#like look i get that in a capitalist hellscape of a society you dont actually care about people being well

[tweedfrog]

That post reminds me of the time I went to a cardiologist because covid fucked up my body and i had to turn down a prestigious internship because I couldn't function and i obviosly started crying cause i was sad and the cardiologist suggested that my emotions were the actual cause of my problem and made my lose my internship....the sadness that had started AFTER i lost my internship....

Like at this point give me an AI doctor at least it understands basic concepts like the progression of time

[deadwooddross]

could you tell us about umami and grendel?

YES i CAN, theyre kind of also my group playtime ocs so they have a variety of AUs, but theyre pretty consistent thematically throughout, so for the Basics Umami: Gentle and gregarious giant from a pack of communal punks relatively cut off from the rest of society, good natured and primed to be ripped apart by the realities of life Outside Home. Grendel: Only child with basically 0 support network and chronic conditions that rig their entire life from the jump, prone to self destructive habits, especially if things start looking Too Good. MORE BELOW...

Umami is adopted, sometimes this means being a baby left on a doorstep in Appalachia, other times this is being a fuzzy puffbaby found on the icy fields of a tidally locked snowball, but either way she always sticks out like a sore thumb amongst her peers. Tends to feel like she doesnt quite fit, both socially and just. Physically, in some cases more than others, so you get a very restless late bloomer who finally leaves the fairly cozy farmy life on her own little adventure! Her house is a bus, and at some point it doubles as a food truck- which she charges absolutely not enough for, so once she's Really out by herself that alone is a struggle. But she tends to do well by pure charisma- and parking near bars with $3+ Pay What You Can burritos the size of a baby Grendel on the other hand has just had shit luck from the get go! Bare minimum care-taking, running around with packs of half feral kids stealing stuff, typically gets mauled by some animal in a thievery attempt gone bad and then is promptly sent to one of those...you know when instead of going to jail or juvie some kids get sent to those.."character building" nightmare camps. That kinda thing, in their "canon" it involves working on the coast and doing oyster farming and isnt actually the worst for awhile. They do get in trouble there though and then go to Actual Prison and continue to dig a hole because even getting out on good behavior, they're still kinda kneecapped by.. ~The Prison Industrial Complex~. They usually make money via theft and Whatnot bc they are trying to keep up with medicine for maintaining a heart transplant or something similar. Canon/sci-fi grendels are in somewhat less dire of a situation and just have an Experimental one shoved in there- though there is probably money on their head for that No-Maintenance billionaire heart...(which they escaped with). Their maintenance problem comes Later. Zombie au grendel gets Bit and steals a bunch of proto-cures that only work on a monthly or so basis, sci-fi grendel sips something they shouldnt, etc etc. Eventually the two of them meet and the more Grendel learns about Umami the more they cannot fucking stand her- they just get So Mad about the differences in their situations that they decide to fuck her over by stealing her whole ass house/bus and ditching her somewhere. Thus thrusting poor unprepared Umami Directly into the middle of everything with Nothin, and leaving Grendel with the GUILTIEST CONSCIENCE..and a bus! Now everything after this i don't have especially figured out bc Solo and Friend Sandbox makes things happen differently fdhjgf Oh yeah also their 'canon' setting is a sorta capitalist hellscape where reality is a little bit broken and there might be little a monsters? Ish and her mud family also live there! Grendel is also my little meow meow but they kinda take turns with umami in the baby rotation, but its kind of a different Vibe. UMAMI PLEASE DONT GIVE IN TO THE VOID, TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE vs OH GOD GRENDEL STOP SABOTAGING EVERY CHANCE YOU HAVE AT A RELATIONSHIP

[spector]

im pasting my tf  thinkpiece over here too, im all sweaty now

i bullied my mom into getting me iced coffee at like 9pm so here comes my thinkpiece about the state of things in idw tf universe , specifically in relation to where megatron and starscreams character """development"" has taken them

