I need to reread the comics again to have specific arguments/evidence for this, but like

I feel a bit like I could've been sympathetic to the way other Cybertronian colonies view Cybertron, if it weren't for the fact that at least several of them (as in, ones that get notable dialogue/screen time) are so low-key self-righteous?

Like, idk... there's a lot of criticism of Cybertronians because they're so "warlike" and how their obsession with violence and vengeance is just dragging the whole galaxy down with them, but uh. The Autobot-Decepticon war was basically a product of societal ills bubbling over for like 6 million years beforehand and then finally boiling over into a 4 million year war that lasted as long as it did because the people involved had immense social/psychological trauma from being "raised" in an oppressive society.

So when the colonists come in being all 'omg you people are so violent and uncivilized why don't you just like, stop fighting' it kind of pissed me off a little bit as a reader/person like. Idk the colonists really came into this society of people full of massive amounts of trauma where even before the war society was super oppressive and no one has any experience of living "normal" lives unaffected by violence and bigotry. And the colonists were like "ummm wow why don't you guys just??? stop fighting???." Like idk it wasn't EVERY SINGLE MOMENT, in fact I think that when it was played for laughs it's quite a funny "fridge horror" type element. It was just annoying because like.... IDK???? It's just really annoying to watch a bunch of people who lived relatively sheltered lives on their own planets come to a different planet full of traumatized people and be like "omg why are you people so fucked up" IDK BRO MAYBE BECAUSE THEIR SOCIETY WAS OPPRESSIVE AND THEY LIVED THROUGH A LIFELONG WAR???

It also doesn't help that the colonies were literally founded based on imperialism and conquest so like, it's fucking rich to hear colonists scolding Cybertronians for their violence ruining the whole galaxy while literally sitting on planets that their Primes colonized from others. The hypocrisy of this is briefly mentioned in Unicron (literally the FINAL STORY OF THE SERIES) but like, that's basically the only time Cybertronian characters are given a reprieve of sympathy from other characters in universe and it's so tiresome.

I've talked to other people who didn't like the colonists and thought they basically (narratively speaking) existed just to shit on the existing characters, and it's actually really easy for me to sympathize with/outright agree with that assessment of the story considering how much of exRID/OP seems to be preoccupied with "Cybertron/the Primes/Optimus sucks" with very few reprieves for anything positive happening and even fewer chances for characters to get to explain themselves and experience a little bit of justice? Like, as the audience, it's just very frustrating to see the characters you spent hundreds of issues keeping up with get shit on by a bunch of "literally-who"s and then not really get a chance to ever defend themselves, either by literally defending themselves in conversation or having some sort of narrative thing happening that vindicates them at least symbolically

Anyways. For all the aspiring authors out there, if you want to write a really epic and cool story where character agency matters and things happen as a consequence of people's actions, don't have the epic plot twist of your story be "this character who fucking died on screen in a very unmistakable fashion actually didn't die, he just went back in time to machinate the entire history of this story, literally everything that happened including major political/cultural revolutions was his machination, everything that has ever happened ever was his doing and btw he's the antagonist of this plot line again" because it's shit writing and it basically makes the entire storyline pointless.

Like, in a lot of my IDW OP posts I've harped a lot about character agency and how it's better for a character to have agency and be responsible for some bad things happening than for them to be responsible for nothing and be boring as a result, and it's the same principle here.

If you ass-pull such a massive retcon to the plotline of your story, making it so that EVERYTHING THAT'S HAPPENED is the result of One Guy in a convoluted man-behind-the-man-behind-the-man-behind-the-man plot, then you're just going to render the entire storyline pointless to your readers because. Okay so if everything that's ever happened is this one guy's fault, doesn't that render the actions of every other character in the story futile? Like, sure they technically made all of their choices of their own will, but the entirety of history and the circumstances of the planet were engineered by this one guy and they were all just helplessly playing into his plans so like.... Doesn't that basically make everything that happens in the story pointless?

Like. Especially since in the example I'm vagueposting about (Onyx Prime = Shockwave in the OP series), a few of the fundamental themes of the entire story center around things like responsibility, privilege, the way that good intentions =/= good consequences, the way that personal bias can influence the way that people think. Not to mention all of the crazy socio-political things going on and the genuinely touching things like, idk, a miner doing his best to change the system of Fuctionism, or a veteran from Cybertronian pre-history regretting the fact that she participated in xenophobic genocide. The entire story of IDW1 is full of BIG characters with big impacts big responsibility for what happens.

And you're telling me that the best fucking plot twist Barber could come up with for this continuity is "yeah Shockwave didn't actually die (even though he got shot in the chest by two people at once and then sucked into a black hole and got no medical intervention whatsoever) he just went back in time and IN FACT ALL OF CYBERTRONIAN HISTORY HAS BEEN HIS MACHINATION" like. Okay I guess the Primacy doesn't matter because Shockwave machinated that for his own purposes, I guess colonialism doesn't matter because Shockwave machinated that for his own purposes, I guess Nova Prime and Galvatron and the Guiding Hand and all of them just went exploring/colonizing as part of Shockwave's master plan, I guess the corrupt Senate with all its cool/underappreciated evil Senators was just all part of Shockwave's master plan, Megatron's writing and the existence of the Decepticons trying to rebel against functionism was all of Shockwave's master plan, in fact literally every part of Cybertronian history and myth and culture was engineered by Shockwave for his own nefarious purposes!!!!!!!

And his purposes were pretty much....................... "because I wanted to be evil and make people give up on hope because I love chaos" like okay bitch then why did I even get invested in this entire years-long continuity if you were just gonna pull a "actually everything happened specifically because of this one guy" plot twist on me?

Like the Functionist Universe is annoying but at least it's an alternate universe whose existence doesn't retcon THE ENTIRETY OF THE CONTINUITY at the last fucking minute of the entire story years after the majority of the comics were written, come the fuck on.