#i have some ideas abt how i wanna play around with the nemesis endings + what they mean to caeru

[thegreatyin]

And thus, with the passing of 24 hours, Caeru's ambition truly comes to an end. Major Nemesis spoilers below the cut- we're talking endgame ambition business here. Mostly on a character RP front.

The Doomed Scientist made quite a few... choice decisions, in the end. Killing Cups once and for all, recording his story as one of grief-

And sparing what little remained of Mr Mirrors, leaving it free to roam Parabola as it sees fit.

Some of them, he can explain. Others, he's still left to feel... discontent.

Cups needed to die. That much was certain from the start. It was a tyrant, as all Masters are, and complicit in the bargaining and eventual destruction of four (potentially five) cities, as all Masters are. It was an obstacle. A murderer. A petty monster that felt no remorse even on its deathbed, and it went out of its way to ruin multiple lives just because it felt owed its own sick and twisted idea of revenge.

It killed his first love. It looked him in the eyes and he knew what it had done and he knew from the start it was going to die.

Perhaps, in the end, it knew too. And yet it still pleaded, and wanted to live, and-

It made a bargain.

A bargain Caeru didn't take.

Not because he didn't want to. Gods, he wanted to. He wanted it. He wanted it more than anything else in the world. To have Greylu back, to give him the gift of life, of love, to show him the wonders of the Neath and the beauty of the correspondence and all of the people Caeru has met and loved and found home with along the way-

But. He couldn't.

Because Cups was a monster. And no matter what, it deserved to die. And he could not, in good conscience, allow it to live.

Even if sparing it meant everything he's ever wanted.

So he's left here, now. With a bloodied traveling coat, and a bloodsoaked knife, and a favor finally fulfilled.

And nothing to live for. No resurrected lover, no charming visits to Helicon, no slow dances in the living room, no memories to rebuild and lives to live and he won't live again-

Nothing. All he has is a coat born of obligation, not to his love, but to people he's never even met. To lives he's never even touched. To a paramour, still alive, with hair of rose-pink, who doesn't even remember her own brother's existence.

Cups didn't die for Caeru's sake. Cups died for the sake of all who wanted it dead. For the revenger's court, and the ghost screaming in his ear, and the reckoning that will not be postponed indefinitely.

And Caeru, who acted as a tool to carry out their wills? Who all but betrayed his own lover, just to satisfy a cause he never knew existed?

All Caeru is left with, is regret. Regret-

-And grief.

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 13

humansona time, hell yes

OH MAN I forgot about the stuff w/swerve and blurr oof

that panel of perceptor just saying random equations always kills me vhsdjhfkbjhksdfnka

also I love so much that they call perceptor ‘percy’ that's so cute

I love the implications here that people just Grab minibots and carry them around like luggage bc they are Tiny lmao

ohhhh my god I fuckgin love ‘I'm just wondering if there's time to expand my aura and cleanse the area of aggression’ ‘I...don't think so, drift’ hgbadjfjbaskdfs drift’s hippy nonsense delivered completely seriously pairs hilariously with his whole ‘violent guy with a bunch of swords’ thing lmao

also, IM NEVER OVER CYCLONUS SINGING TO TAILGATE, and also the security team mistaking it for cyclonus murdering tg hbhkjadfbjkhsdf cyclonus u icon

and tg looking at cyclonus all heart-eyes, omg 

drift showing rodimus how to swordfight...fellas.....

rodimus, being entirely ignorant to the irony in calling cyclonus and tailgate’s relationship strange when he and drift are Right There, being weird gay frat bros

did yall know, I love magnus so much. law dad

magnus saying ‘that's not even a word. id have heard of it’ about the word ‘relax’ is so funny god 

rodimus bribing swerve with a bar license to get magnus turnt is hbvhjakdbfhskf

never over rodimus portioning out drifts blood money to the crew for shore leave hubhjsdkhfdbjksd god 

despite tg lying about a good amount of his past, I feel like he rlly DOES see cyclonus as a link to a more familiar time, and that's a large reason why he’s so forgiving toward cyc

mannnn the stuff w/blurr and swerve is so depressing in retrospect. swerve is like, such a depressing character the more you think abt him vbhskjdhfbsk jesus

