Transformer Alt Modes as a metaphor for Self-Determination?

[Copper Bezel]

That can provide individual story points and Earthspark is the rare case of a show that's used it to at least that level with Thrash etc. To make that work, you have to draw those individual connections explicitly, but there are at least some options to play with. I think like I said, in that kind of context, the strongest potential is a character who has mixed feelings about what their alt mode means to them.

From a fun speculative fantasy race perspective, I do think it would be fun to see it tried to have a society of Transformers as a whole who have some shared social language for what alt modes mean about a person, whether they're a matter of status imposed from outside (more like class), a freely-chosen or sometimes restricted self-expression (more like gender), a feature of related communities (more like ethnicity), a functional role in society that can be changed (simply a profession), or otherwise. That's hard to do since the social norms of the society are coming from space but the widest selection of vehicles with inbuilt meanings the audience can be expected to keep track of comes from Earth. (I may know someone working on their own fiction project that circumvents that problem.)

In IDW1 phase 2, altmode based class was an informed feature of flashback times we didn't get to live in or really see, and the class distinctions we did get to see in action in the present were about whether someone was forged or constructed cold and with what kind of spark. When Tailgate hides that he was a waste disposal guy, it's not by being one of the three guys who refuse to transform into alt mode in the book where no one ever transforms into alt mode anyway, and then eventually being found out as a garbage truck.

In Animated, we got the Bumblebee moldmate situation since that's what started his rivalry with Wasp, and he has to measure himself up against other speedsters when they appear (Nanosec and Blurr), and we know everyone is more or less born into their alt modes, but it doesn't seem like there are pervasive social expecations at play there, and for anyone else it isn't even a dialogue point. It's like Zootopia if no one ever actually pointed out in dialogue that Judy was a rabbit; the audience can see what the designs are meant to tell us but the explicit connections to other characters' expectations aren't drawn. The exceptions are explicitly exceptional, like the Jet twins and Omega Supreme.

We've just never really had "don't date a drummer" sorts of references about alt modes in any TF fiction I can immediately call to mind that would cement the idea of alt modes communicating something social to other Transformers. Except....

Except there's the Beast Wars guys, who will just not shut the hug up about their fursonas. It starts before their beast forms are five minutes old - Rhinox's reveal line is "livin' large is for forms like me, Rhinox." Rattrap delights in saying things like "What can I say, I'm a rat." Megatron attributes Tarantulas's treachery to his being a spider, Dinobot gets called a cold-blooded reptile at some point I think? All long before it's an explicit plot point that their beast forms have an influence on their brains. (Realistically, given these people already know each other, their fursona game is extraordinarily on point, considering that even people who don't like them are thinking "yeah, that pretty much sums up that guy" instead of "I really always thought of her as a sea slug" or whatnot.)

Maybe this stuff is just easier to do with animals. It's definitely hardest with made-up sci-fi vehicles that the audience doesn't even have mental categories for.

 

[NovaSaber]

And that's why Pretenders just do it based on their shells instead of on their alt-mode.

 

[Cybersnark]

If we look at where this idea was REALLY explored, IDW's first continuity, we see that while Functionism mandates you must do the job your alt mod dictates we see that there aren't many limits on what alt mode you can have. Famously Rewind rejected getting a tank alt mode as sort of him "reclaiming" his identity as a data stick Cybertronian.
But if he COULD adopt a tank- or anything else- how is Functionism even a workable system of social control? Obviously the answer would be "well if you change your alt mode then the cops come and arrest you/perform Shadowplay on you/etc...." but that's not viable if you think about it for more then ten seconds.

My preferred take is that Functionism is an old enough belief system that it predates the era of Cybertronians being able to reformat.

For that matter, when the technology did develop, it was probably treated the same way modern humans view gender reassignment (or plastic surgery to reshape one's face to "pass" as a particular ethnicity). I could see it being an early part of Megatron's platform, that people should alter their core structures, which may have horrified the Senate and Council --only for Optimus to agree with Megatron on this particular point (we all know Optimus' techspec quote).