HERE'S THE THING ! we all know that megatron started the war blah blah blah okay yeah he's got shit to atone for. but what eveyone likes to forget, characters and writers included, is that the rise of decepticons was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for cybertron because if it wasnt gonna be decepticons, it was gonna be some other revolution, okay, cybertron was IN FUCKING SHAMBLES before the conflict broke out

cybertron before war was a capitalistic utilitarian hellscape with castes and class regime, furthermore it was on the brink of extinction given how they uh. misplaced the entire concept of natural birth and they had to resort to cold construction WHICH IN TURN CONNECTED TO THE OPPRESIVE FUNCTIONISM because the government literally built the bodies it actively needed !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and they favored building the working class bots who would never rise to any sort of power within the society controlled by the bots who had the luck to be sparked in a natural way, a way which ensured their high society status !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A REVOLUTION WAS NEEDED, decepticons were BOUND TO HAPPEN and both autobots and decepticons BENEFITTED from the war happening, like i cannot stress this enough, cybertron was on its way to societal collapse anyways !!!!!!!!!!!!! THE REVOLUTION WAS NECESSARY !!!!! the fact that megatron just happened to be the first person who managed to organize a revolt is not that important in the grand scheme of things, cybertron was DECAYING and a conflict of some sort would have happened sooner or later!!!!!!!

so this is why i REALLY dont give a flying fuck about megatron's guilt for starting the war because decepticons were initially a faction of FREEDOM FIGHTERS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS SO IMPORTANT and it keeps getting swept under the rug for the easier narrative !!! THE CONFLICT WAS INEVITABLE, its escalation is what needs to condemned not the actual breakout of violence

AND EVEN THE ESCALATION OF THE WAR like, lets look at it, the main points of all autobots vs decepticons conflicts is the war for resources and war for territory !!!!!!!! megatron kept talking about building the decepticon empire and WHY IS THAT??? BECAUSE THERE WAS NO PLACE FOR WORKING CLASS/FIGHTER BOTS ON CYBERTRON. BECAUSE THE SOCIETY CREATED ON CYBERTRON TREATED THEM LIKE TOOLS, THEY DIDNT HAVE THEIR OWN PLACE. 

where megatron went wrong was idk, letting autobots know that he wasnt gonna stop at just one planet or whatever which made autobots pisst off. tbh if megatron only went for like. one unhabited planet and stayed there, everything would be relatively fine for a while, no conflict!!! but then we wouldnt have toys and comics i guess anyways, megatron’s main war-related sin is the unnecessary escalation of conflict which did cause a lot of death and involving other species in this war such as humans who will later end up getting annexed by a fucking truck anyways so like. whatever. 

so no, i dont give a shit about the narrative of him being sorry that the war ever started. they needed the war to happen because it was!!! bound!!!!!!!!!!!! to!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! happen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! because pre-war cybertron was pure shit,if only at some point megatron went like 'u know what, this is good, this is enough, we changed the way cybertronians think, we have our own place, this is good, the war is over', everything would be literally fine. but he didnt stop, he continued to make the conflict worse, it stopped being a fight for freedom and became a power quest he and that's his fault

its also his fault that even after the war was over he stomped all over cybertron like a pissbaby, demanding that everyone pays attention to him again but you know what, thats kinda relatable so im not gonna judge

my palms got so fucking sweaty but anyways. THE THINGS MEGATRON HAS TO RLY ATONE FOR ARE THE PERSONAL TRAGEDIES. a collective guilt is so unspecified and it's easy to dismiss as some vague concept that you cant even tackle, like how would u even begin to apologize, how would u make amends for letting a war escalate? it cannot be tackled in a realistic conceivable way, which lets megatron just wallow in his sin-limbo forever. 