magnus trying to get in on the convo when swerve starts talking statistics oh magnus

idk what ‘the lube pits’ are but I Really do not want to know

‘the temple of the raging prism’ sounds fuckin bangin tho

I love seeing everyones humansona!! this art style is pretty simple, but I think it looks cute

rungs ‘human name’ being ‘mary sue’ lmaoooooo jro w/the self callout

also skids’ name being blank is a nice touch

still not over tg being a baby....poor guy

whirls humansona is so fuckgin good, also swerve looks like a hobbit

magnus basing his avatar on verity is so sweet ;_; I really should read all the wreckers stuff after I finish this reread

THE ABSOLUTE COMEDY OF MAGNUS JUST FUCKGIN PASSING OUT THE INSTANT THE ALOCHOL HITS...ICONIC

WHY would magnus accept a drink from whirl anyways lmao

tailgate is so cute

they rlly just left magnus facedown on the table and kept drinking huh. the irresponsibility....we love it

ARE YOU SURE THAT KILLMASTER IS DEAD, WHIRL? ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?

rung don't lie, froid is your nemesis

WHY do we never get to hear more about skids’ apparent beef with misfire

rewind calling the swerve/misfire This early, wow

literally Everyone abandoning swerve to deal with magnus hgbvhfjdskdfbhs I fucking love this issue man

GOD I LOVE MAGNUS SO MUCH!!!!!!!! he’s such an interesting and unique character and hhhh I love him and his development

like, he was probably the biggest surprise out of everyone who agreed to go on the quest - ostensibly it was to keep order on the lost light, but it would make sense that magnus would get tired of being the Only one who cares about that sorta stuff on board 

drunk magnus is such a delight oh my god

magnus rlly just wants everyone to be safe :( my daddddd

magnus: I love all my children equally...swerve, rodimus, [looks at smudged writing on hand] dirt

swerve: see, magnus, that’s where you’re wrong - I ALSO have crippling depression!

cant believe they bought rodimus a hat vhbhksdfhahsjkdf

HHHHH GOD I FORGOT ABT THATTTT when cyclonus goes bonkers in order to stop rewind from playing the ark 1 footage and inadvertently outing tailgate as a liar....AUGHHHHH THE FUCKING...THE FUCKING ROMANCE OF IT ALL

POOR MAGNUS LMAOOOO

oh rewind :( you should really wonder a little harder where chromedome is right now...oof

everyone jumping on magnus while he’s passed tf out is SO fucking funny 

RUNG, PLEASE, WE REALLY DONT NEED TO THINK ABOUT WHATS AROUND THE CORNER. REALLY DONT

hhhhhhhhhhh I love how cyclonus sat tailgate down and confronted him about lying, but did it privately and not in front of everyone - and he even saved tg from being exposed as a liar, too. AUGH 

I feel like cyclonus is kinda impressed at how effortlessly tg has managed to lie this whole time, and tbh it IS impressive, especially considering tailgate was basically teleported 6 million years into the future and has no idea how the world works anymore, but was still able to lie convincingly. even cyclonus only realized bc of his own past, and not until now

tailgate ;_; ;_; ;_; 

cyclonus: oh no...im soft

tailgate and cyclonus singing ye olde cybertronian tunes together...OUGHHHH my fucking heart bro mY FUCKING HEART.

on that note: the song ‘to noise making (sing)’ by hozier is literally about cygate. thank u for coming to my ted talk

UGH GOD SWERVE STOP MAKING ME SO SAD, ITS NOT EVEN THE SWEARTH ARC YET

magnus had to like, get the robot equivalent of a stomach pumping after that hvbskdjfbhskdf jesus they really did almost kill him huh

I consider this issue forshadowing bc it makes 100% sense that minimus would be a Mega Lightweight considering he’s like 3 feet tall

the real quest that swerve is participating in is ‘the quest to get friends’ and so far its going pretty badly. poor dude 

godddd the thing that says ‘next: Overlord!’ with a fucking exclamation point I DONT APPRECIATE THAT. 

