#mtmteReadalong

[notwhelmedyet]

More than Meets the Eye Readalong!

It's Pride month! It's almost my birthday! ...it's almost the finale of my favorite ongoing comic, More Than Meets The Eye/Lost Light. I was thinking, what better way to commemorate a deeply gay, wonderful comic that brings me so much joy than to share that joy with other people by hosting a More than Meets the Eye/Lost Light readalong?

The pitch (for the comic): I have pitched this comic so many times in so many ways, but I'll give it a shot, one more time:

imagine a comic about a world where every character is assumed to be gay and homophobia doesn't exist. You see a character you love? They're gay! No headcanons necessary, you exist and you are whole and this is your home.

imagine a comic about a group of misfits who go on a roadtrip to achieve a goal and are continually waylaid by adventures that spiral from the horrific to fantastic and span every genre of sci-fi you can think of

imagine a comic that goes on for years and never forces you to read a crossover

That's all this comic! More than Meets the Eye (and the continuing adventures in Lost Light) is a comic tie-in for Transformers adored by people who love transformers and by people who would never have otherwise touched transformers - it has love for its source material but you don't need to know or understand what's gone before to fall for it.

The pitch (for this event): Every week we're going to read a single trade paperback of the comic - that's ~6 issues a week. We've got a Discord to chat about the issues of the week and where any new readers can ask questions. If we can get enough interest @squireofgeekdom had suggested it would be super fun to use the audio chat channel in Discord to read aloud some issues of the comic, with everybody doing fun voices. Each week I'll pull together any fun extra content I can find about the issues we're covering to share. And then hopefully folks will be inspired to post some new things and we'll all remember to review the book on the internet reviewing websites of our choice so that other people can discover it and join us!

All of those events are optional: if all you want is to read the comic, that's great! Opt-in to whatever you've got time for/are interested in :D

Start Date: The Discord goes live now, but we're going to start reading MTMTE Volume 1 the week of June 18th-24th! So whether you're a MTMTE lover who wants to join in on a reread or a hesitant newbie who'd like some company as you embark on a voyage, we want you with us 💕

[ellicler]

mtmte #34

‘Births, Deaths, and Interventions’ tfwiki

I wanted to try and work out the parallels between the two stories in this issue, b/c the question is, what do they gain from being told side-by-side and not just as standalones?

but first, A Thing what’s haunted me for more than a day is this place in Megatron's treatise

i just felt like i've read something like that in some other book, and not a political book, at that. and just now i've realised: it's 'The Little Prince' by Saint-Exupery (btw he's a great writer and i used to love him a lot)

'If I have told you these details about the asteroid, and made a note of its number for you, it is on account of the grown-ups and their ways. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.'

 anyway, the two stories.

- obviously this is about ‘Towards Peace’ a) being written and b) being read. two experiences with a text.

- a thing it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out is that both protagonists (babby!Megs and TC) are in a very pure place, morally. ‘if you can save a life, you save a life’ vs ‘you cannot put a price on life’ – it’s even explicitly underlined in the text! but they have very different journeys from there. Megatron has to let go of his idealism and TC dies for it.

- the above quote about the aggressive social boundaries that prevent us from empathising with people as individuals, enforcing an ‘us vs them’ mentality can just as easily be applied to the Bot vs Con thing. I think this is explicitly JRo’s intention in the text. the way Bluestreak and Mainframe are worrying about the injured bot’s affiliation (and even endanger his life in the process even when they have no reasons to incline towards ‘con’ at that point) cutting to a page of the manifesto really brings that home.

- interesting to contrast the ‘big bad’ in the two stories. the systemic violence, cold, calculated, its agents ‘just doing their jobs’ VS the chaotic and personal violence of war (even though DJD does come closest among all the wartime agents to enforcing a system of oppression - but really, no. they might aspire high but there’s just no comparison, don’t flatter yourself Tarn)

somebody (DC??) said that First Aid is the most emotionally compromised / invested person in the whole ‘ethical dilemma’ side of the story, for him it’s much more personal than to the others (Blue, Mainframe, TC), he arguably lets himself be swayed by his personal experience & emotions. and yet his choice is undoubtedly the most… comes closest to being the ‘right’ one, insofar as there is such a thing. I think that’s what most readers would take from that at least (I know I did) and that’s how I think JRo (as he says in some interview or other) sees it (where ‘the cutoff point’ should be in his opinion? I hope I’m not misremembering). and that’s amazing as a storytelling choice, it’s doubly uncomfortable, even worse than TC not being rewarded by the story for taking a truly heroic moral stand. (I have a lot of feelings about how stories tend to unrealistically reward moral purity and why that’s conservative and sometimes borderline toxic?? but now’s not the time.) so yeah the subversion of moral tropes works beautifully here.

