So phone music shuffle lead me to the idea that in TFA, all the ““historic”“ videos about the beginnings of the Decepticon uprising are basically Megatron singing “Come Little Children” (Megazark who? lol) and seducing those poor innocent youngsters, the time’s come to play in his garden of shadows
When in truth it was kinda more like “Light Up the Night” with righteous fury young (and kinda stupid) Megatron acting as the voice for old man Megazark as they call to the disenfranchised to stand up b/c everything isnt lost yet, we just need one spark to light the revolution-! Sadly the man in the tower who controls it all without lifting a single fist still wins
(*peeks under pile of trash* You’re fine! Come on out of there and have a fic. :))
Megatron’s General towered over him almost as much as he himself did over Optimus, and yet the warlord never looked the slightest bit intimidated, lounging in Strika’s lap as if it were a throne, his wicked grin discreetly half-hidden by the glass of vintage highgrade he was sipping. Optimus watched them from where he knelt on the floor, his head pillowed lazily against Strika’s thigh and Megatron’s fingers caressing his helm almost lovingly.
“My loyal soldier,” Megatron purred, setting Strika’s engines rumbling, “and my clever little Autobot pet.”
“I have a name,” Optimus protested, then broke off, flushing hot; Megatron’s dark, gravelly voice had made his fans kick on audibly, causing the Decepticon leader’s smile to widen even further.
“Of course you do,” he murmured as he curled a finger and tilted the Autobot’s chin up, running his thumb over those plush lips, “Optimus Prime.”
I did not know I needed this in my life and then it existed and filled a void.
When Megatron first said, “I don’t fear you,” he meant it as defiance, and he was unprepared for the sheer delight, the sheer longing, that emanated from the being in front of him, ploughing into Megatron’s EM field like a physical wave.
“What do they call you?” he murmurs now, much later, his claw-tips gently stroking a tendril of dark matter that is there and not there; the being doesn’t speak, but an idea presents itself in the forefront of his mind: I Am First And Best, and Megatron would scoff, were it not for the sadness that accompanies the words, as if they are a burden rather than an honour.
“I will call you something new, more befitting a protector rather than an emperor,” Megatron muses, then offers, “What about Hunter of Peace – Orion Pax, in the old tongue?” and the dark void, so black it gleams with a kind of reverse light, settles happily against his frame, and tangles its essence around him.
So I finally started watching TFA; and, while I’ve not seen all of it yet, and I missed a few episodes, there’s what seems to me to be a recurring theme that I find frankly pretty disturbing and which makes me ask: is it being written this way on purpose?
‘Cause, see, first we have the Dinobots, and then Wreck-Gar, and then the ‘Structies; and in every case, wherein the newly awakened ‘bots fail to measure up to some not-explicitly-defined-or-explained metric, or they make bad choices in large part because of the Autobots’ prejudices and/or refusal to actually EXPLAIN ANYTHING, the new guys are effectively exiled. And I gotta say, if that’s how Autobots treat you? One strike and you’re out, without even getting a “hi, welcome to Earth, here are the rules” rundown? Hell yeah, I’d be talking to the ‘Cons. (The ‘Structies episode really pissed me off, in case that was unclear.)
It’s more obviously intentional in the flashbacks, that the Autobots are coming from some sort of military structure and the attitudes and social mores related to that are deliberately depicted to reflect that; Sentinel is clearly intended to be an authoritarian jerkwad, and it’s possible – even likely – that the prejudices and crappy attitude that he exemplifies are part and parcel of the Elite Guard culture?
And here’s the thing … if this is actually being done on purpose, if the show is actually intentionally written to make an adult audience go, “… whoa, wait, that’s really not okay,” then that’s honestly really cool and I have mad respect. But if it’s just lazy writing and flat characterization and some particularly egregious black-and-white Purity-culture level BS, then I’m going to be hard-pressed to want to watch more of it. Especially when there’s such brilliant fic out there which does incorporate that level of nuance, where the ‘bots aren’t pure shiny heroes and the ‘cons did, in fact, have a reason to be pissed off – @mllemusketeer, @astolat, @reyairia and @lyresnake, I’m lookin’ at you.
