#i havent watched it and even if i had its a reboot of the events so it wouldnt fit in the other theme of through the years

[lavendorii]

Second year

[elfelt-valentine]

beelze.. as someone who recently got into transformers.. where should i start? im thinking about picking up mtmte

Hi Omen!!!

That's a really good question, because TF is such a behemoth when it comes to it's content, there are so many continuities that you really can pick any of them up and go with it! If you're interested in the comics, picking up MTMTE i think is a good way to get acquainted with the idw1 continuity - it takes place after the events of many other comics and goes in parallel with Robots in Disguise, so i think it's good to read them hand in hand, personally. From what I remember, any plot relevant information they provide as well from the word of other characters, so you don't have to worry too much about the fact that you don't know stuff that happened before, if anything it might spark you interest to check it out later!

If I had to personally tell where to start with the comics, talking about idw1, there are three massive phases of their comics before the 2019 reboot - war, post-war, and the third one I don't remember and i havent gotten to it yet, so cant say for sure. All these phase collections are available on readcomiconline.li, that's where i read em! MTMTE and RID are parts of phase two, subsequently.

When it comes to shows, Transformers Animated is also it's own continuity and is very good and fun! It has three seasons 13 episodes each.

Earthspark from what i know is also a standalone show, so far there's one season, but from what i've seen it's very charming and nice (may be a little cheesy for me personally but i dont mind it)

The original G1 cartoon is also a very good way to start if you're into old silly animation and writing, it will give you a ground to stand on i think when you look into other continuities, cuz ultimately all of them take their root from this show, even if a lot of things have changed and aren't aligned with the G1 cartoon anymore. When you watch it and then look into other things like comics you'll have a moment of "i fucking know what you are" whenever a certain writing choice is made, but its just me FGBSFBV It also comes with a movie!

Aligned continuity wraps a huge mass of different mediums as they've been trying to tell this one solid Transformers story, but as far as I'm aware it didn't work and they stopped trying to do it. It includes the Cybertron trilogy games (can pirate them - if you need a link to where i got the games let me know!), a novel (i think) and then Transformers Prime tv show and its sequel Robots in Disguise 2015. I might be missing something cuz i haven't look into it yet, but personally i don't think it's my favorite continuity so far.

There are many other shows that comics and other things take pieces of inspiration from (Beast wars, unicron trilogy, cyberverse i think? and more) but i haven't looked into those yet and can't vouch for them in any way.

So yea! If you want to start, just pick whatever catches your interest the most and you can go from there! You really don't have to read, watch, or play every piece of tf to get in the groove.

[flowergirlmiwa]

I'd love to hear about ur ocs if u wanna talk about them :0

ah ummm... really it's sort of a thing where it goes through 500 reboots and reimaginings and only sort of some of the core elements bleed through so its actually really hard to answer this LOL.. but given this is in response to saying the OCs are from 2003 ill describe that version of the story

basically i imagined a TV-Y8 (yeah they invented TV-Y8 just because this show is That Badass) anime inspired cartoon about a bunch of high schoolers that have magical girl powers. theyre given these powers by the Spirit Guard whom they then work for to fight against the devil or something. lets go into the characters

NOTE I HAVENT WORKED ON ANY OF THIS SINCE LIKE 2007 so if it sounds dumb and not very developed it is

Yamachi - standard protag guy/self insert, he's quiet but fiercely loyal and prone to superpowered freakouts when the tension gets ratcheted up. at the beginning of the series he can transform into a dragon (LITERALLY imagine Guilmon because that's what i did, just bigger Guilmon and he's fuckin pissed) but like a third through the story a major moment happens and after that he can't do it anymore and people just kinda forget about it. if he had real character traits i dont remember them

Manga (this was seriously his name) - Joey Wheeler best friend to the protagonist. much later on he becomes an edgy revengeboy and breaks from the heroes to become an antihero who wants to fucking annihilate the devil for his own reasons. up until that point he's basically Michaelangelo from TMNT. also he dies at the end because fuck you i guess?

