thoughts on the Beast-era

"What? Transformers made from animals instead of vehicles and stuff? Doesn't sound so great, throw it to Kenner division, maybe they can make a quick buck or something."
Beast Wars, Machine Wars, Beast Machines... seeing a pattern? Coming soon: "Wars Wars"
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by SynjoDeonecros »

Dominic wrote:King Tut and the Beast-era. Ah, incest.

I admit, I hated the abstract, and just plain innaccurate, toys. The Vehicons were okay. But, most of the Maximals were intolerable. The looked like knock-offs. Nightviper was okay, but cancelled out by garbage like Rattrap or Nightscream.

Fan-modes are not worth points when it comes to rating a toy, any more than fan-fic potential is worth points when it comes to rating a show.

I am still wondering how a show that had not completely evil bad guys can be more preachy than a show with "bad guyz who is bad guyz". In any case, Megatron's actions in "Weak Component" make sense. He was acting as an ideal machine would, giving the correct output, (keeping hiw word), in response to the correct input.

Dom
-only noticed Rhinox's voice actor screwing up in hindsight.
How many times do I have to explain to you that it's the MESSAGE of the show that I'm finding preachy, NOT the villains? How in the hell can you even EQUATE the evilness of a villain to how preachy a show is?

Let me explain this to you in as simple of terms as I can: the show is preachy because the pseudo-philosophical debate they're using for the basis of the conflict between the two groups - the argument between instrumentality vs. free will and technology vs. nature - is heavyhanded and prevalent throughout the whole thing, to the point where the show focuses on little else. The evilness of the villains aren't in play, here; Megatron could've been irredeemably evil or sympathetic as all hell, and it wouldn't have made a difference to the preachiness of the philosophical position he holds. When I compare the preachiness of this show to the preachiness of Captain Planet, I'm not comparing how evil the villains are, I'm comparing how the writers handle the message and the morals they want to express in the show; Captain Planet isn't preachy, because the villains pollute for the sake of polluting, it's preachy because in order to get through to the viewers their environmental message, the writers resort to having the villains pollute for the sake of polluting and having the heroes give long-winded and annoying diatribes about how polluting is wrong. It's not what the villains DO, or whether they're SYMPATHETIC in the end that makes the show preachy, it's the MESSAGE that the writers want to get past through the conflict between our heroes and the villains, and how they portray that message and deliver it to the viewer. And with Captain Planet, just like this show, they did NOT portray that message subtly.

With BM, the message they're basing the conflict on is the clash of philosophical ideals between Megatron's instrumentality and technological superiority, and Optimus' free will and environmentalism. Every single time we see either one of them, they're always going on a rant about how their side is right, their philosophies are right, and they need to destroy the other side because their philosophies are wrong. THAT is preachy and heavy-handed, because they CONSTANTLY remind us of it, they CONSTANTLY bang it into our heads that they feel they're in the moral and philosophical right, and they NEVER. SHUT. UP. ABOUT. IT. Anything they do, any missions they go on, they do to further their philosophical goals, and every time they do something that their underlings think is questionable and are called on it, they go on ANOTHER diatribe about how it's necessary for "technological perfection" or "fulfilling the Will of the Oracle". This philosophical debate overtakes everything else in the show; most of the character development we see are either absorbed into the debate or forgotten in lieu of said debate, and quite frankly, the Vehicon generals don't seem that evil, because they're little more than more animate drones for Megatron's industrial machine; they don't have any goals of their own, other than to serve Megatron's will, and even when he was snapped back into his old persona, what did Tankor decide to do? Usurp Megs and take his philosophical ramblings as his own. They may have been more quirky, but they weren't INTERESTING.

