bulkheadweek

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Bulkhead Week Day 7

Shattered Glass: And you thought I was done talking about his smarts

In the past, I've characterised SG!Bulkhead as "Onslaught if he was good at his job", but the truth is a little bit more along the lines of "Onslaught if he had no regard for his own safety".

Because the thing is, Bulkhead knows he's not the most useful on the field. He knows he'd be best suited to sit behind a tacmap, putting other people in the line of fire. The most productive use of his skills is playing chess with the lives of other people, knowing that he could save many on his side, and kill even more on the other side. He knows that playing the brute is a waste of his time, and the time of his allies, and frankly he's too obviously clever an enemy for the Decepticons to also kinda think he's wasted out in the field.

He just straight up. Does not fucking care that the Autobots would be otherwise better served with his skills. He does not care if the people he gets his orders from think he's not really applying himself. He will play stupid and refuse to lift a finger to help anyone on his team, unless not helping them gets in the way of the one thing he does want to do -- violence.

How Bulkhead's comrades plan to survive an attack by the Decepticons doesn't matter to him. Arguably, if there's helms to crack, he doesn't care how he will survive an attack by the Decepticons. If he is doing scheming, it's with the goal of getting himself out into the front lines, immediately, because that's where all the Deceptions worth killing are going to be.

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Bulkhead Week Day 6

Crossover: Xenoblade Chronicles X

Xenoblade Chronicles X is still my "oh fuck I made another AU/crossover for this game, goddammit" fandom, and it's largely because I just adore the cast of that game so much.

The Ark crashing on Mira and the Autobots joining forces with BLADE while the Decepticons do some clenched-teeth cooperation with the Ganglion because that's what lets them go punch the Autobots works really well since Mira is also new territory for the Autobots but mostly I want this because I really wanna see Bulkhead & Wheeljack have a big ol' wrassle with a Skell, either one piloted by Doug, Elma, Alexa or by my favourite character, Frye.

Actually, the crossover would in general be an excuse to make the Wreckers interact with Frye! He's got the hotheadedness in common with Wheeljack and the Big Protector Energies in common with Bulkhead, so IDK. I just feel like they would vibe really well. I love using crossovers as an opportunity to create unlikely friendships between characters, and there's just a bunch of people in the XCX cast that Bulkhead would vibe with on the grounds of "loves a good fight" and "is Big Protective", not just Frye -- but Frye is the big one, because he also gets hit with the Comedic Relief wiffle bat instead of being taken seriously by most of the fandom :(

It would also fun to have some human-related combat where Cybertronians aren't at a massive advantage all the time, because BLADE has had to figure out how to fight Ganglion Skells and has been training their own troops on anti-Skell combat. Giving Bulkhead opponents in his own weight class is always a good and fun time, and there's definitely opportunities for that here.

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Bulkhead Week Day 6 - Crossover

When I saw this prompt I'll be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what to do bc uhhh any designs that aren't animated are very hard for me to draw... But then I remembered I have my own cont! @transformersyoungblood !!! So for this prompt I did a concept design for him in it! Below I'll talk about him a bit.

OKAY SO BEING HONEST,,, Bulkhead isnt a very major character in yb, hes more of a background character but that doesnt mean he has No development. As u can see he is a jet [and also has one eye but its not bc he got like the empurata process done on him bc empurata isnt really a thing in yb] and I included a little doodle of the jettwins.

Side note: these are concept designs so I kinda really,,, didnt try with the jettwins bc Im def gonna change their designs later but yeah-

Anyways, the Jettwins are childhood friends with Bulkhead as on the farm all three of them lived on, they used to go flying together! Because of this Bulkhead is pretty widely regarded as the Third jet twin or at least their adopted brother. The jettwins think of him like that and Bulkhead very much loves them like they r his little brothers >w< Besides that I'd say hes mostly like his TFA Counterpart, hes sweet hes big hes protective and hes got a heart of gold. He's a really great guy and while he's a minor character, I'm glad he's there <3

[bulkheadweek]

Bulkhead Week Day 5

Altmode swap: too many to count lmao

So I admit, I kinda tipped my hand on this the previous day when I mentioned that Bulkhead’s frame during the events of Prime is not his original. I think it might actually be his third – a compact rearrangement to better suit working in small team operations. It’s also the first time he’s a four-wheeler, his previous alts having had treads or a full 6x6 drive.

