This sums it up for me. Roller's story went from being a Shakespearean tragic fall to a pretty empty "he was abducted to the future" hand wave and Tarn's backstory evaporates into "meh he was just some guy". That's two new characters I've come to love through MTME devalued in the space of two panels.

As for the claim it was "too obvious" to be Roller, well I don't buy that. It might seem obvious when every detail of every issue gets poured over by the fan discussions but I think it was really just coherent. It makes sense for Tarn to Roller, based on the clues - big and small - laid out through the issues. Having them be just red herrings feels like a cheap trick to me.

 

It does to them. Every. single. thread. if you give a reason for liking the book with even the slightest bit of critical thinking applied you get a multipage thesis repudiating your findings as if at some point the thread will end and the internet jury will decide whose opinion is right.

 

That said glitch was introduced oddly, but must of us forgot he existed. For a second I thought his history was altered saved before he became Tarn, and Glitch fell in his place, much like Megatron's spark being accidentally "replaced" into his body.

 

Did alittle she arch on the name Damus. Which was Glitch's real name.


Full form of Damus : Daredevil Accepting Materialistic Unconventional Self-Assured
Damus is a rare first name for a boy in United States which is not even used by anyone since 1921. Only 5 people have Damus as their first name. Damus is not a native United States and Damus may be came from another language or is a short form of some other name. 0.000001% of people in US have this given name.
Complete history of Damus
Year Rank Occurence
Rare boy name in
Full Historical data
Expression number of Damus is 4.
Organizing and managing qualities are possessed by Damus. By systematic and methodical approach Damus turns their dream into reality. Damus are extremely sincere and honest.
So if that was his name original name JR dropped more hints than we thought

Btw I loved the reveal, at first I was completely shocked and a tiny bit upset it wasn't Roller. Then I went back to all his appearances and yes hints were dropped as to Tarn being Glitch who was Damus. They simply weren't as obvious as Rollers hints. I also drank the Roller kool-aid and was 99.999999999987% sure Tarn was him.

Basically I'm saying that fault of not seeing who he was originally does not lay with the writer but with the fans that did think it was Roller.seriously chances are few people at all thought R+L = J in GOT but jumped on the band wagon after they read it some where.
Anywho that my two cents.

 

Brainstorm's initial plan for the briefcase was to prevent the traumatic experiences that motivated Megatron to shift from good-natured dissidence to terrorism. If he had succeeded we would have gotten a "redeemed" Megatron without any of the character development he went through in Season 2.

Where Brainstorm failed to save Megatron, the Necrobot succeeded in rescuing Roller from whatever would have completed his implied transformation into Tarn. It's such a success that those events never even took place in the narrative. It is the most thorough retcon imaginable.

I didn't like it before, but now I like it.

 

Still mad about Ravage's death. That's the only thing I would change.

 

Dude, this is just sour grapes. It's a discussion thread. We're here to articulate and swap views. Sometimes it takes a few paragraphs to articulate them fully and substantially. You don't have to read if you don't want, but complaining that someone has 'repudiated your findings' and implying that they shouldn't do this because everything is 'subjective' is basically saying, "I don't like people finding weaknesses in my reasoning."

I, for one, participate in these discussions because they do help shape/change my view of the book.

I can't remember that issue, but surely they'd be very different characters. Shockwave is changed by his experience of empurata. Glitch is seduced by someone else's ideology, but at some point he also turns extremely violent (Megatron's original writings don't advocate violence), whereas Shockwave is methodical.

We've kind of been over this already, but for my part, I find this idea kind of far out and ridiculous - the Roller signposts were laid on pretty thick, and this is all but admitted in this very issue when Roller appears precisely at the right point to undermine that expectation.

I had a think about this too. I wondered if there was something going on with Nostradamus, what with all the time travel stuff. Someone earlier pointed out that Chromedome's memory wipe seems to not work properly on Glitch, which would have left him with minor insights into the future.

It's also Latin for "we give", which could ... eh, I dunno. Dead end.

 

That's probably true, in a way, but the truth was that it was a similar situation to the Tarn mystery. There were plenty of intentional hints littered over multiple years worth of fiction that encouraged fans to connect the dots themselves. The way it differs is that ultimately the Song of Ice and Fire fans were rewarded (at least in regards to the show, but I think it's a safe guess it'll be the same in the books, which is where all the hints actually were) whereas the MTMTE fans were not.

 

Well...there you go.

 

Thank you. That's bothering me a lot how much effort people put into this. It's a little exaggerated.

 

...Not really sure what point you think you're making there? Of course this issue needed you to know what was going on. It was, after all, the "season finale" or so to speak.