OHO i forgot abt the canon fanfic at the end of this issue

rung kicking things off with some good ole bodily workings-based dread 

ok but being so awed by the construction of your species’ anatomy that you wanna fall on the floor in amazement? that's a whole ass mood and I do frequently stare at walls for long periods of time, thinking about the marvel that is the human body. so rung is valid 

FROID NAME DROP LMAO. also yet again, are you SURE he’s dead?? are you????

the name ‘froid’ cracked me up almost as much as ‘rigor morphis’ did when I first read this...robot-based science puns! woohoo!

rung rlly b out here thinking abt overlords lips.....

‘forced browsing is not the autobot way’ lmao skids

also fr tailgate defs thinks that whirls actually name is nutjob

the entire segment of cyclonus browsing and everyone watching him and commenting is just. golden

oh no. don't make me think of rewind and his tiny memory sticks that he carries around. I'm NOT READY

magnus’ brutal read on rodimus and the fact that he’s more suited, personality-wise, to wartime than peacetime? oof. love it

I ALSO love that a big part of this issue was magnus admitting, in less direct terms, that HE isn't made for the post-war life either - his strict adherence to the rules and constant vigilance isn't exactly the best mindset for peacetime, for him or the people under his command

magnus’s hatred of metaphors and similes and the like....hvbsdjkfbasjhdf I love him

MAGNUS ILY...he’s trying SO HARD cut him some slack. i think his jokes are. yeah!

oh goody this text used "rodimus’s" so I guess that's canonically correct and I haven't been using grammar incorrectly as I had feared 

rodimus sitting ON his desk and doodling on it...adhd icon

rodimus calling rung a psychotherapist, which was rung’s grounds for a nemesis hvbhjabfdskfnkks

rung: as I'm sure you know I take patient confidentiality VERY seriously

narrator: That Was A Lie 

AUGH this hurts...rung trying to get justice for red alert but rodimus is in on the overlord stuff :( ouch

so issue 13! I fucking love this issue. just some good ole funney space hijinks, with some nice relationship development for tg and cyc - plus a revelation about tailgate - and some characterization for swerve and magnus. plus we get to see humansonas, which is always fun. augh I love this comic, and I am SO not ready for the next few issues, good lord

[kogo-dogo]

i’ve never heard of the video game series u talked about in that last ask, but i loved ur character analysis for torque! i’m very curious to hear abt dr killjoy if you want to share ur thoughts there too? even just the name dr killjoy is bitching as HELL

You do not know how happy it makes me to talk about Dr. Killjoy.

Torque may be one of my favorite characters of all time, but Dr. Killjoy is… he’s up there. And he’s a lot more fun to talk about because he is a fabulous disaster, as well as the poster child for the phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Since Torque is such a vague character, whose personality and backstory are revealed gradually and oftentimes subtly over the course of two games, Killjoy is really the motherfucker who steals the show and is very obviously the favorite of the creators. Even the other sentient spirits on Carnate Island take a backseat to him, and he ends up being a massive driving force in the plot and the one who actually helps the player unravel the man they’re playing as.

(I can’t even say “the guy who you’re put in the shoes of” because Torque doesn’t wear shoes.)

Spoilers follow, but I’ve already told y’all you probably don’t wanna actually play these games. 

Dr. Killjoy is the most well-intentioned, terrible person you will ever see in a video game, probably.

Dr. Killjoy is the spirit of a deceased alienist who was the head doctor at a facility known as The Carnate Institution for the Alienated in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Basically, he’s a psychiatric doctor who hails from a time when lobotomies were still in high fashion and experimental procedures on the mentally ill were less than savory, to put it lightly. Killjoy specifically was known for being rather extreme even at the time, having a very experimental mind and extreme delusions of grandeur. While it’s never outright said he was anything beyond “insane,” he operates in a perpetual manic state and is very, very animated and melodramatic.

How melodramatic? He acts like he has a live studio audience at all times. His whole schtick is that he appears from old film projectors. In a game that is mostly mired in the realm of realism (barring the ghosts and monsters), he creates a fucking weird-ass magic machine that lets you cast spells and basically says, “Ta-da! Look! I made brain magic that will cure your psychosis, Torque!”

(It does not, in fact, cure his psychosis.)

