Ummm i definitely engaged in the ideas of “representation” in tf canon in g1 in my original engagement with you, definitely a little wryly, but also definitely an engagement.

Moreover, it becomes a question of how much humanization is too much? And focksbot is handily interrogating that and i have have implicitly and explicitly supported their posts. I mean for me there isnt a great deal of conceptual difficulty accepting alpha trions beard in G1 and half the shit that happened in LL. C’est la vie robotique.

As above, i think it only boils down to that for you. I’m pretty happy to admit LL was a go nowhere narrative mess with some on the nose characterisation. Somehow i also manage to say all of that without conjuring aryan purity. ... wow, dang....Is this what it feels like to be the god of tumblr?

 

Some of the Sunbow depictions ARE excessive. Already you are arguing in bad faith as you automatically shove me into the "SUNBOW ONLY!!!!!1!@!" Geewunner category immediately. I'm a Marvel G1 fan first, for future reference.

In that comic, they specifically address constant differences between Cybertronian physiology and culture vs. organics, but that doesn't fit your narrative that Roberts can do no wrong.

Just to be clear again, any time you have Cybertronians doing things that are exclusive to Earth culture, ESPECIALLY when it's in a pre-Earth exposure setting, it is overhumanization going too far.

Got it? I doubt it.

You're the guy that argued the whole "death of the author" thing, right? The idea that even when a writer explicity states his work is about one thing, it is explicitly about what the reader interprets it as? Yeah, I'm starting to understand the disconnect now.

If you think that transforming is the only part of the mythos that sets it apart from human/organic fiction, then you're completely unreachable.

Again straight back to Sunbow. This is tiring. I didn't put you on ignore during that earlier tripe with DOTA, but I'm rectifying that problem now. Think you're right or you won, I really don't care. What I DO care about is not engaging a brick wall.

We're done.

 

There you go passive-aggressively calling people ists and phobes again. That’s the only card you have to play.

What you need to do is explain why a comic about people cosplaying as Transformers, that dropped below 6000 in sales, written by an agenda driven writer, and its’ defenders chase people away with ad hominem attacks is a good book.

 

TRUKK NOT MUNKY

Real Geewunners don't misspell it!

#NotATrueFan

 

OK - well, that's literally everything that's ever been depicted in Transformers media, since we're not aware of any other cultures outside of 'Earth culture'. So by your own argument, everything is 'excessive humanisation'.

Marvel G1 features, just off the top of my head, guerilla cells, leaders wearing crowns, conjoined twins, arena fights, zombies, characters jabbing each other in the chest to make a point, quite a lot of punching and kicking and screaming, a flesh-eating bacteria, dreaming, body-modding, teeth, sharp teeth for villains, wrestling, Autobots falling in love with humans ... need I go on? This is all, specifically, human culture and animal biology. All of it.

You're applying no consistency.

I believe that would be Roland Barthes.

What I said was it's the core concept, and that even that can be related to a simple human activity. There are other things that set the franchise apart, but most of them are exactly the kind of thing Roberts explores. This has nothing to do, by the way, with whether Roberts does it well or not. The point is that he certainly isn't any more reluctant to explore alien themes and concepts than any other writer has been. The argument that he has somehow abandoned the principle of using Transformers to play around with robot/computer-type concepts is just laughable. You and others are absurdly angry over something that simply isn't true.

 

I give this full marks for being by far the most sensible point of criticism of the series in the last ten pages.

 

So, to answer your question OP, yes, some people really do hate More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light, while some other people really don't.

 

I think we’re just really dug in on our positions.

 

I will say that rhetoric and arguably political positions aside, both camps seem to at least acknowledge there are actual intrinsic issues with Robert's writing, so at least there's that in terms of common ground.

 

All of the books since Death of Optimus Prime, RiD, MTMtE, TAAO, Etc, have had the problem that some of the detractors are folks that hated the comics before they even cracked open the books. No one has to like everything, no one has to read or watch everything. I don't have to watch new horror films to know I won't like it, because I have never seen one I really liked. It's not my thing.