 

It's funny - throughout this thread, I don't think anyone has ever said that you're *wrong* to enjoy this issue for what it is, or that there's something the matter with you if you liked the reveal.

But there's been plenty of "What's the matter with these people?" coming the other way.

 

I think the "whats the matter" reaction is that some (not all) of the people who hated the Glitch reveal are doing so out of a perceived sense of ownership over the story. That because they have invested reading team, theory time, and in their head constructed an entire narrative to a potential theory - that they were entitled to the version of the story they constructed based on intentionally placed red herrings. The story belongs to the writer, not the reader - if you don't like the story - then don't buy it, if you want to own a story - become a writer.

 

There's a lot to unpack here. You say 'some (not all)', so I wonder who you're thinking of. I haven't read every message of the thread but I don't think this characterisation fits any of the responses I have read. I don't detect any sense of 'entitlement', except to a story that is cohesive on its own terms. The criticism is not "This wasn't the story I wanted" but "This story just doesn't fit together properly".

Most of us, I am sure, enjoy being blindsided by surprise twists and unexpected revelations - early MTMTE managed this fairly well, I think. So it doesn't really make sense that we would suddenly decide, just for this particularly story, that we *don't* like things working out differently to how we expected.

"The story belongs to the writer" - I'm not sure in what sense this is really true. Last time I was in a long-running argument on these forums, I was told in no uncertain terms that everything James Roberts writes is actually owned by Hasbro, and that I was wrong to assert he had any ownership of it whatsoever, intellectual, moral or otherwise.

I think the truth is that everyone who invests in a story (including the author, and including the intellectual property owner) has a stake in it, and is justified in wanting a kind of satisfaction from that story. But if you don't like that way of looking at it, look at it the way SMOG put it: we are here providing feedback on a story because its success, in our minds, determines whether we will continue bothering with it. We could, as you say, simply stop reading, but it's constructive to seek to explain *why* we are considering bowing out.

SMOG has already said he's dropping the book. Now, maybe he's an anomaly, but *maybe* he's also the canary in the coalmine, and if MTMTE's readership takes a plunge in the future, one might want to look back on the reasoning he has offered in this thread and others in order to understand where the book started to go wrong.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have no interest in being negative for negative's sake. I want MTMTE to be a comic I can happily recommend to non-TF readers, as I did continually throughout its first season. I badgered people into reading it, and some of them did, and some of them loved it.

Now I feel like I can't make the same honest recommendation without the caveat that the second season stumbles, stutters and goes out on a low. I *really* like James Roberts in person. I think he's a top-drawer guy, and a brilliant writer. I think what he's done for Transformers is nothing short of revelatory and revolutionary. Even as much as I have occasionally enjoyed RiD, and am getting into the new TAAO, no other writer seems to have actually brough a substantial vision to the franchise, and a knack for developing strong themes through his stories.

So the only interest I have in providing negative feedback on this issue is (a) in order to develop my own view by mingling it with others', and (b) in the hope that by taking part in the shaping of fan consensus, some of this feedback gets back to James and is taken on board. I don't see any reason why he should drop balls like this - he's a good writer. It's just that every good writer needs good critics.

 

Hmm. Good question. I guess we'll see, but I agree that it seems dubious.

But pettiness is their only defense against our merciless, gigantic, densely-worded, hard-to-read critical-thinking assaults on their individual rights (because we're just big, mean bullies).

Making petty retorts like that is the equivalent of the kid on the playground getting flustered, yelling "But... I know you are but what am I?" and running home. It's an act of desperation, an ad hominem in place of doing the intellectual legwork of a real debate... but with too much wounded pride to just say "oh, I disagree" and leave it at that.

A wasted effort around here, sadly.  

Yeah. But as you and GoLion suggest, a one-shot would suffice, if only in the spirit of plugging holes. It's perfunctory to the point of being unnecessary... but people would buy it.  

Dude. Please walk back the persecution complex just a bit, huh? Focksbot addressed your complaint earnestly and appropriately and explained his stance... but it seems that only frustrates you more anyway. And as for me, I just can't even, anymore. I've had it with this self-victimizing approach. So instead, fine... cry me a river. You are soooo tragic.

Seriously, dudes. The people taking this too personally are the ones who are allergic to any kind of disagreement, who see any criticism of James Roberts or the story as "too much" and as attacks on their person. Please get over it. It's a comic book discussion forum. We're not only ALLOWED to debate and discuss and evaluate the story here... but that's literally what this forum/thread is here for.

Disagree with the opinion if you must, but stop crying foul every time someone disagrees with you, and making denigrating remarks about them.

