Dominic wrote:
I'd prefer a moderator that shows more interest in the subject the forum is built on than "Yeah, it sucks, all of it, now let me go back to listening to my audio books on how to give a good political seminar".
Thankfully, you do not have that. As posted above, the fact I am not not slavishly praising every piece of vapid fiction, (or even the middling to good stuff), does not logically make me a bad fan.
That wasn't my argument, and you know it. My argument was that you've clearly shown you hate most fiction because of your stupid moral-driven bullcrap philosophy, and that extends to most if not all Transformers media in general. Seriously, with the standards you've placed, it's a wonder you even got peripherally into Transformers, in the first place, as - like I said before - IT HAS EVERYTHING YOU CLAIM TO HATE IN FICTION.
Did you bother to read the AHM thread? I praise the hell out of that. (Sparky, I expect a smart-@$$ remark about me claiming to not praise middling to bad fiction.
) If anything, one could argue that focusing obsessively on one part of the hobby limits a fan more than anything else. You dislike certain elements of the franchise. So do other people.
From what I'm reading of the series on the TF Wiki, it's no wonder you praised it; it's just as much of a preachy, continuity-screwing fanfic asspull as Beast Machines is.
And again, I need to remind you that I've said several times if you had JUST limited your debate to what you liked about Beast Machines, and not gone on that stupid diatribe about how all non-moral-driven fiction is a bullshit waste of time, we wouldn't be here at each other's throats. I can respect you as a fan for liking a show I dislike; I cannot respect you as a fan for essentially saying it's almost all bullshit and a waste of time, because it doesn't fit into what you'd consider good storytelling to be.
I see little point in reading about fiction characters doing fiction things that have no bearing on anything. If a writer can show insight about something else while writing about big robots, then I am more interested. Hell, read my comic reviews. I pick up a fair amount of filler, and admit as much when I review it. But, I do not lavish praise on those comics. My initial reason for reading Bendis was his amazing dialogue. it was not until later that I started to see where he was going with "Dark Avengers". (My praise for that book has gone up in proportion.)
Then you might as well stop reading or watching any sort of fiction, whatsoever, because THAT IS NOT HOW THINGS USUALLY WORK; fiction is just that, FICTION, not meant to be a reflection of real life or societal norms or problems or philosophical diatribes. It's meant as an escape, a journey into the unknown, a look at new worlds and new civilizations, of magic and wonder, of things we cannot possibly have in the real world or have any sort of comparative parallel with real world objects, locations, or issues. That is why it's called FICTION. Does that mean that real-world issues can't be explored in these worlds? Of course not, but the difference between you and the rest of the world is that the rest of the world acknowledges that fiction is STILL meant to be a journey into something non-realistic and non-reality based, and as such the message and reality-based parallels should take a back seat to the plot and the more fanciful elements, whereas you are determined to keep reality in the fiction, and force the more fanciful stuff and the plot to take a backseat to the real-world parallels and message.
For instance, one of my favorite novels, "Forests of the Night" by S. Andrew Swann, involves a genetically engineered anthro tiger investigating the death of a conservative anti-anthro politician on the eve of an election that could change the face of anthro rights forever. Okay, political message of minority rights and whatnot...but the novel doesn't focus on that; the murder turns out to be a conspiracy by aliens to invade the US. It never loses its perspective that this is a fictional world, keeps its atmosphere, and most importantly uses the political and human rights undertones to drive the plot, instead of using the plot to drive the undertones. It doesn't feel like a rehash of real life issues, because it keeps the feel of its fictional world and allows us to get lost in it. It's an escape for the reader instead of a lecture for an author tract, and that's what makes it so good.
