TF Views

But, which looks better, "TOIHAAK" or "toyhack"? The former is an abbreviation of a mindset. The second actually looks like a real word.


As far as the merits of the various discussions go, look at debates about which segment of the fanbase is the most whiny as sociological discussion. It could also be fodder for discussion the importance of developing IP to sustain a property. (Can anyone honestly say that G1 had that much of an advantage over "Go-Bots" otherwise?)


Dom

BWprowl wrote:They threatened to kill Bob Skir. That's a little intense.

Again, I doubt "they" were strictly BW fans as more than a fair amount of hate towards BM also came from G1 fans, particularly for the retcons it made to elements from G1.

Dominic wrote:There was a fair amount of hypocrisy in the BMac hate though. Retconning was perfectly fine when it was BobnLarry on "Beast Wars", (such as mashing up elements of the G1 cartoons and comics). But, Skir doing the same on "Beast Machines", it was just *wrong*, because "Beast Wars" was perfect and wonderful and furry.

How the retcons were handled between the two shows weren't the same though. Beast Wars may have mashed up elements from the toon and comics but they presented it somewhat vaguely, given the gap between events of G1 and BW, it really didn't change continuity. Beast Machines on the other hand directly changed the established continuity.

It depends how the fandom spends the down-time though. If they spend most of that time, (be it a year or the better part of a decade), re-watching the same old episodes and reading the same comics and displaying the same toys, the down time will only re-enforce their obsession. If they move on and try new things, ("nnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo"), then the down time will make them more accepting.

I don't think that's necessarily true. Seeing the same toys, comics and episodes all the time... It gets old after so long, you start to want something new.

Look at "Star Trek" fans. Many of the old timers were very resistant to the later series.

The environment for Trek fans was different. By the time TNG premiered, the 4th Star Trek movie had been released in theaters. And it was the popularity of the movies that helped lead them to make a new television series. It's little wonder those fans would be a little resistant to a new crew when they were still making movies with the old crew.

I've been on both sides of this so I can speak to the resistant attitude. I was enormously Geewunny when BW originally came out. They're only animals? WTF? And it takes place now? Double WTF? And Megatron is a T-Rex? I actually remember thinking while seeing this in the toy aisle "The only TRex Transformer should be Grimlock. Period." Apparently I had forgotten about both Overkill and Trypticon. Then I saw part of the show and... these were characters I didn't know. Hadn't seen 'em before and they're not Autobots or Decepticons so it's not TF. Skip. Then I saw "The Agenda". Inside the Ark. The originals. The ones I was familiar with and grew up with and suddenly it seemed a little more credible. There were my favorite bots beautifully rendered in 3d cgi. I wanted more. So then I started Watching BW with the hope of seeing more of the G1 bots. Then I actually started to care about the show itself and even started collecting the toys. I was impressed. They were actually better engineered than the ones I grew up with and THAT'S when I stopped being a Geewunner. But, the thing is, with all that time in between, I didn't want something new. I wanted more of the same that I'd had before. I wanted new episodes of the G1 cartoon, I wanted Marvel to pick up the comic where they'd left off (I arguably had that with G2). I didn't really want things to change as much as I wanted more of the same. And it wasn't until I actually got that (sort of) that I really gave BW an honest chance. Since then, I've obviously been more accepting of different incarnations but it was hard to pull myself out of that mentality.

Same thing happened with Trek. I grew up watching TOS. My mom swears that as a kid I would walk around proclaiming "You can call me Kirk". I don't remember this, but the point of my fanism is made none the less. So then TNG starts. What? It's NOT Kirk, Spock and the rest? It's 100 years after them? No no no, this won't do. Why didn't they just make a series based on the movies? Then we'd have more of the crew we were familiar with! Is that REALLY the Enterprise? Looks like a train ran over a penny! And why do the phasers look like dustbusters? And... wait... the MEN are wearing skirts now? As if that's not bad enough, they're letting a teenager drive the biggest most expensive ship in the fleet? There's absolutely nothing that could go wrong there. But then I heard there was a Klingon officer. And an android. And the real clincher... that oh so beautiful separation sequence. That's when I was hooked. That's when I started watching and it became and to this day is my favorite Trek. And that Enterprise I originally hated oh so much is my favorite of all the ships to bear the name.

