#mae catt

Brainstorm, Perceptor, Ratchet, Prowl, Chromedome, Rewind, Drift, Cyclonus, Tailgate, Blast Off, Crankcase, Ten, Onslaught, Swerve, and Pipes are gay in IDW

Arcee, Lug, Anode, Aileron, Jumpstream, Greenlight, Lancer, and Dust Up are lesbians in IDW

Windblade and Strongarm are lesbians in Shattered Glass

Skids, Roller, and Nickel are bisexual in IDW

Knockout is gay in Transformers Prime and in IDW

Breakdown is either bi or pan in Transformers Prime bcuz he's hinted at being more than just friends with Knockout and also says that he thinks Airachnid is attractive

Mirage is gay in Energon

Cyberverse designers decided to slap the gay pride flag on Hot Rod just because they could. "It might not have been purposful-" there are groups of people who work on designs, so at least ONE of them would've recognized it as the gay pride flag and would've said something. If they didn't want it to be the gay pride flag, they would've changed the colors, especially since the blues and whites clash against Hot Rod's red and orange color schemes. Plus, queer people were working on that show. It was definitely purposeful.

Sideburn in RID 2001 is HEAVILY implied to be pan, as he flirts with red sports cars no matter the gender, faction, or sentience. He even ends up flirting with Megatron when he disguised himself as a red sports car and, when he found out it was Megatron, he wasn't dissapointed that it was Megatron; he was disappointed that Megatron was ugly. Even then, he still proceeded to ask if Megatron kidnapping him would mean that their date was off (Robots in Disguise 2001, episode 7)

Arcee, Anode, Lug, and Howlback are all transgender in IDW

Arcee was supposed to be transgender in Earthspark but Hasbro wouldn't let them. Still, many of the writers headcanoned her as being trans

Airachidis is a trans man

Shredhead is nonbinary

Screwball in Beastwars Uprising uses neopronouns

Acid Storm is gender fluid in Cyberverse

Rodimus Prime, Whirl, Ultra Magnus, Megatron, Springarm, First Aid, Cerebros, Fortress Maximus, Tarantulas, Swerve, Proxima, and Dominus Ambus are all LGBT in IDW(not confirmed which specific sexuality, but they fall under that umbrella)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've seen, most of the canon romantic relationships in the comics are between two characters of the same gender. This is because art is an INCREDIBLY queer space, and if artists are given enough freedom, they WILL make everything gay.

It also makes sense lore-wise, too. 12/13 Cybertronians are male in canon, and a lot of their populations are heavily skewered to one gender (Cybertron being mostly male and Caminus being mostly female, as an example), so most end up dating and being attracted to bots of the same gender. Even if they're not gay, gender doesn't work the same way for them as it does humans and attraction isn't often tied to gender because 1) they're robots and 2) how can your sexuality be tied to gender if you had no idea there were other genders, or the other genders have been gone for so long that they're basically not relevant to your society? They don't think, "That's an attractive man/woman," but they do think "that's an attractive transformer" because the gender doesn't often matter to them. Hell, Cybertron has so little woman that most bots there assume everyone is male and still flirt with anyone regardless of gender bcuz they don't know women exist, and they don't have terms like "bisexual/gay" because gender hasn't even been a concept for most of them.

An example of their little care to gender when it comes to attraction would be Pipes, who talks about wanting to be in a relationship with someone on the ship and his type and how he wants them to have "a big chestplate." Haha, yes, we all make jokes about him being a titties guy, but Pipes is gay and said that on a of all male transformers because bots don't tend to have gender-specific attraction when it comes to physical appearances. Bcuz this can be difficult for some people to grasp, imagine this: humans have no sexual dimorphism. Men and women look the same no matter what, and the only way to tell is through pronouns. You couldn't look for gender specific things (like boobs) to be attracted to because no one has that, and everyone looks the same no matter the gender. Sure, some people are still gay or straight and prefer to be in relationships with specific genders, but the only way to tell someone's gender is if you ask. That's basically the Transformers.