The problem with Dr. Killjoy is that he’s very much a product of his time, and obsessed with the idea of scientific progress over all else. He firmly believes that what he’s doing will further a cause that will eventually work out to help people, but the lives lost in the process are just par for the course. The remnants of his hospital (still used as of the first game, albeit as a hiding spot for COs to smoke, drink, and party) are littered with the mummified bodies of former patients and captured corrections officers that Killjoy decided to experiment on.

He will gladly tell you about all of the dead shit laying around his house, too. He loves to hear himself talk.

In the first game, he fixates on Torque as a special interest case and is absolutely obsessed with figuring out how to “fix” him. Most of the time this involves testing him in positively batshit ways. Sure, it probably seems like bad form nowadays to lock a guy in a burning cafeteria or a room full of monsters with shivs for hands, but to Killjoy? Makes perfect sense, since you can really see a man’s character based on how they react to high-stress situations, and what’s more high-stress than a near-death experience?

But whenever he shows up, whenever he has anything to say, whenever he decides to grace Torque with his presence, it’s always under the belief that he is doing something good for the guy. While he never outright says anything to the effect of “I care about you,” his chipper attitude and his absolute determination to coax Torque into doing what he feels will be for his benefit makes it obvious. He’s adamant about every death trap he lures Torque into or every “diagnosis” he tosses out or every “treatment” he devises, and is even the only character from the first game to follow him into the second…

… Because he feels like Torque isn’t well yet, and he cares enough about this random guy that he’s just going to tag along and try to find a way to help him out. In all the worst possible ways.

He’s equal parts a perfect foil to Torque and a driving force to the narrative, being the one who lays down most of the scraps you get about Torque’s mental health (though a lot of it is conjecture, outdated, and wrong), the island, the monsters, and even the drama in Torque’s life. He’s like a weird, gossipy old lady with a very out-of-date medical degree, and he is delighted whenever he sees his favorite patient and excitable about pretty much every goddamn thing he sees.

And it’s funny to watch Torque and Killjoy interact because Killjoy is so exuberant and loud, and Torque is just Very Done With This Shit. In the first game, Torque mostly responds to him by glaring at him stone-faced until he stops talking, and in the second game he seems actively annoyed whenever Killjoy has the audacity to open his mouth. And Killjoy? Does not give a single iota of a shit, and will just gleefully quote Othello at Torque as he’s trying not to get himself killed, or idly chit-chat with him while he’s struggling to figure out how to get out of a room Killjoy locked him in.

But I cannot overstate that despite how annoying, how unpredictable, how dangerous, and how utterly in love with himself Killjoy is, he is absolutely dedicated to the idea of curing Torque. There is actual good intent in what Killjoy is doing, and he seems to legitimately give a damn about Torque and vouch for him to pull through all of the trials thrown at him. Again, this man essentially built a magical machine to try to cure schizophrenia and, even if it worked about as well as shining him with a UV light, that’s some dedication.

Hell, when Torque escapes Carnate Island, as previously stated, he follows him just to double down on helping him understand what is going on and making sure he gets a shot at treatment. He’s so fucking flippant and apathetic with literally anyone else he encounters (all the people Torque is trying to save mean nothing to him), but he is rooting for this man so bad. So bad. 

There are hints dropped that Killjoy has known Torque for a while longer than even Torque was aware of (and even an implication that he was acquainted with Torque’s dead mother), and he’s just so disdainful of Blackmore, Torque’s nebulous nemesis, and when compared to the other spirits across both games, he’s actually the only one attempting to offer any assistance at all. Horace Gauge (the “good” spirit) mostly just whines about how much pain he’s in and how unfair life is, and Hermes (my EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC THIRD FAVORITE of this series) is actively trying to kill Torque or convince him to kill everyone around him. Creeper and Copperfield in Ties That Bind are just irredeemably awful and… yeah.

Yeah. Don’t look up either of those last two.

Killjoy is of the mind that he and Torque are a team, it seems, and this ghost would follow him to the ends of the earth for no reason other than to make sure he succeeded at defeating his inner demons, basically.

… Ugh. Okay. I can’t really do Killjoy any more justice in words. Here’s every cutscene involving him from the first game. Ignore how ugly this game is. Also, I know I linked it before, but he also has a really good boss theme.