It should also be noted that I was geewunny even when I was a kid. I was very hardcore about the various pop culture properties that I was a fan of. To this day I have never seen Voltron and I never had one as a kid. No Autobot or Decepticon logos, I didn't want it. Same with Robotech and GoBots. And Zoids. I saw them all as knock offs that were trying to horn in on the success of my favorite Robots In Disguise. Same with He-Man. To this day, I've never seen an episode of Thundercats. I saw that as a knock off of He-Man and wasn't interested. Not even a blip on my radar.

I was equally resistant to Enterprise, but unlike TNG I still think it sucks and I still hate the design of that ship. Even Count Bakula couldn't save that show.

Similar experience to Trekwave. Couldn't stop laughing when I first heard the name "Optimus Primal". I still think it's ridonculous. And BW never took G1's place as my favourite series, because it just felt so much more like Hard Sci-Fi ('good writing', but good writing about quasi-ion drives and multimodal Matt Fraction sorting), which is something I've only ever been able to have the vaguest camp appreciation for. I also loved G1's absurdly large cast, which no TF fiction since has matched! Besides which, my favourite aspect of G1 fiction was the tech specs, which rather than the cartoon or comics, informed how we Played Transformers as kids. Those still remain the best written TF fiction next to BM (yes, I said it!), in my opinion.

Count Bakula. O boy.

I don't think that's necessarily true. Seeing the same toys, comics and episodes all the time... It gets old after so long, you start to want something new

But, look how nutty fans go for call-backs, or even straight re-issues. The same old is often seen as preferable to "new and exciting".

Along similar lines, gaps in the hobby let fans focus in even more on the older stuff, and become *more* attached to it. "GI Joe" is a modern example of this. "Star Trek" is an older example. We tend to see fanfic more during the gaps when there is nothing official coming out.

Again, I doubt "they" were strictly BW fans as more than a fair amount of hate towards BM also came from G1 fans, particularly for the retcons it made to elements from G1.

BW fans have the same obsessive, (to the point of delivering on the stereotypes about scifi fans being emotional and intellectual stunties), attachements to the old stuff that G1 fans did back in the day.

Those still remain the best written TF fiction next to BM (yes, I said it!), in my opinion.

The cartoons and comics always had more influence on how I played with the toys than the tech specs, especially when they conflicted with the tech specs.

And, while there are some damned good character profiles, there is plenty of better TF content than the packages or "Beast Machines". ("Man of Iron" is still a damned good read. "Last Stand of the Wreckers" is amazing. And, I would take a bullet for Shane McCarthy after "All Hail Megatron".)

Hard Sci-Fi

Uh, no. "Transformers" has *never* been, not will it ever likely be, hard sci-fi. Hard sci-fi does not mean "good writing". It means that all of the tech is based on or *reasonably* extrapolated from, real tech and real physics. Transformers arguably do not even make enough ergonomic sense to qualify as hard sci-fi.


Dom
-not that being hard of soft sci-fi makes something automatically good or bad.

Dominic wrote:"Transformers" has *never* been, not will it ever likely be, hard sci-fi. Hard sci-fi does not mean "good writing". It means that all of the tech is based on or *reasonably* extrapolated from, real tech and real physics. Transformers arguably do not even make enough ergonomic sense to qualify as hard sci-fi.

You know what I mean. It's all relative. BW took itself far more seriously as a Science Fiction Show than any previous series did. And it put me off.

Dominic wrote:not that being hard of soft sci-fi makes something automatically good or bad.

...I think I've already made my opinion on that quite clear. =p I don't like "sci-fi" at the best of times, and "hard" is particularly grating to me.

