#the tf fandom is incomprehensible | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aronarchy · 2 years

Text

ok so I finished watching The Fall a few months (you can find my earlier ramble abt it somewhere on my blog, also tagged #the fall tv) tho I’ve been too low on spoons to finish writing this out properly until now

I’m remembering better now about how I first got into it--the Hannibal subreddit or the Killing Eve subreddit where TF was recommended as ~same genre fascinating serial killer + detective very obsessed with each other deep psychological things~ and at the time I was still very much into a terminally-shipping-brained phrase so I think for the first half of the show while I was watching I just mostly turned off analysis in favor of thinking “this is interesting/hot”/“the main characters are attracted to each other”/“when will get together” (which looking back I can’t really relate to at all anymore but idk)

I’m much more comfortable now in identifying the overall political leaning of the show as radical feminist. It’s not even about the somewhat-possibly-slightly-creator-endorsed misandrist personal feelings of the main character (Stella) which are mentioned/implied a few times, or the few bioessentialist jokes(?) made once or twice, but the overall plot itself. Radfems don’t like hearing this, but radical feminism has major parallels/overlaps with mainstream liberal feminism in their ideas & logical flow & philosophical roots (i.e. both offshoots & enablers of conservative patriarchy, relying on immaterialism/essentialism). Here it was mainly the complete utter lack of intersectionality, the iffy depiction of some misogynistic violence (particularly the attribution to essential traits), and the lack of solutions to misogynistic violence that would involve actually changing currently existing power structures.

The Fall does extremely well in introducing multiple feminist points (impacts of patriarchal culture in the workplace, mostly refusing to validate victim-blaming, etc.; does well showing the institutional barriers Stella faces in her job, how she cannot have control of her own work decisions because of how the power is structured, regardless of what she does, and injustices she experiences are baked into how it was built). It also does well in portraying assaults and murders with sexual motives which did not contain sexual acts (as in acts which are sexual in and of themselves by mechanical components) as no less severe/“actually bad” than outright more obviously sexual assaults. But when getting to the more difficult bits, it falters. (I wouldn’t say its perspective is bad per se, just limited.)

Had some disconnected thoughts wrt its depictions of patriarchal power imbalances and abuse stemming from there (i.e. Paul being a therapist and exploiting that to take advantage of his sexual assault victim without her knowing, arguably an antipsych point if you have a lot of faith in the show directors’ scope of knowledge/background).

As the show progresses, we learn more and more about Paul’s Fascinatingly Abnormal Unique Dark Psychology and his Tragic Backstory. His assaults are always presented as ritualistic, mysterious, incomprehensible, so far out of the norm that they could not actually occur in real life, deviant, thrilling, a spectacle. Because The Fall, while trying to introduce progressive political feminist messages in an area which hasn’t had much like it before, also at the same time still tries to cater to the crime-drama fandom (and, like all serial-killer stories before it, to satisfy the audience’s hunger for drama and bloodlust and fascinating monsters to analyze and pick apart).

So on one hand you see it promoting the concept that all acts of misogynistic violence exist on an escalating continuum, all attributable to various cultural factors of the patriarchy; how normal cis male entitlement/culturally ingrained beliefs about men’s right to women’s autonomy (i.e. James Tyler), domestic violence (i.e. Liz’s story), casual(-but-still-severe-and-should-be-taken-seriously) sexual harassment (i.e. Jim @ Stella), and general misogynistic biases and discrimination (i.e. the constant hurdles Stella has to go through in a very male-dominated workplace) are. Arguably it even touches on the therapist-patient power imbalance leading to abuse. That any man (of the privileged demographics the show chose to depict) is capable of such beliefs and actions, including the drastic ones usually deemed “abnormal” and “would never happen to me/come from someone like him” (i.e. Stella telling Anderson about how many women she knew were afraid of men because they might kill them whereas men told her they were afraid of women because they might laugh at them), including normal everyday men you know. That to fight sexual violence we have to fight patriarchal culture.

