#“in the plot” of my story. like. this is all background technically but i got too invested in drawing togruta hybrids and i want to map the

[cripplecharacters]

What exactly defines a token character as a bad representation choice and not as a "background character" who happens to be disabled? And can a disabled character be the only disabled character but still good representation?

I know having relevant disabled characters is important, but when, besides the cast members who influence the plot, you have one of those scenes where a one-off character needs to be there, like when the autistic protagonist needs a ride in the middle of the road and a little person stops to help, or when the wheelchair user main character wants to talk to the magic council about a certain situation and the attendant is a blind person with a cane who checks the information of a braille book, is it safe from tokenism?

Hey!

For this post I will use "representation" to imply good/decent representation, not just the act of XYZ minority technically appearing on the page.

There's definitely a lot to discuss when it comes to tokenism, and there are a lot of different criteria that you can use to define what exactly it is.

So I'm gonna start with the main definition of what would differentiate a "token" from an unimportant character (=one that doesn't influence the actual plot) who just happens to be disabled: how you go about the fact that they are in your book(/comic/etc.).

If you put in the description of your work that it's "disability rep!" because there's this one guy in a wheelchair in one scene, that's tokenism: using a minority to simply boost/promote something as "diverse". That's the most annoying occurrence of it, there's so much media that people recommend as "XYZ rep" and when you look into it, the "rep" is a side character that shows up in two episodes and has like a line of dialogue. Sad!

To use one of your examples, tokenism would be if you claimed that your work has "dwarfism representation" in it because of that one guy who helps the main character in one scene. It's... just not that. That doesn't mean it's bad; if every single background character who wasn't a cisHet white abled Christian man (etc.) was supposed to be deep and thought-provoking then no one would be writing them, because that's not what a background character is supposed to be.

But - you could commit a tokenism with a character even if they are just a background extra who shows up once. Tokenism often goes with the fact that the token character could be swapped out for a non-minority one and nothing would change, since the key here is that the author doesn't really care: it's all just to say "hey, I got XYZ in my book!". So if you were to write a background character that you explicitly mention has disability X, but then they do something that a person with that disability wouldn't be able to do - that's probably a token (if not, it's still a badly made character). It's there to "represent" a group, but it doesn't make sense and there is no point so to speak because the author just doesn't care.

In that way, many disabled characters are just tokens - because the writer is writing an abled character, but keeps calling them disabled. When's the last time anyone has seen a character with albinism who was blind or low vision? What's up with all those deaf characters who read lips and speak orally so well that you literally forget they are even supposed to be deaf? Why is that "tragically unable to walk" character... walking for the entire duration of the book? They're just tokens done with no care nor research, it's all diversity points and quirky aesthetics. Everyone wants to be "inclusive", no one wants to actually have a disabled character who experiences disability.

Another thing with background characters is what role they serve. Most of them are fine - cashier has a skin condition, guy ordering a drink uses a speech generating device, mom of an annoying kid doesn't have a leg, cool. But sometimes it's worth to just ask "why am I making this specific character, whose disability has no impact on the story, disabled?". That is to say that if you need a prodigy piano player and your idea is to make them totally blind who always wears sunglasses, or to make the generic murderer have a big burn scar on half of their face, you're repeating a stereotype. "Role" also encompasses what happens to them. Does the one disabled guy just... die, and that's all? That's a token.

Those are the main things I'd avoid when it comes to background characters. Don't claim that they are what they aren't or represent what they don't, and if you want a disabled character - even just an extra - then either commit or just don't do it, and keep in mind where you're putting them in the first place.

Can a disabled character be the only disabled character but still good representation?

They sure can, but they just aren't, usually at least. The problem with single character representation is that it puts a big burden on this one character: to represent a whole community. That's a lot. I've found myself in this exact spot before: small cast, one character is disabled, and I try to make the whole thing better and more authentic... every single time the result was adding more disabled characters, even if their roles were smaller. It's about the potential contrast.

There are choices that you can do when you have multiple characters of X minority that you should probably avoid if there's just one of them. If I see a work that has three blind characters and one of them wears sunglasses, my reaction will be "oh, cool, they have photophobia like me". If there's one blind character, and they wear sunglasses, my assumption will be that that's what just the writer thinks all blind people wear.

(Even though, that singular character could 100% also be photophobic. My assumption here is based on my experience, because that's how it usually goes.)

In that case you can find yourself in a place where you either need to subvert a bunch of stereotypes (some of which are based in fact!) or address it in one way or another in your work. That character could say "oh, I wear sunglasses indoors because even artificial light really hurts my eyes", but in order to do that, you need to be aware that this is a writing trope in the first place. Not to mention, if you do it too much, it starts reading as some sort of disability PSA. There's a fine line to everything, and the fewer characters of a particular minority you have, the harder it is to navigate it in a way that feels natural to actually read.

Sometimes the occurrence of just a single disabled character also raises some questions. Where's everybody else at? There are some exceptions to that (e.g. stories with a very limited character count) but generally speaking, everyone knows someone who's disabled in one way or another, especially if they're disabled themself. Books tend to make disabled people seem as a rare phenomenon, but that's really not the case.

Sometimes it borders on nonsensical worldbuilding - all those disabled characters who only get their mobility aids/meds because they Know A Guy (or are that guy)... I always ask myself, "what about all those people who don't know this one specific guy? what about everyone who lived before and after this one specific guy?", and I don't think the authors ever consider that. Unless the world population count is in triple digits at most, your character won't be the only disabled person. Writing in a way that subconsciously implies that they are is to me just another form of tokenism, because they're not only the only disabled character in the story, they're also presumably the only one in that universe overall.

This is just a lot of paragraphs to say that you probably aren't ever fully safe from tokenism unless there are multiple disabled characters who have at least somewhat important roles in the story - and even then, they can still be badly written, just in different ways.

Sorry for the long post but I hope this helps,

mod Sasza

[cerusee]

I've never watched any Chinese dramas but I really enjoy your posts/gifs about them and it's got me interested in trying some! Do you have any recommendations for somebody who's totally new to them? Any tropes/background context I should be aware of? The historical/fantastical ones seem the most appealing to me.

Oooooh! My first thought on reading this ask was, “oh, I’m hardly qualified”; I’m only on my *stops to count on fingers* eighth cdrama, not counting the one episode I watched of the Wang Zhuocheng xianxia where he falls in love with a rock. (Long story.) There’s a lot of cdramas out there, and I myself have not even scratched the surface of what’s out there! That said, if you’re interested in historical/fantastical dramas, those ARE the ones I’ve been watching, so I still have some opinions despite being a total noob myself.

Do not start with The Untamed/Chen Qing Ling. Twas my first cdrama, like a lot of western fans, who were drawn to it in part because of the big censored-but-still-very-evident gay love story between the male leads, but honestly, as much fun as it is for the slash fans, it’s not a great jumping off point for either Chinese television in general, or even for its own wuxia-inspired genre setting. I say this as some who is still deep in the fandom four years later, and has immense love for the show: the first two episodes are flat-out bad, the overall pacing is bad (episodes frequently stop MIDSCENE), the worldbuilding is thin (a carryover from the novel it was based on), and without a larger context for why it’s made the way it’s made (stylistic choices, industry conventions, government censorship, genre conventions) a lot about it is confusing as hell to cdrama newbies, which is…so evident…a lot…in fandom wank I mean in the discourse about what story this story is trying to tell. Like, if you came to me and asked specifically, “I’m thinking of watching CQL. Should I watch CQL?” I would say yes, absolutely! It’s so much fun! I’m obsessed with the characters! I’ve written a lot of fanfic about the purple guy! But it’s not a good first cdrama, nor it is the best example of what the Chinese TV industry has to offer.

A MUCH better first cdrama especially if you like the historical/fantastical: The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017), which not coincidentally was my second cdrama. It’s one of about a dozen television adaptations of the classic 1957 Chinese novel of the same name by Jin Yong, generally considered to be the inventor of the genre known as wuxia, which is a blend of history, fantasy, and martial arts. (One of the most well-known examples of wuxia in the west is Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which you have probably at least heard of.)

Legend of the Condor Heroes (hereafter known as LOCH) has it all: romance, revenge, evil plots and daring deeds, people jumping off a burning mountain and being rescued by the worst CGIed eagles known to television or cinema, boat adventures, mountain adventures, grasslands adventures, a weird cult leader who lives on a spooky flower island (there will be math), murder, baby kidnapping, more murder, one guy inadvertently racking up a ridiculous number of martial arts teachers, sworn brotherhoods which invariably end with one guy stabbing the other, lots of VERY good martial arts fights, and, of course, Genghis Khan. Technically there are no magic/supernatural elements in this show—no ghosts, ghouls, magic, angels, devils, gods, etc—although the martial artists do have l33t skillz that might qualify as superhuman depending on how you slice your genre conventions, and are awfully fun to watch.

I’ve actually seen two LOCH adaptations (there was one in 2024 I liked a lot, with my favorite Guo Jing so far), but 2017 is a much better adaptation for newcomers as it tells a fuller version of the story and doesn’t skimp on or rush through or rewrite as many elements of the plot as other versions do; it’s meant to be a LOCH for people who haven’t seen half a dozen versions of LOCH already. It has a WONDERFUL cast, including my one of my favorite cdrama leading men, Chen Xingxu,* as the lead antagonist, Yang Kang, who is a trash fire of a person you just can’t root for, but he also can’t help it because he was raised by Wanyin Honglie. You can catch it on YouTube (I recall that there are couple of missing episodes from that playlist, but you can search on YT for those when you get there, to find them subtitled from other channels.)

*If you, like me, come away from LOCH 2017 with your mouth slightly ajar at how great CXX is, I have wonderful news for you! He’s been a lead in at least two other very good cdramas: the 2023 xianxia** The Starry Love, where he gets to play, like, five different characters (huge acting flex, and he’s great, although I would rush to stress I loved a ton of things about this show besides CXX himself), and the 2019 semi-historical drama Goodbye My Princess, which might actually be my favorite cdrama I have seen to date, and arguably THEE best well-made on a technical level, with phenomenal acting, a great script, and editing and directing I am constantly swooning over, but I am not entirely sure I can recommend to you unless you are a Tragedy Enjoyer.

(If you are a Tragedy Enjoyer, please stop whatever you’re doing and just start watching Goodbye My Princess right now, it is phenomenal. It is also available on YouTube. Watch the Director’s Cut, not the regular one! This is important. In its haste to get the main leads on screen together ASAP, the regular version does a Reader’s Digest version of stuff the Director’s Cut spends like five episodes carefully setting up, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense, nor does it flow well.)

**Speaking of xianxia! Xianxia is the high fantasy genre, full of magic and gods and demons and people dying and living multiple lives and whatnot. Important to note: xianxias are soap operas (complimentary). They tend to feature female protagonists, sweeping, epic romances, and put enormous emphasis on exploring the nuances of relationships and emotions. I have watched three that I loved (Love Between Fairy and Devil, The Starry Love, and Eternal Love: Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms), and while technically I could recommend all three, if you were going to watch just one, especially as a cdrama intro, I have to recommend Eternal Love, which really is the quintessential xianxia, the one all other xianxias are kind of shaping themselves around. I have watched it 1.5 times and I can say that it does not properly take off until like, episode 10, or whenever it is that the main couple finally, properly meet. IT IS WORTH THE INVESTMENT. This show made me want to spit blood. I cried multiple times watching it. It made me feel things. It has a wonderful immersive quality that’s hard to describe except to say that the entire show sort of vibrates on its own frequency. The casting is just kind of…perfect? Props to Maggie Huang for portraying the most perfectly hatable xianxia villainess of all time. Absolutely no one is doing it like Su Jin. No one should try. I believe this is available on YouTube, but after an abortive start, I realized it was on US Netflix, and watched it there.

As for tropes and background context: ehhhhhh. I mean, it’s an entire industry? I know substantially less about how it functions than I do about, like, American TV and film. I know government censorship is a not-inconsiderable factor, but I don’t know much of the nuance of how that plays out in terms of filming and airing. Tropes will vary according to subject. Idol dramas (shows built to showcase media personalities regardless of their ability to act) are a thing. Most cdrama audio is still dubbed (this one surprised me!), usually by professional voice actors and not by the original cast, for a confluence of reasons, some of which historically make sense (noisy filming lots rendering original audio useless), and some of which are really stupid (fans throwing hissy fits if lead actors don’t have the “right” kinds of voices for their characters).

Anyway! My recommendations are this: try The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017) to start with, UNLESS you would prefer having your heart ripped out of your chest, in which case watch Goodbye My Princess (Director’s Cut, 2019), or UNLESS you love soap operas as much as I do, in which case watch Eternal Love: Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (2017). All three are great shows, but they all hit differently/scratch a different itch.

Oh! Lastly! @dangermousie is a great source of cdrama recs. I should note she prefers dramas and tragedies and mostly does not vibe with xianxias. But she watches like eight million hours of dramas a week and reports her findings to us because she is a river to her people.

[thewadapan]

So why did Transformers One bomb?

Look, I'm just going to say it right off the bat: no, Transformers One is not the best Transformers movie of all time. I am (gritting my teeth) very happy for every single Transformers fan except me, who all seem to have liked it, and most of whom seem to have loved it. I agree that, as a production, it meets some baseline level of technical competence. It's a perfectly fine movie.

It's also the worst-performing Transformers movie Paramount has ever made.

Hopefully, now that its theatrical run has unceremoniously ended, people aren't going to try to rip me to shreds for theoretically threatening this multi-million-dollar film's box office revenue some miniscule amount by sharing a few teensy weensy complaints with my fifty followers.

Because I do just have a few little nitpicks, which I've tried my best to communicate, over the next 17,000 words of this post.

If you're not a Transformers fan, sorry, this essay is mostly written with the assumption that you've seen Transformers One. However, it might still be of some interest as a window into the current state of the franchise. I've written a basic plot summary of the movie to bring you up to speed, in that case. Because Transformers One purports to be the perfect introduction to the story, no homework needed, I've also done you the courtesy of elucidating background context as needed—think of this less as a review, and more as a history lesson, or maybe a "lore explained" YouTube video. After all, that's pretty much all that Transformers One is.

(And if farcically long posts aren't really your thing, you might prefer to listen to the special episode of Our Worlds are in Danger where my pals and I chatted about the film. Many of the hottest takes and silliest bits in this essay are shamelessly stolen from Jo and Umar.)

We've been waiting for Transformers One for a very long time. It's the first animated Transformers film to get a theatrical release since The Transformers: The Movie came out in 1986. It first entered development around a decade ago. Many fandom members I know online got to see it as far back as June. Its US premiere was in September; those of us in the UK had to wait a full extra month before seeing it, for no clear reason. This is a film which purports to show, in broad strokes, for the first time on the big screen, the origin of the Transformers: where they come from, who they are, and why they're fighting.

By the end of its runtime, Transformers One does not actually answer these questions. Don't get me wrong, it takes great pains trying to answer a lot of different, related questions—just ones which nobody was really asking in the first place: What does the word "Autobots" mean, if not "automobile robots"? What does the word "Decepticons" mean, if they're not actually deceitful? Why is he called "Optimus Prime"? Why is he called "Megatron"? If they were friends, why did they fall out? Why does Starscream sound Like That? Where does Energon come from? If "Prime" is a title, what were the other Primes like? How do Transformers transform?

Writer Eric Pearson, coming onto the project as an outsider to Transformers, describes having to go to Hasbro to ask these kinds of questions:

they had a script that outlined the story that they wanted to tell. I knew Optimus Prime and Megatron and I knew Bumblebee as well, or B. I had to ask about some of the other deeper ones, the mythology, “what exactly is the Matrix of Leadership?” Stuff like that.

See, Hasbro does in fact have the answers written down somewhere. The story as I understand it goes something like this. During the wild west of the '80s and '90s, Transformers "canon" was largely a by-the-seat-of-your-pants consensus-based affair between the freelance writers and copywriters the toy company would bring on to advertise their toys. That changed around the turn of the millennium, when late later-CEO Brian Goldner saw how Hasbro's licensed IP lines (such as Star Wars) were more financially successful and realised they could make more money by aggressively promoting their own in-house IP, which they didn't have to pay licensing fees for. (For the curious, a similar thought process at rival toy company Lego was what led to their creation of BIONICLE.)

The guy basically singlehandedly managing the Transformers brand at the time, Aaron Archer, eventually set to reconciling all the self-contradictory lore surrounding Transformers, an endeavour which dovetailed into the creation of the HasLab internal think-tank (best known for Battleship, the 2012 store-brand Michael Bay knockoff which was a failure critically and commercially but not in my heart) and ultimately the creation of the so-called "Binder of Revelation", an internal story bible which cost over $250,000 to produce and has strongly influenced nigh on every piece of Transformers media released since, but which we hadn't actually seen until it got leaked a week ago. As it turns out, the document itself (compiled mostly by marketers and toy designers) is patently useless to any writer: it's a typo-ridden internally-inconsistent wishy-washy mess that mostly describes the characters in terms of a made-up form of Transformers astrology that has otherwise never seen the light of day.

So although the Binder is the baseline story bible for most modern Transformers media, its influence isn't direct per se; it's more accurate to describe it as being an elaborate game of telephone between high-profile cartoons, comics, and other internal documents, with the Binder itself apparently just sitting in a drawer somewhere at Hasbro; Eric Pearson says that he never received a "binder", with the "script" he mentions either being the earlier draft from Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari (the guys who originally pitched the story), or some other unseen internal document. Director Josh Cooley, however, definitely seems to have been physically handed the Binder or its mass-market adaptation:

I knew that there was a lot of origin to be told, and when I first started, [Hasbro] gave me the Transformers Bible. I could not believe how big it was. I was like, "This is way more than I ever anticipated."

When trailers first dropped for Transformers One, a lot of my friends who are savvy were immediately like: "Oh, this is a weirdly faithful adaptation of the Binder of Revelation, huh."

I. The One True Origin of the Transformers

Half of the people reading this are Transformers fans, and half of you literally could not give less of a shit about Transformers, so if you're in the 'former group (so to speak), you'll just have to bear with me while I bring the rest of us up to speed.

Before the Transformers' civil war begins, Cybertron is being oppressed by the Quintessons. The Quintessons are a race of five-faced aliens (as in, not Transformers), who execute everyone they come across, first introduced in The Transformers: The Movie, presiding over a kangaroo court on a castaway world. In the followup cartoon five-parter "Five Faces of Darkness", writer Flint Dille established that, gasp, they were actually the original creators of the Transformers! But basically nobody else at the time was particularly compelled by this idea, it seems, with most fans preferring the more mythological origin story conceived by Bri'ish writer Simon Furman for the Marvel comics. I think people kind of just didn't like to think of the Transformers as being robots—mass-produced, a fabrication, programmed—as opposed to an alien race of thinking, feeling beings like us. But because the cartoon was important to many kids, a lot of early-2000s media tried to reconcile the cartoon and comic origin stories by stating that the Quintessons didn't actually create the Transformers; rather, they simply colonised the planet early in its history and pretended to be the Transformers' creators, until the truth came out and they got kicked offworld. This is how the Binder of Revelation ultimately paid lip service to the Quintessons. In Transformers One, the Quintessons are just sort of here, they're these evil aliens secretly skimming Energon from its miners, they don't speak English (or whichever language the film was dubbed into in your market region), they're just these nasty societal parasites.

Energon is Transformers fuel. In the original cartoon, it was these glowing pink cubes the Decepticons were always trying to produce using harebrained Saturday-morning-cartoon energy-stealing devices. There was a Cold War going on, America had just been through an "energy crisis", maybe you're old enough to remember any of that. Transformers are these big, complicated machines, so I guess the idea is they need this hyper-compressed superfuel to run off, and their homeworld has run out. By the time of the Binder of Revelation, the concept had been telephoned to the point where Energon is like the lifeblood of Primus or some shit.

Primus is the Transformers God—but not the kind of God you have "faith" in, rather this actual guy whose existence is objectively known in various ways. He transforms into a planet, that's kind of cool, right? Where does Primus come from? Look, it doesn't matter, he's like, the God of Creation, he was there at the start of time. He created all of the Transformers. All the other species in the galaxy, though, they evolved naturally thanks to "science". Actually wait, didn't that Quintus Prime guy go around the universe seeding all the planets with different kinds of Cybertronian life? That's why they're called Quintessons. See, now you know. Who's Quintus Prime?

