Fannish things make me happy.
Especially since this weekend has been really a bit crappy thus far. So has this week. :(
Lengthy and squeeish and very occasionally a bit meta thoughts on TFA Season 2, by episode:
“The Elite Guard”
- Ja~zz. *jumps up and down* Admittedly most of my excitement is down to really liking him in the movie and his characterization here could have been totally different, but I really like his Animated personality too, so it’s okay. I love how he’s like the flipped version of Prowl - Prowl is fascinated by nature, Jazz is fascinated by all the mechanical doodads that humanity has come up with.
Also, his “eeek!” face when Sari jumps out at him. A ha ha. :D
- Hang on, something just occurred to me. If the AllSpark is the source of Transformer life, and the Autobots threw it through a space bridge at the end of the war, how did they create new Autobots after the war ended? We’re told that creating new Transformers means a spark gets introduced to a protoform, but where would they get the sparks if they couldn’t access the AllSpark? Do we have to bring Vector Sigma into this and make things even more complicated?
- Apparently being Ultra Magnus gives you the power to rain death on your opponents whenever you choose. Cool.
- Hee, Bumblebee as a receptionist. And he calls Sari “boss-lady”. I’m entertained.
- …Lugnut is kind of adorable. I mean, in a huge and intimidating sort of way, but it’s sort of cute that he can’t actually complete a sentence without worshipping Megatron. Or using the word GLORIOUS.
- I really like the fact that despite the show being episodic, the plot arcs are really tight - Season 2 builds on Season 1’s developments and in particular the finale. The consequences of what happened are being dealt with; it doesn’t all go away.
Also I’ve mentioned how awesome I think the voice acting for Megatron is, all quietly menacing and such, and his conversations with Isaac Sumdac are so much fun to listen to. Poor Dr. Sumdac. :(
- …so, why does Jazz have an arrow on his crotch? I’m just asking.
I do like that he’s too excited about his sports car alt-mode to follow orders from his commanding officer, though. Discipline is apparently not a big thing on Cybertron.
- This was a really kickass fight scene. All I’ve got to say about it, really.
- I really, really liked that scene of Prime sticking up for himself and telling Sentinel where to jam his chain-of-command crap. Not only did it hit my squee button with one of the bots getting all protective over Sari, but it was just…nice. Satisfying, as it were. Don’t really know why.
- Aaaand it’s times like this I really wish I hadn’t spoiled myself for this series. I mean, I might not have checked it out without reading said spoilers, but the plot twists and surprises here are really nicely done and I wish I was getting them cold.
“Return of the Headmaster”
- HEE. After a whole episode and a half of Sentinel being a big jerk it was nice to get a little schadenfreude in there. It makes the character a little more complicated. Also Optimus should laugh more often, it was cute.
- I know I said I love all the characters, but I am also perhaps excessively fond of Prime-focused episodes. I love his “yeah, that’s what I should have said” grumble after he walked away from Sentinel, because nobody ever comes up with a good comeback when they need one, do they? I was also fond of him using his axe to propel himself to the boat when he could have just used his grappling hooks to do the same thing; given that this is the same bot who will later in the series have a guitar battle against an opponent, I choose to think that he was showing off just a tiny bit and chose that method because it was a whole lot cooler.
- Sari’s life sucks really hard. Wow.
- The little scene at the end with Sari, Bee, and Bulkhead, though…awww. I did like that at first they didn’t know how to make her feel better, because why would they, but “we’re here, and you’re safe” made me a wee bit wibbly. They’re all such a lovely little quasi-functional robot family and I luff them. (heart)
On that note, Bulkhead’s tiny glasses omg. *claps hands*
- I wish to echo someone else’s note, however, that Prowl shows up for 30 seconds and immediately solves everyone’s problems. And since we don’t see him throughout the rest of the episode, how does he even know what Bumblebee and Bulkhead have been trying anyway?
Presumably he was lurking in the shadows being a ninja relationship counselor, I don’t know.
“Mission Accomplished”
- STARSCREAM DEATH MONTAGE. YES. I like the guy and it still made me laugh.
In fact, just Starscream in this episode. “I’m too young to be offline!” “Maybe I am a ghost…” “Sorry, you must have me confused with some other Harrier Jet,” and so forth. And then he gets to take out the Elite Guard in about…what, three minutes? Good show.
- That said, the Elite Guard don’t come off very well in this episode, do they? It’s been established that the ‘Cons categorically outclass the Autobots, yeah, and Ultra Magnus did get shot in the face at point-blank range so the “taken down in one shot” is understandable, but that’s not what bothers me. What bothers me is that at the end of the episode they decide that, even though:
1. It took three or four of them to outfight one Decepticon,
2. The Decepticons can mask their energy signatures (after all, they couldn’t detect Starscream) so they have no way of knowing how many are on Earth,
3. Prime (who has just been proven right about everything else he’s said in this episode) knows that the Decepticon leader is still on Earth,
4. Prime’s crew, while competent, has two non-combat-trained members, one who never finished combat training, and most of whom have only been fighting for maybe the past year or so,
…it’s still a good idea to leave Prime and his crew, with no reinforcements, to handle all the Decepticons on Earth. What the hell.
Oh but they have stasis cuffs now, I’m sure they’ll be fine. Seriously, what the hell?
- I find it interesting that Sentinel offered Prime a way back into the Elite Guard (or just the military? I wasn’t really sure) despite no indication that Prime wanted to go back. It makes the relationship between them a little more interesting, giving it more of a dimension of friendship gone sour rather than Sentinel just being a jerk. Like, if Prime was back in the military they could just act like he never got kicked out in the first place and keep going like everything was normal (possibly as a way of getting over what happened to Elita). Hmm.
“Garbage In, Garbage Out”
- Aww, Wreck-Gar. So adorable and confused. I can see why fandom likes him so much. Weird Al’s voice is just endearing and I am a sucker for slapstick jokes and “I am Wreck-Gar!” and the like. And he’s so positive! Even after being yelled at! Bless.
- I am also very thankful for a Ratchet-focused episode, because there are just not enough of those at all. Even if he’s being an extra-special grouch in this one, which I liked. I like that he’s shown as being short-fused and cranky instead of just grumbly; makes it feel more like a personality trait and less like an entertaining quirk.
Also, I am grateful that at least one the Autobots takes advantage of the fact that he is, indeed, a giant robot and much larger than everyone else, see Exhibit A: picking people up and dangling them in midair when he’s decided he’s done arguing. Because I know if I was a giant robot, a whole lot of arguments would end with “Because I’ll stomp on you if you don’t.”
- Ratchet and Sari should hang out more. Her constant reminders to be nice and light scolding of him were adorable, especially since he’s usually the one doing the scolding and Sari is so frustrated with him.
- “Just…go.” Eeeee, I love that even Megatron is getting fed up with Lugnut. I’ll bet he finally went in Lugnut’s room and found the creepy shrine Lugnut built to him; that’d make anyone’s optics twitch.
…oh shit now I have to draw that, don’t I.
- This is all Kaylie’s fault but I think Ratchet needs to meet Bones so they can be cantankerous together. It would be excellent.
- RATCHET. HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I LIKE HIM YET.
“Velocity”
- “Think calm thoughts.” PROWL YOU ARE AWESOME AS WELL. Also I love how that’s immediately followed by him whipping out a throwing star bigger than the person he’s trying to rescue. Yes surely this will help her stay calm.