what NEEDS to be addressed instead is the abuse starscream suffered under megatron because we have PROOF that it's affecting him to this day. and okay i used to be a ride-or-die megastar girl like, i lived for those two, but the storyline idw is presenting... it is absolutely necessary, it is SO necessary to acknowledge the abuse starscream has suffered so i have respect for the writers that wrote in that plotpoint but at the same time, THEY! DO! NOT! COMMIT TO IT! THEY MAKE IT POP UP FROM TIME TO TIME BUT IT ALWAYS LEADS TO NOTHING!!!!! AND IT IS SO UNFAIR THAT MEGATRON GOT HIS REDEMPTION BUT STARSCREAM DIDNT

years after the war ended, he still suffers from what happened during his time as decepticon SIC and it is EXTREMELY UPSETTING to see because we do not get closure for that plotline, starscream acknolwedges his abuse but nobody ever comments on it, not bumblebee, not windblade, literally nobody.

A MINDFUCKING BOT TAKES FORM OF MEGATRON IN STARSCREAM BRAIN AND HE KNOWS HES NOT REAL BUT ITS ENOUGH TO FUCKING MAKE HIM FREEZE ON SPOT

THIS! is the sort of shit megatron has to acknowledge, not the waaah i started the war. he needs to acknowledge the damage he’s done to individuals under his command because it continues to hurt them to this day. 

BUT STARSCREAM AND MEGATRON HAVENT TALKED TO EACH OTHER EVER SINCE THE TRIAL AFTER THE EVENTS OF DARK ENERGON (a really really long time). megatron got to fuck off on a merry ride on lost light, wear glasses and write softboy poetry, while starscream gets constantly undermined as a leader for his past, suffers from mental breakdowns and attacks on his person (some of them are warranted, true but some of them are completely unfair). 

MEGATRON AND STARSCREAM MUST INTERRACT AT SOME POINT and discuss the damage that has been done in order for both of them to get some sort of CLOSURE. but the tf writers KNOW theyre not competent enough to handle a plotpoint like that, they cant handle writing a victim meeting his abuser !!!!!!!! they've avoided it for so long and right now the fucking universe is gonna implode in a month or two so i can tell that they will never acknowledge the damage, the REAL sins that megatron has to atone for and thats why i feel like his redemption is fucking SHITTY like, he gets to say a few snarky comments there and there and what, suddenly everything is alright?!?!? he’s forgiven because his dialogue is sometimes funny?

no, megatron is still running away from his past and now he wont ever get to face it because the universe is about to reboot 

meanwhile starscream has much less war crimes on his account but he continues to get so much shit from everyone 'and its just so unfair that megatron's redemption arc is so vague and unspecified and yet everyone accepts it, but starscream doesnt even get that chance, EVEN THOUGH!!!!!!!!!! EVEN THOUGH STARSCREAM IS THE ONE WHO ACTUALLY ADMITTED ALL OF HIS SINS IN FRONT OF CAMERAS AND LET HIS PEOPLE LOCK HIM UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

its bullshit is what it is

idw set up this plotpoint of starscream living with the burden of what megatron has done during the war and now they cant even make them confront one another. megatron is off fucking around in his dream dimension, meanwhile starscream is scrambling decepticons together to survive the unicron attack, which means they most likely will never meet and wont get to discuss the damage -- the damage that affects starscream to this day, the damage that megatron should be atoning for (not starting the war which was a legitimely good thing)

starscream has a name, has a face, he is a concrete person connected to megatron’s guilt, unlike the unidentified blob called ' the collective victims of the autobots vs decepticons war' and this is where megatron should have started, especially that WE KNOW IT WASNT ALL BAD

LIKE. ALL OF THIS IS VERY COMPLEX. but what it all essentially boils down to is: 

1). megatron should not feel sorry for starting the war because it was necessary 2). it is not enough to be guilty in general, redemption should start with concrete examples, not vague concepts 3). the open plotpoint of the abusive relationship between starscream and megatron NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED, it absolutely NEEDS to be addressed bc the repercussions of their relationship affect starscream to this day so in a way, megatron's war crimes never stopped, they continue to happen every day of his life and this is why i dont buy meg’s redemption and never will

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION