TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

Spoiler: pettyyyyyyyyyyyy. and long. I accidentally shockwave meta'd

Okay, so Rhett's super into Shockwave, right? Pre-shadowplay Shockwave. I personally am not a huge fan of how he characterizes the guy, but canon doesn't lock him down much at all, so that's just a matter of taste. But then I just saw him reblog this old post (his own post from tankfairy) and just hggggGGGGHHHH

This... ugh. This is like Whirl and Rotorstorm and me wanting to fit that piece of Whirl's backstory in with the rest of his character. I like it so, so much better when characters fuck up in pretty egregious ways! I like it when at least they're not super-prescient, flawless, so-far-above-everyone-else-on-this-sinful-earth angels!

So, okay. Instead of just pulling this to pieces, I'm going to suggest something better. Actually, no, one little direct criticism first, the Senator who was moderate enough to give Whirl his pass to leave the aerial service? That guy was considered so ""liberal"" that the council went back and undid all his work and aggressively fucked over the poor sap who benefited from his kindness. Senator Shockwave would not have gotten away with this bullshit, not when the council was already balls deep in empurata and probably at least experimenting with shadowplay. And I'm sorry, but a watchmaker is not "so much talent" that it's worth risking those kind of repercussions.

Awright, though. Something better. Senator Shockwave starts his political career as a firm, confident, conservative functionist. He's young and idealistic. Possibly even religious, given that the functionist line was that 'if we need drills, primus will cause drills to be forged,' etc. And if he's young, he's still building his political power, still making connections and learning the dirtiest parts of playing the political game.

So let's say he's completely on board with screwing Whirl over. Let's say he's a little stunned that-- why don't people understand? If you turn into a flier, then you're needed for the aerial service, that's why Primus made you that way. Now, Shockwave seems like a fairly kind sort. Maybe he's lost and a little uncertain about what to do about this sort of thing. It's wrong, yes-- but is it the kind of wrong that needs punishment, or just gentle correction? But the older senators, maybe even his mentors, sweep him up in the functionist witch hunt.

Whirl's life is destroyed-- without him even knowing that it is being deliberately destroyed, without him knowing that he is being punished. Shockwave isn't giving those commands, but his mentors, his friends are. And perhaps he's uncertain, barely uncertain, deep inside where he can't quite vocalize it. If Whirl doesn't know why this is being done, how can he better himself, how can he realign himself with Primus's vision for him? But again. He's young, he's learning. Surely the people giving these orders know better than he does. Even if Whirl is losing his business, and he's ending up on the streets, he'll see the light eventually and return to the aerial service. And of course, the people in charge of that program will take him on again-- right?

The life of a senator is busy, and in peacetime, the centuries just fly right by. Maybe he never remembers to go back and check on the ex-watchmaker. Maybe sometimes he remembers him, and is afraid to check, because what if he was wrong, what if he never managed to recover? No, it's better to have faith and believe. Shockwave doesn't seem like the sort to involve himself directly with empurata, so who's to say that he even recognizes Whirl the next time he sees him again? A few centuries ago, a watchmaker lost his business. Today, the senate has a new enforcer, one without a face or hands. There's no need to connect them. Or even in he does connect them, then empurata is a punishment. Whirl must have done something to deserve the punishment. At least now he's aligned with the government that works in line with Primus's will again. A happy ending!

PS, that was just Whirl's punishment. What happened to the senator who gave him the permit to go make watches? I'm sure it wasn't pleasant, and it would almost definitely have been worse. Whirl did wrong accidentally, the senator should have known better. Young senator Shockwave gets a very visceral lesson about how important it is to follow the rules, and what happens to anyone who dares to break the mold.

Now, Shockwave is, again, a pretty kind and sympathetic figure. The functionist council is... not those things. Given Shockwave's basic character, it's reasonable to assume that he'd notice that. That it would bother him. That over the millennia, it would get harder and harder to mentally justify all the things he sees the council doing, especially as their methods get more extreme and their punishments get harsher. We don't see the council really addressing the issue of outliers at all, but it seems reasonable that they would nnnnot really approve of their existence. They reacted so poorly when they couldn't fit Rung into a slot. And with outliers, you introduce an extra variable that makes it so much harder to say You Were Created To Do This.

And Shockwave is a flexible thinker! His first instinct, maybe, wouldn't be to try to brute-force these Cybertronians into a slot they didn't fit. He's still a functionist, certainly-- but is it so bad to sit on the issue for a little while, consider the problem, get to know the Cybertronian in question, see if you can untangle the problem and understand why Primus would have created them? Every form has a function, and Primus gave them these abilities as surely as he gave them their alt modes. He must have had a purpose in question when he forged them, so it's only a matter of examining the problem until you can find the answer.