However, that’s just the alts I headcanon him having had in the past. Bulkhead’s demeanour and skills are extremely easy to reframe in interesting ways by… well, reframing, and subsequently changing the social context of the very socially stratified Cybertronian society that surrounds him.

My favourite? Well, to stay in line with previous days’ ideas, I like the idea that if he had been a warframe, Bulkhead would have been a midrange radar, or a counter-battery radar, a bit like the mounted GroundMasters FDF uses. Field radars are such fun machines b/c they’re basically tanks with highly sensitive instruments hidden inside, and the contrast between a tough exterior and a sensitive interior is very Bulkhead™.

Also mounted radars are Honking Big Boys so that’s also a bonus:

Honourable mention goes to Bulkhead being an industrial crane of some sort. I know the apple-shapedness is a huge part of his appeal, and I agree, but cranes also come mounted on big fuck-off truck beds, and something about the ant-like “lift hundreds of times its own weight”-ness of cranes frankly makes me go brrr.

[bulkheadweek]

Day 5

This was way tougher to figure out than I'd thought. I haven't got quite the best handle on cars and construction equipment, so hopefully this doesn't look like I'm just chucking together random vehicles and calling it a day.

Prime Bulkhead? That guy would 100 percent fit as a half-track. I'm thinking something like the GI Joe Snow Cat for him, or maybe an M5.

As for Animated Bulkhead? It was staring me right in the face. A bulldozer!

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Bulkhead Week Day 5 - Altmode Swap

I made a little Jet Bulkhead =D!! I think he looks pretty adorable <3

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Bulkhead Week Day 4

Headcanon: Some people are born into greatness...

Bulkhead is a class climber, and one of the few lucky ones for whom the class society of prewar Cybertron was working as intended.

He was forged a construction vehicle, probably a bulldozer or an treaded lorry, and started out working in infrastructure maintenance as a demolisher. He got dealt an extremely good hand in many ways -- being from the Northern Hemisphere, getting to participate early in his carreer in many significant infrastructural projects around the Torus, and also having supervisors who saw potential in him from the start.

After all, he had a knack for spotting problems before they emerged, excellent intuition for which implementations worked in the long term and which became maintenance hassles in a few cycles, and a good handle on which of his personal skills complemented whoever he was working with. His biggest "failing" as a potential leader was always a lack of ambition, with a side-order of not really being a risk-taker at heart, but being able to pick up construction-related skills on the fly, excellent visualisation skills and mathematical intelligence, and a big drive to always be doing good work will make up for a lack of natural-born leadership qualities. Confidence in your own skills is also a thing you can build.

He was sponsored for a reforging, for a construction specialist frame as a way to boost his opportunities towards leadership roles, and over his life he's done almost as much worksite management as he has manual labour, but the goal his mentors had in mind was to sponsor him all the way to higher eduation in Nova Cronum or Crystal City, probably architecture or infrastructural engineering.

The war may not be personal for Bulkhead, but it still feels like a disruption of his way of life. While he never made it into the intellectual class of Cybertron, and frankly wasn't even sure if that's what he wanted for himself, that was the dream sold to every productive mechanism, so he carries a lot of bitterness and anxiety, feeling like he "missed his chance" to make something of himself on his best moments, and actively feels like the opportunity to be anything was stolen from him in his worst.

Honourable mention goes to my other favourite headcanon -- if he hadn't been picked up by the Wreckers, Bulkhead would have probably eventually worked his way out of the infantry and straight into Autobot artillery. Excellent visualisation skills and mathematical intelligence are also good for calculating trajectories.

[bulkheadweek]

Bulkhead Week Day 4 - Headcanon

Okay so one of my favorite headcanons I have is that TFA Bulkhead is actually part con and it’s one of the reasons he’s so poorly treated by autobots. So many bots seem to instantly see his big frame and assume he is both destructive and stupid. [Heck Sentinel names him Bulk Head bc ‘hes all bulk and no brain’] Which we know is not actually the case…

the others on the crew also sometimes talk about him being scary and ugly mostly as jokes or saying thats not all there is to him, but regardless its all very similar to the same insults they throw at the cons. Bulkhead also just has a frame type not shared by any other autobots [I dont think dug base counts hes like the closest example I think of tho] and I think it could be interesting if that is cause he’s not pure autobot…..

