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
213 notes
·
View notes
oh boy anon, you’ve activated my trap card. GET READY FOR A SEBASTIAN CHARACTER ANALYSIS ESSAY BELOW LMAO
ok so first off I know im obvs biased, but I don’t actually think my seb is that ooc, AND PUT DOWN YOUR PITCHFORKS IMMA EXPLAIN WHY. but im also gonna explain why I don’t think the other more friendly and lighthearted renditions of seb are ooc either. bc theres so many aspects of seb we get in the game that can be interpreted in so many diff ways, and so this is how i see it/landed on MY rendition of seb:
PROTECTIVENESS/POSSESSIVENESS: this is one of the main aspects of him, imo. his entire questline is about wanting to cure anne, and how he’s not giving up, and how he believes that HE is the only one that can do it, because “she’s MY sister!” seb is super tunnel visioned and has a one-track mind when it comes to this, and I headcanon that he’s this way because of their parents deaths. he’s the brother, the boy, he’s gotta be strong for his sister, and ofc when their parents died, he tries to comfort her and be there for her/be the rock, and it happens again when she’s sick. shes his sister, his responsibility, and he’ll die before he gives up on her and her safety.
SO, I just transfer all those aspects over to a romantic relationship instead. you just replace “shes my sister” with simply, “she’s mine/my gf/my wife/etc.” and in the same way I think seb tries to be strong and reliable and protect anne because he’s the brother, I think seb would be the same way in a relationship, because he’s a boy and she’s a girl and its 1890 and he’s chivalrous and he just sees it as his responsibility. I think the death of his parents and his dynamic with anne has baked this sort of mindset into him, and its even MORE intense in a romantic aspect, because then hormones and puberty and sexual tension and attraction is involved (plus the fact that seb in my fic is 17, so he’s older and has even stronger raging hormones and testosterone LOL.
JEALOUSY: who can forget the lines “between the two of you, I’m starting to feel left out” and “ominis simply needs a moment with you and he’ll change his mind. is that it?” the first one is more playful but I feel like the second one really showcases sebs brand of jealousy, and how biting and uncharitable it can be.
AGGRESSION/VIOLENCE: yet another iconic line with: “fine. but ominis knows, I won’t step back from a fight.” LIKE... the fact that apparently ominis knows this means its come up more than once…and im not saying seb is some unruly aggressor who flies off the handle at anything, but he defs has a capacity and is willing to get violent if HE believes the situation calls for it—basically the same way he feels about the dark arts. he felt justified using imperio to protect anne, and taking the relic to save anne, and so he would have fought ominis to get out of the catacomb. and with MY seb, while he doesn’t go picking fights with any boy who looks or gets close to clora, he’ll definitely be willing to beat up or lay hands on a creep who bothers clora/who is in the process of bothering her LOL.
SO YEAH, that’s pretty much it, and I’ll be the first to admit I definitely ramp up these traits further because he’s older in my fic and i think these traits would only get more intensified with age + being in love and also bc IM A TWILIGHT GIRLIE!!! what can I say. there are so many moments in my fic where you can just replace seb with edward and it wouldn’t seem out of place tbh LMAOO so blame twilight, it was a formative experience for me BAHAHA
BUT like I ALSO said, I don’t think peoples more lighthearted interpretations of seb are ooc either. because even all my earlier above examples, you can just focus on diff aspects of them. like his tunnel vision and obsession to cure anne? instead of seeing it as over the top protective and possessive, you can just view it in a more wholesome determined selfless sort of way. like I said we got so many nice little bits and ingredients of his personality that we can turn into anything we want, really👌just pick which flavour of seb u like best and use what we got in game to create it HAHA
AW TYY QUEEN BAHAHA💖 and aw im always so honoured when ppl tell me they consider my stuff canon that’s like the best compliment I can get, tysm 😭 and im glad you like my fic and art so much (enough for your friends and family to unfortunately know💀 LMAOO)
im adding your ask to this because it kinda ties into my seb essay. LETS GET INTO WHY A SWEET BABY ANGEL WOULD LIKE SOMEONE LIKE SEB. the answer ISSS: the same reason WE’RE also all into him I guess?? BAHHA
ok but to start off im gonna defend my seb, not only cause of what you said anon (i dont want you to feel like this is targeted to you!) but also bc I got an ask recently asking me to summarize seb and clora’s relationship since all they see from my art is that “they fuck and seb is possessive” LMAO, and I feel like ppl who JUST see my art and don’t read my fic have a warped image of my seb.
this may be shocking but I don’t consider my seb a red flag LMAO. I joke about how hes more of a pink flag tbh, but even THAT i dont even really believe, and don’t even consider him overly possessive. like yes he keeps an eye on her when shes hanging around other boys, but I feel like that’s normal (esp for 1890) and all of his most possessive moments have been when theres been a threat to cloras life/coming from a place of love and protection (especially since clora is so self-sacrificial, she’d have killed herself by now if not for seb LOL) so to me id actually put Sebastian as being PROTECTIVE as his first and foremost trait, followed by the possessiveness.
