#autocracy trilogy

[enby-rodimus]

listen.

i'm aware the earliest example of where blaster stands when it comes to functionism is hinted at/shown in all hail megatron where he talks about how perceptor defiled himself to become a sniper.

however.

despite the autocracy trilogy being a huge mess, the blaster they introduced is my most favorite characterization in the continuity and to me it makes sense. blaster as a reporter who tries to bypass censorship, is at conflict with authority such as enforcers like orion pax, because while he may have stormed the senate and publicly called them out, he went right back to working for them under zeta, which blaster called out, and continues to question the newest iteration of a violent, flawed government interests me. he's not blind to the flaws of the institution and it's put him at odds with it. hell, it seems heavily implied he's even critical of functionism despite the writers failing to properly write the early days of the war and the motives of each faction.

basically, i wish blaster had his anti-autobot characterization from autocracy and circumstances forced him to join the autobots

[lord-squiggletits]

Do you ever read a post online where someone complains about how "IDW never talks about this [idea/character/plot/theme]" and you just think to yourself... this person hasn't read anything besides MTMTE have they?

Really sad when you see people complaining "the story never talked about this!" and act angry about it as if it's some oppressive flaw that the writer (JRO) was evil for never talking about but it's like. Bud if you just read exRID/OP or maybe Windblade/TAAO you would have read plenty about that.

The two worst ones I can think of off the top of my head are "Optimus is always treated like a saint, I hate how he gets away with everything just because he's a Prime" (wrong, read literally anything Barber writes) and "the Decepticons never get a sympathetic perspective, they're always just villains and the narrative is totally just treating them as if being revolutionaries makes them evil" (wrong, read several side stories that Barber wrote). Like literally the moral of the story is just "read something besides MTMTE."

And I'm not complaining about people who are just curious or don't know. I'm talking specifically about people who complain, or say MTMTE is bad, or generally act as if JRO's writing/MTMTE/LL represents the entirety of IDW1 and basically act like, if JRO didn't write it it doesn't exist and clearly since he didn't write it that means no one else did. Like please I'm begging you to read the other less popular but still good series in IDW1 and you'll find multiple stories/ideas that they tell that MTMTE/LL doesn't.

[singingcicadas]

Some personal favourite panels from the Autocracy trilogy :

The Autobot standard:

Iacon's pretty skyline:

The art style works great for atmosphere and panoramic scenery, not so much for the individual characters. The way it does the faces is just... unflattering lol.

I also find it a bit hard on the eyesight with how dark most of the pictures are.

[quietbluejay]

also i'm hashtag influencing a friend to add more female transformers to her fic...give Elita Prowl's job

i do wish the friend had read TAAO, Elita was such a fun antagonist and we will get there sometime before the heat death of the universe!!! sometimes like right now i am regretting my decision to start from the very beginning.

Okay I did the math. I should be done the Furman run by early March, and All Hail Megatron and some related stuff by end of March, Costa run will be April, Season 1 of exrid will be May (plus also a few issues from MTMTE and Dark Cybertron), June is Season 2 + Windblade mini

not sure when I'll fit Autocracy trilogy in

and that's as far ahead as I want to calculate. I don't want to actually cover literally every single thing lol, I'm skipping a couple of phase 1 miniseries that don't really do much and luckily I already did LSOTW and SOTW though they were pretty messy lol and i left out stuff that didn't make sense with context but, honestly, i do NOT want to go through SOTW again

[sketchehm]

ok so anidala is. a lot. basically it's the heart of the prequels trilogy of Star Wars.

the prequels are like this: you have this system of government that's of course flawed but works pretty okay nonetheless. unfortunately this evil guy manipulates things behind the scenes because he wants to be the emperor in charge of all of it (making it an autocracy). basically the overarching storyline is the fall of the republic into the empire. so there's this original element of tragedy on a really big scale.

and then there's the more personal tragedies I suppose. and that's anidala. anakin was a slave born to a single mother on a desert planet freed by a jedi. the jedi are basically like middle age knights, but they answer to themselves. the thing with anakin is the jedi who freed him thinks he's the chosen one, that he will fulfill this really old prophecy. one thing about the jedi is that they can't form attachments. their whole thing is to make decisions in an objective headspace I suppose. so the "I'd sacrifice the entire world for you" thinking is very much NOT a jedi way of life. as a result the jedi can't get married, have kids, etc. anyways so they decide to train anakin as a jedi.

