.... I don't think you quite get how writing works and what makes one a good or bad writer.

He's a writer, some of his ideas worked very well, others less so. Circumstances and times change.

 

I literally have a degree in literature & art history and I did my 4 year internship at the Эрмитaж I know more about art than half of this forum combined.

Point is his original work was subtle. The world building and concepts were subtle, every character had a unique voice of their own, the writing for each character felt different and natural. That is all gone.

Subtle world building has been replaced by over the top blunt bullshit that disguises itself as intelligent for people who don't actually get metaphors and subtleness, like everything Moffat ever wrote for Dr Who. The characters stopped being their own and just all devolved into one smart cockney British dude ranting on a forum. That's all I hear from every character. Same humor, same characteristics, same dialogue. It's all over written and unnatural.

A writer doesn't devolve this hard this fast. So either he stopped caring and just writes on autopilot what he thinks his fanbase wants to read, or he was always this bad of a writer but he suppressed all of this worst instincts with the "they won't like this, so I'll leave it out".

Either way he need a co-writer, a stronger editor a complete shake up.

 

People are still bitching about Tarn being Glitch?

Oh come on, half the clues pointing to Roller pointed to Glitch as well. Just re-read the parts of Elegant Chaos and Shadowplay that the latter appeared in.

 

Pretty much. It's how we interpreted it, we can't blame him because we read things differently.

 

I don't agree entirely with this, and I, for one, am still enjoying Lost Light, *but* I do feel like I know where you're coming from. I like Roberts, I like his attitude and I love his early writing, but I find it hard to martial a strong rebuttal of these charges. The one that really sticks the knife in for me is the Moffat comparison - it raises in me this horrible suspicion that Roberts has veered more and more towards imitating Doctor Who, consciously or unconsciously, and that's a very bad thing. Doctor Who is, generally, badly written. It's so shockingly badly written that every time I try to give it a chance it makes my lips curl.

And the things that I don't like about it are the things that seem to have seeped into MTMTE/Lost Light and started taking up more and more space - the flippancy, the overwrought big reveals, the soppy bits. When we first heard Rewind say "I love you" to Chromedome, that felt hella earned, and absolutely right. The slow build toward Cyclonus openly caring for Tailgate, leading up to him shielding him from gunfire, was careful and compelling, as was the tension between Cyclonus and Whirl. But since then there seems to have been quite a lot of unearned heart-on-sleeve business.

I wish I could reject the criticisms on this thread, and as I say, for me, the book's still enjoyable, I'm still happy following Roberts where he goes, but I can't honestly say I don't think OP and others have a point.

 

That's not even remotely true. Yes Roller was a red herring, it was painfully obvious that he was a red herring. But here's the fun part EVERYONE can make a red herring, but a red herring is only as good as the ACTUAL reveal is good.

That's why Senator Shockwave worked when we all thogh that he was Ultra Magnus, or why the quantum ship reveal was fun (if a bit too pleased with itself and had a shitty resolve). If you set up a fake-out you need to make the reveal meaningful.

Roberts intended the "SYCKE Roller wasn't Tarn" to be the big reveal when Roller walks into the frame. He also obviously intended the "Tarn is a such a nobody that nobody even remembers him" to be meta-narative of the arc. Both of those fail on fundamental principles of story telling.

Shockwave reveal in Shadowplay works because we as fans of the franchise know who Shockwave is. We know his entire character and his entire storyline and everything about it. The reveal is shocking because we as an audience have a conncection with Shockwave over the course of decades. We don't have the same connection to Roller because Roller is basically a nobody. He appear for like 3 panels in Shadowplay and he was a bit sad in the other time traveling arc. We literally know nothing about Roller as a character. So unless you got SUPER INVESTED in him because of fanart and fanficion him being "all right" has no impact on anyone in the story.

Second like I said having a red herring isn't enough if the final twist isn't satisfactory. Fiction has it's own unwritten rules, if you break them you need to know exactly what the fuck you're doing or you'll end up with...well season 2 finale of MTMTE. Roberts thought that he was sooo smart with the glitch thing and he was so focused on going HA HA FOOLED YOU that he forgot to actually write.

