At the risk of spamming all of you with yet more oppy musings another thing I find charming about her is that her awareness at her inhumanity causes her to act more inhuman as she plays into it — here when I say human I mean of course in the more broad sense of the term, in a symbolic literary sense — in that she will play into her inhuman aspects for the sake of creating that sense of being above fault, the will of Primus, et cetera, to provide this sense of stability to those around her. It’s a logical play for morale. And this has massively stunted her ability to actually function as a person; essentially, like I joked at briefly in a post I deleted, she is rendered an inoperable machine; not only is she discouraged from the expression of her emotion, she is inexperienced and unable to recognize it; she speaks in strange and stilted ways, and is incapable of holding a conversation. I find that bit particularly charming; she can’t actually participate in conversations, she can only orate. It is interesting because of course both the decepticon and autobot sides have the sort of cult of personality aspect going on, but where megatron’s innate characteristics were in a sense enhanced, Optimus’ were reduced, and it speaks to a sort of idealized suppression of emotion that here Optimus is the good guy and megatron the bad. It’s evil, to be overtaken by emotion — it’s good, to transcend humanity. It’s evil to act with fervor; you must feel strongly, but you must never allow it to be shown. You see, having no emotion at all is evil; that’s shockwave. But having too much emotion is bad. To be a good person, you must actively work against yourself, you must overcome yourself; to be a good person you must always be in opposition with who you want to be, and suffer eternally. It’s bad, to be happy; to be good, you must be overcome with grief, and guilt, and suffering, and self-hatred. And Optimus is doomed by being the ultimate embodiment of that, unable to exist without inherent repression. Isn’t that sad? Isn’t that kind of pathetic?
