TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

guys, oh my god, the valentine's day bonnini comic. There are more comics I hadn't seen yet, both in the clownxnerd tag and casamegop, but this one. I just. The look on optimus's face

 

Well, I finally tracked down the annual, and my only main takeaway for the moment is oh god why with soundwave's face

I'm sure I had other thoughts too, but it's sure hard to get past that face. This artist loses their soundwave privileges. I can't think of a transformers character who's hurt more by the cartoony style.

Wait, two other feelings: optimus's flashback was off-puttingly heavy-handed but I liked mmmost of pyra magna's (though some bits were the same sort of heavy-handed :/ )and I am so pleased about dust up and jumpstream (i have a way into some torchbearer personalities! finally!!). and also starscream causes me hurt. as he does :')

Spoiler: OP 5

"Jazz: trying too hard" (darling, i love you, let me hold you)

Describing cybertronians on earth as terrible houseguest, omg. I LOVE

Ooh, jetfire feelings. yessss, YESSSSSS GIVE ME MORE

Optimus, ur kind of a jerk. Even way back before the war, you... kinda tend to run roughshod over people.

And oh my god, writers, please stop taking off his faceplate. The only place (the only place with his original design, tfa doesn't count) where I didn't loathe that with every fiber of my being was in TFP, and even then it took some getting used to.

It's also.... I don't want to laugh at pyra magna, because I really enjoy her as a character and trust her about as far as I can throw her and want to see wht she can do. But comparing one botched miniature military engagement (even with a bonus eldritch encounter) to four million years of indescribable, galaxy spanning warface, it..... it kinda makes you look silly.

Oh my god, Cosmos continues to be precious. I love him.

OH MY GOD, SOUNDWAVE! SOUNDWAVE!!! My boy!! That's my boy! I'm so proud of him, oh my god. What a good boy, all his ideals, the tireless way he ursues them, the strength of his conviction and determination, everything about him! I love him, oh my god.

Oh. Oh, Optimus. I'm gonna need you to...... not. I can't respect you as a leader when you're being a pissy scrunch-faced ragemonster. This isn't you, in terms of any of the story I've seen. This is a seriously jarring character thing. I'm actually having a lot of trouble dealing with his characterization here. For chrissake, wasn't the point supposed to be that he used to be different, and the disproportionate overbearing reactions are a recent development?? The angry, scratchy-looking art doesn't help the writing, but these responses! He's supposed to be... solid. He's not supposed to get wildly emotional. He's not supposed to be like this.

This could have been done so much more effectively with a quiet, restrained anger over the lie. It could have been cold and undemonstrative, and it would have WEIGHT. Now he just looks like your Standard Angry Action Hero. It's boring.

Ohh, Arcee. "I had a friend once. Sort of." Arcee I love you and very much want someone to be happy to have you around, displayed in a way you'll parse. Optimus Prime is an absent father, everybody else is super busy. I'm holding out for Sideswipe when he wakes up. Because he'd better wake up, I am not okay with strained sideswipe+sunstreaker relationship -> sunstreaker is apparently dead -> oh, we're doing better now -> OOPS NOW SIDESWIPE IS DEAD, HAHA. I do not want it, sam I am.

I want more about the new recruits who hero worship optimus prime facing the ugly realities of life as a fighter. I'm only getting hints, I want it for real. I don't care about this optimus, this writing makes it impossible for me to care about him. I want something to get emotionally invested in, please.

I am emotionally invested in wreck-gar, I love him, I want him to have nice things and be happy, I want him to make nice with the autobots and get things that can sustain his people and to give arcee the whatsit for sideswipe. I would like Optimus to stop stepping on people, please. I have no sympathy for optimus in this situation. I can't feel things for him. I feel things for everyone else just fine! But it's orbiting around a dead sun.

I am also confused about wreck-gar. Is the positron core serving as his spark or something? I can't tell, this art style eats the detail work :/ But it seems like he has it, he doesn't want to be tortured, but it's.... kind of still looking like he's going to be tortured? Unless she has the core and is just planning to kill him. In which case, arcee pls. You're better than this.

