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Raksha's Rantings ... from Issue 20, Summer 1997
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Long ago - I don't quite remember when and under what circumstances - I discovered something most curious. If I looked at a photo of a person with a neutral or somewhat stern expression, and I myself adopted a friendly smile, the person in the photo would suddenly look much friendlier. By contrast, if I took on an angry expression and scowled, the photo would suddenly look "mean." Try it sometime.
My computer desktop wallpaper consists of a picture of Megatron. It's a re-touched version of what has become my favorite picture of him, out of the Japanese first-season sticker book - a picture that conveys all his strength of character, conviction of purpose, determination, directness, and (let's face it) overwhelming physical attractiveness. Playing with a scan of that picture in my graphics program, I ended up quite by accident "solarizing" the image so that it became a sort-of photographic negative in black-and-white, which immediately put me in mind of a night scene. Building on that concept further, I added some faint colors and replaced the background with a starry night sky, complete with a comet and a spiral galaxy in the distance (which took an inordinate amount of time to get right, in proportion to the tiny percentage of the image they actually take up). Then I added color to the eyes, and this part had to be absolutely perfect, so it again took up a fair amount of time; I filled in the outlines with a brilliant red fill, with a trace of yellow at the bottom for a true "fiery" effect, and then lightly "airbrushed" around the borders to create the "eyes glowing in the darkness" look. I remained pleased enough with the results that I put up a somewhat lower-quality copy on my web page many months later, and if you have access to the web you can see it there to this day: (http://www.plumed-serpent.com).
In any case, this is the image that greets me whenever I power up my computer. And, I've discovered something. When I've had a good day, when I'm pleased with the world and feeling happy, triumphant, or simply relaxed and content, Megatron's stern expression seems just about ready to curve over into a smile. There's something humorously conspiratorial glittering in the lights of those eyes, as though he and I share a marvelous secret that the rest of the world simply isn't in on.
You're already guessing the flipside, I'm sure. When I'm stressed, upset, angry, and frustrated - when I'm disgusted with myself for not being more efficient, motivated, organized, and level-headed, Megatron's expression borders on disapproval. Or disappointment, at the very least, as though saying "Come on, you can do better than this. You're a Decepticon. I thought more highly of you." Lest that sound totally callous, I'll add that when I'm *extremely* upset, when I feel let down by my friends and bashed at every turn by random strangers, Megatron just looks sad - like he wants to help, but can't.
The point of all of this is that the picture itself hasn't changed one bit, of course. Only my perceptions have changed. Perhaps that's what's going on, when people accept the given labels of "heroic Autobot" and "evil Decepticon" without question, and then view everything they see thereafter, from the perspective of that mindset. From that viewpoint, witnessing Decepticon interactions that are anything but "evil", will either be interpreted as something else ("Soundwave doesn't really feel friendship towards Megatron, he's just grubbing for power by making nice to the leader"), or they won't be registered at all ("Waspinator was concerned for the safety of his comrades in 'Better Mousetrap'? Where?"). It's quite an interesting phenomenon. Furthermore, people are unlikely to realize that they're caught up in it. Maybe if they'd try the "picture trick," they'd begin to see the point....
Maybe for this reason I don't like the grotesque expressions on a lot of the Beast Wars toys, either. I liked the fact that most of the old toys had very neutral expressions - lots of them, if you look at them closely, look quite noble and detached in a Greek-statue type of way - and so it's easy to imagine them changing that expression into either a friendly or an unfriendly one, depending on your current preference. With the BW toys that are all leering mouths and bared teeth, it's hard even with the most determined cheerfulness, to visualize them any other way.
Oh, they're not all like this, to be sure. I looked closely at my Tarantulas toy once, and noticed that he had a very kind and jovial expression. It's very faint, and barely detectable until you look closely, but it's there. Or maybe, just maybe, it *isn't* there. Maybe it's just my own affection for the character that's mirroring itself back to me. I don't even want to imagine what a die-hard Autobot fan would see.
It is, once again, all a matter of perspective.
The End