Basically; the default sexuality for them is bisexual/omnisexual with no focus on gender whatsoever and, if they're not bisexual or omnisexual, than they're most often gay bcuz a very skewered gendered society is what they know and are used to. Sexuality isn't seen as an identity like it is for humans, but as a prefernce. Also, most of these comics were from 2005, 2008, 20014, and 20019. They've been like this FOREVER

Chromedome and Rewind are in a gay relationship (IDW)

Rewind was conjunxed (married) to Dominus Ambus before he met Chromedome

Chromedome and Prowl are exes (IDW)

Idk much about it bcuz I haven't reached that part yet, but Tarantulas was weirdly OBSESSED with Prowl and, from the panels I've seen, it looks like the most toxic + dubious + creepy yaoi I have ever seen (IDW)

Prowl formed a gestalt bond with the Constructicons, who are completely devoted to him, and they act like a polycuel (IDW)

Drift and Ratchet are in a gay relationship (IDW)

Blast-Off and Onslaught are in a gay relationship (IDW)

Rodimus Prime and Drift were confirmed to be "friends with benefits," and Rodimus was a tad jealous when Drift and Ratchet first got together (IDW)

Greenlight and Lancer are in a lesbian relationship (IDW)

Cyclonus and Tailgate are shown to be in a gay relationship (IDW). It was confirmed in the script notes that they are in a gay polyamorous relationship with Whirl as well

Anode and Lug are in an (absolutely adorable) lesbian and t4t relationship (t4t means both people in the relationship are transgender, if you are the homophobic or transphobic fan this was sent to btw (IDW)

Brainstorm was so down-bad for a guy that he invented time travel and almost got everyone killed just to stop his crush from dying (all this for a guy who didn't even like him back, btw 💔💀, (IDW)

Brainstorm had a crush on Perceptor throughout MTMTE, and the two ended up getting into a relationship

Knockout and Breakdown are in a gay relationship in IDW. You can also argue that they were more than just friends in Prime as well, but nothing has been confirmed

Dust-Up and Jumpstream are in a lesbian relationship (IDW)

Arcee and Greenlight are in a lesbian relationship (IDW g2)

Swerve has a celebrity crush on Blurr (IDW)

First Aid has a crush on Springer (IDW)

Cerebros, Fortress Maximus, and Red Alert were all confirmed to be in a poly relationship (IDW)

Ultra Magnus and Megatron had a ship tease in MTMTE, JRO confirmed that they were suppossed to get together, and Rodimhs thinks that they're a couple (IDW)

Mirage had an unrequited crush on Galvatron in Energon

Windblade and Strongarm are in a lesbian relationship in Shattered Glass

The first on-screen mouth-to-mouth kiss in the Transformers franchise was between a transgender lesbian and her girlfriend (Arcee and Aileron)

In IDW, Rung got in trouble for getting with a patient as a doctor, and, at the time, the only known Cybertronians in the comic lore were male, meaning that he is queer, and if Rung is queer, that means PRIMUS HIMSELF is queer

EVERYONE has a crush on Thunderclash (IDW)

Pipes has flirted with Drift, has shown interest in Tailgate, and has a crush on Riptide

Skids flirted with Firestar, not realizing that "he" was actually a "she," but still showed interest in her even after finding out she was a girl (happy bisexual to Skids and Skids only)

Ten had a crush on Ultra Magnus

Proxima is married to a woman

Nickel had a girlfriend back on her planet

Scorponok got pregnant in IDW bcuz male pregnancy is a staple of fandom, I guess

They're not Transformers, but Cain and Akira from Transformers Zone are in a gay relationship

Blackairachnia's design in Beastwars was based off a stripper

Blackairachnia in the WFC trilogy talks about how she thinks Arcee looks cute and also flirts with Airazor

Blackairachnia could be her own category, honestly. Istg, every version of Blackairachnia I've seen had the goal of making her as horny and bisexual as possible

In Transformers Rescue Bots, Blades is shown to happily cross-dress when he switches bodies with Dani

There are two jokes about Mirage in ROTB describing sex-acts with Noah ("Work friends?! You've been inside me!" "Just don't ask what part of my body it came from...")