Oh wait. Oh dear. Soundwave, darling, I'm seriously going to need you to stop advocating for violent revolution. You just had a peaceful commune you were establishing! That's a thing that was just happening! I get where you're coming from, but this is a bad idea :( And lacking in compassion :( I get that compassion reserves are a limited resource, but baby, you kind of tend to gravitate towards nudging people into teams where one has to win and one has to lose, and it kind of leads to a lot of pain and suffering.

 

Oooooooooh, I stumbled onto an old thing I wrote up in a pm when I was being pissy and petty about someone calling starscream godkin. And it was long ago enough that I barely remember writing it, so this was like discovering all these starscream feeling for the very first time. I'm all emotional now over my boy, my terrible son who is awful. I just want him to be happy ;u;

So!

Spoiler: people are being WRONG ABOUT ROBOTS ON THE INTERNET, this cannot stand

Okay, so there is one situation where I could semi-see Starscream going for the godkin thing. I could see him doing it in the sense where you see a lot of these young kids who call themselves godkin, where they have no real agency or control over their lives, and feel helpless and worthless, and call themselves godkin because it's a way to try to convince themselves that they do have power, and they do deserve worship and admiration. BUT, that's an interpretation that pisses the hell out of most of the godkin types I've seen, and I sincerely doubt this person intended anything with that much psychological depth. I'm pretty sure they just picked it because VANITY, HURR HURR.

AND I also disagree with that take on godkinhood for Starscream anyways, because as much as I can see how it could get introduced as a coping mechanism, I think it's an unhealthy, unsustainable coping mechanism, and one that doesn't bring you any concrete long-term benefits. I don't know if you've read discworld, but the way Small Gods and Monstrous Regiment addressed religion really stuck with me, especially in the sense that a god only has as much power as their believers have faith in them. Even outside the context of literal divine power, I think attaching your self-worth to other people's belief/appreciation/worship/synonym of you is... a losing proposition. Sure, most godkin types will say that they don't need other people's worship, they just KNOW they're divine, but then when they get upset or need affirmation, they do the whole 'WORSHIP ME' or 'I AM LITERALLY DIVINE' thing, and... they're not self-sufficient gods.

And I think Starscream is smarter than that. He's not an idiot, and he isn't really given to self-delusion either. Most of his dumbest moments in Phase One are about him trying to recruit people without realizing just how fast they'll turn around and betray him to Megatron. Which isn't really that dumb. And given how cutthroat the Decepticon dynamics are, he can't afford to be dumb. He can't afford to have those kind of vain, self-serving illusions. He already comes under so much fucking fire just for daring to think he can be a competent leader, and that persistent hostility and aggression really fucks him up as it is. Trying to believe you're a god when you're beaten to a pulp for daring to step up and take command when the old commander is apparently dead? No, he's not going to do that to himself.

Like... ugh, I'm probably going to get project-y here, and I'm not sure how coherent it will be, but Starscream seems like the kind of person to steer his own mental processes to protect himself. He almost has to. The other Decepticons dislike him, his commander dislikes him, the Autobots definitely dislike him. Even if he nominally has allies and is a skilled fighter and is someone where it would be a major blow if he was captured or killed, he's so alone. He doesn't have any support structures, and he's really, really aware of that. In a situation like that, as a clever, resourceful person, I think he'd fight really hard to steer away from any mental traps like 'I am inherently deserving, because I am literally divine.' Agh, trying to think of a parallel irl scenario and blanking.

I mean, Starscream is definitely vain, but he's vain over his skills and abilities, it's all about concrete, useful things that he can use to exert control over the world around him. He's had to claw his way to where he is now, he has to be aware that he can't afford to get hung up on how he's ~*~worthy~*~ because of some vague, unproveable divinity bullshit. I'd argue that he feels much less "worthy" than the average person does, especially after being cut down by Megatron for so long. I think that he's in a position like... I was told going into a technical field as a woman, that I'd have to work twice as hard as the boys for half the recognition. I feel like Starscream is in a similar position (especially before he gets some stability in phase two), but instead of like, girls vs boys, he feels like it's 'Starscream vs the entire rest of the Cybertronian race.'

