Can you even imagine being the poor alien sod responsible for auditing an earthling spaceship’s spending allowance? Like:
“I see, and why do you require many tubes of white plant flavoured paste?”
“Oh well, if we don’t rub that on our teeth twice daily the bacteria living in my mouth will begin to devour me teeth.”
“…Noted.”
“I have also noticed several large shipments of specific medications, and a variety of individually packaged absorbent material – however injury records do not show sufficient numbers to justify these recurrent deliveries.”
“Ah, yeah, it’s not really an injury per say. As part of our natural reproductive cycle approximately half the population will shed the lining of one of their internal organs and expel it.”
“…that is the most horrifying thing that I have ever heard.”
“Yeah.”
“Does such a process not hurt?”
“That’l be what the medication’s for. Pain killers for the cramps, birth control to stop the process.”
“…and your reasoning behind the fully functional, high-tech entertainment system?”
“Okay, that we could probably do without. But in our defence that was actually insisted on as a standard feature of all fleet-ships expected to encounter Terrans. Admiral Plo’Kaght insisted on it. Something about bored humans and a an illegal betting ring featuring a cleaning robot with a knife strapped to it going up against a human with a mop?”
“…I believe I should speak with my superiors.”
I love how Stabby the Roomba has become such a consistent in-joke among these sorts of blogs.
Galactic hero stabby the roomba: his legend continues
SSSS Gridman has essentially designed most of its human cast to be visual references to Shattered Glass Transformers characters, including Soundwave, seen here wearing a shawl with SG Ravage printed on it.
And I’m SG Ravage’s daddy, so.
anyway yes it’s all incredibly bizarre
The green hair tie is my fault.
Not kidding.
I want to hear this story
When Shattered Expectations took off, Greg and I set about the task of producing more tongue-in-cheek Shattered Glass material for the club. Early on I wanted to take the cast to Earth in “Do Over” to replicate the 84 toon setup, but in reverse. We imagined this not just as a reversal of roles, but “how would these characters be if this was an actual 80s cartoon”. That meant that the Decepticons needed a kid appeal character, to be what Bumblebee was for the original G1.
Soundwave was the obvious pick, both in terms of popularity and because my highest ranking autobot and decepticon as a kid were Bumblebee and Soundwave, and they’ve been rivals in my head ever since. Soundwave became a cool, surfer-dude heavily influenced by Val Halen from the justice friends. Soundwave reformats into a sweet van with a Cold Slither mural on the side, and is the human kids’ fun, dudarino friend.
As part of this I wrote a scene where Soundwave makes a bandanna out of a tarp, in vibrant lime green. This was a nod to a piece of Poison merch from 2001 that I got in a show in 2002 or 2003 for ½ off (the picture isn’t of my specific bandanna, but one from the web):
Because in my mind, Poison was the kind of band SG Soundwave would love.
I had imagined it as an 80s rocker do-rag, in the Brett Michaels sense:
Jab loves robots 