#lsotw springer

[spectra-bear]

After my ray chase voiceclaim for springer, I kept reimagining some xmen clips with him and realized how fitting wolverine is for impactor

[st-peculiar]

Reading transformers idw was a terrible idea because after reading the last stand of the wreckers I’ve gained at least four new characters I’m attached to who all fucking died so I’m not having a good time

[anabisetia]

Last stand of the wreckers ready for TFcon La

[113-degrees-of-separation]

(Part 5) Bullets: A Last Stand of the Wreckers story.

Springer stood alone on the command deck of Debris, a crumbling Autobot space station in orbit around Klo, and stared at 12 names on a computer screen.

In his right hand he was holding an Autobot bullet (of sorts) that had been fired by a Decepticon (of sorts). The bullet was, in fact, a benign projectile: inside there was no vein of combustible energon, just a data chip containing the latest report from Agent 113, an Autobot working undercover at the Decepticon Justice Division. The name was misleading: it was the DJD's job to scour their own ranks for dissidents and turncoats, and then murder them. Information provided by Agent 113 often led the Autobots to Decepticons who, being dissidents and turncoats, were willing to betray their ex-comrades in exchange for protection against reprisals.

"Your friend has a funny way of making contact," First Aid had said when he'd got in touch three days earlier, and he was right. Terrified of being detected, the increasingly eccentric Agent 113 had developed a unique way of reporting his findings. Instead of, say, a midnight rendezvous on the steps of the Chomskian Embassy, he would wait until the DJD attacked some Autobots and then shoot the 'enemy' with a data-laced bullet. Springer had had to make sure that select medics at key facilities were always on the lookout for Agent 113's calling card: a single bullet hole in the right 'eye' of an Autobot symbol.

With his latest communiqué, Agent 113 had relayed concerns within the DJD that nothing had been heard of Garrus-9 since the Autobot prison had been overrun by Sky Quake's Predators during the early stages of the Surge. The DJD had despatched an exploratory force to investigate. They'd never come back.

Springer had shared this information with High Command, who- on the basis of an earlier report from Agent 113 - had originally concluded that G-9 had been utterly destroyed. They were now faced with the possibility that Fortress Maximus and Co had not only survived the Surge, but were repelling Decepticon invasion parties while waiting to be rescued. All of which had led Prowl to contact Springer to discuss plans for Operation: Retrieval.

Springer would have preferred a more inspiring name, but it was typical of Prowl to opt for something clinical and detached. Fort Max and his team didn't need 'retrieving', they needed rescuing. Drab name aside, Operation: Retrieval was why he was doing what Impactor and Crest and Hyperion before him had done: staring at names on a screen and deciding who he would ask to join the Wreckers.

Guzzle had never held the Matrix before.

The object in his hand was the perfect weight: heavy enough to matter, to tug on the wire sinews in his forearm, but easy to carry. A good size, too: portable, but big enough to stop Decepticons in their tracks. Best of all was the way it felt: the perfect union of holder and held, it sang in his grip.

Guzzle had never held the Matrix before and probably never would, but surely it could never feel as satisfying, as fundamentally right, as it felt when he picked up The Judge, his favorite handgun.

He'd lived an itinerant life of late, latching onto a succession of Autobot squads in the hope of recapturing the sense of belonging that he'd felt when serving in his old platoon. He'd decided to help with Dipstick's reconstruction project until he came across something better suited to his talents (those talents chiefly consisting of the ability to insert various deadly projectiles into various deadly Decepticons). And while the thrill of close combat hadn't entirely deserted him, this most unreflective of robots had recently identified a certain… hollowness inside him. His first reaction, of course, had been to seek medical help. Fixit had carried out a full body search and, finding no internal cavities, suggested that the hollow feeling was not an early indication of corrodia gravis but "an emotional response". Guzzle had pondered this at length, until a pang of acute discomfort had heralded the arrival of bona fide insight: he was in mourning. Most of his old platoon had died trying to rescue Kup, and he was still struggling to accept their deaths and the circumstances surrounding them.

