I love his Ozymandias-esque TV watching setup. I mean, he claimed that he watches everything, but simultaneously? Guess that's one way to distract yourself from... everything. I just want to give him cookies, except he can't actually eat them and would probably find the whole gesture somewhat suspect.
On the other hand, he's watched enough tv to probably recognize and get excited about the symbolic gesture of giving him naked goods!
Haha, that's the most wonderful typo! And here I am checking the thread before I even get out of bed. TF thread is life!
So I have way, WAY too many feelings about Ultra Magnus, and the way he's very rigid and depends on the rules and doesn't do well with things being Different, and given that he's extra bad with change and that he had that job as ultimate space cop, the amount of disruption he was dealing with following the end of the war was... something special. There's the drinking on hedonia and the later stuff he says, plus some of the personal stuff in his backstory, etc., etc. But I'm on a quest for every possible screencap of brainstorm doing things that are relevant to that meta whatsit I typed up. And I stumbled across this in the annual. I think it's kind of a REALLY fascinating look at him. Ultra Magnus is bad at change. He's set in his ways. He doesn't know how to cope with things being different. He has a hard time handling it when the rules he uses for structure suddenly poof on him. I'm pretty sure he's very aware of just how bad he is at dealing with change. I mean, just look at Hedonia and his later crisis. And here, he's being warned that other people will change him. And he smiles. I'm not sure where to take this, but I'm in love with the idea that someone who doesn't know how to change themselves, even while the world slips away from them, is hoping that these other people will take care of the change for him. He doesn't fit in, and he knows he doesn't fit in, and it bothers him, but he doesn't know how he's supposed to adapt himself to it. On Hedonia, he's... fairly close to melting down over how this is getting to him. But this external observer is trying to use the idea of change as a threat, and specifically, the idea that other people are going to change him. Ultra Magnus already knows he can't do it for himself, and his handle on things is just slipping further and further away. I really, really love that he smiles here at the idea that other people will change him in the ways that he can't manage on his own.
There's so much terrible discourse on the maccadam tag right now, what even started it? My favorites: 1.) "Decepticons aren't bad, the writers just make them do bad things," and that's somehow like a lady being blamed for sexual assault because of the way she dresses? 2.) Autobots created functionalism and alt modes so they are super bad [lady laughing with salad] Did they all start with the drama surrounding soundwave?
People don't like the reveal in the...annual? I haven't read it yet so my knowledge is secondhand. There was a bunch of talk about robot faces.
Still working through Phase One. Current reading is roughly 'stuff published in 2010'. There is just *so much material* to cover here. Realized I should probably get to the Ironhide limited series, so that is what I'm doing. Whee! Issue 1 and... did Optimus just knock Ramjet out by hitting him in the head? I was under the impression that bashing things with his head is sort of what Ramjet does. How hard did Optimus even hit him? :/ Spoiler: screencaps because why not Holy shit dude. Maybe the cheek is a relatively vulnerable part of his head. An Achilles cheek.
me, alerting steve to the presence of breakfast: hey you! nice boy, c'mere you. hey hungry. nice boy, good boy. the part of me that is always thinking about soundwave: hey you know who else is a good boy me, wearing my soundwave t-shirt, clutching my heart, suddenly choking up with emotion: yeah
@Exohedron, that actually makes a lot of sense. I'm probably gonna continue thinking of it as an Achilles cheek in my head because I love absurdity and would like to marry it if only it would get back to me about the proposal. I just finished the Ironhide series, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Spoiler: several spoilers Alpha Trion has the best dialogue. And a fucking cape. This dude is so over the top it wraps around to awesome. And yep, there's Sunstreaker. Totally not dead after all. Surprise! I am happy to have him and Ironhide back in the story, though. Next up, uhhh, Infestation, I guess? Although on this reading order post that @spockandawe assembled (which is incredibly helpful!) there is a note warning that it is probably a weird and bad zombie story. I'll just... have a look? Oh nooooooooooo is this a crossover event? D: There's like one major comics crossover event I've ever felt was completely worth the effort (Inferno <3), and I have this creeping suspicion that Infestation is not gonna be the second to win my heart. Nevertheless, let's see how this goes. :D
Cyclonus-Rose is the best thing that's ever happened. I can't watch the show without seeing her as a big, purple skull faced robot.
Spoiler: Transformers Annual Huh. Onyx Prime looks pretty cool, if I mentally compensate for the art style which I'm not really all that fond of. I'm not so sure about Soundwave's face. Like Optimus and Brainstorm, he's always been a facemask to me. I feel like the mind control story has been a bit overplayed in this continuity. And I found Pyra's story just rather confusing. Like, okay, if Onyx Prime really is coming back to turn Cybertron into rust and black holes, why do you spend your time dicking around back on Earth? Maybe I'm just not used to comics having dangling apocalypses all over the place. I did like Starscream's line about "The only thing I believe in is myself and even I let me down most of the time", and his dismissal of Bumblebee as just another figment of his self-loathing.
