yappintilldeath

[yappintilldeath]

Megop sketches // bear with me I'm still learning how to draw them :cry:

+Bonus some human vers (still working on op's design)

[yappintilldeath]

Unicron:..... Primus?

Rung:

Epistemus: Play Dumb.

Rung: Who's Primus?

Epistemus: Not THAT dumb.

[yappintilldeath]

Something something—I think it would be very funny if Tfone Starscream got a head start on betraying Megatron by just… not leaving with him in his banishment. Starstay AU: 1 2 3 4

[yappintilldeath]

I really don't understand the Transformers prime fandom and why they hate Miko SO MUCH, she's probably one of my favorite human characters in all the series, but for some reason they prefer Jack.

In my opinion it has the personality of a wet paper napkin.

.

[yappintilldeath]

The real problem is that people don't really see how the film's undertones, and pretty much the 90% of the stories with the narrative, are consistently written in a very shallow way. They're borderline anti-protestor stories with the "good protestor being someone purely un-bothering" vibe entrenching the whole film.

They have a very centrist view that, at the root of it, denies the very reality of political violence as a necessity in social change. Kwame Ture literally said it best;

“Dr. King's policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That's very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.”

The film, likewise, has a very similar shallowness within it. It doesn't really draw upon the fact that D is somehow secretly the villain, it is just the same garbage of being purely designed as to say "don't be extreme" when the reality of the narrative is that Magneto shaking hands with Red Skull would be a panel with a staggering frequency to reappear.

Like, the film doesn't want to earnestly interact with these themes, it wants you to use the Chinese Communism, the French Revolution and others, but it will never draw upon them but rather it wants to suppress the "other radicals" like the ones in the LA riots by saying "they're going too far!" but I really, bottom of my heart really doubt that Hemsworth being Pax and Brian being D was just an unnatural coincidence.

What the fuck is wrong with writing an “oppressed becomes then oppressor narrative?” Why is it considered problematic? It’s fiction, it’s a good story

And it happens all the damn time irl too. Take this from someone whose family was torn apart by communism in China.

*

[yappintilldeath]

I genuinely agree with this, but man do I still fucking hate the "valiant sacrifice" line for just how utterly galling it is.

Like how did none of the others jump Trion's ghost in that scene baffles me because what valiant sacrifice did Orion do? With D-16's character in the movie basically both speed-running his conversion into Robot Hitler while also having the worst and quickest turn to "he's gonna be bad!" state.

The story needed like 10 more minutes of actual dialogue between the central characters, actual characterization because Orion getting the Matrix purely for gambling in his survival in taking the bullet for the baby-mutilating, hero-slaying oppressor is so dumb that it defies words as an abstract concept.

Like again, the film just rushes after he learns of Sentinel and while it's coherent in the technical sense, it just completely has the execution of making D instantly on the dark side step one. It just feels too quick in some areas.

Transformers One Official Novelization Worldbuilding and Lore Bits

Thanks to the Transformers One movie novelization, here are some worldbuilding facts that weren’t explicitly shown in the movie!

About Iacon city:

Cog-less bots can only work as miners, though the tier system (described later) suggests that they can move up or down a ladder of limited job options

All cog-less bots were born after the disappearance of the Matrix of Leadership

No cog-less bot has seen the surface

The book suggests that all Transformers bot, those who can transform into alt mode, were born before the disappearance of the Matrix of Leadership

Transformers can live anywhere they want in Iacon city, unlike miners

Miners have limited transport options: they can only use public transport or walk. The book also suggests that their access to the overall city is limited, said city being divided into main Iacon and the mining sectors

it is explained that Transformers rarely watch where they step when miners are around, often kicking miners as a result. Orion also notes that some will do it on purpose (yikes!)

There is a tier system that miners can climb. The movie has D-16 mention that tier 1 is the lowest. In the novel, D-16 is trying to reach tier 11 by the end of the current cycle. It is implied that D-16 is one of the fastest rank-climber amongst the miners

About Orion Pax:

His favourite Prime is Zeta Prime, who was the original bearer of the Matrix

Orion is passionate about learning the history of Cybertron, hence him often sneaking into the archives

Miscellaneous facts:

According to the novel, here are the Prime cogs each of the main 4 characters received: Orion has Prima's, D-16 has Onyx's, Elita has Alchemist's, and Bee has Micronus'

In some ways, the novel was better at telegraphing D-16's fall. The signs of him eventually getting tired of backing up Orion and failure to control his bloodthirst are more obvious to the reader.