//cracks knuckles
‘aight, my dude.
Yes, Zuzu and I portray the autobots and the decepticons as more nuanced in Battlesleep. And yes, the Autobots have their flaws. I think, in a way, it was meant to parallel the red scare back in the 50s. There is a reason why the Autobots are so paranoid; had it not been for the invention of spacebridges the cons would have kicked their asses.
(Funnily enough, despite the red scare parallels, it’s implied in the Almanac that it’st he cons that lean heavily capitalistic and the bots that are more socialist but hey let’s skip that for now).
That being said, I think the writers of TFA did not show enough of the Decepticons being evil compared to what is said in the almanac and whatnot. The Decepticons developed a chemical/bioweapon shown as the rust plague and tested it against their own army. Lucifer is implied to be a concentration camp. Megatron decided he wanted to destroy Earth over a ridiculous misunderstanding. The bots might have their issues but you’re trying to compare say, a capitalist united states to a totalitarian dictatorship. The thing is, between fanfiction villifying the Autobots and the fact that we just assume that villains gotta be villains and forget how awful they’re being, we often end up paying more attention to the bad mistakes the “good side” is doing, which causes an unintentional magnification effect.
Are the bots flawed? Yes. I like that about TFA, they are flawed and they go about things the wrong way. They are, however, not functionalist or totalitarian, they’ve just been through a lot of shit culturally.
Not to mention, holy shit, can you imagine what would happen if it was found out that the Director of National Intelligence was a fucking foreign spy?
There has been lazy writing; Sentinel being the dickish buffoon was a result of that. Still, Sentinel may be a dick, and dislike organics, but he never threatened genocide over it. And he had good reason to be disgusted at Blackarachnia. She was a traitor and was doing horrific experiments on Wasp, he had every right to attack her.
And despite lots of writers’ claims that the Autobots are functionist, there is absolutely no evidence of that – to the contrary, Bulkhead was allowed to switch professions.
Also Sentinel =/= all Autobots. The Council actually disliked him a lot and fought with him over a lot of his decisions, which shows that his behavior was particularly disruptive, and not the norm.
Anyway, if you’ve been reading Battlesleep and you’ve taken from it that the Decepticons are the lesser of the two evils, I recommend you read it again because that was clearly not our intention.
No worries – I definitely know the ‘Cons are not the good guys. I was just really surprised and taken-aback by how the Autobots – specifically Optimus – reacted to the Dinobots, Wreck-Gar, and the Constructicons, and it made me curious if that was me being overly sensitive or if the writers were setting up a certain amount of “hey, even the good guys can make bad decisions; what’s important is how you fix it once you realize it was a bad decision.”
The Constructicons I think were mostly the writers being intensely classist.
The Dinobots, well, Optimus had a point, they were dangerous, unstable, and difficult to reason with. Sure I didn’t agree with him, and I think the writing didn’t either, but there was a point. Given his past, it’s totally understandable he’d want to play on the safe side. He also didn’t know they were sentient.
Wreck-Gar I think was mostly Ratchet fucking up and he admits to doing so.
Optimus in TFA is pretty flawed and much different from his more gentler self in TFP, but that just makes it more fun to work with him and give him character development IMO.
I wound up choosing completely different colors based on all of the palettes I made up last time for TFA Rum-Maj. I’m hoping to paint this one at some point but for now please enjoy.
Her power is the ability to absorb any metal around her into her body and rearrange it into a shape she needs like a hand or a whip or a giant axe or whatever. Kinda like Green Lantern except she was born without forearms so it takes a lot of energy. When she’s on her own she doesn’t bother with hands and just does everything with her feet like a showoff ballerina or gymnast
Cybertronian Database 