Ooooooh, I especially like it in terms of the character shift we see for Optimus and the way the characters themselves are even referring to how he's way different than how he was even a year ago OuO
OP, please stop yelling and crowding my poor conniving son, I don't like seeing him lock up and huddle his wings down and avoid eye contact like this, no matter how much of an ass he's been ;-;
Fuck, I'd forgotten that parts of Combiner Wars were Stone's lovely art. He looks sooooo good, even when he's shutting down and being sad because of a looming authority figure that has fighty posture. :<
Ahh, that body langauge, especially with the wings is actually... really sad :( Plus seeing him not making eye contact, he's usually pretty shameless about that kind of thing, even when he's being a conniving asshole. Those tiny motion lines in that last panel suggest a barely-restrained shiver. And seeing a large, intimidating leader-type mech crowd into his personal space, lean over him, and yell at him, that's... pretty upsetting
Oh look! My favorite Spotlight: Megatron page!!! And a bonus avoiding eye contact while getting loomed over OP has no reason to know about this entire sequence of events but please!!! Stop looming over Starscream! ;-;
STOP THIS!!!!! :( :( :( :( man why does loving starscream have to hurt so much?? I'M SO SAD :( :( this is why tfp is sometimes straight up unwatchable for me, the cringing and the cowering and the looming :( @IDW please let starscream have a nice day where no one is trying to kill him or abuse him. please also do not let him kill or abuse anyone. let him go to a spa :(
"It is your own incompetence and poor judgment that has saved you this day" (bolding mine) is... really not too far off from Optimus chewing him out over 'yes I told you not to use superion, but now I'm telling you to fucking use superion'. Starscream's choices are technically saving him, but he's being aggressively shamed for making those choices in the first place. There is no way for him to win, can someone please give this guy a hug ;-; I feel like there's some really interesting meta to be had in here about his character arc between ahm and, say, the end of combiner wars, but I'm not sure exactly what I'd want my point to be :T
I think the point would be [MAKES INCREASINGLY DISTRESSED HAND GESTURES AT THE PARALLELS BETWEEN MEGATRON AT HIS WORST AND OPTIMUS RIGHT NOW]
Man, now I wanna go back and reread all the sections with Windblade, because I want to say that she doesn't try and impose her will over Starscream the way OP and Megs do? She found him conniving and scheming and plotting so she... starts scheming right back. It's not "Starscream is a horrible person for doing these things that we're going to use" it's "Starscream is doing Some Shit so I will do the Shit five times harder just watch me". Which would be interesting, if I'm right about that. And maybe why I like Windblade <3< Starscream so much? It's not just "I'm pitch for him because he's irredeemably terrible" it's that she sees all the good in him and the good that he does do and wants to punch him for turning around and being a conniving bastard while doing it.
Also I need to re-read exRID and TAAO anyways, to figure out when Starscream swapped his frame out again.
Ooooooh, I could do a BODY LANGUAGE breakdown of the most intense moments between then and now! That varies a lot by artist, and the windblade ongoing artist especially... ehhhhhh [vague cartoony hand gestures]. But that could be really neat to poke at! Also, I'd like to call your attention to the windblade miniseries. When Starscream is pinned inside metroplex's brain chamber and thinks he's failed to stop a plan to destroy what's been rebuilt of cybertron and windblade is about to teleport metroplex away and kill a bunch of cybertronians... even then, his body language isn't nearly as distressing and beaten as what megatron and optimus are able to effortlessly pull from him.
AAAAAAAA, why must you do these this to me right as I have to go play soccer??? It's because you like hurting me, that's why. I'm going to do some fun comparison work when I get home, that's for sure!
Starscream's quiet little "Well, I wouldn't be me if I wasn't prepared," hurts me a lot. When he was in charge of the Decepticons at their lowest, they were starving and missing limbs and he couldn't do anything to fix it. He got handed a shitty situation. They were so low on resources and morale that there was little he could do to stop their continued decline So now he schemes and siphons off Metroplex and pushes Windblade to fix the titan super fast and presses Wheeljack to repair the combiners ASAP so that he's never unprepared like that again. Windblade playing political games on him is way easier to bear than having a bigger mech yell at him to do something the big guy told him expressly not to do in the first place
Frankly, the fact that very few people in the fandom seem to be as devoted to breaking down Starscream's reactions to things and his emotional and mental state as we are is a crime. A fandom crime. Care More About Starscream, Dammit.
