#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte and reproductive themes: an analysis

your local medical scientist/biologist LJ dives into the complicated reproductive themes presented in tf: mtmte

ok so amongst my liveblogging I realized I still haven't given my reproductive biology thoughts, and now seems a good time since I couldn't fit it in during remain in light

so basically, ik everyone memes on jro for the mpreg and the general reproductive themes present in mtmte/ll, but honestly I see why he went that route? w/the repro themes, not the mpreg lmao. and even the reproductive stuff has some weird terminology/vibes so I totally get why everyone memes

anyways, basically...[puts biologist hat on] so from a purely scientific standpoint, there is this: the biological imperative is reproduction. as in, the entire POINT of biological species - the reason they exist, their main goal in their existence - is to reproduce and carry on their genes and their species

now obviously this is a bit general, and a lot of people would say ‘hey I don't agree with that, I don't want kids, etcetc’ to which I say, exactly! this is a scientific generalization, and another factor is that humanity is very advanced, especially compared to a lot of other biological species, so of course humans, with our capability for advanced thought and philosophy and whatnot, would not strictly adhere to this

biological species can be categorized as r-selected or k-selected - r-selected (think r = rapid) are species that reproduce frequently, have short lifespans/life cycles, and produce many offspring. example: fruit flies. k-selected species reproduce less frequently, have longer lifespans and life cycles, and produce only a few offspring at a time (so, humans).

so r-selected species are more likely to adhere closely to the biological imperative - fruit flies exist so they can produce as many offspring as they can before dying, and since their lifespan is so short they spend almost all their time alive working towards this goal

now, back to the alien robots - so, cybertronians are NOT biological. so it stands that the biological imperative of reproduction above all else wouldn't apply to them. which, as we see from canon, seems true. most cybertronians don't really care about reproduction or carrying on the species

and this isn't as big of a problem when your species is basically immortal. it becomes more of a problem when your species goes to war for 4 million years and most of you die

then it’s like, oh shit, a lot of us died and also we don't have any sort of easy, obvious way to make more of our species (unlike any biological species)

which is why it makes a lot of sense that cold construction was invented as a way to create more cybertronians once the hot spots stopped popping up

cybertronians are also interesting bc they don’t easily fall into k-selected or r-selected categories (makes sense, since they’re not organic). in terms of being r-selected, they are capable of rapid reproduction (MTOs) through artificial means, and they have short life cycles (no sort of ‘childhood,’ unlike k-selected species), but for k-selected, they DO have very long lifespans, and they don't put nearly as much focus on reproduction as most r-selected species (which, again, they’re not organic, so trying to classify them with these terms is arbitrary)

so it makes a lot of sense that after the war is over, a lot of cybertronians would shift focus towards the question of, ‘how does our species continue on when most of us died and we have no way of reproducing?’

so what I’m saying is, jro IS valid bc this is a logical question that would arise in post-war times

also, it makes me wonder what the cybertronian/mechanical imperative would be - is it ‘war’? that seems pretty harsh, but that could be interesting as a theme in-text, with a lot of the organic aliens hating cybertronians, and cybtertronians having a reputation for being a war-mongering species 

oh man also. reproduction and religion are typically closely tied (think about with christianity and the virgin mary, and all the other bible stories about birth/pregnancy/babies) - because a big question of religion is ‘where did we as a species originate from?’ and different religions answer that in different ways

for cybertronians, it makes a lot of sense that they would have a variety of religions with their own unique takes on where the cybertronian species came from...it’s also a good alternative to the idea that the cybertronians were BUILT rather than born/created by a god/gods

like the g1 origin where the quintessons built them - which, yknow, that’s a different continuity, and also it’s g1, where the transformers were much more robots/cars rather than aliens/living mechanical beings...but it’s interesting to think about the quintesson origin being a bit of a horror story to the idw tfs; the idea that they were created as machines by another sentient species is pretty fucked

anyways that's digressing. the point - even though cybertronians aren't biological, it seems safe to say that as a sentient species, they would have some slanted interpretation of that biological imperative in place - namely, that cybertronians would want their species to continue. secondary to this is reproduction itself - could cold construction be considered reproduction? are sparks springing up in hot spots reproductive? is ‘reproduction’ defined here as a new life being created, or as an act between one or more individuals that leads to the creation of a new life?

interestingly, that second definition would put cold construction in the ‘reproduction’ category, but not hot spot spark production. 

more digression...basically, it stands to reason that cybertronians would have some drive to continue their species, which manifested in the creation of the cold construction method (and later, the construction of MTOs is a war-based slant on that same philosophy)

but during the war, reproduction largely took a backseat to fighting - MTOs were produced to aid in the fight, not necessarily to continue on their species in any significant way

and now that the war is over...it makes sense that reproduction would become more of a priority, especially considering what a huge dent the war left in the cybertronian population

cybertronians...are like certain fish species. some fish species breed semi-rarely, but are designed to live very long lives and get super big and ancient. and if they breed often enough, and the older ones live long enough, you have a nice balance of old-ass fish that can breed to newer fish that don't breed

the problem is fishing - a lot of these species have been heavily fished, and the big fish - the breeding fish - are the ones taken to eat. this leaves the population skewed towards young fish, which isn't how the species is supposed to be structured

this is why some fish have an upper length limit as well as the typical minimum length (like striped bass) - bc the DEM wants the really big breeder fish to stay in the ocean where they can make more fish 

lmao how did I end up talking about fish. anyways

so basically. cybertronians are like this - they live a long ass time and don't reproduce (via hot spots appearing) very often, which creates a good balanced population - or it’s supposed to, if you don't go to war for 4 million years and decimate a large chunk of the population

so the whole...mpreg baby thing also kind of makes sense bc, there’s kinda a population crisis going on, so its logical that various cybertronians would explore a myriad of ways to reproduce, including looking to organic species for inspiration, since organic species generally have built-in reproductive capabilities (and those reproductive capabilities come in many different forms) 

think invertebrates performing parthenogenesis because there’s a skewed female population. generally in the biological world, sexual reproduction > asexual reproduction, because sexual reproduction garners a much higher level of genetic mixing (which is a healthy thing for a population, generally)

but under duress, some species can perform asexual reproduction as a failsafe in order to ensure continuation of the species, even if sexual reproduction would be preferred 

so it would make sense that the cybertronians would be attempting to explore all of their options, because they’re pretty much in the red in terms of population 

ok that’s all I've got tonight folks. feel free to talk to me anytime about this stuff or any biology/science wooooo

#GUESS WHAT I FOUND IN MY DRAFTS LOL #lj rereads mtmte #now theres a tag i havent seen in a while #ill get back to my mtmte liveblog someday i swear #transformers #ahhh i love overanalyzing media through a scientific lens. fun stuff #mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 36

time travel arccccccccccccc yessssssssss

I have been waiting SO LONG to reread this arc hhhhh yessss

starting off strong with the sexy roller cover. nice

I love the disconnect of ‘orion pax: outlaw’ compared to the last time we saw him in shadowplay where he was orion pax: supercop

he’s still punching people for JUSTICE or whatever so I guess not much has changed

oh my god this is the issue with the many many two-page spreads...the first time I read this issue I didn't realize that was a thing and GOD I was SO fucking confused. there's already a lot going on in this issue/arc but this made things so much worse hvbhjkdfbsk. I powered thru and still managed to understand most of the arc despite reading half this issue out of order (essentially) bc the website I read it on split the pages up and I couldn't tell they were supposed to be doubled (and also I'm dumb so I didn't figure it out)

anyways, the actual issue...windcharger is out here using his powers to rip a dudes arms clean off. wow!

and there's skids getting punched in the face. Ls

and glitch! a totally minor character of course...

MANNNNN I SO adore the panel of all the lost lighters appearing in a cloud of purple smoke, all posing epically....SO fucking good, peak sci-fi coolness vibes, A++

as usual jro killing it w/the titles, ‘elegant chaos’ is such a great name for a time travel arc

also reading the tfwiki has shown me that many of jros titles are song or album titles, to which I say - that's epic and I love it. with jro doing it, I feel like it straddles the line between referencing music and the very fanfic-esque ‘title things after music’ vibe. I love it

oh god I forgot they use bs cybertronian time units in this sometimes lmao...I mean of course they do but still like, what the fuck is a cycle. is that a day. I feel like these words all have no meaning/the meanings change drastically depending on continuity. I cant keep up and also I'm lazy and don't care enough to try

I love rodimus did u know

poor riptide looks so confused lmao

IS....IS REWIND PIGGYBACKING TAILGATE...THATS SO FUCKING CUTE....I cant fully tell bc of the page layout but ooomg so precious. minibot buddies

whirl saying ‘chuff’ just reminded me how british jro is hvbhakjhdsfbs sometimes it just Jumps Out in mtmte and I'm like Oh God Britain Is Real

I really like the mtmte approach to time travel and paradoxes and whatnot. its just complex enough to be interesting but not too convoluted that it bogs down the story. perfect sci-fi fun!

mannnn chromedome talking abt brainstorm :( I'm sad abt those two hhhhh

and I love how at this point, nobody in the cast ACTUALLY knows brainstorm well enough to know what he’s really doing - including chromedome, who’s ostensibly his closest friend, somebody he’s known for a while - and even the readers don't really know what he’s up to...I like the mystery tbh

cant believe rewind wrote orion pax’s biography, omg. completely forgot abt that detail

cd saying ‘I love it when he talks history’ about rewind....hhhh I love cdrw so muuuuch

godddd the line rodimus says abt whirl - how they need people like whirl around who are ‘happy to get in the way’ of danger and death - that shit haunts me man like...rodimus is basically saying that he’s bringing whirl along to potentially die in place of someone like orion pax (nevermind the fact that whirl dying would ALSO fuck up the timeline)...like, how deep does it go?? is he saying that bc he knows whirl has been trying to get himself killed for a while now, or just bc whirl likes violence? mannn I cant...the character intricacies...man

anyways...I love rodimus he’s such an interesting character. you have that fucked up moment and then in the next panel he’s saying ‘if you want to call it a time phone, I wont stop you’ about the quantum walkie-talkie. he has the RANGE

oh and then rodimus casually volunteering chromedome to do mnemosurgery on anyone who might accidentally find out about them time traveling, which is again fucked up on multiple levels. the raaaaange

vjaksbhdhfusajbfdjk that panel of the lost light squad just standing there like idiots reminds me of that post where someone said abt that panel ‘these characters have a collective 3 brain cells’ or something hvbjadkfnksfdl

rodimus IMMEDIATELY breaking his own rules by trying to reassure pax that they're good guys by pointing at his autobot badge, even tho the autobots DONT EVEN EXIST YET at this point...my boy PLEASE go purchase some brain cells from the store 

and the fact that rodimus introduced himself to pax w/his real name...shouldn't he go by an alias or st??? that seems like a good time travel rule since optimus and rodimus definitely know each other later 

and like, did they not anticipate that some of the people in the past would recognize some of the lost lighters hgbajkhdjfnjksf like cd and whirl get Instantly recognized...great job guys

they are all SO bad at this hvbahskjdhfbasjkf I cantttt luckily for them the orion crew is handing them easy alibis 

‘the dugout’ is that a baseball reference????

also I love the scenery here, the bg looks like rock but there's metal piping and stuff running thru it, its so cool...really adds to the whole ‘cybertron biomes are made of metal’ thing

‘ancient history’ rodimus are you KIDDING ME-

cyclonus time travels to the past and IMMEDIATELY finds a window to stare broodingly out of. icon

tailgate thinking orion pax is SUPER COOL continues here from shadowplay and I love it...tailgate is so cute

and the tg saying ‘don't you think that's awesome, cyclonus?’ hhhhh so cute

one reason I love this arc so much is that this is the arc where the gay Really amps up 

TRAILBREAKER.... oh man ;_;

are you telling me that this outlaw base they're in has ONE bed for all of these people. what the hell vhbaksjhfnsal

cant believe rung sampled roller’s steroid juice box

also cant believe robot steroids exist. except yes I can and I love it

oooh roller’s a 0/1%er? I forgot abt that 

cant believe orion pax just grabs some random phone that belongs to these weird new people and answers it. WHO does that

goddddd megatron and orion’s conversation....destroy me

HHHHHH like...the HISTORY....the regret...the missed opportunities...its all so palpable....goddddddd

and of COURSE, the whole thing is steeped in tragedy...the ideological differences that will become the foundation for a 4 million year long war...megatron, who believes that you need to burn things down and start again to really make change stick, and then orion, who says ‘reform is the answer, not revolution’....AUGHHH the intricacies. mannnn

‘you sound lost’ 😭😭😭

‘its tragic.’ yeah, that about sums up their relationship, especially at this stage and in this continuity 

anyways. [cries about old man megatron talking to young naïve orion pax] goodbye

AUGHHH and then we jump to rodimus ONCE AGAIN breaking his own rules and trying to save trailbreaker...IT HURTS MAN...god I love rodimus, I feel like him being broken up about crewmembers like trailbreaker dying is one part regular sadness over people he knows dying for tragic reasons, and one part personal guilt at someone under his command dying, even if he’s not involved/at fault. I love the dichotomy of this emotional reaction that comes only partially from empathy/emotion, but also comes from a kinda self-centered need for success as measured by people under your command staying alive. and taking into account rodimus’s life it totally makes sense that he’d act like that...GAH I love it. the complexity of it all!

orion pax saying ‘you should read [megatron]. it’s powerful stuff’ I'm screaming, so many LAYERSSSSS

I fucking love time travel AHHHHHHHHH like the opportunity for interactions like these....chefs kiss

‘hey, best friend! miss you!’ rodimus is such a shit hvbdajkfksjhfd 

‘very sus’ rodimus ahead of his time w/the among us lingo

oooh and then they realize that the senate is trying to kill the sparks...gotta save the babies!

tailgate scolding cyclonus for bluntly stating that you'd wanna be subtle when killing newborns...hhhvbhsdfhhhhhh I love them sm

ooooh and rewind has an interesting suggestion - that the senate is actually trying to irradiate the sparks into being outliers...rewind is so smart I love him

and the fact that he’s using history from his database...love it

rodimus sending cyclonus and whirl out like pokemon

ROLLER NOOOO DONT GO OUT THERE

also wow this is literally the 5th (I think) double page spread in this issue...the confusion I felt the first time I read this...lmao 

and now this is literally one of my favorite issues so I'm glad I know what's going on lmao

oh man rodimus telling cd not to erase trailbreakers memory even tho that could jeopardize the entire timeline... :( 

oh man I didn't even notice but roller getting debris blasted into his face like that makes the whole ‘roller is tarn’ theory even more legit considering tarn’s face scars....

‘tighter the better’ hhh don't say that orion. but also, that’s the companion phrase to megatron saying ‘the deeper the better’ hvbhasjkhdfbaksjlf

I do love the semi-campy action hero antics that orion pax gets up to. its just so fun, even when the stakes are high and things are serious

‘this is the greatest thing I have ever seen’ tg ily

THE REVEAL THAT THE SPARKS WENT TO NYON...so rodimus just saved himself, basically...time travel is so trippy

GODDDD ND THEN TRAILBREAKER...HVHHHHHh 😭😭😭 THATS SO CRUEL MAN

oh man that last panel of trailbreaker holding up roller’s juice box...iirc the first time I read this I thought that was roller (cause of the juice box I guess? idk I'm an idiot) so I was like oh ok he must've come back or something. very much related but I didn't really think about tarn being a particular pre-established character and totally didn't read the whole ‘roller is tarn’ thing that was going on 

which in my defense ruth also didn't pick up on any of that while reading this and eventually like 2 issues before the reveal I had to prompt her like ‘you should maybe be wondering WHO tarn is’ vhbahjksdfbaksjdf

so! issue 37! this issue is a solid favorite of mine, id say definitely top 5 or even 3. I'm super biased bc I fucking LOVE time travel, it’s seriously one of my favorite tropes ever, and this issue hits all the time travel beats I love. characters traveling to the past and interacting with people they know! conversations that have multiple meanings bc of TIME TRAVEL! trying to save someone who meets a terrible fate in your future! fun time travel action! the time traveling characters being generally terrible at hiding the fact that they're time travelers! ITS SO GOOD. 

and I love the clever way everything is tied together here - where we get a nice continuation of shadowplay, with this taking place shortly after that with a lot of the same cast, and time travel classics like the good ole ‘if we hadn't travelled back in time and done what we did, the future we came from wouldn't have existed at all,’ in the flavor of ‘rodimus saving his baby self’ and ‘rodimus NOT saving trailbreaker’ and ‘everyone forgot about roller :(’ 

ok but like, did the lost lighters just go ‘oh well, guess rollers gone now.’ like they DID realize that the outlaw crew would have no idea what happened to him if they got their memories erased, right?? did the lost lighters figure that since roller never reappeared after this time period, that was how history was ‘supposed’ to go and they shouldn't mess with it? am I overthinking it? as usual: yes, probably. I love overthinking about comics, in case that wasn't obvious

basically...I love this issue soooo much. so so good and a bunch of fun tropes that I love. I mean the whole arc is like that for me since I love time travel so much. so I cant wait to (re)read more!!