(btw Megatron initially chooses what TC chooses: to do the right thing, in his case to keep writing; he’s saved from forced mnemosurgery by chance; he gets a second chance to step away from his idealism which TC doesn’t get, here.)

 …do I have to talk about how psychologists are dicks who reaffirm the status quo? and yes, full offense to Rung, who works within the system and is friends with Froid. ‘the most compassionate course of action’ my ass. psychology is sort of inherently about ‘helping’ the individual to adapt to society and amend their ‘problematic’ behavior. I think this is something psychologists themselves became aware of and did address at some point (I once read a book by Erich Fromm who criticised exactly that), but if we’re talking Jung & Freud style early psychology, then yes they’ve absolutely been a conservative force working to prop the system that very much deserved dismantling. (I don’t have to talk about their ideas on female gender, the diagnosis of hysteria etc etc? …I think all of my half-assed points go back to Michel Foucault who is awesome and I need to actually read him already.)

[notwhelmedyet]

mtmteReadalong : v2 discussion questions

In case you don’t have time to follow along with the chat but want to participate, this week in the mtmte Readalong we read issues 4-8 (in theory, I’m totally behind). These were our discussion questions for the week:

Q1 - How are the personalities of the various bots reflected in their character designs?

Q2 - The sparkeater, Delphi and DJD are all things that are very specifically horrifying from the perspective of Cybertronians. What else do you think would work as a Cybertronian horror story?

Q3 - Readers who haven’t read any of JR’s earlier writing: what were your impressions/assumptions about what’s going on with Fortress Maximus?

Q4 - If you could add one page anywhere in the book, where would you want to see more most?

Q5 - First Aid describes Delphi as “an obscure little facility”...why do you think Pharma, Ratchet’s first choice as a successor, is posted there?

Q6 - Read over these panels again. Is this over the line for you? How do you feel about the way violence in this series is treated by the narrative and how does it make you feel about the characters?

[image: 2 panels from MTMTE #7. The scavengers are sitting around an Autobot soldier, who’s been ripped open and lit on fire.

Krok: “Well, well - a straggler. And I think he’s trying to speak.”

Soldier: “P-p-p-”

Krok: “That’s probably Autobot for “Please don’t kill me.”“

Soldier: “But the war’s over...”

Krok: “Really? I hadn’t heard.”]

[ellicler]

mtmte #35

so okay. b/c my style of ehhh critique / discussion / thinking about the comic has really been tending to the monologuing form more and more, I’ve been thinking of just putting my takes on individual issues here and then linking them in the chat (and now i’ve been encouraged to do so), so here goes. I might do a backlog actually if I have time later, but now let’s just plunge right in. (this one is a backlog though, just to iron out the kinks.)

MTMTE 35 ‘The Custom-Made Now - An Elegant Chaos Prologue’ tfwiki

 to get the ‘now’ stuff out of the way: Trailcutter!!

A Very Upsetting Image I suppose someone (Hoist!) must've put the Rodimus star in there... ...

of course the world-building in this issue is exquisite & exquisitely creepy. i love that the reason Dominus hasn't been calling Minimus for the past months is probably him being turned into a 'flathead' and not being indifferent to his brother as he (and the readers) probably think at first. and it's in part because he wouldn't want to put Minimus at risk by making anyone aware of his (negative) reaction to the news; but also it reads as if Dominus is actually ashamed. he doesn't come out immediately to greet his brother, and even though he plays it cool & is sarcastic he's still reticent i think. 'my brother has always been hard to read'

my favorite part of the issue is still the ending i think? it's about the government co-opting even the very bodies of the populace, and all three of our protags are feeling it in themselves in the final scene. amazing dystopia A+

