#transformers essay

[homoquartz]

a show doesn't necessarily have to be ABOUT queerness to BE a queer show. it's a cultural dialect that cishets don't quite speak.

edit: i gotta clarify that the shows do indeed still have to have actual queer characters in them to count

[ihatebrainstorm]

Was speedrunning some work when this one song beamed this image into my brain and I had to drop everything to draw it lmao

(0 clue if this will be my final Jazz design? I dunno I got a few sketches, I'm real indeterminate lmao)

[starheavenly]

Deadlock, Ratchet, and Pharma toxic yuri love triangle. Inspired by bloominglegumes dratchet yuri cause they're so big brained

[mysterywriter2187]

Transformers: One - What's In A Kneel?

!!!!!MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

With the responsibility of leadership and the dangers of pedestals and hero worship being such major themes, it only makes sense that all three of the film's leaders would show their true characters, and in doing so seal their fates, in moments where they have to kneel/bow.

Sentinel Prime essentially sets the entire second half of the film in motion when both the heroes and we as the viewer see him kneel to the Quintessons. It confirms everything that Alpha Trion was just telling them/us about him, and it's also the very thing that ends up getting broadcast to Iacon in order to finally expose Sentinel and turn the public against their False Prime.

For all his superficial charisma and his talk of looking out for the little guys, Sentinel himself is truly nothing more than a self-centred, spineless coward, who couldn't care less for the needs of the many and gladly bends to the will of bigger bullies/oppressors in order to keep himself in power.

After learning of Sentinel's betrayal and being subsequently captured with the High Guard, D-16 makes a point to stand while in custody and adamantly refuses to kneel. Even when Sentinel begins beating and torturing him, D-16 makes it abundantly clear that he has no intention of bowing to him or anyone else ever again.

In better circumstances this could be a heroic trait, a courageous defiance and the willingness to stand up in the face of injustice. But it just as becomes a negative one, and it's one of the last warning signs to the kind of leader that Megatron is going to be.

He may have started out with good and heroic intentions, but because of this Megatron sees himself as superior, and whether by choice or by force, he expects his fellow Cybetronians to rally behind him just as they did with Sentinel. While he sees himself as a revolutionary, in the end he's just going to become another tyrant.

And then we have Orion Pax. For much of the film, he's a far cry from the noble, legendary leader that we know and love from other iterations, but he starts to grow into it as he devises the rescue mission, and is tasked with rallying his fellow miners to help.

Having gotten a major upgrade since the last time he saw them, Orion now towers over his former peers and they're utterly awed by the sight of him. Rather than trying to take advantage of their admiration or even intimidate them with his new size and strength, Orion almost seems frustrated by the new height difference, and before beginning his speech he kneels down to literally speak to them on their level.

Orion doesn't make a point to do this, no one has to ask or prompt him to, in fact he himself doesn't even give that much thought to it, it's just his first instinct for how to best communicate. He may look larger and stronger now, but he still values the miners as his friends and his equals, and nothing is ever going to change that.

Gaining the Matrix later on may have gotten him the name, but it's this moment when Orion truly begins to embody the true core and heart of Optimus Prime. Powerful and inspiring, yet humble and caring. Or perhaps, as the legendary Peter Cullen himself has always said:

"Strong enough to be gentle."

[peak-dumbass]

I know I just got done with ranting about tfp/rid2015 starscream’s character but, if you couldn’t tell by my other rid2015 posts, I’m obsessed with rid2015 bumblebee and when I tell you I love this scene of bumblebee making fun of starscream I’m not exaggerating it’s so cathartic to me

“But bumblebee is a good/hero character, why is he being so mean—” did you forget how much starscream hurt bumblebee in tfp?