His new life on Igue Moor - a fuel depot on the outskirts of Babu Yar- had settled into a reassuring rhythm. Every day, a few hours before dawn, he and The Judge would go outside and shoot statues. If he'd felt a flicker of guilt when he'd first started using the remains of Sacred Debating Chamber as a firing range, he hadn't recognized it as such.

He loaded a handful of tracer bullets into his gun and looked around for today's first target. On the statue of Babu Fost, the Great Pacifist, he found it: a forehead scar. He slid his green targeting visor over his optics and was beginning to squeeze the trigger when the unthinkable happened: he stopped. This frightened him; he'd always seen a gunshot through. He wondered whether his overworked trigger finger had seized up, but no, Fixit had only last week given him new digits. Which meant that this was something else entirely: another 'feeling'. Something, he sensed, to do with his own mortality. Thankfully, the moment passed quickly and he felt sufficiently at ease with himself to unload an entire magazine of tracers into the Great Pacifist's head.

For some reason the luminous green tracer trails did not fade away. Instead, they hovered over the floor of the Sacred Debating Chamber and began gathering themselves up. They started flickering. Then rippling. Then shimmering.

The Judge slipped from Guzzle's new fingers.

Previous | Next

[decepti-thots]

not really a 🔥 prompt but if you want to talk about how you think about wreckers and family i'd love that 👀 i know you have feelings on that soooo

I do indeed, haha. There was a period of time where a common complaint about Wrequiem specifically was that I feel like people fell into the fannish tropification trap of pushing Verity's arc into a kind of found-family trope with her role in that comic, and found it disappointing that the comic consistently failed to pay off what they expected from that lens as a result; that Verity did not get a happily ever after entrenched in those dynamics as her new 'family'.

Which... well, it's trying to squeeze the actual contents of that comic into a trope it never pretended to be, frankly. LSotW sets up this whole concept that the Wreckers as an in-group are in fact a bunch of toxic people put to toxic ends slowly imploding on themselves and, in particular, that it was that sense of 'we're untouchable and accountable to our in-group before anything else' that led to the moment where it all fell off the pedestal with Impactor at Pova. 'Wreckers before everything else' is not a feel-good forged bond of found family tropes, it's like, the setup for showing the cracks in how Springer in particular fell deeper and deeper into self-justification for doing terrible shit with no wider awareness of what, exactly, they were doing. The Wreckers are, very explicitly, a group of people brought on to do morally dubious-to-inexcusable shit because they are willing to throw themselves into the metaphorical meatgrinder in the middle of a war. They protect their own out of self-interest because they are self-selecting to be the sorts of people who, one way or another, want to a) have a license to do some Really Bad Shit and/or b) are willing and ready to die on command. This is not presented as some enviable thing; it is a shitshow.

It's true that as we move onto Sins and Wrequiem, Verity's connection to various characters is increasingly divorced from the actual organizing concept of 'the Wreckers' as an actual wartime entity, but the whole thing still casts a shadow. Stakeout has nothing to do with them at all, and his and Verity's relationship is clearly a loving one in which they supported each other unconditionally- but the moment the actual Wreckers re-enter the picture, it gets him killed, and interrupts that, even as that's implicitly also why they're even brought together to start with. Springer detaches from them because he wants to break a cycle he realizes he himself was a part of and perpetuated, going off with Verity post-Sins and leading into Wrequiem- but again, what puts his attempts to do so in jeopardy is tied to Impactor showing back up in Wrequiem to disrupt that attempt. In general, a theme of Sins as a whole is this concept of the imposition of family as not an inherently redemptive or positive force, but one that reinforces the underlying horror themes in that comic- something that doesn't get walked back in Wrequiem, where it only acts as redemptive for Tarantulas in as much as the narrative recognizes the power of his ability to walk away from Springer, and which frames Impactor's relationship to Springer as explicitly quasi-familial for the first time but which clearly doesn't see any way forward for that except in Impactor explicitly removing himself from the entire affair. (you know. very violently.)

