Katya dies. Katya lives. Katya fakes her own death, which is a metaphor for dying, even if she survives. Note that we never see Katya after her fake death is reported to Goncharov, because the movie is not interested in Katya’s survival; it is interested in her loss. Note that it can be argued this lacuna is of no particular significance, given that we never see her before that, either, because the movie doesn’t exist. Note that Goncharov never sees her, really: note how often in their scenes his eyes are somewhere else, how rarely their conversations fall into the familiar visual rhythm of shot/reverse shot (compare with his exchanges with Andrey, particularly just before the scene on the bridge). Note how often this has been true, on screen and off it: that a husband never really sees his wife. Note how often the effect of cinema as an art form has been to document that men never really see women. They see their mothers, they see sex, they see their desires and their failures, their potential and their shame, their delusions of grandeur and their grubby biographies laid out side by side. They see the airbrushed ad campaign and the unsmooth reality of flesh laid out side by side and they look at the lie and say That one, I want that one, and then they win an Oscar for it. They see themselves. Narcissus at the pond. (There is a story from an ancient land, a story of a love more passionate and powerful than the human desire to survive: A girl loved a boy. A boy loved himself. He couldn’t understand that she was always trying to talk to him; she couldn’t understand that he would never try to speak to her. Their love killed them both.) Note that moment at the start of the bridge scene, before everything falls apart, where we see their reflections in the water, just long enough to note that his eyes are on his wavering image, and so are hers. Note that Goncharov doesn’t see her, because he doesn’t see women as people. Note that Goncharov doesn’t see her because he’s not in the movie because the movie doesn’t exist. Note that actually it’s Goncharov and Andrey on the bridge, because Katya by that point is dead.
did i lose it and write like two thousand words of uh idk some cross between an experimental prose poem and a deranged shitpost about tumblr's current favorite inside joke? well that's none of your business but if you are nosy then yes i did post it on ao3 because of my personal spiritual policy against censoring my own derangement
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Thinking about IDW Optimus again and the fandom's aversion to even acknowledging he exists bc he's a cop or whatever and like. Most of the time people literally just replace him in fic with some white bread knockoff archivist/librarian, not even bothering to keep in IDW OP's personality (which just bolsters my theory that the problem isn't him being a cop the problem is that he's too multifaceted but I digress).
And it's annoying because you could totally write IDW Optimus as not a cop while still keeping his canon personality. You just have to realize that the reason IDW OP became a cop in the first place is because his formative experiences when he was young shaped him to basically have two priorities: 1. To help people and 2. To do it by being on the ground actively doing something about the bad things happening to people.
IDW OP would not be a fucking librarian or archivist because even though those are noble pursuits that can help people and change the world, and Optimus is educated/smart enough for the profession, he wouldn't be satisfied just teaching people or spreading information about activism or social-historical studies or whatever. He's a mech of action: he needs to be doing things right now, in front of him, to people he sees/interacts with in his own eyes, improving society with concrete actions rather than indirect action or abstract inspiration.
So basically the alternate job ideas I can think of for IDW Optimus are something like being a firefighter (or any first responder really) or even whatever the equivalent would be to international charity organizations, those ones that send volunteers across the world to do stuff like build housing/infrastructure or distribute food or whatnot. I mean I can't imagine that the equivalents to these things would be exactly the same in IDW Cybertron, so you'd have to get a little creative with it, but these are just some ideas of jobs that would fit IDW Optimus' personality while still filling the niche of "not a cop" for people who are just that opposed to it.
Though I think the revulsion against coptimus is annoying in general tbh because IDW is already a continuity that rejects the idea of easily defined good/evil people or groups. It feels like people really want Optimus to be a good person in a very sanitized and academically approved way, so he has to be nice and squeaky clean but also like, a perfect leftist who knows theory and holds the most progressive opinions on every single issue....
There is no room for the idea that good people join bad institutions, there's no room for the idea that the reason people think cops are good guys who help people is bc of the government propaganda everything is saturated with. Hell there's even later issues of the Optimus Prime series by John Barber where Optimus like, MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES, is shown in flashbacks grappling with the fact that he as a cop/Zeta's regime that he works for might not actually be improving society like they say they are, and dealing with the fact that he feels more like a lesser evil compared to the Decepticons (perhaps not "lesser" at all).
It's like there's this idea in fandom of like, fictional media and opinions on media having to strictly adhere to progressive ideals at all times. So people just go "cops bad, this character is a cop, therefore they suck" without being willing to engage with the idea of like. IDW OP is born wanting to fight injustice and protect people -> a good way to protect people is to fight the people who are hurting them and committing crimes -> surely following the law is a reliable moral code to guide him in this -> becomes a cop because he's been indoctrinated into a society (much like our own) where he was told that the state/the law exist to protect the people and being a cop means you get to fight bad guys that hurt people. There's really so many interesting concepts there that could be (and CANONICALLY IS) explored about how good, well-intentioned people can be led to harmful actions simply because they have been fed the idea that the things they're doing are good/helpful/noble. Which is especially important for a character like Optimus, I think, who has a cultural icon status as The Irrefutable and Perfect Good, so it's really important actually to use IDW Optimus as an example of how even the most noble people you know have held problematic beliefs or done bad things at some point in their life. You know, because no one is born perfect and ideologically pure, and in fact society is constructed in exactly a manner to make people drink the kool-aid and believe that the systems designed to hurt them/others are just a normal, if flawed, society.
I mean the writing in IDW literally has Optimus deal directly and indirectly with the harm he's done as a cop and how people don't/didn't trust him because of that. I don't know what the fuck else this fandom wants if the source material literally saying "OP realizes that cops suck and he hurt people and earned their disdain by doing the things he did" doesn't stop them from going EW cop bastard sucks and is the worst Optimus. Like the narrative barely stops short of outright saying ACAB and Optimus himself would agree with this sentiment.
At that point, the collective fandom beef with IDW OP isn't because he's a cop and the narrative didn't do enough to condemn that. The problem is literally just that people don't read and don't care
TLDR: Consider the fact that good people can do bad things sometimes especially when living from birth in a corrupt society that thoroughly disguises its vices/oppressive structures as completely normal parts of existence
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the fact that Danny literally has to walk out of the room when Steve makes the decision to go rescue his mother... lordie. he cannot cope with this. he's watched Steve put his ass on the line for Doris several times already and every time she repays him by being shady and keeping secrets and taking off and ultimately not being a mother in any way no matter how much she claims to want to. and he just doesn't know how to handle this happening again, let alone all of it going down in circumstances where Steve has to go completely no-contact with the team. Danny can't even go with him and watch his back this time.
not to project, gang, but there's just. so much happening in Danny's tone and on his face in that moment. "it's your mother; you're gonna do what you're gonna do."
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