Yet The Fall abandons this principle when it comes to Paul, and general discussions and speculations about the possible perpetrator of his crimes before they knew his identity. A man who commits the Actually Severe Extreme murders must have fascinating abnormalities in order to be capable of wanting to do so/doing so. Must have a laundry list of kinks and paraphilias and fictional/artistic/pornographic interests, must fantasize hard about it 24/7 since the age of twelve, must have overpowering ✨urges✨ to do it that he finally acts on only because he failed to resist their temptation, much have a tragic childhood backstory of extreme trauma that led to him developing such feelings and dramatically nihilistic misanthropic views, a Very Fascinating Mysterious Philosophy that surrounding women become closer to him with by learning. Must select his victims based on how sexually attractive they are to him, how well they fit his preferred physical “type” because of course it has to all be pretty and palatable (and white). He must be “sociopathic” and “narcissistic” and “lack empathy/love/caring for women” and overall inhuman, impossible to understand. Stella might’ve made one comment to Jim about Paul’s actions fitting the expected results of patriarchal socialization and material conditions, sure, but that doesn’t particularly match up with the rest of the show’s attempted depiction.

We know there are harmful stereotypes about male CSA survivors supposedly being so much more likely to “continue the cycle of abuse” and CSA perpetrators only being able to want to commit CSA because they must’ve been abused themselves too. This, as per the rest of normative society’s view on CSA, once again, flattens the issue of sexual violence prevention into “uwu let’s ~help~ these poor uwu sad pitiful abused lost souls so they don’t Repeat The Cycle society failed perpetrators by not helping them before they did it because CSA perpetration is just a mental health issue uwu.” Constant complaints even from MC & everyone endorsed by MC about Paul’s “deviance,” that his acts and thoughts and feelings are bad because they’re “deviant” and “abnormal,” implying they were right to call kink practices Wrong because they’re Weird and everyone opposing was just manipulated into believing sexual assault is ok and holds mystical value (i.e. Katie). Iffy conclusions to be drawn from his replies during Stella’s interrogation regarding Olivia (is he a Real Misogynist or not? he’s certainly an adultist--see how he treated Katie and what he constantly said to her about her age and “immaturity” to pressure her into doing what he wanted--fundamentals of his beliefs remain the same even if it’s someone he would personally care about, IRL they don’t tend to be able to compartmentalize as well. Were his femicides motivated by misogyny or were they just coincidental results of his biology which just happened to give him a sex drive oriented toward women?)

I do admit it hit a bit hard when the psych essentially offered Paul the familiar para therapy (practicing distinguishing thought from intent/action, we can treat you & reduce your impulses & offending etc). But unfortunately it also plays into the whole narrative of “all biastophiles experience horrible uncontrollable urges and need help to not offend all offenders just needed ‘biasto therapy’ help to prevent them from offending.” And that several points of his character were Very Relatable (to me), but so were several points of Stella’s, and I know many real people who do not fit any of the show’s predicted profiles of biastophiles or rapists/sexual abusers. And (I’m not sure if this was intentional or not), but the arc of the show from there shows precisely what is wrong with that proposal: he can simply choose to not use those offered tools if he doesn’t feel like it; even if he knows “how” to not be violent, he just doesn’t want to.

No one’s dissecting the possible neurotypes or paraphilias or even sexual attractions at all of James Tyler, or Jim Burns, or any of the other misogynistic harassers/assaulters/abusers (or misogynists in general) depicted in the show, no, reserve the ~fascination~ just for the man who was a walking stranger-danger archetype, trying to built a cohesive “profile” of A Sexual Predator in the way all cops & adjacents/extensions thereof do, that Profile always leaving out themselves as possible violent actors, or just in general people the predator has direct legitimized authority over as possible victims (in this case, his wife and kids).

