all things stikbot, all the time!

What are Stikbots™?

This is a Stikbot!

(^^ They come in many different colors. These colors can also be translucent, glitter, and glow in the dark! Metal ones are metallic colors, like gold, silver, and copper.)

According to the Zing store website, "Stikbots are pose-able action figures that will adhere to almost any smooth flat surface, thanks to their suction cup hands and feet." They're little stop-motion animation toys made for kids, which got quite popular in the 2010s. The company that created them, Zing, has a YouTube channel called Stikbot Central where a number of original animations can be found featuring these little guys.

Their clickable rather than stickable counterparts, the Klikbot, is a lot like a Stikbot except with a larger build and much stronger joints, for better articulation and ability to. Y'know. Actually hold a pose. They get their name from the way their joints click into place. Fun to fidget with, but horrible for anyone within earshot. They're a lot newer and a bit less popular than Stikbots, and notably come in far fewer colors, though have many more accessories. This is a Klikbot!

(^^ metals and normal, candy-like, plastic-y color)

There are many offshoots of the original Stikbots, including pets, safari animals, monsters, mega monsters, dinosaurs, and mech suits. It's kind of a lot.

What is Off the Grid?

Off the Grid (OtG) is an original stop-motion animated series on Stikbot Centrals official YouTube channel. It's aimed at a more mature audience and has much darker, grittier themes. That's to be expected, seeing as it was created entirely by the incredible Moonshine Animations. ("Where Cute and Moe come to die.") It's the primary draw of the Stikbot Central animations, and is something I post a lot about! It's a staple of the Stikbot lore. (There was also the sequel series, OtG: Nightmare, but I don't particularly like that one....) The production of Off the Grid alone is a hefty lore-ridden story within itself, but such is a tale for another day.

BACKGROUND

We know very little about Raptus’s upbringing and life before the events of the Great Stikbot War.

Raptus did not only fight in the Great Stikbot War, but was also part of a team of highly skilled Stikbots who were sent to explore the outside world some time after the fighting ended. Raptus describes their group as full of hopes and dreams, showing that The War and its aftermath didn’t completely demoralize him. He was trying to move on, and to be on the front lines for the betterment of the Grid. He certainly has some resilience, but one bot can only take so much. The expedition flashback is the first big hit to his psyche that we get to see for ourselves within the series. Raptus was incredibly close to every bot on this expedition, and every one of them was killed horribly, some (possibly ALL) right in front of his eyes. In the QnA, he mentions having a sparkmate who has died. The two most likely circumstances of this unnamed sparkmate’s death are either the Great Stikbot War or The Expedition. No matter which theory you subscribe to, the loss of Raptus’s sparkmate alongside ALL of his friends scrambled his circuits badly. He began his spiral into the mindset we see him trapped in during the series: “Out here, good Stikbots die, and only the strong survive.” Raptus believes he must make himself strong for his own survival. He hardens his exterior, closing himself off from anybody who might want to know him. He learns to keep his cards close to his chest in a world where trust is either heavily conditional or non-existent.

The details are fuzzy on what exactly happened to him after he was left to die, but he managed to retreat back into the Grid. I choose to believe that Regalius personally helped plan and execute that expedition, giving the two some history together. Considering not even Striker knew that the expedition ever took place, it was likely highly classified. (Regalius doesn’t want them to know that there’s a world out there, to quote Raptus himself.) Regalius, therefore, is one of the only people in the Grid who knew Raptus personally before he went out on that expedition, which means he DEFINITELY saw firsthand just how heavily traumatized Raptus became from it. After his return, Raptus closed himself off and opted to stick to the shadows, even managing to avoid the detection of rapidly advancing Grid Security. While Raptus could’ve always been reserved by nature, something within him shifted for the worst after that experience. And Regalius chose to... ignore it. Likely out of pity, his responsibilities as a military commander, and having absolutely no idea what to do about it. (Regalius is, in all honesty, incredibly in over his head a lot of the time. He never should have risen to the position that he did!) One could even argue that Regalius just letting Raptus drop off the face of the Earth without even attempting to make sure he was okay could’ve been the difference between the Raptus we got in the series, and a Raptus that could’ve possibly recovered and made it to the end, firmly on the side of good. No matter how much blame you want to put on Regalius for that, I believe at this point Raptus was still able to be saved. That didn’t happen.

SHIFT + STRIKER (S1)

In the S1 era Grid, Raptus is still living like a total recluse, only really interacting with Shift when they start working on the train together to escape. Before Regalius’s reign got really bad, even while planning to escape the Grid together, it's obvious that Shift and Raptus were more like coworkers than anything else. Shift might’ve tried to connect, probably absolutely idolizing Rapus and his service in the war, if his relationship with Striker is anything to go off of. But Raptus is a brick wall by this point. He likely intimidates Shift a lot of the time, intentionally or not, and I bet he relishes in that feeling of being feared, tying into his absolute unbridled lust for power and lightly foreshadowing his eventual betrayal. If he isn't going to open himself up to anyone, might as well feed into his ego and make everyone fear him. Maybe there's a rumor going around the Grid about a scary, rusted old metalbot who prowls the outskirts, only feeding the general panic as Stikbots continue to go missing. A rumor that is in no way perpetuated by Raptus himself, of course. When it comes to Shift, he's cold, and not even the engineer's lovable nature could crack his thick exterior.

