#WFC shamble

[knight-says-rollout]

Would you mind telling us about more disabled Cybertronians?

Oh boy would I

For this list let’s focus on physical disabilities, both because they’re the most commonly dismissed by the fandom and bc if we try to cover everything we’d be here all day (that can be another list, maybe, if y’all want)

This isn’t going to be comprehensive bc I’m tired but!! I will aim for a broad variety of examples nonetheless

Bumblebee - You all know him, you all love him. He’s the most obvious and most well known example of a disabled Cybertronian character.

In many iterations he is mute

Not by choice but because he lacks a voice box. Bee physically isn’t capable of speech and depending on the version has different tools to work around that. Sometimes he uses his radio to repurpose song and radio dialogue into speech, in cyberverse he also makes use of the internet for clips. In the aligned continuity (tfp and connected media) he speaks in binary, a very simplified form of language using beeps and buzzes, but still lacks a real voice and can’t form words.

In IDW he has a cane

At one point in the comics Bumblebee was shot by a human protester and as a result used a cane for a good bit of time. I haven’t had the chance to read that far into IDW yet so I’m not sure how long he had the cane for but it was enough time that it’s a solidified part of the charcaters history. I’ve seen little models of the cane for sale, to be paired with bee figures.

TFP Ultra Magnus - everyone’s favorite awkward commander, despite his popularity he’s surprisingly overlooked when it comes to this discussion

An amputee, he lost his hand

During an energon raid with wheeljack, magnus’ hand was crushed. Ratchet couldn’t save it and had to amputate, replacing it with a hooked prosthetic. I call it a prosthetic rather than replacement part because despite him being able to move it, it’s not a hand. Not in the way he had previously, and he has to relearn how to use it at all.

I think that’s an important distinction to make when discussing disability and transformers. Some bots might have only ever had one hand, or no legs, or etc but that’s always been their level of ability and since they Are robotic. Yeah they might not have the same capabilities as another bot but that’s a hard metric to go by. Seekers can fly but a grounder isn’t disabled because they can’t fly too, it’s a different standard.

WFC Shamble - far lesser known than Magnus, and reasonably so, this background character is Also missing a limb

Amputee, leg edition

His prosthetic is a lot less fancy than magnus’s, it’s a simple peg leg. Put em together and you get a pirate. Not much to say about him since i don’t know how he lost the leg, just that he did.

Shadow Striker - Most awesome lady in cyberverse. Unlike the above two, she Was able to get actual replacement parts rather than prosthetics. Despite this, she is both shown throughout the show and implied to have

Impaired mobility

Chronic pain

She was able to get replacement parts yes but they were needed because she was blown up. The limbs she was given were kinda just what the others could Find and as such are mismatched and don’t fit her very well. Her motor skills took a blow especially when it comes to combat, something she used to excel in. Her new limbs are described as unstable and prone to malfunction. The loss of mobility and implied chronic pain that come along with her situation are rough, but she makes do.

SG Soundwave - my favorite little guy, he’s in a bit of a different situation than the previous.

Bad Joints ™

His body was entirely overhauled multiple times, successfully, but the latest frame change was done with conflicting metals. Earth and Cybertronian materials clash in his joints, making them prone to getting stopped up. The most affected hinge being the one on the door to his tape deck. It is so prone to getting stuck that his cassettes refuse to dock with him at risk of getting trapped. To work around this, Soundwave has the aid of a personalized case he carries around that they dock in instead.

IDW Sunstreaker - speaking of assistive devices, this guy was (for a time) a wheelchair user! Or,, hoverchair.

Temporary,,, paraplegic? Correct me if another term fits better

Taking this moment for an aside to say hey!! Lookit that, both canes and hoverchairs are things that canonically and casually exist on cybertron!! It’s not too wild to assume there are bots out there who use them long term!! Yes both characters on this list were repaired eventually but they’re also both very popular old characters from an action based franchise and hasbro doesn’t have the balls to make something like that permanent yet. We the fandom are not hasbro. We can do whatever we damn want with our OCs. It’s canon that ur little guy can use mobility aids.

Ok, PSA over, anyway yeah Sunny’s body was basically wrecked and alpha trion was able to repair all of him except his legs. This put him in a hoverchair for a good amount of time.

Finback - he’s a con, a pirate, who developed a “metal wasting disease”

He’s on permanent life support

The disease is going to kill him eventually, and it’s explicitly stated that he’s come to terms with the idea of his death. In the meantime he’s using pretender tech, kinda like fancy armor, to reinforce himself and boost his immune system

Perceptor - for a microscope, the fact he’s got vision issues in multiple continuities is kinda ironic

He’s fully blind in cyberverse

He lost an eye in IDW

Between the two we get to see both routes taken to work with this. Adaption and technological aid. In cyberverse he uses his scope to compensate for the loss of vision Toph-style. In IDW he built himself a monocle that basically replaces the pieces that are missing.