Because of the kind of comic the Wreckers saga is tonally and what it's about, it ultimately shows any toxic conception of 'family' it presents through that kind of wartime-band-of-brothers dynamic specifically as one that is ultimately perpetuating a cycle of violence, let alone how it leverages the concept in Sins with the Prowl-Tarantulas-Springer thing. (Nick Roche once described Sins on Twitter as being a comic either about the horror of being a parent or the horror of having parents, and I am inclined to agree that it boils down to both!) Family is often presented in fiction as unquestionably good, or at least when it's bad it is bad because it in some way fails to 'properly' be what a family 'should be'. I don't think the trope of 'found family' always avoids this, tbqh; I think it often just tries to shunt that dynamic onto 'families of choice' uncritically, as though that inherently elevates it without further consideration. I like that this isn't automatically the case in the Wreckers comics! Springer and Verity aren't trying to redeem that as much as they're trying, as people who have leaned on it in the past for lack of other options, to break free of it. (I once compared the way Springer refuses to entertain talking to Prowl after the revelations in Sins, and his pointed distance when we check back in during Wrequiem, to an adult child of a parent who is deliberately estranged, and I really do get that vibe.) The end of Wrequiem is both of them doing so in their own ways. In a way that inevitably takes them apart from each other, yeah, but also because they have been able to make those choices of their own accord in ways that definitively break the cycle of violence they've both been entrenched in. It's bittersweet, but it's not really tragic, I don't think.

There are of course two (pseudo-)parental elements not seen as nearly so negative: Kup to Springer, and Verity choosing as an adult to reunite with her mother. But I think it's crucial that Springer ultimately winds up (however unplanned on the writing side) with Kup being snatched away because that violence continued, however indirectly. And Verity's choice to reunite with her mother is more symbolic of her leaving that cycle than anything, I feel. It does have room for conceptions of 'family' that are positive in a broader sense! But the actual concept of what the Wreckers as a group represent there... that's not some fun endless-adventures-with-my-robot-friends possible future that was snatched away from Verity or Springer, you know. In as much as it brushes up against the idea of 'being a family' (and it often doesn't at all!), it does so in a way which does not assume that kind of implied bond is automatically positive, and that's just so much more interesting a way to read it to me than like. Insisting it's a bug rather than a feature, and wishing there was a 'happy ending' for the way these characters' lives all intertwined as a result.

[spaceybot]

Late TFcon LA 2025 Haul!

Got Neil Ross (Springer) and Michael Bell (Prowl) to autograph my copy of LSOTW

[kryptonitecore]

Rereading: Last Stand of the Wreckers

This must have been a shock to the system when it came out for the first time  and, in terms of quality, I think this clears everything from IDW1 so far. I have so many good things to say about the art. I love the use of upward angles to get you into a certain perspective, the creative panelling and the way that Roche will cram so much detail into every page. I loved the colour swap between the present timeline and the invented story that Ironfist tells about Impactor and Springer. I also love Pyro’s design, especially how there are areas where his Optimus-esque paint-job have chipped and you can see black and yellow underneath.

