Is Transformers an emotionally-stunted franchise?

[Onslaught Six]

I'd like to take a more strength-based approach anyway, any of you care to bring up some emotionally deep moments from any past TF stuff?

I loved what happened with Thundercracker and Skywarp in All Hail Megs, because it was the story I had written in my head for literally years. And there it was, being played out in front of me. (That bit where Skywarp says to Thundercracker that he "misses the old days" when all three of them used to tear shit up together? I felt like McCarthy was stealing from my brain.)

Bit of an abstract one, but I still get the sads when Ironhide's tech spec describes him as "emotionally fragile".

I always took that to mean that he was someone who could overreact under pressure, which is pretty consistent with how he's portrayed in most medium. (Ironhide beats the crap out of Mirage in AHM, because Mirage is the obvious traitor, and he's pissed off that nobody else is doing anything about it.)

I'd have to see an example to judge. But without all of the domestic issues, and physical attraction issues, we're left with stories that could be told just as effectively through friendship. Chromedome and Rewind would work just as well as two old and dear friends as they did the way Roberts wrote them. In fact, remove a few lines of dialogue, and that's what you'd have.

I'm having a problem seeing where the line is, here, and in a lot of ways I think that's supposed to be Roberts' point.

Are we even told directly that Chromedome and Rewind are physically attracted to each other? Is that even an emotion TFs are capable of having? (I guess there's Hoist telling Trailbreaker that his new leg guns are cool.)

As a detour in that vein about so-called "boys' fiction": All of the letters on the mail page of the latest issue of MTMTE came from female readers. I'm not going to draw any conclusions from that unless you other participants in this enjoyable little debate feel it's worth examining.

MTMTE (and RID!) have actually gotten several female TF fans, long since estranged from the franchise, back into it lately. And most of them are just happy that the books don't have Megatron fighting Optimus Prime every month, forever.

But I think I just don't have this gut reaction you do to the idea of "romantic relationship" meaning one person sat at home just worrying about the other. Come on, man. They'd both be on the frontlines, so clichés like that are irrelevant.

Yes! This is the whole thing that confuses me to hell about Anderson's point. It's like he can't fathom two characters being in a relationship without--for lack of better terms--one being the man and one being the woman. What he said...wouldn't happen, and I don't think any realistic TF writer would actually portray characters that way. It'd be fucking stupid.

I'm putting two lines before the next quote because I really want to separate it out.

In the case of Chromedome and Rewind, it is (probably) the kind of fan that I do not want to see more of getting rewarded. (Again, I would rather wait for Roberts' comments, rather than continuously restating my position on this question.)

Why are you against new people who enjoy things differently than you entering the fandom?

That's what it comes down to, you keep...you keep drawing this weird fucking invisible line between "us" and "them" when the reality is we all came to Transformers for entirely different reasons, and we all stayed here because the franchise delivered different things to all of us. Prowl and I came for its rich, expansive universes, Anderson likes its binary morals and adherence to tradition, ShockTrek likes it because it has a purple guy with one eye in it, and you like it because it occasionally has good writers who have something legitimate to say about the franchise. (And I would wager that, every so often, all of us likes to indulge in a good fight between a guy who turns into a truck and a grey guy with a purple face on his chest.)

(Apologies in advance if I simplified your, or anyone's, viewpoint in the above paragraph.)

You're against MTMTE not just because of what you see as pandering--that was just the straw that broke the camel's back for you, Roberts was already on thin ice for writing an allegedly aimless book that was wasting your time because it didn't have a point. (You've admitted before that you're willing to give Roberts more chances than most, and you at least remain interested in discussing the book, so I'm not going to fault you there.) I'm more willing to have my time "wasted" if it's still new and fresh and entertaining to me, which MTMTE is. I get something different out of the book than you, and that's okay because we're different people.

To me, there is no "wrong kind of fan," or "that kind of fan." People are allowed to enjoy things the way they want to, and you shouldn't be throwing stones from afar because you're hardly innocent yourself.

And more importantly, Roberts can't control how people are going to react. Shit, if I was writing the book, I'd be happy that people were doing Rewind and Chromedome fanart or whatever, because that means they enjoyed the relationship that I came up with! But if Roberts writes a scene where Soundwave shoots a guy's face off, you're not going to accuse him of people who want to see Soundwave shoot dudes' faces off (like Prowl said earlier), even if their reaction would be pretty much identical to a Chromedome/Rewind fan. What if I drew Soundwave-killing-Bladerunner fanart? Does that suddenly make me "that kind of fan?"


