#give me silly stuff hasbro i could care less about earth

[icyrambles]

one of the things i find consistently weird about transformers as a piece of media is how the decepticons keep being the bad guys without any really attempt at reworking them as a faction

pretty much every continuity that exists has the decepticons filling the role as the primary antagonists. here's a list of the tf media i've consumed over the past year; g1, animated, prime, cyberverse, earthspark, rotb, first 2 bayverse movies, idw1 + idw2, the first 5 issues of tf skybound, shattered glass, the first 10 episodes of rid15, and a few episodes of armada and beast wars. and literally all of those have the decepticons fulfilling the role of antagonists.

now i'm specifically not taking issue with the fact that the decepticons are the bad guys. that's not my problem here. my problem is that the franchise as a whole seems to have a problem with actually developing the decepticon characters and the faction as characters/concepts worth being antagonists

this isn't a dash on the existing pieces of transformers media just to be clear, i enjoy cartoonishly evil shenanigans as much as the next person (my favourite character is fucking tarn for goodness sake). instead please read through the rest of this post as a single person's critique of a tonal inconsistency throughout the franchise of transformers

with the more recent pieces of transformers media attempting to paint the decepticons in a more sympathetic light (see cyberverse and earthspark) i noticed a core writing flaw with how the teams behind these works tackled making the decepticons more morally grey characters.

and that's the fact that they decepticons are still just as evil as they are in the original g1 cartoon, just with a little more grey paint thrown over their war crimes. it's one of the main writing flaws i have with both idw1/2 and earthspark.

because those writing teams really want you to view the decepticons as less evil. they really want you to watch/read through their content and see the decepticons as a group of individuals who, while not right in their actions, still deserve to be treated as more than a villain of the week.

and i agree with this sentiment. i think the decepticons should be more than villains of the week who need to be defeated at all costs. i think the decepticons should get the opportunity to be fully developed characters with hopes, dreams, aspirations, flaws, and emotions just like their autobot counterparts.

but there's a problem with how these writing teams interact with the decepticons. and it's the fact that they're still the bad guys. even if you give megatron a redemption arc in earthspark, there's still the looming implication that he, along with an army, invaded a random planet and potentially killed millions. (it's a kid show i'm not expecting them to go into detail with all of megan's war crimes, but earthspark does imply that megatron did fuck up a lot of earth's shit)

idw does a slightly better job with this, showing that the autobots have their fair share of war crimes, but the decepticons are still the primary antagonists throughout the comic's run.

even shows that paint the decepticons as purely the bad guys have tonal issues with how they're written

taken animated for example. the autobots get to be fully developed characters with personality traits outside of just being the good guys. bumblebee is impulsive, he likes video games and racing and being a little shit, he's not a beacon of virtue. prowl is antisocial, he doesn't like communicating with his team, but he fucking love nature, he loves meditating. he has a whole backstory about wanting to avoid being drafted into a war for fucks sake.

but the animated decepticons don't get that. there's nothing about blitzwing or lugnut or starscream that makes them uniquely suited to being in the decepticon cast. none of them get to have defining character traits outside of being decepticons who need to be beaten.

the same can be said for prime.

while i don't particularly think that any of the tfp characters are written well, at least the autobots have reasons for their personalities. arcee is a jaded bitch because she watched both of her partners die right in front of her. optimus is distant because he lost his best friend to differing ideologies. ratchet is grouchy all the time because he's constantly running low on fuel and is probably worried about his only family dying horribly in a war while he sits on the sidelines.

but the decepticons. they're just evil. megatron gets so addicted to power that he hypes himself up on the space equivalent of hard drugs for most of the series. soundwave.... he's there i guess? shockwave decided to violate the laws of nature for shits and giggles because the series never decided to expand upon his character except for evil scientist. starscream gets to be a sniveling coward who gets beat up whenever he appears and we never learn why he acts this way.

time and time again, transformers has an issue with writing decepticons as anything more than the bad guys.

and the reason why i take issue with this, isn't just because it's "bad writing" it's because the decepticons have a habit of having backstories that involve being discriminated against and it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth when the group of people who are more than often classified as second class citizens on their own planet get lumped into the role of "bad guys who want to steal and murder and pillage" when they want to change the system that is actively discriminating against them

and this all sounds like a lot of complaining. and it is. but i do have a method of trying to remedy this mess. two ways actually

#1: the hard way. (aka, this is the harder of the writing solutions because it requires viewing the decepticons as more than villains)

instead of having the decepticons being a group of revolutionaries who loose their way and become evil and genocidal seemingly for no reason other than "oh well revolutions don't really work and anyone who starts one just wants to cause problems against the system" why don't writers actually try and view the decepticon faction for what it is in most cases a group of people who were heavily discriminated against and who want to change their planet to actually treat them more than objects.

cybertron is shown to be a shitty planet to live on in more continuity, i can find it perfectly believable that people would want to change the system through radial reform.

show me why the decepticons became the way that they are. don't just tell me that megatron was always a bad person who wanted to become a dictator. that's stupid and highly uncreative after it's been done 15 times in a row in every single continuity

i would highly prefer a series that takes place from the decepticon perspective. i wanna know more about them. why is starscream constantly trying to overthrow megatron? is it because he thinks megatron is a bad leader? does he have a plan for how he would change things if he did become leader? if he's just doing it because he's egotistical, does he have a backstory that made him the way that he is?

give me decepticons with hobbies and personalities outside of wanting to kill everything.

#2: the easy way (this is easier because it doesn't require radical re-imagining of the decepticons as a whole)

just make the decepticons the ruling class. genuinely, just make the decepticons the people in charge from the beginning. you wouldn't have to imagine that many changes. megatron can still be a warlord intent on conquering the galaxy (it's just re-framed through the lens of him always being this way instead of having to learn violence is a solution), starscream constantly vying for the throne is now much easier to understand because the faction isn't rising up from the lower class, they were always in power and starscream wants more of it.

it even works out for the autobots because them being the lower class rising up against a tyrannical force re-contextualizes their desperate want to defend planets being attack by the decepticons. they're not just doing it because it's the right thing, they're doing it because they know what it's like. and that makes their motivations seem more sympathetic than a fucking god complex of saving the "tiny pathetic humans who can't defend themselves"

the decepticons being purely the bad guys is actually the reason why i'm not gonna read the rest of the skybound comics. i have no interest in another comic that is functionally (at least from the five issues i've read) just a bloodier, more violent g1. it's disappointing that instead of trying to explore the existing transformers characters through a different lens other than "evil" tf writers keep making the decepticons the same old bad guys.

this franchise has so much potential for interesting stories, cyberverse proved that to me when they allowed the autobots to team up with clobber, dead end, and soundwave, but it's being held back by the pervasive trope of the decepticons being the bad guys in every single story