Fandom is a Way of Life

Looks like we’ve got a bug problem outside.

obfuscobble asked: watch this, overrated, underrated

Watch This! Hmm. This is a tough question for me honestly, because it equates “favorite TF series” with “one I’d recommend the most”, and those actually aren’t the same thing for me.

See, for all it’s fallen to shit through the second and into the third season, TFP is probably the Transformers series that I’ve responded to the most strongly? The morality is sick and the writing is terrible but it’s got a lot of characters and character dynamics in it that I like a lot (or liked before S2 ruined them).

I have a similar relationship to Bayverse; the text and metatext are TERRIBLE but there are still concepts and characters coming out of Bayverse that I really like and respond strongly to. Like but not limited to BLACKOUT BLACKOUT BLACKOUT. (Shhh I know Bayverse isn’t a series per se but.)

That said, I think the one that I could recommend with the least shame to someone else is Transformers Animated. It’s got its share of flaws, not least among them crappy treatment of female characters and pacing issues out the wazoo, yes, but it also has the least damaging meta text and morality out of all the lot. It’s a solid cartoon with solid worldbuilding and relatable characters who are allowed to make mistakes and learn and change because of them, and that’s awesome.

Whoo tl;dr.watch TFA but it’s not actually my favorite.

Overrated: Hands fucking down it’s More Than Meets the Eye. I’m not going to going into why in exhaustive detail, but put very simply, I don’t privilege humor and pandering callbacks to prior canons over a coherent, cohesive story with a metatextual message that isn’t shitty.

Also any canon that makes neuroatypical folks the butt of nasty jokes without criticizing it in the text gets eight hundred thousand thumbs down from me.

Underrated: Beast Machines. Beast Machines is by no means without flaws, but goddamn! This fandom treats it like a leprous paraiah, like it’s the worst of the worst (of the canons that are taken seriously, so to speak, which a lot of the notoriously bad Japanese canons like the UT and Kiss Players don’t seem to be?) and I really don’t agree.

Speaking as someone who did NOT watch either as a child— so therefore, no nostalgia goggles— and DID watch both within the past few years, I can safely say that Beast Machines is not bad. In fact, I would put it on par with TFP in terms of quality (and in the fact that it started strong and fell to total shit by the end).

It’s not great, but it’s got some good stuff and definitely doesn’t deserve its place on the bottom of the barrel.

ghostanswers asked: Show Me Some Love!

BLACKOUT BLACKOUT BLACKOUT.

I know this is total favoritism because Blackout’s “my” character (quotes used facetiously yes but Tumblr you don’t understand how I feel about Blackout) but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see more of him. After all, we’ve seen the Blackout I like all of two-ish times— the first Bayverse flick, the second Bayverse flick but only if you’re like me and reject Grindor, and for about five minutes in TFA during Transwarped.

In Bayverse Blackout only gets characterization in the accessory canon— he features variously in the novels and comics they released for the first movie, but AFAIK disappears after. In TFA he’s the big stupid guy (retconned by the Alamanac to the big slow but totally effective guy, but first impressions still matter and my first impression of him was of an idiot unfortunately).

That’s not a lot to go on, and I’d love love LOVE to see more, especially if they DON’T go the “big and slow and stupid” route with him.

scaredskywarp started following you

highglossfinish:

scaredskywarp:

-tilts his helm a bit confused at what he was saying at first-

B-but…um other you…um -fidgets- l-likes me…i think..

Its not that im uncomfortable…I’m uh confused and don’t u-understand. I do’t want to hurt you…or um him… 

….-looks down, fidgeting as wings lower- I’m Skywarp. T-the weakest among the clones.. And the one that fears lots of things. 

Well, hey now! If you’re on board with the idea of him pinning down your servos and charging on ahead at his own pace, by all means, enjoy yourself. I’m hardly in a position to judge on that one. 

I’m just saying. If he’s any me at all, he’ll want it to be excellent for you. And if that means slowing down a tad, he’ll do it.

Because that reflects well on him. 

And because mutual enjoyment is hot.

I think sex positive, kink sensitive, consent seeking Knock Out is something I need on my dash immediately.

calibrashuns:

peng-ko:

Breaky and Breaky. :3

HOW DID I MISS MY BABY ;A;

This is the cutest thing ever I love TFA and TFP breakdown crossovers sodihf

BABIES

(via yorks-missing-eye)

6thclone:

Best answer.

Oh Ask Swindle blog, I love you.

(Source: askswindle)

Art

artisfaction:

Apparently, transformers in lingerie is a thing now. I wasted my night drawing Blurr, Knock Out ….

 

….and after that I drew this

Happiest  sexy medic ever, guys

I may not have reblogged a lot of the robots-in-lingerie-February stuff but HOW COULD I RESIST THIS?

(Source: askaclone, via 6thclone)

ghostanswers:

iluvstarscream:

Beast Hunters is premiering on March 22nd. Assuming they air the 13 episodes without break, that means precious Screamy will not live past June 14th.

Can not handle this.

Starts grieving.

Wait why are you sure they’ll kill him? I mean, besides the obvious that they tend to ice old characters randomly to make way for new ones.

Unfortunately the numbers are kind of against him. Every cartoon that’s featured SS as a character has axed him before the end. Sometimes more than once— TFA I’m looking at you here. (BW is an exception to this, but only because he was already dead/an immortal spark for his appearance in BW; simultaneously, BW is not an exception if you consider Terrorsaur the ‘Starscream’ of the show, which I think he was definitely supposed to be.) Bayverse killed him too. In fact, the only long-running series that SS has been in that hasn’t killed him off (yet?) is IDW’s G1-reboot comics/RiD.

