Breakdown and Bulkhead being exes and there being so many emotions about that

Especially with me remembering the semicommon hc that Breakdown used to be an autobot, which considering how he's often a stunticon and the stunticons are in rid15 gives me the crack idea of

At the beginning of the war Breakdown left the stunticons to join the autobots because of his boyfriend at the time and him disagreeing with Motormaster, leading to MM saying he won't under any circumstances take BD back if shit with Bulk and the bots goes sideways

Shit with Bulkhead and the autobots goes sideways as Breakdown grows increasingly dissatisfied with his role in the autobots, leading to him breaking up with Bulkhead and him joining the Decepticons like he was "supposed to" in the beginning of this scrap

Well. Now he's an ex-autobot in the Decepticons and again the stunticons kept to their word as he burned that bridge, leaving him a tidge of a mess.

Enter Knockout, who's looking to take on an assistant with at least SOME medical experience. Breakdown fills this requirement because i say so and because i love nurse/medic!Breakdown. Breaky says yes because fr what the pits else is he supposed to do.

After a rough adjustment period, they grow close and the more familiar power couple KOBD we recognize and love ensues

In his wiki page tfwiki suggests that in aligned Breaky used to be a scout, actually, who was real super anxious before getting a frame upgrade in order to keep up his grudge with Bulkhead and this did wonders for his mental health from what i can see. This may be another reason why Breaky seeked Knockout out

THERE WE GO, TFP BREAKDOWN: AN EX-STUNTICON, EX-AUTOBOT, UNEXPECTED MEDIC, CURRENTLY KNOCKOUT'S PARTNER IN CRIME AND MOTHERFUCKER WITH A HAMMER

There's a lot of angst in Pyrrha Dve's backstory prior to the events of TLT. She was wandering round the Mithreum trying to hide that she wasn't Gideon the First, concealing herself from every other person she ever met, for ten thousand years. Watching them mourn their own cavaliers and presumeably her as well, simultaneously also mourning the friends who were dead and friends who were still alive but who she could never interact with again. Watching millennia alone slowly warp them, even further than John had already warped both himself and his lyctors, until they were shells, shadows of themselves, their worst traits exaggerated and their best traits twisted into mockeries of their pasts. Trapped constantly in close proximity with her best friend, watching him mourn for her and live with the guilt of her death powering his lyctorhood and slowly be warped into 'Teacher's attack dog'.

From what she says in NtN it sounds like she remembers at least some of her life before the resurrection, including Gideon the First's former name. How long did she know that? No wonder she was saving a herald bullet for John if she knew some of his story and had all that time to brood on it, that would drive anyone to fantasies of revenge (or at least fantasies of putting an end to everything John had made, no matter the cost).

Pyrrha was already in a pretty messy place in terms of devotion before Gideon the First ascended, given that she was aware enough of what was going to happen that she asked him to kiss her before she was killed, rather than deciding to shoot/cut/otherwise fight her way out of the situation. Then she went through ten thousand years of semi-consciousness, of physical dysphoria, of mental dysphoria knowing not only was her body not hers in the metaphorical sense trans people sometimes talk about, but in a literal sense too. She manages to have her shit at least moderately together in Nona, aside from the drinking and smoking, but holy fuck that woman been through it. Her decision to start having an affair with Wake doesn't seem so unusual in light of all the other shit she'd been through by that point, in fact it seems downright healthy considering they managed not to kill one another!

I was trying to make a lighthearted joke post about her walking round the Mithreum in sunglasses saying "How do you do, fellow Lyctors?" and then it hit me just how much shit Pyrrha has actually been through. Oof ow, my feelings. She better get to kiss Paul in AtN or something...

Critical Reflection - RTR

Portrait of a Drag King

[ https://youtu.be/B79xoDt3_qA ]

The foundation of this documentary started with researching what the life of a drag king is like. Why they do drag, how drag makes them feel and what kinds of drag are there? It was important to know the basics of drag before communicating with our subject and understanding the possible differences between stereotypical drag kings and the drag our subject uses. We also investigated how drag kings/gender non-conforming persons are represented in the media if there is any. We decided having conversations with Mia as a group would allow us to find out what kind of things they could - or wanted to - speak about and also possible topics for us to research more, one being this idea of gender being a performance that Mia had mentioned in our first call. Cutting down topics into the ones we wanted to cover in the film was the final pre-production step.

Production started with creating a list of ideas for things to shoot with Mia. This included things like profile shots, footage of their bedroom/belongings and shots of their clothing. We first met with Mia to film the interview. A list of interview questions were prepared by the whole group, but due to our close relationship with Mia, we were able to have more than enough time to ask additional questions and receive lengthy answers. The informality facilitated the interview and made talking about the sensitive subjects much easier for us but more importantly for our interviewee.