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 28

catch me completely ignoring dark cybertron lmao

yeahhhh so I'm just gonna skip dark cybertron bc no thanks. I did read the tf wiki articles for the issues tho, which is more than I did in the past, so at least now I kinda know what happened, though I had to suffer thru reading about dark cybertron to learn stuff about it. yikes. reading ABOUT dark cybertron further enforced my decision to not actually read thru it

anyways. the best part of dark cybertron was when chromedome threw prowl off that cliff. that was baller lmfao

a 1 page recap of dark cybertron is about all I can handle. thank you

ooh, the 6 months later smash-cut, I fucking love itttt

nautica’s here!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so happy I love her. also brainstorm, and I love their friendship sm

hvbjdkhfbshdfj god I love them. they have such a fun dynamic 

everyone eavesdropping on a therapy session vhbhdjkhafbhkjsdf. hipaa laws mean nothing as usual 

the casual reveal of captain megatron, oh god 

the title fucking slaps, as usual. this is one of my favorites - ‘world, shut your mouth.’ great stuff, and a song title/reference to boot! and this being part 1: towards peace...chefs kiss

and then we flash back to 6 months earlier...yknow now that I'm rereading this, mtmte has a LOT of framing devices used - there's story-within-a-story, flashback/flash-forwards, storytelling with narration, etc...I love it

god hbvhjakdfbshjkdf rodimus saying ‘magic’ and then the little *magic = science rodimus doesn't understand HBGKJHSDBFKHJSDF my idiot boy ily

rodimus roasting prowl is my fav hbfjdkafshsbjkf ‘maybe the knights can help us find a cure for your personality’ ily sm

and then prowl agreeing w/rodimus a few panels later about megatron’s guilt...

optimus...don't you think that making yourself chief of justice is...maybe a bad idea...like, maybe there's a conflict of interests here...just a little bit of bias...a bit too much history, perhaps...

the fact that all the big roles in the trial were given to high-ranking autobots who were heavily involved in the war...I see that cybertrons justice system is as much of a farce as their medical ethics and patient confidentiality laws 

the ‘you BROKE the MATRIX’ panel is so good bjhkdhfbajskhdf

rodimus: LISTEN dad I just wanna resume my space cruise with my frat bro ship I have no interest in politics

psychiatrists HATE him! local former warlord refuses to recognize the validity of psychological analyzation of people’s actions

ravage casually breaking hipaa laws and chilling in megatron’s therapy session like >:3

I love rung...he’s so good at like, passive-aggressively cutting right to the heart of someone’s issues, and he’s so generally mild that you can’t even really get mad at him 

the sudden inclusion of megatron as a major character in mtmte is kinda jarring at first - mostly, for me at least, due in part because I didn't read dark cybertron so this is like, megatron’s introduction as a relevant character in general - but I feel like jro does a great job laying a lot of intrigue down from the very beginning w/his character - like, I already want to know more about what his whole deal is, even though we have, ostensibly, seen pretty much all of his story play out already 

rung name-dropping froid...i remember that made me lose my shit bc cmon. FROID....jesus christ

rung and megatron: holy shit! we’re suddenly being drawn in a 90s-esque sci-fi tron-looking retro-futuristic style!

interesting that megatron sought rung out, and not the other way around

RIPTIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! my favorite sharkboy is HERE

CREWDITIONS...YES....

‘we’re not allowed to take anyone who might remind rodimus of prowl’ vhbhjdkshfbhaskfd brutal

I love nautica so so much. a perfect autistic scientist after my own heart

I adore that nautica brought chromia along for moral support

hgvbjdakhfbhsj and then swerve saying that rodimus hates ‘trisyllabic names’ and nautica is like....but....‘rodimus’.....

and then nightbeat busts in to get all bbc sherlock on they asses hgbfhjadkfbjaskdf

WHY was perceptor at the crewditions if he was already part of the crew lmao

ooof, and then we have megatron flipping out when chromedome, a mnemosurgeon, shows up

also damn the autobots were rlly like okay so we wanna speed this trial up so lets just like, probe megatrons brain, that seems completely ethical, especially when you consider the history of shadowplay and stuff that our previous government had

I know important stuff is happening but megatron is holding a CUBE and I love CUBES so I'm distracted by that. C U B E

and then right after a scene where we see chromedome willing to perform mnemosurgery again - despite rewind’s like, dying wish for him not to - we hear that he’s been locked up in his room rewatching rewinds goodbye message over and over again :( I'm fucking depressed

I love nightbeat, he’s so funny and kind of an asshole

and then you see more missing letters behind them next panel...clearly nightbeat is right and there’s a mystery afoot...OR somebody is fucking with the ship’s lettering as a prank, which is a plot point I would absolutely buy

yeahhhh skids is right, chromedome is clearly Not dealing 

the dramatic graffiti on megatrons door...I wanna know who spray-painted ‘die’ everywhere like they're reaper overwatch

oh god. whirl vs megatron

really cool red lighting tho

GOD its so brutal, all the stuff megatron said about how he told the cons not to kill whirl...and doesn't that end up being false anyways? so he was just saying it to dig at whirl, which is awful

also I'm never over the fact that literally everyone - including megatron and whirl - blames whirl for ‘turning megatron violent,’ as if the entire Point isn't that whirl was a tool for a corrupt system, and if it wasn't whirl it would've just been someone else, and megatron turning away from pacifism was inevitable given the circumstances, AND also a choice on his part, so he really only has himself to blame for his OWN ACTIONS

bye bye whirls right arm, see you in lost light 

‘people never stop changing’ that IS something I say all the time...damn you warlord grandpa! how can you steal my philosophies?!

ohhh man and then rewind’s goodbye message being different....oooh

AUGH the fact that whirl was basically trying to goad megatron into killing him, just like he did in issue 1 w/cyclonus...It Hurts Man

also I do love the hint at who he’s talking to w/whirl shooting megatron with the bow and arrow earlier, and we know that atomizer is a fan of those

ok, but here’s where my philosophy diverges - megatron talks about throwing away his past and starting new, but I think that you have to learn from and build on your past...either way, megatron’s arc is one that I enjoy greatly from a character writing standpoint, and I'm excited to get it underway, especially w/how controversial it is lmao

big ole double-page spread...I like how you can pick out individual characters in the background crowd, which is crazy cause that's a LOT of people. also how come cosmos is so HUGE

phewwww 4.6 billion cybertronians died in the war, that’s INSANE. that's like, an incomprehensibly huge number. is there an estimate for their current population? I bet its not a lot. no wonder jro leaned into reproductive themes so much in mtmte/ll - of course the continuation of your species would be a concern for many if your numbers have been that greatly reduced

optimus w/his fancy tyrest-lookin crown

oughdajbfsbdf and the fact that megatron ALSO murdered 100 BILLION non-cybertronians...bruh. I feel like they maybe should've dialed those numbers back a little to allow his ‘redemption arc’ to run a little smoother lmao. but also I admire the commitment either way

and then we end w/megatron doing captain stuff, and seeing The Coffin...and we never did see rodimus in any of the flash-forward parts of this issue, did we???? I love how concerning that is. where's my BOY

also of course we gotta remember the warning from way back at the beginning of mtmte: ‘don't open the coffin’....

and so begins mtmte s2! man I love s2. I love mtmte in general lmao. s2 takes on the impossible w/the whole ‘megatron redemption arc’ thing, and I know that’s like, a divisive plot point and stuff, but from a writing standpoint I enjoyed it a lot...I think it was pretty much as well done as it could've been given the enormity of the task, and I thought it was a really interesting direction for the story to go in 

also espec if it’s true that hasbro was like ‘hey jro put megatron in your story and give him a redemption arc’ rather than jro like, planning/asking to do it 

anyways. I doubt ill talk much abt the disc horse(tm) here bc this is just for fun and also my own personal opinions and whatever, but I for one am excited to reexperience this stuff 

so yeah s2 off to a strong start with some wild shit already happening! cant wait to read more!

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 30

30 issues wow...forget the fact that I skipped like 5 issues of crossover event nonsense

another big ole swerve recap omg

this trial is so messsyyyyyyyyy lmao 

hvbajdfbahsjkfdbhjs starscream listening to meagtrons speech looking like ‘hmmmmmmm I may have miscalculated’ 

prowl looks pissed af meanwhile optimus just looks dead inside lmao

I mean. megatron kinda does have a point. this is like, the most biased, conflict of interests lookin trial of all time, in that all the major participants have some sort of long, complicated history with each other. what a mess

optimus, listening to megatron’s speech: wow this is worse than divorce court was

oh shit I totally forgot that those decepticons attacked the trial 

MAGNUS HAMMER AYYYYYY

a guy saying ‘objection!’ as optimus prime punches half his face off...that pretty much sums up idw op lmao 

op: oh thank god, I can punch shit now. I'm not cut out for this bureaucracy nonsense

megatron: thanks, random decepticon, for the attempted rescue, but I'm super old and I just want to nap so no thanks

random decepticon: wtf- [gets murdered by optimus prime]

I love op’s big ass antennae 

meanwhile, brainstorm goes to a bar and instead of buying anything, pulls out his own drink. I feel like that isn't allowed in most bars, or is at least frowned up vbsjdhfbhjdkfn. ily brainstorm 

also? big ass mood I was so broke last time I was on a barhopping vacation w/friends that I brought a cheap giantass bottle of mixed drink in my backpack and just drank that at all the bars lmao

WHIRLLLL I love his humansona sm. and also I love that whirl is into artsy french movies or w/e omg

brainstorm, drinking thru a wrist funnel: sorry I cant take my mask off rn it isn’t plot relevant yet

‘earthlets’ lmao

I love that rung is like, too pretentious to care that much about movies and would rather read earth books lol

and then bluestreak is like ‘yeah they have books...comic books’ can this man not read

I still cannot fuckign believe that the argument that got megatron out of a for-sure death sentence or w/e was ‘its not a war crime if we’re on the moon’ liiiiike what the actual hell lmao

also I love that, once again, we see magnus’s strict adherence to the law, technicalities and all

magnus: you cant really stop a trial and move it somewhere else where the laws are better suited to the outcome you desire

prowl: what are you, a cop? fuck off

also op being like ‘ok whatever all that doesn't matter...what DOES matter is that it would look bad for us to move the trial to cybertron in an obvious attempt to circumvent the rules, and public perception is what’s most important, fuck all that ‘morality’ bullshit’

meanwhile, rodimus is dead! and ambulon is also dead, which makes first aid sad, which makes ME sad

ayyy, rodimus is still alive! well, one rodimus is alive, at least 

rodimus and megatron really have the vibes of ‘stepfather and stepson forced to work together on a family road trip gone wrong after dad decided to sit this one out’ lmao

ah yes, ‘malaise’ the medical diagnostic term for ‘I don't feel so hot and idk why’ that practitioners like to throw under the ‘diagnostic notes’ section of lab orders to explain why they're ordering every blood test under the sun for a patient 

I love medical terminology. ANYWAYS

BE NICE TO MY BOY MEGATRON. 

rodimus: listen I have to come to terms with the fact that there's another version of me right here, and he’s DEAD, which means we can’t fuck, which is super lame 

I firmly believe that rodimus would be team ‘hell yeah id have sex with my AU self’ tbh 

I find it interesting that megatron is often casting blame for his actions onto others - here, he says that rodimus made him realize he doesn’t want to stop doing stuff w/his life, and then says that starscream forced his hand w/the whole ‘luna 2 law’ thing, and previously he’s said how whirl beating him up in jail is what led to him abandoning pacifism - take responsibility for your actions and decisions dude!

though he goes on to say here that he resorted to violence because he realized that the system that was in place could withstand everything else he would have tried to use to change it, which is super interesting 

megatron: okay, yes, I MIGHT have murdered billions, but I could help find us a new planet, which would be baller, sooooo...how about you co-opt your lame son’s frat boy ship and put me in charge? 

op: sounds fair to me. now how about we do some more Big Speeches before I make you somebody else’s problem

vbhdjskfbhaskdjf the ‘team rodimus’ lineup setup reminds me so much of the ‘together we make the ______’ meme with the different members being like, ‘the power’ ‘the gay’ ‘the awesome’ ‘the guy with no ears’ hbvhjdkfbs

chromedome: if I do this I could die

rodimus: that sounds like a you problem bro

‘this one time’ YEA RIGHT c'mon cd honor your dead husband’s wishes

omfg I forgot abt brainstorms ‘early early warning system’ lmao

I love nautica soooo much oh man

ooooof drift :( :( oh no

dead future rodimus!! uh oh is right

rodimus, known himbo: I'm sure I can defeat the inevitability of future events! all I have to do is cut my own arm off!

tailgateeeee he’s so cute...I love that he can tell stories of his daring escapades, just like at the beginning of mtmte, but this time its actually TRUE

OH SHITTTT GETAWAY

he looks so fucking sinister there lmao how are we NOT supposed to realize he has bad intentions from the get-go

‘you’ll make a prime one day’ well, getaway, you’re right about that at least...

cyclonus in the bg like 🤨🤔 at getaway

seriously I cant get over how getaway has such a slimy kinda vibe to him, like specifically in his interactions w/tailgate - this is before things even really take off but I'm still like TG GET AWAY (lol) FROM THIS GUY

cyclonus: somebody flirting with my crush? better go stare out a window instead of communicating absolutely anything to said crush about my feelings!

honestly I feel like, while megatron renouncing the decepticons and becoming an autobot is certainly interesting, it would be equally interesting for him to remain a decepticon but try to change the philosophy of the movement 

like, I get why op had him give that speech - to prevent the cons from trying to free megs again/thinking that he was being coerced into things (ironic considered he WAS coerced into giving that speech) - but it’s kinda the easy way our for megatron - being able to completely abandon the decepticon cause and not deal with it at all, and start over anew as an autobot

it would've been a lot harder to remain a con and try to reform what he has broken in the decepticon movement - but I think that would've been really interesting

though from a writing logistics standpoint, I get why jro didn't go for that bc we don't get a lot of other decepticons in the cast for that to work, and also megatron still definitely DOES have to face down all his mistakes w/the decepticons w/the djd and overlord and whatnot

anyways. I cant believe that all megatron had to do to join the lost light was make ONE speech denouncing the decepticons. like, they should've at least had him do a tiktok dance too or something, just to make it a really tough deal

I love the rodpod vbhjfsdkfbjaskjndfj

ok but I still don't really get the logic of making megs CAPTAIN like ouch. poor rodimus 

I feel like making megs a bartender at swerves or st would've been WAY more useful in showing him humility or w/e. OR it would've made him evil again, which, fair, 

ratchet: don't worry, we’ll medically poison him, it’ll be fine

ok but rodimus is right, this is SO messy, op wants to prove his ex husband isn't 100% evil so he’s like ‘ill let my rebellious son deal with him’ lmao god. I love this setup so much, its so wild

ratchet is also right, rodimus’s fuckup definitely pales in comparison to megatrons All That 

OH BRUTALLLLLLLL when ratchet says the list is fake ‘because my name’s not on it’ FUCKING OUCHHHHH

‘only bad guys say ‘unhand me” rodimus ily

omfg ‘we’ve practiced this’ of course they've done evacuation drills...magnus ily

lmao it’s the panel where it looks like rodimus and megatron are doing karaoke or having some sort of rap battle

and the lost light is GONE! oh shit!!!!

and there closes issue 30! once again we’ve gotten a lot of setup and exposition - which, while definitely necessary, means I don't have too much to say

I will say, throwing megatron onto the lost light has definitely mixed things up, and it’s interesting to see new dynamics already forming

so, until next time!