Anime (this was seriously her name) - tsundere and Manga's love interest (woah). later in the series she's severely hurt by a big meanieman we'll talk about later and this is what causes Manga to go into his descent into badass revenge. after she's hurt she basically becomes a ripoff of Oracle from Batman

Cicelia - the protagonist's main love interest for the first part of the series but they never get together and it just kinda remains flirty. she seems to be having fun much of the time and has a positive spirit. she likes flirting with men but doesn't really seem to want to hook up with them so i'm retroactively interpreting her to be a lesbian. she actually sticks around even when all of the protag's other friends are gone in the sequel series and she becomes a mix between Tuxedo Mask and a catgirl, mostly watching over the protag until he could use unexpected help before fucking off again after saying something mysterious and flirty. so yeah flirty catgirl lesbian

Paka - a girl with a crush on the protag who dies early in the series (in the same event that causes the protag to lose his Guilmon powers) because idk sympathetic cute young girls deserve to die to make the male protag more angrier. also you may note this is the second time ive described a main character as basically being a woman that exists to be hurt to fuel the anger of the cool male protagonists

Rose - not long after Paka dies Rose is introduced to be the protag's love interest. they start dating pretty soon after she's introduced and from that point forward they spend pretty much the rest of the series fighting side by side. she doesn't have a character besides this besides her magic being mostly about making shields and supporting people and stuff.

Rune - an intimidating demonic bad guy who killed Paka. every time he appears in the series it is guaranteed for the heroes to suffer serious losses, like when he hurts Anime

Aiko - brother of Rune and another demonic bad guy... it seems. Aiko is like that archetype of villain that's clearly going to turn on them, he's very bored being forced to fight the heroes and ends up just screwing with them instead. when Paka dies, this disillusions Aiko to the point where he decides to betray the demon world and becomes the mentor to the heroes. at this point he becomes half mentor half team dad, though he always retains his sarcastic wit and youthful energy (despite being 10000 years old or whatever)

the series itself would be mostly episodic with the team going wherever in the world they need to to stem the flow of demons coming from underground. in the finale everyone converges on Hell (basically), Manga ends up dying somehow and Aiko finishes off his brother Rune then the protag kills the big bad who never got characterization beyond being the evil demonking

EDIT: i forgot that i mentioned "the sequel series" above but failed to talk about that so lets do that now

this would be a series running at the same time as the regular series and it even is weirdly well thought out that way. basically it starts when the first show is still early on and gets cancelled before the first show ends. in the meantime it's a more light hearted and comedic show with more adventuring less fighting demons

in the beginning of the sequel series, Yamachi is pulled out of class one day (we see hide nor hair of any of his friends and the audience is just supposed to kind of assume they all went away for some reason? like i dont even think he would end the first series even as a high schooler but that's just part of how this is a 'odd spinoff/sequel'. like the idea basically is that my OC stories are real world shows following tropes of real world animation production and?? ok lets moveon)

Yamachi is pulled out of class one day by mysterious people and ends up in the back of a van getting injected with something called the Dragon's Kiss. suddenly his dragon form from before is back!!! he's permanently the dragon now and it's a more demure form than before (LITERALLY THINK GUILMON JUST IMAGINE GUILMON HE LOOKS LIKE GUILMON). he sets off on a quest to figure out who kidnapped him, what they injected him with and why, and how to go back to normal. in the meantime he abandons his past life and starts going by Dragno (the name of the sequel series)