 

[Copper Bezel]

Leaping out of bed from the hot coupe you just learned was born a garbage scow when you saw their towline

 

[Destron D-69]

if idw 1 had been left alone to continue it would have been interesting to see Cybertron truly try to put the war behind them and announce some sort of planet wide "cold-cast" ...warming initiative...

given that brief moment where we got to see Windblade interact with Starscreem's "true self" ... it would be interesting to have this perhaps be the beginning of the big upgrade to protoforms... or what have you... something on that level. A way for all these ... what were essentially souls drafted into military grunt bodies.. to 'find themselves'

I never read idw2 maybe they did something like that.

 

[Copper Bezel]

I haven't read IDW2, but it's a separate continuity that doesn't have those concepts to build on in the first place. IDW1 had times where everyone suddenly got a new look but that was only because they switched artists

 

[KingSwoop]

I prefer it over the idea of Functionism.
And I mean that in a meta sense.

Functionism as it was created- an in-universe social system where Cybertronians were placed into jobs/social classes based on alt mod, is a huge part of the fiction these days. Even in fiction where it's not explicitly named the idea that Megatron started the Decepticon uprising against some form of rigid social hierarchy that is in some way alt mode based seems like a staple of the fiction.

I was never a fan of IDW's dystopian pre-war past. Inexplicably they set things up so overtly wrong that Megatron was completely justified in rebelling against their unjust leaders, and Optimus was inexplicably unjustified for not assassinating the assorted Autobot Hitlers that he served under.

With that said, I don't particularly like Transformers being able to radically alter their bodies at a moment's notice. If you could be anything you want at any given time, be something useful to the situation.

With this in mind, then, a guy who turns into a garbage truck... is probably better suited to be a garbageman than a soldier or carpenter. This isn't functionalism, but mere practicality.

 

[Copper Bezel]

Even then there's a gotcha. There's a wide range in Transformers for how easy swapping alt modes is. One extreme is demonstrated in Rise of the Beasts, where Mirage swaps through alt modes like he's flicking through a photo album and changes from a small car to a garbage truck for a single scene. (If he's uniquely flexible due to his holography powers the movie doesn't mention or indicate it.) The other extreme is Animated, where Autobots require a ship's facilities to change alt modes and even a Decepticon seems to require elaborate reconstruction to go from a space gunship to a helicopter gunship.

But the premise of "robots in disguise" from another planet means that at least once in every continuity, everyone has to change alt modes at least this much.

 

[NovaSaber]

The Decepticons in Animated did have the ability to just scan a vehicle and transform into it immediately; the reason Megatron's body was completely rebuilt was because the original was basically destroyed.

But I tend to agree with the idea that it generally makes more sense to have limitations on their ability to get new alt-modes, whether it's "they require some external aid" or "it's hard and/or bad for them to do it very often".

 

[Dekafox]

That brings to mind the idea of a TF obsessed with collecting alt modes, which could be an interesting take on the six-changers or Gigatron in some new continuity. After all, if Tarn can obsess over transforming(in b4 "in a book where no one ever transforms") then why not also have someone who's a compulsive alt mode scanner? And maybe they get indecisive or scan too often and get stuck with a mode or four that they can't get rid of, until it finally stops working altogether.

 

[Destron D-69]

yeah it's a very distinct issue in any of the continuities. In the movies we haven't really been given much of a biology lesson on the tfs, since they've all been about the humans. what we can infer from the scraps we have is that... yeah scanning alters their biology.

Mirage's flexibility is a plot device first and a character trait second... however we did get a bit of a win with the triple changers in the last movie as we can see in real time the incorporation of the second mode into the robot mode directly after the scans... so on some level it must be akin to say mutation in organics... a change in the cna lol

in the media where we do have much more detail given to us about how this all works it seems to be a much more straightforward process. Protoforms, constructed cold bodies, Budding... they've all got that included bit of spiritualism... because yeah these are living aliens on top of being robots. and I'm always more impressed with the media we get that leans more toward that and doesn't just treat transforming and body changing as a simple mechanical thing.

