Apropos of not much, somehow when I was a kid I ended up with three or four Oddballs in my collection (but none of the other Wendy's GoBots) despite the fact that we almost never actually went to Wendy's.
Thread of Thoughts, Questions (and Maybe Even Answers) That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread
- Thread starter LBD "Nytetrayn"
- Start date
If I had an Oddball I'd give it to you just to keep this going.
So over in the Energon Universe thread, with the news of SkyBound's run being looked at for an "adult oriented animated series" there was talk about how the franchise in trying to be mature can come off as adolescent instead and how ultimately this is a franchise meant to sell toys to kids, so should that even be attempted?
But I was thinking about something. Something that no one who values their sanity should think about...
The AllSpark Almanacs. Specifically The AllSpark Almanac II.
When it's not retconning G1 stuff, it's giving backstory to Animated's universe. And two things really stand out to me.
The first is the decision in it to introduce Animated Megazarak as the Decepticon founder who's ultimately usurped and replaced as their leader by a charismatic orator named Megatron.
As a history teacher my mind goes to Anton Drexler, founder of the Nazi Party, whose position was usurped by a charismatic orator named Adolf Hitler.
Lest you all think I'm reaching... TAAII makes a lot of WWII references for the Animated version of the Great War. The False Calm, Decepticon bombing campaign attempting to force the Autobots into surrender through sheer brutality, and the Autobot planet-hoping counter-offensive are all lifted from actual aspects of WWII.
The other TAAII thing that got me thinking was the Protectobots. TAAII establishes the original Protectobots as one of the Autobot predecessor factions that did some heinous genocidey stuff way back when. The name gets resurrected for the Autobot subgroup in the present when Sentinel Prime appoints to Animated's take on the G1 team. Meant to show that Sentinel isn't on the up and up. Like if a US politician started using a group called the Praetorian Guard as his posse. Would raise some eyebrows.
But like... here's where the point of this rambly post comes in... the Protecobots in G1 were pretty swell guys? They were rescue/emergency vehicles.
So... is assigning their group name- and even likeness- to a proto-fascist faction or neo-fascist political blowhard's posse really appropriate? Is mapping elements of the Decepticons to the Nazi Party and Great War to WWII- one of the deadliest and destructive eras of human history- appropriate? IDW's willingness to engage with themes like political repression, revolution, genocide, and the horrors of war is nothing new, but this is a tie-in book to Animated. One of the more directly aimed at kids iterations of the franchise.
And TAAII has been widely praised for its worldbuilding in fan circles.
So I guess ultimately I'm asking... if we're going to go "maybe this franchise doesn't have to try to be mature, maybe it should be comfortable being what it is" then... well... I don't think there's room for Nazi and colonial analogues?
I phrased that like a question. I don't know myself. I don't think creatives in this franchise should shy away from mature themes or even wanting to see where they can take the franchise's innate elements if they play with them a bit in that mature space. And that "it's just a kids show, don't make it be more than that" is the path to stagnant creativity.
I also don't think the buckets of blood approach is desirable either, though.
And the fandom leaps between the two. IDW referencing the Holocaust or Stalin's purges is "taking it seriously" and "mature" but SkyBound shows Starscream squishing one dude and it's too far.
TAAII itself is an example of this... a lot of people love it, but it alludes to some very dark and genuinely destructive things in its worldbuilding.
I guess what I'm asking is... what do we want? I know that's a broad question. And a complex one. We're not a monolith, we all have different tolerances and desires when it comes to Transformers storytelling. And we're an aging, small niche of the fandom here (not a knock, it's why I like it here
) so I'm not expecting a definitive answer.
I just wanna see where people land on this, and where they think things are generally handled the best.
But I was thinking about something. Something that no one who values their sanity should think about...
The AllSpark Almanacs. Specifically The AllSpark Almanac II.
When it's not retconning G1 stuff, it's giving backstory to Animated's universe. And two things really stand out to me.
The first is the decision in it to introduce Animated Megazarak as the Decepticon founder who's ultimately usurped and replaced as their leader by a charismatic orator named Megatron.
As a history teacher my mind goes to Anton Drexler, founder of the Nazi Party, whose position was usurped by a charismatic orator named Adolf Hitler.