He killed cliffjumper who, while probably not as close to bee as he was to arcee, was still close friends with bee

He stole the omega keys from the autobots’ base and handed them over to megatron, practically dooming Cybertron at the time to be remade in megatron’s image — of course the autobots get them back last minute, but that doesn’t change how much that loss effected all of them (evidence: optimus shouting in anger for the first and to my memory only time in the series) — including bumblebee

And his greatest offense towards bumblebee in my opinion—

DESTROYING BUMBLEBEE’S T-COG

“But it was silas and M.E.C.H. that took it in the first place—” HE DIDN’T NEED TO HELP SILAS USE IT AFTERWARDS “but Ratchet was able to fix it—” THAT DOESN’T GET RID OF THE TRAUMA THAT WHOLE EXPERIENCE CAUSED HIM

It’s also incredibly fucked once you think about it more because the t-cog is literally a cybertronian organ — while silas is at least mostly detached from how screwed this is since it’s more like taking parts from a robot than surgery to humans, starscream shouldn’t be since he’s also a cybertronian

Instead of being freaked out and recognizing how messed up silas’ actions are like any rational bot would, he helps silas make his fake-bot-that’s-using-another-bot’s-stolen-organ work by providing him with energon (the [at the time] incredibly scarce resource that helps all bots survive) and — after that plan falls through because of bumblebee finding them — he destroys the bot’s organ for no reason other than he wanted to escape and thought that was a good way to distract him

I just—I’m sorry?? I feel like bumblebee is incredibly justified for clowning on this cringefailure of a bot for what he’s done to him

And this isn’t even mentioning what he’s done against the autobots as a whole (both on and off screen) that has probably hurt bumblebee by proxy

I feel like it’d be justified if bee also killed starscream — he already got to kill the bot that destroyed his voice box, I think bee deserves another murder as a treat <3

/joking but also what if—*gets shot by tfp/rid2015 starscream fans*

[ninjasmudge]

When Macaque can take his relationship with Sun Wukong falling apart better than Megatron does with Optimus.

why cant you be more like macaque, he just beat some people up and put on plays until he felt better

anyway enjoy this niche crossover

[lurkingteapot]

Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It's so interesting. I'd wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of "yeah, that's what it literally translates to, but that's not what it means" or has answered a question like "how do you say _____ in (language)?" with "you don't, it's just … not a thing, we don't say that."

I've had my fair share of "[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it's text!" "[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it's text!" and every time. Every time I'm just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.

Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. To lots of people, it doesn't. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It's great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn't available through my local library very much wasn't available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show. When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.

Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn't led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.

And that's … idk if it's fine, but it's what happens! A lot of the time, concepts -- expressed in language -- don't translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn't very idiomatic because there's a register mismatch or worse. And that's even before cultural assumptions come in. It's normal to have those. It's also important to remember that things like "thanks I hate it" as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn't easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.

Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don't have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator's discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it's the listener's responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it's lacking).

Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of "Go?" - "Go." does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as "is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?" - "yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are" in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It's arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying "Are you going?" - "I am (going)" might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.

This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking "are you going" or "is she going"? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it's important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like "are we all going?" - "yes" or "they going, too?" might work. Context!

As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it's because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it's because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn't. However, because in most cases translators don't have access to the original authors, or even the original authors' agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn't get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it's more of a "fuck it, I've got to put something and hope it doesn't get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down" (especially fun when you're working on a series that's in progress).

For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there'll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what "effectively" even means …

ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I'd love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don't speak the material's original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we're basically working from a secondary source, and if we're doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there's nothing substantial being (literally) lost -- or added! -- in translation?

[shroombell]

they definitely match each other's freak

[flayyr]

divorcespark fic + oc shit. i don’t think tf oc stuff is looked at by anyone but i tacked it on anyway lol

[stardust948]

Something something D-16 overthrowing the government because he was lied to by Sentential Prime who stole the title of prime then D-16 taking Megatronous Prime's name and t-cog then using deception as his main weapon.

[xuyaak]

some funny pencil things

[ducksbeloved]

lol i wonder if lucy came up with the "high 5 heroes" party name

[reel-fear]

Bendy And The Power Of Representation

So those graphic novel pages huh? Seems I posted my cover post at just the right time because literally minutes after I was informed the preview pages came out and uh. This is Buddy and Norman!

Oh dear... I'll put the full graphic novel pages down below but I have so much to say on how awful this is it'll need several posts. However, right now I want to mostly talk about representation and briefly touch on why it's so damn important + inform others about the current shit Mike and Meatly are saying about the books n such.

Now note: All the things I'm saying below are based on my personal experience, maybe some people don't care about seeing the representation of their identities in the media they consume. Maybe some will think I'm merely being dramatic and I might be but I'm not lying when I say I personally believe being represented and seen in the media you consume can be one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.

