TF Views

Not only that- you just don't see this type of discussion on other forums. Not really. (at the risk of sounding stuck up and superior)

Yeah, well, when there's only a half-dozen of us at any given point, we have to kick up the discussion level to somewhere past "two sentence replies and page-long signatures" that you see in other places, because there's not 500 of us at any given point posting things.

And starting 40 threads every year asking, Who's your favorite?, Who's your top 5? Who's your fav Autobots?, Fav Megatron?, Fav top 10?, etc. etc. would get old real quick. The quality of discussion outweighs the quantity I see at other sites.

Sunstreaker was supposed to be gay?

Yup. Because, "gay robutt rape is funny" or something.

It really is there just to make a gay-rape joke.

I've still yet to see an iteration of G1 Sunstreaker which does his very cool tech spec justice.

It's just too easy for a writer to equate "narcissist" with "effeminate" or whatever. He's meant to be a cold-hearted Warrior Born who's just obsessed with keeping clean and stylish. That's cooler than any amount of token gaybots.

There was a short story in the "Legends" anthology published by iBooks about 10 years back. I think it was called "Redemption Center", and recall it using Sunstreaker consistently with his tech specs.

IDW came pretty close with "All Hail Megatron". But, as a (non-Transfan) friend pointed out, Sunstreaker being shown to feel guilt undermined the idea of him being a sociopath.

And, back on topic, Dom I'm also glad you're still with us.

Thanks guys.

Dominic wrote:the "Legends" anthology published by iBooks about 10 years back

Was that short stories, or comics? I don't recall it at all.

That was all prose short stories, yeah, and very few of them were any good. It was published when Armada's big push was en vogue, and there was very clearly no style manual provided to some of the writers, who either show very little knowledge of the franchise to begin with, or use terms from different continuities without any regard for if they all actually match up or not.

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Transformers_Legends

Sounds like it could be worth a riff.

Spoilers ...

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MTMTE 16. First, let me say I disliked the art in this issue, and having read RID #10 with its own art I couldn't stand just before, it was doubly frustrating. I think this issue weak, it was sluggish and spent a lot of time telling a lot of stories without giving most of them enough time to really be what they were trying to be. It goes from Ultra Magnus unconscious reliving his pasts and they each felt like they were missing a few panels to make them compelling; then it switches to the ship dealing with the aftermath of Overlord's rampage, going from one story to the next, with only Chromedome's story getting any weight, finally resting on Ultra Magnus getting out of bed and disappearing (which was visually told so poorly I didn't even understand the panels setting it up) and the cliffhanger of Tailgate finding out he's dying. Rodimus' story arc didn't do enough for me, the ideas were good but the way Rung got to them was too quick, too easy, and too one-note, so when it gets a callback during the funeral it's even more frustrating. The funeral felt a tad stilted, and adding 3 redshirt characters that were so well-liked by the crew yet we never met them was cheap. Drift owning to bringing Overlord onboard felt too easy and not a quality justification, I'm hoping he's taking the fall for Prowl and higher-ups that approved or even made the choice. Rewind's goodbye letter was interesting and expressed fairly competently, and Brainstorm bringing sense to Chromedome was good stuff but a tad heavy-handed for an issue that sat in one place throughout the rest of the story.

Rewind's debris floating in space was interesting, Overlord's half-destroyed body was disappointing as we've seen him take far more damage.

Giving this issue a 6.5/10 for ambitious character-driven storytelling, but not holding the line as a compelling comic book -- too much talking without enough doing or going, it felt out of balance both in overall storytelling and individual storytelling

andersonh1 wrote:MTMTE #16

I’m going to say it up front: I read and watch Transformers for action and adventure, not romance and mooning over lost loves. I know we’ve got a long discussion thread about this very topic, and maybe that thread will grow after the revelations of this issue. There’s certainly more fodder for discussion. Needless to say, I’m not a fan of the oh-so-convenient love note that Rewind tossed out the door of Overlord’s cell before sealing it shut, or of Rewind’s final message to Chromedome. Or of the revelation that Chromedome has a string of dead lovers behind him that he’s deleted his memories of. These are asexual nigh-immortal robots… what exactly does love mean to them? They don’t have gender or procreation. It makes no sense. Sorry, but this is exactly where I figured adding romance to Transformers would head, and I doubt we’re done.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that Tailgate exchanged inner energon with Cyclonus, or that Ratchet is helping Drift to his feet precisely when Rewind’s goodbye monologue is taking place. Are we going to start pairing everyone on the ship off now?