Honestly you know what would've saved Tarn? If his true self was never revealed. That way Megatron would symbolically kill the idea of Tarn and the idea of Decepticons, because then Tarn would represent a bot who replaced all sense of self and individuality with that of the Decepticon ideology. It would be a symbolic gesture of Megatron finally killing the Decepticon inside of himself.

This way he just killed a meaningless side character disguised as a plot twist.

 

There were definitely more hints towards Roller than Glitch. There were about two hints towards Glitch being Tarn, which was his power, and his presence as Optimus advised Roller to look into Megatron's writings. Glitch being Tarn doesn't NOT make sense, but it makes the reveal meaningless when he was never really a character. Roller was.

I honestly wouldn't even change it to make Roller Tarn, I'd just have given Glitch some more character beyond background guy who has a power that can evolve into Tarn's death speech. If he developed Glitch as well as he did Roller, then it would have worked, but Roberts did too much to point towards Roller being Tarn, and it made for a cheap reveal when it turns out nearly every scene with Roller he wrote, he did so trying to trick the readership into thinking he was someone he wasn't.

 

you guys are in my fucking brain get out

I don't think Roberts is a bad writer, he's just written some bad stuff. He's just one of those guys who needs someone to reign him in. He's like an artist who gets so caught up in certain aspects of his piece he neglects the big picture. It's like when a movie comes out and there's one aspect or character that resonates with fans on a superficial, Baby Groot level, and the focus shifts almost entirely to that, forgetting that it's not the gags or memes that make the story good. People just latch onto them as an easy way of expressing their satisfaction. And worst of all, the mob-mentality of the internet means people won't even realise it's happened and think, yeah, it is just the silly gags and dialogue that make MTMTE great, so as long as it has that it's gotta still be good, right?

I hated that, because when we first saw Glitch we knew exactly two things about his power: one, it only affected non-living machinery, and two, it only worked through physical contact. The exact frigging opposite of Tarn's ability, yet that was supposed to be a clue? That's like saying Optimus is really Starscream because driving eventually evolved into flying, and being a leader eventually evolved into being a traiitor. It's complete nonsense to claim that as some kind of forshadowing because forshadowing doesn't involve misinformation about the actual reveal.

Have any of you seen The Wailing? It's on Netflix, and it's a fucking great horror/suspense movie that keeps you guessing about who the main vilain is up until basically the end. I won't spoil, but your expectations of who's really evil and who's really good are constantly toyed with, but without the movie ever lying to you or showing you falsehoods or changing established aspects of characters just to surprise you. That's how you do a twist ending, by feeding the reader information without them knowing.

I think it says a lot that the Glitch reveal garnered only excuses of "well I liked the idea in concept" and not "it made perfect sense." It's not so much the idea of Tarn being a former nobody, although personally that's pretty damn weak, it's that it just didn't work and the reader wasn't rewarded for picking up on the clues the book was dropping.

 

It's also the reason why Roller's final reveal is meaningless because all of the personality fans prescribed to Roller because of Tarn got erased the moment it was revealed that they are not the same guy, so in a way Roller goes fro a character developed by fan-association to a literal blank slate. It's actually a spectacular form of complete destruction of a character before the character was even introduced into the story I kinda love it.

It's not as bad as it is VERY British. And I don't mean in a way "hur hur British writing sucks" before anyone accuses me of it, but the way the British approach sci-fi is very different than the American approach it which is different from the way Polish/Russian do it. Each has it's merit and style. The British style of Sci-fi is that of absurdism and a tongue-in-cheek fun (see 2000AD & Warhammer 40k). It's over the top, crazy, deals with big idea by making a parody of them etc. There is merit in it especially if handled well. Modern Dr Who doesn't do that compared to say the crazy fun of the Perwee era. Roberts just tries too much to go to that "absurdist" part of sci-fi with some of his concepts that he goes too far.

