Sick Optimus is sick, in bed, and with Megatron catering to his every whim but also being the stern Decepticon nurse cause he cares and Optimus just take the damn medicine cause it’s good for you.
I see your funny idea, and YES, I like that! I also want to make it serious because that’s how I roll.
Because yeah, this is sort of true, the beauty and the beast motif fits them, and yes, in a sense that Megatron is both sides of the masculinity, the destructive side as well as the civilized side.
Let me elaborate more on the history of this motif and its variation, then I’ll move on Optimus and Megatron, mostly in the TF: Prime verse but also a bit in general.
The motif of the Beauty and the Beast is a popular one with a long history in fairy tales and folklore, and it kind of mixes with the animal spouse motif. ((If you’d like to read more on fairy tale troupes and types, I recommend reading here about
Aarne–Thompson–Uther classification system, which is basically a neat list of troupes.)) There are many version and different takes, and also several thoughts upon what they really are about. The Disney one is actually something of an outlier, because in that it’s the Beast who goes through transformation, not the beauty. In many fairy tale versions that you can find the Beast is a kindhearted, civilized gentleman from the very beginning, and it’s the Beauty who has to learn to see through his monstrosity, accept him, and then he can transform into a human again.
Some have read this as a girl growing up and coming to terms with her sexuality and marriage by leaving her childhood home and learning to see a man through what at first seems like a monster to her. Your kid probably takes a lesson about inner beauty out of the story though, which is just as valid.
You will also note that most of these version lack a Gaston. Disney made a dramatic movie and thus added an antagonist – a good call – and made their own version of the classic story altogether. Personally I think the Disney version is more of a reconstruction and critique of traditional masculinity, as Belle is already the kind and understanding Beauty her predecessors transform into at the end of their story arcs, and the Beast is the one learning about his feelings, learning to be gentle and selfless and earning his form as a man again. And of course there’s Gaston, the loud, self-obsessed man who wants to possess, and doesn’t take no for an answer.
Another the Beauty and the Beast version with comments more on masculinity than the female Beauty maturing is King Kong. Yes, I would argue this, the Peter Jackson version even makes textual references. The Beast is the untamed masculinity of Kong, and the Beauty the pure femininity who tames him. Also in King Kong movies (yes, I have seen four different ones, including the original) there’s often a human man acting as the “right” love interest, whether the Beauty gets with him in the end or not, and the important part is that the roles of a “beastly masculinity” and “civilized masculinity” are split into two characters, just like in the Disney movie.
But how does this motif fit Megatron and Optimus, and especially into Megatron/Optimus with a slash?
Interestingly, I’d say. Well, Optimus is obviously the Beauty, the kind and brave one, but I think he’s already done plenty of maturing, being a seasoned warrior and Commander and all. Also being technically a man he also represents a type of masculinity, a type I find very interesting since he’s depicted as an almost maternal figure: Someone who preserves, protects, resolves and watches over other younger ones. He obviously has the powerful warrior side of him and it comes first, he is Megatron’s match and not only a skilled soldier but the leader of the entire Autobot army too, but a key factor to his warrior side is preserving and obtaining peace, with as little force as possible.
As for Megatron, he is an evil and destructive person, but in TFP I find him to be a masculine ideal in a strangely positive sense: Everything from his design and voice to his character and actions is just so grand, strong and dominating, he’s always in control and super confident in himself, yet he doesn’t have the aspects of toxic masculinity such as fragile ego, secretly insecure or needing to put down others in order to build his own ego. He is genuinely confident, not a secretly weak bully. Yes, he is emotionally unavailable but this is more of an ideal since he doesn’t seem to be suffering from it, and we’re not touching the special abusive thing he has going on with Starscream here since it’s way too serious on singular to go under a bully category. He is violent, ruthless and sometimes even cruel, but he’s also kind of cool while at it.
Where I’m going with this is that in some ways Optimus and Megatron have the beauty and the beast thing going on, if not anything else then at least as a caricature-like, aesthetic thing. But it’s more in the subtext: a kind and protective one meeting an evil destructive one, and the shipping is the part that makes the motif actually fit.
It’s the shipper who decides how this conflict, this meeting of these two beings very at odds, goes and what it amounts to.
Personally I’d like to take this troupe and twist it a little. I take the route of transforming together and accepting the other. I like to think that through their conflict they transform together and ultimately meet in the middle, accepting each other as they are. For example Angela Carter’s The Tiger’s Bride is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast, and features a beast wearing a human mask, and in the end the heroine transforms into a tiger in order to be with him. She leaves behind the traditional female role and the oppression that comes with it, sends a dolls back home to her father in her place and assumes her true form as a beast to join her love who accepts her, accepting him too in return. This version really speaks to me.
Um. Yeah. It’s an interesting troupe, and your insight prompted me to write this. You could also write your fun Beauty and the Beast AU, complete with the ballroom dance scene with pretty paintjobs if you’d like. It might be more what you, my dear Anon, were going for, but I’m the most boring and serious of all the shippers and thus had to take this troupe along with your insight and set it against the canon.
