I regularly see trots being memed about because "they do nothing apart from writing newspapers", but to me from their viewpoint (and as an anarchist) it totally makes sense and is a sympathetic view how it should be the workers leading the fight towards a revolution and the vanguard should stand aside and take the role of advisors (hence the newspapers) rather than leaders.
I feel like i'm missing something but i don't know what.
Hmm, that's interesting because my view on them is that they actually aren't that hard on control as Trotsky turned out to be in his own time.
Depends on the tendency. Cliffites are often almost councilcom, and are many New Left trots who took some Maoist thought. But others are more Orthodox ML.
It comes from Trotsky's critique of the nomenklatura, but he himself was always firm about direct Party control of the Soviets. Partially because Stalin opening up the party to his Soviet supporters was what doomed him.
Charitably Trotsky, and some Trot groups, are converging on a proto mass-line strategy here, but I've rarely seen it properly cohere.