Compare this to Beast Wars: the villains' main plans were simple, and left out philosophical idealism - they felt they were being oppressed in the new peace, wanted to restore the Decepticon empire to its former glory, and set out to do that, in any way possible. It was simple, yet elegant, and didn't have any "deep" or "artsy" pseudo-Nietzschean thesis into the human condition or the meaning of life to be interesting. I actually found Megatron in this show to be LESS evil than his BM incarnation; Yes, BW Megs was eventually planning on destroying Optimus Prime and changing history, and in the end he didn't care much about any of his troops (if he cared about them, at all), but at least, as we saw in the show, he had limits - his focus on gathering Energon for a "modern-day" revolution, during the first season, and his moving up to killing off primitive humans in the second, showed that he KNEW that his ultimate goal was way too ambitious to be sanely feasible, and wanted to hold off on doing it until he had no other choice in the matter. He probably realized that things could go terribly wrong for the future, if he did so, and so put it on the back burner until he ran out of schemes to achieve the same Predacon liberation he was looking to achieve with it. Plus, many of the villains actually had GOALS they were looking into achieving for themselves, and while they weren't always very well explained, they were at least goals that the villains pursued for themselves. They had their own ambitions, their own dreams, and their pursuit of those ambitions made them more interesting and fleshed out and sympathetic than your average one-note villain. The show focused on the characters and their development, NOT on the philosophical diatribes of the main hero and villain.

And, y'know, just because Rhinox repented during the last cycles of his life in BM, doesn't mean that the philosophical ideals he was fighting for as a villain wasn't being shoveled to the viewers in a forceful and preachy manner. It doesn't lessen the presence of the debate between technology and nature or instrumentality and free will, or how much he preached about it while he was a villain. If the preachiness of a show or message is dictated by the evilness of the villain, then I'm betting you'd dismiss Fred Phelps' crusade against gays and non-Baptists as not being as bad as people think it is, if he renounced his ways on his death bed. That's basically what you're saying, it doesn't matter how hard the show pushes its existential bullcrap on the viewer, it's not "preachy" if the villain once pet a freaking kitten instead of strangling it. How evil the villain is doesn't change the message being portrayed, or how it's being portrayed, and the heroes can be JUST as bad with selling THEIR philosophies as the villains. So, once again, and I hope this gets through your thick skull: IT'S THE MESSAGE THAT'S BEING PREACHY, NOT THE VILLAINS. The villains could be saints, for all I care; if the stupid "Technological Perfection" versus "The Will of the Oracle" debate was as heavy-handed, blatant, and mind-numbingly inescapable as it was in the show, THE SHOW WOULD STILL BE PREACHY.

As for Megatron...his ultimate goal is to control a world of soulless automatons with him as the only spark left in existence. THERE IS NO NEED FOR HIM TO KEEP HIS PROMISE TO RATTRAP. Saying he was trying to show his dedication for a "perfect machine system" by keeping his word is bullcrap, since it's not a perfect machine system if the aberration he sees as Rattrap and his ilk are still running around. This is a guy who forcefully stripped the sparks of millions if not billions of Transformers, without bothering to deal with giving "the correct output" by asking them nicely if he could steal their souls, or getting "corrupt input" from the billions of non-consensual sparks. His "technological perfection" is him imposing his will on a cold, dead world with him as the only living soul on it. That is incompatible with letting his mortal enemies, the ones he sees as aberrations to Cybertron and a threat to his version of perfection, leave on his own when he had the guy in his clutches, because he "made a promise".
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

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If nothing else, Beast Wars trumps Beast Machines because it wasn't quite so full of itself. Plus, the villains all had motivations, as Synj says, and they actually made sense with what was established for the characters, unlike BM Megatron's techno-agenda. Beast Machines is just a chore to watch, even now as I'm trying to slog through it over a decade later. It's the emo step-brother of the (generally) better-liked Beast Wars, that sits in the corner wearing black lipstick and cutting itself because "no one really gets" it.
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

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Also, http://www.tfu.info/2000/Vehicon/Megatron/megatron.htm. This toy is balls, and so are most of the Maximals. A few of the Vehicons were cool.
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by andersonh1 »

There isn't a Vehicon in the BMac line that I don't like. Deluxe Jetstorm is one of my favorite jet-formers ever.

The Maximals, on the other hand, vary wildly in quality. I'm a lot more forgiving now than I was then, but some of them are good and some are just really bad. Some examples:

The best: Blackarachnia, and some of the basics like Nightviper and Buzzsaw.