The pace is borderline frantic from the beginning with set-up being blunt and fast, especially compared to the likes of All Hail Megatron and Costa’s decompressed run. Some of the comics from this point in the continuity are borderline apocalyptic in terms of the way they talk about the status quo of the story, but this is one of the ones that actually sells it. The way the Wreckers are introduced has so many telling contradictions in it, between the new members’s enthusiasm versus Dipstick’s reaction versus Ultra Magnus’ exhaustion and frustration. In fact, particularly Ultra Magnus’s reaction: ‘Look, it’s easier for me to turn a blind eye to the wreckers’ methods when I’m not in the same bloodbath as you guys’. The idea that the Wreckers are at a point where they are picking up some of the most obviously ‘disposable’ candidates possible is also really helpful in that regard, plus the references back to earlier events like the number of people lost trying to rescue Kup, you actually get a broader sense of how the faction can be warped by what is, effectively, the celebrity-worship of certain members (RIP Guzzle’s friends). Another thing is that LSotW is surprisingly well-integrated into the wider canon, which is interesting, because I’m so used to thinking about it as more of a standalone, one of the things that people recommend to you as separate from the likes of the ongoing or MtMtE.I have also had the horrifying realisation that the ‘Dipstick’ in the beginning might be the unfortunate ‘Dipstick of Operation Doom Patrol’, in which case, no wonder he’s so angry. 

It’s interesting to see Fortress Maximus prior to Overlord, as limited as it is, and a little sad to see how much more assertive he is here. I continue to be mildly baffled but entertained by Verity. I’d always assumed that there was an explanation for how she ended up on Ultra Magnus’ ship earlier in IDW1 and I simply missed it because I hadn’t read those parts of the continuity… But no. I would do terrible things for more stuff focused on Verity and Magnus, as I am deeply curious as to how they came to be such good friends. 

Speaking of characters I would do terrible things for, Ironfist and Snare. The flashback with Ironfirst is wonderful, I love his conversation with Prowl and that Prowl’s face is always at a bit of an off-angle on the screen and ‘Thank you, but I’m done’ is up there as one of the saddest lines of the continuity so far. I had also forgotten how sad Snare made me - the fact that Impactor offers to ‘take you somewhere safe’, the question of whether he really means that, the fact that Snare’s mask is partially blown off so you can see his face, but only as he dies…

Meanwhile, not even other Decepticons are happy to see Overlord, the faces on the Predajets behind him whenever he is speaking are a sight. Overlord’s whole philosophy here, ‘I grant you freedom, Decepticons - in every sense of the word’ (a.k.a. chaotic ultraviolence through freedom) sets up an interesting contrast to Megatron’s ‘peace through tyranny’ thing. Overlord is delightfully weird about watching other characters fight, especially with the way Roche/Roberts lean into more eroticised language quite consciously with his character, lending him a sadistic enjoyment  of gladiatorial combat that is ideologically interesting for a Decepticon and especially one with such a fraught relationship with Megatron. There’s not a ton of backstory for Overlord besides the whole point one-percenter thing, but it’s such a strange state of being: immediately identified as useful at birth (before birth?), presumably kept by the Senate/Council for many years, fascinated by gladiatorial combat, desperate for Megatron’s attention… There’s a lot there. Him being intensely powerful and self-willed but not politically power-hungry is quite an interesting combination, as his goals are so comparatively petty and passive. That idea of a lack of agency or interiority is what I think Kup is supposed to be getting at with his comment: ‘I remember lookin’ into his eyes and seein’… Nothin’. An absence, y’know? Like his mind was someplace else’.

The book includes a few references to real historical events or atrocities, the same kinds of WWI/WWII/mid 20th-century imagery of war and dictatorship that’s somewhat common in Roche and/or Roberts works. It’s infrequent but a little underwhelming, especially as references to things like concentration camps don’t really serve much of a purpose except to tell me that Garrus-9 is a unpleasant place to be, which I think I could have deduced just fine. On another level, I have some mixed feelings about the utility of the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ allusions that become so dominant towards the end, as it provides a recognisable cultural touchstone and a lot of rhythm and inspiration for phrasing in that closing issue. However, there is a bit of a detachment between the respective narratives there, as although both focus on a suicidal charge in order to achieve a strategic goal, I would argue that ‘Charge’ is ultimately more about loyalty to incompetent and undeserving commanding officers than LSotW, because although Prowl’s mission has a significant body-count essentially baked into it, that’s not really a sign of his incompetence, it’s a sign of his callousness and his willingness to choose ‘more disposable’ team-members.