Wheeljack in TFP made a joke about fucking Ultra Magnus's ship (or, since some bots stay in alt mode to help out other bots, straight-up imply that he DID fuck his ship 💀)

In Transformers Prime, Arcee makes a joke about Wheeljack being Bulkhead's boyfriend, to which Bulkhead just laughs and doesn't deny anything, which leaves them being in a relationship open to interpretation

In Transformers Prime, Wheeljack flirts with Ratchet and calls him "Sunshine"

Wheeljack in TFP seems like he was written by someone who either really wanted to fuck him or really wanted to have him fuck Ratchet and/or Bulkhead

In Transformer Prime, Knockout's first introduction to Team Prime was him cat-calling Optimus and complimenting him by saying he was "heavy duty" and then also calling Breakdown heavy duty. Not only was he calling Optimus and also said that Breakdown was hot in the same damn breath

In Transformers Prime, Knockout says that he admires Starscream's finish (basically calling him attractive), but says that "He's no Breakdown."

In Transformers Rescue Bots, Chase has to explain the concept of male and female to Blurr and Salvage, showing that gender is a choice for them and not defined by any sense of biological sex

In Transformers Rescue Bots, Blades is implied to have a bit (a lot) of a celebrity crush on Bumblebee; wanting to impress him, hugging him a lot, getting flustered around him, checking him out, and making his own goddamn team name, which is also happens to be their ship name. Bumblebee is pretty receptive towards it and even uses their ship name as well

Back to Cybetronians X Humans: When talking about Energon Eaters, Blades says that Energon Eaters are scarier than vampires because "They don't brood handsomely", which implies that he finds human men attractive

In Transformers Earthspark, one of the first things Hashtag did when she was born was think about yuri between her and Skywarp. She is also implied to have a crush on Elita 1 (staring at her when she works out, having the typical daydreamy voice and sighing as she tells Elita how cool she is) so she's probably into women

They had Chop Shop hump Elita's leg in Cyberworld (for some reason???)

An animator on the TFA animation team decided to make Bumblebee blush when Prowl was on top of him. It was notable enough for the director to try and find who did it, but since it didn't take away from the plot, they just decided to keep it

One guy on the Beast Wars animation team became so horny over a bot that he drew him with his spike out

The TFP designers all agreed that Knokout was "the sexiest bot they had ever seen" and then allowed him to try and seduce every damn mech on the show.

James Roberts, an author for IDW, wrote a 300 paged fanfiction of Soundwave getting pregnant

James Roberts in general. Seriously, his tweets about Transformers are batshit insane and I cannot POSSIBLY out everything he says on this post. I still recommend you read them though, they're funny

Mae Catt, a queer person who goes by she/her and they/them, wrote scripts for Cyberverse and Earthspark. She also referred to themselves as "THE GAY AGENDA" when describing their goals for Earthspark

Mae Catt kept saying Dead End x Perceptor ship bait during streams

Mae Catt said that she ships MegaOp

Travis Artz, the voice of Hot Rod in Transformers Cyberverse, ships Hot Rod and Soundwave (then again, who on that show didn't???). He also ships Bumblebee and Hot Rod on Cyberverse

Brian Tyree Henry, the voice of D-16/Megatron in Transformers One, talked about how hot he thought Megatron looked

When asked in an interview why Megatron's name was D-16, Brian Tyree Henry made a joke saying that there's a G-rated reason and an M-rated reason (implying that Megatron's dick is 16 inches)

John Cena, the actor who played Agent Burns in the Bumblebee movie, said that he thought both Blackairachnia and Tarantulas were hot

Rachel Stevens is a transgender lesbian who worked on the Lost Light comics as a consultant. She also contributes to the wiki a lot under the username "antimatter" :)

Evan Micheal Lee, the voice of Jazz in Transformers One, is a gay man

Sue Blu is a lesbian and voices Arcee, Marissa Faireborn, and Beta in g1, Arcee and Flareup in animated, and Transmute in Beast Wars. She was also a voice director in Transformers Prime (this woman is so iconic I love her sm)

