#incoherent rant

WAAAAARNING INCOHERENT (NOT PROOF READ) TOMTORD RANT WAAAARNING ( i do not only ship tomtord. i am not an annoying tomtord fan i SWEAAAR! i love all ships, i just have a lot to say about tomtord)

i love how they depicted tom and tord's relationship. much different than the original pork soda animation. i really reallly like it because its more like how i like to think about their relationship!!! yearning, but hate. they cannot accept that they like each other, because their relationship is rocky and difficult, and not like it used to be.

the animation is beautiful. every once in a while i find an animation that ill watch a bunch for like a week because its visually pleasing or i like the story, and this is THE ONE!!! it felt like i was 7 years old watching it for the first time again.

fantastic job, toast!!!!!! i loved it and you did an amazing job!!!!!!!!!

And it pisses me off knowing we’re gonna see MORE OF HIM

An extremely disorganized, yet very passionate rant, below the cut.

and all the possibilities of him meeting dominus, of him just seeing dominus, of rewind asking swerve about what he saw! and swerve being important to cdrw relationship with that!

and swerve... being important in general.

he doesn't look like he is in any major plot, he's not really a character with a big sad backstory or a big dramatic moment (because let's be honest—Swearth is not that dramatic). he doesn't have a particular character to be connected to; he sticks to everyone and has a potential to develop important relationships with most of the characters on the ship. he's a bit floating here and there, isn't he?

but then it's all in small details. ratchet gently respects him and his medic abilities. skids enjoys his company and is worried about him. cyclonus sees something in him! that grumpy guy! and understands him! velocity thinks he's heartfelt. misfire thinks they're similar. ultra magnus opens up to him—yes, drunk but it's certainly something! and it goes on and on.

and swerve does so many important things. he helps to cure cybercrosis. he has agent's 113 bullet inside of him. he, after all, opens a bar where everyone can rest and have fun. isn't that awesome?

and yet, he locks himself in that room. and yet, he hates himself to his core. and yet, he thinks he is not important at all. and yet, he needs to create a whole planet to get noticed.

in addition to me focusing a bit on college, i’ll honestly say that the reason i’ve mostly been gone is that my dysphoria has intensified far more ever since going back to college. I have been extremely brainwormed and kind of miserable about it and college has kind of been my only way to escape feeling so upset. I genuinely feel bad for dipping on you guys but I really didn’t want to subject anyone to my misery or just feeling super shit about being trans and having so much internalized dysphoria. I’ll be very blunt and say that I do not know when this is gonna be better. It’s the reason why I haven’t been in contact with as many people.

I know a couple of you follow me on my insta main account and I’ve been story posting more frequently on there so it seems like nothing has been wrong maybe, but I genuinely am just highkey tired of being trans and all this bitterness has really changed my personality for the worst. If you have any questions about my disappearance and shit and you want to send them in my inbox, I won’t guarantee that I’ll respond but I’ll at least try to take a look at them.

That led to me characterizing him with high barriers and a lack of friendships, I tied that into his zombie identity. If you were something everyone fear, then nobody would see you. If you have nobody, and everyone who attempted to get close, was seeking you out for business purposes, then it would be hard to trust anyone.

Caleb244 is known to be bitchy, known to be a dick. And I’m sure that bothered the shit out of Kirby when they first met prior to Choka. He was everything he didn’t want to be around.

Yet for Caleb, he didn’t mind being around Kirby. Caleb himself can probably relate to having a high barrier, due to the fact he thinks it’s every man for himself.

Despite them both having these trust issues, the way I view them reacting is very different.

Whilst caleb244 goes straight into aggression, Kirbycaden goes to sobbing before his anger.

Kirby trusted Choka, and I believe that was the first one he truly had let him “in”. She promised to be there for him, comforted him, played on all of his insecurities, and this caused to form some bond with Choka. Finally letting someone in.

(Fear on ao3, by patchesofcut)

So when Choka, and Vice versa caleb244, was revealed to be fake. I can imagine how he was shattered, very emotionally upset. Probably unable to get out of bed for weeks, whilst coming with terms that he still does love Choka, and vice versa towards Caleb, yet he still had to fight back.

Although instead of “fighting back” to make sure people understand the fact Kirbycaden been hacked, he did it more so he could gain some form of attention from Caleb. Because there’s truly no undoing the damage he did to his reputation, whether he got his accounts back or not, he’s pretty fucked.

Lol. Lmao even.

