Talk:Transformers Animated: The AllSpark Almanac

Initial Ramblings

Book in hand... we have to disambig "Solon Kitakaze". This thing is awesome. :D - Chris McFeely 08:28, 19 August 2009 (EDT)

OH MY GOD SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS the number of things that get obscure in-jokey referential names will implode the wiki it is awesome - Chris McFeely 08:39, 19 August 2009 (EDT)

I wasn't gonna buy it, but now... And they reference Solon? Really? It warms my heart whenever its obvious that the official Transformers people are reading out wiki (especially when its articles I wrote!). --DrSpengler 11:09, 19 August 2009 (EDT)

Solon's not the half of it!! Solitarium! Death's Head! The Twilight! Eddie Fairchild and Matt Conroy for pete's sake!! - Chris McFeely 11:44, 19 August 2009 (EDT)

Damn. I'm going to have to get that book. --Detour 13:30, 19 August 2009 (EDT)

I AM MAKING SWEET SWEET LOVE TO THIS BOOK RIGHT NOW --ItsWalky 14:15, 19 August 2009 (EDT)

Well, when you guys are done sodomizing your copies, please make an article to accompany this talk page. I won't be able to get mine until next week. :( --DrSpengler 14:34, 19 August 2009 (EDT)

Considering the book is by Sorenson, I'm not really surprised by any of this! -Mazenoise 15:08, 19 August 2009 (EDT)

About one-third of the book's pages are bathed in Cybertronix. Given what they just came out and said in the book--what with SKY-BYTE AND EVERYTHING ELSE--I literally cannot even imagine what might fulfill their own standard of a "hidden Easter Egg" to be encrypted in another language. Aaiiiiieee. Also, I fucking call dibs on writing up the Visionaries reference. --Thylacine 2000 15:57, 19 August 2009 (EDT)

"The Swiss bank account number of the Bavarian Illuminati".

Is that just a joke on our part or did the writers go crazy? ---Blackout- 14:59, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

That was just a joke, presumably as a proxy until someone actually starts work on translations. Believe you me, I don't intend to run afoul of the Bavarian Illuminati ... again. --Jimsorenson 15:06, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

OK.....

*takes two drinks* ---Blackout- 15:28, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

Ah'm doin' translations tonight! - Chris McFeely 15:55, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

oh sweet jesus this is going to take forever - Chris McFeely 16:21, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

For the love of.... the first bit of Cybertronix is the introduction from the instruction manual of the 1988 video game, "Wasteland". My head is fit to explode. - Chris McFeely 16:46, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

Sorenson, you've played Wasteland? I must worship you now. --Jeysie 16:59, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

Does this book give the names of all the Starscream clones BTW? Considering the toy bio for Sunstorm at least has been a source of confusion.. -Mazenoise 16:32, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

Yes, all the clones are named now.--Rosicrucian^Talk 16:33, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

I will take your answer to mean, yes "Sunstorm" is in the Almanac and yes it identifies the show sycophant clone as "Sunstorm." - Starfield 12:06, 31 August 2009 (EDT)

Can anyone tell me what the page count is for this thing? Screamer 16:47, 5 March 2010 (EST)

It's, uh, right in the infobox on the article itself. 220 pages. --Jeysie 16:56, 5 March 2010 (EST)

Annotations

Got 'em done. check 'em out on this rather unglamorous bit of webspace; if anyone's feeling very brave, they might try and add some of this to the article. - Chris McFeely 18:40, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

The DS9 pilot was just "Emissary", no "The" (originally shown, and presented on the DVD, as a single double-length episode). "The Emissary" was a TNG episode, stardate (per MΑ) 42901.3. - SanityOrMadness 18:59, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

Also, note the "-" in front of the universal stream indicator for the writers. That means they're from a Shattered-Glass-like negative polarity universe! (I suspect Quadwal or whatever is the "real life" universe, which would work hand-in-hand with it being a "live performance" stream. Note that the authors are criminal versions of themselves, which again seems right considering the negative polarity.) --ItsWalky 19:07, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

