Spoiler: MTMTE 50 Oh my god my first time reading I didn't realize how many of them were shielding the minibots. I'm upset.
also i can't lie i got super super excited when Spoiler: 50 extra story drift showed up in "no guns, no swords, no briefcases". he was super cute....... and pipes...! poor dear. also i like that his description of his "type" implies that cybertronians are physically attracted to each other. one more tick in the 'robots do some form of The Sex' column. also: he wants to hang out with drift and rodimus, together, and then immediately implies that he wants companionship for romantic(/sexy) purposes. i mean. take that as you will. i know how i'm taking it. (ALSO: huge crush. YOWCH) also also: a huge banner that says "FUCK OFF MEGATRON" god bless
okay here goes nothing i hope this won't emotionally destroy me even more Spoiler: mtmte 51 "SO WE'RE JUST GONNA SIT HERE AND GET KILLED?!" "You'd prefer to sit out there and get killed?" "Indoors gets my vote." "Can't beat a good ceiling." how are you still bantering in the middle of all this i love all of you NAUTICA LOOKS SO SCARED THIS ISN'T ALLOWED okay Brainstorm that's... sort of cute that you want to joke about Tailgate's powers but also it reminds me uncomfortably of Getaway and could you pls stop? "Tarn is following the script" GREEEAAAAAAT OF COURSE THERE'S A SCRIPT SUNSET OKAY TAHT EXPLAINS THE SIX HOURS THING CENSERE QnQ awww Swerve AWWW NAUTICA even with half her face missing she is still a beautiful ray of pure starlight LIFE SUPPORT PODS THAT'S WHAT THOSE WERE? OH GOD CENSERE BABY DID YOU ACTUALLY TAKE NIGHTBEAT'S ADVICE? OH NOOOO HOW IS MY BEAUTIFUL FLOWER SON SO GOOD? OKAY WHAT THESE ARE ORGANICS? okay you guys i don't wanna be a dickhead here but i totally agree with Brainstorm that it's probably a better idea to just get the hell out of dodge and hope that you can save other people eventually ohhhhHHH rodimus! I am so happy you are so mature "I'M STAYING." megatron pls tone your intensity down a nodge CAN PEOPLE PLEASE STOP TELLING TEN "NOT NOW" HE WANTS TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING D: OH NO HE LOOKS SO SAD D: "You'll die." "I expect so." FUCK "And let me assure you there is nothing in this room but understanding." MEGS' CHARACTER DEVELOPEMENT HOLY SHIT "Well Said." he says and touches his friend's chest in the least homosexual way possible OH GOD I JUST NOTICED HE TOUCHES THE AUTOBOT BADGE HOLY SHIT THE AMOUNT OF TINY DETAILS THIS SERIES MANAGES TO INCLUDE of course no one actually wants to leave after Megatron stays. THE WAY THEY LOOK AT EACHOTHER Swerve you shrewd genius :D (it sounds hella dangerous as far as plans go tho) "That's what I love about this team... everyone's got something to contribute!" aw rods DON'T CUT TO TEN LIKE THAT MY HEART HURTS talk to WHOM? WHY IS HE LOOKING SO SORROWFUL? !!!!! shit megs that's... pls don't do that that's dangerous D: oh megatron D: oh that is so painful "Camouflage or not it's like being trailed by a tank." aww but he's trying RAVAGE WTF THAT IS TERRIBLE RAVAGE TEN DIDN'T DO ANYTHING TO YOU D: YOU CAN'T JUST MAKE HIM A DISTRACTION LIKE THAT! ohhhhHHH TEN YOU ARE SO SMART I AM SO PROUD OF YOU! NOOOOOOO MY DARLING CAN'T GET KILLED IT'S TERRIBLE! HE DOESN'T DESERVE THIS! AHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH DRIFT AND RATCHET ARE BACK FUCK YEAH
Spoiler: 50 extra story I ESPECIALLY LOVED THE DETAIL that implies that mechs can have preferences for different altmodes in their partners! THAT'S SUPER INTERESTING
edit again, fuck it: if anyone else cares about ~The Mystery~ as it pertains to the last 5 issues, I STRONGLY DESIRE 2 TALK ABOUT IT. all of the things in the above post are things I AM VERY INTERESTED IN TALKING ABOUT
Spoiler: 51 I don't know maybe this is because i can literally not think bad things about Censere, but... i think it might be that he has been gradually stealing the pods from "Those Fuckers" after Nightbeat asked him to consider saving lives instead of just observing? in fact iirc there is a symbol on the back of Censere's cape and I'll look it up momentarily, give me a sec ETA: apparently I cannot find a single view of his back?