MCU does the thing where they get money from the military and/or permission to shoot on aircraft carriers in exchange for a passing look over the script. They can ask to cut things, and if (big if) they're not specifying what to include, they're at least being catered to in advance of requests (I.e. things are included because they reckon the funding people will like them). Marvel can go along with them (e.g ca:tws, captain marvel, tfatws, ca:bnw) or refuse the changes, take their ball and go (e.g. the avengers 2012)

The above has an odd effect on the films. All 4 projects listed have anti military themes and contain unsubtle critiques of the US gov and military. Captain Marvel and tfatws openly shit on the war on terror as a concept, for example. However, all these projects portray Military Good Guys doing heroics. And all portray aspects of the us military in a positive light (e.g. the veteran support stuff in tws is absolutely propaganda, glossing over a common complaint about the military leaving vets out in the cold after their tours end). This is thematically shallow but it does please the funding guys.

For the comics, this specific financial relationship does not exist. (Although I would not be shocked if over the years specific comics and runs had been funded by the government (and not just wwii era stuff), or been commissioned top gun-style as recruitment material.)

Pro military, pro war, and (idk how to put this as a European but) being very weird about America in a way that is indistinguishable from paid propaganda - this is so common in marvel comics that you barely notice. As far as Sam is concerned, there are some stand outs:

Sam's early appearances are censored by the comics code, which renders his radical politics subtextual and cloaked in innuendo. (This leads to him being interpreted as less radical and more centristy by people who can't read, which then leads to him being written that way in future comics). The comics code is complicated but to be clear, by 1970, marvel absolutely did not *need* to be compliant here. They could have got out of that situation, they could've challenged it legally, they could've just ignored it (which they often did for other aspects of it for the next 30 years). But no.

Incidentally, when they finally got out of the shrivelled remains of the code in the 2000s, they mainly took the opportunity to write more gratuitous sexual assault in their comics (im barely exaggerating). The women got (even) more naked and worse things happened to them. Not to be politically radical, not to be left wing. Not even to let the gay characters be gay (that took another ten years).

In the 80s, sam is portrayed as believing that Ronald Reagan himself could be talked into being a great president. Embarrassing. The man was openly racist.

Sam gets saddled with military bs despite canonically never being a soldier (and being subtextually anti war in those early appearances). He refuses to ever work wjth shield in 1970 and then basically lives there in the 80s/90s. He gets stupid framing and terrible quotes.

Speaking of the 2000s, post 911, marvel goes full jingoism for a while there, like a lot of American media at the time.

This is also around about when sam gets saddled with a "romance" subplot that dabbles in raceplay shit... featuring the second of marvels "sexy nazi teenager" characters from the era. Unsalvageable. Not what I would consider a more progressive take than the movies.

It's also when we get cap!bucky and sam getting some of his most overt "black sidekick" treatment. The idea of sam being given focus and interiority is not even on the table: he is here to support the next white guy.

I guess this is kind of off-topic, but beyond simply how much the military is literally featured and how much people say "America fuck yeah", the idea that the comics are more progressive, more woke than the mcu is pretty dumb. They are often far worse. And in fact, the vast majority of Sam's history has something up with it (the buckycap storyline isn’t even particularly bad for him, it's just emblematic of something).

And OK maybe you could say it's unfair to compare racist comics from the last century to modern films. Maybe we should only make the comparison within the time frame that mcu sam has existed.

In which case... eh? Post 2013, Sam has some generic sidekick writing, some focus as cap, and a copious heap of sidelining.

In terms of the political themes? Idk it's mixed. People critise the mid 10s cap stuff for being centristy. People (me) criticised symbol of truth for being unfocused and irrelevent to Sam's character. He does start SoT working for a politician for no clear reason. I guess that isn’t the military, but it is weirdly "for the government" for Sam's character.

Despite the fact that the military funding arrangements leave mcu films in this weird space thematically, I do think it's worth saying I could never picture mcu sam saying "America fuck yeah" or any such variation of it. I think mackie knows the character too well to let it get to that (see his comments before bnw that got him harassed by chuds for weeks). Meanwhile, 616 sam has been saddled with more dumb quotes than I could count. Probably because all it takes is one dumb writer (who maybe can't read) and an editor who doesn't care.

I'm not making any clear point here, but just... can we stop glazing the comics like this? Can we stop using the fact that people havent read them (and no ones read all of them) as a way of convincing people of narratives that don't hold up because we won't get any pushback?

Idk i like Sam's original 616 backstory (not the dumb retcons) more than his mcu one. And i specifically like how 616 sam is not a soldier. But then again mcu sam was college aged when 911 happened, he canonically had just lost his mum when he signed up... idk i can see it for him. It makes sense.

Messy ranting