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what the frick person

This is one of the harshest truths of the internet these days.

"Awards" mean nothing anymore, because the people handing them out can have any number of reasons for doing so, and virtually anyone can "establish" an award to be given.

 

Lol okay my dude. Tell that to...the history of narrative i guess?

Also fun fact; if mass production negates the possibility of art you are in for a wild ride when i tell you about this lil invention called the printing press.

 

I think he's referring to authors of long-running series.

And he's not especially wrong. Some of the best long-running books are often made up as they go along, with only general ideas of future story beats. They rarely have a clear goal when producing something intended to last years because you can't control what may or may not influence a work.

But that's just my interpretation.

I think you got hung up on the mass-production thing, but again it's pretty clear Misfire's point was that the book is a product to be produced and sold cheaply and en masse. It's not something carefully crafted over years by a starving artist expressing his vision in a medium, it's a corporate-mandated comic released (almost) monthly to make money. Which it didn't do.

 

Plus ca change. When have awards ever meant anything other than that you impressed some group of people somewhere?

Most art sits between these two extremes. Clearly, Roberts did have a vision and an idea of the kind of story he wanted to tell. Misfire has straight up said on this very thread that he's particularly upset about this - that Roberts used a corporate property to express some of his own views.

 

Rhetoric. Not a meaningful rebuttal. Next.

Porn magazines, instant scratchers, SAT tests , and 1040ez forms (you pay your taxes with these) are to be considered art now because they were printed on a press? That’s a hard sell.

I’m actually glad you consider me your dude. I’ll buy you a beer if I ever meet you at a con. That’s a promise.

 

I consider this a reductive view of art and artistic practice. Plenty of thing designed for banal interests have been since reinterpreted as having immense value. Pulp magazines feature little known writers like Hemingway, reconstruction era women’s magazines featuring raconteurs like poe. Our history of narrative comes to us as pieces of receipts to pay the bills.
Ergo, as above, the tools we use to analyse all of these things are by necessity, and by history indifferent.

Mass culture does not negate the possibility of meaningful art and not even crotchety old elitists like Adorno could muster a meaningful argument to the contrary.

I mean dialectically he isnt especially right either. Plenty of long form pieces stretching back to omnibus dickens and up to stuff like saga have definitive plans about the story to be told. even within comic books it is true on the short to medium scale considering how long it takes from writing to print.

I mean porn magazines like playboy helped most of the silver and bronze age scifi authors we know and love to get published and stay published.

But you have mistaken the meaning of the word “negate” with “provide” in most of those examples regardless.

 

Your other statements made some semblance of sense. Might’ve even agreed. But this?!?... 

I would argue that given he said LL was a “narrative mess” he’s more referring to *MTMTE* being good than LL, but don’t want to speak for him.

 

Controversial perhaps, but I think as Roberts started receiving the polarizing feedback he chose explicitly to "double down" on the parts that were so polarizing (and notably most of the major changes he *did* make to his storylines were in that direction too - for example his abandoning Chromedome's original backstory because he liked Chromedome and Rewind as a couple and didn't want that drama introduced anymore). I speculate it might have been both out of his own sociopolitical leanings as well as him digging in against more of the vitriolic feedback he was receiving and in favor of the audience that in some cases told him the comic had literally stopped them from committing suicide. It's *really* difficult for a human being with empathy to turn aside from that (and I'm not saying that as a slag on people who dislike the direction Roberts took the book - if someone tells you that you or something you did/created literally saved their life, it changes you as a person).

I think so too, but I unfortunately think that comes from Roberts having written the large strokes of the ending when he wrote the beginning of the series. For example, the Skids/Rung scene in issue 3 was put there so that he could call back to it when Rung was about to die in the conclusion. Finding that out explained why a lot of the concluding arc felt like "old Roberts" to me...it *was*. =)

 

Yep, I can agree with all of this. But I don't think you even need to be an especially empathetic person - all media has a tendency to head this way, becoming a conversation between the creator and a particular crowd.

I often think this with regard to video games, which have a large audience but are still, for the most part, culturally niche because they're so ideosyncratic in both content and controls. The comics industry is also shrinking for lack of broader appeal.