"oh huffer's driverside smokestack got blown off in a fight, just hop over to a shop and get him some new chromed-up aftermarket pipes."
"no we can't do that, he need's to go over here and lay on this bed in the sickbay while Ratchet helps him grow a new arm."

I love this franchise's versatility - so I honestly hope we never get an omniversal singular answer to the hows whys and whats of this stuff.

 

[Cybersnark]

I just hate on-the-fly reformatting because it makes everything too easy.

Plus it obliviates the whole need to be Transformers as opposed to T-1000-style shapeshifters that can just turn into anything at any time.

 

[LordGigaIce]

I was never a fan of IDW's dystopian pre-war past. Inexplicably they set things up so overtly wrong that Megatron was completely justified in rebelling against their unjust leaders, and Optimus was inexplicably unjustified for not assassinating the assorted Autobot Hitlers that he served under.

The idea of Nova Prime as a Prime who went bad was very, very interesting. Here's someone chosen by the Matrix who just... went evil. It raised so many questions.
Is the Matrix as good we think it is?
Did it choose poorly?
Or is the Matrix a practical thing, and it chose a morally questionable 'bot in Nova to be Prime at the time because that was what was needed?
Either way- Nova being a good 'bot who went bad, or always being questionable but still chosen by the Matrix for whatever reason- the possibilities within either were too good to ignore.

But then we find out his immediate successor Nominus was also evil. Then his successor Sentinel was evil. Then his successor Zeta was evil. Until we land on Optimus who can't be evil because we're not doing SG.

But beyond just ruining the once novel idea of an evil Prime by making that the standard, IDW 1.0's main issue is that by making the Decepticons so justified it required them to jump through so many hoops to land on "heroic Autobots vs evil Decepticons" which, despite all the insistence to the contrary about the IP evolving to tackle more complex issues, is the status quo that has to be maintained at the end of the day.

To what degree IRL politics can be worked into Transformers fiction and have it still be effective at what it's meant to be, is a debate that's very relevant to this thread's topic. Though I would say for the sake of both keeping the narrative simple and not muddling the moral alignments of the franchise, depicting the Decepticons as well meaning revolutionaries who just took things maybe too far isn't the best message?
Like if we're going to absolutely lean into IRL politics... maybe make the Decepticons the oppressive ones? Maybe Megs is a fascist, and the 'Cons those swayed by him? Make the Autobots those who stand against them, but they can't really get their heads out of their tail pipes until Megs kills the Prime and Optimus rises up to stand up to him?
Just an idea.

'cause if the Autobots are the bastards before the War, and the Decepticons are the bastards in the present, then everyone's a bastard and why should I care?

With that said, I don't particularly like Transformers being able to radically alter their bodies at a moment's notice. If you could be anything you want at any given time, be something useful to the situation.

The way I see it is that it's a matter of personal choice. I could wear a fishnet tanktop that exposes my midriff if I wanted, and there are arguably situations where that would be "useful" I don't because it's not my style. Same reason I don't get a mohawk. I can do these things, nothing's stopping me, but they're just not "me."

So why doesn't Optimus take a flight-based alt mode? He likes being a truck. Starscream likes being a jet. Hell, you could expand that and get meta with it by referencing Megatron's long list of various alt modes. He goes through phases! Some of us had the preppy polo phase, the black goth phase, the band t-shirt phase, the Hawaiian shirt phase. Megs has had the handgun Micromachines phase, the tank phase, the stealth bomber phase, the helicopter gunship phase, etc...

The idea of alt modes just representing the moods, personalities, and likes of the individual segues so well into the idea of shape-shifting robots where you should have near infinite variations among the populace of such beings.

The problem is that, as stated, it makes alt modes the equivalent of a t-shirt or a haircut, which makes them a really poor method of categorization and control. IE Functionism makes no sense.