It makes me sad that you see it only as that possibility, that because of a goodbye letter with a single offending word, "love", you see this as "gay space robots". Ratchet was doing the right thing helping Drift, not trying to become his girlfriend. Tailgate has been longing for a connection to his own time, and has felt that connection to the one person he knew from that era, Cyclonus, whom he's been trying to forge a connection with because he's lonely and feels lost - Tailgate isn't even a bot of war, he was in a coma during the whole thing.

Chromedome's feelings about Rewind weren't mooning, they were quite the opposite, he was willing to walk away from those feelings rather than feel them, but was shown that such behavior is not healthy or respectful of those he's lost. The idea that there is romance is reading into it, nobody felt sexual feelings of any kind, they were simply each others' trusted companions above all others, they had made each other their "family"; I have friends I say "I love you, man" to without feeling like I want to have sex with them. That you're seeing Rewind's "goodbye note" as a "love note" is a slanted way of looking at it, it seems like you see it that way because you know it's the angle you don't want to see. That any of these people are "lovers" is patently outside the realm of the story, there's no sex, no making out, no intimate contact of a physical nature whatsoever, nor any implied. But you see it that way for some reason, perhaps because that's the only metaphor you can imagine a shared life being? And you're so afraid that they're going to have bot-on-bot action that you recoil and immediately take it to the extreme?

It seems like you're more irritated at what this could mean or could be perverted into, rather than what it just is.

Drift gets an appropriate punishment for what he’s done. Stripped of his Autobot status and exiled into deep space, he’s on his own. I guess all the Drift-haters will be high-fiving now.

I don't even buy that Drift is the actual person who pulled this job, and even if so, he's not the one who approved the plan and actually set it into motion, that would be Prowl. Drift without Autobot rules on his own could be a very dangerous thing, and either compelling or fan-wankish, so high-fiving would be premature.

Roberts comments on a few of the issue's pages on Facebook, something I've seen him do on a number of occasions. It's curious that he mentions Doctor Who as an inspiration, because my feelings about making the Doctor far too human by introducing sex and romance into his life somewhat mirror my feelings about what Roberts has done to Transformers. Ironic.

Doctor Who's 11th Doctor hasn't actually had sex and romance in his tales for the most part, it's been hinted that he's done such things but that's always been true since the first Doctor had a granddaughter. The Doctor's marriage to River has been pretty chaste, it's all flirting and forcing of the issue on her part. Clara tries to force both and falls flat.

I think citing Moffat's run on Doctor Who is tragic, Moffat's run has been a steady decline in quality. I know what he's talking about, having the Doctor jump around from place to place, idea to idea, in the cold open, but those are rarely successful as anything more than a gimmick, and in MTMTE they aren't much better. Those scenes he refers to "feel" epic but actually aren't, they're the opposite, they're suggestion only.

Dom wrote:The best way to look at this is to step back and look at the comic from the outside.

Roberts is writing a series where the TFs will know love. And, a significant portion of the fandom (I suspect including a significant number of people who cannot step back and look at the comics from the outside) are eating it up.

This book is catering to them.

What is your argument for claiming that the best way is to look at it from this outside perspective? I'm not, and I'm enjoying the story quite a bit. I'm not a hardcore fanboy who wants to see cybertronian romance, and yet the book and the storyline appeal as human condition issues, how we build deep connections to those we care most about and how we deal with them and with loss of them.

I agree that it does not make sense for alien space robots to have the same emotional and social needs as people, even in a soft sci-fi setting. But, that is not the direction that Roberts is going. He is basically writing a fairy story, or something more akin to Greek mythology where the magical pixies are really just like people, and that means that the readers are not really alone (even if many of them may well be cut off from reality).

and this is why I am skipping this book.

Alien space robots ARE people, aren't you forgetting that? They're not human people, but they're people. They may not need sexuality, but they do seem to need interpersonal connections, they have friendship and loyalty, they're not all hermits, they create groups and factions, things matter to them. It's been in the brand since the earliest G1 bios. If you are skipping MTMTE because of that, then you may as well skip all of Transformers for the same reason, the only difference here is MTMTE is taking the time to examine what these ideas mean, and to extrapolate where interpersonal relationships come from and where they go. It's saying "who are these people when they're not busy fighting each other?"