Shoutout to the novel for also making Orion's motivations more obvious when it came to dealing with Sentinel: Orion knows that killing Sentinel won't actually solve the issue and believes Sentinel can be overthrown and stripped of his power without unnecessary violence. (My personal interpretation is that D-16 is using his desire for justice—more like vengeance really—to feel better about himself, not actually improve Cybertron. It’s the same logic those who support the death penalty have. They like the death penalty because it makes their own feelings better, no matter how ineffective the death penalty is for improving society.)

[yappintilldeath]

Here’s a post with my cybertronian miko designs!

Shockwave made a mistake.

After taking miko from the wreckers shockwave spent months trying to perfect his biotransferance technology for his own unknown designs.

Little did he know the senator within was still fighting, he managed to distract his dominant half long enough for miko to escape!

Miko is now in a body she disassociates from frequently, the wreckers are helping her through this transition and hopefully stop her going on a reckless warpath for revenge! (Also shockwave tries to dad at her)

[yappintilldeath]

Can anyone find that fanart of Starscream being bigger than Megs? One where looked like this version of Megs?

[yappintilldeath]

Part two of Survival AU before I dissappear for a moment :D

(part one)

(part two)

(part three)

If you want to know more, here is the lore

[yappintilldeath]

more of the guys that are neither robots nor aliens

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punch-hungry princess

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Transformers Foundation #2 panel redraw with my designs

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House Horse MD performs his daily checkups.

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hehehaha

[yappintilldeath]

Pay up buckaroo.

Jk but ask next time pls

[yappintilldeath]

Look, this is going to be sorta a personal post, not exactly coherent but hey, why not.

A big thing holding back the film is the jarring comedy. Like I really can't overstate how utterly annoying Bumblebee is. And it even ruins Shockwave be deciding that he's also just another part of the comedy troupe. The comedy will just randomly decide to ruin moments in ways I really can't stress hard enough.

Like imagine, if, just for a moment that when Shockwave threatens Orion over him wanting the High Guard's help, instead of having the whole thing be settled by Elita's comedy, have be settled in a way that has more tension? Like I know most will tell me "how would you have done it hmm😏" but while I can't exactly solve that, it's doesn't detract from the fact that the comedy robs scenes that could've had moments with more energy to them.

There's just stuff like Bee's lines in the cave after the reveal, honestly most of Bee's scenes feel like genuine filler for the runtime (did we fucking need him to say Badassatron 3 times to Elita?). The cutoff at the moment they escape the cave is also another example. It really does feel like the film is bizarrely insecure to the point of wanting to have laughs for every few moments. It's even worse when the story really does just brush aside how Bumblebee was not only clearly not mentally well from being isolated for so long, but what could've been a subplot about his mental decay is just a punchline. The few times he's an actual character are so little and they happen externally with no real character work other than "thunder hit the writers as to not fuck this scene up".

A less annoying one is Elita-1, who's just … there. While Bumblebee is worse for having most of his scenes be just comedy, Elita is someone I genuinely struggle to understand why she was there in the first place.

Her dynamic with Orion really should've been an opposite to D-16, an easier way to infer how D is clearly not as friendly as he seemed. But instead Elita's just kind of a dick? Like that's really the problem, she's antagonistic to them, but it's not really meaningful? Like her being an asshole is never really forming into a dynamic with the rest. Like you could've had D or Orion at least mention "hey we saved Jazz" either angrily or sarcastically or anything. But instead her presence in the story feels like it's there for obligational reasons than anything really meaningful. Even her speech with Orion is filled with jokes for some reason, like how hard is it to just have her say:

"Orion, despite my misgiving, you're the guy that wants to see the bright future that everyone else doesn't, you're willing to do more in this shithole than I'll ever be. So c'mon! Let's do this." And hell, more mentions to Jazz that isn't just another trophy for Orion? Like that is what kinda ticked me off. Jazz is just this point in a basket for Orion, that never comes up again until Elita mentions him. Imagine this kind of scene:

D-16: Angry tone Ruin your life? Sorry you're too obsessed over promotions over Jazz's life, but you don't get to boss us around!

Orion: Hey! If she didn't toss us the thingy-

Elita-1: Thingy?

Orion: Quickly turns to Elita-1 Please. Quickly snaps back to D-16 All three of us would've died. Heavy sigh Calm down, let's try to settle this peacefully.

That would actually allow a bit more of a connection within the group.

Also Elita's bond with Orion feels underbaked? Like that's the closest word I got. It's just that for all intents and purposes they don't feel like they ever connected and Elita feels almost non-existent. Like I don't think her tossing that pillar ever means much within the story's beats. Like you can do things, factually relevant things, but the execution can make it feel like you have no presence within the story. Elita's speech acts like she had more interactions with Orion offscreen even though the timeline and presentation makes it look like that wouldn't even be possible.