The irony here is that Roberts took MTMTE/LL into potentially game-changing territory by focusing on aspects of storytelling usually neglected by comics and sci-fi properties. It looked feasible that it could have blown up really big, and broken out of the Transformers/comics bubble. If he had succeeded in this respect beyond a smattering of coverage in the mainstream press, it would have more than countered the loss of readership among the TF community.

That's the risk you take when you innovate: you will almost certainly alienate some of your home crowd. And to come back to the main topic of this thread, the meta-discussion going on here is to do with who Transformers belongs to.

No question in my mind - the real reason a minority of fans ferociously hate MTMTE/LL is because Roberts aimed above their heads at a different readership. They know that if he'd comprehensively succeeded, the whole Transformers brand would be pushed in that direction (as it has been, to a very limited extent, with Nautica turning up so soon in the new series, and more emphasis on female characters).

That's the reason why they (again, a minority) can't be gracious enough to say "It wasn't my thing but it succeeded in various ways". Every quality has to be denied because the conversation is really about who gets to have these toys.

 

Another thread good for identifying candidates for the ignore list.

A few points:

1. “Plot backwards write forward.” Is one of the well known rules of writing a good long running story. If you think the only good writing is making it up as you go along, you’re wrong. Objectively wrong.

2. Cancellation isn’t a good indicator of quality. Lots and lots of artists were unloved and under appreciated in their time. Lots of popular long running shows turn out to be crap on rewatch.

3. Mass production doesn’t have anything to do with whether something is art or not. A lot of instant classics were mass produced or created for market value reasons. Most of the Shakespearean Cannon is written for the crowds of the day. If he couldn’t fill a theater, he’d be out of business and that would be that. Arthur Conan Doyle and Dickens fall under similar situations.

Look you don’t have to like the book, and you don’t have to read it. But trying to argue it absolutely has to be garbage just makes you look foolish. A lot of folks liked the book. Scoff at the year end awards it got, but a fair number of people inside and outside the fandom cared for the book, bought it monthly, and were sad to see it go. Arguing “Everyone is wrong because they don’t share my opinion” makes you look like a jerk and means folks like me immediately discount future posts as trolling.

 

1. Calm down. You seem upset.

2. I’ll buy you a beer too.

 

Can someone buy me a beer?

 

If you are of legal age, then it would be my pleasure.

 

I was considering that as a point, but you totally beat me to it. Realistically, I think it's very hard for an author to not want to please his vocal fans. Money aside, there seems to be only a few authors that do what they do with an eye towards this sort of mythical literary integrity. Even removing the allegations of Roberts' book saving people from death, it feels good to be praised and it's very human to want to please the people praising you. That's not evil, depraved, or even necessarily bad. It's human. I'll dig into my opinions of Roberts' writing all day, explain why I believe certain parts are bad or good, and like you even speculate as to the causation. That said, at this point I don't think there's any real question that he was definitely being influenced by a certain portion of his audience. However, that's hardly an unforgivable sin. My opinion is that it's hardly fair to lambaste the man for being a human being. Which is more or less what @Focksbot said:

I agree with you in part. Earlier in this thread, I stated I thought Roberts brought more to the table than almost any other Transformers scribe because he did stuff with the stories that rarely got done. Making these immortal war machines relateable while still keeping them fairly alien, introducing cultural aspects and ideas that no other author did and effectively filling in a lot of gaps was a feat. I respect Roberts for doing that and it's one of the things I found enjoyable. I also think that Roberts (with a lot of help) could have elevated Transformers farther into the cultural zeitgeist.

However, there's something to be said about why there's such a hostile reaction to Roberts' book by some. I can't speak for everyone, but to my mind I think the issues presented are a lot less steeped in a "minority" of angry adult-children being pissy because they feel the threat of being denied toys and comics.

Just for context, I'm an old school Transformers fan. I've been following the exploits of my favorite robots for 35 years now and for the most part have loved it more than I've hated it. I'm a straight male, but I also generally feel like I'm a social liberal both due to my socioeconomic status and my general life situation. In short, I love all kinds of culture and really don't feel it's my place to pass judgment or feel like anyone should be hurt or threatened or deprived because of who they are, who they feel they are, or even who they want to be. Follow the rules, try to be polite, and I'm generally okay.

