Super Giant Robot Brothers post
Rewatching the show and currently on ep 8 (Whack-a-bot) and I wanna point out something I just picked up on
When Alex says “Thunder, Shiny, you know what to do”, Thunder says “Affirmative”.
That’s not a shocker, but what it is his tone.
Usually he says “affirmative” in a monotone voice. Even if the pitch is adjusted higher or lower, it’s spoken in a flat voice. But here, his “affirmative” has an inflection.
Here, we’re gonna look at this music chart real quick
If you don’t know: this is a solfège scale. It’s a mnemonic system in music that assign syllables to pitches. Of course, the pitch the scale starts on depends entirely on the major key. For now, we’re gonna use C Major and focus on Re, Mi, and Fa.
Now obviously Thunder doesn’t sing, but this is the best way I can explain the pitch difference. In the top example, the normal affirmative is a constant Re as drawn. There is no change, just a constant D note. Even if you change the Major and adjust the solfège scale, it would still be a constant Re. This is what know as a monotone
However, there is a movement in episode eight. It goes up two step then down a step: Re Mi Fa Mi. This has inflection. A pitch arranged like that cam signal excitement, which can also be picked up in Thunder’s tone.
It isn’t just a pitch change, there is a little emotion thrown in there. It’s like when a mischievous character says “well what do we have here?” when they find something that could help them. Thunder sounds excited and pumped.
Not only that, his posture straightened immediately and gets ready.
Now look at this shot (don’t mind the screen)
That’s a loading screen. A very rare sight we see on Thunder. When we think of a loading, we think of two things depending on the context: download or upload.
While the screen load is on his face, Thunder is rolling his shoulders. A robot is doing shoulder rolls. A warmup exercise that humans do. And not only that, he is also doing squats
The loading screen is gone, but now Thunder is doing another warmup exercise. And while he’s squatting he says: “check it”
(Ignore the ao3 tab, thats to help with part 3 of the brothers reunion fic)
This makes me believe two things
First off: this seems to be a very rare mode that Thunder activates.
This leads me to believe two things
Firstly: This mode seems to be very rarely activated.
Given the fact that Thunder had a loading screen on his face, that could mean he was redownloading the mode. Why would he need to redownload it? That could be because it was undownloaded by Thunder’s systems. With iPhones, there’s a feature called “offload unused apps”. Which is basically deleting apps that haven’t been open for a while but still saving the data on that app. It’s mostly for storage management. Temporarily undownloading a feature like that for storage is reasonable if it’s rarely used.
To add to that, Thunder was rolling his shoulders and doing squats. Which are, again, warmup exercises. They’re quick but enough to get the blood pumpin and the joints moving. And with how he’s positioned, you need those blood and joints going. But it also says to me that’s it been a while since Thunder has gone into that mode.
Secondly: I think this is a mode that Thunder really loves.
His moments of visible excitement are far and wide. Especially since he does actively try to hide it (look at episode three where he says “Of course!” Before correcting himself with “Affirmative.”). But when you see them, you can tell that guy is excited. And here, you can see it.
Or in this case: hear it. His “affirmative” had an inflection. He said it positive tone. He tells Shiny “check it” before he activates the mode.
So while Shiny is mildly panicking due to his claustrophobia, Thunder is fuckin pumped cuz he gets to roll around in a mode he rarely uses.
Thank you for coming to my tedtalk