2018-12-16

I have a tendency to make every story I interact with slowly take on lighter shades of grey and go soft around the edges.

It's not something I set out to consciously do, really? It's just that to me, the natural procession of characters coming to terms with the bad things they've done will at first lead into despair and then slowly roll around back to wanting to do better. It's a series of small steps as characters first make things worse by trying to come to terms with the mental dissonance of "but I am right/I am a good person, why do my actions have bad consequences" and then actually dealing with those consequences.

Heavy conflict makes people want to make things easier, and mutual kindness is the best way to make that happen.

The context for waffling about making things Lighter and Softer as we go was that I was talking about Transformers Prime on Discord and it came up that if we could make Megatron feel a little bit of love for his fellow mecha again, the Decepticon high command might have not been so... quarrelsome? And may have been more loyal and focused? And maybe had better morals as a result over all, because they would have been invested in caring for each other as well? (We all know all Starscream needs is a little positive reinforcement and he'll become Loyal and Useful again.)

And in that context, I got to thinking: My take on TFP has the entire time been that it's a gray conflict where one side became more moral and ethical as time went by -- Optimus Prime pulling the whole faction up with him by refusing to fall to his opponent's level and Megatron pulling his whole faction down with him by trying to win by any means necessary -- and you know, Narrative Mechanics dictate that if the Decepticons are the ones pulling themselves up from the morally gray swamp and becoming more moral and unified, then the Autobots clearly should be the ones who become worse as time goes on.

Except, well... Negative character development in a context where positive character development furthers the plot is frustrating to me, so instead, I started thinking about what would happen if both sides of the conflict slowly became more moral and invested in the wellbeing of their comrades, and that kinda. Softened the whole conflict to the point where I could actually see The All-Important Plot-Moving War literally just ending in a mutual ceasefire because enough dying had been done for both sides to just be tired of it.

And in a series that in its darker iterations is all about how war and conflict are corruptive and makes everyone be the worst version of themselves, that does kinda feel like getting a pat on the butt and being told you did a good job and it's okay now, but I'd be lying if I said that it didn't appeal to me to give all of the characters a chance to go "but... what if, maybe, we are better than that?" It's also something I keep putting into the ideas for characters who don't show up in Prime but exist in Aligned (so they can exist in Prime and be there for me to Play With) like Impactor, whose arcs end up being about refusing to be the version of themselves they are in, say, the comics.

Ultimately, it just feels incomplete to me to make characters watch themselves turn into a worse version of themselves and neither make it an outright tragedy where that state becomes terminal, or go "wait, I don't actually want to be like this" and... change. And ultimately, I believe that people who have done enough bad things to become tired of it will realise they could have been doing good all along instead.

2018-12-16

Errant thought

(no subject)

Fanfic: Half a Same Mind