#no ties management

[gomzdrawfr]

Merry Christmas!! they're exchanging gifts by the tree :3

[lilithofpenandbook]

Something about Snape, 31-38, with pure black hair, not a single sign of white, despite that being the age most people start going grey

Something about how he had the full dark hair of youth and died like that

Something about how he never truly grew up like he should have

Something about how he was always stuck there in the past, stuck as that Snape boy from Spinner's End, stuck as Snivellus the boy who the Marauders hated for just existing

Something about how he died there in the same place he nearly died as a boy

Something about how he died in that place, bloodied and wounded, raven black hair, no difference between him and his boyhood self

Something about how that black hair was perhaps a sign that he was still living in the past, that a piece of him was eternally frozen at 21, at 16, at 15, he died a man yet he wasn't one, he wasn't a boy but not quite a man

Something about how his portrait among all the other heads of Hogwarts is the only one whose hair is fully dark, whose face isn't lined with age.

Next to them, he is a boy. Perhaps he always was.

[baravaggio]

Nana x "Where is My Place in the World? Early Shōjo Manga Portrayals of Lesbianism" by Fujimoto Yukari (tr. Lucy Fraser)

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

I was wondering, does Fiddleford still have a wife in your Halloween au? And if yes, does she know about him being a vampire?

I've been sitting on this ask for a bit, but I think I should finally answer.

In my AU, Fidds is actually pretty old-- not like ancient or anything, but surely a few centuries?

Anyway, so way back, when he was human, he did have a wife and a kid!! But when he got bit and became a vampire, he actually outlived them :(

He tries to think about them often, but it's definitely one of the things he chooses to erase when he creates the memory gun

[ruporas]

bound to want (part two) /// part one rest of pages under READ MORE after ID

[ID: 23 page digital comic of Vashwood from Trigun Maximum. The comic is in a limited palette of a dark blue, light pink, white, black, and a light beige color for Vash's skin and a mid-brown color for Wolfwood's. This comic is the second part to "Bound to Want" and is spoiler-free. The first part is linked here.

It begins with a panel close up of Vash's expressions. The sky colored in dark blue can be seen behind him. He has a neutral expression, but he holds a slight frown and the reflection of his glasses covers one side of his eyes. Wolfwood says, "Hey. What's with the distance?" In the second panel, the shot widens to show both of them, a clear physical distance separating them with Wolfwood walking ahead and Vash trailing a little behind. Vash responds, "What? I'm just walking a bit slower today..." Wolfwood looks at him with a an irritated expression, clicking his tongue. Wolfwood says, "I was going to wait for you to start... But yer just running away away."

Vash is seen looking away, unable to hold eye contact with Wolfwood as he continues, "You've been avoiding me since that night. Did ya think I wouldn't notice? It's about that dream, right? Tell me about it already if you're going to be moping like this." Vash looks slightly downwards, his brows furrowing and he starts to walk ahead of Wolfwood without looking at him and responds stiffly, "I really don't want to talk about it..." Wolfwood looks at him with a surprised expression, but doesn't probe.

A panel close up to Wolfwood's eyes as he watches Vash go on ahead before he follows suite with an irritated sigh. The panels are overlapped by Wolfwood's hand holding the bottle of the Bride with motion lines, indicating a transition in time.

A wide shot of Vash and Wolfwood in a room now. Vash is seated, his back turned away from the viewer, while Wolfwood's body faces the viewer with his eyes looking towards Vash. He rests the bottle of the Bride on the table with a "clack" and his other hand holds two shotglasses. The background is coated in a light pink.

A panel shows a close up of Wolfwood's face, his eyes looking downwards to Vash as he says, "Let's drink." Next to this panel is Vash looking up at Wolfwood, his brows furrowed and a slight frown. The bottom half of the page is a wider shot with Vash's body turned away from the viewer as he says, "I'm not going to talk about it." Wolfwood responds, "You don't have to." as he sits down.

A wide panel of Wolfwood holding the shotglass, pouring in the drink as he continues, "I'll talk." The next panel is a profile view of Wolfwood, his eyes looking down at the now filled shotglass as he continues to say, "You're..."

"... upset with me." Vash can be seen next to this speech bubble with narrowed eyes, looking towards Wolfwood. The panels are all coated in with a dark blue background. Wolfwood continues, "I can't be certain why since yer not telling me a thing -- but it's probably... my bad." The panels show Wolfwood about to bring the shotglass to his mouth but he turns way as he continued to speak, his eyes not on Vash. The bottom page shows him looking away completely with a guilty expression as he says, "I'm sorry.