And just... he spent millions of years with Megatron tearing him down and telling him he was a stupid, worthless coward. I can see how someone might think it's tempting to dive into your own mind and tell yourself 'pfff, just shows what he knows, I am literally a god.' But, come on. How long are you going to last, having that persistent contrast between inside your head and your actual lived reality, and how long before you start to feel like you're just lying to yourself? And then once the divinity feels like a lie, you're left with nothing, no real defenses. You're exactly as worthless as Megatron always said you were, you were just such a coward that you made up a stupid little lie to hide it from yourself. It feels to me like you're going to exit that mess doing even worse than if you just let Megatron lay into you without trying to protect yourself in the first place.

On the other hand, if you look at a Starscream who's vain over concrete things like his intelligence, his fighting skills, and his ability to command, you're in a position where you can still grow in the face of that abuse. Megatron tells you you're stupid-- you're not, you know that. And you're getting smarter every day. You're constantly learning and improving, even if he's too blind to see it. Or even if your attempt to take command (legitimately for once) blows up in your face in the worst possible way, fine, you'll just do better the next time. You survived this, Megatron hasn't broken you yet, and you're only going to come out of it stronger. Eventually you'll be too strong for him to even hurt you.

See, I didn't really have Starscream's attitude re: Megatron locked down in concrete words before this, but using his vanity as a shield against the abuse seems much more 1) healthy, 2) sustainable, 3) Starscream, than anything I can see coming from declaring godkinhood. Godkin feels like... such an avoidant way to deal with that kind of stress, and Starscream is really not a conflict-avoidant person. The vanity and godkin approaches seem like they spring from a similar defensive place, but the godkin one is like... 'you can't attack me without attacking the entire concept of kinhood, so haha, I'm effectively safe from any criticism.' And the vanity is more like 'fuck you, attack me all you want, but I'm better than you realize and I'm improving every day, and someday I'll be good enough that you can't hurt me anymore.'

 

wait okay last thing for the night. I had a ship ask meme going, and I got a message that i... think may be a late attempted entry, or may be a comment about something that I published today. Only all it says is "birds and bees". Being very confused and knowing multiple ships that could apply to, I did a quick google to see if it turned up any obvious results. I should have know better, I really should have. I didn't get any clues about the ship. But. Result number one:



what even is the bayverse fandom and what did i do to deserve this

 

Rodimus is about to do something interesting!! I really loved this part of phase one. Except for a few of the standalone bits like lsotw or the drift miniseries, it's some of the writing and characterization that feels closest to the phase two goodness. The Galvatron plot.... is a mess. I never got through the comic, I was too lazy to look it up on the wiki, and I just inferred everything else from context :V But that worked out well enough for me! I'm pretty sure that even with the wiki as a guide, it's a convoluted mess that like... doesn't get any emotional hooks into you. The end of phase one and what you hear secondhand in phase two give you a pretty good idea of the important things that went down, and it's much more enjoyable reading.

 

OKAY SO I LEARNED A COOL THING AT WORK TODAY

Mostly because people were shit-talking other defense contractors :P One time my coworker was on a project where they were attaching some equipment to the bottom of a B-52 bomber. So they needed it mapped SUPER precisely. And the people who built that were Northrop Grumman. Who built it for the military. And when the military was like 'hey, dudes, can you send these other guys your model of that plane? I mean we bought it from you, sooooo.' Northrop Grumman was like 'haha, well. you bought the SOFTWARE we used to model it. but this is our model nobody else is allowed to play with it because we're jerks bYE.'

And what my coworker did is, okay. So they got a toy model of the B-52 bomber. Mapped it out with lasers. And then when he was on a trip to a military base, my coworker got under a bomber with a tape measure and started checking the results they'd gotten from the model. And it was RIDICULOUSLY PERFECT. Down to the rivets in the plates and everything. It was unreal how perfect it was. The only changes were to a few tiny parts where the plastic would have been overstressed at the proper size.

So if. Hypothetically. Someone needed to procure a model plane for a vain, terrible boy who is beautiful like an F-22 jet fighter. Revell is insanely on top of things, for a surprisingly affordable price. So my silly, self-indulgent setup for Starscream and his model is way less of a stretch than I thought, I am so pleased with myself right now :')