The one person that does is D-16. And while I can see some of the ideas people have explained, here's the real problem with why people have said "his turn was (etc, etc)" is that the story...

...Well look this is going to be a bit of a recap now but first a little thing about pacing, narrative inflection and connective tissue. Pacing is pretty important not out of realism, but verisimilitudinous, meaning "the appearance of being true or real". Reality is reality, and in stories, pacing is there not to make things feel like you're either bloating the film with comedy scenes that exists for the sake of it, or squeezing the film into an anorexic mess.

Now the connective tissue is pretty simple. It's how moments hold weight when they happen, how they reflect the later moments and how the thematic viewpoint of the story or scene. You can't just have a character go through an arc, then vanish into irrelevancy for a long time even by the runtime before having a grand climatic moment. Reinforcement is key because it can add weight. The story-point can't just be a technical straight line.

Inflection is just this: a guy makes a racist/sexist, generally unpleasant remark and when confronted they go "just a joke!" even though it was obvious that it wasn't.

And the first thing that comes to mind is that D-16 is just weirdly incoherent.

People have pointed out his eagerness to make threats on Orion, but the narrative never presents his "threats" to Orion in the beginning as anything more than barbs. Simple jokes to be spoken in conversations. Now you could say that it's meant to be foreshadowing, that we're supposed to connect them to him post-T-Cog, and even in the cave beforehand, being a bit too on-the-nose violent. But it doesn't really work.

The message from how I see people say "He was always secretly bad!" Isn't really there. Orion's lack of a separate connection means that we only see him as the focal narrative lens to see D-16 become Megatron, and it is seen as a "falling" rather than a revealing of his character. The narrative never paints him being revealed.

And then there's the fact that the story really likes having D constantly face-off against shitty people.

This really goes hand-in-hand with how D is given the most focus when it came to wanting Sentinel torn down. When it came to the High-Guard the one given most focus is D, both in wanting Sentinel destroyed, and actively pointing out how blatantly cowardly Starscream is, after the latter established himself as a dick.

Optimus is only spurned into proactivity by D being captured. Like he does get to have his speech to the miners, but the story mainly focused on D when it came to taking down Sentinel.

Like you argue that after finding out his whole world was fake, that everything he worked for was a lie he'd crash out like a meteor. Except this circles back to how underdeveloped Elita-1 and B-127. They're significantly less affected by the revelation that their lives as this whole fucking mess. You could say that Elita has a character-driven reasoning compared to B since he really isn't good, but it still pretty much disconnects any real genuine weight there could've been.

Again, the story pulls so much on Optimus and D contrasting, that the jarring shift in how D begins his dark path is just going 180 without any real fluidity. People posit his earlier behavior, but the narrative portrayed that as him being the responsible one to Orion's recklessness. It becomes jarring because up until the reveal, D is the one to keep his head low, but it's never narratively presented as anything but a guy being responsible while his friend, while good is also clearly in over his head.

D's whole turn is just that jarring, and the narrative also really makes it so that he also takes a significant part of the screentime fighting Starscream, being tortured by Sentinel who also stole his idol's T-Cog. Like you can still argue that his whole scene about mercy is showing his dark turn, but it's the same thing, the story makes jarring shifts over D turning into the bad-guy.

Like let's kid ourselves, the story makes pre-emptive elements to justify it, but it still engages with the idea that the overwhelming uprising is bad. You could say that Optimus also took part in violence, but he's only spurned, reactive whereas D is the only one that acknowledges strength is needed.

The political foundations of the film are weird to me, because it's what Dan Olson said on his video Minecraft, Sandboxes, and Colonialism | Folding Ideas about how certain stories create a "clean" version of history to engage with. And in Transformers One, the story engages with the rage against the oppressor and says:

"Don't try to be violent because it shows that you're inevitably going down the route of becoming a monster."

The Matrix, to me, is the symbol of the divine right over Cybertron. But it's also basically making the idea that radicalism is bad, because the idea that the radical is actually evil/"too far" as per the Matrix's authority.

Some might say "B did it in self-defense! Sentinel didn't have that!" Yeah, let's disregard that those characters are faceless hordes who exist to die to our enemies, and B as a character is so thin on characterization that it's baffling they ever remembered him in the story. The three guards running from B's cutting threat are meant to comedic.

D is outright even more disconnected from the world at times since characters like Jazz are just not meaningful enough to connect us to the idea that he was always bad. Instead the story swerves right into D's thirst for vengeance as this moment of malevolence. When he kills the foot-soldiers with no purpose than to be beaten, the story acts like it's this moment that he might not be all there anymore.

