shitposting rave 5: discount rejects from every genre

*sighs* ... well, it's harder than it looks.

 

[He snorts.]
I'm also not doing this in secret. See also me actually publishing my writings. The war is over people really don't care so much anymore. Don't make me sound any more important than I am, I'm just a.... the human internet calls them lifestyle advice bloggers I think?

Well congratulations to you all then. [He laughs]
And I may try that.

 

ahaha yeah we got those
course the ones i like to read are the shitty ones
those and the tabloids
did you know i have died justly three times in four years and also divorced a guy i was never married to
beautiful
anyway you got any fans? i did the blog thing for a while but it was mostly just me flexing my fledgling understanding of humor and stroking my raging hateon for dane cook

 

I am not aware of any fans- unless you count my... well you humans would likely refer to him as a boyfriend or-... ah is it husband? One of those.
[He flaps a hand to indicate he doesn't particularly care to define the relationship overly clearly]

 

depends i guess
does he like it cause hes tapping that sweet titanium booty or does he like it because he thinks its well made etc
id deffo call the latter a legit fan but maybe not the former
so what do you call an advice blog without people to advise

 

[dave raises his eyebrows]

sure but that dont mean you go ok that was hard lets just treat everyone like trash
i mean obviously people DO but they can get fucked

 

usually something like "Oh that annoying praxian published another angry letter about the state of self care and religion after the war"

 

"You two are so much alike it's hilarious, except in the places you're different," Lissa says cheerfully, and when Ford starts to speak she just gives him a Look. "No, Ford, I'm gonna answer this, piece by piece, because the two of you just piss each other off! You're both sure that everyone knows what you're getting at when you're from completely alien cultures and you're both completely convinced of the rightness of what you believe. It's adorable!"

She grins at Beacon. "I'm Lissa. I'm his wife/mistress/maybe conjunx but maybe not by your lights, because we're not monogamous. Monogamy's not even common among my people, though it is among his. You're missing a very important bit. Organic beings reproduce through interface--we don't grow out of the ground. Usually people interface as a way of trying to become more emotionally close to each other. But sometimes, and there's usually a cycle involved, it's possible to exchange genetic material during interface in a way so that it recombines to make an entirely new being with characteristics of both parents. Families come from the part where people with the same parents are siblings and families grow and get connected when people from different families make children together. So among organic beings, forbidding people to mate separates them from everyone else in the community."

She pauses to breathe. "Now, obviously, the situations you're describing, where people would offer up sex because they think they owe you something, or because they trust you and they're afraid of other people, those are messed up, but what puzzles Ford is why you'd have to ban people from interfacing entirely just to prevent them from doing those things, since those are not the only situations people can interface in."

She shrugs. "The closest thing we have to a religion embraces sex. Of course you have to be careful to make sure that nobody's doing it because they feel like they should and not because they want to. But you know, it seems just as wrong to us to forbid it as it does to require it. Either way is a violation of people's free will on a really ultimate level. Nobody's ever on completely equal footing when their clothes are on. The trick is to be aware of it and balance it. There's a whole lot of twisted up power differentials in any hierarchical society but that shouldn't mean that people should have to go without love when they find it."

She shrugs again. "And you really don't have to explain anything. The stuff about taking care of yourself sounds a lot like what we believe."

 

The Divine is meant to be celibate, I believe, though Chantry sisters certainly aren't required-- something to do with being married to the Maker. Personally, I think it's because the Divine holds such a position of power that it's an attempt to check some of that lest her favors grant undue issue on anyone she takes to bed, but that certainly hasn't stopped people from looking hard at where her gaze rested.

Divine Victoria wasn't particularly averse to withholding favors for me, but I doubt anyone would claim it's because we're sleeping together; all the same, it meant that some of those fine, strapping Orlesian nobles were forced to play nice with the dumb little knife-ear, when they might not have otherwise.

Of course, I don't understand theocracies. Or centralized government. Though it certainly does get things done, doesn't it?

 

.... Don't take that wrong but organic reproduction is weird. If a mech wants to raise another for whatever reason they just undertake a pilgrimage to Vector Sigma and request an apprentice from among the new forgeds.
And it's not religion that forbids people from interfacing, primus, no. We wouldn't be able to interface if Primus didn't intend for us to make use of that. Though some hardliners would prefer that too. No, no, this is just about people who devote their entire life and being to Primus, because they feel called to his service. Because once you're priest it's as if every single mech was a new forged under your care. And besides from that priests are not supposed to let themselves get swayed or distracted by worldly desires. Neither jewels, nor fancy highgrade, not that I have a taste for either, I don't get what the point of glittery things is and highgrade doesn't agree with my fuel tanks. Not interface either, and for the longest time I thought I didn't have a taste for that either but, well, things change. I could have left the temple at any point too had I realized earlier it wasn't my calling after all. I likely would not have found a job above spark grindingly demeaning menial labor if that under Sentinel-... not much better chances under Zeta either. But I wasn't held there by the temple and the damned Primes weren't their fault.
And I don't particularly slaggin' care who is or isn't monogamous s'long as you're good to everyone involved. If you did whatever ceremonial requirements your cultures have to count as conjunxes then you're conjunxes. I just happen to not be interested in anyone but Pillage, doesn't mean other people are wrong. As long as you don't judge me for always taking my fuel the same way I won't comment on you if you take yours differently every single cycle.
[He shakes his head, grumbling.]

