Welcome aboard the Black Solus! The vessel of the Star Burners, captained by Seismicwave the Libertine, the Deviant, the Scholar, His Lordship; whatever you decide to call 'im. Jus' make sure t' flatter him as much as ye can. M!A status: Currently not...
Steven, Iâm coming in from the Transformers fandom and let me tell you how wrong you are and I hope you donât try to bring four million years of war to peace with just that line. If you do, props to you.
Cannondrive cut the link, comm.ing for the closest mech on the navigation deck to beam a space bridge for Kickstart. Silvertail responded, scrolling through the list of coordinates they had associated with Earth. (Why were there so many âbots on that planet?)
Astroscope, feeling the random bit of excitement in his spark, made his way out of the projection room to the deck and met up with his partner, asking why his mood elevated so dramatically.
âWe promised Kicks weâd see her when we were all safe, didnât we?â
ââŚIâd forgotten.â
âSpendinâ all day locked up tryinna get the ship runninâ again, I donât really blame ya.â
Kickstart eagerly bounced on her pedes as she waited for a bridge over, despite the reassurances she just had to see for herself that everything and everyone were actually alright.
Stepping out onto the navigation deck she sent Silvertail a wave, her infamous cheeky grin, and a short thank you before calling down to the deck below.
                       âGarçons?â
Both garçons looked up. Cannondrive had a big smile on his face and ran up the stairs to meet her. Astroscope was a little taken aback, not sure if the hyper feeling in his spark was his own or Cannonâs.
The green mech scooped Kickstart up in a big hug, letting up when he remembered that sheâs tinier and he didnât want to break her.
âAw, babe, there you are! I missed you so much! Câmere anâ gimme a big kiss! Plant one right here!â
âShe was one of the first to die, Zea!â TiâAlm laughed. Zea charged forward, intending to ram him into a wall and shatter his lungs so he would shut up, when Ironclaw and Asher held him back. âShe led the first riot inside this very palace. There was no choice but to put her down and so down the chain of command they were killed. The next riots had leaders too. I remember them. My grandfather made me remember them. Haka, Senool, Wenju, Tzel, Irum, and then RenâLu, until the rest finally gave up.â
Zea snarled, optics filled with uncontrollable anger. He knew those names well. Senool was the head nurse among the slaves and he was the best at it. Wenju was a fellow painter who always smiled even when he was being punished. Tzel was a beautiful femme, one that everyone was sure Zea would be paired with in the future. Irum liked to sneak food into his room during the night and was never caught. RenâLu was responsible for the garden, since her color arrangement was considered an art to Emse Janis. And they all were dead now. His friends, borderline family, gone, slaughtered like animals for what they believed in. And for what? There were still slaves on Nabiin. Their numbers were greater than that of the idnons; they should have won! Why didnât they win?!
âIâll take your payment, Zea,â said TiâAlm, getting a woken servant to carry the load out. âBut since you are a figure of history, you are worth more than you believe. I would charge more but seeing you like this gives me more satisfaction than money can buy. My grandfather would have been proud.â
Zea snarled again, spitting out cursesâthe same way Seismicwave would do in a situation like thisâin fifteen different languages. He wished the palace to burn in Holloc, he wanted TiâAlm to die by a deadly and disgusting infection by the words of the Tanu, he cursed the crops to wither and die for the next seven generations in the vernacular of Xixiots, he wished in Bexyc for the spirits of the revolutionist slaves to be revived and terrorize Nabiin for all eternity until their brethren were set free, and so on in other dialects that TiâAlm would never be able to translate.
Asher stepped forward, knowing that their time here was near spent and they would not be welcomed much longer by the idnon. Ironclaw and Packrat dumped half of the gems onto the floor and carried the rest in its chest while following Zea out of the palace. TiâAlm barked at Sanse to clean up the pile and take it to his private quarters, all the while following him to make sure that he was not going to sneak any of them for his personal savings that would buy his freedom as well.
The green mechling told Ironclaw and Asher to go back to the ship. He had somewhere he needed to be and Packrat would look after him until he got back. The smaller mech asked where he was going, but he ignored him. Zea was too lost in thought to think about anything else than but his dear mother and friends.
He remembered the day that Seismicwave preached to them. The captain had always âgained back his lettersâ, as he called it, whenever he was talking about something important, going from âyeân yersâ back to âyou and yours.â
âWhat right do they have to determine you are a slave based on your birth? Slavery is meant as a debt; you owe someone a great service for a great wrongdoing you performed to him or her. What debt do you owe now? Are they the debts your ancestors acquired those millions of years ago? I stand before you now to tell you that their debts are paid. They have been for longer than the ages of your many generations of masters combined. You have helped them build their culture, build their cities, build their homes and farms and shops. You have copied their books for them, made and washed their clothes, and delivered their goods. You have hunted for them, you have read stories and sung songs to their children. You have cared for them under the unwritten law that all cybernetic Nabiinii are slaves for life.Â
âI am not saying to exact your revenge. Revenge becomes a vicious, bloodthirsty cycle with hundreds of yearâs worth to clean up after it. No specie is superior over another. What you need to understand is that you are equals. It may not seem so, but in the eyes of the universe you are equal. A king is no better than a peasant, for he only has so much power if his people allow it. Will you allow the idnons to keep you and your young as slaves forever, especially if they treat you with such harshness?
âIf you are of the lucky ones that have a loving master, then know that there are others that go through far more punishments than just a skipped supper. You should help your brethren. Help them out of their abuse. You may think, âWhat can I do?â The answer is: Whatever you can. If youâre able to help, help them, for no one else will. And to the masters of loving hearts, help them as well, for gods above know that the ones who whip their backs will not.
