Cultural Appropriation

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"Cultural Appropriation"
Publisher	Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive)
First published	December 9, 2016
By	Jim Sorenson and David Bishop
Art	Josh Burcham and Christopher Colgin
Continuity	Beast Wars: Uprising
Chronology	Circa 2389
Page count	59pp

It's up to Rampage and a gang of misfits to defend their universe from extradimensional invaders.

Synopsis

Prologue:

In the 1980s, everyone's talking about those big Transformers, uncertain if they're Cobra weapons, aliens, or whatever else. Noah Acton, bored and grumpy on a holiday to Britain, gets a good close-up of them when the Decepticons attack a British museum for the magical statue of Amenhotep III. The Autobot Minibots fend off the Decepticons, and save the Actons. In the sunken Victory, Sky Warp isn't too sure using Egyptian magic to disable language skills is a smart plan but keeps it to himself. At least he picked up the Rosetta Stone on the retreat or, as he calls it, that handy paperweight.

In the present day, the Beast Upgrade has dramatically changed the war: now that the Resistance can forage for food, the old logistics about supply lines don't apply and the fortress city of Kaon is now a viable target. As Lio Convoy's troops go for the infrastructure and the Micromasters and Predacon loyalists run a scorched earth defensive, Packrat is looting the Museum of Decepticon Heritage. Small objects are easy to pilfer but taking the legendary "Stone of Sky Warp" requires a sky-sled, which gets him caught and a Micromaster patrol sicced on him. He gets away and back to the "Antares Eight", his creepy employers, and wonders why they would want a hunk of rock.

Act the First:

Overshoot and Stiletto have abandoned the Maximal Command Security Force since traumatic events and now work as freelance peacekeeping agents. The MCSF was losing ground (which Overshoot has mixed feelings about) but they've just abruptly vanished from Proximax. Overshoot and Stiletto are breaking in to find out why. What they find is the whole place was abandoned in a hurry, half-drunk oil left behind and all weaponry taken: the result of the mysterious "Dandelion Protocol", orders to retreat to an unspecified redoubt. Left behind is a Darksyder Beast Pod and the duo use it to take Beast Upgrades: Stiletto as a DeathEagle and Overshoot as an armodrillo. That's when some bizarre, glowing presence hits the upgraded Overshoot and tells him they're "needed" somewhere...

Meanwhile, trundling through Proximax is a Constructicon convoy under the Autobot Hightower, transporting Prisoner N626BG to Iacon; they’d had to evacuate after the local MCSF had deserted. The peak moment of vulnerability is the Hoist Metrospan, the cover-lacking bridge from southern Proximax to northern. Buckethead (former Macromaster and current Decepticon Micromaster) questions the decision to use the bridge in time for the Resistance to attack. She takes command of the scattered crew and they fight a running retreat, but she decides to abandon the prisoner; he may be politically useful but she's not risking comrades for some random turncoat. Unfortunately for Buckethead, her retreat took her right into Rampage. He's too powerful and too fixated on torturing her to death, but she has one option: letting Prisoner N626BG out and having him run away as a distraction. It doesn't work, as Rampage decides to kill her first.

Stiletto and Overshoot arrive mid-battle, and Overshoot "knows" they have to stop the fight and get Buckethead, Rampage, and the prisoner: Snapper, left with a price on his head after betraying Grimlock. Stiletto distracts Rampage from his attack while her comrade goes for the fleeing Predacon, who mistakenly thinks Buckethead had been looking out for him. Poor weary Snapper finds himself cornered and being told the entire planet is in danger and he's needed to save it, and there's just something in Overshoot's optics that make him agree. Rampage, meanwhile, can smell MCSF on Stiletto, which he loathes. When Overshoot tries to stop the fight, Rampage ignores him and when it looks like he might be overrun, he decides to blow the whole bridge up so everyone falls to their death.

Interlude:

Vamp has done her duty and blended in with the local Predacons and built up a power base, despite her utter disgust of Cybertronians. But now she and her fellow spaciotemporal refugees have the Rosetta Stone. The stone itself is nothing special but the Human Confederacy's technology is, and this priceless Earth artifact might lure Terrans into a handy, tech-pinching ambush. Creepy locates a trans-hyperwave caster they can seize while pretending to be Resistance, lure in the humans, and then use Terran tech to conquer Cybertron!