padme is the queen of a planet called Naboo when she meets anakin. (on Naboo they vote for their monarchs and the monarchs are specifically young teens bc ig they're pure of mind? or smth. and also theyre monarchs for ~5 years I think?) she becomes a representative of Naboo after her 5 years are up.

padme and anakin fall in love. they can't be in love. evil guy not only succeeds in making the republic fall, but he manipulates anakin and padme both personally behind the scenes as well. they both die. end scene (please watch Star Wars theres genuinely sm more to be said. like for example padme and anakin are mirror characters, and also they both majorly fuck up but they're people and erehgirehgirh. I think lotsssss of cdream/anakin parallels for those with eyes to see, architect of their own destructions kinda vibes. and george and padme oughghhh im sooo sick actually. "you're going down a path I can't follow".. WATCH STAR WRAS... )

sorry for my unhinged ramblings ^_^

Huh......?

OH pfft

I don't know anything about star wars either haha (just very vague knowledge) but this was a fun read!

I also am not really....a dnfer either LMAO

But people can start yapping about it if they wanna I just won't have anything insightful to say pfft

[decepti-thots]

do you have any thoughts on autocracy the miniseries?

Autocracy is kind of a fascinating blip to me. One thing I think gets overlooked in its existence is how it's an early attempt to do "digital first" in the 2010s: once upon a time, that wasn't just novel, it was a possible future for comics. (In its way, it half resembles the format Roberts originally pitched a bunch of his ideas in!)

It's a piece of canon that accidentally has interesting implications for things that come later. I wrote some thoughts on its specific, accidental influence on phase two Rodimus here (and why I love that element). On its own merits, it's utterly sterile, IMO: uninteresting thematically, terrible visually, no interest in the surrounding canon (bc it's basically an attempt to overwrite IDW canon to do a bland G1-inspired story that pointedly ignores all interesting work IDW did up to that point), and yet despite all that its underlying ideas echo inexorably. Its refusal to engage with what makes IDW1 interesting accidentally helps make IDW1 extra interesting. It is not a good comic. It has awful dialogue, terrible visual storytelling, no interest in making something once derided into fodder for good comics like both really early phase two titles. Frankly, it sucks absolute ass. The rest of the trilogy (including Autocracy, Monstrosity and Primacy) is even worse. But. But! Autocracy's specific unspoken influence on Rodimus in later stuff is undeniable; Roberts called out its influence in at least one panel when asked about Rodimus' relationship to bad coping mechanisms in early MTMTE. Its incongruence is somehow weirdly compelling, honestly. When you choose to deliberately read against the grain, it becomes interesting again. The version of IDW canon where Rodimus and Megatron met this way and Megatron fucked it for these specific reasons is, genuinely, fascinating.

Autocracy sucks. But it is inextricable from the IDW stuff that is good in a way that is not just canon based but formally inextricable from later ideas of characters like Rodimus, and for that reason alone I find it VERY interesting.

[archer3-13]

I feel like more than anything, the disney SW debacle is going to make people see the OG trilogy as "one where the bad guys win save for one movie" or try to downplay and justify everything the Sith did.

I would actually disagree on that one truthfully, because the original trilogy has by this point entered a mythologized status within american pop culture. which is to say that its become entangled with the mythology of america and what an american considers themselves, and that kind of thing tends to be held in an unimpeachable status. and i mean that in every possible negative connotation, because it ultimately doesnt matter what the original star wars trilogy actually IS just WHAT it symbolizes for individual people.

as such it doesn't matter how subsequent material might alter readings of the original text, people will bend cannon as far and as often as possible to maintain the integrity of what they THINK the original trilogy was irrespective of what it actually is. and for many people the original trilogy is an unimpeachable master class in good vs evil, strong moral teachings, the fundamental heroes journey and the ultimate rebels american exceptionalism fantasy of "the people" taking down big scary tyrannical government.

nevermind all the roadblocks the OG stumbled on in its own way, nor the subtle weaving of a larger world and history that suggested even then the failures of a democracy in serving its people and how that gave rise to autocracy by popular approval. nevermind the prequels, nevermind the sequels, nevermind anything because the original trilogy is mythology and luke is the hero. if anything these failures of other people only go to reinforce how much better luke is by comparison and thus reinforce the mythology. no matter how many things we have to break getting there.

as for the sith, people have been wobbifying them for decades so nothings really gonna change in that regard.