Okay, so the Thirteen Original Transformers, or the Primes, are the thirteen original Transformers created by Primus. Most of them correspond to different kinds of Transformer: Nexus Prime is the god of Transformers who can combine, Onyx Prime is the god of Transformers who turn into animals, Micronus Prime is the god of Transformers who are small, and Solus Prime is the god of Transformers who are women. You might remember the Primes from Revenge of the Fallen, although there were only seven of them there for whatever reason.

Honestly, The Fallen was the only one who mattered for a long time. The whole reason there's thirteen of them is because thirteen is kind of an unlucky number, right? Twelve would've been fine. But throw in a thirteenth guy, and he betrays everyone, he's this fucked up evil guy. In the Binder of Revelation, though, the Thirteenth Prime is his own special guy shrouded in mystery, because they kind of liked the idea that Optimus Prime would secretly turn out to have been the Thirteenth Prime all along, and he just forgot or something, because that means he has the divine right of Primes. In IDW's 2010s comic-book reboot, the Thirteenth Prime was called "The Arisen"—in reference to that one line in The Transformers: The Movie, "Arise, Rodimus Prime!" (this margin is too narrow to explain who Rodimus Prime is). Towards the end of his run, writer John Barber did some actually interesting stuff with the concept, playing with the ambiguity over whether-or-not Optimus Prime was actually the chosen one.

All of Optimus Prime's immediate predecessors as Autobot leaders, Sentinel Prime, Zeta Prime, the lineage seen in "Five Faces of Darkness"... they're all false Primes. They're Primes in name only. In fact, IDW had a whole procession of these cartoonishly evil dictators thanks to a few continuity errors leading to the addition of a couple of extra narratively-redundant fuckers. Transformers One tries to simplify it slightly by just saying that Zeta Prime was one of the Primes for real—occupying that thirteenth "free space"—and it was just Sentinel Prime who was only a normal Transformer pretending to be a Prime, then Optimus Prime who's a real boy.

But if he's not a Prime from the start, Optimus Prime needs another name in the meantime. In the '80s cartoon episode "War Dawn", before he was called Optimus Prime, he was called "Orion Pax". Have you noticed that Optimus Prime is kind of an odd-one-out amongst all the straightup-English-word names like "Bumblebee" and "Ratchet" and "Jazz"? That's because his name was one of a tiny handful from very early in the franchise's development, before writer Bob Budiansky came onboard and came up with identities for the vast majority of the toys. Practically everyone Bob Budiansky named is called like, "Bolts" or some shit, long before the characters even know of Earth, which has always just been a contrivance of the setting you're not supposed to think about.

Presumably to create a parallel with Orion Pax's transformation into Optimus Prime, someone at Hasbro in the 2010s came up with a new name for the bot who would become Megatron: "D-16". In real-world terms, this was nothing more than a dorky reference to the Megatron toy's original Japanese release being number 16 in the line ("D" stands for "Destron", which is what they call Decepticons in Japan). But in-universe, the name "D-16" was drawn from the sector of the mine where he worked. I don't get the impression it was originally intended to be part of a broader pattern.

Which is why I'm baffled as to what the hell the reasoning was behind Bumblebee's pre-Earth name, "B-127". There's this bizarre situation in the Bumblebee film, where the name "B-127" first cropped up, where literally every other bot gets a normal cool name with personality like "Cliffjumper" or "Dropkick" except for Bumblebee, who is stuck with this clunky sci-fi name until he makes friends with a human teenager on Earth and she gives him the name Bumblebee. I guess I don't find it confusing that the writers would (correctly) realise it's a bit weird for Bumblebee to be called Bumblebee on an alien planet where bumblebees don't exist. What I find confusing is that they didn't extend that logic to any other character.

So despite everything else in the franchise's direction pointing away from "robot" and towards "alien", Transformers One ends up with this ridiculous situation where two of the most important guys are, for practically the whole movie, simply referred to as "Dee" and "Bee", I guess because the writers correctly realised the numbers sound fucking stupid.

And if you squint, "Elita-1" sorta fits this naming scheme. But the great irony of it is that the very same cartoon episode which coined "Orion Pax" simultaneously established that Elita-1 also used to go by a different name: "Ariel"! Like the Little Mermaid. Y'know, because an "aerial" is a type of electrical component- oh, forget it.

By the time the script made it into Eric Pearson's hands, it's obvious that he simply was not thinking about it that deeply. He describes the genesis of a scene where Bumblebee introduces his imaginary friends, "A-atron, EP 5-0-8, and Steve." A-atron was impov'd by Keegan-Michael Key as a reference to one of his own skits on Key & Peele. Steve ("He's foreign.") was literally just because Pearson thought it would be funny. It's true that Steve is an inherently funny name, and I guess if you're struggling to come up with jokes of your own, it can be handy to fall back on something which is inherently funny.

And again, our silly answers to these silly questions beget yet more questions. If he started out as "D-16", then where did the name "Megatron" come from? And if all the Primes have epic made-up fantasy names, then surely that one guy can't just be called "The Fallen", right? That's not a name, that's an epithet. Unfortunately, someone at Hasbro had the bright idea to answer both these questions at once: The Fallen's real name was "Megatronus". Later, for consistency, they threw on the title, and we get "Megatronus Prime", which sounds like what a thirteen-year-old on deviantART in 2014 would call their Steven Universe fusion of Megatron and Optimus Prime. So you see, Megatron actually named himself after Megatronus Prime, famously the most evil of the Primes. In Transformers One, this is changed slightly so Megatronus is merely the strongest of the Primes, as part of its overall effort to make Megatron not look completely insane.

Which, it must be said, is a tall order. Better stories have tried and failed. Back in 2007, Scottish writer Eric Holmes came up with Megatron Origin, a perfectly-fine comic miniseries which drew heavily from the miners' strikes that took place in the UK from 1984-1985, coinciding with the inception of the Transformers franchise. In that comic, Megatron is a lowly miner who, through a series of chance events, winds up at the head of a dangerous political revolutionary movement.

For some reason—I guess because nobody had ever tried to make Megatron anything other than a bloodthirsty cackling madman before—this take on Megatron as a guy who rose up against a corrupt system became the defining interpretation of the character, copy/pasted pretty much wholesale into the Binder of Revelation. Orion Pax also opposes the system, and bonds with Megatron over it, but they disagree on how to fix it: Pax believes in peaceful reform, Megatron just loves to kill. In Transformers One, the problem everyone has with Megatron is basically "whoa, this guy's a little TOO angry!" and there's a point towards the end of the film where Megatron suddenly starts jonesing to kill literally anyone who stands in his way, because he's irrationally angry.

The core problem here—and it's kind of the Magneto problem, the Killmonger problem, whatever better-known example you care to insert here—is that these guys all fundamentally exist just to be a big villain who loves to kill people and who ultimately gets defeated, but the kids who grew up on this stuff in the '80s are now adults who are no longer satisfied with cardboard cutout villains. People like a complex villain, they like a villain who has a point. They like to root for both sides. And in fact, it's easier to sell more toys to people who are rooting for both sides, if your villain is just another kind of hero. But you don't really need to take the same effort with the good guys: they're good by design, righteous by nature. They don't need to stand for something, they just need to stand against the guy whose whole thing is that he loves to kill people.

But again, we're starting from a place where the evil faction—who half the planet will ultimately align themselves with—are literally called "Decepticons". It's a name you'd only ever call yourself ironically, maybe reclaiming it from your enemies. In this film, there's some tortured logic that implies they're called Decepticons because they were deceived by Sentinel Prime. Like if you met a gang of guys who call themselves "The Robbers", but it turns out to be because they got robbed one time, and they actually have zero intention of stealing from anyone.

The Autobots are easier, of course. "Auto" is a prefix that just means, like, the self, or whatever. And the most agreeably American ideal of all is selfishness the power of the individual, the freedom to seize one's own destiny. Prime's original '80s motto, "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings," is bastardised in Transformers One into the slightly less rolls-out-off-the-tongue "Freedom and autonomy are the rights of all sentient beings," because (I can only assume) they forgot to work the word "autonomy" earlier into the script. If they ever greenlit Transformers Three, I suppose the motto would have ended up as something like "Freedom, autonomy, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope are the rights of all sentient beings." Even though bodily autonomy is one of the most salient motifs present in the film—all but referred to by name—I suppose the filmmakers were worried that you might think, when Prime says "freedom", that he actually means something completely different. So now you see! "Autobots" is actually the descriptive name of a political movement which believes in obviously good things. Like "Moms for Liberty".

Okay, so the cannier among you have probably spotted the mean rhetorical trick I'm pulling with this encyclopedia-entry-ass introduction. By sarcastically relitigating all the storytelling choices I dislike from the last 20 years of Transformers lore, I can build up a negative association with Transformers One without even reviewing the movie itself! On a subtextual level, I'm deliberately misattributing these bad ideas to the filmmakers, conveniently ignoring the mountains of evidence to suggest that they were just trying to make the best of whatever Hasbro handed them from on high. If anything—you might think—the filmmakers deserve even more credit, for spinning this shite into something even remotely good on the big screen.

Like, you'd be wrong, but I can see why you might think that.

II. The Spider-Verse of Transformers

Okay, I can see that I've spat in your soup. I'm sorry. There are lots of good bits in Transformers One. I can even think of one or two of them off the top of my head, without really racking my brains.

Maybe halfway through the film, there is one specific moment where the story suddenly promises to get good. You can pinpoint it down to the word, down to the frame even. Our heroes have just discovered that their planet's leader, Sentinel Prime, is a complete fraud who's been secretly exploiting them ever since they were born—and worse, castrated them by removing their transformation cogs. They are all very cross about this. Orion Pax expresses that he wants to come up with a plan to expose Sentinel Prime. Megatron is too angry to listen. Orion Pax asks, "Don't you want to stop him?" And Megatron replies, "No, I want to KILL him!" And there's like, a little tint of red creeping into the glow of his eyes.

Whoa. Chills. Up to this point in the film, Megatron has been kind of surly at times, but he's otherwise a generic kids' movie protagonist. He's often chipper. He makes quips. He has this banter with Orion Pax where he's always complaining. It's literally that one "Optimist Prime"/"Negatron" comic, committed to film. Like I'm not even being facetious, one of the film's few obligatory "emotional moments" has Elita-1 sit Orion Pax down and say, "You know what I love about you? You always see the bright side. Like you're some kind of OPTIMIST or something." And then later completely unrelatedly God gives him the mandate of heaven and says "ARISE, OPTIMUS PRIME!" Y'see, as originally conceived, "Optimus" is the word "Optimum" if it was a name, which is why people sometimes localise his name as "Best #1". But it's genuinely kind of cute to reverse-engineer the etymology as coming from "optimist", I guess. Like, it's stupid, but it's cute.

Argh, I got distracted with naming minutia again! Entirely my bad. That's the last time, I promise. Where was I? Right, we'd just found out that Megatron is kind of scary. Brian Tyree Henry's line delivery as he growls "KILL" is his crowning achievement in this film.

Where Optimus Prime's character arc in this movie sees him change from a funny, rebellious spirit to a complete personality vacuum, Megatron's character arc is kind of the opposite. When we're first introduced to him, it's weirdly hard to get a handle on who he is. He's a fanboy for Megatronus, the strongest and most morally-unremarkable of the Primes. He looks up to Sentinel Prime. He likes sports. He doesn't like breaking the rules. In fact, we get the sense that, were it not for his friendship with Orion Pax, he would be literally indistinguishable from the legion of silent crowd-filling background characters he works with. But the moment he starts to become Megatron, it's like everything starts to click. Gears catch, where once they ground and idled. There is something in this guy that was made to fight, made to kill, made to rule. It's sick.

And the underlying tension in his friendship with Optimus suddenly snaps into focus. Megatron is mad at Sentinel Prime, but Sentinel Prime isn't there, he's somewhere else, far below... and he can't help but turn that anger on the next closest thing to an authority figure he has in his life, which is his peer-pressuring bestie, Orion Pax. There is a part of Megatron that wishes he'd never learned the truth, and he blames Orion Pax for his cursed knowledge, for constantly leading them into predicaments on his stupid flights of fancy. Now that he knows, he can't go back to how he was. He can't stop thinking about it.

I'll be honest, it rules. Obviously it rules. It's complicated and toxic and darker than this movie was marketed to be. In interview, Josh Cooley describes the draft of the script he was presented with when he joined the project as having been far more jokey, light-hearted, glib—and it seems we can credit him for saying "Look, this ain't right, the minute the credits roll these guys are going to be at civil war for millions of years."

So, they started talking about it in — what did you say, 2015? I came on board in 2020, and when I came on board there was the first draft of the script. So I don't think they'd been working on it that entire time, but they'd been thinking about it, for sure. And the script that I read was a little more comical? But it was clear that that wasn't the right tone for this film specifically, because we know there's gonna be a war, civil war on Cybertron, you can't have everybody making jokes and then all of a sudden there's a war. So, um, the stakes were really important for this film. And because our characters at the beginning are a little naive, and just on the younger side, not as experienced, it allowed more freedom for them to be a little looser and have fun really getting to know these characters. But once they realize something's going on and things are getting real, it needs to get real.

Cooley also describes his "in" on the film as being the brotherly relationship between Optimus Prime and Megatron (they're not literally brothers in this film, though they have been in the past), which perhaps explains why Megatron and Optimus Prime get to be characters, instead of just like, guys who are there.

That was always the goal from the beginning and what got me on board. It was this relationship between these two characters that was very human and brotherly. I thought about my relationship with my brother and how I could bring that in. It’s not like we’re enemies, but we grew up together and then went down our different paths, but we’re still brotherly. I became a writer-director and live in a fantasy land, and he became a homicide detective who deals with reality, so we’re two very different mindsets. I have always been fascinated by the idea of two people who come from the same place but end up in different ones. From the very beginning, I was like, ‘That’s something I can relate to.’

Anyway, things I liked, what else. There's that joke at the very start, after the excruciating lore powerpoint, where Orion Pax does a fake-out like he's going to transform, the music briefly swells, and then it just cuts to him legging it down the corridor. In a similar vein, I liked the idea behind the Iacon 5000, where Orion Pax has them run in the race. I felt like the execution of the race left a bit to be desired—the only other participant who matters is Darkwing—but it's still honestly the best big action setpiece in the film. There's also that bit at the end where Megatron and Optimus Prime are both changing into their final forms simultaneously, and it's basically a Homestuck Flash (what would that be, "[S] OPTIMUS PRIME. ARISE."?), so obviously I liked that. Oh, and I really liked the environment design where the planet's landscape is constantly transforming, that's brand-new, someone had an Idea there, and it creates visual interest during the initial Energon-mining scene... even if I wished it had actually paid off in a more meaningful way than "the planet's crust opens as Prime falls to get the Matrix"—like, someone really should've gotten eaten by the planet, that's a cracking Disney death scene and they left it on the table! I also liked getting to see my blorbo, Vector Prime, on the big screen.

I think, as a Transformers fan who's had to sit through a lot of really quite sexist, racist, and plain bad films, you're well within your rights to come out of this one ready to give it a fucking Oscar. You should be ecstatic! It has none of those pesky humans clogging up the frame. It has plenty of robot action. It has jokes which- well I struggle to call many of them "funny", but they're at least trying to be funny in a different way to Michael Bay's films. The film is obviously a massive love letter to... honestly every part of Transformers except the live-action movies. It is an incredibly faithful and earnest adaptation of all the lore and iconography that has randomly accumulated the way it has over the last forty years of bullshit.

My main point of contention, then, is with the overriding sentiment I'm seeing from pretty much everyone else in the fandom: that this is not just the best Transformers movie, but that it's a great animated movie period, that it does for Transformers what Into the Spider-Verse did for Spider-Man, what The Last Wish did for Puss in Boots, and what Mutant Mayhem did for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That, in effect, this film will make you "get it". That it's better-looking, better-written, and more meaningful than a silly toy commercial has any right to be.

I think you can definitely see some loose influence from Spider-Verse in the overall look of the film—particularly in its color grading, and in the design of its main setting, the underground city of Iacon, where the upside-down skyscrapers hanging from the ceiling evoke the iconic "falling upwards" shot from Spider-Verse. Like The Last Wish, it's an animated franchise film that spent much longer than you'd think in development, only for the release of Into the Spider-Verse to have an immediate impact on its visual style... without actually affecting the basic story to the same extent. Both Transformers One and The Last Wish, in many ways, feel like stories concocted using an older formula; in particular, Transformers One bears startling similarities to a similar toy-franchise-prequel, BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui, which was released twenty years ago! By contrast, Mutant Mayhem—which had a much shorter development period—is a direct reaction to Spider-Verse in both aesthetic and narrative, and it has a much more distinctive creative direction as a result.

If you look at how all these titles have performed in cinemas, I think you can make a pretty strong case that audiences are perfectly willing to go out and see this kind of flick. A glance at Wikipedia tells me that Mutant Mayhem, The Bad Guys, and The Last Wish grossed double, triple, and quadruple their budgets respectively. In terms of the pre-existing cultural cachet they were banking on, we're talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a children's book series I'd never heard of, and fucking Puss in Boots. You cannot tell me that Transformers, as a brand, is on the same level as any of these properties. Meanwhile, Transformers One hardly broke even, while The Wild Robot—another DreamWorks film based on a children's book I've never heard of, which it ended up competing with in theatres—grosses three times its budget. My friends who've seen The Wild Robot say it made them cry.

Face it: Transformers One has not lit the world on fire. I've seen a lot of people cope with this by suggesting that it's to do with the film's staggered release, or even by claiming that the film's marketing was somehow misleading. I'll be honest, upon seeing it, it did not strike me as being at all dissimilar to the trailers. You can maybe say that the trailers undersold the depth of Orion Pax's and Megatron's relationship—which is its best aspect—but honestly, I think if they'd taken a lot of those scenes out of context and put them in early teasers, audiences would've laughed it out of theatres. Like, c'mon, it's toy robots, stop pretending it's Shakespeare. And otherwise, what you see is what you get; it's exactly what it says on the tin.

I wonder how many Transformers fans, on some level, have noticed that even when we're supposedly "eating good", and watching "peak cinema", our films just aren't as good as everyone else's. They're something you'll enjoy if you're already highly predisposed to enjoy them. But otherwise, they're not turning heads. They're not as funny, or as heartfelt, or as complex, or as exciting, or as charming, or as memorable, or as beautiful as these other films. Unlike with Spider-Verse, there's no word-of-mouth amongst normal people to say that this is a film worth seeing.

What I perceive in studios hoping to recreate the flash-in-the-pan success of Spider-Verse is a misunderstanding of what made people go crazy for that movie in the first place. Yes, it changed our conception of what an 3D-animated film could look like. Yes, the multiverse is very cool and all that. Yes, it had a huge IP attached to it. But on a more fundamental level, that movie has a fantastic story underpinning it. The script is razor-sharp. The story is beautifully complex. The vision of New York City it presents is a living, breathing place, populated by real people. It has the kind of craft to it that can only come from truly obsessive creators cultivating an absolutely miserable professional environment for a legion of passionate animators.

In interview, Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura actually spoke surprisingly candidly about his view on crunch:

I probably shouldn't answer this question, because I'm not exactly PC on my answer. I think the nature of filmmaking is, we're really lucky to work in a business that's about passion. Passion doesn't fit really well into a timeline, so inevitably you come to a crunch time. It's just true in the live action, it's true in every movie, and authors always tell me that about when they're writing their books — it's the same thing happens to them! There's something about the creative process that's not — it's unruly. So, I think if you're enjoying it, you need to recognize that. Like, you know, I don't wanna abuse anybody, and y'know — if you get into that period where people have to really work too hard, you gotta help them in that situation, then. 'Cause it's gonna come. It does on every movie. I've never seen it not come, no matter how well you plan, et cetera. 'Cause it's not a science what we're doing at all, and there's all these discoveries that happen near the end, which makes you go "oh, let's do some more, come on!". We discovered that on this movie, where we're calling ILM going "we've got a few ideas, you know, do you have enough man-hours?". [...] Like, you gotta be conscious of it — in live-action, for instance, there are some studios that are so cheap that when you're on — sort of medium location-distance and you're shooting 'til midnight, they don't pay for a hotel room. It's like, well, no-no-no, you pay for a hotel room. You protect the people.

