Chilling

so like, i went on the whole transformers binge chronologically, but we skipped the bay movies cuz OBVIOUSLY we did. they did so much to ruin movies as a whole, getting the military to help fund your (technically) super hero movies? starts here. that ultra patriotic military stuff. let keep a pin in that concept.

so when you start with g1 you know youre watching a cartoon. you know theyre kinda making it up as they go, the concept is robots who fight. thats all it is. but the lore of g1 very much grows over the seasons, it starts to gain this shape. much of the opening concept is ripping off star wars, we have these SCRAPPY rebels trying to win back control of their home planet from the authoritarian decepticons! the good guys we follow are the little guys! they dont have control of the planet, theyre doing SPY stuff trying to win. keeping the autobots as the scrappy underdogs, fighting to free their planet AND planet earth from tyranical rule of the decepticons who want to steal all the energy from earth! you know? like thats the concept.

eventually the lore expands, we see that both sides were crafted by another alien race called the QUINTESSONS! they were created to be labour bots and WAR bots, thats how we end up with the dichotomy of these military jet modes and these scrappy cars. both sides being descended from robots made for one thing.

like the lore is not always consistent BELIEVE ME I KNOW, but this right here is a good note. because its saying that like. yes those robots you love? they were created to be slaves to another life form. and they rebel against their creators. they are more than what they were created to be. its a really good bit of lore for a piece of media about ROBOTS! (robot coming from the word FORCED LABOUR, a sci fi narrative about capitalism, you get it?)

another note from g1: unicron. unicron is based on GALACTUS from the marvel comics universe. he exists to be that thing "beyond good, beyond evil". he is simply a planet sized transformer that needs to consume other planets to live. he's not EVIL, he is simply sustaining himself. he represents nothing but himself. just a cosmic horror, the characters we follow are simply insignificant to his scale. which is why it makes it all the more impressive that he can be taken down, not by the power of being good, or righteous, just by never giving up in the face of such imminent destruction. optimism ;3

so. at some point down the line of shows following this? unicron becomes the devil. like, the transformers devil. at some point he starts representing evil as a concept. hes a god now, which means... well. we now need a good god to combat that evil energy in the universe.

enter the concept of primus. okay, so planet cybertron is ALSO a transformer now, and its their god. it becomes their god of creation. and suddenly the robots are no longer following the allegory of forced labour, we have now entered divine creation territory. uh oh. that metaphor for capitalism has become a 1 to 1 bible metaphor! what happened!

like okay. in transformers cybertron this is an innocent enough concept, they need to save their planet, their planet is ALSO a guy... thats fine! that works. again, if we're talking chronologically about me binging, this is the point where i started to go "uh oh. i sure hope this doesnt become the new narrative"

and then we have the 13 primes. and now suddenly the planet god of all that is good has created 13 apostles with immense power. they are basically gods chosen, right? we are getting EVEN MORE 1 to 1 christian bible-y. its giving like... 'i dunno, whats the only story you know?' 'jesus' 'yeah lets do jesus'

its that whole.... patriarchy thing. im thinking of a maggie mae fish video talking about how male filmmakers have this obsession with daddy and following what daddy says, and god is the ultimate daddy..... ex: why superman became jesus and couldnt go against pa kents wishes when told not to save him. this is such a random thing to say but like... HHHH so much bible-y fiction always does that. dont question HIM or HIS will ass stuff. the ultimate daddy is god in a narrative. you fall in line and do what daddy wants and dont question it. obedient righteous servant of god you.

theyve turned primus into god, and primus' will is good and godly and we follow him because he is god.

okay. so to get into the primes finally, optimus now counts as one. YES he always did, his NAME is optimus prime after all, but thats the whole.... well we've retroactively turned his name into a THING, you know?

so to start with my problem with the primes: why are there 13 of them? thats so many. and as far as i can tell they do not seem to carry a lot of personality. DONT go off about comics to me, comic lore works different than something you put on a screen, the way you present stories work different. the medium of television or film cannot handle 13 random gods you dont know all the names of, its just.... its SO many. its such an abitrary decision that as soon as gets put into tv or a MOVIE (cough one) it becomes glaringly obvious that you need to pull back on the concept.