I’m also unsure if audience was intended to view the psych ward’s practices as violent/abusive, the police’s interrogations & prisons’ practices as violent/abusive (I read them that way, but given how much libs internalize shit I wouldn’t be surprised if the directors and/or most viewers genuinely thought all of that was okay). In particular the treatment of women who weren’t even perpetrators of much in particular experienced the worst violence from the cops (Sally Ann being held for an extended period of time and aggressively interrogated on flimsy pretexts but it was totally fine because the cops used the information to win in the end /s; and particularly, the treatment of Katie).

Katie’s horrendous treatment rhymed w/how general misogyny and adultism and the criminalization of survivors operate broadly: the erasing of any possible nuance, villainizing her, cops stalking her for days/weeks on end while she was at home doing her business (but it was justified because it led to them winning in the end!!! /s), being interrogated harshly & aggressively, being forced to live with a parent she was uncomfortable with by the court, being locked up for her actions which resulted from years of mental health difficulties as she had a shit home life and being continuously manipulated, threatened, and assaulted by a violent serial sexual predator for months on end.

Instead of simply cutting off her incentive by getting rid of her abuser, they go for her, arrest her, and Anderson has the audacity to say she’s “right to kick out at authority [because she’s At That Age]” while being a literal fucking cop interrogating her and clearly not holding to that principle in any meaningful material way, then she gets locked up and still with no one to help her deconstruct what Paul indoctrinated her with or just teach her a general idea of consent and ability to feel self-worth which she needed and didn’t get (because locking up the dangerous juvenile crazies is just so much easier and less risky, right? /s), and the story ends with Stella’s selfishness & need for a Fascinating Chase and Closure (though she wasn’t even a victim of his) in the form of Official Proceedings Which Must Occur Because [essentialism + I’m white so I say so] (which led to further murders & assaults which could’ve otherwise been prevented and much more pain for Katie, policing is incredibly inefficient and does very little for survivors in practice) and Katie remaining trapped in a fucking prison without any way out or any possibility of getting out in the foreseeable future or any aid. Once again adultist paternalism & misogyny centering her as the one to lay blame/fault on, the horrific and detrimental consequences of grooming being exploited to push further state authoritarian agendas instead of the other way around.

The show was excellent, sure, but also if it attempted to decenter ~fascination~ and ~psychological tension~ in favor of less establishment-shilling and more realistic views of misogynistic violence and particularly showed more than one nonwhite person throughout the entire show, particularly the misogynistic violence faced by women and girls on the margins, then it would be forced to acknowledge that in real life the most horrific and Severe and Extreme and frequent and hidden and unaddressed sexual assaults & abuses & femicides are perpetrated by the cishet white men with the most social/political/economic power (i.e. politicians & the rich (none of whose existences were even hinted at throughout the entire story), the very cops the story holds up as worthy moral well-intentioned winners enacting justice, etc) and that the vast majority of victims are not strangers to the perpetrators but the women and girls in their lives whom they have direct legitimized authority over i.e. wives, children, patients, suspects, prisoners, that the brunt of the violence happens by them to them first and decreasing in scale and severity (on average) as you go down the chain (rather than the other way around, stranger danger being the worst and most violent/likely to result in death and acquaintance/authorities’ assault being the mildest thus we can reasonably maintain the cops’ authority to combat the stranger danger Where It’s Actually Needed).

#OP #recently viewed #media review #media critique #the fall tv #misogyny #feminism #radfeminism #white cisfeminism #adultism #victim-blaming #femicide #ramble

0 notes

judasisgayriot · 2 years

Text

Last night I was saying to Han, heroes and supernatural started airing at around the same time and had a kind of overlapping demographic for a bit, but ofc heroes was cancelled in 2010. But we were just imagining the mirror universe when spn was cancelled then and instead heroes had limped on into the year of our lord 2021. god can you even imagine

#it would be fuckin incomprehensible and it would have probably managed to keep getting worse and worse lol #it’s a mercy it was cancelled then lol can u IMAGINE wide scale present day heroes discourse if it were still airing #none of us would make it out alive and that’s a fact #every day I’m thankful the heroes fandom is so niche and on the whole so chill lmao #full body shivers just imagining the whole thing but on spn scale #anni rambles #heroes shitposting #I don’t go there obv #but when I saw ppl saying whatever tf happened right at the end of spn was too pander-y to the brothercest ship or w/e. we HAVE to laugh.

