Tag: autobots

blueskyscribe:

darklordofcutlets:

casualdramatic:

What people in the fandom are saying: but the Autobots are just as evil, if not MORE evil, than the Decepticons! It’s an abhorrence that Megatron now wears the Autobot symbol! How dare Megatron do that to the Decepticons!

What people in the fandom should realize:

–Megatron’s redemption arc isn’t about the Decepticons. It’s about him recognizing he was wrong. It’s about him removing himself from something which only enables his terrible behavior. The struggles the Decepticons are facing now will never outweigh the slaughter of BILLIONS which Megatron carried out with no remorse as the faction’s leader.

–Megatron was never what this fandom positively associates as a ‘revolutionist miner.’ He wanted to be a revolutionist, and at one time his ideas and writings were his protests, but his anger and hatred led to his own corruption. Instead, Megatron was a terrorist who used unlawful force and violence to coerce others and governmental powers to follow his social and political objectives. Destruction and murder became an appropriate way to get what he wanted.  Megatron and his Decepticons didn’t attempt to liberate their species from an oppressive government; Megatron went beyond fighting for the freedom of everyone to instead wanting to punish, to destroy, to be the oppression and ruled as a tyrant. He didn’t fight for the rights he once thought Cybertronians deserved, and rather, rose to be a force nearly as bad as the Senate.

–The word ‘Autobot’ was reclaimed from off-worlders by Orion Pax and later again by Optimus Prime after Zeta Prime’s failed leadership. The true Autobot cause didn’t exist before the war; it came to be during the revolution as Optimus amassed an army large enough only for the sake of defeating Megatron’s Decepticon terrorist movement. Instead of being used as a slur referring to their species as ‘automatons’ because they seemingly never changed, it evolved to mean ‘autonomous’ as Orion Pax suggested it should mean. The word became unpopular because of Zeta Prime’s ruthlessness and neglect of the citizens of Cybertron. However, it was canonically established that Optimus Prime wasn’t corrupt like the Primes who preceded him. He turned the Autobots into a cause for morality and freedom, one which would ensure justice to those who threatened the sanctity of others, their world, and every other world. Optimus has never strayed from those ideals, even though others attempted to bring out the worst in him.

Most importantly, the choices and actions of a few do not represent the cause as a whole. For instance, Decepticons such as Thundercracker who opted to adopt a dog, spend his time writing screenplays, and gets along relatively peaceably with others do not lessen the atrocities of the Decepticon cause. And, the Autobots who slip up, who act more violent or make questionable choices do not lessen what the Autobot cause stands for or what it has accomplished in protecting the lives and freedoms of others.

Although this is technically correct, I think one of the reasons people like imagining Megatron as the revolutionist miner is because they might feel there is something wrong with the general message of the TF storyline. Protest coming from oppressed people? No, that thing is dangerous. Only the god-chosen leader and his followers can be good!

Because divine right!

Those common people can only turn to violence and evil. 

Yes, in the transformers universe this is what happened. But the fact that it’s written this way can definitely lead to fans opposing this idea in their own way. 

Personally I think the whole “Optimus reclaimed the Autobots from being the brutal police force of the Senate to being ~good and just~” is pure BS.  It makes no sense in-universe.  Why would someone join the secret police / enforcers of an oppressive regime if they sympathized with the people crushed by that regime?  A group that would inevitably be full of Functionists?

Optimus is a noble character and an idealist.  It wouldn’t make sense for him to even want to rub elbows with these assholes, and it wouldn’t make sense for them to agree “Gee golly, Optimus, you’re right! Let’s help the oppressed!”

The weird message of the comics canon seems to be that you MUST have the blessing of or a connection to the current government to be legitimate.  Even when the government has a caste literally called “Disposables”, when it disappears and brainwashes political foes, when it is oppressive and unjust.  And that is bullshit.

How it should have gone:  Optimus and Megatron bro it up as Decepticons. But then Optimus thinks Megatron is going too far with violence, so he (and many other Decepticons) split off and create their own faction called the Autobots.  Which has no relation to the Senate because the Senate’s army was never called the Autobots.