Transformers Titan

Awakening

Introduction

Here we are, at the beginning.

I've always been a Transformers fan. Since my early childhood I've watched old episodes of G1 and Beast Wars/Machines. I've mostly grown up with RID and the Unicron "Trilogy", and fell off the grid for a while until I saw the Bayformer movies, Animated and then came across Prime. I never really considered seriously writing about Transformers until I started reading the IDW comics, and discovered the wonderful storytelling of James Roberts. Reading his work helped me in how to work with the various characters and personalities in Transformers, and I drew upon what to do and what not to do with them, as well as help shape my writing into what it is today.

Transformers Titan is, in a nutshell, part original work/part reimagining of the IDW continuity. It takes huge amounts of story elements and plots from the comics and cartoons to shape the universe. Some story arcs are repurposed from the comics and cartoons, while others are direct adaptions with different characters, so I advise reading at your own discretion to avoid spoilers. Not only that, but I also take elements and characters from other anime and comics to fill in the world as well. All of this was formed after extensive planning inspired by veteran TF writers like Simon Furman and James Roberts.

As readers will quickly realize, the layout of Titan is different from conventional Transformers fiction. The main setting of the story takes place on Terra, an alternate Earth with a different history and geography but still remaining the birthplace of humanity; this I had based off of the Strangereal concept from Ace Combat's universe, and you'll find a lot of countries borrowed from that series as well. Even human society is different; regular humans live alongside Espers, people born with superhuman powers and abilities originating from a special gene they're born with. In addition to this, humanity employs the use of giant mecha called Talos, which I based off the Labors from the Patlabor anime series.

I've put a lot of work into the characterization of the characters in the story-human or Cybertronian, heroes or villains, mechanical and organic. Dramatic storylines are born from how characters interact with each other and the world, and if you don't have good characters, then the stories born from them either fall flat or are just bad. The humans in the story are given their fair share of attention, since the entire story takes place on their world, and since the depiction of humans in TF fiction can vary from good to unbearable, I took care to treat them as I would any Autobot or Decepticon. The human allies of the Autobots, children dragged into this galaxy-spanning war, are forced into mature situations which force them to make decisions and perform actions that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. These are children being involved in an alien civil war, and they will not emerge unscathed, physically or mentally. Human enemies also use their heads when fighting Transformers and actually act like they have some intelligence when it comes to fighting them.

Awakening is an opening chunk to a much larger story, spanning millions of years and many planets. It's the ground work on which a whole lot is going to be built and the build-up is slow, but significant. Everything here is from the ground up, essential to what is to come and though the focus is tight, seeds are sown that will burst forth into later stories. The long and short of it is, you're in the best possible place…the beginning!

So enjoy the first installment of Transformers Titan, and I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it!