Look I'm not here to argue with people who think that Norman in particular was never meant to be a person of color, I would argue he is very coded but the points I'm making here are not about how Norman particularly had to be black. The point I want to make is the lack of diversity in our cast in general and how Norman's design has heavily dwindled it considering most people [including myself] rightfully assumed he was at least one of three black characters in our cast. Not according to this though and looking at the the rest of the pages our chances of seeing any kind of decent diverse character designs dwindle more.

So firstly... Buddy a character who has been said to experience discrimination for being Jewish, lacks any kind of ethnic features at all. That's... Cool but yeah I think this shows a rather grim future for the character designs as a whole.

Also, Norman... As I mentioned he was largely assumed to be black due to his southern dialect, his voice, and other factors. But nope, he's a generic white guy. With... Gross looking hair tbh...

Sadly this is not the first time the topic of poor representation has come up concerning Bendy either.

[note how he disregarded the other mentioned minorities and specifically cites LGBTQ+ characters]

This sucks as a response but sadly considering Mike's recent behavior it seems to fall in line with the Bendy team's general lack of care towards representing anyone who isn't straight and white.

So how did Mike respond to all of this? Well...

TDLR - "Who cares if the Graphic Novel we're selling to our fans for full price sucks, we now no longer consider the books canon."

This is horrible, I know Mike and Meatly are only really in this for the money, the fact BATIM is in the state that it is proved that, but they really couldn't have been less obvious about it?

So basically when it benefited them, AKA when it meant people would have to buy the books to understand important lore like Boris' identity... [the character you spend all of chapter 4 trying to rescue] They were considered canon... At least the author sure thought so.

Hell even in the tweet Meatly made here he doesn't say the books aren't canon, he just says they're not needed to understand Bendy's world. Now Mike is using that as a shield instead of doing the right thing and saying "You're right, the poc in our fanbase deserve better we'll have it fixed right away!" Like most reasonable people would considering how his studio has literally been accused of bigotry, poor rep, and general lack of diversity before. Why risk making more people avoid this franchise?

Also just... Imagine how insulting it would be to be an author who helps flesh out so much of this world and gives its characters depth like NONE of the games have managed to do, filling in plot holes, creating a timeline for events, etc... Then because they couldn't bother to change the graphic novel for ur story to be better they instead throw out all ur writing and declare it non-canon.

If I were her to put it bluntly I'd feel insulted and horrible. Why make her do all the work of making sure her works align with the timeline and game's canon if they're not part of it?

I can't speak for her obviously but Meatly and Mike know of her account, so speaking out against this could very much risk her being fired or at least not allowed to work on Bendy anymore... So I would take all her tweets on this situation with a grain of salt. She very much is not in a position where she could be honest if she was against this.

So with all that history now, the question I'm sure many are wondering is... Why does this even matter? Who cares how diverse the characters are when it doesn't affect the story?

Well for one thing, if you think like that consider having more empathy for your fellow human beings but also it does affect the story. One of DCTL's themes is about the bigotry of the period it is set in.

Now the Bendy team has managed to make the discussion of this book centering around their bigotry which is ironic in a way I almost find funny... Though this entire thing is just a bit too hurtful and upsetting to find any humor in, at least for me...

But another thing is representation can bring people such joy when it's done with care. It really shouldn't be understated how far it can go to make people feel more comfortable in their own sense of self to have a franchise choose to represent them and their experiences. I know this from personal experience.

Now if you've been following me for a while, you know I'm a big fan of Transformers. I no longer engage with it much due to baggage from the fandom's awful treatment of me, but before I left I remember being able to witness the release of Transformers: Earthspark first few episodes.

These introduced the Maltos the family who meets the Transformers and serve as our protagonists and guess what?

It's a family of Filipinos!

Now look I'm not Filipino, but I am half Mexican and I have a lot of love for that part of me. So seeing the representation of any Spanish culture in this franchise I loved made me so happy! I remember just watching the first episode I was happily telling my partner how fun it was to see people like me and my family in a world I love!!

But it didn't end with the Maltos in fact... There was another character who spoke to me, their name was Nightshade. Their pronouns are They/Them and they spoke about it on the show! Not just mentioning it and moving on but actually sitting down to speak about their experiences...

