#it’s very uncharitable to everyone else and they don’t deserve it

[darkfire359]

What’s the difference between Izzy (who yells at people) and Stede (who abandons his family without a word), Ed (who makes someone murder his own dog and then basically forgets about it), Jim (who tries to lock someone in a storage trunk and drown them at sea), and Buttons (who tries to eat a guy’s finger, giving him an amputation-worthy infection in the process, for no reason)?

…Sometimes Izzy acknowledges and apologizes for his bad behavior.

[shanastoryteller]

Happy birthday! Hope its great! The Untamed please? Its one of my favorite fandoms you've gotten me into 🥰

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Mo Xuanyu is married to the Second Jade of Lan.

Song Lan had known she’d married into the Lan – it was obvious – but he’d thought it was some not so bright cultivator that had been bewitched by her pretty face, or possibly literally bewitched, which he’d already decided wasn’t any of his damn business. If some stupid Lan wants a terrifying and amoral demonic cultivator for a wife, then good luck to them. Except they obviously don’t know she’s a demonic cultivator, considering their clan’s history with the original. But again, not his business, not his problem. His first priority is Xiao Xingchen and if Mo Xuanyu is going help him, then he really doesn’t care about who she’s terrorizing in her spare time.

Except it appears he’d underestimated her.

Because she’s apparently Jin Xuanyu now, legitimized and married off to the second most eligible bachelor in the cultivation world, superseded only by his brother who’s been unofficially off the market for over a decade.

Hanguang Jun had lived as a widower and Song Lan had been convinced he was going to die as one. Uncharitably, he wonders if maybe Lan Wangji just has a type, then feels bad about it in the next moment.

She orders Sect Leader Lan around and he lets her. She glares Hanguang Jun down.

To say absolutely nothing of the way she’d taken down Xue Yang. And then given him that dubious honor of taking credit for the kill, likely because she didn’t want to try and explain to her family how she’d managed it.

She had been clever and dangerous as a teenager. She’s managed to vault herself from disgraced bastard daughter to wife of the heir to the Lan and the legal mother to the third in line who will likely be the one actually succeeding Lan Xichen.

Jin Xuan – Xuanyu is a friend. She has very firmly shown herself to be a friend, helping him and protecting Xiao Xingchen and showing what certainly looks like genuine kindness to the girl who’d helped them, A-Qing.

Possibly she’s done all this to ensure their silence over what she used to be, what she is, but if so then it’s been successful. Betrayal would be a poor repayment for everything she’s done. The Lan hadn’t helped him or Xiao Xingchen. She had. The Lan can take care of themselves and if they can’t withstand the machinations of one woman, they deserve what they get.

Xiao Xingchen hasn’t said much, and Song Lan owes him so many apologies, but not here in front of everyone. He at least agrees to fly with him without much fuss. It will be difficult for him to fly with all three of them for any significant distance, but A-Qing asks Xuanyu to fly with her and she agrees with a smile.

Lan Sizhui doesn’t seem particularly thrilled, but he apparently is far too respectful of his step mother to disagree with her.

They’re flying back the inn when Xiao Xingchen presses himself back against his chest and tilts his head back to say, “Song Lan.”

It’s been so long since he’s heard Xiao Xingchen say his name. He has to swallow before he says, “Yes?”

“That’s,” he starts, then stops. “Who was that?”

“Who?” he asks. “We’re traveling with the Lans.”

“The woman,” he says.

His lips tug down into a frown but he tries not to panic. He’s been under charms to confuse and dull his senses for months. “That was Mo Xuanyu.”

If he’s already confused, getting into her legitimization probably won’t help anything.

Xiao Xingchen is silent for a few more moment. Then he asks, “Are you sure?”

What on earth. “Who else would she be?”

“She moves like – and sounds – but. It can’t. She’s – different,” he says.

As wonderful as it is to hear him speaking, Song Lan wishes he were saying less worrying things. “It’s been a long time since we saw her last. She’s grown up and married. Of course she’s different.” He squeezes his arms around Xiao Xingchen’s waist, hoping it’s not too presumptuous when they haven’t discussed anything yet. “It’s okay, after everything that’s happened this all must feel very sudden. Xuanyu is the one that found you. We can trust her.”

He thinks they can trust her. They can trust her more than any other sect cultivator, which granted isn’t saying much.

Xiao Xingchen relaxes against him. “Alright. If you say so.”

[buckleyblueyes]

one thing about b*cktaylor that has just never sat right with me is buck letting her back into his life after what she did to bobby, and especially after no substantial apology. like buck has literally said that bobby is one of the most important people in his life, and taylor was really about to let him just jump off a building? so she could further her career? maybe it’s just me, but idk how he could see past that

Alright, so before I get into this, I want to point out that Taylor is the one who called the cops when Bobby was on the roof. I think saying she was going to “let” him jump is a bit uncharitable. I don’t know what she could’ve done, given she has no training for that kind of thing (y'know, since she isn't a first responder). That said, her filming the whole thing with the intention of putting on the news was very, very fucked up.

So, how can Buck see past it? Honestly, and this may be controversial, but I don’t think he has. I think there is a fundamental lack of trust in their relationship, at least from Buck’s side. He wants to give her the benefit of the doubt, sure, because he’s a forgiving and kind person. But she hasn’t actually earned his trust.

Let's look at all her appearances in season 4, staring with 4x08.

He approaches her while stuck at work, bored, and all kinds of bothered about the Veronica situation. Something he's already talked everyone else’s ear off about. I really think he talks to her just because she's there. And then later in that episode he invites her to a weird double date without telling her, knowing full well she’s an impressive date (hot, locally famous) and not actually caring about her or her feelings. Because like. Why would he?

He helps her out with the vaccines, but that’s only after she chews him out, hitting on all his insecurities in the process. When she says he needs everyone to like him, she’s right. He helps her because she made him feel like shit, and he's Buck. He has to make it right, has win back her approval, even though she doesn't deserve it and he doesn't even care about her. Plus, regardless of Taylor, it was the right thing to do to get those vaccines to people.

Then we get 4x11. He calls her because he needs something from her, she's a means to an end for him. He's surprised at the end of the episode to hear her say that she wants to celebrate justice. He expects her to be celebrating something selfish, because that's still his view of her: selfish, not to be fully trusted.

In 4x12, she calls him, and he says yes because all his other friends already said it was dumb. I fully believe had Eddie gotten there first, Buck wouldn’t have partnered up with Taylor. Once again, she was just. There. Filling a void for Buck.

Now, Buck does flirt with Taylor in this episode (and he does basically say he’d be interested in having sex with her in 4x08) but Taylor is someone that Buck thinks wouldn’t be interested in an actual relationship. She says she could use a friend in 4x08, when they’re talking about meaningful relationships. But she doesn’t express any desire for a romantic relationship until 4x14. It seems to me that Buck was just after sex, given that she’s hot and it was good before, and he canonically hasn’t had sex since Ali dumped him. I think he was thinking with his dick, not his heart, I really do.

Which brings us to 4x14. when Taylor shows up at the hospital his automatic assumption is that she’s looking for a scoop, and he barely even looks at her at first. Once again reinforcing the idea that he doesn’t trust her.

And for the rest of their scenes in 4x14, he’s a very passive participant. She goes to his loft, she kisses him, she leaves (he doesn’t follow), she comes back, she says she wants him, and again, she kisses him. He lets it happen, of course. But I question how invested in it he actually is. Does he actually want Taylor? Or does he just want to be wanted by someone?

Has he really moved past what happened in 2x06, or will his lack of trust in Taylor come back to haunt their relationship in season 5?

[translightyagami]

Hi! If you're not too busy, could you write headcanons about Soichiro being super-supportive of Light and/or Sayu being trans/lgbt please? I need something to cheer me up

Hello! I think i’ve written about this before but being a really unruly tag-er of posts, I don’t think i can find them posts easily. so i’ll try to make some fresh headcanons nonny.

i think this depends on how you see the yagami sibs - their identities n such. i imagine they both end up tumbling into adulthood as trans and gay, albeit in different ways. Sayu comes around to a genderqueer lesbian understanding of herself and dates a LOT of anti-cap art students that Soichiro doesn’t like at all. he tells himself he dislikes how disrespectful her partners are, that they don’t have her best interests at heart, but the truth is that Soichiro can sense how Sayu is looking for a way to be Someone when she’s only been seen as a part, a piece. He fumbles everyone’s pronouns but gets it right on the third try, and Sayu always asks what he thinks of her choices. Soichiro is too honest for his own good but the fights don’t last super long. And even as all the different flags she’s worn collect on his desk - each one a token from a different Pride parade - he knows she’ll be okay; Sayu has never had trouble thinking for herself, and making her own path.

He’s a little worried about Light. His son, who transitioned when he was 14 and who never stopped being Soichiro’s shadow, even when he gained those last few inches on his dad. His son who won’t stop dating men Sayu uncharitably (but, Soichiro privately thinks, correctly) calls weasels. Oh sure, this revolving door of well-payed, nice-enough lovers that Light faithfully brings to dinner twice and then never again - they aren’t a threat to Soichiro’s son. Few things in the world are a threat to him, which is why Soichiro worries about those few things. He supported Light when he had top surgery, went with him to the clinic for testosterone (altho, a bit of needlephobe himself, Soichiro let his wife handle the actual shot), and got Light his job at the NPA with not a small amount of pressure to the higher-ups. Light’s happiness is important to him ... but he wishes Light would care a little more about his happiness too. Instead, Light does what he’s supposed to do - date nice but pliable men, bring them home, and remains effectively single.

“Light,” Sochiro corners him during a work lunch. “I want you to be happy. I want you to meet someone nice.”

“Ah, Dad,” Light laughs. “That’s not for me. I don’t think I’m supposed to be with anyone.” He gets quiet, twiddling his thumbs. “I have other things to do. Important things.”

Sayu graduates colleges and announces she’s moving to America. The whole family is in uproar, in a good way, and they see her off at the airport. Soichiro follows her Twitter updates, sees her meeting new people and getting into social activism. She tells her parents she’s seeing a therapist and she misses them.

“How’s Light?” she asks and Soichiro hesitates.

“He should visit you, I think,” he says.

Light is doing fine. He’s been fine for years. Now working in a higher position and living on his own, he doesn’t bring home boyfriends anymore. His passion is burnt, Soichiro can tell, and he starts asking more and more for advice - something Light never used to do. And Soichiro doesn’t know what to say: what Light needs help with is something Soichiro never had to deal with. His own life was, comparatively, easy - he met Sachiko in college. He married her. They had children. Light can have those things, sure, but it will be different and Light’s never been great at being different. So Soichiro tells Light to keep going forward - he just doesn’t know what else to say.

Sayu meets her future wife at a reproductive rights rally and brings her home after several Facetime calls that were really just gushing about how much she loves her. Sachiko and Soichiro love her too; she’s a little older than Sayu, a trans woman who has a steady job running a bookstore and pink streaks in her hair. She calls Sayu babe, and asks Sachiko for recipes. Sochiro knows she’s uneasy around him at first, but warms when he asks her questions about softball (Sayu played it in college, and Soichiro always found it more fun than Light’s short-lived tennis days). Light is courteous toward her, but he never seems fully present during the meeting. He keeps taking calls and returning to the dinner table a little red-faced.

“It’s classified,” he tells Soichiro, who asks the caller’s name. “I can’t say. But it’s someone safe, I promise.”

Light and Sayu’s future-wife go to bed early, both staying over in the house, so Soichiro sits with Sayu getting some father-kid time in. He can’t help but get her perspective on Light’s behavior. She laughs when he asks.

“Oh c’mon Dad,” Sayu says. “Light’s totally talking to a guy he likes. That’s how he always has been with crushes.”

“What?” Soichiro is shocked. “But ... I’ve never seen Light have a crush.”

“Oh yeah, okay.” Nodding, Sayu taps her chin. “You were kinda MIA at the time with the Kira case. Light used to get all blush-y and red back then when he got calls or visits from this college friend he had. I tried to spy on them once, but you know Light. He’s so good at swattin’ down spy stuff.” She scratches her head. “What was that guy’s name? It was like that actor’s name, wasn’t it? Anyway, Light would go totally dreamy after talking to him, all in his own head. Never seen him be like that around anyone else.”

Soichiro’s mouth gets tight. “Was his name Hideki Ryuga?”

“Huh? Oh yeah!” Sayu slaps her knee. “Oh my god, I used to like that actor soo much. Although that guy didn’t look like him at all.”

“Yes. I remember.”

Soichiro digs through his drawers that night while Sachiko tells him to keep it down while they have guests. But he needs to find a very specific number that he was told to use for emergencies only. He finds it taped under his bottom drawer and dials it on the kitchen phone. There’s a long period of hold music before anyone answers; its not that bad a tune.

“There’s no reason for you to call this number,” L says when he picks up. “I’m hanging up now and destroying this line. What a waste.”

“Do you have feelings for my son?”

There’s a crackle that makes Soichiro think L hung up but chewing noises revive him. L is just eating candy.

“Why do you ask?” L still sounds the same, yet there’s wrinkles in his voice that make him sound almost ... well Soichiro wants to say mature, although the candy ruins that a bit. “I need to hang up.”

“If you have feelings for him,” Soichiro bullies through, “then you need to tell him. Light deserves to be happy and I think you make him happy.”

“Hm.”

“He’s a very special person.” Soichiro has water in his voice. “I don’t think he wants to be, but he is. And if he chooses you, then you would have no better choice in the world than him.”

“Mm.” L rolls the syllables around. “I’m hanging up now. This number will not work again. Good bye.”

Soichiro stands in the kitchen for a minute listening to the dial tone before a scuffle catches his attention. Light steps away from a spilled glass of water, eyes gleaming and wide, as Soichiro hangs up the phone.

“I’m sorry.” Light grabs a towel, his voice wavering and his head turned down. “Sorry, I was getting a glass of water.”

“I meant it.” Soichiro gets on his knees and holds his son’s hands. They’re not as small as when Light was a child but they fell the same - warm, smooth, full of grace even when flexing nervously. “You are special. And you’ll find someone who thinks that someday.”

They hug, briefly, but Light’s phone disrupts them with a loud ringing. Hesitating before he takes it out, Light looks at his dad and his eyes are filled with hope - Soichiro thinks its a nice, new look for Light.

“Sorry,” Light says, “I have to take this. It’s classified.”

Three years later, and Soichiro is worried about his kids - they are both having weddings during the same week. “It’s easier!” Sayu says, because she doesn’t want to fly out twice. “We’re not doing anything big anyway,” Light says, because he and L have almost no guests invited beyond family members. But Soichiro isn’t worried so much about money or flights or anything like that. He’s worried about how it will feel, to see his children going off into the world to make their own families, to be so happy, to see them survive and thrive. And maybe he’s worried for himself, more than the kids. After all, how will it feel to be a man who got everything he ever wanted?

[zynart]

stop complaining about sjws and get a little empathy

Here’s my hot take: people dismissing social justice folks for being angry need to get some empathy

This might sound harsh but don’t get defensive and stick with me. If you value calm and civility and reasoned debate, you can live with that

The thing is, it’s understandable to be angry or even overreact sometimes when society’s constantly shit to you.

Being able to either be unaffected by an issue, or have the fortitude to be calm no matter how much it upsets you, shouldn’t be a prerequisite for your thoughts to be valid. If anything, shouldn’t it be the other way around: if “SJWs” are angry, why not try to understand what about society is that upsetting for a given person? Why not try to understand why they might be angry?

Why not have approach it with generosity, thinking of them as people as fully human as you are, as people who collectively have similar human thresholds for bearing suffering or injustice, who rightly have anxieties and fears and resentments about the state of the world?

Why not think of them as people who deserve the same respect and empathy, where we don’t demand that every single one stay perfectly calm and be perfectly informed and study up on the details and have the rhetorical fluency to be on fair playing ground against some 36-year-old conservative doing tours on campus

Why not listen—in good faith, with a fair representation of their concerns, instead of Weissian strawmen or cherry-picked examples—to the angry, period?

If you’re actually trying to understand a social phenomenon, and not just nursing some generational resentment about how the kids these days listen to too much rap music, or bitterness at the idea of being challenged, or if you’re not just making a public spectacle of your own process of resolving the cognitive dissonance between your view of yourself as a brilliant defender of liberal and updated social norms—which I honestly realize can be a psychologically distressing experience, with how much a central thesis of this file may be that so much of the dysfunction of Online is that we’re all flawed human beings lashing out at each other over our discomfort with resolving cognitive dissonances, which I can see particularly stings if you’re thin-skinned and take it very personally—where you’re taking the idea that you may be less relevant or valuable or correct as ideas march on, or just opposed to change, or even just in deliberate bad-faith instead of self-deluding bad-faith

Instead of all this, why not be constructive. Why not try listening to the hurt, to people who feel oppressed, to try to understand what’s causing it and trying to find a way to make it better?

People don’t like being angry. It might feel cathartic sometimes, and that might feel good sometimes, but nobody likes being angry and the idea that people passionate and furious about social injustice just like being angry is condescending and dehumanizing, just a little bit, isn’t it?

People don’t like being mad! Being angry doesn’t generally feel good. It sucks. It’s draining. People aren’t doing it for fun. People aren’t just having a lark when they speak up about things that, more often than not, will get them flooded with both well-meaning condescension and outright harassment. There may be a few exceptions, but assuming that everyone that’s upset about the way things are is just that is an extremely uncharitable view of humankind: odds are, for any group of people, they’re fundamentally just like you, and that includes the vocally angry and the outspoken.

If a group of people in society is upset about something that they experience, it’s just a bit callous to demand that every one of them meet a certain standard of calm and respectable. People that can remain calm are the exceptionally reserved. People who remain calm are going above and beyond what we should expect of them so they can try to politely convince everyone else. That shouldn’t be the expected standard, that should be seen as a gesture of politeness

Even within movements, even among people who share the same goals, there seems to be this expectation: the idea that those in a movement that are angry or upset are embarrassing and counterproductive and a hindrance to achieving your goals, that they are people you need to quickly disavow so that the people you’re trying to convince will take you seriously.

I understand that impulse. It can be frustrating. But it’s still kind of a shitty thing to do

Abandoning the parts of your movement that express themselves in less “acceptable” ways is starting from weakness, already ceding ground.

You shouldn’t play along in invalidating your movement. You should demand that their anger be taken seriously, explain that it’s a valid response. You should view yourself as a representative or an ambassador for that justified anger, and for all those folks that are justifiably angry

If I’m part of a movement and I’m calm enough to be identified as a “reasonable” social justice person, why the fuck would I embrace being used as a bludgeon to discredit the valid anger and reasoning of people who believe the same things? My calmness doesn’t refute their anger, it complements it.

[back to home]

[narniagiftexchange]

                                      THE WINTER NARNIAN GIFT EXCHANGE.

                                   for @kadmeread  by  @tarragonthedragon .

LACKING.

Edmund had always considered himself more similar to Susan than to Peter or Lucy. This had been the cause of some contention between the two of them– from Susan, who even at seven had liked to think herself much more grown up and sensible than her baby sister or her two brothers, and from Edmund, who hadn’t realised until he was at least twelve that Susan thought herself to be the only one with any brains at all almost as often as he did. It was, perhaps unfairly on either, a relief to both of them when the siblings, in Narnia or in England, found themselves split into older-and-younger, or brothers-and-sisters, since it meant that even if they didn’t happen to be correct on this particular occasion, then at least the other wasn’t there to be correct instead. Peter had been a wise king, and even when they were young again usually explained why he didn’t agree with them. And he was both of their older brother, which always made it sting a little less when he made the decisions. And Lucy, while rather more prone to gleeful I-told-you-so’s than any of her siblings, was eminently tolerable once they had been old enough once over to realise that she wouldn’t have been half as delighted to be right if she didn’t consider them both rather intelligent to begin with. Susan and Edmund left alone together, even well into middle age, were almost guaranteed to solve any problem that relied on wits or cleverness, but only once one or both of them had been in tears. Lucy and Peter, by contrast, had been the best of friends since she was just a baby, climbing his trousers and running to him in tears whenever Edmund, competitive even at five, had knocked his fellow toddler over.

Standing on the prow of the Dawn Treader, looking out at the empty water, Edmund wished Peter were here to talk to Lucy, to say just the right things and make it look like it was easy. Or Susan, who would probably just know somehow what had been bothering her since the Duffers’ island, and he could be angry at her for acting like it was obvious, instead of furious with himself for not knowing. But Lucy wouldn’t be standing here staring at the skyline if it was him who was hurt. Lucy, who always seemed certain of what she was going to do next, even if it wasn’t the cleverest or kindest thing, because it was almost always the best she could do. Lucy was the one who pushed, and let the others hold her back or be dragged along as they wished, because they hadn’t let her push on ahead since they had first come through the wardrobe together.

But it was just Edmund. Or, well, Edmund and Eustace, who was a loss less of an ass but still as much of a know-it-all as ever, and who was perched on a beam with Reepicheep again anyway. It would be like talking to Susan, except if Susan really was as stupid as he sometimes acted like she was in uncharitable moments.

This was probably an uncharitable moment. It would be even more uncharitable to assume that Peter and Susan and Lucy didn’t have those. Even if it did always seem unfairly easy for them to be kind, and nice, and good. Edmund only ever seemed to have a decent handle on good.

“You’re moping,” Eustace said, from right next to him. Edmund did not jump.

“I’m watching the horizon,” he replied, which had the benefit of being factually true if not much else.

“Is it because of whatever’s bothering Lucy?” Eustace asked. Clearly he had learnt a little more about being a decent chap, though Edmund rather sourly considered that if he had learnt any more he might not have come over to bother him.

Uncharitable again. This, frankly, was why Lucy didn’t usually let him alone for more than a day or so. If he forgot how annoying his siblings were, he started to remember how much more annoying he found everyone else.

“That’s a yes, then,” Eustace carried on. The area around them was suspiciously free of sailors, because Reepicheep was a little traitor. “Well, it’s not like I know anything about younger sisters–”

“No, you don’t.”

“But when I was brooding, you sent Reepicheep to hit me with a sword, and if you don’t talk to her I’m going to just assume the same tactic will work again.”

“You can’t–” Edmund broke off, scowling at Eustace’s gleefully smug face. “The difference is, I actually like Lucy when she’s herself.”

