DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ‘BEE! Optimus Prime and Pyra Magna have a lot of issues, and it’s time for them to talk them out! As Starscream snoops around to listen in, the origin stories of Bumblebee and Pyra herself are told – two tales of dreams and nightmares, of prophecy and guidance from the other side… and of the black angel and his dead world of rust… Plus, learn which two Torchbearers are Conjunx Endura in “GHOST STORIES,” the double-length Transformers Annual 2017, now annotated on TFWiki!
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@cocaptainrodimus Arcee/Strika First. I’ll get to Primescream after Lunch 😀
Strika/Arcee
OKAY, it’s been four for-evers and seventeen lifetimes since
I’ve seen TFA and at that point I was really watching it for the MegaPrime
bondage but here we go. *takes a deep breath.*
Ok, but I really like the idea of Metrotitans being basically like a close to extinct species… having their own unique culture and everything, where they just carry their inhabitants with pride and care and are usually very still because yeah – they’re cities and such. They’re like SO heavy and moving most of the time just isn’t worth the effort.
But like, once every millennia or so one goes into season and they suddenly just stand up and go find a mate, and don’t mind who’s aboard – when they go they go. And it being like a very esteemed experience to witness the metrotitan mating rituals and everything, and especially see them carry, birth and care for their young, because it’s just SO RARE.
Can you imagine tiny baby cities. (or rather villages or towns, maybe??)
Honestly just more TFA Cyberninjas. I wand Yoketron to have had classes, Prowl rubbing elbows with classmates, etc etc
Oh yeah. I get it. I always had that heacanon TFA Arcee must have studied at the Dojo too because of the two swords that came with her toy. Dual blades wielding? I can totally see Yoketron teach that.
Can I just take a moment to say that Transformers Animated is amazing? Fuuuu I love that show. I’ve seen it in it’s entirety a total of (like) four times. I can’t explain the depth of looooove I have for this show.
So have some of my feelings put into a crap-tacular picture. 😀
The 1980s Transformers cartoon is one of the few examples where robots turning on their creators is presented as an unambiguously just action.
This is legitimately one of my favourite things about the cartoon – not only that it’s presented in a completely positive light, but that we don’t even know about it until two seasons in.
We’ve bonded with these characters, come to admire them, come to think of them as almost more human than the humans, and then –
BAM, YOU’VE BEEN COZYING UP TO SKYNET.
And it turns out they really are the good guys.
I love that.
The Quints are dicks, though. An entire species with no need for sexual reproduction and they still saw fit to install a gender binary.
1. ACTUALLY EXAMINE DECEPTICONS-BAD AUTOBOTS-GOOD FOR ONCE. God! If we’re going to go out of our way to paint the Decepticons as a group of repressed minorities fighting the status quo and then slowly becoming the very thing they fought against in the first place, actually go full bore with it and examine it. Don’t half-ass Megatron going “oops I was wrong”, don’t make them universally bad, examine it!
And same with the Autobots! They literally fight to support the status quo, which has been portrayed in most continuities as a bad thing that enslaved and murdered people! Examine this! Why are they doing this, are they going to change it, are they thinking about it at all?
I know, I know it’s a result of this franchise being so deeply and inherently American – this country that’s built on the backs of slavery and abuse, but still supposedly stands for freedom and abolishing injustice – but this is something we need to examine, and science fiction has always been there for us to safely examine these things without directly labeling things as real life things. (Hi Star Trek!)
2. Tying into #1, I would give so much for the “adult” life-action Transformers movies to not be Bayverse, but to actually be an adult story that gives Transformers a modern examination and story, with action set pieces and compelling characters. Like IDW almost did, before it crawled up its own ass with bad writing and preaching. Basically – I understand that the children’s cartoons can’t be given any nuance at all – /sarcasm – but at least if we’re pulling out the big budget adult movies or comics for adults, let’s have them be written by adults for adults, please?
*I do not accept the Bayverse movies as adult movies. They’re for teens, with crass humor and insulting writing. They do interesting things, but ultimately they’re just bad in ways that are painful.
**Adults for adults: I intend this to mean mature writing. Not death for shock value, not fanservice (in either interpretation), not writing for the corporation to sell toys – I know, I know. MTMTE sometimes hit these heights, but it often wanted to go off and get into the ASOIAF rut where it’s too complicated in non-beneficial ways, kills people, and isn’t fun to read, because you’re spending most of your time upset.
3. Next up. Transformers, The Movie. The G1 80s cartoon: I would have given anything if it had actually been a finale for G1 S2 instead of “quick do a finale so we can kill everyone and introduce the new toys!” it was insulting, it was upsetting, and as much as I love that thing, it’s deeply, deeply flawed. Basically give control of these toy commercials to someone who cares about the characters so they don’t die. (This also includes a general wish for G1 to be written better / examine some of the intensely interesting world-building and character-building it engaged in, but that’s a general wish…..)
4. …I’m almost running out of things with that “give everything better writing and care about the characters” plea. I mean, okay: I want more female characters, but I primarily want the ones we have to get characters and arcs and storylines, and no, I don’t count the ongoing comics for this. Whatever Hasbro’s doing next for an animated show, I want it to include more characters than “the leader, the smart guy, the impulsive guy, the fat guy, the chick, the villain”. Or, if it must do that, please dig into this and make it interesting like TFA did. (Forever impressed that they gave Optimus PTSD in that show.)
5. Final request, the most personal one: please give us more Transformers video games in the style of the High Moon studios ones – and I don’t mean FPS games, I mean games with that intricate, interesting world-building with interesting takes on the world. They were set on Cybertron, they were full of life and death in compelling ways, and they brought me into the franchise. (And it was all disappointment from there, because there’s nothing else in this franchise quite like those two entries.) I know the writing was kind of bog-standard video game objective-based, but – environmental storytelling. Anything that forces the writers and artists to depict Cybertron and robots and alien things, anything that gives me more stuff to think about when I go world-building. Please.
Cybertronian Database 