I mean, I consider myself one of the larger, and more visible, Protomen fans online. They're a band who essentially consist of expanded Megaman fanfiction songs in the form of rock opera concept albums, and it actually turns out to be a lot cooler than that kind of thing sounds. But, there are people within the "Protomen fandom" who do things that I simply cannot fucking stand. And for a while I tried to like, police that, until it got to the point where I threw up my hands and realized, it wasn't my fucking job to worry about how other people reacted to a thing I liked. All that mattered was that I liked it and enjoyed it the way I did.

And you know what, fuck, there's actually an example of this shit! A few years ago, they did a Queen tribute show. They played all Queen covers for one night. (A band that was friends of theirs was doing an all-Black Sabbath covers night as their final show, and they piggybacked onto it.) Since they already learned the songs, they started playing them at all their shows, alongside the "original" Megaman-related material. This isn't really uncommon since every Protomen show normally had a cover song or two. Then news came that they had recorded that original show, and were going to release a CD of it. By the time the CD came out, it had been about two years. (Protomen never do anything quickly. They don't have a lot of time or money.) So then they had to keep doing the Queen covers at shows, to promote the CD, and now it's gotten to the point where they are almost more known for the Queen covers than they are the original material. As someone who got into them for their original shit (and as someone who maybe likes Princes of the Universe and that's about it), I kind of started to get tired of them "pandering" to this newer Queen-related fanbase and wished they would stop being the world's best Queen cover band and start being the Protomen again.

And then I realized it was all in my fucking head, and two Queen cover songs in a night where the setlist was 12 songs long wasn't "pandering" and this legion of new Queen-type fans probably only existed to me. The reality was they kept playing the Queen cover songs because they liked doing it, they already knew the songs, and they want to promote the Queen CD. (It's still the newest thing in their catalogue, besides the one song they play from the still-no-release-date "Act 3" conclusion.)

And then I realized that the band wasn't fucking mine. I wasn't in it. I had no ownership or say in it, and I had no right to try and tell them what the fuck they should do. If other people liked what they were doing, good. If I didn't, I could look elsewhere--I didn't have to harp on "that kind of fan" that possibly only existed in my head.

I actually continue to read Shortpacked to this day, just to find fodder to let me hate him more.

I stopped actually going to his website, because that gets him money, but I follow him on Tumblr (for the odd thing he reblogs from someone else that catches my interest), where he posts his comics anyway, in a form that gets him exactly zero money, but is also slightly more confusing for me to actually pay attention to anything. This whole thing with his stupid car character somehow becoming a human and also now she's a girl is just batshit stupid...and has nothing to do with toys.

seriously, name me a female character in a kids' cartoon who didn't end up as someone's love interest. I'll wait.

Was She-Ra ever someone's actual love interest? My exposure to her cartoon mostly comes from He-Man crossovers, but I didn't really see anything of the kind. (Then again, She-Ra might be the exception given that it was pitched to girls than anything else.)

Does April O'Neil ever actually get with anyone in the 1987 TMNT cartoon? Various reboots and such usually pair her up with Casey Jones, but he's only in a few episodes of that, and I'm sure there was probably an episode or two where she went on a date with someone, but in that show's entire run, I don't think she was ever reduced to "love interest."

T-AI from RID never got with anybody! In fact, you could say that neither did Alexis from Armada, who goes on to be the President of the US (world?!) in Energon, and is apparently still single. (Nothing indicated she changed her last name.)
In fact, Marissa Fairbourne from TF Season 3 never ended up as anybody's love interest, did she? (She's Flint's daughter, which may imply he married Lady Jaye, but I'm not sure her mother is ever mentioned. A casualty of the Cobra war?)

All three Powerpuff Girls remained independent for the show's run. (I'm stretching, here, but you get the point.)

But, I'm sure as hell not going to assume that just because Chromedome and Rewind list each other as "next of kin" or "significant other" that a professional writer has actually decided to pander to those immature fans.

I'd like to point out that this is basically the entire extent of Rewind and Chromedome's on-panel relationship.

Was that your current one, tigermegatron or did you have another one (I really have not had much interaction with the fandom beyond here and sometimes TFW).

Tigger used to go by "Deathsaurus," which is why I always call him Deathy.

The page Deathy is talking about is Encyclopedia Dramatica. Walky and his "Wiigii" cronies used to frequent it when it was still budding, in the late 90s and early 2000s. Basically, it exists as a "Wiki for the Internet," documenting all kinds of dramatic forum and fandom bullshit that nobody would ever really care about. If a person was a notable troll, troublemaker or otherwise someone that was involved in multiple "scandalous" events on an Internet forum, DA, Livejournal, whatever the fuck, then usually someone or other would write an Encyclopedia Dramatica entry on them. Because it's a Wiki, anyone could edit it, and ED kind of had a habit of throwing all kinds of hate speech into any article where it would fit in an attempt to be funny. Don't ever go on it unless you're in the privacy of your own home, where you can safely see people slinging around racial and homophobic slurs with little rhyme or reason.

