#be it out of ignorance of canon or like tweaking his characterization to fit whatever story they want to tell personally

[lord-squiggletits]

A tangent from the tags of my previous Pharma post (and I just thought about this so bear w/ me if it's hastily reasoned) is that the Autobots being generally sanctimonious is actually sort of a reason why I find a lot of IDW Optimus interpretations to miss the mark, specifically the accusations of calling him stuff like self-righteous, caring more about principles than people, etc. And I know that sounds really ironic, but out of every Autobot (and almost every character period), Optimus is one of the few people who has a very forgiving/humanistic perspective on life or at least has a political approach of "if we don't stop fucking fighting we're going to be at war forever and eventually just kill ourselves."

He very explicitly wanted a diplomatic end to the war and not a military victory/conquest. He extended multiple offers to Megatron personally to work together and end the war (Autocracy trilogy, which was pre/early war, and Chaos Theory, which was late/end war, so from this we can assume Optimus' stance was consistent the whole time). When ppl hated him so bad they rioted he removed himself from the planet rather than argue or fight to justify why his actions were the best he could do. Sandstorm starts murdering Decepticons and Optimus solves the murders and then throws Sandstorm in prison bc sparing one of his Autobots the consequences of his actions is less important to Optimus than keeping the peace and making sure anyone who threatens to ignite wartime hostilities is punished for it. There are multiple characters throughout the series that other people give up on as too far gone or too cowardly/evil/damaged to be worth helping where Optimus alone is the person who says "I think they can get better/they did bad things but they're still people" such as the Dynobots, Blurr, Prowl (despite how OP's patience with him hung by a thread by the end of it), Shockwave, and, yknow, fucking Megatron of all people.

And on top of that Optimus' internal thoughts most of the time revolve around feelings of guilt, responsibility, anger, hopelessness/barely hanging on to his ideals, and so on. Bro regularly has thoughts about how the entire Autobot-Decepticon war was his fault and is depressed to the point the thought of dying/martyring himself makes him feel relieved. So like. Idk guys I don't think those are the personality traits/actions of a self-righteous person who thinks he's correct about everything and everyone who opposes him or fails his moral standards is just evil or whatever.

[rontra]

Happy anniversary to fail teacher yuri! Sadayo and Isako’s flawed, messy, confusing, shitpost of a relationship and watching them grow better together is so incredible. Taking two minor characters and fleshing them out like this is so cool.

If you don’t mind me asking, I’ve got a question. Is Minato(p3mc) going to be acknowledged in this comic? He’s been referenced a couple times as Isako’s death arcana and you’ve said in a previous post that the hermit link in p3 has changes but I’m just a little curious. However your take of not sticking completely to canon benefits this story greatly regardless.

Sorry for how long this is, but your comic and your art style is so good. Thanks for answering this if you do.

THANK YOU!!!! stopping in to answer my ask before posting (teehee!) i love this post. thank u sm i love their mess too <3 happy failteachers anniversary!

p3 spoilers vvv

about minato. makoto. whatever his name was in failteacher world. i am like NOT SURE when i would fit that in because of the way failteachers is planned (which is to say, not very far, if at all--i improvise LOL) but it is definitely something i like. would want to touch on if i could find a place for it, because it IS important to her + i ofc also want to explain my twisted mind's Tweaked Hermit because. well i like it. but mostly bc its like relevant to the characterization

especially now that kawakami has talked about the takase stuff, it's got an interesting parallel i wanna play with (Dead! Student! Bond!) and i feel like toriumi might be compelled to share. she was explicitly reminded of his death (makoto is the one standing next to taiki in that one panel) but it wasnt like. A Good Time to be like "awesome story. anyway check out what happened to Me," AHDSHBJF

yea basically i just dunno about a place for it. but one thing i Have decided that i guess i can share (hermit tweak sneak peek) is that the optional epilogue scene on the final day of p3 did not happen. because as funny and horribly cringe as it is (toriumi noises.mp4) it Not Happening is a much stronger choice for FTyuri specifically. the consequence of course is that in this AU she doesn't actually know who tatsuya was, which is why she has never brought that immensely cringe tidbit up in the comic (LOL)

she lives in blissful ignorance but without any of the bliss. amen.