According to everyone who worked on Transformers One, everyone who worked on Transformers One was very passionate about it. But there are parts of this film where I think you can say, pretty objectively, that it's falling short of its intended effect. So I guess maybe they weren't that passionate. I'm not saying that to be mean! It's just... isn't that better than the alternative—that this was the best they could do?

III. I did not care for The Godfather

At one point in the film, the gang's magic map leads them to a scary cave, which looks like this:

Bumblebee fills the dead air by saying, "A cave, with teeth. Nothing scary about that!" The joke here is that this is a cave that looks like a mouth. But as depicted, it's a cave that looks like a mouth that doesn't look like a cave! I get that this is an alien planet, but stalactites don't grow that way on Earth, so when you see the cave onscreen, your gut reaction isn't "oh my, what a frightening cave!". No, this is a cave that makes you say, "that's not a cave, that's some kind of alien monster".

(It's not like "cave turns out to be a monster" would in any way be a fresh twist. In BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui, there's a bit where a character swims into a scary cave, and it turns out to be the mouth of a massive sea serpent. In The Empire Strikes Back, the Millennium Falcon briefly hides in an asteroid tunnel which turns out to be a giant space worm. So I'm definitely not saying Transformers One would've been a better film if it had used this stock trope.)

Then once the heroes go inside, we're whisked off to an entirely different set of concept artwork, for this lush organic underground paradise. There's no danger there. The cave itself is reduced to a strange little footnote. Maybe it's only in the story because a concept artist drew it before they'd worked out the finer points of the narrative, and Keegan-Michael Key just ended up ad-libbing the "teeth!" line when he was told to vamp for a few seconds. Or maybe the teeth gag was fully written into the script from the start, and the environment artists just interpreted it way too literally.

Like, I'm sorry, I don't mean to start off on the wrong foot here by harping on about the cave thing—it's not a perfect example anyway—but to me it's a microcosm for my frustration towards what I perceive to be a lack of creative vision in this film. So much of the film feels like it's not there to be entertaining, or meaningful, or narratively load-bearing... it's just obligatory, something they threw in for the sake of having anything at all. It's colors and sounds. When you see the spiky shape onscreen, you think, "ooh, this film was pretty bouba earlier, but now it's more kiki!" They get the comedian to improvise a few one-liners while the characters walk from place to place. And it's like, yes, this is a film for children. Of course the heroes have an adventure map with a big red X on it. In many respects this is a glorified episode of Pocoyo, or the modern equivalent, which I guess is "Baby Shark | Animal Songs For Children".

Nowhere is this sense of "we are obliged to put this in the movie" felt more strongly than in its supporting cast. When you look closely, you notice that Bumblebee and Elita-1—placed prominently in the film's marketing and being technically present for much of its runtime—don't actually do anything of narrative significance. They don't make choices that impact the story; they're just there, and it would not take much rewriting to excise them entirely, so it's just Orion Pax and Megatron on their little adventure. In fact, I'll just come out and say it: I think Transformers One would have been a better movie if Bumblebee and Elita-1 were not in it.

It helps that, from a Doylist perspective, the motivations for their inclusion are perfectly transparent. Firstly, think of the merchandise! Secondly, in Bumblebee's case, it's fucking Bumblebee, he's the whole reason half the kids will be watching, you can't not have him in there. Whenever Bumblebee's not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking, "where's Bumblebee?" Also, I think the creative team felt that they could use Bumblebee tactically to balance some of the darkness in the story.

In the G1 cartoon, Bumblebee just has the default Autobot personality—good-natured, a little sarcastic—with the dial turned a little more towards friendliness. There's this iconic anecdote from the production that cartoon, where writer David Wise found himself in exactly the same situation Transformers writers are finding themselves in forty years later: he was told to write a story about something called "Vector Sigma", and he had no fucking clue what Vector Sigma was supposed to be. So he asked story editor Bryce Malek, who also had no fucking idea. Malek in turn asked Hasbro, and was told that Vector Sigma was "the computer that gave all the Transformers personalities". Upon hearing this, Malek said, "Well, it didn't do a very good job, did it!" Vector Sigma, in case you missed it, does actually appear in Transformers One, as the polygonal shape that transitions into the Matrix of Leadership in the opening powerpoint; I guess they're one and the same now. Some things never change: in Michael Bay's Transformers movies, there is again just a single default personality that every single Autobot shares, a braggadacious action-hero facade over genuine bloodthirst. Who can forget that iconic moment in Revenge of the Fallen where Bumblebee rips out Ravage's spine in grisly slow-mo?

Aside from the fact that he's small and yellow, Bumblebee in Transformers One bears very little resemblance to any incarnation of the character kids might be accustomed to. Instead, he occupies a stock comic-relief archetype, he's a zany guy who goes "Well, that just happened!" If anything, his one joke in the third act—wanton murder—reads like it could maybe be a reference to his many Mortal Kombat fatalities in Bay's films. Beginning in 2007's Transformers Animated, Bumblebee has sometimes possessed deployable "stingers" that flip out from his hands, as a fun action feature for toys. Clearly someone on Transformers One saw this and thought it was the funniest fucking thing that Bumblebee has "knife hands", because the character spends the third act of the movie just shouting "knife hands!" and cutting people in half like a medieval terror.

(In the UK, Bumblebee's lines were re-recorded at the last minute so he says "sword hands" instead. This is because in the UK, we generally aren't able to kill each other using guns, so it's knives that are the big armed-violence boogeyman. Everyone's always talking about how all the kids have knives. And look, I'm not someone to indulge in moral panic, but genuinely, when I look at Bumblebee chasing around people with knives, saying, "I'm gonna cut these guys, watch!", I'm like... what the fuck were they thinking when they wrote that?)

Frankly, whatever is going on with Bumblebee is just an entirely different movie to everything else that's happening. When Bee shanks his twelfth nameless lackey in a row, the movie's like, awww, you're sweet! But when Megatron tries to kill the one (1) evil dictator who's just fucking branded him, who's still lying to his face while his people continue to die to the guy's fuckin' honor guard, Optimus Prime is like, HELLO, HUMAN RESOURCES?

Bumblebee is solely here to be funny, but there's a point in the film where it needs to become a war story, and the best they can think to do with Bumblebee is to have him kill people but in like, a funny way.

As for Elita-1... look, to put it very bluntly, she is in this movie to be a woman. Transformers has had a long, long forty-year history of boys'-club exclusionism, if not outright misogyny, and each new series usually has a token female character, as a kind of fig-leaf for the fact that really, the only fucking thing Hasbro cares about is that the boys are buying the toys. Beginning in the 1986 movie, it was Arcee who got to be "the pink one" for many years of fiction—but not toys, y'see, when parents want to buy something for their beloved young lad, they don't buy "the pink one", no sir. In the 2010s, wow-cool-OC Windblade took over for a stint as leading lady, decked out in a commercially-non-threatening red color scheme. Recently, though, it's been Elita-1—Optimus Prime's girlfriend from the original '80s cartoon—who's been the go-to female character, and she's increasingly allowed to be pink.

There is a lot of love for these characters amongst creatives and fans alike, and especially in the last decade, female Transformers have been both more numerous and better-written than ever. Unfortunately Transformers One, which depicts Elita-1 as an arms-crossing career-obsessed buzzkill, whose arc sees her learn her place in deference to a less-competent man... well let's just say it struck me as a significant step back in this regard.

There's this great interview with Scarlett Johansson, voice of Elita-1, where she's trying to describe what makes her character interesting, and it's like she's drawing blood from a stone. She's like, "yeah, so Elita-1, I would say, she's on her own journey, because at the start of the film it's sort of like she's working at a big company, you know, and she wants to get a promotion, but then later on she learns that she can't, y'know, get a promotion". Look, it's not that Scarlett Johansson does a bad job—in fact, considering the material she's working with, she practically carries Elita-1 entirely on the back of her performance—it's just that I can't shake the impression that the filmmakers would rather pay Scarlett Johansson god knows how many thousands of dollars than try to think of a second actress that they know of.

As I've already complained, Transformers One has a pretty thin cast, but it effectively only has two other female characters who do anything. Airachnid is a secondary antagonist, Sentinel Prime's spymaster/enforcer, and it's clear that some concept artist really fucking popped off when designing her. She has eyes in the back of her head, and it's ten times creepier than that makes it sound. Her spiderlegs also create some visual interest during fight scenes. As a character, Airachnid has zero internality and is not interesting, but she is cool, so you'll get no complaints from me there.

The film's other other female character is Chromia, who wins the Iacon 5000 race at the last moment. She really comes out of nowhere to clinch it. It's funny, because the leaderboards show this one guy, Mirage, hovering near the top of the rankings for almost the whole sequence. And Chromia's character model really looks suspiciously like Mirage's. In fact, there's a different character who stands around in the background a couple of times who looks much more like Chromia. Funnily enough, that background character is even called Chromia in concept art! So if you connect the dots, it really seems that the "Chromia" who is the best racer on Cybertron was originally meant to be Mirage, a guy, until they switched the character's gender at the very last minute, and didn't bother changing the leaderboards to match.

There are two possible explanations for this. The first is that Mirage was the dark horse of Rise of the Beasts, and for some reason they felt like his depiction in Transformers One would've gotten in the way of their plans for the character somehow. It's plausible, I guess. The second, infinitely funnier option, is that at some point someone working on the movie realised that they only put two women in the film, scrambled to look through the feature to find a suitable character to gender-swap, only to discover to their horror that they'd forgotten to put in any characters whatsoever. Fuck it, the racer guy! He can be a girl. Diversity win, the fastest class traitor on Cybertron... is a woman!

In case you were wondering about the Transformers One toyline leaderboards, by my count, Orion Pax has ten new transforming toys currently announced or in stores, Bumblebee and Megatron have six each, Sentinel Prime has four, Alpha Trion has two, Elita-1 has two, Airachnid has one, Starscream has one, Wheeljack has one, and the Quintesson High Commander has one. In fact, one of Elita-1's toys—the collector-oriented high-quality Studio Series release—isn't scheduled for release until some undetermined point later next year, and she was entirely absent from leaked lists of upcoming releases, which to me smacks of "we realised last-minute that it would look really really bad if we didn't bother to release a good toy of the one woman in the film". Oh, and obviously, Chromia has no toys—but there is an "Iacon Race" three-pack consisting of Megatron, Orion Pax... and Mirage. Go figure.

The thing is, all of the stuff I'm grousing about here is pretty much standard fare for kids' films targeted more at boys. Hell, even The Lego Movie—which is basically the gold standard of toy commercials—gave supporting protagonist Wyldstyle a pretty similar arc to the one Elita-1 gets here, which was probably the weakest element of that film. Evidently conscious of this, Lord & Miller redeemed themselves by devoting the entirety of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part to deconstructing common narratives surrounding gender roles. I guess I just wish the young girls who presumably comprise some portion of Transformers One theatergoers could actually get anything out of Elita-1 as a character. Ah, what do I know, maybe it's still considered countercultural simply to depict a woman punching people.

Still, to give credit where it's due: Transformers One doesn't remotely touch the gender-essentialism prevalent in the Binder of Revelation, treating female Transformers no differently to their male counterparts in lore terms. Solus Prime is, it seems, just a Prime who happened to be a woman, rather than the mythological Eve after whom all women are patterned. There's a scene where our heroes are gifted the Transformation Cogs of the fallen Primes, and the Primes named thankfully bear no particular relation to the characters; in other words, Elita-1 isn't given Solus Prime's cog. As Alpha Trion puts it: "What defines a Transformer is not the cog in his chest, but the spark that resides in their core." Dude really remembered nonbinary people exist halfway through that sentence huh.

(Actually, the bigger mistake would've been with Megatron: if he was given Megatronus Prime's cog from the start, then this would've created the unfortunate implication that his descent into evil was only the result of Megatronus Prime's fucked up and evil cog, rather than a choice Megatron made of his own free will. The film instead has it the other way around: Megatron's radicalisation into a "might makes right" philosophy is what causes him to covet Megatronus Prime's transformation cog, to steal that power from Sentinel Prime, who stole the cogs of both Megatronus and Megatron in the first place. That's cool! This does create a bit of unfortunate narrative dissonance with Alpha Trion's words, alas, as it does seem like Megatronus Prime's cog really is more powerful than the others, because it gives both Sentinel Prime and Megatron a powerup.)

There's just something that I find so dreadfully mercenary about this movie's cast—honestly, everyone except Orion Pax, Megatron, and maybe Sentinel Prime. Take Darkwing, for example. Bro was clearly designed from the ground up to fill this stock character role of "bully who pushes our guys around and later gets his comeuppance". For a more interesting take on that exact same archetype, look no further than Todd Sureblade from Nimona, a bigoted knight who gets a whole damn character arc in the background, which directly complements that film's main themes.

Again, I'm not playing some kind of guessing game here, the authorial evidence is right there: Darkwing didn't even have a name until Hasbro designer Mark Maher was shown a picture of the character and asked, "If this was a Decepticon flyer, who would it be?" This is actually par for the course with ILM; most of their concept art is labelled with very basic descriptions, with the exact trademarks being picked in conjunction with Hasbro at a later point. Darkwing just stands out in Transformers One because he's the only recurring speaking character who's an OC in all but name (unless you count Bumblebee), he's the one guy who's been invented from scratch with total creative freedom, and he's boring as sin. It's like the filmmakers just couldn't conceive of a children's movie without that stock character—and they clearly had no idea what to do with him once they'd invented him, because he disappears entirely from the film at the start of the third act, when Orion Pax throws him into an arcade cabinet, which they have in the mines on Cybertron for some reason.

In a film with as painfully few named speaking characters as Transformers One, there's really no excuse for having this kind of one-dimensionality in their portrayals. Genuinely, I ask—who are Orion Pax and Megatron fighting to liberate? Jazz, one of the biggest personalities from the original G1 cartoon, who gets all of two boilerplate lines here? Cooley seems to think so:

As you’re designing them the background characters are almost like Lego pieces where you put different heads on different bodies just to fill in a crowd. But some of them would be brought forward and be painted specific colors so that it represents a character that I didn’t know was such a big deal. But there was stuff—like Jazz, for example, has a pretty big role. It was important to have a relationship with a character that we know gets to be saved.

To me, the idea that casual cinemagoers would be invested in any of the Transformers as characters is laughable. Michael Bay's characters are famous for being hateful non-entities. In terms of the films, Jazz is best remembered for dying at the end of the first one, seventeen years ago; he looks completely different here. The one breakout character in recent years—Mirage, as played by Pete Davidson in Rise of the Beasts—was, as I've already mentioned, written out so that the movie could reach its girl quota... not that he would've had any lines anyway.

And I just don't buy the idea that the complete dearth of compelling characterisation in this film is just an unfortunate side-effect of its clipped one-hour-thirty runtime—that, given even half an hour longer, the film would suddenly be crowded with rich portrayals of all your Transformers faves. Bumblebee and Elita-1, ostensibly two of the most important characters in the film, are not in this movie because the movie is interested in telling their stories. They are in this movie for the sake of being in this movie. It insists upon itself.

IV. No politics means no politics

In fact, putting aside merchandising considerations, Elita-1 and Bumblebee serve one very specific purpose in narrative terms. The trait Optimus Prime and Megatron have always had in common is that they are both leaders—and what is a leader, without anyone to lead? Without Bumblebee and Elita-1, you'd have this farcical situation where the only person Optimus Prime ever gets to boss around is Megatron, until the very end of the movie when God makes him king of all Cybertron. The High Guard, Starscream's gang of exiles, serve a similar narrative purpose for Megatron; they're a ready-made army who've just been sitting around waiting for him to show up and take charge.

Towards the end, the movie does actually take care to show both Orion Pax and Megatron rallying groups of Cybertronians: in Pax's case, he reveals the truth to his legion of interchangable miner friends, while Megatron riles up the High Guard mob. Again, there's a bit of that narrative sleight-of-hand, a bit of a thematic cop-out, where the question of "how do Optimus Prime and Megatron come to be leaders of their factions?" is answered only in the most literal possible interpretation. Yes, we technically see the exact chain of events that lead to this point—but both characters are portrayed as born leaders. We don't see them grow into the role, except physically. The moment Megatron decides he wants to rule, he's able to take charge. Likewise, Optimus Prime just gets divinely appointed by God. At a key point, Megatron loudly declares "I will never trust a so-called leader ever again", and the movie plays a fucking scare chord like this is supposed to be ominous. Like, oh no! Optimus Prime is a leader! And they're friends! Whatever will Megatron do when he finds out his friend, Optimus Prime, is a leader?

I don't think the movie has given any real thought to what a leader actually is. It seems to take a stance that power cannot be taken, i.e. through violent action, as Sentinel Prime and Megatron do. That one scene with Elita-1 suggests the most important trait for a leader to have, above and beyond any particular competency, is simply hope and optimism. What I just can't wrap my head around is the fact that the counterpoint the movie presents to Megatron, in the form of Orion Pax becoming Optimus Prime, does not support a belief in collective action or basic democracy—rather, it's a boring sword-in-the-stone divine-right-of-kings fantasy.

Except I do have a theory for why the film is like this. Let's look again at that interview with Eric Pearson, who came onboard in the "late middle" of production:

One of the first things that I did was a big pass on Sentinel Prime. I just felt like he was too obviously telegraphing his wickedness in previous versions, and I felt like, “No, he’s a carnival barker.” He’s got to be a big salesman. He’s a bullshitter, honestly is what he is.

(Honestly, if this is Sentinel after a "big pass" to make his villainy more of a twist, I shudder to think what the earlier drafts were like.)

Now, let's see how WIRED introduces their interview with Josh Cooley, titled "Transformers One Isn't as Silly as It Looks":

He liked the script, which traces how Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) went from friends to enemies. But as the world went into lockdown as Covid-19 spread, Cooley found his story changing, if only slightly. Trump was still in office when Cooley started working on the film, and he was having meetings with the producers and they’d “start these meetings off on Zoom just going, like, ‘Holy crap what is going on in this world?’” he says. Ultimately, the infighting they were seeing between Democrats and Republicans in the same family became an undercurrent in the film’s friends-to-enemies storyline, “because that’s what Transformers is.”

So it's like, oh, this is a 2016 election thing. This is just that one election that broke everyone's brains. Of course this movie about a made-up political struggle on an alien planet being developed from 2015-2020 wouldn't be like, hey, you know what might fix our society's problems, is if we had an election. Of course the main villain is a "big salesman" "bullshitter" who says things like "The truth is what I make it!". Wow, guys, your film is so-o-o politically-conscious, and very pretty.

The fantasy is more or less that Donald Trump's army of reactionaries is marching on Washington to seize power through violent means, and on the way he drops Joe Biden into the Grand Canyon, but just before Joe hits the ground a giant fucking bald eagle swoops in to catch him and squawks, "God finds you worthy! Arise, President Biden!"

In our escapist little morality play, our best friend slash allegorical dad gets made king of the planet, and we all get jobs in the government. As in, one of the funniest lines in the movie is straightup Bumblebee exulting, "This is the greatest day of my life. I get to work for the government!" When Prime met Bumblebee—an hour ago—the dude was talking to imaginary friends, and honestly the only fucking skill he's demonstrated since then is cold-blooded murder. We have this dissonance in the storytelling, where it's mostly a story about four friends going on an adventure (are they even friends? Most of them hate each other!), but it's also a founding-fathers political origin story, which means there comes a point where our hero just suddenly starts bossing his friends around in a deep voice, and they're like, "Yes, sir!" It creates this unhinged situation where the "good" faction on Cybertron is ruled by the biblical chosen one and his nepotism buddies.

Per that quote from WIRED (or are they just putting words in Cooley's mouth? I can't help but notice they don't give an exact quote!), the film is ultimately sympathetic to the bad guys (the Republicans, I guess). It deliberately suggests that there is really nothing that should divide the Autobots and the Decepticons: their political goals, it claims, are identical, and they only disagree on the means by which to achieve them. The Decepticons, who are angry and hateful, have simply been misled by a power-hungry liar with charisma—first Sentinel, then Megatron—and so the tragedy is that they are artificially pushed into conflict with their fellow men, when really they should be uniting to stand against their common enemy, the foreigner illuminati trying to steal Cybertron's wealth.

