#I like tfp but God Starscream was just there and they dropped the ball with Miko

[thousandyearphantombunker]

CW: I'm mean here about shows and stuff people like

syndrome from incredibles, Thanos in the comics, mad hatter from Batman, tighten from Megamind, frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Red Hulk, parasite from superman and Ozai all of these villains are pathetic but they work for some reason I cannot place. A lot of stories try and write villains that are pathetic but also scary and it doesn't work- I love Starscream he can be an amazing character (he can be sympathetic or a straight up monster he can be lame but still threatening etc) and I like most versions but God can writers screw him up and he can fall flat (i love tfp i swear but god i hate their starscream! He just didn't work for me! Megatron and knockout are cool tho) Belos for some reason doesn't work for me at all- I know he should be scary while the fandom is wrong about him being a colonizer/cult leader/a dictator (he's not stop using words you dont understand the meaning of)and how insane it is that he's in a kids show (watch more cartoons there's villains darker than him) he's still trying to commit genocide and he's abusive and he's at his core got very little depth or complexity- he's really just an isekai character gone wrong- a pathetic guy with a hero complex and emotional baggage who becomes a villain- but he just didn't work for me. Neither does Jacob Hopkins- he's just Ronaldo from SU if he was written to be a straight up hate sink. I'm a lesbian latina with autism and was raised with a different sect of christan beliefs from him- I know historically this guy would have murdered me and i know he should work but something about him didn't stick the landing! The main thing I think about with belos isn't 'wow this guy is a great villain' it's 'can y'all stop being weirdly ableist toward this old man' or 'why do so many of y'all wanna fuck this man he's ugly' and dont get me started on mcu villains - their version of the mandarin, she-hulk's dumb men rights activists on reddit (seriously that's the scariest villain you can come up with? Like revenge porn is evil but really? I don't like the term man-baby- I have personal issues with how the term has been used in ableist ways- but yeah erm man babies on reddit are the best you can do for a villain? That's freaking stupid) and OMG Sutur in Ragnarok was terrible etc etc- these villains all suck!

How do you write villains that are pathetic but still work? How do write villains who are at their core whiny insecure losers but still work as detestable threatening villains? Like marvel made a character whose whole thing was that he's an incel work but so many other stories fail to write that stuff. Part of me thinks it's because these stories are desperate to make their villain into a hate sink joke but still make them scary and it fails but Tighten and Red Hulk are right there and there's no way the writers weren't purposely writing hate sinks with them! And they work! Why doesn't belos?

[cozybunnyink]

7 and 12 for the gush ask game with TFP Starscream!

7.) Gush About Your F/O's arms!

His arms are so beautiful, like...stupidly beautiful. Maybe it's just because I'm in love with him and everything about him is stupidly beautiful, but like...just look! They're so graceful and smooth, not overly delicate looking. Don't....don't pay mind to the fact that these are back shots. Just ignore that.

The design is is just, muah, chef kiss. Perfect blend of spikey and smooth, just like the rest of him.

12.) Free Space!

HIS VOICE. HIS FUCKING VOICE. OH MY GOD. IF I HAD THE BALLS I'D TOTALLY COMMISSION SOMEONE WHO DID AN AMAZING IMPRESSION OF HIM. I always think about his voice. It's so...ugh 😩😩 I love it. I love HIM. Whenever I hear his voice I drop whatever the fuck I'm doing just to listen. And when HE LAUGHS!!!! I promise I'm sane and completely normal about him

[valorousowl]

What sorts of things would a young cybertronian be expected to learn/experience growing up? Is or was childhood ever a thing there? Are bots created as adults at a cognitive or maturity disadvantage?

Sorry this is so late, I put it off to do it proper justice 

So again this is a thing where, if varies between universes DRAMATICALLY

most universes have about three life cycle stages those being 

LIFE CYCLES

Baby, young-Adult, old-adult  though in some it’s apparent they have really about 5 stages of their life-cycle, if not more, and it varies by type as well.