And honestly? That's fine. I'd rather keep the idea of constant variety and alt modes as personal expressions of agency, taste, personality, etc... and lose the grimdark oppressive dystopian stuff.

 

[Destron D-69]

well, the everyone's a bastard thing has some obvious real world parallels. but if the English and the Americans can both be seen as good guys now... well history has it's fickleness

so it's obviously not as cut and dry in idw1 that the matrix keeps choosing evil primes... after all it's not really a concious thing a lot of the time... it's just a powerful relic handed to the next bot in charge... also 'evil' is a judgment call... Nova wasn't evil evil... he was imperialistic evil... then he was Zombie imperialistic evil so... he might have done a few things that were okay before hand... I don't know, LOL it's all grey just like Megatron

 

[LordGigaIce]

well, the everyone's a bastard thing has some obvious real world parallels. but if the English and the Americans can both be seen as good guys now... well history has it's fickleness

To quote JRR Tolkien from Epic Rap Battles of History...

"Yes it's true to life for characters to die randomly, but the genre's called fantasy! It's supposed to be unrealistic!"

I like the idea of Transformers evolving its storytelling but it's still supposed to be an escape at the end of the day. And while I loved the "OMG THEY'RE REFERENCING SOVIET COMMUNISM" stuff as a 20-something who thought way too hard about this stuff I find that, in my 30s, a lot of it leaves me just "meh."
I appreciate James Roberts and John Barber had complicated thoughts on the nature of democratic socialism vs authoritarian socialism and the dangers inherent in well-intended revolutions going wrong and Jeremy Corbyn but ffs. It really made the whole thing unenjoyable.

It's ok if you disagree, but that's my take on it. Today.
I may decide it was good after all in five years. We'll see.

 

[Copper Bezel]

I think there's value in writing in a politically aware way or making those occasional weighty connections to real life experience. I mean Animated did a lot of that on Cybertron too, and it never put me off. Animated also played with "the Autobots are also assholes", but in context of, the Autobots are a whole damn society, of which our heroes are a tiny isolated part who don't know who they can really trust. I think it's making your main character the General-King of all the Good Guys that's the bad idea, actually.

The Decepticons in Animated did have the ability to just scan a vehicle and transform into it immediately; the reason Megatron's body was completely rebuilt was because the original was basically destroyed.

But I tend to agree with the idea that it generally makes more sense to have limitations on their ability to get new alt-modes, whether it's "they require some external aid" or "it's hard and/or bad for them to do it very often".

Not quite what I meant, I think Animated was more subtle than that. Autobots need external apparatus to take on a new disguise form, and Decepticons don't, that much is true. However, it's also true that at least within the cartoon, no one is ever shown or said to have taken on a radically different alt mode without the application of some degree of mad science. If they're a compact car, they take a compact car disguise form, if they're a truck they're a truck, if they're a jet they're a jet. If RotB Mirage was an animated Decepticon, he could probably become an F-1 racer at will, but I don't think he could become a garbage truck, I think he'd be limited by the mass and functional bits of his transformable innards.

It's arguable whether Megatron's new alt mode is radically different to begin with, so I probably shouldn't have used it as the example, but it's essentially a new body either way. All the other cases where someone gets a new alt mode are arguable for different reasons - there's just no point at which someone just gets a radically different alt mode than what they've been established having previously had in the cartoon, it only happens as a result of some other dramatic change. Blackarachnia and Waspinator get radically different alt modes as a result of mad science integrating organic tissue into their bodies. If you count the mini-comic, the Jet twins had alt modes before their current ones that changed as a result of integrating Decepticon flight tech into them. In both cases, it's a big enough transition to come with a name change.

Blitzwing is ambiguous on this point - he's been said externally to have been made a triple-changer before he came to Earth [via mad science,] but all the cartoon shows us is that on Earth, he has a fight with himself about whether to scan a tank or a jet as if he could have become anything he saw. A person could doggedly read that line as saying he was deciding whether to take the time to get himself an Earth disguise for either of those modes he already had, but I'm not that person.