- Bulkhead made Sari hot cocoa. The last time we saw any of the Bots making food for Sari their grasp of the concept of food was tenuous at best. So Bulkhead has not only learned how to make hot cocoa, he is able to do it himself even though both ingredients and instruments are infinitesimal in size compared to him. Do you have any idea how fiddly it must be for him to do that?
BULKHEAD I DON’T CARE HOW ACCIDENTALLY DESTRUCTIVE YOU ARE, YOU’RE THE BEST ROBOT DADDY EVER. *squeezes*
- Also Bumblebee you are such a bad example and I love it. I was a little nervous going into this ep, because I thought it’d be a redo of “Nanosec” with the whole emphasis on speed, but I should have had more faith in the writers. This episode distinguished itself really well, with Bee’s need to be the fastest only serving as a way to introduce the plot rather than constituting a large part of it.
And Bee was actually competent! Maybe not too much at combat (but then, all five of the Bots can’t handle Blitzwing, apparently) but at figuring out what was going on and keeping everyone alive, and some of the racing sequences were just gorgeously done and showed him putting his speed to good use. And the whole scene with him skating on the ice! I mean, I always love it when the bots quickly transform and put their different modes to good use, but I really love the way he used that to keep his footing and gain a bit of an advantage from something that could have killed him.
- Also Sari laughing while he was skating! So cute. And made me ship them even more, I don’t care how wrong it is. I promise I will age her up if I ever write fanfic, I really do, but they’re just so cute and they make each other so happy and her little smile when she says “Don’t set too good an example. I might not recognize you”? It’s just…it’s so sweet.
- This episode had Blitzwing in it. That is a very, very good thing. Even though it turns out Crazy Blitzwing is in fact cannibalistically crazy, which is…unsettling. But then, there’s also “Oh, isn’t that cute? They’re twins!”
Also, I imagine it must be frustrating being Icy Blitzwing, given that the other two personalities tend to agree with each other and not with him, especially when it comes to “hey, let’s ignore our mission and just blow shit up instead”.
Also, he quotes Galaxy Quest. I just want to let that sink in for a moment.
“A Fistful of Energon”
- Maybe I’m just tremendously slow, but I do not get the point of the “mods are bad” aesops. I don’t get what they’re supposed to correlate to in real life. The closest thing I can think of would be steroids, and I think the target audience is just a touch young for that message to be relevant yet (although, hey, kids these days, you never know…). I mean, there’s also the fairly general message of “don’t become drunk on power and overstep yourself/act like a big jerk to everyone/use your authority wantonly”, but again, the instructions on those toys are meant for five-year-old boys. The most power they’re going to get is being captain of the kickball team.
Although “don’t be a jerk” is still a relevant message even for a captain of the kickball team, I suppose. And if you want to go meta about it, it is sort of inspiring in a strange sort of way that there’s such a strong anti-modification message in the first two season, completely running counter to the purpose of the Transformers franchise (hint: To sell toys). It’s subverting commercialism! Kind of!
- I think it’s sort of sweet that knocking over a nest of baby birdies is enough to upset Prowl. I mean, dead baby birdies would upset me too, but Prowl’s a giant robot. They don’t have baby animals back on Cybertron and thus I’m assuming he wouldn’t have the same hardwired “must save cute fluffy thing” reaction as a human does.
I also think Sari should get him a kitten.
- …yeah, okay, I can kind of see where the whole Prowl/Lockdown shipping is coming from. Can’t say I could get into shipping it myself (foeyay isn’t really my thing and I find Lockdown too creepy to do much shipping with him) but you could swap the dialogue from their last scene into a scene of someone telling off a persistent ex with essentially no changes, so…yeah. Carry on.
- Lockdown has a poncho. Lockdown has a poncho for absolutely no reason except as a shoutout to A Fistful of Dollars.
I love this show.
- …so, how come nobody notices that the Starscream clones aren’t colored like the original? I could see them mistaking coward!Starscream for the real thing, but sycophant!Starscream is orange, which is practically on the opposite side of the color wheel.
- Now that I think about it, Bee taking Sari to a theme park is moderately problematic. Wouldn’t he be too tall to get on any of the rides?
Though for no real reason I do have this entertaining mental image of Bee and Sari with hats and eyepatches, wandering through Disney World and singing “A Pirate’s Life for Me”. You know they would if it didn’t violate copyright, even if Sari would have to explain to him what a pirate was.
What I most love about the whole line, though, is that Sari and Bee passed off a theme park as a fact-finding mission and, apparently, Prime bought it. Oh, Prime.
- At some point during his fake static, Prowl is quite clearly blowing a raspberry into his commlink. I would just like to note that this sounds nothing at all like real static. Oh, Prowl.
“Personally, I always found Bumblebee’s fake static to be a lot more convincing.” Oh, Ratchet. Oh, everyone on this show.
- Is it bad if I ship Ratchet/Prime just a tiny bit? I promise not to make a nuisance of myself, really, I’ll just be over here in the corner…
It wasn’t particularly this episode that made me ship it, but the little conversation they have when Prowl takes off just highlights the unique position they’re in. They’re both sort of the paternal figures of the Autobots, a bit removed from the other three and Sari, and while Ratchet is older and Prime clearly respects him he’s still Prime’s subordinate. That and they just seem to admire each other so much - Ratchet telling Prime that he’s being a good leader (occasionally), Prime asking about Ratchet’s tour of duty, the works. And then there’s little scenes like this, where they can commiserate over the shenanigans that the other three bots get up to.
…I would like to enquire again why I can ship any two characters except the ones who are in an actually popular pairing with its own comm, see comments on Prowl/Lockdown above. Hmmph.
- I only just realized that Prowl’s ‘boots’ have heels. Really. Little ones, the kind you find on sensible walking boots, but heels nonetheless. Aside from the obvious reasons, this doubly makes me happy because when I get around to drawing human!girl!Prowl, I get to draw her with awesome shoes. Yay!
It is distinctly possible that my priorities are out of order.
“S.U.V.”
- I think I love Slo-Mo a little bit. It’s something about the exaggerated, film-noir speech style. And the costume. She’s got a snappy beret. Plus, I have a soft spot for humans who manage to do something when faced with giant robots, even if they’re using a MacGuffin to do it.
- Swindle! Oh, but I did lol. Especially at his sales pitch to Megatron, which mostly consists of telling him how marvelous he is. Yes, Swindle, I’m sure he doesn’t get quite enough of that with Lugnut around. Oh, and his hilarious over-armament as well. Figures one of the smaller-looking Cons has all the weapons. Smart move.
Also, “Are you seeing this? Are you loving this? I could spring a leak I’m so excited!” He even has a little painted-on bolo tie!
Oh, and I just figured out that the guy doing his voice? Fred Willard. I love this show.
- So, at the end of the episode, Swindle is stuck, supposedly permanently, in a state that Bumblebee found horrifying to remain in for a few minutes, about to be torn apart while he’s still conscious. None of the Autobots seem bothered by this at all. Um…wow. Harsh, guys.
“Autoboot Camp”
- The whole thing with the drill sergeants naming the Autobots makes no sense whatsoever. For starters, Sentinel lives on a planet with no organic life. Unless those off-planet excursions were a lot more frequent than “Along Came a Spider” led us to believe, how would he even know what bumblebees and wasps are? Secondly, what about robots who don’t enter the army? Given that there are “energon farms” and other non-combat jobs out there, some bots must not be soldiers. Who gives them their names? Third, if your drill sergeant gives you your name, what sort of indignities do you have to go through to get a name like Optimus, Sentinel, Magnus, or Elita?