The plan with the edit was based off our previous documentary about a skateboarder. We again wanted to emphasise this feeling of fluidity and moving forward and did this by having the visuals constantly moving and keeping the tempo fast paced. We started by cutting down the interview to the most relevant parts to create a foundation for the film and afterwards the visuals were matched up with the audio to keep the linear structure of the narrative flowing. Archive footage was used to show ideas and concepts that Mia could not show us themselves but if we were ever to release this film to the public, we’d have to make sure that the archive footage we use is copyright-free or that we have permission to use it.

Our film’s main objective was to show how one creatively expresses gender through drag and performance. We tell the story of someone who has battled with being in the closet and gender dysphoria and has now finally found a way to express their gender and sexuality. Our character reveals to us how it feels to be trapped within a box of other people’s ideals but also expresses the unusual yet comfortable feeling of gender ambiguity and euphoria. It is this shift in mindset and character that drives the narrative and message of our film.

This documentary starts with an introduction to our subject – Mia – through their narration of a metaphor describing the immense pressure that was put on them from a young age to be a certain way. Mia’s thoughts, poetry and memories guide the narrative finally ending with their feelings towards their identity and how they may change with time. We use a past-present-future structure to allow the audience to follow Mia along this journey of self-discovery.

The main goal with our visuals was to mirror the personality of our character using bright colours and mixed patterns. Even though the visuals harshly contrast some of the topics discussed, we wanted to keep this liveliness and youthfulness to emphasise the idea of growth and transformation. We applied on top of the visuals, layers of animations and drawings which emphasise the depth of our character and the complexity of the subject matter and all the overwhelming thoughts that come along with struggling with gender identity. Simple illustrations help the audience to more deeply understand a subject which is often difficult to comprehend. We used art drawn my Mia themselves that give a first person view into the specific thoughts one may have when going through something like this. We intercut archive footage in the edit to show a before and after but also in some cases to further demonstrate some of the points that Mia makes. We paid close attention to Mia’s clothing to match the topic of gender as a performance and included footage of their bedroom/belongings to give a more detailed insight into who our character is and what they like to surround themselves with.

Unfortunately for us, we never really thought about doing anything with the sound as we were so focused on getting the visuals to look how we had imagined which ended in only using audio from the interview. Although our interview sound was of good quality and all the selected parts were relevant to our narrative, at times the documentary would have benefited from some longer pauses in-between segments of voiceover to fix tempo issues and prevent sensory overload. Of course, now we realise the importance of sound design in creating an all-rounded film and if we were to ever remake this documentary, we would most definitely put more effort into the sound edit to create a more atmospheric film.

The main thing that makes our film so engaging is the interesting and strong character who speaks about a very emotional and personal topic that is rarely seen in mainstream media. The lively and dynamic visuals mirror the styles of film/media that are popular with our generation at this time meaning there is a level of relatability and connection between the subject and the audience.

I think we successfully portrayed our character, as we surrounded every part of the film around one aspect of their personality. The narrative is led by our character and covers the intimate details of their thoughts, memories and opinions. Showing Mia’s belongings, artwork and poetry gives the audience a first-hand view into Mia’s world. The unique and unforgettable essence of Mia is found in every corner of our documentary.

thank you mia :D

Musings on the genre incongruity of the Winter Soldier and Steve/Bucky

There’s an element of the Steve/Bucky relationship that I find so fascinating that I can’t get it out of my head which is this: the moment the incongruity at the heart of the character’s arcs. 

In essence, Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier are two completely different characters. I find him an unusual character for this reason, and I struggle to find one that is similar. 

Bucky Barnes before the war is the sidekick, the charmer, and there’s endless fic characterizations of him but even across a wide expanse he’s a kid from Brooklyn drafted to fight WWII, who is close to Steve and protective of him. 

Whereas the Winter Soldier is such a wildly different character like... look, if you’re setting out to make this brainwashed assassin character, it’s really different in my experience as a consumer of media to see that character stuck onto the tail end of a character like Bucky - hell, just his name makes it incongruous. That’s really the word at the center of it - incongruous. There’s this moment where the switch flips though and one character becomes the other (and, maybe, could at some point flip back again but changed).

Steve is similar but to a lesser extent. Pre-serum Steve Rogers is stubborn, a bit of an asshole, and dying to prove himself despite a body that’s doing its level best to kill him. Yet post-serum Steve is often compared to a golden retriever, you could say he blossoms but he also changes dramatically in personality. That bitterness goes away in large part, but not entirely, he becomes a hero and a symbol that is hard to square with his previous self. However that at least lies at the heart of the character, and we see the steps along the arc of his change, unlike with Bucky.