Middle of the road: Quickstrike, Longhorn, Rattrap, Battle Unicorn

bad: Nightscream, Skydive, Geckobot, deluxe Megatron

I don't know what the deal was with the Maximals, or why so many of them were not too good considering Hasbro had been making beast-formers for five or six years at that point. I never bought Nightscream, because it's a big floppy collapsible pile of plastic. Skydive is the same way. Blackarachnia on the other hand is an excellent spider-former that doesn't have all the legs sticking off as arm protrusions or a backpack like the two BW iterations do. Some of BMac Blackarachnia's transformation went into Animated BA's design.
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

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SynjoDeonecros wrote:tl;dr
Good God, man, do you just have nothing else to do?
Mirage wrote:If nothing else, Beast Wars trumps Beast Machines because it wasn't quite so full of itself. Plus, the villains all had motivations, as Synj says, and they actually made sense with what was established for the characters, unlike BM Megatron's techno-agenda. Beast Machines is just a chore to watch, even now as I'm trying to slog through it over a decade later. It's the emo step-brother of the (generally) better-liked Beast Wars, that sits in the corner wearing black lipstick and cutting itself because "no one really gets" it.
And it's funny, because nobody 'does' get it.
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SynjoDeonecros
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by SynjoDeonecros »

Onslaught Six wrote:
SynjoDeonecros wrote:tl;dr
Good God, man, do you just have nothing else to do?
Well, excuse me, but I wanted to clear up what was an obvious misunderstanding on Dominic's part; he seems to not be getting why I consider Beast Machines to be preachy and heavyhanded, insisting I mean the villains are being preachy instead of the message and moral argument in the show being preachy, which is what I really meant. Everyone else seems to get that except him; they get that the "technological perfection" vs."nature-fueled Will of the Oracle" debate is what turns most people off to the show, next to the gross character derailment, but this guy doesn't seem to get that, instead equating "preachiness" with how evil a villain is.

I'm sorry, but how can you even make such a connection? Maybe he got confused when I compared this show's evangelism to that of Captain Planet, and thought "he must think Captain Planet is preachy, because the villains are evil just to be evil, and that's totally not the case, here"? I dunno, I just don't see how the evilness or sympatheticness of a villain can change the preachiness of the moral and message of the show, and I'm trying to get it through his stubborn head that it's the latter that I'm complaining about, when I complain about the show being "preachy", NOT the former.
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by Dominic »

Onslaught put it best, if a bit dramatically:

And it's funny, because nobody 'does' get it.
People tend to miss points.

Yeah, maybe BMac was a bit ham-fisted. But, at least it was about something besides big robots. And, some people, (adults and kids), do need to be hit over the head in order to understand things. Talk to most any teacher. And, I will say it now: This rule applies to many comic book readers/cartoon viewers.

Is "Beast Machines" preachy because it had an idea beyond "big robots is kewl"?

When I made the comparison between the Predacons and the Vehicons, I was asking how a show that was as black and white as 90% of the other shows on the air could be less preachy than a show where the morals were more grey. As somebody , (Prowl I think), put it, Megatron's troops were escapees from a lunatic asylum, not soldiers. In "Beast Machines", characters on both sides were flawed. Rattrap's actions in "The Weak Component" made sense. The rules changed for Rattrap, and he had to change to adapt to them. In "Beast Wars", Rattrap, and to a degree the rest of the Maximals, were just defining themselves as "not Predacons". t he Predacons were lunatics.

In "Beast Machines", both sides were fighting for something. Aside from the sadistic Jetstorm, Stryka and Obsidian had the problem of fighting agaist a sort of Hobbesian state. But, at least they fought against something defines, rather than fighting against "those guys".

Does giving the characters principles beyond "we are good/bad guys" make a show preachy?

Dom
-might not get it.
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by SynjoDeonecros »

Dominic wrote:Onslaught put it best, if a bit dramatically:

And it's funny, because nobody 'does' get it.
People tend to miss points.

Yeah, maybe BMac was a bit ham-fisted. But, at least it was about something besides big robots. And, some people, (adults and kids), do need to be hit over the head in order to understand things. Talk to most any teacher. And, I will say it now: This rule applies to many comic book readers/cartoon viewers.

Is "Beast Machines" preachy because it had an idea beyond "big robots is kewl"?

When I made the comparison between the Predacons and the Vehicons, I was asking how a show that was as black and white as 90% of the other shows on the air could be less preachy than a show where the morals were more grey. As somebody , (Prowl I think), put it, Megatron's troops were escapees from a lunatic asylum, not soldiers. In "Beast Machines", characters on both sides were flawed. Rattrap's actions in "The Weak Component" made sense. The rules changed for Rattrap, and he had to change to adapt to them. In "Beast Wars", Rattrap, and to a degree the rest of the Maximals, were just defining themselves as "not Predacons". t he Predacons were lunatics.

