GwendolynSOP

right.

there are currently 30 male figures with optimus and megatron having 4 variants each and bee having 5. optimus primal who has not appeared in the show has a second redeco as well.

And by "lean into" I don't mean that I want WWX to be guilt ridden and miserable. WWX is not that type of character. The past is the past, what's done is done, it's water under the bridge. But that's exactly what makes this particular part of his character so damn interesting to me. Because his reaction to being confronted with his past, every time it happens, is to ignore it, to flee the situation, to not confront his feelings and downtalk it. And that is painfully realistic! It's not how most writers write a sympathetic character with this level of guilt, with a past like WWX's, because we feel that it's somehow wrong for a character to not feel tortured and haunted by that past. But it IS in fact a stunnigly realistic description of how some people deal with their mistakes, crimes and the people they've hurt. It's not sanitary, not morally perfect, not what the reader thinks it should be. But it's realistic and painful to witness and just a little bit fucked up. And I wish it stayed like this. I wish it remained a little bit fucked up.

Right up until the second siege, the story actually does play with it. And to me, it's one of the most appealing parts of the narration. Not only is it shown by WWX's actions, but also interwoven with the narration. Certain events not being described in detail or brushed over, like WWX himself would brush over them, there being hints of his true feelings (his reflection looking like he's crying), but these feelings never truly aknowledged neither by the character himself, nor by the narration whenever it follows his perspective. The way he acts around meeting JL and JC the first time in the present timeline, the way he (more or less willingly) stays ignorant about the latter's emotions ... all less shown through inner monologue, but through a descritiption of actions WWX might or might not even be aware of. I could go on and on, but I think it's clear by now what I mean. This is one of the reasons I fell in love with this book and its main character, it's imo one of the most well written parts of it.

But I feel it all goes down the drain after the second siege. WWX is confronted by his victims, then he and the Wens save the other cultivators and it's ... all good now? I wish the narration would aknowledge that WWX just stood eye to eye with people who (rightfully) accused him of murder, people who have been hurt by his actions, people who have lost their loved ones at his hands. And even if one argues that what WWX did at Nevernight was completely justified, HE JUST STOOD EYE TO EYE WITH PEOPLE WHO LOST THEIR LOVED ONES AT HIS HANDS! I just think it should do something to him. It should be aknowledged, not by WWX, but at least by aknowledging how WWX doesn't aknowledge it. The narrative should play a little more. But it stops there. It somehow stops focusing on WWX's processing of guilt, like it's all meaningless, now that he saved someone. Like one eliminates the other. His victims are not really a thing anymore either. And yes, part of it is because the whole point is to show how easily the collective mind forgets, how fast the public opinion is swayed. And at least that part is well done. But the general public is not WWX's victims, not the ones who actually suffered. They should not be convinced so easily. And while I don't think it HAS to be something the narration focuses on, I would have liked to at least have a few traces of it remain. It's a bit too "WWX saved people, so everyone is fine with him now and he is fine too" for my taste. It feels too easy.

She’s crazy, she’s violent, she’s power-hungry, she seriously needs to be humbled, she’s making bad strategic decisions and doesn’t have the right priorities, she’s disrespectful (especially to Optimus) and pisses off everyone around her, she’s actively dooming an entire planet full of innocents—she’s totally gonna regret her choices and/or die later too—

Jiang Cheng’s actions aren’t in some sort of void. Which means it’s impossible to talk about other characters or write meaningful metas without talking about his impact because surprise!

Jiang Cheng is an important character.

So, if someone wants to write a character meta on Jin Ling, but they cannot do that without discussing the overall impact of JC’s physical and verbal abuse on JL and what effect it has; that the person who loves and protects you is also the one who harms you. But if the only discussion allowed is ‘how JC hugged and cooed over JL who was the most loved child ever’, then the fact that JL doesn’t remember being hugged until Wei Wuxian or the fact he was hit at all is buried and you get fanfiction instead of character discussions.

Do you want to explore the power structures? Classism? Patriarchy? Do you want to write about mob behavior? How the Great Sects are set up and how society revolves around them? Overt and subtle homophobia vs acceptance? The mottos of each individual clan and how the founders made it vs current state? Just discuss the events and how they played out in MDZS and why?

You need to refer to the actual text.

Which means you need to talk about JC as he is written and not what he ‘secretly’ could be. Not what you wished he could be. And certainly not rewriting his clearly stated intentions into well meaning fluff about how you think a person would react in the same situation.

But when all text discussions are viciously shut down, you get fanon that doesn’t fit with the actual events of the book. So trying to discuss the basic plot of how WWX died, because he didn’t conform to society and how propaganda can turn a good man into a monster by the powerful, can’t happen. Because that means talking about people in the society like JC. And if JC is rewritten as someone who ‘meant well’ and would never harm anyone deliberately, then as the man who lead the siege to kill WWX, things stop making sense. His actions are not in a void like I said before. And to keep making sense, now all the main characters involved have their intentions and actions rewritten to support the JC fanon.

MDZS stops making sense. The themes stop making sense.

Jiang Cheng is an integral part of MDZS and when canon discussions about his intent and actions are shut down and continue to be shut down or rewritten, the plot of MDZS unravels.

And as people who love MDZS and thrive on such discussions, whether it is about the themes or the characters, people who love to explore MDZS as it is, having a tag which uses the word ‘canon’ wasn’t the end of the world and certainly isn’t the ‘bullying’ that toxic stans or so called ‘neutral’ groups continue to claim it to be.

