One of my favorite parts of phase 2 (and indeed one of the few moments I resonated with IDW Prowl) was when the neutrals were coming back to Cybertron and Prowl said that he refused to let Autobots be pushed aside and overruled after they were the ones who fought for freedom for 4 million years (the exact wording escapes me atm).
And I mean, that resentment still holds true even once the colonists come on bc like. As much as it's true that Cybertron's culture is fucked up, and as funny as it can be to paint Cybertronians as a bunch of weirdos who consider trying to kill someone as a common greeting not important enough to hold a grudge over.... The colonists POV kind of pissed me off a lot of times, as did the narrative tone/implications that Cybertronians are forever warlike and doomed to die by their own hands bc it just strikes me as an extremely judgemental and unsympathetic way to deal with a huge group of people with massive war PTSD and political/social tensions that were rampant even before the war?
Like, imagine living in a society rife with bigotry and discrimination where you get locked into certain occupations and social strata based on how you were born. The political tension is so bad there's a string of assassinations of politicians and leaders. The whole planet erupts into an outright war that leads (even unintentionally) to famine and chemical/biological warfare that destroys your planet. Both sides of the war are so entrenched in their pre-war sides and resentment for each other that this war lasts 4 million years and you don't even have a home planet any more. Then your home planet gets restored and a bunch of sheltered fucks come home and go "ewww why are you so violent?? You're a bunch of freaks just go live in the wilderness so that our home can belong to The Pure People Who Weren't Stupid And Evil Enough To Be Trapped In War" and then a bunch of colonists from places that know nothing about your history go "lol you people are so weird?? 🤣🤣 I don't get why y'all are fighting can't you just like, stop??? Oh okay you people are just fucked up and evil and stupid then" ((their planets are based on colonialism where their Primes wiped out the native populations btw whereas the Autobots and OP in particular fought to save organics. But that never gets brought up as a point in their favor)) as if the damage of a lifetime of war and a society that was broken even before the war can just magically go away now that the war is over.
Prowl fucking sucks but he was basically the only person that pointed out the injustice of that.
And then from then on out most of the characters from other colonies like Caminus and wherever else are going "i fucking hate you and your conflicts" w/ people like literal-nobody Slide and various Camiens getting to just sit there lecturing Optimus about how Cybertronians are too violent for their own good and how their conflicts are stupid, with only brief sympathetic moments where the Cybertronians get to be recognized as their own ppl who deserve sympathy before going right back to being lambasted.
Like I literally struggled to enjoy the story at multiple points because there was only so much I could take of the characters I knew and loved being raked over coals constantly while barely getting to defend themselves or be defended by the narrative so like. It was just fucking depressing and a little infuriating to read exRID/OP
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“Being a pirate is all about going your own way.” // “Come with me, Buggy!!”
is this post totally redundant after the similar post i made last week? idk. i guess the main difference is that this time i’m looking at the same topic in an unambiguously romantic light? the shipper goggles, as they say, are on, and i want to talk about these scenes in that context.
so, if you’ll forgive me for repeating myself a bit, let’s talk about this again:
as much as i enjoy the heartbreak of “they always thought they’d be together but miscommunication tore them apart” takes on shanks/buggy, the very first flashback we get about them—the first things we learn about them at all, really—tells us this isn’t true.
and i think what we get is more romantic.
Chapter 19, Pages 12-13. i know last time i said they’re at most 12 here, but looking at these lanky-ass teenaged designs that’s nuts. i fully believe oda hadn’t thought through their ages/the timeline at this point, and they were originally supposed to be about luffy’s age when buggy got his devil fruit. which is not relevant to this post in any way, but it’s my post so i get to go off-topic if i want.
Shanks and Buggy have their own goals as pirates, and at this time they understand them to be mutually incompatible. Buggy thinks Shanks’ travel-and-adventure-oriented take on piracy is soft and foolish; Shanks doesn’t care for Buggy’s exclusively treasure-focused take. They’re sometimes friendly, sometimes not, they’ve fought side by side, but they know this time as allies and crewmates is temporary. (Buggy plans on taking his treasure map and the Devil Fruit and leaving the crew immediately.) Maybe they’ll become friendly rivals, ‘fighting to the finish’ when they run into each other like Roger and Whitebeard do, or maybe the next time they see each other they’ll literally fight to the finish. Who knows?
“That’s also what being a pirate is all about.” It’s very sensible behavior. Smart planning for the future.
Which means the contradictory ways they act later—Buggy secretly deciding to follow Shanks, Shanks bluntly asking Buggy to come with him—are not about these characters thoughtlessly clinging to the status quo. They are not in a “we were always together and I never thought that would change” situation. Deciding to stick together is a considered, emotional decision: “I know we don’t make sense together but I don’t care, I want us together anyway.”
Chapter 1082, Pages 8-9. i was cursed the moment i saw these pages with Unable To Stop Thinking About It disease; only time will tell if seeing it animated makes it worse or cures me.
This argument is a codependent breaking point. Buggy’s pinned all his dreams on Shanks, hoisted that poor boy up on a pedestal, and it all falls apart when Shanks reveals thoughts and plans that don’t match Buggy’s perception of him. He can’t bear to be around him now that the false image has been revealed. (Shanks, poor thing, seems to have had no idea any of this was happening.)
But if Shanks hadn’t said no to Laugh Tale in this moment—or maybe if he’d offered a soft no of, idk, “okay, sure, once we’ve got a strong enough crew”—Buggy would have gone with him, still projecting wildly onto Shanks. He’d convinced himself that being a member of the Pirate King’s crew was enough for him, that he didn’t need to be Pirate King himself if Shanks got the title and he was with Shanks.
…but would he have actually liked being a member of that crew?
Like, looking at the things the Red-Haired Pirates do, would Buggy have enjoyed being one of them? Wandering East Blue, hanging out in friendly port towns, collecting treasure here and there but spending a lot of time getting drunk and making friends with the locals? Eventually becoming famous for having a large, weak fleet of subordinate pirate crews Shanks has to sometimes physically step in and protect?
God, no, he’d’ve been miserable. Just seething with thwarted ambition, furious at the perceived disrespect. A real power hungry first officer stereotype, the kind of character that makes you think, Why’s he working for this guy if he hates him so much?
And Buggy must have suspected it would go something like that. But if Shanks hadn’t rejected Laugh Tale, he would’ve gone with him anyway.
(Better to be miserable with you than a loser on my own.)
Or say Buggy agreed to come with Shanks. Obviously his presence wouldn’t change the crew makeup significantly enough to skew the Red-Haired Pirates towards his way of thinking, but for the sake of argument: if he had convinced Shanks to do things his way, would Shanks have enjoyed the kind of piracy Buggy engages in? Taking over and destroying East Blue port towns, ordering your crew killed on a furious whim, single-mindedly hunting down treasure maps and single-mindedly hunting down treasure chests and paying no attention to anything along the journey? Eventually becoming the boss and administrator for a bunch of bounty hunters and mercenaries?
No way; most of that behavior is totally repellant to Shanks. If he let Buggy do that kind of thing under his banner, you’d be left wondering What happened to his morals? Why does he let this guy walk all over him?
And Shanks knew the kind of pirate Buggy was and wanted to be. But he asked Buggy to come with him anyway.
(Better to be miserable with you than have fun apart.)
It’s hard to see a way to make these very different styles of pirating work together. It’s probably doable… with a lot of compromise and honest conversation. The younger Shanks and Buggy had a point, when they said each going their own way was the obvious choice! It was certainly the easier one. Was it the happier one? Who can say.
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