After more Stikbots go missing, their plan changes. Instead of seeking only to explore the outside world again, Raptus and Shift find a new purpose in rebuilding the train: Rescuing Pixel and the other kidnapped bots.

Raptus realizes pretty quickly that Regalius is only getting worse in sealing off the Grid and its citizens. He's smart and experienced enough to know that the path Regalius is leading their people down is not a good one, so he takes the opportunity to get Striker onto his team through that phone call. Considering that this is probably the only time he’s willingly contacted ANYONE in the Grid since his return, it shows a surprising amount of trust he has in Striker. Throughout the WHOLE series, even all the way to his face-heel turn, he never doubts for a second that Striker wants only what's best for their kind. The only difference once he goes full-on evil is that he begins to see this as a weakness. Striker and Raptus clearly have a history forged from when they fought side-by-side in The Great Stikbot War, which is most certainly where this trust stems from.

SACRIFICE

You'd think that after losing all of his friends to the nightmares of the outside, Raptus would want nothing to do with anything outside the Grid. I think the opposite happened. Raptus has something to prove. He was completely prepared to die to "settle the score," as he sees it. His brain has been in that "good stikbots die” mentality since the expedition, which means he has had this outlook baked into his servos for years! Raptus has this almost compulsive need to fortify himself in nearly every way, and he wants to prove himself capable of being strong. As his mental state deteriorates, he grows to want revenge on those who have wronged him and the people he cared about. He was almost EXCITED to leave Striker to go and fight the monster in the tunnel. He claims he has a “score to settle.”

Underneath this facade of strength, however, is genuine fear. This is why he chose to retreat to the outskirts of the Grid and never talk to anyone. He's terribly afraid of making a genuine connection to ANYONE because in his experience, everyone he has ever meaningfully connected with has died. This is important to keep in mind when considering his relationship with Shift.

When Shift sacrifices himself, Raptus instantly tries to paint himself as a realist, trying to convince Striker that you have to be cold and uncaring (=strong) to survive outside the Grid. This goes against everything Striker stands for, as he manages to both keep his caring nature and establish peace in the Grid. Meanwhile, Raptus’s indifference and inability to connect is what leads to his downfall. It's almost disturbing how little Raptus seems to care about Shift's death, like he expected it. But when you remember that, in his experience, everyone he’s ever been close to had died, of COURSE he expected it. Even Striker, who is probably the closest thing to an actual intimate friend Raptus has, picks up on this indifference, and it's probably his first inkling to the fact that saving Pixel and the others from the outside isn't going to be as action movie perfect as he'd been imagining.

In the beginning of the series, Striker has no idea just how twisted Raptus’s motivations will become. Only after Raptus’s betrayal does Striker even begin to see how his lust for power has corrupted him, even though the signs have been there (albeit subtle) since the beginning.

Raptus’s betrayal, in the end, truly comes down to his vendetta against these monsters that killed his friends and possibly his sparkmate, driving him to want more and more power. That want for survival morphed into a greed that eventually took over and became priority one over his fellow Stikbots. He DID, at one time, care about his species. But as the show went on, this tenderness was smothered out and hardened beneath his lust for power.

The tunnel monster, Megatron, and the metalbot all represent the same thing to Raptus: The evil that he must become strong enough to overcome. Megatron and the metalbot all attack that insecurity of his specifically. They tell him that he’s weak, and that weakness must be eliminated. This both reaffirms his worldview and drives him to more drastic means of securing power, that being his Season 2 betrayal.

It doesn’t help that he doesn’t defeat either of these monsters, either. He has to call on the Rift Worm and then Striker to defeat them, which must’ve made him feel incredibly weak. Unlike Striker, Raptus is too insecure in himself and his own strength to willingly call upon others for help. Striker straight up tells him this, and this difference is how Striker gains the upper hand and defeats him the first time.

CLOSING

It's incredibly depressing to think about, but we don't EVER get to see Raptus for who he once was. The Raptus we get to know is just a ghost. While not literally dead, he's only a shell of what he was before the War. Just a vengeful spirit fueled by nothing but a want for power and revenge. It's hard to pick up on this hopelessness on a first watch, but it's there, and once you notice it, it makes his first return in Season 2 feel very wrong. Which is REALLY good foreshadowing for his final Season 6 death. By this point, his brain and memories have been manipulated to the point that he’s a completely different bot than the one that made that fateful phone call to Striker all the way back in Season 1. In this universe, there's no hope for Raptus to ever find peace or redemption.