13. okay. 13 primes. well theres 2 evil primes, theres 3 scientist primes, primes of different kinds of transformers and

oh....

now. heres where i really hate what the primes represent. all transformers are seen as being descended from a kind of prime. their physical bodies inherited from them? so. a beast former is probably from the beast former prime, a minicon from the minicon prime......

there is only one woman prime. all women transformers look like that because they are born in her image or whatever. like in terms of KINDS of transformers its like "minibot! combiner! beastformer! woman!"

deep sigh.

its that like. woman is a KIND of thing. that dehumanizing of women, that seeing woman as OTHER thing.... it fucking pisses me off. 1 out of 13 primes is a woman? oh. right. and thats why only the ratio of men to women in tf as a whole is 13 to 1?? i hate you. i hate you so fucking much. thats fucking stupid fix your shit.

also said woman has to be killed by her lover ala plot reasons and becomes the birthing canal of cybertron where the sparks come out! YIPPEE!!!!! we love sexual assault allegory death that leads to 'womens job is give birth'

[[also upon looking further into this the 'beastformer' is the most 'spiritual' and can 'see the afterlife' and uh. hmmm. hes in touch with animals? uh oh. i wonder where they came up with that concept from. they wouldnt do that would they? base a transformer on racial stereotypes? stares into the camera thinking about all the ninja transformers we have.]]

cough. anyway.

so basically every time the primes get brought up outside of when we only need to care about ONE OF THEM... its terrible. it doesnt work narratively in the story, it makes a mess out of it cuz they wont be the focus and yet we have so many names to memorize? its great when its just. oh vector prime hes here in this show being such an old magic transformer! oh maccadam is actually alchemist prime but hes here just being the oldest transformer we have who knows everything! like thats okay.

but as soon as you start a story with 'first there was god and then there was his 13 primes' it leaves me with a sinking feeling that we're only doing this because thats the only story you can think of. because daddy god and his obedient children.

and so this leaves us with the elephant in the room: as soon as you imply that optimus prime is god's chosen...... where does that leave the decepticons? what role does that put them in? the outsiders who dont believe in our righteous god? those who dont accept our religion as the correct one? that there are those who are chosen by god and those who arent? which means we KNOW our side is right? thats a DANGEROUS narrative in this world to be putting out there.

and i dont think primus or the primes necessarily do ALWAYS present us with that huge problem, i think there can totally be ways around this if someone cared enough to think deeply about it. if they cared to try to get around that harmful narrative.

so yeah. as soon as the movie started and said 'first there was primus and the 13' i thought to myself. "uh oh. i think this might be really bad"

and then by the end of the movie optimus gets chosen by god after sacrificing himself (for no GOOD reason really) and then he choses to oust all the decepticons to the surface, surrounded by aliens who will try to kill them. punishing them because they dont follow god the right way.

turning the autobots into the authoritarian leaders of cybertron that the decepticons were originally supposed to be when conceived.

also uh. primus really..... punished his ENTIRE people by cutting off their energon just cuz ONE GUY did a bad thing. has no one thought to ask if this god is an ASSHOLE? how many transformers died cuz of that ONE guy??? he needed to see optimus sacrifice himself to SAVE that guy to turn the fucking energon back on??

anyway. i know g1 has issues, no ones ever trying to say they had it all planned out or that it was all good, but they left delicious tidbits out there ready to be picked up and used for lore later. ready to be reshuffled and edited into something cohesive later. pick up those pieces of who made the robots, of what it means to be alive and fight for your right to personhood, of autobots and decepticons coming together over a greater foe, one who seeks to enslave them because they were intended to be property.

bUT INSTEAD! we need to a bible plot. because fuck it, the only story people can think of is god. and i think maybe people just DONT see why thats an issue! dont see why its bad to constantly be jesus metaphoring EVERYTHING. what room does that leave in culture for other narratives? what are you perpetuating when you do that?

