The Skids thing I think was a huge, huge misstep. He had been built up as so important, and had even received mysterious signs and portents of what was to come... and then boom, killed off. Don't worry, he told Nautica some of the stuff he saw. Really bad call on Roberts' part. I recall the 80s version of Suicide Squad, where, obviously, any character was at risk of dying... and the writer and his wife would specifically kill off characters because they had grown too close to them ("kill your darlings"), but they went too far about three years in, and killed off several characters... basically the whole book had to be retooled / revamped within a few issues, and one of the major, irrevocable deaths was later reversed (because, well, duh. It's comics). The climax of year 2 even had a complete fake out death of arguably the series' most popular character... only to have them pull back at the last minute with the guy being in a coma after a fatal shoot out, and then back around a few issues later. That may not have been their fault... DC or editorial may have intervened.

I don't know where I stand on the Megatron stuff. I liked an awful lot of it, but I don't think it ever quite rang true for me. You're desperately trying to make a sympathetic character out of someone you shouldn't be able to forgive. On the other hand, the mutiny makes less sense without his presence*. Your point about space being taken away to accommodate Megatron rings true, for sure. Really, most of the additions to the cast in Season 2 (save maybe Nautica) didn't really bring a lot to the party.




*of course, this is such a trope in comics, and fiction at large... an arch villain becomes an anti hero or ally. How can the X-Men break bread with Magneto (several different times)? How can the FF or Avengers hang out with Namor? How can Goku's best friend (more or less) be Vegeta, etc. etc.

 

There's the difference of the mentioned villains being stopped by the hero teams before they did manage doing the worst... but IDW Megatron is after successful genocidal campaigns and that's simply not udoable.

 

It’s strange that Roberts wrote in so much evil stuff into Megatron’s backstory that wasn’t as explicit before....while trying to redeem him.

 

Pretty much feel the same way you do about Megatron in the book. Except maybe when it comes to the mutiny...I think Roberts did a good job of making Rodimus a pretty incompetent, dangerous captain, and conspiring with Prowl to bring Overlord on board resulting in crew deaths and injuries would have been sufficient cause for a believable mutiny in my opinion.

I do agree that Megatron's presence makes an even stronger case for mutiny, though. It's funny, because Megatron's presence strengthened some of the original story elements, like the mutiny as you pointed out, as well as the confrontation with the DJD. It's much more dramatic if Tarn's going after Megatron instead of Drift (which I think was the original intention?), but as has been said, it came at a cost.

Part of what I liked about Megatron being an Autobot was that he was so unforgivable. Putting him in a position of power and being forced to cooperate with his enemies is a tense dynamic that I find interesting...in theory. The execution of that concept was a mixed bag for me. There was stuff I liked, like Megatron seeing the field of sparkflowers planted around his statue, but overall his change of heart was pretty drastic, and team Rodimus warmed up to him a little too much for my tastes.

 

Yeah. He’s like...not even the same character. Personality changes very drastically. I have similar problems with his sudden change in Transformers Prime. it walks the line between interesting character development and completely unrealistic/OOC.

Tbh I’d rather have Megatron stay a Decepticon, but have a personal change and maybe guide his followers in a less violent direction and focus on rebuilding and working with the other side ..or at least become non-affiliated. Not an Autobot. His redemption should’ve focused on reformation instead of joining the enemy and turning his back on his followers.

 

You raise some good points, and your suggestions would have been a lot more believable. Someone at some link on the IDW/Hasbro chain probably thought 'Megatron the Autobot' would generate a lot more buzz and hype.   Which, to be fair, they weren't necessarily wrong. It just didn't work as well as I'd have liked.

It's been a while since I've seen Prime and the Beast Hunters movie all the way through. Although there's another good example of TF fiction starting out strong and becoming less engaging as it went on. I really dug most of the first season of that show, then my enthusiasm just kind of petered out. I want to watch it all again, though, to see if maybe I was just grumpy at the time I went through it or something.