4 notes · View notes

vldcoran · 3 years

Text

my favorite pastime is searching up posts that are like "i miss voltron wish it had ended differently :(" and then looking at the blogs of people who've liked that post and searching voltron

#this is incomprehensible #basically. i like seeing how people used to be involved in this fandom #txt #ayesha stop procrastinating on math???? tf?????

5 notes · View notes

decepti-thots · 3 years

Text

I've been around TF fandom for over a decade at this point and let me tell you: things change, seas rise, civilizations fall, but almost all Sta/rscream fandom discourse will be utterly incomprehensible to me on every side until the heat death of the universe. Right up there with death and taxes.

#me @ almost everyone: *eggman voice* what the FUCK are you talking about

8 notes · View notes

macadam · 6 months

Note

Something Something the tf fandom is large enough to have microcelebrities (willing and unwilling), small enough to have incomprehensible interpersonal beef that becomes everyone’s business, friendly enough to insist upon good faith interpretations of everything, toxic enough to send you death threats if you don’t, old enough to have deeply entrenched social norms, and white enough to be really annoying about them.

This reads like poetry to me

#I think... if you're in a fandom long enough.. they probably all feel like this #Mac asks #in spite it all this is the best fandom I've been in since the dead starwars era of 2013 #I love my mutuals and I love so much of the meta that comes out of this place #I love the fan art sooooooo much and I love how easy is it to break into this fandom. for better or worse

63 notes · View notes

dittydipity · 3 years

Text

tag game!

rules: post the names of all the files in your wip folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and i’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it! and then tag as many people as you have wips.

i was tagged by @starryyam! thenk! i’m not exactly the most organized with these kinds of spur-of-the-moment files i open up but i managed to scrounge up some scattered documents in my drive and notes from my phone.

fandom/ship

incomprehensible - persona 5, shuake

akechi’s wildcard - persona 5, analysis/essay

lil bro teddie - persona 4

keats:1 des:0 // bostonius shenanigan - professor layton

better hurry - professor layton/lbmr

simon says - professor layton/lbmr

veggietales u ok? - lbmr

hk tonal analysis? - hollow knight, essay

15 16 (unreachable) - pokemon, nameless

naupaka - pokemon, nameless

idle time - twewy

wildkat - twewy

saudade - the property of hate

originals/uncategorized

And Then There Was One

Novel Chapter - uh?notes+draft(s)

remnants

? (WHO tf getting WHUMPED tonite)

petty bitches only club

Storytime connection

down

me? follow the tagging rules? no <3 tagging @icantwritegood @joshuakiryusmom @rattled-bones @mypunkpansexualtwin and anyone who’d like to do this!

#i also have a couple essays on hollow knight and p5/akechi but idk if those count #not me getting secondhand embarrassment from my titles #even if theyre placeholders #a good number of these are blank or like a single bullet point but i remember the plans i had for them #tagged #drabbles

