It's a kind offer. I don't drink, but thanks for the offer.

My point is: There's legit arguments that can be made about the quality of the book. The list you gave earlier isn't it, and doesn't have much to do with whether something is good, or whether something is art. Mass produced, structured plot, or even cancellation doesn't really speak to that. All of those are quite beside the point. There's quite a few examples of things that were mass produced, highly structured, and/or cancelled that are seen as high points in genres. Those just don't work as criteria.

 

I firmly believe they are legitimate arguments. It's just a matter of opinion on both sides. I believe the vast majority (99.99999999999%) of massed produced products meant for consumption eventually gets thrown away or flushed down a toilet. Your examples are most likely exceptions and not the rule. The success of the book took a nose dive when the stories stopped being about Transformers and were tailored to a small group. This group has every right to have stories meant to appeal to them. The writer has every right to pander to them. However, I have every right to say those stories don't entertain me and I would like something different. The critique of the characters as merely cosplayers in Transformers costumes is really accurate to me. So, I stopped buying. Many more people did too. They spoke with their wallets. The sales reflect that. Whether that reflects the quality or not is a question for thousands of individuals who purchased or stopped purchasing the book. The book was cancelled and is cancelled. Do I hate it. No. I didn't like it. I hate being called names for my opinion as do many other members.

The offer stands. I should make my account more public if anyone ever wants to take me up on it.

 

I agree a lot of mass produced stuff is meant to be tossed. But in that mass of stuff you can still have art and quality. Mass production doesn’t preclude art.

Cancellation is also somewhat irrelevant. Classic Trek was a ratings and financial bomb. It’s now seen as a high point of sci-fi and has inspired countless movies, comics, etc. History is chock full of financial failures that went on to become classics. All success does make it easier for your work to be found.

That’s why I wouldn’t say those are valid criteria for a thing to be a success or not. Big Bang Theory was wildly successful financially, but I don’t think anyone is holding it up as an example of high quality TV. Battlestar Galactica (2000’s), Classic Trek, and Babylon 5 struggled to find audiences and stay ahead of cancellation long enough to tell their story. They’re all seen as pinnacles of Sci-Fi TV.

 

You say that now, but here's betting that the only thing standing after the Uhlek Biowars of the year 3000 is a ninety story solid platinum obelisk with "Bazinga" carved on all four sides.

 

You are probably right. For Pete’s sake, if the Earth is wiped clean then the only US President that will live on in history is Nixon, who’s name still resides on the moon.

 

Oh, I get why they do it. I'm just not going to sit here and read their posts without pointing out that that's what they're doing, and that quite a few of the 'arguments' presented are poor attempts to rationalise this behaviour.

Apologies, by the way, for branding us both 'straight white males' back there - I'd picked up on what you said about your heritage in your previous post but the phrase slipped out, probably because it's used so often.

 

Eh. No worries. I ain't brittle.   Whatever the case, I'm glad there's a place to discuss this kind of stuff, even if there's always a risk that it'll devolve into mudslinging and name calling. Better to have a place to do it than nowhere at all and stew in our own juices I say.

 

This thread has turned into something awesome =)

Love the discourse all!

 

Beer: the cause of, and solution to all of life’s problems

 

I appreciate your input as much as the next guy I'm sure, but calling people who are vocal about their displeasure and dissatisfaction 'angry and militant' is being intellectually dishonest and implies you don't actually understand these peoples issues with the story and furthermore calling someone angry isn't actually an argument if they're still making points that are objectively true. It's also just one of the most obvious methods of trying to discredit the people you're talking about. Criticizing, even harshly, doesn't equate to anger.

Just a reminder: Militant implies "combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause, and typically favoring extreme, violent, or confrontational methods."

In other words, nothing to do with nerds talking about a comic book. You still made some fair points even if I think a lot of what you've said is questionable, but straw-manning your 'opponents' is not the way to go about doing things. I'm not even Anti-Roberts really, I'm just disappointed in him and I don't worship him (anymore.)

No hard feelings, but I'm sure people who have calmly criticized MTMTE / LL and the fandom around it / response to it (such as myself) don't appreciate being called "Angry, militant Anti-Roberts" people.  

 

Hmm. Yeah, I don't disagree with you. "[C]alling people who are vocal about their displeasure and dissatisfaction 'angry and militant' is being intellectually dishonest" is 100% true. If the impression I gave was that anyone passionate about their dislike of Roberts, his writing, or the themes he brought to the book was an angry militant, then that's on me. But that's not what I was trying to do.