- I liked the episode overall, but I thought it was less well-organized than some of the other flashback episodes, in that there really wasn’t anything happening in the present day (whereas Thrill of the Hunt or Along Came a Spider have a present-day subplot) and most of the episode was spent in flashback.
- I really expected them to hold out longer on the identity of Longarm/Shockwave, but I suppose any older fan watching the show would immediately pick out Longarm as the spy because he’s the only one not identifiable from another series (Bulkhead, Bumblebee, Ironhide from G1/the movies/probably a bunch of other continuities too, Wasp from Beast Wars), and given that the writers are fans themselves they probably knew the suspense wouldn’t hold out.
That said, I would have liked to have been a G1 fan during the Shockwave reveal because as I understand it G1 Shockwave is…well, sort of important.
- This episode does handily explain why Bee never listens to Prime, though. The last time he tried the whole “taking orders” deal he got yelled at a lot, beat up by his team mates, had his legs torn off and stuffed in a locker (and it sounded like that hurt) and ended up with all his dreams crushed to save the only friend he had. Is there anyone on this team whose life doesn’t suck?
- That said, wow, Bee, you’re kind of a jerk sometimes. Fortunately Bulkhead is patient with you.
“Black Friday”
- You know, back in “Along Came A Spider” I was annoyed enough at Blackarachnia’s origin story that I didn’t think I could ship her and Optimus, pretty much just to be contrary (i.e. because the show was telling me I should ship them). That, and I saw most of the chemistry as being her trying to put the moves on him in order to manipulate him, without much reciprocation (in a romantic sense - there’s certainly guilt and regret there) from him.
And then I got to this episode. And, yeah, she’s being all seductive, but it’s probably just to make Grimlock mad and I still don’t - WOAH THERE.
I don’t know what it is that flipped my switch this time - I think I bought the idea that Prime might have felt something for her this time, given that he rushes to her aid and kind of…holds her once she gets out of her restraints, not to mention that Blackarachnia manages to lure him into almost the exact same trap as she did Grimlock by coming on to him, literally minutes after he’d warned Grimlock about her doing just that (nice going there, Prime). I think that wouldn’t work as well if he was, ah, clear-headed on this issue.
But I also think it has something to do with the fact that, while Blackarachnia got to have more of a fight with Optimus in “Along Came a Spider”, she was all up in his face in this one. Like, all the time. With a lot of quiet, purring speech and taunting face-touches and generally being all, well, forceful. Seriously, I think the only time she’s that close to him in “Spider” is at the very end (though I don’t exactly recall), and here? Almost every scene she’s in it’s a Personal Space Violation.
I’m a very predictable person.
(Plus, I guess it sort of caught up to me just how emotionally gruesome shipping them would be, and on occasion I find I like gruesome. Besides I still have G1 Elita/Optimus if I’m in the mood for something less all-around messy.)
- GRIMLOCK OMG. This is my favorite Dinobot episode so far just because I want to quote everything Grimlock says. I want to try to sneak them into my conversations in real life only that’s sort of impossible. Particular special love for “But me Grimlock still taller than you. That why Spider-Lady like me Grimlock best.” “GIVE US THINGY!”, and my personal favorite, “Me Grimlock go with you…but me Grimlock go with you alone.” You show him what’s what, Grimlock.
I also love how this allows David Kaye to spend more or less an entire episode arguing with himself. I have always sort of wanted to be a voice actor and long sessions of talking to yourself in different voices sounds like one of the more entertaining parts of the job.
(A funny aside: on the TFA community, someone put up a video of David Kaye at a BotCon panel, whereupon she asks him a question about Beast Wars Megatron meeting Lugnut (both of whom Kaye voices). The result is delightful. As his reaction to being told that his Armada Megatron voice is sexy.)
(One day I will go to BotCon, you mark my words.)
- Also Prowl and Bumblebee omg omg. The wager! Bee’s inability to keep quiet for literally ten minutes! “I’m already being quiet! Didn’t you notice?” “What brilliant, insightful thought can you not wait to share with the rest of the world?” I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. I want them to be stuck on a long car ride together and poke at each other the whole way. Which is sort of a weird thing to want, but whatever.
- Which leads to the adorable little smile Prime gets when they’re cured! Awww. He really should smile more often, because every time he does I just want to hug him. I’m not sure how I’d hug him, but I would.
“Sari, No One’s Home”
- Oh, Prowl, you showoff.
Also while I understand the sentiment I would think that letting Sari on an obstacle course that involves getting potentially hit by cranes would be a bad idea even at one-quarter speed. Sure she’s able to miraculously survive due to The Great Big Plot Point in the next episode, but…just not a good idea.
- I find the Constructicons to be sort of one-note as characters, so I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about this episode, but they’re at least passably entertaining here, and it helps that this episode doesn’t require everyone to act quite as unnecessarily-hostile-bordering-on-stupid as their intro did. And so long as I bought into the episode’s premise as a twenty-minute Home Alone homage, they functioned okay.
- I still like Sari. She’s such a ten-year-old girl and I love her and I also love that the first thing she does once the Autobots leave is raid the candy machines. Heck, I love that she apparently managed to sweet-talk them into installing candy machines even though she’s the only person living there who eats.
And she holds a council of war with her teddy bear! And goes after two-story robots with a hockey stick, which even if it didn’t work is pretty badass! And combines “using the key for something useful” with “using the key to show off”, and I do love it when she shows off a little bit without spending the entire episode doing it.
- Blitzwing is so sure that he’s better than the Autobots that he stands around waiting for them to form a plan of attack without doing anything to stop them - and then beats them anyway. Why isn’t there an entire episode devoted to Blitzwing again? There should be. Alternately he and Lugnut can get their own Odd Couple-esque spinoff.
- Hee, Prime is more-or-less officially Sari’s Robot Daddy now, right? Complete with lecturing her on not eating candy before dinner and cleaning up her room and being responsible. I want fic about the curfew negotiations, I really really do.
I mean, I already have a great big weak spot for non-biological parent-child relationships, and the fact that the parent and child are not only two different species but are orders of magnitude different in size just makes it better for some reason. I couldn’t tell you why.
“A Bridge Too Close”
- It’s a really good thing I already learned I had a thing for branding (in fiction, not IRL) from the Angels and Demons movie, because learning it from a branding scene in a children’s cartoon would be really awkward.
- I would like to point out that what Bulkhead is painting is actually closer to late, Synthetic Cubism than “early Cubism” as he said. Early Cubism has more three-dimensional rendering and tends to have a more unitary form, whereas the picture he’s painting is flat and has fewer dimensional planes. This has been your Totally Useless Pedantic Moment of the Day, thank you come again.
Still, Bulkhead is painting Cubist abstracts and that makes him my favorite. :D I laughed for real when Prime’s suggestion for improving the painting was a caption. I have a feeling Bulkhead has already tried to explain abstract art to him and most of the conversation on Prime’s part involved smiling and nodding politely.
