TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

whine whine whine whine whine

Sorryyy, I don't like to hate on other people's writing, but I just tried to power my way through this thing and I wanted to like it, but it was actually Super Uncomfortable, and ended on this really unsatisfying note, and I never have reading energy and I'm super frustrated I invested my time into this

Spoiler

Again, this is super petty, sorry ;-; So in my quest for more Starscream all the time always, I happened upon this one long transformers fic labeled Optimus/Megatron/Starscream with all sorts of slavery and torture and noncon warnings, featuring Galvatron. And at first, very exciting! Sexual torture, Optimus being enslaved and moving from the WORST master (Galvatron) to a somewhat better one (Megatron), which gave me shades of TGWP, very exciting. The story's setting says that slaves have to have frequent sex with their masters, otherwise the slave coding fucks them up. The Autobots have been nearly wiped out, the Decepticons are in a nasty, drawn out fight with Galvatron's forces, we're all good to go. Yes? NO.

Oh my goddddddd, I don't even know what happened. It was so frustrating. It started out all interesting with Megatron like 'optimus doesn't want to have sex with me, but he has to if he wants to survive, and also i am conflicted and maybe have some Feelings.' Also Galvatron had tortured Optimus so that his interface array was too damaged to be usable at first, so extra conflict because the slave coding will kill Optimus if he doesn't have sex with his new master soon. So that's my jam. But okay. Megatron is, like. Really rapey. Even apart from Optimus. But we're not supposed to hate him for it? I think? It's just How Decepticons Are? And he and Starscream have sex a lot, super rough sex that damages Starscream, and Megatron frequently uses violent sex and rape as punishments for him. But Starscream is into that, I think, so it's okay?

I don't even know, the first time Megatron really gets into banging Optimus, he flashes back to this good ol' sexual fantasy he had where

Spoiler: genital mutilation

he literally stomps Optimus's spike into pulp before throwing him to the ground and pulverizing Optimus's valve with his spike

so there was a lot of tonal dissonance when he immediately has this... noncon scene that is tender but also necessary for Optimus's survival? And also there was a flashback to this one time where he was raping Starscream as punishment for something, I don't even know, and he did it like literally on top of a pile of other Decepticons and he was being all sexually violent, and the other Decepticons were taking the opportunity to molest the hell out of Starscream, and present Starscream is still like 'yep, nothing wrong with that, that's just decepticon life'

I would have been on board with a dead dove fic like this, but the emotions the characters were feeling were totally wrong for that, and I wanted to see how this would develop into something satisfying. I was getting kinda nervous that it was going to be all 'I don't mind being a slave if you're my master uwu', but there was a lot of fic left to go and lots of room for character development, and I wanted to give it a chance. To the author's credit, Optimus never settles down to be a good little slave. He is still all like 'uwaaaaaa, megatron-senpai is being so gentle with meeee~' but he also does the thing where he deliberately acts like a good slave so he can look for an opportunity to escape. Yeah, okay, the way things play out, I think I would have preferred the happy little slave ending.

Optimus runs away. This is a frigid, dangerous planet, he doesn't have any fuel, and the slave coding will only give him a few days away from Megatron before it kills him. He's hoping to find Ratchet, find some way to de-slave code himself, and regroup. All the other autobots appear to be dead. Optimus eventually finds Ratchet's corpse, drags it around for a while, and eventually dies in the cold. Megatron and Starscream eventually find his body, and Megatron "keens" over it, and we're supposed to feel super bad for him, because he might have raped Optimus multiple times, but also TRUE WUB.

And in the meantime, Starscream gets pragnent, gets kidnapped by Galvatron, gets brutally raped by Galvatron, briefly gets away only to be kidnapped and raped again by Galvatron. And all through this, he gets to stress about whether what he's going through is going to kill his babby. Megatron eventually duels Galvatron to the death for... llllllllove of Starscream? I think? And Megatron and Starscream find Optimus's corpse and Megatron is super duper sad, but then Starscream has one (1) baby, which means that the Cybertronian race is no longer going extinct (even though that puts the cybertronian population growth for this fic at like -49), and I guess that's a happy ending?

I don't even know, man. I kept reading the character interactions as unhealthy/toxic pitch all around, but then they were talking about each other in super flushed terms and getting all mushy over how much they wuv the bot they've been regularly raping. I am Uncomfortable, but I can deal with uncomfortable. I'm frustrated!!!! This could have been so cool if this person committed to the character dynamics they were actually writing! Give me TGWP where Jazz isn't for-real falling in love with Soundwave and Soundwave is way less redeemable than he is in that story. Don't give me tittering torture-crazed medic Hook (who's totally off his rocker from losing the other constructicons and sexually tortures anyone he gets his hands on) and play it like comedy. Don't expect me to feel flutters when Megatron was physically and sexually abusive towards Starscream, but then after he's rescued from Galvatron, Megatron cradles him geeeeeeently in his arms and is sweet and tender with him because they're having a baby together. Just!! Commit to the idea you have!!!

also commit to a pov for the course of a scene (sudden magical omniscience doesn't count) and maybe just commit to a verb tense for even the course of a sentence. PLEASE

/petty

Sorry, that was... a frustrating experience. All the components are something I'd be excited to see, but just. GAH. This is the 15th-most-kudos'd explicit Starscream fic on ao3 (the 9th is by the same author and tagged with similar warnings, and I am Not inclined to trust it), and that upsets me (ಥ⌣ಥ)