I do enjoy the narration with Prowl at the end, though, as it shows the areas where things didn’t go to plan (Springer nearly dying, Ironfirst not donating his spark), as both could be interpreted as Prowl underestimating those characters (Pyro’s capacity for actual selflessness and Ironfists’s willingness to reevaluate his admiration of the Wreckers). The way this story muddies the waters for Springer is also very interesting to me, as he knows he sent Impactor down so hard to help cover for the rest of the Wreckers, and the fact that the other Wreckers knew they could count on him to, let’s say, creatively interpret the truth in front of high command? I’m fascinated to learn that this story was originally going to incorporate Grimolock, which I feel I would have loved, even if it was just for a cameo. If anything, the original plan for the story described on TFwiki might be even bleaker.

The extras are lovely if you want a few more looks into the wider continuity, adding in some fun bits of world-building, and Skyfall is an interesting character to meet in terms of how he reflects certain Other Characters later on… Skyfall walked so that Getaway could run, etc. Additionally, this is an absolute shot in the dark based on very little, but ‘Pale Fire’ struck me as an interesting name for Squadron X’s ship, I wonder if it’s a Timon of Athens reference or if there’s something more obvious that I’m missing?

Do villany, do, since you protest to do’t,

Like workmen. I'll example you with thievery.

The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction

Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,

And her pale fire she snatches from the sun…

[elfdragon12]

Re: Earthspark Tarantulas, there were a couple of posts I saw a while ago that might help explain the intent behind his characterization…here they are (https://www.tumblr.com/maecatt/711181400887394304/queer-elder-tarantulas), and (https://www.tumblr.com/maecatt/710831474456297472/me-pitching-tarantulas-oh-hes-this-awesome), and yeah, it doesn’t seem that anybody cared about his original character at all, and just used his name and design for a completely different character. And it’s not like radically reinterpreting a character is always bad, TFA OP is amazing and he’s very different from G1 OP but what they did for Tarantulas…it just doesn’t really work

I know I've seen the second post. These are a part of why ES Tarantulas doesn't click for me. Maybe Mae Catt offline really does get how Tarantulas actually is in the Wreckers saga, but their tumblr posts just lean hard into the "he's a father!!" woobification so popular on tumblr that... Ruined my reading of Sins of the Father (and it took me so long to get to after how violent, graphic, and grim LSOTW was). I know you shouldn't let fandom ruin that kind of thing for you, but it's all I can think of when I read Tarantulas commit the most heinous war crimes for a war he's not even a part of.

If the canonical IDW1 Tarantulas had actually gotten to parent Springer, he would have been an unholy mix of Mother Gothel of Tangled (smothering, controlling, and "loving") and Endeavor of My Hero Academia (controlling, domineering, and with purpose). He was a terrible person. It's why he worked together with Overlord. He made horrible war weapons, he convinced Roadbuster to torture and kill his students, and so on. He has "terrible taste in men" because he himself is evil.

"I love [character]! That's why I changed literally everything about their personality when given the chance to write them myself!"

I actually wouldn't say TFA OP is actually all that radical of a reinterpretion of Optimus. You take G1 Orion Pax in the army, give him a traumatic event that disgraces him, and boom! TFA OP! I don't think TFA Prowl is strictly that radically different from the basic idea of Budiansky's Prowl either.

I mean, I like TFP Wheeljack, Knockout, and Breakdown. I even like WFC trilogy Skyfire... But also, I think it's fair for fans of the original versions to be bummed out the character they love is only superficially present and, sometimes, overshadows the personality they love so much. Not to mention that there's usually a character that already fits the role but hasn't gotten some spotlight in a while. (Blackarachnia would have been perfect for the role in Earthspark. That scene where she fakes threatening Silverbolt to "make it easier" plus the episode with Una and that time she only overheard part of Primal and Rhinox talking about the Maximal coding make her perfect for it.)