If you can ever tell me why, I can try and adjust to make it more bearable. But if you're just trying to get rid of me--" The panels follow Wolfwood's certain expression as he says this, "I don't intend to leave you. I can't... and I won't." A panel shows Vash's wide-eyed expression, surprised upon hearing this, and then his eyes soften as Wolfwood again concludes with, "I'm sorry."

Vash's inner thoughts begins, a boxed speech at the center of the page and panels of his eyes, his brows furrowing again and a resigned, but frustrated expression. His thoughts starts, "Stop. I shouldn't be happy hearing that. And why are you apologizing? I should be the one to..! I can't let anything like that happen to you. You deserve to live a long steady and peaceful life. I want to be optimistic. I want to protect you, but I might end up doing the opposite." The text surrounds Wolfwood from Vash's perspective, the other man drinking out of his shotglass, his eyes downcasted.

"I shouldn't have you. And you won't leave." Behind these text is a panel of Wolfwood's eyes finally looking over to Vash. Vash's thoughts continues,  "It's so unfair." When Wolfwood sees Vash, his eyes soften and he frowns. The last panel shows the lower half of Vash's face, but tears begins to flow down his cheek. Wolfwood's hand is already reaching to wipe at them as he starts to say, "You know..."

A wider shot of Vash and Wolfwood, Vash slightly leaning forward with his mouth tightly shut, and tears steadily continuing to flow out of his closed eyes. Wolfwood continues to wipe at them with his hand as he continues, "This isn't a dream anymore. I don't know what you saw for you to be this shaken up, but whatever happened, you'll overcome it, right? If not you, I'm here too. You'll be okay, Spikey. So..." Wolfwood's expression grows more tender, "Have a little faith in me... and come back already." The dark blue starts to fade.

The wide panel has the dark blue background faded and replaced is the light pink. It shows Vash in full up to his shoulders, his eyes are still tears littered, but there's light in them as he says, "Wolfwood..." making eye contact with the other. The next panel shows Wolfwood's tender expression, his eyes and brows fully soften and he has a small smile on his lips, finally seeing the other return a level of sincerity with him.

The next panel shows the bottom half of Wolfwood's face and his hand is offered towards Vash for a dance as he says, "C'mon. We don't have to talk, but this is okay, right?" The background is now white and a ribbon flowing across the page separates this panel from the next sequence. Vash's inner thoughts continus, "I've spent too long avoiding this. It's scary to want after I've taken so much from others." A sequence close up of their hands is shown, with Wolfwood's outstretched hand on the right and Vash's reaching hand on the left. Vash gently places his hand in Wolfwood and at the bottom, Wolfwood wraps his fingers across Vash's.

Throughout the page, a dark blue ribbon starts to flow around the both of them with confetti raining alongside the effect. Vash and Wolfwood are hand and hand, dancing together with Wolfwood as the lead. The viewer can see a peak of Vash's expression, full of fondness but also a hint of sorrow as he looks down at Wolfwood. His inner thoughts continue, "I don't deserve this. I don't deserve you. But why is that even though I have these burdens, I still want to love you. I still want you to be by my side."

With a close up of their mouths, Vash's thoughts continue, the text covering his mouth, "Wolfwood, I--" Wolfwood's speech bubble covers Vash's text as he completes his sentence, "want you." Vash's eyes widen for one panel and in the next, his eyes spark, a blush appearing on his cheek and the confetti flows and spark. Tears ease up on his eyes again.

"Want me too already, Spikey." Wolfwood has leaned in enough to rest his head against Vash, a hand of his on Vash's neck, holding his nape and another hand pressed gently against his back. A ribbon separates this panel from the next, a mix of confetti flows across the page, as Vash envelopes Wolfwood in a hug too, holding him and his hand gripping tightly onto his back.

This page is just the ribbon flowly throughout the page on the white background, one white ribbon and the other a dark blue. Near the bottom, the ribbon envelopes each other in a loop. A conversation of Vash and Wolfwood is held over these ribbons, Vash starting to say, "What if I hurt you? What if you..?" Wolfwood responds, "You? How could you hurt me?" Vash, "You know what I mean... You see it everyday..." Wolfwood responds, "If you think I'm going to kick the bucket so easily, I suggest you look at me more closely from now on, idiot. I'm not that easy to get rid of."