“I probably deserve that,” Eustace admitted. “But I promised Caspian I wouldn’t be an ass if he let me do this talk, so really I should be commended for the work I’m putting in.”

If Peter had said that, Edmund would have been certain it was a joke. With this new, rather less annoying and slightly less incompetent version of his cousin, it was very much a guess either way. He was spared having to respond by a shout of land, and rushed to his station.

Of course, because this was a magical voyage in Narnia, the shout of land led them to a lost lord and an island of thick mist and even before they saw anything Edmund could hear her, hear it, hear his nightmares looming down on them.

He was not much good at comforting his siblings. He was becoming worryingly good at resisting the call of the White Witch.

Lucy, because of course, was already making quick work of the horrors coming down upon them whilst he was transfixed. Lucy, who got angry instead of scared, leaped down to the deck in front of her brother with a kind of barely-human snarl the second Jadis was vanished, arrows flying and dagger flashing, not missing a step when he reclaimed himself enough to join the battle. And of course the sea serpent didn’t scare her, or if it did it didn’t stop her firing an arrow clean into the creature’s head.

He had never had a head for archery. Fighting was a lot easier, in Edmund’s book, when you had a sword and ‘at something’ was a good enough direction to swing it in a pinch. Clearly Eustace agreed with him, since he had managed to break one on scales like stone. Maybe it was a particular madness of the Pevensie sisters, because Susan didn’t get scared either, always channelling it into doing something useful.

Lucy sat down next to him behind a lashed-together row of barrels. “You’re thinking too much.”

“You don’t think enough,” he said, on fourteen-to-fifty years of fraternal instinct more than conscious thought.

“Well one of us has to be impulsive. You’d never get anything done if we sat around waiting for you three to decide what to do next.”

“Usually, we’re sitting around arguing about whose turn it is to hold onto you by the collar, actually.”

She huffed indignantly through her nose. “It’s not like I’m ever leading you wrong. I remember quite a lot of I-told-you-sos, when we were here the first time. And the second time, for that matter.”

“Not this time?”

“This time, we’ve got Eustace instead of Peter and Susan. There’s no fun in it with you two, you just mope and he ignores me.”

“I don’t mope,” he protested, biting back the urge to cry hypocrisy. “I ponder.”

“Maybe when you were a grown-up you’re pondered. You’re a teenager again, and you’ve been moping an awful lot.”

Edmund laughed. “He’s getting a lot better,” he said, making the most of the lack of uncharitable urges while it lasted. This turned out to be only a few seconds. “Aunt Alberta will be furious.”

Lucy hummed in agreement, and then paused, flopping over onto him. “I still wish we had them instead. I was just thinking, before– before the island. I was thinking that Peter would know exactly how to handle Eustace. And how to talk to him now that he’s not such a terror. And Eustace would probably listen to him.”

“People do,” he agreed. For a moment they made equally crinkled-nose expressions of frustration in silence, both thinking of being a king and queen grown. “I was thinking that if Susan were here, she’d have an answer for everything.”

Lucy went quiet. “I’ve been having rather uncharitable thoughts about Susan lately,” she admitted after some time.

Edmund bit back his initial response, which would not have been helpful. Lucy didn’t sound like she expected him to have much of a good response, but it wasn’t like anyone else on the ship would have a better one. “Would it shock you at all to know that I have uncharitable thoughts about Susan almost every time I talk to her? Sometimes even just hearing Caspian mention her is enough to set me off.”

“Edmund!”

“Just yesterday we went past a rock that looked a bit like her and I thought, she’d be awfully smug if I told her I thought that.”

“I saw that rock!” Lucy exclaimed before she could catch herself, and then bit down on her grin. “And anyway, I don’t mean..”

When it seemed like she wasn’t going to find the right words, Edmund sighed. “I always rather imagine that Susan has as many uncharitable thoughts about me as I do about her. It’s the ones about Peter I feel guilty about.”

“He can be quite annoying when he thinks he’s right.”

“He always thinks he’s right. And in charge. Somehow it’s less irritating when you do it.”

“I do not!” She pushed herself off his shoulder, glaring. “You always think you’re right, too!”

“So does Susan,” he commented. “And Eustace. Clearly there’s an awful lot of pride in the blood on that side.”

“Maybe that’s what’s needed in Narnia. Noone here seems to think like that.”

“It can’t be too bad, then, can it?”

Lucy bit her lip again, looking all of nine. “Or we’re supposed to learn better.”

“We did learn better,” he pointed out. “At least, I did. Eustace has. And you grew up an awful lot, the first time.”

“We all did. But then…”

There was nothing to be said for being young again, but at least she looked pensive rather than upset.

“Come on,” Edmund said, pulling himself up. “I’m going to borrow you a sword. Eustace doesn’t look nearly as scared of you as he should be, after that shot. We’ll have a spar on the starboard deck.”

Lucy grinned, thwacking his arm as he pulled her after him, but didn’t argue.

[theimpossiblescheme]

The Last of the Fires

I didn’t think it was possible for me to be dragged even farther into Cyrano de Bergerac hell, but by God @nonchalantdanger found a way.  This alternate universe we’ve come up has already yielded some great results (I was already pretty proud of the first fic I wrote for it, and then reading the add-on... chills), so I thought I would take another whack at it.  This takes place a few hours after that add-on--the truth has come out, Cyrano and Roxanne have more than reconciled, and now Christian has to figure out his new place in the world... enjoy!

Another greasy campfire had been lit in the camp of the Gascony cadets, but this time they finally had something to cook over it.  Miraculously, Ragueneau was still pulling legs of lamb and whole partridges from his and Roxanne’s coach, which the soldiers accepted and devoured gleefully. Strains of old victory songs rang through the air, and at long last a few men could be heard to laugh.  Even de Guiche, sitting with a barely nibbled-at turkey breast by the fire, was smiling more than any of them had known him to smile. The relief of triumph over the Spanish was palpable, and it had touched everyone present, young and old.

Christian wished he could feel that relief so keenly.  Instead, sharp jabs of anxiety kept intruding, making it impossible for him to eat. He hadn’t seen Roxanne since he left her in the surgeon’s tent.  No doubt she’d talked to Cyrano… he couldn’t imagine what they might have said to each other, though.  Knowing Cyrano, he would deny everything—that he’d ever loved her, that he’d ever written a single letter, that he’d ever given Christian the smallest word to say—but Roxanne was in such a holy fury that Christian doubted very much that she would leave it at that.  Perhaps they’d spent the whole time arguing—that might explain her long absence, but it was hardly a comforting though.  Christian had seen both of them angry, and that was terrifying enough, but for them to be angry at each other… he’d never forgive himself for causing it.  Maybe he should have… no.  No, he was glad he’d said what he’d said.  It had hurt tremendously, but a greater hurt would be to stand in the way of their happiness.  The two people he cared for more than anyone else in the world.

Where that left him… he wasn’t sure yet.  But he supposed he’d find out in time.

The fire sputtered a bit, and Christian leaned forward to stir it back to life.  Through the flames, he could see a figure limping toward the camp, leaning heavily on an old walking stick.  Only when the figure turned in profile did Christian recognize him and smile in spite of himself.  Le Bret, though limping himself on his injured leg, turned away from one of the old supply wagons and raced toward him, pulling him into a fierce embrace.  After pulling apart, the two exchanged a few brief words, and Le Bret patted him on the shoulder before returning to his duties.  As he watched the figure grow closer, Christian felt his palms starting to sweat, the way they always did around… around her.  What would he say now?  What would he do?

Looking up, de Guiche’s lips curled in a small smirk, though this time it came without his usual contempt. “So you managed to survive after all, have you?”

Cyrano merely flashed him that dangerous grin before carefully lowering himself to sit nearby. “I had thought you would sound more disappointed.”

“Not necessarily.  Surprised, perhaps, given your endless barrage of gasconades just earlier today. You sounded quite content—excited, even—to die in battle.”

“Perhaps… but Providence has given me another task to complete.  I could hardly die leaving that great will so unsatisfied.”  Cyrano gave Christian a meaningful sideways look, and Christian felt a new chill run through him.  

“Mm.”  Peeling the skins away from the eaten parts of his turkey breast, de Guiche returned the rest of it to a nearby basket and stood, swiping a delicate hand over his ribbons.  “I must attend to what remains of our supplies.  See that this one stays out of trouble, Nuevillette.”  And he left the two men alone by the fire.

So.  “You have… spoken to Roxanne?” Christian ventured, balling his hands into fists and kneading them fitfully against his thighs.

“I have, yes.”

“And she said…?”

The slightest little disbelieving laugh huffed out of Cyrano as he struggled to repress a smile.  There was a look of… what could almost be described as peace in his eyes, a look Christian had never seen before.  “More than I could have dared to hope.”

“She loves you?”

“… Against all wisdom, against all possible odds… I would never have thought it possible unless I were to hear it from her lips.”  His expression changed as he looked back up at Christian.  “Though I fear she was rather uncharitable to you, my friend.”

“Why—what did she say?”

For what felt like far too long, Cyrano hesitated, gathering all his finely spun words into precisely the right web for the present moment.  “There was never a doubt in my mind,” he began, deliberately looking away and gazing toward the fire, “that your love for her, even in my borrowed declarations of the same, was sincere.  You were willing to give her up entirely, as I was, for her own happiness.  You say that I am your soul, but your own needs no embellishment of fine words and glib turns of phrase.  I decorate mine with small glories, but yours rings golden. And yet… she insisted, for my sake or for hers I cannot tell, that your marriage can be annulled.  That her love for you has cooled.  And I cannot help but think that rather unfair, after all you have done for her.”

Christian felt his hands twisting tighter.  He’d already cried once today, he couldn’t risk it again—not in front of Cyrano.  It was true, that same thought had crossed his mind. There were no witnesses to the marriage; it was unrecorded, uncelebrated, and unconsummated.  Throughout the siege, he’d entertained many a dream of returning home to Roxanne and curling up beside her under one blanket, finding her warm and willing… but no.  She would be making love to a shadow, and he would have to convince himself that she truly saw him every night, not some other man with a different voice.  Christian remembered that night under her balcony, her rapt silence as Cyrano practically sang to her in such words… he would never have thought of them himself, God knew, but they all rang so true.  “Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart.”  Perhaps he was a little in love with Cyrano’s words that night, too. He could feel that same bell pealing in his chest, crying the name of the woman he’d adored.

The woman he might never see again.

He forced a smile.  “Perhaps I should take a leaf out of your book. Learn to love from afar.”

“No.”  Cyrano’s voice was firm.  “I have endured that torture for as long as I can remember, even when we were children together.  There is no greater lingering pain than to love one who neglects or even refuses your very existence.  I would not wish that pain upon you.”

“I don’t want to stand in the way of your happiness, Cyrano.”

“And I have spent enough time hampering your own--”

“Stop.”  Christian ran a hand over his hair, fitfully pushing some of it back into his braid.  “I wanted to say this before, when the fighting first broke out... I don’t wish to be my own rival anymore.  And you have already given up so much for her.  You talk about being unfair to me, but neither of us have been fair to you.  She... she’s made her views perfectly clear, and if I--if I ever cared for her, I have to honor them.”  Roxanne was no prize for either of them to claim.  She had made her decision.  Both of them wanted her to be happy... it was as simple as that.

“But is this truly what you wish, Christian?”

“Yes.”  And he was surprised to find how much he meant it.  After everything the three of them had been through, somehow this felt inevitable.  Inevitable and only right.  This was as graceful an exit he could make on behalf of two people he loved in his own fashion.  “You... you have been my friend even when I have not treated you like one in return.  And I can’t lie to Roxanne any more than I already have.  Besides, she can’t marry two men.”

“Perhaps in a just world she might.”  It was Cyrano’s half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood, but his expression softened into something gentler as he clasped Christian’s shoulder.  “But in this one now, I promise you will love again.  You shall find someone who loves all that you are and not merely what you pretend to be.  Someone you will not feel the need to impress so constantly… you were placed in an unfair position from the very beginning, and I am sorry for it.  The love you deserve is safer and kinder than what you were granted.”

“Oh, I don’t regret any of it for a second,” Christian replied, shaking his head.  It occurred to him that neither of them had been so honest with each other before today, and it was almost embarrassing... and yet oddly freeing.  “This is--this is going to sound ridiculous, I know, and I’m sorry… but I don’t think I will ever be out of love with Roxanne.”

“No need to apologize.  In truth, I would never expect that. She is very easy to love, I’ve found.” A smile flickered back onto Cyrano’s face.  “Carry that torch if you must, my friend, but a day will come when you find it too heavy to bear, and you must set it down for another to bask in its glow.  And you will know that day that it no longer truly burns for her alone, and you shall be happy again.”

“...Do you really think that?”

“I do, or may I live another hundred years and never fight again.”

Christian considered his words.  Ever since that night in the theater, it seemed that Roxanne was the only woman in the world, but now... now the world had opened back up again.  And in so many words, Cyrano was urging him not to be afraid.  “I dearly hope you’re right…”  The idea of there being someone else out there in the world… as lovely as Roxanne, as brilliant, as spirited, but not quite as… well, intimidating.  Someone who could listen to Christian’s damned fool clumsy words and not turn him away… someone with whom he could be more than just a pretty face and a slow tongue… it seemed so inconceivable, a far-flung fantasy.  Yet Cyrano had said it with so much certainty.  And he’d feared almost the same thing, hadn’t he—that he was too ugly for any woman to love?  If he could be proven wrong… why not?  Yes, why not…?  “I should still like to speak to her before we leave.  If she will allow it, that is.”

“You shall have that chance, I promise you that as well. In the meantime…”  Planting his stick in the dirt before him and veering gently out of Christian’s reach, Cyrano rose slowly to his feet again.  “I promised Le Bret I would help organize our return to Paris.  You get some rest, and for pity’s sake eat something.”

“I will.  Thank you.”  Before he could stop himself, Christian’s hand shot out to catch Cyrano’s arm as he turned to go.  “I mean that… thank you.”  For understanding, for being there for so long, for giving him another chance... he could go on and on if only he could find the words.  Thankfully, Cyrano seemed to understand, nodding and giving Christian’s arm a brief squeeze of his own before limping off. Even on unsteady feet with shrapnel in his shoulder, the white plume of freedom floated above him, unspotted and ethereal.

Eventually the last of the campfire had guttered and stopped, and de Guiche had addressed his men one last time in the dark, detailing plans for their return to civilization and offering rather backhanded congratulations for their unlikely victory. Christian barely heard him—after the day he’d had, there was such a weariness in his bones that he could sleep for the next six years.  As everyone slumped back to their bedrolls and tents, Christian followed suit, unravelling his threadbare blanket from the cocoon he’d twisted it into the night before and pulling up his rucksack to use as a pillow.  But there was something laying over it: a note, folded three times. He unfolded it and read the familiar flowing script—obviously memorized and written down for posterity, and not for the first time.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments. Love is not love 

Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends with the remover to remove. 

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 

It is the star to every wand'ring bark, 

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle's compass come; 

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 

If this be error and upon me prov'd, 

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

Christian couldn’t help but smile.  Leave it to his friend to find the right words, even if they weren’t his own. Folding the note back up again and tucking it away for safekeeping, he curled up under his blanket and finally let himself relax.

[livlepretre]

ok wait i have some thoughts about acotar that you may or may not agree with... but basically i loved acotar/acomaf but hated acowar and i didn't even try to read acofas. there was a lot i hated about acowar but basically it sums up to 1) hated how sjm tried to retcon rhys into being this perfect amazing flawless person kind of destroying everything that was interesting about him in the first couple books. 2) THE EXTREMELY GRATUITOUS AND NUMEROUS SEX SCENES IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR. LIKE ??? oh god especially that one scene where feyre wakes rhys up by... yeah. 3) king of hybern fell so flat as a villain i was expecting to get more backstory or smthg on him but no he was just... there. and evil. for no real reason. and then they killed him. like... ok. 4) TAMLIN WAS SO OOC. AND I HATE HOW SHE VILLAINIZED HIM. i also find the whole fandoms take on tamlin to be very bland and ridiculous. like yeah he obviously was not the right person for feyre and he made some serious mistakes for which he should be held accountable, but he was traumatized too! he was a very flawed character but he's not a villain!!! that scene where he's like making rude sexual comments about feyre in front of everyone felt so ooc for him. hated it. 4) mor's coming out storyline was... very bizarrely handled, and frankly i just found it hard to believe that mor's sexuality was something sjm had planned from the start of the series. as a bi woman that whole plot just rubbed me the wrong way. anyway. ya those are my thoughts but i'm curious to know what u think about this series lolol

Oof complicated question. 

I think in general I come down positively on ACOTAR based mostly on the strength of the first 2 novels? I read ACOTAR and ACOMAF back to back right after ACOMAF came out, and let me tell you: I was obsessed. I was devastated. I was enthralled. It filled some very particular requirements for what I really wanted-- it was gorgeous and atmospheric and really frightening and romantic. I thought the characters were well developed, and I just thoroughly enjoyed the world-building with vicious alien faeries and the real sense of danger, as well as the magic and the breathtaking imagery. As a painter myself, I LOVED reading about painting in a way that felt so true to the actual experience of what it’s like-- so much rarer and harder to actually find than one would think-- ACOTAR and An Enchantment of Ravens are the only two novels I can think of that even grasp the experience. I loved Feyre as a human, loved loved loved the trials, and I loved how even after she became High Fae, there was an element to it that was incredibly disturbing-- the idea of having a human soul in a fae body, which meant that things that sort of roll off of the fae around her-- like violence and killing-- profoundly disturb her and wreck her soul. I loved that. (at least, that was how I interpreted the “be glad for your human heart” thing, and also why I assumed she didn’t recognize the mating bond... that maybe, as a human soul in a fae body, it would be lost in translation for her until it was actually consummated). 

One of the things I also really loved about ACOMAF was that it took everything in ACOTAR and subtly turned it on its side. At that point, I was used to 1st love = true love, so actually reading a narrative where a heroine could change partners was really refreshing, and I liked all the ways that, looking back, we could realize that Tamlin wasn’t it-- that he didn’t try to free her from Under the Mountain (wow that should have been obvious) or how he never offered to teach her to read in the 1st book. I also really liked Feyre’s observation that she needed to feel protected in the 1st book because of where she was coming from then, but that by the 2nd book, because of the trauma of her imprisonment, she felt smothered and trapped. I thought the 2nd book did a good job of showing how Tamlin and Feyre could be really trying to make their pieces fit together the way they once did, but they had both been too changed by their experiences to work and had in fact become poison for each other. They both had PTSD, and I felt that was clear in the narrative. And I was happy for Feyre to leave, I loved the exploration of her depression and her slow recovery, and I was okay with how Tamlin was presented in that way because there is a way in which he really was as helpless as her-- yes, his actions were abusive, but I didn’t think that came from having an abuser’s personality. The tragedy was in the fact that he was also suffering and screwed up, and that meant that Feyre had to leave for her own sake, and that Rhysand ended up being what she needed. 

I’ll put my problems with the series under the cut. 

My problems started in ACOWAR, and it was primarily a characterization problem with Feyre that bothered me. To be honest, SJ Maas has this thing where she makes her main characters (male and female) just the most extraordinary over the top horrendous bitches out of the blue and it’s just like what the fuck. I think she does it for drama, and while I love a cold bitch (NESTA IS MY QUEEN)... that’s not Feyre. Her actions in the Spring Court were so much crueler than I would have anticipated. And it bothered me the way that those actions hurt everyone there, which was wild to me, as it was her home once, and that’s not Feyre. She’s the girl so empathetic that she gave those water faeries her bracelet to use as tribute. That she mourned so hard it nearly broke her for those faeries she killed in her third task. The whole point of the 1st novel was that she started with hate in her heart, but that she’s naturally so empathetic when given a chance to think about anything other than bare survival that love comes rushing in. So, I really disliked Feyre being a bitch for the sake of being a bitch. She felt unrecognizable to me. I realized recently that part of this is that Feyre actually completes her character arc in the 2nd book-- at that point, she’s figured out who she is, gained peace, happiness, and empowerment through it, and found a home. She’s answered all of the conflict within herself, so there’s just not really anywhere for her character to go in the 3rd book, which is part of why she feels so weird as a pov character. 

There were other things of course. Rhys had lost that edge I loved in him so much. (what was the point of that prologue, btw?) This is a little thing but giving Lucien a last name really wrecked a lot of the wonderful strangeness of the world building and I resent it. Especially since no one else has a last name. Sarah was on the right track when she gave Rowan the last name “Whitethorn.” THAT is a faerie last name. I don’t know what this Vanserra stuff is. What else. Hybern was supes whatever. Feyre making bargains was pretty much what we’d seen before. I didn’t mind the sex scenes because that’s just what you can expect from an SJM novel, and I don’t really have any comments on Mor’s coming out story. I also suspect that she was originally written as straight in ACOMAF, but then SJM changed her mind while working on ACOWAR. I’m not going to fault her for attempting to write more inclusively and more diversely (which, as we know, is already not something she excels at). I did find the hook up with Lucien’s dad real awkward though for everyone involved though. YIKES. TOGAS. YIKES. SJM also does this thing in her finales where too much of the books tend to be about the battles and the actual war, and that’s not nearly as interesting as the character moments that might occur because of the war. 

So, that leaves my primary complaint, which is Tamlin. I kind of think that it’s not even a matter of him being OOC, so much as Feyre being completely hateful toward him. Like, I remember thinking he was wildly OOC when he was siding with Hybern, a human hater, as he had specifically said in the 1st book that he would always fight against that. I remember being THRILLED when it turned out that he was playing Hybern, and how disappointed he was in Feyre for ever thinking him capable of actually siding with Hybern and bringing up that conversation they had in ACOTAR. I also loved it when he helped her escape the POW camp, and when he told her to be happy at the end. But honestly, after Feyre fucked him over SO! HARD! in the beginning of the novel, not at all surprised that he showed up at that meeting ready to talk smack. I was on his side during that whole thing, because by that point, I was like, get wreckt Feyre. (Which KILLS ME because I LOVED Feyre in the first 2 books, I think SJM really does mistake just horrendous bitchiness with confidence or something? It just horrified and embarrassed me the whole novel). I really do hope that Tamlin gets some sort of arc going forward. I was so depressed by our visit in him in ACOFAS-- sitting alone in that crumbling manor. I think he actually does deserve a “redemption” arc, although I don’t think he actually has to be redeemed. 

On the subject of bitchy Feyre: I do NOT like the way she treats Nesta in ACOFAS. I guess we see that Feyre has an empathy problem in ACOTAR in that she totally misreads her sisters in the first few chapters and thinks of them in the most uncharitable light possible, and of course, once she decides she’s done with Tamlin, she always assumes the worst of him, but wow. The way she handles things with Nesta just horrifies me. I just can’t imagine treating my siblings like that, or extending them so little empathy. 

And ACOFAS made me think about building snowmen and other horrible fluffy things and it was not my favorite. 

But all this being said I know myself and I am definitely going to read A Court of Silver Flames. I think it might be really good, actually. 

[ante--meridiem]

How do you view Albus’ and Severus’ relationship? Do you think Albus’ genuinely cared for Severus’ or was he just - using him?

(Once again, disclaimer that I am working from memory and don't have the books on hand to double-check the details.)

Anon, thank you so much for asking, because this relationship is an absolute goldmine. My tl;dr is "it's a mess and I love that".

To start with though, I need to address the framing of your question. Because "genuinely cared" and "using" are not mutually exclusive categories, especially when it comes to Albus. Albus cares about people, just in general. He can be clumsy about showing it when it's too much for him, or when he's conflicted, or when he thinks he needs to hold back, but he undoubtedly cares. I don't say this often because I'm a big believer in the subjectivity of interpreting literature, but - any interpretation that says he doesn't is wrong, and probably deliberately misreading out of spite. (Am I being uncharitable here? Maybe. But I'm tired of reading some people's takes so I'm going to be uncharitable.)

People are Albus' greatest strength and he wins their loyalty not by manipulating them into following him but by genuinely caring about and understanding them. But he also knows what needs to be done, and is capable of distancing himself, and prefers to keep his cards very close to his chest - because he might care for people but he doesn't trust them. A lot of what gets deemed manipulative or "using" from him stems from his desire to take sole responsibility for things, and unwillingness to let other people in. He's warm to people but shuts down emotionally when it's too much or he's conflicted. He's never actually been the cold chessmaster fandom likes to paint him as. (Chessmaster? Yes. Cold? No.)

When Severus first approaches him, he's quite harsh with him. But at this point, as far as Albus knows, Severus is a Death Eater who's only interest is protecting Lily. (I firmly disagree with the interpretation that Lily is the only reason Severus ever did anything good, but she was his main concern at that time). His harshness doesn't show that he sees Severus as a tool to me, but quite the opposite - that he sees him as a person capable of growth, wants to see him grow and holds him to that standard. If he were a discardable tool, Albus would have just told him what he wanted to hear in order to win his loyalty. Instead he gives him what he needs - an anchor he can use to pull himself up. Albus places himself as a figure that can offer Severus forgiveness and absolution, and there's definitely a power imbalance there, and Severus probably resents it quite a bit, but he still latches on to it. Albus and Lily are probably the only two people in his life at that time who've ever seen him as someone worth expecting something from.

I don't think, at this point, that it's personal for Albus. I doubt he would turn away any Death Eater who genuinely wanted to change, and he is aware of the massive advantage that having a potential spy on his side would offer. He cares, but he's also in the middle of a war and has other people to protect who take priority. You could say he's using Severus to an extent - Severus is emotionally vulnerable and desperate, and Albus sees that and knows how to make use of it. A part of him is aware that he needs to use Severus and tries to keep an emotional distance. But his "making use of it" isn't so much calculated manipulation as offering Severus a way out, which Severus chooses to take.

Albus and Severus make excellent foils that both mirror and contrast each other. Albus plays the role of the hero (I say plays not because I don't consider him genuinely heroic but because it's a role he deliberately assumes for others even when he thinks he doesn't deserve it) because people need him to look up to, but also because it's hard to shatter the image others have of him. Severus plays the role of a villain out of practical necessity as a spy, but also because he's so used to it that it's easier and more comfortable than trying to change people's perception of him. Both are uncomfortable with emotional vulnerablity or letting people see behind that mask. Both are lonely and isolated and secretive. Both have a lot of guilt bottled up that they don't talk about. Both are willing to sacrifice themselves to win the war. And both harbour enough self-hatred that they probably strongly dislike seeing themselves reflected.

I wouldn't be surprised if Albus harbours a touch of envy towards Severus - if only subconsciously - because Severus got to rely on love to redeem himself, which is so far from Albus' own experience. And Severus almost certainly resents Albus for having seen him emotionally vulnerable and getting to hold the upper hand and remain a distant, unassailable figure. I think a part of each of them senses an emotional rawness in the other that they shy away from because it hits too close to home, so while they may care for each other they have too many rough edges between them to fully like or feel comfortable with one another. That's a part of why Albus can seem cold and harsh towards Severus; projection and a discomfort with intense emotion that's too similar to his own. There's also the fact that he knows Severus is in a precarious position and might have to be sacrificed. There is a slightly mercenary slant to their relationship - both know exactly what they want from the other, and what the other wants from them. And on Albus' side, I think he feels a certain fragility in his position over Severus - he's been playing a role that allows him to pass judgement, but he doesn't feel that role is fully deserved. But he never demands more of Severus than he'd demand of himself - and maybe seeing himself in Severus is what allows him to demand as much of Severus as he does of himself, which is a fairly high, unyielding bar. And this doesn't preclude emotional attachment to each other, and on Albus' side, while their similarities may make him want to keep an emotional distance they also, almost paradoxically, allow him to sympathise with and understand Severus.

And with all that, Albus does trust Severus by the end, which is something much rarer for him than simply caring for someone. Severus is the only one who knows the entirety of his plan. Severus is the only one who knows he's dying. By this point the dynamic of emotional vulnerablity has come full circle and Albus is desperate and forced to show vulnerablity. He hates showing weakness because he's always been the one that everyone - Severus included - has looked to for strength and certainty, but now he's willing to beg Severus to kill him. At the start, Severus needed Albus because he had no-one else to rely on. By the end that dynamic is flipped. If there's one thing I would define their relationship by, it's "vulnerablity and mutual reliance forced by circumstance" - but I think that circumstance leads to a situation where they understand and trust each other more than anyone else, however uncomfortable it might be for them.

[shellheadtm-a]

"Don't listen to Johnny. He's... not himself since he died. Hell changed him."

Tony has to physically bite back the uncharitable impulse to ask what was your first clue, because as far as he can see, while it certainly hasn’t done anything positive for Johnny in the slightest...Well.  Experiences with Ghost Riders in general haven’t exactly been a positive experience for the Avengers, have they?  Not until one joined the team.

“Oh, believe me, I’m not.  My ego is not so fragile and my skin is not so thin as to actually care.”  Besides, someone is always going to throw their war in his face from now until eternity, and maybe he deserves a lot of that, but after a while...It’s not that he doesn’t care.  But if he and Steve can move past it and forward, maybe everyone else needs to learn to, too.  They don’t have to like him.  They just have to get over themselves.

And part of that may be a little bravado, sure.  But then he’s fought Mephisto with a time gem in nothing but a suit made of ice, he’s been to Hell himself, abandoned there by Doom and made to face some of his very worst nightmares, confront the fact that yes, Howard had been exactly as awful as Tony had always thought, so pardon him for being harder to shake than that.  

Stark men - this one, at any rate - are made of iron.

“What I will worry about is the fact that he has the potential to be a great, big, nasty thorn in all our sides.  Look, I know it’s clubhouse rules between you two or whatever, but...”

@rcbctracing​ / just connected to hell things ig

[moonwaif]

Graphic by ao3commentoftheday

Soooo I was working on a story for w/ang/xian week but I don’t think I’ll be finishing it in time. Anyway, here’s the premise:

Wei Wuxian, the Cultivation World’s resident disaster, thinks it’s a good idea to set up his shijie with someone so that she’ll get over her hopeless crush on Jin Zixuan. He enlists the help of his BFF-and-totally-not-crush Lan Wangji, whose older brother Lan Xichen has just come out of conclusion and is the perfect candidate for Jiang Yanli. But chaos ensues when Wei Wuxian’s plan starts to run afoul. Are- are his shijie and Lan Zhan falling for each other?!

Aka, the one where Wei Wuxian jumps to the wrong conclusion like it’s an Olympic sport and he’s a professional athlete. 

Aka, the Emma!AU.

Here’s a very unedited excerpt:

Growing up, Wei Wuxian was always the life of the party. Now, as the Yiling Patriarch, he’s far more content to just sit with Lan Wangji after the party is over. Although “sit” might not be the most accurate description, at least not at the moment. Right now, full and sleepy and perhaps just a bit tipsy after the wedding banquet, Wei Wuxian prefers to lay down. On the floor, to be specific, rolled over onto his side, chin propped on his hand so that he can gaze up at Lan Wangji’s face in the candlelight.

“You’re the only one here who isn’t afraid to talk to me, Lan Zhan.” He tosses back another cup of wine, then slams it on the low table between them. “Everyone probably thinks I’ve got you possessed.”

Lan Wangji takes the cup and refills it. “Not Luo Qingyang.”

“Heh. That’s different. Of course she’s glad to see me. After all, I’m the whole reason she’s getting married.”

Lan Wangji raises a brow. His skepticism causes Wei Wuxian to sigh.

“Come on, Lan Zhan--think about it. If it weren’t for me rescuing the Wen remnants, Mianmian would have never defected from the Jin sect. And if she’d never deflected from the Jin sect, then she never would have met her husband. In a way, it’s like I helped match them!”

“Mn. Luo Qingyang must be grateful.”

Wei Wuxian shoots him a sour glance, but doesn’t argue further. His gaze drifts thoughtfully. “Not only did Mianmian get married, she was even able to reunite with the Jin sect. It’s a happy ending, right? It’s really too bad . . .”

Lan Wangji frowns. “What is too bad?”

“That Jin Zixuan is here!” Wei Wuxian bursts out. “Did you see Mianmian and her husband thanking him? What for? He should be thanking them for even wanting to rejoin his stupid sect! Ugh, he thinks he’s so great, just because he’s the Chief Cultivator. All those people flocking around him all night, just trying to marry off their daughters--he didn’t spare them a single look! I can’t stand that peacock! What does shijie see in him?!”

“Many admire the Chief Cultivator,” Lan Wangji says politely, after a pause. “He is a man of culture and refinement.”

Wei Wuxian nearly chokes. “Refinement?” he repeats incredulously. “Lan Zhan, since when did you get so flowery with your praise? Didn’t you see how he treated my shijie at the banquet? She greeted him, and he barely mumbled a word to her in response. He was so stiff and uncharitable. I guess he still thinks he’s too good for her. Well up his, I say! Only a fool wouldn’t recognize my shijie’s peerless qualities. Even the corner of her handkerchief is too good for him. If Jiang Cheng hadn’t stopped me, I would’ve knocked that peacock down a peg or too tonight, dammit.”

Wei Wuxian pauses his tirade to pour more wine down his throat. Lan Wangji watches him drink, eyes moving to Wei Wuxian’s mouth as he swallows, smacking his lips with relish.

“And you know what else bugs me?” Wei Wuxian continues. “As if his head isn’t already big enough, everyone goes around acting like he’s the hero. The sects throw all these banquets and conferences in his honor when in reality, it was your hard work and investigation that brought everything to light, Lan Zhan!”

Wei Wuxian doesn’t need to explain. He can only be referring to one thing, after all--the assassination of Jin Guangshan, the attempted murder of Jin Zixuan, and the fiasco that was Jin Guangyao’s betrayal. Lan Wangji sighs. He reaches for the jar of wine and pours Wei Wuxian another cup. “Wei Ying’s hard work, too.”

“Pfft. Yeah right,” Wei Wuxian mutters. “We both know I wasn’t good for much back then . . .”

Lan Wangji’s face darkens. Wei Wuxian knows what he’s thinking. He must be remembering Wei Wuxian’s meltdown, how he almost lost control. Better yet, how he almost played right into Jin Guangyao’s hands. If it hadn’t been for Lan Wangji’s--and Wen Qing’s--quick thinking, Wei Wuxian would never have been able to clear his name from the Curse of 1000 Holes. At least, not while he still had the Stygian Tiger Amulet pumping his body full of resentful energy day in and day out.

‘I owe Lan Zhan everything,’ he thinks to himself.

In the past, that thought would have bothered him. After all, Wei Wuxian hates being indebted, even though it’s been the constant state of his life as far back as he can remember. First he was indebted to the Jiangs for saving him from the streets, then the Wen siblings for rescuing him and his shidi. Now he’s indebted to Lan Wangji for--well, for everything, basically. But oddly enough, he doesn’t mind. 

Trying to pay Lan Wangji back doesn’t sound like such a bad way to spend the rest of his life.

“What is it?” Lan Wangji asks, concerned. Wei Wuxian smiles.

“Nothing. I was just thinking. You really are amazing, Lan Zhan. How come you’re still a bachelor?”

Normally, Lan Wangji would dismiss this kind of frivolous question. Tonight, he seems to really consider.

“I am satisfied,” he says at last. “What about Wei Ying?”

“Ha! The answer is obvious. Who in their right mind would have me?” This time, Wei Wuxian drinks straight from the jar. “Besides, isn’t marriage just tying yourself down? What’s the point?”

“Companionship,” Lan Wangji answers. “Security. Affection.”

Wei Wuxian raises a brow. “Lan Zhan, how long have you been such a romantic? Since when have you been holding out on me?”

Lan Wangji’s ears redden, but he says nothing. Wei Wuxian smirks. He goes back for another drink, then frowns. The jar is empty.

Sighing, Lan Wangji reaches behind himself to retrieve another jar. Wei Wuxian takes it with a grin.

“Anyway, Lan Zhan--I have an idea. Since I helped Mianmian and her husband get together--” Lan Wangji frowns. Wei Wuxian keeps going. “--this time I’m going to do the same thing for my shijie. With a little nudge in the right direction, I think she’ll finally be able to let go of Jin Zixuan.”

“Letting go is difficult,” Lan Wangji cautions. “Sometimes, impossible.”

Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes. “That’s just because Shijie won’t even give anyone else a chance! Look, Lan Zhan--I don’t want her pining after someone who doesn’t even notice her. Who doesn’t even deserve her! She’s spent her whole life looking out for me. It’s time I finally stepped up and took care of her, too. That’s why I’ve picked out the perfect candidate for her cultivation partner!” 

“Who?”

Wei Wuxian smiles mysteriously. “Someone who’s gentle, but also strong and protective. Someone who’s wealthy and powerful, but humble, with a kind heart. Someone who knows how to take matters seriously, but who also has a good sense of humor. Better yet, someone famous for his good looks! Can you guess who it is?”

Lan Wangji blinks, expressionless. Wei Wuxian lets the suspense build for a few more moments, then throws his head back and laughs.

“Who else? It’s your brother, Zewu Jun!”

All things considered, Lan Wangji receives this declaration fairly well. “Brother just recently exited seclusion,” he says, after a beat of silence.

“Then what better way to help him move past his grief than by bringing love into his life? Think about it, Lan Zhan. Wouldn’t they make a beautiful couple?”

Lan Wangji tries again. “Brother has no intentions to marry.”

“Just wait until Zewu Jun gets to know my shijie,” Wei Wuxian scoffs. “I’m sure that’ll change. Unless you don’t think my shijie is good enough for him?”

Lan Wangji knows better than to take the bait. “Do not trifle with matters of the heart.”

Wei Wuxian gapes at him. “Wow. Lan Zhan, did you get that from a poem? Anyway, are you going to help me or not?”

Lan Wangji lowers his gaze, resigned. “I will help.”

TBC..........

[radiqueer]

I read Natalie’s endnotes to the aesthetic and this is disturbing the fuck out of me so here are some. rambly thoughts I guess. people are welcome to add to this if they like

first she goes “this video is primarily about trans women” and like. caveat that I am not a trans woman, I’m nonbinary & afab so that’s not an experience I have access to in any way. so keep that in mind I guess

I wanted to show a wider audience the way trans people talk about gender amongst ourselves

look...I’m not an expert on trans people or anything but I watched the aesthetic and I can tell you that that’s not how trans people talk about gender. at least, I’ve never known them to. I’ve never participated in a conversation about gender that works that way. 

....no wait. I have. I’ve seen truscum talk about gender, and the way Justine talks pretty much mirrors the way truscum talk. 

I wanted to work through some of my private doubts about common explanations of what it means to be trans

I can’t argue with that.

I also wanted to reconcile the existence of a devoted Tabby fandom with my having created the character as a caricature of leftist ineffectiveness

I mean. how do I say this. I’ve been thinking about the difference between revolutionaries and incrementalists, and it’s clear to me that they need each other. but throughout the video, the way Justine treats Tabby mirrors the way incrementalists treat revolutionaries; as laughable, disposable, pitiable. like they’re caricatures of themselves. 

I had to google what veracity means. 

Some non-binary people disliked this video because they felt that the dialogue excluded or invalidated them. Whereas most of the feedback I got from binary trans people is positive. Which, fair enough—this is a video about binary trans women.

look...I try not to be like “binary privilege” and stuff because when it comes to trans people that concept becomes increasingly incoherent but how else do I talk about how it feels to be a nonbinary person watching that video, listening to people harp on and on about passing, when I myself will never pass? not just because I’m brown even though that plays into it - white people remain the standard of nonbinary presentation and aesthetics - I won’t ever pass. people are never going to look at me and think “oh, nonbinary” because that identity is not articulated in mainstream society at all. and I have to live in mainstream society, right, even as a marginalized person I still exist in the same spaces as other people. 

it feels like this is basically going “articulation of a binary trans identity has to exclude and invalidate nonbinary people” which is how you get truscum. it’s literally. the same thought process. 

I feel like I'm being grossly misunderstood by NBs when they characterize the desire to pass, Justine's point of view, as "respectability politics."

nonbinary people are not characterizing Justine’s (or Natalie’s) desire to pass as respectability politics. they’re characterizing Justine’s efforts to police Tabby’s presentation, and by association the presentation of all trans people who “fail to pass” (scare quotes because Tabby passes just fcking fine) as respectability politics. you can’t misrepresent our position and then accuse us of misrepresenting you. holy shit. 

My wearing long hair, makeup, changing my voice, generally softening my confrontation with the world is nothing like e.g. a black man wearing a suit and speaking in "white voice." I'm not doing "woman voice" to please cis people. I'm doing it because I want to be a woman.

oh god this is a mess. this is such a goddamn mess. starting with that simile I guess but omg Natalie. who the fuck decides what “woman voice” is? why is that song-and-dance necessary to be trans and to be a woman? like if you want to do it for yourself then that’s fine, but trans people remain trans even when denied the ability to perform their real gender. a trans man who is forced by circumstance to wear dresses and heels and makeup when he desperately does not want to is still a trans man. equating your transness with your desire to pass is just, straight up truscum shit. this is why people are calling you a transmed. 

Cis women understand this deeply. They know that they aren't oppressed as women because they psychologically identify as women. They know that misogyny is foisted upon them regardless of their psychology, so long as society views them as women. Trans men escape misogyny to some degree—generally to the degree that society views and accepts them as men. And trans women are in the sad situation of having to claw our way into a social position where we begin to experience misogyny.

dskjhvdkjfhkfdgdslg this is another mess. 

trans women do not have to “claw their way into a social position where they begin to experience misogyny” they already experience misogyny by virtue of being women. a woman who looks like a man is still experiencing the world as a woman. she’s still being affected by the things which affect women. 

trans men are harder to parse because trans men who fail to pass experience misogyny and the associated violence in addition to violence for refusing to conform to their assigned gender. but they’re experiencing all of these things through denial of their real identity. and that colours their experiences to a great degree. additionally, the social aspect of trans manhood is very, very conditional because manhood, even for cis men, is very conditional and highly gatekept. it’s very hard for trans men to access these structures and weaponise them against others outside of like...a tiny bubble saturated with queerness. to simplify, they’re men without privilege. 

It's not psychological identity that makes this happen. It's the interpersonal recognition that comes about as a result of habitually living/performing the identity. Let's be good leftist materialists here.

I don’t know what kind of materialism it is to reject the realness of the mind, of our emotions and experiences, of our internality. I don’t know much about materialism, but if it leads to takes like this I’m not sure I want to. the internet and what happens on it is real. the mind (or brain, or whatever the goopy shit in your head that lets you be a person is, whatever you wanna call it) and the thoughts and emotions it experiences are real. I feel so stupid arguing this. I feel like I’m trying to teach someone that 2+2=4 but I have to start by convincing them that numbers are real. it’s degrading. 

Before I transitioned I identified as genderqueer for a while. I presented basically as what used to be called a male transvestite. People were sometimes shitty about that, but my coming out with the NB identity was greeted mainly by, "sure, whatever bro, wear whatever you want." I found that as an AMAB NB, I was for most intents and purposes—socially, structurally, materially—still a man.

I don’t want to explain someone’s experiences to them but that’s them dismissing the reality of your nonbinary identity. and because you were and are a massively privileged person in every other way. 

surely an account that begins and ends with "I'm not a man because I don't identify as one" is pretty weak.

[uncharitability cw] I mean. sure. lets all set out to prove why we deserve to exist. that’s a good use of the trans community’s time, because we don’t do that enough in our private lives. lets make it the only story we tell. brilliant plan. and then everyone clapped. 

okay and then she goes on for a bit about the relationship between Tabby and Justine, which is fine. they’re good characters. if they were 100% fictional I would write fic for them. thanks for the extra content, I guess. 

The most hurtful things Justine says are my confessions. I have no security in "feeling like a woman." I feel like I'm desperately trying to be a woman though confronted by endless obstacles. It's a shadow that hangs over me every moment of every day. But these are just some feelings I have. I don't have opinions.

I don’t like telling people that they need to cope in private but if you’re coping then the content that you create to cope with your feelings and insecurities needs to be separate from your activism. conflating the two is a really bad idea and I have about 4 years worth of fandom drama on tumblr dot hell to show for it. bad things happen when people look at someone working through their emotions and trauma and go “oh yes, are these your politics?” and worse things happen when you do that to yourself and then you end up being invited to ted talks and fuck a whole bunch of people over. 

I keep trying not to talk about contrapoints because it serves no purpose and leads nowhere - she’s not going to change. but on some level talking about it helps me and maybe someone wants to hear me talk about it I fucking Guess.

this is okay to reblog, and written entirely in response to those tweets. if you’ve got additional responses to those tweets or want to talk about something I said, feel free. but if you’re going to come here and defend contrapoints, then save it. I’ll block you at best. there are times when I can have a rational, nuanced conversation about this but I won’t ever on this post because that’s not what this post is for. 

[davidmann95]

Man of steel #5?

Afraid to report that it’s still that good Superman shit. It’s still energetic and funny and big and emotional and dramatic, and Adam Hughes is evidently a living deity -he mentioned he isn’t often given action scenes, and what the fuck is wrong with you, every writer who doesn’t give him action scenes? There were admittedly a pair of lines from Wonder Woman and Flash that grated for me at first, but Diana’s makes sense given she probably thinks she’s about to throw down right that minute, and Barry’s would sound right coming out of Ezra Miller’s mouth so I assume that’s where Bendis was coming from.

And now, on to reader complaints! I’ll try and keep this spoiler light, but to a certain extent it’s obviously inevitable.

Anonymous said: So, a lot of people are calling “bullshit” on Jon being so eager to travel the universe alone with the creepy man.

It is a bit odd to think of a kid raised by Clark Kent leaving home on a moment’s notice to go on a wild, likely dangerous journey away from his loving parents purely for the sake of adventure and discovery. But at the same time it’s the easiest thing in the WORLD to imagine a kid raised by Lois Lane doing that, so I’d say it balances out. And look, it is his grandfather - who I don’t think he was briefed on the full actions of during The Oz Effect - the kid loves space, Lois and Clark buckling down hard on it not being up to him surely got him feeling resentful, and at the end of the day, he’s 10-11 years old. I didn’t especially find it out of character at all.

Also, a friend pointed out we’ve now got a morally murky science-bastard zipping back into his kid’s life to recruit his impressionable grandson into inadvisable cosmic adventures, and boy, I have to actually wonder if Bendis had the obvious point of comparison in mind.

“Johnny! I, I-I-Iuuuh exposed myself to Red Kryptonite! The pricks on the science council and my ungrateful son said never to do that, but they were fools, Johnny, fools! They didn’t believe in real science, Johnny, not like me! It gave me a giant red ant head! I’m giant red ant head Jor-Eeeeeeeeel, bay-bee!”

Anonymous said: Prediction: We still won’t know what’s up with Zar and Krypton by the end of the mini and Jon and Lois plot won’t be resolved. If you think that’s silly, remember: Ultimate Doomsday. THREE seperate minis for a six-issue story, with no explanation why Reed Richards turned evil for TWELVE issues specifically about him turning evil.

Frankly, I’m fine if this whole mini ends up purely the overture to his Superman and Action Comics runs rather than a proper first act so long as they keep delivering.

Anonymous said: After this issue of Man of Steel Clark deserves to get dumped by Lois and it would be understandable if she never talked to him again

Okay. Deep sigh. Rubbing my temples. Okay. Okay.

SO, you’re far from the only one I’ve seen at least proposing that’s a totally reasonable reading of that scene, or even in fact the obvious one. And this is the part where I lay out a reasonable, stern but calm argument to the contrary! And maybe at the end affix a little qualifier noting I understand everyone’s concerns and I’m not out to discredit what anyone else might take away from it!

But look.

Even claiming Superman was totally into Melody Moore flirting with him in the first issue, while in my opinion a reading so uncharitable as to border on disingenuous, was at least rooted in the two of them getting some banter going and him smirking when she accidentally let slip she thought he was cute. It’s a pretty bad-faith assumption, but it’s not rooted in nothing whatsoever.

If you look at those three panels up above and think “this is clearly the face of a dude who’s actually decided he’s fine with this whole situation, and will in fact fight for it in the face of his wife’s objections”? Straight up, no caveats - either you have never seen a human face make expressions in accordance with emotions before (or you have what’s apparently termed expressive agnosia, in which case none of what I’m about to say applies to you), or you are actively lying to yourself to justify further hating this comic. That is nonsense. That is not simply ignoring what is plainly on the page, it is willfully distorting it and indeed reversing the unavoidably obvious message it conveys. That is a dude who is shocked and then switching into simmering anger, and the very suggestion that it’s even potentially meant to express some kind of fatherly pride and approval is unvarnished, unequivocal grade-A horseshit. Little six-year-old, not-yet-getting-treatment-for-Aspergers me would not come close to mixing those two up, and you all are presumably in at least young adulthood.

It is no one’s job to like this comic in the very slightest. If absolutely everything contained within those pages pisses you off, fine, whatever, no accounting for tastes, hope you find something closer to yours. And I’d be the last to deny that Brian Bendis has written some crap comics in the last several years; my optimism for this book, while absolutely present and bolstered by no small degree of hope and longing for it to work out, was very much reinforced by caution, and I remain surprised how well it’s working out, at least for me. And I’ve spent the last couple years myself making clear how much the actual storytelling of the Rebirth books did nothing for me, so I can sympathize with the grousing. But guys, gals, others. C’mon, everybody. Look at that and remember how faces work, and have the dignity to, if you need to keep coming at this comic, do it in response to something *actually in there* next time.

[metaformers]

Megatron and Abuse

I’ve spent months emotionally gearing myself up to make this Megatron meta post. It will contain mentions of real life abuse--verbal, emotional, physical, sexual--from my own life, as well as links to sites that discuss said topics. There will be a focus on emotional and narcissistic abuse, as that is the kind I have the most experience with--and the kind I most see Megatron perpetuating in More than Meets the Eye.

I understand that many people identify with Megatron. It may be best for you to skip this post if you count yourself among them. I want to be clear that this is my reading of the character, and I do not fault others for reading him differently; I’m not going to go after anyone for liking him or shipping him with people. It’s fiction. Do what makes you feel safe and happy. I can guarantee you are not the first to block me for saying I believe Megatron is abusive.

If you are interested in reading about why I, personally, view Megatron in this light, I would like to make one final request. This subject matter is extremely personal. I have spent four and a half years in therapy, but this still affects me powerfully. If you find yourself getting the urge to argue with me, please keep in mind that I will not be responding to comments for my own health.

So why am I posting? Because I have seen no discussion of this in fandom. When Megatron’s abusive behavior is described, it is invariably treated as a thing of the past, not the present. And I think that multiple views of a character in fandom lead to richer interpretations in fanworks and other meta.

And, with that, we’re off to the races.

(Note: This post is over 18k words long and contains over 70 images. If you would prefer to read this as a Google Doc, use this link. I recommend going to the View dropdown and un-toggling Print Layout if you do so. If you would rather read this as a Tumblr post, please use the read more below. The Google Doc may be better if you would like to use a functional outline navigation system or if Tumblr’s habit of stretching images bothers you.) 

***

First things first: abuse is cyclical. An abuser is not always going to be abusing someone--if they did, no one would ever tolerate the mistreatment. When times were relatively good, my mother and I would crack jokes. My ex would hold my hand and tell me cheesy pickup lines. This is known as the ‘honeymoon’ or ‘idealization’ stage of the abuse cycle, and it is as much a fixture of abuse as the tension-building and abuse phases.

If an abusive relationship never left the abuse stage, no one would ever tolerate it. No one would stay. So violence must be rationed, and after each new outburst, the abuser is likely to promise that--this time for sure--it will never happen again. They then ‘prove’ it with a honeymoon period and the cycle turns anew.

As a result, there is no way to point at one instance of kindness and say that someone isn’t actually abusive. It is likewise not generally possible to point to one instance of cruelty and call it abuse. Abuse is almost never a one-time thing. As a result, I’ve gathered examples from throughout season two of MTMTE and from the latest issue of Lost Light.

Since it’s the most clear and unambiguous example of Megatron’s abuse, I’m going to be singling out one particular relationship--the one between Megatron and Rodimus.

RODIMUS

To help me structure the problems I have with Megatron’s treatment of Rodimus in the time since the Lost Light left Cybertron, I’m going to borrow text from Psych Central’s “Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” article as well as tactics mentioned in their “Signs of Emotional Abuse” article and my own experiences.

Degradation

This is perhaps the most obvious type of abuse Megatron commits. He constantly belittles and demeans Rodimus. On the surface, it may at times seem justified. A minor comment on a fair annoyance.

Here he calls the Rodpod a vanity project, for instance. Getaway does much the same. But we know--and he likely has been told--that this wasn’t a vanity project. This was a gift from the crew to Rodimus.

It’s easy to forget. There’s no clear origin for the Rodpod before it was rebuilt, and, frankly? It’s not important. Whether it was a gift or something he had built, this is a privately owned ship, and this is a possession that clearly means something to Rodimus.

I grew up in the 90s, and I had a lot of tacky plushies and furbies and beanie babies--all extremely easy to mock, especially as I got older and they remained sentimental. Even when I wasn’t a kid anymore, I wanted to hold onto these things, and I think that’s understandable. If I’d lost my neon purple stuffed frog and had gotten a replacement as a gift, it would have been an easy avenue of casual attack. As it was, I mostly got, ‘Are you seriously keeping this ratty old thing?’ about anything that reminded me of happier times. It was always a coded jab at me, a deliberate forgetting of where a gift had come from or why I might want to remember.

This hits me especially hard since everything Megatron says here? Is an uncharitable lie. But believable lies have a way of spreading and turning into a commonly held ‘truth’--and Getaway later cites the Rodpod as a reason that Rodimus deserved to lose everything.

Which, ultimately, is the goal of abuse--start small and build until you can justify anything because of their ‘bad behavior.’

But, of course, this particular comment is targeted at a different audience, intended to undermine Rodimus’ standing with the crew and change the story to something that makes it seem as though Rodimus is squandering quest resources on trivial items.

Much of the time, the audience for Megatron’s comments is Rodimus himself--wearing at his already thin self-esteem and feeding the self-hatred we’ve seen him manifest throughout the series. (If you doubt either of those assertions, I plan to write meta about Rodimus later on. For now, I ask that you remember that he self-harmed by carving the results of the vote into his palm--explicitly so he would always know how many people didn’t want him there.)

Actually, for further confirmation, let’s take it to canon:

While he ‘admits’ to thinking he’s better than everyone else after having a very direct cry for help shot down with an insult, I hesitate to say this indicates in any capacity that his self-esteem is fine.

You see, I’ve been accused of the same. Literally--to the point where this exchange with Ratchet made me sick the first time I read it. How else is Rodimus supposed to respond to this kind of jab, especially when he’s in the middle of handling a crisis?

To me, the willingness to accept as ‘true’ something that directly contradicts his own experiences, especially coupled with the reassurance-seeking behaviors and low self-esteem, makes him especially vulnerable to emotional and verbal abuse.

And so, let’s turn our focus to Rodimus himself and answer the questions posed by the article to see how well Megatron’s behavior holds up.

Do they tell you that your opinion or feelings are “wrong?”

Without any warning of what to expect, Rodimus was presented with his own corpse--which has half its brain sliced out. They specifically didn’t tell him why they were calling him in, which I can’t imagine helped soften the horror. He’s in a very reasonable state of shock.

And there’s Megatron calling his reaction tiresome, even though his eventual reaction when faced with the spectre of his own death is to scream and punch Perceptor. Rodimus is just quietly attempting to come to grips with an upsetting situation, not hurting anyone by taking a moment to process.

But, of course, he isn’t allowed to process. Megatron is the captain of this ship, and he expects everyone else to handle their feelings quickly and efficiently, even if he never does.

This is a hallmark of narcissistic abuse--considering one’s own feelings bigger, more important, more valid than those of others. And it’s fully in line with the dynamic, too, to attempt to invalidate said feelings by emphasizing one’s role as an authority over the victim.

“Don’t you think, as your mother, it’s fair to expect a little consideration?” might have been fair if the consideration hadn’t involved her demanding things I’d already done for her--which she promptly pretended I hadn’t done, or that I’d done them improperly, or that I hadn’t adequately managed my emotions while doing them.

It’s patronizing enough from a parent. From someone who shares the same rank as you? It’s condescending in the extreme--not to mention entitled.

Do they belittle your accomplishments, your aspirations, your plans or even who you are?

But, of course, Megatron doesn’t respect Rodimus’ rank. Rodimus owns this ship--Drift purchased it as a neutral vessel and I would be genuinely shocked if he didn’t insist on signing it over to Rodimus after convincing Rodimus to let him take the fall. This ship? This is his ship. Optimus had no right to set Megatron up as captain; he didn’t even have the right to forcibly install him on the crew roster.

In fact, if you’ll pardon the brief aside, Rodimus had very fair misgivings about allowing Megatron onto the Lost Light.

Rodimus points out that Megatron is dangerous--this is undeniably true, no matter what your stance is on his character. And Ratchet responds by lying to Rodimus to convince him to let a powerful criminal aboard. Which is, ironically, the same thing that kicked off season one--only this time it’s Megatron instead of Overlord.

Personally, I think that this shows Rodimus has learned his lesson and is trying to avoid a repeat of that particular disaster.

He also offers a great insight into why Optimus is cooking up this outrageous plan:

And, although this is just conjecture, I think that this is part of why Megatron targets Rodimus. He can be insightful--especially when it comes to people and their motivations. This makes him a threat to Megatron’s otherwise nearly unchecked power as captain of this ship. However, he is also susceptible to manipulation, as we saw with Prowl.

Megatron is extremely intelligent and very good at manipulating others; he plays a long game, as Ravage walked us through at the end of DotL. And with the idea that Rodimus tried to bar him from his ‘rightful place’ at the helm of this ship, with the idea that Rodimus was the one chosen by the crew to be captain, I would like to return to the panel at hand...

Here we hear Megatron say--exasperated, belittling--“How many times?” As if this argument should be concluded by now, and Rodimus is being childish to keep forcing the issue.

I’ve heard this exact line in this exact tone too many times from multiple abusers. How many times would I dare to defy them? I wasn’t trying to be defiant; as Rodimus just did, I reminded them of an inconvenient (for them) fact, one they wanted to convince me wasn’t true. I doubt I could list every iteration of this I’ve seen in real life.

This is not something you say to an equal when discussing something that is objective fact. Rodimus is the co-captain, much as Megatron wishes to deny it.

And he continues to deny it. It’s not a real rank. It’s a made-up rank. He is the one true captain, and Rodimus is a recalcitrant second-in-command in denial. Megatron doesn’t have the best track record with those--which Rodimus would be fully aware of. I refuse to believe that the Autobots never saw footage of Starscream’s treatment at Megatron’s hands.

So I think that it makes sense that, rather than push farther when Megatron has already raised his voice, Rodimus redirects. This was a tactic I, too, used to avoid moving from the tension-building phase to the abuse phase in my own relationships.

Do they regularly ridicule, dismiss, disregard your opinions, thoughts, suggestions, and feelings?

This is a pretty obvious example of ridiculing someone’s feelings--and it’s another dig following right on the heels of the last two. Although all three are relatively small, the fact that they come one after another, basically coloring every statement Megatron makes, feels uncomfortably familiar to me.

Even if these are justifiable complaints--which I don’t believe they are, but I recognize they may be open to interpretation--the steady build-up is worrying.

My mother did much the same thing. One mild example was that she would tell me to go wash my face--I had acne, so this could have been reasonable advice. However, it slowly escalated until every time she saw my face, she would suck her breath in between her teeth and cringe. “Go wash your face!” If I complied immediately, there was no reward beyond, “See, isn’t that better?” (Which it wasn’t--the repeated scrubbing made my acne substantially worse.) And even then, within an hour, she would repeat the comment.

And if I didn’t comply? She would keep cringing and insisting until she brought acne pads over to physically drop on top of me before walking off with a smug smile. This despite the fact I was bathing twice a day and scrubbing with one to four of those pads a day. (No wonder my acne got worse, right?)

So when I see these types of minor but incessant insults--nothing big enough that any onlookers would feel comfortable defending Rodimus, nothing serious enough to justify lashing out--it rings alarm bells in my mind.

Furthermore, Rodimus turns away, but Megatron looms right behind him. I find the body language of this interesting--even when Rodimus approached previously, he left roughly an arm’s length between them--enough to not really be getting into Megatron’s bubble despite his frustration. It may be an angle thing, but it seems as though Megatron is closing that distance, subtly physically intimidating Rodimus. He’s closer still in the next panel:

Much less than the almost-arm’s length that Rodimus gave him--and he’s much larger than Rodimus, not to mention more powerful, which means that his physical presence alone can be a weapon. Healing Abuse Working for Change, an abuse prevention group founded in the 70s, specifies “looming over you, getting ‘in your face’ or blocking a doorway” as a variety of physical abuse (source).

Rodimus may have approached Megatron, but he respected Megatron’s space. Megatron did not return the favor--particularly when escalating his ridicule and getting increasingly aggressive in terms of tone and expression.

I’ll discuss other aspects of this panel in a later section--for now I want to focus on the intimidation and the way he insists that it is impossible for Rodimus to do something as adult as ‘take stock’--he is capable of it, but clearly Rodimus is not.

Why? He doesn’t need to state it explicitly; his previous comments are explanation enough. Rodimus is childish for not tailoring his emotional reaction to a traumatic scene to suit Megatron’s needs--and for not conceding the argument to Megatron and arguing about facts.

And when Rodimus turns back to look back at his own corpse?

When you complain do they say that “it was just a joke” and that you are too sensitive?

Rodimus’ head is bowed, and he looks resigned to me. Another red flag, since that was usually how I reacted to that particular brand of abuse, particularly when my ex or mother got into my personal bubble. If I didn’t shut down and comply, I ran the risk of inciting something worse.

Especially coupled with yet another dig at his emotional maturity and sensitivity, this conclusion to their altercation leaves me queasy.

If you have never been in a relationship where this is the norm, it can be hard to fathom exactly how taxing it is. You think that, if it were bad enough, you would notice. You would leave. But none of these comments are quite unreasonable enough to prompt a full-blown fight; none of them are hills worth dying on, particularly for someone who already has (hidden) self-esteem issues.

I’ve heard a metaphor for situations like these. If you place a frog in a boiling pot, they’ll jump out immediately. But if you place them in cool water and gradually turn up the heat, they get used to it. Eventually, they boil--because they were trained to tolerate minor abuses along the way.

Over time, in an environment where nonstop digs are normalized, they become background radiation. Rodimus turns away, unable to fight back against any single point aside from the few attempts at fact-checking and explanation he already made. It’s not worth fighting. It’s not worth pushing. If he pushed harder, maybe--but Megatron knows what he’s doing. He knows how far to push.

He wrote the script, after all: attack, withdraw, isolate.

Of course, if this scene were the only such example in the series, I would put it down to Megatron waking up on the wrong side of the bed and Rodimus not wanting to deal with the grumpiness. It’s the context of the entire series that informs the cycle.

Do they give disapproving, dismissive, contemptuous, or condescending looks, comments, and behavior?

Because this panel--containing a very similar dig--takes place a full year later. Instead of encouraging Rodimus or bantering back at him, he dismisses him.

‘But doodling is a sign of inattention and Rodimus should focus!’ you might say. And you would be wrong. As Time reported, doodling helps people focus. So, while teachers and other authority figures demean it, it’s largely because of the lack of respect they (falsely) believe it implies.

Furthermore, even though no one was aware of it, Rodimus was doodling the lost map to Cyberutopia. It’s possible that he was compulsively driven to carve it--and I do mean compulsive in the true sense of the word.

(An aside: I have obsessive-compulsive disorder and, when unmedicated, perform up to six hours of compulsions a day, so I think I’m qualified to make that call.)

He had merged with the matrix--it reformatted him, in fact. It seems reasonable that having the map lodged in his processor would itch like having a word on the tip of his tongue. His doodling in this case would have been more like filling a genuine physical need.

If you have never experienced a genuine compulsion, I can’t explain the visceral need of it. Fighting it down is much like holding your breath--if you hold out too long, it becomes intolerable. You feel like you will die. Like you are actively dying.

Of course, this is conjecture--it’s entirely possible that his doodling serves only the usual purpose: increased focus. And you know what’s a helluva lot more disrespectful than doing what you need to do to focus? Disguising verbal abuse as jokes.

Do they tease you, use sarcasm as a way to put you down or degrade you?

This example is super upsetting to me. On the surface, yeah, haha, Megatron made a joke, good one, Megs.

But...Rodimus was literally turned inside out. He was left in a dark hallway, alone and in pain, unable to move, unable to speak, for an indeterminate amount of time. Someone violated his mind to remove knowledge so basic it’s fundamental to them as a species.

To make sure not to understate things, let’s ask the psychiatrist who has the most experience with the procedure:

The most painful thing a Cybertronian can ever experience. A mental violation followed by incredible pain.

And that painful-looking mess of organs there in the brig?

That’s Rodimus. Who apparently rushed ahead to shut off the lights and protect the mechs in the brig--mechs who were trapped in place and likely targets for a criminal who likes to feast on ‘sin,’ wouldn’t you say?

Meanwhile Megatron and the others are far enough behind that Sunder has come and gone--turning Rodimus inside out, but not prisoners like Getaway, who were left safely in the dark. The timing, to me, makes it look like Rodimus barely got there in the nick of time.

Which, of course, only gets a disparaging comment from Megatron, who won’t even get off his moral high horse to fight back against Sunder and protect his crew.

Rodimus may or may not be able to hear this condescending comment, but when he comes back to work, fresh out of the medbay? Megatron kicks off by making fun of the experience. Rodimus counters humorlessly--clearly not digging this particular joke--and Megatron follows up with, oh, by the way, the only mech you probably count as a friend these days? Helped me come up with this terrible joke at your expense.

Making fun of your own trauma can be cathartic. Making light of someone else’s trauma, particularly when they’re literally leaving their hospital bed for the first time after the fact? No--that’s cruelty. That’s another example of convincing Rodimus that he’s too sensitive. Can’t he take a joke?

And he does take it--with only a minor dodge. Hence the barbed follow-up.

I would say that this is just an example of a tasteless and poorly thought out joke, but Megatron knows people. We see him manipulate the DJD masterfully--and those are mechs who know him, mechs who know the ins and outs of manipulation and abuse. So I’m inclined to believe that this is deliberate rather than a misstep, especially in light of his follow-up...

He cuts off Rodimus’ attempt to move away from the unpleasant subject by literally talking over him (note the overlap of the speech bubbles) in order to make a ‘joke’ about Rodimus resigning. Which--as we saw in the first scene, as we see in many scenes--is a continual point of contention between them.

Megatron is taking advantage of a moment of probable vulnerability by priming him with a ‘joke’ followed by a comment meant to make him feel alone, and then another ‘joke’ meant to indicate the desired behavior.

This is a pattern I’m familiar with, as you might expect by this point. In the case of my ex, he would use this pattern--making light of something traumatic that had happened to me, following up with a non-apology that referenced the fact that no one wanted to put up with my issues, and then bringing it home with an unsubtle joke about things he wanted to do to me to ‘make me feel better,’ no matter how I tried to indicate my own discomfort.

And I, personally, don’t think that this is any less bad here, even though that was really awful and--after enough rounds of it--inevitably succeeded in getting me to give him what he wanted to make it stop. Because, even if Rodimus seems to be in good spirits, trauma can present itself in different ways. And an experience like that, especially given the complete lack of emotional support he experienced before, during, and after? Yeah, no, I’m not prepared to believe that he's actually unbothered instead of coping by acting tough, not when he tries twice to dodge the ‘joke’.

And I’m also not prepared to believe that Megatron can't see right through that act, especially in light of the fact that he also makes a habit of making fun of Rodimus in front of everyone he can.

Do they make fun of you or put you down in front of others?

Megatron continually puts Rodimus down in front of the crew.

In case the screenshot ends up too small to read, he says, “I hope this puts paid to the notion that I ignore everything my ‘co-captain’ says on the grounds that he’s lazy, petulant, and pathologically ill-suited to command…”

From the air-quotes around ‘co-captain’ to the specific insults he uses, every word of this is supposed to cast himself as the responsible, capable captain and Rodimus as the immature usurper. He maintains a formal voice for his own actions--he’s being magnanimous by agreeing to Rodimus’ rendezvous plan on the planet below. Why, if he doesn’t, Rodimus will probably be petulant and whine about it, so really, any inconvenience is on Rodimus’ unstable emotional state.

Which seems over the top, but look at what he said. He starts by heavily implying that Rodimus shouldn’t be respected as a leader, then follows this assertion with three ‘reasons’ for this.

Lazy - Rodimus goes out of his way--literally--in season one to go on side-quests that help people. He’s always personally willing to go to the frontlines of any conflict he’s willing to risk his crew in. And when the co-captains are each presented with the opportunity to risk their lives for the sake of saving others (Rodimus in #21 and Megatron in #33), they have two very different reactions.

We are shown no panels of Rodimus balking; he immediately allows Perceptor to wire him to the anti-killswitch. When told it might kill him and will certainly destroy the matrix, he says, “There goes our map.” And after spending what might be his last moments telling Minimus the truth about Overlord, he says, “Self-sacrifice, Magnus--it’s cheap. It’s a cheap way out. I need to live so I can make amends and--” before the anti-killswitch cuts him off.

We go on an entire hunt while Megatron avoids coming clean about being able to mass-shift; it’s how we find out Brainstorm is a Decepticon. It takes five pages. And although Megatron agrees in the end, his quote on the matter is, “Oh, I could’ve said something earlier, but here’s a survival tip: when everyone’s lining up to make sacrifices...always get to the back of the queue.”

Which maybe doesn’t qualify as laziness--but it still paints a very different picture than Megatron is doing here.

Another point of fact is that even though Megatron has said in this arc that Rodimus has spent the time since launch hiding, Ravage points out later in the arc that he’s observed the same behavior in Megatron. More on that later--under Double Standards and Projection--but worth noting here to undermine the ‘honesty’ in the lazy point.

Petulant - This particular insult is set up to make Rodimus look emotional and childish. This is a pretty common tactic in abuse--it makes it hard to believe anything the person in question says. After all, they’re a child, do they really know what they’re talking about? Surely they just misremembered. Surely it’s safe to ignore their petulant demands unless you feel like indulging them.

Which is exactly what Megatron is implying he’s doing here. Indulging the whimsy of a child instead of working with the mech who shares his rank.

This particular brand of trivializing is a favorite when setting up for gaslighting, which I’ll talk about later. After all, if you can convince someone they’re immature--that they’re too inexperienced or emotional or downright crazy to trust their own perceptions--then they need to turn to someone with the authority to tell them what the truth is.

And if you can also convince those around the victim that this is true--as the villain does in Gaslight (1944), which gives us the technique’s name--by slandering the victim and undermining their authority, you have others who can ask, ‘Are you sure you didn’t imagine that?’ even when you aren’t around to enforce the reality you want.

The air-quotes around ‘co-captain’ are small, and words like ‘petulant’ are minor--but as Psychology Today’s article on Gaslighting points out, it always starts out slow. These words are weapons--and words have always been Megatron’s weapon of choice.

Pathologically Ill-Suited to Command - The final nail in this sentence’s coffin is this one. As I mentioned above, prepping for gaslighting is easier when you can convince your victim and their would-be support network that the victim is crazy--and here we see Megatron pull out that argument. Pathologically ill-suited to command.

It’s not poor baby Roddy’s fault, you see--his brain isn’t wired for command. He doesn’t have the intelligence of the True Captain. He doesn’t have the stability. He might like to pretend, but these are delusions.

As someone with several mental illnesses (primarily anxiety disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, but also depression), I heard this one a lot. A lot. I tried for years to take crazy as a point of pride; sometimes I still want to. But it’s been used as a weapon against me for years. “Are you insane?” prefaced a lot of furious dismissals of innocent requests I made when I was young, but it sometimes still happens when I try again to interact with my family. I also had panic attacks that got called ‘tantrums’ to trivialize them.

Rodimus likely has PTSD--he’s a veteran with a traumatic childhood, after all--and I’ve seen headcanons that he has ADHD. We also know for a fact that he self-harms--and so do all the people Megatron is addressing, since the cuts were visible all the way until the morning of the day this issue began. (It was even commented on when they were looking at Rodimus’ corpse.)

Casually pathologizing someone who visibly self-harms is an easy way of isolating them. Making it an indication that Rodimus is unfit for command? Easier still. It’s also a ready-made dismissal whenever someone doesn’t like your argument. I could offer examples, but this blurb has gone on long enough as it is--and I think every mentally ill person I know could likewise offer examples of it.

This is far from the only time Megatron publicly insults Rodimus in ways that undermine his credibility as a leader. In fact, he does it often enough to have become an in-joke among the crew between Dark Cybertron and the first arc of season 2:

This is the first arc in season 2. The first arc. And yet they’re already saying that Megatron always says this.

Which...isn’t really fair. Rodimus isn’t an engineer. If you review the scene in issue one, he gives the order to jump, and no one tells him that the engines aren’t ready until after they’ve malfunctioned, and even then they can’t tell him why. He immediately has them set down and refuses to take off until they’ve figured out exactly what went wrong--which seems responsible to me.

But, of course, anything that goes wrong can become Rodimus’ fault, even if he wasn’t the one responsible.

Megatron also deliberately insults Rodimus in front of Ultra Magnus, the mech who was, once Drift left, probably the closest thing to a friend Rodimus had on the ship:

Note the way he frames it: “a crisis in morale precipitated by his own woeful captaincy.”

We know people actually liked the Rodimus Stars, even though they were ridiculous. Maybe because they were ridiculous. We saw that in the Trailcutter Spotlight, where the entire story revolved around characters like Trailcutter and Swerve trying to get Rodimus Stars.

Yes, it’s silly. He doesn’t have a great system for passing them out. But that’s not what Megatron focuses on--instead he once again targets Rodimus’ supposed ineptitude.

Am I boring you to tears yet? It’s five hundred insults that all make the same point, one after another, to everyone he can get to listen, for over a year.

Until eventually…

Even the mechs that once supported him are instead convinced that Megatron is correct. Rodimus is incompetent, incapable of leadership--Minimus is comfortable joining Megatron in mocking Rodimus after he took a long weekend off to do something he enjoys.

Something I find interesting about this is that they accuse him of disappearing when there’s work to be done, but he has no idea whatsoever what the work they’re doing is.

In fact, he doesn’t know anything about the situation at all. He’s been gone three days, and they clearly hadn’t started decorating before he left. He even makes the reasonable suggestion of maybe just maybe avoiding the death zone, even if he goes with Megatron’s reasoning in the end.

This implies to me that he didn’t know there was work to be done. Either it came up after he left, or he wasn’t properly informed before he left.

As for the ‘not returning their calls’ bit--I suspect that meteor storms might interfere with comms. I’m fairly sure that’s a repeated subplot in most sci-fi I’ve seen, and the Lost Light’s comms aren’t especially robust at the best of times, let alone whatever handheld or internal unit Rodimus might’ve had.

Leaving things in the hands of Megatron and Minimus for three days--just a long weekend--isn’t irresponsible. Everyone deserves to be allowed to have hobbies. Everyone deserves to have a long weekend now and again, no matter their job. But Megatron has turned this--along with a laundry list of things he himself does--into a way to justify isolating Rodimus.

Isolation

How isolated is Rodimus? Since season two started, there have been no scenes of Rodimus spending downtime with anyone--until Drift returns, the one friend who hasn’t been exposed to months of Megatron’s unending degradation and insults.

It’s possible I missed a scene in my reread, but even though every other member of the group who ends up on the Necroplanet in Dying of the Light has at least a panel of casual or friendly interaction with others, the closest I found for Rodimus was the scene when he was fresh out of the medbay and Megatron made fun of him. Not promising, to say the least.

From all the available evidence, I’d say that Rodimus is an extrovert. He seems more energized in front of crowds, he was so charismatic he was partly responsible for short-circuiting the personality ticks, and he does things like naming his favorite crowd the Rod Squad. He likes people, clearly--and he’s shown repeatedly to care about protecting his crew, as well as total strangers.

He also habitually seeks external validation because of his low self-esteem. Without this kind of support, he resorts to self-harm (see the numbers he carved into his palm) and other unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Again--planning to do a Rodimus meta at some point. For now, let’s roll with the idea that he’s a social mech who craves being around others and needs external validation to function, which I don’t think is particularly difficult to believe.

The lack of interpersonal interaction in season two--alongside the belittling comments he faces when he does interact with others--indicate that he’s isolated. He’s a charismatic mech; that’s part of how he helped to kill off the personality ticks. And yet by the time they leave for the Necroplanet, he’s receiving no external validation, no interpersonal support, nothing. He’s alone.

He may not be the best at friendship--but neither are Whirl, Cyclonus, or Swerve, all of whom end up with strong friendships and support networks. Considering the previous section and Megatron’s clear attempts to isolate Rodimus, one can only surmise that he was ultimately successful in cutting him off even from Minimus.

So what does Megatron accomplish by shutting out all sources of external validation, anyone who might rebuild Rodimus after Megatron verbally tears him down?

In my experience, he’s setting himself up to have power over Rodimus. Remember--Rodimus is so full of self-doubt even before the beginning of the series that he reaches out to Ratchet, only to get shot down there. (“Beneath my cocksure exterior I have terribly low self-esteem.”) No longer able to lean heavily on Drift for emotional support and cut off from any positive reinforcement, he’s put in an extremely vulnerable place.

I, too, am an extrovert. Sometimes I’m fairly sure that it makes me intolerable to be around, especially since I do the same reassurance-seeking behavior as Rodimus. If I go too long without interacting with friends, my depression makes a bitter comeback.

Yes, it would be awfully nice if I could go without social interaction or reassurance or positive external feedback in general, and certainly no one is obligated to provide such things for me. But the fact of the matter remains that without these things, I’m left vulnerable and hungry for any scrap of affection I can find.

And, in my experience? My abusers have deliberately starved me from outside attention to put me in that vulnerable state. It was easiest for my mother, which isn’t surprising; she already had absolute power over where I went and who I saw. What she didn’t have--and what she wanted more than anything--was my undivided attention and affection.

So when I displeased her--and there were quite a lot of ways to upset her--one tactic she used was cutting me off from other sources of support. People who could verify that she’d said one thing on Tuesday morning and something radically different by Wednesday night. People who could help me cope with the nonstop insults, the micromanaging, the unbearable pressure.

Without them? I crumbled. I did anything my mother asked--and I apologized when I did it ‘wrong,’ or if I had ‘misunderstood’ the order she’d changed halfway through my obeying it, or if she’d simply forgotten that I had, in fact, obeyed her already. She was the only one who could arbitrate the Truth; I didn’t have anyone else to turn to.

My siblings and I banded together sometimes to stave this off, but at other times they behaved more like Minimus--going along with Mom to keep the peace, to keep her focused on me instead of them, or just because they actually agreed with her, I can’t quite be sure. In the end, I’m not sure that it matters.

For a specific example--I was required to hug my mother and tell her I loved her before I went to bed every night. One night, I could tell she was sleepy when I hugged her, but she said, “I love you, too,” so I thought I was safe.

No such luck--she woke up at two in the morning convinced that I hadn’t hugged her good night or said I loved her. She burst into my room, sobbing and shouting, and I had to stumble out of bed and try to calm her down.

I’m fairly confident that she didn’t cite that as the direct reason for the ensuing silent treatment and enforced ‘family time’ that meant I couldn’t see friends for a while, but the timing was suspicious.

We see this general pattern a few times with Megatron and Rodimus, as well, the most recent of which was in Lost Light #4. I’ll cover other aspects of that later, but, for now:

Transgression: Rodimus asked about teleporters.

Warning: “Hush.”

Withdrawal: “Not now, Rodimus.”

Isolation: Public humiliation.

And that pattern--do something ‘wrong’ to earn punishment, an initial outburst, pulling back with the silent treatment, and then isolating them from others as a way to build tension for a final blowout? Uh...

That’s a script Megatron wrote a long time ago, and he knows exactly how effective it can be.

Ultimately, what Megatron gets out of setting himself up as the only one to interact one-on-one with Rodimus is a lack of oversight, a lack of outside influence, and--if he presses hard enough, if he twists Rodimus around for long enough, if he sways the opinions of enough of the crew--eventually he might succeed in becoming sole captain of their merry band. With Minimus in his pocket? It’d be a recipe for total control over not just Rodimus, but the entire group.

Rage

“This is an intense, furious anger that comes out of nowhere… It startles and shocks the victim into compliance or silence.” (“Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC)

This is what most people think of when they picture abuse--the most violent of the symptoms. It’s also the one that Megatron has deliberately been keeping in check, pulling it out only when the long game he’s playing is at risk of being cut short.

I have said before that abuse can only be viewed in a pattern--one instance of shouting doesn’t necessarily make an abusive relationship. In the context of an abusive relationship, however, even one instance of rage is a powerful tool for controlling someone. Even if someone never again takes it ‘that far,’ the victim remembers. And they know that the threat is always going to be present.

When I was fifteen, I did something to upset my mother. To this day, I have no memory of exactly what I did wrong. What I do remember is my mother taking a book and slamming it against my temple so hard that it knocked me to the floor. She then grabbed me by the hair and dragged me up to scream in my face. I remember being held high enough that my knees weren’t on the floor, but my legs were still bent--the only point of contact I had with the world was my toes. I remember being so terrified that I had no idea what she was saying other than the tone, the way spit hit my face. She then stormed out of the house and blamed me for it.

The older of my two younger sisters tried to run away that night, and I nearly jumped off the roof of our house. I remember very clearly that the only reason I didn’t was because I was convinced that I would only break my legs, and she would use it as an excuse to trap me at home with her.

Beyond that, my memories blur. I remember that either that night--or perhaps another night--my littlest sister caught our mother’s attention. I remember making an attempt to distract our mother. Was that why she attacked me? I don’t remember. Did I make her more upset? I don’t remember, although I recall fearing I had. What I do remember is the moment that she grabbed my seven-year-old sister and threw her--physically threw her--out of the way. My sister landed wrong--on her wrist--and broke a bone. I remember her crying. I remember my mother telling her to shut up. I remember that it took a while before Mom took her to the hospital, and then that we were all ordered not to tell anyone how she’d broken the wrist.

Aside from these instances, my mother never laid a hand on any of us.

She never had to. It’s been twelve years--almost thirteen years--and I still feel it every time we interact. I remember that she’s capable of it. I remember that she was willing to shift her rage onto the more easily accessible target despite my best efforts. All the way until I moved out--and beyond then, and into the present--it’s kept me from being willing to confront her about some of the worse things she says and does.

It’s been over a decade and I don’t think I’ll ever forget that fear. For a while, I was so deeply afraid of even sharing the story--after being ordered to be silent about it--that I think I’ve only told a few of my closest friends and my therapist. The only reason I’m sharing it now is because I’m posting this anonymously. Because, at heart, I am still afraid.

Now, I could cover the handful of examples of Megatron hitting characters here. I could make conjectures about how Rodimus cares more about the wellbeing of others than his own, and threats of violence against characters like Trailcutter, Perceptor, and Minimus would be more likely to keep him in line than violence against his own person. I know that was true for me.

But none of those were done directly in front of Rodimus, even though he would have heard about them later. That makes it harder to draw conclusions about without wandering a bit too far off panel. So I’ll be discussing physical violence in those characters’ subsections--and for now, I’ll be looking at the times Megatron has threatened violence directly at Rodimus.

In context, Rodimus respectfully said that he and the others were reporting for duty; he even saluted. Megatron then ordered all of them to carry Ravage back to Ratchet, and Rodimus objected.

What was his objection? Was it, ‘but this is only half of Ravage, and even Ratchet probably needs both halves to repair him’? Was it, ‘but there are a lot of us, and probably we don’t all need to carry Ravage, so maybe some of us could stay and help’? We don’t get to find out, because Megatron doesn’t accept any objection to his orders, no matter how softly or respectfully put.

In this scene, with the DJD nearby, his long game is, as I said, at risk of being cut short. So he breaks out the rage to terrify Rodimus into unquestioning compliance.

What’s more, it worked. They all fled.

Maybe this doesn’t look like violence to some of you. But his expression and the way he towers over Rodimus as he screams? Looks almost identical to my mother’s face in the anecdote I shared above. And to me, that screaming was violence.

In fact, screaming like that was the only kind of violence my abusive ex-boyfriend perpetrated against me. He was physically larger than me; he would get me cornered in a bus seat and loom over me exactly like this while screaming insults. And I know for a fact that some people don’t think this counts, or believe this behavior can be justified--when I reached out to the older of my two younger sisters about how he kept doing this, she told me that I deserved it, and she wasn’t the only one.

As a result, in the context of Megatron’s treatment of Rodimus, and in the context of this being a tool that worked to control him, I would personally count it as an abusive tactic--one that I believe was deliberate. Especially since he never apologized.

And then, almost immediately after Rodimus risks his life to save Megatron…

Rodimus is standing directly behind Ratchet as they try to convince him to pretty please put down the gun, as we can see in the next panel:

And, of course, Megatron pulls the gun on them--all of them. And Rodimus, the one who brought him through the portal, the one who rescued him, is looking down the barrel of a fusion cannon over Ratchet’s shoulder. This group of mechs--the Rod Squad, his favorite people--are all being threatened.

And then Megatron says that it’s time he left, and it’s hard not to think, under the circumstances, that he means he’s done playing at being an Autobot, done being nice. He’s wearing Tarn’s mask as a deceptibrand, for goodness’ sake! For all intents and purposes, at this moment, it looks like Megatron is through with the quest and has no intention of going to trial.

A few days later--or however long it takes them to build the Den and end up on Functionist Cybertron--you can see that Rodimus is still thinking about this:

There are other potential explanations, of course, but--in context? I find it both telling and worrying that Rodimus’ instinctive reaction when Megatron shouts his name is a full-frame flinch. Not with battle prep or defensive stances or anything that would indicate he learned this response from being ordered around in battle. Just the same sort of flinch I still sometimes get when my mother raises her voice.

And, although it’s been a bit since I used this format, let’s answer another question from the checklist:

Do they accuse you of something contrived in their own minds when you know it isn’t true?

This is the last example I’m going to use for rage--and a tirade like this is an example of out-of-nowhere fury used to shock Rodimus into silence.

The thing is? Megatron pulled all of this out of his tin-plated ass.

In this scene, Rodimus did not once mention the Lost Light. He only tries to ask about the teleporters, and then Megatron derails him with this.

Now, I’m going to give JRo the benefit of the doubt, here. Instead of assuming he’s forgotten about Nyon--the core of Rodimus’ backstory--and abandoned Rodimus’ main driving force as a character by having him sacrifice others to get what he wants instead of, y’know, literally being willing to risk his life saving people at every single opportunity he’s ever had… Instead of pinning writing that terrible on JRo, I’m going to assume instead that Megatron cut off and then derailed Rodimus before he could suggest what he actually had in mind. Misunderstandings and assumptions being thwarted both play a role in JRo’s writing, after all.

And, with any thought at all, it actually makes perfect sense that Rodimus might need teleporters for a plan--for saving the people of this Cybertron, not for tracking down the Lost Light. These mechs aren’t safe on Cybertron, even in this supposed ‘sanctuary city’--and there’s no way to transport all of them offworld. There are too many of them--we see veritable thousands in the streets.

So how do you save everyone? Do you start another war to rise up against your oppressors--because the first one went so well--or do you get everyone the hell off the planet?

Sure, maybe Rodimus wants to use the teleporter after the fact. I’d be surprised if he didn’t--he left half the crew he still has on a distant planet with a bunch of potentially dangerous strangers.

As for why Rodimus responds to this accusation the way he does instead of by saying what he actually intended--have you ever been accused of the worst thing? Something that is so antithetical to your character that you feel like the person accusing you of it has never interacted with you? How could you have given this person the idea that you would ever, in a million years ever, consider doing what they’ve just accused you of?

Well, you see, that confusion? That disorientation? The scrambling to find any common ground to argue on and finding that you have no footing because you don’t even know what to expect--what’s real and what you’ve made up? Leaving you floundering to counter a point in a way that at least connects to their reality?

That’s another abuse tactic. And it’s called gaslighting.

Gaslighting

“Narcissistic mental abusers lie about the past, making their victim doubt her memory, perception, and sanity. They claim and give evidence of her past wrong behavior further causing doubt. She might even begin to question what she said a minute ago.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

I have more experience with gaslighting than literally any other form of abuse, to the point that I still struggle to believe that my memory isn’t just faulty, that I’m not just overreacting, that these things really did happen, that I’m not the one making things up. That’s why I extensively cite every point I make: I feel as though no one will trust me or my word, but maybe if I bring in enough data points--enough hard facts--it’ll make up for the fact that I’m the one writing it.

Gaslighting seems so minor, and it is so hard to point to examples when you’re living in it. Even the extensive trauma I described above doesn’t hold a candle to the scars left by decades of gaslighting. I cannot overstate how deeply emotionally scarring it is, the way it can change the entire way you see the world, the way it makes trusting yourself and others almost impossible at times.

This is a hard section for me to write. Perhaps the hardest, in fact, and I say that despite the fact that writing the last section gave me flashback nightmares so intense I couldn’t sleep for three days. To get through the experience, I’m using the framework offered by the article linked in the above description and referencing other sections of this meta post. Any brevity in this section is a result not of a lack of evidence in canon but of an overabundance of my own trauma.

And with that disclaimer, let’s dig in.

They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.

“You know they said they would do something; you know you heard it. But they out and out deny it. It makes you start questioning your reality—maybe they never said that thing. And the more they do this, the more you question your reality and start accepting theirs.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

I would personally amend this to say that they deny they ever said or did something, even if you have proof. This can range quite a lot:

“Mom, you said that you’d already picked up the stuff for my school project, but I can’t find it anywhere. Where is it?”

“You never even told me you had a project! This is what happens when you leave everything to the last minute.”

“But I have your text message right here?”

“Let me see that. No, no, that’s not what I meant at all, why would you think that was what I meant? Are you stupid?”

Which was a pretty staple ‘misunderstanding’ in our house, but less frustrating than the times my mother’s reaction to evidence was to say, “I swear to God that I never said that, and if I’m lying, may He strike me down where I stand!” Which was, unfortunately, at least as common--more common, actually, when we were in public. And when God didn’t smite her, she gave us a smug smile and considered herself proven right.

As this escalated--gradually, over the course of my entire childhood--eventually she built to a moment so big and so obvious that I actually realized what she was doing. That it wasn’t forgetfulness. That it wasn’t a case of repeated misunderstandings. That she was reconstructing reality as it suited her, and I was powerless to stop her.

What moment could possibly have been jarring enough to open my eyes to that? I talked in the rage section about the night my mother knocked me to the ground and hauled me up by my hair. What I didn’t tell you is that after she dropped me back to the floor again, I looked up at her and, still sobbing, asked her why she’d hit me in the head with her address book.

“I didn’t,” she said, still towering over me as I lay curled on the floor. “I would never.”

“Then--” Maybe it was her hand, I thought. Maybe I was confused. I felt so disoriented and terrified and I didn’t understand what was happening. “Then why did you pull my hair?”

“I didn’t,” and she looked angry enough to do it all over again. “It must have gotten caught in the zipper.”

The zipper, of course, being on the address book she’d just denied smacking me with.

When I tried to point out this logical flaw, she redirected--and then stormed out of the house, blaming me for the fact that she needed to abandon us. Even though she came home a few hours later, the guilt worked--and I was too afraid to bring up the incident ever again.

And here’s where I’ll be frank--I said that that incident opened my eyes. And it did--but not that night. That night, I was terrified I’d imagined the whole thing. I had no evidence. She’d hit me, but it hadn’t left a mark. She’d pulled me up by the hair to bellow in my face, but I couldn’t even remember what she’d said.

If my siblings hadn’t been there to question her with me--to reaffirm it had actually happened--to be honest? I might to this day believe it was a nightmare. That she’d never actually laid a hand on me. And that’s what long-term, slow-build gaslighting does.

So--a few small denials, a pointed redirection whenever holes get poked at, all of that seems trivial in comparison, I’m sure. But it builds. It has to start small if the abuser hopes to normalize it. Because, at first? You question them. You start hoarding evidence. But if it goes on long enough? You start to question yourself. You start to question any evidence that you, personally, collected. Eventually you’re left questioning yourself so often that you stop questioning them.

Which is why even minor instances of gaslighting--if they’re part of an abusive pattern--should be noted as soon as possible.

In this case, Megatron asserts he’s been saying something when Rodimus has proof that he hasn’t even been around to say it. He says it both to belittle Rodimus and to set up a reality where he’s been dutifully doing his job instead of secretly doing prep work for the ultimate supervillain device in his habsuite (I’m talking, of course, about the antimatter he spends months channeling, almost certainly in violation of his parole).

Before you doubt Rodimus--and I wouldn’t be surprised if you did, because another goal of gaslighting is to make others doubt the perception of the victim--I’ll point out that Ultra Magnus also comments on Megatron hiding himself away.

So Megatron was lying to begin with--he hasn’t been saying that for weeks. He hasn’t been in a position to say anything to Rodimus for weeks. And when called out on it, he neither apologizes for the lie nor even allows time to address the fact that he did so. Instead, he picks something we know to be a sore point--and therefore a good distraction.

Taking stock, not sulking. Because, as Rodimus clearly remembers:

And from the way Rodimus reacts? Especially given my own experiences? I would guess that this wasn’t the only time Megatron said it--just the only time caught on camera, so to speak.

Also, yes--in the next panel, Megatron claims that he’s been working, something that both Ultra Magnus and Rodimus have both confirmed isn’t true. The truth is that he’s channeling antimatter for his own purposes--regardless of whether he eventually uses them to benefit the others, with no one aware he’s setting this up, he has no oversight.

They tell blatant lies.

“You know it's an outright lie. Yet they are telling you this lie with a straight face. Why are they so blatant? Because they're setting up a precedent. Once they tell you a huge lie, you're not sure if anything they say is true. Keeping you unsteady and off-kilter is the goal.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

These lies, in my experience, can range from nearly inconsequential to the extreme. My mother would routinely tell me that I hadn’t said something that my siblings later confirmed I said, but that could be dismissed as forgetfulness or poor hearing. She would also tell me that I’d promised to do something when we’d never discussed the matter in the first place, then tell me that I was the one forgetting. That was a little harder to handle--my siblings didn’t listen to every conversation between me and Mom, so I had no one to back me up. It’s much more difficult to prove you never discussed something than to prove that you did.

But, like I said--minor. Hard to prove or disprove. These tiny lies make it hard to trust reality and harder to trust your memory or judgment. These are also almost impossible to point to when discussing abuse with those who have never experienced it, because they look like misunderstandings at worst. It’s insidious and frustrating and only when you get to a big lie--the kind you build up to over years (or after more than twenty issues)--that you can point to it and say, “See? I have proof. I can prove this time it isn’t true!”

Megatron is claiming--genuinely daring to claim--that he was the one to first suggest stopping to help people along the way. When he’s been complaining about Rodimus’ so-called “side-quests” since day one. In season one alone, we saw them stop on the DJD homeworld so Ratchet could help cure a plague, Temptoria to rescue prisoners being used as batteries, and, eventually, the Big Hero moment when Tailgate uses a semicolon to save them all.

Except something that nobody seems to talk about in season two--as far as I’ve found, at least--is the fact that Rodimus is actually the one who saved all the constructed cold mechs with the help of Perceptor. Tailgate shutting off the suggestion beam and shutting down the Legislators was also critical to the operation’s success, of course, and I’m hardly going to say that Tailgate doesn’t deserve his due credit, but Rodimus was also fully ready to die for a universe of strangers.

I covered this above when talking about how Megatron called him lazy, but let’s pull in the panels for comparison’s sake.

Here we see Rodimus getting hooked up without a single panel of hesitation. As soon as they were ready to wire him in, he went.

He asks if it’ll kill him and has no qualms when he’s given a decided maybe.

And when he does save the CC mechs, you would expect, wouldn’t you, that he would never let anyone else forget it. After all, everyone (especially Megatron) insists he’s a self-centered jerk. But he lets Tailgate take full credit, and the only mention of Rodimus’ role in the proceedings after the fact comes when Optimus gets angry at him for destroying the Matrix.

Meanwhile Megatron drags his feet for five pages as the foam gets progressively worse and more dangerous, hoping they’ll find Brainstorm’s shrink ray so that someone else can go in his place.

But it was Megatron--who stays on the ship, who sends mechs to do battle but spares himself from the dirty work that would strip him of his self-righteous high horse--who first had the idea to help people. Right. One hundred percent his idea, and Rodimus should have told him they were saving organics so he could leave them to die.

It’s a lie. It’s a big enough lie that anyone could point to it and objectively prove that it’s not true. But Megatron says it, and Rodimus placates him instead of fighting him on it. He’s just happy that lives are getting saved; he doesn’t try to take any of the credit.

I find it unpleasantly relatable that Rodimus’ first reaction is no longer to correct Megatron, as he once did--in fact, as he did in the last example where we caught Megatron out in an obvious lie--but instead to offer him something to calm him down. Something to mitigate fallout. Something I, myself, have done countless times.

Their actions do not match their words.

“When dealing with a person or entity that gaslights, look at what they are doing rather than what they are saying. What they are saying means nothing; it is just talk. What they are doing is the issue.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

I want to write a separate meta post about Megatron’s bullshit redemption arc because I don’t want my opinions on that to distract from the primary point I’m trying to make with this meta. However, it also fits this point to an almost ludicrous degree.

Rather than break down Megatron’s entire character arc, I’ll focus on a few relevant points and save the rest for another post.

What Megatron says: “I am on this quest to make amends by finding a new world for our people after destroying our original planet.”

What Megatron does: never apologizes to the people he wronged using his own words, takes control of a privately owned neutral vessel with the help of a mech who holds no democratically appointed position nor has any kind of oversight, deliberately sends them three jumps off course to the necroplanet for the express purpose of derailing the quest.

What Megatron says: “I’ve renounced violence.”

What Megatron does: continues to send others into battles he’s not willing to fight, refuses to act even when it means that his crew will likely suffer casualties, orders acts of violence from behind the protective distance of a screen.

What Megatron says: “It’s not about me! I am taking a vow of pacifism because, if I were to pick up a weapon again, I would be unstoppable.”

What Megatron does: continues to reach for the dark matter that would make him unstoppable (even at the cost of shirking his duties--note that he missed Brainstorm’s trial), continues to risk the lives of others--apparently, by this logic, for their own good.

I could go into greater depth--I hope that someday I will get to tear this particular topic open--but, for now, I’ll leave it at this. What Megatron says can be very pretty, particularly if you ignore the overblown narcissism hidden in the message, but in practice it’s functionally worthless. He does virtually nothing to actually advance the honorable goals he’s espousing--only enough to make himself look good and noble.

This is something my mother and ex excel at. My mother can talk anyone into believing she’s a good and loving person who gives everything she has for us kids, tailoring how she frames her beliefs to most please whoever her audience is. Growing up, I heard a lot about how lucky I was to have such a loving and wonderful mom. My mom has even been able to talk me in circles--‘I only threatened you with a pray-away-the-gay camp because I wanted you to know you had other options! I didn’t want you to be bullied, so I had no choice but to completely isolate you from your DFAB friends any time your sexual orientation came up!’

Only, uh, of course I’m not framing that the way she did. That’s just what all the pretty talk amounted to. I only picked it apart years after moving out of the house.

Actions speak louder than words--because in situations with this brand of abuse, words are just tools to further the abuse, not tools for honest communication. With gaslighting, especially, words are meant to confuse.

They know confusion weakens people.

“Gaslighters know that people like having a sense of stability and normalcy. Their goal is to uproot this and make you constantly question everything. And humans' natural tendency is to look to the person or entity that will help you feel more stable—and that happens to be the gaslighter.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

Gaslighting has profound effects over time. In “Identifying Victims of Narcissistic Abuse” on Psych Central, the provided list offers some idea of the scope of the damage that victims endure.

What I find most interesting about that list in the context of this meta post, though, is that it increasingly describes Rodimus as season two of MTMTE and then Lost Light each progress. From second guessing and increasing difficulty concentrating and making decisions to being highly strung and irritable to fear responses when Megatron says his name, this all actually adds up to a potentially realistic picture of how trauma can affect someone.

It’s not pretty. In fact, it can leave people looking and feeling unstable, which adds further fuel to the gaslighting fire.

I can’t say for sure whether JRo intends Rodimus’ increasingly erratic (and, at times, desperate and out of character) behavior to be read as a response to this prolonged abuse. I hope he does--it makes more sense to me than the alternatives.

Especially since this particular article on gaslighting goes on to cover many of the points I’ve already addressed in this meta, which I think hammers home their severity.

They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.

“They know how important your kids are to you, and they know how important your identity is to you. So those may be one of the first things they attack. If you have kids, they tell you that you should not have had those children. They will tell you'd be a worthy person if only you didn't have a long list of negative traits. They attack the foundation of your being.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

I could rehash this point--but I’ve already spent several thousand words on it. From mocking the Rod Pod to tearing down Rodimus’ identity as a leader and a hero to rattling off reason after reason why he’s worthless, the entire degradation section could fit under this bullet point.

They wear you down over time.

“This is one of the insidious things about gaslighting—it is done gradually, over time. A lie here, a lie there, a snide comment every so often...and then it starts ramping up. Even the brightest, most self-aware people can be sucked into gaslighting—it is that effective. It's the "frog in the frying pan" analogy: The heat is turned up slowly, so the frog never realizes what's happening to it.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

Once again, a point I covered in previous sections. Abuse builds up bit by bit, allowing the abuser to skate by without being called out. What would have looked like a vicious and unfair tirade at the beginning of the abuse--uncalled for and baseless--eventually looks like a righteous ‘dressing down’ of a petulant child.

They tell you or others that you are crazy.

“This is one of the most effective tools of the gaslighter, because it's dismissive. The gaslighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is abusive or out-of-control. It's a master technique.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

This is the reason I homed in on that particular choice of words by Megatron in the degradation section. It seems like it’s no big deal--all varieties of this abuse seem like they’re no big deal. Until they build and build and suddenly everyone believes--both in the comic and in the fandom--that Rodimus deserves the treatment he receives at Megatron’s hands and should not be trusted with any serious task. Everyone immediately believes the worst of him in every situation.

They try to align people against you.

“Gaslighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what—and they use these people against you. They will make comments such as, "This person knows that you're not right," or "This person knows you're useless too." Keep in mind it does not mean that these people actually said these things. A gaslighter is a constant liar. When the gaslighter uses this tactic it makes you feel like you don't know who to trust or turn to—and that leads you right back to the gaslighter. And that's exactly what they want: Isolation gives them more control.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

And here we have the final critical point I covered above--the result of all the dismissive comments, the intention behind the isolation. No one trusts Rodimus’ judgment. No one trusts Rodimus to even have good intentions anymore.

It’s a personal hell for someone as extroverted as Rodimus--and it could all end if he ceded power to Megatron. And wouldn’t that be easier?

They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.

“This person or entity that is cutting you down, telling you that you don't have value, is now praising you for something you did. This adds an additional sense of uneasiness. You think, "Well maybe they aren't so bad." Yes, they are. This is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter—and again, to question your reality. Also look at what you were praised for; it is probably something that served the gaslighter.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

This seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? If you’re spending months or years breaking someone down, why would you ever throw in a compliment?

The thing is, this particular brand of abuse--this variety of manipulation--makes the victim especially susceptible to praise as a weapon. When starved of praise, it’s natural to crave it. And in two rereads of season 2? I found exactly one instance of someone praising Rodimus. In issue 43, Rodimus says that Swerve called him the best dancer he’d ever seen. Other than that? Nothing. I reread twice specifically looking for positive comments about Rodimus, and there was absolutely nothing for him.

I was lucky enough to have friends who told me that I was worth something even when I was being abused. And even then, I craved praise from my mother more than anyone--both because she’d conditioned me to look to her above all the others, and because she was the one who was the hardest to please.

Of course, when she did praise me, it was either performative--‘look what a good mother I am’--or it was to get me to do something that I desperately did not want to do. “You’re such a good daughter, (name)--I know you actually do love us. That’s why you’re looking forward to this three month trip (where you’ll have no contact with any of your friends and no means of escape), right?”

And I went. So help me, once she pulled out that card, I honestly believed I had no choice but to go. Every summer, I fell in line.

If I’d been as starved of praise as Rodimus had--if my mother had succeeded in fully isolating me as she so often tried to do--I don’t think I could have pushed back on any subject at all.

At the start of Lost Light, the issue summary indicates it’s been five years since the ship first took off. Assuming half of that was during season two, that’s two and a half years--during which we only have evidence of a single, passing compliment. Especially for someone like Rodimus, that’s downright devastating.

And then Megatron drops this bomb during their most critical argument:

It works.

Rodimus stops pushing. Rodimus stops fighting him. Stops begging him to help them not die by standing with them instead of watching them fight from a screen, directing them in how to die. (Which he doesn’t do, by the way--he makes no contact with the group once they leave until he strides out onto the battlefield.)

This is the antithesis of everything Megatron has said for the last two-ish years. This is everything that Rodimus has wanted to hear.

It’s pure manipulation, of course--Megatron goes back to doubting Rodimus’ leadership and judgment without a single pause. He doesn’t hear Rodimus out on the battlefield or on functionist Cybertron. If this compliment had been genuine? He would have.

But no. It was a means to an end, and it worked. Rodimus did exactly as Megatron wanted. As Megatron knew he would.

The final point the article on gaslighting brings up is one I want to address separately--projection and double standards.

Projection

“They dump their issues onto their victim as if she were the one doing it. For instance, narcissistic mental abusers may accuse their spouse of lying when they have lied. Or they make her feel guilty when he is really guilty. This creates confusion.” (“Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC)

“They are a drug user or a cheater, yet they are constantly accusing you of that. This is done so often that you start trying to defend yourself, and are distracted from the gaslighter's own behavior.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

Megatron has claimed--first to Optimus and later to everyone who would listen--that he would find success where Rodimus found failure. It was part of his sales pitch to avoid imprisonment until his retrial.

So he said then, when they had no map and their only plan was to track down Thunderclash, who was having visions to guide him toward Cyberutopia. And, once they’d found him, the map he’d carved was destroyed in the fight with the personality ticks, leaving them rudderless once again.

Or so it seemed.

Up until this point, Megatron has disapproved of Rodimus taking supposedly pointless sidequests. However, as soon as Rodimus produces a hand-carved map to Cyberutopia, he changes his tune.

Rodimus has just very reasonably expressed that Cyberutopia is in the opposite direction and given his position as co-captain: they need to stay on task and find the Knights. Here, Megatron overrides him without even acknowledging that, technically speaking, he doesn’t have veto power. Of course he gets the final say even if they share the same rank. Why shouldn’t he? Co-captain is a position made up for Rodimus’ ego; if Megatron decides that it’s time for a literally pointless sidequest, then it’s time to start getting the quantum engine jumping.

He looks so smug as Rodimus arches an optic ridge in the background. No one questions Megatron’s authority to make the executive override here, though, including Ultra Magnus, who would be the one in the best position to point out that the captains share a rank and Megatron can’t just arbitrarily ignore the chain of command. Ultra Magnus is also probably the closest thing Rodimus has to a friend on the ship, and he still doesn’t speak in Rodimus’ support here.

Even though, by the terms of the quest and Megatron’s parole? Rodimus is the one clearly in the right.

Megatron has been accusing Rodimus of shirking responsibility, of laziness, and at one point of not having the steel to face his own death (in the form of his corpse). And yet, when they can finally actually get on the right path--when Rodimus has hand-delivered a map--his first action is specifically to derail the quest.

And for what possible reason?

Because of character flaws he’s been accusing Rodimus of since day one.

Of not facing his death quickly enough.

Of not even being able to start the quest--when, of the two of them, Megatron is the one who sent them deliberately off course as soon as he could.

Of vanishing when work needs to be done.

This is all par for the course with projection. It can look coincidental; it can even on occasion look well-intentioned. But it ultimately comes from a self-centered place where the one doing the projection can have a few possible motives.

Self-Centered Motive 1: Being unable to conceive of motives separate from those they would have.

Self-Centered Motive 2: Being unable to conceive of being wrong about someone’s internal motivations--or, indeed, about any assessment they make.

Self-Centered Motive 3: Deliberately using the projection to cover for one’s own behavior. (This isn’t necessarily indicative of shame or guilt; it can be done to draw attention away from behavior they believe they will face repercussions for when they would like to continue perpetrating said behavior.)

Self-Centered Motive 4: Deliberately using the project to confuse and disorient an abuse victim, putting them on the defensive. (After all, “No, you,” is an argument that could be regurgitated by a ‘petulant’ two-year-old and therefore easy to dismiss, particularly when you habitually tell others that your victim is just childish and overly sensitive.)

The first and second motives are unlikely to be the case for Megatron, who is a master-class strategist used to dealing with schemers. He wouldn’t be able to remain several steps ahead if he was unable to read intentions behind other people’s choices. He also wouldn’t have lasted particularly long as leader of the Decepticons if he couldn’t infer the motivations of others.

Meanwhile, motives three and four would serve him extremely well, particularly in this situation. If he spends sixteen issues convincing the crew that Rodimus is the irresponsible one holding back the quest, if Rodimus tries to counter by saying, “But you’re the one trying to keep us off course!”--well. Can you imagine anyone taking him seriously?

Oh wait. You don’t have to--they had that argument in Lost Light #4.

And, as Megatron knew would happen, even Minimus Ambus believed his lie. No one--no one at all--believed Rodimus or took his side.

Great bit of misdirection, isn’t it? It also has the benefit of leaving Rodimus doubting himself--questioning whether he actually is working hard enough. That’s the gaslighting aspect of the technique; it destabilizes your reality and makes it harder to question what your abuser says about you or asks of you. Because if you and you alone think that something is true? Peer pressure is likelier to silence you.

It won’t always--the Asch conformity experiments are an interesting place to begin for further research, if you’re interested--but in those experiments, even though it was clearly objective reality being described, only one in four participants consistently fought majority opinion. When it’s something more nebulous--personality traits, personal failings--it seems likely to be a little harder to fight.

And when you’re already being conditioned not to fight this particular person (with bouts of rage and the other abuse techniques I’ve described here), it can be hard to convince yourself that it would be worth fighting in the first place.