Now, I know I've just handed you a get-out-of-jail-free card. My political allegory here is chock full of holes. What, are Sentinel Prime and Megatron both Donald Trump? Get a grip. Obviously any real-world commentary in Transformers One was only intended in the loosest sense imaginable: things like, "people should be free to change into whatever they want!" I'm being unfair, I'm reading too much into it, this is a cartoon movie for children, and if I want politics, I should start reading some fucking books. Also, come to mention it, my whole argument about that cave earlier really didn't hold water, and- I know, alright? I know.

V. Place / Place, Cybertron

I'm not mad at this toy commercial because its politics don't quite align with mine. I'm not mad at it for having a boring-ass supporting cast. I'm not mad at it for reheating a bunch of half-baked lore I didn't care for from the early 2010s. I've actually spent a lot of time mad about Transformers media that I've thought was bad. There's Transformers: Armada, where the English translators are fully asleep at the wheel and render even the most basic cartoon plots incomprehensible though constant mistranslations. There's Transformers: Micromasters, where two white guys wrote a downtrodden race of tiny Cybertronians who greet each other like "Wattup, my micro!". There's the recent series of Transformers: EarthSpark, where there's an episode that I can only describe as "the Wonka Experience but it's an episode of a children's cartoon", with a plotline that mostly revolves around our child heroes straightup robbing a Onceler-looking businessman of his most valuable possession. There's Transformers: Age of Extinction, with that one scene, and also the rest of that movie. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most Transformers fiction is some combination of bad, offensive, and offensively bad.

So even though I've just spent thousands of words whinging and moaning about how I didn't like Transformers One, the truth is that I had a perfectly nice time at the cinema. I got to go see it with five of my pals who love Transformers just as much as I do, and we had a blast. It is easily in the top 50% of all Transformers fiction.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I guess I've always given a lot of thought to what Transformers looks like from the outside. Maybe it's that I'm compelled to spend so much time and money on it, that it somehow compels me to vomit up these kinds of essays, and all I want is to be able to make it make sense to anyone in my life. It would be so, so nice if I could just sit down in the cinema with a friend or family member for a couple of hours, and at the end of it, they'd be able to walk out and say, "Okay, I guess I see what you get out of it." Rise of the Beasts was kind of that movie for me, but Rise of the Beasts is also the seventh instalment in a blockbuster franchise. It kind of takes for granted everything about Transformers.

It doesn't answer, "what the fuck is a Transformer anyway?"

For many years now, fans have noticed a marked aversion to using the word "transform" as a verb, or even as a noun. Optimus Prime no longer says, "Autobots, transform and roll out!", he just says, "Roll out!". Transformers no longer transform, they "convert". In fact, Transformers are no longer Transformers at all: they are "Transformers bots", the italics here serving to distinguish a registered trademark. This is because the worms in suits at Hasbro are worried that, if they continue to use the word "transform" by its dictionary definition—that is, to change—then rival toy companies will be able to make the case that anything that transforms can legally be described as a Transformer. It will become a generic trademark, like Velcro, or Band-Aid, or Dumpster.

Yet in Transformers One, "Transformers" is not just the noun by which the characters are referred to—rather, it's used in a descriptive sense to specifically mean "Cybertronians who can transform"! Characters are constantly talking about whether they can or can't transform. Prime gets to say his catchphrase in full. It's a miracle. Not only that, characters even get to say the word "kill" instead of "defeat" or "destroy".

Transformers One has a level of unrestricted creative freedom not seen since the 1986 animated film. This is a film unconstrained by location shooting, or licensing deals, or uncooperative actors; through the magic of CGI, for every single frame of its one-hour-thirty runtime, the filmmakers can put literally whatever they want on the screen. They were given the assignment, "Make an animated prequel set on Cybertron telling the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron", handed an estimated $147 million and a blank page, and told to go nuts. Like those born with transformation cogs, Transformers One had the power to become anything it wanted to be.

The 1986 animated film took that carte blanche to do whatever the fuck it wanted, and basically singlehandedly defined the direction of the franchise ever since. On a lore level, in terms of tone, I would say that Transformers owes practically everything to The Transformers: The Movie. Cartoons, comics, films, and video games have adapted every single one of its scenes countless times over. I'm not necessarily saying that it's a good film, or even that it's a particularly original film—much of it is ripped off from Star Wars—just that it took the franchise somewhere it hadn't gone before. It was looking to the future. As in, literally, it was set in 2005, at the time two decades into the future.

What gets me down about Transformers One is that—like most major franchise media released since The Force Awakens—all it can do is think about the past. Swathes of it are devoted to painstakingly recreating or setting up the various bits of iconography which have arbitrarily come to define the franchise. Even when it appears to be taking things in a new direction, it's not long before it course-corrects back into familiar territory: Steve Buscemi invents a surprisingly fresh take on Starscream's voice, and then Megatron half-strangles him to death, saddling him with a post-produced rasp to emulate Chris Latta's iconic performance from forty years ago.

The very title of the film, Transformers One, is an allusion to the line, "Till all are one," which originates in The Transformers: The Movie. In an early script for that '80s feature, it was actually "Till all life sparks are one", referring to a literal metaphysical process in that draft whereby one Transformer's life force could be passed on to another, presumably with the belief that they would all eventually be merged into a single afterlife. In the finalized story, it's just this kind of mystical phrase vaguely evoking concepts of togetherness and unity.

Transformers One brushes up against the phrase a couple of times. Alpha Trion almost says it at one point, when passing on his dead siblings' transformation cogs: "They were one. You are one. All are one!" Whatever that means. Later, Orion Pax starts a chant amongst the miners: "Together as one!" And finally, at the very end of the movie, during his obligatory film-ending monologue, Optimus Prime again goes: "And now, we stand here together... as one." (Half of Cybertron has just been banished to the surface forever.) "[...] Here, all are truly... Autobots." (Again, half of Cybertron- Optimus, what the fuck are you talking about?) Regardless, this is inexplicably the one instance where the movie doesn't twist itself up into knots trying to nail the exact phrasing.

Actually, there is one other sideways reference like this I can think of. Early in the film, Orion Pax is chatting up Elita, and he remarks, "Feel like I have enough power in my to drill down and touch Primus himself." To which Elita replies, "You don't have the touch or the power." This is kind of a nonsensical retort unless you know that in the 1986 movie, one of the most iconic songs on the soundtrack was "The Touch" by Stan Bush, which had the chorus line: "You got the touch! You got the power!" It's a banger. Anyway, remember when I said Darkwing gets chucked through an arcade cabinet? Well, here's Cooley revealing why that arcade cabinet is in the film:

I actually wrote [that exchange between Orion Pax and Elita] because I love that song. [...] And we had this one version where D-16 and Orion were playing a video game, like a stand-up old arcade game—it was inspired to look like that, but a Cybertonian version of that. They’re playing that together like friends and the song, like the 8-bit song that’s playing is ["The Touch"]. But that scene got nixed. And so I wanted to work it in there somewhere. And I just felt like a natural place for it. But that was one where I’m like, "I just love that song and those lyrics and that’s Transformers to me so I want to get that in there."

(I've had to amend that quote to fill in the blanks where the article has redacted "spoilers" for the movie. Spoiler culture is an absolute pox, I swear. Can't have the audiences knowing about one (1) mid joke in advance—the movie barely has enough jokes to fill a "Transformers One Funny Moments" compilation as it is!)

This actually isn't the first time Hasbro has "nixed" a reference to "The Touch" in major Transformers media. In the Transformers: Cyberverse episode "The Alliance", a character references "The Touch" right before a training montage which is clearly supposed to have the track playing, except instead it's been replaced by a generic rock instrumental, presumably because they couldn't afford the license. And in Daniel Warren Johnson's Eisner-award-winning bestselling comic run, there's one panel where he clearly wanted to include the song's lyrics as a sound effect, but wasn't allowed, so the final sound effect famously reads "YOU KNOW THE SONG". But that's a random episode of a bargain-bin cartoon, and an indie-darling comic series—not a $147 million blockbuster. You really have to wonder if it came down to money, or if it was something else. God knows Transformers One would not actually be improved for having a chiptune remix of "The Touch" in it, anyway.

The most egregious misplaced bit of fanwank in the film isn't even in dialogue. In the 1986 film, there's this one iconic moment when Optimus Prime arrives at the besieged Autobot City, drives through a crowd of Decepticons in truck mode, then fires some afterburners, launching his cab up into the air, where he transforms mid-leap, drawing his blaster to shoot a couple of Decepticons before hitting the ground. It's a fantastic bit of original animation. It's the Akira slide of Transformers. And, surprise surprise, it crops up in Transformers One. In the climactic final fight, Orion Pax shows up to save Megatron, and he does the thing.

But the problem is... he's not in truck mode! The film just cuts to him standing there in the middle of some anonymous mooks, then he does a standing jump into the air, the movie momentarily goes into extreme slow-mo like he's doing a fucking quick-time event, then he shoots a couple of guys and drops to the ground. There's no momentum. It exists purely to create that simulacrum, to take the single most iconic frame from that bit of 1986 animation, and stretch that one frame into infinity. The context is discarded, irrelevant. All that matters is that brief moment of recognition: "I know what that iiis!" God knows Transformers One has precious little in the way of impactful fight animation of its own; the choreography is stiff and uninspired, while the shots themselves are nauseatingly cluttered. Often, the best it can do is pilfer from older, better stories.

"Did you clap at any of the new moments and memorable characters?" "Were there any?"

Look, I get it. Transformers One is a prequel. By definition, it can't change the future. It has to play with the characters that are already in the toybox. But I do think it had this really special opportunity: to show theatregoers where the Transformers come from. To show us Cybertron not as a distant star or a barren scrapyard, but as a living, thriving alien world, unlike Earth, something special and worth protecting in its own right. Something new and memorable. In Rise of the Beasts—probably the best Transformers movie by default—when Optimus Prime is at his lowest, he wants nothing more to return home... but home is something we've only ever seen as a cold dystopia, ruled by Decepticons. The version of Transformers One I had hoped to see was one that would have imbued Optimus' homesickness with greater meaning. I wanted to feel his loss, and to hope that one day the war will end, and Cybertron can be restored.

I think Transformers One sincerely tries to achieve this effect. The concept artists have clearly put a great deal of time and thought into Cybertron as an environment. When the artbook comes out, I'm keen to see how much stuff didn't make it into the finished film. You have to assume most of it got cut, because there's next to nothing left!

At the end of the film, battle lines are drawn, the civil war is about to start... but strangely, the movie's setting does not convey the sense that anything beautiful is being lost. Nobody is unwillingly turned to violence, innocence-lost; they're all too eager to get to killing, friggin' Bumblebee is gleeful about it. There's no beautiful, iconic landmark, which gets tragically destroyed, like in some kind of Transformers 9/11—"What have we done! Where will this war take us!". There's no part of Cybertron's natural ecological environment to be ruined by the war, because the surface world is already turbofucked by the Quintessons to begin with. No, rather, we have the total opposite: Optimus Prime finding the Matrix (which was just, like, hanging out in the core of Cybertron or whatever) actually restores Energon to the planet, removing the unnatural scarcity which was the entire impetus behind the film's dystopia. He made Cybertron great again. So again, Transformers One fails to answer one of the most fundamental questions one might expect of a Transformers prequel: "When did things on Cybertron get so bad?" The movie ends with the planet in better shape to how it started!

The big original idea that Transformers One has is that Cybertron, the planet itself, should be in a constant state of transformation. I've already talked about the beautiful shapeshifting landscapes, but it's also the moving buildings, the complicated mechanisms, the roads and rails that magically lay themselves between the vehicles and their destinations. I've already mentioned how odd I find it that none of these environmental transformations have any significance to the story; the closest it comes to some sort of payoff is when Orion Pax falls into the hole that makes you king.

What I find most perplexing are the deer. When the gang makes it to the surface, the idea is to show the natural beauty of the surface, which the cogless have been denied their whole lives. The mountains glisten as they move. Nebulae glow in the night sky. The surface is blanketed in organic (?) plantlife, like a watering can forgotten in a garden. And, most strikingly, there are deer: mechanical animals, just like those found on Earth, being hunted for sport by the evil Quintessons. When the cruisers near, their glowing horns turn red with alarm, and they prance around in fear.

I'm reminded of a brief gag from the third season of Transformers: Cyberverse—one of very few shows to have devoted any serious effort to Cybertronian worldbuilding—in the episode "Thunderhowl". Bumblebee and Chromia stumble across a "singlehorn" (read: unicorn), and when it senses danger, it neighs, transforms into a rocket, and blasts out of frame. And apart from being really cute and funny, it's like, oh, of course that's what animals are like on Cybertron! Everything on this planet transforms. Why not the animals?

For whatever reason, the deer in Transformers One are like the one thing that don't transform. Why the hell not? If Cyberverse could find the budget for its split-second sight gag, surely this blockbuster could, I don't know, have them turn into dirt bikes with antler-handlebars. That would've been something, right? If not, then at least could we maybe see some other animals on Cybertron, to really get across that alien biodiversity? Of course not. See, the deer exist to communicate one very specific story beat: a single moment of trepidation, where the heroes know there's danger nearby, but they don't know what. And all you need for that is a single kind of prey animal, with some kind of warning light to let you know, hey, there's danger! Once this purpose is fulfilled, the deer have no further significance to the story.

We need only look to BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui to see this exact same beat play out with a modicum of competence and creative flair. Also in the second act—in fact, at practically the exact same timestamp—our heroes, the Toa, have a run-in with the bad guys, and they're nearly captured... but then there's this sudden rumble of danger approaching, we don't know what. It turns out to be a herd of giant Kikanalo! They send the bad guys packing, except they nearly trample our heroes too! But then, Toa Nokama's mask begins to glow, and she discovers that her mask grants her the ability to talk to animals. They learn some vital information from the Kikanalo, and are able to ride the creatures for the next stage of their adventure. Finally, when they can go no further, the Kikanalo cave in the passage behind the heroes to ensure they won't be pursued. Holy shit, that's like, five different story beats with just that one type of creature!

It's not just that Transformers One struggles with that kind of basic narrative flow, where a single element serves multiple purposes. It's that often, it wastes precious time creating redundant setups to achieve the same effect twice.

For example, Megatronus Prime's face happens to look exactly like (what we know will be) the Decepticon insignia. At the beginning of the movie, Orion Pax mollifies Megatron by giving him a rare decal of Megatronus Prime's face. Traditionally, Megatron wears his insignia in the middle of his chest—but in this film, nearly every character has a big hole in the middle of their chest, where their missing transformation cog should go. So Megatron sticks the decal on his shoulder instead.

Later, he gets a cog, and the hole in his chest is filled. When Sentinel Prime captures Megatron, he notices the Megatronus sticker, and rips it off. Then, he re-applies it on Megatron's chest—purely so it's in the "right" place for the iconography. And then, he uses his gun to crudely brand Megatron with a tracing of Megatronus' face, inadvertently creating the Decepticon symbol. Finally, in a post-credits scene, Megatron has fashioned a proper Decepticon brand with which to brand himself and his followers. So in effect, there are four separate moments where Megatron gets the symbol! Orion sticking it on his shoulder, Sentinel moving it to his chest, Sentinel mutilating him, and finally Megatron branding himself. You can make an argument that the symbol starts out meaning one thing, but ends up meaning another thing, which has a kind of tragic significance—but I think you would struggle to distinguish subtle shades of meaning from all four of these brandings. Considering the movie only has an hour and a half to work with, I find this lack of narrative economy to be honestly embarrassing.

(My friend Jo also points out what a misstep it is to just have Megatronus Prime's face perfectly resemble the Decepticon symbol from the start. Had it been a looser, more stylised—that is to say, original—design, the moment where Sentinel Prime roughly carves it into Megatron's chest could be a shocking reveal, as the basic outlines are abstracted and simplified. Gasp, that's the origin of the Decepticon symbol! Instead, from the very moment that sticker first shows up, it's like... oh, well, there it is I guess.)

In a similar vein, both Optimus Prime and Megatron undergo two different transformations at different points in the movie: first, when Alpha Trion gives them transformation cogs, and second, when respectively they obtain the Matrix of Leadership/Megatronus' cog. The gun that sprouts from Megatron's arm in his intermediary form bears a much closer to resemblance to his iconic "fusion cannon" than the triple-barrelled cannon he ends up with in his final form. Again, in such a short film, can we really say whatever subtlety this brings to Megatron's arc is worth all this fanfare? Now, Redditors ask: "What is the EXACT moment D-16 became Megatron?"

In fact, probably the only point of criticism I've seen levied at Transformer One from within the Transformers fandom at large is that Megatron's arc is maybe a little "rushed". He starts out being best bros forever with Orion Pax, and by the end of the film, he's ready to drop the guy into a bottomless pit. The film takes a lot of time to justify his anger at Sentinel Prime, but the deterioration of his friendship with Orion goes much more unspoken, and is framed more as a point of irrationality: psychologically, Megatron comes to conflate his bossy friend with his oppressive ruler. I liked this, personally. I liked that it's as if a switch gets flipped in Megatron's head. But you do just kind of have to buy into it. The film itself does not put in the work to really sell you on the friendship souring, because again, it's too busy fucking around with two (2) magical girl transformation sequences for each of them.

Everything in the film is like this. They go into the cave and meet Alpha Trion, then leave the cave so they can watch a FMV cutscene with Sentinel Prime and the Quintessons, who've coincidentally arrived at that exact moment, basically just to rehash what they've just been told... and then they go back into the cave so Alpha Trion can resume his infodump, and then they end up clashing with Sentinel Prime's forces once that's done. At the beginning of the movie, they're at the very bottom in the mines, then they get banished to an even lower level, then they banish themselves all the way up to the surface, then they return to Iacon, and then Megatron gets banished to the surface again so he can be mesmerized by the beauty of the world and/or get gunched by Quintessons depending on what the film wanted me to take away from this. Compare to Minecraft but I survive in PARKOUR CIVILIZATION [FULL MOVIE], where the theme of class struggle is pretty efficiently depicted in the vertically-stratified setting.

I just find it so wasteful. Outside of the one scene where they're introduced, the Quintessons—ostensibly the true architects of Cybertron's oppressive status quo—may as well not exist. If not for Orion Pax addressing his closing remarks to the Quintessons, almost as an afterthought, I'd assume the film wants us to forget about them entirely, as it knows full well that its paltry runtime does not give it time for a second action-climax against the aliens. Even as sequel bait, it feels halfhearted at best; Josh Cooley is clearly already bored of Transformers, and seems unlikely to come back for another round unless the money is really really good (which *glances at the box office* it's not). So what the fuck are the Quintessons here for? Was the idea that Sentinel might just have pulled off his coup singlehandedly really so hard to stomach? Could the conspiracy not have been simplified to just involve Sentinel and his Transformer cronies? Hang on, are all the Transformers seen at the start of the film in on it, or just some of them? How's it decided who keeps their cogs and who doesn't?

VI. Into nothing

Why does this movie, where the main selling point is ostensibly that we're getting to see Transformers civilization for the first time, mostly focus on all these guys who can't fucking transform? Surely the entire thing that makes the setting fun is the Zootopia angle of, look, they're all different animals! Or the Elemental angle of, look, they're all different elements! Or the Emoji Movie angle of, look, they're all different emoji! Or the Cars angle of, look, they're all different cars! This is a Transformers film which features several significant sequences involving these cool trains, and there is absolutely zero indication that these trains are themselves Transformers. This is a Transformers film which extensively focuses on miners, and none of them transform into mining vehicles; they're holding, friggin', space jackhammers. Even the premise of "isn't it sad that these ones can't transform" is kind of undercut by the fact that all the miners get to wear fucking jetpacks, which is a frankly much cooler and more effective method of locomotion than driving.

I'm just sick of Transformers stories having zero interest in the basic premise of Transformers, which is to say, they transform into something. I also think this is the biggest dissonance between casual audiences, who think "oh yeah, Optimus Prime, that guy who turns into a truck", and Transformers fans, who think, "oh yeah, Optimus Prime, the messiah or something". Normal people love to know what the Transformers turn into. They ask, "Wait, is there a Transformer that turns into [insert silly vehicle here]?" Of course people are interested in that angle! Vehicles are such a huge part of our daily lives—honestly, for those of us living in cities, more so than animals, the classical elements, or emoji—but the closest Transformers One comes to engaging with this lens is that aforementioned Iacon 5000 race sequence. By and large, it presents a world which is made for standing up and walking around. And personally I do think that's an insane approach to take?

