The way Eoin said "You" to Paddy just before he said " I missed you".
The way he conveyed every emotion under the sun, from this life and the next, into that one word. And I know it was really Paddy saying what he needed to to Eoin, and having the memory of his late friend (mmhmm) say it was the only way he would ever be able to at this point in his life.
But that delivery, the one word, filled with such devotion, grief, pride, and finality.
very tempted to make an MCR server…cause the one I’m in wants me to have my phone number in Discord’s system and I don’t trust that app enough to do that…
This is mostly a rant about Cyclonus + Scourge in one of my fanfictions and how they tie into my own mental health problems so if you don't like that kind of ramble just skip. Rant is below the cut.
One of the most cathartic things about writing Cyscourge, especially them in that Takoyaki fic I mentioned a while ago, is the characterization. And I don't just mean how these two war criminals have to adjust to customer service (though that is a big part of it tee hee) but also how they have to adjust to society and well, free will.
For those of you not in the know, my fic (called Takoyaki Trouble) is a comedy that entails Cyclonus and Scourge having to hide from the Autobots after the events of the Headmasters cartoon by laying low as food vendors on a small colony world. Of course, this also means that they have to blend in as functioning citizens of a society, which as you might see, poses a few problems.
Because all these two have known is violence and war. Stealing a little bit of narrative from my friends' ramblings here- They were born from war-torn bodies into a war they didn't start and forced to continue fighting under a leader who doesn't really have much of a goal other than unending violence. And the scary bit is that both of them don't really question it- Cyclonus at the very least follows Galvatron and furthers their cause pretty blindly and while Scourge has his moments of rebellion, in the end, he's still going for the same goal of domination and power that Galvatron envisioned. Both of them are largely just following orders.
I know that G1 isn't meant to have depth and that the bad guys are just supposed to be evil without remorse but to my knowledge, they don't really ever share plans of what they're going to do with the power, just that they want it.
So throwing them into a scenario where their leader is dead and their cause is ultimately scrambled or noticeably impossible- ought to throw them for a real loop. Because without a cause to fight for or a leader to rally behind, and their use as warriors rapidly declining even in the Headmasters cartoon- what really are they?
It's a question I end up asking myself as well. As a person who has spent most of my life just unquestioningly following the orders of people around me- my parents, my schooling, my friends- as a person who finds it more convenient to surrender to others than to inconvenience the world by fighting for beliefs of my own... now that I've moved on to a new stage of my life, I feel more made up of other people than I feel like myself, like I'm a shell that needs filling with the substance of others rather than something independent. I don't really have opinions or beliefs of my own. I don't feel strongly about anything. I kind of just feel... hollow.
And now that I'm away from that, there are a million things I need to unlearn, like how to make decisions for myself again, building my own personality... And those are problems I kind of see Cyclonus facing as well- finding who he is as a person without the influence of Galvatron. Having to build a personality and make his own life decisions now that he's been forcefully set into a society. Both he and Scourge need to find new hobbies that aren't just ceaseless violence.
But the thing is? It'd just be so much easier to go back to the way things were. To return to the mindless embrace of following a leader, because decisions are hard. Causing a disturbance in the status quo because you don't want to do a certain thing? That's hard on all levels, even if it's just refusing plans with your friends. Cyclonus definitely wants to go back- I mean, it's all he knew, and all he wanted, and now, it's gone.
But unlike him, Scourge wants to stay.
For the first time in his life, he's been given a taste of true freedom. Because he's arrogant, not subservient, and he has his own agency- you see that when he defies direct orders and takes the matrix for himself in "The Burden Hardest To Bear". And for the first time, he isn't under the command of a leader or a cause. And he's finding out that he likes that, for better or for worse. And while Cyclonus is still technically his superior, as neither has denounced the Decepticons yet, and they're in the process of making plans to get their leader back- Scourge is starting to break away from the mold. Starting to figure himself out. And he full well intends to take Cyclonus with him this time.
So we kind of have this conflict. Cyclonus, wanting to go back and take Scourge with him because it's the right thing for them to do for the Decepticon cause- and Scourge wanting Cyclonus and himself to stay here and be their own mechs for once. And all the while, both of them are learning what it is to be individuals, whether they want to or not. They learn how to compromise and put up with their neighbors. They develop mannerisms and traits and character flaws that their previous lifestyles would've never allowed them to show. They argue and make up peacefully. They fall in love.
Takoyaki Trouble was written to be a comedy, yeah, but that doesn't mean it can't have a whole lot of heart to go with it as well.
