JIMMY
Most people know of Jimmy Tsai in one of his roles as accountant, fantasy basketball commissioner, or purveyor of athletic sportswear. But what people do NOT know is that under the pseudonym Tequila Rush, Jimmy authored the “mockumography” Go! Opium Pandamonium! Go!: From the Opium Pipe to Saturday Morning Children’s Cartoons. It currently ranks #5,339,475 on the Amazon.com sales ranking list. Amongst Jimmy’s latest ventures is a website devoted to Asians and Asian-Ams in sports entitled beyondbadminton.com.
THIS BLOG HAS BEEN UPDATED AS OF 2:50 P.M. PST ON MARCH 18, 2010. THERE WERE SOME TEXT ISSUES THAT ARE NOW FIXED. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
Over this past weekend, I had a revelation on a topic that has been pestering my subconscious ever since I was a child. A revelation of “bake your noodle” proportions. Now, before I dive into both conundrum and subsequent revelation, let me preface this all by mentioning that if you were not a fan of the original 80s Transformers cartoon, you may find this rambling just as necessary or relevant as those goddamn accelerator suits in G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA (in other words, “not very”). However, if you were one of those inquisitive minds that wondered where the hell Soundwave was able to store all those damn tapes that popped out of his chest ad infinitum, then read on!
First, the conundrum (you may not have consciously thought this to yourself–or maybe you did—but trust me, as soon as I finish asking the question and providing the answer, you will suddenly feel as if a nagging itch has finally been scratched). You ready? Here it goes:
“Why the f*ck is Devastator dumber than the six collective Constructicons that form him?”
Oh snap. Yeah. You heard that sound, too? That was your collective jaw dropping to the floor as you suddenly realized that this question has been hounding you since childhood (for those of you still reading even though you’re not familiar with the 80s Transformers cartoon, we’re not talking about the robot from Revenge of the Fallen that was comprised of a bunch of unidentifiable parts with a cement mixer/woodchipper thingie for a mouth; we’re talking about the badass motherf*cking Hulk-color-scheme-looking motherf*cker from the original cartoon).
Ostensibly, this makes absolutely no sense. You’ve got six robots, meaning six central processors, who collectively should have the computing power to actually think faster than one individual processor alone, right? Devastator should be smarter than any single one of the Constructicons alone, right?
WRONG.
Let me tell you why. The answer, when you think about it, is actually quite simple. The reason Devastator gets dumber when the Constructicons merge is because he speaks and makes decisions by committee. Let me illustrate by way of example:
Let’s say the Constructicons run into Optimus Prime on the battlefield. For whatever reason (most likely because they individually feel overmatched against Prime and don’t want to risk being labeled or identified as the Constructicon weak link just as Starscream is unequivocally identified as the Decepticon weak link), they merge into Devastator.
Now, here’s where we breakdown Devastator’s thought process when it comes to speaking or verbalizing. Usually, after the invariable “Constructicons, merge to form Devastator!!!” command, the Constructicons merge, and then Devastator has some kind of quip that he relays to his opponent. In terms of actual process, each of the individual Constructicons would have to come up with that quip, so what you’d have to start out with could possibly look something like this:
SCRAPPER: “Prime, I’m gonna destroy your ass and the f*cking horse you rode in on! Or rather, you and that f*cking trailer that rode in with you. Wait a minute—what the f*ck happened to the trailer?”
HOOK: “I’m gonna shove my foot so far up your f*ckin’ ass, you’ll be tasting titanium toejam for the next two years!”
BONECRUSHER: “I’m gonna enjoy destroyin’ you, Prime!”
SCAVENGER: “I’ll wipe that sh*t-eating grin off your face and then—oh wait, can’t see your goddamn mouth underneath that f*cking faceguard thingie. F*ck it—destroy!!!”
LONG HAUL: “I’m gonna destroy you in combat and rip the f*cking Matrix out of your chest cavity, Temple of Doom style!”
MIXMASTER: “Hand me the keys, you f*cking c*cksucker motherf*cker, blehblehblehblehblehaaargghhh!!!!!”
Now, for those of you who’ve taken statistics, you know that the first we thing we do is get rid of what are called “outliers.” In layman’s terms, if your professor is grading on a curve, he or she will usually throw out both the highest and lowest score in order to more appropriately assess the median or mean. In Constructicon terms, it means throwing out the cleverest remark (let’s say Hook’s because of its poetic and alliterative wittiness) as well as the dumbest one (Mixmaster—what the f*ck?).