Now we get into the uniquely Cybertronian disabilities, one’s that don’t quite translate to human conditions

Transmutate - is a beloved bot from beast wars

They can’t transform, they don’t have an alt mode

I’m hazy on the details of their character but afaik they came from a damaged stasis pod. Described as deformed and handicapped for their both their lack of an alt mode and general appearance, they are probably the oldest explicitly disabled Cybertronian character

Xaaron - from G1 is in a similar situation

He can’t transform, it would kill him

Unlike transmutate he does have an alt mode, a tank, but after thousands of years without transforming he is no longer able to. The new stress it would cause on his body would kill him.

Broadside - continuing with the subject of alt modes, this clumsy boy is a boat! That’s not a good thing.

He’s very prone to motion sickness

As you can imagine, chronic sea sickness isn’t the most helpful thing when you are the boat. This brings in the entirely new element of mobility issues that are inherent to alt modes. A bot that functions fine in root form might not in alt mode and vice versa.

Trailbreaker - is another instance of this. He’s not a fast car by any means but that doesn’t stop the fact

His frame has a very high energon cost

Possibly the least fuel efficient autobot, he’s got an outlier ability on top of it all that only further increases his required energon intake. He needs to pay more attention to his energon levels and refuel more often overall.

G1 Knockout - yes that’s right the shiny medic himself is on this list, though not for the same reason as his tfp version, g1 knockout still lives up to his name

He’s prone to fainting

A knockout in the more literal sense, he faints when he gets too excited. Fully collapses and everything. Since he’s a fall risk, his teammates take care to keep an eye on him.

Annnnd Yknow he probably should’ve been earlier in the list along with the “human-ish” issues but I’m tired, it’s late, and I’m bringing this list to a close

Im sure there are more characters that I didn’t mention but I hope this helped! Thank you for the ask

[asllani]

[dykendireckt]

shamble is so cute……….. he was so excited to show megatron sector 12 and then megatron had shockwave take it offline……. :,,,,,,(

[vicstenius]

I TOLD YALL IF THEY SCORED IN THE SECOND HALF ITS CAUSE OF MY DAD AND THEY SCORE THREEEEEEE

[raziel3025]

According to TFWiki, his name is Shamble.

Reasons I like Transformers Siege (WFC) #61:

This dude is SO fucking excited to see Megatron-

[tfwiki]

Hey TFWiki! We got some disabled cons in Netflix's WFC, like Shamble, and of course many iterations of Bumblebee being mute, but are there any other physically disabled transformers in other continuities? Thanks!

Good question! As Transformers are mechanical beings who can usually just detatch and pop on a new limb as needed, there aren’t very many “permanently” disabled characters across the franchise-although quite a lot of characters have suffered debilitating injuries with long-lasting consequences at one point or another. If we listed all of them, we’d be here all day, but here are a few notable ones!

After a run-in with some humans on Earth left him seriously injured, Bumblebee got around with the help of a cane for a few years before a new body rendered his mobility aid obsolete.

Sunstreaker was left badly damaged after sacrificing himself to fend off a ravenous swarm of Insecticons, and spent a few years confined to a hoverchair before Ratchet could fully repair him.

Cyberverse Perceptor burned out his optics to escape the Decepticons, leaving him blind, but he was still able to use his built-in sensors and scanners to “see” his surroundings.

In the Beast Wars: Uprising stories, the “Builders of Cybertron” are former Autobots and Decepticons, too fuel-inefficient to move under their own power; most of them are hardwired into life support cradles that leave them all but immobile.

Ultra Magnus lost his hand partway through Prime’s third season, and had to make do with a crude prosthesis cobbled together from Earth technology for the rest of the show-although he did get a proper replacement later on as seen in the 2015 Robots in Disguise comic.

On a similar note, an elderly Ratchet had trouble with his hands early on in IDW’s More than Meets the Eye comics when he began suffering a condition analogous to human arthritis, but dealt with the issue by replacing his hands with new ones.

Intriguingly, early concept art suggests that Rattrap would have had a markedly different character arc than what his character became in the final show: the scanning technology necessary to obtain a beast mode would have failed, leaving him with a malformed robot mode on permanent life support.

There are also plenty of Transformers who’ve deal with more science-fictional disabilities or medical problems-things like a tendency to rust, problems relating to their ability (or inability) to transform, or straight-up fantastical issues like malfunctioning superpowers. Check out Nautilator, Finback, Xaaron, or Skywarp’s pages for more information!

[kickassviv]

Haha so glad to see you so happy! Arsenal wfc is in shambles right now, our players are clowns we've known this all along tho 🤡

😔😔😔 thank you anon

[silviajburke]

How Much Lower Will Bank Stocks Fall?

This post How Much Lower Will Bank Stocks Fall? appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

[This post was originally published on The Institutional Risk Analyst from R. Christopher Whalen – CLICK HERE for more from the publication.]

