And I mean, I do think the Autobot policy that you can't just kill organics like they're not people is preferable to the Decepticon policy of universal genocide, it's just hard to definitively call either side the good guys in the IDW g1 continuity because the writing extremely doesn't shy away from there being atrocities on either side and the fact that the Autobots were not actually very successful at saving many civilizations.
Ooooh that is interesting! And I don't have anything pre-thought-out about this angle on the issue, but it totally sounds like there's a lot interesting to explore. I think the autobots vs decepticon black-and-white dichotomy wasn't doing anybody any favors during the war in like, ten million different ways, but I think there's a cool angle in there where it like, decouples morals and consequences and such from a wider context. Did the autobots occupation of X planet do harm? Yyyyyeah I mean maybe kinda a lot of native inhabitants got killed and we wrecked their cities and ruined basically everything, but the POINT. The POINT is that we thwarted the decepticons, and that's what matters more than anything. (which is a very autobot-exclusive side of the issue, but it also reminds me a lot of all the politics on earth where an irritating number of characters are like ???? why humans hate us?? we're the good guys, decepticons are the bad guys, humans are really short-sighted, yo) I'm losing that train of thought, and it's hard to talk about in the abstract, but i DEFINITELY think it's a mental pitfall that we see a number of characters fall into. Yes, we might have done [bad thing], but it was in pursuit of [positive goal], so will you stop focusing on the bad things I did???? Clearly i was trying to accomplish something good, and by criticizing my actions, you're trying to tell me that [positive goal] isn't important! And Getaway's whole creation was a scenario like that, which is a really interesting perspective for him personally to have on the situation. It's kind of prowl-ish in some ways, though Prowl's background is definitely a different kind of damage than Getaway's was. They both end up very.... ready to make the hard, ugly decisions for the supposed greater good, and both take it badly when someone criticizes their priorities. And it's not just material priorities, both of them kind of give me a feeling that their personal sense of morals is more like.... autobots vs decepticons, rather than good vs evil. Which means they feel very personally attacked when someone criticizes that, because it's not just saying that their goals are questionable, it's their entire sense of right and wrong. But hmmm. Getaway's background in particular. It's really fascinating, in that light! Because Prowl had a lot of time before the war to define who he was to himself, and the war gradually crept in to take over. Getaway was born at the peak of the mass slaughter, and his entire identity had nothing else to build on. He was born at the height of the war and carried through to the end, and tyrest happened, etc., getaway joins the LL, and like a year later everyone is like haha yeah man, megatron's our bro. I do wonder if... I don't know how aware Getaway is of the effect of the damage he's carrying. Because clearly he knows things were BAD and traumatic, but i don't know how much introspection he might have done about his feelings. But it's interesting to me that a lot of the big players moving pieces around to land Megatron on the LL (and to make friends with him there) were mechs who were alive before the war and had the experience of Cybertron at peace. I think... there's Brainstorm, but he straight-up tried to assassinate Megatron. Riptide was born during,the war, maybe? Excepting Tailgate/Cyclonus/camiens, I think most of the other people playing a notable role with Megatron were born before the war, and the others never experienced the war in the first place. I don't know exactly where to take that thought next, but i can totally see how it would be a major point of resentment, when they're making nice with Megatron like everything is fine, but all he ever knew was the war, and they're expecting him to set that aside like it was all some kind of mistake.
I think it's notable that like, apparently the first (?) time Getaway actually sees a therapist it's a dude who's egging him on because he finds Getaway's psychology interesting. So no, I really don't think Getaway had the mental space to realize how messed up he'd gotten and try to detangle that, because in the war he jumped from one survival situation to another and post-war it's really hard to break out of that if that's been your entire identity and life experience. The line he has at the very end, that's something like 'turns out I was just an MTO with ideas above his station after all', that fucking broke me and I wasn't even that interested in Getaway at that point. I think it's also notable that Getaway got named for running when he was created. Did he not have a name before? Or did he not identify with that name because it was just something random slapped on him while he thawed so they'd have something to put on his gravestone? By going with the name Getaway, he's defining himself by the extremely traumatic incident he was born into, and as much as he's manipulating Tailgate when he talks about it, I think there's genuine vulnerability there. I think he's telling the truth to Tailgate because he doesn't think Tailgate will live long enough to use it against him. EDIT: Also, yeah, Riptide was an MTO but he was a fairly early MTO, back when they got actual classes and stuff before joining battles. I believe they were down to 8 steps when they made him instead of 10, but that still implies to me a relatively early-war creation date. And it's also notable to me that he DIDN'T side with Megatron against Getaway at first, despite taking classes with Megatron and getting academic praise from Megatron when he'd never gotten academic praise from anyone before, on account of being quite bad at learning.
I think we never hear whether it was a birth name or a chosen name, but i could totally see the people calling the shots not bothering to slow down enough to name the cannon fodder. Which is a whole nother interesting awful scenario, imagine living through that nightmare, somehow coming out alive, and immediately being told to make introspective decisions like choosing a name, like nothing bad just happened (oh, and all the good names are taken. No, you can't have that name. Not that one either. Or that one. Come on, stop making this so difficult, just choose a name already and get this over with) And I've been assuming he was telling the truth to Tailgate! Lies that are close to the truth make for a story that's easier to remember, and to make seem real, and weaponized vulnerability is a great way to manipulate someone. And it all makes everything that much more tragic, which I mean. That's my JAM XD
Psychologically I don't really agree with Froid that Getaway is a narcissist although he's narcissistic... I feel like Getaway has a lot of similar psychology to Vriska, weirdly enough, in that both were forced into constant life and death situations and escalations for the greater good and then neither knows what to do when that framework is taken away.