Overall I just think the entire idea is really neat, Bulkhead being scared abt the others finding out bc they might begin to assume things of him the way others have in the past… Bulkhead being upset about the way bots in the past have treated him over it…. Feeling casted out by autobot society… Idk could be cool to see explored in fics n stuff ;]

[bulkheadweek]

Bulkhead Week Day 1- Favorite/Coolest Scene

AH IM LATE OH NO,,, oh well Im proud of how this looks- Anyways I dunno if this is cheating but for my moment I chose to redraw a frame from Survival of the Fittest because its one of my favorite Bulkhead episodes just, overall <3.

Elaboration is below ;3

I love the showcase of a side of Bulkhead the fandom seems to have largely ignored! For one thing, his more angry violent side coming out bc hes VERY protective of his friends and family, but also the fact that the assumptions he makes about people are not always good ones. Bulkhead likes to believe the best in those he first meets, but since hes got such a huge heart and gives love more freely I think betrayal in any form just hits him really hard. When Sari goes missing and the dinobots appear to be responsible Bulkhead is hurt but also assumes the worst of them, saying a bunch of accusations about them to prowl at the canyon, and Then the second they attack him and prowl, he starts fighting them and demanding to find out where Sari is. He's quick to fight because he's scared about Sari's well being but I also think because it just hurts him to think he trusted bots who turned around and hurt part of his family. He yells out "Seems pretty straight forward to me" and when Prowl asks why they are attacking them Bulkhead says it's because they are mean and dumb and shouldn't have been allowed to escape. My man mad... anyways you can actually see this sense of betrayal being followed up by anger and violence from Bulkhead a couple times in other episodes too, the way he lashes out at the constructicons in their first episode after all the trouble they caused. The angry comments he makes about Longarm in Threes a crowd I think? And also him being the one to punch Shockwave I think could count. Not to mention also attempting to attack Sentinel.

Another thing is the scene I redrew this from is just a couple seconds before he attacks Meltdown by tossing his wrecking ball at him and with the knowledge the dude is human sized and Bulkhead clearly didn't account for the fact he's made of acid. Bulkhead was going for much more of squish sort of affect on the dude. Honestly good for him murder is okay when my fave big green boi does it n that's just facts <3 [also cause Meltdown confessed to kidnapping sari but just overall Im giving Bulkhead a license to kill]

my point is Bulkheads a big guy with big emotions and not all of them are good or non-destructive ones and I wish the fandom talked about that more. [Though its understandable why they dont too since a lot of his arc is him trying to make others understand that those arent the Only emotions he feels] Bulkhead is scary if he feels you've betrayed him and Even More So if he feels you've betrayed him and also hurt his friends.

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Bulkhead Week Day 3

Favourite Trait: Heart of the team Oh boy now this should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody who has ever had even half a conversation with me about Bulkhead. I think a lot of people don't recognise how deeply empathetic Bulkhead is because he also displays many of the negative traits associated with it, and his tendency to mirror negative feelings back stronger (which is no surprise. He does deal with a lot more negative than positive vibes during the plot)

But, yeah, Bulkhead is very much a moodmaker for Team Prime -- big on talking up everyone around him, very generous with compliments and isn't shy about his high (or low) opinion of people. I suspect this is a big part of why he vibes so well with Miko, because she is also exactly like this -- both of them use positive self-talk as a self-soothing method and neither of them is embarrassed about being excited or affectionate. The love languages, they match, they were destined to be inseparable.

It's not just the Big Positive Vibes, though -- Bulkhead is usually also the first to jump in with a suggestions that feels like he's trying to stabilise the situation, or redirect the team away from getting wrapped up in problems that aren't theirs and wasting their time and energy as a result. He can be very defensive, but not just of himself, it extends out to everyone else on the team. Arguably, he's even more defensive of the team than he is of himself, really.

It's such an interesting contrast with how intractable and callous Bulkhead can be, too. Considering how well he seems to intuit when a problem is something that can't be ignored, it comes across like he's tired of caring, sometimes. A lot of his most cruel comments are to the effect of "let them hang -- I don't care and you can't make me". Being naturally good-natured is not a great starting off point for dealing with people who want to harm you and yours.