Act the Second:

Everyone on the bridge survived the fall but their personal and ideological conflicts are likely to make them kill each other anyway, until Overshoot uses force of will to get everyone to quieten down: there's a threat to Cybertron only they can stop and they need to go "down". In order to calm things, Overshoot gets everyone to talk about themselves and, to general amusement, all of them have left some cause or group. This ragtag group of "Ex-Bots" start to follow him down. All the way down until they find themselves descending through ancient ruins that the later generations built over, ruins dating to the Age of Internment.

At the bottom, they find the mythical Oracle!

The Oracle absorbs the receptive Overshoot into itself and grants him a vision of Cybertron in flames and chaos. But this is a necessary conflict, sweeping out a monstrous old order and restoring a balance, much as has happened before and will later. In the distant future, Earth and Cybertron will once again be allies against a great threat and, in time, there will be a merger. But to prevent this being derailed, someone has to stop intruders from beyond, "the Spawn of Antares", from distorting the order of things!

Everyone else is incredulous of the Oracle wanting the war and humans needing help, but "Spawn of Antares" makes Snapper remember Grimlock's G-Virus came from that very group in exchange for information on the Terrans. With the threat seeming real after all, the crew head back up.

Ssshhh! Don't tell Bandai about this!

Stiletto picks up an SOS about the Antares Eight's attack on the old MCSF brand and the crew head out. Her reconnaissance flight sees two Micromasters desperately holding off the Eight until they transform into monster vehicles that she's never seen before. Vamp and Bladez spot her right after killing the guards and attack. Luckily, the Beast Upgrade gives her the upper hand and she's able to evade and hurt Vamp. Numbers almost overwhelm her before the others arrive. All seven of the monsters are easily handled till Creepy shoots Stiletto in the back. The Ex-bots are told to stand down if they want Stiletto to live, though it takes a few tellings before Rampage begrudgingly agrees. All five are lined up and when Overshoot admits to being the sorta-leader, Vamp shoots him through the chest. Rampage grabs Buckethead and Snapper before throwing himself off the tower's ledge but Stiletto is still there, paralyzed, watching Overshoot bleed out and die. Since the Cybertronians don't have integrated antigrav like they do, the Antares Eight declare victory!

Interlude: On the Terran craft Spooky Action at a Distance, Captain Blix watches the broadcast by "Resistance members" at the caster tower, recognizing the Rosetta Stone in it. To recover their cultural artifact, he mobilizes a team to go to Cybertron.

Act the Third: Rampage has no antigrav but he does have a heavy, armoured body that he can use as a crumple zone so his comrades survive the fall. A weary Buckethead is about to cut and run on the mission when Rampage turns out to be still alive, his regenerative powers just that good. But with two of them walking wounded and the Antares Eight outnumbering them even more, Snapper declares that while he tracks the Eight to base, his comrades need to find their old comrades and convince them to help.

At the Eight's headquarters, Stiletto is weighed down by the thought of another partner dead. Best she can do now is get revenge as soon as they enter their Modifier to heal up. To stall for time, she claims to still be MCSF and while they only half believe her, she is able to manipulate Scorp into going for repairs and Bugsie into zapping her in a fury; once she plays dead by shutting her optics down, everybody leaves her to rot and she's able to break free from her bonds. Bugsie notices her in time but in the quick fight that follows, Stiletto jabs a stylus through an optic and he falls dead with organic matter pooling out of the wound.

A repaired Scorp finds the corpse and attacks her in a rage, but Snapper has arrived just in time to help. They fight off Vamp and Scorp into retreating, and, in a quick check of the base, they find a computer with gibberish names like "Fitor" next to lists of "Levels", all under the file name Diaspora. Stiletto is left disquieted, more so when her flashbacks return but this time to a conversation she never had, where Overshoot is now telling her "the details matter". That causes her to glance at a readout and see a countdown, and the two beast warriors flee before the base explodes.

Elsewhere in Proximax, the rebels and Constructicons are still fighting at the Sights & Sounds casino. Rampage and Buckethead head off to figure out how to get people to stop. Rampage gets the attention of Archadis, who brings Rampage before Magmatron. The Predacon leader is appraised of the situation and, despite Rampage's self-doubt, agrees to help. When Stiletto and Snapper make their presumed suicide run on the caster tower, they find a Predacon strike team engaging it.

Snapper gets dropped off on the tower itself to give the resistance a shot at storming it. Klaws and Hornet get blasted but Snapper goes down too, mocked that it doesn't matter what he tried to do because the Monsters have reinforcements en route too: seven more "Predacons" under Odd Ball, six of them combining into a gestalt called Monsterous!