The next page has the ribbon criss cross over the top of the page. Vash and Wolfwood can be seen in their dancing position again, Wolfwood now resting a hand on Vash's shoulder, as Vash takes the lead. Vash continues, "Well, I know that... I tried." Wolfwood responds, "But you won't anymore... since you want me... around, yeah?" Wolfwood's head cocks to the side, smiling with assurance, cheeks flushed. Vash looks at him with a wide smile and fond, loving eyes. The confetti flows across the bottom of this page and as it eases into the next page, it starts to disappear.

Vash responds, ".. Yeah... I do..." as he pulls Wolfwood into a hug again. Wolfwood says, "Not going to run away anymore, are you?" Vash says, "No... I trust you." A panel shows Wolfwood's turning away slightly with a shy expression, muttering "Geez..."

In a more simplified style, Wolfwood is seen gripping Vash's cheeks now with his hand, "Though... You do remember you avoided me for two weeks straight, right? How are you going to make that up to me?" Wolfwood asks. Vash responds with eyes closed and a pucker of his lips. A vein of irritation appears on Wolfwood's face. Wolfwood starts to squeeze at Vash's cheek with both hands, shouting, "Now that you've recovered, you're trying to be funny, huh?!" Vash says through the squished cheeks, "I'm just happy..."

The next page opens with a closed up panel of Vash's widen eye as Wolfwood's hand moves from squishing his cheeks to gently holding them and Wolfwood leans in. The inner thoughts starts again, "There's a chance I'm not making the right choice... My dreams, my fears of losing you, it will never go away. But you said you won't let it happen... And I want to hang onto your words closely this time. After all, if it's anyone who can make me believe, it's you."  The white ribbon from previous pages flows across the page and it visibly ends at the bottom of the page, enclosing the two of them as they share a gentle kiss with Vash holding Wolfwood's face, a tear in his eye.

The next pages starts with Wolfwood saying, "You cryin' again?" Vash responds, "I'm just grateful..." Wolfwood responds, "But you've always had me." Vash responds, "Being like this is different from staring at you from behind all the time though..." The two can be seen together again, Wolfwood pressing his elbows against the table with Vash leaning over him. Wolfwood is easing the tears out of Vash's eye again, just like earlier. A close panel of Vash's fond expression is seen as he says, "Thank you, Wolfwood." Wolfwood looks up at him with a small smile, gentle eyes. Confetti starts to flow lightly across the page as text starts to appear against the white background, "I'm the one who's grateful...

That you'd embrace someone like me, when I'm not fit to hold you in the first place... But I know better than to hesitate. The moment I acknowledged it, I knew I'd spend the rest of my life loving you. So, have as much of me as you want, Vash."

The final page shows the confetti gently falling down the page and at the bottom shows Vash and Wolfwood pressing their foreheads together, Wolfwood's hands cupping the side of Vash's face gently, and both of them smiling brightly with each other. ID END]

[biancadavri]

Oh don't get me wrong I'm sad we've been getting so little about the dwarven kingdoms as much as the next orzammar fan but hey! If you get really into surface dwarves and their lore you can get fuck-all about them too!

[beartitled]

so after the new content any thought on the opportunist?

He was, currently is and always will be a sleazy littol bird butt 🪶

[existingingrey]

Uhh guys I don't know what's happening here but bloodied NSC looks fun

@kanronotatsu @thedevildeer help me out here

[anghraine]

jenndoesnotcare replied to this post:

Every time LDS kids come to my neighborhood I am so so nice to them. I hope they remember the blue haired lady who was kind, when people try to convince them the outside world is bad and scary. (Also they are always so young! I want to feed them cookies and give them Diana Wynne Jones books or something)

Thank you! Honestly, this sort of kindness can go a really long way, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.

LDS children and missionaries (and the majority of the latter are barely of age) are often the people who interact the most with non-Mormons on a daily basis, and thus are kind of the "face" of the Church to non-Mormons a lot of the time. As a result, they're frequently the ones who actually experience the brunt of antagonism towards the Church, which only reinforces the distrust they've already been taught to feel towards the rest of the world.

