Awesomeness in disguise

I latched on to The Transformers in a pretty serious way as a child, and then as a teenager. Then as an adult. I'm latched. I'm probably always going to be latched. Particularly with the film. The first one that they made back in 1986. There is a lot to be taken from The Transformers and The Transformes: The Movie. I mean, there is all that stuff about the fuel driven conflict, opposing ideologies and civil war, if you're fighting something bigger than yourself, you've got to get inside and use your truth crystal, the big world politics stuff, but there is this whole other thing.

There is also the effectiveness of Saturday morning cartoons for advertising action figures, which is a whole thing. It is super effective. I'm not talking about that either.

Honestly, this is going to be one of those 'stop me if you think that you've heard this one before' kind of things, because you probably have, but you can't because I'm going to have finished by the time you even get a chance to know that I've written it, and I want it somewhere on my blog, so it's going to happen anyway.

The Transformers is about pretending. Clearly that is exactly what it is about. It is about pretending in order to avoid scrutiny and ridicule. That is pretty much the stated reason. It is about fitting in. That's why they turn into cars. I feel like I spent a lot of time as a car. I feel like that was important part of who I was for a long time. Not to suggest that I get to be an autobot. I'm not really that good. I'm okay. I don't think I'm a really bad person or anything, but I could be better.

It was important for a long time to spend as much time as a car as I could, and then I had other forms too. I became a Triple Changer, because I turned into a helicopter or something as well as the car. Like Blitzwing, Astrotrain and Springer. I prefer Springer, who was kind of like a wise-arse samurai, which is pretty awesome. I think sometimes you forget which bit is the real you. You're switching between the car and the helicopter, and you kind of forget that you're also a robot underneath it all. An awesome robot.

At the end of the day though you're at your best when you're yourself. That's what happens. That's the hard part though, because the reason that you aren't yourself is to make things easier. Not just because turning into a car and going somewhere might be easier than walking. I couldn't tell you. I've never been a car. I mean, I have been the metaphorical car I was talking about earlier, but not an actual car.

It's one of those things that we say shouldn't be a problem, and we tell people that they should just be the robot, but it is a problem, and is scary. Super scary. I think that the best that we can all do is try and let people know that a lot of different kinds of things are okay, so that they don't feel the need to be the car all the time. Or the helicopter.

If all the pretending is making you feel like you're disappearing into a larger whole (as though you're being eaten by some kind of giant machine planet with tusks), and you're frightened of being the robot and you're looking for a little help, I would like to leave you with this. It has helped me a great del over the years. It metaphorically held my giant metaphorical robot hand on a number of very literal occasions.

¡Atrévete! Atrévete a creeer que puedes continuar. Tú tienes el futuro en tus manos.