dunmurderin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dunmurderin) wrote2006-06-06 04:10 am
dunmurderin) wrote2006-06-06 04:10 am
Entry tags:
Random Transformerly Musings
I was rereading Barbara Hambly's Dead Water and it got me to thinking about something I'd never associated with Transformers before: voodoo.
Some background: Dead Water is the 8th in Hambly's Benjamin January series of books which all take place in the 1830s and are all, except for Days of the Dead set in New Orleans. The main character is a former slave named Benjamin January who was freed at the age of 7 when a white man bought his mother to free her and make her his mistress as part of the placage system. Benjamin's sister Olympe was also bought and freed.
While Benjamin grew up to become a surgeon and a musician (and eventually fled to Paris only to return 20 years later after the death of his wife which is when the books pick up), his sister Olympe ran away to become a voodoo queen.
In book 8, Benjamin and his new wife run afoul of another voodoo queen and there's a scene where Benjamin sees her in a graveyard and muses that graveyard earth is used in all the most severe death curses.
And as I'm reading this, the thought hit me: what if Cybertronians used slag from the Smelting Pits for death magic? Which was followed with: what if Cybertron had some form of voodoo magic that was a holdover from slavery days? Charms and spells and talismans used to protect or defend oneself against the vagaries of fortune.
(Though, when I looked up voodoo, I found out that what I really mean isn't voodoo, which is a religion, but hoodoo which is a system of folk magic not tied to a particular religion.)
# # #
Changing tracks: I can see the roots of the Autobot/Decepticon conflict rising out of slavery days. I doubt any canon materials back me up on this, but that's ok, since this is just me shooting the breeze before I go to bed.
Here's the way I see it: the ancestors of the Autobots were inclined to forgive and forget -- well, mostly forget -- their enslavement under the Quints. The important thing wasn't vengeance, it was to move forward as best they could and to forge a society on Cybertron that was uniquely theirs.
The ancestors of the Decepticons were more inclined toward anger and the desire for vengeance, not only against the Quints but against every race that purchased them. While they did agree that as a race both sides needed to work to build a new society, they were more inclined toward xenophobia and isolationism.
What Megatron did wasn't so much create the Decepticon movement as give focus to emotions that were already there but without a single leader and a single direction.
# # #
Lunatron was talking in her journal about "The Alien Allure" or, how the Autobots seem to have a thing for females not of their species. The thought just occurs to me that maybe this is a survival of ancient subroutines of the slavery days that caused Consumer Goods to imprint/bond with their new owners? It's not as strong as it used to be, but the Autobots' almost immediate affinity for non-Cybertronian aliens might be a harkening back to those dark days?
Meanwhile, the Decepticons seemingly natural dislike for organics might just be a harkening back to either old programming to kill one's enemies wherever you find them and/or the post-Quintesson xenophobia of the Military Hardware.
# # #
And now, I gotta go play Katamari Damacy. Must. Make. Moon.
Dun
Some background: Dead Water is the 8th in Hambly's Benjamin January series of books which all take place in the 1830s and are all, except for Days of the Dead set in New Orleans. The main character is a former slave named Benjamin January who was freed at the age of 7 when a white man bought his mother to free her and make her his mistress as part of the placage system. Benjamin's sister Olympe was also bought and freed.
While Benjamin grew up to become a surgeon and a musician (and eventually fled to Paris only to return 20 years later after the death of his wife which is when the books pick up), his sister Olympe ran away to become a voodoo queen.
In book 8, Benjamin and his new wife run afoul of another voodoo queen and there's a scene where Benjamin sees her in a graveyard and muses that graveyard earth is used in all the most severe death curses.
And as I'm reading this, the thought hit me: what if Cybertronians used slag from the Smelting Pits for death magic? Which was followed with: what if Cybertron had some form of voodoo magic that was a holdover from slavery days? Charms and spells and talismans used to protect or defend oneself against the vagaries of fortune.
(Though, when I looked up voodoo, I found out that what I really mean isn't voodoo, which is a religion, but hoodoo which is a system of folk magic not tied to a particular religion.)
