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Random Transformerly Musings
Jun. 6th, 2006 04:10 amI 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