Mix this with Rodimus’ already present self-worth and guilt issues? And it’s frankly stunning to me that he contradicts Megatron as often as he actually does. I know that I didn’t have it in me that often--it’s almost unspeakably exhausting to have this kind of fight, particularly when you have no one on your side and no hard evidence to point to.

This is still relatively early into the abuse, admittedly--six months after the trial. But Rodimus is still trying to assert his own reality in the face of Megatron projecting.

And he is projecting. Need proof? Ask Ravage an hour or two later in this arc:

He’s been sitting in his room for six months, the same as Rodimus. But to distract others from that fact, he loudly accuses Rodimus of it--publicly, purposefully. “I ‘take stock.’ You sulk. You’re sulking now.”

As the second blurb says, it puts Rodimus in a position where he must defend himself against the accusations, distracting from the fact that Megatron is also doing this.

And it works: Rodimus goes on the defensive, and no one questions the narrative that Megatron is setting up.

This narrative allows Megatron to twist situations (and facts) to suit himself with relative impunity.

Twisting

“When narcissistic spouses are confronted, they will twist it around to blame their victims for their actions. They will not accept responsibility for their behavior and insist that their victim apologize to them.” (“Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC)

Megatron avoids apologizing like the plague. He apologizes exactly once in the series--and then leaves without trying to get the injured party to the medical bay or calling a medic, which makes it more than a bit hollow. Beyond that? He never apologizes for his actions during the war--for Grindcore, for setting up the DJD, etc--and he also never apologizes for things like decking Perceptor and nearly sending him through a computer screen. He certainly never apologizes for his behavior toward Rodimus.

Instead, he twists the situation so that he’s justified in his awful behavior or so that the blame falls on someone else. He does this, too, when something threatens the narrative he’s been building or Rodimus ‘disobeys’ him. For example, when Rodimus overrides his condescending hush command that Megatron had no place issuing...

Rodimus is offering a potential counter-strategy that Megatron hasn’t approved: evacuation and escape. It’s something they discussed while Megatron met the ‘troops’ instead of coming to the briefing:

A solution Rodimus brought up at the time, using the same language he describes the teleporter with above:

So he’s trying to work out, it seems, whether there’s a possibility of rescuing the mechs already teleported away--and whether there’s a chance they could get all of these civilians to safety.

I discussed this possibility in rage, but I’d like to look at a different panel for the lead-up to that, where Megatron twists the narrative:

See how he turns his controlling and dismissive behavior (“Hush, not now.”) into an attack that invents a sinister motive Rodimus is clearly supposed to apologize for? This being despite the fact that all Rodimus asked about was teleporters--something that would be absolutely vital in evacuating a civilian population off-planet.

It’s a successful twisting of the situation--successful enough that even I bought it on my first read-through. Despite everything, despite all logic and circumstance and evidence, Megatron convinced even me that his narrative was the right one.

But when I read again? It was groundless. Megatron describes Rodimus as being obsessed; if he’s referring to the paint job, then Drift pointed out it lends itself to multiple interpretations--including mourning. Other than that, all Rodimus has done is organize a plan to get them home. Nothing about his behavior reads as obsessive to me.

But let’s stick to these panels and break it down:

Rodimus attempts to participate in the conversation. Considering that he and Rodimus share a rank and the group is currently planning what to do, it’s perfectly appropriate for Rodimus to try to pitch in, especially since he was the one at the briefing while Megatron met the ‘troops’ in another area. He knows more about the situation than Megatron in some ways, and he’s trying to use that information to help.

But Megatron gets visibly angry and tries to shut the attempt down. Based on his behavior through the series as well as my own experiences, I think I can guess why.

Rodimus ‘disobeyed’ him, which undermines the vision Megatron has of himself as the ‘real’ captain. The image he’s been trying to sell the crew. If he can spin this as Rodimus being childish, he can salvage the situation and maintain his narrative. Scolding him like a child sets that up.

It’s technically also possible that he’s somehow forgetting Rodimus’ experiences with Nyon and nonstop heroism despite being present for both, although that seems like an awfully large and uncharitable lapse on his part.

This implies to me that this isn't the first time Megatron has dismissed Rodimus like this--but before Rodimus can call him out further, Megatron twists the narrative, and now it's not about teleporters or exit strategies. It's a personal attack on Rodimus.

This comes, frankly, out of nowhere. It's an unprovoked attack against someone who shares his rank and is trying to contribute to the planning process--you know, trying to do his job.

Here's the thing. I'm familiar with these derailing types of attacks--where anything I do can get twisted and turned into something that requires an apology when I'm (a) trying to help, (b) doing my job, and (c) trying to do it respectfully but also efficiently due to time crunches. And, like Rodimus, I've been baited into shouting back at my abusers.

It's a win-win for them. Sure, they derailed first--they shouted first--but since I fought back, it can't be abuse. Since I got distracted from the point I wanted to make, I proved them right. I'm too sensitive. I deserve to be ‘taken to task’ or ‘put in my place’ or whatever euphemism you care to use. Because I stop looking like a crying victim on the floor, it stops counting as abuse.

If you think I'm exaggerating, I can assure you I'm not. Read any comment thread about abuse or assault and see how long it takes for people to find reasons why this person wasn't really a victim. Why they deserved it.

I should have talked above--under almost every section--about my abusive ex-boyfriend. Really, it's painful how much is relevant. But I haven't, because… Fuck me, this is the sixth complete rewrite of this section, and I'm still tearing up. I haven't, and it's because experience has convinced me that no one will take my side because I wasn't a good enough victim.

I'll keep it simple and relevant--just a single example that I feel parallels the above scene. It happened within a week of when my mom hit me; I was 15. My ex was failing a writing class, and he showed me his homework. I thought he was asking for feedback, since, y'know, he was failing. But I only got as far as saying he'd misused a comma before he told me to shut up.

I say he told me. That sounds so mild. We were sitting near the front of the school bus together; I was trapped between him and the window. He had eight inches and fifty pounds on me, and he used it to loom over me like Megatron continually looms over Rodimus. I say he told me to shut up; he got in my face and screamed it in front of a bus full of our peers.

He then proceeded to scream insults at me until he was red in the face. I wasn't qualified to judge his commas, I was an idiot, on and on. He had a bad habit of yelling at me in 1337-sp34k--yes, out loud--because it made him feel intelligent when I couldn't understand it. To be honest, I think that parallels with Megatron’s consistent condescending use of ‘big words’--the point of communication is to communicate, not to feel smart about our superior vocabulary.

Like Megatron, he would get loud and condescending and demeaning and use speech I couldn't understand to prove that I wasn't as smart as he was. Like Megatron, he would loom over me, using his height and bulk to intimidate me when I started getting ‘uppity’ or otherwise ticked him off. Like Megatron, he mostly did this when we had an audience--it was other types of abuse he perpetrated in private.

And, like Rodimus, sometimes I backed down--but sometimes I shouted back.

Not often. Usually I kept it to a few incredulous statements. But there were times when he said something so shocking, so untrue, I had to defend myself--like Rodimus does in this scene. And--once again, like Rodimus--I got so ‘het up’ that I would lose my point, forget my words, and find it impossible to actually figure out how to fight his points. Partly because they were so groundless it felt like there was no evidence I could pull to counter them.

I told my sister about it, once. And she said that since I yelled back sometimes, I deserved it.

She wasn't the only one to say that, but it hurt the most coming from her. And it hurts again when I read posts about Megatron and Rodimus where people talk about how great it is that Megatron finally put Rodimus in his place, how much Rodimus deserved to be screamed at. It's just fiction, true, but in the back of my mind, I always think, ‘If I told you that this happened to me, would you say I deserved it, too?’

Because I've seen very little recognition of the fact that victims do sometimes fight back. They often pay for it, but when you're driven into a corner you don't lie down and take it every time.

No one looks like a Hollywood victim all the time--crying and ‘weak’ and only staying because of fear. Anyone of any personality type can be abused. And abusers are experts at seeming like good, upstanding people; they need to be able to build a narrative that casts them as the hero or anti-hero. You need to see a whole pattern to recognize them for what they are--and they're invested in hiding that pattern by any means necessary so they won't lose that control, that power over both their current victim and other future victims.

Some abusers apologize going into the honeymoon phase of the abuse cycle as part of perpetuating that narrative. Others avoid taking blame at any cost, refusing to take responsibility for their actions. Megatron makes excuses rather than apologies and never does the work to make amends; like my abusive ex, he thinks experiencing any guilt at all absolves him of the hard work of fixing things. It doesn't; feeling bad is meaningless. It accomplishes nothing. And excuses relieve that guilt--the false high of unearned absolution.

Do they make excuses for their behavior or tend to blame others or circumstances for their mistakes?

It’s not his fault, you see! This murder squad he personally trained massacred two hundred of his crew members (the theory at the time of this panel was a ‘near future’ scenario, not parallel quantum shenanigans), but really, he knew this would happen the moment Optimus made him say sorry. These are natural consequences of making him do something he didn’t want to do.

Now, it’s true that Megatron didn’t order them to do this, but immediately putting the blame on Optimus making him vocally renounce the cause he was already claiming he’d renounced… When, y’know, these are his hand-picked and hand-trained assassins who he used to terrify his troops into abject obedience to all Decepticon beliefs… It’s just mind-boggling to me.

To explain another way: he just entered a ship full of two hundred mutilated corpses, all but a few showing signs of extreme torture. And he makes it about him. And he does that while still trying to dodge all blame. It’s a natural consequence of him reading the speech Optimus wrote for him, but it’s not because he trained a team of murderers in the art of violent murdering, no, that part has nothing to do with anything. They didn’t answer to him, he says, when he’s the only one who has Tarn’s comm number. When Tarn personally credits him with shaping him into the person he became.

The DJD are responsible for their own actions, certainly, but that doesn’t mean that Megatron isn’t responsible for giving them a list of traitors and turning them loose on his troops--and on innocent bystanders.

This would be a good opportunity for a sparkfelt apology. We could have seen Megatron mourn these dead and regret training the DJD and tell the survivors that he’ll find a way to talk to the DJD and make sure this never happens again (something he could have done at any time--he does have Tarn’s number, after all). We could have seen him start making reparations six months after saying he’d changed.

Instead we see him give a self-righteous little speech about how he’s totally blameless.

This may not be directed at Rodimus, but Rodimus numbers among the dead--he was the first corpse they found. And he cares not one bit that his living co-captain and second in command have vanished, with only gray and disfigured corpses to replace them. No, the most important thing in this situation is to twist the narrative and make sure everyone knows it’s not his fault.

This is what happens when he’s made to do things he doesn’t want to do. There are consequences; he doesn’t need to make reparations because the consequences are natural and right.

Living for millions of years with the DJD as real boogeymen who could appear and wreak this kind of devastation without warning if Megatron gave a single word? It’d be hard not to see those natural consequences as a threat.

Manipulation

“A favorite manipulation tactic is for the narcissist to make their spouse fear the worst, such as abandonment, infidelity, or rejection. Then they refute it and ask her for something she normally would reply with ‘No.’ This is a control tactic to get her to agree to do something she wouldn’t.” (“Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC)

All of the above is manipulation, without question. But I’m including this as a separate bullet point because it allows me to address a particular tactic that doesn’t fit neatly under any of the other sections.

Do they continually have “boundary violations” and disrespect your valid requests?

Megatron has no respect for Rodimus’ personal space, particularly when he’s being ‘defiant’ in some way. Paring away text to focus on body language, it becomes even more abundantly clear.

From the beginning of season two, he towers over Rodimus, jabbing a finger less than a hand’s breadth from his face.

When he wants to be obeyed, he physically gets in Rodimus’ face--snarling and huge.

And as a new arc begins, he’s once again looming and jabbing fingers in Rodimus’ personal space.

If I listed every panel where Megatron was shown leaning physically over Rodimus, I’d be including almost every panel they share. And before anyone says it’s because of Megatron’s size, and he can’t help but loom--he doesn’t do it to other characters unless they, too, are ‘misbehaving.’ He’s perfectly capable of keeping a straight back and relatively professional distance with most mechs, even when being threatened, even with extreme height differences:

Straight back, no leaning over Tailgate, no snarl. It’s the same with other crew members. With Rodimus, however, his nonverbal cues are constantly screaming dominance fight.

Now, I’m a small person, so maybe I’m especially sensitive to this--I’m just barely five feet tall and not muscular in the slightest. When much-bigger people get in my space the way Megatron gets in Rodimus’ space, it’s terrifying. Respectful people don’t do those things, and you can’t convince me that it’s merely a product of his size. My boyfriend of almost ten years now is eleven inches taller than I am, and he’s never once loomed over me or used his size to intimidate me.

I might be willing to call it thoughtless rather than an abuse tactic, since it is possible to loom unintentionally--except he singles Rodimus out for this treatment.

And it works.

After the first example above, Rodimus is visibly cowed while Megatron practically presses himself against his back:

Note the lowered spoilers on Rodimus’ back, the lowered head, the expression on his face.

And after the second panel, he literally transforms and obeys Megatron without further question.

Constant physical intimidation has unfortunate effects on a person, particularly when used alongside verbal and emotional abuse tactics like the ones I’ve been describing. This is a documented aspect of physical abuse--of which physical intimidation is a part--but I also know it intimately.

My abusive ex boyfriend never hit me, but he used physical intimidation tactics like these on a daily basis. He sat between me and the aisle on the bus and got in my face and snarled at the least provocation, but he also just--loomed. He was always--always--in my bubble, to the point that sometimes my friends would literally push him out of it. He would stand behind me like that, and when I have nightmares I can still feel his hard-on pressed against my lower back, his hands on on my hips or shoulders to keep me where he wanted me, the heat of his breath on me as he curled above me, around me, cutting off every exit until he was physically my entire world.

Which brings me to the panel that finally set me off enough to write the meta post I’d been mentally composing for over a year:

I feel sick when I look at this panel. When I look at the hand on his back and the way Megatron curls around him and the way the hand that’s always jabbing fingers in his face is caging him in. When I look at the way Rodimus is hugging himself, pulling in and away from Megatron--because in is his only escape route, because Megatron has cut off everything else. Verbally isolating him, then emotionally, then physically.

Rodimus doesn’t have any friends here to shove Megatron out of his bubble. Rodimus has the certainty that Megatron could be screaming at him (again), could be threatening him with hands in his face (that we can see are the size of Rodimus’ torso), could actually be injuring him--which we haven’t seen, but, honestly? “Whenever you shout my name I expect to get shot,” uh, isn’t a ringing endorsement of what might be happening behind closed doors, where most actual violence plays out.

Even if Megatron hasn’t hurt him--and I haven’t got enough proof to conclusively say one way or another--the threat is still there. As I said, my abusive ex never hit me. But I knew--every time he screamed, every time he got in my face--that he could. That he was capable of it.

He didn’t have to hit me. Like Rodimus, my defiance never lasted--without support, with too much fear, I decided that I needed to pick my battles. And, one by one, he pushed through my boundaries. Because if it wasn’t worth picking a battle over him stroking my inner thigh outside my shorts, was it worth fighting him on stroking the inside of my waistband? With that boundary demolished, was it really so unexpected--really worth challenging--when he went past the waistband?

After all, it was my fault he was so riled up. I’d done this to him. Didn’t I owe it to him to fix the problems I’d caused? But I guess that particular bit of nastiness comes from the next section--the victim card.

Victim Card

“When all else fails, the narcissist resorts to playing the victim card. This is designed to gain sympathy and further control behavior.” (“Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC)

At every point in Megatron’s “redemption” arc, he casts himself as a tragic figure. Poor Megatron, made to stand trial! Poor Megatron, asked to provide evidence to expedite the trial! (optional; he didn't consent to mnemosurgery and they immediately left) Poor Megatron, asked to read a speech renouncing the cause he already said he'd renounced! (optional; purely a get-out-of-jail-free card) Poor Megatron, surrounded by incompetence on this privately owned neutral ship he was given captaincy of in place of his prison stay! Poor Megatron, forced to drink ‘poison’! (optional; again, he made the choice himself) Poor Megatron, having to share the ship with the mech who owns it! Poor Megatron, faced with the knowledge that some people wish the war had never happened! Possibly even the knowledge of how many mechs he killed! What terrible knowledge.

Poor Megatron, indeed.

All of these situations are fair and reasonable for him to encounter. He's not a tragic figure for facing any of these things; in fact, the last two are hardly even about him. Billions died, and we're supposed to feel sorry for him surveying the field of flowers? For having to face the facts of what he did when he still doesn't face any negative repercussions for his choices?

This is entitlement, but it's also an abuse tactic. My ex used this trick to guilt me into roleplaying sexual situations I was really, really not comfortable with, while my mother used it to get me to do...well, in retrospect, basically anything she felt like I owed her.

Used on the wrong party, this tactic is just grating--case in point, Getaway and his mutineers. He specifically cited this overall strategy in his last call with the crew on the Necroplanet. But on someone who already has a guilt complex--someone who's easily manipulated by authority figures telling him it's his duty to do one thing or another, insisting nothing he does is enough and he owes more than he can give--the sort of person who carves into his hand the number of people who wanted him gone? Yeah, that's a different story.

Do they blame you for their problems or unhappiness?

Prior to this panel, Rodimus just informed Megatron that Brainstorm seemed to have jumped through time. Rodimus specifically gives him time to process the info, too.

He's beings downright nice about it.

And, yes, it's absolutely fine to need time to process or to freak about things not going according to plan. That's natural! I say this despite the fact that Megatron--a mech made of black holes--isn't exactly unfamiliar with weird science. In fact, one of the thirteen ores seeded by Shockwave had time properties, and they literally just met quantum doubles of their entire ship. I'm a little dubious about his claims of a minor breakdown here, but the freak-out itself isn't the real problem here.

What's not fine is taking that as an excuse to once again lean in over Rodimus (note the angle Megatron shifts to once he starts yelling), jab a finger in his face, and personally insult him. What's he done to warrant the “You are ridiculous” line and accusatory tone, other than tell Megatron something he didn't want to hear? How does keeping him briefed and patiently waiting for him to process lead to the conclusion that Rodimus is his own, personal punishment?

Well, keeping a level head while publicly briefing Megatron means undermining some of that narrative he’s so carefully constructing, where Rodimus is rash and rude and impulsive and irresponsible. Unsuited to command. Because in this scene? Rodimus looks and acts like a capable and considerate commander.

There's also the fact that Rodimus is treating him like a peer rather than a superior here.

Now, that might not be why Megatron lashes out. He might genuinely be disturbed by the idea of time travel and instinctively target his current favorite (emotional) punching bag. But I think it's telling that he immediately turns something going wrong into being Rodimus’ fault when he's actually doing his job quite well in this scene, not to mention respecting Megatron as co-captain. It's also telling that he breaks out the same physical intimidation tactics I described in the last subsection the moment he gets agitated.

So why do I think this is an abuse tactic and not poorly-handled panic, aside from Megatron's extensive experience with various types of weird science? Because Rodimus doesn't try to contradict him. He doesn't fight the point or defend himself. And, sure, that could be a sign of maturity--but it can also be a sign that he's beginning to internalize Megatron's message, especially when looked at in the context of everything else I mentioned in this post.

In fact, let’s cover his motivations and intentions a bit more directly.

INTENTIONALITY

Assessing whether abusive behavior is deliberate can be nearly impossible when you’re living in it. For example, I highly doubt that my mom is any kind of mastermind with an ultimate end goal of control over me. I’m not actually sure what she was thinking for any of that--she insists most of it never happened and has a different justification every time I ask about the parts she doesn’t deny (although she sometimes denies those, too, depending on her mood).

Even if Megatron’s behavior wasn’t intentional, it would still be unacceptable, dangerous, and traumatic. But I do genuinely believe it’s deliberate--partly because of the following scene:

This is coming from Ravage--a spy with extensive experience that goes all the way back to the day of the Senate. He’s seen a lot. And he makes a compelling argument:

Ravage points out numerous occasions where Megatron played the long game--planning ahead, setting up for what he might want someday as well as what he wants today. Reaching for the dark matter, delaying his trial with sidequests as soon as the opportunity presented itself--those, too, are examples of this.

So it stands to reason that all of this manipulation could serve the fairly straightforward goal of setting himself up to be sole captain of the Lost Light--or some other goal we haven’t yet worked out that requires tearing down Rodimus’ reputation and isolating him from the rest of the crew.

IN CONCLUSION

Megatron is abusing Rodimus. Emotionally and verbally at the very least, but possibly other forms of abuse. He’s certainly threatening physical abuse with his nonverbal cues--and, by some definitions, is in fact perpetrating physical abuse by bodily intimidating Rodimus.

The evidence is overwhelming, and I think that this interpretation gives greater depth and meaning to JRo’s characterizations of both Rodimus and Megatron. Through this lens, Rodimus’ increasingly erratic and seemingly out-of-character behavior as the series progresses can be viewed as a response to gaslighting and other abuse. Meanwhile, for Megatron, this interpretation serves to connect his current behavior to his wartime behavior in a way that feels more in line with IDW’s past version of him instead of a sudden and hollow change.

Ultimately, though, this interpretation is important to me as an abuse survivor. I don't fault those who want to write their own version of Megatron, but, if I'm being honest? I never again want to see another post insisting that Megatron can't be written as abusive. (and if you think this is vagueblogging about someone in particular, I swear it's not. I've seen multiple posts and tweets echoing this sentiment. This isn't some vague callout post; it's an alternative interpretation that runs counter to the dominant fandom narrative as I've encountered it.)

You can keep your interpretation of Megatron. He is a fictional character who has been written by dozens of different people in numerous canons. If you don't want to write about him as an abusive and manipulative jerk, by all means, don't. The only request I make is that you not condemn those who do.

Multiple interpretations of canon lead to more varied and interesting fan works. And I think that's good for everyone.

Additional Reading

In case you want to do further reading, here are some links to other articles I looked at while making this post. I may add to this if I find any others that feel relevant.