Oh, and you got your Archa Nine and Archa Seven switched. --ItsWalky 19:08, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

Typo: "...Irwin Spoon, a journalist who appeared in a three-party story in Marvel UK's..."; three-part, yes? - SanityOrMadness 19:09, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

The Farscape monologue is from S1 & 2. It changed for S3, and again for S4. - SanityOrMadness 19:17, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

The Dune fan in me screams at the misspellings in "He is the Kwizatz Haderach He is born of Caladan And will take the Gorn Jabbar" (it's supposed to be "Kwisatz" and "Gom"). Is this how they're spelled in the actual song? —Interrobang 20:44, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

Digimon FAQ? Haha. But anyway: "An observation of the events of the first issue of the Animated comic by the trans-dimensional Vector Prime" Please tell me there's a picture of Animated Vector Prime. Also, "The team is thrashed by real-life football team West Ham at Tigatron Stadium" This might be a reference to West Ham apparently being Furman's favorite soccer football team. -Mazenoise 03:45, 26 August 2009 (EDT)

There is no art of Vector Prime. --ItsWalky 08:19, 26 August 2009 (EDT)

I want this book so much right now. But I seriously need to try and ignore the stardate for "Babel": as much as I hate to say it, that episode still scares me. ---Blackout- 08:27, 26 August 2009 (EDT)

Dude, McFeely? "Quadwal" as the universal stream is a joke. Quad=four. Wal=wall. "Fourth wall." It's the "real world." And it's not a negative universe, it's a negative number. 9/25/3760 BC. That's the day calculated for Creation by adding up the ages of everyone in the Old Testament and subtracting back from the birth of Christ. (And it's a "live performance" because, uh, yeah.) FUCK ANYONE ELSE WHO POINTED THIS OUT ALREADY, IT'S FIVE AM AND I CAN'T SLEEP. Hooper_X 04:52, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

I had already figured out that the date was probably referring to the day the universe came into existence (just forgot to actually mention that here like I'd meant to...), but I'd still been stumped on the "Quadwal" part. --Jeysie 06:50, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

You may consider my mind officially blown. - Chris McFeely 07:34, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Are we not dealing with pointing out picture stuff? Like on page 171 there's a kid dressed like Destro (and another one dressed like a Joe?). Are the guys on 184 at the bottom (1-5) supposed to be anybody? Just curious. --Crockalley 07:21, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Similarly, is it worth mentioning anywhere in the article (or associated articles) about the flip-book animated Pocketbot at the bottom right of the right-hand pages?

Also, having gone over the book, I am amazed you could read the Cybertronian writing enough to figure out what it said, Chris. Maybe my eyes are just that bad now, but a lot of it seemed far too faint to distinguish, never mind the large portions obscured by overlaid art. Did you get layered files from which to study or something?--Apcog 07:55, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Naw, I just turned on every light in the room and squinted at it like the dickens. I translated what I could of the very first two passages and googled them to see if they were referring to something, so when I discovered that they were straight transcriptions of other sources, I circumvented the obscured-by-art problem by just started translating some of the large visible patches of text and googling it to see what it said. Would you believe that typing patches of the final narration of Robotech into google gets you no relevant hits? Seriously, the only relevant hit you get for "his homeworld and his past" is now my fricking annotations. As to pictures, I was focusing on getting the references added for the book, rather than pre-existing ones from the show and comics themselves, which is what those kids dressed as Joes would be (that said, I shamefully admit I didn't spot them - I've still not, ahem, read the book fully and properly, and probably would have mentioned them just because that's awesome.) - Chris McFeely 07:59, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

