#my brother in christ you are reading the story about autobots in an autobot ship going on an autobot adventure

[lord-squiggletits]

Do you ever read a post online where someone complains about how "IDW never talks about this [idea/character/plot/theme]" and you just think to yourself... this person hasn't read anything besides MTMTE have they?

Really sad when you see people complaining "the story never talked about this!" and act angry about it as if it's some oppressive flaw that the writer (JRO) was evil for never talking about but it's like. Bud if you just read exRID/OP or maybe Windblade/TAAO you would have read plenty about that.

The two worst ones I can think of off the top of my head are "Optimus is always treated like a saint, I hate how he gets away with everything just because he's a Prime" (wrong, read literally anything Barber writes) and "the Decepticons never get a sympathetic perspective, they're always just villains and the narrative is totally just treating them as if being revolutionaries makes them evil" (wrong, read several side stories that Barber wrote). Like literally the moral of the story is just "read something besides MTMTE."

And I'm not complaining about people who are just curious or don't know. I'm talking specifically about people who complain, or say MTMTE is bad, or generally act as if JRO's writing/MTMTE/LL represents the entirety of IDW1 and basically act like, if JRO didn't write it it doesn't exist and clearly since he didn't write it that means no one else did. Like please I'm begging you to read the other less popular but still good series in IDW1 and you'll find multiple stories/ideas that they tell that MTMTE/LL doesn't.

#also it's just funny to me that mtmte/ll readers will complain about there being no decepticons #my brother in christ you are reading the story about autobots in an autobot ship going on an autobot adventure #like. the entire premise is that it's a ship full of autobots and a few other random people they pick up #why are you reading the autobot story and getting mad it's mostly about autobots. this is the TF idw equivalent of 'read another book' #also don't complain about how the story never talked about xyz thing when you've only read one single series #squiggposting #granted i don't think JRO and his work are without flaw but like #idk i think there's just something about how like. just bc JRO didn't write it doesn't mean you can't find it elsewhere in idw #that and people seem too inclined to think that the comic writers all conspired to write/not write certain things for an agenda #when in reality they were just a bunch of independent writers trying to make things kinda coherent but mainly doing their own things #anyways. i would recommend reading the phase 2 dinobot trilogy by barber and the autocracy trilogy by metzen #barber's stuff in general is worth reading. i don't like a lot of his choices but he DID choose to write about them #i think it's worth reading his stuff if only as food for thought and more ideas even if his execution was middling in many parts #i also think mscott's stuff isn't talked about much and is underrated for how much exciting stuff is in it