#but there's still so much that could be explored with more Cybertronian-Earth relations

[witchofthesouls]

Kiss players traumatised Hasbro and that’s why they won’t give us a Human/Cybertronian couple 🥲

Okay, I had to look it up, and yeah....

Why, Japan!? WHYYYYY?!?

All that aside, Hasbro needs to get over it and let their greedy hands into the xeno territory because, c'mon, there's already a portion of the population that's into that.

Mass Effect romance options? The Shape of Water film? People are down to fuck Mothman and the Predator.

Plus, it could open new storylines, like neutrals or refugees actually integrating into quiet, rural areas; utilize underused characters as they navigate their own way on a new world that's under Autobot protection; an actual collaboration between governments and the remaining Cybertronians because of space drama (idk, maybe the Galactic Alliance is super paranoid and terrfied on how the hell there's a thriving planet in the middle of a Dead Zone that's too similar to Cybertronians for their collective tastes); dealing with the aftermath of the civil war where some 'bots (and 'cons) find Earth far more freeing than Cybertron. It could definitely explore more aspects of their culture and differentiate the mentalities between those that remember Before and those who never knew anything else but the war. Look at G1 Skyfire vs. the Aerialbots. What about the Stunticons and the Dinobots that were "born" of Earth?

I honestly believe there's a lot that can still be done.

Shoot, imagine a Transformers x MIB fusion?!

[lets-try-some-writing]

🔥

Anything tfp related

Call me a stick in the mud, but I am rather bitter about the way Cybertronians in general were portrayed in TFP. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED the show and the characters themselves were excellent. The plot made sense a majority of the time and it felt like every character (save for Makeshift) was given reasonable screen time and exploration, even if it wasn't perfect in the end. However I have one big problem with a lot of TF content and that is that I never get that distinct feeling of Alien that I feel should come from a robotic race from space.

Yes, these are robots designed with the intent to adapt and hide in plain sight, and yes they were on earth for at least three years before the show began properly. HOWEVER I find it rather disappointing that there wasn't more focus on just how different Cybertronians are from humans and why certain things are more important to them than others. I wanted to see them speak Cybertronian, I wanted to see them struggle to understand emotional concepts that don't work the same way for them, and I wanted to see the difference in morals that would naturally come from a functionally immortal race interacting with a short lived organic species.

These are aliens, a completely different race that has none of the same cultural or physiological constraints as humans. And yet... I never got the distinct sense that they were other, that they were anything beyond a subset of humanity wrapped in metal with high technological capability and the odd relic that is also just a bunch of tech slapped together.

This is a very picky opinion that only exists because I am a world builder first and foremost, but I really feel that so much more could have been explored even in small snippet of dialogue such as an offhanded comment about perhaps the Outliers being used as a special force back on Cybertron when discussing abilities or even something as insignificant as the team pulling a dolphin and turning part of their processors off in a type of sleep while still being aware.

Just small things, little comments, body language, and even the odd term could have been adjusted further to really drive home the point. But in the end I get it, TFP is a kid's show and I am just a picky writer and world builder with way too much time to consider how human concepts wouldn't or would apply to a race capable of not being affected by more human drives.

[entropic-introspection]

Ok so TFA Optimus, Elita, and Sentinel all suffer from “gifted child syndrome” no I will not be taking questions because the essay is below the cut

Ok, so Optimus is our go-to protagonist boy, he’s pretty easy. He’s smart, very clever, maybe feels like he has to work harder to keep up with Elita and Sentinel who have the flashier in-built/Outlier powers. He screws up once, and his life sort of implodes. It’s not even necessarily his fault! He’s spent his whole life trying to be a good kid and being praised for it/following rules, and then got chucked out the minute something went wrong. Sentinel and Elita both should have listened to him or been smarter about exploring on a forbidden planet, but because Optimus was technically in charge of them he took the fall.

Except now he feels like it is his fault, and he internalizes the blame pretty badly. He’s now a washout, his plans for the future are gone, and he has no idea of what he’s supposed to do now. He doesn’t want to step out of line because he thinks he can’t without fucking up again. Which is also a problem, because if you watch, Optimus’ greatest strength tends to be that he thinks unconventionally and is willing to act outside of accepted doctrine to complete the overall mission. Dude’s actually very good at taking limited resources and using them to find viable solutions when he’s not tripping over himself or the idea of what a proper Autobot should be.

