Glup Shitto Conissueer

yeah. maybe that would be fair to say about say, discrete viruses. but about syndromes?

like. the conditions of the human body don't know that they're taxonomically discrete. they don't know that they have different names or lists of symptoms. if a human body has a consistent issue with say, its heart rhythm, or its inflammatory response, or its glandular response, or immune system

the reason that ehlers-danlos syndrome (EDS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS), IBS (irritable bowel), autism, and even shit like coeliac and PMDD or endometriosis overlap is bc like. these are largely inflammatory issues or issues with the fascia

It's not "what the fuck, how can this person have all these different things wrong with them", bc these are largely like. syndromic definitions of how x bodily issue manifests in different systems, structures, or organs of the body

many of these conditions change in definition over time

and that's bc they're studied and understood more over time where people more meaningfully understand underlying causes and issues, such as through hormone or genetic profiles, or largely like. immune response

it's also how "rare" conditions become understood as more common over time

...

"is it a new form of energy or just steam power again?"

TBH, the thing about all of IDW's attempts to paint Shockwave as 'emotionless' is that they only really make sense when you pass it through a mental filter I like to call the "Scifi As A Genre Doesn't Know What Logic Or Emotions Actually Are" filter. Very clunky I know, I'm workshopping it. Perhaps the Vulcan problem, if you've seen Star Trek?

Shockwave in IDW is the classic 'emotionless' robot where in fact he clearly has emotions because he has motivations and goals; what he lacks is any emotional drive or care that might stop him doing anything bad or hurting anyone. Which, like. Of course! To be a compelling villain he has to have a drive to DO stuff on his own. It is very difficult to conceive of a truly emotionless character who acts independently (rather than on another person's orders) because to care enough to actually have goals, one has to have something going on as motivator.

In IDW's defense, it's not a problem they really invented. Shockwave as "emotionless" and "purely logical" in this way exists in multiple continuities. They're just the one that came up with a backstory for why- the Shadowplay thing- which has the unfortunate side effect of ruling out the 'they're not talking literally, they're just emphasising he's really heartless' idea.

My go-to explanation is that I think saying they "removed his emotions" is an overly simplistic way to gesture in-universe at the fact they deliberately fucked about with his ability to process emotions and care as much as they could, but where actually removing all ability to experience anything called "an emotion" was not actually possible, so it was just as much as they could get out of him. I headcanon that this had a completely unintended set of side effects they didn't foresee in that they couldn't get rid of Shockwave's very basic motivations deep down, but they COULD make it so he had no ability to form individual complex emotional attachments to *people*, and thus accidentally made Shockwave someone who is motivated solely by the abstract concept of his goal to 'save Cybertron' but like... he can no longer emotionally process that the reason he wanted to do this was *the people* he cared about. He can feel emotions, but not in a way that the average person around him can really parse because it's so different to how most people experience them, so he comes across as so cold as to be 'emotionless'.

post-DC spoilers:

And based on how he behaves post-shadowplay, I've interpreted his objections to the injustice of Functionism, like when Proetus kicks that projector, as based primarily in emotion and empathy. You know how people with say "x is bad" just based on a reaction of it making them feel bad, and not be able to justify it with other reasoning? He doesn't have an underlying moral philosophy. What he does have as an actual believe is technoism/Cybertronian supremacy. From being forged in a culture that believes this. This belief is more strongly seeded than any more recent ideas like his friendship with Orion, so it actually survives the process.

Several hundred stellar cycles later...