One of my favorite parts of phase 2 (and indeed one of the few moments I resonated with IDW Prowl) was when the neutrals were coming back to Cybertron and Prowl said that he refused to let Autobots be pushed aside and overruled after they were the ones who fought for freedom for 4 million years (the exact wording escapes me atm).
And I mean, that resentment still holds true even once the colonists come on bc like. As much as it's true that Cybertron's culture is fucked up, and as funny as it can be to paint Cybertronians as a bunch of weirdos who consider trying to kill someone as a common greeting not important enough to hold a grudge over.... The colonists POV kind of pissed me off a lot of times, as did the narrative tone/implications that Cybertronians are forever warlike and doomed to die by their own hands bc it just strikes me as an extremely judgemental and unsympathetic way to deal with a huge group of people with massive war PTSD and political/social tensions that were rampant even before the war?
Like, imagine living in a society rife with bigotry and discrimination where you get locked into certain occupations and social strata based on how you were born. The political tension is so bad there's a string of assassinations of politicians and leaders. The whole planet erupts into an outright war that leads (even unintentionally) to famine and chemical/biological warfare that destroys your planet. Both sides of the war are so entrenched in their pre-war sides and resentment for each other that this war lasts 4 million years and you don't even have a home planet any more. Then your home planet gets restored and a bunch of sheltered fucks come home and go "ewww why are you so violent?? You're a bunch of freaks just go live in the wilderness so that our home can belong to The Pure People Who Weren't Stupid And Evil Enough To Be Trapped In War" and then a bunch of colonists from places that know nothing about your history go "lol you people are so weird?? 🤣🤣 I don't get why y'all are fighting can't you just like, stop??? Oh okay you people are just fucked up and evil and stupid then" ((their planets are based on colonialism where their Primes wiped out the native populations btw whereas the Autobots and OP in particular fought to save organics. But that never gets brought up as a point in their favor)) as if the damage of a lifetime of war and a society that was broken even before the war can just magically go away now that the war is over.
Prowl fucking sucks but he was basically the only person that pointed out the injustice of that.
And then from then on out most of the characters from other colonies like Caminus and wherever else are going "i fucking hate you and your conflicts" w/ people like literal-nobody Slide and various Camiens getting to just sit there lecturing Optimus about how Cybertronians are too violent for their own good and how their conflicts are stupid, with only brief sympathetic moments where the Cybertronians get to be recognized as their own ppl who deserve sympathy before going right back to being lambasted.
Like I literally struggled to enjoy the story at multiple points because there was only so much I could take of the characters I knew and loved being raked over coals constantly while barely getting to defend themselves or be defended by the narrative so like. It was just fucking depressing and a little infuriating to read exRID/OP
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discliamer since i havent really done that for these kinds of posts and i feel like this one is worded in a more demanding way than i usually do: any post of mine regarding what the ccs "should" do is less me actually wanting them to do what i say and more me speculating on the kinds of actions that they could take, not cause i think im smart or tactical or anything but because this is my idea of what fun is
im watching the tower vod rn and i think the only real way to deal with minute and jumper at this point in the server is to. not
like it probs wont be satisfying to the PlayersTM considering the kind of ppl they are (proactive, confrontational, plays along with the spirit of the server, self-focused morals) but considering the kind of ppl minute and jumper are (reactive, avoidant, prioritizes survival even if it means not great content, normative morals) i think its the only real way to engage with them when it comes to this kind of recursive conflict
like everytime they confront one another it keeps circling back to this moral debate regarding the ethics of killing ppl on fucking Lifesteal of all things and i highly doubt its ever gonna stop (at least for this season) considering none of the new members have really been traumatized the lifesteal way, i dont mean regular smp trauma like war and betrayal and all that jazz cause theyve already got that, i mean Lifesteal trauma: the realization that everything is a cycle, that good and evil doesnt matter, that feeling of hope shattering over and over again, that realization that in the grand scheme of things your ideals dont matter and the only thing you can truly hope for in the server are teammates and allies that wont backstab you, and that even then thats a tall order
so back to Not dealing with jumpertech, i dont mean forgetting what they did, i mean actively avoiding them, acting irrationally scared of them even when theyre being civil, fully putting them in the role of big scary villains, basically still putting what they did at the very forefront but acting like its an insurmountable trauma, planting doubt in their status as heroes, continually being the aggressors just cements in their minds that yes they are the heroes and that yes they are doing the good things
like whether the PlayersTM like it or not this is an unstoppable force vs immovable object kind of situation except the unstoppable force has more to lose by virtue of having a goal that can easily be tided by the immovable object
and i do think they can pull it off, they can lose a fight and lose so much that it breaks their spirit, like jumpertech have both been in kings, they both know how determined at least zam and mapicc are, surely it would be really offputting to see someone youre so used to seeing never giving up to do just that
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can’t stop thinking about Marie reviving Kevin. does anyone ever manage to open the gates of Heaven again. does anyone even bother to tell Linda if they do. does Kevin lose more and more of himself as the years go on, and she’s forced to lose her son a second time. Linda carrying around a warded box with Kevin’s final tether in it so that he can’t accidentally hurt anyone, never knowing if it’s safe to release him from this world, if he won’t be worse trapped in the veil with no one to hold on to at all. one way or another, to love your child is to cage them.