However, as stated, I'm a straight male. As an added wrinkle, I was raised in a quasi-traditional Asian household, surrounded by US culture. There's certain things I don't always identify with, or will never comprehend completely because I don't embody those things and/or did not grow up internalizing those things. However, as opposed to being over my head, I feel like those things are simply not things "for me", just like many things such as recreational drug use, organized religion, extreme sports, fancy coffees that take more than two words to describe, certain breeds of dogs, so on and so forth. If you wanna drink your double foam whateverchino deluxe and walk your 175 pound schnauzer to church, great! I won't get it, but I don't gotta. None of my business. However, with those examples, I can ignore them because I don't have to deal with them. What happened with IDW was a little different.

Roberts packed "social progressive" stuff into his work. It's a given at this point. So consider a fan like me, 35 years in, getting handed a book that has something we love - Transformers. Awesome! New book! New narrative. But wait... something I don't get. Something I don't and will never really truly comprehend. And then again. And again. And again. And then plastered on the news. And discussed ad nauseum by these very vocal NEW fans I've never seen before and don't get and why are you writing horrifying fanfiction about Rodimus Prime!?

And that's the rub for some people. I firmly believe that there were more than a few moderates that got turned into ogres. IDW was all TF fans got, comics wise. It's not like we can go and read some other transforming robot book elsewhere, as if it was some DC/Marvel/Indie thing where we had alternatives. It wasn't even that there was socially progressive stuff in the book. Comics have been doing that for a while. It's that it was slammed into the book and arguably pounded on repeatedly to the point where there was at least this impression of overexposure, compounded by this strange, new group of people that showed up in the fandom that were downright hostile to anyone that expressed exasperation over not liking what Roberts was doing. It was too much, too soon, too fast, too in your face... and it was ANGRY. I mean... shit guys. I feel like I'm a pretty even guy but even /I/ got called nasty names by some people just for trying to provide counterpoints.

While I'm sure there's a few - I'm not naive enough to believe otherwise - I seriously doubt that even the angry minority of the books truly are or believe they're anti-whatever-it-is. I think they're exasperated that the only TF medium they had that was initially apparently geared towards them - a mature fan - was slathered with stuff that wasn't for them. That's probably not even the big the issue. The issue is that there's this impression that it was rubbed in their face repeatedly, and in some case gleefully.

So yeah. I'm not making excuses for anyone. In the words of Furman: "It's over... finished!" I don't feel that most people talking about the book NOW in the aftermath are necessarily terrible or unreasonable. However, Roberts' books to me do carry the taint of some seriously foul and angry language from his most ardent fans, and that's harder to shake for some and definitely plays into whether you like or dislike MTMTE/LL.

 

I could not have said it better. Thanks !

 

You're welcome. As a caveat though, I don't think the angry, militant anti-Roberts position is warranted either. Just that there's at least some discernible basis for the behavior outside of "people just being babies/ignorant rubes".

 

Then we good!

 

Can we give ProtectonPrime an award for being the most down to earth, well reasoned and solid poster in this thread please? Seriously, great posts!


On the subject of Roberts doubling down on what his vocal fans liked, and others disliked: I’d like to add something that I’ve learned over the years:

The human mind is not suited for negativity. Back in the Bronze Age, negative feelings like fear or anger helped us escape (or challenge) a potential danger, helped us survive. In the current era, though, it’s doing us more harm than good.

Basically, for every positive comment one can get, there will be at least ten negatives. And worse, our caveman brains will linger on every negative one, just like in the past, rather than focusing on the positive ones (that never seem to stick).

Now imagine you’re a semi (or even very) famous person living on Earth in 2019, where mostly everyone has quick access to the internet - a system where it’s already been proven anonimity makes a lot of people act much nastier than they would face-to-face. Seriously, imagine the amount of vitriol - warranted and unwarranted one will receive. Let’s all be honest here: we all know that one actor, that one writer, we don’t really like. Maybe it’s for valid reasons. Maybe it’s because we don’t like his face. Maybe we’re angry that somebody had success and we don’t. Truth is: we’ve all said something nasty about somebody in the spotlight at one point in our lives.

Now imagine you’re that person, who’s living their daily live, opens their Twitter inbox, and sees this literal tsunami of shit geared towards them. What do you think will happen? You seriously think that person is going to listen to your ‘feedback’, big or small, warranted or unwarranted, for even a second?

