Maximum Dinobots wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, but I was all emotionally invested in Sunstreaker by that point, and it's got some good stuff for him. Though the big emotional payoff isn't until AHM, so ehh. I did like getting some additional context for how Grimlock ended up in Garrus-9 and separate from the other Dinobots, but again, not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Rodimus does get one crowning moment of awesome, though! Spoiler: rodimus He sets himself on fire through sheer mothafucking force of will And when someone mentioned it to JRO on twitter, he was like 'ooh, I forgot about that. Maybe it could happen again in the future, but only if it's for something really awesome' So if you'd like to see that page, I can probably see about getting the image from my trade later today.
So I just finished Issue 51 of MTMTE, and I have some meta thoughts about Getaway. Spoiler: Getaway If you asked Getaway why he targeted Tailgate, I think he'd say it was for the greater good. He'd say Tailgate isn't important enough to be a huge loss, but is well-liked enough to get people livid at Megatron. He'd say the loss of one life is worth taking out Megatron. He'd say all these things, and maybe he'd even believe them, but they're all lies. See, Getaway is cruel. He's not doing the ends justify the means, he's a sadist, and whether or not he admits it to himself, the means ARE something he enjoys. He reveals this, oddly enough, in his conversation with Whirl. After having shot Whirl with the memory gun, when there's only a minute or so before Whirl forgets this ever happened, Getaway takes the time to tell Whirl that he's just a dumb killing machine, that even Tailgate thinks so. This isn't a necessary part of his plan. This isn't a means to an end. This is Getaway openly being cruel for the enjoyment of being cruel, and doing this merely because he knows he can get away with it. How does this relate to Tailgate? Remember how Getaway was born. He told the story to manipulate Tailgate, but I think it was true, and it revealed some things about him. He's an MTO, he was shoved out of a plane seconds after being created, before his eyes even worked. His first sight and taste of life was a horrific battlefield, and this fucked him up. It likely fucked him up much more than he realized. I don't know how old Getaway is, but he's not young, and he spent his entire life embroiled in a horrible, planet-razing war where both sides used the ends to justify the means. It's the only life and context for life he knows, and like many characters post-war, he is floundering for a purpose now that the war is over, and in order to help himself, he's told himself the war isn't over, and the ends still justify the means. But Tailgate? Tailgate slept through the fucking war. Tailgate has the privilege to learn about the war as history, and he's got the ability to be happy and well-liked and brave. Everyone likes Tailgate, even if they don't always take him seriously, and I think Getaway's real motive for targeting Tailgate is to punish him for not having had to participate in the war. He's jealous, and he doesn't like how that makes him feel, so Tailgate needs to die. Similarily, Cyclonus didn't sleep through the war, but he spent basically the entire war trapped in the Dead Universe, only escaping that fate right at the tail end of the war (and possibly even after the war technically ended?). Cyclonus isn't happy and naive and joyful, but he also got to miss the way, so he also needs to be punished. And what better way to punish him than taking Tailgate away from him?
Oh, also Spoiler: Getaway If one life is worth taking out Megatron, as Getaway claims, why is Getaway not willing to carry out the plan himself and die for the cause? Answer: Because it's not about Megatron.
Spoiler: Getaway Yeah, honestly if Getaway had just wanted Megatron dead...he had Whirl on his side and Megatron is running on fool's energon, he could have just had Whirl kill Megatron two days after leaving Cybertron, mindblanked him afterwards, and nobody would have been surprised or even all that upset. But Getaway wants to win in a way that demonstrates something, and it's about more than just Megatron.
Spoiler: Getaway Theory: Getaway wants to 'prove' people can't change because he is actually really fucked up over the war and fucked up over how he can't leave it behind. He wants to drag everyone down to his level to prove that he's not the one that's messed up.
Spoiler: 47 onwards YESSSSS the "that's what tailgate calls you, by the way. we laugh about it." was so pointlessly cruel. an extra kick -- not even the bot you're trying to spare thinks you're worth anything, whirl. and then there was the "hey, i don't like sacrificing tailgate, but i don't like megatron blah blah blah either" like he's not even trying to sound remorseful or hesitant. getaway's a user. he gladly used whirl until he stopped being useful, used brainstorm (the fucking. the one shanix thing. it was funny but like.), used the hell out of tailgate, has used and continues to use atomizer, whether or not atomizer's bothered by it. there is not an altruistic metaphorical bone in getaway's body. he's such a dick. (i love him) i just went through my whole robofolder to find some cute panel of him to justify my lingering affections but apparently my id doesn't have too much control over which pages i save, so he barely features. i did find this, though, which is super cute skids juggling datapads! cross-legged nautica!! brainstorm showing off!!! fishtanks!!!!! the fact that this is all taking place in nautica's hab suite, which is just. the implications are so cute.... oh and getaway's there too i guess
Spoiler: 47 Also the thing Getaway says about them laughing at the way Tailgate doesn't know Whirl's name. That's one of the bits my brain tries to gloss over, because getting someone's name wrong is very much a thing I do and that I'm really insecure about, and if someone did that to me, I would be crushed. It would wreck me. If people thought it was harmless or whatever, that's bad enough, but what Getaway says about laughing about it and not correcting him, there's no reason to do it, and that's so pointlessly cruel.