We can both agree, and I think most people here agree, that there were some very odd people that showed up in the fandom during Roberts' run that, for lack of a better term, were just inordinately hostile. Anyone that criticized Roberts over ANYTHING was labeled something unpleasant. That's uncool. That could also be labeled militant and hostile. You could say: "I really don't like Chromedome's characterization" and BAM, you were a neo Nazi. What the hell?

However, there was (or is) in fact a group of people that were anti-whatever, mean or just completely not open to change at all. Period. And not in a: "Jesus, this sucks." way. Like in a "I would, if given a chance and without risk of repercussion, burn your house down" sort of way. In short, they were (and likely still are) just as militant and hostile as the weird pro-Roberts fans. That's not you, or anyone else still here, talking about this, in recent history. But they were there, and they weren't any better than the guys that called anyone a Neo Nazi because they weren't on board with robot kissing for legitimate, non bigoted reasons including simple taste. That's what the addendum post was meant to convey.

You've inferred I'm opposing something. I'm not looking for opponents here - my intent is to say that there's room for some mutual respect even if we passionately disagree. Passionate statements are OK. Great even! The US, for better or for worse, would still be a colony and our minimum wage would still be $1.00 if not for impassioned arguments.

You want my true opinion on Roberts and MTMTE/LL? I think he's a self aggrandizing, egotistical twat-waffle that can't do anything without having his hand held and I do 100% feel like his weird echo chamber behavior alienated a lot of readers. His book ended a god-damn mess that was an embarrassing disappointment compared to where he started. Dunno if he started there, but he certainly ended there in my opinion. I've been labeled a bigot for saying stuff like that.

But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate that he did some good things. I loved his early work on the book. Chirolinguistics? Color expression? Ancient Cybertronian opera? I'm there in spades. I even liked the general romance subplot with Chromedome and Rewind and I will cop to the guilty pleasure of the Nautica/Skids dance scene. I've also had my personal integrity/intelligence placed into question for saying I like some of his stuff.

I'm not saying you, or any of the people on this board are part of any crazypants crowd any more than I'm saying @Digilaut, @Focksbot or @pluto are always 100% right. Honestly, even if I don't agree with you, @misfire19d , @SPLIT LIP or the like all the time, you guys make salient points I agree with and tried to incorporate in my weird attempt at being a moderate for a very polarizing book.

At the end of the day, @misfire19d is on point - "beer" is the equalizer, i.e. we're all human. I got up this morning, cleaned up, fixed my kid breakfast, helped mom get the little booger into the car, and drove to work. We're all human beings, and we have Transformers to share. Passioned, dispassionate - it's all good. Antagonistic and hurtful - from anyone - is not so good.

Honestly and selfishly, just like you I'd just like to be able to talk about magic transforming space robots without getting yelled at for my opinions.

 

I’m probably making a mistake trying to reply to this when I’m bed-ridden with a migraine, but I feel like a key aspect of how these conversations work was (unintentionally) overlooked.

You see, people seem to think that critics and creators operate on the same level. That someone being paid to write a book is equal to the random Twitter dude saying “this stinks my man.” But they aren’t. One is an individual in the spotlight, one is part of the “masses.” I think everyone can agree on that, because it’s how everyone in this thread, yourself included, has chosen to separate the sides.

But this is where the discussion takes a truly destructive turn. Your point about “we are not wired for negativity” lacks... maturity? That sounds insulting and harsh, but I meant the actual thought process itself is not properly extrapolated, not that you or anyone who thinks that way is immature. Rather, even if our brains are not designed to handle negativity we’ll, they are exceptionally designed for complex, rational thought. The idea that we would revert to “caveman” impulses over a comic book is absurd to me, because it implies it is not only expected but accepted that we will not, or can not, think when discussing it. My brain my not be wired from the outset to process negativity, but I’ve spent thirty years growing and maturing to the point where I can have a healthy conversation about things I dislike and still function with emotional stability if that argument turns sour. Like, I feel like this is what separates us from the animals, our ability to think beyond our instinctual reactions.

Going back to my first part about creator and critic, this is where that “immaturity” (again it sounds mean and spiteful but I literally have no idea what else to call it) sets in. People who criticize, or at least the people I have witnessed criticizing, are not acting instinctually. They’re responding, like me, with rationale and a thought process and a biased based on the information they’ve taken in. I loved MTMTE from the beginning, made fan art, bought toys of characters I never cared about, posed TR Chromedome with Rewind on his shoulder, all that stuff. I didn’t enter MTMTE with intent to hate or a checklist of “off-limits” ideas. I was open and loving it.

However, when critics criticize a work, and you see this everywhere, the “supporters” feel an instinctual compulsion to “bite back.” I know this because I feel the same way when anyone criticizes what I like, so supporters then criticize the critic. That’s only fair, right?