To what degree IRL politics can be worked into Transformers fiction and have it still be effective at what it's meant to be, is a debate that's very relevant to this thread's topic. Though I would say for the sake of both keeping the narrative simple and not muddling the moral alignments of the franchise, depicting the Decepticons as well meaning revolutionaries who just took things maybe too far isn't the best message?

I think it was fun to do once. Once Prime jumped on the train it was over for me. I think Transformers origin stories are needlessly calcified at this point. Steven Universe is an obvious Transformers AU, why not do a mainline show with that background, where "Decepticons" (so named by others because they disguise themselves as native machines on victim planets) are a vast empire exploiting the natural resources of planets across the galaxy, and Autobots (who chose an a name to reflect their self-determination) are a tiny rebel group resisting the invasion of Earth, and are also interested in learning all the parts of culture and expression that aren't built-in guns.

The way I see it is that it's a matter of personal choice. I could wear a fishnet tanktop that exposes my midriff if I wanted, and there are arguably situations where that would be "useful" I don't because it's not my style. Same reason I don't get a mohawk. I can do these things, nothing's stopping me, but they're just not "me."

So why doesn't Optimus take a flight-based alt mode? He likes being a truck. Starscream likes being a jet. Hell, you could expand that and get meta with it by referencing Megatron's long list of various alt modes. He goes through phases! Some of us had the preppy polo phase, the black goth phase, the band t-shirt phase, the Hawaiian shirt phase. Megs has had the handgun Micromachines phase, the tank phase, the stealth bomber phase, the helicopter gunship phase, etc...

As long as it takes time and resources, I'm fine with it. The trouble is that convenience of plot often requires taking on a disguise form to be instantaneous or nearly so, and increasingly in recent years, without any external equipment or resources. In that case, it's too close to being a proper shapeshifter, and Prime should really take a flying alt mode whenever he falls off a building.

I would also still like to see more radical changes take more radical steps. Independent of any lore mechanism to make it happen, which should be fitted to the result rather than the other way around. Most characters don't change suddenly in size or build either, and the identity of their alt mode is a part of the character that should really only change as the character does, like Hot Rod to Rodimus Prime. I'd accept that as a maturation of the character in a later time without any god powers involved, just as long as there's something around to make that sort of thing possible, but not something you generally do for the span of an episode plot.

in the media where we do have much more detail given to us about how this all works it seems to be a much more straightforward process. Protoforms, constructed cold bodies, Budding... they've all got that included bit of spiritualism... because yeah these are living aliens on top of being robots. and I'm always more impressed with the media we get that leans more toward that and doesn't just treat transforming and body changing as a simple mechanical thing.

"oh huffer's driverside smokestack got blown off in a fight, just hop over to a shop and get him some new chromed-up aftermarket pipes."
"no we can't do that, he need's to go over here and lay on this bed in the sickbay while Ratchet helps him grow a new arm."

I could take or leave the spiritualism. Er. It's leave, honestly. I could leave the spiritualism. Religions in fantasy fiction are hampered by the fact that they have to be true and Prime gave me enough faux gravitas for a lifetime.

Rossum's Trinity haunts me, too. The idea of the brain, spark, and transformation cog being these three central organs that define who and what a Transformer is, and can't exist independent of - oh, never mind, you can just - oh and we're doing the Beast Machines thing again too and - he does what with their morphcores

 

[LordGigaIce]

I think there's value in writing in a politically aware way or making those occasional weighty connections to real life experience.

Sure there is, but just because something can be done well doesn't mean the way that it was done was done well.

I mean Animated did a lot of that on Cybertron too, and it never put me off. Animated also played with "the Autobots are also assholes", but in context of, the Autobots are a whole damn society, of which our heroes are a tiny isolated part who don't know who they can really trust. I think it's making your main character the General-King of all the Good Guys that's the bad idea, actually.

