Post #1509424

2026-04-20 12:57 UTC

After decades and decades of kids consuming cartoons and comic books depicting hero protagonists who win by kindness, sacrifice, and battle cruel and greedy authoritarianism it’s hard to believe how easily these adults lie and attack a cartoon they probably watched as “woke”. I mean, what? The Decepticons are the misunderstood good guys?

Replies (2)

@Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2026-04-20 15:02

Those types have been attacking "woke" cartoons this whole time. There's a lot of stories about writers getting push back from executives for having independent female protagonists and being forced to shoehorn romantic or maternal aspects in like with Pirates of Dark Water. Sometimes though, a whole "woke" show gets made, but then it becomes the butt of jokes like Captain Planet.

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@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-20 16:11

No, the Decepticons are not misunderstood as the good guys. You are giving the Transformers series WAY too much credit. First of all, let's address this lie about decades and decades of woke comic books. That's mostly marketing for the MCU that the movie industry has told you. Some comic books from some publishers some of the time have had social justice allegories. Stan Lee did it a lot. That was far from the standard; elsewhere in the industry you'd find nationalist propaganda like Captain America or just...DC spent a lot of time just doing salacious shit for the sake of salaciousness. Batman has been anything from goofy shit for children to a grimdark showcase of mental illness. Wonder Woman was an excuse for one author to write about his bondage fetish. That's not where Transformers came from. Transformers was a toy line first; Hasboro imported a line of Japanese toys and then created comics and cartoons around them as a marketing exercise. In the Ronald Reagan 1980's. There's a lot of people who have correct memories of Transformers being about a team of virtuous, American-made automobiles lead by a Red, White and Blue Peterbilt^(R)^ in their glorious fight against the fundamentally Evil, dark-colored foreigners. And those eye rolling The More You Know segments the Gubmint makes em do.

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