yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.
to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!
i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.
also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.
they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.
they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.
i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.
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Something about a bottle of vodka that (almost) jogs your memory
“Scar…” Grian’s exasperated voice rings through monopoly mountain. He quickly peeks down into the first level. His friend is holding the bottle of vodka he had managed to find ages ago. “Where on earth did you find this. How on earth did you find this. What even are you doing with this.”
None of his ‘questions’ are actually questions; his inflection does not go up, as Grian is not actually curious as to where he got the alcohol, rather he is tired of his shenanigans and trying desperately not to lose his mind. Scar kicks his feet and giggles, his hair leaking over and dangling in the air.
“Why, I got it from the village, of course! Before I burnt down that house— you remember the one, don’t you, Grian? It seems those pesky villagers knew how to distill alcohol. Have you ever seen that before, Grian? Distilling alcohol? In a village? It’s madness!”
Grian’s beady little eyes glare up at him from the ground floor. “Scar, I don’t think either of us have seen villagers before we got here. There’s not much we’ve seen.”
Of course they have. They’ve had to. It was only natural— he knows it in his heart. But they can’t remember this fact. When Scar tries to hold onto the memory, it floats away from him. Things he should know dissolve between his fingers. Things he shouldn’t know linger on the back of his neck.
He picks up his cane and walks downstairs. The slats of the window are tiny but if one squints and tilts their head in the right direction, then they can see the entire desert and forest sprawled out in front of them. The sands sometimes hold their footprints until the wind blows them away, covers the paths they’ve taken. They’re still working on building up a cactus wall as defense.
The sandstone awards them a bit of coolness in the day. At night it becomes unbearable, as they both flock upstairs to try and conserve as much heat as possible. There’s always a careful distance they keep from each other in the day, but during the night it becomes impossible to do so. When Grian grumbles and pushes his nest towards Scar’s sleeping bag, curls up right next to him and nudges at his arms until they open and he can be enveloped by him, that’s when Scar truly feels like he’s back to being a person again.
If they could mend the self inflicted rift that exists in the daytime… well, maybe Scar wouldn’t feel so prone to drinking. As it stands, though, Grian’s found his bottle of alcohol and he is not looking impressed.
“Say, have you ever had a drink before?” He asks as he peels the bottle out of Grian’s hand. He smells like the sun. He’s been out all day.
Grian scoffs, his pretty features twisting a bit as he obviously thinks about it. “Of course I have! I-- well, I haven’t had one here, but I can only imagine I have before. In another life.”
In another life. If only they got to have that. Another life seems like an intangible dream.
He hums thoughtfully. He’s only had a few drinks from this bottle. Just enough to stave off the gnawing anxiety and bloodlust that grows underneath his skin everyday.
He starts to toss the bottle from hand to hand, watching the way the liquid inside jostles. “The taste was at least a little bit familiar to me when I tried some. I’ve definitely had it before! No clue when. I wonder what I liked to drink before I got here? That guy… the other me. I wonder what he was like.”
He laughs but it doesn’t have much humour.
And Grian’s eyes look softer when he finally peels his stare away from the droplets racing down the bottle. “Yeah, it would seem that bits of our past bled through into this life. Like, I can’t resist pressing a button or flicking a lever no matter how dangerous it may be. Other me must’ve been a right moron, don’t know how I lived to be… here.” A hum. “And redstone makes me… sad. As if I’ve lost something close to me. Something really important." His face falls. “I don’t get it.”
Normally Grian only gets like this when the sun falls. Normally he’s guarded, witty, sharp; and Scar is much the same, each of them trying so desperately to preserve what little bits of dignity they have left here. Prideful people. Pride is such a sin, he can see it now.
He sits down, stares at the swirling shapes of the sandstone on the wall. “Sometimes I can feel my brain try to remember my memories. Things important to me. People important to me. But it’s like there’s a… a block.”
