I recall, it was always kind of ambiguous whether Cybertron was entirely artificial, or was built over an existing planet, so it was cool to that explored. Is there precedent for using magic in the TF universe? It was nice to see the much neglected Skids taking on the role of "Autobot Magician".

I'd never really thought about how odd it was how few "sea characters" there were in Transformers. You'd think with the Decepticon base being underwater, they'd have developed some aquatic troopers capable of guarding it.

Liked seeing the origins of Metroplex and Trypticon, and tying the latter to Dinobot Island was a nice touch.

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts in detail, Eryk. As some recent posts in Mission Monitor Board's Share Something else else Completely Random thread indicate, one should never underestimate how much a creative person appreciates such things.

That makes me feel really good, because it was by far the hardest stuff to write, since it was the only thing in the story that was not part of established Transformers mythology and I had to create it from whole cloth.

A little bit. One of my favorite episodes was the one about the planet of the mer-people with their magic wishing pond. And there's a Season 3 episode that I consider rather underrated where a doorway to a magical dimension is opened. That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Yeah. Poor Skids. He was the only one of the second wave of Autobot cars and trucks that didn't get the spotlight even once in the TV series. I had to remedy that.

I tend to be very critical of my own work, but I was very satisfied with the way that the Metroplex/Trypticon sequences came out.

I'm not really up on my 'Bot lore but I fondly remember all these guys from my childhood. I was really disappointed with the movies.

As a result of reading your fic, I was went looking for stuff around the net. I totally geeked out because they are making a new video game set a prequel to the original G1 series and have preordered it for June release.

Both the video game geek in me and the transformer fan in me says this is going to be good.

That's great news, TL. I'm very glad I helped you find that game. Enjoy it to the fullest.

I saw the first of the live-action movies and thought it was almost completely without redeeming qualities, save for Peter Cullen returning to the role of Optimus Prime. I skipped the second one.

The animated movie, I'm deeply ambivalent about. I don't mind that it was darker and more violent than the first two seasons of the show. I do mind that the story was an incoherent mess, and that the celebrity voices were far inferior to the professional voice actor voices.

I'm more bothered by the inconsistency of the violence of the movie with earlier seasons. Characters suddenly get killed by damage that is extremely minor compared to stuff they'd been through before. It really just smacks of "Hey, let's snuff out as many of the older characters as we can to clear the way for the next wave of toys".

After re-watching the first season of the original, I decided to check out more recent series. Transformers: Animated was actually a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Certainly worth watching. Then I watched Beast Wars, which was okay, but had a lot of annoying aspects to it.

Yeah, the inconsistency of the violence in the animated movie is annoying -- all they had to do was have a character say something like "Since the Decepticons took over Cybertron, they've upgraded their weapons thousandfold."

And I, too, find Beast Wars overrated, except for a Season 2 stand-alone episode, "Transmutate", written by my heroine Christy Marx. That one is outstanding.

I think I would have preferred to see a lot more of the characters "reformatted" into new roles rather than killed off and replaced.

I remember thinking when the Protectobots first appeared (with absolutely no explanation where they came from), that it would make a lot more sense to turn the existing Firetruck character, Police Car character, and Ambulance character into Protectobots than introduce all these new guys.

And did we really need to kill off grizzled war veteran Iron Hide to replace him with never-before-seen grizzled war veteran Kup?

But Ironhide was an early 80s Toyota camper van. Kup was a pickup truck... of Space.

Funnily enough, I've often suspected that the original plan was to have BOTH Megatron reformatted into Galvatron AND Optimus Prime reformatted into Ultra Magnus. The cab of the Ultra Magnus toy was basically Optimus re-painted all-white. The fact that separate Rodimus Prime and Hot Rod toys were released only makes me more certain.

By coincidence, one of the future Transformers fanfics that I've plotted (did anybody really think I'd stop at one?) has the Protectobots trapped and their functional predecessors having to take their place.

I loved Ironhide, but I have a sentimental spot for Kup. In the movie, as voiced by Lionel Stander, he was just a one-dimensional old grouch, but in Season 3, John Stephenson took over the role and really seemed to put his heart and soul into the role. That, combined with improved writing of Kup (particularly in his showcase episode, "Chaos", one of the best Season 3 episodes) ultimately made him just as valid as Ironhide IMO.

Yes. I liked Floro Dery's space-age car and truck designs better than the more conventional car and truck designs of the originals.

I have mixed feelings on that. While I liked the futuristic car designs, part of the original fun of Transformers was imagining that the car down the street was actually an Autobot. That kind of got lost when they moved to the futuristic setting.

I actually think they really missed out by not releasing "Cybertronian" versions of their original characters. I would've loved to have one of those Tetrahedron-style Cybertronian jets to play with.