Changing tracks: I can see the roots of the Autobot/Decepticon conflict rising out of slavery days. I doubt any canon materials back me up on this, but that's ok, since this is just me shooting the breeze before I go to bed.
Here's the way I see it: the ancestors of the Autobots were inclined to forgive and forget -- well, mostly forget -- their enslavement under the Quints. The important thing wasn't vengeance, it was to move forward as best they could and to forge a society on Cybertron that was uniquely theirs.
The ancestors of the Decepticons were more inclined toward anger and the desire for vengeance, not only against the Quints but against every race that purchased them. While they did agree that as a race both sides needed to work to build a new society, they were more inclined toward xenophobia and isolationism.
What Megatron did wasn't so much create the Decepticon movement as give focus to emotions that were already there but without a single leader and a single direction.
Lunatron was talking in her journal about "The Alien Allure" or, how the Autobots seem to have a thing for females not of their species. The thought just occurs to me that maybe this is a survival of ancient subroutines of the slavery days that caused Consumer Goods to imprint/bond with their new owners? It's not as strong as it used to be, but the Autobots' almost immediate affinity for non-Cybertronian aliens might be a harkening back to those dark days?
Meanwhile, the Decepticons seemingly natural dislike for organics might just be a harkening back to either old programming to kill one's enemies wherever you find them and/or the post-Quintesson xenophobia of the Military Hardware.
And now, I gotta go play Katamari Damacy. Must. Make. Moon.
Dun
no subject
Hmmm... that would explain why "slag" is a cuss word, for one thing.
I can see the roots of the Autobot/Decepticon conflict rising out of slavery days.
Interesting thought.
how the Autobots seem to have a thing for females not of their species. The thought just occurs to me that maybe this is a survival of ancient subroutines of the slavery days that caused Consumer Goods to imprint/bond with their new owners?
Possible. And the preference for females would be because
they couldn't show gay xenophilia on 80's children's televisionthe ancestors of the Autobots were "householdy" goods that were mainly used by females?no subject
Mostly, I just like zombies.
- - -
Comic-wise, Megatron preyed upon the disatisfaction of the disenfranchised to build his movement. He certainly couldn't have ascended like he did if it wasn't the winter of many's discontent.
- - -
If it was just owner-bonding, they'd be macking on male aliens, too. Perhaps they are. I suppose that depends on one's perceptions. Or maybe they display the owner-bond differently depending on the perceived gender of the perceived owner?
2 birds/1 stone
they couldn't show gay xenophilia on 80's children's televisionthe ancestors of the Autobots were "householdy" goods that were mainly used by females?Lunatron said: If it was just owner-bonding, they'd be macking on male aliens, too. Perhaps they are. I suppose that depends on one's perceptions. Or maybe they display the owner-bond differently depending on the perceived gender of the perceived owner?
Since you guys both brought up a similar point, I'm replying here 'cause I likes killin' 2 birds with 1 stone.
When I wrote Autobots' almost immediate affinity for non-Cybertronian aliens might be a harkening back to those dark days? I wasn't just talking about their affinity for female aliens (my fault, I wrote it early in the morning and didn't make what I meant clear enough), but their tendency to bond with organics on all levels -- everything from the Autobots befriending Spike and Sparkplug through Seaspray falling for Allana. Devi, I think you hit it on the head: the reason we didn't see Tracks macking on Raoul or Spike giving Bumblebee a wax job was that no kids' show in the 80s was just as Devil said, no kids' show in the 80s was going to show gay alien xenophilia. Well, that and I doubt the writers were thinking of the characters the same way we do.
I wish we knew more about the cartoon version of the Transformers' origin, if only to find out what different types of consumer products the Autobots' ancestors were supposed to be. We know they didn't transform then, so they were probably just varying sizes of robots intended for everything from farm work to mining to domestic work (I'm stretching 'consumer goods' to include a lot of non-householdy civilian jobs). They probably weren't sold only to/predominately used only by females, since it's clear from the TF cartoons that there are a wide variety of alien species out there. The "Organics are Nice" subroutine was probably added as a way to control the slaves' behavior -- kind of like how the concept of "Silicon Heaven" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Heaven) was added via a belief chip to mechanoids in the Red Dwarf universe as a way to keep them docile.
Dun.