TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

Spoiler

I got the impression with Lug and Anode that the frame change was more like.... I had a happy life event, and I'm getting a dramatic new haircut to celebrate. Especially with that friend both recognizing them, and not realizing until it was explained that the change came along with a change in pronouns. It's confusing, because their bodies are a combination of like, BODIES, but also fashion. I don't think we've seen anything to suggest that Cybertronians have gendered expectations to go with bodies (some of it happens, because bluh bluh marketing and executive dictates and all, but we've gotten an influx of supporting women who don't have stereotypical Woman looks), and the thing with Skids and Firestar makes me think that even for a character who pings as female to human readers, the characters aren't being written with those ingrained expectations. It's kind of funny, because with Lug and Anode, I just sorta assumed they were dudes at first, because so much of the cast is dudes and they didn't have obvious LOOK IT'S A LADY signifiers like robot boobs and lipstick.

I'm so tired, and it's killing me because I've wanted to write about this all week, and I've just been too exhausted to articulate some complicated thoughts. But Cybertronians seem to have a REALLY sharp division between physical dysphoia and social dysphoria. Not that they can't both occur together, but like, in our world every so often you get some people insisting that anatomy isn't gendered (and then other people getting upset because their anatomy feels plenty gendered, thank you, and that is a big part of the problem). But for Cybertronians.... it isn't, really. They don't have differently sexed bodies with different reproductive anatomy in the mix. And so on and so forth, I can't write that whole essay right now.

I think I'm trying to get at something about like... 'I was born in the wrong body, but that body has nothing to do with gender', and social transition being a fairly thorough solution to the dysphoria problem, and social transition being a lot easier when people don't have those ingrained expectation of 'X gender should look like THIS'. And both of those flavors of dysphoria having extremely different root causes driving them. Actually... I'm pretty sure both of those are very Cybertronian problems, and much, much less of a thing in the colonies. Because Cybertron was the only place that lost the idea of 'female', and the only place who was doing mass-produced cold construction. I'm sure there are people everywhere who run into similar issues, but there's nobody else encouraging those problems on such a wide scale.

It's really fascinating in every possible direction. Because decepticons have an (oversimplified) culture of 'ew, organics'. How much harder does that make it to look at alien social structures and draw parallels between them and cybertronians? Or once you have a sufficiently large population of cold constructed mechs, oh, it's not UNUSUAL to feel uncomfortable in your body, EVERYONE feels that way, it's just part of life. Or even oh, you want to change your body? Haha, yeah, I change up my paint every year or two, I know what you mean. Plus a degree of body reformatting that comes with taking new alt modes, but which is probably within a person's comfort zone of yes, this is Who I Should Be.

Sorry, I am WAY too tired to be trying to break this out coherently.

(also anyone can be a lady now. there are so many possibilities i can't even focus on what i want to see most. the world is your oyster. laserbeak is a lady now i don't make the rules)

Ohhhhh, but! One last thought. You know who has a forged spark, a cold-constructed body, and has gone through a LOT of frame changes over the years? I wouldn't be at all surprised if a forged spark had more.... idea of what they were supposed to become. He had a body that was designed for heavy labor and mining. And especially back then, body determined social position. And the whole mass-produced people thing being used to shove Megatron into a disadvantaged social position where he isn't allowed to shape his own life and people attempt to stop him from even expressing his thoughts, that all is a REALLY interesting, very plausibly toxic combination.

Then add that to Terminus and him doing his best to groom Megatron into the person HE wanted, while Megatron is getting all sorts of nasty pressure in the other direction from the functionists. Terminus was taken away before he could definitely win, but with how he was taken, Megatron never had a chance to recognize that pressure as toxic, so he never had a reason to try to pull away from that influence. And the functionists escalated and escalated all the way through Whirl's attack in the prison, and... something about the incredibly strong emotional reaction he has to their entire philosophy, and everything close to what they ever supported. And he did plenty of bad shit on his own, WAY more than could ever be blamed on environmental factors. But the more about his backstory we learn, it's just... so tragic how little chance he was given to organically find his own way in life.

