TF Views

I am going to go track down that TS Eliot stuff in a bit.

But, I will say that author intent is not about dictating opinions. Somebody can like understand something for what it actually is and still form an opinion on it one way or another. In other words, I can fully understand something like..."V for Vendatta", and still think that Moore was completely off base. The key thing is that my opinion is based on what Moore actually said with VfV.

Dom

Shockwave wrote:I'm not. I made the point I was making and everyone understands it to my satisfaction so I'm good. Hey O6 ya wanna kibitz about the BW comic? I happen to agree with what you said about it being this perfect continuity that can't be tampered with. That's what really annoyed me about Ascending/Gathering.

Bullspit it can't be tampered with. It's fiction like anything else and that's why I'm annoyed with some of the BW purists around. It's like, how many times do we see Optimus Prime's character model and personality change around? How many different Starscreams have we had? But we're never allowed any depiction of Optimus Primal or BW Megatron or frickin' Cheetor without a *hint* of reinterpretation or reimagination.

I want my BW series that continues off the minicomic. I want it set in 1996 with a 30-foot-tall Optimus Primal fighting Megatron in New York. I want Orcanoch to be the Maximal base. And more importantly, I don't want any BS to do with timetravel or chronal displacement.

My thing is that if they were going to do a series with the existing BW cast, in BW's timeframe, they should have just made a series about that. Just those guys, doin' stuff. If you want to add new characters, write them in their own environment--and if you absolutely *have* to have new characters *and* the existing BW cast, in prehistoric Earth, then by God please *do* something with them. Magmatron and Randy or whatever his English name was effectively contributed *nothing* to the actual BW story; you could take them out of the story and nothing would have changed--and in fact, that's exactly what happened because these new characters were specifically written in so that they *couldn't* affect the existing story.

Sure, Magmatron's mission was to go kill Megatron (or bring him back to the future for questioning or whatever) but then he had his own agenda that brought that off the rails to the point where it no longer mattered.

Which brings up the whole thing--if they weren't going to affect the story of BW the cartoon, why did they have to be in that environment? Why did the story have to have those restrictions?

And the answer is, of course, money and bullshit puritan fans.

I just don't understand why G1 is allowed to be screwed around with in tons of different ways (Just in the last four years we've had the live action movie, Animated, WfC and Prime) but BW isn't allowed to be reinvented or redone at all.

Exactly. I actually wouldn't even have minded if they'd gone the same direction the show originally went but with a bigger cast (maybe the stasis pods all activate on crashing, meaning much larger armies on both sides). There's nothing wrong with a new continuity.

O6, the problem you are talking about touches on the think Trekkie and are have been going back and forth about regarding PCC.

BW really only had 2 sets of context in the US, the back of the box (including the pack-in comic you mention) and the cartoon. The cartoon resonated far more widely. (This would have have happened even if the pack-in comic was not lack-luster.)

From 1996 to 2001, there was the cartoon and *only* the cartoon. The only non-cartoon context that was contemporary to this were comics. Most people ignored the Japanese comics, if they even knew about it. And, the convention comics were mostly consistent with the cartoon. Even the back of the box eventually conformed to the cartoon. (Think about that for a minute. What does it imply when the owner adjusts to the henchmen?)

The BW cartoon was it. We know that Beast fans were no more immune to toy-hackeritis, (despite the fact that they shoudl have been), than your average Gee-Whiner. But, Gee-Whiners need to accept some deviation between the cartoon and comic, or simply within the cartoon. Beast fans, (including the furries), have one true path, and woe to those who would deviate from it. The fact that there is only *1* "Beast Wars" also probably goes some way towards explaining their hostility to the thing that changed the Beast era, "Beast Machines". The fact that "Beast Wars" have inconsistencies and real technical flaws does not matter, because it was better than what come before (as low as that bar was) and it was the only one true path.


Dom
-at times wonders about hating BW more than Raksha.

The Flash #7

I didn't hold out much hope for this issue at first. Barry Allen barely appears, and instead the story centers around Captain Boomerang. Surprisingly, it's a decent origin story for the character, well-told in that it explains exactly who he is and why he acts the way he does. And it makes sense of the Rogues as a super-powered gang of criminals who watch each other's back and split the take. Harkness wants back in the group, but then he goes and releases the reverse-Flash from prison, which is probably a very big mistake.

Far, far better than I thought it would be. Any writer who can make me interested in a character I cared nothing about prior to reading the issue is doing a good job.

Onslaught Six wrote:Sure, Magmatron's mission was to go kill Megatron (or bring him back to the future for questioning or whatever) but then he had his own agenda that brought that off the rails to the point where it no longer mattered.

Which brings up the whole thing--if they weren't going to affect the story of BW the cartoon, why did they have to be in that environment? Why did the story have to have those restrictions?

Magmatron was concerned through-out "The Gathering" about the time table they were on, knowing the Council would grow suspicious of his activities if they took too long in capturing Megatron and returning to Cybertron. It stands to reason the Council could have been monitoring when in time they traveled to in the first place, given the apparent concerns they had over Magmatron's potential for betrayal. You're also not mentioning Magmatron's goals for capturing the stasis pods. That was another key reason why they had to be in that environment when they were. And really, that was the whole point of the story. To tell a new story about new characters by using a couple plot threads left over from the cartoon.

Yeah, the stasis pods The whole thing was really one big ball of Deus Ex Suck It.

Do we not have a thread for this particular arguement?



Dom
-this thread is like Final Crisis...pulling everything down with it.

True, but at least we're back talking about "a" comic

Shockwave wrote:Yeah, the stasis pods The whole thing was really one big ball of Deus Ex Suck It.

I don't see how it's a deux ex machina... It makes sense the Tripredacus Council would send another agent when Ravage failed to report back. And it makes sense someone like Magmatron would be more interested in his own goals, being like Megatron, tired of waiting for the Tripredacus Council to make their move and needing his own loyal army of Predacons to that end. Beast Wars already had this set up for them.

Dominic wrote:Do we not have a thread for this particular arguement?

As Shockwave said, at least this discussion is actually about a comic... Albeit one discussed elsewhere.