decepticonsensual:

lickoutyourbrains:

gemmaroses:

Some things were paraphrased bc I was writing this down on my phone as I stood in line to ask a question, but here’s a transcript of the TFCon Chicago 2018 JRo panel. Under a cut, because long

• Did terminus lie or was it roller?
• TERMINUS LIED TO KEEP MEGS IN THE FUNCTIONIST UNIVERSE
• There wasn’t enough time/space to have terminus confronted in a satisfying way and that’s why hes ded
• How were the council forged as the vector sigma key?
• They may have not been forged that way, their Thing is mythmaking and shifting their bent as politics need so it’s perfectly plausible
• Were there any stories u didn’t have space to tell?
• He wanted 43 issues of LL for 100 total
• Scavengers and firstborn was supposed to be a 5-parter
• He wants them to have a miniseries
• Infinites was nearly dropped
• Cdrw storyline
• Improbability police
• In ll25?!
• (someone else thought he said it was a dropped plot that he wanted to put in LL25 but couldn’t manage. guess we’ll see!)
• Wishes he could’ve given rung an arc
• What’s ur opinion on shocky as onyx?
• He’s impressed by how jb pulled it off
• CALLS A FIRSTBORN COSPLAYER GRIMLOCK’S BABY
• Important Note: she was wearing a shirt that said I ❤ My Mom with a pic of Scorpinok
• here’s a pic they got with jro
• Does getaway actually work for prowl?
• Yes, he and skids did work for prowl. No prowl did not tell him to do what he did
• Was there ever consideration to tarn being someone else?
• No. He was always meant to be an ascended background character.
• The misleading re: roller was intentional tho
• The mask started off as just a cool look thing
• He wouldn’t do it again bc its v hard to make it satisfying
• How do u personify minor characters?
• He was looking for “empty space characters” to populate MTMTE/LL
• They (Getaway, Star Saber, etc) just filled narrative space
• Getaway was the mutineer bc he was an autobot and therefore trustable
• Did you always intend for tgcy to be an item or did they just Happen?
• If there was to be romance it was always going to be cdrw and tgcy ♡♡
• He didn’t want the queer characters to be plot hinges, wanted them all to be NORMAL
• LL25 is “what do we do now?”
• What were the hints of rung being primus?
• Serial code 100,000,000/000 000 001
• Proof of it being planned from the start
• Rung isn’t replicated, along with the time-case (didn’t catch when the happened, might’ve been in the duplicate LL arc?)
• Rung healing from the headshot
• His forgettability
• Only survivor of the Fateful Archetype
• Functionist arc
• Nightbeat figures out rung’s function WHEN HE LOOKS AT THE GIANT MATRIX
• (now I feel like a right idiot for not noticing that one)
• The matrices at the end, would tarn or someone like him who believes in their cause be able to open one?
• Nope. Certainly not post-megatron’s defection
• Megatron’s blessing was a band-aid on Much Bigger Problems
• exact words: “a plaster over the cracks”
• DOM AND KAON’S HISTORY?? (asker seemed to be angling to know if they were romantically involved)
• Their friendship was to make kaon’s death Hurt and to make him notable beyond being one of Tarn’s team
• They had to be close enough for kaon to be protective of him even after the reveal dom was a spy
• Anything u wish u would’ve changed?
• Yes
• Sequenced parasite ticks and swearth NOT together
• Not killed trailcutter
• He opted not to kill several characters in the finale

Someone’s phone went off after that question and their ringtone was The Touch

• In LL22, the megatron drift moment, was that to trigger emotion bc of rung’s theory on zero points?
• YES
• That’s from a wreckers text story
• helpfully titled Zero Point (tfwiki article link)
• So much of drift is grounded in his shifting allegiance he kinda had to talk with megatron
• Originally it was a “happened off-panel” thing on Necroworld
• Pharma. What was he like/how stable was he before Tarn?
• First appears in a wreckers text story, fairly stable there
• specifically the story Bullets (tfwiki article link)
• Most of his emotional/mental collapse is due to djd blackmail
• Did u have any plot ideas hasbro/idw veto’d?
• Wanted to include Death’s Head for a crossover but marvel
• When the djd are killing blip, helex was gonna kiss his brain out of his mouth. IT GOT TO PENCILS BEFORE BEING AXED. That wasn’t even Hasbro that was just them going “hmm that’s Too Horny”
• here’s a link to the pic
• Disposables were originally meant to be super short lived, they only lived til their initial supply of energon runs out (like cheap lighters)
• What was the secret domey erased from prowl?
• MASS CHEERING
• tg was supposed to die in the s1 finale but jro got attached
• Domey was complicit in Dom’s disappearance
• WHOLE ROOM GASPS
• domey was initially supposed to be at the clinic to make sure rewind didnt know the truth
• Domey was going to confess when rewind was on his death-bed in mtmte 12, and rw would be recording in coma and that’s how it’d come out
• He axed it bc he didnt want to rock their relationship, they were too good a couple
• Scavengers bit was gonna be a functionist universe thing with that answer
• What’s ur writing process?
• Prep is key, he planned mtmte over the course of a year
• Ensemble/big cast is fertile for slow burn mystery
• Things happen organically, links & potential links between characters
• Don’t patronize ur readers
• Were there any characters or relationships u wish u could’ve paid more attention to?
• Roller
• He used to do roll call to make sure ppl weren’t left out
• What was roddy’s forged function? (My Q!)
• Courier or Entertainer
• specifically racer but he said entertainer first so go fuckin nuts
• Were there any characters u never got to write but wanted to?
• Prowl, blitzwing, bluestreak, wheeljack
• Did anyone fill roller in on the last 4 million years?
• Yes, off-panel
• Ambus bros are a mech and a turbofox, does ravage have a mech form?
• Yes! He just stays a cat all the time
• (this is just JRo’s headcanon)
• Simpatico, yes no? (From a brainstorm cosplayer recently married to a preceptor cosplayer)
• “I’ll see what I can do”
• Someone else yelled “you told me it was canon”