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 29

and continuing on!

the cover w/megatron and tailgate....tg so tiny...ooough

omg I forgot abt swerves long ass recap lol

the fact that they lowkey lampshade the fact that as mtmte was really hitting its stride, ending s1 fantastically, they got sucked into the whole dark cybertron thing...Ls

TG AND CYCLONUS HHHHH

tg as a lil car...and cyclonus smiling when he hears him coming...HHHH

also I love that cyclonus kept the great sword that he like, found amongst the belongings of all the dead circle of light members lmao 

or maybe the dude it belonged to didn't die, but he was too intimidated to ask cyclonus for his sword back. understandable 

tgs reaction to megatron...omg. I love him

I love ‘star sabered’ as a way of saying ‘drunk’ lmao

OUGHBHGGBHGJIHHIUHGHH and then when tailgate is like ‘ok, but HAVE I been missed?’ and cyclonus smiles and says ‘very much’ IM GONNA FUCKING DIE. this is only the BEGINNING of the tender gay pain for these two, how am I gonna survive this

the fact that tailgate’s criteria for ‘best day ever’ includes ‘people knowing who I am’ and ‘people being nice to me’...my boy 😭😭 

ah, trial time. I'm not really one for court/procedural stuff, and the gay space robots edition of judge judy is about as much as I can handle 

OOOOOF the list. the liiiiiiist

AUGHHHHH rodimus....rodimus....please make good decisions my boy

TEN!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love him

the little swerve icon on the ‘no guns no swords no briefcases’ sign omg

the panel of megatron like, smirking and reclining while ultra magnus yells at him is wild...I always forget that those two like, actively didn't get along at the beginning, mostly bc we only see that for a few issues, but still, it’s pretty ironic considering how things end up w/them later

lost light insider...I SO wish we could've gotten that one-shot issue about the guy who writes it, that's ridiculously up my alley 

skids saying ‘I don't think you’re fit to drive’ to trailcutter is like, bending my brain, bc like...is it a DUI if a transformer drives around in alt mode while drunk...you're not driving a car, you're driving YOURSELF, but still...bruh

oh god starscream is here hvbakjhfbjksdbfj he’s such a bitch I love him

starscream putting on his theater kid crown, ready to make the fuck-up-the-plot-of-a-series-I'm-not-even-in speech of a lifetime

magnus and optimus: ok enough drama you gay idiot get to the point

that panel of starscream raising his hands up like ‘ok ok sheesh lol’ is so fucking funny

ok oh man, that is an epic speech. like, ooof. ‘he deserves pity.’ WOW

I feel like it also does such a good job showing how much bad blood is between starscream and megatron, and goes to show how megatron fucked Absolutely Everything up, including his dynamic w/his subordinates 

anyways, I cant believe starscream roasted megatron so hard that megatron ended up become a main cast member in mtmte bc of spite lmao

meanwhile nightbeat is contemplating the Mystery Stick™

nightbeat yet again pulling his bbc sherlock bs on somebody, this time...chromedome, certified grieving widow. never change nightbeat hvbhjakdsfbsakjdf

AUHGHHHHHH DATA GHOST REWIND IM HHHHHHHHHH

HIM 😭😭😭

I'M SO FUCKING SAD

REWINDDDDDDDDD

meanwhile, trailcutter is wearing a gopro to pull some sick illegal pranks for his youtube channel

there was probably a content creator power vacuum in the lost light youtuber community after rewind died and now everyone is scrambling to be the next big vlogger/editor

megatron: we should play this by the book

magnus: I have no choice but to simp

nautica is that Straightedge Square who gets caught up in sketchy shit and just dips vbhsjdkbfdjaskdf. the cops get called on a party and she's already gone, she drove you there but she left w/the car, whoops. I love her

oh I adore the panel with all the stuff labelled. tho ‘ambulons stuff (untouched)’ is making me really sad

ah, the premiere of the panic bubble, which will indeed be showing up again later

meanwhile starscream is doing lowkey anime poses and waxing poetic about how hard he dunked on megatron in front of everyone. I get the feeling he’s been waiting a long time for that one

oiguhahgudaf I forgot about chromedomes weird looking alt mode. cooked turkey lookinnnnn

don't knock ‘the power of love,’ nightbeat. You'll See™

the fact the cd is still looking for dominus even tho rewind is dead and also they haven't like, had any leads in millions of years...oof it hurts

gotta be honest, my first readthru I didn't understand the (really cool looking) panel of the lost light from the outside w/half of nightbeats hab suite missing, bc I just was like ‘oh its a visual framing technique for Cool Comic Panel’ lmao

ok I need the backstory of megatron being able to karate-chop people into permanent sobriety

megatron hiring trailcutter but in the most threatening way possible

oh, good, the coffin’s bleeding!

OHHH and the reveal that RODIMUS IS IN THE COFFIN and OH HEY we STILL haven't seen rodimus in the flash forwards have we??? hmmm

optimus: ok back to judge prime: luna 2 trials, magnus you got anything to add?

magnus: ಠ_ಠ(•_•)

and then we have megatron being the pettiest mfer in the known universe and changing his plea bc starscream pwned him ONCE 

hhhh and rodimus looking at the list...It Fuckin Hurts. my boy please make a good decision

thinkin abt how if optimus was like, supportive and understanding when rodimus tried to open up to him about his struggles w/leadership, all this might've gone differently...AUGH

anyways, cool issue! we’re doing lots of setup for the new status quo for s2, and there’s a mystery afoot! 

I don’t have much to say here tbh lol, this is a good issue and all but I don’t really have anything to add, soooo til next time!

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 31

the drama continues....

so I got like halfway thru the issue and my liveblog got deleted bc I accidentally zoomed in really far and for some reason that deleted fucking everything :) thanks tungl!!!!

like ik I probably shouldn't type these up right in the tungle post but ugh. why would THAT delete all my shit. fuck this

anyways I didn’t write that much but I’ll try to rewrite it...

I love the mexican standoff cover, ratchet and megatron and chromedome look so hardcore and serious, meanwhile nautica is having the time of her life. respect

ooooughhhh flashback w/drift and pipes, ooof

is that chromedome and rewind??? hhhhhhhh they're on a date....

drift: don't ask where I got my blood money credit card pipes.

pipes is so cute I love him

and riptide!! I love him too

I love that transformers have a whole language that they speak by holding hands. fuckign superb you funky little robots

two trucks holding hands...

the lost light hhhhh ;_; best spaceship

its sooo cute that nautica thinks of brainstorm as like, the number 1 genius...her calling perceptor ‘brainstorm-level brilliant’ is adorable, I love those two sm

nautica ily sm

‘quanton technology’ vhbsjdfbsaf tailgate ily

in this art style, getaway has like, a mouth? looks super weird

nightbeat is so rude I love him

I fuckgin love the sci-fi bullshit w/the quantum stuff

I'm sorry but ‘dipstick’ is still such a funny name lmao. so is ‘huffer’ tbh

the fact that there’s something called a Smartplanet™ is hilarious. reminds me of the SmartBoards™ of my youth

and ofc the galactic council created them and added tuition fees. smh

cyclonus’s disgust at tuition fees is so relatable

tailgate pulling a gun on megatron...oooomg

the top of megatron’s head is weirdly round in this art style lmao

megatron: ...is that baby threatening me with a gun??

aaand then megs and riptide pull their guns out too

ok yeah so I guess cyclonus DID go on a murder spree prior to mtmte, but also at this point who HASNT done some war crimes, lbh

aaaand there’s ravage!

ravage and megs speaking hand 👀👀

cyclonus ik you’re worried abt tg and also terrible at communicating your feelings but please be nice :( :( 

and there’s getaway, sliding in smoothly...get AWAY from tg tbh

‘I'm fighting the urge to diagnose you’ lmao ratchet

nightbeat is like oh hell yea a mystery is afoot

tailgate telling cyclonus he’s scared :( give your tiny roommate a hug cyclonus

and here we get to hear abt MTOs...such an interesting concept, I love it

hoist mentions he knew an MTO named scattergun...wasn’t that one of chromedomes husbands? oof

interesting point, that w/out the war, the MTOs likely wouldn't exist - so does megatron get credit for that, then? does that get subtracted from his kill count? lol

also I feel like it’s noticeable even here that nautica doesn't distrust/hate megatron as much as a lot of the others - which makes sense bc she wasn't ever involved in the war, and never had to deal w/any of the decepticons or megatron in any context except post-war

and for tailgate, who also missed the war, it makes sense that he’d distrust megatron, because all the people tg is closest to hate megatron, and tailgate is trying his best to be an Autobot™

‘prenatals’ jro what the hell is that

I started writing up my reproductive themes spiel but it got so long so I think I’ll make a post just for that lmao. channeling jro w/that one

poor riptide...it’s tough when you’re not made for academics

fascinating how at first the MTOs/CC bots did get at least a basic education which involved cultural information, but as the war went on the education dwindled until it was just the basic stuff needed to fight in a war

ratchet has an interesting point, with MTOs being more likely to have ‘mystical experiences’ bc they're essentially newborns thrown onto a battlefield trying to make sense of things

and we also get to hear about information creep, another important concept! lots of relevant exposition this issue

I love information creep as a concept so much, bc it makes sense that even mechanical beings with like, computers in their brains wouldn't be totally infallible - bc if they’re really alive, and have souls, then that means there HAS to be fallibility, bc otherwise they would just be completely fact-based and logical, and that would make them less ‘alive’

also, the fact that they live so long would definitely contribute, and it’s cool that there ARE some sort of consequences to living for literal millions of years

aw nautica :(

tailgate aw man :( cyclonus will be back don't worry 

nightbeat is such a dick vhbhdjskhfbsjkf ‘someone tell tailgate to get a grip’ his bf just disappeared ok

and we get a brief reappearance of magnus and his humansona before he disappears too

nightbeat: enough of this bs! ratchet, break every hipaa law ever! go! 

and then ratchet DOES bvhajdbfajskfbajhd I am once again asking for somebody to care about patient confidentiality in cybertronian medicine, 

cant believe riptide got KO’d for 2 days straight and got left behind by the lost light as a result. Ls

nightbeat solved the mystery! woohoo! megatrons still gonna be rude abt it tho

OOOOH man and there’s the slaughterhouse lost light. oh boy oh god

I'm so not prepared for slaughterhouse oof. I'm glad we’re done with the court drama stuff bc that's so not my speed vbhdjkbfjksdf give me wacky sci-fi adventures or give me death!! 

I'm honestly just so excited for the time travel arc lmao give it to meeeee

so yeah, til next time!

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 35

ooooh baby functionist universe time

the cover with the neon ‘everything is fine’ sign is rlly good but also the pile of dead data stick bots makes me so sad omg noooo they're so cute leave them alone :( 

minimus and rewind...! its so cool seeing them interact

also I just love the crowd shot, and you can immediately see that there are a ton of data stick bots like rewind around - which isn't what we’re used to at all

also some good ole totalitarian govt stuff like the ‘you are our eyes’ sign (which, in retrospect, is fucking evil damnnnn)

also I'm so [eyezoom] on this functionist universe stuff bc like, this is basically the only time we ever see dominus be a character (rather than hearing abt him thru other characters), and even so he remains pretty ambiguous 

like, minimus clearly isn't thrilled that dominus didn't show up to see him at the space airport or w/e when they've been apart for two million years - and even tho we later see why he didn't show up, it still shows that there's some tension there

the amount of crowd shots in this issue is insane 

oooof, the fact that they sold luna 2 - and to the black box consortia, who we just heard about last chapter when they previously got into a space battle w/the galactic council and the djd

fu!minimus being part of the primal vanguard is interesting, I wanna see more about that. what was he doing w/them for 2 million years?

rewind just casually saying this completely fucked stuff, like that the govt ‘outlawed the intellectual class’ and ‘deported the knock-offs’ (which I'm assuming is cold constructed bots?)

I really like the sense we get thru minimus and rewind’s convo that all of this fucked up stuff has happened slowly enough that its become almost normal - like, they talk about it casually, even though its clear they don't necessarily agree with any of it 

plus the sense of ‘even if things get really bad ill be okay’ that both rewind and minimus seem to adhere to - rewind having been upgraded from being in the disposable class due to his connection w/dominus, and minimus saying ‘I like to think that obsolescence is something that happens to other people’ 

I love all the fucked up signage this issue. ‘take pride in being a means to an end,’ yikes

god and the fact that there isn't MORE data sticks, there's just LESS of other alt modes bc of how many alt modes the govt has wiped out completely...

oof, and continuing the whole ‘slow change’ thing - minimus saying that ‘the council never touches the astro class,’ and maybe that used to be true, but the govt will keep pushing that line, clearly...

and we get to see minimus’s alt mode! altho we the readers know that this isn't minimus’s true form...

‘amazing, the lengths some people will go to cross class boundaries,’ minimus says, as if he isn't doing exactly what rewinds describing, but even moreso as a loadbearer wearing an entire suit of armor

and then the casual public execution of the last lunabot...oof.

love the ‘cybertron. the present day’ text overlay...I was so confused about this when I first read it lmao. I figured it had to be some sort of au/quantum nonsense but STILL

back on the lost light, chromedome is going full kool-aid man on rewinds door

mannnnn I absolutely love the plotline of rewind 2 and chromedome 1...im so glad the story acknowledges that they ARE different, they did experience different stuff on their own lost lights, and rewind 2 being a quantum duplicate doesn't mean he had the same experiences as rewind 1...

and I love so much that chromedome just Doesn't Get It, bc of course he wouldn't - he’s too relieved that rewind is back to even consider that its not quite the same, that the rewind he was forced to blow up is still dead (which is a fucked up thought, so of course chromedome, the master of pushing the past away and moving right along, would want to avoid thinking about that in favor of continuing his relationship w/rewind 2)

it also makes a lot of sense that rewind, who records everything and puts a huge emphasis on history/the past, would be hyperaware of all the differences between him and rewind 1, and his chromedome and this chromedome

AUGHHHH and chromedome referring to an offer he made to rewind that was pretty clearly ‘if your memories of the djd slaughter are too much, I can remove them for you’ ooooof...I love these two so much, like...their absolute opposite approaches to trauma is fascinating

oooh mannnnn and then rewind starts ‘remembering’ stuff from the functionist universe...the plot thickens...!