Like the story does put context into these situations, and I'd argue that the reasoning behind making those in the first place are not great. The story just outright gets him into this box. Like the only reactions to Sentinel Prime's reveal that have genuine narrative weight is Orion's and D's, Elita's and B's are just background noise.

The story's shift is desperately trying to bury you into his fall into Megatron, but it rushes in the details, hammering them but never actually allowing us to see where his mindset turned from. D is just instantly now becoming Megatron, his growth being that every action he takes results in his fall.

It's like that you have a pathway with 30 steps before the hole to fall into, and the story just has D suddenly skip 25 steps before he drops.

Look, I don't think the writers and director intentionally made these weird points, but I would argue that the direction of Megatron as a pseudo-justified slave uprising is a demonization of political dissenters that oppose the system with a glorification of the centrists who, realistically, do jack shit to fix things. (IDW2005 has the same issues.)

Revolutions don't have a pretty history, 1984 is the textbook of this, since it directly commentates on reality to an extent. But that excuse feels very disingenuous since D is the only one who has the most rage against Sentinel, his rage is the most focused, and he seems to be the only one that pulls his weight the most against him, narratively.

D-16 is an interesting character in how a story failing to connect other characters, to have others reflect him can make a turn feel rushed. Like this film needed 15 more minutes to have him interact with more characters, or maybe instead of having the scene with ship, and the dumb comedy, cut them out for more interactions with the crew during their trek to Alpha Trion?

Who knows? Discussing in a hypothetical "better" is both infinite and moot, but this was a fun exercise in thought.

Me rn:

Yeah reposting my things into different blogs. check out yappintilldeath

[yappintilldeath]

Sanji, Black Maria and Benevolent Sexism.

Why didn’t Sanji do anything to defend himself against Black Maria despite being capable of cleanly doing something against Big Mom? Like why not use fire to burn the webs? Why not use Observation Haki?

(I’ll get to the SBS)

Sanji is a benevolent sexist. He’s a guy who places women on a pedestal that actively reduces the idea of what humans are, because he basically segregates women with bizarre toxic-positivity. He can’t attack them because Zeff said so, but he’s very much happy to desire the ability of violating their privacy to literally objectify them for his own pleasure to the point that the story focused more on his jealousy that Absalom has his dream fruit than Nami being literally sexually assaulted. That’s not even getting into the bizarre gag that happened when Usopp and Chopper bust the door down.

And it’s not just Sanji, there’s a whole moment when Zoro suddenly is appalled at Enel attacking Robin because she was a woman despite his backstory. Women are just treated with kid gloves and not actually allowed to contribute as direct forces unless they’re victims or in the case of Big Mom, ugly.

It’s why Oda draws the scene, the measure of a woman is her beauty. The running gag about Kokoro is the definition of this. So why doesn’t he just do anything competent? Why literally risk Robin’s life? Does he actually know how strong she is? Does he know she had Fishman Karate?

The entire “reliance” theme feels fake because Oda decided that women can only fight women, that’s why Robin fights Black Maria, it’s a girl fight. The final dynamic, closing point is just that. Sure there’s the occasional trade of fists, but the set-up for Ulti is Nami and later her fight is Big Mom. Oda has Sanji risk Robin’s life and not once does the story actually make any real “thing” over this absolute fuck-up.

The theme is negatively connected to how Zoro never hurts Monet, but Tashigi, a character that was relentlessly humiliated in Punk Hazard, sexually and personality-wise because she’s a woman. Baby 5 is basically Robin, complicit in a litany of horrific crimes but being beautiful means she’s given a sad backstory and then gets off scot-free. Rebecca is constantly paraded in a sexualized outfit, can’t even be allowed to use a sword, and is basically treated as dead weight while her father takes all her rightful moments. It is connected to the heavily sexist subtext of the story.

“Guys love robots and girls just don’t get it.” FUCKING HELL. 

That is why, personally, I can’t take the theme seriously. It’s an attempt to basically shove a girl-fight without any real substance that doesn’t feel contrived. Any positive spin on it just doesn’t work. The SBS is complete horseshit as far I am concerned since it’s the place where we learn about Fujitora’s sword, Zoro’s family and Tama’s family, something that’s irrelevant as far as I am concerned. It feels like Oda trying to contrive a reasoning that’s not just “It’s like Kokoro, she’s not pretty so she’s free for hits.” so now Black Maria is pretty so she can’t fight or even face defense from him. Better have Robin.

Had Oda literally not pulled Robin’s new powers from the ass, that I’m still not sure if Sanji knows about, Sanji would have gotten Robin in critical danger.