Is the excuse that cars can't emote? Nonsense. If you've ever seen a traffic jam, you'll know that cars can sure as hell emote. Pixar, where Josh Cooley cut his teeth, famously spent a lot of time working out how to put a facial expression on a car. No, the problem dates back to the very start of the franchise.

In the 1980s, two main people were responsible for writing the comic stories: American writer Bob Budiansky, and British writer Simon Furman. Budiansky approached the premise of the franchise from an external, human perspective, writing about culture clash, and taking delight in the Transformers' mechanical alien nature as "robots in disguise". Meanwhile, Furman wrote the Transformers as giant people: he focused on their own internal conflicts and motivations, and the grand history of their war. Pretty much every Transformers story ever told can be boiled down to one of these schools of thought: Budianskian, or Furmanist.

Budiansky quit the comic after fifty issues, allowing Furman to take the reigns as sole writer, and Furman basically got the final word on what the Transformers are. They did not evolve from naturally-occurring gears, levers and pulleys. They were not designed by a supercomputer, or built by an alien race. They are the chosen sons of God. The Thirteen are, of course, an invention of Furman's. And Transformers One is perhaps the most Furmanist story ever told. It's the culmination of years and years of lore building up, ossifying into something you can no longer describe as the history of a universe—no, this is a mythology. It's the most perfect form of brand alignment imaginable: this is not an origin story, this is the origin story. It's been the origin story for a better part of the decade—and now that everyone's seen it in theatres, it will be the origin story forever.

It's not just the fiction, either, by the way. These days, if you go into the store to buy a Transformers toy, chances are it'll turn into some misshapen made-up futuristic concept car with unpainted windows and wheels that don't even roll—and that's terrible.

There's truly a lot to hate about Michael Bay's Transformers films, but with each new entry that's released following his departure from the franchise, I feel like I only find myself appreciating them more. In the 2007 Transformers movie, we see the Transformers crash-landing on Earth in their "protoforms", and their movements are animated like they're shy, like they're naked until they scan an Earth vehicle and adopt a disguise. The visual impact of Megatron, meanwhile, is that he doesn't adopt a disguise in that movie: he's a horrible metal skeleton that turns into a jet made of knives. It's weird and alien and it rules.

In the 1980s Transformers cartoon, and in the last-minute Cybertron-set prologue added to Bumblebee, and now in Transformers One, the Transformers look basically the same on Cybertron as they eventually do upon their arrival to Earth. Optimus Prime turns, unmistakably, into a truck. He has windows on his chest, and smokestacks on his arms. He doesn't have these features because he disguises himself as an Earth truck. He has those details because that's just what Optimus Prime looks like. They're his "essential brand elements", or "trademark details", which "identify the must-have elements in character design to be carried across all creative expressions". Prime may take any form he wishes, so long as it looks exactly like himself. A mask of my own face—I'd wear that.

What I find fucked up about the reception towards Transformers One is that a lot of people seemed very invested in its success—and not its popular success, certainly not its artistic success, but rather its commercial success. They wanted this to be the first film to make one bumblebillion dollars. They wanted Hasbro to line its fucking pockets and make movies like this forever. So if you express any kind of negativity towards this film online, which might theoretically affect some other person's decision of whether or not to go and see it, which might theoretically affect the profit it makes at the cinema, which might theoretically affect the future of the franchise in some unknown way, then you're some sort of fandom traitor who oughta be executed.

If you're so worried about the future of the franchise, the fandom really isn't where you should be looking. Like, c'mon, the Transformers fandom has been good as gold, we buy so many toys. Meanwhile, Hasbro just got finished laying off around 100 employees with no warning to make their books look a bit better. Transformers designer John Warden—who'd worked at Hasbro for 25 years, is widely credited with inventing the modern paradigm of Transformers toylines, and ultimately became the creative director of both Transformers and G.I. Joe—was on assignment to a convention in the UK with the rest of the Transformers team when he heard the news. Suffice to say, he did not end up making a public appearance at the convention. With his work's health insurance snatched away without notice, he's had to resort to crowdfunding to pay his family's medical bills. As a well-known figure in the toy industry, he will presumably find a new job and land on his feet, but the same cannot be said for all 99 of the remaining employees we're told have been unceremoniously dumped.

The Binder of Revelation, which has been something of a holy grail of behind-the-scenes material for over a decade, has finally been leaked—presumably by one of these guys, presumably out of spite.

Now, I'm not going to pretend to have been paying particularly close attention to Hasbro's financials, but from where I'm sitting, it sure seems that ever since the sudden death of then-CEO Brian Goldner in 2021—credited for saving the company in 2000, and overseeing the explosive growth of its intellectual property ever since then—his replacement, Chris P. Cocks (or "Crispy Cocks", as we're all now calling him), has been dead set on gutting the company for all it's worth. The Power Rangers franchise, which the company acquired for $522 million in 2018, is dead in the water, with huge quantities of physical assets being flogged at auction for quick cash. In 2019, they acquired the entertainment company eOne for $4.0 billion, and now they're selling off the whole shebang (except the cash-printing Peppa Pig franchise) for just $500 million. I guess maybe they just fucked it big style?

Because now, Crispy Cocks has proudly announced that Hasbro is going to stop financing movies altogether.

I'm sure that in the wake of this announcement, many of those aforementioned fandom pundits will be drawing a correlation between this announcement, and the box-office figures for Transformers One, and the fact that you personally failed to convince your Mom to go see it with you or whatever. "Ah, you see! They didn't make enough of their money back, and now they're consolidating. Simple economic cause and effect. Market forces." And look, I'm not going to sit here and claim these things are wholly unrelated. Of course they're very related. But I am going to make the case that, in truth, nobody at Hasbro really cared how Transformers One did. Unless it turned out to be some pie-in-the-sky runaway hit, I don't think the future of the Transformers film franchise would've been particularly different if only the film had done better.

With Paramount, Hasbro has been making these movies and having them underperform ever since 2017's The Last Knight—which apparently lost Paramount $100 million—and that's because at the end of the day, what they're most interested in isn't making movies. It's making toy commercials. And on that level, the Transformers films have clearly been a success so far.

Now, Crispy Cocks' skinsuit fashions itself as a gamer, so he can personify Hasbro's hardcore pivot towards digital and tabletop gaming. While we await the release of the assuredly-dogshit, assuredly-hell-to-have-worked-on, assuredly-never-coming-out Transformers: Reactivate, the brand has been whored out to a procession of mobile games you've never heard of, glorified gambling machines designed to hack the monkey part of your brain with bright colors and Things You Recognize. The exact content of these games is irrelevant; all that matters is the announcement, on every single pop culture news outlet simultaneously (naturally—they're all owned by the same company, talk about Monopoly), of New Collaboration Between Transformers And Goon Warriors Free To Download Now. Your daily, weekly, bi-annual reminder to think about that thing you can buy.

That's all any of this stuff is.

All these words spilled about what a good movie Transformers One is, and how bad it is, and why the marketing failed it, and what the next one might be like, and- none of it mattered! It does not matter. From the beginning, this movie was always going to be too preoccupied with its own mercenary interests to be something anyone would ever be able to seriously talk about as a work of art, even corporate art. The actual content of the movie is irrelevant; I've spent very little of this review talking about it, because there's nothing there to talk about. It is the mere fact of the movie's existence that serves its purpose. Like the Optimus Prime Fortnite skin, it's enough for it to occupy our attention.

Maybe that's why they staggered the film's release date: because some marketing exec watched the rough cut and realised, if everyone saw it at once, we'd be done talking about it within a fortnight. And in ten years' time, after it has been paraded around whichever streaming services survive 'til then, and nearly every last cent of revenue has been squeezed out of it, the kids will be able to watch it on YouTube with ad breaks, and decide what they want for Christmas.

To the Transformers fans reading this, I am begging you, unless you happen to own shares in Hasbro for some fucking reason, to disabuse yourself of the feeling that you owe any kind of loyalty to a toy franchise. It shouldn't matter to you one jot how Transformers One did in theatres. The people who actually make the product you care about, the friendly faces paraded before you on livestreams and press tours, don't see this money anyway—they too are merely assets, who can be fired and replaced with cheaper, inferior equivalents.

I'm sure many of you will have, from the very start, seen this review for the foolish endeavour it is. I've wasted all this time criticising Transformers One for its lack of artistic vision, when the truth is, Transformers One is playing an entirely different game. Like the Disney Channel running "Fishy Facts!" segments to subliminally get kids interested in fish a full year and a half before the release of Finding Nemo, this is not a product—it's an ad for a product.

...

Okay I'll be honest, I don't entirely love where this review has ended up. It ends on kind of a "bummer note", I guess you could say. Flashing back to sections I. and II., I feel like things started out so fun. We had that whole bit at the start where I was telling you about the Transformers, remember that? We learned so much together. And there were even a few moments where I was able to express some kind of sincere joy and appreciation over this thing that I supposedly adore so much. Sure, I did a lot of complaining, but it was fun complaining, right? It had like, a sarcastic edge to it, sort of.

What happened? Why am I suddenly talking like I want to cut someone's head off? As I grow more bitter, I type this essay with increasing difficulty. The massive gun that's sprouted from my forearm keeps colliding with my monitor.

Hasbro descends from on high to reward @TFHypeGuy, a grown-ass adult who has spent untold unpaid hours fearlessly replying to every single viral tweet to tell people to go see the film, somehow netting himself 80,000 followers in the process, with a crate of toys, which was probably his end goal from the start. He and I duel. We trade blow after blow. Finally, he clobbers me with a Walmart-exclusive light-up Ultimate Energon Optimus Prime figure. "It didn't have to end this way," he says. Then he banishes me to the surface world to think on my sins.

VII. The Wrong Trousers 👖 | Train Chase Scene 🚂 | Wallace & Gromit

When Eric Pearson came onto the project,

It was late middle of the game. They had a script that had the outline of the story, which is still very much the structural bones of the story now. But what I found interesting about animation is there are certain things that were far along in the process. The train escape to the surface was very far along, so that was just kind of locked. Maybe you could change a line here or there. Meanwhile, the opening, the whole first 10 minutes, was all storyboards and sketches, which changed a bunch of times.

And I do think that's a really difficult position for a scriptwriter to be in. Sure, the parts of the screenplay I feel able to attribute to Pearson, I wasn't particularly impressed by. But I think this anecdote goes to show how unnatural the constraints can be on a story like this. When you think of like, a scene that's key to Transformers One, you're probably imagining something like the Megatron/Optimus fight, or the scene in the mine—not the train scene, which is basically a bit of arbitrary connective tissue bridging the two main locations in the film.

Josh Cooley, the film's director, the face of the film on the press circuit from a creative standpoint, came onboard after five years of previous development work was already done. Writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, who originally pitched the film and presumably wrote the early drafts of the story, might have already left the project by that point. Aaron Archer and Rik Alvarez, the creative forces behind the Binder of Revelation, left Hasbro years before the film was even pitched. It's no wonder to me that the final result feels incoherent, disjointed, and oddly stilted. It's certainly no wonder that nobody at Hasbro today really seems to care about the film; it's not their baby. If any of the people credited with bringing the project to completion had been given full creative freedom to make whatever Transformers movie they wanted, it would've looked completely different.

Luckily, there are still plenty of areas of the franchise where creators have just been allowed to go ham. Over in Japan, TRIGGER has taken a modest budget for a music-video and produced one of the most visually-striking bits of animation in the franchise, a true love-letter to all the weird parts of its forty-year history. And in America, comic creator Daniel Warren Johnson is halfway through his Eisner-winning new run on the title, which is the kind of thing I would basically recommend to anyone without caveats as being a phenomenal story, period. If that comic can be said to be an advert for anything, it's for Skybound's other, nowhere-near-as-good comic series, or for the unofficial unlicensed copyright-infringing Magic Square Optimus Prime toy Daniel Warren Johnson apparently used as reference the whole time.

I dunno, maybe Hasbro stepping back from financing these films is a good thing, in the long run. Maybe we can do without Transformers movies for a while. And however many years down the line, maybe Paramount or some other studio will put together a new team of talent, and they'll get to do whatever it is they want. And maybe the movie they make will be the one that knocks everyone's socks off.

Truly, I don't know where the road leads from here. It hasn't been built yet. It could turn out to go anywhere.

If you made it this far, I hope some of what I've said has been entertaining or interesting. Thanks for reading!

Time to for me to come clean. There is one other reason why I've waited so long to release this review... and that's because I have a special announcement to make. Last month I set myself a little challenge: to write something that's at least as long as this review, but which isn't another negative-nancy tirade. It's a story.

The working title is "Ice Road Transformers". It's like an episode of that one reality TV show about Canadians driving trucks across frozen lakes—except the truck is Optimus Prime.

Early reviews say it's good! It'll be going through several rounds of revisions, to turn it into a well-oiled machine, hopefully in time for a seasonally-appropriate wide release in February. I'm very excited for you to be able to read it. You can follow me here or on Bluesky to be the first to find out when it's ready!

I'd like to thank my friends Jo and Umar for their work interviewing Cooley and di Bonaventura during the film's press circuit, along with Viv, Callum, and Omar for allowing me to enjoy this film much more than I otherwise might have. I wouldn't have been able to express many of my feelings about this movie nearly so cogently if not for the conversations I had with them. Additional thanks go to Chris McFeely, as his Transformers: The Basics videos (linked throughout this essay) refreshed my memory on a lot of the Aligned stuff, sparing me from having to read The Covenant of Primus again.

[jthealien]

Foreshadowing I’ve Found for THAT Reveal

Spoilers for the Season 1 finale under the cut!!!

HI GUYS HOW ARE WE FEELING WOW

I’ve spent the weeks in between the fast pass release and now rereading and looking for every bit of foreshadowing I could find for B- I mean Nox… being a key. (Or at least key adjacent)

Side Note: I’m playing fast and loose with the definition of foreshadowing here. Some are pretty small details or silly observations, but my list my rules :P

So here it is compiled in a massive (vaguely chronological) list with numbered photos!

Also if there’s anything I missed (I’m sure there is) please add it!!

———

1) The literal first scene of the comic is a crescent moon (in a purple background), which we now know is Nox/the villain key’s symbol

2) (Ep. 13) Nox knows “plenty about the keys.” uh yeah I bet you would

3) (Ep. 13) Chase asks if Nox is part of Ex Libris and wants to make the keys more miserable, which seems to make him really upset. It’s understandable, I’d be pretty upset if I was implied to be working with my tormentors to make my own life even worse.

4) (Ep. 13) From the start Nox assumes Chase wants the keys for something selfish. Considering Ex Libris treats the keys like objects, and some of the keys (like Bronze) are pretty weary around people, that’s not an unreasonable assumption. Nox is so accustomed to being used by higher ups for selfish wishes

—This puts his outburst in Ep. 31 in a whole new light, specifically the line about Chase wanting to befriend the keys. He’s so convinced that couldn’t be true because it’s never been true for him.

5) Each of the keys has a specific junk food/snack they like. Silver has cheese, Bronze has peanut butter, Goldie has gummies, and it seems Nox has chocolate :]

6) (Ep. 20) “Every last thing” about the keys is his business in his words

—Guess that includes himself

7) Metals can rust, and Nox isn’t a fan of water (besides baths, but I assume that’s because he can control when he goes in and for how long)

8) When you stick a key in a book, they automatically know the story (as said by Bronze in Ep. 21). This explains why Nox seems to know a book’s plot no matter what

9) (Ep. 28) He says that the keys can take advantage of “certain loopholes.” In that moment, this is a reference to what characters a key can use for their role. But it could also be a nod to how keys can technically use other keys to enter stories. He’d know that since it’s what he’s been doing this whole time.

10) In the infamous “They feed you, right?” scene (Ep. 29), we’ve always kind of assumed that — yeah — Ex Libris just doesn’t feed him often. But in this scene, Chase ALSO says “keep you locked up.” I have a feeling that’s actually what Buddy got upset about. Ex Libris probably did keep him locked up as a key, which has to be really traumatic considering his severe claustrophobia.

11) (Ep. 31) Nox assumes Chase’s wish is just as “self-serving” as his is, which we now know is to be human again.

—(Nox actually projects a lot of his own feelings onto Chase, I’ll talk about that some other time though.)

—Referring back to number 5, during this whole confrontation, Nox is convinced that Chase only wants Narratonin for a wish. As a key, of course he’d think that, because that’s all that the humans usually around him want.

12) ”Nobody should have to accept being the villain if they’re trying their best not to be.” (Ep. 30) and “I get it, you’re the villain around here…” (Ep. 32)

—He literally IS the villain

—(Also I didn’t have room to include it, but Nox gets a really sad look on his face after Chase says that last line. yikes..)

13) (Ep. 32) In response to Chase talking about trusting humans, Nox says “them.” He could’ve said something like ‘people’ or ‘anyone,’ but his wording here implies that he sees human beings as separate from himself.

14) The crescent moon necklace on his outfit in Sick Days, as well as the half-ones on his jacket. If you really think about it you could also count the gemstones near his eyes as representing his gem eyes.

—It’s maybe a little strange that this outfit is the one he decided to make so similar to his key form. But it makes sense considering the previous arc was Beach Boys, where Nox became more trusting of Chase

15) (Ep. 35) He’s never been sick because keys can’t get sick.

16) (Ep. 36) He says “real people” and “person,“ showing again how he might not think of himself as either of those. (See number 13)

17) (Ep. 39) There’s a lock on Nox’s coffin

18) (Ep. 39) I originally thought it was the lighting but nope, his ear is literally gray! Also his hair here is less spiky at the ends, like how it is in his key form

19) (Ep. 39) He looks surprised by his reflection, because he’s only used to seeing his human form while in the books.

—In fact, since you can’t see yourself in the book mirrors, when’s the last time he saw himself as a human?

20) (Ep. 39) The broken key-ring looking thing around his neck

21) (Ep. 49) “Good, that means I’m taller than someone for once.” if only you knew, Chase..

22) The entirety of Ep. 50 confirming that keys can go into books

23) (Ep. 53) He gets really pissy over the idea of his teeth being “baby”. Might be carry over from his grudge against being like 5 inches tall in reality

24) (Ep. 53) His claustrophobia could stem from being stuck in his key form and being put in a box for weeks or months at a time.

—He keeps repeating that he just needs to “wait it out” and “it’s fine” because that’s all he could do and think as a key

25) (Ep. 54) “That moon is too close” following the scene where Buddy decides to lower his guard and work on his harmful behaviors. We now know the symbol of the villain key is the moon, so it could be Nox trying to distance himself from his role as the villain.

26) (Ep. 55) The crescent moon on Bad Cat’s lapel

27) (Ep. 56) “Some people are very good at disguising their true nature” in reference to Nox. It’s quite literal, in this case.

28) All the characters’ eyes are drawn in a very specific way, no matter their color (black shading taking up half the iris, the white shine). Every character except Nox, that is.

—Well, every character except Nox and the key’s human forms. I always thought it was meant to make him seem more intimidating (which it Does), but it really might be a byproduct of being a key. The queen in Friends and Family (Ep. 56) almost has Nox’s exact eye color, and her eyes are still colored in the usual way. So it’s definitely more than a stylistic choice.

—Makes me wonder what Nox looked like pre-key form. ..Did he still have his bright blue high beams..

29) Dreams by Day is about a key having a dream/flashback, and Dreams by Night is.. also about a key having a dream/flashback

———

And that’s all I have for now!! I’m absolutely going to find something else the millisecond I post this but like u said please add anything you notice.

[willbyersmikewheeler]

Thoughts on the trailer:

I’ve been in shock so I haven’t actually said my thoughts on the trailer. So let me speak my truth now:

Ok, Joyce and Will, that opening man - that really got me screaming quietly because it was 3am. It was so healing to see them finally talk about it, we haven’t see that yet and I better see more conversations like that in s5 - them being able to talk about their trauma and start healing from it hopefully.. I’m happy to get that Joyce being a mother dynamic again with honestly, everyone not just will. Since, no shade to Joyce she was going through a lot but, I feel as though that mother dynamic was neglected due to her other story lines so I’m very happy to return to MOTHER JOYCE. Her with that axe? OH….LORD. Powerful. She’s gonna be so mother this season I know it.