5 notes · View notes

zhuhongs · 3 years

Text

something that i always am hit with, is the realization that i just feel so fundamentally different from my peers. for example, last night I went to work and so it was just me and my one manager in costume. And this one dude i worked with was like “oh nice spirit sage. do you have plans tonight or?” and i was like “nah, i just dress up. other than that i just chill by myself on halloween lol” and he was like “ahahaha nice” and it was just like whatever. And as we were closing he was talking about how hes having a party with like.. at least 50 ppl at his house and i was like.. What... ppl do that. ANd all the other coworkers around my age were like “ahaha yea we’re doing things” and idk i just felt like weird. Like I don’t ever do that. I can’t even think of 50 ppl irl who like me like that, tf. And it was just a weird realization that like.. im the weird one for not partying and drinking with others in my 20s. Idk it made me feel like the stupid annoying introvert fandom nerd stereotype that ppl think of when they think of ppl like me and i just felt so deeply uncomfortable. Like iwas sitting here bragging that I dont have friends or plans. I felt so boring and pretentious and just.. weird. Like wow... friends. Idk im just not social. I’m really bad at talking to ppl in a meaningful way. I feel lke I can’t be understood by others. Or like I don't want to. I’m scared of being seen so i eliminate that possibility entirely. Like I communicate well with my coworkers but not in a way that 20 yr old should. I do much better talking to older people--I relate more. I just.. cant relate with others my age. I feel so bad for this. Again.. like one of those quirky bookworm introvert stereotypes. I dont want to be seen that way but maybe that’s exactly what i am. idk i put on an act that i’m just put together and studious, but still able to have fun and joke around but I’m not. I’m just sad and miserable and not even as studious and hardworking as I try to give off. I talk about work and stuff all the time that I fear that im annoying everyone around me. I’m sure they’re all just like “yea we fucking get it, ur at work. ur tired.. bc u work.. and u cant talk bc u have work. fuck off u insufferable cunt. We get it, ur in college, ur working, you have it SO hard...” idk i just feel like such a pretentious idiot. I talk too much or i just blank out like the blandest person ever. And when I do talk I talk in a way that im trying too hard to make for something. In essence, my being is apologetic which is more infuriating than actually making mistake. I'm too afraid to be undesireble that I try to be likeable but that try hard likeableness is actually the most insufferable personality to have. I just.. i dont know how to be in a way that is acceptable-- to myself and to others. I feel so incomprehensible and sad. I dont know what I’m doing. I keep grasping at straws and sending mixed signals bc i dont know myself. I cant rectify a version of myself that I can be satisfied with so i wear 500 million different masks to try and be an amorphous, easy to like shell of myself. I dont know. I’m awkward and terrified. How have I made it this long living this way. I’m a child.. im not doing this.

#🐌.txt #sages identity crisis part 563.6

3 notes · View notes

imababblekat · 5 years

Text

Alriiiighty!!!

I finished Lost Light last night, and all I have to say is wow, just wow! I choked up a few times, but hadn’t split it till the end. Why is this so significant? Because I’m a picky reader. I love to read, but I can only stay reading something if it actually grabs hold of me. Mtmte/LL is the first in long time where I’ve not only been able to sit and read something without getting bored, but the first to have such an impact on me. It’s filled to the brim with amazing, intricate characters, story arcs/plots, and just about everything that a good story would have and then some. It’s also the only other story that’s brought me to tears besides the Book Thief.

But other than this amazing series impacting me emotionally, it’s impacted my life in other ways! I haven’t been in the Transformers fandom very long, and that’s not just counting this continuity, but I will say that a big part of why I’m still here is because of Mtmte/LL. I remember when I just started slipping into the fandom, found TF writing blogs, and happened across a few reader request about Rodimus. I had absolutely no idea who he was or any other character in those ask, but I read any ways, because hey, it’s Transformers and these writings are dope. Then, eventually I decided to check out Mtmte/LL, after a while of simply learning about it’s characters from ask, and was immediately blown away! Not only did it take my hand and walk me more into the TF Fandom, but it introduced me to so many wonderful people! I can’t even recall the last time I had this much human interaction(does this sound bad? i hope not lol), even if it’s all only online. I say that, yet just a few weeks ago I was at TFCon, where I met several upon several wonderful fans, who didn’t mind in the slightest if I popped in to have a friendly chat! All of you have been and are so amazing. With all of you I can express and have fun with an interest that’s shared among many others that I can’t do with those I know at home. They’re all good to me as well, but being able to express something so meaningful to you without having to worry if your bouts of excitement are just annoying rambles to the ears, is an amazing, incomprehensible relief!! Other than being able to openly share my interest, I know also that if something where to happen, or if something were troubling me, I could come to y’all. In the times where(not just me as I’ve observed with other fan writers), I only put out a small thing of not doing so well, and needing to take some time off, all of you would be nothing but supportive. You don’t even need to know what’s specifically wrong, and yet you’ll still wish me well!