Lest you all think I'm reaching... TAAII makes a lot of WWII references for the Animated version of the Great War. The False Calm, Decepticon bombing campaign attempting to force the Autobots into surrender through sheer brutality, and the Autobot planet-hoping counter-offensive are all lifted from actual aspects of WWII.
The other TAAII thing that got me thinking was the Protectobots. TAAII establishes the original Protectobots as one of the Autobot predecessor factions that did some heinous genocidey stuff way back when. The name gets resurrected for the Autobot subgroup in the present when Sentinel Prime appoints to Animated's take on the G1 team. Meant to show that Sentinel isn't on the up and up. Like if a US politician started using a group called the Praetorian Guard as his posse. Would raise some eyebrows.
But like... here's where the point of this rambly post comes in... the Protecobots in G1 were pretty swell guys? They were rescue/emergency vehicles.
So... is assigning their group name- and even likeness- to a proto-fascist faction or neo-fascist political blowhard's posse really appropriate? Is mapping elements of the Decepticons to the Nazi Party and Great War to WWII- one of the deadliest and destructive eras of human history- appropriate? IDW's willingness to engage with themes like political repression, revolution, genocide, and the horrors of war is nothing new, but this is a tie-in book to Animated. One of the more directly aimed at kids iterations of the franchise.
And TAAII has been widely praised for its worldbuilding in fan circles.
So I guess ultimately I'm asking... if we're going to go "maybe this franchise doesn't have to try to be mature, maybe it should be comfortable being what it is" then... well... I don't think there's room for Nazi and colonial analogues?
I phrased that like a question. I don't know myself. I don't think creatives in this franchise should shy away from mature themes or even wanting to see where they can take the franchise's innate elements if they play with them a bit in that mature space. And that "it's just a kids show, don't make it be more than that" is the path to stagnant creativity.
I also don't think the buckets of blood approach is desirable either, though.
And the fandom leaps between the two. IDW referencing the Holocaust or Stalin's purges is "taking it seriously" and "mature" but SkyBound shows Starscream squishing one dude and it's too far.
TAAII itself is an example of this... a lot of people love it, but it alludes to some very dark and genuinely destructive things in its worldbuilding.
I guess what I'm asking is... what do we want? I know that's a broad question. And a complex one. We're not a monolith, we all have different tolerances and desires when it comes to Transformers storytelling. And we're an aging, small niche of the fandom here (not a knock, it's why I like it here
) so I'm not expecting a definitive answer.I just wanna see where people land on this, and where they think things are generally handled the best.
My answer is, "Yes." We're 40 years into this franchise. It doesn't have to be just one thing. It shouldn't be. It CAN'T be. There have to be different projects with different approaches that appeal to different people. No one's going to like all of them, no project will appeal to everyone, and that's all ok. Being able to have both kid-focused shows like Go-Bots and Rescue Bots alongside stuff like IDW and the WWII parallels you're talking about is a good thing, IMO.
I don't care for IDW or TAAII so my hands are clean here. I'm tired of WW2. If you must with the historic analogies, give me the Cold War.
Beast Wars is a sweet spot for me. Cybertron seems to be on a knife's edge. The Predacons are just waiting for this thing to pop off. The Maximal Elders.. aren't great. I don't think they're going to be wimps when the fighting starts. This thing could go from 0 to 11 very easily. There's definitely stories that could be told about all the machinations and backstabbing and whatever that's going on as cooler heads (if not always necessarily good) try to keep this seemingly inevitable war from happening and hotter heads (if not always unsympathetic) try to set it off. But we're not focused on any of that. We're focused on two tiny crews in the middle of nowhere, whose tiny conflict could be the thing that blows it all up. It's very Cold War without being on the nose about any specific people or events.
Beast Wars is a sweet spot for me. Cybertron seems to be on a knife's edge. The Predacons are just waiting for this thing to pop off. The Maximal Elders.. aren't great. I don't think they're going to be wimps when the fighting starts. This thing could go from 0 to 11 very easily. There's definitely stories that could be told about all the machinations and backstabbing and whatever that's going on as cooler heads (if not always necessarily good) try to keep this seemingly inevitable war from happening and hotter heads (if not always unsympathetic) try to set it off. But we're not focused on any of that. We're focused on two tiny crews in the middle of nowhere, whose tiny conflict could be the thing that blows it all up. It's very Cold War without being on the nose about any specific people or events.
