#or familiar characters ppl were reading about for the past decade being shit on by OCs made up to fill a new roster

[lord-squiggletits]

One of my favorite parts of phase 2 (and indeed one of the few moments I resonated with IDW Prowl) was when the neutrals were coming back to Cybertron and Prowl said that he refused to let Autobots be pushed aside and overruled after they were the ones who fought for freedom for 4 million years (the exact wording escapes me atm).

And I mean, that resentment still holds true even once the colonists come on bc like. As much as it's true that Cybertron's culture is fucked up, and as funny as it can be to paint Cybertronians as a bunch of weirdos who consider trying to kill someone as a common greeting not important enough to hold a grudge over.... The colonists POV kind of pissed me off a lot of times, as did the narrative tone/implications that Cybertronians are forever warlike and doomed to die by their own hands bc it just strikes me as an extremely judgemental and unsympathetic way to deal with a huge group of people with massive war PTSD and political/social tensions that were rampant even before the war?

Like, imagine living in a society rife with bigotry and discrimination where you get locked into certain occupations and social strata based on how you were born. The political tension is so bad there's a string of assassinations of politicians and leaders. The whole planet erupts into an outright war that leads (even unintentionally) to famine and chemical/biological warfare that destroys your planet. Both sides of the war are so entrenched in their pre-war sides and resentment for each other that this war lasts 4 million years and you don't even have a home planet any more. Then your home planet gets restored and a bunch of sheltered fucks come home and go "ewww why are you so violent?? You're a bunch of freaks just go live in the wilderness so that our home can belong to The Pure People Who Weren't Stupid And Evil Enough To Be Trapped In War" and then a bunch of colonists from places that know nothing about your history go "lol you people are so weird?? 🤣🤣 I don't get why y'all are fighting can't you just like, stop??? Oh okay you people are just fucked up and evil and stupid then" ((their planets are based on colonialism where their Primes wiped out the native populations btw whereas the Autobots and OP in particular fought to save organics. But that never gets brought up as a point in their favor)) as if the damage of a lifetime of war and a society that was broken even before the war can just magically go away now that the war is over.

Prowl fucking sucks but he was basically the only person that pointed out the injustice of that.

And then from then on out most of the characters from other colonies like Caminus and wherever else are going "i fucking hate you and your conflicts" w/ people like literal-nobody Slide and various Camiens getting to just sit there lecturing Optimus about how Cybertronians are too violent for their own good and how their conflicts are stupid, with only brief sympathetic moments where the Cybertronians get to be recognized as their own ppl who deserve sympathy before going right back to being lambasted.

Like I literally struggled to enjoy the story at multiple points because there was only so much I could take of the characters I knew and loved being raked over coals constantly while barely getting to defend themselves or be defended by the narrative so like. It was just fucking depressing and a little infuriating to read exRID/OP

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Thoughts on Evan's feelings for Jared? I always see people talking about Jared's feelings towards Evan (for obvious reasons), but the mood around Evan is a lot quieter.

really i think part of the reason it’s much more difficult to talk about evan’s feelings about jared in a potentially em ell em sense is because like, canon gives us such a small piece of their relationship and is so vague about the entire Past Decade+ They’ve Known Each Other, and evan’s really not acting very consciously interested in jared in the duration even as Only Friends (haha…it works in two ways there b/c ppl say things like “*just* friends” but also b/c evan and jared are each other’s Only Friend…) and he’s immediately caught up in The Whole Mess before jared’s second appearance so

but also another big issue is that we’re given this whole opportunity to see how evan navigates his Romantic Feelings for someone via his crush and eventual dating relationship with zoe and yet………………………….it gives us hardly any information. it’s very weird

like? okay, so evan is pining from a distance on this girl, and since it’s only the first day of school and he’s talking about messing up a chance to talk to her after a jazz band performance, presumably the crush started in evan’s junior year or earlier………….and Pining From Afar On Someone He’s Never Had A Conversation With isn’t really useful to reference when it comes to his relationship with jared. and maybe the details of Why evan is crushing on zoe in particular potentially could’ve been handy in like, getting a concept of what attracts evan to someone, but like, i guess we get the idea that he’s picking up on her Seeming Nice (which……like, is partly an act? it’s partly an act for him too, so is he picking up on That similarity? that could be interesting but rather it seems like he just….likes that she’s nice, which, okay…) and “if i could tell her”? more like “if [this song] could tell [the audience anything about Why Evan Likes Zoe]” because that’s purportedly what it’s About but it honestly gives us no info. it just lists off unimportant details he’s noticed about her from Afar that can’t necessarily tell anyone that much about what she’s like as a person…..she doodles when bored….probably takes buzzfeed quizzes…..okay

and then when they’re together it continues to be an absolute mystery. even if we ignore all the lying and weirdness re: how it’s all tied up in tcp and connor, and try to focus on What Works to figure out what these two might be looking for in the relationship and what they’re responding to, it’s like, infinite ellipses……they’re seriously always uncomfortable around each other?? like?? once again “only us” pointedly refuses to tell us, say, why zoe likes evan. they Joke Around in that scene and that’s like okay haha bants i guess that’s good, but it seems to be about warding off the tension so………the omnipresent Discomfort……….like can they have a substantial conversation?? imo the moment between them that might like, give us Anything to work with is when evan is accidentally “”””rude”””” in rightly pointing out that zoe seeming to imply that evan wishing his mom was rich rather than poor Stems From Ignorance is a terrible take……and then zoe says she was impressed by his ostensible Not Being Niceness, and yknow, the whole part of the show where she’s getting to be angry and ~rude~ and not getting along with evan is like, most interesting re: her character b/c she’s just refusing to Lie. inchresting moment!!!!! maybe evan and zoe could bond over feeling obligated to Act Nice / Accommodating despite doing so for different reasons!!! but no. the moment just Goes Away instead

we really just….in spite of how much Content in canon is devoted to evan’s feelings about zoe and their relationship, we get like………..no info about why evan likes zoe. she is a girl who is nice? and that’s all we’ve got. cue jared’s off broadway (?) line of: we get it, it’s very heterosexual…….fittingly in response to evan Not Really Answering the question of why he’s so #about zoe………

liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike my takeaway from these (non)examples of Evan’s Romantic Feelings is…………that evan is pretty freaking clueless about his own feelings? and is hardly deeply analyzing even this nice safe crush on a girl so like. if he Does have latent feelings for jared at that point, i really do not think he is Conscious of them or of their True Nature.

