newvagabond:

This was something painful to notice. The top three gifs are from Con Job. At the end of that episode, Wheeljack is so smiley and happy. Nothing that has happened to him that day really bothers him. Even though it sucks that he’s not staying on Earth, he’s positive! He’s going out there to find the other Wreckers. To find his friends. So happy, look at him!

Then there’s Loose Cannons. Wheeljack is back, but his mood changes. A lot. And very quickly. In the beginning of the episode he is almost disoriented in the way he’s fighting Dreadwing. It’s very different from his ass-kicking in Con Job. He’s easily distracted, gets blasted to the point where he has difficulty standing and loses his focus for a good moment and you can see it in his optics, he’s sort of dazed. Then he just keeps shooting and shooting at Dreadwing like there isn’t anything else. After the gas station blows up he looks more confused than he should be when they explain what the hell a gas station is and immediately wants to get back to chasing the enemy down. He’s pissed but clearly in a state of disarray. 

They get him to base and he’s calmed down. When he tells what happened to Seaspray, he looks exhausted. Not just physically but emotionally. When he says “Some coincidence, huh?” he just sounds… not himself. And then in less than a minute he’s on his pedes ready to fight again. Prime lays down the rules for him and his feathers rise immediately. Fowler jumps in and makes it worse. Wheeljack goes from soft and worn out to bristled and angry like that. His plating angles, he gestures sharply, he talks back. When Bulkhead goes to talk to him, he’s standing by the Jackhammer very still for a moment. His optics move, he shutters them and ventilates. Something hurts. Then yet again his mood flips as he reads off the names of their fallen comrades, his optics widen very expressively, defensively, angrily. When he’s talking with Optimus in the Jackhammer he’s back to speaking softly. “Alone’s usually a lot less complicated.”

A lot is going on with Wheeljack in that episode. This is a different Wrecker than we met at the end of Con Job. He’s all over the place for a good portion of it. It’s like he can’t decide whether to be sad or angry and the fact that he probably hasn’t recharged in a very long time probably isn’t helping. He’s… a little messed up, maybe. I mean, Jesus, these poor robots. Who isn’t messed up? 

It’s just such a big jump from happy Wheeljack to fucked-up-needs-a-hug-and-a-power-down Wheeljack. In Triage he seems to be doing a lot better, maybe he’s reconciled it. He’s smiley and has a lot of fun flirting with teasing Ratchet. Though he’s still wild, he’s not all disoriented and borderline frigging bipolar like in Loose Cannons. I don’t think I need to go in depth about Hurt because it’s obvious what was going on there. 

It’s just apparent to me that Seaspray’s death affected him more than people realize. He’s different. Just look at his facial expressions in the bottom two rows. Look at how still he is compared to when he gets mad like two seconds later, it’s a huge change in body language.

Everyone always talks about how expressive Starscream is, but we can’t forget our favorite insubordinate ruffian. 

Oops, I really didn’t mean to write this much, I just have a lot of Wheeljack feels right now.