and uh. this goes hand in hand with the bayverse and the hand it played in messing this whole story up. funded by the US military, full of racial stereotypes and the sexualization and dehumanization of women, a hatered for humanity in general. no value to life or cooperation. its just about pleasing daddy (the us military)

but a lot of people only actually like transformers so they can point to the background and go THATS THAT GUY!!! I KNOW HIM!!! but that does not a good MOVIE make. thats a fucking ADVERTISEMENT.

and honestly. maybe THATS why they made 13 fucking primes. so they could sell 13 of them! $$$$$

thats being nihilistic. but you know, it just leaves the worst taste in my mouth. i miss when the message of transformers was about conservation and cooperation. it was never perfect, but it was kinder. and now its all... our righteous primus, your dastardly unicron/megatronus/megatron/galvatron whatever. knowing what side your on is right because god told you, instead of for your value in life.

which is why things like cyberverse and earthspark i dont mind as much, because theyre keeping it simple. maybe there are 13 primes but you dont need to know or care who they are because.... they dont fucking matter, we're not preaching theology at you, we're here to tell narrative stories about the main characters. heres a single prime to focus on and hes not the best and youll learn more about that as the show goes on.

But I have an AU idea, where in this universe, Unicron does not actively seek to destroy worlds or hate Primus. He floats through space and travels galaxies, eating dead worlds, kinda like cleaning away the dead and old so new life can be born. His four children are his companions, who keep him company and scout the galaxies for dead worlds to feed their father. 

They avoid worlds that are recently born or filled with life, making exceptions only to worlds that have died by the hands of their inhabitants or it was simply its time to cease from existence. 

Unicron and his children act like family. 

Unicron lets his children use his body as a home and a place to rest, and his children take care of him, sometimes even telling stories of the living worlds and creatures they have seen, which he finds fascinating. 

And I’m not entirely sure why, but I keep imagining that they sometimes sing together, and Unicron finds peace in their songs. 

And sometimes, when it's time to rest, Unicron lets his children sleep inside his spark chamber, where its safe and warm. 

And then this is when it gets a bit angstrier. 

Even though Unicron and his children do not harm living worlds and other creatures- possibly due to paranoia or a religious misconception stemming from their opposition to Primus and his creations- the Cybertronians secretly plot to destroy them.

They succeed in entering Unicron while he was resting, discovering a way to reach his children during their hibernation. 

As his children’s sparks could not be extinguished, they were extracted from their bodies and placed into imprisoning vessels, intending to make them unable to be reborn. 

Unicron then sensed that something was wrong and woke up. Seeing his children’s lifeless bodies makes him fall into rage, and devour the intruders using his anti-bodies. However, it was too late, as the intruders escaped with his children’s sparks. 

Perhaps this will cause Unicron to fall into madness from rage and grief, as he searches for his children and ultimately succumbs to insanity, devouring living worlds in his quest for their sparks. 

Another idea was that the intruders poisoned him with something, making him feel constant pain. The pain and starvation would then be the heavy cause of his madness. 

This transformation will make him the chaos bringer and the evil unmaker among Cybertron’s inhabitants. Meanwhile, on Cybertron, the intruders celebrate their success in imprisoning the harbingers and ensuring their future would be with no doom or destruction. 

The Harbinger’s sparks would be imprisoned in a secret vault that acts as a prison, and the stories of their imprisonment would be filled with lies of their supposed evil, epic fight, and eventual defeat. 

They were marked as enemies of Primus.

The Cybertronians believed that their future without the enemies of Primus would be certain. 

However, because the Harbingers’ sparks were born from Unicron’s essence—tied to doom and destruction—their power slowly radiated across Cybertron, infecting it.

Pestilence spread deadly viruses and cosmic rust. Famine drained Cybertron’s fauna and dried up its energon. War fueled uncontrollable fires, growing worse when Cybertronians fought among themselves. Death made them vulnerable to dangers that had never troubled them before.

The Cybertronians remained unaware of the source of this chaos. Meanwhile, deep within a hidden prison, the sparks of the four Harbingers lay dormant, waiting for the day they would finally be freed and reborn into the world.

i cant take her seriously