Dominic wrote:But, look how nutty fans go for call-backs, or even straight re-issues. The same old is often seen as preferable to "new and exciting".

There are a ton of reasons why fans love re-issues/call-backs but that doesn't mean they prefer the 'same old'. If anything I think it's more nostalgia. And after 25 years, it's understandable the toys may not have withstood the test of time. Parts become lost or broken... Maybe they never had a certain figure when they were a kid. For me, being born in 1984, I didn't know what Transformers was until G1 was practically over. There's also the issue that the G1 figures were severely lacking on articulation, making call-backs great for fans who want modern (new and exciting!!) articulation for classic characters.

We tend to see fanfic more during the gaps when there is nothing official coming out.

Which reinforces my point that fans want *new stories* when nothing official is being produced.

BW fans have the same obsessive, (to the point of delivering on the stereotypes about scifi fans being emotional and intellectual stunties), attachements to the old stuff that G1 fans did back in the day.

I don't see how you got that out of what I was saying, as that's not even close to the point I was making... I don't doubt that BW fans are obsessive (the term fan comes from fanatic after all), but I don't see that it's necessarily the same as G1 fans.

New iterations of old characters are one thing. But, I am talking about "ohhhhhh, this new toy sort of looks like that old one of a completely different obscure character....wow, thanks hasbro!" type bull shit.

And, most fanfics are painfully insular and/or derivative.

Gomess wrote:
You know what I mean. It's all relative. BW took itself far more seriously as a Science Fiction Show than any previous series did. And it put me off.

...I think I've already made my opinion on that quite clear. =p I don't like "sci-fi" at the best of times, and "hard" is particularly grating to me.

How was BW having good writing "off putting"? YOu would rather have crap?

Mind you, for me to even admit BW had good writing is painful. But, as much as I hate the Beast era, I have to admit it had the best writing of any TF show. (It was still inferior to many of the comics though.)


Most science fiction is just sword and sorcery with a slightly different look.


Dom

Gomess wasn't saying that the good writing put him off, it was the sci fi elements.

As for fans reacting to call backs, I believe Ben Yee was/is guilty of this. If you read most of his reviews for new toys he always seems to be looking for some sort of connection to G1 and seems to find "referrences" to G1 on toys that I would argue there are no such referrences. The fanfic comes not from wanting something new and different, but wanting more of the old.

Dominic wrote:How was BW having good writing "off putting"? You would rather have crap?

....Wha-? Dude. Please never be an interviewer! Well by "good writing", I meant it took itself rather more seriously than G1, planning out long story arcs, using 'adult language', themes like sex and euthanasia, and positioning itself as a Real Sci-Fi Show (of which all the previous qualities are trademarks). So, rather TOO seriously for a toyline cash-in cartoon about brightly coloured robots accidentally landing on prehistoric Earth to have adventures and farting rhinos, in my opinion. I would've liked it better if it'd chosen a couple of those qualities rather than just aping every other sci-fi series on TV.

What I would really have "rather had" as a kid (which isn't even my point, especially since I wasn't watching kids' TV when BW came out, but I'm humouring you here!) is a competently written show about living machines that have to disguise themselves to blend into modern society, and aren't particularly fussed about THE COVENANT OF PRIMUS or TRAHNSWARP ACTIVATION MODULEZ. But we've danced that number before.

Dominic wrote:Most science fiction is just sword and sorcery with a slightly different look.

Is... that supposed to convince me to like it? =p I think that "different look" is quite important here though, because a TF series with more quasi-medieval, mythic or magical qualities would actually drive me finally and completely insane.

*Has a sudden urge to look at all the infinite varieties of Ninja Turtles that were released back in the day* Astronaut Leo! Triceratops Raph! Chartered Accountant Mikey! Thursday Morning Don!

Trekwave wrote:Gomess wasn't saying that the good writing put him off, it was the sci fi elements.

THANK you!