(which is not to say that it’s her fault or even that she could have done anything differently. this is an impossible situation. this is something neither of them ever should have been forced to go through. her son is dead, and nothing can ever change that, and the best she can hope for is to hope that she can send him to heaven before she gets killed, too. because once an acquaintance of the winchesters, always a target for people who have a grudge against them. linda goes through. a lot. in the next few years. family is hell and all.)
the way this shakes out in my head is as a hunt. someone is using a ghost to kill people, and it becomes clear, very quickly, that this ghost is kevin. that someone stole him from linda. and the worst part is that kevin has been a spirit for years now and the magic keeping him under control is strong enough that he can barely tell what’s happening. to him, he’s lashing out to protect his mom, even though she’s not there and he’s just being used. it’s a horrifying fate. and “the only way to save him is to put him down, it’s mercy,” except they still don’t know if that’ll send him to Heaven or Hell or further into the Veil or worse.
and I am thinking about marie finding this little box, open because Kevin is being forced to attack the Winchesters, maybe even his mom, as they try to save him, and marie pulling out the ring his ghost is tied to, and marie, who listened so closely to Linda talking about her son, so proud of him and so torn apart by grief. I’m imagining this takes place early on, before Lucifer has had a chance to get to the twins, so all the family Marie has is the Winchesters, and Castiel, and Jack, and none of them are really her parents. Dean is hot-and-cold unable to connect, and Sam tries so hard to take care of the twins but can barely look them in the eyes most days, and Castiel prepared for a baby and got something else entirely, and Jack is. Well. Jack is someone she cannot imagine outliving, cannot conceive of a world without.
And so what I’m saying is that she’s holding that ring, and she’s supposed to destroy it, and she can’t. She can’t. Kevin’s spirit is here, and if she can fix it- if she can fix it. Jack elsewhere suddenly gulping down breaths because his heart is racing too fast and his power is being dragged from him into his sister’s hands, and realizing that this is how Marie felt when he brought back Castiel. She didn’t complain, so he grins and bears it. It is an awful, exhausting thing.
But Kevin lives. With all his memories of being a ghost, of losing himself, of being used as a weapon. He’s alive. He shouldn’t be, but he shouldn’t have died either. There’s a girl looking at him, who is his height and younger than him by more than a decade and needs this to have been a Good Thing she did.
at least he gets to hug his mom again.