There is a huge discrepancy at work here... where one group is criticizing the STORY... while another group gets butthurt (and oh, how I hate using that term) and resorts to criticizing the critics for having (and voicing) an opinion they don't like.

So stop it already.

I applaud your patience in this matter. I wish I could ease your burden, but I'm tired of the BS.  

For my part, I participate in these discussions because I've been invested in this series for a long time, and after reading issue, I like to talk about it. That includes both the processing and theorizing of the events, but also rants when I think the series falls up short. That's kind of what fan forums are for... where fans can come and share their joys and frustrations (in this case, my frustrations).

Unfortunately, some people want to muzzle that, because apparently criticizing a comic hurts their feelings or kills their buzz or something.  

Very minor insights, really. But was it ever established that the mindwipe handshake didn't work properly on Glitch?

I remember in that issue of Elegant Chaos, I thought it would be a Doc-Brown-esque hail mary for Trailbreaker. Because we know that Glitch's power works involuntarily on contact, Chromedome's device would be scrambled, and therefore not work for the very next person in line for a handshake: Trailbreaker... who would then piece together the puzzle bits of his conversation with Rodimus and find a way to save himself in the future/present... possibly by the time Team Rodimus got back.

Alas, no. I don't recall there being any indication that Glitch's power did anything in that moment (if so, it stands to reason that it probably wouldn't have worked on Trailbreaker either).

And of course, Elegant Chaos only seemed to assert the notion that time-travel is a fixed loop, and that whatever you do in the past only ends up reaffirming the reality of the present.

But where does all that info come from? Astrology? Numerology? Random internetisms? Is it the kind of thing where you could read just about any set of attributes into a character like Tarn? And was Tarn extremely sincere and honest? Seems to me that he put on a lot of airs, and engaged in a campaign of torture that he didn't actually enjoy for the sake of keeping up appearances. The air of theatricality around Tarn was one indicator of his distorted hypocrisy, no?

I wasn't sure that Roller was Tarn. But I was skeptical that Roberts could make any other reveal credible and not feel like a far-left-field wild-card deus ex machina. The other options just didn't seem to be developed adequately to carry any weight. So I was hoping for Roller... or else a REALLY well-played alternative (which would probably involve a lot of development after the reveal).

So in the end, I wasn't really suprised or shocked... just disappointed.

No, that's a distorted example. R+L=J in GOT is an established theory because it has been heavily, heavily foreshadowed, hinted, and developed through the books - literally for about 20 years now. It's a pretty solid theory that has its adherants because it makes genuine internal and narrative sense, more than any other possibility.

...though it's true that people who only follow the TV series didn't benefit from most of those clues, since they either weren't included in the shows, or only occurred much later (the 'Tower of Joy' scene originally appeared in the very first book).

At this point, to contradict that, Martin would have to perform the literary equivalent of a backwards somersault just so he could teabag the faces of all his longtime fans.

I don't think the Glitch reveal is quite that bad... but the premise is the same. If you don't reward your fans for following the 'trail of breadcrumbs' that you yourself are generating, then it makes everything feel arbitrary and capricious.

You don't say "Hey, look over there!" and then get to say "Aha! Made you look! Wasn't that great?" and not irritate people.  

Again, you have it backwards. The story 'belongs' to the writer, sure... but that means they have to own the story's failures as well. The writer isn't free-standing. The writer also has an audience they are writing for... and it's up to that audience to decide whether what that writer did was actually good or not. That's the audience's responsibility. We're under no obligation to eat it up, whatever it is, and keep our mouths shut... which seems to be your assertion.

zmog

 

The irony foks, is that you are not one of the people that I am talking about - its more the people in the first 30 pages who were like - "Glitch is so dumb, it should have been Roller for x,y,z reasons"

I think that when you describe the disconnect between the receptiveness to S1 twists and S2 twists you are not taking into account the maturation of the readership. I'm going to use a weird analogy to explain. Back at the beginning of world of warcraft - there weren't tons of addons to help you play better, and tons of sites to educate on how to clear content - so content lasted longer - as the player base matured, and more resources became available, content was consumed at a much quicker pace, and then people look back at how long older content took and say "hey it used be be better/harder before".

In the case of MTMTE, when that first payoff hits that was subtly being layered, you are completely knocked for a loop - its like "the first high" that people reference when they talk about drug addiction. So the community grows and starts discussions, and starts looking for that next payoff, that 2nd high. And then the 2nd one is good as well. But now the community has gotten really good at sniffing out the clues, and is over reading details, so the writer has to step up their misdirection game and you eventually reach a point where - not only do you not get that high, but if you were deeply entrenched into another outcome - you are upset that you didn't get that high that was wanted.

