Not to make you go on discussing something painful, but will I recognise the Mind Stone when I hear it? We don't have to be in mental contact for me to hear surface thoughts. I wear external shields so that I don't hear everyone's surface thoughts. I know that frightens some people, and I'm sorry about it, but I can't help the way my spark came out of the ground, or what it did to my brain module during my forging.
Your anti-conscience sounds as though it is a bit more complex and insistent than most people's intrusive thoughts are. But being told all your life that you are bad and there is something wrong with you would make you pay attention to those thoughts, and give them more power than another person just as powerful might have given them; it doesn't mean that you are innately malicious.
I feel that if you were innately malicious, I'd know. I have had a lot of experience dealing with the minds of malicious people. You are nothing like Ravage's abuser, or Starscream at his worst, or Scorponok, or Tarn and the rest of that crew. Like me, you have been known to derive joy from the pain of others, but only those who have caused enough pain to merit it.
Your mind has twists and turns and tricks, but I like minds like that. They're interesting, and their ability to compartmentalise limits the amount of pain they're able to inflict upon me without meaning to. There are disadvantages--Ravage, when I first met her, was able to hide the source of her pain from me for quite some time, which was especially frustrating because when I first met her, all that I wanted to do, other than find my way back to sanity, was to take it away. But around people like Ravage and Megatron and you, I'm not constantly barraged by trauma I have no power to address, where the sufferer would only be further harmed by the knowledge that I, as a stranger, was aware of it.
I have no doubt you will recognize her, if it's actually the Mind Stone's voice and not merely nightmares my own mind is conjuring up. It's a force that existed at the dawn of my universe, and will continue to exist until the very end.
I would never expect you to apologize or regret your own gifts and nature. I'm admitting my own fear because I think...because you value honesty and therefore I wish to give you as much of it as I can. But individuality is something I value as much as I do self-determination.
I always thought I was inherently grey, and easily pushed into the dark. I have both indulged that darker nature and fought tooth and nail against it, with very little difference in the results except that the more I fight the more exhausted I feel. Identity and purpose is something I have struggled with since I was a child. It's taken so much work to get to where I am now...and there will be more work ahead of me, possibly for as long as I live.
But it means something, what you've told me. I'm not a monster.
I've met monsters. I've worked with them. I've served beside them out of necessity. I've worked for them.
I've served them unwillingly, their presence like acid bathing my processors, every moment a struggle not to snap in a way that would end my life and leave Ravage and her sibs undefended.
And I've broken them, and taken a sick, brilliant joy in reducing them down to their primal fears as they crumple in my grasp. I will break them again if I need to.
You've done terrible things. Just like Megatron. But neither of you is a monster.
You've just lost your way, here and there. And not without help.
I've met them, as well, and served them in spite of how ill it fit my own nature to do so. The wounds linger, but I still wonder, often, what separates me from one of them. I thought it was divinity for a time, and then I thought it was an understanding of sacrifice, and now I think it may be some capacity for love and compassion that they were too calcified to possess, but which I have miraculously retained. Perhaps a little of all the above.
There is something about being a god--at least, one of the sort that Thor and myself are--that leaves you halfway between individual and Elemental. I am a person with a window in my soul that opens onto something impersonal and implacable, but I will cling to both my personhood and my divinity forever, unless they pull me apart.
Knowing that this is the way you see me helps keep the balance. Others would tell me the same, I'm sure, but you have a gift of perception not everyone shares.
When I open my mind completely and take off all my external shielding in public, unguarded places...the vastness of the universe and all its information comes flooding through me. I lost track of myself for a long, long time, until I first saw Ravage, and focused on her. If it were not for her I doubt i would have been able to keep track of my personhood long.
I don't know if it's the capacity for love and compassion, or the fact that you can still want them.
Before I met Ravage I wasn't sure that feelings like that could bring enough joy to be worth all the pain.