Him being in charge of team is both really good and really bad for him alternately, because being responsible for people again keeps him from focusing too far inward, but it also puts pressure on him again in very sensitive spots. Especially because his team is in no way shape or form “proper” Autobots, and sometimes that leads to them getting in trouble with Authority, which Optimus is terrified of doing again. Ratchet is honestly the best bot he could have been paired with, because Ratchet is old enough to have been through some shit and has learned enough emotional distance to teach Optimus how to say “fuck you and your emotionally manipulative bullshit”. Optimus goes from seeing his team of washouts as being a pity “thanks for trying” gift to his responsibility (in a good way!) and his friends.

I wanted a TFA season 4 for a lot of reasons, but one of those is that it would mean Optimus is no longer just on Earth where he’s got a fairly nice, stable routine and his supportive team around him. It’s the first time he’s back into a position of possible authority while being under constant scrutiny, and everyone’s watching him and his ““potential”“. That’s often a bad word to previously gifted children, aight. It is a bad bad trigger word that inspires some deep set panic of failing to live up to expectations. He’s expected to have plans and future desires. As someone who went through something vaguely similar and some ensuing depression, that’s uh. The future turns into a big worrisome question mark. I can plan for next week! Next year? Uh. Never. Never really thought I’d get that far...

Elita/Black Arachnea is very much “driven gifted child”. Her power is insane, she’s very smart, and physically talented enough that the Elite Guard is within her realm of possibility. Then something goes wrong and she’s all fucked up. No one wants her anymore, and she’s stuck between blaming herself and blaming others. Usually, she blames others (namely Optimus and Sentinel) because anger is a lot easier to deal with than guilt and self-recrimination.

So she gets stuck on the idea of “fixing” herself to be good, rather than really learning how to work with her new reality. And that’s frustrating to her, because here’s something without an easy fix. It’s not something she can work to overcome. It is very much a dead-end to her, and she’s not used to that.

Although she does make her entrance having thrown in with the Decepticons, I don’t count her as one. She’s strikes me as more of a neutral party willing to use either side in her current state. The Autobots do not like organics, and there’s too many people who would know her back on Cybertron, so it’s safer for her to throw in with the Decepticons until she gets herself sorted out, even if they don’t like organics either. That’s fine, because she can work hard and show off her potential and finagle her way up to a spot where she can travel with Megatron himself. Which like, damn?? Even if no one likes or trusts her she is good enough at what she does that they will bring her along on the crazy top-secret mission. So she’s gotten some internal validation that she’s still a good gifted child, she’s worth something, and she’ll be worth more once she fixes herself. (Honey it ain’t just your physical being that will need fixing after all this.)

Then she gets to Earth and meets Optimus again. And oops that opens up a kettle of worms she’s been steadfastly ignoring for a long time except to blame him whenever she starts feeling too upset about her condition. And he doesn’t want to treat her any differently. He still wants to call her Elita. He’s still fond of her. He has some very obvious spider-related PTSD. And on the one hand, she wants that. Wants to be loved by someone who knows her, wants that friendship back. On the other hand, it’s like. He’s refusing to acknowledge her, as she is now. He’s not looking at the whole of her, and that’s infuriating. AND THEN she has to deal with Black and Sentinel and it is driven home very hard that she won’t ever be “normal”. She’s going to be “broken” forever. It doesn’t matter what else she does, she’s always going to be a techno-organic freak. And that sends her off the deep-end a bit and leads to her shenanigans with Wasp and. Hm. Therapy is needed, really. For everyone in this verse but I’ll settle for her first.

Sentinel is our favorite asshole. Personally, I read him as “imposter syndrome gifted child”. He feels like he can’t keep up with Elita and Optimus because they’re both so much smarter than him. He’s just not as special as them. So he blusters a lot to cover that up, tries to force the world to make space for him and acknowledge him. If he’d slow down and find some inner-peace, he’d probably find that actually he is very talented and clever, and that by partnering with others he can cover for the areas he’s deficient in, but eh. That takes self-reflection, and folks with imposter syndrome have some trouble with doing that truthfully.