And none of them are a match for a gestalt save for Magmatron in his tripartite beast mode and that's not enough. Not unless they have their own gestalt.

Appropriating Combiner Wars and making it better.

In the nick of time, the Micromaster Constructicons show up and combine into a version of Devastator!

While everyone is distracted with the fight, Snapper connects wirelessly with his severed arm and shoots Bladez through the back. Now holding the high ground, he takes potshots at the Antareans and swings the battle back to the Cybertronians. While Monsterous is faster than Devastator and has him on the ropes, the ground and air forces win their battles and concentrate their fire on the now-alone gestalt. Devastator pounds the weakened, distracted foe and smacks him back into six components who all flee.

There's still one foe left unaccounted for and the humans are already en route. Overshoot's ghost is very unhappy about that; even though not going to the Allspark now could condemn him to eternal wandering or to the ravenous ablyss, Overshoot chooses to remain: his task isn't complete. So he goes back a few minutes to warn Stiletto, through her own memories, that the Antares base is about to blow, and then drifts to the present to follow his comrades. He uses a memory once again to warn her of a trap within the tower: Creepy with a weaponised transmission pulse that will kill Cybertronian and human alike. Stiletto disables him fast but Creepy is willing to surrender and hand tech over. Overshoot knows he'll poison the planet if this is allowed. Stiletto hears his warning and slays the monster.

When the humans arrive, the Transformers hand over the Rosetta Stone. The humans, Una and Chak, irritate the robots with their blasé, callous comments on the battlefield and are left shamed when Stiletto sneers that they can't help being children when they've never known hardship. Una weakly promises maybe humans will reach out to the proto-races after the war.

And Overshoot's ghost knows he'll never cross over as long as Stiletto's alive and he's fine with that.

Epilogue: Only Klaws remains of the Antares Eight but the scattered Transformers have a more important task: figuring out what to do with Snapper, who both the authorities and the rebels want as a prisoner. Rampage breaks the stalemate by declaring Snapper a member of the Ex-Bots and anyone who wants him, goes through X. That settles it and Rampage admits, distraught, that he can't follow Magmatron anymore, the Resistance's dirty war isn't for him.

When Hightower asks if saving the planet was a one-time event or if there's still a need, Stiletto has a vision of a pristine Crystal City and declares there's indeed a need: whichever cause is right out of the Builders and the Resistance, civilians are caught in the middle and she intends to look out for them. The Constructicons, hoping to construct for once, sign up for the Ex-Bots and so do Crazybolt and Bazooka; Guiledart refuses to accept this until he learns that Snapper betrayed the Resistance by preventing a terror attack on non-combatants, at which point he walks too, as does Magmatron. Archadis and Sling return to the Resistance, the former disgusted.

Sights & Sounds proprietor Jackpot abruptly turns on the news: the MCSF have just annexed Tagon Heights and renamed it the Maximal Nation, declaring independence and neutrality in the war provided nobody attacks them.

Meanwhile, buried in the Builders' systems, a malicious digital entity is enraged that the Terrans were not provoked into scorching Cybertron. He'd gone to all that trouble allowing the Antares Eight to learn about the Rosetta Stone! Still, there's always his backup plan to get genocide: continuing to whisper into Galva Convoy's ear...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Maximals	Predacons	Builders	Renegades	Others
Packrat (18) Overshoot (21) Stiletto (22)	Bazooka (29) Snapper (31) Archadis (51) Magmatron (52) Crazybolt (53) Sea Panic (63) Guiledart (67) Sling (68)	Autobots Brawn (9) Huffer (10) Cliffjumper (11) Bumblebee (12) Windcharger (13) Gears (14) Hightower (24) Quickmix (27) Alpha Trion (41) Optimus Prime (43) Heave (45) Highline (49) Jackpot (66) Decepticons Soundwave (2) Starscream (6) Sky Warp (7) Thundercracker (8) Hook (15) Rumble (16) Frenzy (17) Shortround (19) Vorter (20) Buckethead (23) Skavenger (25) Bone Crusher (26) Long Haul (28) Gigatron (42) Thunderwing (44) Meltdown (46) Devastator (62)	Vamp (32) Klaws (33) Bugsie (34) Scorp (35) Hornet (36) Pincher (37) Bladez (38) Creepy (39) Odd Ball (54) Fright Face (55) Heart Attack (56) South Claw (57) Gore Jaw (58) Fangs (59) Weird Wing (60) Monsterous (61)	Rampage (30) Oracle (40) Screwball (48) Overcharge drone (50) A unique digital entity (69) Terrans Noah Acton (1) Gary Acton (3) Judy Acton (4) Leah Acton (5) Blix (47) Una (64) Chak (65)