Since the November 2016 election, large cap financials have moved sharply higher, in the case of Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) up almost 60%.  This spasmodic upward movement in reaction to the election of Donald Trump reflected both the collective desire of professional managers to increase allocation to financials but also the shared frustration of investors with the chronic under-performance of large banks.

Let’s face it; there’s a whole generation of managers on Wall Street who made their careers buying big banks.  These torpid zombies may not have very good financial metrics, but the roar of the Buy Side crowd managed to push financials to more than a quarter of the market cap of the S&P 500 during the 2000s.

Today financials as a group are not quite half that portion of the broad market and for a reason: large banks are horrible financial performers.  Flat revenues, strained earnings and buckets of headline risk do not make for peaceful slumbers in the world of Buy Side managers.  Just look at the self inflicted wounds at Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC).

And ask yourself if anybody, anywhere would have predicted three years ago that Warren Buffett’s favorite big bank would be clawing back CEO comp and, yes, effectively cutting off fingers and toes for public giggles.  Yeah?  Can’t make this stuff up.

Since BAC peaked a bit shy of up 60% on March 1st at a whole $25 and change per share, our favorite zombie girl has been giving back those hard won gains.  The House that Brian Moynihan kinda, sorta owns, by default, closed at below $23 yesterday and our guess is that the best performing large bank of the past six months will give up more in coming weeks.

Consider the fact that in the upward whoosh of the Trump Bump our friends at BAC actually outperformed the other large zombie banks and by a wide margin.  BAC is still up 40% since the election of Donald Trump, while JPMorgan is up a mere 25%, WFC under 19% and Citigroup (NYSE:C) right on 20%.  There are so many managers that have waited so long for Brian and BAC to take flight that they simply could not help themselves.

As we told Jeff Cox and our pals at CNBC the other day, our guess is that nothing in earnings this week or next is going to prevent these large cap financials from giving up more ground in coming weeks.

The fact that the Street has BAC with a up 9% revenue estimate for Q1 ‘17 can only be interpreted as an act of extraordinary generosity, especially when you consider that the full year estimate is just half that number.  But even if we assume 9% up revenue for the full year, admittedly an amazing suggestion, does the current market value of equity of BAC make sense on any planet in the solar system?

Then there is Citi, the laggard in the large bank peer group and for a reason.  The Street has Citi up 2% on revenue in Q1 ’17 and, wait, a whole 2.1% top line growth for the full year.  That is just 1/10th of the move in the stock since October.  But somehow the house that Bob Rubin almost destroyed single handedly in the 2008 will do plus 4% revenue growth in 2018?  You really have to respect Street analysts for their ability to see the bright side of the picture no matter what the actual numbers may suggest.

The Street has WFC up a whole 0.5% on revenue this quarter and 4.3% for the full year 2017, another act of selfless generosity based upon the bank’s shaky state of governance and the sharp decline in mortgage origination volumes.

We are still getting over the fact that WFC publicly got ripped a new orifice over hedging its mortgage book last quarter.  Like, really??  If the biggest mortgage bank in the world cannot hedge its mortgage servicing book, then why are we even here?  But then again, the shambles in the bank’s CSUITE really answers that question.

Then finally we come to the House of Jamie, JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM), which actually underperformed BAC in the upward surge we all know as the Trump Bump.  The Street has JPM up 3.3% on revenue in Q1 ’17 and a whole 3% for the full year.

Looking at the plus 25% for JPM at yesterday’s close, we need to ask the question. Even if Jamie manages to beat the +15% Street estimate for earnings, does the outlook for the business really justify a 25% move since October?  No it does not.

As the chart below illustrates, there is no real growth in bank earnings when you look at the industry as a whole.  The dollar revenue of interest earnings is rising, this due to the growth of bank balance sheets, but there is no corresponding expansion of income as a percentage of earning assets.  The top four banks discussed in the post account for about half of industry assets, so the general does inform the view of the particular.

Source: FDIC

As we noted in the last issue of The IRA, the yield on earning assets for all US banks has been falling since 2008 thanks to the social engineering of Janet Yellen and her colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee.

Quantitative easing is bad for the economy and for banks as well.  But don’t blame Jamie Dimon or Brian Moynihan for the stagnation of bank revenue and earnings.  That honor belongs to the FOMC, their colleagues among the ranks of the bank regulators, and ultimately Congress.

Give President Trump’s comments about deregulation and stimulative fiscal policy credit for driving up the value of financials generally.  And thank the generosity of credulous investment managers for the fact that large cap financials have not fallen farther faster as the exuberance of the Trump Bump fades.

Fact is, the Buy Side just loves the big banks, this even though the real value creation comes from smaller names.  But we continue to believe that in the absence of a remarkable increase in bank revenue and earnings this week and next, the market value of equity for the four zombie dance queens is likely to go lower in the near term as value and stock prices return to balance.

Regards, Christopher Whalen for The Daily Reckoning

The post How Much Lower Will Bank Stocks Fall? appeared first on Daily Reckoning.