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Watching Transformers G1 Part 26

Starscream literally pulls out a slingshot that he never uses again despite having guns on his arms and fires it at nothing. He is a fucking dumbass and I love him

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i scream!!! you scream!!! WE ALL SCREAM FOR STARSCREAM

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Hello friends! It's happened. I posted a new chapter of Life in Glass Houses. :)

I realized that the previous events of Chapter 33 (Smokescreen and Ultra Magnus find Shockwave's cave) needed to be pushed back, because Bumblebee Drama (yes, he gets some too, Knock Out is not allowed to hog it all) needed to occur first. So basically there is a brand new Chapter 33.

But I couldn't bear to lose all the wonderful comments on the old version of the chapter (which would have happen if I'd removed & reposted it), so I replaced the old chapter via the Edit feature. I hope this makes sense, ha ha!

Anyway, because of this AO3 won't generate an update notification for subscribed readers like it usually would, nor will the story be bumped to the front page. But it will be business as usual when I post Chapter 34. :)

Thank you for reading, leaving kudos, and commenting! I truly appreciate your patience. :)

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It’s a popcorn!

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I’M LOSING MY SHIT WHY IS THIS SO FUNNY?

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The Decepticon high command & Megatron/Tarn

Since my old acc got nuked, might as well post these old works here!

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Giving robot meth to my dead boyfriend's possessed corpse is fine but reanimating it with SPACE COCAINE is where I draw the line.

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something that is very interesting rereading early MTMTE is that the comic is actually very much written with the assumption a ton of its readership are specifically pre-existing IDW comics readers, which can sometimes be difficult to remember because of the fact that a lot of people wound up coming onboard to MTMTE from outside the fandom in the end and now it has a reputation as an entry point as a result. this manifests in a couple ways throughout the first couple major arcs. one obvious one is that the Overlord stuff functionally makes it a sequel of sorts to Last Stand of the Wreckers, at a time no direct sequel was planned. but my favourite is that there's a kind of narrative trick the comic pulls with the leadup to the payoff Remain in Light gives us for Magnus.

the Magnus we get in early MTMTE is not the Magnus we get in earlier IDW comics. he's very exaggerated; where phase one Magnus is a by-the-books stickler for not so much as bending rules and someone we see struggling to maintain that sense of moral uprightness in the face of the war and the people around him being far less dedicated to staying on the straight and narrow like him, it's completely turned up to eleven in early MTMTE. phase one Magnus would not be doing endless doorframe audits, or throwing people in the literal brig for crooked badges. but this doesn't necessarily register as a change in character so much as a change in genre. MTMTE is also a dramedy with heavy emphasis on the comedy side of that in a way no other IDW comic is, and the shift in Magnus' characterisation therefore feels like 'well in THIS genre, that's what that archetype is like', rather than a diagetic shift in character. even if you come to MTMTE straight off those prior comics, it is very much a 'roll with the genre shift' thing rather than a 'hm. Magnus is acting… weird' thing. you let it go.

there are a couple indications this might not be the case early on. Rodimus especially seems to be under the impression that Magnus is acting uptight even for him, with his insistence on waving it off like 'he needs to relax, Swerve can you get him to chill on Hedonia because my guy is REAL stressed' and the like. (this makes sense- Rodimus is the person on the ship who has actually been directly interacting with Magnus regularly pre-MTMTE.) but it's not super obvious and not heavily emphasised.

which makes the eventual post-Overlord and RiL reveal, which is that Magnus has in fact been acting weird because he's having a breakdown that has largely gone unremarked upon by his shipmates, really really good. Magnus has not been doing doorframe audits because he's the comically uptight second in command acting as straight man for genre purposes; Magnus has been sending Rodimus a million memos a day and losing his shit over nothing because as someone whose entire identity as 'Magnus' is rooted in a wartime role he escaped into, he's been having an existential crisis now the war is over and he has no purpose and doesn't know what to do because he never expected to have to play that part in peacetime. the entire time the genre shift was somewhat obfuscating the fact this characterisation was a thing that is in-universe relevant, which also then reflects back on the fact Rodimus is like. hm. probably should have noticed that, now I feel like an asshole for not realising. (the scene where he and Rung discuss those unread memos, post-Overlord.)