15 Types of Verbal Abuse in Relationships

10 Signs You Are in a Relationship with a Narcissist (first part in a series)

[feynites]

#I love their interactions to bits and their fluffier moments are amazing#but so often there's an underlying heartbreak about them too#the difficult paths that shaped them into the people that they are#but also the hardships (and sometimes tragedies) awaiting them#sometimes it feels like I'm doing escapism of escapism#if that makes sense XD#with all the au fanart for LG#trying to imagine what they might have in happier moments#in worlds that might treat them more gently#in futures that hold more hope than darkness for them#and I just gave myself a sad over gratuitous art for no reason :x#(poor thenvunin barely-clad as usual :3)#but sometimes difficult doesn't mean impossible#because these dorks aren't just passively sitting back either#they're /trying/ and sometimes that works out#and all the aus you've written for them are just <3<3 (@pyrrhy)

Sometimes - when he lets himself - Thenvunin wonders what would really make him happy in his life.

He knows what is supposed to make him happy, of course. A life of good works and atonement. There are days when he uncharitably thinks that all mages are born with a debt they never asked for; like inheriting some unmet ancestor’s bills. From the first moment magic flew from his fingertips, he was destined to spend the rest of his life paying for it, paying for the danger of it, and the power of it, and the ancient history tied to it.

He is supposed to be happy, in his payments. Humble and thoughtful and willing to make all needed sacrifices, to be one of the good mages. And sometimes, he is. He can recollect a feeling of relief that would rush through him, every time his sacrifices were rewarded, every time it was affirmed that he was doing well at offering the universe his apologies.

He can recollect it.

But, more and more, he finds, it is becoming less likely that he will actually feel it. And some part of him is beginning to wonder if that was ever really ‘happiness’, or simply the brief flare of hope that maybe, some day, if he did things precisely right...

Maybe he would actually pay his debts, before he died.

Maybe he would no longer have to constantly prove himself, and could simply be.

But whether it was happiness or not, Thenvunin finds in his time with the Inquisition, that it becomes harder to feel. That instead of relief, something else tends to rise up in him every time he is called upon to pay for his magic. Something steely, and bitter, and increasingly resentful. It doesn’t really speak with Uthvir’s voice, but it listens to Uthvir. This part of him that would only ever come out, in the past, when he had a sword in his hand and an enemy in front of him... it gets bigger. Stronger. Louder.

Thenvunin would be afraid that it might steal all of his happiness.

Except, he realizes, when he leaves Markham for the second time - when Uthvir comes and gets him, and tells him they’re rescuing him - that he is happy. Or rather, he can be happy, in ways that sometimes conflict with him, but also seem much stronger than what he thought happiness was. He finds something that he hadn’t even realized he’d misplaced; something left behind in the days before his Harrowing. Before Seth and the guard and the rebellion. He is not really sure if more of the blame rests with Uthvir or the Inquisition but he knows he’s changed. That he can feel giddy, and excited, and confined, and strong in ways that he shouldn’t. For reasons that he shouldn’t.

That he can want things he’s been told not to, and that even realizing that, even admitting it, doesn’t seem to carry the dire consequences he somehow always feared.

What would really make him happy?

Is it wandering? Is it fighting? Is it love? Is it freedom?

Can it last?

That’s the sticking point, he supposes. Most any mage can taste freedom, but usually only at the cost of death. Any thrill can be obtained, but not all of them can be survived. What kind of end is waiting for him, now? What kind is waiting for Uthvir? If neither of them had been born mages, would it have gone better for them? Or worse? Would Thenvunin have been left to die as an infant? Would Uthvir have ever escaped enslavement?

How many lives might they have led with worse fates in store?

...How many with better?

And what would ‘better’ even look like? Thenvunin wonders. Utopia, maybe. Elvhenan, he might have thought, before he learned that even old fables must be uprooted and destroyed in this life. But if not Elvhenan, then what? Some other idyll, some other place. Free of demons and slavery and death. Or even just less replete with them. Would the two of them have ever had simple lives? Or lives filled with fewer harrowings, at least? Kindly adventures, maybe. Sweet stories. Uncomplicated dreams. A castle in the clouds, higher even than Skyhold, where bad things could only threaten to reach them, but never actually succeed.

He does not realize how thick his throat feels, until he swallows and finds it like sandpaper. His vision blurs a little, and Uthvir stops, and looks over with concern. Their hand rests against his forearm.

“Thenvunin?” they ask. “What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head.

How can he explain? It sounds so silly. To suddenly start crying, of all things, just because of a daydream. Just because he doesn’t know why they don’t deserve a chance. Why everyone, it seems, is so set upon abandoning them; why people must hate mages, why humans can go about destroying the lives of elves, why Uthvir’s skin has scars but there are magisters who live to ripe old ages and die peacefully in their beds, untouched by justice for their atrocities. Why even the elven gods must be liars and cheats and murderers and creatures of their ilk, why Solas would look the Inquisitor in the eye and declare his intentions to destroy this world.

Their world.

Even the rebel gods forsake them.

Thenvunin shakes his head, again, and then lifts his arms and puts them around Uthvir. He cannot change it. That is the worst part. He is still, after all this time, so powerless to fix things. His shoulders shake and he pulls Uthvir presumptuously close. They do not object, though. Their hands settle onto his back, and they ask him what’s wrong again. They don’t let go, even as Thenvunin just rests his head atop theirs, and weeps for seemingly no reason.

When he finally finds that he can’t anymore, Uthvir rubs a hand in slow circles against his spine.

“We have been travelling much harder than usual,” they say. “I should have realized. Let’s make camp, hmm? Rest a while.”

A much simpler state of affairs than anything which Thenvunin could articulate.

Uthvir gets him moving again. The roads they are traversing are not well-trodden, but they are better than hunters’ trails or smugglers’ paths. Trade routes, Uthvir had said, between villages and more remote homesteads, not-quite-civilized but not really wild, either. They had warned him that slavers were known to pass through the areas, every now and again. Opportunists, mostly, or bounty hunters, following leads on runaways. Debt collectors, too, apparently. Thenvunin had been surprised to learn the fullness of the systems in place, that operated within the machinery of Tevinter’s slave trade.

Somehow he had always envisioned things as a matter of... well, magical force, more than anything. Corrupt mages casting spells that stripped others of their agency. Shackling people to them with blood magic and curses and demons to aid them. He had never really considered that a great deal of paperwork was involved, and truthfully, Dorian had explained things more than Uthvir generally did. He had made it sound almost reasonable, talking about debt and time frames and ‘indentured servitude’. Made it sound almost like the Circle, in fact, and sometimes Uthvir made the Circle sound like slavery, too, in even more unsettling ways.

Thenvunin thinks about debts, and cruelty, and stares at the tip of a scar he can see on the back of Uthvir’s neck, as they find a spot sufficient to their aims of making camp. The sun is still up, and it can’t be all that long past midday. They don’t complain about the daylight they will lose by stopping now, however, merely bid Thenvunin sit and get work on preparing a fire, while they set up their tent.

Thenvunin takes his time - it is hardly urgent, after all - and spends the better part of it watching Uthvir. Watching their hands, as they move, and watching their face, as they frown a little, and send the occasional glance his way. Watching their arms and their back and the way their armour moves with them, the way they walk and the deftness with which they go through familiar motions.

They are very graceful.

Graceful. And gentle. And sometimes not gentle, in ways that... excite him. But do not frighten him, and haven’t for a long time, now. They are cautious - even over-cautious - and playful, and they are beautiful. It strikes him, then, that Uthvir is one of the loveliest people he has ever met. He wonders if this was what the Maker might have felt like, when he heard Andraste’s voice, singing so brightly from such a dark and forsaken place.

“What?” Uthvir asks, and Thenvunin realizes his staring has been quite blatant.

He swallows.

Say it!

Uthvir is always saying such... such things, to him. Poetic things. Flattery, he might call it, except that it works too well. With things as they are, should they not reciprocate? At least somehow?

“You remind me of Andraste!” he blurts.

Uthvir blinks.

Awkward silence descends, and Thenvunin kind of wants to find a rock to hide under. Uthvir’s brow furrows, and they look as though they are backtracking the last few moments in their mind, searching for a missing piece of context.

“...In what sense?” they finally ask him.

Oh, Maker, why did he say anything? Now he has to explain. Or at least try to. He folds his arms, and lifts his chin, except that he cannot get defensive. Uthvir has done nothing wrong, there is no fault in their inquiry, and though Thenvunin dearly wishes that they could simply divine his meaning, it is rather reasonable that they can’t. Under the circumstances.

“Well,” he says, still feeling somewhat wrung out from his tears. He clears his throat. “Well, in the - in the sense of, I was just. I was thinking, and, you know, the Maker heard Andraste’s singing and He fell in love with her. And that is rather like you. Except that you don’t sing, of course. Unless you do, though I haven’t heard it, I don’t think. But, that’s not the point, obviously. Just that... the Maker thought that Andraste was very nice, and... not that I’m comparing myself to the Maker, per se, that would probably be presumptuous, but... I love you.”

Uthvir stares at him.

Thenvunin redirects his gaze onto his unfinished campfire, and attempts to survive the sheer tidal wave of mortification rising up in him. He cannot bring himself to look, when he hears their footsteps coming closer. Not until they settle down beside him. And then he does, and his heart stops at the aching affection in their gaze.

“I do not think I am very much like Andraste,” they tell him. “But, thank you.”

Thenvunin sniffs.

“You have plenty in common with her,” he insists. “She wanted to end slavery and destroy Tevinter too, you know. And back when she was raising her army, very few people shared in her faith, and a lot of her enemies objected to nearly everything about her. But she was clever, and charismatic, and also very good at killing.”

“Ah,” says Uthvir. “I admit, when I consider her, I tend to think more about the end of that story.”

He frowns.

“I would not betray you,” he asserts, before he can think twice about it. “Not like Maferath.”

Uthvir reaches over, and brushes their fingers across the back of his hand.

“An addendum, then,” they decide. “Shall we say I am somewhat like Andraste, but with potentially better taste in husbands?”

“Certainly,” Thenvunin agrees, and then his brain catches up with the implications of that. Potentially better taste in husbands. Not men. Not lovers. Not bedpartners, cohorts, or allies.

Husbands.

Married.

Thenvunin’s heart stops and his tongue ties itself into a knot, and he looks at Uthvir, who only looks levelly back at him for a moment; before their expression softens, and they squeeze his hand. And then stand up, and move away, which seems so wrong that Thenvunin cannot help but reach out and grab their wrist.

Such a comment seems to vague to be a proposal; but too important to deny offhand.

“...You would consider marrying...?” he manages to ask.

Uthvir inclines their head.

“I would prefer to discuss such things when we are not on the road and near to exhausted,” they admit, which does seem reasonable. “But, yes, vhenan. I would.”

They lean down and kiss him, just once, before working their way free of him again, and saying something about having to check and just make certain of some nearby tracks they saw. They don’t leave his sight entirely, but Thenvunin can tell they are conspicuously giving him some space to process things.

The future is such a perilous thing. Happiness seems only so fleeting. All of it rife with the potential for a multitude of disasters. This is not, he thinks, the best of all possibly lives and fates.

But it is his, it is theirs, and if he can share it with them, then...

Then that is more than he could have dreamed.

[gretamaya]

Title: Back Porch

Summary: This is for @invaderhogtwopointohno, who asked for a new neighbors au in the rebelcaptain “May the 4th” exchange. I hope you enjoy the story!

AO3/2446 words

“How do I look?” Jyn asked, stepping out of the door onto the back porch. She didn’t stop to think about why she was asking for Cassian’s opinion. When he wasn’t away on assignment, he could normally be found on the back porch that stretched across both sides of the duplex.

“Good.” The warmth in his voice made the word sound more positive than it was - the lovely smile he gave her had the same effect.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling back. “Um.” Her purpose obtained, she suddenly felt the awkwardness of the situation. “Have a good evening,” she offered weakly. She suddenly wished she was staying here, on the back porch with him, like she normally did. But everyone in her life - her parents, Leia and Han, Bodhi - were urging her to ‘get out there’ and ‘not hide away in your house with no furniture, God, Jyn, you make me look good’ (“Thanks, Han,” she had said, no real thanks in her voice).

“Good luck,” he said, lifting his mug of coffee to her in a kind of salute.

As it turned out, she really should’ve just stayed on the back porch. How could she have trusted Han Solo to set her up on a blind date?

She didn’t know how she knew from one look at the tall, severe-looking man at the bar that things were going to go poorly, but she had. However, she also told herself not to judge a book by its cover.

She really should’ve judged, though, because her judgements were entirely correct in this instance.

“Do you really think watching men kick a ball around is a valuable use of your time?”

“Yes,” she growled. She really hated talking to men about sports. Normally, when they found out she liked football, they immediately started to try to catch her out, by asking her to explain the offsides rule or claiming she just liked it because the men were hot. Somehow this pretentious asshole, who didn’t even like sports, was nevertheless trying to make her feel inferior about sports.

“I prefer to spend my time reading John Chesterfield’s three-volume work on the Crusades. Are you familiar with it?”

“No,” said Jyn. She was frantically trying to think of a way out of this mess.

“It is far more exciting than a football match. Chesterfield’s scholarship is top-notch.”

“Actually, I prefer Niall Ferguson’s scholarship.”

Jyn was a bit surprised when he physically leaned away from her in horror, instead of reacting with glee. “Ferguson’s scholarship is appalling. His inability to build a cohesive narrative from his research seriously undermines any point he is attempting to make.”

“His research really isn’t all that, either.”

He frowned at her, confused. “You just said you prefered his scholarship.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean I like it.” She actually found Ferguson awful, she had just been hoping that mentioning him would keep Kay talking for awhile without any input from her. “I was expecting you to launch into a long soliloquy on his attributes. People like you normally like Ferguson.”

“‘People like me?’”

She was prevented from answering by Kay fixating on someone who had just entered the bar. For awhile now, he had been watching everyone that came in with an expectant look on his face. She had thought probably in hope that his real date would appear. Jyn frowned as she realized that she knew who was approaching them.

“Oh, good, my ride is here.” All at once, Jyn’s attention snapped back to the man sitting next to her.

“Your ride? You can’t drive yourself to your date?”

“I assumed there would be alcohol.” He looked down at her beverage. “You’re not driving yourself, are you?”

She snorted. “Of course I am driving myself home!” She could handle a drink. Well, at the moment, she felt like having a lot of drinks and then calling a cab, and feeling that intensified as Cassian approached them. Jyn was both mortified and angry. How did he know this asshole? “Kay… Jyn,” he said, greeting them in turn.

“You know her?” Kay asked, clearly taken aback.

“She is my neighbor.”

Kay looked her over, not for the first time that night. “You did not mention that she was extremely irritating.” Great, thought Jyn, he’s discussed me with this idiot.

“She’s not.” To Jyn: “I’m sorry.” When he offered to pay for their drinks and get Kay out of there, Jyn told him he sure as hell wasn’t doing that and she was going to stay there, drinking.

“But you drove yourself here! How will you get home?”

“It’s called a cab, Kay,” said Cassian and then to Jyn, “I can’t promise he won’t call the cops on you. Why don’t you let me take you home, now, and then we can worry about your car later?”

Before she could respond to that, Kay added, “You should listen to him. Cassian is a sensible person.”

‘Sensible’ was not how she would describe him, not if he had the role in this debacle she thought he did, but to get this over with, she agreed to go with them. Besides, it would give her a chance to confront him about all of this.

Kay, mercifully, did not live far away, leaving Jyn and Cassian alone in the car.

Jyn crossed her arms over her chest. “So how do you know Han Solo?”

“Who?”

“Don’t give me that. You worked with Han to set me up on that date.”

“I would never set Kay up on a date with anyone.”

Jyn had wondered how long he could keep the act up, wherein he looked horrified at this situation instead of enjoying it, but just maybe it wasn’t an act. She was still expecting Han to pull up in a car while they idled at a red light any moment, gleefully shouting about how he had played her.

Getting no response from her, Cassian added, “When he told me he was going on a blind date, I tried to talk him out of it. He doesn’t handle surprises well.”

“If you didn’t set him up, then who did?”

“His friend Cee.”

“Ah.” Cee. Who worked for Leia. Who knew Han. Yes, Cee definitely had the poor judgment required for this.

By this time, they were pulling into the spot in front of the duplex. “You know Cee?” Cassian asked, as he turned the car off.

“Yeah. That explains things. If I had known Cee was involved…”

“You wouldn’t have done it.”

She shook her head, sighed, and leaned back into the car seat. She heard Cassian get out, and wasn’t surprised when the door on her side opened. “I promise never to mention it again.”

“Can you get Kay to never mention it again?” she asked, swinging her legs out of the car.

“I will do my best.”

“Thank you,” she said, fumbling for her keys as she moved towards her door. She looked down at herself. “It’s a shame I got all dressed up for no one to appreciate it.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Cassian had closed the car door behind her, and was moving towards his front door, so close to hers.

She looked up at him, startled. “You wouldn’t?”

He looked embarrassed. He had pretty much looked embarrassed from the moment he had shown up in the bar, but subtle changes in his expression told her he was somehow even more embarrassed now.

He stuck his tongue out slightly, a gesture Jyn had learned meant he had made up his mind about something, and said, “I appreciate it.” She was a bit too startled to say anything, but she didn’t run, so he added, “I know you didn’t get dinner, I could make some pasta if you’re interested.”

She had enjoyed Cassian’s cooking before, of course, when he had found her on the back porch they shared and offered him some of what he had been making. This felt different, though, like he was offering to cook especially for her.

She wondered briefly if he was Kay’s friend because he looked good by comparison, but she quickly shoved that uncharitable thought aside, he had done nothing to deserve it. She was still somewhat stressed out from the disaster her date had been, and she didn’t know how good of company she would be. On the other hand, she didn’t want to be alone, and she did want to eat, and Cassian was used to her moping on the back porch, and she really was dressed too nicely to drink whatever alcohol she had in the house while eating ice cream out of a container and cursing Han Solo’s name.

She realized she was taking to long with her answer when he said, “Look, Jyn, don’t worry-”

“I’m interested.”

His worried, embarrassed look was replaced by relieved embarrassment. He held his door open for her.

Jyn had seen plenty of his kitchen from the back porch but very little of the rest of his house. It was warm, inviting, comfortable - a lot like Cassian, really. He spent weeks away on assignment when reporting on the global effects of climate change - he had seen famine, drought, disease. He just liked to come home to something comforting, and alive, which is why their shared backyard was overflowing with greenery that went untended while he was away.

“Would you like something to drink?”

She was desperate for some alcohol but said, “I really need to eat something first.”

He smiled and in short order a plate of cheese, crackers and fruit appeared in front of her. Jyn had to stop herself from blurting out “How the fuck are you still single?” because she knew what his job required of him, she knew that was why he came home to an empty house and overgrown garden with an new, irritable neighbor who made him feel unwelcome the first time she saw him.

“So…” Cassian began, trying to sound casual, as he pulled food out of the fridge. “Who is this Han Solo?”

Jyn smiled. “A friend from college. Now that he finally got up the nerve to actually get engaged, he keeps trying to hook everyone else up. He’s terrible at it. I don’t know why he thinks he’d be any good, either, he danced around Leia for years before anything happened between them. I said yes to his latest offer just to get him to leave me alone.”

“Ah,” he said as he smiled at her. Then, changing the subject completely: “You okay with mushrooms?”

“Sure,” she said. But she wasn’t ready to let this go. “So you knew I was going on a date, and someone had set Kay up on a date, but you didn’t bother to check to see if it was with one another?”

“I thought it was too improbable. Besides, you didn’t tell me you were going on a blind date, just a date.” He looked over his shoulder at her, somewhat apprehensively. “How long are you going to blame me for this?”

“I can’t blame you, you’re too cute and you feed me.” Cassian’s answering blush told her he didn’t expect to hear those words any more than she expected to say them. He quickly turned back to his cooking - Jyn knew her cheeks must be burning as well. She wished she hadn’t turned down alcohol earlier, she could use some now to drown her embarrassment.

Instead, Jyn watched Cassian as he worked at the counter while she munched on the food he had already provided for her. Is there a particular reason you left out the fact that your new neighbor is really good looking? Leia’s words floated through Jyn’s mind. Leia had gotten a look at him one day when she stopped by Jyn’s house to drop some things off. Leia didn’t like Jyn living in an apartment with no furniture. Jyn didn’t mind - her old furniture had been too much of a reminder of her past life, that she was trying to move on from, and it had been cheap, anyway. Leia, the daughter of a senator, her life mapped out before her, did not do and had never done ‘cheap’.

Jyn had thought about answering Leia with glib remarks like ‘don’t let Han hear you say that’ or ‘I didn’t think it mattered’, but Leia never would’ve been satisfied with that. Leia dealt well with honesty, though, so Jyn had told her she didn’t want to talk about it, and Leia let the matter drop. Or maybe she hadn’t. Leia knew Han, knew Cee. Leia could’ve stopped this whole thing, only she didn’t. Maybe Leia had let it go through, so Jyn would realize she was interested in her cute neighbor. Fine, Leia. Jyn would admit that to herself. She was interested in her cute neighbor. Who was currently cooking for her. Sometimes Jyn felt that they were all being carefully manipulated by Leia, and there wasn’t anything any of them could do about it. Her missteps with Han had been caused mostly by the fact that Han was about as far removed from who Leia thought she should be marrying as possible (and also by the fact that Han was Han).

“Are you ready for that drink?” he asked, with a brief glance over his shoulder.

“Sure,” she said, standing up as she said it. “If you’ll tell me-”

“No, no, no,” he said quickly, leaving the food he was preparing to gently push her back to her chair. “I’ll get-”

Instead of letting him push her back further, Jyn pulled him towards her. He had already been leaning down slightly, making it easier for her to pull him down for a kiss.

Several minutes later, when he came up for air, he managed to say, “The pasta will get mushy.”

“You have more,” she said, turning off the burners. She wanted Cassian more than she wanted food.

(It turned out he did not have more.)

(She, however, had some. From a box of mac-and-cheese.)

(She’ll never forget the horribly cute distressed face he made at having to cook it. She laughed and kissed it off him. “Cassian, I’m hungry.” He grumbled, but was happy to accept her kisses.)

*

Han was there to greet her at work the next day. “Jyn, look, I can explain-” Han was out of his seat, moving his arm in a sweeping motion, as though to push away the debacle he was prominently involved in.

Jyn walked right up to him and kissed him on the cheek. Han, flabbergasted, sputtering, “Wha- what?”

Jyn just smiled at him and walked away. It was all he deserved, really.