I am ever so tempted to write fic about Bulkhead trying to explain the different styles and eras to each of the other Bots, who are less than receptive (and, in my mind, poor Prime gets stuck trying to puzzle out what Dada is, and since he’s still adjusting to the whole concept of art the idea of art that is in fact not art results in lots of circular conversations and neither of them having any idea what to do with this concept), but I’m afraid that might create some kind of giant nerd vortex that would swallow the planet.
- Coward!Starscream is adorable. I want a plush doll of him that I can squeeze and love and refer to as “George”. His big wide-eyed stare! As someone on TV Tropes put it, “poor little guy; life is scary!”
Also HURRAY FOR FEMMESCREAM, MORE OF THAT PLEASE. I like that she appears to be the part of Starscream’s personality that has any common sense. And that Starscream appears to be chatting her up in her introduction, which is just bizarre enough to be awesome.
It only belatedly occurred to me that, while the clones were presumably created from blank protoforms, they still have their bodies and coloration before Starscream ever gives them a Spark, or at least they appear to. Does that mean he built the female body himself?
Either way I’m crack!shipping Femmescream (Slipstream, I think her name is?) with Blackarachnia already. I mean, Blackarachnia kind of wandered off and did her own thing after the first season, and none of the other Decepticons seem too bothered about it - possibly Slipstream might find it tactically advantageous to find her and lure her back to the Decepticon cause?
Also, it’d be hot. That’s basically my argument, really.
I am also rather a bit fond of Sycophant!Starscream (TFWiki tells me he’s called Sunstorm; the more you know!). He and Lugnut should be friends.
- Add Professor Sumdac to the list of people in this series whose lives suck really, really hard. Like being terrorized and used to aid in Decepticon conquest isn’t quite bad enough, now he gets gagged and used as a human shield. The therapy bills coming out of this series must be enormous.
Still, though, that’s another point for Megatron being Quite Clever and Competent, Actually, which I am in favor of.
- I still want a plush doll of Bulkhead. Poor thing, he just can’t catch a break at all. And he’s an expert on space bridges! I do so love it when characters appear ditzy on the outside but are actually quite smart in one area or another, though it is somewhat surprising that he’s the absolute best Cybertron’s got. But not unpleasantly surprising. It’ll make ficcing him more interesting, that’s for certain.
And it just made sense that he built the space bridge correctly just to prove he could, and it made me feel so sorry for him, because people have been telling him he’s big and stupid and useless pretty much his entire life, even his friends, and after all that time he finally gets to be good at something, and...well, it made sense to me, anyway.
DAMMIT AUTOBOTS WHY DO YOUR LIVES ALL SUCK.
- “Our Bulkhead? An expert? On anything?” You guys are so mean. D:
- OMG BLURR. I really wish I grew up with G1 right now. He’s even got the same voice actor and everything! And they gave all the exposition to the guy who talks fast, good on them. And I want there to be whole episodes where he and Bumblebee do nothing but poke at each other. And his car mode! If that is not a purposeful homage to the Mach 5 I don’t know what is.
Also Bee’s dejected little “I’m officially no longer the fastest thing on wheels.” Aww.
- NEDS MOAR BLITZWING AND LUGNUT. I will just have to rectify this lack through fanfic, won’t I.
- More or less the entirety of Episode 2 was a Great Big Robot Fight. And there are about five different things happening at once and a whole bunch of combatants and yet it all still makes sense and is well-animated and flows. Oh, it’s beautiful. :D
- “I’m not down! I can escape any time I want to! I just don’t want to.” Eeee Liar!Starscream is almost as cute as Coward.
-Speaking of adorable things, “total 0wnage, n00b!”. For some reason it’s annoying when Headmaster says it but so cute when Professor Sumdac does.
- It probably says something bad about how many cartoons I watch that the second Omega Supreme started talking, I immediately went “Ayep. That’s Kevin Michael Richardson”. I should get out more.
Also chalk that up as another character whose life sucks. And yet another testament to the voice work in this show that his conversation with Ratchet made me wibbly all over again. I don’t know what it is, but something about Ratchet’s quiet, sad-but-trying-to-be-upbeat “Yeah. We won.” got to me. Because it’s implied that the war’s death toll was pretty staggering, and that, from Omega’s viewpoint, they might all have died for nothing because he never saw the end of the war. And then there’s all the “Stay with me! I believe in you! I’m not going to let you die!” encouragement and the pride in his voice and then Ratchet has to watch him sacrifice himself all over again and I am actually really sad about this, I did not expect that.
Dammit Ratchet you and your backstory are making me take a show about giant robots seriously, STOP DOING THAT. D:
- Another testament to the voice work here is that whenever the Bots get hit by Egyptian laser beams laserfire it sounds like it hurts. I expected Prime to get hit at some point; I did not expect to flinch when he did.
- PROCESSOR-OVER-MATTER, HURRAH. So Cybertronian ninjas are basically Jedi, then. Psychic robot ninjas. I’m not sure the world can handle so much awesomeness.
- I’m glad that Bumblebee feels guilty about sending Wasp to the stockades. As he should, but it gives him a bit more depth. I hope that carries over into Season 3.
Nicely handled little revelation, though. That’s got to be a punch in the gut.
- The music when Omega Supreme transforms and starts fighting is really damn epic.
- Speaking of Really Damn Epic, that thing at the end with Prowl and Prime and getting Prime out of the cuffs and getting out of the space bridge just in time and omg omg omg that was oh so very cool.
- Because I was a moron and watched Human Error first, I was already aware of Sari’s Robotic Reveal, but I so wish I wasn’t, because the plot twist here was really, really well-handled; even if I knew it was coming it was still a “!” moment at the end of a “!” two-parter. And her scared face! I’m so glad everyone in this show has expressions.
On that note, oh I am so very excited for Season 3.
And, so I am not a complete slacker, a tiny little bit of writing on that Blitzwing fic I nattered about earlier. I am still very unsteady writing in this universe, but managing to work on this fic at all rather than staring blankly at the paper was something of an improvement, so I thought I'd put it up here as a teaser or something.
---
What you look like is who you are.
In principle he understood it. It was how you recognized other robots, how the factions in the war identified one another. The protoform only took on a size and shape and color once it was introduced to a spark - give a robot a mind and the body molded itself to fit.
And yet he could never believe it, not enough to see other bots, not enough to understand them. How could you trust them from their form when the form could be modified, purposefully designed, or simply wrong?
His own face did not match his spark. It never had. Why should anyone else's?
It was difficult to describe what precisely was wrong with it. It functioned. It had no obvious flaws. But even with its given features it was blank and unresponsive. It lacked -
He does not even know what it lacked. Some cycles it was simply off, too rounded, too wide-eyed, too imprecise and unlike him. Sometimes even looking at himself made him angry - so furiously, helplessly angry that he wanted only to tear it all away until there was nothing left but his spark (or sparks, maybe, he's never been sure). At least then he'd be correct.
Some cycles that face simply wasn't any fun. Drawing shapes on it helped. (When he was having a really bad cycle he would draw on a smile bigger than that face could form.)
---
An additional point: I watched M play the end of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 tonight, and...well, without spoiling anything, I'll just say that those were some of the more harrowing cutsenes I've ever seen in a video game. I think that was the only time I've literally been on the edge of my seat and I wasn't even playing.
It's good to know it's earned that good reputation, at least.
Also, Lance Henriksen does a voice in it. The guy's everywhere.
I grow tired, so my ramblings about epic multiversal crossover fic will just have to wait for the morning. Or, um, possibly the evening, after I spend the morning and afternoon legitimately working. Yes.