Writing is a skill. It's taught and it's practiced. Like how many artists just outright suck because they never bothered to properly learn the basics like anatomy and just directly started drawing something by copying other's works. You can NEVER be a good artist if you don't understand where different styles come from and how abstraction works. You need to know the basics before you can do advance stuff like stylization.

It's a problem with all new writers that haven't actually read many books and fiction and just try to replicate what they saw on television and what they picked up from other comic by osmosis. If you don't know your fundamentals you can only try to imitate but you can't properly create something worthwhile (hell that's the Micheal Bay problem of film making he can only make cool looking scenes but he doesn't understand how to use them in service to story telling). Roberts more and more keeps ending up like this. He imitates what he sees on television and what he picked up from comic books but he doesn't understand how it all functions beneath it.

I can't wait for someone to accuse me of "elitism" or "you can't study art man it's all subjective" and no, it's not fuck off with that bullshit we're talking about funny books about plastic toy space robots we're not discussing the underlying complexities and struggles with Christianity of Dostoevsky's work.
Just because a comic book make a commentary about the world in a blunt matter it doesn't make it high art and I wish that trend of "oh man this thing is so deep because it's not pants on head ******ed" to end.

 

That's the crux of it right there.

 

I'm not here to argue with any of the points brought up. I just wanted to mention and remind that when we see Glitch for the second time in issue 36 he can now use his power from a distance without the need to touch anything. So it was to show a progression of his powers. I do feel a few more of these scenes would have been nice.

 

If somebody is done with something that is fine as they get to save money and free time to invest in other things but I never get the whole angrily telling everyone publically Online how done they are with the thing in question as it seems to be based on several iffy assptions, firstly that we care and secondly that we believe them considering if you was really done with something I imagine the last thing you would want to do is talk about it loads online with people.

I'm personally getting a little impatient with the done brigade as I'm a member of the (sadly toxic) street fighter fandom and the amount of times I have seen people declare themselves done only to come back next thread or with a new account is ridiculous but that is me drifting slightly off topic.

I liked the not being roller thing as I never really the tarn was much like roller at all and roberts successfully second guessed us all again.

My personal gripes are probably more focused on the art change and the page count going down leading to each issue feeling less substancial. Also think it needs more cryptic mysteries to get the forums into crazy conspiracy mode too.

 

*grabs issue 36*

Well blow me down, I must've thought he was just shooting lasers or something, but you're right. There it is, clear as day.

Neither do I, which is why RNSrobot didn't do that. His original post isn't angry, it's solemn given a book he once loved is no longer what he once loved. He just actually took the time to put into words what had changed and why he didn't like it. It wasn't a rage or rant post at all.

 

I was just about to post this. I think we also get Tarn mentioning that his abilities had evolved over time, and that it was a matter of recognizing the potential of those abilities.

I think it does boil down to what SPLIT LIP said for me, whereas is cool in concept, but it doesn't feel like it was executed as well as it could have been.

 

At the risk of beating a dead horse, the Tarn reveal for me had the effect of 1) making Tarn less interesting, and 2) making Roller less interesting. Tarn was interesting because *maybe* he used to be Roller. Roller was interesting because *maybe* he becomes Tarn. If you're going to pull a switcheroo, yeah, it has to be more compelling. Instead, Tarn becomes a background character who went evil, and Roller becomes a stalwart old soldier who disappeared one day. Both fairly boring.

Compare to the Minimus is Magnus reveal - suddenly adds a whole new layer to both characters. The very opposite.

 

Me done too. I like MTMTE, but LL is not MTMTE. I like the art more than the writing, so without Milne I never bought LL.

Nothing I saw in the previews made me think about picking up LL. Nothing I heard here tells me LL is a title I need to be reading.

Shame, MTMTE was as good as it gets and we all didn't know, not even IDW.

 

There's a lot of rants here which I can understand because I was frustrated with the book from time to time. But I totally disagree that because of these flaws JRo or MTMTE is as bad as it was made out to be by some.

