The New Garage Chronicles

I also wonder if I should write about how while there's a lot of interesting Labour Politics(tm) stuff in Aligned that goes into the Decepticons being a worker's militia, there's similarly interesting things going into the majority of the best-known Autobots being a part of a conscript army with most of their infantry also being retrained labourers.

Like, most of the explicitly professional military mechs we see are Decepticons, and the few professional officers we see are Autobots, which is about what you'd expect because commissioned officers are, like, academics and shit, while the majority of non-drafted military are people who just wanna make ends meet. The military of Cybertron is an interesting relic of the previous broad historical period but also a symptom of a society without much social mobility.

(Individual city-states also have apparently have their own police-forces but the "federal" police is just the military, which makes me feel A Kind Of Way as well.)

The civil war as it was isn't something I've seen a lot of explorations of other than some criticisms of the comics for having a bunch of imperialism in them (which, fair enough, they are written my Americans after all) and the tensions between civillians and military outside of wartime are incredibly interesting to me.

After a few days of pretty intense individual scrutiny, I figured it would be a good to pull back a little and collate what I know and what I've already figured out about the geopolitics of Cybertron so I don't have to go back to the wiki every time it happens, and it'll also probably be a good jumping off point for other people or whatever.

Unfortunately there isn't a way to make this as generic as I'd like since the history and politics change with every canon (and also rarely are they kept consistent as writers just kinda come up with their own shit) so this is going to be focused on my interpretation of Aligned, specifically drawing from the novels and Prime, as well as using material created for the WFC. I've said elsewhere but I take a kind of... anthropological approach to the stuff I add to the worldbuilding, so where my sources contradict each other, I try to figure out why the contradiction exists and whether it has significance.

My primary resource is... my memory, as well as TFWiki, so factual errors aren't only likely, they're also pretty unavoidable :'D I'll try to come back to fix any mistakes, but the point of this post isn't to be comprehensive, it's mostly a self-reminder.

Anyway. ( Relevant pictures under the cut. )

So in the spirit of "fuck it, I guess I'll be my own fan base" I went to read back through my fan talk tag and to my great consternation discovered that apparently I'm angry about how much unexplored territory every single ship involving Bulkhead is for the eight month running.

So that's fun.

I also stand by my original statement from that post that the only character who has more fun ship dynamics available is Smokescreen, and that's because Smokescreen is the Dumb Young Idiot who tries to impress everyone (and that makes him, just. Inherently shippable, b/c attention-y behaviour is just really good fodder). But, you know, Smokescreen is Young & Hot and has the silhouette of an Hollywood Athlete(tm) and that's why he's the team bicycle.

Meanwhile... IDK. I guess Bulkhead is just the kind of character (read: the only character with Any Fucking Common Sense, Holy Fuck Y'All Are Such Passionate Idiots) I keep finding interesting dynamics for -- half of them practically made to generate endless fluff. Putting aside my OTP and their dramatics for a moment, Bulkhead also has very good chemistry with Arcee (the Bestie Shit Arcee does behind Bulk's back is my favourite thing, goddamn) and Ratchet (he acts like he doesn't caaaaare but he dooooooes), he's also probably the most suited to be the Caller-Out of Primes on their Primely Bullshit, being able to fairly confidently say that Bad Things Are Bad and Good Things Are Good and Optimus, aren't you forgetting that We Are the Good Guys Here? And when I say Smokescreen wants to prove himself to everyone, I mean Smokescreen wants to prove himself to e v e r y o n e. It's only appropriate Bulkhead is the one who openly acts like a mentor towards him.

On top of that, even among the people who recognise that despite being the team Bruiser, Bulkhead's actually quite the teddybear, not a lot of them recognise that holy shit he was also essentially blackops, and that context makes the lapses in his judgement and his more brutal moments way more interesting. I've seen maybe one person question exactly what Bulkhead's definition of The Good Guys is, and how that plays into his relationship with his allies, let alone his attitude towards his enemies. Like, shit, you'd figure a morally lapsed marshmallow man would be right up the alley of a good half of this fandom.

And yet.

(Also none of this would bother me so much if it wasn't for a little niggling fact that despite the long-standing species-wide size queen jokes everyone seems fairly comfortable treating Bulkhead like he's completely nonsexual. Hmm.)

(I'm frustrated, y'all. A part of me wants to think that I'm reading too much into this and that They're Robots So Beaty Standards Don't Apply but frankly the fandom is still made of humans, and Prime!Bulkhead isn't the only big-boned bot I like that gets hit with this, so I feel fairly confident (and, thus, extremely salty) in being a bit conspiratorial about this.)