---

• How long have the djd members been in the djd? (Asked at his table before the panel)
• Tesarus and Helex have been there with Tarn pretty much from the beginning
• Kaon, thousands of years at least
• Didn’t mention Dom or Forestock
• Forestock can’t have joined before 2007-2008 tho, as the G9 mission in LSotW was enacted on Dominus’s intel
• What is a group of Tailgates called? (Asked after the panel)
• First answer: A marshmallow of Tailgates
• Second answer: A panic of Tailgates
• everyone agreed this one was better

Soooo…. in regards to JRo’s answer as to how long the DJD members have been in the DJD? (X)

Methinks he forgot he answered this already and what his answer was.

#RODIMUS THE GOVERNMENT SANCTIONED STRIPPER YOU MAY PRY THIS FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS

Hella seconded.

rizobact:

rizobact:

alienatedaugmenter:

JRo’s answer to “What secret did Chromedome delete from Prowl’s processor?”

YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!! THANK YOU FOR THIS!!!!!!!!!

@decepticonsensual @5779 and probably more people who’d love to hear this that I’m forgetting atm

Bonus Transcription:

With a few exceptions. There are some, like, there are some characters, like, um, Tailgate was destined to die in Remain In Light and, and you think, you know, that’s one thing, that’s one thing to have, um, on a page in a story breakdown before issue one comes out, that’s something else when you’ve written him for like, 18 months, you know, so you can, you can change.

And the Rewind-Chromedome-Prowl plot… We would have learnt that Chromedome was, to an extent, complicit in the disappearance of Dominus Ambus.

*crowd gasps* 

Alright? Alright, which is – right? Exactly! Correct response! 

*crowd laughs*

Yeah, and, um, so um, I’m telling you this, all we’re doing is we are occupying a sort of rarified space of non-canon. 

*more laughter*

I’m telling you what didn’t happen, okay? 

So um, in issue 12 you, you um, this is, there was a couple of instances where, on paper, this story line was set up. So you’ve got – I can’t remember the details now, the, the first words between Chromedome and Rewind, I think – basically, Chromedome was going to be at the, when they first met, at the suicide clinic, the relinquishment clinic, Chromedome was there as part of his brief, to make sure that Rewind didn’t know what happened to Dominus, you see? Um, and Rewind, Chromedome would have confessed to Rewind when Rewind was on his deathbed in issue 12. Which is why, um, if you look at issue 12, you will see that there’s a shot, like, Rewind’s POV, Rewind’s point of view, he’s got, he’s recording? Even though he’s in a coma? And that’s how the secret would have come out down the line, it’s that he, Rewind would have at one point reviewed some footage and there it was. But it just, it just didn’t work, I just didn’t like it as a story. Uh, I didn’t want to, um, the, sentimentally, the, the two of them were, they were too good a couple, they were too good together, and I didn’t want to, oh God, here we go, another, oh, their, their relationship’s rocked to its foundations or, or something which is quite pure turns out not to be so pure and so, so, I, it was a rare instance of just quietly shelving that story line.

Um, and, there was gonna be the… It was always hovering there, it was, it was possible to resurrect it, should I want it to, and the, and I hadn’t felt any urge to do so until the – if you think of the, the last turnoff on the, on the road, you know, this one last, if you don’t take this turnoff then you really can’t go back to it – and it was in the, as late as in the lead up to – it was Lost Light era, um, it was around the Mutineer’s trilogy – and um, the scavengers issue was going to be an interlude in the functionalist universe, um, and it – it’s too long for this answer – but yeah. You would have had the Rewind thing come back into play then. So. It’s on a pile of things that didn’t happen.