#even poorly formatted ones that are closer to bulleted lists than essays

[bitegore]

Hey, I’m just dishing out the tough facts. Megatron was forged for heavy labor in the mines. That’s what he’s good for in IDW2. The fact that he pretends to be a senator won’t change his nature as a violent hunk of metal. He’s not worth sh*t and honestly, deactivating him would just be like throwing away a toaster oven or a broken alarm clock. He’s an appliance and that’s it. In fact, IDW2 proved that he doesn’t even have feelings. He’s a mindless robot without a spark.

1 - He’s not pretending to be a senator, he is a senator. Or is Optimus Prime also pretending to be a senator? IDW2 hasn’t been incredibly clear on how senatorship works, but it’s very clear that they aren’t sparked for it. Optimus was an archivist first, as you see with Codexa. 

2 - being a public policy maker (eg: a senator) doesn’t make you nonviolent. False equivalency. He can be a violent hunk of metal and a senator at the same time. Come up with a better way to phrase that or drop that part of the argument.

3 -  At the very least, he’s a decent public speaker. He’s the public face of the Ascenticons. If you want to argue that that’s Termagax, tell me how many times she’s given a speech- Megatron is the face that’s attached to the movement. She even says so herself.

(Image source: edited together from panels in issue 8)

They wouldn’t be such a big movement if he were good for nothing but mining, because no one needs a poetic or talkative miner. Having your nearly-nonsentient drone inspire the other nearly-nonsentient drones to rise up and kill the people holding their chains is the last thing a mine owner who needs nearly-nonsentient mining drones wants to happen! 

4 - “deactivating him would just be like throwing away a toaster oven or a broken alarm clock“ lol i don’t even know how to explain that throwing away the public face of your movement would be a bad idea. Even if he’s just a puppet, which he’s clearly not, you’d have to be a moron to do that. At the very least he has use as a senator and therefore an infiltrator of the government the Ascenticons are trying to change. Nonetheless, he’s not actually useless. He is shown as directing the Ascenticons and the Rise both. 

(Image source: issue 10)

Sure, he’s coming over as a mercurial dick here, but you don’t speak to your boss like that. Shockwave is clearly taking orders, as much as he dislikes to admit it. He’s operating within Megatron’s plans and working the way that Megatron wants him to, and Megatron came here to yell at him for going off the playbook, not to ask him to explain what the plan is or something. He’s not stupid and he’s not just playing along- he’s actually writing the plans. 

(Image source: issue 10, one page later)

Oh, yeah, definitely just a broken appliance. 

5 - “ In fact, IDW2 proved that he doesn’t even have feelings. He’s a mindless robot without a spark.“ 

This point breaks down into a few parts. 

I - you can’t just take the story at it’s word. If a character is consistently shown acting on emotion, going “they have no feelings” is kind of, and I wish i could put it more kindly but I can’t, really fucking dumb. The on-page text is really just dialogue and imagery, as this is a primarily visual medium. The dialogue that is used as world building is therefore unreliable, as it’s coming straight out of biased characters’ mouths. Megatron is shown snarling, arguing, using aggressive body language- signs of at least one emotion, anger. You even mention it yourself! He couldn’t be a “violent hunk of metal“ if he didn’t have the capacity to get angry and therefore violent. That’s kind of an important thing. He’s also shown playing people fairly well- that doesn’t necessarily mean he has emotions but it definitely means he has the ability to understand and manipulate them, making him not mindless. This is just basic reading comprehension skills. 

II - Secondly, a spark isn’t equal to having feelings. I’m not going to pull out things from IDW1 and RID/The Transformers where they go into that kind of thing because it’s a different continuity, but even in IDW2 there’s no real evidence that sparks are linked to or made of emotions. It’s just never mentioned lmao. 

III - I can’t even find any point where it would be shown that he doesn’t have feelings. I think you’re just projecting your distate onto the character, but if it’s not backed up by canon, you don’t have a reason to claim it is. Don’t tell people who read the comic that you know better than they do, if you don’t seem to be able to read it yourself.  

6 - Being that Functionism literally isn’t a thing and has never come up in the entirety of IDW2, I have to conclude that you’re using the IDW1 definition, which I’d like to point out was a very thinly veiled metaphor for racism, classism and sexism. I just wanna point out that you��re endorsing that. Just wanna point that out. Maybe you can restate your stance but I’d be realllll fucking wary of taking the side of “fantasy racism is good because I dislike this one character”, personally. Makes you kind of sound like a douchebag. Just a little bit. 

In conclusion: you don’t seem to understand this comic or Megatron’s role in it very well. Try harder.

(Note: I do actually like IDW2, but you have to also take into account that this is the very beginning of the war. Of course no one’s all that competent yet. They don’t have the experience they need. And I would agree that Megatron is foolish and incompetent at this point- I just wouldn’t argue that there’s anyone else in the entire comic that isn’t, therefore making it completely irrelevant.)