#I want to see the Autobots try Christmas and fuck up spectacularly tbh

[cleverthylacine]

Thoughts non-Christian Transformers fans might be having this time of year...

You are allowed to write whatever self-indulgent bullshit you want, because that is what fanfic is for, but if you want to make your “Transformers doing Christmas” fics 5000% less annoying to grumpy non-Christians, here are some thoughts on how they would be less annoying to me, personally.

1. Transformers are aliens.  They have their own religions.  It would be very, very odd for Transformers to care about Jesus. It’s fine if OP puts tinsel in his windows because all the other trucks are doing it, lol, but I’m talking about TFs actually celebrating Christmas in any serious kind of way.

2. If the Autobots who are living on Earth pick up human customs as an excuse to have a party, let them be hilariously ignorant about it. Despite being the Designated Good Guys in all non-Shattered Glass continuities (except possibly Earthspark), they are just as prone to being colonialist and ethnocentric as the Decepticons. Let them be embarrassing and offensive as well as cute. I’m thinking about the level of cringe involved in Christian attempts to throw Passover Seders with no actual Jews involved, or the Japanese department store that crucified Santa in a shop window.

3. In continuities like TFA, TFP and IDW, Decepticons are have experienced the way religion is and can be used to support and spread systems of oppression, because the Primacy has used it against them that way. If they bother to pay attention to human holidays, they’re going to recognise Christianity as a religion that is frequently used this way.

4. Decepticons are not out to destroy all organic life in every continuity, but they are usually ethnocentric and frequently colonialist. Their opinions of humans vary from “unimpressed” to “annoying Autobot allies” to “gross but it’s funny when they pop” to “organics always create mechanoid life and oppress it, and we have to stop them before they get there” and you even get the occasional “If form and function don’t matter, why should we care whether people are organic or not” Decepticon, but those last ones are a minority and they know it. They’re unlikely to adopt human holidays.

5. I do love IDW Starscream’s appropriation of Christmas customs because a) he made it all about himself because he’s Starscream and b) in his post-Decepticon life as Emperor of Cybertron he IS trying to find ways to subvert the mess that is Cybertronian culture in order to consolidate power. That is one example of Doing It Right (tm).

6. Consider characterisation.

6a.  Ratchet is often a militant atheist.

6b.  Soundwave is usually a militant atheist. In IDW he’s also a master of inciting and manipulating class warfare and he would recognise what evangelicals are doing in American culture from a distance meaasurable in parsecs.

6b1. There is no canonical evidence that Soundwave’s deployers are pets or children except one IDW panel where Starscream makes a sarcastic comment, despite it being IDW canon that Ravage saved Soundwave’s life and helped him learn to manage his disabilities. There is no evidence that they are anything other than adult Cybertronians. Ravage has been with him so long that some people (like me) ship them.

Rumble and Frenzy act like kids in fanon, but in canon they act like gross army boys (affectionate) who like to blow things up and pull pranks for fun and are no more children than Tailgate is.  The beastformers are not animals except in Cyberverse, where Laserbeak and Buzzsaw are trained sentient but probably not fully sapient trained birds and “cat” and “wolf” are just alt modes some mechs happen to have instead of “car” and “aeroplane”.

6b2. Soundwave playing Santa to his deployers as if they were children and/or pets personally makes me nauseous.