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Bulkhead Week Day 3 - Favorite Trait

Bulkhead being an artist is sooo cuuute. I loved him indulging himself in it and I really really wish the rest of the crew supported him in it more. I loved him using it to show others he's got way more to him than just a big stupid robot who destroys things too. I just love everything about it, besides a few mean spirited jokes about it...

Either way Bulkhead being an artist in TFA Is one of many great traits he has and its one of my favorites ^w^

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Day 4

Let's talk about a Bulkhead nobody talks about. Transformers Energon. He's a spirited old man who fights off evil with the power of shimmies and has a team with two guys who constantly use each other's name. He's great!

As for the headcanon I like to think he takes a grandfatherly mentorship angle to the young Omnicron Arcee. She's got a lot on her shoulders being their "idol" and being so young in a war against Unicron, so it'd stand to reason he'd try to help take the edge off or try to give her advice.

And if that doesn't work... shoot things. Makes him feel better!

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Day 3: Favorite Trait

If you want me to choose just one?

Loyalty.

I'm dead serious. Bulkhead's probably one of the most loyal characters in the series, irregardless of continuity. I'm gonna specifically talk about TFP, though.

You wanna talk about loyalty? Everyone talks about Bulkhead powering through agonizing pain for the sake of his human friends, and that's great! But I think something that isn't brought up is when he saved Breakdown. There was a split second where he didn't want to do it; he's just that betrayed by whatever Breakdown did to him.

Bulkhead says he did it for the sake of being the one to kill him first (and oooh boy would I love to talk about that moment in more detail), but I'm not too sure that's all of it. Maybe he used to be a Wrecker? Maybe he knew that his guilty conscience would kill him? Maybe it's because after everything, he's still a Cybertronian?

Whatever the case, Bulkhead made a choice, and for the short few months that Breakdown lived afterwards, I'm sure he was grateful.

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Bulkhead Week Day 2

Favourite friendship: "Don't worry, big guy, they ain't ever pay me enough for this shit either."

We love a good defection, don't we?

William goddamn Fowler always had too much meat on the bones as a character for a kid's show to realistically handle, but that's not gonna stop me from having feelings about how he goes from approaching the Autobots with the wry wariness of a seasoned spy to actually, honest-to-Primus being on their side as the stakes of their war actually start dawning on him. And even before then, our introduction to this guy is that he's straight-up ready to die to buy some time for them (from his perspective, he'd know that if they could snag him, they could track him -- and if they could track him, it would be trivial to backtrace his route, so thank god the Decepticon intelligence department doesn't ever do its job right) just because they happen to be his problem to deal with.

He's also such a great example of Bulkhead's tendency to only warm up to his in-group -- the two of them start out with some pretty extreme horn-rattling b/c Fowler's job is to threaten the Autobots into behaving themselves in the most diplomatic way possible, which Bulkhead responds to by going "hey, fuck you too buddy" and threatening him right back. He mirrors his hostility in a way where it's really easy to read him as having clocked what Fowler's mission is and thinking that niceties are wasted on a spy -- and in his defense they kind of are, because Fowler's priorities at first are firmly in the "contain these alien clowns the best you can".

And they kinda stay at cool co-operation from thereon! Until Fowler meets Wheeljack, which is definitely the point where the gears really start turning in his head, and he goes "oh shit, they're like me. Not just, like, people, but they're like me". Like, you can tell that he suddenly gets it, because during the Great Fuckening Of The Plot in Season 2, he goes out of his way to try to relate to Bulkhead as a person, rather than passively assuming the duties of a commander like he's done in the past, and would you look at that. Now Bulkhead has a reason to be nice back at him :)

Fowler is incredibly underutilised, but he's underutilised in a way where I get it. After all, you need to take a few steps back and think broader to see how him "picking" the Autobots slowly unfolds in the background. It also requires really chewing on the backstory implications of a former Ranger, now working as a G-man, and a former Wrecker, now the Prime's bodyguard, a lot of which would probably be pretty tonally unsuitable for the show itself.