 

The topic is fairly definitively about this community and how it reacted to MTMTE and LL.

its called "Do folks actually hate on MTMTE?"

And as the thread has shown (again ad nauseam) that folks do hate on it. Moreover as @Focksbot stated above, some folks love to hate on it, and love even further that they will be criticised for their hating on it. tfw is a wild place.

Edit to say: I'm not a part of other fansite forums that went hard on the comics. So maybe an interesting question might be to ask what other active forums were like? seibertron for instance seemed relatively tepid the couple times i bothered but I'm no expert on that.

 

That's a nice dismissive condescending prickery you like to create. Don't speak for me. Ever.

As do several other people who you dismissed with your previous statement...

... which you conveniently repeated right here. Your insisting on painting large swathes of critics of the book with a broad "bigotry" brush pretty much negates any other aspect of your comment. The second you do that, you are basically saying "Agree with me or I'll try to shame you into silence!", which seems to be a popular tactic in any discussion that even peripherally involes inclusivity, unfortunately.

It's when it doesn't make sense that it's a problem. If you had a comic focusing on Vikings from 600 BC Norway, would it be a good fit to include minorities from other countries and cultures knowing how insular Norway was at the time? No, it would not. Same as with giant robots who don't reproduce nor have any reason to ape those that do. Breasts included, ESPECIALLY so.

 

dude are you super sure that you wanna evoke viking cultural purity and an ESPECIAL distaste of mammaries all in the one post? About super duper not being a bigot?

Whether or not you are wrong headed in your statement is inconsequential to how dang tineared it all seems.

 

Okay, tell you what, YOU come up with an analogy/comparison that doesn't somehow wind up triggering you. You can tell the gist of what I'm aiming for, are you super sure you want to somehow focus on some specific nugget of the post while ignoring the main body AND the point of it?

 

There's no difference between your 'main point' and what Pluto is focusing on. In order to reach for a hypothetical example of a fictional world where it would be in any way odd or less than ideal to represent minorities, you have to try to imagine some kind of racially pure time and place. For the vast majority of possible story settings - including a sci-fi planet of robots whose society parallels aspects of our own - there's absolutely nothing to lose by including proxies for all kinds of different humans.

Your point about breasts is bad because none of the characters have breasts, in the same way that they don't have blood or hearts or beards - what they have is a visual approximation of these features that allow us to identify them as a rough equivalent to ourselves in various ways.

You have no basis for objecting to the inclusion of female or 'gay' Cybertronians based on realism. The stories would be equally plausible if the entire species was made up of lesbians. So what *is* your problem with them?

While I'm here, here's why a planet full of robots having constant lesbian orgies makes more sense than a planet full of robots who bleed, and why I would still prefer to read fiction about robots who bleed:

1) Being soft sacks of red water that expire when punctured is one of the main obvious disadvantages of organic animal life. As far as 'machine' life is a distinct concept, it's surely to do with being made out of durable material and powered by electricity conducted through wires and cables. There would be very little need for liquid at all, far less copious amounts of 'energon', and to the extent it was used as fuel for some kind of engine, the lines wouldn't need to travel throughout the whole body. Really, though, you'd expect TFs to be powered be rechargeable battery cells.

2) Complex social organisation, on the other hand, is a massive evolutionary advantage and one of the main things you would expect to see in any sentient species. The surest route to encouraging social organisation, biologically, is to make it pleasurable to be in the company of others and frustrating to be on one's own. Therefore an entirely plausible route for evolution to take is the development of erogenous zones in difficult-to-reach spots, which can be activated by other members of the same species, and a sex drive that compelled you to seek out company.

3) As Cybertronians don't reproduce sexually, however, there would be no need for the family unit to develop as a vehicle for offspring-rearing, so monogamy would be quite a limiting concept. You would expect instead that members of the species would form concaves and fission-fusion societies (like bats) where individuals enjoyed many sexual partners.

