thinking about Autocracy as the backstory of the Rodimus we see in MTMTE works surprisingly well in very broad strokes, given the tonal dissonance between the two iterations, it's true; understanding the Rodimus we see in MTMTE as being in part driven by a sense of inadequacy relating to very real prior experiences and perceived failures that he refuses to like, explain to anyone as context for his actions and emotional bad decisions... it works surprisingly smoothly in an abstract sense. has some real pathos to it too.

however. it does make me think about the idea of everyone on the LL who largely just knows him through the events of MTMTE and reputation as an impulsive asshole and so on. finding out that Rodimus' pre-war experience was very specifically as the leader of, basically, a terrorist cell, and a very successful one by certain metrics, and honestly i think that would be really fucking funny i'm not gonna lie. drift fully did not realise this at all. he has been assuming rodimus was like, an early middle class autobot sympathizer who went straight to high command or something and now he feels kind of privately guilty oops.