[kiisuuumii]

thinking a little bit too hard about how every sleep token song is a piece of vessel, from their lyrics, to their instrumentals, down to the way he chooses to sing or scream,

how every poem anyone has ever written is just the same a piece of that person, whether one or two lines, proud of the work or not,

and realizing the severity of my admiration for the sleep token frontman

i'm listening to the tmbte record, which i don't think is suprising to hear to the people who know me, while i'm outside in the backyard, intending to maybe finishing calling a wolf a wolf, until my mind starts to wander. to the state of the us currently, how it's in enough shambles for me to see that even my parents are scared. to what my future will look like, what'll become of it because of the decisions of the autocracy, and my own. to how heartbreakingly beautiful euclid is, because it came on. to how apologetically himself he is. to how people love him anyways.

to how every work of writing and art made with our heart has a piece of it in it.

to how despairingly human we all are. how even the things we choose to hide ourselves behind still tell on us.

time and time again, i've imagined up scenarios with people i love asking, my asking myself, why i like sleep token so much. i've come up with answers before, much to do with vessel and his vocal technique, his producing, his lyrics, that inspired me to start writing poetry again. but that never felt like enough of an answer.

and i've come to realize that it's the severity of his humanness. i'd recently seen a concert slip from sleep token's very early days, where vessel was performing nazareth, i believe, drunk, and slurring the lyrics.

throughout the entire records in this trilogy, he depicts the worst of connection. how obsession became undoing. it's the messiest, and bloodiest, i've ever seen an artist become in their work.

but nothing about its articulation is messy. every vocalization, every lyric, every riff so meticulously crafted. every single detail placed there with care.

i'd said in my writer's survey that there wasn't anyone that i'd want to emulate. nor was there anyone in particular that i looked up to. at the time, i was thinking only about poets by title. and it wasn't as if it was a secret that i admire vessel.

but i realize now the severity of my admiration.

not that i want to emulate his work. there is no other lyricist or poet like him, nor will there ever be.

just that i only want to work towards the discipline to be just as meticulous, while still letting my heart bleed all over everywhere just the same.

[outlier-roddy]

i don't know why i did it to myself, but i reread the autocracy trilogy and when i got to primacy where slinger got murdered after his change of heart by the predacons i was like "wait a minute one of them looks kinda familiar."

so it turns out after a quick readthrough of the tfwiki and issue itself, razorclaw, the guy who led slinger's dismemberment, was the one rodimus shoved a bunch of cerebro-shells into, which, to me, shines a whole new light on rodimus sending razorclaw to attack starscream for the matrix.

also before slinger died, onslaught went after hot rod stating that if he killed him, he might be elevated to a member of high command. this gives credence to, despite the lack of attention to it, rodimus possibly being notorious for his insurgency and later conflicting affiliation with the autobots amongst the decepticons, especially given that it seems like they were working with them closely for access to resources back in autocracy???? though maybe it was just swindle they had contact with.

i thought you might enjoy these tidbits i discovered and i hope you have a good year

These are insane observations and I'm so into them dude tysm... I think I've said before anything that references hot rod being well known as an insurgent is like tf candy to me lol. Your brain though... 🙏

[heliopauseentertainments]

MegOP for either faction swap au, but not shattered glass. Or the war very nearly happened, but was averted at the last moment au.

Hi, Anon! Thank you for your patience.

I'm not really feeling strongly pulled by either option, but I think I'll give it to "War Averted Last Moment." The trick would be finding something that could effectively cause that aversion.

In IDW1, you could theoretically use an earlier intervention by legal actors such as Tyrest, Xaaron, and Ultra Magnus. They could negotiate a deal of some sort to head off the worst of the hostilities.

Certain points in the Autocracy trilogy (hiss, boo, yes, I know) would be possible times for such an intervention.

In other continuities, it would be tricky (Ex. in Sunbow!G1, the war predated Megatron and Optimus) so it really depends on which baseline continuity one uses.

