Rebecca Hb. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beckyh2112) wrote2008-06-18 12:10 pm
beckyh2112) wrote2008-06-18 12:10 pm
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Shattered Glass vs. Mirrorverse
You know, when you get right down to it the Shattered Glass universe is almost... silly compared to the Transformers: Mirrorverse the fans invented.
There are a lot of good meta reasons for this. Number one being that Hasbro is in this business to make money, and part of that does come from the relative child-friendliness of Transformers. Even when we get to see Megatron flicking humans away ('07 Movie), we don't get to see a lot of the bodies. We get property destruction. And property destruction is pretty bad, but you'll notice that the Movie didn't say anything about how many people must have died during the Mission City battle.
In the cartoons, of course, humans never get killed. Transformers might, but it's usually played wonderfully tragic (Beast Wars, the animated movie), mostly ignored (Beast Wars and the animated movie again, different characters), or we have a resurrection in the not-too distant future (Optimus Prime, most incarnations). Again, the cartoons usually are quite fond of the property destruction, but heck, it took until Transformers: Animated for the Transformers to even be held accountable for their property destruction.
The comics are a different matter, but even when we're slaughtering Transformers wholesale (Underbase) or someone is cluster-bombing Earth (G2), there's never quite the same urgency or gut-churning horror and helplessness that some pieces of fanfiction can show so well. Charles RB's This is BBC1 gives a much better idea of what kind of damage the Transformers can do to the world than the comics/cartoons ever have.
Which, given the nature of the media, makes sense. Transformers is not a horror genre. It's science-fantasy and action-adventure. We can't really expect it to give us realistic results of what it displays.
But that does hamstring the officially-licensed Mirrorverse-equivalent. Because, to me, the point of a Mirrorverse has always been to contrast with the main universe and to explore the differences that come about when our heroes are villains. If the writers can't, or won't, do that with a crossover between the two universes, then going the horror route is a really good alternative.
Yeah, yeah, Shattered Glass did have a crossover victim. Except we took Cliffjumper from the Collectors Club comic timeline and dropped him into a Mirrorverse with a not-very-well-defined timeline.
(On the upside, evil Optimus Prime used to be a librarian, and he went crazy from reading the books that contain information mechs were not meant to know.
Also, what is with the number of Decepticons and Autobots in the Mirrorverse who have their roots in the university and education systems?
Also, also, Hot Rod has a moustache.
See what I was saying about Shattered Glass being a bit silly?)
Unfortunately, all we really see of the crossover victim is Cliffjumper going "wtf?" a lot until he decides to throw in with Megatron, because even if he is a paranoid fighter-jock, Cliffjumper believes in good and right. The limitations of the format they used really stand out here - one comic issue is not enough to give the readers much besides "Autobots bad, Decepticons good, Optimus Prime craaaaaaaazy". We barely even get to see all of the Botcon '08 Shattered Glass toys on stage in the comic, much less actually saying and doing things.
The ill-defined timeline really works against Shattered Glass here. If Shattered Glass had a specific G1 timeline it was mirroring, it would probably be a much more understandable why Megatron used to be a mathematician. (I doubt it, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.) As it currently stands, it doesn't really make sense, because we know extremely little of the history of the Shattered Glass universe.
Without that sense of history, we also lose a great deal of the contrast with the original universe. There is nothing in particular that defines Shattered Glass Starscream as anything other than Jetfire with a name change. His tech spec gives us a history that almost makes sense with the G1 cartoon history of Starscream. Sort of. If you squint. But then you put that in the same universe where Jazz has a twin named Ricochet, and they were an experiment created by Optimus Prime.
The Transformers: Mirrorverse has its own problems. The rampant legion of original characters detracts from the overall theme, in my opinion, and the no-slash rule means we've got a lot of female original characters running around whose principal purpose is to be a love-interest for a certain character.
On the other hand, if there's one thing the Mirrorverse does well, it's give you a very good sense of the horror of a world with evil Autobots and good Decepticons.
I leave you with the one Transformers: Mirrorverse fic I will reread, and the one I consider to be the absolute best of my admittedly limited reading: Cats' Cradle.
It could also be referred to as "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part Two: Mirrorverse."
There are a lot of good meta reasons for this. Number one being that Hasbro is in this business to make money, and part of that does come from the relative child-friendliness of Transformers. Even when we get to see Megatron flicking humans away ('07 Movie), we don't get to see a lot of the bodies. We get property destruction. And property destruction is pretty bad, but you'll notice that the Movie didn't say anything about how many people must have died during the Mission City battle.
In the cartoons, of course, humans never get killed. Transformers might, but it's usually played wonderfully tragic (Beast Wars, the animated movie), mostly ignored (Beast Wars and the animated movie again, different characters), or we have a resurrection in the not-too distant future (Optimus Prime, most incarnations). Again, the cartoons usually are quite fond of the property destruction, but heck, it took until Transformers: Animated for the Transformers to even be held accountable for their property destruction.
The comics are a different matter, but even when we're slaughtering Transformers wholesale (Underbase) or someone is cluster-bombing Earth (G2), there's never quite the same urgency or gut-churning horror and helplessness that some pieces of fanfiction can show so well. Charles RB's This is BBC1 gives a much better idea of what kind of damage the Transformers can do to the world than the comics/cartoons ever have.
Which, given the nature of the media, makes sense. Transformers is not a horror genre. It's science-fantasy and action-adventure. We can't really expect it to give us realistic results of what it displays.
But that does hamstring the officially-licensed Mirrorverse-equivalent. Because, to me, the point of a Mirrorverse has always been to contrast with the main universe and to explore the differences that come about when our heroes are villains. If the writers can't, or won't, do that with a crossover between the two universes, then going the horror route is a really good alternative.