And this is so true. I really just don't understand people that do stuff like this. I just don't have time for it. And even if I did, I could think of like a billion other better uses for my time.

Sometimes, you just run into someone that wastes your fucking time on the internet so much that you have to go tell everyone else what a shitty person they are. That's how ED started. "Stay away from this guy, he's messed up; he's a troll, he has severe psychological issues, and you shouldn't try to reason with him." Then it all got blown out of proportion and shit.

[Gomess]

ED is one of the best expressions of the worst effects of the internet's anonymity. Namely, kids who were bullied in high school 'getting their own back' by becoming bullying adults from behind the safety of a screen.

Deathy has my sympathy, and Willis loses even more of it, if that's true.

...So hey, if our franchise's BNFs are feckless pricks, maybe that's the purest proof of TF's emotional immaturity.

[Tigermegatron]

ED is one of the best expressions of the worst effects of the internet's anonymity. Namely, kids who were bullied in high school 'getting their own back' by becoming bullying adults from behind the safety of a screen.

Deathy has my sympathy, and Willis loses even more of it, if that's true.

...So hey, if our franchise's BNFs are feckless pricks, maybe that's the purest proof of TF's emotional immaturity.

I use to get upset about various TF fans cyber bullying me on the internet. Then after a while I started to pity & ignore those guys. after all normal sane adult men don't stalk other fans around where ever they go on the various internet forums. nut cases,stalkers,shut in,hermits & those with no no families,no friends,no jobs,Menatl illness that is in the family genes, do this sort of stalking/cyber bullying behavior on the internet.

[Gomess]

Well, in fairness my family has a history of mental illness and I like to think I turned out ok, so I'm not sure that's relevant. Being a jackass has nothing to do with your genes. If Willis is a bullying self-important jackass, then it's on him, not his situation.

That's a good point actually, regarding the maturity and emotional openness present in a popular franchise. It's very easy to become the kind of person who takes no personal inventory when you're surrounded by people who like the same thing as you.

Maybe if TF's fictional material challenged more people to confront things with which they're uncomfortable- get a load of this, Dom- then jackasses would think twice before being jackasses. Depth breeds depth.

And maybe not, but it's worth a shot.

[Tigermegatron]

Maybe if TF's fictional material challenged more people to confront things with which they're uncomfortable- get a load of this, Dom- then jackasses would think twice before being jackasses. Depth breeds depth..

I don't think this is the problem. Due to the star Trek fans being leaps & bounds more nuts,crazy,social outcast & beyond more malicious than any evil TF fan is capable of doing on-line.

[Gomess]

Does Star Trek have emotional depth? I haven't seen much of it, but I guess it is mostly about the characters' relationships in an enclosed space.

Are Star Trek fans really 'worse' in general? Sure it isn't just the fact that Star Trek is a bigger franchise, so it happens to cover a wider breadth of people, including more jerks...? 'Cos I don't know many Star Trek fans, but those I do know are good people.

Anyway, does Star Trek confronts its audience with things that make them uncomfortable? Probably some iterations of it do. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying TF should be a boundary-breaking franchise, but its comics should be one of the few areas where it can tell slightly more challenging stories. It doesn't seem to be. Or at least isn't given the chance to, because whenever it does the fans just click "dislike".

[Dominic]

Why are you against new people who enjoy things differently than you entering the fandom?

I am not against new people or different people in the fandom. But, no fandom needs more of the kind of fuckwits and lunatics who develop obsessive attachments to fictional characters.

I work on a college campus and get more than enough exposure to people who are divorced from reality every damned day. (So, yeah, I read comics to get away from those people. Yeah, that is kind of nutty.)

ED is one of the best expressions of the worst effects of the internet's anonymity. Namely, kids who were bullied in high school 'getting their own back' by becoming bullying adults from behind the safety of a screen.

Exactly.

Willis and his crew are pretty much "the new cool kids". They are still fighting the battles of 20 years ago and savoring victories that most people got over simply by virtue of growing up.

If Willis is a bullying self-important jackass, then it's on him, not his situation.

What "situation"?

Willis is a damned grown man who apparently makes money froma web-comic despite having no real talent.