I also wouldn't be so bothered by ES Tarantulas if his fans wouldn't keep tagging posts on him with Beast Wars. I would love to just ignore ES Tarantulas, but he keeps popping up when I look for Beast Wars.

[spectra-bear]

Completing the flip, he climbed again, higher and higher, until she could barely make out his shape against the sky.

A moment later, the sound of his rotors vanished.

He had transformed.

A little something for @nicad13 's work Wrecked on AO3

[aelyxiae]

Revisiting this now that I know more, because I can’t help wondering about what was really going on at Delphi and whether it was just what it seems or whether there’s more to it than that.

The timeline as far as I understand it:

Delphi is constructed

Pharma is assigned there (I'm assuming this happens first)

First aid joins

Ambulon joins

Sometime later Springer recruits Aid to look for messages from agent 113 in autobot badges (source: Bullets)

LSoTW

Agent 113 discovered

Records of patient deaths increasing begin 2 years prior to start of MTMTE (MTMTE #4)

First Aid demoted (flashback shown in MTMTE #4, but exact timing unclear)

MTMTE #4-5

Everything from here on out is purely speculation on my part based on the information above.

It seems reasonable that to set up an operation like agent 113's infiltration of the DJD is something that would take a considerable amount of time and resources. And it's known that First Aid was later recruited and became directly involved in that operation. Also, Pharma was directly recruited/assigned to Delphi by Prowl (MTMTE #40) who managed covert operations for the autobots. Considering all this, it then seems possible that Delphi's unusual design was indeed because it was never intended to be just a medical base or mining outpost, but to be a station within the DJD's territory that could support agent 113's activities if needed. Further, there is no clear explanation within MTMTE for why exactly Tarn takes an interest in Delphi. However, if the time that Tarn first took an interest in the facility is around the same time as the start of the death logs First Aid broadcasts, then this would be somewhere around the same time that agent 113 is implied to be discovered. And therefore, that Tarn started looking around Delphi at that specific time because an autobot traitor had just been found within the DJD and the autobot base conspicuously on DJD territory would suddenly be a lot more interesting for the potential it had to be connected to the traitor within the DJD.

Other Thoughts:

In addition to First Aid being directly contacted by Springer (and therefore by extension the Wreckers), Pharma is shown in flashbacks to have worked around the Wreckers (SotW) and with the new institute (MTMTE #14). All of which could make sense in relation to a facility that might be used covertly, as opposed to assigning an unknown medic or someone like Ratchet to that position.

There's also a potential explanation for Ambulon's presence in this scenario beyond just hoping that he'd be overlooked. Because why have a Decepticon defector stationed in close proximity to the group infamous for hunting down Decepticon traitors? Maybe for the same reason that Shockwave was travelling around with a ship full of others that were on the list (Lost Light #14). Maybe because the hope was that if Tarn did look at Delphi, he would see Ambulon and not see anything else that might be going on.

I've been reading through MTMTE for the first time and I just went back to issue #5 and it caught my attention that Pharma, after his involvement with the red rust is discovered, disappears into a fake floor below one of the cryogenic regeneration (C.R.) chambers. Initially, I hadn't thought much of this, but really, why would there be a false room (seemingly with rooftop access as well) built into a medical base? And how did it get there?

So far I've thought of the following possible explanations:

Delphi was constructed as more than just a medical station and considering it's strategic positioning within DJD territory, this secret area was constructed to support the possibility of more covert operations.

Pharma created the space or disguised an existing area of the base to be harder to find and access in order to hide his dealings with Tarn. However, if this was the case, why then would he have stated that he "intended to hide in a C.R. chamber, but they were all occupied" when explaining his choice of the quarantine room for soundproofing? Because if he created the secret space under the C.R. chamber surely he could have soundproofed it and hidden there? Unless the point was to be able to be found somewhere more public to increase the plausible deniability that Pharma was in any way involved with the events shutting down Delphi (in which case, the room full of what appears to be t-cogs for the DJD would obviously not be an option).