Here are the four replies remaining:
SCRAPPER: “Prime, I’m gonna destroy your ass and the f*cking horse you rode in on! Or rather, you and that f*cking trailer that rode in with you. Wait a minute—what the f*ck happened to the trailer?”
BONECRUSHER: “I’m gonna enjoy destroyin’ you, Prime!”
SCAVENGER: “I’ll wipe that sh*t-eating grin off your face and then—oh wait, can’t see your goddamn mouth underneath that f*cking faceguard thingie. F*ck it—destroy!!!”
LONG HAUL: “I’m gonna destroy you in combat and rip the f*cking Matrix out of your chest cavity, Temple of Doom style!”
So, if you’re Devastator, you have to take those four answers and whittle it down to one LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) answer. Let’s illustrate by eliminating words that aren’t seen in all four versions of the individual Constructicons’ replies:
“Prime, I’m gonna destroy your ass and the f*cking horse you rode in on! Or rather, you and that f*cking trailer that rode in with you. Wait a minute—what the f*ck happened to the trailer?”
“I’m gonna enjoy destroyin’ you, Prime!”
“I’ll wipe that sh*t-eating grin off your face and then—oh wait, can’t see your goddamn mouth underneath that f*cking faceguard thingie. F*ck it—destroy!!!”
“I’m gonna destroy you in combat and rip the f*cking Matrix out of your chest cavity, Temple of Doom style!”
What you’re left with is:
“I (Devastator) destroy you (Prime)!”
And thus, Devastator’s menacing, not-too-bright quip becomes:
“Devastator destroy Prime!”
And there you go. There’s the answer plain and simple.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t shed any light on why Wheeljack made the Dinobots so f*cking stupid. Either his ass was a little too toasted on some of that Cybertronian moonshine or he just decided to play a practical joke on those poor Dinobots. Oh well, we’ll save answering that problem for another installment…
Jimmy Tsai’s previous guest offender blog: BREAKDOWN OF THE CRANE KICK
Along with Optimus Prime’s trailer, there’s also the pressing issue of why Soundwave, Blaster, Megatron, Perceptor (oh yes, I went there), et al changed sizes when transforming from robot to whatever earth machine form they took. I mean, if Megatron can fit in Starscream’s hand as a pistol, he should be the size of a sea otter in real life.
Still, I still remember how utterly blown my mind was the first time we saw Devastator. He was the biggest, baddest, thing in the universe and he was a Bad Guy. Unlike GI Joe or He-Man, the it was the villains who always got the best weapons in Transformers.
Good reasoning.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I missed the Tranformers sign-up party. But, I was a big fan of the ASIAN version of G-Force (aka Battle of the Planets).
that was amazing!
that being said, perhaps when Devastator “has” to assemble, he is in a time of great danger and stress. perhaps the programming gods designed Devastator to go into a full Primal mode (ie. animal instinct and no logic) in order to muscle his way out of a jam. B/C unassembled, the Construcitcons are very smart. Perhaps it was deemed that if the Constructicons could not take out their opponents as a group, that opponent was massively powerful (ie. most likely a Prime). It is at the point of having to become Devastator there is truly only one option – “Devastator Destroy ________!”
Just a theory. perhaps we should field test it?
A couple points:
1. The integrity of all Transformer gestalt personalities relies on how the individual component personalities get along. In Devastator’s case, his “primitive psyche is limited to only the thoughts and actions on which all his components can agree, which results in raging bouts of destructive fury.” http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Devastator_(G1)
2. The issue of what happens to Optimus’ trailer is linked to the issues of Soundwave/Blaster’s storage capacity and the mass/size-shifting of the tape players, the tapes, Megatron, Perceptor, Reflector, the gestalts (i.e. combiners), the Insecticons, and any time one Transformer travels inside another.
It is theorized that the Transformers use one or a combination of sub-space mass-displacement, parts compression, nanomachine deconstruction/reconstruction, anti-gravity, and hyper-gravity generators. All of these suggestions are problematic, both in terms of physics as well as plot consistency. A more fulsome discussion can be found here:
http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_shifting
Finally, Ping Pong Playa was fantastic.
A committee. running a robot. shouldve named him devastOBAMA
‘beyond badminton’ – nice original idea. hope it takes off, you need more Asian sponsorship or something
Stealth M.C., you’re my fucking hero.
[...] keeping with the theme of my last guest post, I present yet another cartoon conundrum that you may have always wondered about in the back of [...]