It's not that the Church doesn't deserve this antagonism, but a lot of people seem to take this enormous pride in showing up Mormon teenagers who have spent most of their lives under intense social pressure, instruction, expectation, and close observation from both their peers and from older authorities in the Church (it largely operates on seniority, so young unmarried people in particular tend to have very little power within its hierarchies). Being "owned" for clout by non-Mormons doesn't prove anything to most of them except that their leaders and parents are right and they can't trust people outside the Church.

The fact that the Church usually does provide a tightly-knit community, a distinct and familiar culture, and a well-developed infrastructure for supporting its members' needs as long as they do [xyz] means that there can be very concrete benefits to staying in the Church, staying closeted, whatever. So if, additionally, a Mormon kid has every reason to think that nobody outside the Church is going to extend compassion or kindness towards them, that the rest of the world really is as hostile and dangerous as they've been told, the stakes for leaving are all the higher, despite the costs of staying.

So people from "outside" who disrupt this narrative of a hostile, threatening world that cannot conceivably understand their experiences or perspectives can be really important. It's important for them to know that there are communities and reliable support systems outside the Church, that leaving the Church does not have to mean being a pariah in every context, that there are concrete resources outside the Church, that compassion and decency in ordinary day-to-day life is not the province of any particular religion or sect and can be found anywhere. This kind of information can be really important evidence for people to have when they are deciding how much they're willing to risk losing.

So yeah, all of this is to say that you're doing a good thing that may well provide a lifeline for very vulnerable people, even if you don't personally see results at the time.

[nadiajustbe]

There's something incredibly strange and funny about the FIRE DEMON from Ingary who somehow managed to work at some random Welsh school for at least a couple of weeks, maybe even longer and not get caught.

Like, did WoTW just lecture ms. Angorian about stuff like printers, photocopies or, well, the whole English Literature program she was supposed to teach for a good amount of time? Or was it just a kind of scripted info for the new form the demon was taking?

And — most importantly — how did WoTW (who, again, lives in Ingary with little to no connection to our world at all) get all this info about Welsh education in a matter of days?

Wikipedia page informs me that she kidnapped Suliman to ask him about it and she did, in fact, asked Sophie about Wales as well. But I cannot believe any of this guys can tell her enough to make a whole fire demon an English teacher, unless Ben was one himself and did willingly tell her the school curriculum — wich is no less hilarious of a concept.

And If she didn't, how couldn't anyone, kids or other schools staff, notice she has no clue about any English literature besides John Dohn and one (1) poem.

I have so many questions.

[keepthedelta]

the worst part of this james vowles nonsense is that people are now left thinking that toto wolff is a competent leader with good interpersonal skills and not a raging austrian asshole carried by niki lauda, and a handful of genuinely great drivers and engineers, many of whom he has psychologically harmed through his bullshit "management" to the extent that multiple employees have developed serious medical conditions

[clonerightsagenda]

Since I was kind of distracted by wedding and travel I'm rewatching Arcane s2 to see if any of the incoherence was on my end and my experience so far has been:

Act 1: This is actually pretty good. Maybe I was overreacting

Act 2: Ah yes. This is where it all goes to shit

[youssefguedira]

I wish you would write a fic about irreconcilable artistic differences on a movie set between Joe and Nicky.

not really irreconciliable as in not solvable at all but you know i had fun with this

Joe squeezes his eyes shut, covering his face with both hands, and leans forward. His shoulders tremble uncontrollably. He takes a short, sharp breath, and another, and another, but he can’t quite seem to get enough into his lungs. There’s a lump in his throat and a weight in his stomach. He leans forward with a low, wounded sound and–

“Cut,” Nicky says softly. Then, because it takes Joe a second to hear him: “Joe, stop.”

Slowly, Joe raises his head. Wipes at his eyes and takes a few deep breaths to steady himself. Nicky’s already up, frowning ever so slightly as he looks at the camera. 

“What is it this time?” Joe manages. His voice is hoarse; he has to clear his throat once or twice. Nicky doesn’t look up. The clock on the nightstand reads 01.34, but Nicky’s changed it a few times over the course of the shoot. He has no clue what time it really is, only that it’s dark outside.

It’s just the two of them in the room. Nicky had wanted to keep this one small, just him and Joe and the camera. The apartment they’re in is nice, if a little empty, though Joe supposes that’s the point. They’re in the bedroom, Joe sitting cross-legged on the bed, shirtless, sheets bunched up over his lap, a phone lying on the nightstand behind him. One entire wall of the room is taken up by a floor-to-ceiling window which lets the moonlight in, though there’s a few low lights set up behind Nicky to send bars of silver light across the bed, because the natural light hadn’t quite been strong enough for the effect Nicky wanted. It’s otherworldly; it’s beautiful. 

