#transfor

"You're the looker, liquor sugar

And I'm the rotten apple of your eye

Pressure, poets, priceless smiles, cutting-edge entertainment

Foolish antics, antique evenings, fragile, frugal, breaking even

(A flash fic to go with the au idea I just posted)

As he continued his pummeling, D-16 stopped seeing Starscream. He saw Darkwing, he saw Sentinel, he saw every fucking bot who looked down on him for being a miner, for being cogless.

A hard scrabble life he had to live because of one selfish bot!

Fuck Sentinel! Fuck Orion and Elita for trying to pull him off this afthole!

He didn't notice the silence until it was broken by the sound of purging. Lots of it.

Then broken by "Primus, D-16, OH PRIMUS!"

"STARSCREAM! I'M SORRY, I DIDN'T THINK HE WOULD GO THAT FAR!"

"D-16, he's gone, please stop!"

"Who's gone?" D-16 found himself snapped back to a gruesome reality: Starscream's...well it wasn't a face anymore, just a bunch of circuits and energon.

Two weeping seekers ( a light blue and black one, plus a purple and black) took the body, wrapped it in a sheet, cross their arms, looked up and the sky and began a strange chant.

D-16 stared at the body and then his energon covered fists

I just watched this video and I wanted to share it beforehand before I watched it fully.

It’s been nearly a year since I’ve talked Transformers stuff or well...months. I’ll be honest I’m not the hugest Transformers guy these days. I do still like the franchise though. Esiecally I skipped out on any sort of news from months ago. 

But now since this video was uploaded yesterday. Spoilers for the video, these are just rumors. Yet if these are true, I’ll be quite excited for the next one. Considering this is something I remember talking about wanting for the franchise. Yet it may bother some folks because it may me pushing too much stuff.

by A. B. Simpson

"And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure." - 1 John 3:3

God is now aiming to reproduce in us the pattern which has already appeared in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Christian life is not an imitation of Christ, but a direct new creation in Christ, and the union with Christ is so complete that he imparts his own nature to us and lives his own life in us and then it is not an imitation, but simply the outgrowth of the nature implanted within.

We live Christ-like because we have the Christ-life. God is not satisfied with anything less than perfection. He required that from his Son. He requires it from us, and he does not, in the process of grace, reduce the standard, but he brings us up to it. He does not let down the righteousness of the law, but he requires of us a righteousness that far exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and then he imparts it to us. He counts us righteous in sanctification, and he says of the new creation, “you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.”

153. 212. These are the lengths of the two speeches that bookended the Lost Light’s quest. Delivered by Rodimus, they are critical apexes that punctuate the story of the Lost Light. 

While some 90 issues separating the two speeches, they say a lot about where we started and where we’ve ended. Both speeches were a call to arms. The first speech was delivered in MTMTE #1 in the shadows of a four million war that had just ended. The second speech was delivered in Lost Light #24 with the fate of the universe on the line. 

Both were designed to rally but their differences could not be more stark. As a starting point, the analytics specialist in me couldn’t help but indulge in some sentiment analysis. What’s sentiment analysis you ask? In short it’s a way of using mathematical algorithms to score the sentiment of a text as positive or negative - if you believe it’s possible to reduce text to such a binary outcome. Rodimus’ first speech scored 100. His second speech 51.9*. 

This didn’t feel right at first. The emotion the second speech stirs in me is so much stronger. I could delve into the pitfalls of Machine Learning / AI but that wasn’t the point. When you start to look at the speeches, while they are both rallying calls Rodimus’ second speech -is- more negative. 

It rightly points out that this band of misfits are “not natural bedfellows” and “it shouldn’t [have] worked” because they’re “not the smartest or the strongest or the bravest or the best” and they’ve “hurt people” and they’ve hurt themselves. 

In contrast, Rodimus’ first speech is far more positive. With the war over, Rodimus took aim at dislocation that a postwar world had brought, that fragmentation of an identity forged over four million years of war, and offered hope. He reassures those listening that “You’ve done your duty. The war is over.” More than that he tells them “that day you thought would never come? That’s today” and reminds them of what they deserve: “you’ve earnt the right to see the universe without a gun in your hand”.

It is aimed at offering purpose. It’s effectiveness comes from its broad and hopeful appeal. It could appeal to any Transformer, Autobot or Decepticon. 

This is at odds with Rodimus’ second speech. Rodimus’ second speech is personal. Without being grounded in the context of their struggles aboard the Lost Light, the second speech has no effectiveness. It has meaning because they have “stumbled through life [together] from one self-inflicted disaster to the next without anything even approaching a plan”.

It’s a speech that’s brutal in its honesty but heartfelt in its sincerity. It’s recognises and celebrates the intimate journey that our protagonists have endured to be where they are. 

Rodimus summarises it as only he could: “Welcome aboard. Maybe you’re not good. But you’re sure as hell as good enough.”

The contrasting reactions to the speeches further underline how far this quest has come. Rodimus’ elation at the number of bots that have signed up after the first speech is to “stick it up [Bumblebee’s] exhaust”. 

In the latter case, the crew rallies and finds belief in each other and, more importantly, themselves. There is no personal glory for Rodimus. The glory lies in bringing together a bunch of people where this should’ve never worked. 

And this is the heart of what makes MTMTE, MTMTE. As much as MTMTE is a story about big ideas, big moments and big confrontations, it is first and foremost a story about acceptance.

 * You can use this free sentiment analysis tool here to try for yourself: https://www.danielsoper.com/sentimentanalysis/default.aspx

I’M SCREAMING!!!!