Quotes

"THE DAY WILL COME WHEN EARTH STANDS SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH CYBERTRON, TO FACE ADVERSITY BEYOND GOOD, BEYOND EVIL, BEYOND IMAGINATION."
"Earth? The human world? I thought humans were the enemy?"
"CAN YOUR LEFT HAND BE THE ENEMY OF THE RIGHT? CAN THE LEAVES OF A TREE BE THE ENEMY OF THE ROOT?"

—The Oracle and Overshoot make with the foreshadowing.

Notes

• Characters mentioned but not appearing include: Duran Duran, Abbot and Costello, Amenhotep III, Cobra, Simon Le Bon, Saint Peter, Lio Convoy, Ramjet, the Combaticons, Pounce, Wingspan, Primus, Squawkbox, "Howlinger", Grapple, Hot Rod, Overlord, Hoist, Blurr, Mindwipe, Grimlock, Blackarachnia, B'Boom, Cheetor, Cybershark, Preditron, the Tripredacus Alliance, a Narly, Ser-Ket, the original Rampage, the original Predacons, Wheelie, Trans-Mutate, Stiletto's old partner, Getaway, Fitor, Dumper, Unicron, and Galva Convoy.
• Characters mentioned in Bazooka's HUD include: Nekomimi A/B, Stage-Dive, and Furmanator.
• Characters mentioned in the GoBotronic section include: Gong, Tic Toc, Fitor, Psycho, Stallion, Dumper, Pumper, Van Guard, Zig Zag, Crossword, Rube, Pocket, Jig Saw, Tic Tac, Jaw Bone, Rib Cage, Hip Bone, Tail Bone, Path Finder, Rest-Q, Treds, Small Foot, Road Ranger, Man-O-War, Bad Boy, BuggyMan, Bullet, Apollo, Hi-Way, Jack Attack, Decker Decker, Vain Train, Loco, Breez, Pow Wow, Major Mo, Super Couper, Bent Wing, Raizor, Tail Pipe, Magmar, Stoneheart, Brimstone, Spearhead, Chaos, Re-Volt, Traitor, Steamer, Wrecks, Tri-Trak, Staks, Twister, Snoop, Pistol, Shotgun, Rifle, Scope, Squirt, Blades, Warpath, Tank, Screw Head, Spoiler, Ace, Dart, Night Ranger, Bolt, Sparky, Wrong Way, Gunnyr, Slicks, Crain Brain, Tombstone, Slimestone, Stone Hook, Saberstone, Good Knight, Royal-T, Dozer, Hans-Cuff, Beamer, Sky Fly, Guide Star, Defendor, Mach-3, Flip Top, Destroyer, Water Walk, Solitaire, Flamestone, Sunstone, Rock Roller, Stinger, Twin Spin, Sky-Jack, Clutch, Von Joy, Blaster, Dive-Dive, Spy-Eye, Street Heat, Scratch, Bullseye, Motosan, Stretch (see below), Spay-C, Heat Seeker, Sticks 'n Stones, Rock Shot, Rumble, Blast, Ridge Runners, Hitch Hikers, Quick Steps, Zods, Dactyls, and Scales.