General-King of Good Guys?
Like... I'm not saying strip out all the nuance. I just think that the way IDW 1.0's chips fell... it made things muddy in ways it really didn't need to be.

 

[Copper Bezel]

Sure there is, but just because something can be done well doesn't mean the way that it was done was done well.

Yeah, my apologies, I didn't intend to accuse them of any such thing. I also agree with like 99% of what you're saying.

General-King of Good Guys?

In most continuities, Optimus Prime is the military dictator to half a planet and also contains their most sacred religious artifact in his body, which is also objectively real magic and contains actual divine right and some form of dynastic wisdom. He's sequentially been the Moses, Jesus, Gandalf, and Bruce Willis for a civilization so ancient and nigh-immortal that nearly everyone in it is already older than the actual Moses. And he's still just like, around, doing cool action hero stuff, because everyone is about as old as their recorded history seems to be.

But yeah as you said, the unrelenting roll back into the status quo is the real problem. I mean I get it, there are hundreds of Transformer dudes in Transformers and they all have guns and either a smiley face sticker or a frowny face sticker and there's only so many ways to package that. But how nuanced and politically savvy a story could you tell in GI Joe in a world where Duke is the founder and leader of the good humans, and the Joes and Cobra together constitute the entire geopolitical sphere?

The things I enjoyed most in IDW1 were the times it created its own stories within the world with its own protagonists and antagonists that weren't synonymous with the entire factions, and there wasn't a war to pretend to care about the outcome of. First season of MtMtE? Aces IMO. Obviously, the even better solution is to do what Beast Wars and Animated did, and make the main conflict of the story its own isolated space with protagonists and antagonists who don't represent the entire civilization they came from.

Edit: Stating the obvious re: the GI Joe comparison, the difference is that for the Joes in their original TV context, the civilian population is the human population of Earth, while for the Transformers, the civilian population is the human population of Earth. Some backstories aren't meant to be told.

 

[LordGigaIce]

And he's still just like, around, doing cool action hero stuff, because everyone is about as old as their recorded history seems to be.

I mean that falls into a different ball of wax, which is TF timescales. Funnily enough G1 did it best because it told a fairly straightforward no-nonsense story and if you wanted to you could just pretend that that the Autobot and Decepticon leaders getting knocked offline for six million years was sort of curveball that disrupted everything.
I don't mean to pick on IDW1 because there was a lot I still adore about it, but eh... it's ripe in this case. We establish that the war is the standard six million years. Nova Prime's era is ten million years ago.
That's... not too drastic, comparatively. Hell, Rewind was there when Nova launched his expedition, and recorded the speech!
Yet they also wanted it that Nova's ascension took place in the realm of myth and legend. The time scale is whacked and makes no sense and every justification I've heard is frankly a bandaid trying to justify a plot hole that could have been avoided with maybe a bit more forward planning?
They want Nova to be Charlemagne. Instead, if you look at the scale of time involved, he's Jimmy Carter.
I mean Arcee is the brother-turned-sister of Galvatron, who dates to the era of the Thirteen! That's like if we had one of Moses' pals just still hanging around and it wasn't a big deal.

In most continuities, Optimus Prime is the military dictator to half a planet and also contains their most sacred religious artifact in his body, which is also objectively real magic and contains actual divine right and some form of dynastic wisdom. He's sequentially been the Moses, Jesus, Gandalf, and Bruce Willis for a civilization so ancient and nigh-immortal that nearly everyone in it is already older than the actual Moses...But how nuanced and politically savvy a story could you tell in GI Joe in a world where Duke is the founder and leader of the good humans, and the Joes and Cobra together constitute the entire geopolitical sphere?