On the other hand, I stopped reading Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series when Obsidian Butterfly came out, because she DID turn it into an author tract, one about her own personal fantasies and - arguably - a reflection of her breakup and remarriage; before, her version of a St. Louis infected with vampires, werecreatures, and other things that go bump in the night was layered and multi-faceted, with each crisis being explored through the interactions and personal experiences and personalities of the characters, and the titular protagonist grew from a stern, black-and-white exorcist and monster hunter into a more complex and lovable character through those interactions. There wasn't really a moral, there, just really well-written fictional stories about fictional worlds and fictional characters. Now, though, she's turned the main character into an author avatar, sexed everything up, said "to hell" with character development or progressive storytelling, and made it an outlet for her own personal fantasies, and it ended up sucking, as a result. She put her own personal biases and desires above the story she was wanting to tell, and forced said story to be worked around it instead of letting the former flow naturally through the latter. This is what you're arguing good fiction should be about. And this is what most of us are saying is NOT what it should be about, or how we were taught it should be about.
not going to feel safe with a moderator on here who "does a good job moderating" but only comes on here because he has nothing else to do with his time, rather than out of a genuine love for the franchise, whichever parts it may be.
Really, you feel unsafe? Have I censored you, even once? I would be lying if I said I was not tempted. But, have I edited your posts? Have I deleted your posts? Have I done anything to your account? Or, do you simply find new/different ideas *that* frightening that you feel unsafe around somebody voicing them?
What if you DID start censoring me, or pull some moderatorial action on me? How do I know that it was because I was honestly being disruptive, and not because you hated talking about the shows and disliked arguing with me about it? Like I said, you can like Beast Machines or hate Beast Wars all you want, but if you're going to rag on nearly everything Transformers-related because you don't like it from a story mechanics standpoint, and think it's too much of a waste of time for you to bother with it, how can i trust that ANY action you take against me or anyone else, for that matter, isn't simply because you hate the franchise and just don't want to be bothered with it? As i said, it's like giving Fred Phelps a job moderating a gay pride board, it just doesn't make any logical sense.
When talking about a story, does it not make sense to bring up the mechanics of story-telling? It makes more sense than impugning the politics and integrity of somebody. (I am a right-wing hack in the Commonwealth of MA apparently.....)
Considering that we WEREN'T talking about the mechanics of story-telling, no it doesn't make sense. Debating about whether the show was being preachy or how much Rattrap was derailed isn't the same as talking about how bad the sentence structure of a book is. You could've argued your point about the show NOT being preachy without bringing up stupid shit like "villains being evil just to be evil making a show preachy" (it doesn't, it's how the message is presented that makes a show preachy), or how characters should be tools to push the message; the main argument was, at least from where I was coming from, was whether Optimus' and Megatron's zealotry and constant diatribes about how their side of the conflict was right was too heavy-handed and preachy for the show, and whether it disrupted the story. You could've simply argued that that was what the writers were going for, and the story might've made less sense or had less impact than it did if it was made more subtle, or something along those lines. You didn't have to go as far as you did with your assessment of how story structure works, especially not to the extent of saying anything that doesn't revolve around a moral and is firmly grounded in reality in its message and isn't pushing that message in our face every five seconds is utter shit and a waste of our time.
As a writer myself, I feel insulted by his drivel, and I don't buy that he's got a degree in literature; no literature or creative writing teacher in the world would teach that kind of shit, at all. The only way I can think of to explain how he could possibly have that kind of opinion on fiction in general, is if he lived an intolerably sheltered life where fiction and games were off-limits for being "destructive to his intellect".
Serious question Synjo, if you are writer, where do you get ideas to write about? I am honestly curious about this. (And, for the record, my BA is in English. There was an emphasis on LIT classes though. I was killing time until grad school, which is another story.....)
And, again, do you see the difference between a story having an idea and having a moral?
