Head Games
From MediaWiki
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| "Head Games" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive) | ||||||||||||
| First published | March 16, 2015 | ||||||||||||
| By | David Bishop & Jim Sorenson | ||||||||||||
| Illustrations by | William Mangin | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Beast Wars: Uprising | ||||||||||||
| Chronology | early 25th century | ||||||||||||
| Page count | 30pp | ||||||||||||
Buzzclaw is recruited for a mission into Fortress Maximus.
Synopsis
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Maximals | Predacons | Builders | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
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Quotes
“Hi, I’m Buzzclaw, Champion of the Games.” [...] “And I can fly, I guess.”
- —Buzzclaw fails to make a great first impression
“I am Plasma, but I’m also Galen, and Spike, and Daniel. I am Cerebros, who is Zebres, who is Emissary. I am male, and I am female. I am compassion and horror. I am my own father, grandfather, son. I am Gasket and Grommet, who are Cog, who is Koka and Onomisu. I am wisdom and grief. My wife is my mother is the daughter of my enemy is bonded to my opposite. I am human and Nebulon, Cyberdroid and Macromaster and Megamaster. I am death and I am life. I am Fortress Maximus! WE are Fortress Maximus. We are–”
- —Plasma's speech is cut off midway
Notes
- Like the previous story, Head Games has blocks of Cybertronix text between scene transitions - in this case, the thoughts of Fortress Maximus, with Gran's data reports in red, Kord's status checks in blue, and Plasma's rambling literary quotations and cryptic references in green.
Errors
- "Hear" is used in place of "here" in the sentence "This Fortress Maximus is no more a Builder than the transport that brought you hear is part of you."
Continuity notes
- More detail is fleshed out for this timeline and how the war ended this way, namely that the Human Confederacy (which given the common authorship is probably shorthand for the Confederation of Terran Worlds), now more advanced than Transformers, forced them to Cybertron. We would hear some more detail about them in the Facebook version of Ask Vector Prime, via a reference to the Confederated Terran Colonial Fleet.
- This story follows a few days on from "Broken Windshields" but the Grand Uprising is only now kicking off for real, much to the shock and horror of many characters at the pub.
- Cheetor as "first resistor" nods back to the earliest Uprising fiction, Blackarachnia's bio in club magazine #25.
- It's implied Daniel Witwicky had a son, Galen Witwicky.
Transformers references
- Buzzclaw's bundle of nerves under a brave front and Armordillo's patient, murderous stalking are both in line with their Beast Wars Sourcebook bios.
- Wreckloose and Backstop, two slight redecoes of the Cybertron characters/toys of the same name in the 2010 Transformers toyline, are finally given a continuity family of origin with this story: they're G1 Beast Era guys!
- Just before his death, Squeezeplay mentally rails against his "former partner". This probably refers to his Nebulan Headmaster partner Lokos.
- While several of the Micromaster guards in Fort Max are classic G1 Micromasters, others are repurposes of Armada and Cybertron Mini-Cons. Dirt Digger is the only Micromaster with a new name but may be an erroneous parsing of the Classics Mini-Con Dirt Rocket, a member of the Dirt Digger Team.
- The given origin for Fortress Maximus is broadly in line with "The Rebirth".
- Galen Witwicky is a reference to Galen, Fort Max's original partner in the Marvel G1 continuity.
- The Cyberdroids are a reference to two Japanese redecos of Cerebros and a UK Annual's wrong name for Galen.
- The following characters are mentioned or referenced, but do not appear in the story proper: Diver, Drancron, Frostbite, Vamp, Omega Sentinel, Rage, Autostinger, Nightviper, Scourge, Razorclaw, Megatron, Liege Maximo, Trypticon, Cerebros, Spike Witwicky, Daniel Witwicky, Galen Witwicky, Zebres, Emissary, Gasket, Grommet, Cog/Cog, Koka, Onomisu, Cheetor, Grimlock, Preditron, and the Tripredacus Council. The "Titans" are also referred to as a group.
- Further mentioned in the Cybertronix text are: Llyra and Olin Witwicky.
Real world references
- The "Terran Singularity" that made the humans powerful and immortal is a reference to the Rapture-for-nerds theory of a technological singularity.
External links
- "Head Games" PDF at transformersclub.com (no membership required to download)