Sometimes the thing with Bulkhead/Wheeljack is that they're like "I love you, but could you stop being horny for like five minutes so we can finish this conversation", and I forget to bring that along and instead try to jump straight into writing the conversation.

Like, yeah, they have issues, but they're also Crazy Into Each Other, which I can't just gloss over b/c it's the reason they repeatedly try to solve their problems against the insurmountable impossibility of Being A Good Boyfriend. A lot of it comes down to "I'm making an effort, and I'm making this effort for you, and I wouldn't make it for anyone else."

I love trying to explain my Aligned Hollow Knight AU b/c it always turns into an astounding amount of bullshit in an unbelievably short time.

Like it starts out straightforward enough -- Primus is the Pale King, Unicron is the Radiance. (The Primes are Godseekers or whatever. They're not relevant.)

Next, Optimus is Ghost and Megatron is Hollow Knight. But wait, Megatron is also kind of... Vessel-like, which would make Optimus Hornet? But, if Megatron is Ghost, then Optimus is basically a Dreamer?

And the Autobots are basically the Kingdom of Hallownest, which makes Optimus the Pale King? Which makes Megatron the Radiance, which works better than I like admitting. And if Optimus is the Pale King, then his command staff are The Five Great Knights? Would that make the Wreckers the Mantis tribe? Except Impactor is basically a Reverse Traitor Lord and--

Ow.

Ow, ow, ow, my head.

Anyway y'all

I forgot how fucking hard the OST to Metal Gear Rising fucking goes, and how much of it is Very Much Wrecker Material.

Top picks are "I'm My Own Master"


"A Soul Can't Be Cut"


and "The War Rages Within"


with a Honourable mention that "A Stranger I Remain" is very much an IDW!Arcee song.

I don't listen listen to metal/industrial but this is like the one exception that will get me hype Every Instance.

(Reposted from Tumblr)

I’m pretty sure Alpha Trion was deliberately grooming Smokescreen for a Rodimus-like role. I mean, he could see the future, he was probably able to anticipate the events of Season 2, so for the sake of the cosmos, he made sure to have a backup plan for when Known Idealist Optimus Prime would fail to do what needed to be done to end the war.

Like, maybe he deliberately picked Smokescreen, because someone so young, naive and hungry for recognition would be easy to shape into a zealot capable of returning peace to Cybertron by any means necessary, would be easy to groom into thinking that the ends justify the means,

and then on top of that made sure to cultivate qualities that would appeal to Optimus, namely perseverance, good cheer and a forward-looking positivity, so when manoeuvred into a position where he’d have to give up the Matrix, Optimus would naturally feel inclined to hand it over to the person Alpha Trion wanted it to end up with.

And it almost worked, too. I have no doubt that when Smokescreen first arrived on Earth, had he then been offered the Matrix, he wouldn’t have thought twice about taking it. But either by providence or good luck, Smokescreen’s mercurial adaptability meant that by the time Alpha Trion’s plan would have taken effect, he’d already grown to exceed it, and could find a third option.

As much as his naivety and malleability made Smokescreen the ideal candidate for such a plan, it also made him the perfect foil for it. Having the forward-looking, progress-oriented attitude that endeared that was required for Optimus to fall for Alpha Trion’s scheme meant that Smokescreen’s growth didn’t just stop at the things Alpha Trion taught him.

The best-kept secret of Team Prime is the bonkers good aim Bulkhead has.

The reason it doesn't come up much is because a) he's primarily a close-quarters fighter packing enough firepower that just hitting in the vicinity of where you aimed is enough and b) his poor reflexes -- the actual reason he's so accident-prone -- end up playing a much larger role in battle situations.

But in the event that he gets to show off, his throwing aim (and as a corollary, his ability to catch stuff thrown his way) is pretty much pinpoint accurate. The reason for it is that as a construction worker, he has a sensory array that prioritises the kind of spatial information required for three-dimensional reasoning -- normally used for figuring out the stress profiles of different structures, but also highly useful for working out trajectories. He also has better fine motor control than he ever gets credit for -- not graceful on the level of, say, Optimus, but way less clumsy than anyone thinks.

More self-indulgently, the mechanical basis for it is that Bulkhead's sensory systems experience significant overlap in the radio-IR spectrum and while the internal resolution/focus speed of his optics might not be any better than anyone elses, the range of radiation and the resolution of the spectrum he can perceive is much higher.

He and Ratchet are also the only two in Team Prime who have native UV/near-UV vision, and Bulkhead has the highest colour/brightness distinction out of all of them. After all, it would be advantageous for a constructor to see/sense what parts of a building are likely to form radio wave "noise traps", and have access to IR and even x-ray vision -- although "seeing" in x-ray (or more accurately, shifting his range of vision into the x-ray spectrum) and "seeing" in radio wave is disorienting enough that Bulkhead rarely uses them outside of when they're absolutely needed.