Lengthy and squeeish and very occasionally a bit meta thoughts on TFA Season 2, by episode:
“The Elite Guard”
- Ja~zz. *jumps up and down* Admittedly most of my excitement is down to really liking him in the movie and his characterization here could have been totally different, but I really like his Animated personality too, so it’s okay. I love how he’s like the flipped version of Prowl - Prowl is fascinated by nature, Jazz is fascinated by all the mechanical doodads that humanity has come up with.
Also, his “eeek!” face when Sari jumps out at him. A ha ha. :D
- Hang on, something just occurred to me. If the AllSpark is the source of Transformer life, and the Autobots threw it through a space bridge at the end of the war, how did they create new Autobots after the war ended? We’re told that creating new Transformers means a spark gets introduced to a protoform, but where would they get the sparks if they couldn’t access the AllSpark? Do we have to bring Vector Sigma into this and make things even more complicated?
- Apparently being Ultra Magnus gives you the power to rain death on your opponents whenever you choose. Cool.
- Hee, Bumblebee as a receptionist. And he calls Sari “boss-lady”. I’m entertained.
- …Lugnut is kind of adorable. I mean, in a huge and intimidating sort of way, but it’s sort of cute that he can’t actually complete a sentence without worshipping Megatron. Or using the word GLORIOUS.
- I really like the fact that despite the show being episodic, the plot arcs are really tight - Season 2 builds on Season 1’s developments and in particular the finale. The consequences of what happened are being dealt with; it doesn’t all go away.
Also I’ve mentioned how awesome I think the voice acting for Megatron is, all quietly menacing and such, and his conversations with Isaac Sumdac are so much fun to listen to. Poor Dr. Sumdac. :(
- …so, why does Jazz have an arrow on his crotch? I’m just asking.
I do like that he’s too excited about his sports car alt-mode to follow orders from his commanding officer, though. Discipline is apparently not a big thing on Cybertron.
- This was a really kickass fight scene. All I’ve got to say about it, really.
- I really, really liked that scene of Prime sticking up for himself and telling Sentinel where to jam his chain-of-command crap. Not only did it hit my squee button with one of the bots getting all protective over Sari, but it was just…nice. Satisfying, as it were. Don’t really know why.
- Aaaand it’s times like this I really wish I hadn’t spoiled myself for this series. I mean, I might not have checked it out without reading said spoilers, but the plot twists and surprises here are really nicely done and I wish I was getting them cold.
“Return of the Headmaster”
- HEE. After a whole episode and a half of Sentinel being a big jerk it was nice to get a little schadenfreude in there. It makes the character a little more complicated. Also Optimus should laugh more often, it was cute.
- I know I said I love all the characters, but I am also perhaps excessively fond of Prime-focused episodes. I love his “yeah, that’s what I should have said” grumble after he walked away from Sentinel, because nobody ever comes up with a good comeback when they need one, do they? I was also fond of him using his axe to propel himself to the boat when he could have just used his grappling hooks to do the same thing; given that this is the same bot who will later in the series have a guitar battle against an opponent, I choose to think that he was showing off just a tiny bit and chose that method because it was a whole lot cooler.
- Sari’s life sucks really hard. Wow.
- The little scene at the end with Sari, Bee, and Bulkhead, though…awww. I did like that at first they didn’t know how to make her feel better, because why would they, but “we’re here, and you’re safe” made me a wee bit wibbly. They’re all such a lovely little quasi-functional robot family and I luff them. (heart)
On that note, Bulkhead’s tiny glasses omg. *claps hands*
- I wish to echo someone else’s note, however, that Prowl shows up for 30 seconds and immediately solves everyone’s problems. And since we don’t see him throughout the rest of the episode, how does he even know what Bumblebee and Bulkhead have been trying anyway?
Presumably he was lurking in the shadows being a ninja relationship counselor, I don’t know.
“Mission Accomplished”
- STARSCREAM DEATH MONTAGE. YES. I like the guy and it still made me laugh.
In fact, just Starscream in this episode. “I’m too young to be offline!” “Maybe I am a ghost…” “Sorry, you must have me confused with some other Harrier Jet,” and so forth. And then he gets to take out the Elite Guard in about…what, three minutes? Good show.
- That said, the Elite Guard don’t come off very well in this episode, do they? It’s been established that the ‘Cons categorically outclass the Autobots, yeah, and Ultra Magnus did get shot in the face at point-blank range so the “taken down in one shot” is understandable, but that’s not what bothers me. What bothers me is that at the end of the episode they decide that, even though:
1. It took three or four of them to outfight one Decepticon,
2. The Decepticons can mask their energy signatures (after all, they couldn’t detect Starscream) so they have no way of knowing how many are on Earth,
3. Prime (who has just been proven right about everything else he’s said in this episode) knows that the Decepticon leader is still on Earth,
4. Prime’s crew, while competent, has two non-combat-trained members, one who never finished combat training, and most of whom have only been fighting for maybe the past year or so,
…it’s still a good idea to leave Prime and his crew, with no reinforcements, to handle all the Decepticons on Earth. What the hell.
Oh but they have stasis cuffs now, I’m sure they’ll be fine. Seriously, what the hell?
- I find it interesting that Sentinel offered Prime a way back into the Elite Guard (or just the military? I wasn’t really sure) despite no indication that Prime wanted to go back. It makes the relationship between them a little more interesting, giving it more of a dimension of friendship gone sour rather than Sentinel just being a jerk. Like, if Prime was back in the military they could just act like he never got kicked out in the first place and keep going like everything was normal (possibly as a way of getting over what happened to Elita). Hmm.
“Garbage In, Garbage Out”
- Aww, Wreck-Gar. So adorable and confused. I can see why fandom likes him so much. Weird Al’s voice is just endearing and I am a sucker for slapstick jokes and “I am Wreck-Gar!” and the like. And he’s so positive! Even after being yelled at! Bless.
- I am also very thankful for a Ratchet-focused episode, because there are just not enough of those at all. Even if he’s being an extra-special grouch in this one, which I liked. I like that he’s shown as being short-fused and cranky instead of just grumbly; makes it feel more like a personality trait and less like an entertaining quirk.
Also, I am grateful that at least one the Autobots takes advantage of the fact that he is, indeed, a giant robot and much larger than everyone else, see Exhibit A: picking people up and dangling them in midair when he’s decided he’s done arguing. Because I know if I was a giant robot, a whole lot of arguments would end with “Because I’ll stomp on you if you don’t.”
- Ratchet and Sari should hang out more. Her constant reminders to be nice and light scolding of him were adorable, especially since he’s usually the one doing the scolding and Sari is so frustrated with him.
- “Just…go.” Eeeee, I love that even Megatron is getting fed up with Lugnut. I’ll bet he finally went in Lugnut’s room and found the creepy shrine Lugnut built to him; that’d make anyone’s optics twitch.
…oh shit now I have to draw that, don’t I.
- This is all Kaylie’s fault but I think Ratchet needs to meet Bones so they can be cantankerous together. It would be excellent.
- RATCHET. HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I LIKE HIM YET.
“Velocity”
- “Think calm thoughts.” PROWL YOU ARE AWESOME AS WELL. Also I love how that’s immediately followed by him whipping out a throwing star bigger than the person he’s trying to rescue. Yes surely this will help her stay calm.