I used to work with Krista Kohlhausen. The likeness between the real person and the EMT character model is, well, perfect. There must be other people out there who look exactly like Derrick Wyatt's drawings too. Maybe he unwittingly creates them, like the narrator-author from "Stranger Than Fiction" who accidentally controls Will Farrell's life. Or maybe he wittingly creates them, like the author from "In the Mouth of Madness" who uses his simulacra people to summon Cthulhu. --Thylacine 2000 10:49, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Something not mentioned in these annotations is that ,on page 187 in the top-right corner is a man who resembles a glasses-wearing Animated-styled Hawk from Masterforce. --Sabrblade 01:14, 1 January 2011 (EST)

It's just a regular crowd-filling guy in a suit, no more an "homage" than any other human featured in the section. --Detour 01:28, 1 January 2011 (EST)

References as a part of the article

Now, I can hardly claim to be an unbiased party in all of this, but it seems to me that there is value in having a wikified list of references as a part of the article, rather than shunting people off-site to a web page that may or may not be there in perpetuity. I can't think of another instance of us saying that we shouldn't be codifying legitimate information because 'there is a large amount of it.' At worst we put that information in a sort of side-page, like we do with Optimus Prime (G1)/Generation 1 cartoon continuity and whatnot. Also, the hyperlinked version allows one to more quickly navigate around, rather than having to laboriously type in each search term. Finally, I won't lie, I'm tickled pink to see a 25K list of just the Transformers references in this book.--Jimsorenson 21:44, 1 September 2009 (EDT)

I agree, plus there should also be a list of who got profiles like in other books. - Starfield 22:09, 1 September 2009 (EDT)

aren't references present in other stuff like Divide and Conqure (Real World and Transformers references both) and Nemesis Part 2 and RID episodes and linkage and so on?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.148.38.190 (talk • contribs){{#if:| {{{2}}}|}}.

Yeah, as is this article isn't nearly as informative or complete as many of it's counterparts. I DO understand the impulse not to go crazy over it as there is SO much awesome geekage that it'd be really easy to let the article become Godzillic. Still that's no reason to starve it into near uselessness either. A greater detail on the content, and list of profiles should be definite. I think a list of at least the TF references, kept as breif as possible should be VERY within the usual scope ot this wiki as well.--76.28.72.27 13:28, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Agreed. Ever since Chris did the work on his annotated version, I've been urging him to wikify it and integrate it into the article.--Rosicrucian^Talk 13:35, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Is this a consensus I see forming to add back in the wikified references? (Attempting to restrain myself ...) --Jimsorenson 13:38, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Do both. Include references here, and link to Chris's external reference list. There will be overlap... but different eyes see different things, neh? -Derik 13:41, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Works for me. "It's long" is no reason not to include something on the wiki. Just the opposite, in fact. -- Repowers 13:47, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Sandbox Discussion

OK, I took a stab at a format that keeps readability but also incorporates the wikifying work already done. Check it out here: "Jimsorenson/Sandbox1". Thoughts? --Jimsorenson 15:21, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

I dig it. In situations like this, I love our articles being this informative.--Rosicrucian^Talk 17:37, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Yes, well, so do I, but I feel weird doing this myself. Note that, for references, I'm restricting myself to dropping in work that was already done by other. That is, even if it's "wrong" or incomplete or not what I was going for, I'm still just copying it and pasting it in.--Jimsorenson 17:45, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Well Jim, if something is wrong, do let us know! Don't want to spread misinfo! - Chris McFeely 17:52, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

I concede that this will look better than the more sparse approach I'd previously suggested. I just feel a little weird about basically outing ALL the in-jokes in the book.... though it is why we're here. Go for it. --Thylacine 2000 17:56, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

OK, I think I'm done ... thoughts? The references in chapter 4 were just too dense. For the real-world stuff, I figured I'd break it out into a sub-page. For Garbage O's, Venus and the Detroit Powell Press, all fairly reference-dense, I figured it'd be enough for the references to be on their own pages. --Jimsorenson 19:12, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

I'm thinking we might want to trim some of the reference explanations for brevity's sake... since we link to the things being referenced anyway. For example, "In addition, he calls it a “Seafood Louis creature”, after the crab salad notable among Transformers fans for having been served at several BotCons." could probably be trimmed to just ""In addition, he calls it a “Seafood Louis creature”." what with the link. A little bit of that here and there can really trim things nicely. --M Sipher 20:42, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