I really like how one of the main ‘things’ in a lot of tf universes is energon/energy shortages, its interesting when the angle is kinda like, ‘energon is a finite resource and the methods to obtain more often involve destroying other planets,’ that's a pretty unique, alien problem for the tfs to have

it also makes sense that the functionists would form partially in response to that (perceived) shortage, and any sort of scarcity would push them further into their extremist views

I like how expressive the characters with visors are...its cute...

poor rewind has to go thru So Much

WHY can just anyone go into the morgue and touch the dead bodies. I mean I guess megatron being one of the captains explains why he’s in there, but that still shouldn't be allowed 

‘megatron mountain’ vhbjdkshfbjskfbhhk that's so fucking funnyyyyy I love rodimus....I quote that line a lot, especially when watching g1 lmao

the fact that swerve diluting his engex bc he’s a cheapskate saved everyone's s lives is amazing lmao

also like...damn brainstorm sure tried to murder Literally Everyone huh. like I guess the logic would be that if he succeeded in changing the past it wouldn't matter that they had died there cause the timeline wouldn't exist, but STILL. I guess that shows how confident brainstorm was in his plan

it makes so much sense somehow that rung doesn't drink. and we’ve seen firsthand why magnus doesn't lol

mannnn that panel of brainstorm shooting magnus with some wacky beam and causing the magnus armor to fall off in vehicle mode...Super Cool, just peak mad scientist vibes there

ok but if minimus switches to alt mode when ultra magnus does - as we see here, where minesweeper-minimus is inside big-ole-car-magnus - does that mean that inside the minesweeper is turbofox-minimus?? I want to seeeee

ghsdufjkbvksadfbhjs the panels of rodimus telling megatron that brainstorm time travelled are so fucking funny

and megatrons rant about how absolutely bonkers the lost light is....hvbhjdskfbasjh that's so funny oh my god. like yeah dude you're right and you gotta roll w/it sorry 

'on this ship, a minor breakdown is practically a rite of passage’ vbjdsnfbkasdfn its true and I love it

goddddddd it kills me how at this point in the story its So Obvious to everyone that brainstorm travelled back in time to do evil decepticon double agent stuff - and we as the reader can even buy that bc brainstorm has been so sketchy until now, and nothing he’s done contradicts what rodimus suggests - but it turns out in the end, it was all just for love. AUGHHHHHHHH its about the LOVE!!!! that's why I love this arc so much.

back in the functionist universe - god I cant believe rewind waited until Now to reveal to minimus that dominus has a tv face...like I get that that's a difficult topic to bring up in conversation but like, a little sooner might've been good hbvhjkdhnfbjaksl

oh man it hurts...rewind saying that they're in a ‘blind spot...’ oh man :(

rebel rewind, tho!! I love it sm

oh man and rewind never even broke the news about dominus to minimus oof. that's a tough reveal 

MANNN I really like the whole ‘flathead’ thing, its so awful and brutal. its such a logical extension of empurata, and as dominus says, once people get used to seeing empurata’d bots, it loses its punch...and the flatheads thing is even more invasive 

and writing wise, both empurata and the tv-heads are such good devices to show evil govt bs. I talk abt it a lot but I like all the ways jro gets creative with the ‘alien robots’ thing; a lot of these concepts wouldn't work at all with humans or other organic aliens

GODDD and dominus’s chilling speech being interrupted by the functionist propaganda....fucking horrifying I love it

also seeing dominus here is fascinating - clearly the council managed to pin him down enough to turn him into a flathead, but they never discovered his true alt mode...same with minimus, actually 

the cog is so fucking ominous. just floating there...

and the council is scary too! their names, and the fact that they all look the same...seems about right for an evil alien governing body

mannnnnnn and then the reveal that the data slug alt-modes will be ‘recalled’ next...rewind noooooo...and the one council guy even admitted that they still served some purpose in society, BUT that their ability to mass store data made them dangerous to the goverment...evil!!

meanwhile, rodimus doesn't know enough about science to be appropriately frightened about their timeline being wiped from existence, so he’s having a grand ole time

‘no one’s nodding, perceptor’ bvhjdbfasdfhbk their expressions....the lost light command crew are all clearly team ‘leave the science to the scientists’ lmao

I do love the paradox stuff, and brainstorm’s way around it all 

‘so I'm not allowed to take an interest in magic?’ hvbjhsdkfbjhkdf ily sm rodimus

but also like....rodimus suggests a parallel universe could've formed and perceptor is like ‘no way, that's not scientifically possible,’ as if brainstorm didn't basically defy science by time travelling at all...and more to the point, functionist cybertron DID get created, so rodimus was actually RIGHT this time

love that we’re already seeing perceptor’s admiration for brainstorm and his invention even here....sapiosexual mfer

a time travel chase....so beautiful...I love sci-fi so much

seriously time travel is one of my favorite tropes ever, this arc was inevitably gonna be my fav 

‘he’s going to kill orion pax.’ DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN

meanwhile, on functionist cybertron...aw, is that bulkhead? great cameo! oh wait what's going on with all the data sticks...? uh oh!

the fact that their heads just EXPLODE....soooo fucked!! 

god and then the council picks up their dead bodies, for...probably something evil, I’d assume

god and then dominus got even more fucked....

‘there are certain words you cant afford to lose’ ;_; REWIND....GODDD IM SAD 

GOD GOD GOD the reveal that minimus has CAMERAS in his EYES GODDDDDDDDDDDD that's so FUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and rewinds reaction...ME TOO BITCH TF!!!!!!

all the ‘you are our eyes’ messages are even worse now huh!!

they did it while minimus was asleep...that's so fuckedddd

FUCKKKK and then rewind’s impassioned rebel speech, which I adore.....rewind ily sm...he’s such a good revolutionary, I wish we could've seen him leading an anti-funtionist rebellion....BUT THEN ‘oh? what about the back up?’ and its just like HHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and then his head starts smoking and we see another billboard, but this time it says ‘WE are your eyes’ - is the implication that everyone is now a surveilling spy, whether they like it or now, so now it’s ‘we?’ like, we’re all in it together, spying on each other! ooooof

also. this is like the third time rewind has died on-screen in this series lmao (well, if you count the fake-out death where he thought he’d be cancelled out during slaughterhouse)...he ALMOST died in issue 12 too....poor rewind

‘the custom-made now’ is such a great title. jro always killin it w/the titles

plus ‘elegant chaos’ is such a cool arc name. fucking epic 

M A N NNNNNNNN THIS ISSUE WAS BALLER...this ARC is baller....I talked a lot hvbhdjkhfndsak lmao but there's so much to talk abt!!! I love the look into the functionist universe, I love seeing alternate versions of characters and settings so much, and I love time travel, so this issue is basically made for me

plus I fuckign love alien robot politics and seeing the absolute control the govt has over cybertronian society in the functionist universe is fascinating - plus from a storytelling standpoint, I think it was brilliant to show the ‘other side,’ aka what things would've been like without the war...which is something ill talk about later when its more directly addressed in the story but man do I enjoy that 

basically I love this arccccc I cant wait to read more hhhhhhh

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 34

lets get itttttt

I'm reading this in physical paper comic form unlike all the issues I’ve read so far and this is SO BLESSED

its the trade paperback and the cover is that sexy roller drawing w/the juicebox. ty for that one milne 

WHY is the volume cover a drawing of megatron standing over trailbreakers dead body. that's like a huge spoiler hvudbsfjkasnf 

I nearly forgot about this issue - gotta catch up with the first aid crew

the scenery IS very nice

I like all the background stuff that goes on w/aliens like the galactic council and the black box consortia, it really makes the universe seem vast and not centered around the protagonists 

I love first aid so muuuuch 

oh right they must be on the Smartplanet™

oh first aid, you're morally correct in choosing not to dig deep about the mystery victim’s affiliation and fix him no matter what, but in this particular case maybe you should do a little oath avoiding and try to figure it out first

OHHHH I FORGOT THIS WAS ALSO THE MEGATRON FLASHBACK ISSUE YESSS 

FUCKGIN FROID he’s such a weird looking gibbon robot 

kinda funny that the datapad is in english one panel and then cybertronian(or w/e) the next panel lmao

REALLY like the panel of megatron mining with all his thoughts/writing in the background. visually excellent 

oh god trepan. he and froid make quite the Little Bitch Squad 

lmaooo they moved the busted up guy, thats like medical no-no #1 c'mon guys 

HHHHHHH the vos reveal is very cool...oh boy...but also in the panel where we finally see a full-body shot he looks completely undamaged lmao

mannnn the page-long text-only script of megatron’s writings...pheww.....listen I love it. AUGH

MANNNN functionism is like, one of my fav tf concepts ever bc like...it makes so much damn sense that cybertronians would create this taxonomic system based on alt modes, when they're robots who turn into things, and also that that system would become rigid and corrupt and create huge class divides....in terms of fantasy/sci-fi oppression concepts this one is real good imo, bc it makes so much sense based on how transformers work, and its not bogged down by a ton of weird parallels to real life systems of oppression like so many other fantasy oppression storylines are

I love also that religion has a place in it - as in, the system pretty much says that dissenters are rejecting primus’s vision for them as a person, and therefore you risk being smited for your heresy, and whatnot

the whole ‘retroactively giving new meaning to the decepticon movement’ thing is, from what I can tell, pretty controversial in the fandom and all, but I personally like it, and I like the way it was done, especially here in this issue

especially considering that the nature of comics means that they're written by a whole bunch of different people who have different approaches to the characters/storylines - and by the time jro got mtmte, there was already a huge backlog of comics establishing stuff 

so I don't really fault him for doing his own thing and molding canon into what he wanted, while taking the previously established stuff with a grain of salt - that's why I feel pretty comfortable ignoring a lot of the pre-mtmte stuff (or at least what isn't written by jro) and seeing mtmte as its own little canon

AUGHHH I just love that whole page. REVOLUTION!!

ANYWAYS. having terminus here also does a great job of showing a personal, firsthand way that megatron experiences how fucked the system is - terminus isn't injured beyond repair, or even THAT badly all things considered, but their society deems him unimportant enough that he doesn't have access to those repairs 

oof i forgot how Baby megatron looks in these flashbacks 

ohhhh man the bit ‘every member of the manual class is one accident away from redundancy - and redundancy is one step away from death’ MANNN that hits, its such a similar sentiment to the whole ‘the entire working class is one bad day away from homelessness’ thing that people have talked a lot about recently...anyways, guillotine and eat the rich

oh I really like the parallels to megatron saying ‘if you can save someone, you should save them,’ and first aid refusing to care about the injured guy’s affiliation...you could also get deeper and make the connection between megatron being the one presenting that sentiment in the past, and then first aid enacting it towards vos, a member of megatron’s djd, to terrible consequences

‘I'm not a figurehead’ oh, megatron, we’ll see about that...

I love this look at truly pacifist megatron - we really needed to see this after being told over and over how much of a pacifist megatron used to be, up until he clearly wasn't anymore

‘you are being deceived’ is still such a fucking cool tagline. also it does a great job in establishing a good reason for them to be called ‘decepticons,’ bc as many people point out in other continuities, that sounds evil as hell, who would name themselves that other than a bunch of evil idiots

back with the modern day crew...things are getting morally dicey...first aid is just such a good boi I love him. but also oh my god SO much dread

but even first aid balks when he realizes that that's a djd member right there - as he should, bc jesus vos, u really cant stop saying ‘find, kill, cleanse’ for 3 seconds even now??? yall really have no chill 

trailbreaker is so good and that makes what happens to him EVEN SADDER jesus

oh man also the parallel of megatron donating his energon to terminus, and trailbreaker to vos....

OH GODDD I can SEE the chair in the bg in tbs bubble....HHHHHHHHHHHH

also im kinda distracted by the fact that this artists draws fingers all the same length vbjkshdfksajnbfjk so hands look kinda weird, and this issue is a bit hand-focused so its noticeable 

first aid’s alien ambulance mode is cool 

vos looks like he’s doing a peace sign lmao

OH NOOOOO KAON IS HERE. AUGH

god trepan just looks so absolutely creepy. like his design on its own isn’t that creepy (unlike, say, froid or sunder) but his expressions and the shading on him just make him looks like the total freak that he is

and here we see where megatrons aversion to mnemosurgery came from!

like, trepan, dude, did you really have to remove the top of his head and go into the brain raw like that. admit it, that was just for the drama of it all

AUGHHHH the successive panels of megatron with his writing in the background, but the second panel is missing a bunch of words...mannnnnnnnn so good and so awful

and then OH SHIT ITS RUNG

...here to enforce (new) hipaa laws, which is surprising considering his history of hipaa violations. maybe he hasn't done most of them yet?

no, I will not stop talking about Rung The Hipaa Violator sorry

also I stand by my assessment that rung and froid are the ONLY psychologists on cybertron so their entire department is Just Them. imagine how funny that would be 

SENATOR SHOCKWAVE HHHHHHHHHH OW OW OW 

oh boy the alarms, wonder what that could be...a power surge you say...👀👀👀

and then smash cut to trailcutter gruesomely dismembered, jesus. that went south really fast

also where's his spark/spark casing? we see his entire spinal column here - and that's the design we see later w/the whole mutineers thing iirc - but earlier in the story when ratchet was all dismembered, his spark casing seemed to be attached midway down his spinal column...or maybe his spine was behind his spark, and still w/his body? not sure

also now that I think abt it its kinda funny that this issue was all like ‘oh man vos is gonna die unless he gets an energon transfusion’ but ratchet was just fine chilling without his body and therefore without most of his energon circulating. maybe ratchet is just that powerful. whatever I'm gonna disregard alien medical inaccuracies bc I love mtmte

anyways. poor trailbreaker he didn't deserve that

also goddamn first aid cant catch a fucking break, he has to deal with ambulon dying in front of him via his batshit old boss and now this. let him rest already

what the hell DID happen to terminus I don't even remember. yknow that's ok ill get to rediscover that later which is always cool

GODDD the panel of megatron running away w/all his datapads and the background is just ‘I'm sorry’ over and over again....It Does Hurt Doesn't It

AND THEN THERES BRAINSTORM!! MAN OF THE HOUR!! WHATS HE UP TO I WONDER....

also I thought the the power surge was brainstorm arriving but maybe not?? so what was it then? just like, mine bs? 

also. I love brainstorm did u know 

hhhhh I'm so excited for time travel. I've been saying that for ages but rlly I love this arc sm and this issue is such a strong start. I really like the ways that the two stories - megatron in the past and first aid & trailbreaker in the present - are connected 

it shows a nice beginning and end in a way - megatron at the very start, where he’s still a very idealistic and pacifistic budding revolutionary, and then the far future, where he isn't actually present in that story but his presence is very felt, in tb talking about his writing (plus tb’s new attitude basically coming directly from megatron putting him on a different track), and of course the djd 

and my interpretation is that this issue shows how something like the decepticons (and specifically megatron) had a beginning full of good intentions and morally solid ideals, but it still turned into something completely different that resulted in something like the djd existing

also I feel like the megatron flashback portion pairs quite nicely with the upcoming look at functionist cybertron, which I'm rlly excited to revisit bc I forget a lot about that honestly. 

so yeah up next: time travel and functionism, oh yeah!

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 22

oooh man, its time to feel some EMOTIONS!

I'm BACK after a hiatus, which was due in part to me getting my 1st dose of the covid vaccine! woohoo!

anyways, starting here w/issue 22....we have a great cover w/thunderclash, the legend himself

oof. the covers made me forget how much I don't like the art this issue...I hate to be mean to the artists but this art style just isn't doin it for me chief

god I love this issue though. the framing device of rewind’s movie is so so fantastic

tailgate listing off all his fake awards/accomplishments....ily 

rodimus my boy, you're a prime in my heart

the ‘not a decepticon’ label for cyclonus is so much hvbhkjfbskjf

I literally wanna comment on every single panel bc I love all the characters so much but then id be here forever...that being said whirl ily sm 

hvbjdfbhsfjhdfshja BRAINSTORM ‘according to perceptor - ships genius’ hvhdkjhbfhjs ily dumb gay idiot

and then the cut to perceptor after brainstorm like, blew up his lab vjbkdsfnbksjf dude

GODDDDDD drift ‘your name...defines you. it’s your soul expressed in syllables. hm? oh, yes, sorry. it’s drift.’ GOD he’s so fucking funny. I love early story hippy drift

god I cant stop thinking about how good this whole issue would be as an animated show...like, specifically rewinds film, it would be SO FUCKING GOOOOOOD mtmte show WHEN

rewiiiiind ;_; I fuckgin love rewind god. fellow video editing enthusiast....

ohhhh rodimus being embarrassed about his big speech at the beginning of mtmte....my boy I love u so much

gjhnbgehjsrkfbjksf magnus being suspicious of rewind oh my god. magnus ily but please, look at the lil guy, he’s a good boy, most of the time

the fuckgin footage that magnus removed hbvhakjbfhskf god. wasn't that intended to be footage of magnus dancing? I love him

minibot squad.....

and here it begins, the mystery stick rung question...

poor rung oh my god he’s just trying to polish his lil spaceship and people r throwing shit at him. taking Ls as per usual it seems

hand grenade tag hvbfjksdnfbkjdf love that callback

noooo rungs ship :( 

magnus’s censorship vhbhadkjfhdbhjsakjhfn

oh man I forgot about how they met that race of Transformers But More 

the one-upsmanship hbvkajsbehfjks

whirrrrrl lmao I love whirl sm

goddddd whirl just killing that other alien and ending the 16 million yr long civil war bvkjsdbfhjjkafs so fucking much

oh god oh god the ‘are you happy’ page, I'm not emotionally equipped to handle this like, ever

but I will say I feel like it would be EVEN MORE oof if it were milne or someone drawing it bc I feel like this art style takes away from some of the impact bc the expressions aren't really that...expressive? idk how to put it

anyways. every single answer destroys me!!! like even the happy ones, like chromedome and rewind and tailgate - well, in present time, none of those three are doing so hot, so that makes this just hurt 

and rung....that is so fucking depressing. jesus. this guy is so fuckng sad, somebody get him a friend stat

and swerve...ouch. this readthru I've really noticed how much early-mtmte swerve is not-so-subtly like, crying out for help bc he’s so alone and shit. jesus 

also brainstorms response is just plain ole sad w/context, but at this point in the story without context, it just seems very foreboding lmao. I'm realizing this readthru that brainstorm is very sketchy and ominous in a particular ‘is he evil?’ mad scientist sorta way in early mtmte

and then everyone else is also just so OOF in their own unique sad ways, but I think the worst out of everyone is drift....GODDDDDD. especially considering that at this point in the story, drift is this kinda goofy hippy guy, so seeing him just sit there with his face in his hand, not even answering the question...AND knowing that shortly after this he’ll end up banished...IT FUCKING HURTS M8!