and yeah he gets jealous, but unless a dude is actively trying to get with her/hitting on her/harassing her, he’ll otherwise just kinda be unhappy about it/let it play out/ watch on unhappily LOL.
and even when lawley was blackmailing clora and getting in between her and sebs relationship and lying about how close he and clora were, seb demanded answers from CLORA on what was happening between the two of them, but he didn’t touch lawley or tell him to stay away. bc seb thought that was what clora wanted, so he let her drift away. if he was TRULY a red flag, in this instance he would have just beat up lawley for taking what was "his"/not allow clora to leave him/immediately go to lawley instead of clora, and tell him to stay away despite what clora might want. (and clora even WISHED seb had interfered and done this. she was like 'why is he letting me drift away and go off with lawley i WANT him to fight for me...but she couldn't actually say anything thanks to the blackmail)
clora doesn’t just 'put up' with sebs more possessive and protective behaviour though, she actually likes it HAHA. just bc shes a precious baby angel, we all like a bad boy, even back then. just look at jane eyre, and how popular the dark and brooding and assholey mr. rochester was.
she tells seb at one point that she likes those things about him, even his immature competitive side, and his darker sides, and that he shouldn’t try to hide them or change himself because she accepts them. and even putting aside all of the stuff they’ve been through together that has bonded them (like the main canon quests + annes curse and then CLORA being cursed, and then clora being kidnapped and seb saving her) clora thought seb was roguish and charming and witty and intelligent and good looking from day 1. add to the fact that he’s just so devoted to her in everything he does, that even if he CAN get a bit overbearing at times, how could you NOT fall for someone like that😩 someone whose possessive behavior just stems from wanting to protect you and love you and want to keep you safe and cherish you like DAMN…. GET ME A SEB, TOO. WHERES MINE!!!😭😭
clora also realizes in ch 32 WHY seb is so protective of her (the trauma with his parents and wanting to be there for anne) and that she accepts it, and enjoys it, and that she might even MISS it if seb were to ever get less protective of her/might get lonely LOL, and then sebs like "i’ve "spoiled you, have i?"
so YEAH I don’t think sebs protectiveness and possessiveness goes into any toxic territory or red flag territory PERSONALLY (and the time that it DID get toxic was because of the relic, and clora DID put her foot down)
but my normal seb? whose dream in life is to whisk clora away into a tower and lock her up to keep her safe and keep her all to himself, but that he’d never ACTUALLY do because he knows its insane and unreasonable but jokes about wanting to do it anyway bc he would if clora agreed? clora finds that endearing and cute and is touched by how much he loves her and wants to keep her safe.
IN CLOSING: I LOVE THEM YOUR HONOUR AND THEY LOVE EACH OTHER👩❤️💋👨👩❤️💋👨👩❤️💋👨
130 notes
·
View notes
Cant sleep so im thinking about ayhalo
I think its like. one sided. qaypierre WOULD smooch that demon and take him on dates. qbad would not recognize anything as a romantic gesture. aypierre could throw a bouquet of chocolate roses at him and bad would just be like ! thank you :}
like they love each other, absolutely. they TRUST each other, to the point where i’d even say it gets in the way of bad seeing aypierre as anything more than a good friend. that’s his guy. The dude always in his corner. Friend resource label: team mate (coparent) (down to help kidnap people). bad doesnt do classic romantic relationships- all of his relationships are INCREDIBLY queer, but the closest he usually gets to what others read as romance is a classic chewtoy4chewtoy dynamic. He LOVES to fuck with people and he loves to get fucked with and if there’s a nice jawline or pretty muscles included?? huge bonus !!
he’s got something- not kinder, with aypierre? not calmer, either, but stable, maybe. pierre has proven, over and over again, that he’s on bad’s side. Spying on tubbo, encouraging bad’s pranks, the kidnapping- i can’t call it a reliable dynamic, not with how paranoid bad is, even when he trusts, but there is still a feeling of understanding that, wherever pierre’s limits are for when he cant support bad (or genuinely turn against him), it hasnt been reached yet
aypierre, on the other hand, i dont know enough about to be absolutely sure but there are some Vibes. ironically, i think hes feeling like his relationships are unreliable. max was going to have their baby, and then he wasnt, and then he left him, then max fucking died. plus whatever is happening with him and ayrobot, which probably leaves him feeling like he cant rely on Himself. like he had, if not a little crush on bad, at least some Interest in him, before. as well as several islanders. i remember the days of the Bed Threat.
but thats part of it, too? because those flings didnt have that emotional connection, and i always got the sense that he started looking for that with maximus, to Love and Be Loved rather than pure lust. To care about someone, genuinely, and be cared about in return. but he didnt get that with the flings, and We know that max was using him, but i dont know if he did, but maybe he had a feeling about it and maybe he also had a feelinf about maximus’ feelings towards bad and maybe- there’s something about that? A little push of not-spite-not-projection onto bad.
because bad IS that reliability, right now. he’s a fucking gremlin. a bastard. a prankster silly guy. he trusts aypierre and aypierre trusts him and they dont share everything but so often, when it comes down to it, it is them against the world. them in the corner, caught, aypierre shouting about kissing as a cover for their crimes while bad runs giggling away from him.