Continuity notes

• Gadgets and powers:
  • Rampage uses his Galva-conductors, previously established in "Intersectionality". Here, it's shown they have the less dangerous potential to be used as magnets, handy for carrying tired 'bots.
  • Stiletto has Magno-clamps built in to her robot mode feet.
• In the opening flashback, Noah wonders if the Decepticons are connected to Cobra, the bad guys of Transformer's sibling series G.I. Joe, which were previously mentioned in the Cybertronix text of "Head Games".
• Noah Acton mentioning The Wild Boys as Duran Duran's latest single narrows the date range of the flashback to between October 26, 1984, and May 5, 1985.
• Continuing on from the previous Uprising story, Megatron's Beast Upgrade has spread like wildfire. The Builders are now getting pushed back on multiple fronts, since the Resistance no longer need traditional fuel-lines, and worse for them, lowly Micromasters are now sassin' their betters with wild abandon.
• Packrat begins the story raiding the Museum of Decepticon Heritage, which was mentioned back in "Identity Politics".
• The Renegades return, last having shown up in the beginning of "Micro-Aggressions", where they traded with Grimlock for information about the humans. Unsurprisingly, they've ignored the Dinobot's warnings about tangling with them. They're operating out of Proximax, as was established in just the previous story.
• Stiletto and Overshoot's story continues on from "Burning Bridges", which is dated to three stellar cycles from the beginning of this story. Stiletto has recovered from her botched mnemosurgery job, since she's no longer suffering flashbacks as she was there.
• During their stay in the abandoned MCSF base, Stiletto finds a pack of cy-gars-ettes and starts smoking them in honor of a deceased friend, Wolfang, who Stilleto had served with as shown in one of the flashbacks of "Burning Bridges". She mentions his death was the result of some "Builder murder case", as was shown in "Trigger Warnings".
• Snapper was arrested by the Builders when he turned on Grimlock's cell back in "Micro-Aggressions". Seems Hot Rod was able to keep his word about keeping the Predacon out of The Games. That the Constructicons are handling him would go with the fact Hot Rod, as mentioned in this story, was the one who convinced them to downsize.
• Buckethead's inner monologue reveals Thunderwing was the one who invented the Micromasters in this continuity, and that he was responsible for Overlord's short leadership of the Decepticons, something mentioned in "A Brush With Infamy–Prologue". It's little surprise Thunderwing is the one responsible for the Micromasters, given he's been mentioned to have tinkered in science already.
• Rampage met up with the crew of the Dinosaur in "Intersectionality". His inner monologue as he attacks Buckethead name-drops all the previously established leading members of the Resistance. He dismisses Cybershark as callous, as was demonstrated pretty aptly in Head Games.
• Vamp mentions having heard Ser-Ket complaining about humans and not being able to spread her wings, something the Predacon also did back in "Head Games". Ser-Ket thought they were just pals that hung out but here we learn Vamp was grooming her as a potential Antares Eight mole in the Resistance, and Ser-Ket did indeed join the rebels in that story.
• Among the visions Overshoot sees are Optimus Prime launching the Ark and Thunderwing discovering the Underbase, the latter of which was established in the previous chapter.
• The epilogue states it's been a year in-story since the evil figure started influencing Galva Convoy.

Transformers references

• As in previous stories, several characters have bodies that are "virtual" redecos of existing toys. Snapper is Fall of Cybertron Brawl, Stiletto is Classics Dreadwing, Overshoot is Armordillo, Vamp is Cybertron Megatron, and Bladez is Cybertron Unicron. The Constructicons utilize the Universe Micromaster toys, and Rampage is his classic Beast Wars form. Monsterous is a recoloured Monstructor with Tripredacus's head—literally, it has Tripredacus's head's colors, not Monsterous's. While we never see their robot modes, Christopher Colgin has said Bugsie was visualised as Beast Machines Scavenger with Retrax's head, Creepy is Cybertron Scrapmetal with Tarantulas' head (fitting nicely the "spider" line about him before his death), Klaws is Energon Sharkticon with Venom's head, Hornet is a modified Animated Slapper who flies, Pincher is Energon Slugslinger with Manterror's head, and Scorp is Energon Scorponok, while Vamp would have Chop Shop's head and Bladez has Beast Machines Thrust's head. Additionally, while not described in detail, Odd Ball would have been Rescue Bots High Tide with Armada Thrust's head. Phew!
• If you decode the Predacon Cybertronix on the gunsight pic, you'd see it's fittingly Bazooka who's about to fire. Little details also show he was receiving messages from Magmatron and Crazybolt (with his partner being the top messenger), he's been reading "A Whole World of Pain" by Furmanator, and he's been listening to his anime's theme song.
• The flashback is one giant homage to the Generation 1 cartoon: The Decepticons pulling off another fiendish evil plan, the Autobots trying to stop them, the 'cons operating out of a sunken spaceship... Cliffjumper even uses one of the Cybertronian versions of common phrases that could be found through the first two seasons. Soundwave, meanwhile, is shown speaking more like he did in the comics, rather than his cartoon-self's distinctive speech patterns.
• Noah Acton and his family come from the Marvel issue "Decepticon Graffiti!".
• The Decepticons refer to their invention as the Egyptian Incantation / Autobot Destroyer, or EI/AD, a not-so-subtle reference to "Evil Invention / Alien Device", an old fan term for the cartoon's long string of villainous devices of the week.
• Sky Warp remarks that he always bets on the leader, as he said in Spotlight: Ramjet.
• It was also in that story that Ramjet constructed a Universal Cybertronic Tracker (UCT), which in this continuity apparently killed him.
• Packrat notes the Museum of Decepticon History has a Legendisc, the central plot device of Transformers Go!. Also on display is a personality component of a Combaticon.
• The Builder in charge of the museum is a version of Shortround, a character exclusive to the Cybertron toyline. That he's managing a museum of antiqueties (and random junk) is in keeping with the original character's bio of being a nerdy hoarder. Just who you'd want running a museum.
• Stiletto mentions she used to annoy the late Wolfang by calling him "Howlinger", the original Wolfang's Japanese name. See what she did there?
• Overshoot chooses an armodrillo as his mechanimal beast mode, which is naturally based on the beast mode of Armordillo.
• Thunderwing is credited as being behind the creation of the Micromasters. His counterpart in the Marvel UK comics created the Decepticon Micromasters in "A Small War!".
• Buckethead's inner monologue mentions she used to run a port on the Decepticon colony on the planet Lucifer, from the Battlestars manga. She notes it collapsed. In said manga, the place was levelled by the Battlestars blasting the living daylights out of it.
• The symbol on the side of Snapper's prisoner transport is the proto-faction symbol first used by Shockwave in the Dreamwave G1 comics. Author Jim Sorenson has stated that this symbol was designed by Hot Rod, presumably as a way to foster cooperation amongst the Builders, but never really caught on.