I agree with you completely. That said, that takes us into an area that I'm not comfortable editing. All I've been doing was grabbing wiki code from the edit by Bishbot, which was in turn just a wikified version (more or less) of Chris McFeely's annotations. If there is to be further trimming here, I think that it'd be best done by someone more objective.--Jimsorenson 20:47, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Thoroughly understandable. I'll give a go at em. --M Sipher 20:49, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

If anything, at this point I'd say there's enough support to move this material to the main article, and let everyone hone it.--Rosicrucian^Talk 20:51, 2 September 2009 (EDT)

Scans

Could some people who have the book upload scans of it? like for example for blackaracnia's page we could have the character model for Blackarachnia so why not? --92.238.187.82 11:37, 14 September 2009 (EDT)

Er, we already have 90% of the character models uploaded?--Rosicrucian^Talk 12:05, 14 September 2009 (EDT)

Well, a lot of what the wiki has up is style guide art, not character models. However, the principles of fair use still apply - a few excerpts here or there are fine, but scanning in everyone's character model and posting them is definitely not fine. It is not necessary for the wiki to have everyone's character model posted here.--Jimsorenson 12:18, 14 September 2009 (EDT)

Hmmm. You leave me wondering, what is "style guide art" and how does it differ from character models? Does the wiki need a "style guide" page? - Starfield 12:25, 14 September 2009 (EDT)

By my uneducated estimation, a "character model" would be a static pose of the character, standing still, arms at sides, designed to straightforwardly illustrate the details of their bodies so that they animators and artists can draw them correctly. If what we have on the wiki is "style guide" art, then that would appear to be art that gives off personality and character - observe Prowl's ninja-pose, or Bulkhead's crossed arms, they give off plenty of character, but obscure chest details that artists would need to render the character properly. - McFeely, not signed in

Bingo. Blitzwing's character model vs Bulkhead's style guide artwork. Character models are used by animators and comic book artists so that characters can be drawn in a uniform way. The style guide imagery is generally given out to other licensees and is (I believe) designed to convey both the character's design and their basic personality. The art is designed so that it can be just dropped in place and look cool, which isn't something that character models need to accomplish.--Jimsorenson 12:48, 14 September 2009 (EDT)

Offhand, I'd say style guide images make for more evocative main images on character articles than straight-up character models. Given my druthers, I think we should use the less static pose where availability and layout permit.--Rosicrucian^Talk 13:25, 14 September 2009 (EDT)

so eh does this mean we should upload scans or not? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 92.238.160.72 (talk • contribs){{#if:| {{{2}}}|}}.

That's a big NO. (Aside from a small amount for fair-use.) --Jimsorenson 13:18, 26 September 2009 (EDT)

Vector Prime

Hi! I am reading the book right now and I do not understand the Vector Prime part. I understand that Primus is god so who is vector prime. Like why is he in here. I just do not understand transdimension thingies. Does anybody think they can explain it very simple that an 11 yr old can understand it.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.23.202.3 (talk • contribs){{#if:17:27, 7 October 2009| 17:27, 7 October 2009|}}.

Hello. Vector Prime is a very, very old Transformer. He can see across many different dimensions. He looks in to the universe of Transformers Animated and watches some events, then writes down what he sees. Does that make sense?--Jimsorenson 17:54, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

Specifically, we have an article on Vector Prime if you want to find out more about him!--Rosicrucian^Talk 18:03, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

Oh Thanks! I did look on his article I really am just like wow! but now I get it so He is old and is a bot who sees everything.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.23.202.3 (talk • contribs){{#if:18:11, 7 October 2009| 18:11, 7 October 2009|}}.