[fanboy-firstaid]

redraw of a sketch i made ages ago

[robot-thighs]

hello maccadams fans,

so! i kept stumbling across mentions of the short story "Bullets" on tfwiki, because it had important lore about Kimia and some characters who would later appear in MTMTE. but because it was an exclusive that was only published in the TPB for "Last Stand of the Wreckers," not many people have probably read it. it's a prequel story to LSOTW and DOES contain some spoilers if you haven't read that series, but it's also interesting how much jro is obviously setting up for MTMTE, even tho this was written about 2 years before MTMTE started coming out. pretty sure this is the first canonical appearance of Rung.

anyway, because this was so hard to track down, I took the time to find a scan of the LSOTW trade paperback and used an ocr scanner to transcribe it so that I could share it and make it more accessible. I've only ever found a few transcriptions of the first chapter, but not the whole thing. it's very interestingly written, and also contains some interesting criticism of Furmanisms. I highly recommend anyone who is a fan of MTMTE/LL or LSOTW give it a read. The ending still has me shook.

Disclaimer: I didn't change the writing at all, but i did omit a couple very obvious typos that were printed in the TPB, and I fixed some of the formatting issues where chapter breaks were missing or put in the wrong place. otherwise, this writing is completely unaltered. Also, I did read this over like 3 separate times as I was working to transcribe and format it, but because ocr scans can be unpredictable, it's very possible I missed a few minor things.

Anyway please read and enjoy!

edit: fixed the title for the link

[cerebrocentric-bullet]

"Final habitat in front of me Boundless walls of pulsing red"

A redraw of my favourite LSotW panel from issue 5.

Original lineart: Nick Roche Original Colors: Josh Burcham

[bepisprime]

[decepti-thots]

I keep meaning to come back to this, because I have Thoughts about Springer as a Prime and I must get them out chfgjsgf

When I think of Springer in this position, the immediate thing that comes to mind for me is Zero Point. That element to pre-LSotW Springer we see where he's someone puffed up on his own sense of moral superiority and the idea that, because of this imagined moral elevation compared to everyone around him, he has a responsibility to pull everyone back and then post-Pova take over the Wreckers. I don't think he would want it in the conventional sense, but I think he would 'want' it in the sense that the idea of making the sacrifice because noone else will do, everyone else is too compromised would appeal to that part of him. The part that, in surrounding himself with people whose moral boundaries set the bar in hell, allows Springer to feel like he is near-idealistically moral and Good TM despite his own objective failings.

This is how Prowl would put it to him, and this is how Springer would accept, I think. And in this situation they're honestly in a weird kind of sync with each other tbh. They're both people with Main Character Syndrome whose concept of 'the greater good' is egotistical and self serving; they just express it and live with that idea in very different ways, and in particular Springer gets a rude-ass wake up call that puts doubt in his head (versus Prowl's sunk cost fallacy nightmare of a life).

Needless to say: it would be a mess, but the optics would be marvellous, and Springer would be constantly reassured he was doing the best anyone could possibly manage, given the circumstances. What a mess.

it IS very funny that those little 'springer might have the signs of affinity!' hints we see turn out to be like. well his spark is completely artificial but he was tailor made to be Best Goodest Specialest Boy by his weird dads so i suppose prowl perhaps asked mesothulas if his supersoldiers could be matrix compatible Just In Case. that's why springer's final frame is so broad chested, prowl was like 'well, i'll just make sure there's room in case OP dies and i need a new puppet leader ig'. you know he would.

[mychlapci]

I've said it before but I love LSoTW sm

this is basically porn (I'm still delusional)

it is porn, i can see it, yes. poor springer.