(stares at the wall) jesus christ i need to update my askblog

A Transformers meta thingy

To begin with, I mostly have just watched most of the shows along with reading up about various characters on the wiki, but I have thoughts on Transformers that must be shared.  I’m going to start with some background as I understand it, though it will be more of a summation than fully explaining it.

So, the timeline of Cybertron is not all that well established, but there are a few things that are known.  First is that in the beginning there were the Thirteen Primes and under them (until the kerfuffle that broke the band as it were) it was a Golden Age.  During that Golden Age, the knights went off to spread the word as it were and later the civilization they made was re-found but right now we don’t care about that outside of that it confirms that the Golden Age was a thing.

So the kerfuffle introduced Death to the Cybertronians and the remaining Primes fucked off one way or another leaving running the planet to who the hell knows.  Weird given that a few of them stayed on planet and basically did nothing of importance (looking at you two, Alpha Trion and Vector Prime). So enough time passes that people are all “hey aren’t you one of the Thirteen?” upon seeing dear ol’ Alpha. The Golden Age has well and truly passed, but Cybertron is doing its best.

Aaaand then the Quintessons show up all ‘hey guys! We know the secrets of the universe!’ or something. And somehow manage to take over the planet and convince the Cybertronians that they created the bots.  Which actually could be explained if there were depictions of Quintus Prime and people were mistaking him for Primus…. Huh.

So now the Cybertronians are convinced that they were created by the Quintesson to be a work force. But some of the bots are all ‘this doesn’t seem right…’ especially as some of them remember when these tentacle fucks first showed up.  One such bot is Orion Pax.  Another is Jazz.  I’m pretty sure that Rachet is also there, but I can’t quite remember.  That being said, I don’t think Rachet was there when the Quintesson arrived.  I think he, much as the bot that would be Megatron, came online during the Occupation not before as Orion and most likely Jazz.

Long story short (too late), they drive off the Quintesson and have to rebuild their society.  Not everybot fought, so I think that a good portion of them would be fairly recognizable (I think that the Autobot symbol was originally theirs? or used by them? So they were branded with it), but then some time passes (a lot of time actually) and everyone forgets about the old masters and sets up the city-states in a fashion that is very similar to how Ancient Greece was set up, but with a centralized over-government.   So maybe more like Rome.  And then Megatron decides that he’s being repressed (which honestly might be true) and does his whole rebellion, but only after the Senate decides that they would rather have a quiet equivalent of a librarian Orion Pax- who believes that he is a young bot as the new Prime (that’s Optimus you guys).  And it’s only later in the war that he starts to remember the first war.

Which brings us to what I actually want to discuss, well, one of two things.  Let’s go with the quick one first.  If Jazz came online during a time where there were still bots that knew the Primes, why would he say that he doesn’t believe?  I think it may be that he doesn’t believe in the way that bots are worshipping/believing in the Primes post the Quintesson.  I also think that some believe in the Guiding Hand instead of the Primes- that Primus split himself into Five beings instead of creating Thirteen bots to then create all of Cybertron.  Think of it as if Jazz in Jewish, the ones that believe in the Thirteen in the new fashion as Christians, and those who believe in the Guiding Hand as Muslims in regards to how the religions relate to each other, though that is far from being an accurate metaphor. I also think that towards the end of the rebellion Orion was starting to remember his previous life as the original Optimus Prime which was then a large factor in his repressing/having his memories erased/repressed.  Which Jazz as his best friend would know and probably wants to avoid having to go through again (somebody give me an angsty fic where the only person Orion would trust to do this would be Jazz), so instead, he misleads Optimus as to what his beliefs are, assuming he can apologize later.

And now the other thing I wanted to talk about.  How underutilized the fact that there were various city-states that all had their own cultures is in regards to the fandom, and even canon from my understanding. Everyone has the main city-states being different, but usually they go for an idea of either a) frame differences ala genetics based on the city or b) x city is full of corruption.  Bleh.  Jazz’s job, when not joining illegal gladiatorial fights, was a cultural investigator.  Basically he was an anthropologist, and as an anthropologist, let me tell you, each place has its own culture.  There needs to be like, way more fics where there are cultural misunderstandings between the denizens of different city-states that take Jazz to clear up because he’s studied all of them, and I don’t mean the usual ‘door-wings have their own language’ type thing, I’m talking ‘where I’m from looking you directly in the optics is far too forceful of an action’ vs ‘not looking me in the optics is rude’, ‘fluttering of hands and other body parts is part of speech’ vs ‘keep your hands down and in control when you talk’, and differences in personal space, dialects, body language, food, how bots worship, who bots worship, you know, actual cultural differences (Japan is not USA is not Israel is not Russia is not South Africa why would the city-states be any different?).  Add in that Jazz probably subconsciously does a bit of archeological comparison due to living when things were different and you get a Jazz that probably is considered a bit of an odd ball, but is alright.  Think, Evie from The Mummy.  Of course you can keep Jazz having a background as a musician or Enforcer by having one or both be his function pre and during the Quintesson Occupation. And as to Jazz being a Saboteur in both wars?  I give you Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia who was an author, archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat, and was conscripted to be a spy, as it were, before his military career.