(ALSO more thoughts about how cold construction and body dysphoria, plus the functionist approach where the shape of your body determines what you're going to BE, and all the complicated baggage that would go along with that, but okay I'm going to stop now I am seriously about to keel over)

 

OH, finally figured out words for what I like about the 'Wind-Voice' imagery, to go along with Star-Voice.

Spoiler

So the Star-Voice thing is about the illusion of cold, flat emptiness, when the sky has depth forever and is filled with stars that almost nobody sees.

The Wind-Voice thing is especially apt given the end of TAAO 12, because, okay. The idea that Windblade will speak up, that's a character thing in general, that shows up in lots of places. She was a cityspeaker, which is a pretty direct tie to 'voice'. But now she's explicitly saying that she's not going to speak JUST for Starscream or JUST for Metroplex. Starscream's been trying to pin her down into being a tool he can use for ages, and she tethered herself very voluntarily to Metroplex. But the idea that she can't be contained or caged, that is really lovely imagery in terms of her character and what she wants to do.

And being able to articulate that imagery really makes me extra pleased with the two of them working as a team. Starscream is old, he has loads of experience, he's got depth, he's proven he can absorb just about EVERYTHING and still come out of it as his own person, still determined to hold control of his life and work towards his goals. Windblade is young (she has only decades of training? i might have been on the spot writing her as super duper young) and fresh, without being held down by all the baggage of the war. She's selfless and determined to be a positive force in the world, without being tethered to any single individual's agenda, and she's broken free of every attempt to control her.

It's almost the whole unstoppable force/immovable object thing, except now they're finally working as a team. Windblade isn't quite unstoppable, there are limits to her power. And Starscream can't weather everything that hits him, there are limits to what he can deal with on his own. They fill in for each other's weak spots so well! And the wind-voice/star-voice structure makes me so happy in terms of that imagery. That is so many words to say such a short thing :p Sure love those moods where you need to say words but are also super bad at saying words. Just wait until I come back later to feelings-dump about Ultra Magnus :VVVVV

 

So hey, if you're like me and have zero impulse control, check out these acrylic charms. I've been low-key sulking over miscellaneous items for sale at TFN that I can't acquire for reasons of an ocean in the way, plus I have other merch from this creator and love it, so... one of each, I have no impulse control, it is honestly a real problem :P (but that minimus ambus one!! that wheeljack one!!!)

 

Ahhhhh, Ramondelli. He's improved a lot, but they still keep giving him miniseries with REALLY good writing, and his art is just.... Hhgghhh. Not great for sequential storytelling. I grieve most for the pre-DC exrid issue, where the Soundwave+Shockwave flashback scenes are all him :/

 

That Starscream is an especial low, but I kind of loathe those other two in the same panel :P The lines on whatshisface's mouth are, just... ugly and so very unnecessary, and I should be able to tell who whatshisface is. And rattrap's face looks... missing. Plus it's a head-on shot and the eyes are so asymmetrical that even I can tell something is off.

He's in competition for my very least favorite transformers artist, just because his art... it doesn't FLOW at all. In long shots his proportions are consistently off (in ugly ways), and consistently inconsistent from panel to panel. He does best at static setpieces, but even then, they're heavy on the static. And he abuses the paint spatters like whoa, and it's... an aesthetic, but it's also a cheap way to distract from art with shoddy bones. In some of his static prints, or in like, that one panel with Strafe, it can work. But he those are usually the ones that are the most a pose, or where he can lean heavier on effects to lay over the art.

He's better as an artist than me, no question at all. But I'm vaguely offended that this large, popular franchise keeps giving him money for that quality of artwork. Covers are annoying enough, but his art is weak enough that it drags the writing down with it.

(the spotlight: arcee art is dreadful, but it at least manages to be dynamic and flow a BIT, which is so important for comics. don figueroa is tied with ramondelli at the bottom. Because jfc. He's got technical skill, but I got zero pleasure out of looking at anything he drew that had a face in it.)



(god, their hideous little liefeld teeth...... but I can still follow the story better than with ramondelli art. I have to apply the brakes with his work to even know what I'm looking at, never mind follow the story. Figuroa's work is intensely ugly, it's just not so bad it makes the writing unreadable)