It’s pretty obvious from what we saw in Transformers: The Last Knight that their Earth is well and truly fucked. You don’t even really need to see this scene featuring Hong Kong, a city of seven million permanent residents, being scraped away by Cybertron’s anchors, to know it. Watching the anchors make a mess out of southern England hammers home the point pretty well on its own. However, what the Hong Kong scene does is indicate just how widespread the damage is━━at a bare minimum, we now have a swathe of destruction running from Southeast Asia to Western Europe, where the sky has been replaced by a million-dollar view of an alien planet and if you’re really unlucky your corpse may hitch a ride hundreds of kilometres from your home on one of those titanic scrapey bits.
I wanted to know exactly how fucked we all are… so I put together a loose projection of the contact zone, assuming that Hong Kong and Stonehenge are the two farthest-flung locations affected by the anchors.
Thanks for your patience, anon! I am now ready to talk way too much about Starscream.
First things first: I had to look up “The Seven Deadly Virtues” and you should all listen to it if you haven’t because 1) it’s great (thanks for bringing it to my attention, anon!) and 2) it is such a Starscream song (mostly–gonna get to that in a sec).
So I actually had to think about this ask for a bit because I wasn’t sure I quite agreed. Starscream definitely tries to give the impression that he thinks like that (when he’s around people who know he’s terrible, anyway), but I don’t think he genuinely doesn’t believe in any notion of goodness.
He makes a pretty good show of embracing being a monster, and I agree he does believe that trying to be most people’s definition of “good” is naive at best (and suicidally foolish at worst), but he does value some things traditionally viewed as virtues, and he does have a line. I think that line is best demonstrated when he shoots Metalhawk:
For everything else he’s done, he draws the line at pointless cruelty, and it doesn’t make him not a monster, but it does make him a slightly more complicated one. I almost think he has to have a line, because even though he does his best to ignore it, he does have a conscience, and it’s easier to live with yourself if you can say “at least I don’t do that.”
And now for the point where I don’t think the song quite fits: he does seem to actually value courage. He joined the Decepticons when he showed up to fight in death matches in the gladiator pits, and he didn’t react well to Turmoil calling him a coward:
He even–in a really weird way–seems to value loyalty. That seems a little ridiculous on the face of it, seeing as he’s…well, Starscream. But he really doesn’t like it when people call him a traitor:
(I think about this panel a lot)
I also think his weird sense of loyalty might be why he feels guilty about killing Metalhawk. He thinks it’s not betrayal if he was never on your side, but he admits he thought of Metalhawk as a friend, so he very well might view killing Metalhawk as a betrayal.
So, um, yeah, basically, I don’t totally disagree with you, because in a lot of ways Starscream does have a really topsy-turvy definition of morality. But there are some areas where his views overlap with traditional morality, and I like him because of that tension between what morality he does have and him being just generally a self-serving monster.
According to this recently circulating post, the helm design is based upon figures such as the Horned King (from Disney’s The Black Cauldron) and the grim reaper.
okay but what about that
…Is it the fact that they managed to give that particular frame a chin, despite it being faceless?
WAIT I THINK IVE GOT IT
why is the waist so thin compared to the rest of the body megatron could literally wrap one hand around him and hurl him into the sun
I, uh. Am pretty certain that is just a side effect of being in the TFA universe. Several characters (Optimus himself being the first example that comes to mind) aren’t much better.
I wonder if there were general guidelines when they started making designs, because unless you’re a heavy hitter usually the design does slim out in the waist.
A lot of them show a lot less armour in the waist too. Actually now that I think about it isn’t there a scene where we see a protoform being put into armour? And it likes stretches out between pieces? It’s been a while since I watched TFA but I think something like Shockwave’s waist would actually be closer to protoform than heavy armour.
Are u telling me this dingus is a war machine but he didnt even put armor on his own waist
So, I think we need to talk about Terminus. Because there is some
interesting stuff going on there. And after LL06, I was upset and
confused and wanted to figure out what was going on, and I tripped
over some fascinating things along the way. Behind a cut for spoilers
and length.
So I don’t own the Almanac yet but because I’m always thinking about Blurr I’ve also been thinking about Velocitron and racer frames in general. Which also means I’ve actually been thinking about that design for TFA Drift for a bit too.
And I know TFA Drift technically went through a frame reformat but honestly you could AU you it so he didn’t. I’ve just been thinking it would be interesting if racer wars, pre-great war and large divides warframe/civilian, had been the only civilian frames recruited for military units. Not as fighters but as in-battle messengers.
Like if you’re fighting on a planet’s surface and there’s communication interference a small ground-bound bot would be less noticeable to run quick messages between units than a Seeker frame that enemies would already be watching for to shoot down.
You know what annoys me? The hard metallic looking berths and couches we’re so frequently shown.
Sure, Cybertronians are made of metal, so presumably the feel of cold hard metal is not actually uncomfortable against their surfaces, nor will their joints be strained by being braced on them.
But what about when they’re moving? Metal on metal isn’t pleasant for a reason: friction. I’m sure we’ve all heard the unpleasant screech of metal scraping and dragging, and maybe even seen sparks fly when a piece of metal strikes a rock or other object. And it’s not like the metal is unharmed and obvlious to the contact. From Wikipedia:
Galling is a form of wear caused by adhesion between sliding surfaces. When a material galls, some of it is pulled with the contacting surface, especially if there is a large amount of force compressing the surfaces together. Galling is caused by a combination of friction and adhesion between the surfaces, followed by slipping and tearing of crystal structure beneath the surface.
[…]
Galling is most commonly found in metal surfaces that are in sliding contact with each other. It is especially common where there is inadequate lubrication between the surfaces. However, certain metals will generally be more prone to galling, due to the atomic structure of their crystals.