it's a small thing, but it's a really effective misdirect for the payoff Magnus gets in RiL that reads a hell of a lot more clearly on reread and rewards that chance to revisit the early issues with that knowledge. of course that wasn't just a gag, of course he's actually slowly losing his shit slightly, he cannot go five seconds without making it clear he is Stressed As Hell. but until you get to that actual reveal, there's just enough room for the comic to let a reader assume it's, you know, we're in a comedy now, we need a hilarious straight man, and Magnus is it. it's great! all the stuff MTMTE pulls to simultaneously obfuscate the Magnus/Minimus reveal while also making it feel completely reasonable on reread is great. really good use of reader bias there.

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Voyager 1 looks back at Saturn, November 16, 1980.

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Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

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stop asking him if he has a favorite. he doesnt have one!!!

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Every transformers fan has two wolves inside them: one that says every version is valid and different and there is no set canon, and one that says “He would Not Fucking say That.”

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Springville Journal, New York, May 8, 1947

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a leia comic about loss.

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In "Masters and Students" Starscream digs up Skyquake, who was like. Left in a pod as an Emergency Backup Decepticon.

But I wish the big bot Starscream dug up had been Skyfire. (They were still old friends but Skyfire went missing when Starscream wasn't around. And he was stuck under the ice due to an accident, just like in G1.)

And from there it could either play out like the G1 episode "Fire in the Sky" OR maybe Starscream does convince Skyfire to continue helping him based on their old friendship, even though Skyfire is visibly uncomfortable with violence. And it could have a tragic ending like Skyfire dies when he can't bring himself to harm Agent Fowler. (Maybe he's about to smash through Fowler's flimsy human jet like Starscream asked him to, but at the last moment Skyfire swerves away and slams into a mountain as a result.)

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So I was brain-rotting about Transformers Prime, as one does, when I had a thought. What if the bots don’t have the Uncanny Valley? Cause the theory behind the Uncanny Valley is that something that looked human that wasn’t human existed. So our brains developed an entire biological response to detect it. Since the bots were all created by Primus, and thus don’t have many if any predators that can mimic them, they just…don’t have it. Which is a big reason why Makeshift was able to trick everyone that he was Wheeljack. Till Bulkhead found holes in his story of course. What do you think?

That's an interesting thought! I like it! However I do have my own thoughts to add here!

I don't think Cybertronians would lack an Uncanny Valley phenomenon. Rather, I believe they have it and the response shows itself differently. Spark Eaters, Ghouls, and the techno organic abominations of the Quintessons I think would instill a very deep set concern when it comes to potential infiltration. I personally am of the belief that they are VERY adept at picking out something that is not one of theirs. EM fields, facial expressions, and overall movement probably help in that regard. I imagine when two Cybertronians notice each other, it is a split second scan that tells them everything they think they need to know. Failure to meet the inbuilt specifications to qualify as Cybertronian would likely be met with extreme reactions. Violence I feel would be the most common form of reaction to anyone who feels too Cybertronian and yet not Cybertronian enough.

Too many times the children of Primus have been harmed through those who call themselves allies and mask themselves in forms similar to their own.

In fact, I think they would have a heightened sense of Uncanny Valley considering all the crap their species has been through and the many MANY species that hit a little too close to home biologically at times. (cough the quints and their stuff cough). On alien ships, if you want to pick out someone who Isn't Right And Feels Off, but send the resident Cybertronian. Their sense of Uncanny Valley can be trained to pick out other things that Feel Off and thus save their comrades the pain of potentially being hurt from within.

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