The problem is everyone in a fandom feels the obsessive need to not only have an opinion on everything, but to bring everyone around to their view of what things should be. Most of the time I can tell when a detractor goes in hating something, and those folks can be safely ignored. They were foolish enough to read something they didn't really want to read, they can deal with their foolish opinions. I haven't seen any of the Bay movies after RotF (save Bumblebee), and I don't need to. Period.

Those folks that went in knowing they'd hate it and now want to make sure everyone else does too.... those folks go right to my ignore list.

That said, there's legit complaints about each of the IDW books post DoOP. Those probably deserve conversation.

That is a legitimate complaint. I really like Robert's run. My kids and I read those together, I keep them around for comfort reading on my phone. But yeah, sometime around Tailgate and Cyclonus pairing up things went way too far. There's a legitimate conversation to have that when you pair everyone up romantically, you diminish romanticism. There are different kinds of loves, different kinds of relationship, and Roberts really screwed up by reducing them all to romantic relationships. Tailgate and Cyclonus should have been mentor/mentee. It's kinda gross the level of difference in maturity between the two, lampshaded by their holo avatars, and the nature of what their relationship became. Add in the implication Roberts has put out there about Red Alert, Fort Max, and Cerebos, or the weird relationship between Megatron and Ultra Magnus which is strongly hinted at to be romantic.... yeah, it's a legitimate complaint.

There's a few others too. I think it drags in season 2, but I think it comes together in the end for a strong finish.

 

@ProtectronPrime : “I will say that rhetoric and arguably political positions aside, both camps seem to at least acknowledge there are actual intrinsic issues with Robert's writing, so at least there's that in terms of common ground.”

Yeah. That’s true.

 

I'd also add: This thread is the best example you'll get of how entitled fandoms are. You currently have multiple transformer continuities, not to mention tons of older material available through video streaming or services like Hoopla and Comixology. There's literally 35 years of Transformers materials available.

So we hang around and argue about whether one comic book run was good or not.

If you don't like the book, go read a different book. Go watch the old cartoons or the new ones. Why indulge in the endless criticism of something you don't enjoy? Why not just move on.

A lot of folks in this thread have been pretty honest that MTMTE/LL had it's issues. I rank it up there as one of my top five favorite runs in comics and I think it has some problems. So I just do not get the desire of folks to endless follow any thread on the run and argue incessantly that it's a bad run. I don't hang around any of the Bayverse threads and I am so much happier for it.

 

Yup, please no romance  

 

Another thing mtmte, though this applies to the whole of IDW1 too, is that it answers questions no one asked.

 

True, though not necessarily a bad thing. Even then, sometimes a shitty attempt is better than none at all, as it might invite someone else to take another, better stab at it later on down the line.

While I agree with the sentiment, I watch/read/do a lot of things I don't "enjoy" for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's just to try it out again, just to see if the first time was just a bad experience. Sometimes it's for the experience quotient itself. Sometimes it's to build a sense of community - after all, if I stopped engaging with Transformers past G1 and then only cherry picked at the things I knew I'd enjoy 100%, then I wouldn't have very much to talk about. Finally, sometimes I do stuff I dislike just to figure out why I don't like it to engage in self discovery.

Through that, I think it's actually possible to enjoy things you don't enjoy, if that makes any sense. Nothing wrong with learning a bit more about yourself.

Also, I do like to share my thoughts with others. When couched in a tone of civility and in the spirit of friendly discussion, having differing opinions can be a heap of fun. However, it's predicated on the concept of mutual understanding and respect, insofar as we're all adults that deserve SOME level of politeness and that we should at least acknowledge that we are discussing QUASI MAGICAL TRANSFORMING SPACE ROBOTS FROM SPACE. It's when people start heaving nastiness, regardless on how that nastiness is couched, is when we get the issues.

Even if we harp at one another and have bad feelings, there's always at least a small nugget of value in these discussions regarding our favorite fiction franchises. I dunno. From where I sit the primary argument here wasn't so much the actual content of the books, but the fanbase in general. Honestly, the consensus, politics aside, seemed to be "Roberts seemed OK at first but then everything kinda fell apart near the end" with some variance on that theme as to whether he managed to pull it off at the end or not... which is pretty much what I feel.

