Transformers: These Games We Play

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JAZZ NO

Oh my god, Laserbeak

Oh my gosh, though. Jazz was really hurting over being left with Megatron. That is... interesting. That is really interesting. I wasn't expecting him to take it THAT personally, not when he had a front row seat to see how onto them Megatron was. It was killing Soundwave, but like... even if his loyalty protocols had been broken, it's a hand-to-hand fight with a large, vicious sadist who is very good at violence and angry enough to be extra violent. And even though Soundwave left, he went home and immediately broke his brain for love of Jazz :(

This is killing me. They're more on the same page with each other than they realize, even though Jazz is trying to bring down the decepticons and Soundwave is trying to preserve them. It's the personal betrayals that are hurting them the worst here. Jazz is aching over the 'soundwave, yours' apparently being a lie. And Soundwave... man, he is dealing with things on a broad scale pretty well (and he just cracked his own loyalty protocols over it and everything), but then you turn right around and hit him with Laserbeak, then sucker-punch him right in the cassettes. Holy shit, man.

I do get the feeling that Jazz........ is being extra vicious, because he's had the rug yanked out from under him on the whole 'soundwave, yours' thing anymore. He thought he had his footing there, and there was the 'jazz and soundwave, one, the rest of the world, zero' business. Even with the destroy-the-decepticons thing going in the background, he has been voluntarily vulnerable to Soundwave in some major, major ways, and he's moved to protect Soundwave before. And he got jealous over Shockwave of all people! The scenes where he invites Soundwave into his head, I don't think those would happen without MAJOR amounts of caring and trust.

And then if you trust someone on that level, if someone as self-contained and twisty and vicious as Jazz trusts someone on that level, it's gotta hurt real bad to get left alone with the Worst Person in the universe. When Soundwave is one of the only people out there who could possibly successfully intervene on his behalf, when it must look like there's SOME way for Soundwave to push against Megatron further, at least try to save him... it just has to hurt even more to be left behind without what looks like even a token effort. From Jazz's point of view, it looks like Soundwave just buckled and abandoned him.

It's come up in the story before that Jazz makes bad calls when he has incomplete information. And as Soundwave has gotten more worried, he's been keeping more of his work from Jazz. From the outside it's easy to see how cornered Soundwave is, but Jazz doesn't know much of anything about the escalating commands, all the way up to sending cassettes out to die. All he saw was Megatron going after them, Jazz tried to protect Soundwave, Megatron laid into them, and Soundwave.... left. Their last real interaction was Jazz trying to comfort Soundwave while they were being raped and Soundwave was dissociating to hell and back, and then Soundwave just. Left.

Damn, man :( I feel like telepathy almost definitely has to play a role in what's coming up. Soundwave doesn't have the driver's wheel in Jazz's head. But when the link is open, does Jazz have any way to see what's happening in Soundwave's head? If Soundwave invites him in maybe? Because the depth of hurt that Soundwave is feeling right now is just. Out of control. And I don't think Jazz sees any of it, beyond his own potshots at Laserbeak and the cassettes. As far as he knows, he's taking shots at someone who just chose Megatron over him, without any hint of hesitation, knowing what Megatron has done to everyone, what he just did to Jazz and Soundwave, and Soundwave is still choosing Megatron and abandoning him.

Wow. I don't think I had any good view into Jazz's thought processes until this update, but. Wow :(

 

OH. ALSO

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If Prowl is still alive, I wonder if any of the other bots at that post made it out too. I'm too lazy to go back and see who they were, because the autobot plotting is something I'm still struggling to set straight, and that's without the cast expanding. But MAN, that was something I really did not see coming. I want my jerk son! I have the good son and the bad son and the Difficult son, I need the uptight jerk son to add to the pile!

eta: breezing through peacewish's replies to the last update, and they replied to my comment, and without any detail, apparently the ordered cassette suicide mission is going to become relevant at some point soon :3c

And the sad thing is that I'd already been planning to make a post thing when I got back from soccer, before this update came along to punch me in the goddamn heart.

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Because just imagine a universe where Blaster's cassettes hadn't died. Imagine they'd been willing to open up and give Soundwave just one little chance. Because holy shit, the amount of investment Soundwave and his cassettes have in their family, it. It gives me many emotions. The cassettibots would still be grieving, obviously, grieving hard. The loss that they took was just massive. But even before they were properly in the family, before Soundwave could even say he loved them, he still threw his EVERYTHING into doing anything he possibly could to help them. And the cassetticons were helping too. They were feeding them and doing bedside assistance and making them walk so their joints wouldn't freeze up. That was before any of them knew any of the cassettibots as people.