This clip in particular really turned them into an absolute favorite among fans and well... I'll let you see it for yourself.

This scene... Fills me with a joy I cannot describe. It is the creators of a franchise I love telling me they see people like me and find the stories of people like me important enough to include in this series. There really is nothing like being able to say there are Non-Binary characters in a franchise I have so much love for. I was far from the only one too.

This is amazing, this is wonderful, this clip and character were moving to so so many people and...

This is a joy the Bendy creators have no interest in giving their audience. They don't care how you feel as a queer and/or black person, which... Hurts...

I... Discovered I was trans while in the Bendy community... It was where I learned the word Non-Binary and started using it for myself. To me Bendy will always have that connection... But the devs themselves seem to hate the idea of being forced to actually represent that in their games... And I still haven't really gotten over that pain or betrayal if I'm being honest.

So...

With Norman now being portrayed as white here, we are down to two black characters. Thomas [who Meatly has claimed is white in the past] based on a vague conversation with Sammy in DCTL they could easily ignore... And Jacob.... A book exclusive character which according to Mike means he is non-canon.

If we don't count Thomas' vague talk with Sammy about disrespect as confirmation he's black [which the devs don't seem to think so] then we have one black character in all of Bendy... And he recently got retconned into non-existence. Great.

Look... The Bendy fanbase has always been full of wonderfully diverse designs for the staff and even more diverse people creating them. Bendy's fandom was built with the work of queer people from all kinds of places.

If the Bendy team continues to show how little they care for anyone who isn't straight or white... I wonder who they are counting on to buy this book or in general financially support their franchise?

I know right now, I am furious, I am hurt and I most certainly don't feel like buying a book that's currently just a massive fuck you to the fans and I hope I've expressed why I feel this way in an easy-to-understand way here...

Either way, I will not be forgetting this anytime soon and I hope the fanbase does the same. Maybe just maybe, if there's enough backlash to this series of horrible decisions they'll learn better.

Right now, it's kinda of our only hope for a better future, and if you know any poc who are into Bendy right now... Maybe consider making sure they're feeling okay.

I know from experience how much this sort of thing hurts, to have the creators of a world you love straight up tell you they don't intend to fix the fact no one in their stories represents your identity or life...

What I'm trying to say is...

This is a really low point for Bendy and its fans... Even more for the poc who have to witness such ignorant and careless attitudes from Mike and Meatly towards their feelings.

Please don't forget them when you discuss these tweets or this situation. That's exactly what Mike and Meatly want right now.

For them to be unrepresented and therefore... Unheard.

[cybertron-smash-or-pass]

TF One D-16

[hydenraven]

Wednesday and the Hyde

[peak-dumbass]

I felt like ranting about TFP/RiD2015 starscream’s character since I feel like a lot of people mischaracterize him, but this turned out to be much longer than I thought it would sooooo click if you wanna see my essay about the most disloyal second-in-command ever :]

So when talking about tfp starscream I hear a lot of his fans mention how bad the show was for not addressing megatron’s abuse of him and for not giving him a redemption arc where he recovers from it and becomes a better person or something along those lines

I don’t want to seem rude, but where the fuck did you guys get the impression that the show was ever going to do something like that?? Or even that starscream was ever going to be viewed in a remotely sympathetic light??? Cuz it definitely wasn’t from the show I can tell you that much

Now I’m not denying that starscream was abused, I do agree with that — but did you guys forget the context of why Megatron feels the need to punish him so brutally? Cuz every single time he does so it’s cuz starscream is trying to take his place as leader of the decepticons and, more often than not, trying to kill him in the process — like did yall forget that one of the first things starscream did in the show was plan to leave megatron to die in space after taking the only thing keeping him alive from his chest and the only reason he didn’t was because he was being spied on by soundwave?