âShould you take anything from what I say, it should be this: You did not deserve this. You did not ask to be born a slave. You did not ask to be used and abused under the law that the idnons are permitted to do so. You are not livestock, you are people, and you will demand to be seen and treated as such, without demeaning others.â
Orbs in thick glass boxes. That is how most slaves ended up at the end of their life on Nabiin. There were rows and columns out in an open, plain field of yellow grass of glass boxes with small metal orbs. Zea scanned the area to find his motherâs name among all those who had been melted down after their decommissioning or extinguish. One could tell how old some of these were, for the style on the corners of the boxes. The more ancient ones had what looked like runes, and the newer boxes had swirls.
âUh, Zea? Kid?â Packrat muttered, as though if he made his voice any louder it could stir something terrible in the dark. âWhat is this place?â
âMababuri. A graveyard for slaves.â
âOh⌠Thatâs not creepy at allâŚâ He took a closer look at the boxes. âSo these liâl balls areâŚ?â
âThey were once slaves, yes. At the end of their life, their spark casings are removed and used as a mold. The body is stripped for spare parts and the rest is melted down and put into the mold. Each one has different markings according to the pattern that were in their casings.â
âOkay, I take back what I said âbout the graveyard part. What you jusâ said there is creepy as hell.â
âThatâs how it is here.â
After half an hour of search, he found the box that was inscribed in Nabiin runes: Haka. He kneeled to look at the metal orb, at the crisscross shapes that looked like an unplanned map of a city. This was what the slaves referred to as a blueprint. It was proven long ago that no one slave had the same line pattern as another, almost like snowflakes. The only way to see this blueprint was after the spark was put out. And here was his motherâs, right before his eyes. He knew one day he would see it, but he did not think that the day would have come so soon.
âYou should have come with us,â he whispered. âMaybe then you would have lived⌠But that wouldnât have stopped the others from fighting, would it? Everyone else would still be dead⌠If I know you⌠knew you⌠then you went down swinging.â Tears started pooling at his optics, and he had to speak louder to force through the lump in his throat. âIâm sorry I wasnât here⌠I shouldâve been here, to fight with you. Maybe I couldâve saved you!â
âBelieve me, kid, the way ya were back then? Ya couldnât do jack shit.â
Zea flashed him a glare. The mech put his hands up in surrender and backed away. The mechling turned back to the glass box, the moonlight gently reflecting his face.
âHeâs right⌠I probably would have ended up dead, too⌠Maybe it was better that I went⌠The captainâs made me strong, stronger than I could have ever thought. You wouldâve liked him, mom, heâs a great guy⌠Heh⌠I called him âdadâ once and he didnât object⌠Iâd like to think of him like a dad.
âAnd after all Iâve been through, after all Iâve been taught, I know what to do now. I promise, mom, I wonât let you down.â
Zea stood up. More tears streamed down his face, but he did not weep. He smiled, instead, knowing that his motherâs suffering was through and that she would continue to guide him in spirit.
âWe goinâ back home, chief?â Packrat asked.
âYeah. But Iâm coming back to Nabiin.â
âBack? Why? There ainât anythinâ else here for you to do; ya bought yer freedom.â
âAye, but the others are not free.â Zea turned his body to him. The smaller mech tilted his head, knowing exactly what that look was all about.
âThatâs near suicide, kid.â
âThatâs why weâll need to be ready.â He looked up at the sky. âIâll come back here. Maybe not for a long time, but I will. I will be side by side with my brothers and sisters and the idnons who support us, and we will all be equal upon this planet.
âI, Zea nol sak Haka, vow to set my people free.â
Same reason Young Justice and Green Lantern The Animated Series were canceled: Girls liked it. Bruce Timm finally up anâ said it out loud in an interview a while back when he was asked why in the hell GL:TAS had been canceled when it was doing so well on every front; DCâs animation department has institutionally decided that feee-males donât/canât/shouldnât like superheroes, so even if a show is drawing in great viewership numbers and has great toy sales, once they find out that itâs popular with women and girls, they pull the plug on it. Cartoon Network loved Teen Titansâ two million viewers for new episodes will do thatâ and wanted a Season Six, and the production staff was already in the planning stages for it; they were going to have a big arc about Terra and why she was Living Normal, and do a lot more with the extended Titans team members.
To elaborate on this point a bit, the reason this happens is that modern television merchandising aims for total market segregation.
In a nutshell, itâs much more efficient to sell things to people if you can divide them up into tightly defined subcategories that have no interests in common; that way, you never risk accidentally competing with yourself.
This is why childrenâs toys (and toy sales channels) are actually much more strongly gendered these days than they were forty, thirty, even twenty years ago: one of the basic market segregation splits theyâve decided to use is âboys versus girlsâ.
Ever wonder why you see Avengers t-shirts that leave Black Widow out of the group shot, or Guardians of the Galaxy action figure lines with no Gamora? Thatâs market segregation in action.
The upshot is that shows with crossover appeal can actually be cancelled for being too popular with girls; theyâre viewed as âstealingâ the female market from the specifically girl-targeted media that rightfully âownsâ it.
This is the sort of thing folks are talking about when they say gender roles are socially constructed, by the way. The gender split in media merchandising? Itâs not just artificial, itâs deliberately imposed as a top-down marketing strategy. When folks try to justify it by saying âthis is the ways itâs always beenâ or âthis is just what the market wantsâ, theyâre lying through their teeth - this is, in fact, the merchandisers dictating to the market what it wants in order to sell stuff more efficiently.
(Interestingly, the reverse isnât always true: if a specifically girl-targeted show unexpectedly becomes popular with boys, sometimes rather than being cancelled, its merchandising will shift to court the male collectorâs market. TV execs are so sexist, even their sexism is sexist.)
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