Another good point would be in Cyberverse if Optimus had been able to successfully talk Megatron down from escalating the conflict.

Let's go with that one. That could make for a nice little vignette, probably a quadruple to sextuple drabble to comfortably explore that. Or a background to a somewhat larger piece exploring the actual fallout of not destroying their sci-fi world.

Title: Back From The Brink

Loose Summary: Freshly bonded with the Matrix of leadership, Optimus struggles to convince his old friend that cooperation is still on the table.

[kryptonitecore]

Re-Read: Transformers: Primacy

Primacy is a bit of a disappointing way to end this trilogy, as I think it’s the weakest part - it continues some of the ideas of Autocracy and Monstrosity, but what really killed it for me was the characterisation. The challenges to Optimus’ character are rapidly eroded, but it’s Hot Rod/Rodimus and Megatron who are really in trouble.

Hot Rod shows up, having apparently completed Autobot training in the background, and is now completely and unambiguously in support of Optimus. Any skepticism regarding the Autobot cause and its connections to the old Senate have disappeared while he was off page, and his actively Decepticon-leaning sympathies have also disappeared right along with it. In fact, to prove that Hot Rod has moved on, there is a brief and mostly one-sided confrontation with Slinger, his friend and one of the few survivors of Nyon, who has recently joined the Decepticons. Rather than dig into this, the writer makes Slinger abruptly hostile and he disappears from the book until he can be brought back for a death scene where he confesses how wrong he was. (Slinger and Fasttrack can both join the ‘former friend to Decepticon to corpse’ club!). Facetiousness aside, I think the real issue was the feeling that this story wanted Hot Rod to be a different kind of character than Autocracy and Monstrosity had created - for example, pairing up Grimlock and Hot Rod as grizzled veteran and inexperienced, optimistic kid just does not work for me considering Hot Rod’s past as an insurgent, everything that happened to Nyon, etc. I just feel that once you’ve been forced to destroy an entire city, you may no longer qualify for ingenue roles.

Megatron is similarly a point of strange characterisation. Characters making mistakes is not necessarily a problem, but having a supposedly intelligent, strategic character who is intended to serve as a major villain repeatedly make daft choices? Less good, and it is especially not good when the behaviour of the character is described differently from what actually happens in the story. The writers continue to define Megatron’s version of villainy in terms of dominance and control, the implication (to me, at least) being that he is precise and focused in a way that other villains, like Scorponok, were not. However, Megatron’s actual behaviour and dialogue in the comic does not live up to that - he repeatedly takes massive risks or makes obvious tactical errors, relies on fear and blunt, brutal tactics, and can be quite self-indulgent. Although obviously mistakes and character flaws are fine, I think the writers settled for mistakes that were just too, too obvious in terms of tactics and created a bit of a clash between what they wanted Megatron to be and where the plot actually took the character.

First up, there is the decision to place Pentius’ spark inside of Trypticon. Megatron is aware that Pentius is actively malevolent, but seems to find no potential drawbacks to placing his spark inside the most powerful physical body available and only afterwards does he apparently think to ask ‘How am I to trust you?’. He is then shocked when the evil alien whom he had been able to control on Junkion because Pentius was literally a head on a chain, can suddenly be far more independent and dangerous when placed into a giant hell-dinosaur. Later things are smaller, but moments like Megatron only realising that acid rain would damage his air force as well as the Autobots’ halfway through a battle added to the impression that the writers were scrambling for a way to end the series quickly.

Optimus fares better. For example, his enjoyment of the mission to the pole has interesting implications for his tendency to isolate himself, but the flaws or challenges that gave him a lot of texture in Autocracy and Monstrosity have been shaved down - his main personal issue in this book seems to be a generalised sense of the pressure that comes with leadership. Compared to the Optimus of Monstrosity, this is a very smooth Optimus. Overall, the story seems more interested in propping up Optimus as the hero - Omega Supreme’s interactions with him spring to mind - but that comes at the cost of the specificity that previous books had given the character, which is a shame, as I think they helped me appreciate him more.

In fact, a lack of specificity is the cause of a lot of my problems with this book. The battles between Trypticon and Metroplex are so huge that it is difficult to really engage with them, they take place on a disaster movie scale, but named characters are in little danger and I wasn't attached enough to Iacon or Harmonex to really feel their destruction. Other threats are similarly poorly defined, like Pentius, and resolved through vague solutions, like Optimus showing Megatron the Matrix, which apparently removes or destroys Pentius' spark or its connection to Megatron for reasons that are sort of unclear.