Parvesh Cheena, the voice of Blades in Transformers Rescue Bots, is a gay man

Tiana Camacho, the voice of Frenzy in Transformers Earthspark, goes by she/they pronouns

Daran Norris, the voice of Knockout in Transformers Prime, is bisexual

George Takei, the voice of Master Yoketron in Transformers Animated and Alpha Trion in Transformers Prime, is a gay man (seeing old queer people makes me so happy 😭)

Mairghead Scott, the writer for the IDW Windblade comic series, was the first woman to write an official Transformers comic book series. She was also a writer on Transformers Prime, Rescue Bots, and wrote an episode for Transformers Cyberverse. She is also bisexual

Erica Lindbeck, the voice of Windblade in season 3 of Robots In Disguise (2015) is bisexual (I KNEW I RECOGNIZED HER FROM SOMEWHERE! SHE ALSO VOICES LOONA IN HELLUVA BOSS AND EMIRA IN OWL HOUSE!)

Sam Maggs, the creator of the character known as "Gauge," a writer for Transformers: Galaxies and My Little Pony X Transformers, is a lesbian

Colman Domingo, the voice of Unicron in Rise of the Beasts, is a gay man

Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, the voice of Nightbird in Rise of the Beasts, is a transgender woman

Marc Swint, the voice of Soundwave in Cyberverse, is bisexual

Z Infante, the voice of Nightshade in Earthspark, is nonbinary

Jaime Lamchick, the voice of Arcee, Acid Storm, Chromia, Nightbird, and Alpha Strike in Cyberverse, is genderqueer and bisexual

Kei Zama, an artist for IDW who is known for their work on the Optimus Prime comic series, is nonbinary

Sara Pitre-Durocher, an illustrator and game concept artist who is known for her work on the Transformers Legends game and the "Till All Are One" series, is a queer transgender woman

Jack Lawrence, an artist for IDW, is a queer man

Saren Stone, an artist for IDW known for their cover illustrations, is nonbinary

When asked, "How many times have Rodimus and Drift slapped each other's asses?" JRO said that he couldn't answer that because he signed an NDA (implying that it was many times but Hasbro won't let him confirm)

The official Transformers Insta posted art of MegaOp

The team for the Prime Wars Trilogy decided to make a sexy poster to promote Titans Return

James Roberts has joked about Swerve dating Ryan Reynolds

Honestly, once you research how policing queer media and people's sexual expressions has been used to subjugate people and reinforce puritanical, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic beliefs for thousands of years, it's super hard NOT to be upset at policing of people's interests and fandoms. As long as no one is getting hurt (and no, kids seeing gay people holding hands or knowing about the existence of trans people doesn't count as getting hurt as there is no evidence to prove psychological damage, and most people who make art depicting sex actively discourage children interacting with the art and it is not the fault of the artist for children accidently seeing their art and policing art and sexuality does a lot more harm than good, and parents should just watch their damn kids if they don't want them exposed to sex at a young age) it's fine.

And believe me; no one is getting hurt because an alien robot goes by they/them pronouns or because a teenager on Twitter posted their drawing of Optimus and Megatron holding hands. 

Q: Megop rights?

“Oh absolutely, duh.”

Q: What does Optimus do when he’s not giving speeches / being a leader when they were all hanging out on the ARK?

I think he reads, he seems like a heavy reader. It’d be cute if he read really bad Earth romance novels. He seems like a guy who needs a break from everything.

Q: Does Optimus have hobbies?

Not to borrow from Rung, but doesn’t it seem like Optimus would make model ships? Very quiet, very focused detail-oriented hobby. *pauses* Oh duh, he also plays basketball.

Q: How did the Decepticons learn to stream? 

Because they’re deceptive! Megatron knew he should dedicate some time to winning the hearts and minds of humans. Starscreams’ funeral was not the first time they streamed. Optimus would use the official media channels (like the news), not a streaming service. Megatron would try to speak more directly to the people.

Q: Is Optimus the type of streamer who would take 10 minutes to figure out how to un-mute his microphone?

Optimus is a dad. He has no idea what’s going on with streaming. Optimus would say embarrassing things while Bee and Hot Rod were in the middle of streaming something.