When I look at how much, like, Frenzy and Rumble started caring for Jazz, and how much fun they had having a new person in their family.... the cassettibots weren't quite the same, they're less sassy and backtalk-y than Jazz is. But okay. The cassettes wouldn't have been burned by the death of the cassettibots and emotional fallout from that, so they probably would have been willing to open up faster. I don't know G1 that well, but! Two twins meet two twins! I don't think Rewind and Eject are quite on Rumble and Frenzy's disruptive level, but.... ghhh, I am having trouble articulating this without writing a full-up knockoff fic.

Also imagine Ravage and Steeljaw doing the cat+dog cuddle thing. Very important.

But anyways, I think I'm trying to get at the idea of the cassettibots getting folded into the family, but like... they're still not EXACTLY part of the family. Soundwave isn't the same sort of personality type as Blaster, he's very hierarchy-oriented. And the cassettibots are still slaves, they still have all the collars and restrictions on them, and Soundwave's whole paradigm of them being HIS. As much as they might (eventually) be treated as equals within the family, that difference never stops being a thing. And from Megatron's point of view, they're even LESS of a person than the other slaves.

I just want that juxtaposition of being in a nasty, delicate position in terms of broader social dynamics, where they're some of the most vulnerable autobots. But also they're in the cushiest home, with the sweetest master. Who eventually adores them, with a family that adores them, with a family that prioritizes them being a PART of the family above everything else. I want that same thing that happens with Jazz, but different. Basically, I want this fic, but different in ten million sliiiightly different ways, and then I'll never have to stop reading it :P

 

One last tidbit from the old comment replies!

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When Soundwave found Jazz in the basement, he heard Soundwave coming and scuttled off into the ceiling. Soundwave only found him because long experience with Jazz had taught him to look up. But Jazz's preferred outcome would be that Soundwave hadn't been there to begin with, or that Soundwave had gone elsewhere to look for him. So cutting up Laserbeak wasn't at the top of Jazz's plans for the night. I mean, he still did it :( But it was only there as a fallback, fallback plan, not something he was really aiming to do.

 

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Okay, peacewish confirmed in the comments to the last upd8 that jazz is a lot more hurt than he let on, and blah blah etc. But they're also talking about how they don't know if they can write an ending to satisfy team S and team J and I'm too frazzled to comment meaningfully on the latest chapter because I'm suddenly super afraid that maybe we won't get a mutually positive ending after all and I can't

I mean all hope is not lost or anything. Jazz feels positive/admiring things and he tried to protect Soundwave from Megatron and he doesn't have the full picture of how Megatron was pressuring Soundwave. But. FUCK. STRESS.

 

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I'm not going to go read those comments, because I find it very distressing that like... okay. The reason I get so overemotional over Ultra Magnus is because he was so fixated on doing everything right and playing by the rules and all. And after so long doing his veryvery best to do everything correctly, after trying so hard to do things right, he's getting repaid by being the person left behind as things change, who can't find his footing with other people, within a broader social context, anything. The way he's tried so hard to do everything to do everything correctly, and that same thing he poured so much effort into is what's making him miserable now.

Soundwave. Within the context of this story, he's by far the most moral of the decepticons. He might occasionally take his frustrations out on Jazz, but even at his most demanding, he's gentler than the average slave-owning decepticon is on a good day. His only serious moral failing is not seeing slavery as an automatic moral wrong. Which, honestly! Lots of humans took thousands of years to handle! And even if Soundwave probably wouldn't be inclined towards slavery himself, but the person in charge said Let There Be Slaves, so slavery was the new rule, and Soundwave follows the rules. He only took slaves on because he tried to save five separate lives. He works tirelessly for the benefit of society, such as it is. He did that even when he was falling apart from the cassettes, he's done it even when he's being treated unfairly by Megatron and company, he's done it even when Megatron demanded a workload that was seriously more than any one person could reasonably handle.

Point is, nobody has worked harder than Soundwave to do things right. Even Jazz is cheerfully amoral. He's been completely shameless about angling to sabotage the decepticons any way he can, and good for him. But also good for Soundwave! Good for that dedication! Good for him working for the preservation of peace and society. I mean, goddamn. So he was working for Megatron. Has the fic not said enough about carrier loyalty programming, has it not lingered enough in Soundwave's head so that we can see how much the loyalty programming digs into him? Have we not seen enough of Soundwave doing the best he possibly can to protect the people he cares most about? And he's still out there telling deceptive truths to Megatron to shield Jazz, still failing to pass tiny pieces of information to Megatron, and shocking Ravage with how much of a deviation that is from Soundwave's norm. Jazz has spent the story doing the right thing in terms of the end justifies the means. But Soundwave has been doing his level best to do the just thing whenever he can, and to protect others, which is leagues beyond what we see out of any other decepticon outside his family.

I don't understand how someone can read this story and be cheering for Jazz to punish Soundwave.