#versus the story itself being fragmented incomplete and tbh a little boring and you having to rewrite it in your mind to make it interesting

[lord-squiggletits]

The thing about TFA is that I think it’s a pretty good Transformers cartoon, it’s fun and has interesting spins on the usual premises of TF. But I honestly don’t think it’s as deep as a lot of the fandom likes to act as it is.

Like, sure, in the show we have a few glimpses of Cybertron under Autobot rule and get inklings that this isn’t a pure and wholesome society. Except we literally don’t get anything besides that-- glimpses. All of the backstory that actually reveals the ~problematic~ and ~revolutionary~ things of the TFA continuity takes place solely in extra materials. And even if you could convince me that this is a valid way of telling a story (spoilers: NO because I shouldn’t have to buy multiple separate pieces of merchandise, half of which is shown via Word of God/meta texts and not actual story content, to be able to understand a single story), it honestly doesn’t make a difference. None of the extra material that shows the dark/gritty parts of TFA shows up in the cartoon itself.

It doesn’t matter that the flying twins were experimented on while on the verge of death because they sure don’t act like it matters. It doesn’t matter that the Decepticons apparently used to be enslaved as war machines, because the show sure as hell doesn’t give them any deeper characterization than “we’re gonna take over Cybertron because we’re the Decepticons raaaaawwwwrrr!” And it doesn’t even matter that Optimus Prime, one of the main characters of the show, is literally a high-ranking military officer of a regime that brainwashes/experiments on civilians, because as far as the story is concerned his biggest problems are 1. Trying to get his crew to listen to him 2. Fighting Decepticons 3. Putting up with his annoying superiors after he got kicked out of the Elite Guard. (Note that just because he didn’t make it in the Elite Guard doesn’t mean he’s not still important: Prime is one of the highest ranks the military has, and Optimus was given freaking Omega Supreme, a top secret war weapon/artifact, as his ship.)

The story is trying to pose itself as something deeper and more serious, but ultimately fails because those deeper/serious things are barely covered in the show or delegated to side materials.

Am I saying TFA is a terrible show that has no good ideas at all? Am I saying that people who like TFA are dumb and should watch another show? Not at all. I’m just saying that I think the fandom opinions of TFA as a show honestly overhypes it compared to the actual content of the show itself. Forget about the dark and gritty backstory, the vast majority of TFA is spent on human villains and random skirmishes on Earth instead of the actual interesting part, the Autobot/Decepticon war and the state of Cybertron!

If you want a TF continuity that has great lore (and doesn’t require you to watch a cartoon, read a book, find a bunch of old interviews, read a comic, and listen to a script reading at a con), IDW1 and IDW2 are both right there waiting for you. Especially IDW2, which is written as a single continuous story and not as the chaotic decade-and-a-half long mess that is IDW1.

#squiggposting #also another reason i dont really like fanon views of tfa is that like #the content for MOP and especially OP himself is so meh #people seem to think OP is like a crybaby twink who's the victim of constant bullying #and M is the one who swoops in like a romantic novel love interest to save him #in other words not even the content made by people who like the characters/ship #is something i'm interested in at all #nor is it really in character for that matter #it just seems to me like the reason people like TFA is because the material is scattered enough that they can just #cobble together whatever headcanons they want and create the story that they want in their head #and the cartoon itself doesn't contradict them because the cartoon is just a simplistic good guys vs bad guys #with some hints at something deeper that never get explored #i know some people like the 'sandbox of headcanons' or whatever but like #if a piece of media doesn't have substance on its own #and isnt well crafted or coherent on my own #then why would i care about it enough to be interested #the cartoon can't even tell a story standing on its own so why should i have to do all the work of making the story work #there's a difference between leaving things to the imagination vs straight up leaving things out of the story #the difference between making inferences and theories that enrich the already existing story #versus the story itself being fragmented incomplete and tbh a little boring and you having to rewrite it in your mind to make it interesting #anyways that's my spiel for the day