Q: Is Megatron dead?

In discussions we wanted to kill him. We wanted to do a reverse Optimus death. However, in the final product, I kinda enjoy the ambiguity rather than the final decision. Can’t remember if we were decisive about that in the script.

Q: Did the Titan mind Decepticons living in them?

The Titans want to be cities. They want citizens. They want to be lived in, that brings them joy.

Q: Does Megatron do anything for fun or is he too angry?

I want to say he’s too angry, he has fun beating people down but I don’t think he’s had fun for a long time.

Q: How would you feel about a female Optimus Prime? 

[GAY LAUGHTER] 

The question is: do you turn Optimus Prime into a woman, or do you take characters like Elita One and uplift her? I would want to lean more into giving Elita One more oomph, I do love how Optimus doubts himself and if he’s worthy of being a Prime.

(Mae Catt talked a lot about representation and later mentioned how there's more pressure to write the girl characters well, especially because of the need for better representation. They wanted more girls in the show, and they planned to have Jazz be a girl).

Q: Elita prime when?

All the time, in my heart!

Q: Did you plan to have ___ character in the show?

Almost every character was discussed at least once. 

She really regrets that they didn’t get to have Beast Machine Obsidian or Rumble and Frenzy in the show, and says she would’ve loved a MTMTE-style Ultra Magnus / Minimus and Transmutate. She didn’t know what Obsidian’s personality would be, it was just a “Look how cool he is!” sort of thing.

(Note: We have Mae Catt to thank for Whirl getting into Cyberverse)

Q: What was your favorite episode?

“I Am the AllSpark” because of the Megatron and Starscream dialogue (which she wrote). Also S2 04 Soundwave and Shockwave.

I enjoyed writing Starscream most, Clobber and Hot Rod became a joy, S2 E4 was my first episode, and it was fun getting into Hot Rod’s voice. It was hard doing Optimus’ voice, I’d always pass it off to someone to look at it.

Q: Did you ever plan to have Hot Rod become Rodimus?

Rodimus was never considered for the show because Optimus dying has been covered to death, but we were adamant about portraying Hot Rod as someone who wanted to be a leader. Hot Rod is someone who is learning to be a leader.

(On that note, when someone asked if she thought Bee would ever become Prime, Mae Catt said:)

I don’t think Bee would be a Prime. Windblade and Hot Rod would be a better Prime. He wouldn’t want to be a Prime. He’s the #2 to Primes!

Q: Did Megatron always plan to return to Cybertron?

Megatron’s priorities changed when he saw his doppelganger. Realizing he was a horrible tyrant, that scared him enough to return and not kill Optimus and make peace no matter what.

Q: Which death hurt you the most?

Starscream. (Slipstream’s hurt too).

We didn’t want to kill people off willy-nilly for shock value, but in certain instances it made sense. Like, the audience will fall in love with Slipstream because she’s becoming good, so she has to die. (She apologized for that sounding harsh). We killed Prowl because it was Shadow Striker doing the killing and he’s a self-sacrificing lieutenant. I almost wanted Starscream to emerge from the Judge’s head untouched, but I’m ultimately glad that idea got shot down.

(She circles back to this comment later, so I’m making note of that here since it wasn’t a direct response to a question)

When I was desperately trying to save Starscream’s life even though I brutally murdered Slipstream, I wanted Starscream to have amnesia and have a redeption arc. I wanted him to have a Windblade shard and have it be kind of like Castaway, where the only person he talked to was that (and the shard only had 5 phrases it could say). Eventually Bee would befriend him and he’d wind up with the Autobots.

I wanted to write Starscream kind of like an abuse victim who expects the worst of the Autobots, but I wanted him to warm up slowly to them. I wanted to have a Starscream and Optimus episode where Starscream messes up on something and Optimus is like “you did your best and that’s what counts”, a response which is totally new to Starscream. But obviously we didn’t have time for that.

