Ummm...yeah? The first one was a story about how Caminus is a planet of high school girls that was written in service of a really bad pun, and Swearth was James saying "Hey, here's a list of TV shows I like" written as an excuse to show off more holomatter avatars set against a backdrop of Swerve whining about how he's not as major character anymore. Those issues embody literallyevery complaint people have about Season 2.

 

Not to me, those are two of my favorite issues.   I'm pretty omniverous when it comes to reading so I really dig tangents and when writers go off the rails for a while, when things just get weird for no particular reason. Hell, one of my favorite authors is Tom Robbins, an author who writes novels that are almost entirely weird tangents and asides. It just works for me.

I totally understand how others wouldn't like it though.

 

I still enjoy it. So I think I was done reading this thread even before the first paragraph ended.

 

The intent is not to convince anybody how to feel. Nor is it a generic takedown.

"This is how I'm feeling, does anybody else feel this way?"

Why even come in just to cast snark?

 

Try reading your own quote for perspective.

 

Good point. I actually liked both those issues. They were a little gasp of comic relief in an arc that was morally heavy. I can see peiple not liking them, but it doesn't make them bad.

 

They're bad in the sense that they completely ruin internal logic and can't function without the kindstand of "it's just a gag, bro." Unless you find the subject matter funny, they cease being competent stories, and do not work on their own merits.

Swearth takes the already fundamentally unlimited power of Holomatter and cranks it up to idiotic extremes. Its power is well and truely limitless, and begs the question of why it's not used for everything from alt modes to surgery to combat to whatever. It has limitless prospects, seeing as it can project a fully realised 1:1 model of the Earth at a distance. Literally, a full-sized planet, of solid, projected matter. A much better story would be if Swerve projected a tiny Earth inside the LL, and everyone had to shrink their avatars down to explore it. But even then it's stupid, since making people to scale of the Earth to search the whole thing on foot is absurdly impractical. (and not, say, project themselves all as planes, or at least their normal transforming bodies) Really, it all should've taken place inside Swerve's head, so there was a good reason for it being on Earth. (kinda like what Animated did) Because that's all it existed to do, make all the TFs human and put them on Earth for self-indulgent fanwankery, and tie up a character subplot no one knew existed and was itself a really fanwanky thing. But it was such a terrible, terrible way of doing it. And it wasn't even all that rewarding because most, if not all of the "human" forms of the TFs didn't jibe with their personalities (instead going for the unexpected because unexpected) or were just really boring, and the premise of rendering the story like a sitcom TV show fails because... well, it's not a TV show, it's a comic book. It's the antithesis of the brilliant nod to Marvel G1 in the annual where the style, composition, and even dialogue were tooled to match the old cmics as a nod to "ancient times." That was clever, "Swearth" was not.

Personality Ticks was just really... dumb, and I feel bad saying that but there's hardly any other way for me to describe it. It lacked any sort of cleverness or intellectual element to it. The idea that anything can feed on "charrisma" is stupid itself because what charrismatic is differs from person to person. Maybe if they fed on the unique set of chemicals a brain releases in response to what an indiviual percieves as charrisma, but that doesn't apply to Transformers and is still really stupid- almost as stupid as how they're beaten, because Rodimus and Megatron overload them with their combined "charrisma." Yes, arguably the two most hated people on the Lost Light are "charrismatic." It's just plain old silly, and not in an endearing or charmingly self-aware way. It thinks it's self-aware, but really it's just ironic humour gone awry, hiding behind the excuse of "it's just a goofy comic, dudes."

The reason I consider those two issues bad, and not simply issues I don't like, is because they not only encourage you to not think, they punish you for even trying. Expectation, reason, and logic die in those issues, which are the exact things Roberts was so fucking masterful at in season one. All at the expense of cheap humour you see better realised in actual fan works. It's like if in Batman the Animated series, the one episode where the kids envisioned him as different Batman iterations, he actually did change into those versions. It wasn't just imagination, but he just randomly decided to be goofy Adam West Batman for a day. It's not so much that these jokes were made, it's that they fundamentally challenged the world created until that point. If the goal was to be comic relief, they could've done so much better. Hell, look at the "comic relief" episodes in a show like Cowboy Bebop, where the tone fluctuated drastically yet never felt out out of continuity with itself.

You don't have to agree with any of this, mind you, but I just wanted to make clear my reasons for considering those issues bad extend far past simply not liking them.

 

OH MAN. Don't remind me of how great that issue was. To this day it's still one of my favorite issues ever. Wow. I miss the Barber that did experimental stuff like that and like the trippy Morrison-esque time travel issue. He definitely did a lot of trying different things out in the first 12 issues. I loved that genius.