It would be fine if he stopped "Shortpacked", or if he changed the focus of his work to something other than toys if it was not all about himself.

Maybe if TF's fictional material challenged more people to confront things with which they're uncomfortable- get a load of this, Dom- then jackasses would think twice before being jackasses. Depth breeds depth.

This is going to sound very selfish, but hey. I am not concerned with the maturation of other fans so long as it (or the lack of maturation) does not impact me directly. I would rather have good comics that appeal to me than "Transformers: Lessons In Minding Your Manners".

More on topic, MTMTE is arguably not fostering any real emotional growth. Roberts writes character moments and interactions where the fans know the right emotional response to have. But, there is no apparently higher reasoning behind much of Roberts' run. (Again though, I am willing to "wait and see" what he says about this topic after he leaves the book.)

I'm not saying TF should be a boundary-breaking franchise, but its comics should be one of the few areas where it can tell slightly more challenging stories. It doesn't seem to be.

You really need to read more of IDW's run (and ignore the cartoon while doing so).

Costa's run went over the heads of many fans. (And, damn if he did not call them out on it.)


Okay, now lets try to get back on topic.


At various points, the comic industry has tried to grow and adapt to changing markets and raised standards. And, there were often stumbles.

As eye-rollingly stupid as much of the O'Neil/Adams "Green Lantern and Green Arrow" series was, it is doubtful that DC could have made something as good as "Red Son" had O'Neil and Adams not decided to have Lantern and Arrow put around in a truck with a space midget in tow.

The same applies to Bob Harras' Marvel (aka "Revlon" or "90s Era" Marvel). There were some *bad* comics published in the 90s. And, Marvel bears no small amount of responsibilityfor that. My lord, there were some bad comics. But, people often forget the technical and stylistic changes that Harras's Marvel forced writers and artists to make. Pages with standardized panels set out in a predictable grid pattern were still common in the 90s, but they also went away in the 90s during the rise of the "superstar artists". Similarly, Harras is at least partially responsible for the end of bad "comicbook style" writing. Before Harras, Marvel was especially guilty of panels consisting of a bombastic narration box describing what the character was doing, a thought balloon with the character narrating their own actions and a crudely drawn picture showing the damned character doing the stupid thing that had already been described twice. 90s Marvel made a point of cutting that shit out.

In that light, it is harder to condemn Harras' Marvel, even if it was the same company that gave us "Hearts of Darkness" and "Sabertooth: Death Hunt".


As a franchise, "Transformers" hit that point about a decade ago. Dreamwave knew that they could not simply publish kiddie books. But, they tried to keep the comics accessible while making them readable for adults. (And, to their credit, Dreamwave did this while avoiding the "fun for all ages" trap of throwing in pop culture references and obnoxious whimsy for the grown ups.) "War Within" was pitched towards readers who already knew the property and had gorgeous artwork that was unprecedented for TFs at the time. ("War Within" was basically "Transformers: Year One".) "Armada" the comic was everything that "Armada" the cartoon should have been. Both Saracinni and Furman did a good job of using the innocence and humour of a kid's perspective while acknowledging that there was some pretty terrible stuff going on in the background.

But, we also got that atrocity by Reiber with the damned near unreadable story and impossible to look at art. (Ironically, this book was explicitly marketed as an attempt to make TF and GI Joe more mature.)

Dreamwave arguably paved the way for the greater stylistic freedom that artists at IDW enjoy.

At this point, "Transformers" comics are being marketed as comics. When a character shows up, the odds of them looking like a current toy are actually pretty low. There are complaints from fan, often the fans who just want "comics with Transformers doing Transformers stuff" rather than actual comics. But, the franchise is generally maturing. Some of IDW's biggest mis-steps are rooted in them trying to attract comics fans with gimmicks that went out of style 15 years ago (fancy covers, forced cross-overs and such). But, they are producing good comics.



Dom
-seriously, Costa went off during an interview with Kalimus.

[Tigermegatron]

Does Star Trek have emotional depth? I haven't seen much of it, but I guess it is mostly about the characters' relationships in an enclosed space.

Are Star Trek fans really 'worse' in general? Sure it isn't just the fact that Star Trek is a bigger franchise, so it happens to cover a wider breadth of people, including more jerks...? 'Cos I don't know many Star Trek fans, but those I do know are good people.

Anyway, does Star Trek confronts its audience with things that make them uncomfortable? Probably some iterations of it do. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying TF should be a boundary-breaking franchise, but its comics should be one of the few areas where it can tell slightly more challenging stories. It doesn't seem to be. Or at least isn't given the chance to, because whenever it does the fans just click "dislike".