I’m sad to see Mtmte/LL go, but I’m happy to have experienced the journey with it, and ever thankful for those it’s allowed me to meet along the way.

#i could go on #about it's characters or the story in general #or all the little things that made my heart either flutter or ache #and so so much more #but then i would be sitting at my desk all day and probably start crying ^-^'#mtmte #more than meets the eye #lost light #maccadam #imababblekat

18 notes · View notes

blueoatmeal · 6 years

Note

I GOT U MY DUDE how bout a, o, q, v, and x >:3c all but x require something specific so uhh transformers I guess?? or anything else ur rlly super into lately lmao. Spill the dEETS

ask meme

Thanks Megan!!!!!

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships*, pairings^, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

Recently I’ve really liked Brainstorm and Perceptor^

R2D2 and C3PO^

The Doctor’s various platonic relationships with his companions. Especially the Doctors who’s personalities didn’t really lend themselves to typical friendship behavior; like Four and Six.*

Spock, Kirk and McCoy are EXCELLENT together*(^?)

Gladstone and Magica (dangit modmad)^

g1 ratchet and wheeljack,,^

g1 skyfire wheeljack ratchet perceptor become fantastic buds*

Seaspray and Alana!!!^

CDRW^

g1 Tracks and Raoul are awesome*^

idw drift and ratchet*^

g1 Grapple and Hoist^

g1 Red Alert and Inferno*^

g1 Brawn being better buds w Perceptor*

transformers/having more girl characters^^^^^^^^^^OTP

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

Love on First Sine... Blaster :)

Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

Heta//lia. First because a good bunch of the popular ships were ones I hated, and more later when I saw a few people discussing it and how it’s problematic in ways that I wasn’t sure what to do with besides avoiding it. Like, I always knew it had flaws, but does that invalidate the entire thing? I legitimately don’t know; I need to read up on this. For now I’m just not engaging in that fandom. My interest waned after a while anyway as I got into other stuff.

V - Which character do you relate to most?

In TF, it’s definitely Perceptor.

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness. Using many big words when fewer and smaller words will do, and talking a LOT. It’s wonderfully precise and admittedly I get an ego boost when I can perfectly understand supposedly incomprehensible dialogue. I also LOVE it when used obnoxiously. It’s so funny sometimes

SHOOT, also giving clothing or a personal item to someone else to use, commonly a jacket. MAN i love this trope

#oatmealspeaks #oatmealreplies #oatmealanswers #thanks!!!!!#this is fun!#incomingtransmissionfromearth

3 notes · View notes

ha-heeprime · 7 years

Text

Megs-hate vs Getaway-hate

I see posts railing against James Roberts for “letting robot-Hitler get away with it,” and saying we should all side more with Getaway, “who sees past the current woobiness and remembers the full horror of what Megatron has done.” I read those posts with a sense of incomprehension. But then I remember two important things:

1: It’s personal. It’s ALWAYS personal. When anyone has strong feelings about a character, it’s because that char links to something they feel strongly about in real life.

2. My journey’s not their journey. I’ve had ten years to make peace with Megatron, and haven’t given Getaway a chance.

So I’ve decided to throw my two cents in, because, yeah, it’s personal; and because I believe we ought to try and understand each other.

“It’s Personal” As I was growing up, there was this kid at church. He was a weirdo. I did not like him. There was this old gentleman who seemed like everybody’s grandpa, who exuded kindness, gentleness, and love. Then we all found out the old guy had abused the “weird” kid sexually for about a decade. I felt so much horror and betrayal. We’d had that guy at our house! But worst of all was how I’d thought about “the weird kid.” How I had avoided him. How there’d been nobody to side with him against this person everybody liked. And THAT, ladies and gents, is who I thought about each time Getaway appeared in the comic after his first creepy “Bomp” on Tailgate. Getaway fooled us. He fooled me. He started out as this wacky escapist who was maybe too familiar... and then he began “grooming” Tailgate, who is at his best childlike and at his worst childish, but whom I cannot see as a fully-accountable adult like all the others yet, because he refuses to grow up and be accountable for himself. He’s a teenager, maybe. The dynamic is set for both Tailgate and Getaway, all because of one horrible experience I had. It’s personal, and I DESPISE Getaway for it. I feel personally betrayed by him. He disgusts me. And -- importantly to this discussion -- it has almost nothing to do with how he thinks about Megatron.

