TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

It's ok, the point you contested was pretty minor - and doesn't disagree with what Herzspalter said from what I can tell.

I would add to the post, but I'm so new to the fandom that I'm afraid I don't know what I'm talking about. Rodimus is an insecure show off who wants to be the biggest, most important thing around. I don't think he's aware of his insecurities unless they get shoved in his face. Most of the time he ignores or downplays his weaknesses, his whole personality is built around pretending that they don't exist. He seems to lock up his insecurities in an internal vault where he doesn't have to look at them, until they crawl out and bite him in the ass.

I think one of the keys to Rodimus' behavior is that he makes snap decisions based on instinct so that he won't have to look at them to closely. He's got a certain careless optimism-- everything will turn out ok so why agonize over details. He buries his guilt/regrets so that he can keep being himself. On the upside, he can still be the easy breezy Rodimus who stands on gravestones while admonishing his crew to be respectful of their surroundings. On the downside, he has a really hard time learning from his mistakes. He didn't look for Drift, because somewhere along the way he decided that Drift hated him, and that was that. Decision made. I bet he spent the two years (?) deliberately not thinking about Drift's sacrifice, even after he told everyone the truth.

 

I wouldn't say that Rodimus is unaware of his insecurities (the Spotlight: Hot Rod issue and followup with Doubledealer definitely implies that he's deeply introspective and actually has issues with hyperfocusing on his perceived weak points) but I do think he tries to downplay them. I think he makes decisions about the crew like he would make decisions about himself-- which is a problem, because he's reactive and self-destructive.

I think that captaining a crew that big wasn't ever going to work out (see how he picks favorites and pulls them closer and closer as time goes on) but with a smaller, tighter knit group, maybe. 200+ people? Nah. He's going to get overwhelmed and jump at decisions, even as he stagnates in a mire of indecision when he doesn't have things to specifically react to.

He'd definitely have done the 'deliberately not think about Drift/Drift's sacrifice, because Drift Must Hate Him So It Doesn't Matter' thing though. Depending on how much he was trying to appeal to Megatron's authority (hi daddy issues) he might have never gone looking for Drift just so he could pretend like the Overlord thing had never happened-- he did paint over his hand after Optimus told him it was stupid (thanks OP) so he might have been doing the 'what would OP/Megatron/characters-of-authority-I-admire-and-aspire-to-be do' dance while he was at it.

 

Good points! The spotlight issue had him obsess over some lost crewmates, like he was obsessed with his failure with Overlord later on. It might be the nature of comics, but he seemed to hyperfocus and then abandon the issue, like he does with projects. At some point he decides, 'enough is enough' and pushes the problem aside until a some future event brings it up again. Maybe writing the no confidence number on his hand was a way to keep it from fading into "oh well theres nothing i can do about that, wheres my next project" territory.

Despite everything, i think Rodimus would have done alright as captain (more like roadtrip organizer?) If Overlord and Megatron hadn't come aboard. I definitely can see where he would have done better with a small group of friends, he does isolate himself pretty hard (that the may be limitations of the comic though).

Another thing thats been bothering me, i get why he brought overlord on board (to prove that he wasnt afraid of difficult problems), but i cant figure out why he was ok with torturing Getaway if he still felt like he had to prove himself as a good captain to the crew. Does one of his idols torture people? I feel like in order to have done that, he cant have been examining his past mistakes too carefully.

EDIT: Is 'daddy issues' shorthand for something else, because the robots were never children, nor did they have parents. Yeah, thats a minor thing, but its been bugging me. Was Optimus his surrogate dad?

 

I didn't interpret what was done to Getaway as deliberate torture. Getaway gets away. He's an escape artist. That was Rodimus and Ultra Magnus and Megatron making damn sure he couldn't be an escape artist. The problem is, he already had a contingency plan with his conspiracy!

Basically, they didn't think they had the equipment to humanely imprison someone as smart and escape-artisty as Getaway, so they went the inhumane route. They're mechanoid, so taking off someone's arms and legs isn't permanent or even necessarily painful, depending on... circuit dampeners, I think is the term? It's psychological torture more than physical torture, depending on how they did it.

 

Well, Getaway's containment procedure seemed about the same as what was implied to have happened to Overlord prior to the reconstruction. Depending on how the decision was made, emulating Prowl with the expectation that the Optimus Approves stamp was on it doesn't seem that out of the ordinary.