And look, I get not agreeing with the direction that an author took a story - but there is a difference between not enjoying what the author did - and flatly stating that the author is "wrong". For example I don't like Hamlet, I think Hamlet should be a basic revenge story and that Shakespeare fell into the tropes of his time period and made it a tragedy - hence why I enjoy the Lion King better. But I don't think Shakespeare was wrong in writing the story that he wanted to tell, I just choose not to read it (again) or watch film adaptations of it.

As for the ownership - I plainly think you are avoiding my argument by arguing the "letter of the law" instead of the spirit of my ownership comment. Yes, Hasbro legally owns the transformers and any licensed work of fiction - and even has creative final say - but a story belongs to the storyteller. In the same way that I would say that the best 20 years of X-Men belongs to Chris Claremont, in the same way that I would say the best run of Daredevil belongs to Frank Miller - I would say that MTMTE belongs to JRo - and as such - you cannot say that the story he told was the wrong one - you can simply argue that you didn't like it.

In terms of your claimed "stake" in the story - its crap. Your logic is, "I like reading Transformers comics, for their to be transformers comics people need to buy transformers comics, people will only buy transformers comics if they are good, when they are good - I can recommend them to others increasing the readership, if they are bad - people will stop buying and I will lose my transformers comics." The failure of your logic is this: 1) You seem to assume that if you don't like it, a majority of people don't like it, and clearly this thread alone disproves that. 2) You seem to make the inference that IDW and Hasbro do not have that shared interest in selling Transformers comic books - news flash - they are here to make money, if readership falls they will add a new team to hopefully bring readers back - in other words, if you don't like it, stop buying and then you will get what you want. 3) But the bigger problem is that you are their perfect customer, as long as you have the disposable income, you will buy their product due to a lifelong obsession with the brand (that's not meant as a negative statement as I myself - and really anyone on these boards - also have a lifelong obsession with the brand) - so you cannot vote with the only currency that means anything to the business - your dollars.

Number 3 is the bad one - because it means whether its good or bad, you are on board so that you can have all the story - and that means when the story isn't to your taste, you are going to react negatively, because like an abusive relationship, you're going to keep coming back. If SMOG says he is dropping the title, good for him, if more follow his lead, then you may get the story changes you are looking for. But I liked it, I like how once the reveal happened, it instantly made sense to me - the empurata, the outlier power, a lack of page time and character development was irrelevant, the truth of it was obvious as soon as I saw it - it wasn't a last minute switch. And like some others, it gave me relief, because in that minimal page time, I did grow to like Roller, and now I can see more of his story unfold - like holy shit - if he felt insecure before, wait until he learns Orion became a Prime... not just a Prime - but the THE M'F'n Matrix having, Titan Raising, PRIME!

 

You misunderstand - my point is for the people who are saying that either the Glitch twist was "wrong" or "it should have been Roller" - my statement is no - Tarn's identity is up to the writer. You can discuss and criticize the path to get ther - not enough development/hints about Glitch, too many false leads towards Roller (which is what you do) - but you cannot claim that the reveal was "wrong" - and I feel that you especially cannot claim that when your reasoning is only "I had fully bought into the false trail for Roller and now don't won't to feel dumb for having been tricked"

 

Oh, I'm hardly the canary. The dead canaries are the people who dropped a year ago, and whose bird corpses are no longer visible in these threads.  

In a real sense, I'm not really "dropping" the series. I'm far too passive for that... but it seems to me that this is a good opportunity "not to renew". There will be plenty of opportunities to pick up trades or digital downloads later... if it seems merited. But I am not getting a satisfying monthly fix this way, so why not save some bucks along the way?

By not signing up for the next Lost Light series as an early adopter, maybe that will have zero effect, but it's still voting with my dollar, and I'm voting my conscience on this one.

Setting aside all the people online that I ranted and raved about this series to, just in my In Real Life circle of people I actually know face-to-face, I put at least 5-6 people on to this series, who I now know buy it regularly.

And I'm with you... for a while now, I just can't make those honest recommendations anymore.  

I'm not going to call them up to decry the series, and tell them to quit... but when each new issue comes out, we do talk about it, and almost across the board everybody I've spoken to is losing faith with the book and rolling their eyes with many of the twists over the past year. Two of them have already quit.

This is all true. I like how he come off in interviews as well, but I missed my opportunity to meet him in person at TFcon about 3 years back (when I still would have been a drooling fanboy, haha!). My friends met him and said he was a very good guy.

So I feel slightly bad about being so critical of his work of late... but damn... it's hard not to be.  