!!!!!!! Ahhhhhhh, exRiD finally is upping the gay robot quotient!! With DRAMA AND ANGST! Omg, I already went back and reread this dude's other scenes and the hindsight is delicious
Spoiler: 51 oh no no i am not calling censere's Goodness into question because. he is Good. he is Good and Pure. actually depending on how censere's spark-detecting machine... thing works, that's plausible!! if they are the same organics as were in the green pods, then they've prrrobably been experimented on. 46 feels like it implies that they've been crossing organics with mechanicals (the ... glowy red thing on its palm), and then there were the mutated protoforms on the worldsweeper that grimlock was found in...... if Those Fuckers Guys are like. trying to create weird half-cybertronians, then they could potentially have sparks that censere's machine could detect. but if they're just regular organics with no mechanical features, then i don't know if i can buy that censere just happens upon them! and it hasn't been all that long since their last visit --- how much time passes between 44 and 50? (i genuinely do not know) i'm sort of inclined to think that someone else put them there. i don't know why i think that, but. i feel like the whole thing is super shady and i don't want censere to have knowingly been a part of it. also of interest to me: 'the stock', 'contamination', 'deadline', 'the grand architect', 'abort'. dlfgsgllwreg MYSTERIES!!!! what did demus have that Those Guys wanted? was it because of his experiments with the roboids? what are they trying to achieve, who is their boss, what happened on the crashed worldsweeper??? we haven't been told enough to reach any kind of conclusion but. i like listing out all the things we do know and the things we can sort of wildly guess at. this is less theorizing and more tinhatting Spoiler: a real photo of me, kintsugi user applechime
And the series is finally going hard on the psychological damage everyone's taken from the war. Wow, I am seriously getting engaged now, this is great stuff
ALSO! @applechime Spoiler: that symbol, lots of stuff, spoilers up to 51 I am interested in what you think about my absolutely spitballed idea that... maybe the symbol has something to do with the knights in a very very nefarious way. What if it's a symbol to mark a splinter group that, after the knights obviously failed with their quest to bring peace to the universe, broke off from the main group and started doing something (?) that involves keeping people in a coma in pods. This would also tie in neatly if the organics are being spliced with mech-life-forms as some weird experiment! Maybe the splinter group broke of because they realized the only way to end the Organics Versus Mechs conflict that is raging all over the universe was to make Hybrids. The Knights of Cybertron, the way they are protrayed seem to be implicitly benevolent in mission but very reclusive and are probably focused on Mechs I can imagine innergroup conflict leading to group splintering, especially seeing as the knights of cybertron are associated so heavily with The Guiding Hand, which stands, implicitly, for the Perfect Cybertronian Design and can be used as arguments for Mech supremacy. So yeah my theory is that the symbol we keep seeing is probably a symbol used to brand Heretics/Rejectors of Primus's Design I suspect they will be a group of hyper-rationalists that got tangled up in the decepticon forces/actively recruited from decepticons with arguments like "We make the changes that will lead to Absolute Cybertronian Dominion over the Universe" and neglect to mention the organic splicing part.
Spoiler: MTMTE 51 I mean, we had one DJD member who liked to shoot messages into autobots. Depending on when he was killed, it's possible that someone planted the key on him for reasons unknown.