Nicky still isn’t looking at him, so Joe says again, “What?” It comes out a little harsher than he means it to, but it gets Nicky’s attention.

Nicky runs one hand through his hair. Joe can’t see him well, not with the light behind him and the shadows in the room. “I don’t know,” Nicky says. “It’s missing something.”

Joe has worked with Nicky enough times before. It’s not that he doesn’t like working with him - they’re friends - but he can’t fucking read him, and so after the sixth take of the same scene he can’t help but take it a little personally. 

Joe reaches for the bottle of water hidden just under the bed and takes a long drink, mostly to keep himself from snapping. What time is it? “I can try again, but I can’t do this indefinitely, Nicky.”

“I know, I know,” Nicky says, fidgeting again with the camera, “it’s not you, it’s just–” 

“What else could it be?” Joe interrupts. He’s not stupid. This scene doesn’t work if he can’t get it right, which means the entire film doesn’t work if he can’t get it right. More than anything else, this one depends on him. No music, no camera movement, no dialogue, nothing but him and the camera. And he wants to do it right, he loves this project almost as much as Nicky does, but there’s a hollow feeling in his chest and he’s spent the last however-many-hours having a near-complete breakdown over and over again and it’s still not right. And Joe doesn’t know what it is he’s doing wrong.

“I don’t know,” Nicky says quietly. Now he is looking at Joe, and Joe can’t tell if he’s disappointed, or angry, or – or what. He’s perfectly expressionless, as always. 

Joe loves this job. And he wants to get this right. But it doesn’t mean it’s not one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do, and he’s tired.

“I don’t have much more left in me, Nicky,” he says, and this time he does snap. He wipes at his eyes again, can’t look at Nicky. He’s supposed to be making himself vulnerable, above all in this scene, but suddenly he can’t stand the way Nicky’s looking at him. “Pass me my hoodie.”

“Joe–”

“I can’t. I can’t keep doing this.” He kicks the sheets off and gets tangled trying to do it, grabs his hoodie when Nicky offers it, pulls it over his head in one fluid motion and gets out of there as soon as he can. Thankfully, there’s only Andy and Nile in the other room, Andy lying back on the couch with her feet up and Nile perched on the arm of it. They both look up at Joe as he enters, both look like they’re about to ask, and Joe can’t stand it, can’t be in here a second longer, can’t–

“We are done for the day, I think,” Nicky says behind him, startling Joe. He hadn’t realised Nicky was there.

Andy raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t argue. It’s already the second day of trying to shoot this scene: they’re running the risk of falling behind schedule. 

“We’ll find something else to do tomorrow,” Nicky says. “I’ll look over everything tonight. We will try this again on Monday.”

Andy and Nile look at each other. Nile shrugs. 

“Get some rest, Joe,” Nicky says. 

Joe shoves his hands in his pockets and doesn’t say a word.

–--------------------------------

He doesn’t get called in the next day at all, and he doesn’t interrogate it too closely. Takes the day off, pretty much, because they’ve only really got one scene left to film, and there’s not much more he can do for that. Nicky had wanted to leave it to the last, and Joe had agreed, at the time.

At about nine pm, someone knocks on his hotel room door, which is unusual on a day where they don’t have a night shoot to do. When he opens it, Nicky is on the other side. Joe lets him in without a word. 

“I wanted to apologise,” Nicky says, standing in the middle of the room and looking as uncomfortable as Joe’s ever seen him. “For last night. I was pushing you too hard, and I should not have done.”

Joe closes the door behind him. Nicky fidgets with the sleeve of his hoodie. 

“Sit down,” Joe says. 

Nicky does, settling himself on the edge of Joe’s bed, not quite looking him in the eye. Joe joins him, after a moment. 

“At the risk of sounding cliche,” Nicky says, “it’s not you, it’s me.”

Joe laughs, mostly because the phrase sounds so strange coming from Nicky and also because out of everything he’d thought Nicky might say, he hadn’t expected that. 

Nicky smiles slightly, too. Then he gets up and heads for the minibar. “Mind if I have a drink?”

Joe shakes his head. Nicky gets out a little bottle of wine, glances at the label, and takes a swig straight from the bottle without bothering to get a glass. 

