TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

Basic backstory is that Cybertronian colonies have been away from their homeworld and totally isolated for the last ten million years. Caminus had a stable settlement on a planet, with a solid foundation, viable hotspots (something Cybertron hasn't had for millions of years), a healthy metrotitan and a way to communicate with him, and a strong cultural focus on the arts. The only problem, and a big problem, is that they're short on resources. Nothing they do seems to turn it around, and resources become more and more scarce until they have to admit that eventually it will kill them. Eventually they manage to scrape together the supplies to send a ship out looking for help, which is crewed by Nautica, Windblade, and Chromia, and begins their Space Adventures. Nautica joins the party bus, Windblade and Chromia stay on Cybertron and spend their time getting tangled in political shenanigans and blackmail plots (they should have joined the party bus)

And there's also a little bit of backstory to the metrotitan that you might have missed if you're reading on viewcomic. Spotlight: Trailcutter (paired with Spotlight: Hoist) has some information on how the Lost Light crew got involved in these shenanigans. There are low-quality pirates that I posted somewhere back in the thread.

 

Story is pretty much all true, as far as I recall! There's some interesting phase one backstory wrt Whirl's part in it that I can provide if you're curious, I just have to shower first.

 

Awright, here we go! There's Whirl backstory that gets revealed as you progress through mtmte, and I'm too tired to figure out which bits and pieces you would know by this point, but the long and short of it is that way back when, before the war, Whirl was working for the awful functionist government, where he was effectively press-ganged into service as a corrupt cop, doing the council's dirty work. They're the ones who took away his face and hands, and then still forced him to work for them.

Now, at this time, there was this miner dude named Megatron, who was writing some philosophical anti-functionism reform stuff. The government was Not Pleased. They had him arrested on trumped-up charges (supposedly for brawling in a bar, even though Megatron insisted he hadn't done anything). And they sent Whirl in to his cell with the communicator he could use to make his one call. Whirl told the guard on duty to piss off, then once the other guy was gone, Whirl crushed the communicator and immediately started pounding on Megatron.

Nowwwww, at this point, things get a little wibbly wobbly on interpreting the text versus what the actual writers intended. We don't have ALL the canon to fill in interpretive holes, but the version I like best is: Whirl was probably ordered to straight-up kill Megatron. Even as a corrupt cop, Whirl has a very 'fuk u I do what I want' attitude, and doesn't especially enjoy being a government tool. When he tells the guard to leave, he... doesn't exactly wait before he starts beating up Megatron. He isn't quiet about it either. And Whirl is very good at violence, but by the time the other guard came back and pulled him off Megatron, most of the damage Megatron took looked very minor and superficial.

After this, Whirl is thrown in jail (also this police station is being run by Orion Pax and some of his buddies). That night, while Orion is out on patrol, more government thugs bust in, kill the other decent cops, and break Whirl out. Orion comes back just on the tail end of this. Whirl's like hey, looks like the council decided what they want, what are you gonna do about it? *shrug* And the other thugs decide to continue their murder streak and take out this cop too. Doesn't go so well for them. Orion takes them out pretty easily, and shoots off one of Whirl's legs for good measure. Whirl doesn't fight back against Orion. Mostly he just tries to drag himself away, but he doesn't make it far before Orion finishes up the rest of the fight and comes back for him.

And Orion. Oh, Orion. He's like GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION WHAT? Whirl tries to tell him that this isn't going to end well for either of them, and that he's already going to be the fall guy, but Orion doesn't have to shoot himself in the foot at the same time. But Orion is like MUST. DO. HERO THINGS. So he literally throws Whirl over his shoulder, goes marching off to the council, throws Whirl on the ground, and makes a big dramatic 'what the fuck, guys?' speech. He quotes some of Megatron's writing at them for good measure.

Aaaand the council is not pleased. Whirl gets sent to the prison where you see him in the mtmte flashback, where he's denied medical treatment and the guards deliberately place him with other prisoners who want to beat him up. By this time, Megatron wrote a thing about the corrupt cop who totally beat him up in prison, and he made it pretty durn clear who that corrupt cop was. So you've got things like the miners next door getting themselves deliberately arrested just for the chance to take a swing at him. Orion nearly got in a whole fuckin lot of trouble too, but he had a politician friend who intervened and called in a whole bunch of favors to save his ass (same senator as shows up in the mtmte flashbacks). I mmmay be remembering this wrong, but I think that's when Optimus's frame was artificially modified to make it matrix-compatible.

The saddest thing, especially if you interpret Whirl's actions the way I like to, is that Megatron credits this as the moment where he decided violence was the only way forward. This was his turning point from peaceful protest into bloody revolution. And he did everything short of naming names to pin the blame on Whirl. Pretty much everyone who's read Megatron's writing knows that he's talking about Whirl. Especially if you look at Whirl's actions in the prison cell as him doing his best to avoid killing Megatron, without bringing the council's anger down on his own head, that... makes me sad.

Bonus: Senator Sherma (one of the assassinated politicians in the mtmte flashback) can be seen in the scene where Orion Pax yells at the council. I guess that speech made an impact on him. Momus (the other assassinated politician) gets his own flashback cameo arounnnnnd issue 14 or 15, I think?

Double bonus: In the mtmte flashback, in Whirl's story, it ends with Impactor coming into his cell and Rewind being like 'oh my god, the guy who led the wreckers, I bet that was the start of a bee-yoo-tiful friendship!' and Whirl being like 'yeah no he almost beat me to death.' Impactor is one of Megatron's oldest, oldest friends, and was there when he got wrongfully arrested. And then they ended up on opposite sides of the war, both up to their elbows in war crimes, and Megatron very nearly killed Impactor at least once. Back in the day, Megatron used to read poetry to him.

 

Wait, where did the pieta happen? I need to experience this beautiful soap opera in its original glory :DDDDDDD

(immediate edit: wait, that's gotta be the flashback, right? Given those frames on drift and ratchet and chromedome's flying jetski)