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lost phineas and ferb episode where perry is called to investigate what dr doofenshmirtz is up to because carl the intern got ahold of some intel that doof has been seen speaking to lawyers and looking up the endangered species act at internet cafes and as major monogram says, "something fishy is going on"
meanwhile phineas and ferb's subplot of "i know what we're gonna do today!" is that isabella needs her environmentalist fireside girls badge so they start researching which species are in urgent need of help in the tri-state area so that they can use new cloning and gene therapy technologies to bring at-risk animals back from extinction
(yes there is a c-plot where buford and baljeet argue the ethics of this idea, i don't have time to explain it all for you rn)
we cut back to🎵doofenshmirtz evil incorporated🎵where we see perry carefully maneuvering around doofenshmirtz's lab scared he might fall into a trap but he hasn't set off a single booby trap and it's clear something is off
he runs into doofenshmirtz and goes to kick him in the gut action movie style but doof steps back one overly confident and says, "nuh uh uh, you see perry the platypus, you are TRAPPED! by the danville section of the endangered species act of 1973!"
doof goes on to explain his tragic backstory: "you see, perry the platypus, when i was a child my parents did not show up for my own birth! but you know that already, yadda yadda yadda they did not love me and then they loved roger more, ANYways i was raised by ocelots! i had a lovely foster mother who took me in and made me one of the pride, and so you see, perry the platypus, i am still legally considered an ocelot. did you know that there are only 50 recorded ocelots still alive in the continental united states? very sad for me as a member of a near-extinct species. it would be immoral for you to hurt someone critically endangered... in fact, you have made many attempts on my life this summer"
[montage of doof's security camera footage of their battles]
"which is why i have decided to bring you... TO COURT!" we cut back to phineas and ferb's back yard where they've decided to start cloning ocelots in their kiddie pool
candace storms outside enraged and says, "phineas and ferb are you cloning ocelots in my duckie momo kiddie pool!?"
ferb's one line of the episode is "well, i guess it's more of a kitty pool, now"
candace storms away saying, "i'm going to tell mom!" and isabella turns to phineas and says, "oh, does your mom have experience in wildlife conservation?"
we cut back to the doof and perry plotline where the two are now in the danville hall of justice and we learn that doof has spent his monthly alimony check on a defense lawyer and perry turns and sees the lawyer and then vanessa helping her organize her briefcase and perry chitters at her and vanessa shrugs and says, "i'm thinking about going into legal defense. sorry perry."
the rest of the doof and perry b-plot is spent in court and perry is about to ask for a public defense lawyer when carl runs into the room and explains that he's owca's official legal defense and perry looks at him like, "uhhh is that even allowed?"
it doesn't matter because apparently the judge is out sick today but because it's danville roger's the judge now because he's the mayor and everyone loves him.
the court case continues.
meanwhile phineas and ferb have successfully cloned multiple ocelots from the original ocelot dna they had on hand and isabella asks phineas if these clones will experience health problems like premature aging, phineas casually explains that ferb figured out the problem while they were experimenting with stem cell harvesting.
back in the courtroom, doof's ocelot foster mother has been brought to the stand along with an ocelot to english translator. doof gets emotional seeing her after so long. she says that he was one of her favorite child and he was as strong a hunter as anyone else in the family. it's incredibly sweet. the jury's in tears.
meanwhile, isabella has established connections with a group in texas who are going to release the ocelots back into their natural habitat and, using the cloned ocelots to prevent inbreeding, help establish an ocelot breeding program. the group explains that they are going to send a helicopter to retrieve the cloned ocelots from danville and bring them to texas soon.
isabella gets her fireside girls badge.
candace manages to get mom to see the backyard only after the ocelots have been helicoptered off to coastal texas, their primary habitat.
mom makes it into the backyard as phineas stares wistfully over the fence and says, "if you love something, you have to let it go." candace goes, "look mom look look look!" and points at the ducky momo kiddie pool, devoid of cloned ocelots, where baljeet and buford are now chilling out, having settled their philosophical debate about the ethics of animal cloning.
back in the courtroom drama, doof looks like he's about to win when an attendant walks into the courtroom and whispers something in roger's ear.
roger looks up, grinning, and says, "good news, everyone! my attendant here has just enlightened me that ocelots are no longer considered critically endangered!"
this settles the case, with perry being decreed not guilty and the entire affair being called off. the courtroom cheers, roger walks over to doof and personally congratulates him on his species' return from the brink of extinction.
doof shouts, "curse you endangered species classification system!" at the ceiling of the danville hall of justice.
perry arrives back home just in time for mom to say, "who wants pie?"
the end.
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