oh hey i don't know why but i really like that not everyone has blue optics, out of the bots that we're rooting for Spoiler: up to 51 ie the rodpod squad. like... brainstorm, skids, velocity, whirl, and CD all have yellow optics/visors, and cyclonus, ravage, mims, and megatron all have red nightbeat's visor colour has changed over the years and drift's had every eye colour under the sun, so like w/e they don't COUNT for the blue column. i don't know. i just like that the blue optics are like, the stereotypical "good guy" colour, and not everyone in the rodpod squad has them. not even a majority of them do! it's nice :)
oh god. yeah, same. that's. yeah, that is upsetting. D:> edit: Spoiler: 47 i think i interpreted that as getaway saying that he and tailgate laugh about calling whirl "nutjob," together, actually! not because it was true (since tailgate's not calling him nutjob out of unkindness, just ignorance), but just as an extra little cruelty. still same re: the insecurity about getting names wrong, though
why does a character so absolutely unrepentingly dickish have to have the cutest signature tic ever fucking bomp
Actually, that ties back nicely to some of the stuff Allenna was saying last night about how mature/immature some of these characters were before they were thrown into the mess and how the war might have affected their development. It's hard to get worse than the start Getaway had, in terms of him barely even coming online before being tossed out to do his thing, and in terms of a traumatic fucking start to his life. I'm not up on my research about how childhood trauma affects future development, but I think there's some interesting stuff to be said about him there.
Also! I remembered sorta what I was trying to say about Starscream. A race that lives for millions of years is going to have different ideas of maturity and what young is. So like you can be an adult, have a job, interface etc but other mechs might go heey slow down kid if you run out and get a conjunx a few weeks after you've joined society. Even mechs a 200-300 years old would be considered maybe too young to be soldiers. They're still adults, but it's adulthood in stages. So while say Rodimus was clearly an adult at the start of the war, he's still considered very young (you get shades of this with how Optimus and Megatron treat him just after Nyon and how he's still treated millions of years into the war.) So I'm thinking Starscream, like Rodimus, was young when he joined up with Megatron. He might have been cold constructed, but he was still at the age he'd be expected to be having fun etc. And since Starscream was cold constructed he might not have had all the cool nice things he wanted for wherever he lived. So when he can? He buys all that stuff and fills he's spaces with them. Sorta like Rodimus and painting things and carving into his desk -- he finally has a space he can do whatever he wants with because it's his. It's not a crummy run down apartment in Nyon, it's not military housing, it's his. Same with Starscream, he has no one to tell him he can have a little model of his frame type. He can have that expensive imported organic cloth or finely woven mesh. Which makes Getaway's resentment of things like the Rodpod and stuff more layered Spoiler: spoilers because as a MTO during the war all he's KNOWN his military and war. That's his baseline. So Rodimus' claiming of space and wanting to personalize it and not be a solider and have fun while on this quest is seen has deeply irresponsible. To Getaway, Rodimus allowing Megatron onboard was following orders, but he should have offlined him the moment he stepped aboard because Megatron is the enemy. Rodimus (and Starscream) has a baseline for peace times, even just culturally, Getaway doesn't
Also consider: Spoiler: Getaway And Megatron regarding the Meta about Megatron posted upthread and how his leadership style is ultimately focused around his own self? Getaway and Megatron are foils for each other in that way. Getaway clings to the self he built in the war, and is cruel out of the selfish desire to not feel like he has to make up a whole new identity from scratch. Megatron clings to the new self he builds himself now in peacetime, out of scraps and discarded parts and fragments. Most of his decisions have the intended effect of giving that new sense some solid foundation in demonstrable actions.
Wait, so. Tailgate comes off as particularly childish because he's the only character (except the Caminus crew) who has never experienced a war or other long-term oppressive and abusive situation in the case of Cyclonus? So like. Maybe Tailgate isn't even particularly immature for a cybertronian with his amount of life experience. He's pretty average and healthy in development, but literally nobody else is?
Spoiler: CYGATE And this would add whole new layers to how Cyclonus and Tailgate deal with each other. Because Tailgate is an adult, yes, but probably nobody but Cyclonus is aware of exactly how young he was when he got trapped underground. And Cyclonus has issues of his own, but he's clearly thawing towards Tailgate and has romantic sentimental feelings towards him that he definitely doesn't express when it comes to anyone else. But even like at the total romantic extreme, if he was like okay, this is it, I am definitely In Love and think he loves me back, he'd be like whoaaaa whoa whoa, he's young, we're going to live for millions of years, it would be irresponsible of me to do this to him/allow him to do this to himself. We're going to live forever, letting this sit for a century or two isn't going to hurt anybody. (especially since Cyclonus doesn't have the same experience of life being short and brutal that so many of the others have from the war). So he's thinking it would be wrong to push too fast, and he's aware that general societal standards would hold that it's wrong to push too fast. So Getaway starts breaking the rules and railroading Tailgate towards marriage, and, like.... you're not going to see that coming. Or you'll see the signs and be like pff, I'm reading that wrong, it's Not Allowed, so it's not going to happen (also ties back to me and my autistic cyclonus headcanon where he had to learn the social rules manually but things have bent and changed while he was gone and it's still hard to adjust when people break the rules on purpose). But Getaway knows the rules and general societal expectations, plus being aware that Tailgate doesn't know them (and/or that Tailgate being That Age, when you think the rules are dumb and shouldn't apply to you), and that makes it so much easier for him to deliberately break them. But when you get characters like Jetfire talking about how they were in college for a couple thousand years, there's a lot of power to be seized by someone like Getaway deliberately pushing a sprint through on some normally-slow social process. This is really, really interesting to think about, and I'm having so much fun turning this all over in my head.