THE WILL VOICE OVER, OH ITS SO HIS SEASON. SO HAPPY. LOVED THAT.

OK,,,, now wasn’t the biggest fan of half of the trailer being flashback scenes - BUT, we have already worked out a lot from leaks and stuff, so it’s just to not spoil the plot. So, sad but meh it’s fine - we got content, that’s all I need.

BARN SCENE - OK,,, what’s banging down the damn door? Joyce w axe!! From left to right in the background we have : Will, Erica, Derek, and Robin. Will and Robin interaction officially confirmed !! I’m aware we all knew already but I’m happy asf with Will and Robin interacting. Derek is either on the second floor, or floating to which HUH?? Hella confused.

HOLLY AND KAREN: Been knew that this was gonna happen, but still confused of what they are shocked at - ted isn’t in the shot so…. Maybe something is happening to him? I’m excited too see where they’ll go with this new storyline and exploring these characters more.

LUMAX, the only ship *cough cough* Byler was technically shown together *cough cough* that was shown in the teaser! We’ve seen this shot in bts before twice now, so easy shot to include. I’m happy that max is out of that full body cast but, how they are gonna wake her up and she plays a part in this season is a question mark for me right now.

DUSTIN & STEVE SHOT: Them looking up at something, we’ve seen this in leaks before - not sure what they’re doing but you can’t really tell much of anything from this shot. Other than a beaten up Dustin to which, been knew. The bullies obviously beat him up, confused on the timeline of these events though…hmmmmm.

HOPPER & EL: Ok, first off the duos are so clear by this teaser trailer! And I’m so happy for the hopper and el dynamic to come back full swing. We see alarms blasting as El screams and hopper comforts her, I’m not to sure where they are? Maybe the lab? Definitely somewhere that’s high security. And then, the edge of the wall - and hopper and el standing there looking at it, I’m very interested as to what this is and what the hell that brain like stuff is on the wall. The edge of the upside down because it only exists in Hawkins?? Are they in someone’s mind?? Hmmm interesting!

LEADER MIKE LEADER MIKE: OH, I LOVE THIS SHOT. OK LOADS TO UNPACK,,,

Mike is wet in this shot??? what?? And don’t think I forgot about that will byers wet bts pic too, byler is see you.

Mike protecting kids + Will & Joyce, I knew Derek was being added but I didn’t know about the other kids - I saw multiple people say that, they are Holly’s friends and … Mike sees himself in one of them and realises his feelings for Will were romantic. ABSOLUTE CINEMA. While I love Mike being a protector to those kids, I really hope they aren’t paired up with those kids for the entire season. I need Byler to have some solo moments.

Will in Joyce’s arms in the background,,, oh I feel ILL. Why is my poor boy exhausted / nearly unconscious?? From powers usage or injury…? I just want him to be happy guys.

MILITARY SHOT: NOW WHAT THE HELLY. Ok, the upsidedown ,saw someone say dragon from the painting and I do need that now, breaking the concrete.. SICK AS HELL.

WILL ONCE AGAIN PASSED OUT IN THE BACKGROUND WITH JOYCE BY HIM (?), NOT AS SICK AS HELL. IM SCARED FOR HIM, DESPITE ME KNOWING HES GONNA LIVE. STILL WANT HIM TO BE OK.

WILL SCREAMING - SO, we have our answers it was will screaming at Mike to run!! VERY TERRIFYING. AMAZING SHOT / SCENE. HORRIFYING SCREAM. EXCITED BUT SCARED. Not sure, why he’s screaming duh, But two main running theories are Will and something to do with possession or powers or both?.. I’m sat you guys.

I’M HAPPY THE TEASER TRAILER IS OUT, NOT SO HAPPY ABOUT THE GA BUT SIGHS GUESS ILL PUT UP WITH IT.

[lanascurse]

: ̗̀➛ Some of my DR deets

JJK DR

Oddly enough, this is the one I tend to be most private about despite it being my main. I’d love to share soooo much but it’s all too personal. I’m part of the 2006 gang, and have a lovely s/o who I adore to death ! I scripted many things out (kenjaku dies off wayyy before 2018 lmao) so the plot is sort of similar , but I added my own tweaks to it? Also, my CT is related to crystals. I might explain it more in detail one day?? Idk if anyone cares tho but I love it sm. I’m considered a semi-special grade honestly…? It’s confusing but I’m definitely not a low grade 😋

Obey me! DR

Honestly my biggest concern about this reality was the language bc the game is meant to be in Japanese but I can’t imagine them speaking English 💀 the thing is they’re all demons living in “hell” so wouldn’t they have their own special language? Idk but I guess we’re all gonna be fluent in Japanese lmao. Anyway, there is so much chaos in the reality it’s so fucking fun. Lucifer is pissed 24/7 but I’m lowkey scared of him so I try not to slip out of line often. My S/O is Solomon because something about him hits diff 😍 I love my guys Mammon and Levi too but I don’t feel a huge connect to them in a romantical sense. MY OUTFITS TOO!! I mix the devildom and human realm fashion and it’s absolute perfection!! Also, even though there’s no sunlight in the Devildom, I will NOT be deficient in vitamin D 🥰

YouTuber DR

This is a fun one for sure. I’m basing this reality around sister squad mainly because first, iconic ass squad. Second, I eventually want Grayson Dolan as my s/o…I used to be Ethan’s lane lmao. I scripted for us to get together around 2020 since this is their “maturing” era. I have a YT squad of my own and we blew up in popularity years before we got involved with others YouTubers. I know James, Emma, and the twins personally, and quite close with them. And for fun I interact with Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star cuz why tf not? Doesn’t mean I wanna be their friend but they carried 2018 YouTube, let’s be so fr. 2018 is our prime year, my squad and I are drama free for the most part, even when people want to drag us into a scandal. Also making LA more ideal because…I think we all know why. Love this DR 😫

Waiting room

A cute cottage near the cliff-sides of Scotland where I have my bunnies, and all my cats (including the deceased ones). I chill, script, and am filled with absolute love and positivity. This is the place where time truly slows down and allows me to enjoy life. I get to watch edits of my dr’s (w me in them ofc), read goofy fanfics, and can literally summon anything or anyone I want ! It’s technically my dream life but without a career ;)

Haikyuu DR

In love with this anime/manga forever and always. My story goes deep so I won’t get into it too much but my s/o is most definitely Oikawa Tooru. I am a manager for Karasuno’s boys volleyball team and honestly might be like Hinata with how many encounters/friendships I develop 😭 I’m a second year so I’m close to Tanaka and Noya (two of the biggest doofus dingus heads ever I love them sm). My childhood best friend is Kageyama which creates an interesting dynamic around us imo. Wayyy too much to spill about this DR so imma keep it short !

Alice in Borderland DR

I was contemplating this one because it’s so creepy yet interesting. My occupation outside of the borderlands is still confusing to me because I haven’t given this DR any attention, but what I do know is Kuina will become my mf girlfriend. Have you seen that woman? Like idgaf about Chishiya, move over !!!!

Fame DR

I’m an actress with a background in musical theatre, and come from a successful family. I have some notable roles that led me to winning quite a few awards. In this DR, I have an older brother because I want to know what it’s like to have a sibling so bad. Idk why this is the reality I chose to experience that tho. I am friends with some of my fav celebs, ANDDDD one of my cousins is a K-POP idol as well!! We got them connections, y’all. NVM I don’t want a particular s/o in this reality but if I do end up with someone, I’d prefer it be a woman bcuz male celebrities do NOT hit the same :/

felt like yapping about my dr’s sorry. uh thanks if you made it all the way to the end. subscribe and like plz 🙏

[timeslipcamp]

thoughts on episode 5

hotarubi!!! god this chapter was such a rollercoaster when i read it for the first time. the last like, ten chapters had me on the edge of my seat and i was texting my friends who had never even heard about the game lol

other than the dolls smh not a fan sorry zenji

spoilers through ep 17

like why did it have to be a doll 😭😭😭

anyways

love that this chapter opens up with romeo demanding things. mc working with sinostra is so funny she really can do it all. good for you girl be multi faceted!!

OH THE HOUSES omg i forgot how early we saw the info. look at her getting her research on. it's still wild to me that there were 10 (potentially 8 or 9) houses worth of gen students and they all managed to fit in five this year lmao. hope there was enough dorm rooms

moby does point out that hotarubi has a "pristine" reputation among the students and the professors. darkwicks pets much. no wonder haku transferred there.

alright wait hold on you're telling me ANYONE can use this 3D printer in the library to get a perfectly detailed layout of ANY place in darkwick??? 👀 oh boy if this isn't foreshadowing idk what it is then. like, any location???

dude rereading this chapter and knowing about zenji makes it ten times more sad lol like noticing the scene cuts and the lines....that plot twist was so well done. i SCREAMED when i read it the first time

also hotarubi is just so pretty???? like these are my fav aesthetics for suuuure

man im gonna start keeping a list of which ghouls get called handsome in canon lmao we've got what, jin twice over and haku? and the JANITOR lmaoo

once again wishing subaru was a lesbian...

mc bowing back is so funny dude i love her

LOVE how shifty subaru got when we explained why we were there. i know it might technically have to do with lyca but the way his expression dropped and got so serious for a moment...love it love the tense moment. also love that all the other inspectors quit lmao

haku why are you always taking walks dude what are you looking for

dude they really frame subaru's meetings with lyca as so shady 😂 the all black background, "it won't be long now," tkdb please. not to mention moby's warning of "the hotarubi ghouls are hiding something"

it's also fun to see haku step up and see how competant he is on missions, like no wonder darkwick trusts him. he gets shit done and looks great doing it!!

i really hate creepy dolls man. every once in a while this story reminds me it's horror based and i'm like oh yeah i'm a giant wimp!!! honestly i'm impressed i kept reading after episode 2 hahaha fuck that thing

when i say i screamed the first time i read this

anyways

"not even us ghouls understand our stigmas that well" this game makes me feel insane.

mc getting sleep paralysis right when zenji's trying to leave a note 😭 messenger boy at it again i love him. unintentionally freaky as hell

OH MY GOD DANTE AND ALANS MEETING IS THIS CHAPTER mc i love you, you peeping tom

"why are you alive" never change alan

hey wait. subaru's said a couple times that people suck more than anomalies and then that wickhive screenshot said they were dissidents during the clash. what happened between then and now that made them have such a "spotless" reputation with the staff?

COULD THE ABBOT SEE ZENJI????

"Why do you work so hard for everyone around you?" Haku: "There's someone I wanna help. Call it practice."

ughhhhh i love hotarubi chapters i love you haku

also once again, fuck darkwick for keeping so many anomalies locked up like this. absolutely insane. and this was ultio's gig?? oh wait lyca was at the romanian branch. ed is most likely from romania based on what he said in like ep 17 i think, do you think they were at the same facility? and then both ended up here? he did say his ideal life has a big loyal dog in it...

i really dont say this enough but props to lyca's voice actor for going in on the barking lmao i love it sm

"Special missions are classified. You can't tell anyone." how many secret missions have the other ghouls gone on? what did they have to do?

iris-colored eyes is an interesting way to describe subaru's eyes. that probably doesn't mean anything lmao that's a reach

so what do we think subaru was lying about? was it lying in general about lyca? or did lyca actually murder someone? was it something else about his special mission? EDIT nvm it was his stigma lmao

"i'm done suspecting people" says mc immediately before finding haku talking to that creepy doll

oh my god speaking of creepy 😭 i forgot about the ghost kids. brb while i get my post it notes to cover my screen while i read

i still would love to know which rogue anomaly killed zenji but nooooo haku said not to poke the hornet's nest. ugh. i want the clash details so bad i'm actually going to lose my mind whenever it finally happens, i won't shut up for WEEKS

also good to note that both tohma and haku have a skeleton key. and that subaru doesn't have to say his word at all, it just starts. the staff really knows nothing huh

LOVE LOVE LOVE that the first time we see haku with an actually mad expression is when subaru reveals he was lying to darkwick. "look where you're standing. you of all people should know better than this." haku has seen first hand what happens when ghouls become liabilities and subaru has seen lyca been locked up for less! he's still in here! haku has INTIMATE knowledge, especially after what he was implying in the prologue/chapter one around the rui conversation, of what happens to ghouls that disagree with darkwick. UGH ugh ugh haku im shaking you in a jar TELL ME ABOUT THE CLASH

so i spoke a little about haku's motivations in my traitor theory post but i'm almost kind of wondering now if haku became the traitor as like, a sacrificial move. like he fell on the wire so no one else would have to. he's mentioned a couple times in a few episodes and screen lines about how his family is a big deal but he's nothing special, always takes the easy way out, etc. maybe him making the play to become darkwick's puppet was his way of making up for that, that this is how he could finally do something big and worthwhile.

or he's just slimy, who knows.

anyways it made me so genuinely happy to see lyca being freed even if darkwick put that wack ass condition on it.

this chapter was such a whirlwind the whole way through and had one of the best plot twists i've seen in this game. love hotarubi so much and lyca deserves the WORLD. 10/10

[flightyalrighty]

(sorry if you've gotten this before or if this is not the right kind of question for the blog)

Do you have any advice on HOW to make a comic series? From what I've seen your work is fantastic, well made and written! (Cool concepts, story, and character dynamics etc)

How did you start? How DO you start?? How do you comic lol

I'm glad you enjoy my work! I'll do my best to answer this question!

I could give the ol' "Just jump in! Get started!" But I don't think that's the answer you're looking for, here. Even if it's technically the correct one.

"How do you make a comic series" Is one of those questions where the answer is kinda difficult to summarize in a single ask, because there's a whole lot that goes into it, y'know? I'll give you a brief run-down of my process.

I figure an idea for a story. In the case of Infested, the whole story was written before I even got started on the script. This is an outlier in my usual process and I don't normally do this and definitely don't recommend it.

Figure the plot like how you would figure a regular story's plot; The beats you wanna hit, the way the characters develop, the beginning, the middle, the end. What's the point of the story? What, exactly, are you trying to convey here? Who's the target audience? All that stuff ought to be figured out before even picking up a [MEDIUM OF ARTIST'S CHOICE].

Script the story. If you've seen a movie script, these things look a bit like that. You wanna not skip this step because this is where you determine the visual language of each page. Comic script writing is a whole thing and a half but I do have some random tips regarding it. -> When writing the beginning of a new scene, write down the time of day, the weather, and any important details about your setting (this is most important if you're working in a team). -> Using storyboard/film language when trying to figure out a scene is very helpful. You're not gonna remember exactly how that scene looked in your head when you finally get around to penciling it. Trust me. Write it down. Or thumbnail it! Thumbnails are also very helpful! -> Remember that you have very limited space for dialogue. Write with that in mind.

Figure the paneling on a page. I work at 11x17 and do my panel layouts based on those dimensions. I tend to make more important panels, or panels with PUNCH or SHOCK bigger than the others. Each panel is an individual illustration, but together they make a whole piece. You gotta treat it like that, y'know? Find the focal point on a page, find the most important element of it, and make that your focal point. Don't be afraid to get a lil wacky with panel shapes, either. They don't HAVE to be squares and rectangles. Check out what other cartoonists do! Get inspired! Paneling is an art-form within itself!

Page from "Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name" By Tess Stone

5. Penciling time! Get the perspective figured out, then draw the background, then draw the characters. Do it in that order. Trust me. With a background already set up, characters can be drawn more like they exist within that space, instead of floating in front of it. Also? Be aware that comic artists need to be ready to draw ANYTHING. You may have a great idea that you GOTTA put out into the world, but you have no idea how to draw, say, a car. Or debris. Or jungle foliage. There's no shame in using references, tutorials, or even doing a bit of tracing if something's outside your wheelhouse. Here's a bazillion tutorials from two guys who REALLY know their stuff.

6. Speech Balloons! Yes, really. In fact, you may want to do this and penciling at the same time. I certainly do. It's better to figure this out immediately so it doesn't hurt you later when it comes to getting your balloons to share a space with your art. Here's some great advice on the whole subject from a master of the craft

7. Inks! Line weight variation is key. Closer to the "camera" means thicker lines. If a part of a character is in shadow, that part is gonna get thicker lines, too. Personally, I make my background line art thinner than character line art. It helps the characters pop out!

8. Flats! Or flat colors if you wanna get specific about terminology. It's exactly what it sounds like -- Coloring the characters and backgrounds with the bare bones basic colors. I highly recommend keeping the character flats and bg flats on separate layers if you're working digitally.

9. Rendering! There's no hard and fast rule as to how a cartoonist ought to render their comic -- If they want to do that at all, even. Go with what you believe looks good AND is something you can do quickly. The "quickly" part is important. Heed my warning. Don't be like me.

And then I'd schedule the comic to be uploaded on whatever day suits me -- Thursday (usually) in Infested's case.

Of course, I kinda suck at relaying my process, so the final thing I can do for you is direct you to an extremely helpful book that really breaks it down in a way that may click with you as it did with me.

I hope this was in any way helpful to you!

[kidspawn]

OOH could I ask about Beneath the Mask?? I’m such a sucker for vigilante aus and I’ve never seen a trc one before 👀

(Fun-ish Fact: Its what this snippet is from)

Thank you so much for asking!! This fic is kind of my baby. I've been quiet about it because, to be honest, I didn't think anyone would be interested in reading it. And it started as kind of a joke? I won't go on too long, but to explain what it is I want to just share the inspirations:

"Ronan was saying that he never lied, but he wore a liar's face" Blue Lily, Lily Blue

And this got me thinking about Ronan, his personality, how he handles his keeping of secrets, and how the bled into his relationship with Adam. Ronan doesn't technically lie. He dances around it, he bends the truth until right before it cracks. He excels in secrets. And secrets are a half skip from a lie, aren't they? And in my head, this is almost a way to justify to oneself that, if you really think about it, it's not really lying so really he's honest, right?

Now, pivot to Adam. I start thinking about how Adam responds to people keeping secrets. When Blue and Gansey were hiding their relationship, and he confronted them, he wasn't so much angry about them hiding the actual relationship as he was the idea they didn't think he could handle the truth.

So my little lizard brain goes, "god isn't that great fucking conflict??? wouldn't it be fun to write Ronan keeping this huge secret from Adam? and how that tension would build and boil over and break?" And yeah that would be so fun.

On the other hand, the idea of Ronan trying to help Adam and Adam getting pissed over it. And this going on until Adam decides he needs to figure out who the fuck this guy is and also they know each other in real life? Wowza, this will not go bad at all. Fun little push and pull, you know?

Add that onto Ronan "has never used a healthy coping mechanism in his goddamn life" Lynch dealing with what has been one hell of a year and working through his grief and isolation the only way he knows how? With a power he inherited from his father and learned could make the bad things go away. I could talk more about where the rest came from, which was a period of time spent playing Persona 5 nearly every night and thinking about Akechi Goro and his sense of justice and the idea of doing anything, anything, because if you make someone pay, maybe it'll fill that pit in your chest.

Somehow this has bled into "hey how much can I make Ronan fucking suffer because maybe my mental health will improve if I write his gradually spiraling down the drain" and I was right. I'm setting Ronan on fire, dousing him in gasoline, and dancing on the ashes. I am beating him with a wiffle bat. My skin is clear though.

I wish there was a more clear synopsis at this point. I have 50k written and most of it won't see the light of day, to be frank. It's been a lot of maneuvering and rewriting and editing to get the tone I've settled on. Henry has also made himself a major player despite all my outlines and plans. Half the fun of this story is me being able to ask questions about character dynamics and what switching them up will look like. Aging them up and threading their development if it had played out differently. I had to go and write drabbles and one shots to establish background for characterization. But at its root its the product of me starting a crack drabble I will likely never show anyone and it just spiraling so fast out of control.

There's a lot I won't clarify in terms of plot, because I'm worried sharing too much would ruin the story beats? But let me link this snippet I'm editing down, with unreliable narrator Adam judging the fuck out of Henry and kind of the groundwork for the dynamic I want to write between them:

==

“Oh.” Henry said, already making a beeline to the kitchen. “Scary when she does that, isn't it?”