Regarding redemption arcs (a continuation from the previous question, and a huge highlight from the stream):

Re: the potential for Starscream’s redemption arc “A redemption arc needs to be facilitated by a character acknowledging that what they did was wrong. He would have had a laundry list of excuses for it, even if there was all that evidence to the contrary, but the character needs to acknowledge that reasons don’t matter because people got hurt [by their actions]. [The character] needs to intend to do better. Let them try and let them fail, they don’t need to do a 180, it’s hard work to be a better person.”

NOTE: Mae Catt also made a few more comments re: the idea of a Starscream redemption arc on her Tumblr page.

Q: Did Megatron really kill Starscream?

The Starscream beatdown was super severe and they were like “holy frick they’re really going for it” when they saw the storyboards. According to Maecatt, Megatron didn’t kill Starscream when he slammed him down (which is a bit confusing since the show definitely made it seem like Starscream died). 

Q: Did Drift die? Why was he a double-agent?

According to us, Drift did not make it, but I fully endorse whatever you want. We needed a double-agent, someone who would (seemingly) kill Hot Rod. (She says they went with Drift because of his history in the comics).

(Later on in the stream)

Maybe Drift is alive, maybe he’s rethinking his decision and he’ll come back later. Drift would’ve been helpful in S3 for sure, maybe he’d come back with Repugnis or something.

Q: Why are you so mean to Percy? 

He's so mature and pragmatic that he can take it, and is willing to take one for the team bc he understands that it's what he needs to do. (In response to someone’s comment about his personality) Yes, he’s calmly feral.

Q: Is Skullcruncher Percy's bouncer now that he's running Maccadam's? 

Oh totally.

(She later mentions that Percy has permanently taken over Maccadam’s. Also: Skullcruncher is a lady! She misses Mac, but Percy takes good care of her).

Q: If Tarn is the perfect Decepticon who's the perfect Autobot? 

A firetruck alt mode, and an Autobot insignia as a face. Nat (her fiance) and I talked about it a lot. Optimus SHOULD be a fire truck, it makes the relationship between him and Ratchet a little more fun since Ratchet is an ambulance, and Optimus has an ax. It just makes sense! 

(She agreed that the perfect Autobot would be Thunderclash after the chat said that).

On that note, Mae Catt said they used Tarn for the show because: “OBVIOUSLY (the perfect decepticon) should look like this guy. A faceless mindless Decepticon that only serves Megatron”.

Q:  What sort of documents DID Optimus work on in the archives? 

Probably historical archives and working on stuff about all the Primes. Something like the French / American revolution equivalent, which informed his speech writing for Megatron and his own ethics.

Q: Did you always plan to make Optimus socially awkward? 

We “found” the social awkwardness for Optimus. Optimus was depicted as a father figure in S1 (implying it’s because S1 is from Bee’s perspective), S2 / S3 we were able to explore more and found the limits [writing him] and found it was hard to maintain that level of heroic dialogue. Optimus would feel awkward about it too. Randolph did an impression of Optimus’ speech for the Party Down episode. “[Optimus] can’t not be in war-mode.”

Q: Were Optimus and Megatron ever friends, or did they just work together on the speech stuff? 

Oh hell yes, I think [the story] is always enhanced when they’re friends and when Optimus really believes in what Megatron was working on. Optimus’ rejection of Megatron is what pushes him over the edge, his best friend rejecting him pushes him into a place where he becomes a tyrannical person.

Q: Does Maccadam know we love him? 

Mae Catt: *puts hand over hear heart and looks off into the distance dramatically* Yes.

Q:  What’s the best selfie Arcee’s ever taken? 

I like the one with the giraffe. Or maybe a selfie with some humans. I like the idea of Arcee having a bunch of human friends. 

Q: What do the Transformers think of the Florida Man? 

They can’t really tell the difference between humans, they don’t really get it. It just sorta looks like all the normal stuff they see on Earth (or something). 

Q: Who’s the Florida Man of the Transformers? 

Rack ‘n Ruin. But he’s too nice. Hmmm.

Q: What was most important to you personally to put out in each episode? Like humor/characterization/arcs 

I wanted to make sure I didn’t write dialogue that was condescending to kids, wanted to be true about the character. Dialogue needs to be true to the characters, and gay. (Laughs)

Q: Do Transformers know what memes are?

