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Uncharitable
...y’know, I think I just realized why that “WE’VE ACHIEVED SOMETHING” panel from MTMTE always makes me feel weirdly uneasy rather than amused
because how depressed are you at baseline if achieving “something” is the threshold for celebration? Like, it’s not “we did this difficult thing” (even though that’s likely the cause for the banner) or “we achieved something this week” or “this month” or even “this hekavorn”
so my brain parses it like “ooh, we finally went against type and DID SOMETHING. Sarcastic yay.”
like, I know the thing is supposed to be self deprecating British humoUr but my brain reads it like how I feel when i’m convinced I’m not worth much.
that I think was my whole problem with that series—it was clever but my mind parsed it as overwhelmingly despairing. The Decepticons turned into a colossal mistake, the one guy who redeemed himself ultimately ended up executed or put away for eternity by an evil authority everyone nonetheless had to bow to, a whole bunch of guys died just For The Feels as far as I could tell...
other people read it as “masterful tragic playing with my feels” and I read it as “overwhelmingly despairing in tone” and “for the love of Primus please give me some sort of crowning moment of awesome no matter how ridiculous because I HONESTLY CAN’T ANY MORE”
because how depressed are you at baseline if achieving “something” is the threshold for celebration? Like, it’s not “we did this difficult thing” (even though that’s likely the cause for the banner) or “we achieved something this week” or “this month” or even “this hekavorn”
so my brain parses it like “ooh, we finally went against type and DID SOMETHING. Sarcastic yay.”
like, I know the thing is supposed to be self deprecating British humoUr but my brain reads it like how I feel when i’m convinced I’m not worth much.
that I think was my whole problem with that series—it was clever but my mind parsed it as overwhelmingly despairing. The Decepticons turned into a colossal mistake, the one guy who redeemed himself ultimately ended up executed or put away for eternity by an evil authority everyone nonetheless had to bow to, a whole bunch of guys died just For The Feels as far as I could tell...
other people read it as “masterful tragic playing with my feels” and I read it as “overwhelmingly despairing in tone” and “for the love of Primus please give me some sort of crowning moment of awesome no matter how ridiculous because I HONESTLY CAN’T ANY MORE”
no subject
Which is why MTMTE never worked for me and even... oh lord that Wreckers one? Didn't really grab me the way they did other people I don't think.
I wouldn't mind a redemption arc for Megatron (well I still would dislike it but I wouldn't be so darned upset by it) if it showed him deciding something he was doing was wrong by his own lights--like, say, "I thought murdering everyone made perfect sense but it just creates Autobots who don't just want revenge but can claim the moral high ground believably enough to never just fuck off, maybe I should be merciful for pragmatic reasons and hey, i remember how this felt"
But "I got carried away into killing everyone" just... no. I mean, if we're trying to present the guy as a genocidal figure (and the "field of flowers" makes me think that was the intended reading), genocidal leaders don't start off sensible and then decide to kill all the Xs. They firmly believe the Xs are evil already, and it's the people they slowly convince to agree.
no subject
To each their own on the Megatron front. I find genocidal characters interesting in fiction. The person who can kill without blinking (serial killers, assassins, warmongers, etc.) has always been a fav character type. Megaton would fit into that "Warmonger" slot & so "I originally didn't like killing but the more I did it and the more I realized I was good at it, it became more appealing" storyline feels more up my alley plot wise.
My personal favorite Megatron is "I'm going to keep fighting until everyone is dead" sort of warmonger. Definitely aware that's not an interpretation for everyone & it probably influences how I read his character more than it should but eh. That's what fandom & head canons are for. XD
no subject
If that's what you're getting out of it, I think we're probably not disagreeing on much of substance :-)
"When I hear a character "fell," I usually associate that with "goes evil." It's very possible I'm mixing up idioms. XD;"
Okay, yeah. To me it also has a connotation of like "became sad or tragic," and what I liked about *the way I read* Megatron: Origin was that it seemed like his change was positive for him in some weird way. I liked that because it felt like a break from "evil always somehow secretly pwns itself in the end." (Which is not a bad trope in itself it's just... it's the norm, so seeing something different from it makes me EEEEEEEEEEEEE in excitement when it's done well.)
Which is why I was all HARRUMPH when Megatron turned himself in and became Sad, ostensibly just because That's What Evil Does rather than for what I saw as a clear in-character reason.
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Megatron sad and pouting is indeed a tragedy. If they were going to go redemption, a simple "This one particular death" (probably Bumblebee, and Megs wearing Bee's badge in his honor was like the only reason I'd accept Megs with an Autobot badge) was one too far and I've seen how out of control this war has gotten and it should stop before we all die and there's nothing left." Might have been better? I dunno. That's where I would have gone. No punishments from the Autobots, etc. Just a genuine truce kinda deal.
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