Centralized government means you don't gotta hunt the boltheads in need of a slap upside the same down so much. Keep 'em all locked up in a room makes it much easier to yell at them all at the same time. The more there are and the more they run around the more stupid ideas they can get about not asking for advice from people who know what they're doing.

 

You know, this does make me wonder-- how many cultures do mechs have? On, er, Cybertron? Or rather, how many were there before the war? Because from what I've heard-- and do correct me if I'm wrong, I am very much out of my depth when it comes to ancient immortal giants-- it seems as if your centralized government was, well, all encompassing. No rival nations, no clashing cultures, just one massive theocracy that ground the masses to dust under the weight of the empire.

It might explain some of the differences in how we approach the question of theology and function, I think.

 

-ventcat is watching you- Naw, everyone else just fragged off to the colonies to pull the same slag again.

 

[Time to talk politics? Time to talk politics. Like a right-winger Ignis is there!]

Cybertron itself was the seat of an empire under Nova, the first historically-verified post-unification Prime, with a few primary cities as cultural hubs. Even Vos's borders were open in those days, or so the records say.

And then he left on his grand adventure, left a handful of advisors in charge as a Senate, and everything went right to slag. Or already was slag, given how many laws Nova put in place to stratify society, but all the various clampdowns sure didn't help people feel more unified. By the time Sentinel took the Matrix, we'd lost most of the off-planet Empire and even the individual cities were starting to break away. It's something we took advantage of-- the First Five by and large flew the purple because they wanted to rebel against Iacon and the Senate, not because they'd been conquered.

 

Well there was some amount of clashing cultures alright -- Iaconian towerlings and their silly cutlery, who ever needed anything to fuel but their own intakes -- but it has been... a long while since Cybertron had fully independent citystates rather than tensions between regions, senatorial infighting and The dozenth time this megacycle that Vos tried to play at separatism. But people still had dialectical differences, different ways to celebrate holidays, small tiny ways that told you at a glance where a mech was from even if you didn't have the most obvious clues. [His doorwings flare a little, absentmindedly]
The Decepticon uprising was the first real territorial conflict we had in several million years, if the history books are to be believed. Megatron took 5 cities in one fell swoop, plunging cybertron into civil war and chaos. They quickly took to calling their territories "the Decepticon empire". [His facial expression makes it clear how little he thinks of that.]
And now that the war is over there's... a single city that they took as the center of their rebuilding efforts. Hasn't exactly been enough time to spread from there or figure out if other cities should have their own governments.

 

sounds about right
id say you should talk to karkat but imma be honest self care is still a new concept and religion is super weird for all of us so itd just be like
fondly agreeing that writing enraged open letters is a hell of a pastime
anyway howd you learn about earth a buncha the mechs in here dont know much if anything and here you are knowin about our top secret advice blogs etc
whatever will i do without my air of mystery

 

Post-unification? So there was a pre-unification period of time, it was just far enough back that the defining features of it aren't apparent in the current-- er, previously overthrown government. That explains a thing or two, thank you.

I see! Not unlike Orlais prior to the Fereldan bid for independence, or the Tevinter Empire prior to one of the very many Exalted Marches. Bits a pieces of culture trapped inside the morass of a government that doesn't do anything to support them and a great deal to oppress them.

 

[He thumbs at the autobot badge on his hood (which is part of his torso in rootmode, conveniently) where most cars would have a brand badge and grins.]
Got the tip about downloading earth stuff whenever I was in range from Bluestreak. He's kinda a big shot and we're not exactly the closest of friends but- well. Not many others who still remember how home looked like before the war. And 'streak's easier to talk to than Prowl.

 

[He mutters something suspiciously close to "Th'Senate left the Helix Gardens alone so it wasn't so bad."]

 

Again, if you trust the histories published under Nova. I don't doubt he took over from someone, but unless things have changed a lot since I died there's no proof he actually won a thirteen-way war by divine intervention via one of Primus's first children bestowing the Matrix upon him, destroying all his foes in a single flash of light, on and on and on. I'm sure Mister Shiny Praxian there could give you he propaga-- ah, sorry, official histories if you're interested.

 

Frag th´t in the audial, if he won a war he won it being being a bigger slagface th´n the rest.