#transformers one sg specifically. I've been thinking about my own version but i also had to draw this so bad its so good actually

[monofazz]

Shattered Glass makes me violent and sick actually.

inspired by zorangezest and this set of tags in the reblogs in particular

[earthstellar]

how would you go about doing SG bumblebee/goldbug? i have a few of my own thoughts but i’d love to hear yours :0

Thanks for asking! :)

There have been a few slightly varied depictions of SG!Bumblebee/Goldbug, but I'll just take a general approach here and not fixate too much on any one story. :)

It's been a while since I've read SG content, and I've never done so with too much of a focus on Bumblebee specifically, so please take all this with a grain of salt as I haven't had any time to go back and re-read the relevant content! :')

Bumblebee: A Basic Character Trait Analysis

With Bumblebee in the main canon, we can isolate a few common traits across almost all of his various appearances:

Friendly

Fairly outgoing if shy or awkward at times

Young (by which I mean, inexperienced or less experienced than others)

Highly motivated and energetic

Brave / Curious (he's a scout, so this makes sense)

Cares about others / his team mates

We tend to find these traits endearing!

In fact, this is why Bumblebee is often the "child audience appeal" character, and features so heavily in merchandise and advertising!

It's also why he could carry his own solo film; It is easy to believe such a character would be willing to engage with humanity, overcome any fear/hesitancy with a wide-eyed honest approach (literally, they have redesigned his model several times over the years to emphasise his optics to hammer this home visually), and he's least likely to come across as scary to younger kids because his inquisitive and open nature comes across as friendly and non-threatening-- Even though he's a giant robot from space.

But then!

In Shattered Glass, we tend to see him depicted as:

Ruthless

Disinterested in others for the most part unless they serve a purpose for his goals

Highly focused (could overlap easily with highly motivated) but only when he takes personal interest

Far less of a team player unless necessary

Cunning but willing to abandon a plan or situation if he deems the risk to himself or his goals to be too great

We tend to find these traits intense or even off-putting; SG Bumblebee comes across as more selfish or manipulative, and a lot is lost from what we find interesting, compelling, relatable, or enjoyable about his original universe counterpart in this trait-swap.

(Personally, I think we never really got a Shattered Glass style episode in any animated media at least in part because Bumblebee is mostly the "kid-friendly" character, and doing SG Bumblebee might be considered by Hasbro to be too jarring or potentially genuinely upsetting for the target younger audience for them to ever commit to greenlighting a legit SG episode.

Among other reasons, lol, but Bumblebee is usually specifically used to appeal to the youngest children watching any TF media, so I can see how they would want to dodge this potential concern.)

Why This Is An Issue:

Generally, in the context of the SG comics, this is why Bumblebee/Goldbug can be a little off-putting or outright unlikable for some people.

We don't really see him as being Bumblebee anymore, even an alternate universe version of him, because his core traits are just totally removed and swapped out.

Like I said in my other SG analysis post, in order to relate to the characters and continue to accept them as different versions of characters we are already familiar with, at least SOME recognisable elements of some core traits needs to remain.

Otherwise, they become just a little too far removed, and we stop being able to really see them as who they are supposed to be a mirror image of. They start to become new, different characters altogether, in an unfamiliar universe, which doesn't work when the unfamiliar universe is, well, unfamiliar-- We have no connection to it, once the characters lose our interest or become too unrecognisable.

This isn't universal, of course, but this tends to be one of the problems with Transformers SG content in general; I love the concept 100%, but there needs to be a balance with the trait-swapping.

Some Possible Ways to Address SG Trait Swap And Make It Slightly Less Jarring: Bumblebee Edition

To retain more of a connection to Bumblebee as he appears in the SG universe, it would help to retain more of his original universe traits of genuine curiosity or sense of wonderment, carried over from his main universe counterpart which we are more familiar with.

Not only is Bumblebee a scout, so he does tend to exhibit a personal and professional curiosity-- This is why he is often the first bot to run into human beings when looking around or exploring a populated area for the first time.

But also, we associate curiosity with youth, and therefore with some degree of innocence.

While SG!Bumblebee/Goldbug is very experienced and more "hardcore" as it were, it would still be nice to retain this genuine kind of curiosity as a personality trait, rather than a professional trait.

Sure, he knows professionally that he needs to stay behind cover, or shouldn't ask questions. But personally, he is curious.

He wants to know, he investigates even when he maybe shouldn't and discovered some things as a result, or maybe we get a brief moment where he is less motivated by underhanded selfish goals and instead is primarily motivated purely by an interest in something that catches his eye, something he's spotted before anyone else has.

We could get some moments where his motivation is not something underhanded or cruel or conniving, but rather, just a little innocent curiosity. Just so we could see that we can recognise something in this character, so there's a little hope that comes up-- Oh, maybe he has the capacity for some good, maybe somewhere inside his spark there is something untouched by his outwardly aggressive behaviour, etc.