Now, of course it's not that easy. The functionist rhetoric works deeeeeeecently on a planetwide scale, but it falls to fucking pieces on the level of the individual. And when everything ultimately comes back to function, it's so much harder to work out the reasons that, say, a super-learner has for existing. We can assume that under the functionists, the arts were repressed in a major way. At a standstill, at least. Maybe if you turned into, I dunno, a musical instrument, you'd be allowed to be a composer (ps, I want a transformer that turns into a pipe organ, please. I might design that robot later). I can imagine that under that government, pure academia, just learning for the sake of learning, would meet with at least mild disapproval. So what do you do with a super-learner?

I personally like to think that Glitch had a similar BUT-WHAT-ARE-YOU-FOR run-in with the government before Shockwave took him under his wing, and that's why he lost his face and hands. And okay, okay. Coming back to that repression of the arts. Shockwave is collecting all these young transformers with unusual abilities who don't have a clear purpose for existing, and so aren't getting properly put to work. What are a bunch of nigh-immortal robots going to do to pass the time in a situation like that? I'm sure there are lots of things, but consider: hobbies.

Now, Shockwave is a cultured guy. I'm certain he's aware of Cybertron's golden age. We know that when Cyclonus was around, things like music flourished, and were even encouraged. Let's say that a random outlier, saaaaaaaaay Windcharger, realizes during his downtime that he has a thing for music. Now, music performance can carry you a long ways! And I'm sure the government wouldn't go so far as to ban music altogether. But you handle a musical instrument for long enough, you start noodling around on it just for kicks. It's going to happen. And from there, it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to trying your hand at actual composition.

So under the council, the creative input would prrrrrrrobably stop around there. Cybertronians don't seem to have weekends, so imagine working an eight hour shift, every day, then trying to find the time, energy, and motivation to learn how to compose music. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it's going to be hard, and under that society, you can probably expect minimal support and not much in the way of positive feedback. You're at a disadvantage, is what I'm saying. So imagine hearing a new song for the first time in millennia. Imagine being suddenly aware of how long it's been since you heard a new song, and wondering why it's been so long. Imagine seeing the number of novels being published these days, and comparing it to the written works being produced in the golden age. Art, theater, everything creative and beautiful for the sake of being beautiful, imagine slowly becoming aware to how rare things like that are in the current day and age.

Then add to the mix a less-young, less-idealistic senator, who's getting frustrated with the way the council refuses to bend, even when there's no reason for them to be rigid. A council who repays small missteps with extreme punishments. A council who refuses to admit that there could possibly be a better way to do anything-- when even the suggestion that there might be a better way means that you're risking one of those extreme punishments. Perhaps Shockwave is being indulged in how he's allowed to hold onto these mis-forged outliers. We know that by the time he makes friends with Optimus that he's got a good amount of political clout. Considering how poorly the outliers fit the functionist mold, it's not a stretch to imagine that he had to spend some political favors to get the council's approval to hold onto them-- only pending their proper functionist assignment on Cybertron, of course. He used the Academy as a 'secret haven,' but this is politics, people would have known, and it would have been a dangerous game.

So when Shockwave tries to hint that maybe sometimes people have something to offer outside the pure functionist philosophy, the best he gets is people shaking their head at that Shockwave fellow and his radical ideas. But his political opponents, the heavily conservative council members, anyone strongly dedicated to pure functionism-- what do you think they're going to do in response to that sort of thing? Shockwave is already being dangerously liberal, and so many politicians play a vicious, zero-sum game. For me to get ahead, I need you to take a fall. And speaking in such an anti-functionist way would make Shockwave a big target.

Now, he's not stupid either. So I'm sure he'd play the game carefully. He's not as young as he used to be. He's not as idealistic. He really truly understands that not everyone on the council has Cybertron's best wishes at heart. And that's when he starts carefully, carefully courting younger, more liberal mechs. Like Optimus. And it's still a very, very dangerous game, and he knows that. Honestly, we don't see too much of him in canon at all, but I really got the impression that he had plans with scope, which barely got off the ground before he had his unfortunate encounter with empurata and shadowplay. It's really interesting that he was willing to sacrifice himself and leave things to Optimus, a relative newcomer without much/anything in the way of political know-how. Optimus tries to play the game honestly, like when he drags Whirl with him to confront the council, and that's... idealistic of him. But this is politics.

Actually, one little thing I do wonder about is what pre-shadowplay Shockwave thought about Megatron. I don't thiiiiiink he mentioned him in the Shadowplay arc, but there are two ways to play it. One is super easy, the 'I agree with this young miner and all the things he says, what an upstanding gentleman, etc., etc.' The other is more interesting to me. Shockwave is a pretty chill guy, but what if he had a deep, abiding frustration with this radical, outspoken reformer? Shockwave has been working harder than this laborer could possibly imagine, for millennia, trying to improve things. And this miner thinks it's as easy as a couple of emotionally-charged papers? That's all it will take? No, this asshole is just going to rile up the more conservative parts of the government. They'll lash out against dissenters even more, double down on their harshest, most restrictive policies, he's going to undo the quiet, cultural shift that Shockwave has been doing his best to encourage.