Defensor United

Pg 124 refers to Defensor United sports team. I remember the Marvel UK letters page referring to Cybertronian sports teams - e.g. "Bruticus All Blacks" is one I remember. Does anyone know if Defensor United was one of the other teams from that? J'mie 17:32, 12 October 2009 (EDT)

Ok, never mind. Found it in the Mecha-Soccer page (thanks to the timely update of the Cybertron sports page by Jimsorenson that led me there!) J'mie 17:42, 12 October 2009 (EDT)

Categorization

I have kind of a technical question. If a character appears in the cartoon and in the Almanac, would their character page be put in the Category:Cartoon-only characters or Category:Fiction-only characters? If this were strictly a profile book, it would be "Cartoon-only" but this is kind of "reference text" and kind of "fiction", since it is written in-fiction. I was going to put cartoon and Almanac characters into "Fiction-only" but I wanted to check.

Also, I see that some Almanac-only characters are in Category:Prose-only characters. I think that is correct, but I could also see it in Category:Profile-only characters. - Starfield 14:40, 14 December 2009 (EST)

I'd suggest fiction-only, from my biased viewpoint. Also, given the plethora of images, I'd hesitate to call the characters prose-only, though I suppose prose is closer than most other alternatives. --Jimsorenson 20:11, 7 January 2010 (EST)

Scholastic Edition

So, it turns out there is a Scholastic Edition of the book. It's 120 pages, covers Autobots, Decepticons, Humans and Culture, and it's a lot smaller than the regular version. It's maybe 5 by 7, down from 8.5 by 11. So, how does that get covered here? A note on this page? Probably not its own page. --Jimsorenson 20:11, 7 January 2010 (EST)

Link to the listing? As for covering it, maybe its publication info (ISBNs, page #s, publication date, etc.) at the bottom? --Lonegamer78 20:40, 7 January 2010 (EST)

I happen to own the no-good worthless ripoff piece of shit. ZeldaTheSwordsman 17:19, 13 June 2010 (EDT)

Ouch. How bad is it? --Lonegamer78 00:14, 14 June 2010 (EDT)

Chapters 4, 6, and 7 are left out and the others have all had detail trimmed from them. ZeldaTheSwordsman 15:32, 24 June 2010 (EDT)

Magnus Memoirs oddity

I've noticed that the last sentence on page 145 just kinda ends, with "Would that all of our". Is that intentional (it is an excerpt, after all) or a goof? (Yes I am hideously late in getting to actually read this.) --Jeysie 11:02, 18 February 2010 (EST)

That was intentional, and made my copy editor apoplectic. I didn't want it to seem like the whole chapter was one page, and that seemed like a good way.--Jimsorenson 12:00, 18 February 2010 (EST)

*chuckle* Admittedly, with sympathies to your copy editor, I can't think of a good way it could have been marked as intentional without breaking the verisimilitude either. --Jeysie 18:16, 18 February 2010 (EST)

Even More Almanac Tidbits

I'm sure there must be something out of Forster's latest notes that should be worth adding... I'm just not sure what and where, admittedly. --Jeysie 21:02, 9 June 2010 (EDT)

January FA?

Let's face it, this page is pretty much complete. Anyone else think this should be the FA for January? ---Blackout- 05:27, 28 December 2010 (EST)

Well, just looking at the article without actually reading it, I think it would at least need some more images to break up the wall of text effect a bit. --abates 05:49, 28 December 2010 (EST)

Actually, we were sort of grooming Wreck-Gar (G1) for January over the past few days. --ItsWalky 09:00, 28 December 2010 (EST)

Note to self: watch Allspark thread more.

Anyway, let's leave this for February. ---Blackout- 04:57, 30 December 2010 (EST)

Intoduction.

Um, Chris, you forgot all about Epsilon Holdings. Was this intentional?{{184.56.27.61|184.56.27.61 23:40, 27 May 2011 (EDT)}}

DJW note

Honestly, is it really necessary to have this whole section as it's own thing? It really is more of a note thing. Escargon (talk) 17:14, 8 August 2017 (EDT)