I guess the difference lies between "real maturity" (deep, high concept writing that is thought provoking, emotionally engaging, and carefully crafted) and "fake maturity" (gore, sex, swearing, f-bombs, nudity, etc.). Sadly, when people hear the word "mature", it's the latter that springs to mind more commonly for most people than the former, because of a widespread misconception that something needs to have at least some of that "fake maturity" in order to be considered "mature".
But what they fail to realize is that the rating system gauges content not based on "real maturity" but based on "fake maturity", otherwise known as "inappropriateness". But that word has such negative connotations that they use the phrase "For mature audiences" instead of "For inappropriate audiences" in order to make people feel better about themselves for watching that kind of content, so that they can get a higher viewership of said content. After all, content creating is a business. They don't make money if no one's watching.
But what they fail to realize is that the rating system gauges content not based on "real maturity" but based on "fake maturity", otherwise known as "inappropriateness". But that word has such negative connotations that they use the phrase "For mature audiences" instead of "For inappropriate audiences" in order to make people feel better about themselves for watching that kind of content, so that they can get a higher viewership of said content. After all, content creating is a business. They don't make money if no one's watching.
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I've been saying for decades that Transformers lends itself uniquely well to high-concept adult sci-fi (stories about philosophy or social issues), but keeps getting kneecapped because "it's just for kids" (or worse, something that must be "deconstructed" with added gore, swearing, sex jokes, and ironic cynicism a la Michael Bay).
I really feel like both Beast Wars and Beast Machines tried hard to steer the brand more in the course of deep, high concept sci-fi, especially when reading the interviews given by Bob Forward, Larry DiTillio, Bob Skir, and Marty Isenberg (heck, Forward and DiTillio originally wanted Beast Wars to be a Star Trek type show)... but in the end, no matter how hard these people tried, it always came back to people just wanting to see car people and jet people simply punching and shooting each other.
BM tried but I'd argue it failed.
And you know what? Seeing car and jet people punch each other is kind of important. It's the foundational imagery of the first show's first season's title sequence
Conflict is baked into this franchise.
"Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons."
We can get as deep or introspective as we want, this will always be there and it will always be what most people come to the franchise to see, in some form.
Pretending that's not the case... is like wanting a Batman series where he doesn't take on Gotham's underworld.
Even series like IDW1's latter run or EarthSpark, which take place after the end of the War, still reverberate with the War's aftermath.
I'm not sure fully divorcing Transformers from the concept of conflict and two sides fighting is possible or even desirable. I don't think Transfomers needs to necessarily give the Decepticons their own version of Auschwitz, but conflict in and of itself is part of the franchise.
Eventually a car person and a jet person will have to throw down.
You're someone whose takes and insights I respect a great deal, and that includes this topic. So please understand I'm not trying to take a shot here... just trying to delve further into this discussion. That being said...
Who decides where the lines are? Everything you've listed as "fake maturity" can and has been done in multiple works across multiple franchises poorly... but they've also been pulled off well in a number of different works.
Just going with sex... sex is an intrinsic part of the human experience. Most (not all, but most) humans are drawn towards romantic and sexual coupling. A work of a speculative fiction nature that wants to capture an authentic human experience with a "mature" audience will explore sexual relationships. That's just realistic and good writing. It's not strictly relevant for Transformers per se, but I hope to highlight that these "fake maturity" themes can be done well.
One of my favourite sci fi shows, the nu-BSG show of the 2000s, doesn't shy away from curses, sex, and violence. And I think it's brilliant. I don't think those elements are why it's so good, but they do make the world of the show feel more authentic. People curse. They swear. They have sex. And, in war, there is violence.
I certainly wouldn't put it in the same category as a work just flashing tits and guns on screen wanting to seem "hardcore."
Circling back to Transformers... SkyBound (the source material for the show that kicked off this discussion) is certainly violent, but it also has scenes of characters trying to cope with the horrors of war, Optimus discovering Earth's intrinsic beauty, a tragic story of how conflict forced Starscream into a life of violence, etc...
And yet "SkyBound is too violent" and "this is just fake maturity, why can't this franchise go back to being kid friendly?" gets tossed at it. Often by people who are happy to praise IDW with allusions to the Holocaust and Stalin-era purges, or TAAII straight up turning a friendly team of rescue vehicle-themed Autobots into the Gestapo and making Megatron an expy for Adolf Hitler.