So when Aranea-7 goes down, he’s left with the feeling that he fucked up big time. Optimus though, he’s not saying anything. Optimus is willing to take the fall. Optimus is special and Sentinel doesn’t even have to say anything really and oh look, Optimus is still a Prime, and he gets his own ship and crew. Sentinel knows if he had spoken up, he wouldn’t have gotten that. Then the lucky idiot goes and finds the fucking All-Spark, like what the fuck that thing has been missing for goddamn centuries.

And then Sentinel gets to spend 50 years thinking that his two former best-friends and teammates are dead.

Now, honestly, 50 years is not that long to a Cybertronian, true. But! Even if we compress it down to a more human compatible time of say, 5 years, that is a long time to think someone is dead, and to maybe sort of blame yourself for it. And Sentinel got to see that these lucky, gifted kids who were so special weren’t safe. And he knows that he isn’t safe either, because it’s not like he’s that special. So he knows he needs to be a good Autobot and a good yes-man and stick by the rules and keep fighting for his spot at the top because otherwise, what will happen to him? And so he’s kind of a prickly asshole, but he’s good. He has to be good.

And then he gets to find out in short order that oops! Both his friends are alive, doing significantly better than expected, Optimus can still kick him to the floor after being out of the service for so long, and no one on the disgusting organic planet respects him. And now Ultra Magnus is out of commission, somehow he’s supposed to be in charge even though it feels like all he’s done is just stand there behind Magnus and be his secretary (pro-tip kids: paperwork and secretarial know-how is actually what makes roughly half the world run. If you hold the files, you hold the keys to the kingdom). But he’s in charge, he’s in the spotlight, and all he can think is “I can’t screw this up I can’t let them find out I’m a horrible little nobody what would somebody actually important do in these circumstances”.

Could Sentinel have a redemption arc? Probably! I’m not the one to write it though, and it would most likely involve a lot of him being stuck in places where his identity both does not matter and conversely does: his rank and abilities don’t matter. His willingness to help and interactions with others? Do. He needs a chance to interact honestly with people again to fix some of his underlying problems with trust before he can start on other shit..

[freezaprime]

The Unforeseen Destiny of a Techno-Organic Chapter 1: Tragedy and New Friends

Three years later...

Y/n woke up from her sweet slumber stretching her arms out and let out a huge yawn. Looking around her room and reflecting on how much her life has changed since her father’s untimely death. Ever since she revealed to the Autobots that she was half human, half cybertronian they made her feel more welcomed here than her human relatives had with the exception of her father.

Getting out of her bed, Y/n got dressed in a f/c tank top and put on a pair of jeans followed by socks and sneakers. Y/n brushed her h/c hair and exited her room only to find a note stuck to her door. It read:

Y/n,

Everyone including myself are out searching for energon. So you are in charge of the ground bridge and remember: don’t touch anything that isn’t related to the ground bridge.

Ratchet.

“I wasn’t going to anyway.” Y/n said to herself.

Y/n made sure she had her cell phone on her which was programmed by Ratchet to receive everyone’s comm-link frequency including his and made her way down to the mess hall. The mess hall wasn’t too big but it was perfect for Y/n to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner there. Though when her father was still alive she would often make him something to eat since he got so buried in his research on the protoform pod that he forgets.

Y/n pulled out a gallon of milk, a couple of eggs, olive oil, a pan, a bowl and a plate. She was infamously known to make the fluffest scrambled eggs ever as her late father had put it. She then turned on the stove to let it warm up as she cracked both eggs allowing the yolks to fall into the bowl. Adding milk to the bowl, Y/n stirred the eggs and the milk together. After that she poured a bit of olive oil so that the eggs won’t stick to the pan and then tilted the pan around to insure that the oil is spread all over the pan. Once that was done, Y/n poured the stirred eggs and milk into the pan where she let it set for a while before putting on a mitten and bringing out a spatula to ‘scramble’ the eggs up.