• The Predacon HUD display is reminiscent of the player's HUD in High Moon Studios' Cybertron games.
• This story refers to the "Tripredacus Alliance", presumably this reality's term for the Predacon Alliance and a direct tie-in to the name of the Tripredacus Council.
• Snapper swears by "Prime's Ion Blaster".
• This story identifies the Maximal insignia as the face of the luponoid mechanimal species.
• The gang's descent into the lower levels of Cybertron and subsequent discovery of the Oracle is a shot-for-shot recreation of the scene from "The Reformatting". Overshoot plays the role of Optimus Primal, first triggering the legendary supercomputer and subsequently experiencing a series of mystical visions.
• Buckethead references the "Age of Internment" from Dreamwave continuity but unlike in that story, the event happens pre-Great War here.
• Among the sights in his vision from the Oracle, Overshoot sees Alpha Trion holding a quill, the artifact of his Aligned continuity counterpart.
• Gigatron is an inhabitant of some long ago era, as was the case in the Dreamwave continuity.
• The Oracle refers to an upcoming struggle for Cybertron as being "beyond good, beyond evil, beyond imagination", paraphrasing the tagline of the original animated movie.
• The future vision of Earth and Cybertron merging is a technorganic world, as seen at the end of Beast Machines.
• Highline is mentioned as being a subject of empurata.
• The Micromaster guard duo in this story, Meltdown and Heave, are the toyline combiner partners of Half-Track and Barrage, who were partnered up in "Broken Windshields".
• Overshoot's corpse is noted to have turned grey with his death, which "sometimes" (as the narration puts it) happens to dead Cybertronian bodies across the franchise.
• The final section notes a "unique digital entity", which was the term used for the Transformers' creator in Armada. His "primal scream" is a reference to the title of issue #61 of the original Marvel comic series that introduced Primus.
• The story ends with the newly formed Maximal nation taking the Tagon Heights from themselves. Introduced in Dreamwave's The Dark Ages miniseries under the spelling of Tagan Heights, the region was established as a major industrial area. Taking it over is a huge deal!

GoBots references

• The cipher text used throughout the story is "Gobotronic", a font created by Jim Sorenson based on the alphabet seen several times in Challenge of the GoBots, distinguished by its "upside-down trapezoid" shape.
• The decoded data says it was hacked from Gong and Tic Toc, who in Ask Vector Prime were introduced as powerful time-space bending guys.
• The Diaspora was first referenced in Ask Vector Prime as the reason why GoBots of the "Withered Hope" continuity were fleeing their native universe en masse.
• Klaws references narlies, alien creatures that appeared in Battle of the Rock Lords.
• Dumper and Fitor receive brief name-drops as Stiletto examine the Monster GoBot files.
• Stilletto is left confused by the constant mention of "levels" within the same files–as the GoBots cartoon episode "Invasion from the 21st Level" established, GoBots refer to different universes as "levels".
• The GoBots use Modifiers instead of CR chambers to heal their wounds. In the cartoon, these devices were used by the Renegades and Guardians to adopt new alternate modes, and one was used to repair a dismembered Leader-1 in the episode "The Fall of Gobotron".
• Cybertronians are shocked at the GoBotic ability to fly while in robot mode, referencing how all GoBots, regardless of vehicle mode, were flight-capable. (One can assume, then, that the Transformers cartoon rule that all Decepticons could fly in robot mode doesn't hold true for the Uprising continuity.)
• While the dying GoBot reality of Gargent 984.08 Alpha is generally taken as a splinter timeline from the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon, Sorenson referred to it as "a mix of toy and cartoon".
• The Monster GoBots use quantumite, an energy source from the Challenge of the GoBots episode "The Secret of Halley's Comet".