There are still things to enjoy about this book and I fully intend to read it again at some point, but the plot holes and characterisation are glaring enough that it is definitely weaker than its predecessors.

Well, that was the last of the -acies series and I’m actually glad I read them, even if this last instalment didn’t do as much for me. Time to move on to Spotlight: Thundercracker!

[enby-rodimus]

I hunger for pre-war hot rod in nyon content but there's literally none or it's buried so deep i can't find it

[lord-squiggletits]

A compilation of all the times during Autocracy in which Megatron praises Orion or twirls his hair like a schoolgirl saying "I wonder what Orion is doing now"

Or in other words: Autocracy Megatron is incredibly fond of Orion Pax

Bonus: Megatron lied that he ripped Orion apart with his bare hands when he actually just shot him. Why? Is it because a gun is less gay than your bare hands?

[purpleglitch]

ok so anidala is. a lot. basically it's the heart of the prequels trilogy of Star Wars.

the prequels are like this: you have this system of government that's of course flawed but works pretty okay nonetheless. unfortunately this evil guy manipulates things behind the scenes because he wants to be the emperor in charge of all of it (making it an autocracy). basically the overarching storyline is the fall of the republic into the empire. so there's this original element of tragedy on a really big scale.

and then there's the more personal tragedies I suppose. and that's anidala. anakin was a slave born to a single mother on a desert planet freed by a jedi. the jedi are basically like middle age knights, but they answer to themselves. the thing with anakin is the jedi who freed him thinks he's the chosen one, that he will fulfill this really old prophecy. one thing about the jedi is that they can't form attachments. their whole thing is to make decisions in an objective headspace I suppose. so the "I'd sacrifice the entire world for you" thinking is very much NOT a jedi way of life. as a result the jedi can't get married, have kids, etc. anyways so they decide to train anakin as a jedi.

padme is the queen of a planet called Naboo when she meets anakin. (on Naboo they vote for their monarchs and the monarchs are specifically young teens bc ig they're pure of mind? or smth. and also theyre monarchs for ~5 years I think?) she becomes a representative of Naboo after her 5 years are up.

padme and anakin fall in love. they can't be in love. evil guy not only succeeds in making the republic fall, but he manipulates anakin and padme both personally behind the scenes as well. they both die. end scene (please watch Star Wars theres genuinely sm more to be said. like for example padme and anakin are mirror characters, and also they both majorly fuck up but they're people and erehgirehgirh. I think lotsssss of cdream/anakin parallels for those with eyes to see, architect of their own destructions kinda vibes. and george and padme oughghhh im sooo sick actually. "you're going down a path I can't follow".. WATCH STAR WRAS... )

sorry this is so long loll

OH WOWWWWWWWWW im not good with keeping up with series :( but still it's so interesting how both cdnf and anidala have that vibe of royal/knight to their relationship and there being an evil force that keeps them apart, i like to think that in death they reunite after everything :') doomed lovers is something that breaks me every time oughhhhh, do you know if there are compilations about anidala? i want to see them,,,,. random but this also reminds me of simon and betty from adventure time 😞 and dont worry about the ask being long!!

[toaarcan]

Same iteration!

The bottom image is from Issue 3 of Optimus Prime, which is well into the reimagining of Thundercracker as a character. The top one, however is from Issue 2 of Primacy, part of the Autocracy trilogy that covered Orion becoming Optimus Prime for the first time, the outbreak of the war, and the exodus of the neutrals. The art for these stories was done by Livio Ramondelli, who has a very distinctive style, with lots of heavy shadows and harsh colours, and a very painting-esque look.

Ramondelli's work is fairly divisive for a lot of fans, but I personally quite like it. He based the Seekers' designs in the trilogy on their look look in Megatron Origin, but with their wings either flipped upside-down or angled outwards, giving them a more bat-esque shape.

Here's some of my favourites from his work!

How can anyone hate the guy that gave us "Prowl (Prowl)?"

Same character.

[bumblebeesdoorwings]

i got the Autocracy Trilogy.

time to see what the fuck Metzen did.