Not the post 🎵 I wanted to repost 🎶 BUT YOU CAN HAVE IT ANYWAY

[yvannairie]

(Reposted from Tumblr.)

Something that exists in the subtext of the way I write Bulkhead and Wheeljack but that I haven’t really been able to describe properly is that ultimately, I do kind of see them as being intellectual equals.

Like, I’m on record saying I think Wheeljack is about as smart as a brick. Yes, he’s incredibly competent, but he’s competent in that “learning to do one thing, and then learning to do that thing really fucking well” kind of way. His one thing just happens to broadly be problem-solving. We’ve just never seen the awkward data-gathering trial-and-error phases of him getting to that point, which makes it seem like he has his shit together way more than I personally think he does. Don’t ever let him fool you – Wheeljack is about as much of a dumb prettybot as Knockout is.

But also, we know for a fact that Bulkhead was a construction worker before he was a soldier. And construction, for all it has a reputation for being “unintellectual” work, it requires good memory, good execution, consistency, and both good long and short term planning. Any management position, even lower management, is a hellscape of trying to juggle priorities if you’re genuinely invested in doing a comprehensively good job.

And you know, modest, self-deprecating Bulkhead? He would have made a point of being bad at his job, if he had been bad at it, while you don’t really hear him brag even when he has cause to. Not to mention, people consistently underestimate Bulkhead’s emotional intelligence and I’m just *drags hands over face* but at least that’s conveniently something Wheeljack is just like So Fucking Bad At, so

IDK I just think they compliment each other in neat ways. They share so many core values, but go about the problem of “how to be true to yourself” in such different ways, and for that reason have viewpoints that are beneficial to each other. I’ve described both of them (on separate occasions, in different contexts) as “scoundrel engineers” and I stand by this statement, even though both the word “scoundrel” and “engineer” mean wildly different things depending on who I’m applying them to.