In "Beast Machines", both sides were fighting for something. Aside from the sadistic Jetstorm, Stryka and Obsidian had the problem of fighting agaist a sort of Hobbesian state. But, at least they fought against something defines, rather than fighting against "those guys".

Does giving the characters principles beyond "we are good/bad guys" make a show preachy?

Dom
-might not get it.

No, you don't, and if this explanation doesn't get you to get it, then nothing will.

For a show to be "preachy", it has to have an overlying moral lesson or philosophical debate that forms the core of the story being presented TO preach about; no moral lesson or debate, no preaching. This has NOTHING to do with the characters, JUST the message being presented and dictating the story; if the message being presented is "polluting is bad", then your stories are going to be confined to writing about that message, and how that affects dialog, character actions, etc. is determined with how much the writers want people to get that message. The harder the writers push to make that message known, the more blatant it becomes in the show's dialogs and action scenes. Yes, if the message is being pushed hard enough, it CAN force the villains to become stock and one-dimensional, to present their side as being "wrong" and what they're doing is "bad", but you don't HAVE to go that far for the show to be overly preachy.

Take Captain Planet, for instance: the show had a very blatant environmental message that was pushed way too hard, and as a result dictated EVERYTHING that happened, in the show; yes, the villains polluted for the sake of polluting, but that's only because the writers wanted to make sure the viewers got the message that polluting was wrong, and didn't know how to make the message subtle, hence the villains did what they did "for the evulz" as a way of demonizing their side of the pollution debate. But even if they WEREN'T portrayed like that, the show was STILL preachy, for other reasons; there were constant diatribes on the benefits of recycling, detoxifying, not wasting, etc., and the good guys still tried to demonize the bad guys by explaining how what they were doing was wrong, and how they should give up and join their side, because it was right. It's that constant philosophical butting of heads, and that constant SHOWING and TELLING about that butting of heads, that makes the show preachy, regardless of how the characters were, personality-wise.

With Beast Machines, it's the same; the overlying argument of technological purity and instrumentality vs. free will and the organic "rightness" of nature permeated in nearly EVERY episode; every time Megatron or Optimus opened their mouth, it's another lecture about how their position is right, and the other side is the aberration; every time someone calls them on an action that seems suspect, they get a bitching-out about how it is necessary to achieve their position's goals, every battle they engage in against each other ALWAYS gets clogged up with them trying to convince each other that their position is wrong and they need to convert to their own side, etc. It's all the debating and diatribes and lectures and sermons and preaching about how their side is right and the other side is wrong that makes the show preachy, and it wouldn't matter if Megatron was a saint and Optimus Primal was the devil himself, it would still be preachy, because the message of the show, the philosophical debate that forms the basis of the story, is being shoved in our face nonstop with all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Any character development or "flaws" either gets drowned out by or absorbed into the debate; Blackarachnia's search for Silverbolt more or less takes a backseat to the "Technological Perfection/Will of the Oracle" debate, Rattrap's insecurities about his lack of legs is forgotten soon enough, and takes a backseat to the debate, and the Vehicons? They have NO AMBITION WHATSOEVER; no unique plans or goals for themselves, just following loyally Megatron and/or his philosophical dream; even Tankor, after he snapped out of Meg's control, used "achieve technological perfection" as his personal New Year's resolution. How is that entertaining? How does that make them "deeper" characters than the Predacons? Yeah, they're fighting for something "bigger" than themselves, but because that "something bigger" permeates everything else in this show, it doesn't feel so much part of THEIR personalities, as it does a mere extension to the message being hammered into our skulls, and as such, they come off to many people - me included - as being just more animated (and annoying) versions of the mindless drones they command. At least the Maximals had their own personal problems to deal with OUTSIDE of achieving the "Will of the Oracle".

Beast Wars was the superior show, because it didn't HAVE any message to convey, in the show; it didn't HAVE to preach, anything. The villains may not have turned all good in a last-minute evangelical "second birth", but they all had PLANS for themselves; they all had AMBITIONS they wanted to achieve, and the show - not fettered with an overlying moral message to push on the viewer - was free to EXPLORE those ambitions and plans, and as a result, they made more interesting characters. They weren't being evil for the sake of being evil, they were being evil because they wanted more power, or more recognition, or felt oppressed by the Maximals, or out of loyalty to their former commander, or whatnot; they all had an individual story to tell, and the writers got to tell them, without needing to cram those stories into a philosophical debate an conform them to one side of the debate or the other. They were REAL, instead of being puppets for conveying the message of the show, and they made for better TV, as a result.