It's not hard to believe at all. Thor's dearest friend Heimdall was the gatewarden of Asgard for millennia. If I'm honest, the whole place would have fallen down without him there. From his observatory, he could see all of the Nine Realms, and tens of trillions of people.
I don't know that he ever claimed any worshipers, but there is no doubt his gifts were divine. I'm not sure how he kept himself from becoming overwhelmed with them.
Who and what we love says a lot about us, in the end, does it not?</font?
I am having a moment right now. I've never experienced amicitia. I never thought that I would. But knowing that you feel the same tension between the infinite and the intimate that I feel gives me balance, too.
Ravage is my sparkmate but even she doesn't understand that, because she isn't shaped to contain it. She's a lens, through which the powers of goodness and compassion and creation were meant to shine. And she is everything there is to me.
But this discussion has brought me a peace that I don't know how to explain.
I am still in love with him. I don't even want not to be, any more. I was angry with him because he shut himself away from me when he started to go wrong, and then he tried to make her do it, too. They were terrible together by themselves. They weren't terrible when he didn't push me away, which he did because he didn't want me to know how fucked up he'd become.
She's his amica. I don't know if I'll ever have one, but it would have to be someone like you.
I don't even know what I'm saying here.
I know what she did, by the way. Or at least I've guessed.
But I'm waiting for her to tell me. I wish she would. It hurts me, and I can't forgive her until she tells me. They were stupid, but how can I be angry when they did it because they love me? I even think I know why it went awry.
It went awry because she was still cassette-bound. She couldn't fully consent to it. She couldn't give the Lady what She wanted. And if Solus wants what I think she might, she still can't, but not for the same reasons.
I don't even believe in this scrap line of thinking, so tell me how it is that I know how it works? I can see them together on that Pitbound beach I've never set a pede on, and the only reason I don't want to look is it hurts, and at the same time I hurt more for them than I do for myself.
We love a pair of idiots, you know. But I wouldn't with anyone else. They're alive in ways that nobody else is.
I won't strike him again. I promise.
I thought he didn't see me anymore. Ravage thinks I want from him what I didn't get when he shut me out and she was the joint between us, and she says it's not as much fun as I think it is but she loves me enough to want me to have it, and besides, she is wholly mine now. I don't deserve any of you.
And I swear I'm not fendered on energon wine. I know it sounds like I am.
[Some hours later:]
I told her I knew she had something to tell me, and please just to tell me, so we could get past it.
She fell apart on me and told me.
What happened after that was only for us to know about but I was wrong to say that she is a lens. That is not her function, chosen or otherwise. She encompasses a lens. I want to say that Solus has made a space inside of her for her to grow into.
But that's wrong. It has always been there. I saw it the day we met.
And none of this matters. I'd love her no matter how far from infinite she was. She's my anchor in the intimate.
Everyone liked Heimdall. Even me, and I fought with him bitterly more than once.
Sometimes, the people I love understand, at least from the outside in, or through their own experiences. Ian studies chaos. Harley dances in meditation. Megatron is a poet. I would pity anyone who truly has no contact with the infinite. But there is a difference between touching it for a moment with the tip of a finger, and feeling it rush through your body like the blood in your veins. I would not be myself if I were closed to the cosmos forever.
Perhaps sometime we could...'compare notes' sounds inadequate, but I would be honored to show you how I reach for the sacred, and what I do when It reaches back.
You know how it works because it operates on the same level as dream logic. There is an element of inherent irrationality, but there is also a pattern in the chaos, and that pattern is beautiful and terrifying. You know how it works because you are a part of that pattern.
We do love a pair of idiots, but I'm afraid we are also a pair of idiots, if in a different form. It's all right. You can tell me whatever you wish, and I will hold it as sacred as I would if a follower needed me as a confessional. We can be that much for one another.