But it isn’t. Not even close. They have chosen to personally attack a person who has not attacked anyone, but instead has attacked a product. They’re not matching the offence they’ve perceived, but going beyond that slight to inflict personal “damage” against someone who’s words harmed nobody. It’s an extreme reaction to a not extreme problem, and instinctual reaction to a non-instinctual declaration.

This is where you see critics villainized and called names just because they don’t like a book. And this gets worse, because of the way instincts work. Instincts, to our minds, are never “wrong.” They can’t be, because that’s what gets you killed. Its like when someone scares you as a prank and you get genuinely mad even though there was no danger. Your brain can’t admit that it made a wrong call because that would make your instincts, something meant to protect you, unreliable. This sounds so hoity-toity and serious but I’m just making an example, I’m not a neurologist or anything. But because the brain really doesn’t want to admit when it’s gone too far, supporters will begin to rationalize or excuse their destructive behaviour. “Oh well there’s so MANY people who are racist,” or “the majority of people I’VE seen are just bigots” etc. They can’t admit that they were wrong for attacking what is ultimately harmless criticism so they need to create a circumstance where their reaction is appropriate, even if it’s retroactive. You see this all the time, more than you’ll see anyone who criticizes a work for illegitimate reasons, because it is a mindset free of criticism itself. They’ve escalated the conversation and subject matter to build up the ultimate defence of righteousness. After all, nobody can argue that racism or sexism is bad, so by making their position more about those things and less about “I got mad someone said mean things about a book I like” it absolves them of being criticized themselves. Its how humanity seems to work these days. A conversation is joined and promptly “shut down” by those who claim a moral high ground. They want to have the last word, whatever that entails.

I’m not a hateful person, at least not in regards to this. I save my hate for things that actually hurt people, but a comic book will never do that. I don’t hate women, I don’t hate gays, I don’t hate minorities or anyone born a different walk of life. Yet I have been called a bully, a racist, a bigot, a misogynist, a homophobe, and much more just because I stopped reading a comic book I thought was stupid. But I made the mistake of voicing my opinion that certain subjects are inappropriate for a comic about colourful space robots, in the same way that I don’t think Pokémon would be the best avenue to discuss geopolitical landscapes in foreign countries.

But... and this is where I’m sure I’ll seem infinitely arrogant to those who already dislike me, I also don’t really care what other people think of me. Because I am not one to demand and eye for an eye, or in this case the whole fucking head. I can take shit talk against me or stuff I like and not get offended on it’s behalf. I’ll argue it, of course, but I’ll never attempt to fight dirty by undermining the opposition with name calling and generalization just to protect that small portion of my ego that may be chipped by associating with something others dislike. (Unless it’s TF Animated. I’ll kill your fricking family if you talk shit about my children’s cartoon you hecking frickers! D:< )

Maybe it’s just because I grew up during a time where society was truly fucking hostile. There were no special interest groups or “safe spaces” for me or children who were actually gay, etc. Nobody had “representation” or groups online to talk to because the internet was still too young and the media was still too set in its ways. You had exactly two options when faced with criticism: argue it on its own merits, or ignore it and move on with your life. You didn’t get to play the “you’re just a bigot!” card because they’d just make fun of you more, and nobody was going to help you.

But it’s like nobody thinks that way anymore. Nobody can just take a hit and keep walking like it’s nothing. Every offence, big or small, deserves the same nuclear counter-measure. How are you supposed to build up a tolerance to this shit if you let every little thing break a piece off? I just don’t get it.

If this seems like an overly long reply that has almost nothing to do with the post I quoted (which I didn’t even necessarily disagree with) it’s because this shit is so pervasive everywhere that I feel compelled, in an immature instinctual level, to say something before I take my own advice and just ignore it. I don’t want everyone to get along, but I do wish everyone would stop taking everything so personally. I wish we could have conversations that didn’t end with “society!” and “intolerance!” and the like. But with every piece of media insisting on making itself politically charged, it’s a conversation you can’t escape, no matter how redundant and played out it is. That’s ultimately why I dropped Roberts’ work, I just didn’t want politics in my TF fiction anymore whether I agreed with them or not.

Well, that and I couldn’t fucking stand “Community” being referenced one more God-damned time...

 

You know, it's funny. I've been listening to the Heathers: The Musical soundtrack over and over for the past few days and the song that sticks in my head is the opening song, "Beautiful". The song is keyed to my mind as having a veritable Greek chorus of people shouting horrible insults and slurs as part of the school experience. The musical is, as the movie, set in 1989 - the time I grew up - and this was more or less my childhood. Like you, I got no safe spaces, got attacked and occasionally beaten up/getting into fights just for being a little different.