Divorced from the meta-textual analysis, authorial intent, or whatever happened outside of the context of the book, MTMTE/LL did bring new CONTENT-related things to the table whether some of us liked it or not. The important thing to consider is that even if you hated it, it MIGHT attract someone else to do it better (or worse!) later down the line. At least, this is my hope.

 

I really enjoyed following a lot of the more thoughtful criticism of MTMTE/LL. Some of it I agreed with, some I didn't. And I think it's good to interrogate and talk about why we don't like things as much as why we like things. So for the most part, I was totally on board with the discussion around the book. In fact, a good part of the reason why the thoughtless whingeing was/is disappointing is because it detracted/detracts from what was/is otherwise quite a range of opinions people express on this site.

I seem to recall that before season 2 ended, for instance, there were some quite involved and intelligent discussions of how the various technologies Roberts introduces are increadibly OP and could have been put to much wider and more decisive use in battle, eg. sending your holoavatar to scout ahead or battle for you.

I would say that as it went on the stylistic range of the stories got narrower and the cracks more pronounced, so the number of people for whom it was still as good as ever got smaller and smaller, and the people who weren't sure from the outset became more and more alienated. It became more niche, essentially.

 

I'll agree to those things. Honestly, I got a little blindsided by those people that made it a mission to interpret everything I said as "bad", no matter what I said. Those people are gone now for the most part, which was what I suspected might happen after the run ended.

That crap aside, if you want to talk tech... yeah. I think a lot of Robert's OP tech introductions were largely based in the fact that he introduced them out of a desire to set a plot point or explore a new thing without adequately thinking through all the repercussions. His style strongly suggested to me that he was a showman first, and less of the well-thought-out plotter as I originally thought he was - those cracks getting pronounced as you say.

I still like Roberts for a number of things - first and foremost getting me to read a damn comic and care about characters again. It's just such a shame it all went sideways for a lot of people near the end. It would have been great if he ended on a Last Stand of the Wreckers as opposed to starting off with it. He DID entertain me... and there's always that sharp sense of "betrayal" (regardless of whether or not it's rational) when it STOPS being entertaining and then starts to slip into something you find offensively bad, if not by sheer concept than in delivery. Sometimes I wonder if it's that feeling of loss that makes people "hate" him as opposed to a writer that kinda toddled off into the mists of mediocrity instead.

 

Um no dude, g1prowl literally said those things, and you defended his right to say so? I am guilty of paraphrasing at best. Arguably about as sordid as poorly applying high school debating skills without self reflection but here both are.

As for your other points
A) cosplaying transformers
B) sales
C)agenda driven writer
D) chasing ppl away
E) A GOOD BOOK
The first is in matter of fact an ad hominem attacks insofar as its a bizarre mischaracterisation. and if true of mtmte/ll then also true of all tf fiction too? G1 is just robots cosplaying as star wars characters, animated is really no different either, prime was robots cosplaying as edgelords and so on. Fundamentally, tho, whats so bad about cosplay &c&c&c

B) if you qualify art on basis of sales you dont know shit about art.

As for c) all writers have an agenda whether they admit it or not

D) the boards lit up with discussion like nothing before or since.

E) the book won numerous accolades and was pretty constantly in a number of high profile end of year lists. But was it a GOOD BOOK. There’s only one good book my friend, and it was published by jesus christ of america

 

Only on tfw would a 20 years out of date theory still be controversial.

 

A)It was not an attack on you. It’s a critique of the book. puzzling that you took it personally

B) It’s a product on a shelf in a store. It was mass produced in a factory in China. Not art.

C) Nope. Wrong again. A good writer has no idea where the story is going. They’re along for the ride with the reader. This guy knew what he intended to do from the start. 5 minutes on his twitter was all it took to figure it out.

D) It was so popular it was cancelled.

E) Anybody with a computer can create a website and pass out awards. They’re meaningless. I used to think they represented accomplishment until I realized some of the awards were conjured up and awarded by people trying to kiss ass and break into the industry. Other awards are meant to create the appearance of merit and talent. They’re clever marketing gimmicks. Nothing more.