Fowler is also underutilised as a comedic foil, which is a trait he shares with Bulkhead, actually -- I'd pay good money for stories where the two of them are just in the background, watching the general melodrama of the plot unfold like "watcha make of this, two-tonne?" "Scrap, I dunno. Not the weirdest thing I've seen on this assignment, though". I've got a big need for stories where Bulkhead gets to be the adult in the room, and Fowler is just the best sounding board for him for stories like that because he is also, quite literally, the adult in the room, lmao.

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Bulkhead Week Day 2 - Favorite Friendship

God I love Bulkhead and Prowl so much. Their friendship is sooo cute throughout the series, esp in the episodes focused on them they are sooo sweet and their dynamic is sooo nice. Prowl is so concerned for Bulkhead when hes injured in Survival of the Fittest and Bulkhead values Prowls advice so much in Blast From The Past. They're always so so delightful to see play off of each other and Im so glad we got to see so much of it in S1 <3<3<3

[bulkheadweek]

wanted to participate in the bulkhead week!

second prompt: favorite friendship

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Bulkhead Week Day 2: Favorite Friendship

You may be thinking. "Is Mir of all people really gonna be able to talk about Prowl and Bulkhead's friendship without any romantic context??" and the answer to that is OF COURSE because I very firmly believe that such a relationship between the two would be built on the foundation of a strong friendship that you can already find in the show!!

A friendship that I think is very overlooked and underrated to begin with! Under a cut because this gets long and I struggle to articulate my thoughts well. U_U

I'm not even sure where to begin. Maybe from the start? The fact that Bulkhead admires Prowl and his skill? The fact that when Bulkhead was eager to learn how to fight like Prowl, the other Autobots questioned this decision, but Prowl never once backed down from teaching Bulkhead? In fact, Prowl is one of the only one of the bots that is continually supportive of Bulkhead even if he doesn't Get It. Remember when Bulkhead started trying to be an artist and Optimus and Ratchet were a little harsh, but Prowl tried to get it?

There's a foundation of trust built between the two of them RIGHT at the start of the series in Blast From the Past. Prowl doesn't back down from trying to teach Bulkhead, but at the end of the day, he's the one who tells Bulkhead that he needs to use his own strengths to his advantage, after Bulkhead had so little support from any of his other peers.

And then they go hide the Dinobots together, which is a HUGE act of trust! I personally like to think Bulkhead had an idea of what Prowl was going to do and went to go help him on his own accord because he knows it's the right thing to do, he sees himself in the Dinobots, and he knows Prowl can't do it on his own. I always think of Dinobot Island as a symbol of this bond of trust between them, and how Prowl allowed himself to open up to someone a little and Bulkhead got some support he really needed while strengthening this friendship.

And we see in episodes after that they have a lot of fun banter! They assist one another a lot in battle, in fact! They bounce off each other so well, their dialogue together is always so much fun and you can see that trust.

Sometimes I think it's so often looked over despite how prevalent it is is because... to be quite frank, because BULKHEAD himself is so easily overlooked despite being one of the most well rounded characters in the show. And Prowl. Well. I love him dearly, we all know this. But in comparison, he's so much more popular and people's investment in him overshadows any investment in Bulkhead so often, even though they have some of the best interactions in the show.

It's really sad for me to think about!! Bulkhead is an incredibly well fleshed out character, and it's not that the rest of the Autobots aren't, but there's definitely obvious biases and a tendency to not give Bulkhead full credit for what a well rounded character he is.

When I first watched the show, one of the things that stood out to me most was how Prowl and Bulkhead interact with one another! In fact, between the two of them, Bulkhead is more often the mature and responsible one, a really fun dynamic that I think gets overlooked since people tend to look to Prowl as the serious voice of reason and Bulkhead as the Big Fun Guy.

I know this whole thing is kind of a jumbled mess of words and thoughts, I'm really just typing out whatever pops into my head, but the point I'm trying to get at is, the friendship between Bulkhead and Prowl is one of the best in the show, and in my opinion of of Bulkhead's closest, and this sadly isn't appreciated enough because of how Bulkhead isn't popular.

There's so much more I could say on the topic, they have so many specific interactions I adore, but I think it's one of Bulkhead's stand out friendships and one he gets the most support from, as he deserves.