Transformers Collectors' Club Prose story: Flames of Yesterday

I'm more of an action-figure-collector type person, but this? This is worthy of being on my wall.

I really enjoyed how Onslaught was written in this prose. And it's nice to see the Combaticons still being themselves, I mean Brawl is Brawl and Swindle is still Swindle even though they are on the side of the bots. I didn't like the end to much, wrapped up to conveniently, but still an enjoyable read.

I find the TFCC Prose very hit and miss.

I've enjoyed the Shattered Glass and Go-bot storys, but the the others haven't captured my interest and this one while starting interesting enough just seemed to drag. By the time Glyph is killed I had already lost interest and only continued reading for the sake of completing it.

Editor wrote:I find the TFCC Prose very hit and miss.

I've enjoyed the Shattered Glass and Go-bot storys, but the the others haven't captured my interest and this one while starting interesting enough just seemed to drag. By the time Glyph is killed I had already lost interest and only continued reading for the sake of completing it.

I've found everything Sepelak and Troop have written to be consistently good, if not top-notch. (With "I, Lowtech" being by far the best story the TFCC's put out, IMHO.) The rest I agree is of varying quality.

I agree, this one started off pretty well, and had some interesting/fun ideas, but it started to feel too meandering and unfocused towards the end.

And lord, the typos, although I heard those hopefully are being fixed soon.

Dear TFCC people,

I humbly offer my editing/proofing skills to you, FOR FREE. Solely so I don't have to run across, in the first two hundred words, 'feint' instead of 'faint' and 'who he towered over' which should be 'whom'. Light does not 'protrude' so there's some faulty...something there.

And this:"And not stop until that job gets done, however, let’s keep the protie gloves on until we can sway the council to the
right way of thinking" is in DIRE need of a semi-colon.

'knock its welder off their feet' should be 'knock its wielder off HIS feet'--and that's just page one!!! (And yes, I'll stop now). (Okay, and the scene ending was flabby and pointless and now I'll stop).

I know, I know: English. It's so hard. Especially when it's like...YOUR NATIVE LANGUAGE?!?!

The dialogue is flat and draggy and sententious (go look that up, authors) and the whole femmebots thing was just a facepalm and a half it was so cliche.

But the real urgh for me was Onslaught. Wow, he had the leadership qualities of a wet sock. I don't mind him being the butt of genderfaily jokes--he does make a great straight man--but he just seemed...castrated to me. And totally not even close to controlling his team. Perhaps I just got too excited because I *heart* the Combaticons precisely for being the most dysfunctional, screwed-up gestalt ever, and I expected more out of them. Like...hello? Vortex? There were at least nods to Blast Off and Swindle and Brawl in characterization (brief nods, but they were there) but Vortex was total cardboard, which in my fanfic writing mind is something like a capital crime.

There's WAAAAAY better fanfic about the Combaticons out there that doesn't resort to AU to cover bad characterization, paper thin plotting, no sense of story arc or internal tension, and, whoa, actually uses proper grammar.

HK, heck, *I've* written better Combaticons stuff.