Dragno quickly meets and befriends a nine year old named Zak (if anyone remembers that post i made about coming up with the name 'Zak' as a variant of 'Jack' not realizing it was already a real name uhh yeah it was this). Zak's thing is that he's a gunslinger and during every fight is just constantly firing all sorts of guns and jumping around being a menace. so basically Rocket Raccoon. Zak besides this is a fun-loving regular kid and he and Dragno start traveling together. basically this forms the core of the series, Dragno becomes more relaxed because he's hanging out with a goofy kid and the two just kinda have a good time and are friends on Dragno's quest

like mentioned above, Cicelia returns except as a Tuxedo Mask catgirl now going by just "Celia". every single other one of the characters from the original series are nowhere to be found. aaaaand there isn't really a whole lot more to it because i never had any real ideas besides "and then they adventured and had fun together and then Celia would hop in from time to time to give mysterious advice or fend off a powerful foe". at some point they'd discover a village full of dragons just like Dragno and he'd learn more about his origin and why he can turn into a dragon and stuff but i never thought about it that hard

[dick-grayson-wayne]

I legit spend 2 years studying before I started to buy American comics.

I am not kidding I spent 2 years watching history video, guides, reading articles on the history of characters and events in just DC. Just DC. Just for the Batfam. Not all of DC, not DC and Marvel but just DC and focused on Dick Grayson and Co.

I also spent that time picking up every comic my local library and high school library had and spent the time learning how to tell which time period in comics that comic was from (and therefore what continuity i was looking at).

All before I majorly started buying comics so that way I wasnt left floundering as I tried to read stories about characters I grew up with through other mediums.

And now I havent regularly bought comics in 3 years. I got bored with what current comics are doing with the characters im interested in, or I got frustrated, and to top it off each issue was 4 to 5 dollars and the prices just kept seeming to go up. So between the damage it did to my wallet to just not having fun anymore I dropped them.

If I ever go back to buying comics its going to be older runs. I havent completed my Robin Vol. 1 run as I only have up issue 180 so I do need to finish getting the rest. (With a few issues between 1 to 180 that im missing). Or I'll continue collecting the Pre New 52 Batman comics. Basically if I go back to collecting them its going to be older titles, older runs.

The new runs have gotten boring, have bad writing from the runs I've read, are getting more expensive, and are just hard to get into.

There is also the issue that trying to make the comics more accessible to new readers causes issues. New 52 and Rebirth were both attempts but I'm a new reader who still had a lot of work to do to get into the comics even with the N52 being a thing. (Though I don't like the N52 and know very few who do)

The reboots which were attempts to bring new readers in both really didn't but also pissed off older readers as the characters they'd been reading about suddenly had all their stories and back story shifted. Relationships destroyed. Personalities changed. The whole shebang.

Not to mention newer readers like myself who liked the old continuity and/or characters that n52 got rid of suddenly didn't have those characters we wanted to read about or see in comics.

And then there is the issue of there not being good guidelines or communication through the various writers so various runs have different interpretations of the characters. Just look at the Rebirth Teen Titan run. They just. Destroy Damian and back track his development. And hes a comic book character who has gone through so much development in so little time to (reletavie to comics).

The industry is dying. And the reasons why are way more than pandering. Im someone who wanted to collect comics. I was all in. I personally own at least 300 individual issues. And im a new reader. I only started collecting back in like 2015. And was ready to keep collecting my whole life.

But in the span of 3 years I dropped out of collecting because new runs just weren't interesting and were so expensive.

It also doesn't help that better alternatives exist. Manga is killing it right now. Im a huge manga and anime fan I've been collecting manga since I was like 11. And like between the story lines that are easy to get into, the better prices (7 issues for $10 is way easier than 1 for $4/5), the diversity in type of story and just better story telling it's thriving while Americans comics are dying.

The American comic industry is not doing good right now and there are so many issues that need to be addressed if it's going to be fixed.

Also people who say western comics are failing only because comic writers are pandering “sjw” wokeshit dumb. 

Comics are failing for a whole bunch of other reasons. Writers being jackasses are just the tip of the iceberg. I’d say the simple fact thats its literally impossible to read comics about one character without having to do a shit ton of research while looking up reading guides and editorial being dog shit at quality control and being extremely out of touch of what readers want are much bigger problems.

Fuck man the process that dictates what book gets canceled is beyond fucked. Its not issue sales, digital sales don’t matter, its not trade sales its fucking pre orders. Something that new readers have no idea how to do.