Not to make a long, albeit good, point any longer - I agree with you. Period. Full stop. For reasons you state and reasons you don't. I sympathize, of course, with people that get discriminated against and bullied... but I also think that sometimes you just need to sack up.

Just to address a few other things:

Yeah. Sadly I think that's a thing that happens, no matter how absurd it is. There are people that don't have the benefit of growing and maturing... or have ignored the opportunities to do so. Based on what I've seen, attacking a comic can sometimes be seen as attacking someone in the childhood which garners a defensive reaction. Again - sure, maybe those people need to not take things like that so personally, but there are people that do it and for whatever reason won't or can't control themselves.

Animated was basically one of the most perfect Transformers cartoons ever created. It's an objective truth.

I think the only way I can legitimately approach creative work these days is deliberately ignoring the talking heads babbling about the work and it's deeper meanings. I mean, it doesn't necessarily hide the quality (or lack thereof) of the work, but at least I can come to the conclusions without a beehive's worth of crazies telling me what everything is supposed to mean.

 

I had a litany of complaints about MTMTE's final issues and quite a lot of LL. I was never shy about expressing them. But I don't remember any of the book's fans villainising me or calling me names.

The truth is that these forums hosted a lot of hateful shit written about Roberts and those books, and what you've missed out in your account is that quite a few forum users actually got banned because they couldn't stop trolling the threads with it. At least one of those users raged at me for contacting the moderators (I hadn't, but they presumed it was me), and the mods were in turn accused of being politically motivated. A certain acronym is now banned entirely because it was flung around liberally as an insult by people who were clearly not acting thoughtfully or rationally. Guess which 'side' they were on.

And let's not forget how every thread about potential financial woes at IDW turned into a discussion of how they were being justly punished for publishing books that a section of the fanbase didn't like.

So your analysis that things took "a destructive turn" because people couldn't take on board politely expressed criticisms seems to be lacking some very important context. Let's not pretend that negative reactions to MTMTE/LL weren't visceral and emotive, and that the mere fact of there being 'gay robots' wasn't brought up quite a lot as the locus of the umbrage.

I would accept that some people with more nuanced criticisms got caught in the firing line.

 

Just to put a point on it, I think it's because very few of your criticisms were targeted at some of the more rabid fan's hot button issues. A lot of the chaos was caused whenever anyone expressed displeasure at certain aspects of the book as opposed to the book's construction.

That said, yeah, I mean, you've got it coming from both sides. Just as there were "critics villainized and called names just because they don’t like a book", there were just as many critics villainized and called names because they DID. Neither situation is really ok, much less nuanced, moderate commentators getting mowed down in the crossfire.

 

It's possible, but I did say on multiple occasions, for instance, that I wanted to see less of the Cyclonus/Tailgate thing, and that even Chromedome and Rewind should have been relegated firmly to the background after they were reunited. Had very little time for Anode/Lug either. And I went in hard against the all-girl issue - I think I said at the time that the reveal of Anode/Lug as trans characters was the only part of the issue that didn't tank.

I would say that chronologically, you got a lot of genuinely hateful stuff flung at the book first of all, and that that put its fans on edge. They were then perhaps very quick to read other criticisms as being politically motivated.

But then another complication to that is that people seem to be very quick to think they're being called names when they're actually just having their views challenged. We've seen that on this thread.

*edit*
Actually, I can remember a precise example of that that's stuck with me. I can't remember who the poster was. They were making the old stinker of an argument that politics shouldn't feature in comic books. I pointed out that what we see as 'politics' is just the politics that we're not used to, and as an example, I said that if a book featured a soldier killing literal Nazis he wouldn't see it as 'political' because it's so firmly established that Nazis are bad.

His response? He thought I'd accused him of being sympathetic with Nazis. Literally the opposite of what I was suggesting. But that presumption informed the tone of all his subsequent posts on the matter.

 

That's fair. Not that anyone ever asked me to, but I think I'm taking a break on doing deep dives into the social morass that is the Transformers Comic Fandom for a minute and go back to posting more stupid jokes in the IDW2 and Galaxy mainlines threads.  

 

Thanks for the post, and hope you get well soon! Since I’m trying to cut my time on TFW short nowadays to be a bit more productive  lol) I’m reading and typing this from my phone. Not very enjoyable! Either way, please take caution that I might’ve skimmed over some important bits and will try to reread at a later time.  

I want to add to what I said previously, which you go into detail in in the first part of your reply: what I mean with negativity and caveman brain was definitely not meant as an insult or a get out of jail free card.

