Stop saying stuff I agree with.  

Jokes aside, I didn't feel anything from Damus being Tarn because it was clearly just a twist for the sake of a twist, which often leads to unsatisfying or nonsensical 'twists'. I hate this overemphasis creators these days put on 'twists' and trying to be subversive, instead of trying to tell a good and satisfying story first. I would've been happy, probably even moreso, if Roller WAS Tarn.

 

The one thing I can't forgive about mtmte: Tarn being Glitch.

I love the idea of Roller being corrupted. I don't care about red herrings and the use of them. Roller being corrupted is much cooler.

 

Well, actually I don’t have any problems with the whole “God is fake” story. And I do want more story of this kind. To me it is better than talking endlessly about the writer’s political view (which I usually disagree with) and XX rights (which I am not interested in at all when reading comics). I hate the stories of Autobots and Decepticons (always these two sides) fighting for the allspark, only to have Prime win because he is favored by the allspark/Matrix/he is the one of the 13 Primes aka the chosen one. I have never read Eugenesis before so I do enjoy the main idea of it although it has already turned into space opera. It’s at least fun to read his story. I never bothered to pay any attention to another line whatever it is called. The human characters and XXX and XXX in it always irritate me when reading. But I do agree with the plot twist thing, it’s illogical for readers who read carefully and analyze things based on the information the writer give, only to have some random character suddenly revealed to be Tarn and only one panel could be interpreted as the clue of it while many of other clues he dropped suggest against it.

 

Nothing actually suggested Glitch wasn't a viable candidate, he was always just there and a nobody to the point very few even considered him, the giveaways people overlooked was his height and some similar design like the head behind the mask.

 

Yes, obviously, anyone can come to the conclusion that Glitch was Tarn cause he was in the background of a conversation and had one panel with Ratchet. Why would anyone think that it was Roller who looks identical to Tarn, has the same face as Tarn, is known as a friend of Optimus', and had multiple context clues pointing to him being Tarn until he walked out of a Fridge at the last possible moment?

 

I think an earlier poster nailed it--we'd be fine with Glitch as Tarn if Roller's return had served an important purpose instead of bloating the already-huge LL cast.

LL had a real issue with cast bloat. Roberts needed to offload a lot more of the main cast if he was going to keep Roller, Anode, Lug and the returned Drift/Ratchet again. Should have found a way to let Chromedome & Rewind sail off happily together, & maybe even replaced Magnus with Roller.

But I would still take LL over the current comic. Just... I need a story that moves!!!

I blame Twitter for A LOT. LL is pretty far down the list of "societal problems caused by social media" at this point.

 

The hints were there but there was a fair amount of naysayers who pointed out it was too obvious and not Roberts style so was a distraction. Another Tarn candidate was Dominus Ambus, they had the same sparks, Dominus was a scholar which Tarn had hints of being, the music he used was Ultra Magnus/Minimus Ambus favorite and they let duplicate Minimus off lightly compared to the other Autobots.

 

Chromedome and Rewind absolutely should have left. All I can think of them doing in LL is the deeply uncomfortable scene where they get inside Roller without his permission and "canoodle". Completely unnecessary. At that point the two of them had just been reduced to "they're in a relationship with each other".

 

wait what?

 

I Definitely agree @AutobotAvalanche and @Bumblemus Prime, There was definitely the issue of a bloated cast. Roberts felt the need to add more characters but hold on to characters who had their arcs.

• Chromedome
• Rewind
• Magnus
• Velocity
• Swerve
• Riptide

And Roller all collectively sat on their asses for almost the entirety of LL. WHY DO THEY NEED TO STICK AROUND THEN!?!?! Mangus' arc was done by the end of S1, Chromedome and Rewind's arc were done by the end of MTMTE, and Swerve basically sat around without his bar for LL.

 

First off, you don't need to apologize for your rant, my guy. You got a stance to share and this is how you brought it up.

Before I kinda delve into my take, lemme just say, I absolutely adore MTMTE. I've said before that James Roberts was really trying to set up a real world of it's own with MTMTE and did spectacularly, speaking about everything Pre-Dark Cybertron in that case. But over time, after finishing my first read-through of MTMTE over a year ago now, while everything Pre-Dark Cybertron is still for the most part fucking GOLD, i've come to really see the flaws in everything after Dark Cybertron, and is partly why i've never picked up Lost Light.

Everything in MTMTE post-DC I believe was more of a downward slow boil. I still see merit in the first couple issues and some when looking at them alone, but for the most part, then it starts dwindling from there.

There's a lot I wanna get into, but for now for the sake of time on my end, I wanna focus on the characters and the story real quick.

Probably the most egregious out of all were the DJD. As they are essentially our final bosses, we should expect for them to be given their own character, right?

They are given absolutely no character and end up being worthless losses. THEY HAD A CHANCE TO GIVE THEM MORE OF A CHARACTER IN THEIR OWN ISSUE AND THEY DIDN'T.