A lot of what I do is fanfiction, so you wouldn't be interested in it, but I'll give you a short list of stories that I've done or am trying to do, and what inspired them:
1. My one and only Transformers story to date, "Seeds of the Future", was actually inspired by Primeval Dawn, as well as the debate over Transformer reproduction and how it would change post-Beast Wars and Beast Machines, after they've become more or less cyborgs instead of true robots. Yes, it stars Ravage, but it also brings in the Maximals (mainly Cheetor, Rattrap, and Rhinox), Tarantulas, the Tripredacus council, and even the original Insecticons. It deals mainly with Ravage's loyalties to Megatron, the Tripredacus council and Cheetor/Nightstalker (it's complicated), and involves him getting in a war with Tarantulas and the Insecticons on Earth while the others work on stopping a plot by the council to unleash a lab-created version of the Swarm to destroy the populace. The way I have it written, right now (it's only the first chapter, and I'm debating rewriting it or merging it into another version of it that I had), I realized it had a hint of unintentional gay rights subtext (a big part of the plot is an "Interfacer" underground that the council is using to spread/blame for the Swarm plague), but honestly, it's not going to be based on that subtext or really on the loyalty issues.
2. I have a Mortal Kombat story in the works based on the events of Armageddon, dealing with two characters of mine inspired by rejected character designs (mainly Zebron and the original, non-Shokan version of Kintaro) as they search for the real culprit of the Centaur's curse. The only thing that inspired this was the fact that they never made any bios for half of the characters in the game, and never gave an adequate explanation for most of the events in their endings, so I decided to come up with my own explanation. I seem to be able to do that really well, I'm told; take an existing franchise and work in my own theories explaining things that weren't adequately expanded on, and making them sound plausible.
3. The big one I'm hoping to get out the door is an original story based on the SatCho alliance, and the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate. It actually started as a sort of "furry sentai" comic taking place in neofeudal Japan, but living with an asshole of a war vet with a thing for the Tokugawa period inspired me to try a priod piece as a sort of backstory for the future series. And the original concept was inspired by, of all things, a White Wolf "Werewolf: The Apocalypse" supplement gamebook. Again, you'd likely not be interested in it, since it's heavily character-oriented, dealing with the interactions between the heroes and the villains, and the conversion of the latter to the former's side.
4. I also had another, more modern novel in the works (though I seem to have lost my copy of it) about a mercenary sniper that lost his teammate on a botched mission being hunted down by the same people who killed the teammate, and getting help from a British sniper who ends up becoming his new partner. The inspiration for this was easy: Silent Scope 2: Dark Silhouette. Again, it has a bit of a pro-gay message to it, this one being a little more intentional than the Transformers one, but again, it's more focused on the characters than anything.
5. Finally, I'm working on what is admittedly a Sonic slash fic, but i'd like to think it has more heart in it than just that. It was inspired by a thread on former Sonic writer Ken Pender's board about his plans to turn one of the Freedom Fighters gay in an alternate future sries he was writing, as well as a subplot of a current story his replacement Ian Flynn is doing, currently. i didn't like how Ian just stopped the subplot without any real resolution, and I thought Ken's plans for the character in question would actually work well in it, so the fanfic's basically my little fan contribution to the series (ironic, since Ian himself started out as a fan comic writer/artist).
There's a ton of others, but I trust I made my self clear; fiction inspires me, not real life - TV, movies, novels, comics, even mythology. I know that that's not true for everyone, but even those who take inspiration from real life know that there's a difference between taking inspiration from and basing stories on reality, and having reality overrun the story, and I've had enough of my fill of real life to have it in my stories.
I think you're taking his views on fiction a little too seriously. (And my responses, for that matter.)
About 2 weeks back, I lost my temper. I admit it. But, I lost my temper when the attacks became personal and completely disconnected from fiction.
I have friends in red-ish states and friends in blue states. I have friends with "R", and "D", and "U", and even (maybe) a "G" or 2 in front of their names. And, we can talk maturely about more important things than toys or comics.
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Then, since we've established that neither one of us wants to argue these points, anymore, nor will we be able to convince the other of our point of view when it comes to the subject of how story mechanics need to work, can we please shut up about it and move on? I'd like to get back to talking about the Beast Era, now, and as passionate as I am with my arguments, I can guarantee you I'm a LOT less argumentative and more cordial when it comes to talking about Transformers itself.
