"his entire upper body was a bold visual testament to the power of unchecked width" sounds like something you'd read in a 3 dollar bargain bin Harlequin knockoff. I love these gay robots.
...............oh my god oh my god, holy shit, I am so emotionally compromised right now DDDDDD: I feel like a horrible person for disliking Rotorstorm my first time through lsotw, I am so sad for him right now
If Rotorstorm was one of his most promising cadets, Whirl was probably intensely jealous. Which justifies none of this, but. Could also be that Whirl was genuinely proud of Rotorstorm at the end, and figured that by horrifically abusing him he was 'testing' his strength. Could be both!
Oh, I'm definitely guessing Whirl had some twisted psychological stuff feeding this too, and that he was genuinely proud of the guy by the end! I'm quietly choosing to believe that Whirl realized just how badly he was fucking up and transferred away to protect Rotorstorm (he does say he keeps making mistakes!). And also that Rotorstorm would never ever credit him for being honestly proud of him after that nasty history together. I ran into that quote again where he was talking to Cyclonus about how the only thing that keeps him going is anger, and that got me thinking about his past. The functionist council carried out an abuse campaign against him that wasn't so... overt or concentrated, but it was still pretty dreadful. And this was after his kinda-semi-wrongful imprisonment, where the guards let the other prisoners beat him to the brink of death. But like, okay, in Rotorstorm's psych profile, Rung mentions that he was so traumatized by the battle of Babu Yar that he basically invented his current narcissist personality as a protective shield. And then you get panels like this one in canon, where these new revelations about his past make an already-sad panel extra sad He was already breaking my heart before I knew Whirl let his own damage spill over onto someone else in such a major way, now I'm just like. Spoiler: last stand of the wreckers I can't afford to have you as a fave, you die the fastest, most unceremonious death, and even your teammates say that yeah, they didn't really care for you. Stop destroying me with all these emotions, I already know how soon you die, you can't do this to me
i genuinely do not get this part of canon >:/ it just. it doesn't feel like whirl!!!! like if it wasn't written by jro i would full on reject it. whirl's a fucking dick, but he's not calculating. it doesn't feel like his brand of awful. (also "the look on his face", "clenched fists"............ like. what face. what fists) idk. i hate it. i really hate it. :/ edit: .....oh my god. oh my god, i'm a whirl apologist. dear god.
Yeah, I can't buy that Whirl calculated to end up at the ceremony to rub it in, because he only really has that attention span for a few specific people, like the people that torched his watch shop. Which is why I think he was genuinely proud. As for the rest of it... I can buy him taking out his damage on a promising, shiny new cadet, but it surprises me that he apparently hid it so well. I know he's not stupid, but in MTMTE he's quite upfront about being a volatile, low-empathy sadist, so... I dunno, was he just holding it together more in public back then? Who put him in charge of cadets?
Though the timeline does get confusing having Whirl and Jetstream be the same person considering when Whirl was supposed to have lost his hands and face. I wonder if the original idea was that they changed his brain first and then took his face and hands when he went against them again?
This is something you're right about, though. That leads me to believe this wasn't actually... written with Whirl in mind, given that his most defining physical feature is that he LACKS a face and hands. Did someone else jack his pseudonym?
...oh oh. That...I just had a terrible wonderful idea. What if Jetstream was his original name and the Senate wasn't satisfied with physically taking everything from Whirl -- they took his original name and gave it to someone else to ruin any good reputation Jetstream ever had.
it's that combined with the whole... dedicated campaign of abuse that makes me >:/ i can see whirl beating the shit out of someone a couple times cause he doesn't like being shown up, cause he's extremely violent and not shy about taking out his anger on people ("i'm agitated and i need to hurt someone", etc), but mercilessly chipping away at someone's self-esteem and then escalating and still maintaining a facade of supportiveness, that feels... not right. that seems so..... i dunno, it feels like it's a different sort of awful than whirl actually is. whirl is "boom-headshot cause i'm in a 'mood'" awful, and "worrying about collateral damage is for sissies" awful, and "i wonder what'll happen if i blow up half the ship" awful. impulsive awful. not sustained awful :(
Yeah. I'm not denying Whirl can do horrible, horrible things, and not even really feel sorry about them, but this isn't the kind of horrible thing that feels in character for him, especially without a real external reason. And if he met up with someone he did have a legitimate reason to hate enough to treat like that, honestly I feel like he'd just... kill them? See the guys that torched his shop.
Like he might kill them in a particularly bad way if he was in a 'mood' but he wouldn't slowly escalate, beat them to the point they're dying, and then shove them in a regen chamber and ollie out.