Another of the most egregious that I have yet to mention was easily Star Saber. I always had a question about him when he was around. What made him this way? Why did he become who he is now?

We're given nothing.

To focus on the three you mentioned, I personally believe Nightbeat had the most. Though I believe a part of that kinda has to go to the fact that he was a part of the original crew in IDW and was not delegated to just MTMTE. Megatron I believe could have been handled worse than he was, but that's absolutely not saying he was handled great. Nautica though I feel was more of a "grasping at straws" character.

Though part of them I believe also is hand-in-hand with the story outlook. Like you mentioned, entertaining stories were replaced with soap opera drama. Without a doubt I agree. I personally believe MTMTE as a whole should have been handled, to put the hypothetical ideal plot in a sentence, "An mostly upbeat yet lifelike quest, though trouble finds a way to invite itself in, no matter how big or small".

I have no problem when an upbeat story needs to take a turn for the serious, but it should not be forced.

I'll give a quick example of something i've thought up for a while. This most likely taking place in what we know as Issue #33.

Rodimus, after seeing what was on Rewind's data slug following the attack by the DJD on the other Lost Light, starts to think that he is the reason such a thing happened. On top of still feeling that he isn't completely confident as a leader (which would be a constant from the start of the series onward in this hypothetical), it all just bubbles up and ends up with Rodimus ejecting himself from the ship (In an escape pod of sorts, not suicide), believing that the crew is in better hands without him. That would end up spiraling into something else completely but i'll leave it there for the sake of the conversation.

How interesting would something like that be in comparison to what we got?

It's stuff like that which I believe ends up becoming more intriguing and may even end up leading to a lot more possibility than what we got. Yet what we get for the most part is almost nothing more than scratching the surface of possibility and we end up getting mindless nonsense or stories that lack MTMTE's heart and outlook.

 

They're all crammed aboard a tiny ship so there isn't much room, Roller turns into the big prisoner transport vehicle so the two of them get inside him for privacy while he's recharging in vehicle mode. Later when he wakes up he goes to Rodimus and says "I think they were... canoodling" (I'm pretty sure that's a verbatim quote) and Rodimus essentially goes "oh silly Roller, you have to learn to live with it". We don't actually know what they were doing but it's just such a gross and needless scene to even have at all.

 

Somehow completely forgot about him in my og post here
I fucking hate what they did to him

Did Roberts find like a fanfic somewhere and just threw it in his comic or something?

 

Yeah, they massacred my favorite G1 Leader bot.

Gross.

I feel like this is an interesting point and something interesting about Rodimus. After the events of DC and learning of the crew members who don't like him, you think that would lead to an arc about Rodimus learning to deal with his doubt and becoming a better leader... No, he's just a dick to everyone until the mutiny happens.

 

All the non-Ratchet medical characters only exist to go "I fixed it!" after some completely unsurvivable damage happens to someone. Velocity being added only because Roberts had to send First Aid to the Combiner Wars event was so transparent. On a ship of 200 you didn't have a third medical guy? You had to coincidentally pick up yet another new character on another annoying side mission?

 

God, I know the Hasbro Mettling got annoying in some books like the mainline one, but it really was funny in LL. Like how Mirage, Sunstreaker, and the previously mentioned Protectabots all had to leave the crew for a bit because of the tie in.

The best part was watching Roberts have to scramble to find replacements in his cast.

 

Keep in mind that this is the equivalent of some dude sleeping; not a vacant room with a lock on the door. That guy was just trying to recharge after being flung into a different time and place, and what’s the first thing that happens when he closes his eyes? Two expired characters try to stay relevant inside of him? What!? Roller should hire a good lawyer and sue Tumbler.

Also, why didn’t Star Saber get a better backstory. I mean this is the guy who, in G1, asked Ginrai first if he was okay with him becoming the Supreme Commander, before even considering the promotion. Admittedly, he turns into a fully fledged mad lad with sick sword skills and an actions not words approach to leadership, but I don’t think that’s really precedent for the use of a cardboard villain from Roberts’s fan fiction in canon.

Side note: The first time we see Star Saber, he is defending a church from Decepticon cattle drovers. Maybe this was the inspiration for his religious defender persona in MTMTE? I know Roberts skewed it to be a villainous roll because of his personal beliefs, but it does seem to be a nod to the characterization of the OG. Is this reaching or could it be something?

 

He needs to sue both Tumbler and Tumblr.

That would be neat, but it probably isn't the case as Roberts said he bearly knew a thing about the character and wanted to reinvent him.

 

Believe me, the old Western-type scene that introduced him did inspire me to make him a sort of Lone Ranger type of character in the scripts I've written, but making him a villain is just way off.

It's like they're literally kicking the essence of the character away just to have a pointless villain.

 

Nice catch there.

Yeah I always thought of Star Saber as kind of a cowboy type. It really was a well done scene as well. It’s a shame that his legacy is as a cheap and underdeveloped minor antagonist.