I mean... I'm not saying you have to, but just check out some of this awesome cast you get to deal with And occasionally Sarah Stone does the artwork and everything turns stunning. She does the entire Windblade miniseries, which separate from exRiD, but slots into it the same way Empire of Stone slots into MTMTE (starscream is so handsome when she draws him, i just swoon) Ummmmmm, as far as context that would help for exRiD Spoiler: pre-mtmte So the original transformers run started with the autobot/decepticon clash on earth, but it branched from there. The stage was set with three consecutive miniseries, Infiltration -> Escalation -> Devastation. Those are decently solid, but a lot of the rest of the continuity can be hit or miss. Some of it is so bad. If you can follow the issues that have to do with Sunstreaker, I really recommend it. The first post in the thread has the full reading order. The decepticons eventually managed to one, exile the autobots back to the destroyed cybertron with no way off it, and two, launched a full-scale invasion of the earth. They started with NYC and decimated it, which directly affected/traumatized some humans who show up later in the series. Okay, so the autobots eventually managed to get back and fight, drove back the decepticons, and allied themselves with the humans. Good, right? NOPE. At this point, humans have had enough interactions with cybertronians that there's a lot of mistrust and such going back and forth. In particular, Spike Witwicky ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT like these aliens. He was part of the effort to save NYC and he's kind of a bag of dicks. And now he's kind of the main military/diplomatic link between the species. Yyyeah. In various ways, the autobots are exploited. They're bossed around and abused (not just by Spike) and things are a mess. Optimus Prime is not around very consistently and Bumblebee tries to lead, but things are... complicated. At one point, Spike goes off and tortures and kills one of the constructicons even after the guy tries to surrender, because he's one of the ones Spike blames the most for the NYC thing (this has to do with later Prowl-related developments). And in particular, Prowl kind of trusted Spike and takes his double-dealing with the autobots very hard. Meanwhile, the dead universe nonsense is going on. I did.... not follow this so well, because the art was really bad. But Galvatron is trying to get a foothold in the... live? universe. Cyclonus is his partially brainwashed zombie servant. Scourge is one of the only other mechs to survive the dead universe and gets accidentally turned into an army of flying clone soldiers called Sweeps who fight for Galvatron (these were what Whirl was talking to at the beginning of MTMTE). Eventually, things conclude with a battle on Cybertron, autobots and decepticons fighting together against Galvatron. Megatron apparently sacrifices himself in the fight. After this, the war is declared over with the autobots as nominal victors, since Megatron is kinda deceased. Cybertron is a wasteland, but they want to rebuild. They send out a call throughout the galaxy that the war is over, everyone can come home. Aaaaaaand cue MTMTE/exRiD Spoiler: Thundercracker Oh right, Thundercracker was a high-ranking Decepticon seeker who got injured and left behind when the Decepticons were being driven back on earth. He was pretty badly injured, but managed to hole up in an abandoned building and eventually turned to watching television to pass the time. His mental health development is interesting. He goes from proud warrior to what reads to me as major depression, with lots of apathy to keep him stagnant, and over time he falls in love with the tv shows he's watching and gains a lot of appreciation for earth and humanity in the process. Now he writes screenplays and has a pet dog and her name is Buster. A lot of the backstory is mostly just relevant in how it relates to Prowl's character, because he's a big character in this series. I love everything that goes on with his character. If you're curious about anything, hit me up in the thread or by PM and I can explain!
Oh wait I forgot the best character I totally forgot about Sky-Byte Spoiler: spoiler cut for size ........and one last picture of my handsome asshole husband
I LIKE THIS A LOT!!! Spoiler: 51 what would that mean for the giant spark that "spoke" to skids? and for the maps that thunderclash has been dreaming? i wonder if thunderclash's dreams are from the giant spark?? (*points AGAIN, with increased urgency, at the throwaway joke in #2 about drift's theory*) and if they are, why is thunderclash specifically getting the dreams (besides being an absurd mary sue)? if it's a symbol that was originally meant to brand heretics, then maybe the psychic spark is not benevolent, or maybe it was attempting to communicate a warning? and that would possibly mean (*tinhat*) that thunders has been having evil beamed into his head for however long he's been on his quest, or that he and everyone else have DRASTICALLY misinterpreted the meaning of the dreams. if the clan/splinter group associated with the symbol (and apparently there were other, less prominent symbols too?) is Bad News, then i wonder how that would affect the function of the map? what purpose does the symbol even have in the map? (if it genuinely is a map that's actually leading them in the right direction) if it's a symbol that was co-opted by a splinter group, then why that symbol specifically? i really really want to see more religious symbols...... so far we have seen the symbol: - from the psychic spark - on the other side of luna-1 - thunderclash's map - grimlock's drawing - the mysterious pointy cybertronians in #46 - apparently nautica's stumbled across it before in an exhibit on the Old Order (????) its phonetic pronunciation is probably important!!!! (and i still want to know what the hell they were doing to grimlock. i want to know so badly.)
oh my GOD i guess... i guess i am going to have to read it.......... just for sky-byte and Handsome Starscream....
