TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

.........okay, so now I've seen the next Bayverse preview and I'm conflicted. On the one hand it looks epic, and I am all about seeing the ugly impact these giant robots have made on our small, squishy society, and also was that Unicron?, and also those sure were some cliffs of moher-esque seaside cliffs and medieval warfare, and everything is more interesting when Optimus is dead, and I am intrigued. On the other hand, Michael Bay. I've been hurt before

 

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Optimus will be back for the dramatic finale, especially since the preview lingered over him drifting dead in space, but I'm hoping Bay might might might let some other characters get some sunlight while he's out. Since they already included super boring arcee and chromia, I think Elita One is the main, last legacy hope for a prominent lady, but I'm pretty sure she's way too pink for Bay :T I'll totally hatewatch inexplicably french, miscolored Rodimus, and I'll forgive a lot for robots + knights, but I'm still super, super leering, and I don't think it will be a quality product.... but I spend money on plenty of things that are not quality products :B

Actually, you know what, Optimus already died once in this series. Movie two. I remember because I called it going in to the movie with my friend. Michael Bay needs to stoppppppppp

 

I've seen one (fun time) and two (funnish time with a heavy dose of cringe), but none past that. I think I own both of them maybe? The dinobot-taming thing in age of extinction (movie... four?) is maximum , but I figure I'm going to catch up with them at some point.

 

Okay, I'm like three issues behind on sharing my transformers thoughts, and there are manymany things I want to say, and also panels I want to share from older comics that I tripped across while looking for unrelated things, BUT. Before it slips away from me.

So that bit in LL1 was nagging at me, where Megatron's all like TIME TO VISIT STARSCREAM, SHH WE'RE GONNA SURPRISE HIM

My initial read on the situation was that Megatron, like... legit had no clue how badly he's abused Starscream, or how much it's affected the guy, or just plain the amount of fear he inspires in Starscream. But also... I think Megatron probably got a pretty good look at how Starscream felt during the trial, when Starscream started firing torpedoes straight at Megatron's entire history and his competency and intelligence. Plus the frequency and scale of betrayals mst have been higher in the last few years than it was during the rest of the war, because dang son, that is just not sustainable. The series opens with him straight-up attempting to have Megatron killed.

Now, Megatron's a smart guy. Did he really miss all that, and think gosh, Starscream sure is going to be thrilled to see him? I doubt it. Or did he mean it in a malicious, or at least overbearing way, where he's going to make Starscream give them an assist, no matter what Starscream thinks of the situation? Given Megatron's recent character development, that seems kinda out of place. So what gives?

Well, I was thinking about how bad this latest arc rattled Megatron. Just hit after hit. Getaway dumping them to be ambushed, Getaway dumping them on a planet that reminds Megatron of the sheer amount of death he's caused, Overlord (direct abuse victim #2) popping up, plus Tarm (it's fanon, but I read him as abuse victim #3, especially considering how he reacts when Megatron tries to talk him down), plus the entire DJD, Megatron's personal torture squad. There's the revelations about the fool's energon. There's Ravage. There's that entire last showdown, where Megatron breaks his vow of pacifism that he was really, really trying hold onto, even at the potential expense of his own life. There's the way he leveled his (broken) fusion canon at Ratchet, of all people. And there are positives too, like the way Rodimus comes for him personally, or Terminus, things like that. But this all happened to him in like a day.

S0 if we're looking at Tarn as an abuse victim, Megatron had two people he's personally abused show up and try to take things out on him (even if Overlord was like 'why would anyone waste time on a loser like you? sad!!!'). In contrast to them, Starscream looks like a downright sweetheart. We know Megatron's whole moral/ethical everything got super borked during the war, and didn't seem to start un-borking until Dark Cybertron. Part of me wonders if Megatron is looking back at what happened between him and Starscream and thinking that compared to this? What happened between him and Starscream wasn't really that bad was it, hahahaha (yes it was)

Gah, I'm tired and words are getting harder to string together. What I'm getting at is that a central cast-wide character thing in this arc has been forgiveness.The crew sent off to be stranded with Megatron was sent with him effectively because they were willing to forgive him. The other lost light crew, particularly Getaway, are unwilling to look beyond all the past damage Megatron has done, no matter how decently he seems to be acting in the present day. But especially in light of Getaway's last message, and where they were stranded, Megatron especially knows just how much they're forgiving him for. Since his positive character development in mtmte seems awfully genuine, and he's trying to be a better person, like... hoping for forgiveness is a natural thing, and there's nothing wrong with it. Expecting forgiveness or demanding it is less okay. But especially when you're privy to your own innermost thoughts, and now how much you're trying to change, the liens between those categories get awfully blurry.