Megatron... See, I love him. And this predates all the comics stuff. Again, it’s personal. When I jumped headlong into the TF fandom, I jumped in as Optimus Prime. All thanks to an RP forum and great people who ran with that. Prime represents all the things I most want to be. (And I have many strong opinions about IDW’s portrayal of him, but we’re not talking about that now!) As “Prime,” I felt sick about how long past reason and sanity the Autobot/Decepticon war had lasted. I needed some shred of hope that transformers could change more than their outsides. So I embarked on my first writing project, compelled by a desire for something I thought NEVER would be made official. (How wonderfully wrong I was!) I thought about the characters, about Soundwave the quiet telepath who sees and hears all things... and had him one day give up and walk out into the crossfire to his death, because he saw no future worth living for. And THAT was enough to give Megatron pause. When he expressed a tiny wish that things could be different, I-Prime jumped in all willing for self-sacrifice, the way I always do. But I (small i) only know one way peace is possible, and that is total understanding: Truth and Reconciliation on a personal and global scale. So I-Prime challenged Megatron to a spark-bond (which I imagined as an out-of-body total merging of the souls), because if you’ve BECOME another person, you (A) absorb all their memories and the reasons for the things they’ve done, (B) hesitate to hurt them because now they’re part of you, and (C) can’t help loving the heck outta them because goshdarnit, now you KNOW ‘em. It was scary and hard for both of us to take on one another’s crap. I had to forgive Megatron for not just countless deaths -- that was easy, because I had them on my hands as well -- but for personal things like reaching into my chest and squeezing my spark in Escalation, for Agent Smith & Morpheus-ing me in Dreamwave [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb6yOklzHMI], and a whole buncha other things. But we did it. And together, for the past decade in my own fictional universe, Megs & Me’ve been trying to undo all the bad stuff and rebuild all the good things lost in the war. He is my Bond-Brother, and I love him like he’s real.

So yeah, this whole IDW “The War’s Over and Megatron’s Trying To Be Good Now!” thing is almost everything I ever wanted. The end of Lost Light #6, where Megatron’s not only trying to do things right this time, but is finally in contact with a Prime who’ll work in concert with him?!? That was a great gift to me.

But My Journey’s Not Your Journey. Would I open my spark to Getaway, the way I did to Megatron? Heck no. And that’s unPrimely of me. I don’t understand Getaway or see the good in him. Sure, he may have a point about Megatron’s evil deeds being too awful to forgive. But it’s his ONE awful deed I can’t personally get past. I know this isn’t balanced. I don’t care. When people post things about James being too blithe about comparisons to past atrocities, I shrug. Those past things aren’t a part of who I am. That nice old guy from my church is. My past pain limits me, and I am letting it, for now.

Tomorrow the first issue of the Mutineers’ Trilogy drops. If James can make me understand and come to love Getaway, I will absolutely take my hat off to him. Not since an adult re-reading of Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Swiftly-Tilting Planet” have I been so taught to forgive a hateful character. It can be done. But it’s not easy. Are you up to this task, James? I hope so.

I really do hope so.

Because beyond the grim fun addiction of righteous rage, I don’t like to hate. “Hate diminishes me. I am lessened by it,” as I-Prime once told Megatron back in Chaos Theory. I’d like to be shown the error of my ways. Not (please!) by having my beloved bond-Brother turn from his new hopeful path, but by showing me how to love this guy I hate for being a manipulative [insert lots of words I don’t allow myself to say here]. Good luck, James. I really, really, really hope you pull it off.

Love to everyone, on both teams.

-Prime out.

3 notes · View notes