A strange warble comes from Grian. He makes those sounds sometimes-- bird sounds, that is, which makes a lot of sense given that he is a hybrid, but they only happen in specific circumstances. They’re different each time, from chirps to melodies to whistles to clicks. It happens when he’s bored, when he snuggles up next to Scar at night, when he accidentally hurts himself, when Pizza is being extra cute.
This sound is sad. It rings in his chest.
“I’ve tried to ignore it.” Is what he admits after a few minutes. “I, um… grabbing this gave me one of those feelings like you described. It was as if I’d done this before. Not just with anyone. With you...” His voice gets real quiet at the end.
Scar fights to keep his voice even as he responds. “Do… do you think we knew each other before?” Before we got thrown into hell.
For Scar, the answer to that question is obvious: yes. He felt it as soon as he saw all of them. He felt something deep in his chest when he saw Grian, flashes of memories trying to bubble up to the surface but unable to. When Bdubs first spoke to him, he felt an immediate instinct to comment on his height-- which would have been very rude of him! They’d just met, after all!
Except they hadn’t. They’d known each other before. An election. A moon. A home. What even is he trying to remember?
“I…” Another sound worms its way out of Grian. It’s more desperate, uncomfortable. He laughs it off awkwardly. “Can I try a sip of that alcohol? I think I suddenly need it.”
For the first time since they began talking, Scar really looks at Grian. His face is tight with stress, eyes shiny, nose flaring. His feathers are all fanned out, his ears twitching. In another life, Scar thinks maybe he also had wings. He can feel an absence on his back, like something has been missing all along, a vital piece of him.
Grian’s wings don’t work. None of the avians have actual working wings that can sustain them for a long period above the ground; they can all flutter, sure, but it’s as if their bodies aren’t made for it anymore despite them having these traits.
He tries to make his smile as gentle as possible as he passes him the bottle. “Of course, of course! Would be downright cruel of me to make you handle this while sober!” He aims for a humorous tone, but the situation is so fucked up and strange that it falls flat. His smile is pulling painfully at the edges.
Grian unscrews the bottle, smells it. He makes a face. He looks at him.
“I recommend not smelling it.”
He rolls his eyes, then takes a swig of it. The face immediately turns to disgust. He swallows it, gagging, coughing, pounding his fist onto the table. It looks just like he did when he tried for the first time. It makes him start to laugh.
“Scar!” He wails. “It tastes horrible!”
“It does.” He swipes it from Grian, steeling himself before taking a sip. He only flinches a little bit this time. He looks to see if it impressed Grian, but the avian is flapping his hands, eyes screwed shut. Dangit. “It’s not supposed to taste nice, Grian! Because then you would drink all of it and it would be horrible. It’s the alcohol’s defense mechanism, y’see? It makes itself so bitter when you first take a sip that you run away immediately! That way you don’t drink it all right up and end up gettin’ yourself killed! But it doesn’t work on me.”
For better or for worse.
Peeling his face off the table, Grian turns to glare at him. “Well, it could stand to taste a little less like… that. Maybe then it would hurt less people.”
“I guess.” He studies the way the bottle glints in the diminishing daylight. “So… are you gonna have anymore?”
“Are you kidding me?” He scoffs. “Of course I am. Pass it here.”
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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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Bright colors !!
Sorry if I haven't been using Tumblr that much 😭 I GOT TOO BUSY
I drew a lot as well but I don't want to show those,,, so have this new oc I just made
Idk what they would have for legs just yet but so far I'm really liking them !! Not a stick oc sorry 💔 but they can exist in a stick world,,, I may or may not do something with that....
Anyways info about them !!
Their body is decaying as time goes on and their head is like a curse being placed upon them, they used to be a normal person until whatever this is has happened. Since they have those green gills, they need to consume lots of water to stay alive and breathing, if there's insufficient water, they breathe out blood that would come out from the gills
Their speech is very alien-like if not just screeches. In order to understand what they're saying, they have to spit on you first which would feel like acid burning your skin when in actuality it's harmless
They're basically in constant pain and agony and on the look for help but nobody understands them so they're left like this
If in battle, they have an insane amount of hp to the point you really just can't kill them. So you have no choice but to help them find a way to release the curse
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