the stupid ideas thread

[Dominic]

This week, I had been intending to review the latest edition of "Transformers: Timelines". "Timelines" is the imprint of Fun Publications, the publishing wing Master Collector, the license holders for the "Official Transformers Collectors Club". Yeah, that is an ugly sentence. Screw you.

This year's "Timelines" special is "Shattered Glass", the "Transformers" take on the old "alternate universe of inverted morality". Given that the "inverted morality" gimmick is not know for yielding good stories, and Master Collector's less than stellar track record, this would have been easy to trash. But, none of the local shops seem to have copies. (I am working on securing a copy, but that will take at least a week or two.

Rather than rant about a bad "evil twin universe" comic, I will make up my own. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a "GI Joe" story featuring this god-awful narrative convention. Well, here are some ideas for how to write such a thing. (Note: I feel it necessary to point out that I know the following ideas are completely and utterly retarded. I make these suggestions for the sake of humor. If anybody wants to use these ideas, then they are fucking morons.)

"Shattered Glass: GI Joe"

-Snake eyes: The noble and tragic "everyman" of "GI Joe" would become the faceless and amorphous evil that dwells in the darkest corners of our minds and hearts. Instead of losing his family to an accident and being disfigured in the line of duty, evil-SE would instead kill his family for the sake of greed and be disfigured as a result of his avarice.

-Cobra Commander: The faceless demagogue who twists the American Dream to his own ends instead becomes a populist gad-fly. He chooses to pattern himself after a cobra in order to remind himself and his followers of the danger they all face, from without and within. His inspiration and humanity are a threat to the corruption the Joes are devoted to. (I am not trying to be political here.)

-Destro and Baroness: The arms dealer becomes.....a humanitarian. Destro spent his life developing more efficient methods to harvest food and energy. He was aware of the military applications for his work, but never exploited them until his hand was forced by the Joes. Now, Destro supplies Cobra Commander with the most efficient weapons possible in the hopes of ending the war more quickly. He wears a heavy iron mask to maintain a veneer of calm when confronting problems that weigh heavily upon his heart. Destro will grudgingly admit that warfare forces mankind to advance. But, he envisions a future were humanity is free to grow and thrive because the chains of poverty and hunger have been broken. The Baroness is Destro's anchor. She passionately believes in a better future, and when Desto loses heart, he fights on for her. The Baroness knows that radical measures are often necessary, but is always restrained when others could be hurt.

Cutter: The loveable and idiosyncratic Coast Guard Joe instead becomes a vagabond thug. Cutter grew up in the middle of America, and could have lived a quiet life. But, his temper, and knife, got him in trouble with the law. Fleeing his hometown with forged documents, Cutter joined the Coast Guard, where he took a "cut" of the action from local smuggling rings. He managed to extort an bribe his way onto the Joe team, where he finds new rackets to exploit.

Major Bludd: The ferocious mercenary is now a man who fights for what is right. Bludd still demands a high fee for his services. But, he donates the proceeds to charity. While Destor and Baroness focus on providing food and shelfer, Bludd wants to ensure that there is still art and literature in the world. In addition to the epic poems and elegies he composes, Bludd funds artistic communes around the world. He has one eye, but it is a keen and sensitive eye indeed. He carries the dog tags of loyal and brave friends killed by the Joes. He can never write a poem sad enough to memorialize those brave souls. (The original Major Bludd wore the dog tags or the men he killed.)


Okay, look, I could do this all day. You get the idea. This type of story only works as idiotic self-parody, intentionally or otherwise. Given the temperment and humours of the Joe fandom, I doubt the above story will ever happen. (I hope.)



Dom
-hopes Master Collector is not reading this.

[SynjoDeonecros]

Stupid ideas...stupid ideas...

I had one: It involves Binaltech Battle Ravage's storyline, the events of the Beast Wars episode "The Agenda", underground Transformers sex movements, Tarantulas reviving the Insecticons to take over prehistoric Earth, and the Tripredacus Council using a synthetic version of the Swarm to conquer Cybertron in an analogy to the AIDS scare. Good news is, I stopped writing it after the first chapter, because I realized the first ingredient of the idea (the Binaltech story) tipped the whole thing into the absurd and I couldn't make it work. Bad news is, I'm trying to revise it. Primus help me if I succeed...

As for my Shattered Glass counterpart...there is none. I already have a morally-ambiguous counterpart, I don't need any more cramping my style. If he DID exist, though, he'd probably an upstanding, religious, sexually abstinent man who is a whiz at math, finds any sort of fiction abhorrent and stupid, and has to fend off sexual advances by the very real incarnations of all of the fictional characters real-world Synjo lusts after. Oh, and he is committed to conquering the world with the evil of doing good deeds. It doesn't make sense, and neither does this post.

[Dominic]

Damn Synjo...that idea is terrible.


Dom
-thinks it is ironic that "Shattered Glass" turned out to not be a complete train-wreck.

[SynjoDeonecros]

Damn Synjo...that idea is terrible.


Dom
-thinks it is ironic that "Shattered Glass" turned out to not be a complete train-wreck.

I'm sure I can make it work; I have a knack for making crazy ideas like that into plausible stories. My main problem was trying to shoehorn in the Binaltech canon with Beast Wars canon, which didn't work out too well. That, and I think I was working on too many plotpoints for the story to handle (the thing with Tarantulas and the thing with the Swarm should've been two separate storylines, not fused into one). Doesn't stop me from agreeing with you the more I think about it. At least I dropped a third plotpoint for the story while the getting was good (dealing with the Maximals being exiled to planet Beest by the Council for their role in the Beast Wars, and finding that the Battle Beasts are the descendants of the Transformers stranded on Prehistoric Earth, crash-landed on the planet millennia ago in a failed attempt to get home after defeating Tarantulas and the Insecticons. NOW do you see why I dropped it?).

[onslaught86]

Okay.

Hate me for this one.

A fight between all the Primes. All of them, all the different forms represented in fiction and toy form, fighting to the finish. It's so lame, but then..the sheer dynamics and choreography take over, and I imagine Laser Prime and Hero Prime taking down Magna Jet Convoy with their giant guided missiles, and Go-Bot Prime strangling Convobat, and Star Convoy wrestling with God Fire Convoy, and yeah.

[donosaur]

I need a little more clarification in order to share your vision. Are the Primals there too? Sentinel and Vector? Or are we strictly talking Optimi, a battle of red and blue trucks, eternally retold? I can get behind either, but more so the latter, especially if toy scale is brought into it. An army of legends and the original diaclone version trying to topple Masterpiece

[Dominic]

You guys are really amping this thread up.

Dom
-appalled by this, really.

[Onslaught Six]

I need a little more clarification in order to share your vision. Are the Primals there too? Sentinel and Vector? Or are we strictly talking Optimi, a battle of red and blue trucks, eternally retold? I can get behind either, but more so the latter, especially if toy scale is brought into it. An army of legends and the original diaclone version trying to topple Masterpiece

Well, ideally it would include All Convoys, meaning that all Beast-related ones get the go ahead.

[donosaur]

What on earth would it be called?

[BWprowl]

What on earth would it be called?

Convobeat! Wait, no, no....

Does Ginrai get invited?