Look at it from "outside the story". Think in terms of the real world logic used to make decisions about the comics, not the on-page logic of the comics.

Forget that stuff, as long as nobody's being injured in the making of the content, I don't give a shit what drove it's creation so long as the content works. I don't care if Roberts was jerking it or angry at his dad or just out for a paycheck when he wrote this story.

Shock wrote:Finally read the latest issue and apparently the whole series up to this point hasn't just been about aimlessness but has been leading up to the very deep themes in this issue. This issue (and in hindsight, a lot of last issue) is an exploration of death, loss and the stages of grief. Tailgate is shown representing the stage of denial, refusing to accept Ultra Magnus' death, even though the Dethklok says otherwise (more on that later). Rodimus is representing anger, shown to have practically destroyed his quarters and even threatening Rung. Pipe's final words last issue is a haunting recap of all the things he'll never be able to say to his friend (I forget who he was recording a message for). Chromedome's conversation with Brainstorm reveals that Chromedome doesn't actually deal with death at all. He apparently uses his nmemosurgical abilities to just turn off a switch in his brain where he doesn't remember the loss and therefore doesn't have to cope with the loss. In that context, Rewind's "love letter" doesn't come across so much as a plea to not be forgtotten, almost as if he knew Chromedome's tendancy to "flick the switch". Tailgate accidentally winds up in the field of the dethklok and sees how long he has to live. It will be interesting to see how he handles knowing when he's going to die (this would be akin to someone who feels perfectly healthy getting told by a doctor that they have 6 months to live. What would you do with the time you have left?). I look forward to seeing that question explored a lot more in the next few issues. Also, there was some stuff with Ultra Magnus, showing several of his battles, which really kind of served as a sort of eulogy to the character. The fact that he's missing may mean that he's regained conciousness and maybe just decided to saunter off to cross a few things off of his bucket list. Or maybe not. We'll have to wait and see.

Your previous posts were pretty solid but this one mentioned Dethklok so it gets the comment. You're absolutely right on all of that. I would have liked more with those battles, even as suggestions they felt like they could have been doing more.

I don't know that the exploration of death and loss and anger at futility is enough to drive a comic book on its own though, without any real "going" or "doing" this issue felt a little underdone to me.

I have to say, that I am happy to see the comic tackling such adult/mature issues and to explore them so thoroughly. This is usually the kind of commentary one would expect from an episode of Star Trek (in fact, Trek has explored death and loss quite a few times over the years). I think this issue really goes a long way to answering JT's question of whether the FRANCHISE itself has become emotionally stunted and the answer here is a solid "no". Roberts is clearly writing for an adult audience capable of understanding and dealing with and perhaps some who may have already dealt with such issues in their own lives. Now if only the fandom can get past "Gay space robots" we might actually be able to discuss the real themes in this book.

Is this indicative of the franchise, or is the fan pushback going to overwhelm it though? Will these ideas carry the franchise forward more, or will the fan reaction turn it into a pariah? I hope not, this is not Kiss Players by any stretch, but that's up to the fans to get there.

Anderson, I appreciate the comments although I will confess that I did have one moment while reading this issue, it was the scene where Chromedome is looking at what appears to be a crystal rose and puts it in the garbage shute that I thought to myself "Ok, I get what Anderson is saying".

Man, I had to skim it twice to find the panel you're talking about. This is a massive failing on the art's part. It's not a rose, it's a trophy - a red crystal mounted to a stand with a plaque on the front, and he's placing it in a box marked "waste disposal" because he's gathering up all of Rewind's possessions so he can later throw them away, in preparation of erasing Rewind from his life.

Dom wrote:

For now though, I just want to say that I amusingly only just now noticed that the word 'fandom' is a portmanteu of 'Fan' and 'Dom'. Heheh.

Wow. I never realized that either, even when I was trying to make "Dom" in to an internet thing about 7 or so years back.

Yeah, that was a really good one on Prowl's part.

Well, I have to admit that Shockwave is probably on to something. Roberts is writing about life/death/loss/yaddayaddayadda. And, when I consider MTMTE along those lines (and Shockwave's reading is probably accurate), the apparent aimlessness of the book makes a certain amount of sense. When compared with mortality, even a life well spent can seem to be a waste.