Might need to start a "Remember when Barber was cool?" thread now...=)

 

I liked the Personality Tick issues for bringing back Thunderclash and having some good character dynamics (Skids and Nautica dancing was legit the cutest thing), but Swearth was pretty bad.

 

Not technically correct. Only a small region of the planet was populated - the one Swerve was in. It was a throwaway line, but the clear implication was that Swerve could only project the rough image of an entire planet and then fill a few spaces with scenes he recognised from TV. It was basically the others entering his dream, except that the dream was a solid projection.

That's not to say it's not an overly outlandish concept. The Community influence was very palpable - lampshade the lack of realism and remind the audience that they should enjoy the fictional universe for what it is.

I wouldn't call it a bad issue so much as an experimental issue. Inconsistent universe logic isn't in itself a bad thing if the inconsistency can be tonally contained - look at how most manga series will have back-up strips showing the cast members engaged in various ridiculous activities that are somehow in-canon at the same time as being entirely out of step with the drama and character tensions in the main fiction (ie. big bad guy Aizen decides to enter the cookie-baking contest with the rest of the Sereitei captains, in the land of the dead where they all live).

Or consider the MTMTE Christmas special, which was also in-canon and generally well received.

For me, this isn't anywhere close to the heart of where Lost Light has lost traction - occasional goofy issues should be fine. It's the way the goofiness has crept into every page of the book so that Rodimus is blah-blahing the ruthless dictators of a dystopian nightmare world in the final confrontation over the future of the planet - we've gone from mood whiplash to mood soup.

 

Even protecting a smooth, detail-less ball the size of Earth is absolutely ludicrous. The Earth. The biggest object humans have ever come in contact with. So large it has its own gravity. Did "Swearth" have gravity? I mean, it's solid, right? Does it have mass? Is it hollow? How thick is the surface you can interact with? How solid its it?

These are very simple questions that go unanswered, and if even half of them are "yes" it shatters the whole concept. Why is holomatter not used to create detailed structures on the fly? Like making a bunker in the middle of a battle when things get rough? Using it to make a bridge across a gap? Why is every problem not immediately faced with "let's try holomatter?" Why are they not the go-to tool for infiltration? Sure would've come in handy in Remain in Light when Ravage was scoping out the DJD ship. Could've just sent a tiny avatar out that was too small to notice. I mean, the distance shouldn't have been an issue, nor power usage since Swerve could project, again, a model of the Earth at full scale and not die from it. (in fact his condition was mostly from a lack of upkeep, not pushing the holomatter to its limits)

Also, if a dream is a solid projection, it's not a dream anymore. And why did it have to be a solid projection, then? What did that add to the story? (because the list of things it took away is a long one)

This isn't just "inconsistent." It's a glaring incongruity. They've introduced a concept that is compeltely at odds and challenges the very fundamentals of the universe, since if holomatter is so versitile, why transform? Or why replicate fully featured alt modes as part of your person and not just transform into a basic blocked wheeled thing and project an alt mode around you? Why send soldiers into combat and not just project invincible soldiers or indestructable weapons via massive holomatter machines from orbit or inside strongholds?

The applications are limitless and have almost no drawbacks. All you need is power, and not even a lot. Line of sight isn't needed, proximity isn't needed. It's the ultimate "don't need to think of an explanation" technology. They introduced magic into the TF universe and called it science.

 

Hardlight hologram comes from the a British TV show Red Drawf, I remember it was said somewhere. Light don't have a stasis mess. But we don't know how the holomater works, so... anyway it's comic science, aka pseudoscience. Don't think too hard about it. Or as they say Superman shits diamonds.

 

I mean, we do. We can see what it can do, and little of what it can't.

We don't know the technical process, but that's inconsequencial in comparrison to actual examples of use.

I didn't, I barely thought of it before I came to the realization that it's incredibly BS. No attempt was made to suspend my disbelief or offer it to me in a way that wasn't blatant in its ridiculousness. When they brought in size-changing to IDW, they set up that it's a difficult process that requires a lot of energy and is unstable and rare. And that the more you size change, the more energy you need. And most importantly, not everyone could do it because of the stress it put on the body. Holomatter has no limits such a sthese. It requires energy, but not even a lot, since little old Swerve was quie capable despite falling into disrepair.

I didn't come to this conclusion after a deep thought process, it was my immediate reaction upon seeing a 1:1 Earth projected out of solid matter. I "overthought" nothing. And the idea that I shouldn't think about it too hard is ridiculous when that's all MTMTE has been requiring of the readers up until then. It actively encouraged readers to overthink every little detail to glean a reference or piece of forshadowing from.

"Don't think about it" is a pretty weak excuse to begin with, but it's especially unbefitting of a series like MTMTE.