So, once again: the preachiness of the show does NOT lie in how evil or good the characters are, but in the "Technological perfection" vs. "Organic freedom" debate that the show is forced to revolve around.

And for the record, Rattrap's betrayal of his friends for Megatron in "The Weak Component" did NOT make sense, because he was NOT "changing to adapt" to them; he was taking the easy way out. Changing to adapt to his situation would have meant he found a way to compensate for his lack of weapons and legs, and found a way to contribute to the Maximal pretentious cause ON HIS OWN, or with help from his friends. Instead, he abandoned them and made a deal with the devil to get compensation. THAT IS NOT ADAPTING TO HIS SITUATION, that is him betraying everything he ever had for a quick fix, because he was too desperate and scared of his new 'flaws" to admit he needed help coping and moving on. That makes him LESS sympathetic in my eyes.
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

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SynjoDeonecros wrote:With Beast Machines, it's the same; the overlying argument of technological purity and instrumentality vs. free will and the organic "rightness" of nature permeated in nearly EVERY episode; every time Megatron or Optimus opened their mouth, it's another lecture about how their position is right, and the other side is the aberration; every time someone calls them on an action that seems suspect, they get a bitching-out about how it is necessary to achieve their position's goals, every battle they engage in against each other ALWAYS gets clogged up with them trying to convince each other that their position is wrong and they need to convert to their own side, etc.
Oh, man, now that you've put it this way, I realized something. I've been wrong about Beast Machines for years. It's not a metaphor for nature vs. technology.

It's a metaphor for Internet message boards! The two sides just spout their position endlessly at each other without actually acknowledging the others' points!
And for the record, Rattrap's betrayal of his friends for Megatron in "The Weak Component" did NOT make sense, because he was NOT "changing to adapt" to them; he was taking the easy way out. Changing to adapt to his situation would have meant he found a way to compensate for his lack of weapons and legs, and found a way to contribute to the Maximal pretentious cause ON HIS OWN, or with help from his friends. Instead, he abandoned them and made a deal with the devil to get compensation. THAT IS NOT ADAPTING TO HIS SITUATION, that is him betraying everything he ever had for a quick fix, because he was too desperate and scared of his new 'flaws" to admit he needed help coping and moving on. That makes him LESS sympathetic in my eyes.
You want to know something? This whole thing with Rattrap has always, ALWAYS made sense to me. Everybody always talks about how Rattrap was so "in control" and "composed" in BW and how that Rattrap would never try to work alongside Megs.

Instead, The Weak Component *reveals* something about Rattrap's nature. Deep down inside--he's a coward and a pussy, and he's always been. He talks a big game, but he's a small spy Maximal with a tiny gun and that's 'all he's ever been.' His whole tough-guy New Yorker thing is an act. Rattrap voices repeatedly in BW about how he wants to go back home...because he needs the familiar comfort of Cybertron, away from this deserted foreign planet. And once he gets there, suddenly it's all overtaken by the very nemesis they'd faced for ~3 years prior. Oh, and he can't transform--which *by itself* is an indication that Rattrap doesn't really believe in himself at all to begin with. The facade has broken down. Rattrap is a broken man. So he turns to Megs.

(And I've fought this argument so long that I have a backup argument too--Rattrap is a spy. Everybody assumes Rattrap isn't being a complete backstabbing asshole when he joins up with Megatron. How do we know Rattrap wasn't going to carefully destroy Megs from the inside somehow? We don't, Primal just shows up to crash his plan instantly.)
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by SynjoDeonecros »

Onslaught Six wrote:
SynjoDeonecros wrote:With Beast Machines, it's the same; the overlying argument of technological purity and instrumentality vs. free will and the organic "rightness" of nature permeated in nearly EVERY episode; every time Megatron or Optimus opened their mouth, it's another lecture about how their position is right, and the other side is the aberration; every time someone calls them on an action that seems suspect, they get a bitching-out about how it is necessary to achieve their position's goals, every battle they engage in against each other ALWAYS gets clogged up with them trying to convince each other that their position is wrong and they need to convert to their own side, etc.
Oh, man, now that you've put it this way, I realized something. I've been wrong about Beast Machines for years. It's not a metaphor for nature vs. technology.