Yeah, yeah, Shattered Glass did have a crossover victim. Except we took Cliffjumper from the Collectors Club comic timeline and dropped him into a Mirrorverse with a not-very-well-defined timeline.
(On the upside, evil Optimus Prime used to be a librarian, and he went crazy from reading the books that contain information mechs were not meant to know.
Also, what is with the number of Decepticons and Autobots in the Mirrorverse who have their roots in the university and education systems?
Also, also, Hot Rod has a moustache.
See what I was saying about Shattered Glass being a bit silly?)
Unfortunately, all we really see of the crossover victim is Cliffjumper going "wtf?" a lot until he decides to throw in with Megatron, because even if he is a paranoid fighter-jock, Cliffjumper believes in good and right. The limitations of the format they used really stand out here - one comic issue is not enough to give the readers much besides "Autobots bad, Decepticons good, Optimus Prime craaaaaaaazy". We barely even get to see all of the Botcon '08 Shattered Glass toys on stage in the comic, much less actually saying and doing things.
The ill-defined timeline really works against Shattered Glass here. If Shattered Glass had a specific G1 timeline it was mirroring, it would probably be a much more understandable why Megatron used to be a mathematician. (I doubt it, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.) As it currently stands, it doesn't really make sense, because we know extremely little of the history of the Shattered Glass universe.
Without that sense of history, we also lose a great deal of the contrast with the original universe. There is nothing in particular that defines Shattered Glass Starscream as anything other than Jetfire with a name change. His tech spec gives us a history that almost makes sense with the G1 cartoon history of Starscream. Sort of. If you squint. But then you put that in the same universe where Jazz has a twin named Ricochet, and they were an experiment created by Optimus Prime.
The Transformers: Mirrorverse has its own problems. The rampant legion of original characters detracts from the overall theme, in my opinion, and the no-slash rule means we've got a lot of female original characters running around whose principal purpose is to be a love-interest for a certain character.
On the other hand, if there's one thing the Mirrorverse does well, it's give you a very good sense of the horror of a world with evil Autobots and good Decepticons.
I leave you with the one Transformers: Mirrorverse fic I will reread, and the one I consider to be the absolute best of my admittedly limited reading: Cats' Cradle.
It could also be referred to as "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part Two: Mirrorverse."
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Shattered Glass is badly done, but I have honestly never seen a pure mirrorverse that I thought was well done, so I couldn't tell you how I'd feel about it. :) I would like to play in SG, but I am already aware that I would find it very, very difficult to allow more than the already specified "evil autobots" to actually be evil - I'd start thinking too hard about the whys and before you know it I'd have a bunch of extra neutral factions, a good few Decepticons-as-Autobots and vice-versa, and a Starscream who'd stab you in the back if he thought it was for the "good of the cause". I like shades of grey.
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I love morality-swap AUs/mirrorverses. They're one of my favorite types of AUs, because exploring how everything falls out from a simple switch in morality intrigues me. Keeping the characters themselves but twisted by the dark looking glass is the kind of challenge that I love.
This likely stems from my general love of mindfucks and how brainwashing/reprogramming affects a person. A mirrorverse Silverbolt (a manipulative, ambitious, chilly killer, lord of the skies for all that he fears the heights from which he may fall) is just as fascinating to me as a Unicronian-reformatted Silverbolt (shield of the Void, ruthless in battle, mad as mad can be, lightning-lord, disdains the ground for the air) or Chaos-infected Silverbolt (green-eyed madman whose passions rage free, soft and manipulative in one moment, hard and fast as his lightning in the next).
(I will note that my personal mirrorverse is rather different from the Transformers: Mirrorverse project.)
Any good mirrorverse should, to me, not be the original universe with people in opposite positions. There should be a history of some sort that explains where everyone is coming from. I am very fond of the Transformers: Mirrorverse in that regard, as there is a very nice origin story of Orion Pax as a sullen, violence-tinged dockworker for Ratbat. He's an Autobot, though, and even though the Decepticon knows it's unfair to stereotype him as trouble, he still does so just a bit. And there's an underlying thread of the Autobots being second-class citizens.
Very nicely done, very interesting.
It's the balancing act between "this is Optimus Prime" and "this is an evil psychopath" that has to be made to work. To me, a mirrorverse only works properly with some history or at least some allusions to a mirrored history that you can recognize and develop in your own head. When it's just... semi-random like Shattered Glass is, there are problems.
I do think it rather defeats the purpose of a mirrorverse if you're making a whole bunch of the canonical good guys not evil. It should be possible with nearly everyone to fit them into the world once you've got the basics and some of the history down. As a for instance, the Bluestreak from the Transformers: Mirrorverse project had his city destroyed by Autobots. However, the Autobots told him that the Decepticons did it, and he joined the Autobots to get revenge on the Decepticons. (If I remember correctly, this lie also came back to bite the Autobots on the ass during the course of the Mirrorverse.)
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Edit: I do love turning people evil. I really do, and I'm 100% with you on the "Holy mindfuck, batman!" thing. It's just that mirrorverses do it so sweepingly, and often illogically... well, like I said, I've never found one I liked, so who knows what I'd think if I did. And unfortunately the TF:MV's "no slash" rule puts me off exploring it.
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I've also written fics (http://beckyh2112.livejournal.com/tag/sideshot) with him and the Voidverse in general.
Green-eyed Silverbolt has some roleplaying logs on my hard drive. Sadly, I've never much done anything with my own mirrorverse. Mostly because there are some aspects from the Mirrorverse project I'd like to lift, and I don't feel comfortable with doing that.
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