meanwhile, the more upbeat ‘quest to see rungs alt mode’ continues...with an ‘alt mode party’ vhbadkjsdfnabskjf it looks so silly with a bunch of cars just sitting around a table lmao

I cant even tell who everyone is bc they so rarely turn into cars n shit lmaoooooo 

rodimus with the bucket on his head hbvhakjbfskjf I CANT

everyone’s reactions to thunderclash...i fucking love it

the fact that TAILGATE doesn't hate him, even though we’ve seen that tailgate tends to dislike people who are universally liked/who have achieved a lot of impressive things

rodimus you petty thot vbdkjbfdjhsakjdf ily

RODIMUS IS SO FUNNYYYYYY ‘I'm not making all these sacrifices and leading these guys into battle and being inspirational - I'm not doing that because it makes me look good’ RODIMUS VBHSKJDFNBKSJF

thunderclash talking about magnus’s article on typefaces....hdbksjfsdbkjgfb bro

AND THEN MAGNUS HUGS HIM....HGBSKJFDSHFKD I CANT

POOR DRIFT bvhajkdfbhjkjsfd rodimus saying he ‘rehabilitated him’ oh my god

the whole spectralism thing...im sorry I cant get over how funny all this is vbakdjfbksjf thunderclash rlly b out here charming rodimus’s entire crew

and then ratchet comes in, calling tc ‘thunders,’ and tc immediately notices ratchets new hands (somehow) hvbkjfhbskjf truly amazing

it cracks me up that rodimus is all 😒😒 at thunderclash, even though as we come to find out, tc really IS That Perfect, and him complimenting rodimus isn't sarcasm at all lmao

AND THEYRE LOOKING FOR THE KNIGHTS OF CYBERTRON TOO HVSDHFJBSHKHDFJS OF COURSE

the vis vitalis being a life support machine spaceship is a really cool concept tho

‘rescuing some orphans from an exploding sun’ I fucking cant

evil guy: [holds a gun to thunderclash’s head] 

rodimus: :D finally something doesn't go his way!

he’s so petty I’m..........dkdjhfdabhduifadijgl

and its the aliens from earlier! oooh

GODDD I forgot that swerve used rung in mystery stick mode to SCHWACK the guy

rung casually dropping the fact that the functionists like, experimented on him...there's a lot of implications there, and that'll certainly be explored more later...

the fact that his ID card says ‘rong’ hvbhjakhdsbfakhsjfn 

oughufadkfujbsfk the circle of light throwing wrenches n shit at skids...guys cmon vbhsdjkfnslfd

the circle of light is like ‘wtf you all have trauma and a bunch of weird unhealthy coping mechanisms this is wack byeeeee’ lmao

skids calling the lost light his home is rlly sweet tho

cant believe the religious space hippy cult is being so rude about a film made by a guy who died like a week ago. unreal 

cd finally figured out how to make the pffft sound, good for him

AUGHHHHH the fact that rewind used ‘little victories’ as the title of the film and that's something that chromedome said in the video ;_; I'm fucking inconsolable 

rodimus, despite his obvious posturing for the camera during the whole issue, comes off as surprisingly genuine when he says that he hasn't thought about his own future much, but wants the crew to have a happy ending....im gonna cry

‘who knows what's around the corner?’ tailgate, PLEASE don't say that, oh my god, 

OUGHHHH GROUP SHOT 

OHHH mannnnNNNNN i love this issue SO MUCH. what a good fun emotional rollercoaster wrap-up to mtmte s1. god. 

like, this issue has it all - humor, drama, crippling sadness, intrigue, worldbuilding...it’s so excellent 

and getting to see rewind again hurts so bad but also I love him

ok quick mtmte s1 retrospective...god s1 is so fucking good. I'm gonna have to read more to say which chunk of mtmte I liked best but s1 is so fucking excellent that it might be my favorite. though its hard to pick bc there's so much good stuff later on too...whatever, the point is s1 is so so good

the plotlines and characters are fucking stellar. like I cant even believe how well Everything works, its very impressive. I cant really think of anything major that made me go ‘yeah could've done without that plotline/character’

I love how dedicated jro is to connecting everything. I've mentioned it before but basically every single moment in the series has payoff - what you initially think is just a funny moment, or a fluffy character establishment bit, ends up ALSO being an important plot point later, in some way

an example would be here w/rung and his alt mode - it just seems like a fun little B-plot for this issue, and seems to pretty neatly conclude with the reveal that rung was eventually classified as an ‘ornament’ (lmao)...but we later on get to see a lot more about this, both here and in the functionist universe 

and like, stuff like tailgate’s autobot lessons w/magnus - at first that can be seen as purely character establishment stuff, showing that magnus is a strict rule-lover and tg is a loveable try-hard good boy - but that becomes plot relevant in remain in light, with tailgate saving the day due to his knowledge of the autobot code (and its also character relevant, with magnus’s arc in remain in light). 

and I know this is like. a normal regular thing in writing, but I'm just very impressed about how cleanly jro pulls it off, and how many things he’s juggling at once, especially in early mtmte - it’s very ambitious!

and we gotta remember, this is a comic book. I've read a lot of comic books, and the quality is all over the place. a lot of writers bite off more than they can chew, and the story ends up kinda scattered as a result. 

another thing I see a lot in franchise writing like this is a lack of strong early character establishing due to the author assuming the readers are at least somewhat familiar with the characters already - which can be totally fair depending on where it is in the continuity, but other times it can come off as lazy

in mtmte, the cast is extremely well fleshed out, and not only that, the cast itself is unique in that there are a lot of relative unknowns (franchise-wise) - which I think was an absolutely brilliant move, because then jro was able to essentially create The Definitive Version of these characters - characters like swerve, brainstorm, chromedome, rewind, tailgate...mtmte is their baseline characterization, because they haven't really appeared in much else

this also allows for deviation from the franchise norms - again, a comic book classic is good writing being stifled by a need to stick to a certain status quo regard the characters, the world, the powers, relationships, etc

(I've mostly read DC comics, and some marvel, so I'm thinking superheroes w/all these comic comparisons)

so mtmte had a good recipe for genuine creativity in that the characters were relative unknowns, the plot was basically ‘space road trip,’ the status quo of ‘autobot vs decepticon war’ had been demolished throughout the entire franchise...so jro was able to take all that and run, and it turned out so fantastic

and luckily it isn't over yet! so many comics suffer from premature cancellation...and sadly mtmte/ll isn't exempt from this, as we’ll see later, but I've seen some awful ones, where comics are forced to wrap up in like 2 issues while in the middle of an arc. yikes. 

but another comic staple...one of my least favorite things about comics books in general...something that was basically responsible for driving me away from comics after reading a bunch...the dreaded crossover event

yep, even mtmte isn't immune to this unfortunate plague on the comic industry. crossover events are the absolute worst, and I'm saying this as somebody who adores crossovers (in concept more than execution usually). they SHOULD be my favorite, but unfortunately they p much always completely suck

they're essentially a ploy to get you to read the other ongoing titles, but they usually only serve to bog down whatever story you're reading to the point where you don't even wanna read that one anymore, let alone read all the other ongoings. at least, that’s been my experience 

it doesn't help that reading orders tend to be hard to find/keep track of, and that you need to go read the other series to know what's going on. I just hate it, like, I came here to read THIS series, I don't want a bunch of other series showing up too - even if I was reading two series, I wouldn't want them crossed over, because they're separate stories! augh!

I'm totally losing my focus here but my point is...crossover events suck, and mtmte unfortunately is involved in one. I have not read dark cybertron, and I'm not about to. I've heard nothing but bad things so I have no desire to inflict that upon myself 

soooo ill be reading through the tfwiki articles for those issues to give myself a better understanding of what went on - which is more than I've ever done in the past - and maybe ill even make a single post summarizing my thoughts on what I read in the wiki, lmao

but yea ill be skipping to the mtmte s2 stuff next 

phew ok I'm super tired, my vision keeps blurring out and stuff lmao. its time for bed, I probably have more thoughts but ill save them for later. for now...peace out!

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 33

[sees rewind cover] time to be emo

swerve giving us a nice lil recap of the wild events of slaughterhouse thus far

and then the roll call page...I love how the last one is ‘rewind?!?’

OUGHGHGGHGHGH REWIND TINYYYYYYYYYYYY

I adore that nautica has a list of in-jokes to check off 

ohhhh man I forgot that alt-lost light rewind doesn't really know skids?? bc the alt lost light never picked him up....

POOR REWIND he wakes up all elder scrolls style and then immediately autobot megatron is just There without explanation lmao this poor lil guy

love the casual gender stuff honestly

nightbeat: ayyyy rewind!! sup? what horrific slaughter happened here? spill the tea! 

hvakjdfbskdf poor rewind is going thru it jesus

nautica and riptide hvbhkjasdsfasdfn ‘are jokes not funny where you come from?’ immmmm

nautica is so cute I love her

ohhhhh I love the panel of the two lost lights going off in separate directions with the title right below 

‘I remember it well. kind of’ that's a really funny line actually hbvkdjfnasdfl

I really like how on the alt lost light, rodimus’s risky stunt with the sparkeater actually kills him - I mean I'm glad that didn't happen in the main story but that's such a cool jarring discrepancy 

ok but its inherently VERY funny that the djd like, murdered the entire lost light, but later in the story the lost lighters are obviously still around and not dead...that's so fucking funny, the djd were probably like ????????????????? what the fuck didn't we kill these guys?????? but also they were tripping so they cant be sure

isn't it brainstorm who called the djd on the alt lost light??? oof 

LOVE the continuity of the alt lost light being the place that the djd went at the end of the scavengers 2 parter wayyyy back in the beginning of s1

more horrific slaughter, as one would expect from an arc called ‘slaughterhouse’ 

jeeeesus I forgot how completely fucked up all the shit was for poor rewind 2. christ 

also the like, thematic irony of alt-chromedome refusing to erase rewind from his memory and choosing to die horribly instead....SCREAMS I cant handle it

ITS SO HORRIBLE I'm so sad. poor rewind

‘silly string’ I love riptide

nautica is so smart I lov her 

oooh skids going off on megatron is really good. I find the whole ‘cons are super anti-organic/alien life’ angle interesting, bc it like, Makes Sense that a race of robot aliens who live for millions of years wouldn't consider shorter-lived organic life to be on the same level as them, but its also like, not morally right, so the autobots are correct w/the whole ‘freedom is the right of all sentient beings’ thing...its LAYERED

rewind: ‘I'm tiny’

me, crying: yeah...

honestly I really really love the quantum duplication plot in this arc. its like, peak sci fi nonsense but it also like, Makes Sense, and is presented in a very understandable manner...plus its like, super entertaining and fun, so I just love it

love how they're perusing brainstorms lab and just stumble across a dead body. classic

aaaand the plot thickens, with the reveal that brainstorm is a decepticon????? whoaaaa

I love that twist too oh man. I cannot WAIT for the time travel arc yessss

oof nautica being in denial about brainstorm being a con :( 

I find it kinda funny that getaway is IMMEDIATELY like, punching walls and going full that-one-wack-storm-trooper-from-that-star-wars-movie abt brainstorm being a con lmao, like what's even ur beef dude

when nightbeat is all like, wait there's a Type™ for decepticon double agents? and megatron says ‘hm. have you never been approached?’ bvhjaskdfbaksfd

mannn tho, I love all the character stuff this issue...I love the panels of megatron where he looks mad and crushes brainstorms mask, bc like, he’s gotta be thinking abt the fact that the djd, his personal squad of bloodthirsty attack dogs, were the ones responsible for all of this, as well as overlords presence, and brainstorm secretly being a con....

ok rewind and megatrons interactions are fantastic

like, rewind IS the nice one, but the definition of ‘nice’ is probably a little different than it used to be due to Big Ole War 

how are they propelling themselves in space????

NOOOOOOO I'm so fucking sad, rewind 2 is literally like ‘I'm fine with being deleted from existence bc my husband and everything I knew is gone’ aughhhh

and then megatron lies and tells him that he and chromedome, on the og lost light, are ‘inseparable’ 😭😭😭 I mean I guess that's not a lie if you count cd rewatching rewinds goodbye video on loop...AUGHHH

‘let’s not drag out the goodbyes’ but rewind, what about one of the story’s themes, ‘how to say goodbye and mean it’? 

and we cut off right there for maximum suspense...

omg I love swerve like, fistbumping cyclonus in the chest, and cyclonus is just like ?

skids,,,,,maybe surprising chromedome with his not-so-dead alternate-version husband isn't the best idea...like, this isn't exactly a zero-explanation-necessary kinda situation...

I adore rewinds massive shoulder pads tbh

oh god. GODDDDD. the panels of rewind and chromedome sitting next to each other, not saying anything, and just slowly moving closer to each other while looking out at the stars....literally these gay robots invented romance, thank you very much

I'm so fucking tender guhhhhhhh

like,,,,the fact that both of them separately watched the other die horribly and could do nothing to stop it, and now they're reunited here, and they don't even need to say anything...AUGH.....

OUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I'm sorry I can’t. SO tender

and MANNNN I'm so so glad that rewind is back. I don't always love when characters don't stay dead but I'm completely happy w/it here for multiple reasons, like the fact that I really like rewind and chromedome’s story after this arc - like, I LOVE that they addressed the fact that rewind 2 is different from OG rewind, despite being fundamentally the same person, so he and cd cant just immediately get back together and pretend everything's fine, but also there's really only an 18 month (?i think) disparity between the 2 rewinds which is nothing compared to literal millions of years, soooo

ALSO I literally never considered this until this reread but it would've been kind of an L for rewind to die and stay dead considering that rewind and cd were The First transformers gay couple, and that's a really big deal! and I don't really consider it bury your gays bc like, rewind doesn't stay dead that long and also there are soooo many other gays, but STILL 

plus rewind and cd ended up having a lot of story left to get thru, which is awesome

also I just love rewind so I'm glad he’s back :) 

ok the fact that the suspense over brainstorm being a con still isn't resolved bc not everyone knows....spectacular tbh

don't knock the power of love, nightbeat! 

the briefcaseeeeeee

ok but I really don't remember jros explanation as to why rewind 2 and the briefcase didn't get deleted hvbhjsdkhfk I gotta go look that up again

OHHHHHHHHHH I FORGOT THE EPILOGUE IS THIS. OHHHHH MANNNNNN THIS IS ONE OF MY FAV PARTS 

BRAINSTORMMMMMMMMM ILYYYYYYYYY

I fucking love this scene bc this is basically the culmination of brainstorm being Completely Ominous for the entire story thus far, like, it really hit me this readthru that brainstorm was so totally sinister for like most of his screentime up until this arc...and this scene is the pinnacle, I love how everything brainstorm says is overlaid with so much tension for the reader bc of what we know now about him

like brainstorm saying ‘yes - here’s to fixing things’ is so fucking sinister even though out of context that sentence is just normal

and when atomizer basically voices what the entire audience is thinking as brainstorm opens the briefcase - ‘brainstorm, you can’t do that.’ bc yeah, what the hell, he’s opening THE briefcase, Oh Shit

AND THEN THE FINAL SHOT....brainstorm front and center looking SCARY AS HELL.... ‘I can do whatever the hell I like.’....everyone suddenly collapsed around him...the fantastic shadowy lighting...the ominously open briefcase...the clear segue Directly into the next high-concept arc....[chefs kiss] ART

seriously I love this issue so much. SO many good things. such good character stuff, really great interactions, some fantastic plot development, super creative sci-fi fun times...all around just an extremely solid and enjoyable issue, 10 outta 10

and MAN OH MAN I cannot wait to get into the elegant chaos arc, it fucking SLAPS, that arc and remain in light have always been my favs, I'm so excited to revisit it 

AND ruth bought the physical comic TPB for like issues 34-38 or something and I'm so so glad I can read that instead of braving the many split-up double page spreads on the online comic 

so yeah, cant wait!

