i love the idea of targetmasters…
interesting topic of choice for a first ramble, but i’m very serious. someone please match my freak about these things :(
anyway g1 targetmasters are really gay, and so are headmasters but i’m focusing on targetmasters. there’s something so inherently intimate about binding yourself to someone else, serving them with your body for both of your protection. like, your partner has to hold and use you, and you have to have full undying trust and love and respect for the other person to not be mistreated. your partner is a weapon of mass destruction and they trust you to protect them and yourself. that type of dynamic in a war setting is just so tragic yet so good for writing.
for the past year and a half since i got back into transformers, i’ve been hyper focused on specifically the crosshairs and pinpointer/pointech partnership; drawing art and collecting their figures and studying their designs.
[drawn- dec.2023-jan.2024]
earthspark concept [drawn- idk mid-2024]
out of the original g1 guys that weren’t pre-established main characters or were paired w/ main characters— sureshot, pointblank, crosshairs, pinpointer, peacemaker, and spoilsport— crosshairs and pinpointer are said to have a good relationship. out of the entire gang, these two are the only ones who actually work together and stick together. willingly. sureshot and spoilsport are butting helms because their egos are too big, and pointblank is completely depressed with peacemaker trying to make, well, peace. I’m sure the japanese headmaster cartoon works off this very well, but i haven’t seen it yet. it’s high on my priority list, so please no spoilers.
yeah the characters were made for a gimmick and were introduced in a pathetic season 4, but i liked it. the cybertronian characters went off to become their own things, but it feels like the nebulan/partner aspect of the headmaster/targetmaster dynamic is terribly underutilized in storytelling. the closest thing I can really think of to a modern story including a targetmaster-like dynamic was rid-15, but then that comes into question of “is it a targetmaster or just a minibot/con?” and i’m not too sure how to think of it.
i just want a story where a cybertronian meets and pairs up with an organic or a smaller cybertronian and they become targetmasters. but the entire time, they’re both grappling with the fact that their entire dynamic hinders on war, and they both grow exhausted from fighting. they can’t break the bond, because it’s too ingrained by the time they both are sick of war, and so they both have to heal and fight together, side by side, while trying to keep each other safe and healthy. because why would they want to die now? they made it this far, they could go further, could go until the war ends and they can retire to the countryside and finally get married or whatever.
anyway, TL;DR— big robot hold little robot/organic like a gun makes my heart hurt and brain explode with angsty story ideas.