that’s not to say i don’t think it’s possible that he Could have those latent feelings in canon. even though evan ignoring jared is a whole part of the plot / leads up to good for you, and that evan’s dissatisfaction with his and jared’s relationship is like, suggested right off b/c nobody’s signing his cast, when they Do get in sync (literally!! lol! they’re Singing!) in sincerely me it’s very effortless and we see The One Time that evan drops his “gotta be nice and accommodating” facade b/c he’s with jared and nobody else, and the way they interact here (and at other points) speaks to how comfortably familiar they feel with each other and how they’re pretty In Tune with each other. and the sincerely me scene makes jared want more of that experience of being alone together and having fun and being in sync, but evan isn’t pursuing jared at all unless to ask for input about His Zany Situation………see: evan’s cluelessness and Not Really Reflecting On Feelings

like, jared may or may not realize that his feelings for evan are Like That, but we know that it is whole entire Canon that he is conscious of his desire to have a close and real relationship with evan. whereas evan is like, seemingly not tuned into this fact about jared at all

like baaaasically unless it’s an au i don’t think of evan as becoming Aware of any Feelings™ for jared until after canon (or sometime before the Finale 1.5 Yrs Later scene, possibly)………..like, i think those feelings Could be present in canon and could even be affecting events in canon, which is a fun (i mean nothing about canon is particularly Fun) perspective to take, but i don’t think evan like, is going to think about feelings like that in even a “is it Possible it’s a crush” way in canon

but like, mutual pining is great, and even if we have these two Trying to work on communication skills, you Know that even if they’re both at stage Awareness Of Crush, neither is just going to up and talk to the other about it. smh

re: what Could be there in canon that evan’s not yet aware of……i mean, he’s all about Longing for shit, and we can assume he maybe wishes he and jared were closer too, but unlike jared actually trying to make that happen, it kinda feels more like evan just figures that that’s Just Not How Things Are and there’s nothing he can do about that………i also just kinda feel like evan could be at a stage where if there’s even a glimmer of awareness re: A Gay Feeling it’s like oh denial time, what if i were to decide i’m even more committed to this crush on a conveniently Unattainable™ Girl who……seems nice……..yeah awesome

like i really don’t think that Feelings For Jared would truly spring out of nowhere for evan as in “the feelings are nonexistent during canon”…..but it might Seem like it’s ~totally new~ re: a changed perspective when it comes to those feelings, b/c i don’t think of evan-during-canon as aware of that kind of thing or really devoting much thought on it. being an apparent great essayist means that not only must his writing be decent but his Ability To Analyze things must be, too!! let’s have some parallels of jared reading evan’s letter, as it’s all too easy to think he must have, and evan reading jared’s letters, i.e. Fake Connor’s emails to evan. analyze That content evan

anyways yeah i just think of Evan During Canon as totally unawares but i do think that if he Was to reflect on how he feels about jared, which we don’t really see him doing in any significant way thanks in part to being distracted the whole time, it’s entirely possibly there could’ve already been mutual pining lol. like, it’s not that i don’t think The Feelings Could Be There, cuz really, it feels like if there WAS that awareness that yeah we could really be making progress here. but i also think that like, evan needs to shift his broader perspective of jared as well to get to the point that that’s possible. cuz he’s just kind of not seeing ways the relationship could be different than it is and i think that like, the lack of communication, e.g. not directly saying what they want / not talking for stretches of time potentially ((another) e.g. how they apparently hadn’t talked all summer) also plays into Miscommunication……..like, i do think that jared is trying to express friendliness and affection, but evan is just like “Sigh!!! 9_9″ about him and like, focusing on the lack of what he considers Real Connection Ideal Friendship things, like apparently that Open Direct Communication about feelings and dreams and stuff, and frolicking in meadows, and emailing

speaking of, evan nervously refuting any possibility of Being Gay twice in four minutes does not suggest he’s someone ready to think about the love that one man feels for another or anything

and it’s all in line with how jared’s pretty much seeing evan more accurately than evan sees himself, being the Teller Of Truth, the stand-in for The All-Seeing Audience……………..jared’s the more Aware one here, both about evan And himself And everything else that’s going on. he may not have an objective or omniscient perspective on anything, and he’s obviously making mistakes in how he understands things about himself and evan and everything else, but evan’s kind of just careening around knocking shit over and just struggling to keep up rather than really think things over…….and also it’s clear that he’s Avoiding thinking some stuff over thanks to messiness and uncertainty and all that

uhhh in conclusion………………i think evan’s feelings for jared During The Events Of Canon would be repressed and unexamined and he’s just like, put everything in his life in this box of “i hate it” and so he not only has to be willing to really redirect some focus to jared but also like………..really consider him anew and maybe see the good in what’s already existed in their relationship rather than just see how it fails to measure up to what evan Thought was proof of friendship (signing a cast) or the ideal best frienditude (straightforward encouragement, personal lore-sharing, frolicking, etc). basically Stop Ignoring him, which is what would’ve made jared happy in the first place lol. so yeah something like all that