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 32

SLAUGHTERHOUSE BABEY

mannnn I love the full-page spread of the lost light all broken up in space with the red quantum stuff looking like blood...fucked up and excellent

‘two words: paradox’ I love riptide sooooo much holy shit

tbh ‘that's the lost light from the future/coffin-rodimus is future rodimus’ is a much more realistic hypothesis than ‘quantum duplication’ 

I love so much that nautica is a science nerd from a planet of theater kids. that's like, SO funny

nautica saying ‘poppet’ hvbhjdafbsjkf the british just Jumps Out sometimes when jro writes

so nautica missed the whole ‘beast mode tf are people too’ thing, as well as the ‘gender’ thing lol

nautica is a SPACE SUBMARINE that's so fucking cool

riptide saying ‘epic fail’ hbvhjskdbhfkasndf

ahhhh man I love the mystery here, bc all signs point to megatron being the one who did this in the future, but....

nautica and nightbeat have a rlly good dynamic too. and I love the little  worldbuilding w/caminus - they too have amica and conjunx!

also I think this is the first time we hear about amica which I love...Official Best Friends!! So good!!!

nauticas wrench is my favorite character

THE BRIEFCASE..............nightbeat do NOT open that 

they locked megatron and ravage up....in a storage closet. yeah guys I'm sure that'll hold em lmao

ooooh man the whole convo between ravage and megatron is soooo fucking good

like...idek what to say abt it other than Its Rlly Good....I really enjoy this characterization of megatron, as like, a tired old man who is just now realizing how many mistakes he’s made and trying to rectify at least a few of them...plus I love ravage, and having him in mtmte is cool, I feel like we get to see a lot of ravage as a character on his own (like, apart from soundwave) which I like

damn they were chilling with some dead bodies this whole time. fucked up 

crying abt how drift and ratchet died together on the alt-LL, gahhhhhh

oh god the panels of nautica and nightbeat w/the briefcase confused me so fucking much when I first read this vhbjdaabjfaskfb they're numbered tho! thank god for that at least?

also I cant BELIEVE they opened the briefcase smh

tailgate oh god :(

NOT ANOTHER BASEMENT

skids and getaway...they have such an interesting dynamic, I wish we’d seen more of it (plus their history together)

this issue is so fucking gorey and horror-y, jesus. I love how all of this is allowed but nobody can say ‘shit’ 

overlords decapitated body just hanging there...jeeeesus

oh I love the panel of the djd all posing with the sylized text saying ‘decepticon justice division’ on it...that's so Comic Book™, I love it

nautica is very useful for not really knowing much about the war, so we get to have some good exposition delivered to her and therefore the audience as well

I love how many pages in this issue have the panels overlaying the space-and-bloody-quantum-foam background

SERIOUSLY THIS ISSUE IS SO GOREY. OH MY GOD

megs my man maybe you should've planned for the djd to go hog wild and done something to prevent it 

the djd as a concept is so interesting, espec since in-story they basically serve as handy representation for exactly how the decepticon cause went bad, so pitting them thematically against a reformed megatron is really cool

REWIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oughhghghh ;_; rewind.......he.........

so fucked up that rewind has been hiding in the dead shell of the magnus armor for like. a long ass time. just surrounded by dead bodies. jesus

AUGH this issue is really really good. oof. lots of great horror/gore elements, especially seeing a lot of our main cast dead in horrible ways. plus the worldbuilding and character stuff continues, with a really good convo between megatron and ravage, and some quality nautica screentime

a lot of intrigue too, with the seemingly-solved mystery suddenly deepening, and the briefcase being opened but in a way that leave us w/more questions than answers, and also REWIND????? 

so yeah cant wait for more! plus we’re coming up on what might be my favorite arc...cant wait!

#lj rereads mtmte #whoops forgot to post this like a week ago

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 9

back at it again, and its time for the shadowplay arc, HELL yeah

oh I'm so excited i love this arc lets DO this

oooh its nightbeat and quark!! way before they become relevant, which is so cool

‘one of those recepticon fanatics’ lmao imagine if they were...the recepticons. just doesn't have the same ring to it 

god i fucking love all the politics of mtmte. i love how they’re talking about the senate here before we really get to See how bad they were (we heard a bit about it from whirl a few issues ago, and now here)

love how nightbeat is pretty much agreeing with the decepticon ideology here, even if its clear that he isn't Actually a decepticon - it just drives home the fact that, in this story, The Decepticons Were Right About A Lot Of That Stuff (or at least, they had a reason other than ‘destruction’ for rebelling). 

AND THEN THERES RUNG!!!!!!! WITH HIS MODEL OF THE LOST LIGHT....god i fuckgin LOVE the continuity in this story bc the first time reading this ur like oh ok rung is old yea makes sense...but then later all the time travel stuff happens and then its like OHHHHH 

damn poor rung nightbeat can rlly tell he's lonely just by looking at him vbhjdkdfhbjsjkdf geez. also nightbeat that's ur mystery stick bf from the future js!!

quarks extreme POV on all of the stuff is so interesting, and makes so much sense bc of Course he would think that as a non-combatant scientist who, due to his functional value in current society, wouldn't really benefit much from a revolution - in fact, he’d probably lose a lot. and that’s the sort of thing where you’re like, ok well think about everyone else dude, have some perspective - but at the same time, quark did suffer a pretty terrible fate, so his fears weren't entirely unfounded...augh, its so fascinating...im sorry I'm not gonna shut up about space robot politics this Entire time

HOW did nobody notice that dead body before now

ratchet spray-painting the hands he stole from pharma to match his own paintjob is like...kinda gruesome if you think about it hvbhsjkdfbkjdf

i love rewind sooo much oh my god 

he rlly stashed rung’s comatose body in a wheelchair behind the bar hbkjdhfbshjkdf rewind 

rewind and chromedome’s tag-team explanation....ough hhhhh THEM 

wait a sec, rewind, you have medical records in your database? that is, at least according to regular medical laws, very illegal lmao. my favorite long-running theme in mtmte: the fact that hipaa and osha laws on cybertron are either basically nonexistent, or just universally disregarded 

what the actual fuck is up w/cybertronian time units. that shit is wack as hell 

ooh i love how chromedome looks different in the flashback - no shoulder tires! - that's a cool detail

how come prowl just said ‘minute,’ rewind was busting it up w/all the wack ass fantasy time units just a second ago. geez

also goddd i love the scenery of pre-war cybertron, its SUCH a cool setting like, visually and aesthetically and politically

like, i adore details like the sign in the bg that says ‘everyone’s shape serves a purpose.’ really adds to the ‘society on the precipice of civil war currently controlled by an increasingly-desperate faction who are doling out propaganda like crazy in an attempt to maintain their image and control over the populace’ vibe

good ole murder mystery setup. love it!

pre-war prowl is such an interesting character. actually prowl in general is such an interesting character...I kinda wrote him off during my first read of mtmte (and even a little during my second readthru) as just this dude who’s an asshole (espec bc my prev tf experience involved watching tfa as a kid, and this prowl is very different from tfa prowl lol)...but prowl is SUCH a multi-faceted and interesting character, even in the relatively little we see of him in mtmte 

plus it was interesting to learn later that prowl was one of the characters that jro wanted for mtmte and didn't get, and MAN i wish he got prowl bc I would've loved to see what jro would've done w/prowl on the lost light, that would've been amazing. like, just imagine the arc he would have...I have no idea what that arc would BE, but I know it would be awesome. plus I’d be really interested to see how prowl would factor in, relationships-wise, amongst the crew of the lost light. so much potential!

anyways. I'm in a very talky mood tonight it seems. its currently 4 am so that kinda explains it. ok, moving on!

chromedome and prowl bantering....in their own morbid forensic-cop way...

skids bvhjdbsfjasf. speaking what we’re all thinking: is prowl gonna keep showing up in mtmte despite not technically being part of the cast??

swerves drawing of prowl lmaoooo

AND THEN REWIND IN SOME OF MY FAVORITE MTMTE PANELS....fuckgin cracks me up every time god. rewind was rlly about to flip their entire ass table just to demonstrate that prowl is a serial table-flipper...and then he cant even make the table budge and he just stares at his hands like ‘how could you betray me like this’ hvbajkhhsfdhksdf PEAK hilarity

drift hvbshfdjbasdfj his forcibly cheery expression even tho he’s being harassed by rodimus, who is a big whiny toddler w/drift lmao 

rodimus is the type of guy who, upon drift not replying to one of his texts, would post a whole twitter thread being all like ‘these days u cant trust any1 to hav ur back...u think u kno someone and then they just ghost you...(1/14)’

again, rewind, HOW and WHY do you just Have medical reports, oh my god, somebody please call a hipaa agent I’m scared, 

ratchet interrupting the story to give a quick medical PSA....that's Such an on-brand thing for Me to do that I feel like jro is assigning me ratchet kin as I read this

also, hey, its sonic and boom, those two decepticons from delphi! nice little continuity there

AND HERES ORION PAX SUPER COP

can’t believe idw made my dad optimus prime into a cop. smh. shouldn't be that shocked tho, I feel like half the idw characters are cops

orion rlly hit them w/the omae wa mo shinderu arrest strat

orion: I cant believe you're beating this guy up. anyways, now I'm gonna beat YOU up,

when ratchet puts his hand over drifts mouth and then gets spray paint on drifts face bhjdfsvsdjhfgbjdskf

pre-war ratchet and drift ;_; ratchet’s little inspirational speech...the fact that he tells drift that he’s special...the fact that drift remembered all of this even after 4 million+ yrs...it gets me bro it GETS me

ALSO the layers in the fact that drift then goes on to become a well-known murderous decepticon...so this little scene of him and ratchet in the past gives a lot of context to ratchet’s general attitude towards drift - ratchet clearly feels at least somewhat responsible for all the blood on drift’s hands, since he saved drift’s life way back in the day

the whole relinquishment clinic thing is such cool worldbuilding, bc of course that's the kind of thing that would develop in a society of robot aliens who are only allowed to work within the rigid confines of their alt mode 

I love the whole matrix thing bc its kinda like being the pope or st but also you have a ton of political sway, so its a super important position, so of Course the corrupt senate would want full control over that power, and would assassinate the current prime to try to get their own guy in 

god vhbhjsdkbgshjdf rodimus is such a dick lmao poor drift

HHHHH I love that the cybertronian version of an autopsy is taking the dudes body apart into the smallest components and laying them all out. that's so fucking cool

hmmmm chromedome maybe you should Not be interested in mnemology, how about that,

oh god. time to start being sad about op and senator shockwave. oh god

senator shockwave more like senator sexy 

also the first time I read this I thought I had just missed his name and like halfway thru the story I went back and scoured the pages looking for it hbvhsjdfbshgfdsbj then I was like oh ok so we’re maybe supposed to just know who this guy is from another comic? but NOPE it was very deliberate and I only realized very close to the end that they were setting up some sort of reveal

its funny bc normally I'm not a huge fan of stories where politics play a huge role but I fuckgin love it here, the politics and worldbuilding is all so interesting and also balanced out with a healthy dose of cool sci-fi hijinks, so

lmao there's chromedome being obsessed w/people making the ‘pfft’ sound 

also wow yet more hindsight, maybe you Shouldn’t be so interested in the Institute, chromedome, 

OHHHH shit I forgot abt the red alert stuff happening at the same time as this :( :( :( 

AUGHHH what a fucked up situation. god 

oooof i gotta continue now!! what a solid issue, I love the shadowplay arc

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 21

and here we go w/the end of the remain in light arc! 

TAILGATE COMIN THRU W/THE SAVE, AS SOON AS THE ISSUE BEGINS...my BOY!!!!!!!!!!!

real Q is how tg managed that 9 ft vertical leap to reach tyrests head

tailgate is so brave and smart I love him ;_; 

don't!!!!!! hit him tyrest!!!!!!! bastard!!!!!!!

AUGHHHH seriously tailgate is so brave, telling rodimus to kill tyrest even if it means tailgate will die even sooner - cause we know that even tho tg technically has a day and a half to live, he was hoping to find a cure on the moon - so he’s choosing to sacrifice that chance, however slim, to save everybody ;_; I love him

BUT THEN THE BIG SAVE FROMMMMMM - MINIMUS!!!!!!!!! HE ISNT DEAD, YAY!

‘fully deserved’ MINIMUS ILY 

‘this calamitous life,’ the amazing titles continue. jro seriously has a knack for titles 

OOOOH NOW WE GET THE SUPER SEXY PANEL OF CYCLONUS...the one where he’s half-shadowed with his sword, walking towards star saber as he challenges him...fucking epic you goth gay

and then the fucking ICONIC part where star saber is like ‘so I'm a religious zealot and that's why I fight, why do YOU fight?’ and cyclonus, never one for meaningless battle talk, just says ‘its personal’ and STABS OUT STAR SABERS FUCKING EYE WITH HIS HORN. CAN YOU SAY ICON??????

aughhhhh and then he says ‘[primus] lets the best of us get sick and die...,’ he’s talking about tailgate AUGHHHH he’s already in so deep, phewww

also can I just say. the harsh black shading/shadowing around cyclonus on these pages? fucking fantastic, it looks so damn good 

especially cause star saber isn't shaded like that, so he looks brighter/lighter compared to cyclonus - that contrast is just [chefs kiss]

don't worry, cyclonus, you'll get your rematch. eventually

OHHHH I love the panel of rodimus like DAD WTF????? and minimus is just SO TINY 

also I like the contrast of rodimus being covered in like, various chips and nicks and then minimus looks pristine bc he’s been russian nesting doll’d for who knows how long

minimus punching his way out of his own body shell? fucking gnarly 

oh okay so we DO see brainstorm dying cause of the killswitch

wow pharma really escaped from his restraints like 4 seconds after being tied up, jesus guys he was RIGHT THERE how did nobody notice that

rung, is the reason you cant go thru the portal bc you feel guilty about the many hipaa violations you've committed? is that why?

SKIDS MAYBE YOU SHOULDNT GO THRU THE MYSTERY PORTAL MADE BY A CRAZY ZEALOT??? MAYBE THATS A BAD IDEA???

who am I kidding, this is skids we’re talking about, this is the kinda stuff he does

pharma why does everything you say and do have such horny energy to it

oh first aid looking SCARY AS HELL over here

again, love the harsh shading on first aid’s face here as he solidifies his murderous intent into actual murder

and there he goes blasting pharma’s entire head off. phewwwwww. so pharma definitely deserved that, but poor first aid

rung watching this happen: welp there's another extremely traumatized person to add to my mile-long list of ‘people who really really need therapy’ 

alternatively...rung: don't worry first aid he probably isn't dead, the same thing happened to me and I survived :) 

first aid: biTCH WHAT [grabs gun]

rlly tho poor first aid, even tho pharma really did deserve that, that's still really tough for somebody who, yknow, dedicated their life to healing people

like, pharma is out here disregarding the hippocratic oath in the most extra and horny way possible, but first aid is putting aside his vows in the saddest way possible (sad for him, not pharma)

also the fact that even if pharma is dead, that doesn't make ambulon any less dead either, PLUS all of the bs w/delphi...first aid’s rlly been thru it huh

good thing perceptor is here to whip up a completely ridiculous sci-fi device at the last possible second

also, rodimus t-posing...or rather jesus-posing...I see it

oh my god minimus is so fcking tiny. I cant...I love it. I'm so sad we never got to see his alt mode 

percy: yeaahhhhh this might kill you. anyways, FOR SCIENCE! 

NOOOO DONT LET TYREST SPEAK

oh god and then minimus tells rodimus that he disapproves of his leadership skills, just as rodimus is about to maybe die. phewwww brutal 

and then minimus just tears into him about specific incidents (including possibly mentioning thunderclash? I cant remember the timeline on all that lmao)

ooooof I completely forgot that magnus DID lure them there - though obviously he thought things would go a bit different

HHHHHHHHHHHHH MANNNN and then rodimus admits to it - he brought overlord on board. whoa! 