“I can’t seem to get it right,” Nicky says. “You know I wrote almost fifteen different versions of that scene?”

The scene in the script itself is barely a page long. “No,” Joe says. 

Nicky nods. Rubs a hand over his face. “I wanted it to feel real. I thought if I could get it right, it would… help, somehow. I don’t know.”

It’s the exact same reason Joe said yes before he even read the script, when the whole thing was just an idea in Nicky’s head, when they were talking about it over drinks at Andy’s and Joe was in love with the idea almost immediately. He knew exactly why Nicky was writing it; he knows, now, exactly why it needs to be right. But at the same time – “I don’t know if that’s possible, Nicky.”

Nicky sighs. “I know.” He crosses back over to sit beside Joe again, takes another drink from the bottle. “But there is something missing, and I cannot seem to find it. And so it does not feel real. And I know this is not easy for you.”

“It’s not,” Joe says plainly. 

“But you know,” Nicky continues, “I could not have trusted anyone with this but you. If you had not said yes, I would not have done this.”

That, Joe didn’t know: he knows he’d been Nicky’s first choice, but he’d assumed that’s because they know each other well enough already. But it makes sense: the reason Nicky wrote the script is the same thing they’d bonded over. 

Even still, it’s a lot. “I don’t know if I can do it the way you want,” Joe says. 

Nicky looks up at him from where he’s been running his fingers over the label on the bottle absentmindedly. “If you want to stop, I can–”

“No,” Joe says quickly. “But I don’t think it’s ever going to be exactly the way you felt.”

Nicky looks away. “It is a lot to ask,” he says. “I know this.”

Joe doesn’t think; just reaches over and takes Nicky’s hand. “I know,” he says. “Trust me.”

Nicky takes a deep breath. Then he nods. "Okay."

[louthestarspeaker]

You guys!! Dal's captain arc in season two is literally him just learning to trust that people will watch out for him and care about him and the institutions that are supposed to keep him safe and his crew safe and actually have his best interest at heart, I'm not the only one who thinks this right?? <- girl who thought too hard about Dal R'El and now needs to write an essay and maybe cry a little about him

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

I love Taash's outlandish ideas about the Crows. Each question they ask Lucanis about them is more ridiculous than the last. And when they ask him whether there are any non-binary Crows... I thought, that's it. I'm going to make a non-binary Crow Rook to romance them.

[lord-squiggletits]

On the MegOP fandom trend of saying "Optimus should apologize to Megatron"

(Speaking specifically for IDW1, though it applies to a lot of MegOP especially ones that do continuity soup with heavy reference to IDW1)

I was talking to a friend in DMs and they mentioned a common headcanon/fanfic trope that I also concurred with, and both of us said it's something that bothers us: a common take in the MegOP fandom goes basically along the lines of "If Optimus had just apologized to Megatron, the war would've ended" (or other variants including "if he'd tried harder to understand Megatron/work in collaboration with him").

And firstly, this is incorrect for a number of reasons:

There were attempts at peace negotiations during the war, but they fell through. So Optimus WAS trying to work with Megatron to the point of participating in formal diplomatic meetings.

Optimus tried multiple times on page to convince Megatron to just stop fighting and work with him for peace (Autocracy, Chaos Theory) that Megatron rejected. Given that these on-page examples take place at the start of the war and at the end of the war respectively, it makes sense that Optimus asking Megatron for collaboration is something he was trying/willing to do the entire time. So again, Optimus was always willing AND ATTEMPTING to work with Megatron and find a joint solution

Even before the war when Optimus was still Orion, he was very explicitly inspired by Megatron's writing and names Megatron as one of the people who "opened his eyes" to the wrongs of Cybertronian society. So how is it that people claim "the war went on for too long because Optimus never tried to understand Megatron" when OP literally named Megatron as one of his biggest idols, thus implying that OP does understand Megatron's ideals

But the primary purpose of this post wasn't to defend Optimus, actually. Even though I personally think Optimus did plenty (dare I say, everything) to try to end the war, there are some who may still think otherwise, so instead of arguing about whether Optimus did "enough", or who should apologize to whom, or who "deserves the blame" for starting/continuing the war, I'd actually rather talk about this:

No matter who is most "to blame" for the war, it's my firm belief that neither Megatron nor Optimus would even expect/demand the other to apologize to them at all.