Of course, that still doesn’t make it a foregone conclusion that he’ll die. If the “next iteration” of TFP that we’re supposed to be getting is a direct continuation— the BM to TFP’s BW, if you will— then Starscream might survive through one to the other, if only because I think Hasbro’s mostly realized that Starscream is one of their breadwinner characters.

By that same token, though, his ability to die and still be a character has been an element of his characterization since the moment he came back as a ghost in G1. So we could still see him die in TFP, without losing him as a character either in TFP or in the putative “next iteration” of the show due in 2014. We could see him die and come back as a mindless dark energon zombie. We could see him die but have an immortal spark, and so survive on somehow because of that. We could see him “die” but somehow survive because of dark energon, like Megatron (who’s animated by the dark stuff but still retains his mind). We could see him die but have a clone take his place (after all, the reverse of this— clones dying that we’re supposed to believe are SS— already has happened. I wouldn’t put it past TFP to have the “real” Starscream die and a clone— either one that somehow managed to survive the carnage of that ep or one that someone makes at some other point— take his place in the narrative).

Whew, parentheticals. Anyway!

I won’t lie, I honestly do expect Starscream— and most of the Decepticons— to bite the bucket before the end of Beast Hunters. Part of it is everything I said above about Starscream being a character you can safely kill because he can always be brought back again later. The other part is DotM and the fact that TFP shares a lot of its narrative and moral sensibilities with Bayverse. This is at least in part because the writers of TF2007 and RotF are executive producers on TFP, but probably also in part to branding and Hasbro’s absolute insistence that all their narratively unrelated products resemble each other. (Because kids are too stupid and brainless to have brand loyalty unless you jump through hoops to connect the disparate canons, don’tchaknow.)

Don’t believe me? TFA was made to include elements of the movie mythos, like the Allspark; some of the Cybertronian-mode aesthetics, Megatron’s in particular, recalled Bayverse designs as well. The artists on IDW’s RiD were instructed by Hasbro to give all the characters Fall of Cybertron-compliant character designs. TFP’s visual aesthetic in terms of the character designs is obviously a blend of Bayverse’s complexity and TFA’s hypersimplicity. TFP and Bayverse’s takes on Optimus Prime are very similar, including the insistence on privileging humans and Earth over TFs and Cybertron and OP’s conviction that his right to make judgments on the battlefield (executing Deceptions in Bayverse, destroying the Omega Lock in TFP) is intrinsic and above reproach.

Remember that Dark of the Moon made a very deliberate point of killing off all of the named, significant Decepticons before the end of the movie, as well as every other antagonist of significance. Hasbro looked at that movie and thought that that was a satisfying and positive ending.

We know that TFP is culminating with BH. We also know that the last three “episodes” of BH are going to be a TV movie. We know that Hasbro likes to tie things up “neatly” (most of the ‘Cons getting captured hauled off to prison in TFA) and with a bang (all of them dying in DotM). We also know that in TFP Cybertron is dead, and that Optimus is willing to massacre Decepticons and unwilling to take prisoners.

I don’t know about you guys, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if TFP ends with all of the Decepticons dead. Hasbro’s made it clear that the unequivocal and total defeat of the Decepticons is their happy ending de rigeur, especially in their canons intended for kid consumption (which IDW is not, if you’re thinking of bringing that up as an exception). They’ve also made it clear that they don’t see anything troubling or problematic in annihilating Decepticons totally to acheive that.

Honestly, it’ll be a damn surprise if any of the ‘Cons survive the end of TFP.

But hey, look on the bright side. Even though Starscream almost certainly will die, his chance of making it to the next show anyway is pretty damn good. Starscream is immortal. Even if the “next iteration” of TFP— even if 2014’s new TF cartoon— starts over from the beginning, he’ll be in it.

My chances of seeing KO alive again after TFP, especially as a featured character, are slim to none.

(via ghostanswers)

so I found Skywarp hunkered down in a comforter nest when I went into the bedroom tonight…

ghostanswers:

zmpeccadillo:

[image: the Decepticon Octane drawn in Transformers Animated style]

So I watched “Starscream’s Ghost” today and whipped this up. Please hire me to draw Transformers Animated season 4.

HASBRO ARE YOU LISTENING I WOULD THROW MONEY AT YOU THROUGH THIS WOMAN

HASBRO COME ON

HASBROOOOOO

The amount of DO WANT I am currently experiencing is off the charts.

(Source: zmtn, via ghostanswers)

Prowl cannot endorse your wholesale slaughter of Vehicons, Arcee. Even if you are an excellent warrior to have at a bot’s back in a fight.

For ghostanswers.

Too early but…

artisfaction:

My boys are getting ready for Halloween…

Knock Out’s a knight.

…so of course Breakdown got to be the dragon.

He got a tail and everything.

But no worries, all ends well in the end.

Shockwave can’t get into the holiday spirit

I don’t think Blurr enjoys playing Beauty and the Beast this was a excuse to put him on a dress again so...

And he got a temper.

sniperdusk:

more Dirges on Flickr.

A very pleased-looking TFA Dirge swiping up his helpless little G1 counterpart. (Animated Dirge painted by 6th Clone.)

/screeeeee

Guess who arrived today~

artisfaction:

My poor Blurr figure, forever alone I need to get him a Shockwave

Not gonna lie this action figure of Breakdown worth its price, it’s one of the most accurate figures I saw so far.

Read More

OH BLURR HONEY…….

But surely you don’t begrudge the precious babies their reunion, even if you are forever alone.