[He assumes, when the texts trail off, that Soundwave needed a break from the emotions of the conversation, and opted to give him space, and not to worry. He's just getting up in the morning and making breakfast for the children when the next words appear on the screen of his PINpoint, and doesn't try to read them until all four little ones are safely eating their oatmeal.
He cannot quite grasp through text what Soundwave is trying to tell him, and it's too important to guess at, but he's relieved they've had the vital conversation at least.]
I want to understand, but this may not be the right medium. It sounds as though I should be happy for you, and I am.
Would you like to talk, either or both of you? The children are at breakfast but I can meet you in an hour or so, if you wish.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Your anti-conscience sounds as though it is a bit more complex and insistent than most people's intrusive thoughts are. But being told all your life that you are bad and there is something wrong with you would make you pay attention to those thoughts, and give them more power than another person just as powerful might have given them; it doesn't mean that you are innately malicious.
I feel that if you were innately malicious, I'd know. I have had a lot of experience dealing with the minds of malicious people. You are nothing like Ravage's abuser, or Starscream at his worst, or Scorponok, or Tarn and the rest of that crew. Like me, you have been known to derive joy from the pain of others, but only those who have caused enough pain to merit it.
Your mind has twists and turns and tricks, but I like minds like that. They're interesting, and their ability to compartmentalise limits the amount of pain they're able to inflict upon me without meaning to. There are disadvantages--Ravage, when I first met her, was able to hide the source of her pain from me for quite some time, which was especially frustrating because when I first met her, all that I wanted to do, other than find my way back to sanity, was to take it away. But around people like Ravage and Megatron and you, I'm not constantly barraged by trauma I have no power to address, where the sufferer would only be further harmed by the knowledge that I, as a stranger, was aware of it.
no subject
I would never expect you to apologize or regret your own gifts and nature. I'm admitting my own fear because I think...because you value honesty and therefore I wish to give you as much of it as I can. But individuality is something I value as much as I do self-determination.
I always thought I was inherently grey, and easily pushed into the dark. I have both indulged that darker nature and fought tooth and nail against it, with very little difference in the results except that the more I fight the more exhausted I feel. Identity and purpose is something I have struggled with since I was a child. It's taken so much work to get to where I am now...and there will be more work ahead of me, possibly for as long as I live.
But it means something, what you've told me. I'm not a monster.
no subject
I've met monsters. I've worked with them. I've served beside them out of necessity. I've worked for them.
I've served them unwillingly, their presence like acid bathing my processors, every moment a struggle not to snap in a way that would end my life and leave Ravage and her sibs undefended.
And I've broken them, and taken a sick, brilliant joy in reducing them down to their primal fears as they crumple in my grasp. I will break them again if I need to.
You've done terrible things. Just like Megatron. But neither of you is a monster.
You've just lost your way, here and there. And not without help.
no subject
There is something about being a god--at least, one of the sort that Thor and myself are--that leaves you halfway between individual and Elemental. I am a person with a window in my soul that opens onto something impersonal and implacable, but I will cling to both my personhood and my divinity forever, unless they pull me apart.
Knowing that this is the way you see me helps keep the balance. Others would tell me the same, I'm sure, but you have a gift of perception not everyone shares.
no subject
When I open my mind completely and take off all my external shielding in public, unguarded places...the vastness of the universe and all its information comes flooding through me. I lost track of myself for a long, long time, until I first saw Ravage, and focused on her. If it were not for her I doubt i would have been able to keep track of my personhood long.
I don't know if it's the capacity for love and compassion, or the fact that you can still want them.
Before I met Ravage I wasn't sure that feelings like that could bring enough joy to be worth all the pain.
no subject
I don't know that he ever claimed any worshipers, but there is no doubt his gifts were divine. I'm not sure how he kept himself from becoming overwhelmed with them.
Who and what we love says a lot about us, in the end, does it not?</font?
no subject
I am having a moment right now. I've never experienced amicitia. I never thought that I would. But knowing that you feel the same tension between the infinite and the intimate that I feel gives me balance, too.
