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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YaoiThe Fic... it's very clever, I like the specific paralleling of "The Key To Vector Sigma", particularly the two times Silverbolt interacts with Optimus Prime and it's a twisted version of the equivalent interactions in canon. ;_; I also like the way that Aerialbots start out pretty close to their canon counterparts, and it's through forced reprogramming that they become broken and evil - and I really, really liked the way it's never explicitly stated that Silverbolt was also reprogrammed (with added claustrophobia) because he himself doesn't realise it, but it's damned obvious to the reader.Didn't like Optimus at all. Too much of a "Megatron with the serial numbers filed off" vibe from him, too violent - there was nothing recognisably Optimus about him. I'd like to see a mirrorverse Optimus who doesn't ever lay a finger on anyone, who is worshipped as a god and has devoted followers who will do anything for him, so that he doesn't even have to command them to hurt someone, they'll just do it.
It did make me realise there's another aspect to my dislike of mirrorverses, though - I don't like seeing the good guys gone evil. I am a big sucker for redeeming villains - not by turning them good, necessarily, but by greying their motivations so that they're not just cardboard cutout antagonists - and I am, as mentioned previously, quite interested in playing with the Shattered Glass Decepticons. But the first thing I thought on reading that fic was to wonder if the Aerials could be fixed, if the Decepticons could get hold of them and put them right, and to want to read that as a followup. I like to fix things, which means that 90% of my writing is always going to be not worth much on the great scale of literature - if there is any way to save someone, I will take it. I like, if not 'happy' endings, at least hopeful ones.