“Not scary.” Adam corrected, following. “Not surprised you think it is.” Henry had never struck him as the type to know how to handle fear. Granted, the information Adam had on Henry was limited to a trust fund hefty enough for effortless comfort well into middle age. 

“You're acclimated to it.” He was digging through the fridge, edges of his nose and mouth radiant against a pale yellow glow. Even hunched over, Henry had an easy elegance when maneuvering his body. There was no rationale to Adam's envy here - elegant was the one word he knew came attributed with his features and hands and complexion - but it was more the sense of comfort in skin he figured he'd covet. 

“I got it from her mom, first.” Adam shrugged. “She comes by it honestly.” Maura had more a grasp on the theatricality of it all, and rarely needed to practice those confrontations. Adam had been trained out of reprimandable offenses long before association with the women of Fox Way. Rarely, if ever, had Maura turned admonishment his way.

Henry came up empty-handed, frowning at the shelf he'd been scouring. “There's nothing to eat.”

“There's plenty to eat.” Adam corrected, “You just don't like leftovers.”

“Takes all the zest out of mealtime, doesn't it?” Henry grinned at him, straightened up to shut the door.

“I guess.” Adam leaned against the cupboard, arms crossed. “I don't think about zest very often.”

“That much is obvious.” Henry did not spare him a glance as he went to the sink instead. “Water?”

Adam sighed. He'd had this conversation with Blue before, about trying harder with Henry. The conversation had not quite been an argument but should have devolved into one, especially when Blue had compared him to a shelter stray. Something to do with abstaining from interaction beyond his trusted few. Adam, she'd said, was not the type to snarl but he didn't come close either. Trapped between docile and hostile, a true neutral ground. It was most apparent when he spoke to Henry, who spat back venom under ostentatious vocabulary.

“Sure.” He said, picking at a patch of dry skin on his elbow. Much like his hands, his joints flecked and dried during these drier winter months. 

“You should look into lotion.” Henry pointed out, faucet on and back turned. By no account should he have seen the picking. Adam hated when he noticed things about him. It was like being trapped by a two way mirror.

“I'm fine.” 

“I have some. I'll even pretend not to notice you use it.”

“I'm fine.”

Henry passed him a glass of water, careful not to graze fingers. “Pride is a sin, I've heard.”

“I'm agnostic.”

“Also a sin, I imagine.” He said, turning to reopen the fridge, like a second approach would grant new results.

“Something like that.” Adam snorted, despite himself. He watched Henry, keen to absorb what little information could be filed away. The tender half moons of exhaustion barely peeking through his complexion should have indicated a lowering of defenses. Henry wore a bone deep exhaustion Adam recognized in mirrors and glass panels, another conundrum when paired with smooth skin and soft palms. 

“You know, Parrish,” Henry began, examining a bottle of relish. For no particular reason, really. Adam didn't think any of them particularly liked relish. Or had anything to put it on. “I am caught between a rock and a hard place with you.”

Could say the same for you. 

“Are you?” Adam crooked an eyebrow. 

“I'd like to know you, but you bristle and hiss if I get close. I’ve never seen a human practice overt piloerection.”

“Who uses piloerection in casual conversation?”

“Now, don't tell me this is casual.” Henry said, “I doubt you're the type for small talk.”

Adam wasn't, but he could pretend to be. He stared back. 

“I'm not a fan of it.” Henry admitted, setting the condiments down. “Pickles are good for muscle cramps. We should keep pickles on hand.”

“Blue isn't big on pickles.” Adam explained.

“And neither are you?”

“I don't care either way.” 

“You know we've known each other a year and I don't know anything about you.” He shrugged, “Not for lack of trying.”

Adam scoffed, “I'm not hiding anything.”

“Didn’t say you were.” Henry said, “You don't offer anything up, either.”

He couldn't argue with that. “And you do?”

Henry considered this, glancing at the ceiling like it held an answer. “Blue is very expressive isn't she?”

Well that was a given. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“It's something I admire about her, you know.” He tapped the side of the fridge, a one two three rhythm. “She always seems able to say what's on her mind. How she feels. You know who she is, you know? She's good at showing it.”

Adam swallowed. “Yeah. She is.”

“I think that's one thing we know about each other, then.” Henry continued, resting his chin on the door, rocking back and forth on his toes. 

“What's that?” Adam took a sip of water when Henry caught his eye, smiled a little sad. A little triumphant too.

“We both wish we knew how to show who we are, don't we?”

==

Alright that's all. Thanks for asking and tuning in!

ask about my wips (or don't you don't have to i swear)

[icy-watch]

And that was s2 of LEGO DreamZzz.

I'm legit still crying over here. I was not expecting it to hit me this hard, but when plots revolve around siblings... yeah.

Alright, no new villain was shown for s3, but I am cautiously eyeing 1 particular human who named himself King of the Creatures. It'd be a change up from the dream creatures being the antagonists.

Unless the turtles or the red pandas suddenly become villainous, he's really the only 1 I can see coming out of this season.

Either that, or he helps whatever antagonist comes next.

We didn't get much of Lunia this season. Mentions here and there, but not as much as last season. Which is fine. But it's making me think some things.

I know other people have probably given this hypothesis before, but my mind has been mulling it over since I went over all of my predictions for this season.

What is Lunia is the Never Witch's sister?

The timeline is... iffy. But it is possible.

Idk, it's just what my mind was thinking earlier today.

I had something else that crossed my mind before I started going over all of this, and I lost it. Ah, well.

Anyway, if you haven't voted yet on what movie(s) I'll liveblog next, let your voice be heard!

I'm going to take the next few days off to let the poll run its course, and then I watch whatever y'all selected for me. So, until then!

Correct and incorrect predictions are under the cut.

Correct

We won't see the Sandman for a while. Almost all season! TToTT

We’re going to get more information on the Night Hunter’s background in ep7. I wasn’t sure if we’d actually get that in ep7 or ep8, but we got it! And it’s sad.

Izzie will be the first to realize Madteo is Mateo. She knows her brother.

The Dream Chasers will have to go to the Gnorfs to fix the pocketwatch. Well, they did technically go there, but the Gnorfs never got to fix it.

Mr. Oz’s Landing will be space themed or in a space-y area. There was many space. Much stars. And danger ‘pedes.

The Never Witch will get all of the items she needs before the end of the season to complete her spell. This was pretty obvious. It’s legit in the story writing code for this to happen.

Izzie will make a lot of friends in the Beast Realm. She sure did. She also made a lifelong enemy - and locked him in a cage.

Dizzie will fill in for Izzie at Jose’s birthday party. And boy did she! So much chaos unleashed on the unsuspecting partygoers, Jose, and Jasmin.

The Night Witch will use Izzie against Mateo. She did, just not in the way I expected her to.

Incorrect

Logan and Cooper's friendship with Mateo will revert back to the way it was during ep1 bc of the memory loss. Thank goodness it didn't actually happen like that.

The Never Witch is gathering memories to either free herself or to become more powerful. She was gathering memories, just not for either of those reasons.

Izzie is not going to get her missing memory back until the midseason finale. A few episodes later…

Cooper is going to spend most of the season having to think around not having his tech skills. Putting this here, bc it is the rest of his life. 

Someone in the Never Witch’s past forgot about her. Forgot about her? No. Her sister could never forget about her.

The Never Witch will notice the tag on her raven and send the Dream Chasers on a wild goose chase. That would have been good.

Izzie’s going to lose her memory again. Thank goodness she didn’t.

The Never Witch’s twin was taken from her. Thankfully, her twin left on her own free well - to explore the Dreamworld.

The Nightmare King has the Crown of Control and it is the crown he’s wearing. Good news! He’s not. Terrible news! He’s not.

Logan is going to fit right into the Beast Realm. We were robbed. /j

Royce will have a change of heart about the Brooklyn Bureau at some point this season. Or die. Alas. But he did kind of get better as a person. Just a little bit.

Partial

Mateo is going to release the Nightmare King because he needs a friend. Well, he did release the Nightmare King. But not bc he needed a friend.

Neither Logan’s moms or teachers will realize anything is wrong with him after being doom domed. His teachers… this is kind of questionable, but it didn’t seem like any of them were really concerned that he was running around on all 4s after Diz. We, sadly, never got to see how his moms reacted.

The Never Witch wants to go back to the way things were so she can see her sister again. Yes but also no? If that makes sense.

Zoey and Mateo will use the memory the Never Witch locked away in a flask to get her to stop the spell. Another yes but also no. (Which is why it’s here). It seemed like that was the plan. But not entirely.

Unconfirmed

The Never Witch took Lunia's memories. Honestly, this would have been interesting.

The Never Witch’s sister became the first Dream Keeper. There’s nothing confirming or denying this, but it feels right.

The Never Witch needs a memory of a song for her spell. Putting this here bc it seemed like it was a something - especially since that was the memory taken from Logan and it seemed like it was a memory that was going to be taken from the Night Hunter.

The Never Witch will lock the doppelgangers away after she takes over the Dreamworld. Putting this down here, bc their actual fate of what would have happened to them once she completed the spell is unknown.

[suzuran777]

Review: Lamento stageplay

I've been waiting for a Lamento stageplay since the DRAMAtical Murder stageplay in 2019, so I'm really happy that it's finally real and that I got to watch this one! Since I also wrote a blog post about the sweet pool stageplay, I wanted to write one about the Lamento one too. I really enjoyed it! As usual the pictures I used in this blog are pictures posted by the staff and the official Twitter account! Please check it out if you want to see more.

First of all, this stageplay is pretty long! It's almost three hours long, an hour longer than Nitro+Chiral's previous stageplays. As usual, the first 45 minutes were a bit of a common route in which all the characters appeared. This was mostly the same in every route, but it did change a bit near the ending. After a short 10 minute break, it split into three different routes, so I had to watch three different shows to see all of the endings. It's technically a "musical drama (音楽劇)" which means it combines elements of a stageplay and a musical. I was kind of expecting only the Sanga to sing, but the main characters (Rai, Asato and Bardo) also sing together with Konoe sometimes! My favorite song was probably the opening song, when all of them sung a new version of Itou Kanako's "Lamento" with different lyrics! They also sang a slightly different version at the end of the stageplay. The common route also has two duet songs sung by Rai and Konoe, as Konoe learns about his power as a Sanga.

The new music was really nice, especially the background music. I love how they brought back the composers who made the game's OST to create new songs! I lowkey wish the devils had more songs because whenever they did sing during the opening and ending song of the stageplay, they sounded amazing together! I think it would also be great if they released studio recordings of the songs, as they are always a bit better than the live versions. So far they did already release an album of the instrumental songs which you can buy here, Ototoy shouldn't be region locked, so I think anyone can buy it!

The stage This time the venue was the same as the DRAMAtical Murder stageplay (Shinagawa Stellar Ball), which I've actually been to before, however it looked completely different this time! I liked how they turned the stage into one big forest. Whenever Leaks used his power on Konoe, they used this effect which made the stage look strange and trippy, it was really cool! I also really liked the green light effects they used whenever Konoe would use his Sanga abilities. The screenwriter Uchida Hiroki posted this picture on his Twitter account which kind of gives you an idea what it looked like!

Plot I was curious how they would turn a rather long game into a stageplay, but I think it worked surprisingly well. They kind of skipped over some of the stuff that happens early in the game when Konoe is still in Karou, but they do explain the general story, like the problems caused by the Void and the Sickness. Shui's character also kind of functions as a narrator in the stageplay, similar to Kamiya in the sweet pool stageplay and Virus and Trip in the DRAMAtical Murder stageplay, which is always a nice addition. It's not unusual for fans of the actors to watch stageplays without knowing the original source material, so I think this makes it possible for everyone to enjoy the show, no matter if they're familiar with the game or not.

Now for the different routes, I think all of them were great and the actors definitely put a lot of effort into their roles. Bardo's actor was really funny, especially in the scenes in which he teased Konoe (when he wanted a kiss lol), but I think he also did a great job during the serious scenes! I think Bardo's and Rai's actors had a lot of fun messing around with each other, like jokingly pushing each other, or fighting each other with their tails, which happened during one of the curtain calls people were allowed to record. Asato's actor definitely was a lot more calm compared to these two, but he did a great job at showing Asato's gentle personality! His actor mentioned listening to the drama CDs too including Lamento Love Love Gakuen, doing some extra research! (And for some reason he suddenly got into Togainu no Chi if I look at his Twitter account now...). They ended the stageplay performances on Sunday with Rai's route. Rai's actor, Katou Shou, did an incredible job as Rai during the more emotional scenes, like when Rai insists Konoe finds another Touga because he's afraid he will hurt Konoe. That scene in which Konoe realizes Karou (his hometown) had been completely consumed by the Void was also incredible.

I should probably mention that they showed the good ends only, so no devil endings in this one sadly. Razel's actor agreed that Razel should have his own route because every devil gets quite some scenes depending on the route, but Razel is always kind of left out! Also, can I just say that I absolutely love Froud's stageplay actor, he did such a great job at making the character look intimidating (he's also very tall...) even his voice sounds similar to Froud in the game. I also really liked Leaks' actor, he has a nice deep voice, and Shui's actor liked teasing him sometimes!!

I'm just happy that Lamento has been getting new content again lately, first the webtoon and now the stageplay. You can find lots of pictures and recordings that were taken with permission if you look for the ラメステ hashtag on Twitter! I saw that both Froud's and Konoe's original voice actors (Sasanuma Akira and Hatano Kazutoshi) actually went to watch the stageplay in person. Slow Damage's artist Yamada Uiro, who's also in charge of lots of other official Nitro+Chiral illustrations, also watched the stageplay and drew some new art of it! Always happy to see new Lamento art in the year 2024, I've been enjoying all of the new fanart posted on Twitter as well.

I wonder what stageplay they're planning on doing next, only Slow Damage and Togainu no Chi remain (unless they're planning on bringing Itsuwari no Alkanet or World End's Nightmare back). Next year is Togainu no Chi's 20th anniversary, so I am curious if they are going to release anything new! The director of Nitroplus (Digitaro) also mentioned that N+C is currently working on a new project, though it's currently unknown if it's a new game, Slow Damage fandisc or something else. I guess I will be patient!

[renae-the-turtle]

I saw your trolls au where Branch raises Coooer and I wanted to know.......could you please info dump on it??? I'm all ears! :3

OK first of all I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this, it's been literal months lol

I'd be happy to infodump about it, and I finally have time!!!

Putting it under the cut just in case this gets really long lol

So I got the idea for this AU because of a fanart I saw on pinterest. It seemed to be concept art for a Broppy au with the pairing trope of kindergarten teacher × single parent, with Poppy as the teacher, obviously, since that's canon, and Branch as the single parent. I couldn't tell who the kid under Branch's arm was, and assumed it was an OC (I later figured out it was probably Keith from the TV show).

But this made me think about how I would do such an AU, because I like to try and avoid using OCs in fanfiction, especially for any major role in the story. It's just more fun to think about which canon characters, no matter how minor, could fill the roles I need.

Anyway, somehow I came to the conclusion that I would take one of the main cast from the first movie and de-age them. At first I considered Biggie for some reason, but then I realized that Cooper already has a very childlike personality, so he's easier to imagine as a child... and then I recalled his backstory that was revealed in the second movie...

See, Cooper's egg fell from the sky and landed amongst the pop trolls, and I get the distinct impression that this was after the escape from the Troll Tree, both because of the forest-looking background in the flashback, and just sorta from the way Cooper tells the story. And since the first movie takes place on the twentieth anniversary of their escape from the Bergens, this means that Cooper is less than 20 years old, and is therefore a teenager in the first movie. Which honestly makes so much sense for how he acts.

I also headcanon that he as ADHD, though. With the way he frequently seems to space out and miss parts of conversations, or just doesn't follow along with what someone said, the way he makes weird connections between what's going on and something random... and he's pretty easily distracted... as someone who actually has ADHD, it seems pretty obvious once I thought to look for it! And I will be writing this headcanon into my comic.

I might as well get into the little bit of plot I've got for the movies, though it's just vague ideas, really.

For the first movie, I'm actually not certain what I'm gonna do... should Cooper be one of the ones taken or not? It would make Branch way more fired up to go get them back, and just generally more emotional and snappy throughout the whole thing, but on the other hand I've still gotta get through how actually raising Cooper changes Branch... like, technically the point of this is to force him to interact with Poppy more prior to canon events because she's Cooper's teacher lol. So idk about the first movie.

But the second one! Branch is either more or less paranoid and I'm not sure which is better lol, but he'll be a lot more prepared before leaving with Poppy on her impulsive quest, because he's gotta make sure his son is taken care of while he's gone. Cooper is only 5 and obviously isn't gonna come with them, that'd be stupid!!! ...unfortunately for Branch, Cooper listened in on the meeting, and snuck out of bed to follow his dad, heard him talking to Poppy, and since he both doesn't want his dad to leave him (trauma from the first movie????) and wants to find out where he came from... Cooper sneaks onto the balloon lol. Biggie might not even come with them, idk. Or maybe I'd have DJ Suki come with just cuz I like her and it's a shame she wasn't in the second and third movies. Idk.

Anyway this means I get to draw baby Prince D as well!!! Cooper doesn't get to the funk trolls before Branch and Poppy because he's traveling with them! The King and Queen haven't been searching for as long as in canon, and oooo boy there's gonna be drama lol. Because technically the funk trolls have a right to keep Cooper??? And Cooper isn't an adult or mostly-adult who can make his own decisions about where to live??? I mean, at the time, Cooper and D are just excited to meet each other. And there's a rock apocalypse to stop. And Cooper wasn't supposed to be along in the first place because this quest is no place for a small child.

Anyway yeah, the second movie is gonna be so fun to write with an adhd five year old along for the ride lol.

Third movie, Cooper might not even be in it, or he might take the place of Tiny, idk yet. I think I'm leaning more towards Cooper staying with the funk trolls for the duration of the movie events as some sort of split custody thing so Cooper can get to know his twin and bio parents??? But. This means that Bruce is not the only Brozone member to have become a dad during the split. ;3

And I think it'd be so funny if Branch and Poppy don't mention Cooper, or at least don't refer to him as Branch's son, until they get to Vacay Island, and Bruce mentions how becoming a father really changed him, and Branch can say something like, yeah, I know what you mean. And John Dory gets a double shock because what???? Spru– Bruce is a father??? And SO IS BRANCH???? WHAT??? Hahahahahaha!!!! It's gonna be hilarious >:3

Anyway, cue Branch and Bruce gushing over their kids, Branch showing photos of Cooper, someone asking if/implying that Cooper is Branch and Poppy's kid, the silly flustered denials because they may be dating but they are NOT ready to have that talk yet lol (it's an understandable assumption tho bc Poppy and Cooper are a similar shade of pink and Cooper does have that bright blue hair and at this point Branch and Poppy are obviously together so???)

OK so that was in fact a long rant as I expected, hope you enjoyed, and thanks for the ask!! I won't be working on the comic until after Christmas because it's gift-making time and I have. Two months. To make at least 6 presents. Aaahhh.

[heycerulean]

i need help finding a new podcast if yall have any recs please tag them im looking for a more dialogue ish based story podcast? think TMA or Wolf 359. I was recently listening to EOS 10 but the later seasons aren't available on spotify (at least i think? it's all music? what's up with that?) but i did like it before i had to stop. WOE.BEGONE is also great, i'm still technically listening to it. also malevolent. almost forgot malevolent. we love malevolent. i also tried the silt verses and am kind of still into it but it's kind of hard to follow for me so we're shelving that one under maybe i don't really care about the genre as long as it's got good characters and plot thank you :) edit: i just found what was going on with EOS 10. it is not, in fact, just music. my headphones were not plugged in correctly and it caused all the audio of talking to be buried under all the audio of background music. i was not aware this could happen. i am now going to finish that. i would still love to hear all of the new podcasts i can add to my to-be-listened-to list though :)

[jotun-philosopher]

Brother Aziraphale: some interesting parallels

I got a bit into the Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters and their mid-90s TV adaptation a couple of months ago, and my GO-saturated brain being what it is, I started picking out some fun coincidental parallels :D

On with the rambling!