I remember that shocked me when I first read it. I was also like, damn how many people brought overlord on board????? it seemed like a lot lmao

god and the fact that prowl goaded rodimus into doing it by being all like ‘what are you SCARED?????’ oooof. that's a blow, the fact that rodimus let that get to him instead of saying ‘uh yeah why would I NOT be scared of overlord’ and telling prowl to screw off

GOD I love rodimus, he’s such a flawed and interesting character

perceptor, who probably heard all of that and really wishes he didn't: ok guys ready to do science????

but rodimus, self-sacrifice is the (optimus) prime way!

now we go over to skids, to see what he’s up to...I fucking ADORE the scenery, mannnnnnnnnn

skids is such a good boy, he just sees this weird glowy orb and is like ‘hi there! hello!’ so GOOD

and then the orb starts talking in pictures, which is sure something!

ahHA I see that symbol!!! I see what's going on here!

and the last-minute science McGuffin worked! woohoo!

the tiny swerve in the corner of the panel where the legislators storm in....TINY

mannn I just love the lighting in the panels w/cyclonus and whirl. so atmospheric

cyclonus, you cant kill whirl, he’s gonna turn out to be your ultimate wingman 

oh god the panel of skids running out of the portal just reminded me that his feet are so wack hbvsdjkhfbhjksdf and that one post talking abt it where someone edited crocs onto him...never forget

pharmas body being stolen 👀👀👀

ALSO look I figured out emojis on the computer! I'm such a tech genius lmao 

I love minimus firing a gun that's as big if not bigger than he is

there goes tailgate being tiny and brave again 😭

THE SEMI COLONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

TAILGATE MVPPPPP

but then he just falls over 😭😭😭

and we’re back on the lost light! time to figure out what’s happened in the meantime

GODDDDDDDDDDDD IM LOSING IT IM STR8 UP LOSING IT....cyclonus singing to tailgate the whole time that he’s dying....im gonna cry

oh god the panel where cyclonus is bowing his head over tailgate, and the death clock is just There, reading 11 minutes....HHHHHH

GOD GOD GOD and then the heartcrushing reveal that tailgate was literally fucking 2 WEEKS OLD when he was trapped for 6 million years, so essentially he’s been alive for like a year and a half, GOD, 

and it’s like, tfs aren't ever really babies or children - I mean, tg may be 2 wks old but he clearly was operating as an adult right before he was trapped - but still man, STILL

and godddd tailgate’s whole little speech about how saving the day is overrated compared to the little moments in life, like movie night or hanging out at the bar with friends....that GETS ME man, that's so poignant and real and relatable, bc often the best things in life are the small moments...AUGH 

seriously I've talked a lot about how much I commend jro for writing the cybertronians as such Aliens, with their own completely unique culture and world that arose from them being quasi-immortal alien robots, but I also have to admire how relatable and human a lot of the writing is - the emotions come through so solidly, and really pack a punch. there's a perfect balance of completely foreign sci-fi worldbuilding and touchingly relatable emotional beats....fantastic stuff

anyways. time to continue to feel Big Emotions 

fuck that's so messed up, tailgate asking cyclonus to mercy kill him...like it isn't fucked up for tailgate to ask that, because he’s dying and of course he doesn't want it to be worse than it already will be, but the situation is just so fucked up and tragic

hhhh but cyclonus would never kill tailgate because he’s holding on to hope until the very last minute....

I fuckgin love that panel of cyclonus enthusiastically running thru the halls. he has great form

‘yeah we found a cure but it’s too late for tailgate’ that's fucking brutal, jesus

also, swerve taking a break from bartending to bust out some science and cure cybercrosis, nice

I know I literally haven't shut up about it this entire time but the whole page where cyclonus comes in and stabs tailgate thru the chest just looks so 👌🏼👌🏼

now that I've figured out emojis I'm unstoppable 

anyways, cant believe they really let us think that cyclonus mercy killed tg like that, jesus

tho iirc jro really WAS gonna kill tailgate originally, but then decided not to which, thank god

and there's magnus, back to being Large and In Charge

and rodimus didn't die! nice. you've still got plenty of character development in store for you my boy 

looking very sinister and mad-scientist-y there, brainstorm....

god I love brainstorm. I cant fuckign wait til the time travel arc

ok wtf happened to tyrest???? I mean we’ll eventually find out what happened to him but like, did rodimus & co just leave him there? he clearly wasn't dead...shouldn't they have arrested him or something?

ooooh the ominous shot of luna 1 with The Symbol and stuff....hellooooo

then we flash to cyclonus - now sporting two horns!!! - saying that tailgate is ALIVE!!! thank goodness.....

ah, I love magical alien robot medical nonsense so much

see cyclonus? aren't you glad you didn't kill whirl now?

so cyclonus basically has the spark of a newborn, and tailgate is essentially a newborn - yet they're both also old men...they're a perfect match 

and the final panel of magnus telling cyclonus ‘welcome aboard’ 🥰🥰

so, this issue! THIS ISSUE....this ARC....ill talk about the issue first - as I said frequently above, I feel like the art and colors were especially strong this issue, with all the different settings having very unique palettes and visual tones. the shadowing stuff was my favorite, and I also think the paneling was really good - there were multiple pages where the entire page was one drawing, and it was overlaid w/other panels and then the background drawing is visible in the middle/bottom - it’s hard to describe but I think it looks so dynamic and cool

as for the actual story this issue...SO good. things were tied together so nicely, both for this arc and the entire series as a whole so far, and we got plenty more intrigue for future issues even as we closed out a lot of big plot points, and had a lot of status quo changes (no more matrix map! we found luna 1...but lots of crazy shit happened there! etc!)

particularly, the reveal that rodimus was in on the whole overlord thing...that was shocking and perfect, and puts all the previous issues in a new light. this is where I feel like mtmte is a series you absolutely need to read twice (at least), preferably in quick succession (which is what I did - I read it once then before I even finished started reading thru w/ruth, which also helped me pick up on a lot bc I had to explain stuff to her)

anyways, that reveal makes drift’s banishment even more brutal, bc rodimus got off basically fine, along with brainstorm and chromedome (though cd losing rewind was certainly punishment enough). I love the scene of magnus tearing into rodimus about his leadership skills, right as rodimus is ABOUT TO MAYBE DIE. magnus thats kinda brutal, I love it.

as we’ve seen in the series so far, rodimus is definitely a Flawed Hero (all the incidents that magnus brings up prove that), but I feel like this reveal takes it to the next level, and I love that. and I love rodimus saying that he doesn't want to die, he wants to live so he can atone - also, looking at the series as a whole, I adore that this wasn't like, The Final Turning Point for rodimus - it wasn't like he went all uphill from here, development wise...nope, he goes on to make plenty more mistakes, and has to learn from those too, because that's how it works! and I love that 

oh man what I also love about rodimus - he seems at first to be the ‘overly confident loose canon action hero star’ type who thinks on the fly and gets it right every time, even if things realistically shouldn't always go his way - but we quickly find out that that isn't quite the case, and I feel like it culminates here w/the overlord reveal. like, yeah, that was a huge fuckup, and you wouldn't really see the blandly perfect 80s blockbuster protag do something like that - or rather, it wouldn't be framed as a big deal 

my last liveblog was for hxh, a show that subverts a LOT of shounen anime tropes, and I feel like rodimus’s complex, flawed approach to heroism feels a bit like a genre subversion a la hxh - at the very least, it’s a subversion of what you expect from him as a character upon introduction and first impressions 

anyways - I talked abt it above, but I feel like this arc is really the culmination of the whole blending of ‘very human emotions’ with ‘completely alien sci-fi worldbuilding.’ we get to learn a lot about the tfs with the reemergence of luna 1, and we get a lot of threads for future worldbuilding here - but we also get some really fantastic, complex emotions - like tailgate and cyclonus’s (seemingly doomed) romance starting to blossom, ratchet and pharma’s showdown which culminates in tragedy, magnus having the grapple with his identity, rodimus’s deathbed confession, even smaller moments like whirls speech about why he doesn't get ‘fixed,’ and first aid killing pharma then collapsing with grief - there's so much good stuff 

also, I gotta talk about magnus bc I love him...the whole russian nesting doll lore is one of my absolute favorite things that mtmte brought to the table, the whole concept is fantastic and adds so many layers to magnus’s character

I just love the magnus armor as this literal physical embodiment of a job - its like minimus is wearing his ‘work clothes’ All The Time. so obviously, storytelling wise, you gotta take that away and see what happens. and I love how this begins minimus’s arc of self-acceptance that spans basically the entire series - it’s seriously one of my favorite character arcs in the whole series, in part because of how subtle it is - it never really takes center stage at any point, we just see the slow progression as the story more forward. aughhhh I just love magnus, he’s such an interesting character

also, Latin talk - I adore the fact that ‘magnus’ basically means ‘big’ (or ‘great/greatest’) - like in your skull, the largest hole that your brainstem passes through in your ‘foreman magnum’ (translation: ‘big hole’) - meanwhile ‘minimus’ is Latin for ‘small/smallest’ (or something along those lines). it’s so poetic, I love it

ill defs talk more about rodimus and magnus and stuff at a later point - ill also do my biological/reproductive spiel at some point, bc I couldn't really find a good chance here. bummer 

more at the end, but I gotta read the short story first!

oh man I almost forgot about the canon fanfic here at the end, so: the sound of breaking glass! let’s do it!

so we pick back up during the span of time right after all the on-page Drama - glad we’re filling that stuff in, mostly bc I love the characters and want to see more of them

love the snippets of all the calls that rodimus makes

minimus noting that rodimus has ‘given more orders in the space of 3 minutes than he had in the last 12 months,’ wow. I feel like that has to be in response to minimus criticizing his leadership - and rodimus definitely looks up to magnus as a leader (and bc magnus is his dad ok) and took what he said to heart

goddddd minimus and rodimus having a serious and depressing convo about how many people have died in the last day or so, and then brainstorm skips into the vicinity and dances around (I'm assuming bc SCIENCE!)....glad you’re having a good time, brainstorm, because literally nobody else is. I fuckgin love brainstorm. king of not reading the atmosphere

I feel like rung meeting w/max for an unofficial therapy session in a busted up bar perfectly represents the state of the mental health facilities of cybertron/its affiliates

rodimus talking about redecorating - aw my boy, but that stuffs part of your personality, you don't have to suppress it to be more professional 

I do find it interesting that rodimus’s idea for what he’d have instead in his office - only the basics, and a memorial - seems like the kind of thing that magnus would do. I feel like in telling magnus about the overlord stuff, and magnus criticizing rodimus, rodimus is (consciously or not) trying to make himself more like magnus 

also, rodimus my man, changing your office to be more ‘serious’ isn't the kind of atonement you should be looking to do - in fact, that seems more performative than anything, trying to change people’s perception of him as a leader rather than making changes that will actively prevent similar mistakes from repeating in the future. I'm totally overanalyzing but I love rodimus okay, he’s so interesting bc he’s always Trying, in some way 

oh god I forgot there's a little flashback to drift and rodimus’s final convo w/the whole overlord thing

hhhhhhhhhh rodimus and drifts relationship is so fascinating and I could talk abt it for ages. the fact that drift basically always tells rodimus what he wants to hear, and that's an arrangement that benefits both of them, but they're also surprisingly aware of it? and there's a lot more depth too, with rodimus being very aware of the fact that drift had to spend a lot of time gaining trust w/the autobots, and drift likely thinking about how rodimus trusting him probably gave him cred in this respect...

AUGHHHH and the fact that rodimus seems 100% ready to take the fall for this and resign as captain and whatnot....

and then drift wont let him - but even so, drift taking the whole fall and being exiled was pretty rough (which is talked abt in brainstorms trial later), and rodimus has to feel super guilty for that too, wondering if there were other options...

meanwhile at swerves bar...does brainstorm not remember the whole thing where getaway took the briefcase clamps to use in the escape from the cell? I'm assuming brainstorm consented to this...there was a lot of wacky thought warfare type stuff going on this arc so who knows. or maybe someone did tamper w/the case aside from that - I genuinely don’t remember lmao

‘brainstorm laughed and clapped swerve on the shoulder, agitating an old injury and making the bartender flinch’ OOOH I SEE THAT 👀👀👀

god I love how threatening and sinister pre-time travel arc brainstorm is, god. I love brainstorm 

and the 0.1%er spark!!! helloooo

the mental imagine of minimus with just the lower leg part of the magnus armor on lmao...He Boot Too Big For He Gotdam Feet 

oooh I love that ratchet knew about the armor this whole time...

oh man I love what ratchet says about how people who’ve known ultra magnus for a long time ‘make allowances’ to account for differences in personality brought on by different suit wearers...that makes a lot of sense actually. the kind of retroactive thinking of like, ‘yeah I've known this person for ages, could've sworn they quite weren't like this before, but...yknow, it’s not like they're THAT different, I'm probably just remembering wrong/time changes people’

its trippy as hell to read getaway and rodimus interacting in a way that isn't absolutely rife with conflict and drama

oh I see getaway casually wondering about being a matrix-bearer, I SEE that

I do really like fort max becoming the new enforcer, and as rodimus says, just bc tyrest lost his marbles doesn't mean the position isn't still important - it still holds a lot of weight and power 

RED ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😭💕 I'm so glad he came back and also gets to go retire and join a polycule. blessed

‘he pictured ultra magnus listening to him and nodding sagely at his words’ rodimus ily

oh ok so tyrest is like, in a (possibly medically induced) coma of sorts

and they FINALLY got comms up and running - that only took most of the story 

oh my god and the reveal that STARSCREAM is the one leading cybertron....bro bvhjakdhnfjksdf

omg outrigger, isn't he the youtube vlogger guy?

welp, that coma sure didn't keep tyrest down for long. first pharma escaping his bonds within seconds, now this...

also I'm assuming the implication here is that tyrest clenching his fist like that activated the same type of switch as in the magnus armor - I wonder if there were theories about tyrest also being a small dude in armor lol

THE END! of this arc that is. and s1 of mtmte I believe? or I think issue 22 is the end of the season proper? ill do my s1 retrospective then, this particular liveblog is already so long

anyways, final thoughts - as I talked about above, I love this arc SO much, the overarching story was great, the way it tied together so much of the series so far was great, the characters and relationships were great - I love it. 

reading it now, I feel like so much bonkers stuff happened this arc, and yet even CRAZIER stuff happens later, and often in much quicker succession, so this arc feels kinda normal in comparison bvjahdknfajksdfnkjl

but I do think that mtmte does a great job building up to that craziness - things do get pretty crowded in lost light just bc it had to be rushed, but other than that factor, I think the scale/ambition of the plotlines are perfectly built up to as the story moves along

so yeah, I still love this arc. I'm curious if it’ll still be my fav arc alongside the time travel arc - idk, I feel like I might end up being surprised by another arc I didn't consider that'll knock remain in light out of its spot

tho I will say, the arcs are all so different in a lot of ways that its hard to really compare them, even tho its all the same story. I love all of it tbh 

so yeah, this liveblog ended up being super fucking long but mannnn great arc! cant wait for more!

