danteelveera:

For those of us who weren’t able to tune into James Robert’s Instagram Q&A this past Friday 11/30/2018, I recorded it and posted it on YouTube in case it expires before some of us are able to see it.

Twitter: @jroberts332 

Instagram: @j.roberts332 

Support James Roberts by visiting his Creators page at IDW Publishing through buying and reading his many Transformers works which can be bought at digital access prices as low as $1.99 an issue: https://www.idwpublishing.com/creator…

Mmm can I get your thoughts on IDW jazz? Jazz has always been one of my favorite bots, and one day I wanna read the rest of idws series, but right now Ive only read mtmte/ll. Would you recommend any of the idw series for jazz character arcs? Thank you so much!!!

I really like IDW’s take on Jazz:  he’s every inch the easy, brilliant, kind, dangerous charmer he is in G1, but IDW also gives him an interesting arc as he becomes more disillusioned with Optimus and the war.  The problem is that Jazz gets comparatively little screen time, and so his story tends to get told in dribs and drabs across thirteen years’ worth of comics.

What I’d recommend (roughly in chronological order):

  • Infiltration/Escalation/Devastation/Revelation:  I’m a bit torn on this recommendation; it’s our first introduction to Jazz in IDW, but he doesn’t appear that much in these series.  His appearances are gold, though (includes him fervently thanking their new human friends for pointing out that the Autobots’ holoform drivers all have the same kind of uncanny-valley little half-smile and it’s really fucking creepy :D).
  • Spotlight:  Jazz:  Absolutely a must.  Jazz at his cool, badass best.  It’s also kind of fascinating as one of the only Spotlights – possibly the only other one being Spotlight:  Drift – that’s actually told mostly from another character’s perspective about the title character.
  • All Hail Megatron:  Again, Jazz’s role is brief here, but it’s important nonetheless, and this has some of my favourite Jazz bits in IDW.  This is Jazz the Spec Ops commander, whose reputation alone is enough to terrify bots into submission; it’s also Jazz the Good Boss who stands up for this team even to other Autobots, and Jazz the Caring Friend (his dynamic with Prowl really picks up here).
  • The Transformers ongoing series (by Mike Costa, not the later one by John Barber):  I’ll admit, I don’t like these comics.  I am not a fan of the writing.  However, not only do they have a decent amount of Jazz, but what happens to Jazz here is key to understanding what he goes through later.  The Transformers was divided into several arcs which were later published as individual trade paperbacks.  If you’re reading for Jazz, you can basically stick to two arcs:  Revenge of the Decepticons, and Police Action.
  • Robots in Disguise/The Transformers (the other one)/Optimus Prime:  Jazz’s major role in this series basically starts right after Dark Cybertron – with the “Earthfall” arc, issue 28.  This is Jazz at his most conflicted and, I think, most interesting, and it’s the first time we really get a substantial look inside his head.  Jazz continues to play a role right up through the end of the series.

So, a while ago you were talking about an mtmte/ll musical… are you familiar with The Scarlet Pimpernel? Because A Falcon in the Dive strikes me as such a perfect Tarn song (and if you wanted to push it a little further, the plot could make for a fun dratchet fic…)

I am!  It’s funny you should say that, because I’ve always thought of Falcon in the Dive as a Prowl song, and now that you mention Tarn, I think it works well for both of them because they share certain similarities.  It’s that sense of, This is not what I was born to do, but if I must, then I swear on my life that I will learn to be every bit as ruthless as it takes.

Now that I think about it, I think it’s more a Tarn song, you’re right – it is, after all, about both a revolution and a manhunt.  But I’m also intrigued by the idea of having one of them sing it and the other do a reprise.

And I’m intrigued by the Dratchet idea!  Let me see if I’ve got this right:  you’re thinking, Drift, the former Decepticon, is heartbroken because his new husband discovers his past and pulls away from him, but actually, part of the reason Ratchet does that is because he’s secretly dressing up and rescuing prisoners from the DJD every night?  Because I LOVE that. 😀

You and your friends make a lot of fine points so thank you for the reassurance. I guess my biggest fear is people might make less content, but I realize that’s probably a bit silly. I was mostly taken aback by Magnus/Rod not being considered (it’s been one of my otp since G1), and Pharma/Ratchet being heavily one-sided (they will remain former husbands in my heart) along with a few other smaller things. I didn’t actually see the stream in person tho so only going off what other fans have said.

I’m genuinely glad it helped.

ETA:  Okay, I had an entire response after that and Tumblr ate it, so let me try to reconstruct things.

I really think and hope that people will continue producing content for their favourite ships.  It hasn’t put me off at all, for a start.  I was also surprised by the thing about Rodimus/Magnus, but it doesn’t change anything.

I’m aware that I’m Fandom Old, so I may be approaching this a little differently.  I’ve been reading and writing fanfic for around twenty years now.  When I started, there really wasn’t considered to be any relationship between shipping something and whether that ship was canon.  If anything, for us slashers, we had very little hope of seeing any of our pairings between main characters in a mainstream series become canon.  Fanfic wasn’t about that.  It did what canon wouldn’t; it replaced canon with something we prefered.  And now we have wonderful and diverse comics where a whole range of queer ships can be, are, canon, and I’d never trade that.  But I wonder if one unintended side effect is that some folks start to attach too much importance to whether a ship is canon, or, at the very least, is something the creator intended/doesn’t contradict existing canon.

It makes me sad when I hear people say, as I have today, “I feel guilty for shipping something that turned out not to be canon”; “I feel foolish”; “I feel ashamed”.  I’m not ragging on those people!  We feel what we feel.  But I really believe it’s not necessary.  Non-canon ships aren’t invalid or lesser.  That’s not what shipping is about.  (And in this case, we even have the canon creator’s blessing to ship as we please – although we don’t need it.)

I guess what I’m saying is I’m going to keep writing Rodimus/Magnus, and I hope everyone else who wants to does, too.

Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut

animatedamerican:

lannamichaels:

nomettesbizzareadventure:

Reblog this if you want readers to come into your ask box and ask for the “director’s commentary” on a particular story, section of a story, or set of lines. 

Or, send in a ⭐star⭐  to have the author select a section they’ve been dying to talk about!

Director’s commentaries are so much fun!

Please do! (My stories are here.)