Challenge Fic: For the Beauty of the Earth (G1 Hound/Earth)

[femme4jack]

Title: For the Beauty of the Earth
Author:  femme4jack 
Beta:  fierceawakening (I have so much fun chatting about Autobot and Decepticon culture with you.  Thanks so much for the awesome feedback!)
Pairing: Hound/Earth
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: AU, OOC (Dark Hound), Dark Fic
Continuity: G1 AU (‘cause my Prowl doesn’t die in no stinkin’ attack on a shuttle, that’s why)

Comments

[niyazi_a]

Oh very nice dark fic. I love the idea that Autobots are so arrogant that they decide when a planet's population is 'out of balance' and do horrible Cass Sunstein things like that. Honestly, Hound's actions aren't as disturbing to me as that notion that the Autobots feel that they have such an imperialist manifest destiny to inflict their vision upon other civilizations. Considering that they are victims of Quintesson cultural manipulation it shows they've learned NOTHING.

And it all makes for fantastic fic!

[femme4jack]

I'm SO glad you enjoyed. I guess I think the Autobots are a lot like humanity, especially Western human culture believing it knows best and has the right to impose those values on others, in the name of "good". The Autobots may value "freedom" but they are also all about social control, at least in my head canon. But I want my characters to be morally ambiguous.

[synaltern]

I think I can see your point. It makes an interesting thought process/internal discussion. Can you clarify what you mean with the Autobots seeming to have "an imperialist manifest destiny"? I'm not quite seeing that, myself.

[niyazi_a]

That they have some right to go to another planet, another culture, and meddle about how those indigenous peoples should live their lives. Like European settlers coming to America, determined to 'civilize the savages'. Or as they did in India. Or Africa. 'We know better than you how you should live your life.' The 'population control virus' femme alludes to in her fic is just a less-immediately-lethal form of smallpox laden blankets, or early 20th Century plans to put sterilants in the drinking water in the neighborhoods of 'undesirables'.

I don't see that in actual G1, of course; but femme says it pretty clearly in her AU fic and comment *points up* to my comment.

[synaltern]

....this is scarily Hound. I can see this.

Tis a good darkness. And bad.

[femme4jack]

Thank you! It was the logical conclusion of my belief that his core coding is all about biosphere guardianship.

[lightningscythe]

I imagined the ending and thought of nothing but rotting corpses all around him instead of just wet dirt. I like how you kept reminding how everyone else had their place and how he had his.

[femme4jack]

Thanks! I'm sure there was nothing but rotting corpses for a long time, but when you are near-immortal, you can take a long term approach to things. I'm not even sure his grief over the Witwicky descendants was an act, but in the grand scheme of things, his guardianship of the biosphere took precedence in his programming *shivers*

[gatekat]

Ever watched Life After People? It'd be a great look at what'll happen, especially the episode The Bodies Left Behind.

[evvj]

Wow. This was so very, very Hound. The saddest thing, probably, is that we are destroying our planet, but there's no giant alien robot with a biology major coming to save the Earth from us.

... maybe that's kind of morbid, but I really feel that Hound did the right thing in this fic.

[femme4jack]

Thanks for reading!

On one level, I really agree. I think that agriculture was the worst thing that ever happened to us or this planet, and it has just gotten worse since. But, I wonder what Hound could have accomplished through education? One thing that is probably rather unrealistic in this story is that the Autobots would not have helped humans improve how they found and used energy. Though perhaps they did, and it still was too little too late.

On a planetary level, it is easy to say that the Earth would be better off without us, and I can imagine even "good" aliens with the power to do so making the choice that Hound did. However, it robs an entire species of an opportunity to redeem itself or suffer the natural consequences of their actions. Question is, can genocide every be justified? Even against a species that is committing it themselves just by the way they live? Hmmmmmmmmm

[gatekat]

My take on the above was with Hound's programming so out of balance, he couldn't stand to wait until education, technology and political pressure did the job of controlling the humans. And/or he saw that humanity would never leave the world clean enough for his programming to accept.

[femme4jack]

*nods* Totally. That was where I was trying to go with the frightening side of core coding when it is not balanced by those around you.

[gatekat]

Oooo, I love this. It's so believable. Makes me wish we'd incorporated this kind of thing more into DdG.

[femme4jack]

Thanks :) I really enjoyed/was freaked out writing it. And yes, I think we still can. I eventually want to get into a major rift between humans and TFs because of the favored place of sockets (and the political power they were gaining because of their lifespans and advantages). I had also thought about a massive war, and the TFs having to make a decision about whether or not to intervene. Not the same as a virus they released, but still great ethical questions about whether to allow a species to die off or not.

[gatekat]

I'd love that one. It'd cause quite an explosive argument ... especially since it'd be after the Cons surrender.