Like SkyBound Starscream killing one guy is too violent but IDW Megatron committing multiple genocides across the galaxy is "deep and serious and mature"?
I guess I'm wondering where the lines are.
The cynical part of me just thinks that none of this is genuine, people just arbitrary like some things and dislike other things, and rather than be ok with that they try to glom onto reasons to feel morally righteous about their subjective opinions.
But... also... I don't want that to be the case because I think these are interesting discussions to have and I have a desire to assume people are acting in good faith.
So again, I'm wondering where these lines are and who makes these calls as to themes and subject matter?
I hope I made my case that it's not so clear cut.
You can't be surprised that the majority of people view "mature" as "when I was a kid I got in trouble for seeing that, but now that I am an adult nobody is saying I can't watch those things".
Add the word "gratuitous" before each of the ones I listed in the parentheses. As in "gore/sex/swearing/f-bombs/nudity/etc. for the sheer sake of it, rather than using any of those to make a point of thoughtfulness in greater service to the narrative."
Like, take Lucas's death in Age of Extinction for example. The way it was done with an extreme close up of his smoldering corpse, and then lingering on it for so long afterward, was gratuitously horrifying and unnecessarily disturbing, all for the sheer sake of it. The extent of how morbid and grim his death was served no purpose other than to be edgy.
Behind the scenes, Bay took Lucas's death to such an extent as a middle finger to T.J. Miller, since they apparently had some difficulties working together, which just makes Bay come off as incredibly petty and childish.
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I remember my theater laughed at the whole slow motion bit, until Lucas' death instantly shut everyone up.
(shrug)
I can't profess to having a super coherent take on these things, just what I either like/don't or have the energy for/don't at this point in my life.
I will say these things from some distance and disinterest: chronology can and probably does play a role for people; seeing violence (or whatever) as being a part of the fiction they consume can be fine the first (or so) time, and less fine the next because they've already (and perhaps just recently) gone through it. Not even getting into the actual content of time 1 vs time 2, just the fact that time 2 happened to follow time 1.
There's also the depiction of things. Violence in backstory or violent events referred to by name in dialogue vs. on-page gore (and both IDW and Skybound have had both) will stick out in people's minds differently, and associations will be formed either way. This is also alongside what other narrative bits surround the violence and gore, and whether that's enough of a pivot or palate cleanser. (Skybound is young yet, so each element is more concentrated into one space, which is another element outside the actual content influencing its perception.)
There will be different preferences and tastes here, and I can see both arguments having merit -- or the notion of arguing merit being pointless as it's a matter of taste as much as anything.
Me, I've always appreciated the limits that animation and kid-aimed media have had; constraints create art, and we've had some fascinating takes on things that are no less memorable or powerful than they would have been if those constraints were removed. I don't go into these things looking for sex and violence, and I'll admit that being used to not having them directly presented may be influencing my tastes. But my gut instinct is to have my interest undermined a bit when either starts to build or become more explicit, and that's a bias I'll own. Doesn't mean it's any less good or meaningful, and I'm trying to outgrow the urge to defend or denigrate material based on that.
Aside from all that, I'll second CoffeeHorse here and say I'm just tired of WW2 now. Especially with everything going on outside, I don't want to escape into my fiction and find the same crap there.
I can't profess to having a super coherent take on these things, just what I either like/don't or have the energy for/don't at this point in my life.
I will say these things from some distance and disinterest: chronology can and probably does play a role for people; seeing violence (or whatever) as being a part of the fiction they consume can be fine the first (or so) time, and less fine the next because they've already (and perhaps just recently) gone through it. Not even getting into the actual content of time 1 vs time 2, just the fact that time 2 happened to follow time 1.
There's also the depiction of things. Violence in backstory or violent events referred to by name in dialogue vs. on-page gore (and both IDW and Skybound have had both) will stick out in people's minds differently, and associations will be formed either way. This is also alongside what other narrative bits surround the violence and gore, and whether that's enough of a pivot or palate cleanser. (Skybound is young yet, so each element is more concentrated into one space, which is another element outside the actual content influencing its perception.)
There will be different preferences and tastes here, and I can see both arguments having merit -- or the notion of arguing merit being pointless as it's a matter of taste as much as anything.