I’m not stating that to say “megatron was right to abuse starscream”, hell no, but I’m stating that to say there was a reason for it in-show and it wasn’t to show that starscream deserves sympathy but to show how ruthless megatron is, especially to people that cross him like starscream

The whole “redemption arc” idea that some people like to cling to is what confuses me the most because are we talking about the same character here?? Are we looking at the same guy because so matter how you look at starscream, he was never meant to be redeemed

This is the same character that, throughout the entire show, is the only one to have killed an autobot on screen — and he did this in his first scene in the first episode — and actively brags about it on several occasions afterwards throughout the show

This is the same character that, when the autobots gave him one chance to see if he could be seen as an ally, couldn’t help himself from mentioning his murdering of cliffjumper to arcee — cliffjumper’s partner — and then using her anger and grief as way to escape, effectively making it impossible that the autobots would ever truly trust him again

This is the same character that, even after leaving the decepticons, can’t help himself from trying to murder megatron (to take his place, not as revenge for his abuse) and getting in the autobots way of stopping the decepticons

The fact that starscream’s seemingly favorite pastime in the show is Attempted Murder so he can become a Worse Dictator is something I think his fans gloss over much too easily — especially since they’re typically the same people that hate megatron for abusing him because starscream *checks notes* keeps attempting to murder him

The only reason why megatron keeps starscream around is because he’s more useful to him alive and working under him than either dead or working against him — and considering how many times starscream has attempted to murder him and has actively ruined his plans, I’m surprised he hasn’t killed him already

Even after all of that happens and starscream finally says “fine, I won’t attempt to kill megatron anymore” in season 3, he’s still ruining his plans with his pettiness and jealousy towards others like shockwave —

no matter what happens to starscream, he refuses to grow and change

— which is why I can’t understand where this “I can fix him cuz the writers refused to” mentality came from

He was never meant to be “fix”-able, at best he was meant to be a doomed character, a cautionary tale and/or a tragic villain — because no matter what happens, he keeps ruining things for himself and refuses to accept that, putting the blame for his failures and feelings of inadequacy on others like megatron or optimus when, in reality, it’s always him who is reason why he can’t be happy

And this carries over into Robots In Disguise 2015 as well, when he returns to be the villain of season 3 (or 2.5, it’s complicated)

He returns to earth so he can find all of the 7 weaponizer mini-cons and link them to himself to become all powerful so he can kill megatron and conquer the galaxy

I’ve seen some people say that “the writers had to add on the ‘conquer the galaxy’ part to starscream’s plan because then it would be hard to justify why the heroes would want to stop a victim of abuse from killing his abuser” and just —tell me you don’t understand starscream’s character without telling me you don’t understand starscream’s character

My Sibling in Primus, starscream has been wanting to do that since the beginning of Transformers: Prime, that’s literally his main reason for constantly wanting to kill megatron all the time — so he can take his place as leader of the decepticons, defeat the autobots, and then become the ruler of Cybertron

While I do agree that starscream wanting megatron dead for all of the pain he caused him is definitely part of his motive here, this type of revenge is never going to shown as a good thing, nor should it

Even after its been several years since megatron left the decepticons after being used by unicron, even after all of cybertron seems to have moved on from the war, starscream can’t let his obsession with killing megatron go — and that isn’t a good thing

Bumblebee confirms that starscream has been assumed dead this entire time, meaning nobody was chasing or hunting him down, nobody was trying to turn him over to the new cybertronian government for his crimes — he could’ve used this as a way to escape it all and finally start anew, find other ways to make himself better and happier after having to deal with megatron looming over him for so long

But he didn’t

He stumbled upon an old megatron plan for gaining power and couldn’t help himself, he couldn’t let it go, he refused to break the cycle and he has no one to blame for continuing it but himself

When he finds the Dark Star Saber and uses it, the sword resists him, with him saying that it’s because the sword doesn’t find him worthy enough to weld it since it can tell he isn’t megatron, but he tries to weld it anyways

I’ve seen one person try to interpret this as a way to say that “this means he isn’t evil since the sword that was made for evil is rejecting him” which is the dumbest take ever, but here’s my interpretation of what the Dark Star Saber’s rejection means

Ever since his first appearance on screen, starscream has been trying to be the leader of the decepticons, the most powerful, the most feared, the most respected — he wants to be megatron so bad it’s painful — and everything that happens to him is telling him that he isn’t

But he refuses to accept that — of course he doesn’t, he’s starscream, megatron’s most disloyal second-in-command — and that’s all he’ll ever amount to as long as he walks his road of selfishness, anger, and revenge

And that’s what he does until he’s defeated again by Bumblebee and his team, because if there’s one thing that remains constant for starscream that isn’t his favorite hobby of Attempted Murder it’s his refusal to grow and change as a person