If we’re going to be logical about it, then Transformers probably prefer, for their furniture and resting places:
1. Well-lubricated metallic surfaces that are made up of a metal or alloy that has a low gall rate and is more resistant to wear
AND/OR
2. Surfaces that are covered in some kind of soft materal that does not create damaging friction against metal: cloth padding, a layer of gel, something of that sort.
(I would honestly guess a combo: some furniture surfaces are made up of low-gall material and lubricated well, others are covered in padding. One is probably more of a luxury than the other. Padded cloth/gel surfaces would certainly be cleaner.)
In other words, it makes more sense for Cybertronians’ furniture to be comfortable padded than to be simple metal slabs. Pillows make more sense for them than the kind of furniture the comic is showing. I don’t think Nightbeat’s couch here is well-lubricated either: look at it versus Nightbeat’s metal body: there is no sheen or shine on the couch–oil and grease would reflect back light.
I think there is this thing where people, both fans and official content creators, want the Cybertronians to be alien and robot-ish to some extent, and make gestures like these (hard metal recharge slabs and couches) without thinking through the reasoning for why they would have such a thing. They want to avoid being lazy or not representing fully that these are aliens and do things differently.
But some things they probably do the same as humans, and for good reason. Giant alien pillows are one of those things.
Been thinking about Lugnut as a character, and how he might be applied as a character in a more complex or grounded show or series than Animated. And I have to say he has potential.
Lugnut’s defining characteristic is his fanatical loyalty to Megatron, perhaps even more than any other Decepticon. And that sort of blind loyalty can be terrifying. There would be no reasoning with him, no way to get him to back down from anything. Any with Lugnut’s massive strength, any Decepticon that didn’t live up to his ideals of loyalty would be rightfully afraid of him. He’d probably be some sort of enforcer, somebody to keep everyone else in line.
The only person who’d actually be out of Lugnut’s grasp would be Starscream. Starscream, the ultimate traitor, the one most critical of Megatron. Starscream, the Air Commander, and likely Lugnut’s direct superior. It would eat Lugnut up inside to have to follow Starscream’s orders. But Starscream isn’t there for the common troops to challenge. When he breaks rank, it’s always Megatron who brings him crashing back down.
And what if, one day, Megatron didn’t live up to the ideal that Lugnut imagines him to be? What if Megatron didn’t live up to his own values? Would Lugnut desperately try to ignore the difference, and be driven further into fanaticism? Or would his worship turn to disgust?
I’ve been thinking about this all day, and it’s kind of distracting me from my Work-work, so I’m going to go ahead and write this down so I’ll get it out of my system.
Spoilers for MTMTE #38…
I’ve said this before: Transformers has historically been a pretty regressive franchise, even for franchises that exist for the express purpose of selling toys to 8-11-year-old boys (and the occasional nostalgic dad.) I barely consider the Bay moves to be connected, really; the rest of the franchise has done fine on its own reinforcing our cultural status quo without the help from Mudflap and Skids and butt shots and statutory rape jokes.
As a long time follower (even now I am loathe to say “fan” for reasons outlined above) of the franchise, I never expected things to take the sharp turn they did a couple of years ago, first with the evolution of the More Than Meets The Eye ongoing and then with Mairghread Scott’s development the character of Windblade, or the fact that Windblade even exists.
There’s a lot to unpack there, but after today’s issue (More Than Meets the Eye #38, for those not playing the home game) I found myself again focused on the idea of queerness, and that being a part of what makes More Than Meets The Eye so unique not only in terms of the Transformers franchise, but in science fiction in general.
Up until the recent introduction of the Camiens, Transformers in the IDW G1 continuity were coded male, with the exception of Arcee (hashtag problematic hashtag let’s not go there). More Than Meets The Eye was the first thing in the Transformers franchise that took this to its logical conclusion—not only that deep, romantic bonds might form, but they would do so despite the coding of male and female. That gender might have fuck all to do with who falls in love with who. That, yes, Virginia, there are female Transformers, but they don’t have to be in relationships, nor is it mandatory that they have boyfriends to be defined by.
So up until this last issue, there had only been one clearly defined couple—this being Chromedome and Rewind, who were our first “married” couple, gay or no (and if you’re just joining us, no, it’s not played as a joke.) I personally found this remarkable because it wasn’t just a sci-fi universe where queerness exists, but by our standards (and remember, this is media made by humans for humans therefore the context absolutely matters more than the internal logic of the universe because THIS IS FICTION AND THESE CHARACTERS DON’T EXIST) queerness is the default. It is the default out of logical necessity, but we hadn’t seen evidence of that outside of Chromedome and Rewind until #38.
Brainstorm was the antagonist for this arc, and it is revealed in #38 that his motivation for all of his dastardly deeds was mainly to save the life of his One True Unrequited Love, a scientist named Quark.
The oddness of this is not remarked upon. It is accepted, because it is not odd in this culture. In this ever-widening universe, this is the status quo and the status quo is queerness. Brainstorm’s motivation was his unrequited love for some other guy. Nothing more, nothing less. It is not remarked upon, because it is ultimately not remarkable.
I feel like this comic stumbled onto this unintentionally, but that it is this that we need to see more of—more media in which queerness is completely taken for granted, is completely accepted as normal. That when the reveal is a surprise (as in this case) it is a result of an established character, not of a universe that so closely mirrors our culture. That is not to say that we don’t need stories about queerness and exclusion, but the opposite is true as well. And what could be more revolutionary, however unintentional, than a machismo-filled universe wherein queerness as we understand it is the real status-quo?
Cybertronian Database 