I don’t really know what this adds up to. I love Megatron/Optimus? I love Megatron/Optimus.
This is a really interesting perspective on both Beauty and the Beast and on Megatron/Optimus; I actually had never thought of the original transformation being Beauty’s, not so much because of Disney’s version (ubiquitous though it is) but because all the other versions I’d read had Beauty’s sisters as models of vanity and pettiness while Beauty herself was The Good One, and the only change she evidenced was becoming less afraid as the Beast became less monstrous. Are there versions in which Beauty is vain and needs to learn humility? Because frankly that sounds a lot more interesting than the trope “love of a good woman saves a dude of questionable past decisions.”
(Also, searching for “the Tiger’s Bride” on Amazon turns up a wide variety of bodice-rippers, but no Angela Carter. Looks like that story is in her collection, “The Bloody Chamber,“ the arrival of which I am now eagerly anticipating.)
… also, I refuse to pick up any more story ideas until I’ve at least finished the damn cave fic. I mean it.
Okay, I’m going to take a little bit of a left turn here, but I wanted to comment since one of my longest TFP MegOp fics is in fact at Beauty and the Beast AU and I have a number of Thoughts on the matter (Read: yes I am going to take a few minutes to bang on about how I think TFP Optimus = the Lady of Shalott some more, sue me).
One could make the argument that the Lady actually parallels Disney’s version of the Beast (she’s shut away in a castle with a mirror as her only window to the outside world, flowers are a recurring motif, doomed love is an idea that’s floated around). And while I’ve not discussed it in that much detail, TFP Orion/Optimus’s character arc parallels the Lady’s in a number of pertinent ways [he’s introduced as part of a cloistered caste (archivist), his given task is to search the DataNet to “weave” a picture of Megatronus, and it’s Megatronus’s voice (not just his words, hearing his voice) that draws him out of his stagnation and frustration and pushes him to step outside his constraints (just as Lancelot’s song sets the events of the poem in motion)]. And don’t even get me started on that whole bit in the Covenant about Megatron “waking him with the movement of his own heart” and the recurring “journey’s end in lover’s meeting” line. So they’ve got the “potentially or entirely doomed love” bit down pat. And if we operate under the assumption introduced by the Covenant, that Optimus has actually been hanging around almost alone for thousands of years, it starts to look more like Megatron is the weird singing village girl who shows up in Optimus’s house and starts making the cutlery dance.
So, I guess what I’m trying to say is, as weird as it sounds, I do see TFP Megop as already an inverted Beauty and the Beast trope rather than one played straight. Not in the sense that the character types are flipped, Megatron still has the aggressive, bestial streak and Optimus is still kind and brave, but more that their roles in the story are inverted. It’s the “Beauty” character who undergoes the most profound transformation. Hell if you broaden your thinking, it’s Optimus who takes on the burden (or curse) of the Matrix in order to match Megatron in battle. And while he never loses his nobility, this is an Optimus who is repeatedly remade into a more efficient weapon, an Optimus who kills, and the blood on his hands weighs on him. And Megatron would just as soon see them be beasts together.
But perhaps most interestingly, Optimus’s final moments in the movie do involve him shedding that curse of war and opening himself up for a new transformation via transcendence of his physical body (just as the Beast does). While it’s Megatron’s perspective (as the Beauty character’s) which is altered. So I suppose you could argue that they’re both transformed by the end of things, and well, if they didn’t get an exactly happy ending, that’s what fanfic is for.
This is a lot of words and I’m not sure I made a point at all but basically yes I also love Megatron/Optimus, in all its strange and beautiful iterations.
I see your funny idea, and YES, I like that! I also want to make it serious because that’s how I roll.
Because yeah, this is sort of true, the beauty and the beast motif fits them, and yes, in a sense that Megatron is both sides of the masculinity, the destructive side as well as the civilized side.
Let me elaborate more on the history of this motif and its variation, then I’ll move on Optimus and Megatron, mostly in the TF: Prime verse but also a bit in general.
The motif of the Beauty and the Beast is a popular one with a long history in fairy tales and folklore, and it kind of mixes with the animal spouse motif. ((If you’d like to read more on fairy tale troupes and types, I recommend reading here about
Aarne–Thompson–Uther classification system, which is basically a neat list of troupes.)) There are many version and different takes, and also several thoughts upon what they really are about. The Disney one is actually something of an outlier, because in that it’s the Beast who goes through transformation, not the beauty. In many fairy tale versions that you can find the Beast is a kindhearted, civilized gentleman from the very beginning, and it’s the Beauty who has to learn to see through his monstrosity, accept him, and then he can transform into a human again.
Some have read this as a girl growing up and coming to terms with her sexuality and marriage by leaving her childhood home and learning to see a man through what at first seems like a monster to her. Your kid probably takes a lesson about inner beauty out of the story though, which is just as valid.
