I love all your Combaticon posts, I’m relatively new to Transformers in general but I can’t get enough of this one paramilitary group of assholes for some reason. I’m curious, since you mentioned not super digging their most popular canon and fan personalities, what are your ideal Combaticons personality and setting-wise? (Sorry if you’ve already made a post on it)
Oh I always love an excuse to talk about the Combaticons haha! I have a fair amount of posts about my headcanons for them, which is under my tag uniend 614.5 iota if you feel like perusing that at all!
I do have a soft spot for their G1 versions, as those were the first ones I was introduced to and basically what all the fan content for them was based on when I became a fan. It's been a while since I've seen more than just the occasional clip, and I never watched season 3 & 4 in their entirety, so a lot of the details are fuzzy for me these days.
But my personal favorite canon iterations are their appearances in the games War for Cybertron and its sequel Fall of Cybertron. The writers for them obviously cared a lot about them as a team, and I will forever be grateful that the creative actually seemed to like them instead of just having a combiner team around as a gimmick or one-off.
Onslaught is a master at strategy and planning. It pays to think ahead and have contingencies. When in a bind, he absolutely can improvise, but it's not his preference. That's when important details can be lost and things can easily take a turn from bad to worse. I think of Ons as generally being off and on the battlefield at a fairly even 50/50 split. They know how valuable it is to be able to have someone giving orders that isn't also dividing their attention by being involved in the fight. But of course, he can hold his own in combat and he needs to be near his team should they require Bruticus. He cares deeply for his team though; they're not merely soldiers for him to order around. He trusts them and their capabilities more than anyone else.
Brawl is competent and shown to be leading a ground assault during the first game. I hate the trope of "big and dumb" he often gets reduced to; it's lazy and uninteresting to me. I'm supposed to believe that someone working under Onslaught for years and years doesn't at least pick up on some of his tactical and strategic thinking? He packs a punch, of course, and he does like getting up close and personal in a fight. But they're not just a dumb brute. I like to think they pretend to be a little socially inept at times when they don't want to talk to people, though they do tend to be blunt just in general. Brawl is like the unofficial second in command to me, by which I mean that if the team splits for whatever reason, Brawl is in charge in Onslaught's stead more often than the others.
Blast Off doesn't get a whole lot of spotlight in the games, but I still enjoyed them! The scene where they fly Swindle into the battlefield, after they do several aerial stunts, is simply the best. He's aloof and standoffish and tends to prefer solitude, yet is part of a gestalt. The easy route is to say he resents it, but to me it's more interesting that he doesn't. That despite how it seems like a recipe for him to hate it all, there's something about it that feels... right. And his altmode needs to be a spacefaring vehicle. You'd think that would be a no brainer, given their name is a thing associated with rockets and space shuttles, but apparently not!
Vortex hides under a mask of nonchalance, sarcasm, and threats. To me, he reads as both deeply paranoid and insecure; he struggles with social situations involving others outside his team. He doesn't know what to do with emotions that aren't "easy". He lashes out quickly, because it's safer to be on the defensive than risk being caught unaware and hurt for it. He's touch averse, even with his teammates, but they're able to gauge if/when he will tolerate it. In my headcanon backstory for him, Vortex basically didn't get to grow up or develop properly, so that affects him to this day. Despite all that, or maybe because of it, they're fiercely loyal to their team. They're a little bit like "only I can mess with them!!", because they absolutely are a shithead at times, but they cares for their team deeply.
Swindle... he's better with a team. Canon loves to separate him from the others, even when they're around, and I hate it! He doesn't value money or material objects over his teammates. Honestly, I think some of the ways he's depicted as greedy just don't make sense to me? Why does he care about money on Cybertron during the war when the government has collapsed and there's literally no commerce to speak of? So to me, that means that Swindle trades in information or is willing to barter with useful tech or supplies. Actual money isn't their number one goal; they want connections and favors and future opportunities. That's what has value (but money is still very useful in certain contexts). Also, with his munitions expertise and how he's described as being a jack-of-all-trades, he's kind of a nerd! Swindle has a wide breadth of knowledge, and people should capitalize on that more.
Bruticus, like Brawl, often is reduced to "big and dumb". Making all of the Decepticon combiners have "dumb" as a defining trait is just... boring. Like, just look at his components. He should absolutely be good at manipulation and lying! I enjoyed how FOC let him speak in full sentences and didn't have him talk in third person. And his flame thrower!!! lol, I have too much fun with that. Anyway, my headcanon for the team involves them all opting into being made into a gestalt, so while it's definitely something that takes a lot of adjusting to, they don't resent it or Bruticus. After the Detention Center and loyalty coding, Bruticus struggles with his sense of self. It's almost easier to think of himself as just a weapon or only useful for combat. His components worry about him and do their best to help.
I could keep rambling about them forever, but this is already so long lmao! As I mentioned in that other post from earlier today, I made an rp blog for these guys a long time ago, so most of my thoughts and ideas about them stem from the interactions I've had and the writing I've done over there. To me, the Combaticons are a close-knit team who've been through a lot of shit together, yet have also survived together. You cannot hope to tear them apart without a fight.