Real world references

• Cultural appropriation is when a dominant culture adopts or borrows elements of a weaker or minority culture without considering contexts or people saying "please nah, bro". Often, the appropriators publicly enjoy their newfound "culture" while the originators are restricted from doing so. In this case, a priceless piece of human culture is literally taken by Sky Warp (albeit by accident) who doesn't understand its context and later Transformers, either ignorant or callous, associate it with him instead.
• Noah alludes to Abbot and Costello when observing ancient Egyptian artifacts, referencing to 1955's Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.
• In this 1980s, Duran Duran have to reassure people their song, "Union of the Snake", isn't about Cobra.
• The armodrillo mechanimal is also a reference to the Ben 10 alien Armodrillo.
• Snapper's prisoner number is the registry number of Blade Ranger from Planes: Fire & Rescue .
• The Oracle notes that "ALL OF THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE. ALL OF THIS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.", a paraphrase of a quote which originally appeared in Peter Pan and was used to great effect in Battlestar Galactica-in particular, by the First Cylon Hybrid...played by Campbell Lane, Rampage's voice actor. And again. And again. And again. Again. Again. Again.
• "Protimax grid Nealed" is named after (in)famous Transformers fan Neale Davidson.
• When Blix orders a 'freeze frame' on a video, Screwball cryptically replies "snapshot image froze without a sound", quoting a line from The J. Geils Band song "Freeze Frame".

Level up!

• The encoded information in this story's chapter breaks is a full breakdown of the files of the Antares Eight glimpsed by Snapper and Stiletto. In essence, it name drops every single Guardian, Renegade, or Rock Lord as part of teams investigating various Levels. It also confirmed a large stockpile of WMDs remain on Level 1 just like the TransTechs were afraid of waaaaay back in "Withered Hope". Some of the various levels referenced in the Diaspora correspond to various universes within the Transformers multiverse... and without.

The decoded data informs us:

