FAQ for "The Transformers - The Lord Of The Matrixes - The Two Bases" (will
be updated every so often; may contain spoilers)
1. "EZBoard Company?" "Padded Cell Productions?" "Cell Birthday Committee?" What are you talking about?
Ah, yes, the "opening credits" of the script. It's a long story, but I'll try to summarize it as best as I can.
Many of you I'm certain is familiar with EZBoard. As for The Padded Cell, it's the name of a TransFan message board that I go to all the time. It's existed since February of 2001, and I was one of its first members. It's very different from most online TF fan communities in that the membership is predominantly female (and I'm in the minority, though I'm very friendly with most of them). If you want to visit, you'll have to e-mail me a request for the Padded Cell's link, because FF.net won't allow me to post it up without screwing up my posts. (Believe me, I've tried. MANY times.) But once I give you the link, you can drop by and just take a look around. And feel free to post if you wish.
The Cell Birthday Committee will be explained in the next question.
2. What do you mean by birthday gifts for Princess Artemis and Starseeker?
Since the beginning of the Padded Cell, I usually whipped up a little party post for whenever a CellMate (our name for a Padded Cell member) had a birthday coming up. It usually featured the b-day celebrant's favorite characters, with references to their other favorite things (movies, TV shows, books, etc.). Over the last two years, the party scripts ended up getting bigger and bigger, along with the board's membership. By April of 2002, I couldn't do all the party scripts by myself anymore, so a few CellMates volunteered to share the workload with me. We called ourselves The Birthday Committee. We have about 12 members, some of us more active that others, depending on our real-life situations and creative juices running at the time.
Princess Artemis and Starseeker are two of my best friends, both from the Cell. I've known Seeks - my best friend in the entire galaxy - since October of 2000 and we're super-tight, despite her living in Florida and me in Canada. Princess Artemis first joined the Cell around late summer of 2002, and she and I became close friends surprisingly fast as well. Both Seeks and PA are huge Tolkein fans, as you've figured. So when T2T hit theaters around Christmas of 2002, I already knew what I was going to write for their birthdays. With the whole movie being so big, I had no choice but to cut it in two halves, one for PA, and the other for Seeks. Even then, both parts were LOOONG to write out.!
3. Who's playing who?
There's a "cast list" of sorts posted up.
4. If your story is already completed, why not post the whole thing right away?
I found out after posting the script onto the Cell that, with a project that big, even a few tiny missed words can sneak in. It's like trying to make sure you're baking the perfect wedding cake by yourself, and you fail to notice you accidentally spilt a chocolate chip in the batter mix. So I'm doing a few more thorough spot checks when time permits, and I'll have it posted up when they're as close to perfect as I cam possibly make them.
5. Any plans on making a TF version of Fellowship of the Ring?
Not right away. What are you trying to do, kill me?! :O
6. Did you come up with the entire casting by yourself?
No. There was another b-day during the summer of 2001. My co-captain in the Birthday Committee, codenamed Iespyk (pronounced "icepick"), made a TF parody of the first half of Fellowship of the Ring. He and I worked on the casting together, with a little help from Starseeker. Iespyk came up with the idea of TF subgroups (official or unofficial) as the different Middle- Earth races. However, since the favorite characters of this particular birthday girl were the Dinobots, they were cast as the Hobbits instead. When I made "The Two Bases", I decided to switch things around a bit so that the size and personality parallels would be more accurate.
Some of the individual characters were changed to suit the parallel personalities better as well. For instance, Prowl had Legolas' role in the Fellowship-parody script. When I wrote T2B, I felt Jazz was better suited for the role. Most of the others, though, remained the same (Wheeljack as Gandalf, Starscream as Saruman).
7. Why change the setting to Cybertron instead of keeping it on Middle- Earth?
Because it suited them better. :) Honestly, I figured that would be more creative than just plugging the Transformers into Middle Earth itself and just having them copy everything the real Lord Of The Rings cast did.