He probably saw it as Containing A Threat, not torturing his crew. Which it totally was torture, but realizing Getaway was a threat was just something that happened way too late in the game.

 

Yeah, I'm not calling it a good thing, because even if it was done painlessly it's unambiguous psychological torture. But I can see how it came about without being thought of as torture, too.

 

Rodimus was very young when he ended up joining the Autobots and had to blow up his home city to prevent everyone in it from being literally sucked dry by Zeta Prime, iirc. After which he definitely saw Optimus as a mentor figure and courted his approval. So surrogate dad might not be the exactly right term, but it's something analogous to that?

EDIT: Although, it's interesting to note that despite the fact that he's pretty canonically hungry for OP's approval, and has issues with his own identity, Rodimus never develops that psychological disorder that causes people to obsessively quote and emulate OP to the point of pointless self-sacrifice. When push comes to shove, he is able to do things that OP wouldn't approve of because he thinks it's the right thing?

 

Yeah I use 'daddy issues' as a joking shorthand for Rodimus's issues wrt to Optimus/Megatron and idolizing the major figures of authority in his life while trying to measure himself against them. It's super clear with OP especially, but it occasionally comes out around other authority figures too.

 

I get why they took his arms and legs, but the rest of it seemed vengeful rather then pragmatic. They had getaway's spark in a cage that would electrocute him if he moved an inch. Rodimus knew that getaway could be contained with far less, he was locked up on luna 1 for months.

 

Thanks for clearing that up (also the zeta prime stuff, i know nothing about roddy's early life) He doesnt act like he idolizes them, but i guess thats where the daddy issues thing come in. Please tell me that he doesn't idolize prowl.. Nobody needs that kind if trouble.

It could be that rodimus wss trying to emulate megatron when he threw the book at getaway?

 

Ooof, I'd forgotten that detail! I guess I saw more people being upset at the dismemberment when to me that seemed like the... most reasonable part of the thing, especially with a somewhat modular species like transformers? Like, obviously it's a very visceral reaction, and even for transformers removing the limbs renders one significantly more helpless than before mobility-wise. But we've seen characters get limbs blown off a lot and then just get new ones, and in a proper setting it wouldn't even involve pain, like I said. Ehn.

 

Removing his limbs seemed extreme, but sort of understandable. The problem is that they always sawed off his mouth, removed his tcog and put him in a pain cage-

I'm still mystified why Rodimus thought this was a good idea.

 

The mouth thing might have been to prevent him from subverting the crew. He's a a good manipulator. That still leaves the tcog and the trembler.

 

..............i'm so sorry for who i am as a person, but all i can think about when i see that panel is 'oh wow getaway is such a babe'

 

Well..they could have just removed or silenced his vocalizer. I guess this is one of those mysteries that will be addressed later? There's a bunch of characters in MTMTE that are all about over the top torture and punishment, Getaway's treatment is mild by comparison (at least no one made him eat his own brain). Maybe Getaway's treatment was supposed to look reasonable when compared to the antics of DJD? I honestly have no explanation beyond "Somebody wanted to punish Getaway for his failed coup in a viseral way and Rodimus went along with it because they appealed to his emotions."

Oh god, I forgot that Perceptor was part of the mutiny. Yes, he absolutely put Getaway back together. The MTMTE scientists are as close to grand master wizards as you can get in a sci fi setting. Brainstorm built Maximus Ambus in 6 hours out of scrap metal. If perceptor is as good as him, he could absolutely put getaway back together.

 

You know thinking about it -- I wonder if the idea to do the trembler and his jaw -- was by someone not UM or Rodimus. Someone on Getaway's side. Because it's pretty clear he's using "You did this terrible thing to me" as ammo. And frankly unless I'm miss remember Rodimus directing taking credit it seems to cruel for him. idk I might just be over protective of Rodimus.

 

It could be? I guess? Rodimus didn't take credit, but he wasn't surprised when getaway described the conditions he was in. I don't think it was directly Rodimus' idea, but he was at least aware of it, and he didn't stop it from happening. Maybe it's all just a weird mistep on the creators' part, like what happened with the Cersei and Jaime on season 4 game of thrones. I will be disappointed if it never gets brought up again though.

 

Hoist can also fix people to some extent.

Spoiler

He tended to people during Overlord's rampage.

Apparently maintenance engineer and emergency medic are not so distant.