 

Well, if you really want to think about it ...
The hologram is hard, but hard doesn't mean it is sturdy. It might shatter with a bit more force.

Since it's a hologram, it is projected out from some machine. In this case, Swerve's brain is the projecter. Everything on Sweath doesn't need to have mess or gravity. Their movements and positions and intersections are decided by the machine. The law of gravity there is coded into the algorithm. All those who went on Swearth is using their avatar. So it's needless to worry about gravity. It's all information. Also, we've seen Whirl's avatar floating in and out of the ship.

There is real physics problems in the book. But actually I don't think this is one. And we really don't know how hardlight works. I don't think it's explained. If I missed it I'd like to be reminded because it could actually be interesting.

 

It "might." But we don't know. All we know is that holomatter is strong enough to lift a TF at least. It must have quite a bit of solidity to it. You could project layer and layers of it, or just re-project it once it's "destroyed." And since it's projected, that means it's not static matter, but matter constantly replacing matter as it originates from a single point. It should be even more robust, if not invincible, because it's constantly "regenerating." And since it projects instantly, presumably at light speed, little should be able to properly compromise it.

Except it's solid matter. Which means it has mass of some kind, and mass has gravity. You can't be solid and not solid at the same time, it has to be one or the other.

And all that is just one aspect of holomatter. It doesn't negate the other logical leaps like why it's not used for disguises or infiltration. (which would've been super useful, y'know, during the Infiltration protocols, yet all it was used for was making vehicle modes not look driverless)

 

On the personality tics story, it started out legit creepy, I liked the personal interactions and character development, and the ending *was* weak but failure to stick the landing is the only major flaw in my eyes.


And on the Swearth arc, physics of holomatter aside, it had some fun jokes, told us how, well, Swerve had pretty much been letting himself die, and seeing new holoavs is always enlightening- Megatron is this old but impose guy who at one point literally has blood on his hands.

 

*i should note first I do not have a degree in mordern physics. Don't be misled by what I say as absolute truth. I only speak with the knowledge I have which is limited to what they taught in college general physics classes. If you need to know more about wave-particle duality or the mass of lightwaves and such things, please do the research yourself.*


My memory might be a bit blurry about holomater avatar lifting a bot. I just remembered several of them jumped on UM when he was unconscious. Besides, my hands can lift a knife no problem but if stabbed with it my hands are still gonna break.

Besides how do you know it's matter constantly replacing matter? How do you distinguish that it's new matter replacing old matter but not just the same matter constantly? I'm guessing they just somehow make the electro-magnetic waves extremely high frequency, and thus tipped them towards particles, but still flimsy enough to have some convenient qualities of light waves. And it can just move by itself. But this way it shouldn't matter whether the waves just move or constantly regenerate? They can still always be flimsy.

Or it could be that the projector is actually on the ship just using datas from Swerve's brain, and perhaps expansive.

I don't think this is a loophole. It's just unspecified, which isn't really a problem. If this kind of unspecificaction of specific imaginary tech is a problem, than it really is a problem of comics in general.

If it has a mass of near zero it still has a mass technically, but its gravity doesn't really matter. Again, we don't know how they work, but they clearly can change the quality of whether it's more wave like or more particle like, might be just changing the frequency. Since they can lift things as well as move through walls, I guess it's quite easy, but how reliable are the projections? And we are all sort of solid and not that solid at the same time. Being solid itself got nothing to do with being sturdy. There are just too many possibilities here.

If they are going to use holomaters in some other ways, I'm sure they are going to give us more information about its specific qualities. But I really think it's a bit beating it too hard to ask for every spec when it's just used for some character works now.

 

If he REALLY felt that story was necessary, he should have written it so that they went into his mind via Cortical Psychic Patch.

 

I dropped this series after MTMTE season two. Been wondering if LL was worth checking out. Sounds like it isn't. Pity. Jame's Roberts' writings were once one of the best things to come out of TF. Now I barely give them any thought. Maybe one day I'll return to season one, just to remind myself of how good it used to be, even if that means reminding myself of what was lost when the series became rubbish.

 

Actually, the comic itself explained that it DID require a massive amount of energy. The only reason Swerve was able to do it was because he opened Brainstorm's timecase off-screen, which created a time loop that allowed him to re-route energy through his holomater avatar an infinite number of times. It's ultimately a hand-wave, yes, but one I'm willing to accept since I personally enjoyed the story. I don't feel it somehow needs to have baring on hollo-matter technology in the long run - not when its built upon the literal reality-bending shenanigans in a previous arc of immense importance, and said arc repeatedly acknowledges that everything to do with the timecase is breaking the laws of nature. In other words, with the wibbly wobbly timey casey network destroyed, it's not like they'll be able to replicate the Swerth experience anytime soon.