But since the actual tag made for canon discussions has been destroyed by campaigned and targeted harassment by stans, there can be nothing done and everything will be posted in the main tag anyway.

And if the JC stans found the posts "negative" toward their homophobic, classist abusive nepo baby, that's their issues. I no longer give an f.

Suck that Jiang Cheng was interested because he was a well-written mundane piece of shit, who did play a role in Wei Ying's downfall through his passive actions to ruin Wei Ying's reputation completely (People should know, Wei Ying wasn't deemed as the enemy of the Cultivation World yet after escaping with the Wens Renmants, until fucking Jiang Cheng made that announcement. If Jiang Cheng just mentioned Wei Ying a Jiang deserter, at worst people would just make up baseless rumors about him without any confirmation. But nope, Jiang Cheng falsely confirmed Wei Ying would be against the Cultivation World when he fucking knew all Wei Ying wanted to do is just to protect the Wens Renmants. This is not an "I didn't mean to" action. This is deliberate action with malicious intent. Jiang Cheng deliberately gave the Cultivation World a "legit" reason to treat Wei Ying as this big bad monster needed to be destroyed later. The Cultivation World already had negative in Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng went along and made it worse for Wei Ying.

Wei Ying may not know about the "enemy of the Cultivation World" deal from Jiang Cheng, he still knew that Jiang Cheng essentially abandoned him and deliberately went along with what Cultivation World thought about him and condemned him to death without caring about his side of the story, plus, the first seige. Heck, there was even a passage of Wei Ying lamenting how he used to trust Jiang Cheng to back him up, only for him to turn his back on Wei Ying and abandon him, while the person he thought to be against him, a.k.a, Lan Zhan, ended up to be his biggest supporter. Wei Ying may feel no resentment towards Jiang Cheng in his second life and maybe nostalgic about their close bond in the past, he also felt so done with Jiang Cheng and simply wanted to move on with his life without Jiang Cheng. Wei Ying in his second life, even when they were kinda on the better terms, still chose to avoid Jiang Cheng and simply did not want to be near him.

And when they don’t listen all she has to do is punch ONE OF THE MAIN FEARED LEADERS OF THE HIGH GUARD and makes them pay attention like the boss she is!

At the end OPTIMUS MAKES HER A COMMANDER TO HELP THE AUTOBOTS BECOME STRONGER!!!! Hell without her help Orion Dee and Bee would have gotten killed looking for the matrix! So Optimus makes her in charge because she helped bring everyone together!

DONT YALL DARE SAY MY GIRL ELITA CANT BRING BOTS TOGETHER!!! 🤬

oh also this interview where the writer says she’s important to the story because of what she provides for d-16 and orion. like fully just focusing on why SHES important to HIM and that’s why she needs to be included in the story and not. like any other reason. combining that with the fact that she’s the one of two female characters that actually have relevance and airachnid also suffers from “being included to support a man” syndrome. it’s not the best

Dear anon I have no idea and I honestly don't care enough to search for an answer I'm afraid that you will have to ask that to Robert Kirkman himself

...

Okay so my cables got crossed and I put this answer in another ask so to atone for my sins I did search it up:

Appearently the name came up when Cobra Commander's writer Joshua Williamson mentioned to Kirkman that he wanted to put energon in the story. Kirkman was like "oh I could put energon in Void Rivals as well" and boom the Energon Universe was born.

The Matrix of Lettership though—

In retrospective, I realized that person was right, because now Kirkman can't stop insisting that the Energon Universe is its own thing and that the readers need to stop expecting characters to be their versions from other continuities, but— dude, Transformers EU started clinging itself from the sunbow cartoon, can you really blame the public if you are depending in their already existing fondness of the characters to make your story work? Like– the first characters looked like their versions from the cartoon and the new characters look exactly like they did in their original media. If you want your work to stand on its own, at least change the designs a little. I mean, Arcee was a Lamborghini and her robot mode look exactly the same, giving her new kibble would have give her more identity, it would have make more people think "this is Skybound Arcee" instead of "ah yes, Arcee from the Sunbow cartoon". Of course you can take inspiration from other series, Elita from TFA is obviously inspired by Ariel from G1, but she still looks like her own character that belongs in the TFA universe.

I'm not even an IDW fan but yes lmao

Like sorry my guy but the bar for "crazy Shockwave" is already high I believe he is going to have to do a little more than putting whales in a blender to be considered "more crazy than other versions", the dude is known for that lol

Also I already made a post with this image but I'm also putting it here because it just cracks me up

The Matrix of Lettership though—

In retrospective, I realized that person was right, because now Kirkman can't stop insisting that the Energon Universe is its own thing and that the readers need to stop expecting characters to be their versions from other continuities, but— dude, Transformers EU started clinging itself from the sunbow cartoon, can you really blame the public if you are depending in their already existing fondness of the characters to make your story work? Like– the first characters looked like their versions from the cartoon and the new characters look exactly like they did in their original media. If you want your work to stand on its own, at least change the designs a little. I mean, Arcee was a Lamborghini and her robot mode look exactly the same, giving her new kibble would have give her more identity, it would have make more people think "this is Skybound Arcee" instead of "ah yes, Arcee from the Sunbow cartoon". Of course you can take inspiration from other series, Elita from TFA is obviously inspired by Ariel from G1, but she still looks like her own character that belongs in the TFA universe.