It's no problem. Armada Thrust gets so little respect and not a lot of fan art at all, so I was very happy to see your work.

He is actually my favorite Armada Transformer for a rather bizarre reason: his alternate mode. You see, I believe Armada Thrust was the first Transformer ever to adopt the infamous Joint Strike Fighter, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, as his alternate mode.

(Specifically, he is the upcoming F-35B variant ordered by the U.S. Marine Corps fighter wings to replace the Harrier jump jets they're currently using. You can tell because of the vertical lift fan engine behind Thrust's cockpit block - that's the hallmark of the F-35B and what allows it to make takeoffs and landings without a runway, the #1 quality the Marines prize in a fighter plane.)

This means a lot to me, because as a lifelong military history and technology geek, I have followed the development of this aircraft ever since the design competition between the then X-35 and Boeing's X-32 (which I called the "ugly guppy") began back in 1996.

(The Joint Strike Fighter project is the real-life equivalent of a phenomenon we see all the time in mecha anime like Macross and Gundam: use simple variants of one machine to fulfill most needs of all your armed forces. The USAF gets one, the USMC gets one, and the Navy gets one. It's hoped that having all of our forces replace their own planes with this design will help to make operations more streamlined and cost-effective.)

Of course, since then, we've seen another F-35 in Transformers; Breakway and his retool, Thrust (modeled on G1 Thrust) transform into F-35's. Their forms are more accurate to the real airplane than Armada Thrust's, but the Armada toy's playability, sci-fi looks, and the character's somewhat sad fate cause me to still like him the most!

Sorry if that was too long, but I wanted to explain to you why I was so glad you did that artwork. ^_^;

--
"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."
-J.R.R. Tolkien

It's no problem. I thought your little story was quite cute and had a sort of blend between the adventurousness and seriousness of Star Trek with the atmosphere you get from a lot of good "school life" anime... which is sort of what I had always imagined a good Starfleet Academy piece would be like.

I love the way you introduced Mr. Chekov - you didn't make him overly cutesy or overly neurotic or act like a little boy and you didn't dwell on him too much but you nailed the aspects of him that we were introduced to in ST:09 and even demonstrated your TOS knowledge by mentioning Sean Finnegan.

Furthermore, your character is believable and while clearly good at what she does, she is also definitely *not* a Mary-Sue, something that's hard for a lot of people creating original characters to do. Heck, the term "Mary-Sue" actually comes from the world of Star Trek fanfiction to begin with!

So, yep, I definitely wanted to add that one to my faves list. ^_^

--
"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."
-J.R.R. Tolkien

No problem. That's a great logo, by the way!

--
"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."
-J.R.R. Tolkien

No problem. I love your work!

--
"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."
-J.R.R. Tolkien