When that was finished, Y/n then turned off the oven and scraped the eggs off the pan and onto the plate. She grabbed her plate, fork, and salt shaker and walked to the nearest table to sit down and eat her breakfast. Later after that, Y/n walked into the medbay where Ratchet was examining the protoform pod. Much to her disappointment Ratchet had said that he didn’t know how or why she came to Earth but he knew that she and her pod originated from Cybertron. Although that didn’t stop her from living out her life happily with her new family.

She then explored the communications center, making sure everything was in its place and decided to play Pokémon on her DS as she sat near the ground bridge controls. The day was nearly over when suddenly Y/n’s phone went off. She turned off her game after saving it and answered her phone.

“This is Y/n.”

“Bridge us back, Y/n. Something terrible has happened to Cliffjumper.”Optimus said in a solemn tone which made Y/n’s heart drop.

In an instant Y/n entered the bots’ location coordinates and activated the ground bridge. Optimus, Ratchet, Bumblebee, Bulkhead, and Arcee walked through the ground bridge with no Cliffjumper in tow. All of their faces were sadden and grief stricken.

“What happened? Where’s Cliffjumper?” Y/n asked carefully.

Ratchet slowly walked up to Y/n. “We tried to get to him after he found an energon deposit and fought off the Decepticons but when we got there we were too late. Cliffjumper is dead.”

A cold chill ran down her blood as Y/n looked to Arcee who was holding one of Cliffjumper’s horns. This makes two family members Y/n has lost so far; first her father, now Cliffjumper. Cliff had been very nice to her since she moved in with the Autobots and he has been constantly keeping her company everywhere she goes around the base. He was like the brother Y/n never had, aside from Bumblebee and Bulkhead, and now he’s gone.

Optimus extended his palm to Y/n as a sign of wanting her to get on it. Without making a sound, Y/n got on and they all went up to the top of the base to say their goodbyes to their friend and comrade.

The next day...

Y/n stayed in her room still in mourning for Cliffjumper. Optimus’ eulogy was inspiring yesterday but it wasn’t enough comfort for her since she already lost one person whom she cared for. Three years after she found her father dead in the living room with their security alarms disabled Y/n thought that he’d be the only casualty, until Cliffjumper made number two to the casualties list.

Bulkhead had been trying to coax her out of her room but nothing has worked so far. So now Y/n stayed in her room until her stomach growled for food. So she walked out of her bedroom and made her way to the small mess hall where she cooked up a hot dog and walked to the communications center after she ate. Little did she know that the Autobots brought in a trio of human teens who were in hiding from Agent Fowler.

“Pretty big bearings. For a human.” Bulkhead said as Fowler left.

“Agent Fowler is concerned for his world, Bulkhead. As he should be.” Optimus replied.

Y/n was then startled by the sight of the human teens who were just as shocked to see her.

“Guys, what are human civilians doing here?” Y/n asked causing the Autobots to turn to see her.

“Those two saw me fighting some cons yesterday.” Arcee explained pointing to the black haired boy and the brown haired short boy with glasses.

“Okay. What about her?” Y/n pointed to the Japanese girl with a ponytail and pigtails with pink accents.

Arcee shrugged. “She saw me like this.”

“I’m Miko! Who are you? Do you live here with them? Do you like heavy metal?” The Japanese girl asked in an exciting tone as she got up into Y/n’s face.

The closeness was rather uncomfortable to Y/n. “Hi Miko, I’m Y/n. Yes I live here with the Autobots and I don’t mind heavy metal music but I don’t listen to it very often.”

“So where are your parents?” The black haired boy asked.

Y/n fell silent at the boy’s question.

Taking the hint the boy quickly regretted asking her that. “I’m sorry.”

Y/n shook her head. “It’s fine. That was three years ago.”

“Why are you living here besides not having your parents around.” The boy with the glasses asked.

Before Y/n could answer the screen showed a life signal that just popped back up. Y/n ran up the stairs with the teens following her. Looking closer at the life signal on the screen, Y/n froze and wondered if she was dreaming.

The life signal blinking on the screen belonged to Cliffjumper.

To be continued....