On Megatron's side, he would never seek to judge Optimus negatively for the decisions to the point of saying "you wronged me, apologize." Whether it's evil Megatron who doesn't care about atrocities and revels in an opportunity to expose Optimus as a hypocrite, or post-war/Autobot Megatron who knows that his own evil actions are irredeemable, the idea of Megatron judging Optimus and demanding an apology for the war specifically strikes me as out-of-character. Why would Megatron demand or even want an apology from Optimus when Megatron knows fully well that he has his own sins to bear, he prolonged the war for his own selfish/material gain, and that he is responsible for an untold amount of suffering? Demanding an apology would imply that Megatron sees himself as the wronged party and Optimus as the wrongdoer, but by the end of the war, Megatron is too aware of his own part in the war to ever demand such a thing of Optimus. Even if he DID think that Optimus was "equally to blame" for the war (which he doesn't/wouldn't, btw), Megatron's own feelings of guilt would prevent him from trying to seek the petty satisfaction of the moral high ground or making Optimus beg for his forgiveness.

Additionally, Megatron knows Optimus very well as a person: he knows that the position of leadership is full of "loneliness [and] agonizing self-doubt" for Optimus (Chaos Theory) and that "when Optimus hurts others, he hurts himself" (MTMTE). Another reason that Megatron wouldn't demand nor want an apology from Optimus is because Megatron knows Optimus so well that he already knows that being a war leader fills Optimus with immense guilt and suffering. Given that Megatron knows about Optimus' self-doubt and guilt, why would he even need an apology when he already knows how much Optimus regrets the war and desperately wishes/wished for it to end?

Then, as established in the previous paragraphs, Optimus is too full of guilt for his part in the war (both before it started and in being unable to stop it sooner) to demand an apology from Megatron. Again, demanding an apology would put Optimus in an implied position of moral superiority and/or victimhood, but Optimus doesn't see himself as morally superior or as a victim (or rather, he sees himself as being responsible for these bad things happening and internalizes this as a duty to do better/fix wrongdoings). In other words, Megatron and Optimus both share this view of themselves and each other: Their hands are so dirty, and they both feel such guilt over this, and they know each other well enough to know that the other feels this way as well. Because both of them feel blame for the war and are acutely aware of their own flaws/part in suffering, both of them feel far too responsible for the war happening for them to ever blame their archnemesis for "not trying harder" or "being responsible for the war."

Hell, if you even look at the socio-political climate of Cybertron before the war started, neither Megatron nor Optimus were the ones who put this conflict into motion. The corrupt legacy of the Primes, Functionism, class issues-- all of these things existed before Megatron and Optimus did. Even once they started doing things like writing about social issues (M) or fighting against the Senate (OP), both of them were "underlings" in sense that they weren't leaders:

Megatron's writings may have inspired the Decepticon movement, but that movement existed as an independent entity with its own leaders and speakers long before Megatron became the "official" ruler of the Decepticons. He wasn't even the leader of the 'Cons until he took control of the gladiator arena and the nonviolent sections of the Decepticons were (presumably) subsumed into the underground, exploitative battle culture that Megatron created.

Optimus-as-Orion was a police officer to start, but even once he started going against the Senate, he mainly worked in collaboration with others like Senator Shockwave and Zeta (later Zeta Prime), who he either saw as his idols or who were literally superior to him in rank due to government/military structures.

So with this in mind, even from a social level, while Megatron and Optimus may have been "catalysts" of a sort that caused the war to escalate to an outright planetary/galactic level, the scenario is too complex to solely lay the blame for the war at either of their feet. I'm not confident in saying that Megatron/Optimus would explicitly think of this when talking to each other, but what I'm trying to say is that M/OP were just catalysts in a long chain of brewing tension that exploded into a war. Even if one could claim that one of them "started" or "escalated" the war, the social issues that caused the war and the positions of power that allowed them to become leaders in the first place were falling into place before either of them actually BECAME leaders.

In other words, this shared fate of being the final reaction that exploded a societal conflict into outright war... Megatron and Optimus both have that in common. And because of this, I really don't think either of them would even think to ask the other to apologize because they're both in such similar positions, with such similar feelings of guilt and responsibility, that they understand each other's feelings without words. To demand an apology would be akin to taking that shared vulnerability/guilt and stepping on it, attempting to claim that one is right/superior and the other is wrong/inferior, and that the inferior one needs to grovel and take responsibility for the bad things that happened.