You will also note that most of these version lack a Gaston. Disney made a dramatic movie and thus added an antagonist – a good call – and made their own version of the classic story altogether. Personally I think the Disney version is more of a reconstruction and critique of traditional masculinity, as Belle is already the kind and understanding Beauty her predecessors transform into at the end of their story arcs, and the Beast is the one learning about his feelings, learning to be gentle and selfless and earning his form as a man again. And of course there’s Gaston, the loud, self-obsessed man who wants to possess, and doesn’t take no for an answer.
Another the Beauty and the Beast version with comments more on masculinity than the female Beauty maturing is King Kong. Yes, I would argue this, the Peter Jackson version even makes textual references. The Beast is the untamed masculinity of Kong, and the Beauty the pure femininity who tames him. Also in King Kong movies (yes, I have seen four different ones, including the original) there’s often a human man acting as the “right” love interest, whether the Beauty gets with him in the end or not, and the important part is that the roles of a “beastly masculinity” and “civilized masculinity” are split into two characters, just like in the Disney movie.
But how does this motif fit Megatron and Optimus, and especially into Megatron/Optimus with a slash?
Interestingly, I’d say. Well, Optimus is obviously the Beauty, the kind and brave one, but I think he’s already done plenty of maturing, being a seasoned warrior and Commander and all. Also being technically a man he also represents a type of masculinity, a type I find very interesting since he’s depicted as an almost maternal figure: Someone who preserves, protects, resolves and watches over other younger ones. He obviously has the powerful warrior side of him and it comes first, he is Megatron’s match and not only a skilled soldier but the leader of the entire Autobot army too, but a key factor to his warrior side is preserving and obtaining peace, with as little force as possible.
As for Megatron, he is an evil and destructive person, but in TFP I find him to be a masculine ideal in a strangely positive sense: Everything from his design and voice to his character and actions is just so grand, strong and dominating, he’s always in control and super confident in himself, yet he doesn’t have the aspects of toxic masculinity such as fragile ego, secretly insecure or needing to put down others in order to build his own ego. He is genuinely confident, not a secretly weak bully. Yes, he is emotionally unavailable but this is more of an ideal since he doesn’t seem to be suffering from it, and we’re not touching the special abusive thing he has going on with Starscream here since it’s way too serious on singular to go under a bully category. He is violent, ruthless and sometimes even cruel, but he’s also kind of cool while at it.
Where I’m going with this is that in some ways Optimus and Megatron have the beauty and the beast thing going on, if not anything else then at least as a caricature-like, aesthetic thing. But it’s more in the subtext: a kind and protective one meeting an evil destructive one, and the shipping is the part that makes the motif actually fit.
It’s the shipper who decides how this conflict, this meeting of these two beings very at odds, goes and what it amounts to.
Personally I’d like to take this troupe and twist it a little. I take the route of transforming together and accepting the other. I like to think that through their conflict they transform together and ultimately meet in the middle, accepting each other as they are. For example Angela Carter’s The Tiger’s Bride is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast, and features a beast wearing a human mask, and in the end the heroine transforms into a tiger in order to be with him. She leaves behind the traditional female role and the oppression that comes with it, sends a dolls back home to her father in her place and assumes her true form as a beast to join her love who accepts her, accepting him too in return. This version really speaks to me.
Um. Yeah. It’s an interesting troupe, and your insight prompted me to write this. You could also write your fun Beauty and the Beast AU, complete with the ballroom dance scene with pretty paintjobs if you’d like. It might be more what you, my dear Anon, were going for, but I’m the most boring and serious of all the shippers and thus had to take this troupe along with your insight and set it against the canon.
I don’t really know what this adds up to. I love Megatron/Optimus? I love Megatron/Optimus.
Summary: Continuation to this. The Autobots break Megatron out of the prison and narrowly escape the Elite Guard. Escaping on the same space ship, Megatron and Optimus find time to evaluate the crossroads they are at.
A/N: So. It’s been only like. Three months since I got this prompt. Hi? I hope you like this?? This ended up getting out of hand a bit. Oops.
Breaking out the leader of the Decepticons would have
been hard enough even if it didn’t include being caught in the surveillance
cameras and being outed as rebel sympathizers. Prime and his small team of
Autobots were supposed to free the Decepticon leader and be his escort to the
rendezvous point where his own mecha waited, but with the surveillance and the
surprisingly quick response from the Magnus the road turned out to be a bumpy
one.
They had barely made it out of the prison complex when the Elite Guard closed
in on them, and then it became a firefight.
Two years ago, in 2016, I made this comic as part of the @megopzine hosted by the absolutely amazing @taiyari ! A second zine might be in the works, I suggest checking out the zine blog if you’re interested!!
I don’t write MegOP a lot, so this was a nice challenge. I ended up choosing TFP because something I really, really like about Megatron in that series is that he seems to begrudgingly admire Optimus Prime, so I wanted to make the comic about that.
Also sorry I had to merge the first two pages because of the pictures-per-post limit on tumblr!
Cybertronian Database 