And while this may not be the case in whatever story, it is an engaging thought for readers/the audience to have. We still want to think there's something more under all that toughness and selfishness;

And that makes sense, because it adds some interest and potential depth to his character.

By which I mean, a common problem with SG is often that the characters are so obviously and overwhelmingly evil that they come across as one-dimensional villains, rather than alternate universe versions of characters we care about.

We generally don't get to see SG Autobots do anything other than be comically evil, unnecessarily cruel or violent, etc. and it winds up falling a little flat because it removes a lot of the complexity from these characters as we know them through their original universe counterparts.

Case Study: Star Trek Mirror Universe

I'm going to pick DS9's mirror universe, because there's a great example of this, good and bad.

A great example of "Trait Swap Balancing" (as I call it) is Kira, in the mirror universe episodes.

Kira, in the main universe, is a victim of violent oppression who obtains a position of relative authority on board a previously occupied space station which orbits her home world, out of a personal desire to oversee the restoration efforts and ensure her people are not taken advantage of by Starfleet immediately after the prior oppressors are made to leave the station, as she does not initially trust Starfleet to act on their promises or remain within their agreed upon limited remit.

Kira, in the mirror universe, is a collaborator and secured her position of power through political finesse and social manipulation, running the same space station in the mirror universe but as a singular representative of her planet's position in the oppressive interplanetary collaboration, lording her power over Federation indentured slave labourers as an Intendant.

Why is this so effective?

The audience doesn't totally hate Mirror Universe Kira, because we see that even in this universe, she is revealed to have some doubts about what is going on and the collaboration she is an active participant in once she is pressed further, and her emotional stability is obviously in question; She copes primarily through lashing out at others and engaging in overly-personal manipulative behaviour.

She is unstable in her position, and we get a sense eventually that she isn't as happy with the situation as it first seems. She believes that collaborating is her best chance to spare her people the worst of it, even if it means subjugating others, and this appears to be a root cause of much of her personal instability.

Thus, she retains some critical traits from her main universe counterpart, we recognise this as being the same character at heart, who made very different choices (choices which appropriately mirror her decisions in the primary universe).

She retains her love for her people, and we find out that her motivation in both universes is actually the same: She wants to keep her people safe. In the main universe, she did this by fighting against her oppressors. In the mirror universe, she attempted to do this by joining her oppressors.

So, there you go!

Even though Mirror Kira is awful, we don't hate her. Because we can see where her outwardly evil actions and harmful behaviours have a basis, deep down, that is rooted in a trait which makes us like the main universe Kira: She's trying to do good for her people in both universes.

In the Mirror Universe, this took a terrible path, and her behaviour and actions are oppressive and evil; She is still willing to go along with it in the Mirror Universe. The trait reversal is still very much present. She is still a "bad guy" in the Mirror Universe, very much so.

But we can still recognise some critical key traits from the main universe Kira in her, so we don't start to see Mirror Kira as another character entirely, we don't experience any disconnect there despite the extreme differences in their behaviour and thought processes...

And as a result, we can believe that this is really a Mirror Universe.

We don't have to like Mirror Kira. In fact, we're encouraged not to. We just have to accept her as a mirror universe counterpart to her character in the primary universe.

And retaining those core traits, as differently as they manifest in the mirror universe, is a great way to make Mirror Kira more interesting and familiar to us as an audience--

--Because we can see that yeah, this is the same person. Just different.

Comparing DS9 Mirror Universe to Shattered Glass

Compare this DS9 Mirror Universe example to a lot of the currently available Shattered Glass media, and how the characters are "trait reversed" in many of these stories.

Do you feel you can see any of the "liked traits" of the original universe characters present, in any way or to any degree, in the SG counterparts?

If so, in what situations? How did these liked traits come out, and how did it affect their decision making, if it did at all? Was this engaging? Did it help you recognise the character as more relatable to their original universe counterpart, or make them more definitively recognisable as being a mirrored version of the more familiar main universe version of the character?

If not, how might retaining certain liked traits help provide some character depth or improve recognisability of the SG version of the character? What are ways in which the SG character might become less "flat" feeling or more rounded out by the inclusion of some element of a likable trait or two from their original universe counterpart? What are some ways an SG character could retain some recognisable likable traits while still being suitably evil?

Just some questions to consider!

I think one of the main reasons why a lot of people struggle to get into the Shattered Glass media, despite the great concept behind all of it, is that the trait swap is just too much of a 100% trait swap, and we don't really get to see any recognisable traits underlying any of their actions, behaviours, or thought processes in the SG universe.

Of course, this is just my assessment of things; I hope this was an interesting read for you, and I'm sorry it took me a few days to get the time to type it all out! <3