Me, I've always appreciated the limits that animation and kid-aimed media have had; constraints create art, and we've had some fascinating takes on things that are no less memorable or powerful than they would have been if those constraints were removed. I don't go into these things looking for sex and violence, and I'll admit that being used to not having them directly presented may be influencing my tastes. But my gut instinct is to have my interest undermined a bit when either starts to build or become more explicit, and that's a bias I'll own. Doesn't mean it's any less good or meaningful, and I'm trying to outgrow the urge to defend or denigrate material based on that.
Aside from all that, I'll second CoffeeHorse here and say I'm just tired of WW2 now. Especially with everything going on outside, I don't want to escape into my fiction and find the same crap there.
Wasn't G1 based on Cold War scares and such?
Amusingly, this reminds me of this video I saw a couple of nights ago:
It was probably meant to warn us away from letting history repeat.
Fat lot of good that did.
Along with the oil crisis of the 1970s.
Add it to the pile.
I'm not certain about that. Outside of "two sides" nothing in G1 really seems overly Cold War-ish.
The main IRL political inspiration seems to be the 70s oil crisis inspiring the "Cybertron is out of power and we need to find a new source of it somewhere" plot, but the deeper political dynamics of the oil crisis don't seem to really influence much.
It's mostly just a plot point that anyone who was old enough to remember that from the 70s might have picked up on at the time... but it's really not explored in any great detail other then "the Decepticons want to plunder Earth's resources."
If anything I'd argue that G1's most overt political message was environmental in nature, about how the Decepticons just want to recklessly drain Earth's natural resources, to the point of inducing climate change, and how this is obviously bad.
But even then, a lot of the "energy" stuff gets buried under a lot of G1 wackiness. A big game hunter who wants to hunt Optimus Prime or mammoth cowboy time rips aren't exactly adding to the complexity of the oil crisis and environmentalist narratives
And all of that stuff seems to be gone by the time we get to TFTM and S3.
Well WWII is a particularly big thing for me.
I'm Jewish, and I had family killed in the Holocaust. I grew up seeing family members who survived with the tattoos, and as I grew older I began to realize how deeply that effected not just them, but my community as a Jewish person as a whole.
So I can be very sensitive to fictional works that lean on those things.
Not always in a bad way, mind you. Magneto and Kitty Pryde are two great examples from X-Men. Magneto as someone whose own experiences reflect members of my own family, and sort of a cautionary tale of how hatred and trauma can lead to becoming what you once feared. And Kitty as someone who did experience antisemitism but because she does have a generation or two's worth of distance between her and what made Magneto what he was, she landed in a very different, far more hopeful space.
How X-Men handled Jewish identity and response to antisemitic trauma in these two is kind of wild in just how nuanced and great it is, and as someone from that community? It's very empowering to read.
So Transfomers leaning into Nazi analogues with the Decepticons isn't a bad direction in and of itself. Like... Megatron turned into a Walther P38 in the 80s it's not a totally out there idea
And hell... IDW giving the Decepticons their own Auschwitz in Grindcore isn't a bad idea in and of itself. As I said, you can get some proper pathos out of that, as X-Men did.
But I suppose my issue is... this isn't exactly kids fare and is far more brutal than some of the other stuff people complain about.
Given my own family history, Grindcore and all it implies through very direct Auschwitz coding affected me in a far deeper way then SkyBound Starscream crushing a single dude.
There's also the fact that IDW gave Megatron his own Auschwitz and then tried to give him a redemption arc, which is a whole other can of worms.
I think that's a really good point. And kind of gets into a wider societal issue... but I'll keep it limited to Transformers.
I think "hey I didn't like that, it's not my cup of tea" is a very valid take. Sometimes you just don't like a thing. You can articulate your rationale if you dive into why, but going "it just wasn't for me" is valid and should be enough for most people.
All of this is subjective. Sabrblade pointed to BM as a show that tried to push mature themes. I said I didn't care for it. We can both be "right" because there is no right. It's just different strokes for different folks.
But we as a fandom can often fall into the trap of thinking that this isn't enough. OUR subjective opinions need to be treated as objective FACT and so we have all sorts of rationales to try and twist what amounts to "eh, it wasn't for me" into something far more morally and objectively "correct" even if the every premise of that is flawed.
There is no objectively correct opinion in art.
And yes I am being critical, but I'm being self-critical as much as I'm being critical of others. I am 100% guilty of doing all of that myself.