They know what they ARE, but they don’t get it. We wanted Hot Rod to be super into Earth culture (winning races and driving off before humans could realize no one was in the car), but we never had time to really get into that.

Q: What music does Soundwave like?

We had a cut joke from S2 E5 [where Megatron and Optimus are popping through portals all around the world trying to find the All Spark] . Soundwave pops into Brazil where there’s a music festival and he crashes the concert and hang out. He likes EDM the most? 

His favorite song is Despacito. He thinks its so sad.

Q: Were you surprised that Jake Tillman was in his 20s listening to his Optimus voice the first time?

She apparently listened to his vines a lot when he was in his teens so meeting up again like that was a cool coincidence. 

Q: What other dimensions or places did you want to be in the show?

I would’ve liked to have the other Transformers series show up (TFP, TFA, G1, Shattered Glass) but we don’t have those assets or budget. 

“This will quickly become unclear to audiences who aren’t (you people).” They couldn’t have all these references when some of their audience wouldn’t get it. 

Q: What about ____ ship?

Mae Catt says she doesn’t want to yuck anybody’s yums. For example, someone asked about Arcee/Grimlock, and while she said she sees them more as friends, she didn’t say they can’t be in a relationship. (Mae Catt also said she doesn’t ship Bee with anyone because she sees him as a little brother).

As she said several times in the stream, “Don’t take things I say as the end-all be-all”!

That being said, she did say she likes Dead End / Perceptor and Windblade / Slipstream.

Q: Why are there no humans in the show?

From the show’s conception, there were no plans to include any humans. They didn’t want humans distracting from the Transformers.

Q: Why did the Scientist collect Soundwaves?

He collects Soundwave because Soundwave is COOL! Wouldn’t you collect a single father of 5 who carries them around in his chest?

Why does anyone collect what they collect? “That’s a really angry dad who’s got five children he carries around in him and he plays music. Gotta have that!”

(Later on, she circles back to this question)

All the Other Universe Soundwaves the Scientist collected also had their own Laserbeaks. I wonder if the scientist would’ve taken them out. He might’ve just gotten rid of them.

(And of course, here are the boyfriend questions from the stream:)

Q: Is Dead End a good boyfriend?

Dead End is a work in progress, but maybe Percy is patient enough to get him there

(Mae Catt says she really loves the Deadceptor ship. She knew people would ship it, but she didn’t ship it herself until she saw the fanart for it).

Q: Is Astrotrain a good boyfriend?

No, no...he’s not a good person, really.

Q: Is Percy a good boyfriend?

Absolutely--WAIT HOLD ON. He’s very blunt, he doesn’t mince words, if you can handle his bluntness then you’re good. He is what he is and you have to deal with him.

Q: Is Soundwave a good boyfriend?

Soundwave is not a good boyfriend. He’s a good casual romance but he’s not a good boyfriend. Soundwave would be a terrible listener. He hears a lot but he’d tune you out.

Other information tidbits:

- If Thunderclash was in the show he and Jetfire would HATE each other. Thunderclash would be a rival reality star (maybe) to Media Fire.

- Mae Catt said “A lot of intelligent life is inherently mechanical” in space, explaining why so much of the non-Cybertronian life we saw in the show were robots.

- Knock Out was considered for the show, but every Transformer under the sun was discussed at some point in the writer’s room. (Ex: “Rumble and Frenzy are always considered in my heart, but there wasn’t enough time or space or assets to do so”).

- “The brand team had grown up on the toys as we had grown up on the ‘toons, so we just wanted to make the best thing imaginable.”

- They decided Optimus would be in the Other Universe’s Matrix and have a plinth because they wanted to show he was dead. “Logical backflips because he needed to be among the 13 to talk to Windblade.” 

- Dead End’s eyes are white.

- The team wanted Jazz to be a lady (!!!!!!!)  

- These characters have their own lives that we don’t see. Lots of stuff happening between episodes that we don’t always necessarily see.