Transformers is a tough medium for expressing the ideas of "a life well spent" because they live virtually forever. Rodimus' funeral setting is grand, but even it is not quite grand enough for a race that sees so much war and yet so little death. But here they at least are trying, they are exploring ideas left and right, the aimlessness isn't aimless, it's leading somewhere. If you look at this series as M*A*S*H, it works a lot better.

Most of the characters on the Lost Light are either looking for or running away from something. With the end of the war, the had the chance to seek something or were forced to run from whatever their demons were.

Why would you sign up for a quest that has no real hope of finding answers? Seems like it's the right type of thing for those looking for existential answers or running from something.

So, yeah, maybe I did miss something in "More than Meets the Eye".

I honestly think your focus on what isn't there and all these outside meta factors has clouded the series for you, that your focus determined your reality on this series.

My strong reaction to "gay space robots" stemmed from the fact that the idea looked so much like something I have seen in so many bad fanfics and fan-centric discussions over the years. I saw "gay space robots" and thought "ah, hell, the inmates have really taken the damned asylum". It was something of a trigger for me. (I guess there is some irony in the fact that I had an emotional over-reaction to a comic when I am normally very analytical about comics.)

To be fair, you haven't read issues 13-16 yet, maybe you'll still feel that way. I doubt it though, with an open mind this stuff reads very well, leaving the baggage of outside forces at the door makes the interpersonal stuff solid IMO.

Need me to loan you issues 13-16?

Shock wrote:I also really gotta give credit to IDW for not hyping the whole "gay space robots" or "X character is now gay" for sales purposes like DC did with... crap, what was his name... um... Arnold Scott? Adam Scott? It was Scott right? Damn. Anyway I think you all know what I'm referring to. IDW theoretically could have done that here but didn't. The whole thing was really handled as delicately and tastefully as possible and I gotta give props all around for them being able to do that. Especially since it's so relevant to the deeper themes of the book. I'm personally more interested to see the follow up on Magnus and Tailgate. How will Tailgate deal with knowing when he's going to die? Will he try to have Ratchet buy him more time or just try to cross off as much of the bucket list as possible? And given that the X over Magnus' picture is gone we can assume that he's still alive for the moment but probably dealing with the same issue. How does someone deal with knowing their expiration date? Do you try to cheat death? Vie for more time? Reflect on the life you've lived and just wrap things up or lash out with anger over your fate? There's so many ways this can go and I'm very interested to see where Roberts takes us with this.

Totally! Instead of using "this guy is gay now, we have a gay character!" type of attention-getting, they let non-sexual characters just have a non-sexual intimate relationship and it lands a lot better for it. Where DC uses "gay" for fashion, IDW de-stigmatizes the very notion by not making it an issue, 2 characters having a deep relationship doesn't matter to these stories if they're straight sexual couple, a gay sexual couple, or a non-sexual couple.

Yeah, it was Alan Scott, Some alternate dimension Green Lantern dude, that nobody had really thought about for years. They're doing the same thing now with Batgirl's roommate being the *gasp* first ever trans-gendered character in comics. Or at least the first in mainstream comics (I don't know- that's just what the article said). I think it's lame, when they hype up a character's sexuality as their key defining characteristic. It comes off as yet more pathetic attempts to shock the readers into picking it up. Killing people doesn't shock people anymore, so maybe their sexuality will? I don't know.

Ugh, fucking DC, and they think that they're doing good this way, they don't realize that by not just making gay people and transgender people PEOPLE but instead wearing them as a fashion statement that they're still part of the problem rather than the solution.

O6 wrote:I told you you were overreacting--and in nine cases out of ten, I'd be right along with you, honestly, because the concept reeks of the weird shit Dreamwave would pull--remember Sunstreaker being outed as gay, or Jetfire being a "confirmed atheist?" In ways that did absolutely nothing with the idea, and were clearly just DW trying to be edgy and mature for the sake of being edgy and mature? Whereas this whole situation with Roberts certainly doesn't feel like that at all--it feels like he had some stuff to say.

Square hit there. In MTMTE there's interpersonal relationships and there's conflict in religious beliefs, and neither of them are there for shock value or fashion statements or manipulation of any kind, they're there to explore ideas and tell stories based on those ideas.

Mako wrote:Not only that- you just don't see this type of discussion on other forums. Not really. (at the risk of sounding stuck up and superior)

That's alright, you can say it, you don't sound stuck-up when you're right.