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August 20, 2026

My Transformers Universe> How I’d Write Cybertron’s Pre-War Military

In the previous installment I began setting up the next set of lore dumps for my take on pre-war Cybertron. Now we get into some specifics of each of the early grouping put together by Primus’ first 13 “Prime” Transformers: the military, or as I called them in the overview the “Cybertron Defense Force”.

One of the things I want to do with this series is utilize the toys and their gimmicks and play styles. I feel official media has not really taken advantage of anything beyond “they transform into things” when it comes to many of the toy characters. In this case it’s explaining why so many of the Decepticons are war machines and few “civilian” forms, while the Autobots are the opposite. It wasn’t some anti-military move on Hasbro and Marvel’s part; they already were collaborating on G.I. Joe’s story, and that was heavy into the military in the 1980s, battling a terrorist organization and using a discarded plan for Nick Fury and his old Howling Commandos. Instead, they wanted the Decepticons to be the warriors while the Autobots were civilians forced into war to protect their home.

In the comics, the first issue explains that Megatron grabbed a bunch of guys to conquer a planet he found too peaceful. In the cartoon it was eventually revealed he was the latest in the line of Decepticon leaders, “descendants” of the Quintessons’ war machines and so just wanted war because that was their nature. We’ve had other origins but this series is a long ways off from Megatron’s backstory and the forming of the Decepticons. However, this must be taken into consideration when discussing the backstory of the Cybertron military and their eventual fall. The focus here is on the military’s history, it’s ties to the liberation of Cybertron from the Quintessons, and how they factored into the early days of Autobot life. I think I’ll let our chronicler take over from here and explain the details.

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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on August 20, 2026 in BW Prose (stories/fanfic), My Transformers Universe.

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August 20, 2026

BW’s Daily Video> Critical Fans Aren’t Necessarily “Haters”

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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on August 20, 2026 in Uncategorized and tagged commentary, fans, media critic.

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August 19, 2026

The Ahsoka Season 2 Trailer: They Did Too Hard

Ahsoka Tano, played by Rosario Dawson in live-action.

Is this a night scene or just more Hollywood vs the sun? I can’t tell anymore but I still lightened it up.

My usual wakeup podcast wasn’t on this morning, so I watched a replay of yesterday’s The Real BBC. Hosts Gary Buchler (happy birthday, Gary–you old fart), Az, MauLer, and Gary’s producer X-Ray girl discussed, among many other topics, two Star Wars related ones. Apparently Dave Filoni and the Star Wars X-Twitter posted an explanation [that one’s an article] for Yoda’s iconic statement “Do, or do not. There is no try” as if we were too stupid to figure it out at a level that defies simply trying to (doing?) inspire people. We got what Yoda meant when he said the thing. Commit fully, don’t simply attempt. Accept the success or failure that follows.

Then again, look at what Dave Filoni did.

The other topic they went over in the Star Wars segment of the show was a trailer for season two of Filoni’s surrogate daughter, Ahsoka. Clearly his preference to whom should replace Luke Skywalker over Rey Palpatine, Ahsoka Tano’s not that well received series, set after the original trilogy so we know she didn’t die to General Order 66–which at this point has so many Jedi getting past in shows and games you wonder if they truly nailed anyone–is of course getting another season because Filoni plays favorites. She and the cast of the animated Rebels series, which took place during the original trilogy, and Grand Admiral Thrawn (because he was so successful in the books they locked out of continuity they had to have him in official canon) are coming back to tell us how awesome Ashoka and his other surrogate daughter, Sabine Wren, are. You can call it “woke”, I call it Pet Character Syndrome, but either way it shows who Filoni cares about. Mainly Dave Filoni.

If that was it I wouldn’t be doing this article. Even if I had Disney+, and I don’t, I probably wouldn’t watch it for similar reasons to the ones keeping me from watching Lanterns and making me less than excited for the next Avengers movie duology: we don’t care about the same things but they’ll alter what I like to their weak preferences. I only know season 1 third hand, but it doesn’t sound all that interesting OR good. However, having watched the trailer on the new season, and listening to the quartet’s responses, I ended up with a few of my own they missed, and they were just really silly. Let me show you the trailer so we’re all on the same page, and then we’ll set the book on fire.

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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on August 19, 2026 in Streaming Spotlight and tagged Ahsoka Tano, Disney Plus, Disney Star Wars, Grand Admiral Thrawn, Lightsaber, Lucasfilm, Sabine Wren, Star Wars: Ahsoka, teaser trailer, trailer review.

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August 19, 2026

BW’s Daily Video> Who Are The Manhunters

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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on August 19, 2026 in DC Spotlight and tagged DC Comics, DC Universe, Green Lanterns, Guardians Of The Universe, Manhunters.

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August 18, 2026

Why I’m Not Interested In The (Greenless) Lanterns Show

If you don’t follow my X-Twitter account, and I’m betting you don’t, I was considering watching the first episode of Lanterns. I’ll be honest, if I had the livestreaming thing going I might just for the conversation. Ultimately I decided that I really don’t want to watch it, and opted to pass. It’s rare I get to review something in my wheelhouse when it drops since so much is behind paywalls these days. We only have HBO Max because my dad wants access to Discovery’s programs (particularly shows like Restaurant Impossible and Moonshiners) as well as older movies, as he has less interest in new movies and shows than I do. I just turned 53 last month, so you can guess how old he is.

I do reject the recent idea that watching something you know is bad just to review it is somehow foolish or grifting. Meanwhile, even when I admit I’m going by reviews both praising and negative, or just the promotional material–the thing that’s supposed to get you excited for the project–, someone is going to complain that I didn’t watch it. What’s really going on, to me, is that some people don’t want to hear any negative reviews. Some reasons are understandable and some are just dumb, but that’s a discussion for another time.

As for this series, I read review from a site that would ordinarily be on the “hater” list say that on its own merits the show was okay, though it didn’t sound like it was the same genre as the source material. You know, the comics. Someone on X-Twitter even tried to defend the show from people upset that Hal Jordan was out of character by saying “this Hal is different”, and refusing to understand that’s the problem. The lore is wrong, the characters are wrong, the genre is wrong. I don’t even mind that the show isn’t set in space. That would be a serious budget issue for live-action and they’d never be as believable as they are in comics or cartoons because they’d try to make it realistic to match the live-action presentation. Animation’s benefit is that you can make a world that’s believable without being “real”.

Since the promotional material, the ads and interviews, are supposed to help you decide whether or not to watch something, it’s all done the exact opposite for me for a bunch of reasons. I don’t care that it’s good. It’s not what I’m looking for. Allow me to explain…otherwise why are you reading this?

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