#Also JRo really read the UK G1 comics and was like

[arceespinkgun]

It's rant time! I'm now halfway through rereading Lost Light, wow the pacing is super fast. While I like a lot of the cast of MTMTE/LL on paper, I feel like these series overall are uh, actually really bad and basically have no plot at all. Plot = the meaning that links events in a story. When it's sitcom-like stuff happening it can actually be really fun and not as big of an issue, but every edgy moment feels like it's mainly for shock value and none of the implications of anything are adequately explored. And these implications are usually really negative.

I could basically point to any of the many grimdark moments as examples but I think Skids and his death and what happens afterward are some of the worst. He was the most consistent proponent of typical Autobot values, and he has amnesia for most of the series because he's so guilty and traumatized by feeling like a monster for having been sadistically tortured in a prison camp and feeling culpable for other prisoners' horrible deaths, an experience that was in no way his fault. He eventually becomes suicidal, and the moment there's an opportunity to sacrifice himself to help save others, he takes it and his spark fades and he dies, thinking he's scum.

What happens because of this? Well, we don't even get to see much of his sacrifice empowering anyone. No, Megatron—the guy the prison camp was killing prisoners in the name of—has to save the day. And he doesn't seem to give a shit about Skids, either—Megatron only fights after Ravage gets hurt.

Skids's corpse becomes a prop for Nautica and Rung to cry over, but despite them all being Amica Endura, they never discuss their grief together, and no reason is given for why they don't. Nautica loses her grief trying to bring Skids back, so she never has to work through it naturally. Oh, and if you thought Nautica had to make a hard choice about moving on, deciding whether her feelings for the departed Skids and the still-living Velocity were both worth trading to bring Skids back... nope, her choice means nothing, because by the time she chooses Velocity, the feelings for Skids were already gone. Rung commits suicide at the end of Lost Light, with Skids as the last thing on his mind before he sacrifices himself and crumbles to dust.

When it comes to other characters who were friends with Skids, like Swerve and Nightbeat, JRo just chose to have them take "grief shots" so he didn't have to write them any differently by depicting their grieving process.

No one ever discusses the fact that Skids died thinking he was a monster, blaming himself for the horrific death of Brainstorm's crush, Quark, either. Brainstorm almost certainly knows what happened and doesn't blame Skids at all—they were Amica Endura by proxy!—but nobody ever talks about it. It's also criminal that Nautica and Brainstorm never talk about anything that happened, when her losing her emotions is very similar to something Brainstorm witnessed Chromedome go through, and Nautica almost certainly tried to sacrifice her emotions because the self-sacrificial natures of her friends like Brainstorm and Skids influenced her.

None of this is ever explored because there really is no meaning. It's just meant to be "whump." But because it's never explored, I end up extrapolating meanings like, "So... since no one ever acknowledges any of this shit... is it implying that if you have survivor's guilt it is your fault and you should kill yourself? Is it implying that it's not possible to work through grief in a healthy way and live on?" I know these are presumably NOT the intended readings, but still! I mean, I talked about "The Magnificent Six!" story from the Marvel UK comics continuity a while back—imagine if all the Autobots who had been traumatized from how they were tortured and what they'd went through had never worked through any of their feelings and had just killed themselves... and their experiences or what they'd meant had never been acknowledged again. That would be a really unsatisfying story (and I say this knowing that in at least one timeline, one of the team members—Inferno—did sacrifice his life)!

Oh yeah, and this is all especially garbage given that I just finished LL #15, where Tarn—who was the commander of that prison camp!!!—gets one last posthumous win as Nickel uses a recording of him to escape from Scorponok?! What was JRo thinking?!