First stage is usually Protoform (in some fanon this includes Sparklings, Bitlets and other young children) it encompasses when the Spark of life is created up through the full development of the frame, for some that’s a relatively short period (TFA and TFP/RID2015 for example) and for others it can be a bit longer (IDW G1, and Tyran/bayverse, bayverse also calls them hatchlings). Protoform is used as slang for youngling, often as an insult to a bot that’s acting childish or is young. Bumblebee, Bulkhead and Sari from TFA fit this category, as well as Wheelie and the Dinobots in some universes.

From there the Young-adult phase is after they’ve learned everything they need to and how they spend their life, be it working, fighting or leisurely. The marking of one bot moving to this stage from the previous is not always measured by years but more of experiences and mental capacity. Most bots are somewhere in this middle cycle, which can be broken down into about three parts give or take just based on their experiences.

Old-adults are several million years old, it’s the age where parts don’t work like they used to and the spark is starting to degenerate. Kup, Ratchet, Optimus and Megatron are all part of this bracket to varying degrees with Optimus and Megatron being on the low end, Ratchet being in the middle and Cup being what we call Old as Ball Bearings. Think of ROTF Jetfire, his father was a wheel you know--THE FIRST WHEEL. And you know what he transformed into? NOTHING! but he did so with Honor--WITH PRIDE!  This stage usually has two parts, one being early onset the other being for bots on the way to the scrapheap if you get my meaning. 

CHILDHOODS

Depending on where they’re raised bots WILL have a childhood. Wheelie was from, I wanna say Lithone, and lived in a family unit and was shown to be “growing” to some degree. TFA has specific teacher-bots that basically act as Governesses/Goverors that raise the bots while acting as mentors and nannies. They literally raise them. Tyran has them grow up, but their childhoods are super messed up. Megatron literally made a generation of Decepticons to taunt Optimus with, which I remembered wrong before I went back and reread it. WHOOPS. 

in G1, to some degree as well, the Dinobots had a childhood, though this was because Wheeljack (and Perceptor) made them “simple-brained”. Which it seems they’ve outgrown over time? 

MTOS VS FORGED

So i’m using the term from G1. MTOs, Made-To-Order (usually MTOsoldiers) are literally bots brought online as Adults. They originally had a ten step learning program, literally thousands of files on life and how everything worked, poetry, pilosophy, art, math, religion--EVERYTHING A PERSON MIGHT NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD AROUND THEM. They dropped that to eight steps then three. Because if you have a 3 minute life expectancy you don’t need to be fancy. 

Either way this makes the survivors stuck with the BORN SEXY YESTERDAY TROPE. You think Megatron is sexy? You thirst for Large Oldman Bucketman? He was born sexy yesterday.

Megatron to my understanding was at least still born during either the 10 or 8 step cycle, because hey the man was once brilliant enough to write the Cyber-Communist manifesto. And then things got worse. Brainstorm was also a MTO who was brilliant. 

Generally though, these guys are the exceptions not the rule. 

Usually you get more like the Dinobots, simple childlike minds that take time to mature and are capable of doing a few simple tasks and can engage in combat but nothing world shaking. That being said Grimlock DID build the technobots who are some of the most brilliant bots of their generation so maybe it’s kinda luck of the draw. 

Starscream and his brothers among the seeker trines are other examples. Star is a genius, the others are pretty smart over all, but other trines don’t match up to Star’s trine in terms of intellect or planning.

The most important take away from it is, these guys, if they survive, are seen as adults by their society. Even if that age is a couple days old. But they’re naive, they don’t know everything they should. People do take advantage of them. Besides that is the fact people don’t want them leaving their castes. Warframes aren’t scientists. Despite theit personal abilities, it’s better to keep them in Security and Manual labor because they’re “BIG AND DUMB tm” and it’s self-serving to keep them there.

I think definitely there’s a cognitive/maturity disadvantage, because they’re immediately shunted into the second lifecycle stage when it can take hundreds or thousands of years to qualify for it in normal circumstances. Hell, Bee is at least 4 million years old, give or take, and he’s STILL in the second life-cycle in most universes. which shows you how massively different this is. 

Also cause this god kinda dark I’m putting pictures and screen-grabs of various protoforms, hatchilings and younglings beneath the cut. Enjoy the babies. Enjoy entertainment.