No they won’t, and neither would we, if we were in that position. That’s why people in that position close themselves off/don’t reply to negative feedback, or break and lash out.

If there’s one big thing I ‘fault’ the critics - not the people with legitimate feedback on this book’s faults, but the outright acid-spewing jerks and the people who initially started pretty mellow, but got much more petty and ‘vocal’ overtime; everyone who has been taking it too far - it’s this: that they ‘demand’ to see said person reply, acknowledge of incorporate your feedback. Which won’t happen. Which in turn only frustrates those people even more, making them even pettier and nasty in their behaviour (and projecting and connecting more and more negative associations with the famous person).

I’m pretty sure a writer, an actor, an artist has no shortage of people surrounding him/her offering feedback he/she can filter. Really, anything you can tell someone in that position is nothing new. Next to that, I’d also prefer a working environment where I don’t have hundreds of people shouting at me that I’m trash. In short: the ‘critics’ are as much to blame as the ‘blind followers’, but it’s good to be aware of how our brains function. It’s not (just) percieved ego of someone who somehow won’t listen and will intentionally double down on something.  

Hope this makes sense and brings awareness somehow.   Also I’m buying you all beers if you come to the Netherlands someday! Proost!

Edit: fixed a typo (I’m sure there are more   )

 

I can well imagine this to be the case, but I also think - stepping back a bit - that this is a more problem to do with fantasy properties (and their fans) getting cordoned off from the development of real-life politics and ending up stuck in a time capsule from the 80s and early 90s.

What I mean is that the process of catching up to the current day ends up packing the wallop of a slingshot, because it hasn't been gradual. I, like you, am a straight white male who grew up in the 80s and is fairly at home in the moral landscape it engendered, and I, like you, have been caught off guard many times by the sharpness and the anger of progressive activists who are done playing nice, thankyouverymuch. But of all the things to sit tight and get used to, this is the one - largely because what we don't see is just how much the exclusionary politics of the past were - and still are - rubbed in their faces repeatedly and gleefully.

It's not as if Transformers was a quiet little thing we had on the side - it's a worldwide multimedia brand which is still imprinting its ethical template on children as they develop. As long as that's the case, everyone has a legitimate interest in wanting it to keep up to date with the kind of values they apply more widely, and those new fans have a right to demand and celebrate a continuity that speaks to them. Since it also gave us some pretty awesome concepts and characters, surely we can share?

What I'm saying is: I can understand the impulse toward hostility. What I can't countenance is failing to reflect on it and instead blaming the writer and the publisher for pushing forward.

 

Preaching to the choir, brother. It took some adjustment, but I really didn't have a lot of problems with the progressive material after a ton of reading to help at least comprehend the issues I was facing. However, there's a few things that add nuance to this particular situation.

One of the things that helped me understand what was going on was just as you said - getting some perspective. Luckily (?) my being a minority at least gave me some idea of what the complaints were. Still, as mom used to say, two wrongs don't make a right. Just because the behavior can be comprehended didn't make it okay for anyone to be hostile. Passionate, controversial, or harboring disagreement of opinion, yes. Hostile, probably not. Might be due to my upbringing enforcing the idea that it's not a good idea to attract too much negative attention, though, so I'll cop to that.

While Transformers are a global multinational brand, the comics have kind of been a niche into itself, providing a little more pablum for the mind. Not to engage in too much hyperbole, but if the cartoons and other media is your standard swords and sorcery Thundarr the Barbarian, the comics were our Tolkien. It's the same whiplash effect you described.

So ultimately, I don't think sharing was ever really the big issue. I think all of us are OK with them trying out new ideas save for the staunchest of the "I don't want anything to change ever" crowd. It was how some people were trying to make room for themselves. After all, there's a difference between asking to have a seat on the train, and quite another to kick in the door and yell "GIMME THAT SEAT, OPPRESSOR". But we've discussed that.

But to address your final point...

Really? You don't get that some people - and I'm not saying ANYONE here is doing this - would foist the blame on a few highly visible targets instead of engaging in self reflection or even trying to comprehend whatever new issues are being presented with an open mind? C'mon. That's human nature. We seek patterns and correlation as a rule. Without a very wide array of experiences and/or some level of training, humans invariably pull the trigger on the nearest target without hesitation because it helps us make sense of the world.