4) At the end of the day, though, realism in stories is only really a supporting column for their primary purpose, which is to simulate situations readers find relevant to their own circumstances, for the purposes of instruction and imaginative stimulation. Therefore, since - very sadly - few of my real-life problems relate to gay orgies and many more of them relate to avoiding bleeding, I would rather read stories about characters who bleed. And I would assume that that goes for most of us.

 

My main problem with Megatron's redemption arc is the relative time scale. Megatron was a genocidal tyrant for four million years and then a 'good guy' for maybe 5 - 10 years - and I might be over-estimating that a bit. During that 5 - 10 years, he's put in co-command of a major Cybertronian space vessel, as well as being befriended and accepted by many of the main characters.

So, if we go with a high estimate of 10 years, Megatron's change of heart has lasted 0.0000025 of the last four million years. To convert to a more human time scale, WWII lasted about 6 years - rounding for simplicity. The time span of Megatron's change of heart and acceptance by the Lost Light crew is akin to Hitler having a change of heart at the end of WWII and within the next 8 minutes being given co-command of a US battleship and gaining the acceptance/friendship of some of the ship's crew.

 

That’s faux triggering. It’s like flopping in basketball. He’s acting like you said something istic or phobic. Reasonable people know you didn’t.

 

You’re totally right, and the ‘four million years’ gap that has been reinterpreted as ‘four million years war’ in modern TF fiction is one of the most ridiculous bits about this franchise.

At first glance, it might feel epic, but it completely collapses once you realise these characters have always been shown to operate on the same day-to-day basis as us. They get tired. They get impatient. They sleep. They are (and I guess this is the only point that -sort of- validates Megatron’s shift) unable to change their ways for eons, only to make a sudden change in personality or outlook on a whim.

Anyone who lives through 4 billion years, especially war, but operates on a level similar to the human brain would go insane and outright kill themselves.

Anyway..I like Autobot Megatron (see my avatar   ) although I agree his list of atrocities is just too long for it t genuinely work. But he switched sides, and I was totally willing to roll with that for the sake of some interesting development and stories.
In the end tho, I think this book succeeded at it for the most part - Megatron feeling isolated, having fits of rage that explain his tendency to just destroy everything and move on, justifiable hostility from his crewmates, the inability of galactic society to look past his crimes in the end...all great.

But like so many things in this book I think it took a nosedive towards the third act (and again, I like to emphasise that I STILL feel much more positive about MTMTE/LL overall than some of you here - think I’ll leave it at that for now...). Because for whatever reason, complex relationships revolving around Megatron stopped being possible for this book, and became outright black and white.

I mean...Getaway and the other mutineers were totally right. Totally, justifiable right. So what happens? It’s no longer enough to have everone feeling uneasy or on edge, or boot Megs’ sorry ass off the ship. Nope, Team Rodimus, including Megatron, are right and everyone else is wrong. Getaway had to become an increasingly vile, mustache twirling manipulator who is not above abusing the innocent, murdering and feeding his crewmates to his pet...all because he wants to be a Prime. What. The. Fudge.

I guess you could say that’s one big pet peeve I have with IDW1, not just in Roberts’ work but Barber’s as well. The factions are way more grey, up to the point where one can genuinely think the Autobots are a bunch of bad guys. Getaway is irredeemable (great moment for Rodimus when he pulls him out of the fire, tho), and Windblade calls Optimus a murderer at his own funeral. Yikes.

RANT OVER

 

I don't think there has to be a problem here. You have a situation on the ship where most of the characters have a completely fair and understandable distrust of their leaders and their coterie. You also have Getaway, who is am ambitious villain through and through. Because he's smart, though, he works out that the best way to further his ambitions is to take up a righteous cause.