8. How did you come up with the Matrix of Conquest?
It's actually not my idea. If you've never heard of the annual Transformers convention BotCon, just go to www.botcon.com for more info. Every year, BotCon offers an exclusive souvenir toy for BotCon goers. One year, they offered a re-paint of Beast Wars Rampage named Shokaract. His Tech Specs profile mentioned him coming across a crystal shard, which housed a sample of Unicron's life force. As a mockery of the Autobot Matrix Of Leadership, he called it the Matrix of Conquest. I only came up with the names "Black Crystal" and "Dark Matrix" as synonyms.
9. Where is Optimus Prime?
Dead. Surprisingly. While he's my favorite Transformer, I didn't have any plans to include him in the story. Instead, I had him in Isildur's role when he defeated Sauron; Prime and Megatron opened their Matrixes in a last- ditch gamble to win the war and let the cards fall where they may. Megatron was destroyed and the Matrix of Conquest shattered, but Prime was too weak to gather the remains to destroy them himself. He died right after that battle. While most of the Dark Matrix was gathered and destroyed by the Autobots, one shard was not found. It would probably have its own story as to how it was found by Punch/Counterpunch. It's just not conceived yet.
10. What's with the song quotes?
A lot of the Elves' flowery speech (i.e. "A red sun rises. Blood has been spilled this night") wouldn't work for TFs to keep them in character (especially Jazz). So I thought up the idea of using appropriate song lyrics that would fit instead; plus it would fit with Jazz's pop-culture- loving personality. And I thought they were fun to stick in. After all, this is just a parody, not a totally serious story.
11. Which continuity does this story fit it? G1 cartoon? G1 comic? Dreamwave G1 comic? Japan?
None, really. While it's not meant to be any kind of continuation of any official TF canon, it's not really an establishment of a new universe, either. Like I said, the birthday scripts for the Padded Cell members were meant to be gifts for the b-day celebrant, usually as just a parody of a favorite non-TF story with TF characters. That would explain why Silverbolt/Treebeard didn't recognize Cliffjumper/Merry and Beachcomber/Pippin in Hangar 13/Fangorn Forest (getting dizzy yet?); or Ironhide taking Bumblebee and Spike prisoner. I did intend to keep the players in character as much as possible, so they'd still be recognizable.
12. What's with Moonracer flirting with someone other than Powerglide?
The story only states that Moonracer and Perceptor were long-time old friends. It never actually said they were an item. ;)
1. "EZBoard Company?" "Padded Cell Productions?" "Cell Birthday Committee?" What are you talking about?
Ah, yes, the "opening credits" of the script. It's a long story, but I'll try to summarize it as best as I can.
Many of you I'm certain is familiar with EZBoard. As for The Padded Cell, it's the name of a TransFan message board that I go to all the time. It's existed since February of 2001, and I was one of its first members. It's very different from most online TF fan communities in that the membership is predominantly female (and I'm in the minority, though I'm very friendly with most of them). If you want to visit, you'll have to e-mail me a request for the Padded Cell's link, because FF.net won't allow me to post it up without screwing up my posts. (Believe me, I've tried. MANY times.) But once I give you the link, you can drop by and just take a look around. And feel free to post if you wish.
The Cell Birthday Committee will be explained in the next question.
2. What do you mean by birthday gifts for Princess Artemis and Starseeker?
Since the beginning of the Padded Cell, I usually whipped up a little party post for whenever a CellMate (our name for a Padded Cell member) had a birthday coming up. It usually featured the b-day celebrant's favorite characters, with references to their other favorite things (movies, TV shows, books, etc.). Over the last two years, the party scripts ended up getting bigger and bigger, along with the board's membership. By April of 2002, I couldn't do all the party scripts by myself anymore, so a few CellMates volunteered to share the workload with me. We called ourselves The Birthday Committee. We have about 12 members, some of us more active that others, depending on our real-life situations and creative juices running at the time.
Princess Artemis and Starseeker are two of my best friends, both from the Cell. I've known Seeks - my best friend in the entire galaxy - since October of 2000 and we're super-tight, despite her living in Florida and me in Canada. Princess Artemis first joined the Cell around late summer of 2002, and she and I became close friends surprisingly fast as well. Both Seeks and PA are huge Tolkein fans, as you've figured. So when T2T hit theaters around Christmas of 2002, I already knew what I was going to write for their birthdays. With the whole movie being so big, I had no choice but to cut it in two halves, one for PA, and the other for Seeks. Even then, both parts were LOOONG to write out.!
