Topic Meme: (belated) Day 6

[pockysquirrel]

 fly_buggy_fly asked me to discuss why I love robots!

So this is...actually a question I have never quite thought about before? I didn't grow up on Transformers the way I grew up on PR, so there's no nostalgia factor at play. And of the multiple incarnations of the franchise, there are several that I legitimately don't give a rip about. Or in one case - I'm looking at you, Bayverse - straightup dislike. But I've been living in this fandom for a solid five years now, it's high time I gave it some props. So without further ado and in no particular order, 10 things I love about the Transformers franchise:

1) It's a kids show that doesn't insult the intelligence of an adult viewer.  I love PR in all of its cheesy glory, and I love TF for the opposite reason. Some of the series are better at this than others - Beast Wars and Prime win the race on that front - but even some of the lighter, younger-aged shows like TF:A and Rescue Bots still offer a fair bit of clever humor and interesting story. I've only ever done a legitimate "that's so cheesy!" cringe at G1, and let's face it...EVERY cartoon to come out in the 1980s was equally terrible. 

2) Dem voice actors! It's pretty common knowledge that I have a thing for voice actors, and TF has a long tradition of quality casting. Even G1 had a solid voice cast, including several people you would never expect to find voicing giant alien robots. (Casey Kasem, anyone?) And of course, the inimitable Peter Cullen, who is still (mostly) voicing Optimus Prime three decades later. The G1 movie took that to the nth degree - Orson Welles! Leonard Nimoy! Eric Idle! - and it's just kept on ever since. Some of the highlights? George Takei as Alpha Trion, Townsend Coleman as Sentinel Prime (a character deliberately designed in homage to his other iconic character, The Tick), David Kaye voicing both an Optimus AND a Megatron at different points of his career, Scott McNeil voicing both halves of Beast Wars' most shipped slash pairing, Weird Al reprising the role originated by Eric Idle in the G1 movie, and the scene in Prime in which the actress who played Zoe in Firefly kills the actor who played Jayne.

3) Fans who are also creators. I love when this happens regardless of fandom, but there are a couple of ascended fanboys in the TF world that just deserve a shout-out. Derrick Wyatt, who was already known for doing the character designs for Teen Titans before he drew a bunch of robots for TF:A. He was a guest at the first TFcon I went to, but he spent most of the time just hanging around with my friends and being a mad nerd. And James Roberts, the TF fan who went on to create a (heartbreaking and addicting) TF comic. Also his Tweets are gold.

4) Multiple incarnations of the same characters. TF is very much a multiverse, and some bots are more common in it than others. There is always an Optimus, there is always a Megatron. Most everyone else is a crapshoot. But the interesting thing about TF is how different the same character can be from one iteration to the next. Sometimes they have a lot in common with each other. Sometimes they...really don't. And it's always neat to analyze and make comparisons in those similarities and differences.

5) Ridonkulous cosplay. I have never seen better cosplayers than some of these people who make full-on robot suits. They light up. Some of them even transform. It's amazeballs. I am so jealous.

6) Chardev, chardev, chardev.  Again, some of the series are better at this than others. But I'm sure you can guess which ones are the ones I like. 

7) I dig worldbuilding and I dig well-developed fictional cultures. And TF has both in spades. Really, what could possibly be more fun for us sci-fi nerds than thinking about how a culture works that's composed of ridiculously long-lived sentient machines and that has been devastated by several millennia of civil war? And there's no shortage of source material after 30 years. It's especially fun to think about - and to write fic about - how these characters relate to one another, and how those relationships are both similar and different to those between humans. Which brings me to...

8) RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF ABSURDLY INVENTIVE PORN. All fandoms have porny fic. Not all fandoms have several hundred pages worth of kink meme covering every act and fetish under the sun. Not all fandoms have spent enough time speculating about the sex lives of their favorite characters to have invented three - THREE! - distinctive styles of robot sexual congress. It is a warped and filthy fandom and I love it.

9) There is always at least one character that I latch onto and refuse to let go of. And really, isn't that all I ever need?

10) They're giant alien robots who transform into vehicles and fight each other.  So really, what's not to love?

Comments

[tsukino_akume]

OMG BEAST WARS! I loved that show! ♥ ♥ ♥

Cheetor was totally my favorite (Yes, I've always had a thing for 'kid' characters), but there was so much to love about it! I watched it religiously for ages and ages, and then it was gone and I was so sad. ;_;

I'm also incredibly amused that I kept reading 'TF' as Time Force in my head throughout this entire post.

[pockysquirrel]

Beast Wars is AMAZEBALLS. For all that I enjoyed TF:A and some of the other variants, there's only one other series that comes close to matching Beast Wars for pure quality. And that is Transformers: Prime. If you still have any interest in Transformers, I'd recommend you check Prime out. It has a very similar tone to BW but much prettier animation. And the voice cast is smashing.

And yeah, I thought of TF as Time Force also. I was just too lazy to write out 'Transformers' repeatedly for the whole post.