Which isn't to say that Shockwave's methods would have necessarily succeeded (they probably/definitely wouldn't have, given Rewind's alternate future). But by then, he's doing his level best to fix the government from the inside, and Megatron stirring up unrest on the outside makes it... pretty much impossible for Shockwave's approach to work. That's really hard to deal with. Even for someone as pro-reform as Shockwave, it must have been so frustrating. If this is the main political goal he's been angling for, for a long, long time, just... wow. It's like spending a lifetime trying to raise awareness for deforestation in Peru and doing your best to introduce legislation to protect the environment... and then Greenpeace/Megatron comes stomping in without a care in the world and does irreparable damage to the Nazca lines. I think it's so much more interesting to consider the anti-functionist parties as disparate groups of people with clashing methods and minimal/no communication, rather than a single monolithic whole who's totally on board with everything every other anti-functionist is doing.

And last thing, this gets into extra-speculative territory, but I have to wonder if by the end, Shockwave thought he'd reached his limit in terms of changes he was able to make as a politician. I mean, yes, he was still having a positive impact. But the senate was still dominated by functionism, and I'm sure on a political level, he had to fight and fight for every inch he gained. Especially after Megatron stirred up the more conservative side of the government. And the senate must have been an absolute minefield too, given how dirty they were playing by then. That's when you have Whirl being sent to kill Megatron because he wrote anti-functionist things, or they were pulling the Proteus's Promise shenanigans, or when, y'know, they put a giant-ass bomb inside a dead Prime and planned to blow up a shit-ton of innocent civilians. Heck, they were even outright assassinating Decepticon-sympathizing senators. Shockwave might have just been... tired. He might have known his time was about to be up, one way or the other. He'd burned a lot of political favors. Politicians who sympathized with him were getting assassinated by the rest of the government. He might have known his time was up, one way or the other, and decided to surrender on his own terms.

 

Shit, I didn't just accidentally meta. I'm pretty sure I just tricked myself into writing a fanfic this weekend. This is exactly the kind of life-spanning melancholy nonsense that comes easiest to me. I had other things I wanted to write, gahhhh

edit: oh, I worked out why the original post bothers me. It's like having a medieval princess who's a flawless 21st century feminist and thinks women are equal to men and peasants deserve more rights, etc., etc., etc. The setting doesn't do anything to justify that person holding those radical views, at least not without serious pushback and punishment.

 

Verity was the only part of that miniseries I didn't adore. I could even live with the eye candy, but the expressions... Verity is actually pretty much the first protagonist you meet in the idw comics, period. She doesn't take center stage for too long, because let's be real, people are here for the robots. There are a couple of several-years-pass periods in the comics, but at first, I thiiiink she's sixteen, and she looks like this



I like her best in sins of the wreckers, which is eight-ish years later (I think), and she looks like this



I really enjoy her character a lot. In terms of mixing humans in with my giant robots, she's my favorite (except maybe Thundercracker's human, director Faireborn). It's kind of a slow burn, because at first she's kind of a bland Tough Kid archetype, but there is depth in there. Even while she stops taking center stage, it's really interesting to see how the other characters react to her. You've got Ultra Magnus quietly clinging to her as a reassurance that he is worthy of love. You've got grumpy old man Kup letting her sass him in front of new recruits, and worrying over her safety even while his health is starting to fall to pieces. You've got the war-crime-tastic Wreckers affectionately tolerating her, and even Springer being super delicate and careful with her while he's worried for her. She can even thaw Prowl's frosty-ass heart, which is really saying something.

Basically, I'm glad she mostly isn't a protagonist these days, but there are a lot of things she brings to the table as a secondary character that I really appreciate.

But man, would it have been so much to ask for one quiet panel of her and Ultra Magnus being affectionate together? I want him to be happy and appreciated and feeling like he can safely express his emotions, goddammit

 

Depending whether you read on comixology or viewcomic, the text may not be included with the miniseries. I did take some EXTREMELY shitty photos from my hardcover trade, which are in four parts, starting at the link below. There's a LOT of extra material. I think it's all pretty awesome, but the highlights are definitely "Bullets" and "Zero Point." There's some important story tucked away there (especially for darling, sweet, precious Ironfist) and since EXCELLENT character moments (my heart fucking broke over Rotorstorm).

https://kintsugi.seebs.net/posts/198777/

 

The kids did grow on me with time! They're at their worst in the initial mini-arc-thing, and they improve fairly steadily from there. I still spent a lot of time muttering 'goddammit Miko,' but the robots really, really do get to shine in this series.

And you know, this was definitely the beginning of my slide into the land of 'starscream baby ilu come rest your head upon my bosom.' I really appreciate the things they do with his character and the way they portray his relationship with Megatron. IDW is still my favorite-favorite, but this series is also some good stuff.