18 FROM THE FILES HACKED FROM GONG AND TIC TOC. LEVEL 11 -- FITOR, PSYCHO, STALLION, DUMPER, PUMPER, VANGUARD.

17 LEVEL 16—ZIG ZAG, CROSSWORD, RUBE, POCKET, JIGSAW, TIC TAC, JAW BONE, RIB CAGE, HIP BONE, TAIL BONE

16 LEVEL 22 -- PATH FINDER, REST-Q, TREDS, SMALL FOOT, ROAD RANGER, MAN-O-WAR, BAD BOY, BUGGY MAN

15 LEVEL 29—BULLET, APOLLO, HI-WAY, JACK-ATTACK, DECKER DECKER, VAIN TRAIN, LOCO, BREEZ, POW WOW

14 LEVEL 34 -- MAJOR MO, SUPER COUPER, BENT WING, RAIZOR, TAIL PIPE, MAGMAR, STONEHEART, BRIMSTONE, SPEARHEAD

13 LEVEL 39 –- CHAOS, RE-VOLT, TRAITOR, STEAMER, WRECKS, TRI-TRAK, STAKS, TWISTER, SNOOP

12 LEVEL 44 -- PISTOL, SHOTGUN, RIFLE, SCOPE, SQUIRT, BLADES, WARPATH, TANK, SCREW HEAD, SPOILER

11 LEVEL 51—ACE, DART, NIGHT RANGER, BOLT, SPARKY, WRONGWAY, GUNNYR, SLICKS, CRAIN BRAIN

10 LEVEL 59 -- TOMBSTONE, SLIMESTONE, STONE HOOK, SABERSTONE, GOOD KNIGHT, ROYAL-T, DOZER, HANS-CUFF

09 LEVEL 63—BEAMER, SKY FLY, GUIDE STAR, DEFENDOR, MACH-THREE, FLIP TOP, DESTROYER, WATER WALK

08 LEVEL 69 -- SOLITAIR, FLAMESTONE, SUNSTONE, ROCK ROLLER, STINGER, TAILSPIN

07 LEVEL 72—SKY-JACK, CLUTCH, VON JOY, BLASTER, DIVE-DIVE, SPY-EYE, STREET HEAT, SCRATCH

06 LEVEL 77 -- BULLSEYE, MOTOSAN, SCRATCH, SPAY-C, HEAT SEEKER, STICKS N STONE, ROCKSHOT

05 NOTE—LARGE STOCKPILES OF DRONES REMAIN IN LEVEL ONE. BOOMERS (INCLUDING RUMBLE AND BLAST

04 MODELS) POWER MARCHERS (INC. RIDGE RUNNERS, HITCH HIKERS AND QUICK STEPS) ZODS AND DACTYLS. SCALES

Of these:

• Level 22 has been established as Primax 207.0 Epsilon, the Fun Publications Classics stories. This was home to the first GoBot infiltration way back in 2007's "Games of Deception" and the cast listed are the ones sent there in that story, "Withered Hope", and Spatiotemporal Challengers (though it has since blown up and the crew gone elsewhere so the Monsters' info is outdated).
• Level 44 has been established in "Echoes and Fragments" as somewhere in the Viron Cluster, AKA 2001's Robots in Disguise.
• Nearly every known GoBots toy or character is accounted for in the above roster, although there are several errors and missing names:
  • "Scratch" appears twice on the list, in Level 72 and Level 77. It's likely one of these is a typo for "Stretch", the alternate cartoon-based name for the missing Renegade Tux.
  • "Tailspin" on Level 69 is presumably the Renegade Twin Spin.
  • Bug Bite is not listed on Level 22, possibly because he has gone rogue from his infiltration unit.
  • "Motosan" is listed in Level 77, but "Last Sunset" would show that "Mr. Moto" was still in his home universe.
  • Leader-1, Cy-Kill, Zeemon, Doctor Go, and Zero are confirmed still in their Gargent universe in "Sunrise" and "High Noon". It seems highly likely that the "main guys" (Turbo, Scooter, Cop-Tur, and Crasher) also remained behind with the leaders, as well as the unlisted Rock Lord leader Boulder. "Last Sunset" would confirm that Crasher, Cy-Kill, Doctor Go, Zero, Leader-1, Turbo, and Scooter were still planetside as well.
  • Other missing GoBots include Tork, Fly Trap, Throttle, Block Head, Geeper-Creeper, and Spoons.
  • Although from a different Gargent universe, the Level teams also match with details from the universal stream of the Cy-Kill from Renegade Rhetoric. Major Mo and the Robo Rebels operate together, and the previously unnamed RoGuns and Machine Robo-exclusive toys are also present.

Errors

• On Page 13, "Predacon" is misspelled as "Predicon".
• On Page 18 is the phase "we need to focus on next steps". A "the" ought to fall in between "on" and "next".
• At one point on Page 35, Screwball is referred to by the narration text as "she" rather than as the gender-neutral pronoun of "ze".
• Page 36 contains the mistyped phrase of "Then there was there was the awful wrenching of the abrupt crash into the ground below."
• On Page 52, "THE SECRET OF CYBERTRON AWAIT" should be either "THE SECRET OF CYBERTRON AWAITS" or "THE SECRETS OF CYBERTRON AWAIT".
• Overshoot's name is misspelled as "Overshot" three times on Page 53.
• The term "Proto-Races" is capitalised on Page 56; though capitalisation of the phrase is inconsistent across the whole series, this is the only instance where "-Races" is capitalised.
• At several points, Proximax is referred to as "Protimax."

Other trivia

• Whither Megatron? Much like how what became of Optimus in previous Uprising stories is unclear, Megatron is entirely absent from the Generation 1-era flashback that begins this story, with Starscream apparently in charge of the Decepticons during their time on Earth. The story does have Skywarp refer to the "slagmaker" as leader without clarifying if it specifically refers to Megatron or Starscream (and given the absence of capital letters, it's entirely possible the term is being used as a euphemism, not an epithet.)
• Jim Sorenson implied the possibility of the Antares Eight listing all the Diaspora bots in order to kill them.

See also

• "Cultural Appropriation" Cybertronix translation

External links

• "Cultural Appropriation" at The Official Transformers Collectors' Club website
• "Cultural Appropriation" annotations by Jennifer Alexis Carlo
• GoBots on deviantART by Christopher Colgin