- Developing Sky-Byte’s character was simultaneous with Jetfire’s character. “We knew we wanted Sky-Byte to be a poet, and we wanted him and Megatron to be chummy”.

- Percy did permanently take over Mac’s bar.  

- Her favorite VA is Jeremy Levy, he’s a really cool guy.

- She thinks Starscream and Cheetor could become (not necessarily friends, but connected?) because of their connection to the All Spark. Mentions how Starscream acknowledge Cheetor as the “Guardian of the Allspark”.

- Mae Catt describes Starscream as an “Awful gremlin” several times.

- Astrotrain and the Insecticons are from Megatron X’s universe.

- She thinks Cliffjumper and Bee wouldn’t get along, solely because of the IDW2 comic stuff. (They had a cut joke about someone telling Bee he should paint himself red and Bee saying, “But then everyone will think I’m Cliffjumper!”).

- Cyberverse got 26 episodes for season 3 because they had the 4-part episode movies.

- Megatron cares about his troops, but not in a way that we would notice that care. 

- AcidStorm is genderfluid. 

-  Cold Construction doesn’t exist in this show. When asked why all the Seekers look the same then, Mae Catt says “Maybe there’s one jet mode all the seekers really like”.

- She loves the idea of Wild Wheel robbing Astrotrain in train-mode, totally Wild West-style.

- One of the things she’s proudest of was turning Lugnut into a gal (and having so much body diversity and gender-neutral designs for a lot of characters). They wanted to include many more girls in Cyberverse (Nickel and Lightbright among them). She also mentioned that  Shadow Striker is taller than Optimus or is his height.

- She describes Cosmos as “R2D2, but a Transformer!”

- Maccadam looking like a buff Rung was just a strange coincidence.

- Blurr really was the fastest.

- Mae Catt says we absolutely SHOULD write fanfic. Fanfiction made her into the writer she is today. She wrote non-stop Matrix fanfic from the age of 12-20 years old. It helped her learn a lot about writing.

- She uses “They” pronouns for Rack ‘n Ruin when referring to both of them, but says that individually they both use “he”.

- She’s really sad that Skywarp didn’t get a speaking line.

- Mae Catt won’t say whether Ratchet finished medical school or not. (She laughed when someone commented "I don’t believe that man has ever been to medical school”). She also says she wants “I choose to believe Ratchet has never been to medical school” on a T-shirt.

- When asked why Rack ‘n Ruin were captains of the Ark in one universe, she says they’re probably the Prime in that one weird universe (lmao).

- She loves the idea that Transformers have siblings / families.

- In a world where they had an unlimited budget, it’d be fun if Cybertronians were constantly shape-shifting and changing their forms. Example: she’d like having Transformers who “grew a beard” and decided to “shave it”.

- She doesn’t understand cycles or astrocycles, she doesn’t understand the weird Transformers time stuff. (mood)

- She loved Beast Wars Inferno, she loved that Inferno called Megatron a Queen. It was played as a joke because the 90s weren’t very socially conscious, but she liked that Megatron never corrected him or beat him down.

- Shockwave altered his spark to have maximum bad vibes to destroy the All Spark.

- She said it’s hard talking about writing a show because you’re designing the experience and you have to make sometimes what sounds like cold and pragmatic decisions (eg: "we need a cold and spunky female”) which sucks, but they need to balance out the show. She says she’d never do that just for the sake of doing it, but it’s part of something that they do need to be aware of while working on a show. “It starts from a weirdly cold pragmatic place, but we try and put truth in it”.

- They didn’t want to have Unicron in the show since he’s the default “big bad”, but if he was in the show, Mae Catt says “If you put the proverbial budget-gun to my head, I’d keep Unicron in planet-mode because it’s more mysterious, but I want both alt modes”.

- Her favorite Megatron is Beast Wars Megatron.

- She doesn’t like Sky Lnxy’s design, it’s creepy. “He talks in the G1 episodes and the voice makes it worse.” She can’t get over his face.

- “I’d love to see more jets [who aren’t our usual gang] and find out all jets are kinda snobby, which explains why Starscream’s the way he is”.

- Everyone on the Autobot side are friends with each other.