I am really having trouble wordsing, I hope this is coherent. I'm trying to get at something about how even after all those nasty blows, Megatron still had this little crew of bots who forgave him, were punished for forgiving him, but still stood by him. And Megatron is trying to recapture something of who he was before the war started really getting to him. If he looks at Starscream, someone who he knows inside and out, and who knows him, and knew him when he was young... and also hasn't tried to personally have him killed in the last few years........... Something about hoping for forgiveness sliding into expecting/demanding it, especially given how rattled Megatron was from everything that happened in issues 50-55, and how he's grasping at whatever he can to keep himself together, and Starscream has always been a fixture, ever since the war started.

There's something nuanced to be dissected in there, but my eyes are literally defocusing as I type. Hopefully those words have formed readable sentences. Sorry ;u;

 

I think I want to say that like... At his lowest (for the moment) point in phase one, Starscream turned to Megatron and tried to remind him of the old days, when things were better between them. And Megatron was like fuck you, this is the way things are now. I don't think Megatron is making the same kind of desperate plea, but I think being at his lowest point and trying to lean on Starscream's good will is a pretty nice parallel, and that of he'd actually found Starscream, he would have gotten a response similar to the one he gave Starscream back in the day.

 

Oh hey, so someone (I am too lazy to check sources) mentioned a few days ago in the cdcf thread about Arcee having dysphoria in both directions when it comes to her gender. WELL. I was thinking about what an unhappy situation that is to be stuck in, and slid into thinking about a couple other characters. Consider the empurata victims, the long-term ones, having that same kind of no-win dysphoria situation when it comes to their own bodies.

So I'm thinking more in terms of faces than of hands. To a certain degree, cybertronian bodies are modular, and I'm sure comfort levels vary from person to person, but even some really major body changes happen without much fuss. And I want to say that, like... self-image isn't so much about hands. Hands are one of the biggest ways you interact with the world around you, so taking them away makes your life harder, and I'm sure it sucks. But in terms of how you see yourself, I think faces would be a much bigger factor. The only real practical difference between having a face and not in this canon is... making expressions, really. It would suck for a human to lose that, but when a significant chunk of your society is already rocking visors and faceplates, I think it would make less of an impact. But self-image, man. It's hard to find a body-altering punishment more visceral and cruel than taking somebody's face away.

But okay, what I'm getting at. Just think about how long some of these empurata victims lived without faces! Over four million years for Whirl and Shockwave, and an unknown-but-probably-significant time period for Glitch. No matter how not-you the empurata face is, it's gotta seep into being part of your self-image at some point. How rough must the ride be in having that taken away, again, and having a different face put on you, even if that's the face you're nominally supposed to have?

Basically, the only person we see with a missing face and a restored face is Tarn. So it's really, really interesting to me that he also hides that face behind an unmoving, expressionless mask. I know the obvious read, and the one Tarn probably pushes, is that it's an expression of devotion fanaticism. Which isn't to say that's not true! Because, yeah. Fanaticism is definitely happening here. I have seen a fic or two that brushes up against 'this is my real face now'. But I'd love to see something that dug deeper into the personal-level dysphoria he feels over his face, especially if he can't articulate what's wrong. His face was taken as punishment, and later restored. So he should be happy to have a face again? Right? Right? And oh man, especially if Megatron was responsible for restoring it, because then he should also be grateful for such a gracious gift. Gahhh, there's so much interesting in there to think about, and my brain's trying to spin off in like five different directions, and here I am with no inspiration for writing Tarn at all, just a desire to do so ;u;

 

OH AND ALSO

I was singing songs from that awesome traditional music subgenre of 'oh johnny, you went away to war and came back missing all your limbs', and I realized

Cybertronians didn't have that thing. In human war, there was always the chance that if you got wounded enough, you'd be sent back home and pensioned out and you wouldn't have to fight again. If a Cybertronian isn't dead, it's possible to rebuild them pretty much from the ground up. There's no such thing as too wounded to be a soldier. There's no real recognition of ptsd, because man, everyone has ptsd. Even Flattop, so right after surviving the incredible horrors of Babu Yar, Springer tried recruiting him right into the wreckers, and it was only then, with how bad seeing the shimmer shattered him, that he was even sent for sessions with Rung.

There is no getting drummed out for the average Cybertronian soldier. No point where they say yep, you've suffered enough, you can stop fighting now. As long as you survive, they'll keep throwing you back into the war, over and over, however many times it takes until you don't come back.