Would you mind elaborating on what you mean when you say optimus is what d-16 was? (/genuinely curious, and i like reading your character analyses)
OK. ok ok . ummmmmmm. i can try my best
i was referring to transformers one specifically, even if the same idea sort of could carry into other continuities, so thats what ill talk abt
firstly i might not have phrased that in the best way. i mean more that optimus is.. what sentinel was.. which is what d-16.. is. to megatron.
so secondly, these 3 things have to first be understood
1 - d-16 is not fundamentally different from megatron. the point is that she doesnt truly change and her physical change is an illusion, that she herself is convinced by.
2 - optimus shares the same belief as d-16/megatron. ‘some transformations are permanent’ + dead wife d-16 flashback
3 - megatron calls optimus the deceiver therefore proving that she is deceiving herself. since they believe the same thing. in this regard.
thirdly, i have very helpfully overlaid d-16’s arc on the heros journey structure, which is based on the protagonist undergoing transformation and also one that most ppl are probably familiar with, that works pretty well with the events of tfone and I would even say is the intended framework of at least d-16’s arc:
you’ll notice that she fails, leaving optimus to finish her journey
all because of number 8 - she fails to really truly kill her past self and pax takes d-16’s place. d-16 'takes her reward/seizes her sword' (killing sentinel + t-cog) and moves on, but she can’t progress to the resurrection stage, because she never “killed” herself. so optimus takes that role. optimus is what was supposed to be the “resurrected” d-16, and returns with the matrix.
so naturally optimus insists d-16 is dead and megatron has undergone a transformation and crossed the line, because she won’t admit that d-16’s relationship with pax was always fragile and about d-16, and that d-16 would have always been willing to drop her in that situation. understandably! it would hurt to admit that and megatron has admirably convinced herself and everyone else that she is different from d-16 (we must remember she is not). But it means optimus can only see herself as ‘the resurrected version of d-16’ in some way and therefore insist d-16 did die.
so post-movie their dynamic is going to be influenced by that. we must now consider what d-16 means to megatron: megatron would hate d-16. megatron would happily kill d-16 (shes convinced she has). d-16 created megatron out of d-16’s need to protect herself from outside forces changing her (which in her opinion renders her powerless), and therefore megatron is, in some way, almost leashed to d-16, to protecting d-16 (her allegedly dead past self has, in that way, taken pax’s old role)
and she cant fix that. she cant kill d-16, and truly transform/free herself because to do that would require realising and admitting that she hasn’t ever truly changed in the first place, and in her view has never truly been free from another’s lies and control. her resistance to realising that was the point of megatron coming into existence. shes neck deep in denial. so she shoves all of that onto optimus instead, the narrative d-16. the representation and product of her past self. almost her mirror reflection, that she despises, that has a symbolic control over her that she can’t eliminate unless she kills her. this leads to presumably a long few million years of obsession that dooms megatron presumably to death or worse, that shows u that to kill d-16 is to kill megatron. a personal enemy is what she calls her lmfao.
here i made really really bad diagram #2:
and from megop perspective it results in what i keep calling.. to myself.. nothing x nothing toxic yuri: optimus insists on being d-16’s walking grave, but d-16 still exists, so she is an empty grave then, an empty vessel. and megatron insists that she is anything but nothing, but in reality has failed to fill the hole in her chest with anything real as much as d-16 and therefore also is an empty gap. nothing x nothing :)
And also, I like to compare tfone and tfp a lot because 1) they’re the main 2 continuities i talk abt on here and 2) they’re similar:
so it’s not exactly the same situation in tfp’s case because the ‘difference’ between megatronus and megatron is not as clear cut or intentionally written, but the dynamic of their relationship is mostly the same. megatron obsesses for so long over killing optimus and taking or destroying the matrix because she is resistant to admitting that she has flawed insecurity and shes used physical/relationship/worldly change to cover it up instead of addressing it. so it’s less that optimus is what megatronus was/is, and more that orion and optimus hold the same use to megatron and neither is as a person, instead more of a vessel through which she can get what she wants. but through doing that, what in reality actually becomes nothing more than a vessel through which she (and unicron) uses to try and get what she wants? her own body subjected to dark energon. u get me???????
of course none of this is like. me trying to analyse their psychology as if theyre a whole real person, im trying to outline how they work as a 3d cardboard cutout narrative device. you understand.
if this is all bullshit though please feel free to shoot me down with a gun and kick me and throw rocks
turnnoffyourmind
jacobvanloon
vaporwave
theartofmadeline
tangentwithtanner
dededos
kianamaiart
baratheonpilled