3. Who's playing who?
There's a "cast list" of sorts posted up.
4. If your story is already completed, why not post the whole thing right away?
I found out after posting the script onto the Cell that, with a project that big, even a few tiny missed words can sneak in. It's like trying to make sure you're baking the perfect wedding cake by yourself, and you fail to notice you accidentally spilt a chocolate chip in the batter mix. So I'm doing a few more thorough spot checks when time permits, and I'll have it posted up when they're as close to perfect as I cam possibly make them.
5. Any plans on making a TF version of Fellowship of the Ring?
Not right away. What are you trying to do, kill me?! :O
6. Did you come up with the entire casting by yourself?
No. There was another b-day during the summer of 2001. My co-captain in the Birthday Committee, codenamed Iespyk (pronounced "icepick"), made a TF parody of the first half of Fellowship of the Ring. He and I worked on the casting together, with a little help from Starseeker. Iespyk came up with the idea of TF subgroups (official or unofficial) as the different Middle- Earth races. However, since the favorite characters of this particular birthday girl were the Dinobots, they were cast as the Hobbits instead. When I made "The Two Bases", I decided to switch things around a bit so that the size and personality parallels would be more accurate.
Some of the individual characters were changed to suit the parallel personalities better as well. For instance, Prowl had Legolas' role in the Fellowship-parody script. When I wrote T2B, I felt Jazz was better suited for the role. Most of the others, though, remained the same (Wheeljack as Gandalf, Starscream as Saruman).
7. Why change the setting to Cybertron instead of keeping it on Middle- Earth?
Because it suited them better. :) Honestly, I figured that would be more creative than just plugging the Transformers into Middle Earth itself and just having them copy everything the real Lord Of The Rings cast did.
8. How did you come up with the Matrix of Conquest?
It's actually not my idea. If you've never heard of the annual Transformers convention BotCon, just go to www.botcon.com for more info. Every year, BotCon offers an exclusive souvenir toy for BotCon goers. One year, they offered a re-paint of Beast Wars Rampage named Shokaract. His Tech Specs profile mentioned him coming across a crystal shard, which housed a sample of Unicron's life force. As a mockery of the Autobot Matrix Of Leadership, he called it the Matrix of Conquest. I only came up with the names "Black Crystal" and "Dark Matrix" as synonyms.
9. Where is Optimus Prime?
Dead. Surprisingly. While he's my favorite Transformer, I didn't have any plans to include him in the story. Instead, I had him in Isildur's role when he defeated Sauron; Prime and Megatron opened their Matrixes in a last- ditch gamble to win the war and let the cards fall where they may. Megatron was destroyed and the Matrix of Conquest shattered, but Prime was too weak to gather the remains to destroy them himself. He died right after that battle. While most of the Dark Matrix was gathered and destroyed by the Autobots, one shard was not found. It would probably have its own story as to how it was found by Punch/Counterpunch. It's just not conceived yet.
10. What's with the song quotes?
A lot of the Elves' flowery speech (i.e. "A red sun rises. Blood has been spilled this night") wouldn't work for TFs to keep them in character (especially Jazz). So I thought up the idea of using appropriate song lyrics that would fit instead; plus it would fit with Jazz's pop-culture- loving personality. And I thought they were fun to stick in. After all, this is just a parody, not a totally serious story.
11. Which continuity does this story fit it? G1 cartoon? G1 comic? Dreamwave G1 comic? Japan?
None, really. While it's not meant to be any kind of continuation of any official TF canon, it's not really an establishment of a new universe, either. Like I said, the birthday scripts for the Padded Cell members were meant to be gifts for the b-day celebrant, usually as just a parody of a favorite non-TF story with TF characters. That would explain why Silverbolt/Treebeard didn't recognize Cliffjumper/Merry and Beachcomber/Pippin in Hangar 13/Fangorn Forest (getting dizzy yet?); or Ironhide taking Bumblebee and Spike prisoner. I did intend to keep the players in character as much as possible, so they'd still be recognizable.
12. What's with Moonracer flirting with someone other than Powerglide?
The story only states that Moonracer and Perceptor were long-time old friends. It never actually said they were an item. ;)