After a while of thinking about it,I will concede you are right on most of your points.

I was more or less referring to the Malicious star trek fans in the early 1990's who use to send people those viruses because they use to get bent out of shape when people would steal media images from their sites & use that stuff elsewhere. That was almost 20 years ago & other than that I don't see any Star trek fans acting this way anymore in this day & age.

I don't visit nor post on any star trek message boards nor forums,So I don't know how they act over their.

From my own personal experiences I can confirm that TF fans are a mean.mentally i'll,hermits,degenerates & malicious bunch. The main reason I like being here on TFViews is because everyone is polite & tries to get along,also Jedi is perhaps the most professional,plite & respectful TF moderated forum owner,I've ever seen.

Due to the TF franchise being toy driven & not media driven like star trek is. the TF fans collect more toys than the star trek fans. so by default the TF fans have not grown up while the Star trek fans are more mature due to them not playing with toys. the star trek media is also aimed at adults while the TF cartoons are aimed at kids,So by default Star Trek bring in more mature media fans while TF bring in less mature media fans.

[Tigermegatron]

David willis is only doing well with his short packed comics thanks to TFCC & it's crew. Those who have quit the TFCC club know too well that the TFCC crew/group is the most meaniest & malicious bunch of TF fans ever assembled. what makes the TFCC crew & it's members so malicious is they are all scalpers. they buy up all the Botcon convention & club toys at regular prices then try to sell them to other fans in the fandom for double,tripple or quadrupple prices. What makes the scalper situtation so bad is that the Fun Pub owners are the most corrupt businessmen i've ever seen who are in on the scalping,support it & put zero rules in place to defeat the scalpers.

Other things that upset me about TFCC'S crew & members is all the favortism that goes on. like the favorites getting their club magazine weeks/month before the non-favorites,this is done,so the favorites can feel more special & get first dibs on bragging rights thru being the first guy on the block to say "I got my club magazine,here is a mini review for you guys on-line."

the majority of those TFCC crew & it's members are clearly the more overly obsessed bunch of internet TF fans. Most are Scalpers,Most are extreme TF toy/media completist. most will bite your head off & cyber bully team up on you if your not like them nor share their obsessed habits.

Clearly the Fun Pub owners build their clubs around elitist behavorial programs. like doing all those penalities,forcing everyone to join the club by paying the $40 fee if they want the rights to buy any of the club/convention merchandise.

Their was this one guy on the TFCC club forums that kept creating dozens of threads repeating the same old tired song. which was him asking questions how much the TFCC club magazines will be worth in the future as scalper profits. When I was a club member I politely explained the club magazine with the comic inside won't be worth anything. due to the club magazine being published on paper that is so thin it almost falls apart in your hands like toilet paper. Due to the magazine only being 10 pages counting the front & back covers,with the first 5 pages wasting space on made up altrnate universe TF character bios & fans interviewing fans,with barely 4 pages decicated to the club comics. I also politely explained that the club comics are not mass released they are being released in a confined private club space that hardly the general non fans know they exist. lastly I explained that the club comics are not official because they are not being written nor drawn by liscensed comic book companies,I told him these club comics were being done by fans for fans,nothing more,nothing less. NEEDLESS TO SAY THIS GUY WENT ON A MAJOR TROLL OUT BURST VIA OBSESSED REPLIES SAYING I WAS WRONG,OTHER MALICIOUS TFCC CREW & MEMBERS JOINED IN DEFENDING THE GUY & SAYING HE WAS RIGHT & I was wrong on all accounts.

[Onslaught Six]

David willis is only doing well with his short packed comics thanks to TFCC & it's crew.

Despite Willis being friends with some of the TFCC writers and production staff, he does not actually get any money from it. (If he does, it's only for his "Recordicons" strip, which is a one-panel gag thing that shows up on the back of the "magazine," and has only been running for maybe a year or two at best.)

Despite what we might think of him personally, Willis has a successful webcomic. Shortpacked did not spring up overnight as a "webcomic about toys," it's a sequel to his older comics (and thus has a built-in audience already). Willis has been doing webcomics since the mid-90s, and has gained a large enough following to enable him to do so professionally (i.e. without having a day job to pay his bills). And his older comic has a subscription model service that apparently works and pays well. Shortpacked is also not the only webcomic he has right now--he has another one that apparently has way more readers than Shortpacked, despite featuring a lot of the same characters. (It's an alternate universe, or something. I don't know, I don't read it. It looks stupid.) As much as I might begrudge him for his opinions (sometimes) and his general sphere of influence (definitely), he makes his living legitimately.