140 notes
·
View notes
Do you agree w/ the fandom interpretation that john was so homophobic he’d have beaten up and abandoned his sons for being gay? Cause sure, he grew up in the 60s as a mechanic and then later became a marine during the vietnam war, but i also don’t think homophobia would’ve necessarily been a priority for him? Like obviously he’s not gonna be the full on supportive and politically correct loving dad, but i think that the fandom’s general opinion on that is pretty warped by people’s relationships w/ their own fathers
I do think this is one place where people tend to project. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that; working out our issues through fiction is healthy and good! I don’t think there’s any canon proof of it beyond, as you said, him being a marine from the sixties who would probably not be super knowledgeable about being queer, maybe a little apprehensive about it from what he’s absorbed through the culture he grew up in. I think we’d be correct to point out that if Sam or Dean were queer, he might be uncomfortable about it, he might try to avoid the topic, which is in of itself hurtful.
The thing about me is: I fully disagree that John was ever physically abusive towards his kids. At most, I will bend this interpretation to say he was probably too harsh on them while teaching them to fight and that maybe he and Sam have traded blows before when arguments got too loud (by blows, I mean, probably shoving with the yelling, you know, assertion of physical space. It seems realistic to me that two people who have been using violence for a long time to protect themselves, and for John, his family, down to the hierarchal power he’s put in place of him -> Dean -> Sam, would resort to it when things got too heated.)
(I also think that sometimes fandom’s insistence that John had to be physically abusive can sometimes get a little insulting because it perpetuates the idea that emotional abuse does less harm and can be overlooked and for flattening out John’s character in a way the show very literally pointed to and said He Did Not Do That. This is the entire point of Max’s episode in s1, for the show to point out that their experiences of abuse were different. How well it was handled is arguable, but I take it as clear evidence that when we talk about John’s relationship with his sons, the focus should be on the emotional abuse, the codependency he developed with Dean from a very young age, his neglect of them both, his attempts to suppress Sam, etc. And I appreciate this about the show, because you can’t talk about any of those things without also talking about why they’re happening, why John thinks this is necessary, how he loves his sons and isolates them to protect them and ends up doing more and more damage that will never leave them through their entire lives.
I’m sure there’s depictions of John being physically abusive that handle it with the same amount of nuance that the show handles him being emotionally abusive in canon. I have not seen them, unfortunately. I’ve seen John being physically abusive 90% of the time just being used as shorthand for him being Bad and Evil and A Terrible Father. Which does not interest me. So I will remain here as a staunch defender of He Would Not Fucking Hit His Kids.)
Sorry, okay, we got off topic there this is about gay shit.
The point of All Of That was for me to be able to say, John’s not going to react to his sons being queer by beating them. He’s definitely not going to abandon them. Hello? John Winchester? Abandon his kids? John Winchester, the guy who has been keeping them in warded up motel rooms their whole lives and moving them across the country out of paranoia the demon who killed his wife could find them if they say anywhere too long? John Winchester who only trusted one or two people to ever look after his sons when he went on a hunting trip too long? We think that John would ditch his kid because they’re queer???
Like I said, I think the most realistic reaction for John, (if not just flat out him going ‘that’s fine, now load this gun while I time you because that’s more important for me to know that you can do’, because. He kind of has bigger priorities to worry about here. Like werewolves.) would be discomfort and pushing it out of his view, ignoring it. Which would still fucking hurt! And would have horrible effects on Sam and Dean both, would encourage Dean to repress it if he thinks his dad is ashamed of him, would push Sam away if he trusts John with this fact about himself and can’t be accepted easily.
I just think this is truer to John’s character.
Anyway. If nothing else here persuades anyone reading that John Would Not Fucking Do That, well. He thought his kid was demonspawn, remember? He thought Sam was corrupted and might not be able to be saved. I don’t think you can get more clear queercoding than that, and you know what John’s very telling response was to that information, to finding out something a thousand times more terrifying than Sam being gay ever could be? To refuse to look at it. To insist to himself that whatever Hell wanted with Sam, he wouldn’t let it happen. To tell Dean to take care of it, because even when John is certain that his son might literally become a demon, he could never bring himself to pull the trigger on him. Because he loves Sam.
So like. He literally would not do anything for the much smaller realization that Sam is gay. His son has demon blood that might turn him super evil, and John still wouldn’t hurt him.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is, I try to keep the fact that John loved his sons at the forefront of my mind when I’m writing stuff about him, because I think if you let that slide out of your head, you can very easily make him much worse, much more flat than he was in canon. The real picture of him is just an extremely flawed man in a terrible situation who fucks up his kids as much as he protects them.
And also he wouldn’t care about them being gay because JohnAzazel real and true and they fucked sloppy in that hospital basement-
36 notes
·
View notes