So yes, his mutiny was justified. That's why it succeeded. Team Rodimus were not right, and the story isn't saying that they were right. However, the mutiny was also a device that allowed Getaway to acquire a dangerous level of power, and so it went pear-shaped for everyone else very quickly. This mirrors plenty of real-life revolutions; the cause is just, but the charismatic figures who rise to power through it are really just using it to secure their own dominance.

The three-parter with the Protectobots confirmed - very deftly, I thought - that the other characters involved in the mutiny had good reasons and good motivations, with the exception of Atomiser, who was happy to go along with Rodimus' team being executed.

 

Careful. Make him too mad, and he'll start stalking you from thread to thread like he used to do me.  

Except it is not. "Representation" has been turned into little more than an excuse for crappy writers to defend their crappy characters with. As a writer, you should always strive to create characters that can stand on their own, and only then move on towards secondary characteristics. Instead you have characters whose entire personality is centered around this 'representation' or are terrible characters in their own right who would be hated normally. Any criticism directed at the character, however, suddenly becomes an 'ism of some sort. That's not even touching the tendency towards a purity spiral that this causes, as can currently be seen happening in the YA scene.

Heck, in another post you pull the same thing with "hee-hee, good to see the bigots getting mad!" Which totally doesn't come off like this:


Because some people find it odd that robotic life forms have secondary sexual characteristics. Nevermind the fact that IDW 1.0 began with things like gender, families, etc. being foreign concepts to that iteration. Even in 2.0, where this is no longer the case, IDW's biggest flaw is their inability to commit to some sort of logic when it comes to Transformers, gender, and social concepts. Think about it, there's sexual dimorphism without any evolutionary need nor a reproductive one. There's also strong, monogamous relationships without hormones like oxytocin or vasopressin, which play major roles in such things developing in biological creatures like ourselves. IDW treats Transformers as metal humans, except there's no biological aspect to them and they reproduce asexually because they're robotic and changing gender is just like changing the frame on your car.

Basically, IDW should either to commit to "Metal Humans" or to the "Robotic Life forms" and go with it. Spit-balling, but maybe give them two genders, one produces what becomes the protoform, one what becomes the spark. It doesn't have to involve actual sex, just have a justification for the two existing. Then couples of the 'same gender' would mean something, and beings like Anode would carry more weight than a bot who wanted a new paint job. On the other end, don't have what amounts to romance with TFs, but a type of bond like a sworn sibling or an "oath" brother/sister. Go look at classic Chinese literature, and you'll find that many of those relationships were often depicted as being stronger than romantic ones. Likewise, they'd all be genderless, and find gendered language confusing.

Really, there's a myriad of ways you could go with this, instead of the same old vaguery IDW uses of them being human-like when it is convenient, and robotic when it is not.

 

Seeing as 'female' Transformers are established in IDW 1.0 as being a minority, it can't really be called sexual dimorphism.

I think we can safely assume that Cybertronians have some kind of equivalent programming. Hormones are the delivery method; they would have something like a subroutine instead. The function would remain the same: social bonding, the better for the species to exist in stable societies.

There's literally no iteration of Transformers which doesn't commit to a hybrid of the two. A hybrid of the two is also by far the most realistic concept. 'Metal humans' sounds like you're suggesting a metal outer skin and organic centre, which would be ... far out, to say the least. 'Robotic life forms' as in, what, sentient computers? You wouldn't expect them to have arms or legs or heads - there are far better organisational strategies for robot bodies.

 

Same. MTMTE was all I needed. I also read RID just to make the waiting time shorter for MTMTE, as there were no other books I subscribed to. But MTMTE was just the best. Marvel and DC can be quite tyring, as it's always the same, just with a twist.

Dark Cybertron is when everything started to go down the crapper. All crossovers in general. Only great book was Rom Vs. Transformers.

 

That wasn't what I was talking about at all, but whatever helps you cope.

 

This thread inspired me to go back and read MTMTE on comiXology. Working my way through it and the humor works better than I remember. Especially with Rodimus. I might have to take back some of my criticisms.