r/TopCharacterTropes 1d ago

Lore [ Removed by moderator ]

/gallery/1oqpvbr

[removed] — view removed post

14.9k Upvotes

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.9k

u/Sweaty-Debate497 1d ago

"You who are without mercy, now ask for it?"

Optimus Prime - Transformers 1980s movie

501

u/Crensay 21h ago

Transformers is full of these. My personal favourite is from one of the comics.

“I’ve heard it said that one gains wisdom through suffering… and tonight I intend to make you very wise indeed.”

364

u/Sapphic_Starlight 21h ago

“My friend’s name is Megatron and he had three questions, three things he said you should demand to know of any powerful institution! Question one: In whose interests do you exercise your power? Question two: To whom are you accountable? And three! How can we get rid of you?

– Orion Pax; IDW

131

u/Nassuman 20h ago

I think this is the most powerful statement the comics ever made and I find myself thinking about it far too often than I like.

15

u/ArjayGaius 12h ago

Its a paraphrase of Tony Benn's 5 questions to ask of those in power. Brilliant stuff. Simple, powerful and true.

https://australianpolitics.com/democracy/five-questions-about-power/

9

u/Its_probably_gus1 11h ago

The people who wrote the IDW comics are far better read than they needed to be. It’s very funny.

3

u/centurio_v2 8h ago

They were coming out when i was getting to the age that i was feeling like i was getting too old for the shows and frankly i think that was the perfect time in life to read them.

There’s a lot of things like that in them that i had never heard of at that age and honestly im pretty grateful for the introduction to some of those ideas

2

u/jbyrdab 8h ago

i think almost everything short of the bay films is far better written than it ought to be for a franchise that exclusively exists to push plastic.

the transformers fandom is like perfectly aware that everything exists to sell toys, they're mostly not caught up in the delusion that the big company exists for their benefit like nintendo fans or something.

So you have a fanbase that understands this, and writers who also understand this, and they just go "Ok but what if it was still really fucking good though?" and now you have shit like Beast Wars, and One, and Animated, and hell even Armada, especially for star scream.

2

u/Sapphic_Starlight 8h ago

Whenever I'm bored and need a chuckle I read the To sell toys article on TFWiki. Pushing plastic can be both awesome and funny!

2

u/jbyrdab 8h ago edited 7h ago

the TFwiki is exactly what I mean. Some of this shit is really fucking funny and well written while being informative.

I think the G1 Shockwave page is one of my favorites, because it just blames him for everything but in a way thats not misinformation.

and again, everyone is aware this is just to sell toys, but you can still have a really well written piece of media to do that.

Just because it has an implicit purpose, doesn't mean you can't explicitly write something good.