It's a metaphor for Internet message boards! The two sides just spout their position endlessly at each other without actually acknowledging the others' points!
And for the record, Rattrap's betrayal of his friends for Megatron in "The Weak Component" did NOT make sense, because he was NOT "changing to adapt" to them; he was taking the easy way out. Changing to adapt to his situation would have meant he found a way to compensate for his lack of weapons and legs, and found a way to contribute to the Maximal pretentious cause ON HIS OWN, or with help from his friends. Instead, he abandoned them and made a deal with the devil to get compensation. THAT IS NOT ADAPTING TO HIS SITUATION, that is him betraying everything he ever had for a quick fix, because he was too desperate and scared of his new 'flaws" to admit he needed help coping and moving on. That makes him LESS sympathetic in my eyes.
You want to know something? This whole thing with Rattrap has always, ALWAYS made sense to me. Everybody always talks about how Rattrap was so "in control" and "composed" in BW and how that Rattrap would never try to work alongside Megs.

Instead, The Weak Component *reveals* something about Rattrap's nature. Deep down inside--he's a coward and a pussy, and he's always been. He talks a big game, but he's a small spy Maximal with a tiny gun and that's 'all he's ever been.' His whole tough-guy New Yorker thing is an act. Rattrap voices repeatedly in BW about how he wants to go back home...because he needs the familiar comfort of Cybertron, away from this deserted foreign planet. And once he gets there, suddenly it's all overtaken by the very nemesis they'd faced for ~3 years prior. Oh, and he can't transform--which *by itself* is an indication that Rattrap doesn't really believe in himself at all to begin with. The facade has broken down. Rattrap is a broken man. So he turns to Megs.

(And I've fought this argument so long that I have a backup argument too--Rattrap is a spy. Everybody assumes Rattrap isn't being a complete backstabbing asshole when he joins up with Megatron. How do we know Rattrap wasn't going to carefully destroy Megs from the inside somehow? We don't, Primal just shows up to crash his plan instantly.)
I don't buy it, one bit; yes, he's a coward, but he's not so much of a coward that he would BETRAY HIS OWN PEOPLE TO THE ENEMY, just to gain a little more power, or did you forget how much he hated Dinobot post-betrayal? Seriously, how can you look at that and NOT see that turning traitor is one of the big things that grinds his gears? Yeah, he "betrayed" the Maximals during Double Jeopardy, but that was a FALSE betrayal on ORDERS by Primal and Rhinox, not some whim he pushed himself into due to a nervous breakdown. Or what about all of the times he buckled down and jumped into the fray, when he didn't need to or was pushed into it? Does "A Better Mousetrap" mean NOTHING to you? Or his rescue of Cheetor and his lying to cover up Cheetor's capture in "The Web"? Are you seriously trying to argue that what we see in the ENTIRETY of Beast Wars was a charade, and he really IS a backstabbing, lowlife asshole who doesn't care about anyone or anything but his own self-preservation? BULL. SHIT.

And if you really going to argue THAT point while trying to backpedal by saying he was going to "bring Megatron down from the inside", then you have less brains than Ian Flynn; you CANNOT argue that he betrayed the Maximals to join up with Megs at a moment of weakness when his facade broke free and showed the truly despicable asshole within, while maintaining that he was going to do the Maximals a service by throwing a monkey wrench into Megs' operations. The two are NOT COMPATIBLE; either he's a cowardly, traitorous asshole, or he's not, THERE IS NO GRAY AREA, HERE. If he really WAS doing this to sabotage Megs, why didn't he let the other Maximals know? Why didn't he leave a note, or sneak in hidden messages in his conversation to them when they confronted him letting them know about his plan? Why did he ATTACK THEM with intent to harm, instead of purposely missing with his shots? There's NOTHING indicating that he was doing this, as an infiltration plan. Just saying "he's a spy, so this makes sense" makes about as much sense as saying "he's a secret agent, so it makes sense that he'd sell top-secret information to the enemy, after having such a huge breakdown over his lot in life that he barely avoided suicide"?
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