Me, thinking about Altered Loyalties: Hmm yes, I can choose who gets to live :)
Me, looking at @turrondeluxe‘scomic and thinking of narrative parallels: And I can choose who stays dead… :)))
Oh, alas Dreadwing, your mission to set out and kill Airachnid - with the assistance of Breakdown - led thee with a dead ‘Con after all, and a rouge on the loose to boot. I wonder which other flight frame Seeker commander had a fatality on a mission, something with a little bot and some slicing of joints?
That’s right ladies, gentlemen and felons! That’s Starscream, bitches!
Imagine this, though many of the trials and tribulations have changed between the death of Skyquake and the first interaction between Starscream and Dreadwing, not only have both commanders lost a mecha on their first formal mission in so long- they just so happened to lose bots that had a bond with a very much still living ally.
But the question is, do I dare entertain these musings? Do I wish to go down this path, what will I gain? Perhaps this relatability, the mutual failings they had for the other half of a departed, will be the shift Starscream pushes for Dreadwing to rethink him- to see Starscream as he is now rather than in the past, and see how Megatron comparably now falls short to this treacherous Second-in-Command. Perhaps, it is with this understanding that it was the fault of the killer - or whichever event led to the death of their lost comrades - that Skyquake and Breakdown are slain, torn asunder and the bodies- where are the bodies?
Or perhaps… things get worse before they get better. Perhaps Dreadwing still finds his brother’s death the fault of Starscream, who led him on a mission that ended up his last, for he too blames himself for the loss of Knock Out’s conjux. It was his fault a spark was lost that day, it was his fault that it wasn’t the sly mecha he was told to kill, and it was his fault that the corpse was nothing more than splattered energon in the dirt.
Where was the FUCKING BODY!?
And it’s that spiralling, that hatred both strawmanned and self-inflicted - pin the blame on a face you know, on a reflection in the mirror - that could play parallel to Starscream. Starscream who has always been blamed for the failings and faults of others, of situations that could not have been predicted, of the numbers lost to the Allspark. Of the blame held only by Megatron towards the poor sod stuck as his Second-in-Command, the bot he keeps the closest not as a reward, but as a caution.
Oh, what better position would it be to keep your conniving bastard, the one that so desperately desires to overthrow your position as top dog of the Decepticons, than to be right by your ever watchful side. A general - a LORD - with one eye open towards his SiC, paired with the one and only ‘eyes and ears of the Decepticons’ Third-in-Command Soundwave to be the optics in the back to Megan’s helm.
And what a lovely position to give a mecha who’s lost his ever loyal brother, who began to slip from his grasp (he was so sure of it at the disgust in the green twin’s eyes) when the ever grand warlord himself grew a fascination for the living dead. What a wondrous gift to give a mecha who’s lost his everything, one who does not fully understand what his position truly means in the eyes of his lord, and will surely stop at nothing - nothing but his morals - to appease the Decepticon cause.
Surely, what a grand position to give a mecha, where the almighty lord himself can push the boundaries of what Dreadwing considers ‘honour’.
I mean, where else are you going to start ‘convincing’ Dreadwing that ‘desecration of corpses is good actually’ if not as a SiC being told to help cut off an arm from a centuries - MILLENIA - old corpse of a long since dead and now desecrated body of a Prime.
But do I, even after all this ‘parallel narratives’ talk (as if trying to convince myself to go through it), wish to uh… forcefully divorce the beloved couple of Knock Out and Breakdown? Do I believe, with the entire story of Altered Loyalties at my fingertips, that this is the only way for a narrative parallel between Starscream and Dreadwing play out? To change their relationship to one another because both of them, their fault or no, are in part related to the death of a bonded spark?
Maybe the scenario will not come to fruition in the first place, there are MANY things I can change between my rewritten ‘Students and Masters’ Skyquake death (with all the hints of backstory and now actual character with a few episodes of ‘being alive’ before exiting stage left) and the original episode ‘Triangulation’ of rouge Starscream and Lieutenant Dreadwing despising one another. After all, I still have some ideas brewing about Cliffjumper and freaking Makeshift, for heaven’s sake! It’s a long way to be rewritten and thought about between the fricking pilot and season fricking two, haha!
Who knows, only I will- with further thinking, at least.
:)
Stay tuned.
oh- they put the tag limit to 30 now- oh… my rambling…