You’re totally right that we, as a species, and as individuals in our lives, have (or should have) developed in a way that we can have complex, rational and sometimes heated debates without immediately feeling attacked (or attacking ourselves).

Think you might’ve misread my post, or maybe I did not explain it properly (probably the latter, as I can see now I’m talking about two seperate things: A. impact on a person of fame, and B. People leaving warranted and unwarranted feedback), but when I’m talking about those negative thoughts, I’m mostly talking about the receiving end, the creator.

So no, I don’t think that idea lacks maturity (and no offense taken either way!   ): it’s just the difference between the rational mind and the subconscious feeling. Everyone knows that some things (like for some people: heights, or creepy insects) are rationally nothing to fear - yet we feel fear. The exact same thing a person feels when having to deal with negativity - my point in the end was that, thanks to the inbalance between creator and amount of feedback-givers, as well as the inbalance between how the brain deals with positive and negative thoughts, it is definitely not weird to see a creator backing out, snapping, going silent, or doubling down on what his positive fans are saying.

However, I would agree that creators and critics/the masses don’t operate on the same level - and I guess I don’t see how it should be any different. As a consumer (or ‘observer’) you are treating something on different merits and are in no way obliged to do anything other than that, same as somebody judging a dish of food on whether it was good or not (and if the price was fair   ).

So again, no, I didn’t mean to say people handing out the feedback are acting on instinct. I do not wish to pretend people suddenly revert to mindless animals (and yeah, it would be pretty damn destructive and elitist if I’d suggest that).
I do think there are an awful lot of people out there who talk/type before they read or think (just open any newspage comment section or Facebook), but that’s something to do with laziness and a general culture of ignorance. Those are the people who leave shitposts on actors, because they’re bored, jealous, cruel, or because they’ve not yet stopped and realised the person at the other end is...well, a person, and not a meaningless idea. Not because they’re acting on instinct.

There will always be people who are more tactful than others when criticizing, or giving more fair feedback than others, that happens. And I’m sure some people are just (by nature or by experience/training) more adept at filtering given feedback, it will differ.
But it’s how a brain processes that given feedback that’s interesting, and I tried to point out that I actually understand why a creator (Roberts in this case) would simply stop interacting - and how that has lead to visible frustration in some people (and not others).
I didn’t mean this as a means to wave away any critism, as I definitely agree with some of it, and for a lot of other bits I might not agree but can see where people are coming from.

Hope I didn’t make things worse, and for anyone wanting a good laugh: try to dig up my ‘feedback’ on Transformers Prime. If I remember now you’ll see me get more and more frustrated with how I thought the show was wasting away its potential with every new episode.  

Get well!

 

I have my own thoughts on IDW...granted they're thoughts on why I never ended up really getting into it. It's kinda incomplete as I never actually read it and I don't really intend do so I don't know how close I am to the mark. I do want to touch on this quote though...

I wholly disagree here. It isn't that negativity is bad for you, it's that the lack of management of negative emotions is bad for you. Studies have shown that people need to embrace the fact that they have negativity and process that rather than push it aside. Pushing negativity aside and focusing only on positive makes you ignore a lot of factors on why you may be feeling or harboring negative things, and stunting your emotional development.

As someone who's grieved, being mad, angry is a healthy thing to feel. You need to process this. You **NEED** to do it. It's part of how you heal and move on. Negativity is good...you just can't let it overwhelm you.

I mean, with how much Transformers means to people, I think it's reasonable to feel that reasonable people are upset of how IDW has developed Transformers in the past. I for one was never too happy with how token the gay relationships in Transformers feels. It was portrayed in such a way that didn't say anything about what it means to identify as male, or what if anything being gay says for Cybertronian society. It opens up lots of interesting discussions of how society works but it seems to never have been touched in IDW, and that's upsetting.

Being gay means a lot to me in many different ways. But yet we never see any deeper meaning aside from two male robots are in love with each other.

 

PlankEpoch, great post and I agree for the most part. Good catch on having to deal with negativity, rather than shutting it out. I’d say that’s spot on.

But you seem to have missed the important part of what I was saying - the difference between a ‘regular’ person and a person who’s in the spotlight, and the amount of both warranted and unwarranted feedback one gets in such a position.

I’m not saying it’s good to shut yourself off from negative feedback. I’m saying that, in that specific position, it’s completely understandable that people do it. It really is a different ballpark alltogether, and I think it would be an eyeopener for a lot of us to experience that side - I’ve talked to artist friends who experienced something similar - ‘fame’ through years of working or overnight success. The shit that reaches their inboxes is....unreal.