(This is also one of those headcanons I will smugly point the canon support out for. Bulkhead having Anti-Stormtrooper Aim is legit a consistent aspect of his characterisation, although in TFA his spatial awareness isn't nearly as good as it is in Prime.)

I keep thinking thoughts about Wheeljack's fighting style developing in the context of serving with the Wreckers, who for the most part are bigger and heavier than he is, but also in the context of serving beside Bulkhead, who, despite being a big bot, is also not Incredibly Huge like Impactor and Roadbuster, so their fighting styles end up converging in weird places.

Like, to quote myself, Wheeljack is for the most part The Shiniest Object. The way he fights is fast and flashy, keeping every eye on the battlefield on him byway of being the quickest-approaching threat in every single situation, and relying on either overwhelming the opponent into falling on the defensive, or being out of reach by the time they're ready to retaliate, quick and light on his feet.

But then sometimes there will be moments where he'll resort to straight-up ramming his enemies, compensating for his comparative lack of mass by getting his speed up in alt form and having his whole weight behind an attack meant to lay his opponents flat. Instead of dancing around an opponents, he'll quite literally drive right at 'em, and through 'em if at all possible.

Because that's how Bulkhead fights -- all power, all momentum. Being within his reach is terrifying unless you're constantly pushing back, because for all his comparative lack of speed, he really only does need to land one proper hit to regain and press his advantage, blow after blow after blow, until his opponent goes down.

Except then he proceeds to have these moments of frankly startling dexterity, where an expertly timed dodge or a step back out of range upsets his opponents balance and turns their momentum into a weapon, letting it do the damage. Catching punches and redirecting strikes, because while he can no-sell plenty of damage, what Wheeljack dodges with sheer reflex, Bulkhead can turn about into an advantage when he can spot it coming.

Their synergy in battle is not just the result of knowing themselves and making the most out of their best qualities, but also knowing how to take advantage of each other's best qualities.

I can kinda just ride along a constructed scenario and his reactions will parse just fine and then I'll realise I'll have wandered into somewhere starkly, startlingly cynical and it'll still be entirely in character.

Bulk's got a morbid streak. True, it's nowhere as bad as someone like Ratchet, but man, he really doesn't have a ton of faith in people, not even the people he ostensibly HAS faith in.

(I really love that about him. That's probably what makes him such a neat complement for so many characters, he'll just keep trucking through stuff that'll knock a more emotionally sensitive character on their aft.)

The context for waffling about making things Lighter and Softer as we go was that I was talking about Transformers Prime on Discord and it came up that if we could make Megatron feel a little bit of love for his fellow mecha again, the Decepticon high command might have not been so... quarrelsome? And may have been more loyal and focused? And maybe had better morals as a result over all, because they would have been invested in caring for each other as well? (We all know all Starscream needs is a little positive reinforcement and he'll become Loyal and Useful again.)

And in that context, I got to thinking: My take on TFP has the entire time been that it's a gray conflict where one side became more moral and ethical as time went by -- Optimus Prime pulling the whole faction up with him by refusing to fall to his opponent's level and Megatron pulling his whole faction down with him by trying to win by any means necessary -- and you know, Narrative Mechanics dictate that if the Decepticons are the ones pulling themselves up from the morally gray swamp and becoming more moral and unified, then the Autobots clearly should be the ones who become worse as time goes on.

Except, well... Negative character development in a context where positive character development furthers the plot is frustrating to me, so instead, I started thinking about what would happen if both sides of the conflict slowly became more moral and invested in the wellbeing of their comrades, and that kinda. Softened the whole conflict to the point where I could actually see The All-Important Plot-Moving War literally just ending in a mutual ceasefire because enough dying had been done for both sides to just be tired of it.

And in a series that in its darker iterations is all about how war and conflict are corruptive and makes everyone be the worst version of themselves, that does kinda feel like getting a pat on the butt and being told you did a good job and it's okay now, but I'd be lying if I said that it didn't appeal to me to give all of the characters a chance to go "but... what if, maybe, we are better than that?" It's also something I keep putting into the ideas for characters who don't show up in Prime but exist in Aligned (so they can exist in Prime and be there for me to Play With) like Impactor, whose arcs end up being about refusing to be the version of themselves they are in, say, the comics.

Ultimately, it just feels incomplete to me to make characters watch themselves turn into a worse version of themselves and neither make it an outright tragedy where that state becomes terminal, or go "wait, I don't actually want to be like this" and... change. And ultimately, I believe that people who have done enough bad things to become tired of it will realise they could have been doing good all along instead.