and now onto the complaints!! i critique because i love

firstly i think the history behind the functionists' rise to power & subsequent rule isn't well thought-out? these totalitarian regimes always try and frighten the people with external & internal threats, playing them up into an agressive paranoia. we see nothing of the sort here: there's no agressive rhetoric about idk obsolete classes (who are stealing your energon & jobs), there's no overt aggression even directed at organics (instead of 'we'll not give a single foot of our land' it's all 'lol at those moon-huggers' - a great word / concept btw! also i love how JRo never forgets to add some real facts to feed the organic / mechanic hatred & opposition so that the Cons don't sound deluded when they talk about the organic threat etc.)

also i really really refuse to believe that without Megatron there has been no attempted revolution. in a society with ever worsening conditions sliding toward totalitarianism?? there must've been some sort of ugly violence, some rebellions, even if they ultimately didn't succeed w/o Megatron's genius politicking

like, this whole idea of history as being directed / made by exceptional individuals?? is really really pre-marxist xD same goes for the way Megatron & others guess at Brainstorm's plan: win the victory for the Cons by killing Orion Pax. history... really isn't that simplistic. (now i want an AU where in place of OP there's Prowl who quickly wins the war and goes on to become a dictator on par with Megatron)

another point: i don't get why the functionist council is so... over-the-top evil?? why they couldn't be just normal mechs being methodical bureaucrats about mass extermination. i think that's plenty frightening. these almost identical half-empurata modes, this air of operatic villainy... it just makes me think of broadway musicals, black leather capes, maybe that jewish council (...Sanhedrin) from JCS. it just detracts from my suspension of disbelief idk

apparently these are Ratchet and Pharma? at least tfwiki thinks so. so the last thing: for all the bots who we see alive and more-or-less well in the present day FU, i can say that it throws a deep shadow over the integrity of their characters? (there's a saying... from a communist fairy tale i read as a kid i think? that goes smth like: with such people in power all the good men are found in prisons.) it's the same here: all the 'good' people must've already done something and suffered the consequences, oh, a couple million years ago? or otherwise been frightened into submission by the whole totalitarian social machine, but then... then they'd be different, broken and used to duplicity and double-think and insidious moral corruption, constant compromises with TPTB. and if they only just began to rebel or realised that it was an option? that means they've struggled to stay willfully blind all these millions of years, which is. a very sad and a very scary story i think, and i would've liked to have it acknowledged on page a bit more? although Rewind's matter-of-fact usage of slurs and the whole way he talks about politics in public goes towards making that point, as does Dominus' job of 'ranking the animals' (which he'd agreed to do! he's been a useful and obedient tool in the council's hands for a very long time), but it still doesn't go nearly far enough i think

[notwhelmedyet]

is it too late to join the readalong discord? and if not, where can i do that?

Yes, of course you’re still welcome :DThis week we’re discussing volume 3 of mtmte and next week we’ll be reading volume 4, but you’re free to hop on/off whenever you want. Here’s a link to the chat / Here’s a link to my original post describing the event

[notwhelmedyet]

mtmteReadalong : v1 discussion questions

In case you don’t have time to follow along with the chat but want to participate, this week in the mtmte Readalong we read The Death of Optimus Prime and issues 1-3. These were our discussion questions for the week:

Q1 - What does it feel like this story has promised you? What do you need to happen before the end to feel satisfied with this set-up?

Q2 - Imagine that you know nothing about what happens on Cybertron after the Lost Light leaves. What do you think would happen next?

Q3 - Which is more confusing: reading Death of Optimus Prime first? Or going into MTMTE without Death of Optimus Prime?

Is there anything the book could have changed that would have made you less confused as a new reader?

Q4 - Characters in MTMTE tend to have heightened, somewhat simplified personalities, much like a sitcom character. (IE: Ratchet as the grumpy athiest, Rodimus as the impulsive & insecure goof)

What are the benefits and/or drawbacks of doing that in a story with a huge cast like MTMTE? Do you feel the book leans too far towards the iconic, the humanistic or neither?

Q5 - The panel layouts in MTMTE are doing some cool stuff. What’s a beat in the story that you felt really landed because of the way the panels were done?