I mean names being "taken" doesn't really matter, see that one guy named Prowl who isn't That Prowl and also the various Tankors :P
Well, the other Prowl was going by 'Dent' when he died, which.... ouch XD And JRO said Ambulon's original name that he couldn't use anymore was Thunderclash. So I don't think there's necessarily something hard and fast, but I like me some dysfunctional bureaucratic dynamics, and the idea of this organization trying to record and index this group of traumatized newborn survivors who have no idea what's happening and ugh, we have things to DO, we don't need to be dealing with duplicate entries, just PICK SOMETHING already and get it over with.
Like, Getaway is definitely causing his own problems but Froid is also explicitly baiting him into doing worse and worse things and limiting the time he has to make a decision in order to override Getaway's natural and genuine desire to say no. We see that Getaway isn't a sociopath. We see him trying to say no, we see him regretting what he's done. We also see him doubling down in the aftermath, every time. I wonder if he thought that, if he reached his goal, he'd be able to take back some of the stuff he did?
Breaking news: chronic manipulator can't tell he's being manipulated by much more dangerous manipulator, kills 30 people.
This is why I said my Camien OC's name was originally Strongarm bc I think duplicate names are funny. She renamed herself long before contact was re-established with cybertron, tho.
Augh sorry for the quadruple post but for me the part of the Mutineer's Trilogy that really hit me the hardest was Spoiler Getaway beating Atomizer to death with his bare hands, because the other kills had been made under pressure and set up in such a way that Getaway didn't have to actually watch them die, even if he was willing to be extremely cruel in the lead-up to them. He sets things up so he can remove himself from the actual act, which is again one of the big clues that he isn't a sociopath because there is some empathy going on there. With Atomizer's death, we see what happens when he just gets mad after being under a lot of stress. It wasn't something Getaway was forced into, it's something he wanted to do in the moment because Atomizer had deliberately helped people escape after things had already been falling apart for Getaway. So all the rage of nothing working out the way he wanted it to from the moment Rodimus' transmission comes through and he realizes the DJD is involved and not just the Galactic Council, all that gets taken out on Atomizer. And it's horrific. EDIT: Well actually Rook's death is pretty direct but Getaway again removes himself from the direct act by making Atomizer do it. And now I'm wondering how messed up you could write Getaway/Atomizer.
I agree MTOs probably weren’t named - you know Brainstorm’s original name is given as Genitus of Operation Solar Storm? Genitus just means “born” in Latin. As for telling the truth to Tailgate - I’m not sure? Probably about the running - as Petra said it’s not like he’s going to live long enough to spread it. But the becoming aware on the battlefield doesn’t completely add up with what’s been stated about MTOs earlier in the comic. (“Thaw to war in under an hour” is still awful! But it’s not exactly the picture Getaway paints) and I think he was amping that up to play on Tailgate’s issues around not having any life experienc.e
I think the problem is the MTO experience is going to be vastly different based on what exact campaign is involved. IIRC Getaway's battle was one of the biggest, bloodiest battles in the entire war, so of course things are going to be exceptionally bad for MTOs made during that battle. So it's not just the experience of 10 steps to 8 steps to 3 steps beamed directly into your head, but the surrounding context. As well, I believe the thaw to war crack counts the time the body is making the intial connections with the spark, since it seems like Getaway and the two other MTOs with him were left suspended from the wall/ceiling as their bodies and brains made the initial connections and then dumped as soon as they were functioning people, which means Getaway could have been aware before being dropped but his first SIGHT would still be the battlefield. EDIT: Correction, Getaway was made during the Corcapsica Incursion, which we only know of in the context of it being in his name. I thought he was made during Simanzi, but that's Riptide. The Simanzi Massacre was the super horrific battle that iirc cut the numbers of both sides down by half and almost drove them to extinction, so, uh... are you okay, Riptide?
I also think it's notable that the person we see being harshest about the cruelties of the treatment MTOs got was Skids, who said that the average lifespan of an MTO was 3 minutes, which is almost definitely hyperbole but if that's the hyperbole the reality is still going to be crushingly bad. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Skids was super close friends with Getaway for a long time, even if he doesn't remember that. His outrage at the treatment of MTOs definitely seems to me like the outrage of someone who has personally seen some shit happening to his friends. EDIT: Other things Skids says include the thaw to war in under an hour comment, and a comment that High Command didn't consider MTOs worth teaching to read. So yeah, he's pissed.
I’m not saying the treatment of MTOs wasn’t bad - I’m saying that all the parts about the suspension and so on were from Getaway’s narration and he isn’t exactly reliable. His recounting of the event is even worse than Skids’ (I agree with your analysis about him, by the way)
Yeah, and it's definitely not above him to twist things to better hit Tailgate, but I think even if he's doing that, it's revealing vulnerabilities he doesn't want to think too hard about having. Because I'm sure what he said happened is how it felt to him as a newborn.
Spoiler: Transformers: Cyberverse ep 10 Can't believe they introduced Blurr in a flashback just to kill him off brutally, although I guess the non-linear nature of season 1 makes it so he can certainly show up again. It was a pretty brutal episode but I'm trying to figure out the larger point... I guess Megatron was probably using biological weaponry at that point, since that shady guy coming through the spacebridge was infected and PROBABLY carrying something that'd deploy the infection quickly? But man, you know something is contagious when the environment can catch it... but it also makes me wonder if organic material would be a perfect barrier against the rust plague.
I'm reading The Way of the Stars Undone and Spoiler: i see that fruits basket reference "Being alone is scary. It's a frightening way to live."