- Bulkhead made Sari hot cocoa. The last time we saw any of the Bots making food for Sari their grasp of the concept of food was tenuous at best. So Bulkhead has not only learned how to make hot cocoa, he is able to do it himself even though both ingredients and instruments are infinitesimal in size compared to him. Do you have any idea how fiddly it must be for him to do that?
BULKHEAD I DON’T CARE HOW ACCIDENTALLY DESTRUCTIVE YOU ARE, YOU’RE THE BEST ROBOT DADDY EVER. *squeezes*
- Also Bumblebee you are such a bad example and I love it. I was a little nervous going into this ep, because I thought it’d be a redo of “Nanosec” with the whole emphasis on speed, but I should have had more faith in the writers. This episode distinguished itself really well, with Bee’s need to be the fastest only serving as a way to introduce the plot rather than constituting a large part of it.
And Bee was actually competent! Maybe not too much at combat (but then, all five of the Bots can’t handle Blitzwing, apparently) but at figuring out what was going on and keeping everyone alive, and some of the racing sequences were just gorgeously done and showed him putting his speed to good use. And the whole scene with him skating on the ice! I mean, I always love it when the bots quickly transform and put their different modes to good use, but I really love the way he used that to keep his footing and gain a bit of an advantage from something that could have killed him.
- Also Sari laughing while he was skating! So cute. And made me ship them even more, I don’t care how wrong it is. I promise I will age her up if I ever write fanfic, I really do, but they’re just so cute and they make each other so happy and her little smile when she says “Don’t set too good an example. I might not recognize you”? It’s just…it’s so sweet.
- This episode had Blitzwing in it. That is a very, very good thing. Even though it turns out Crazy Blitzwing is in fact cannibalistically crazy, which is…unsettling. But then, there’s also “Oh, isn’t that cute? They’re twins!”
Also, I imagine it must be frustrating being Icy Blitzwing, given that the other two personalities tend to agree with each other and not with him, especially when it comes to “hey, let’s ignore our mission and just blow shit up instead”.
Also, he quotes Galaxy Quest. I just want to let that sink in for a moment.
“A Fistful of Energon”
- Maybe I’m just tremendously slow, but I do not get the point of the “mods are bad” aesops. I don’t get what they’re supposed to correlate to in real life. The closest thing I can think of would be steroids, and I think the target audience is just a touch young for that message to be relevant yet (although, hey, kids these days, you never know…). I mean, there’s also the fairly general message of “don’t become drunk on power and overstep yourself/act like a big jerk to everyone/use your authority wantonly”, but again, the instructions on those toys are meant for five-year-old boys. The most power they’re going to get is being captain of the kickball team.
Although “don’t be a jerk” is still a relevant message even for a captain of the kickball team, I suppose. And if you want to go meta about it, it is sort of inspiring in a strange sort of way that there’s such a strong anti-modification message in the first two season, completely running counter to the purpose of the Transformers franchise (hint: To sell toys). It’s subverting commercialism! Kind of!
- I think it’s sort of sweet that knocking over a nest of baby birdies is enough to upset Prowl. I mean, dead baby birdies would upset me too, but Prowl’s a giant robot. They don’t have baby animals back on Cybertron and thus I’m assuming he wouldn’t have the same hardwired “must save cute fluffy thing” reaction as a human does.
I also think Sari should get him a kitten.
- …yeah, okay, I can kind of see where the whole Prowl/Lockdown shipping is coming from. Can’t say I could get into shipping it myself (foeyay isn’t really my thing and I find Lockdown too creepy to do much shipping with him) but you could swap the dialogue from their last scene into a scene of someone telling off a persistent ex with essentially no changes, so…yeah. Carry on.
- Lockdown has a poncho. Lockdown has a poncho for absolutely no reason except as a shoutout to A Fistful of Dollars.
I love this show.
- …so, how come nobody notices that the Starscream clones aren’t colored like the original? I could see them mistaking coward!Starscream for the real thing, but sycophant!Starscream is orange, which is practically on the opposite side of the color wheel.
- Now that I think about it, Bee taking Sari to a theme park is moderately problematic. Wouldn’t he be too tall to get on any of the rides?
Though for no real reason I do have this entertaining mental image of Bee and Sari with hats and eyepatches, wandering through Disney World and singing “A Pirate’s Life for Me”. You know they would if it didn’t violate copyright, even if Sari would have to explain to him what a pirate was.
What I most love about the whole line, though, is that Sari and Bee passed off a theme park as a fact-finding mission and, apparently, Prime bought it. Oh, Prime.
- At some point during his fake static, Prowl is quite clearly blowing a raspberry into his commlink. I would just like to note that this sounds nothing at all like real static. Oh, Prowl.
“Personally, I always found Bumblebee’s fake static to be a lot more convincing.” Oh, Ratchet. Oh, everyone on this show.
- Is it bad if I ship Ratchet/Prime just a tiny bit? I promise not to make a nuisance of myself, really, I’ll just be over here in the corner…
It wasn’t particularly this episode that made me ship it, but the little conversation they have when Prowl takes off just highlights the unique position they’re in. They’re both sort of the paternal figures of the Autobots, a bit removed from the other three and Sari, and while Ratchet is older and Prime clearly respects him he’s still Prime’s subordinate. That and they just seem to admire each other so much - Ratchet telling Prime that he’s being a good leader (occasionally), Prime asking about Ratchet’s tour of duty, the works. And then there’s little scenes like this, where they can commiserate over the shenanigans that the other three bots get up to.
…I would like to enquire again why I can ship any two characters except the ones who are in an actually popular pairing with its own comm, see comments on Prowl/Lockdown above. Hmmph.
- I only just realized that Prowl’s ‘boots’ have heels. Really. Little ones, the kind you find on sensible walking boots, but heels nonetheless. Aside from the obvious reasons, this doubly makes me happy because when I get around to drawing human!girl!Prowl, I get to draw her with awesome shoes. Yay!
It is distinctly possible that my priorities are out of order.
“S.U.V.”
- I think I love Slo-Mo a little bit. It’s something about the exaggerated, film-noir speech style. And the costume. She’s got a snappy beret. Plus, I have a soft spot for humans who manage to do something when faced with giant robots, even if they’re using a MacGuffin to do it.
- Swindle! Oh, but I did lol. Especially at his sales pitch to Megatron, which mostly consists of telling him how marvelous he is. Yes, Swindle, I’m sure he doesn’t get quite enough of that with Lugnut around. Oh, and his hilarious over-armament as well. Figures one of the smaller-looking Cons has all the weapons. Smart move.
Also, “Are you seeing this? Are you loving this? I could spring a leak I’m so excited!” He even has a little painted-on bolo tie!
Oh, and I just figured out that the guy doing his voice? Fred Willard. I love this show.
- So, at the end of the episode, Swindle is stuck, supposedly permanently, in a state that Bumblebee found horrifying to remain in for a few minutes, about to be torn apart while he’s still conscious. None of the Autobots seem bothered by this at all. Um…wow. Harsh, guys.
“Autoboot Camp”
- The whole thing with the drill sergeants naming the Autobots makes no sense whatsoever. For starters, Sentinel lives on a planet with no organic life. Unless those off-planet excursions were a lot more frequent than “Along Came a Spider” led us to believe, how would he even know what bumblebees and wasps are? Secondly, what about robots who don’t enter the army? Given that there are “energon farms” and other non-combat jobs out there, some bots must not be soldiers. Who gives them their names? Third, if your drill sergeant gives you your name, what sort of indignities do you have to go through to get a name like Optimus, Sentinel, Magnus, or Elita?