#lj rereads mtmte #this is so damn long lmao

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 20

almost wrote 200 instead of 20, lmao I wish 

goddddd I LOVE the cover of rodimus holding tailgate who is SO tiny augh its precious 

also rlly like the nick roche cover of tyrest looking manic, having just drilled a hole in his head...nice roches art has such a unique energy to it, I love it

oh man, so much going on in the first page...the overlay text of first aid talking to ratchet about ambulon, minimus’s decapitated body, getaway freed in the cell and tailgate’s death timer ticking lower, and then finally ratchet working on poor ambulon

yikes, pharma is such an asshole...ambulon didn't deserve to be caught in the crossfire of all that drama

‘arm the lonely,’ another absolute banger of a title

‘it’s a great sword’ ‘its certainly impressive’ cyclonus, ily, 

and then this golden exchange: ‘your friend is clearly devout.’ ‘sorry, my what?’ whirl, ily, 

meanwhile...getaway is here! bastard man himself, before he’s fully revealed as a bastard man. I do wish we got to spend more time w/skids and getaway, bc their relationship is super fascinating to me and I really wish we’d seen more of it 

remember when jro said they were a ‘hot duo’ on the lost light? I love that lmao 

getaway calling rodimus ‘hot rod,’ immediately those two aren't vibing

‘quantum foam’....I love mtmte 

and then getaway tries to throw magnus under the bus, implying that he’s in on the plan w/tyrest and lured them there...yeah right man 

‘smite them’ tyrest can you chill for ONE MINUTE OF YOUR LIFE-

ooh, time for some backstory on skids (and getaway) - I've always loved stuff like this, bc its kinda ambiguous, since it’s all coming from getaway, and even if most of it is clearly true, there could be omissions or small lies in there...mtmte does a good job leaving space like that sometimes 

fuckgin....thought warfare. bruh. its so fucking wild, and god, I love it, its like peak ridiculous sci-fi played completely straight and its so fun

love that getaway is being noticeably vague about ‘the boss,’ we figure its prowl but its interesting that getaway isn't willing to divulge that even tho its obvious (as rodimus later points out)

all the memory stuff is awesome tbh

oooooof, I love first aid ripping into ratchet, fucking brutal. poor first aid tho, I can see why he’d feel that way, especially in his position, and then ratchet turns around and immediately proves that he’s still got it

turning ambulon’s dead body into a giant fuckign laser....hardcore

I do have to question...how the fuck does ratchet know how to do that?? like, you could say that he’s such a good medic that he can figure it out, but I don't buy it. he’s done this before, I'm sure of it. and I really wanna know how and why and when 

and then ratchet is big enough to admit that first aid has a point, ough 

I fuckgin love how down w/murder first aid is. he’s like, hippocratic oath WHOMST??? my buddy just got murdered so it’s time to do unto others how they do unto our coworkers. now give me that gun

seriously I fuckign love ratchet pulling the whole ‘if we kill him we’re no better than he is’ thing and first aid is like ‘yeah no if we kill him he’s dead, which is epic, soooo’

and then there's the panel of rodimus carrying tailgate ;_; HES SO FUCKING TINYYYY

also I love chromedome with a huge ass fucking gatling gun. I think I said it before but ill say it again - chromedome is a huge fucking nerd who cant fight, idk and idc if canon says otherwise, its true

ratchet just holding tg up....bc he tiny......

hhhhh tailgate I feel like you should've listened to cyclonus...pharma probably isn't gonna help you, and who knows if the miracle tools can even cure cybercrosis

damn, dai atlas vs star saber is like the xtreme religious dude showdown of the century

OH SHITTTT I forgot dai atlas fucking dies

rodimus kicking the door down lmao, what an icon

really love the shadowed drawings in this issue 

also, poor minimus :( and rodimus yet again thinking magnus is dead...oof

and then poor brainstorm gets shot for no reason. Ls

tyrests chin is insane

tyrest: I Was Threatened By A Flashy Twunk...What Happened Next Will Shock You

WEAPON OF MASS SUGGESTION....I canNOT deal w/the wordplay in mtmte hhbvjkdbhfksndbhfk

ooooh I love the montage of all the different cold constructed bots being attacked by the killswitch

I like that we get a whole page w/the scavengers...I lov them and their continuing misadventures 

fulcrum: where the fuck is the wet ass pussy ship??????

I love that we DONT see brainstorm being impacted by the killswitch, even tho he would be as an mto - but from his comments earlier in this arc, we’re kinda supposed to assume he was forged at this point, and we wont hear about his mto backstory til later 

and there goes tyrest, into his crazy dude portal...good luck man you're gonna need it

ahhh, great issue! this one has a bit less action (at least, until the end), and is more about moving the story forward and explaining a lot that we’ve seen in this arc so far. and gotta say, I love it! I really like all the stuff we learn about this issue, and the character stuff (always fantastic). cant wait for the conclusion!

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 19

it’s 2021 now!! time for more transformers 

we start off w/a flashback showing tyrest retrieving ultra magnus’s body from the ship - and we get a look at magnus’s spark, which is the green color of a 0.1%er [eyes emoji]

tyrest punching magnus..... grrrrr leave my dad alone bastard man

‘the divided self’ what a good title 

rodimus is like listen man this is a lot for my poor thot brain to take in

in flashback land, we see tyrest immediately launch into a crazy person spiel about how he can and will edit the law as he sees fit to conform to the situation, because that doesn't seem like a blatant abuse of power or a huge conflict of interest or anything 

oooh the screen in the corner that says ‘thought warfare,’ I see that

oof, poor magnus. its gotta be rough to hear your boss rant about how bad at your job you are....especially bc this is right after overlord called magnus a joke and nearly killed him

its especially brutal bc as magnus says, his job is his life 

augh, I love the panel where the armor is falling off around minimus, and then the one where he’s holding the ultra magnus head...poetic 

its fascinating that there was an ‘original’ magnus who was an actual guy, and then tyrest chose to make him into this legacy symbol - I'm assuming the OG magnus had no say in this, and probably didn't even know that he was gonna become this lawman legacy figure

I do wanna know though - obviously everyone thought that ultra magnus was one dude, but how did the different guys wearing the armor deal w/that? like, did minimus have people coming up to him like ‘hey ultra magnus old buddy! remember when we fought those guys in that one place? good times!’ like, do they have to study up on the lives of the past armor wearers to prepare for the role of ultra magnus?

augh poor minimus, of course he’s been wondering about what happened with overlord after he was KO’d

oof, drift...I feel like minimus looks surprised and a little skeptical at the idea that drift was the one behind the entire overlord thing - which is interesting bc as we saw at the beginning of the story, he doesn't exactly trust drift, but it’s still pretty far-fetched that one person orchestrated the entire thing

tailgate :(

the concept of a load-bearer is SUPER cool, I love it so much

it also puts a much-needed limit on things - as in, there IS a limit to how much weight/mass a normal cybertronian frame can carry, which is why you don't see everybody upgrading to be Massive - bc they actually CANT

oof, the worst part is that tyrest is RIGHT, minimus essentially DID have a nervous breakdown after the war ended bc of the rigid way he views the world

mental health support is clearly in shambles for cybertronians, yikes. they literally have 1 therapist for their entire race, and he’s not even licensed anymore due to hipaa violations. what a mess

the��‘attention deflectors’ thing is so cool and clever and also a great explanation as to why ratchet or anyone else never said ‘hey wait a minute, you're actually a much smaller dude in a trench coat’ 

I love tailgate knowing all the stuff about the autobot code bc of magnus...my BOY

and THATS why minimus was asking about skids specifically earlier!

oh minimus, please don't put so much stock in tyrest being stable and resonable...

aaaand there's skids and swerve! brainstorm says it best - ‘because something unexpected hasn't happened for at least nine seconds.’ lmao ily brainstorm 

finally checking in w/whirl and cyclonus - god I love that. whirl asking cyclonus how many cons he killed and cyc is like psh I wasn't keeping count....................ok it was six

hhhhh cyclonus IS looking for a cure for tailgate, even though he told tg that there wasn’t anything to hope for....excuse me as I go be emo 

and now we flash over to the unethical medical conduct hell zone, where pharma is being weird and horny and ratchet is appropriately horrified 

I seriously love how unhinged pharma looks, the art & colors do such a good job conveying his feral energy 

ratchet has some massive dick energy for taunting pharma when he’s currently just a head and pharma has dual chainsaws for hands 

ugh, I love whirls speech about anger...and I feel like he really does see cyclonus as a peer, despite cyclonus wanting to kill him, which is why he tells cyclonus all of this 

I fuckgin love that cyclonus’s reaction to very suddenly getting stabbed thru the abdomen is to just glance down at the sword, looking mildly inconvenienced 

back over to ratchet - and at first its like oh wow I can’t believe pharma was stupid enough to let ratchet goad him into this contest....but then you see first aid and ambulon and its like UH OH this is gonna be BAD

the idea that getting sliced in half is no big deal for a cybertronian is wild

‘you're gonna let doctor djd cut us in half?’ yeahhhh that's an appropriate reaction, yikes

FUCKING LENGTHWAYS GOD

pharma you piece of shit

poor ambulon :( :( :( that's fucking brutal. amazing panel but....jesus

and like, to further my point from last issue’s liveblog - the fact that this very gore-y panel is okay, but swearing isn't...that's really funny honestly. I guess robo-gore is acceptable, while I'm guessing regular ole run of the mill human gore wouldn't be

then back to cyclonus, who is still looking only vaguely put out by the sword stuck right thru him

and then cyclonus just pulls it right out, which is a very bad idea for humans but probably not as big of a deal for big near-immortal alien robots

circle of light stuck in capitalistic urban hellscape cubicals 

poor skids, being asked to stand trial while having no idea what his crime is due to Big Amnesia 

OH SHITTTT I totally forgot that getaway shows up here

that is super clever though, with chromedome confusing the name ‘getaway’ with the concept ‘needing to escape’

cant believe tyrest is really dumb enough to tell minimus all his evil plans

BUT that means its time for some very important forged vs constructed cold lore

jro spelling ‘program’ as ‘programme’ made me remember when he said that he considers everyone on the lost light to be british, which is perhaps the least valid thing he’s ever said vhbghjsdbfjkhasbjk

the idea that they used the matrix - which is portrayed as kind of a holy object - in reproductive experiments is really interesting

AUGHHHHH this is all so good and interesting...im really fascinated w/this particular brand of like, alien robot racism/constructism/whatever you wanna call it - I feel like it does such a good job as a plot device, where many other ‘fantasy racism’ concepts from other franchises fail, bc there's not really a ‘human metaphor’ being used here (as far as I know/can tell) - as in, this isn't a thinly veiled metaphor for something that happened/could happen in human history

in fact, this type of bigotry (or w/e you wanna call it) isn't something that is even really possible in humans - I guess if there was a stigma against being born via ivf or something...? but there isn't, so there's no obvious real-world equivalent, which I take as a sign of good writing and worldbuilding - it makes the cybertronians feel more Real, bc of course they would have their own types of bigotry based off of completely different things than humans 

additionally - and this is crucial - tyrest is wrong: there’s no like, inherent moral corruption in cold constructed bots. there's no difference at all, other than method of construction. fantasy racism plotlines often flounder here, with the oppressors having a ‘valid reason’ for oppressing the oppressed, but tyrest is just operated on religious zealot bs and some biased science

like, dude, did you ever think that maybe there are other reasons why your trials only condemned cold constructed bots? like, maybe the trial itself was biased? or societal conditions were to blame? correlation is not causation, my dude, especially when the conclusion is ‘cold constructed bots are inherently SINNERS’ lmao 

like, tyrest rlly said ‘FUCK separation of church and state,’ huh

anyways I just think the whole cold construction vs forged thing is really interesting and well-done, and serves as a good precursor to the more fleshed-out functionism stuff we see later 

so tyrest is clearly off his rockers w/the whole drilling thing - dude, you accidentally gave yourself a lobotomy, okay - but I find it kinda funny that he’s right about a lot of that stuff he said at the end, about primus and the guiding hand and stuff being real 

cyclonus saying ‘tailgate and the others’...I see you, man, I see you

also cyclonus looks fine now??? didn't he just get stabbed??? 

ah, tyrest sprinkling a little light genocide onto his plan to find salvation. nice, dude!

MINIMUS NOOOOOOOOO

‘fully deserved’ SHUT UP BIIIIITCH

poor minimus is taking a lot of Ls this arc, geez

oof, great issue! again, as usual....I loved the lore we got this issue, its so interesting...and some good character stuff too. I love minimus, I feel like he’s gonna be my fav this readthru; my first read my fav was brainstorm, second readthru was whirl, and I feel like its minimus/magnus this time. I just love his character arc...

hype af for more B) 

#lj rereads mtmte

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 18

lets goooo

I love the ‘no guns no swords no briefcases’ sign sm

NEVER over the ‘my first blaster(tm): big grip for little hands’ fucking iconic

‘get the hell out of my bar’ swerve lmao ily

so now we continue on with the remain in light arc, this issue subtitled ‘house of ambus,’ which is a dopeass name and also promises some ambus lore, which is exciting

first aid holding his gun sideways like a gangsta lmao I canttt

forgot there's literally a guy named dipstick LMAOOOOO that's funny on so many levels like...it sounds like dipshit, and also a urine dipstick is a urine test used to detect various stuff so that's the first thing I think of...what a name

‘put two and two together and make it a fist’ skids ily sm

pharma is in full-on dr thot mode over here, oh boy

lockdown looks like such a nerd on his edgy decepticon hoverboard

the fact that cyclonus immediately goes along w/whirls suggestion to disobey rodimus and attack the enemy....both of them are icons

OOOH ALL THE TITANS...that's such a good panel 

ok but I cant get over how lowkey funny it is that there's this battle going on rn where most of the participants can turn into various vehicles, but they're all riding around on dorky air scooters instead. this series, man

well, at least chromedome transformed

I fucking love that rodimus is always doing this like, ridiculous 80s action movie nonsense, I feel like that's perfect considering his g1 debut was in a ridiculous 80s action movie

poor tg just found out he’s gonna die in like 3 days and then rodimus immediately is like ‘wanna make that today?’ and does some crazy shit while tg clings to him like a terrified baby

rodimus mid-car transformation is fucking wild lmao

and now we finally get to see a bit more of what’s going on with our framing device flash-forward - it’s not just rodimus, everyone’s there! except ratchet...also, they’re in jail. woohoo!

and then there’s magnus, looking completely healthy but strangely unresponsive...

TYREST....this motherfucker....he is like, SO MUCH. the cape...the helmet crown thing...the holes....

tyrest told rodimus to ‘shut up or be held in contempt’ ayyyyyyyyyyyy

‘crimes against creation’ that's pretty dramatic dude

Let The Robots Swear!!

ok but rlly I find it funny that they're not allowed to say swear words (I'm assuming its not allowed rather than it being a creative choice) but all the death and violence and body horror is ok

chromedome is sitting there like oh holy shit did I find my now-dead husbands missing 1st husband after millions of years, like a WEEK after my husband died

chromedome mimicking the moustache with his finger...cute

its interesting to see a ‘sibling’ type of relationship here, since that's really uncommon for tfs since they don't really have families/lineage - of course, we don't really get to see dominus and minimus interact (until the FU), so

minimus really tried to pass himself off as a law-breaking smuggler lmaoooo that was never gonna work mdude

like he just continues acting exactly like ultra magnus except he pretends not to know these guys lol

‘forceful expressions of innocence’ tailgate ily

poor tg :( 

OH GOD pharma time. he’s out here looking totally unhinged and also thotty somehow, like usual

I SO subscribe to the idea that ratchet and pharma are exes are pharma still isn't over ratchet. that's the most entertaining and interesting way to read their interactions imo

dual chainsaw hands.....Bruh.

skiiiiiiiiiiiids....I love skids, he’s just such a good dude

also he’s really cool and also sexy. I feel like if anyone would be the mary sue of the series it would be skids rather than rung lmao 

oh shit I forgot skids gets skewered by star saber

aaaaaand ratchet’s in the box!!!! jesus pharma just say you kin the joker and go

HOW is ratchet alive tho like....wouldn't he need energon?? isn't energon basically blood for them, but also food, and fuel, and basically everything? I don't get it but yknow what, ill suspend my disbelief bc its so entertaining 

see, the little backstory on tyrest is really interesting, cause it seems to me that at one point, tyrest did have the best interests of the cybertronian people in mind, and he really did stand for true justice and tried to end the war peacefully - but somewhere along the way things went bad, and now here he is

oh rung, scolding somebody for revealing top secret information, that’s rich coming from mr hipaa violations himself 

lmao and minimus cant restrain himself from scolding rodimus either, and then very obviously fishing for information so he can ask questions without it being clear that he already knew all about the lost light 

vhbjahdbhjhdf im NEVER over rung passive-aggressively antagonizing minimus so he can accuse him of being ultra magnus hvbhjkdnfssfhsabjhdfk that's so funny

also its another example of rung maybe not being the best at his job - he’s basically manipulating magnus’s OCD to try to force minimus into revealing his identity...ethical? perhaps not. effective? oh yeah

I mean I guess you could say this is an example of rung being really good at his job, bc he was able to use psychology to deduce minimus’s identity...it’s more like he also decided to disregard medical ethics and ethics in general 

and then the reveal....ultra magnus is actually a much smaller green dude?! whaaaat!? 

ill talk more about it later but fr this is one of my favorite concepts that mtmte introduced, I fucking love it 

ahhhh I love this issue. tho tbh I love basically every issue. anyways tho I love the continuation of ratchet and pharma’s story, with pharma officially going off the rails with some complete bullshit, and also the big reveal about magnus/minimus! great stuff

#lj rereads mtmte