With Tranformers? They're alien. Alien machines at that. They are potentially removed from a lot about what we see as fundamentally human.
Would robots have ethnicities? Racial groups? Tribal groups that would form the foundations of nation-states? Hell...would different languages even be a thing? I can go down the list about the ways humanity is a complex tapestry that we arrived at more or less naturally just by being biological organisms subject to environmental pressures and cultural and linguistic shifts that may not apply to robots from an alien world (UNLESS CYBERTRON IS EARTH X-Files music)

But it's weird because we have to humanize them to a degree because otherwise we, the paying human audience, won't relate to them. It's one reason (among many) I roll my eyes at people who lose their minds at gender being brought up in Transformers. "THEY'RE ROBOTS THEY DON'T HAVE GENDER" no shut up, they've been coded as male and female since the start because it's easier to get us to relate to them that way, it's part of the brand, stop it.

The problem is the factions because it very clearly defines two groups. And everything else is... up to interpretation? And yes I know there are alternate factions. Hasbro rolls out a new third faction every few years and this time they're super serial about it you guys and they're always forgotten within two years.

So you have Autobots and Decepticons and at a base level... that's it as far as groups go. The G1 comic mentioned city-states but like... what exactly do Auobots and Decepticons mean?

To your main point, there are ways to address this. Animated did a very interesting thing I'm a fan of, making them two large societies in conflict with each other. And maybe one side is more "the good guys" than the other but these are two large societies, there's going to be variance among them and maybe our group of heroes isn't necessarily representative of ALL the Autobots?
Honestly? If someone from Hasbro came to
me and said "LordGigaIce, we want you to write the next Transformers series" that's probably the approach I take? It leaves room for some complexities while keeping things more or less "Autobots good Decepticons evil" for the marketing and toys.

The other way I'd prefer falls into the other way to depict the Autobots and Decepticons- as political factions.
While IDW1 opted to make Decepticons a well meaning but ultimately corrupted left wing revolutionary movement and Autobots fascists turned good guys I guess because Optimus ended up in charge(?) I'd go the other way?

Make Cybertron a planet on the back end of a Golden Age. The cracks are starting to show and here comes Megatron as an unrepentant fascist willing to not only exploit some social tension to get what he wants, but actively engages in accelerationism to speed things up.
The Autobots can be the government or just another political factions more in line with the good stuff like freedom, co-existence, democracy, rights for all sentient beings etc... but maybe, say, Sentinel Prime is your typical centrist/moderate, the type of guy who just doesn't take the rising, bubbling fascism seriously until it's too late. Orion is your more proactive Autobot who knows very much what Megatron is (you could even do the 'they were once friends' thing to show Orion really knows what's up) but whose words fall on deaf ears.
Then the fascist uprising happens, Autobots are caught off guard because leadership was asleep at the wheel. Orion becomes Optimus Prime and now has to lead the Autobots as a resistance force against an ascendent Decepticon empire that's not just going to enact a police state on Cybteron, it's going to launch a war against the universe because they think it's their right to scour it for resources and slave labour.

Sorry that got rambly...but the tl;dr version is that I think you can have some moral complexity without muddying things too much.

As for the Matrix and what that means Optimus is... I'll level with you. I like fantasy literature. It's probably my favourite genre. Swords of destiny, magical McGuffins, Chosen Ones, etc... these are all just things I'm used to. And while they tend to over-simplify things they've also been staples of human storytelling as long as there's been human storytelling. They don't bother me in and of themselves, and I think there's thoughtful and meaningful ways to play with those concepts and what they mean without fully deconstructing them.

Yeah, my apologies, I didn't intend to accuse them of any such thing. I also agree with like 99% of what you're saying.

It's all good! Same to you

 

[Destron D-69]

as I am now 41 and rushing head first toward 50 and the grave... I'm also not all that interested in doing TFs as political commentary all that often again XD... maybe that's why I find the concept of them being spiritual beings (not necessarily religiously speaking, I could do with less of that too) an honestly more appealing aspect of the whyfors related to transformation -alt-mode selection etc...

how interesting could a toyline/show be if say long established characters... say Thundercracker for a fast example... came out as a truck, just popped up as a jet one time and then the next time we see him he's all like "yeah now that the war is over I'm taking my dog and we're going to explore earth together.. also I'm a truck now"

I'd buy truckdercracker