Some background: the Cadfael stories are historical mysteries set during the Anarchy, a civil war waged between 1138 and 1153 by King Stephen and his cousin Empress Maud (aka Matilda), King Henry I's only legitimate son having died in the White Ship disaster of 1120. It's a fascinating period in English history that's criminally under-represented in popular culture. The books are extremely well-researched in their historical detail and are worth reading for that alone even if mysteries aren't quite your thing; the TV series is a tad variable in its level of faithfulness to the books, but it's good solid television with some excellent performances (see below for my favourite).

Cadfael himself, a Welshman by birth, is a former soldier and sea captain, having taken part in the First Crusade and travelled extensively in the Middle East and other places, learning medicine and generally gaining a great deal of worldly experience, before returning to England in his forties and taking the cowl, becoming the apothecary at the Abbey of St Peter and St Paul. His greater experience of the world and particular views on justice and fair play (which seem anachronistic but are actually neo-Aristotelian; perfectly accurate for the time period and character backstory) tend to clash with the other monks, who took their Benedictine vows much earlier in life and so tend to be less wordly and more doctrinaire. Cadfael is fiercely intelligent and compassionate, and if presented with a choice will always go for doing the good thing as opposed to the lawful thing, as he understands them. Luckily for him, though, he doesn't have to contend with Metatron-esque arseholes overmuch; the two abbots he serves under in the stories, Heribert and Radulfus, are very firmly reasonable authorities.

So now to those parallels I mentioned!

Cadfael:

Former soldier, still fully capable of defending himself or others in a fight

Considerable worldly experience and very well-travelled; consequently well-acquainted with human nature in all its facets and frailty

Has much to do with a literal garden, used for medicinal plants

Part of a religious order/organisation that is, all things considered, fairly healthy

Intelligent, compassionate and open-minded, which sometimes puts him mildly at odds with the other monks

Prefers to do what is good rather than simply following the rules

Welshman, played on TV by an English actor

Aziraphale:

Likewise a former soldier and fully capable of physically defending himself or others should it become necessary (see here for some of my analysis/speculation on this)

Considerable experience of the world through having been living there since the literal start, and is accordingly well-travelled; very familiar with humans and human nature

Is connected to both a literal garden and more metaphorical ones; the 'medicinal herbs' he grows in the latter are likewise metaphorical ( @vidavalor has a great deal of very good meta on gardens in GO; this post is a good recent example)

Teeeeeeeeeeeeeechnically part of a religious organisation, but one that's so ghastly that 'unhealthy' barely scratches the surface

Intelligent, compassionate and open-minded; the ways this puts Azzy at odds with Heaven are literally the whole dang plot! XD

Prefers doing true and genuine good, and [bleep] Heavenly Rules -- though Az seems fairly law-abiding wrt human laws that aren't complete [excrement]

Technically English, portrayed on TV by a Welsh actor

And one final thing -- the scene in 'One Corpse Too Many' (the first episode of the Cadfael TV show) that establishes Cadfael's character for the audience is one that I particularly like because it's awesome in its own right, and also because the first time I saw it, my whole brain went, "Yep, that's what Aziraphale would do!" In the scene in question, Cadfael intervenes to protect a vagrant who's being hassled by a jerkass soldier of King Stephen, then calmly, politely, wordlessly, and with great economy of action disarms said soldier with his bare hands -- see the gifs below:

And if you're thinking, "Hang on a mo'! That guy looks familiar!", then yes, you are absolutely correct! The first time I saw the cover of my grandmother's Cadfael DVD boxset, I actually had a bit of a knee-jerk fear reaction -- as in, reflexively yeeted myself halfway across the living room backwards -- simply because Derek Jacobi's performance in The Final Fifteen was just that effective! (Nothing was bruised except my dignity, and the only witnesses were a cat or two, who've so far kept quiet about it) He is just as skilled at playing good/heroic characters as he is at portraying terrifyingly evil villains :D

It's impossible to say, now, whether or not Terry Pratchett was consciously influenced by the Cadfael Chronicles when working up Aziraphale's character, but given that he was a voracious reader and Brother Cadfael made his print debut in 1977, it's reasonable to assume that he was at the very least aware of them. Certainly, they were a part of the referential sea in which he was swimming while writing Good Omens -- and I bet you anything the Ineffable Husbands like the books as well! (I'm less certain about whether they'd watch the TV series, though, given the lead actor's uncomfortable resemblance to the Metatron)

Thanks for reading!

[raayllum]

I’m sorry how is arc 2 not about aaravos? Everything about the show leads back to aaravos. The whole lore of the show is centered around aaravos. And it is absolutely titled the mystery of aaravos because it does plan on dealing with the mystery of aaravos in every possible way, and that has infact been confirmed by the showrunners on multiple instances. Aaravos is just as, if not more of a main character than rayllum in the ways that count because everything going on revolves around him. 

And since he’s an EXTREMELY important character, how is it not justified for fans of him to want more screen time of him? 

I’m sorry but not everything about the show revolves around rayllum and you shouldn’t call people out just for wanting to see more of their favorite character.

God forbid something about aaravos is actually about aaravos and not rayllum for once 💀💀

Actually I can and do call people out for wanting to see more of their favourite character when it causes them to be entitled / unfair to the broader story they want to tell. If you haven't been doing those things, then that post wasn't about you, but given the way you put your best foot forward here, I might go out on a limb and guess this might be behaviour you display sometimes, and it may be worth reconsidering.

As a bit of background:

My favourite character in a TV show was once a side character who was in 1/4 seasons, and one episode in the final season, and then he never showed up again. which was Okay, because he was a Side Character and it would've been pretty silly for the show to bend over backwards to include him more. Granted, there were opportunities (him and another character were travelling together, then she showed up at a Plot Relevant location without him and it was never addressed) but the show wasn't bad or wrong for not including more. I wasn't owed more screen time just because he was my favourite character, and while any character can Technically be Levelled Up for more screen time and plot relevance, sometimes characters are just there to serve more minor specific purposes, and that's Okay. It's all about adjusting your own expectations and not being an asshole.

Furthermore, given that I posted my personal opinion on my personal blog and only used my personal tags for it, you had two options for finding this post:

It got sent to you, presumably meaning you had someone else to be salty with in a private manner that would've been far more appropriate

You follow(ed) me, in which case you are more than encouraged to unfollow or block me if I have a post/opinion you find annoying or uncouth. Please do so rather than doing whatever This Is in my inbox in the future, it'll likely save you not only time but also embarrassment

The fact you thought going into the inbox of a Virtual Stranger and getting upset about me not thinking your favourite character is the Most Important Character in TDP Ever — because he isn't — in one (1) post is truly baffling to me in terms of 1) curating your internet experience and 2) interacting appropriately with strangers directly online. I've seen a lot of shit opinions in my day, and I vent in private to my fandom friends about it 99.9% of the time, thank you very much, or post about it in my personal tags on my own blog rather than making it someone else's problem.

In the nature of analysis / debate, though, let me clear what I meant considering 4+ people got their trousers in a twist about the idea that Aaravos isn't a main character.

That said, a few quick disclaimers: Aaravos is a very interesting character to me, and I like him a lot. I've written a fair bit about him in regards to how he's a thematic opposite to Harrow, his view of children, what I think happened to his chest piece, speculation on his banishment, his parallels to Finnegrin, his mythic connections to aspects of the Fae + Egyptian and Greek mythology, his foil relationship to Rayla, his characterization and motifs/symbols. So it's not as though I don't enjoy him or don't think he's important to the story. He is, he's just not a main character nor the most important. Moving on:

Secondly: it seems maybe my meaning of macguffin is getting misconstrued. A story Macguffin is a plot device that drives the story forward. Sometimes it's a character (R2D2 in star wars has to be transported from one dangerous location to safety because he has blue print plans), sometimes it's an object (the one ring, fetch quests, etc). Either way, the story is centralized around 1) characters competing for ownership or safe guarding of said person/thing and 2) through that competition or competing needs, the characterization of the main cast is revealed.

In Arc 1, Zym is the plot Macguffin. He overall has very little personality even once hatched beyond being sweet, occasionally helpful, and scared. He is the titular character, and his existence matters, but mostly because he serves as a motivational point for the characters. Claudia, Soren, and Viren want to stop Zym from getting back to Xadia; Rayla, Callum, and Ezran, want to help him get back.

Zym himself does not drive episodes forward. He rarely makes decisions that impact the main group. His existence or fears cause them to make decisions (they go looking for help because they dropped his egg; Rayla and Callum have to go after Nyx because she stole him) but he is not likewise making decisions for the group. S4 definitely levelled Zym up into him making 1) more independent decisions and 2) having more of his own interior feelings, particularly about his father, but Callum is the one who decides to send him up into the trees; Ezran is the one calling the meeting for Zym to come to Katolis. A couple of exceptions (he has a mini arc about his mom for 2 eps, he has an arc in s2 with Ezran) do not suddenly make Zym a "I'm making decisions that heavily push the plot forward every episode" kind of character.

You'll also note, if you actually read said post you're referencing, that I specified "'the mystery of aaravos' (esp these past two seasons)" and that I never mentioned lore, either, even if I have likewise written about lore extensively (one of my more recent metas on it was about 4.8k words on lore alone, for example).

Aaravos' plot impact was a lot heavier in S2 and particularly S3 than it is in S4 or S5, as he influenced Viren's decisions more heavily and eventually came into more direct conflict with the core protagonists. This is likewise reflected in Aaravos in S2 and S3 being in multiple episodes (half the season in s2, and almost every episode at least a little in s3).

Meanwhile in Arc 2, Aaravos could effectively, unknown to his pawns drop dead after giving Claudia her final instructions pre-S4, and nothing would be affected plot wise, because Arc 2 thus far has mostly been characters fearing his impending release (the main cast) or dealing with the fallout of his actions from S3 (the Sunfire elf plot line). The only thing we'd lose on that level from a "Claudia believes Aaravos is alive and is trying to free him, but he's not actually" is Callum and Rayla's possession plot line, ironically enough given your apparent dislike of them, until the very very end of 5x09 in which he tries to goad Viren into killing SS.

I'm excited for and expecting that to change in S6 and S7, but that doesn't change what S4 and S5 currently are, either. Same thing for Amaya and Janai more so being main characters, Janai in particular, in S4 and S5, but they were not main characters in the first three seasons. That doesn't mean they're not good, meaningful, and important characters for the story, but I'd be a very poor meta writer / have very poor media literacy if I tried to claim that Janai is a main character in arc 1 over say, Callum.

For another example: everything in Avatar: The Last Airbender revolves around Team Avatar wanting to stop Ozai, but Ozai is not a main character in the show. He's there to be a minor character, an endgame big bad, and to affect his children / embody the conflict the characters are up against. The fact that TDP has so many antagonists that are also Main Characters throughout the whole show (Viren, Claudia) is actually pretty rare in media, particularly for children.

The Legend of Zelda games usually revolve around Link wanting to save or free Zelda, and while certain games flesh her out and make her more developed into a main character, the central character of the narrative is Link, because he's the character we follow the most.

Additionally, the Importance of a character in a narrative has no bearing on whether they're your favourite, or even necessarily whether they're a 'good' / 'well written' character. Rayla, for example, is my personal #1 favourite character in TDP. She is a main character; she is not The main character. That's not an insult to Rayla; she's there to be a foil, one hell of a narrative lancer, and our main elven character. But I can't (nor do I want to) magically change her role in the story to claim that it's something it isn't.

The central main character of TDP is Callum. It always has been, it always will be.

He is the character who shows up in every single episode, he's our central mage character in a show all about magic, he has the most developed relationships out of everyone, he is the POV character we follow the most. That doesn't mean he's your favourite, that doesn't mean he has to be your preference, you don't even have to like him. But he is The Main Character. The majority of the story revolves around him and the people in his life. No amount of liking another character more is going to change that, whether you're clamouring for Rayla, Aaravos, Sol Regem or anyone else.

While there are shows where I think the side lining of characters feels off (Gus and Willow in The Owl House come to mind) that's mostly because 1) that sort of side lining usually happens to characters of colour, as it did there and 2) there's no real reason for the story to sideline them considering everyone lives in close proximity and there's a s1 emphasis that the main character has never had friends before and that she desperately wants some. Therefore, she should be thrilled to have best friends for the first time, but we barely see them. See the disconnect?

Aaravos is a minor character and big bad who is well utilized in the overall minimal screentime he has, especially thus far in S4 and S5. That doesn't mean he's not important to the story, and that doesn't mean he can't or shouldn't be your favourite, but your assertion doesn't miraculously make him our main core protagonist of the entire show, because 1) he's not our central pov character and 2) that's about the only requirement a main protagonist has to have, and 3) that's just not how stories work.

I also have no clue why you brought up Rayllum as a ship, given that I didn't mention them in my OG post at all, but given that you seem to think "this character isn't a main character" is a moral or value statement, I'll assume you said it to ruffle my feathers — that doesn't really work, given that I agree with you that not everything in the show is about Callum or Rayla individually or as a relationship, because it Isn't. Even if I hated them as characters or as a dynamic, however, that wouldn't change the fact that they're two of the core 3 characters (alongside Ezran) and that their relationship has the most screentime out of anyone in the show.

And if the show decided to tone down their screen time to give other characters more time, I'd be okay with that — because I don't need my Personal Favourite to be the most important character in the source material / screen time ever in order to feel secure in liking them, thanks.

[arrows-unofficial-ocs]

𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐝 + 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐕𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐊𝐢𝐝 𝐎𝐂𝐬!

(tagging a few who have consistently shown interest in my descendants ocs: @welcometotheocverse • @dancingsunflowers-ocs • @littlebvtterfly • @rose-of-oz — hope you don’t mind)

officially introducing my revamped/redesigned and new disney’s descendants villain kid ocs! some are familiar versions of old ocs, some are brand new, and others are a complete redesign of old ocs! there are three other posts like this coming — the revamped radcliffe siblings, the royals, and the non-royals! most of them take place in a parallel story to the main plot or between movies 3 and 4!

Trevor Jasper Badun • he/him • son of Jasper Badun • Ian Radcliffe (oc) ship • Joe Locke fc

The youngest of the Badun cousins, Trevor is also known as the weakest. He’s got a soft heart and as such, has never been included in any of the villain kid gangs… unless you count him and Dex Tremaine as a gang of two. A common target for those looking for an easy mark. Trevor is easily taken by a sob story. He’s very willing to stand up for those he loves but tends to let people walk all over himself. Does not mean to fall hard and fast for one of the identical Radcliffe boys… but he does. Has a tendency to gain crushes easily — previous ones include Harry Hook and Carlos De Vil.

Zelie Facilier • she/her • daughter of Dr. Facilier • Alexander Darling (oc) ship • Zendaya fc

The eldest of the Facilier siblings, Zelie has always been a bit of a loner. She preferred to keep to herself. Has a “don’t mess with me” vibes that keeps pretty much everyone except Asa Mim at bay. The least forgiving Facilier sibling. She loves Freddie, Celia and Felix but thinks that they forgive their father too much. Sarcastic AF. Low-key terrifying half the boys and some of the girls on the Isle. Low-ish self-esteem. A degree of eldest daughter syndrome. The black cat to Alexander’s golden retriever. Loves Alexander so much that it hurts and scares her. Comes to Auradon between movies 1 & 2.

Wyatt Murphy Gothel • he/him • son of Mother Gothel • Iris Hercules (oc) ship • Curran Walters fc

The eldest child of Mother Gothel, Wyatt hated her. He’d hated her ever since she’d tried to steal his youth when he was twelve. And ever since he’d heard the story of Queen Rapunzel, Wyatt had secretly hoped that the truth of it would be that she wasn’t his mother. He had no such luck though. On the Isle, Wyatt generally kept to himself or was accompanied by Percy C. McLeach and Reva Khan. In between the first and second movie, Wyatt is asked to go to Auradon Prep where he meets Rapunzel’s children… and the eventual love of his life, Iris — daughter of Hercules and Megara.

Reva Khan • she/her • daughter of Shere Khan • Percy C. McLeach (oc) ship • Charithra Chandran fc

Technically a tiger. Wears a tiger themed charmed bracelet in order to inhabit a human form. Prefers being human to being a tiger. “My father is the worst man alive and I am his favorite daughter.” Does not like her father but she is his favorite. Born December 1998. Is a triplet (as tigers most commonly have three cubs in a litter) with a younger sister (Megan Suri fc, possible background Gil ship?) and a brother (fc tbd). Has been best friends with Percy C. McLeach since she was five and his father captured her, her siblings, and her father. She’s been in love with him almost as long but cannot bring herself to admit to him. She’s heartbroken when he’s asked to go to Auradon Prep in between movies 1 & 2 and she’s not. Sneaks out in movie 3 to find Percy.

Gabriela Kronk • she/her • daughter of Kronk • Audrey Rose ship • Belissa Escobedo fc

The only child of Kronk, it’s often questioned why Gabriela and her father are on the isle. She’s too peppy and kind and sweet for the Isle. Which is probably why Elisa Sumac named herself Gabriela’s protector. She feels that she doesn’t need a protector, but she loves Elisa too much to say anything. Gabriela is also friends with almost everyone. Unlike Trevor Badun, she doesn’t let herself get taken advantage of. Gabriela goes to Auradon post-movie 3 and falls hard for Audrey… even after learning of the young woman’s past. If she’s being honest, it’s probably all the more attractive for Gabriela.

Percy C. McLeach • he/him • son of Percival C. McLeach • Reva Khan (oc) ship • Felix Mallard fc

Once a poacher, always a poacher. It was a saying that fit Percy’s father almost too well. No animal on the Isle was safe from the terror of Percival C. McLeach… and neither was Percy. His only friend for many years was Joanna the Goanna and Percy loved the egg-stealing lizard as no one was interested in befriending the son of the most notorious poacher on the Isle. Percy’s first real friend came with his father captured Shere Khan and his triplets. A disaster had occurred in which Percy befriended a daughter, Reva. Then came his friendship with Wyatt Gothel. So when Percy and Wyatt are selected to attend Auradon Prep between movies 1 &2, he’s shocked to say the least… and saddened to learn that Reva was not selected. He may or may not have been falling in love with her.

Asa Mim • he/him • son of Madam Mim • Jean Radcliffe (oc) ship • Ryan Potter fc

Shapeshifter. The second eldest of Madam Mim’s four children — has two full siblings, Kenji and Hana, and one half-sister. Also has a niece who’s in-between Kenji and Hana age wise. Bit of a loner. Enjoys being around people but didn’t vibe with like 90% of the kids on the Isle. Doesn’t really want to be evil. He has some magic too, beyond the shapeshifting but that’s usually where he uses his magic for. His shapeshifting animals are usually green the way that his mother’s were usually purple. Goes to Auradon between movies 1 and 2 and worries that he’s letting down Kenji and Hana. Opposites attract with Jean Radcliffe but that actually have a lot in common.

Elisa Sumac • she/her • daughter of Yzma • Chad Charming ship • Paris Berelc(?) fc

Gabriela Kronk’s best friend and protector. Often underestimated. Fond of magic and potions thanks to her mother. Definitely enjoys using the animal potions that Yzma avoids. Closer to Gabriela and her father than her own mother. Often watches people as she believes their actions represent their true motives. Meets Chad after movie 3. She may be demisexual but Elisa knows a good-looking man when she’s one and that Chad is. Has a bit of an “I can fix him AND make him worse” vibe. Doesn’t hesitate to call Chad out but also sees that there’s something underneath and that is what really intrigues her. Rivals/enemies to friends to lovers.

Dex Tremaine • he/him • son of Drizella Tremaine • Santiago Madrigal (oc) ship • William Gao fc

Dizzy’s younger brother by 11 months. The only boy out of six children. Drizella’s favorite child… much to his frustration. His relationships with his sisters are strained due to this. One of only two grandsons of Lady Tremaine. Trevor Badun’s best friend. Closest to his sister Dizzy. Tries and fails at being popular on the Isle. A mess. Always trying to make people laugh. Refuses to let anyone change his hair color. He likes it being black. Not necessarily invited to Auradon after movie 3 but refuses to let both Trevor and Dizzy go without him. Has proper full-on gay crisis in regards to Santiago Madrigal and that’s how he realizes he’s bi. Trevor is the first person he tells.

and these are all the villain kid ocs i currently have! some will be familiar, others won’t. like mentioned above, there will be posts with the revamped radcliffe siblings (with trevor’s boyfriend officially getting a name!), the royals, and the non-royals!