#howlback

What We Know About Howlback in (various) Canon(s):

Howlback's first appearance was as an e-Hobby collectible toy released only on the Japanese market in 2005. This toy was not associated with any Japanese manga, anime or radio play. They just decided they wanted to release a new, cool cassette cat. At least Glit got to be in KP, even if he was only in the manga and never in the radio drama! But Glit didn't show up until 2007.

She was a redeco of G1 Ravage in blue and her partner, Garboil, was a redeco of G1 Laserbeak. They were sold as a set. She was the captain of the Cobalt Sentries, the public safety wing of the Decepticon military/secret police.

("No, ACAB does not stand for 'Assigned Cat At Birth'.")

We are told that she has multitracking missiles and an energy barrier that allows her to absorb and redirect energy-based weapon attacks. This is called the "Feedbacker Shield" and the word Howlback is actually a word for audio feedback.

(I'm going to be a bit perfunctory here because I'm not going to retype her entire TFWiki entry, which is here: https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Howlback_(G1) )

Some of the interesting things about Howlback are:

she carries herself with an aloof and "elegant" air and is a bit of a stone-cold killer

she's frequently trans (in one unnamed universe, she was built male and transitioned socially but not physically to female, per Vector Sigma; in the Marvel universe she was assigned neuter at creation and decided/figured out that she was female)

she is the first MTF transformer who gets to be normal about it

she has a sense of fair play and dislikes being ganged up on

David Willis thinks she's Renee Montoya, at least in SG-Verse

In at least one universe, Arcee knows her well enough to have a good opinion of her, possibly because they are both trans ladies

In the TFP verse she was once partnered with Barricade, which has got to have been hilarious given the size difference. (You know that in VOS this probably means they fucked at some point in time because in VOS it's absolutely canon that she is a worse size queen than Ravage and the other cougaraiders put together. ESPECIALLY since he was a gladiator and she was a bit of a pit bunny.)

However, neither she nor Garboil (it's not said in TFP whether she and Garboil worked with Barricade together, or separately) liked working with him enough not to ask for a transfer.

In the IDW 2005 universe, she was a prisoner at Garrus-9. This is especially interesting given that her original toy version carried a very detailed map of Fortress Maximus' vulnerabilities.

After escaping from G-9, Shockwave tried to trade her to Tarn for his own life, which I've always thought might be why @polyhexian (I think) once wrote her as a DJD reservist.

Her other officially produced toy was produced for the Bumblebee movie, even though we didn't see her in it. It was a redeco of Titans Return Ravage, which meant she got to have wings.

She worked for Clench in IDW 2019 (can this girl stay away from gladiators? no. no she cannot)

She was one of Ravage's clones in the Transformers tabletop RPG, where they misgender her. Instead of a cassette alt mode they give her a humanoid robot root mode. (Of course we also get to see Ravage with a humanoid robot root mode--albeit, cat-headed--very briefly in one of the IDW 2005 comics, which isn't surprising, given that in the IDW 2005 comics there is no evidence whatsoever that cassettification is a natural alt-mode rather than a punitive forced reformat, like empurata.)

Part Two:

Howlback in Voice of Stanix and adjacent fic (Primax 1020.27 Iota) canon:

So, if you've read my fanfiction, you're probably aware that Howlback, Ravage, Stalker, Glit, Stripes and Pounce were experimental models produced by crossbreeding an extinct predacon with a Quint-era "entertainment" model. Garboil, Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, Squawktalk, Sundor and Wingspan were produced by crossbreeding an extinct predacon with a Quint-era small fighter plane model, and they were created in cat & bird pairs designed to work together. The bird was meant to scout and guard the cat, who was meant to do infiltration and psych ops, because according to some of Ravage's earliest G1-era technical specifications, she was supposed to have been incredibly intelligent and meant for infiltration and spec ops, even though they rarely showed this in the cartoon.

Originally I thought they were all the same age exactly but I've come to infer based on their behaviour and personalities that this probably isn't the case; some of them seem markedly more mature than the others at the time at which the experiment was decommissioned and the mecha sold off under the table for costs. I'm guessing that because they were predacons they had to be allowed to be sparklings for a little while and couldn't just be built completely at adult size.