You're a better man than I... while both (A) and (B) are certainly true for me as well, there is a degree of venting as well. Like walking out of a bad movie, or exorcising a disappointing sport outcome, sometimes you just need to talk about that, and share those feelings with others... a kind of communal processing of grief or whatever.  

So yeah... good thing we have forums for that, right?  

zmog

 

Yes, it seems like maybe Focksbot and I both read your comment the wrong way. Sorry for that.

So yes, technically the Glitch reveal can't be "wrong"... but it can still be viewed as a bad writing decision, or as badly executed. It's a subtle shade of difference there in terms of the criticism, but it's a fair point.

I disagree with many of your other points made in relation to Focksbot's post. But I'll let him dissect those for you. I'm going to step outside and enjoy the weather.  

zmog

 

Ah. Well, I did raise a question mark over that point in my last post. I didn't read much of the first few pages because they seemed to be people reacting without having read the issue.

Interesting analogy. So what if Blizzard said, "People are finding the new WoW content too easy because of all the resources that have been gathered for clearing it quickly and efficiently. So let's introduce a boss which telegraphs one move, and then does another one at the last minute. It acts like it's about to swing a club at the player in front of it, but it's actually firing a long-distance insta-kill invisible spell at the player behind it."

Essentially, in gaming, this is a cheap move. There is a point where 'difficulty' crosses the line into feeling unfair, where players can't be expected to improvise around it and must simply luck it out.

I think that's a way of illustrating what has happened here. Sure, some people may have guessed Glitch, because there weren't that many candidates. Just like if there were three players attacking a boss, he's going to attack one of you. It still feels cheap when it's not the player the boss is actually facing and swinging his club at, and when the resulting damage doesn't line up properly with the attack animation.

There is a difference, yes ... but also, sometimes the author is wrong. If you want to say Hamlet is wrong, you've got a high bar to clear. (That hasn't, by the way, stopped people criticising it). But if you're suggesting that saying the author is wrong is always a no-no, then I feel you're completely off-base. Some authors are wrong sometimes, and some authors are wrong a heck of a lot of the time. It's the nature of criticism that we make these assertions.

In my opinion, Roberts made the wrong call here. It happens.

I don't know if you read my comment carefully, but you should note that I'm (almost) completely with you on this. I lost a lot of time on a previous thread to arguing exactly this in the face of people who, as far as I could tell, refused to make any distinction between the letter of the law and the wider philosophical idea of 'ownership'.

That said, I only *almost* agree. I don't think the story belongs to the storyteller - I think that according to the 'spirit of ownership', the story belongs to everyone who invests in it. That means author, reader, property owner as well. We all have a stake. That's why, after a time, intellectual property passes into the public domain - because it's well recognised that ownership of culture tends to spread out among the populous as it affects more and more people.

I can indeed say that it was the wrong one. I can say that a different story would have served Roberts' own purposes better, and would have made for a superior end artefact, a more robust work of literature.

It is just my opinion, of course, but that doesn't mean I can't say it.

I assume nothing of the kind, so we can knock that one out for starters.

That assumes an absurdly direct connection between the actions of a readership and the conclusions drawn by the author and publishers. Actually, in all cases, the seller or author of a product is more likely to pay attention to a well-reasoned and articulate criticism than they are to a silent boycott.

So you are wrong here too, I'm afraid.

Well, quite. But what I can do is take part in the formation of a consensus of reader opinion that might find its way back to James (whom we know is cogniscant of fan reactions, and who will often address them) and that may lead him to up his game. So it's entirely sensible to post my criticisms.

This is you misunderstanding the nature of the criticism. When people say it's "wrong" and that "it should have been Roller" they are saying that the story would make more sense and be more cohesive and compelling if it was Roller.

Of course Tarn's identity is essentially up to the writer. No one else can write it for him. But this issue would have worked out better if he'd gone with Roller.

Yeah, I admit this is part of it for me too. I mean, heck, this is part of how people enjoy culture generally. Kvetching can be as involved and engaging as celebrating something.

But also, I feel like the more I talk about this issue, the better my chances of summing up the problems pithily, in a couple of lines maybe, should I get asked for feedback by IDW or Roberts or anyone influential in the future. You sharpen your own faculties for expression by discussing.

It's a shame some people are so down on the process, but I've always found that in internet forums - there's a certain amount of disdain for views that are, dare I say it, *too* persuasive, because reading them makes intellectual demands on people. Even if you don't reply, you have to carry round that person's view in your head and sometimes you can't help it altering the way you think. So when people get impatient at me, *sometimes* I consider it to be a sign that I'm on entirely the right track.

I appreciate your comments a lot, by the way, SMOG - reading them was one of the things that persuaded me to take up residence here when the IDW forums went down.