Ravage is my sparkmate but even she doesn't understand that, because she isn't shaped to contain it. She's a lens, through which the powers of goodness and compassion and creation were meant to shine. And she is everything there is to me.
But this discussion has brought me a peace that I don't know how to explain.
I am still in love with him. I don't even want not to be, any more. I was angry with him because he shut himself away from me when he started to go wrong, and then he tried to make her do it, too. They were terrible together by themselves. They weren't terrible when he didn't push me away, which he did because he didn't want me to know how fucked up he'd become.
She's his amica. I don't know if I'll ever have one, but it would have to be someone like you.
I don't even know what I'm saying here.
I know what she did, by the way. Or at least I've guessed.
But I'm waiting for her to tell me. I wish she would. It hurts me, and I can't forgive her until she tells me. They were stupid, but how can I be angry when they did it because they love me? I even think I know why it went awry.
It went awry because she was still cassette-bound. She couldn't fully consent to it. She couldn't give the Lady what She wanted. And if Solus wants what I think she might, she still can't, but not for the same reasons.
I don't even believe in this scrap line of thinking, so tell me how it is that I know how it works? I can see them together on that Pitbound beach I've never set a pede on, and the only reason I don't want to look is it hurts, and at the same time I hurt more for them than I do for myself.
We love a pair of idiots, you know. But I wouldn't with anyone else. They're alive in ways that nobody else is.
I won't strike him again. I promise.
I thought he didn't see me anymore. Ravage thinks I want from him what I didn't get when he shut me out and she was the joint between us, and she says it's not as much fun as I think it is but she loves me enough to want me to have it, and besides, she is wholly mine now. I don't deserve any of you.
And I swear I'm not fendered on energon wine. I know it sounds like I am.
[Some hours later:]
I told her I knew she had something to tell me, and please just to tell me, so we could get past it.
She fell apart on me and told me.
What happened after that was only for us to know about but I was wrong to say that she is a lens. That is not her function, chosen or otherwise. She encompasses a lens. I want to say that Solus has made a space inside of her for her to grow into.
But that's wrong. It has always been there. I saw it the day we met.
And none of this matters. I'd love her no matter how far from infinite she was. She's my anchor in the intimate.
no subject
Sometimes, the people I love understand, at least from the outside in, or through their own experiences. Ian studies chaos. Harley dances in meditation. Megatron is a poet. I would pity anyone who truly has no contact with the infinite. But there is a difference between touching it for a moment with the tip of a finger, and feeling it rush through your body like the blood in your veins. I would not be myself if I were closed to the cosmos forever.
Perhaps sometime we could...'compare notes' sounds inadequate, but I would be honored to show you how I reach for the sacred, and what I do when It reaches back.
You know how it works because it operates on the same level as dream logic. There is an element of inherent irrationality, but there is also a pattern in the chaos, and that pattern is beautiful and terrifying. You know how it works because you are a part of that pattern.
We do love a pair of idiots, but I'm afraid we are also a pair of idiots, if in a different form. It's all right. You can tell me whatever you wish, and I will hold it as sacred as I would if a follower needed me as a confessional. We can be that much for one another.
[He assumes, when the texts trail off, that Soundwave needed a break from the emotions of the conversation, and opted to give him space, and not to worry. He's just getting up in the morning and making breakfast for the children when the next words appear on the screen of his PINpoint, and doesn't try to read them until all four little ones are safely eating their oatmeal.
He cannot quite grasp through text what Soundwave is trying to tell him, and it's too important to guess at, but he's relieved they've had the vital conversation at least.]
I want to understand, but this may not be the right medium. It sounds as though I should be happy for you, and I am.
Would you like to talk, either or both of you? The children are at breakfast but I can meet you in an hour or so, if you wish.
no subject
Is Megatron there? He isn't with us.
I didn't know the god of mischief heard confessions.