#i wanna make salem be a bigger douche

[spinaroos-47]

War crime buds who helped build the empire

Been meaning to draw them together for a while, I think they would at least be in neutral terms (depends where Salem is on their character development). Pretty sure he would untie Petro from the chair jsfnjfdd

@sergeantsporks (Salem is shorter than that but I had to make them fit in a non awkward way fsdjdsj

[rwdestuffs]

The problem is Vol7 wants to have it both ways. He's a military douche you is making absolute sense and the team 100% goes along with his plans. He caves on everything the team asks him to do and even says he will compromise with Robyn when he could dismiss them. He isn't a hero but he is honest and does try and takes the reveals amazing up until he get triggered. There are ableist elements to his story both mental and physical (The commentary on losing an arm = losing humanity)

Ironwood was already losing his humanity before losing his arm. The guy was lying about the construction of the tower to lure out Salem’s agents, and he wasn’t willing to trust anyone. He was siphoning off resources from Mantle to build something in Atlas. He decided a long time ago that sacrificing the thing that makes him human (his empathy for others), along with the literal rest of the world, is worth it to delay the inevitable.

Ironwood wasn’t a hero. That’s why the team held off on telling him anything, because they knew that he couldn’t be trusted. And then he trued to buy their trust. Trust is earned. He was willing to abandon the ENTIRE WORLD to escape Salem and “save humanity.” He’s using Ruby’s conscience against her by saying that “You can’t rescue everyone. If this fails, it’s not because I was selfish, it was because you were selfless.” 

The bigger problem here is that Ironwood is basically a stand-in for America’s military. Bases everywhere, constantly showing off their might, values loyalty over morality. And that makes this fndm uncomfortable because they don’t wanna acknowledge that the American Military is overinflated, takes resources from other places that could do good with it, and is seen as dictatorial by other countries. Which… sigh… Points to the writers for doing that, even if it was unintentional.