- I liked the episode overall, but I thought it was less well-organized than some of the other flashback episodes, in that there really wasn’t anything happening in the present day (whereas Thrill of the Hunt or Along Came a Spider have a present-day subplot) and most of the episode was spent in flashback.
- I really expected them to hold out longer on the identity of Longarm/Shockwave, but I suppose any older fan watching the show would immediately pick out Longarm as the spy because he’s the only one not identifiable from another series (Bulkhead, Bumblebee, Ironhide from G1/the movies/probably a bunch of other continuities too, Wasp from Beast Wars), and given that the writers are fans themselves they probably knew the suspense wouldn’t hold out.
That said, I would have liked to have been a G1 fan during the Shockwave reveal because as I understand it G1 Shockwave is…well, sort of important.
- This episode does handily explain why Bee never listens to Prime, though. The last time he tried the whole “taking orders” deal he got yelled at a lot, beat up by his team mates, had his legs torn off and stuffed in a locker (and it sounded like that hurt) and ended up with all his dreams crushed to save the only friend he had. Is there anyone on this team whose life doesn’t suck?
- That said, wow, Bee, you’re kind of a jerk sometimes. Fortunately Bulkhead is patient with you.
“Black Friday”
- You know, back in “Along Came A Spider” I was annoyed enough at Blackarachnia’s origin story that I didn’t think I could ship her and Optimus, pretty much just to be contrary (i.e. because the show was telling me I should ship them). That, and I saw most of the chemistry as being her trying to put the moves on him in order to manipulate him, without much reciprocation (in a romantic sense - there’s certainly guilt and regret there) from him.
And then I got to this episode. And, yeah, she’s being all seductive, but it’s probably just to make Grimlock mad and I still don’t - WOAH THERE.
I don’t know what it is that flipped my switch this time - I think I bought the idea that Prime might have felt something for her this time, given that he rushes to her aid and kind of…holds her once she gets out of her restraints, not to mention that Blackarachnia manages to lure him into almost the exact same trap as she did Grimlock by coming on to him, literally minutes after he’d warned Grimlock about her doing just that (nice going there, Prime). I think that wouldn’t work as well if he was, ah, clear-headed on this issue.
But I also think it has something to do with the fact that, while Blackarachnia got to have more of a fight with Optimus in “Along Came a Spider”, she was all up in his face in this one. Like, all the time. With a lot of quiet, purring speech and taunting face-touches and generally being all, well, forceful. Seriously, I think the only time she’s that close to him in “Spider” is at the very end (though I don’t exactly recall), and here? Almost every scene she’s in it’s a Personal Space Violation.
I’m a very predictable person.
(Plus, I guess it sort of caught up to me just how emotionally gruesome shipping them would be, and on occasion I find I like gruesome. Besides I still have G1 Elita/Optimus if I’m in the mood for something less all-around messy.)
- GRIMLOCK OMG. This is my favorite Dinobot episode so far just because I want to quote everything Grimlock says. I want to try to sneak them into my conversations in real life only that’s sort of impossible. Particular special love for “But me Grimlock still taller than you. That why Spider-Lady like me Grimlock best.” “GIVE US THINGY!”, and my personal favorite, “Me Grimlock go with you…but me Grimlock go with you alone.” You show him what’s what, Grimlock.
I also love how this allows David Kaye to spend more or less an entire episode arguing with himself. I have always sort of wanted to be a voice actor and long sessions of talking to yourself in different voices sounds like one of the more entertaining parts of the job.
(A funny aside: on the TFA community, someone put up a video of David Kaye at a BotCon panel, whereupon she asks him a question about Beast Wars Megatron meeting Lugnut (both of whom Kaye voices). The result is delightful. As his reaction to being told that his Armada Megatron voice is sexy.)
(One day I will go to BotCon, you mark my words.)
- Also Prowl and Bumblebee omg omg. The wager! Bee’s inability to keep quiet for literally ten minutes! “I’m already being quiet! Didn’t you notice?” “What brilliant, insightful thought can you not wait to share with the rest of the world?” I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. I want them to be stuck on a long car ride together and poke at each other the whole way. Which is sort of a weird thing to want, but whatever.
- Which leads to the adorable little smile Prime gets when they’re cured! Awww. He really should smile more often, because every time he does I just want to hug him. I’m not sure how I’d hug him, but I would.
“Sari, No One’s Home”
- Oh, Prowl, you showoff.
Also while I understand the sentiment I would think that letting Sari on an obstacle course that involves getting potentially hit by cranes would be a bad idea even at one-quarter speed. Sure she’s able to miraculously survive due to The Great Big Plot Point in the next episode, but…just not a good idea.
- I find the Constructicons to be sort of one-note as characters, so I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about this episode, but they’re at least passably entertaining here, and it helps that this episode doesn’t require everyone to act quite as unnecessarily-hostile-bordering-on-stupid as their intro did. And so long as I bought into the episode’s premise as a twenty-minute Home Alone homage, they functioned okay.
- I still like Sari. She’s such a ten-year-old girl and I love her and I also love that the first thing she does once the Autobots leave is raid the candy machines. Heck, I love that she apparently managed to sweet-talk them into installing candy machines even though she’s the only person living there who eats.
And she holds a council of war with her teddy bear! And goes after two-story robots with a hockey stick, which even if it didn’t work is pretty badass! And combines “using the key for something useful” with “using the key to show off”, and I do love it when she shows off a little bit without spending the entire episode doing it.
- Blitzwing is so sure that he’s better than the Autobots that he stands around waiting for them to form a plan of attack without doing anything to stop them - and then beats them anyway. Why isn’t there an entire episode devoted to Blitzwing again? There should be. Alternately he and Lugnut can get their own Odd Couple-esque spinoff.
- Hee, Prime is more-or-less officially Sari’s Robot Daddy now, right? Complete with lecturing her on not eating candy before dinner and cleaning up her room and being responsible. I want fic about the curfew negotiations, I really really do.
I mean, I already have a great big weak spot for non-biological parent-child relationships, and the fact that the parent and child are not only two different species but are orders of magnitude different in size just makes it better for some reason. I couldn’t tell you why.
“A Bridge Too Close”
- It’s a really good thing I already learned I had a thing for branding (in fiction, not IRL) from the Angels and Demons movie, because learning it from a branding scene in a children’s cartoon would be really awkward.
- I would like to point out that what Bulkhead is painting is actually closer to late, Synthetic Cubism than “early Cubism” as he said. Early Cubism has more three-dimensional rendering and tends to have a more unitary form, whereas the picture he’s painting is flat and has fewer dimensional planes. This has been your Totally Useless Pedantic Moment of the Day, thank you come again.
Still, Bulkhead is painting Cubist abstracts and that makes him my favorite. :D I laughed for real when Prime’s suggestion for improving the painting was a caption. I have a feeling Bulkhead has already tried to explain abstract art to him and most of the conversation on Prime’s part involved smiling and nodding politely.
I am ever so tempted to write fic about Bulkhead trying to explain the different styles and eras to each of the other Bots, who are less than receptive (and, in my mind, poor Prime gets stuck trying to puzzle out what Dada is, and since he’s still adjusting to the whole concept of art the idea of art that is in fact not art results in lots of circular conversations and neither of them having any idea what to do with this concept), but I’m afraid that might create some kind of giant nerd vortex that would swallow the planet.