Where the ship of these two fascinates me is how they stick together. You’ve got these characters defined by their Before/After, and their Before/After’s are really, wildly different from the usual arc of a character. Sure that’s in part because of the long history of these characters in comics and the film’s attempted abridgment of that, but just taking the films there’s just a huge about-face when The Winter Soldier appears on the scene. The franchise tone changes and loses its camp, the emotional impact which was hinted at with Steve losing everyone he knew and loved while frozen in the ice is escalated. Now he’s even more literally haunted by what he has lost. Everyone who ever knew him is dead or has forgotten him, it’s a hellish scenario but buried in the tragedy of Bucky is this flicker of hope for reunion, and getting just a scrap back of what was lost.

But so much is lost. I try to think of my own New York-based, Irish and Italian Catholic grandfathers and grand-uncles and just imagining one of them becoming something like the Winter Soldier makes my head spin. I think that’s where I really get stuck, I’m fascinated, horrified, and struggle to grasp what could take a kid like Bucky would have been, probably expecting to come home after the war and live out his life in Brooklyn, into a mechanical nightmare working for the enemy across 70 tortured years. There’s a switch flip in there where “Band of Brothers” becomes a Cold War nightmare, and for me it’s just so strange to fathom characters of those two genres being put together into one person, or the arcs of those stories being stuck one after the other.

I won’t lie, I actually get choked at the thought of that happening to one of those kids, to one of my family members, going off to a war and never returning home. Worse, that a war you thought might be over in a year, a few at most, holds you in its jaws for seventy more, that at the end Bucky still has to fight off attempts to label him as an enemy combatant rather than a tortured prisoner of war.

How to reconcile that? No less with Steve, who goes into the war with a body that’s basically a weapon, that is arguably as detached as a suit of armor but one he can never take off. Is there a sense of dysphoria there? Does he simply become what he was meant to be given a body that could keep up with him, or is he placed inside of a weapon he can never remove? Does it mean this war, that temporary war, is always carried with him in some sense? That really, he can’t ever go home either?

Perhaps that’s the issue, that in most war movie narratives the story is about how they come home. Captain America and the Winter Soldier as narrative arcs though break that usual return to domesticity. For them the war quite literally never ends, and it is tormenting in its endlessness. It can be highly metaphorical and political as well, but again I come back to those kids who could have known my grand-uncles never coming back and getting lost in the tides of the 20th century’s wars. 

Bucky as a dark mirror for everything that could have happened to Steve is one way to tackle this, one way to encapsulate it. It’s not the only interpretation but it at least allows some framing of such a dramatic shift in circumstance to one person. Endless War imprisoning the person in Steve’s life who arguably most wanted it to be over quickly. The irony is extreme. At least on some level there might have been a sense of cosmic justice had Steve been the one captured and transformed into an endless weapon, at least he wanted to fight. But as far as we see, that was never Bucky. 

Again, such a character as the Winter Soldier is one you would expect to have a background of wanting to fight, and while canon isn’t entirely clear on this point it’s not a stretch when fanon says that Bucky probably wanted to go home more than Steve did. Steve found his purpose in the war, and yet he was the one who was kept from it for 70 years while Bucky was subjected to it again and again. 

As is obvious here, I still struggle to figure out the core of this, the center that brings me back to these two characters and the pairing between them again and again. It’s somewhere in there at the center, the grain of sand that irritates into a pearl. How did these two become this, can they ever go back, how did it change them, when did the transformation really take place? Can you somehow arrest it in the middle, take a snapshot and say “This is the halfway point between who they were and who they are, captured in amber”? 

Where is the kid from Brooklyn in the modern soldier’s body? Where is the seed of the Winter Soldier and Captain America in those kids? Why them, out of all the hundreds of thousands that served? Is fate endlessly cruel or is there some kindness in that Steve didn’t die and was there at the end? Or is the cruelty in the fact he was not there in the middle, while Bucky was being transformed? 70 years of changing and no one left to even try to look, to stop it from happening.

 I am fascinated by narratives that say “bad things happened then, and did not stop for decades, and no one was able to stop it in between” fascinated and often infuriated. And even if canon will never address this to the extent I would like I keep coming back to it in fanon, looking for that seed that makes such unusual characters span such a length of time that they become such tragically different people in ways that don’t feel predestined only horrifying. I tried to capture it once myself, but still feel as if I’m skirting the edges, never quite able to say with words how one becomes the other.