#thinking about robots

obviously i think tyrest is wrong about constructed cold transformers being inherently corrupt, but tbh i also think ultra magnus is wrong about this being a concidence.

my question is: how many of the defendants were MTOs? how many of them were thrown onto a battlefield right after they were born? and how might that warp their ideas of what’s acceptable?  it wouldn’t surprise me if MTOs were more likely to commit atrocities (their lives have been nothing but atrocities). but this is because of how they were treated after they were born, not because they were constructed cold.

Nautica asked if on Cybertron, amicas are allowed to become conjunxes, and then said “there are certain questions you keep putitng off...until you realize you’ve only got a few hours to act on the answer.” This heavily implies that she’s romantically interested in one of the people who become her amicas in the next issue.

A lot of people assumed she was talking about Skids, but at a convention, JRo confirmed that Skids and Nautica’s feelings for each other were platonic. So who was she talking about?

Allow me to answer that question with some questions of my own.

Who did she call by a nickname in the amica endura ceremony?

Who had an entire issue heavily focusing on their relationship with Nautica (complete with montage)?

Who did she want to “worship like a god”?

Also just look at how they’re looking at each other here:

okay this explains a lot, but not everything. namely: why did it think that Nautica wanted to see Skids? can it not read emotions? so it saw that Nautica and Skids were close and assumed she would still miss him? does she still have her grief buried deep down somewhere that this thing could access but she can’t?

also: apparently the thing that would make the LL crew happiest is being dead, so that’s depressing. and why is garrus-9 the Scavengers’ utopia?

1) Weird Stuff From LL13

In the interests of saving space, I’m not pasting panels, but all this happened in LL13:

Swerve’s ass catching on fire for no reason

Ratchet going grey

Losing the lock on Getaway

Getting news of Tailgate’s “death” (which I think is fake for several reasons, see below)

Cyclonus accidentally hurting Rewind

The mass displacement wearing off

Ten talking and happening to know exactly what’s wrong with Ratchet

Now some of that stuff is just weird on its own (Swerve’s ass catching on fire, Ratchet going grey, Ten talking), and the rest of that is just a lot of stuff going wrong in weirdly quick succession.

There’s still no explanation for Ten being able to talk (and again, this would’ve happened before they “died”), or for his voice sounding different (according to Nightbeat), or for how he knew what was wrong with Ratchet. Something weird was going on in LL13, and until that’s explained, I’m not going to trust anything they’re perceiving.

2) Tailgate’s Death (or lack thereof)

I’ve been saying this whole time that I don’t believe Tailgate is dead, and I’m sticking with that. This is not the reaction you have when you see that your friend is dead:

And I’m not going to repeat this entire post again, but “the whole body is atomized in seconds” means “there was no body,” which is already suspicious as hell in any fictional medium. But ALSO JRo has said that if we don’t see someone die on screen, we shouldn’t assume they’re dead.

So if Tailgate isn’t dead, and everyone else is, how could this happen?

3) Early Early Warning System

If they’re in heaven, why wouldn’t Brainstorm’s early early warning system stop going off?

Honestly, how did the early early warning system even come with them to heaven?

So what do I think is actually happening?

.

.

.

Let’s recap:

Cybertron had apartheid. Some forged Cybertronians tried to (and claimed they did) prove that cold constructed Cybertronians were inferior. Presumably, this “proof” was used to further support apartheid, because that’s how these things work.

Now, let’s flash forward to Tyrest.

“I’m saying that they’re predisposed towards sin.”

Now, Tyrest is not exactly thinking clearly, given the hole he drilled in his head. Some of the characters are prejudiced, but there’s no reason to believe constructed cold Cybertronians are actually inclined to be any worse than forged Cybertronians.

Until TAAO rolled around and made just seeing his true form nudge Starscream in the right direction. Logically, actually embodying his true form would improve Starscream’s character even more. The logical conclusion of this plot point is that Tyrest was right. The city-states that “proved” cold construction was inferior were right.