Ravage and Laserbeak are actually one of the youngest pairs. The oldest ones were Pounce, Wingspan, Howlback, and Garboil.

Just as Ravage, Stalker, Buzzsaw and Laserbeak were sold to Ratbat, a major investor in the project, and Glit and Squawktalk were sold to the family that produced Starscream and Pharma and sent to look after Pharma while she was in school in Iacon (which is how they ended up with Ratchet, who got them in the disjunction), and Sundor and Stripes were sold to the Primal Censor (which is how they ended up with Blaster), and Pounce and Wingspan were sold to an Urayan brothel (which is how Pounce ended up becoming Leozack and Lyzack's mom), Howlback and Garboil were sold to....

Iaconian Metaforensics.

This is how Howlback got mixed up in the clusterfuck of weird situationships and relationships that existed between Arcee, Prowl, and Tumbler (Chromedome).

Ironically, even though Grimlock was formerly involved with Arcee, who sired several Dynobots who weren't his brothers on him, that's not how she met him. That happened as a result of her work with the Decepticons and her gladiator "problem". Grimlock's past relationship with Arcee was much longer ago than that, and dated to when she and her brother Galvatron were still sort of on good terms.

(Grimlock is way, way, way older than Howlback. He felt bad about it once, but not for very long, because she was already banging Prowl when he met her...)

Prowl taught Howlback how to be a cop. (In point of fact there are some very uncomfortable parallels between Sentinel/Tumbler/Prowl ==> Prowl/Howlback and Terminus/Megatron ==> Megatron/Ravage that I didn't realise until I wrote the end of Every Day Is a Winding Road. Right down to the part where Megatron thinks he seduced Terminus and Howlback...probably actually did seduce Prowl. There is also a very hilarious parallel between Prowlback and Agent Cooper and Diane that is only incidentally @breakdownsbuttlights' fault...)

On the other hand Howlback is aromantic (but not ace) and Ravage is very definitely not aromantic, lol. Howlback has become attached to several of her sexual partners but there is absolutely no romance/limerence/idealisation there whatsoever.

(I'm not sure cougaraiders are ever ace. If they are, it's in later generations, because none of the original six were.)

Grimlock/Howlback, like Vos aka Forestock/Leozack, was not a ship I planned. I knew that she remembered him from Garrus-9, if only because Grimlock is not a person you easily forget, but I did not realise how deeply bonded they became during that traumatic time until I started writing Designs and Persuasions.

They were wildly sexually attracted to one another when they met before the war and incredibly drawn to each other as friends, to the point where he and his brothers and children fell rather quickly into the group of people Howlback considered family, and the point where even though she was furious with him when he worked for the Autobots, she did not write him off. Howlback is ride-or-die for her family (siblings), all eleven of them, even though she sometimes wants to throttle Glit when he's being overbearing and sure that he knows what's best for everyone. That is her job. And Pounce's job. They are the big sisters. (Unlike Ravage, she would still speak to Stripes if she could.)

Prowlback was always intentional, lmao, but they were always using each other, even if they were friendly about it in the beginning.

One of the things I most assuredly identify with Howlback the hardest about is that she has principles deep down inside of herself but she isn't always really sure what they are until she finds out. She probably cares more about "fairness" in the objective sense than I do, maybe, but I'm also not 100% sure. On the other hand she is 3000% more self-sacrificing than I have ever been in my life, lmao.

Howlback, incidentally, had issues with Overlord going back to the gladiator years, but I think I won't spoil that for you if you haven't read about that.

What else did you want to know? I promise not to take a year and a half to answer this time, the last two years have been a bitch--my brother got cancer, and then he got better, but Trump won the election, and then our mother died, and I've been a little unhinged.

Garboil has been Howlback's partner in...crime fighting, anyway...since forever. I wish I knew more about him. He has very little to say. I know Tumbler messed with his head. Perhaps I will find out as I finish the fic. Recovered Light is not done, Year of the Cat is not started, Quintessential isn't even plotted except that I'm sure you can guess what one of the plot points will involve.