- Coward!Starscream is adorable. I want a plush doll of him that I can squeeze and love and refer to as “George”. His big wide-eyed stare! As someone on TV Tropes put it, “poor little guy; life is scary!”
Also HURRAY FOR FEMMESCREAM, MORE OF THAT PLEASE. I like that she appears to be the part of Starscream’s personality that has any common sense. And that Starscream appears to be chatting her up in her introduction, which is just bizarre enough to be awesome.
It only belatedly occurred to me that, while the clones were presumably created from blank protoforms, they still have their bodies and coloration before Starscream ever gives them a Spark, or at least they appear to. Does that mean he built the female body himself?
Either way I’m crack!shipping Femmescream (Slipstream, I think her name is?) with Blackarachnia already. I mean, Blackarachnia kind of wandered off and did her own thing after the first season, and none of the other Decepticons seem too bothered about it - possibly Slipstream might find it tactically advantageous to find her and lure her back to the Decepticon cause?
Also, it’d be hot. That’s basically my argument, really.
I am also rather a bit fond of Sycophant!Starscream (TFWiki tells me he’s called Sunstorm; the more you know!). He and Lugnut should be friends.
- Add Professor Sumdac to the list of people in this series whose lives suck really, really hard. Like being terrorized and used to aid in Decepticon conquest isn’t quite bad enough, now he gets gagged and used as a human shield. The therapy bills coming out of this series must be enormous.
Still, though, that’s another point for Megatron being Quite Clever and Competent, Actually, which I am in favor of.
- I still want a plush doll of Bulkhead. Poor thing, he just can’t catch a break at all. And he’s an expert on space bridges! I do so love it when characters appear ditzy on the outside but are actually quite smart in one area or another, though it is somewhat surprising that he’s the absolute best Cybertron’s got. But not unpleasantly surprising. It’ll make ficcing him more interesting, that’s for certain.
And it just made sense that he built the space bridge correctly just to prove he could, and it made me feel so sorry for him, because people have been telling him he’s big and stupid and useless pretty much his entire life, even his friends, and after all that time he finally gets to be good at something, and...well, it made sense to me, anyway.
DAMMIT AUTOBOTS WHY DO YOUR LIVES ALL SUCK.
- “Our Bulkhead? An expert? On anything?” You guys are so mean. D:
- OMG BLURR. I really wish I grew up with G1 right now. He’s even got the same voice actor and everything! And they gave all the exposition to the guy who talks fast, good on them. And I want there to be whole episodes where he and Bumblebee do nothing but poke at each other. And his car mode! If that is not a purposeful homage to the Mach 5 I don’t know what is.
Also Bee’s dejected little “I’m officially no longer the fastest thing on wheels.” Aww.
- NEDS MOAR BLITZWING AND LUGNUT. I will just have to rectify this lack through fanfic, won’t I.
- More or less the entirety of Episode 2 was a Great Big Robot Fight. And there are about five different things happening at once and a whole bunch of combatants and yet it all still makes sense and is well-animated and flows. Oh, it’s beautiful. :D
- “I’m not down! I can escape any time I want to! I just don’t want to.” Eeee Liar!Starscream is almost as cute as Coward.
-Speaking of adorable things, “total 0wnage, n00b!”. For some reason it’s annoying when Headmaster says it but so cute when Professor Sumdac does.
- It probably says something bad about how many cartoons I watch that the second Omega Supreme started talking, I immediately went “Ayep. That’s Kevin Michael Richardson”. I should get out more.
Also chalk that up as another character whose life sucks. And yet another testament to the voice work in this show that his conversation with Ratchet made me wibbly all over again. I don’t know what it is, but something about Ratchet’s quiet, sad-but-trying-to-be-upbeat “Yeah. We won.” got to me. Because it’s implied that the war’s death toll was pretty staggering, and that, from Omega’s viewpoint, they might all have died for nothing because he never saw the end of the war. And then there’s all the “Stay with me! I believe in you! I’m not going to let you die!” encouragement and the pride in his voice and then Ratchet has to watch him sacrifice himself all over again and I am actually really sad about this, I did not expect that.
Dammit Ratchet you and your backstory are making me take a show about giant robots seriously, STOP DOING THAT. D:
- Another testament to the voice work here is that whenever the Bots get hit by Egyptian laser beams laserfire it sounds like it hurts. I expected Prime to get hit at some point; I did not expect to flinch when he did.
- PROCESSOR-OVER-MATTER, HURRAH. So Cybertronian ninjas are basically Jedi, then. Psychic robot ninjas. I’m not sure the world can handle so much awesomeness.
- I’m glad that Bumblebee feels guilty about sending Wasp to the stockades. As he should, but it gives him a bit more depth. I hope that carries over into Season 3.
Nicely handled little revelation, though. That’s got to be a punch in the gut.
- The music when Omega Supreme transforms and starts fighting is really damn epic.
- Speaking of Really Damn Epic, that thing at the end with Prowl and Prime and getting Prime out of the cuffs and getting out of the space bridge just in time and omg omg omg that was oh so very cool.
- Because I was a moron and watched Human Error first, I was already aware of Sari’s Robotic Reveal, but I so wish I wasn’t, because the plot twist here was really, really well-handled; even if I knew it was coming it was still a “!” moment at the end of a “!” two-parter. And her scared face! I’m so glad everyone in this show has expressions.
On that note, oh I am so very excited for Season 3.
And, so I am not a complete slacker, a tiny little bit of writing on that Blitzwing fic I nattered about earlier. I am still very unsteady writing in this universe, but managing to work on this fic at all rather than staring blankly at the paper was something of an improvement, so I thought I'd put it up here as a teaser or something.
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What you look like is who you are.
In principle he understood it. It was how you recognized other robots, how the factions in the war identified one another. The protoform only took on a size and shape and color once it was introduced to a spark - give a robot a mind and the body molded itself to fit.
And yet he could never believe it, not enough to see other bots, not enough to understand them. How could you trust them from their form when the form could be modified, purposefully designed, or simply wrong?
His own face did not match his spark. It never had. Why should anyone else's?
It was difficult to describe what precisely was wrong with it. It functioned. It had no obvious flaws. But even with its given features it was blank and unresponsive. It lacked -
He does not even know what it lacked. Some cycles it was simply off, too rounded, too wide-eyed, too imprecise and unlike him. Sometimes even looking at himself made him angry - so furiously, helplessly angry that he wanted only to tear it all away until there was nothing left but his spark (or sparks, maybe, he's never been sure). At least then he'd be correct.
Some cycles that face simply wasn't any fun. Drawing shapes on it helped. (When he was having a really bad cycle he would draw on a smile bigger than that face could form.)
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An additional point: I watched M play the end of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 tonight, and...well, without spoiling anything, I'll just say that those were some of the more harrowing cutsenes I've ever seen in a video game. I think that was the only time I've literally been on the edge of my seat and I wasn't even playing.
It's good to know it's earned that good reputation, at least.
Also, Lance Henriksen does a voice in it. The guy's everywhere.
I grow tired, so my ramblings about epic multiversal crossover fic will just have to wait for the morning. Or, um, possibly the evening, after I spend the morning and afternoon legitimately working. Yes.