Am I a ****** if I enjoy something that is flawed or like a writer if he's flawed? Nope, it only means I'm more tolerant. To me the pros much outweigh the cons for MTMTE, and I think a some of the problems people have with it is not real (I'm not going to name them in case it invokes a new rounds of writer bashing). Even the real ones are not as damning to me, because I can't see why JRo can't improve on them whence he realized them.

Some of the criticism are indeed valid, and I hope JRo would hear them, however, there's some irritating factors...

What irritates me the most is the declaration that JRo is a fundamentally bad writer. Hello, that is a person you are attacking, not only his work. Why give him such a definition? What is the purpose of that? And who give you the authority? If you've got a doctoral degree on writing you still only have your personal opinion on that. And why feel the need to try to persuade everyone else to have the same judgement you have on this person?

Now, I can also understand that it's a good wish to shake him up, and a response to someone who try to discredit other people without knowing anything about them... firstly lets stop personal attack all together, whether on fellows members here or on the creative team from IDW. Secondly, you don't know how this particular person works. You are not his psychologist. The shaking up method may not work for him and could possibly make things worse.

Besides, I've found the more knowledgeable people usually more moderate. I'm not a art or literature major but I've studied with professors who are prominent in their fields, in literature as well as my own major. All of them did not try to use their years of experience and tremendous knowledge to dictate what is right. Perhaps it is what comes with their knowledge: the understanding that there are so much still unknown, and the humbleness and patience that followed that understanding. I'm not demanding every must be as humble as that cause I myself is only a half bottle and still have arrogance because of that, but at least be careful when it comes to people?

And sure it's nice to have formal training on writing, but that is not the only way. Practice and constant thinking back on it is the key whether or not you've god a degree. If only people with a formal training on writing are allowed to write, then the Japanese and Chinese light-fiction and online fiction industries would have never existed. But now we do have a few good writers that emerged out of the huge pool of works. Many of them come from stem background, without formal training in fiction writing.

 

Lemme go over the hints that tfwiki mentions, point by point, replies in bold

• Roller is a Point One Percenter, Tarn was implied to be one in issue #14 and confirmed in #39 The point one percenter/outlier overlap is at best undefined. Doesn't strongly indicate either way.
• Roller is seen crushing an Elite Guardman's head with a look of virtual disinterest, Tarn did the same to the alternate Swerve in issue #32 Two characters were in a vaguely similar pose in a vaguely similar action? Wait...a Legislator crushed Ambus' head in #19...HOLYSHITGUYSTARNISALEGISTLATORBOTBUILTBYTYREST!"
• Roller has an addictive personality, Tarn is addicted to transforming Best I can say to this this one is that we never really see the latter developed, and addictive as a personality trait can be rather loosely defined
• Roller feels outclassed by the Outliers, a good reason for him to undergo the upgrades that put him on the level of Phase Sixers, as noted in issue #14 Same with an empurata'd guy, even partially reversed?
• Orion encourages Roller to read Megatron's works this issue, Tarn is intimately familiar with Megatron's writings We already know this one.
• Roller is familiar with Megatron's slogan "You are being deceived" which Tarn later quotes when confronted with the Scavengers' "coffin" EVERYBODY is familiar with this saying. Means nothing.
• The left side of Roller's face is noticeably damaged this issue, Tarn has scarring around his left eye visible through his mask in closeups in issue #7 and #8 Tarn's got multiple masks that are damaged around the eye area which obviously does not predate his defection, I never bought it that his eye injury HAD to come from the incident in #39
• Roller is left "abandoned" by his friend as a result of the mind-wipe, a reason he may fall in with the opposite side So, a soldier who saw this happen to a comrade's not allowed to feel the same way even if he's not personally the one forgotten?
• Growing power already covered

Shoot, even going further, people said that Roller looks just like Tarn...but the only similarity I see is that they're both big and blocky, with no actual shared designs apart from a "chinstrap" that's hardly unique to either. Heck, Tarn's body is SMALLER than Roller, why would he have sprung for an "upgrade" like that? Meanwhile...just look at Glitch's head. Seriously.

Half of these clues can be applied to Glitch, the other half were much ado about nothing.

 

If you need to defend a plot twist this hard it's not a good plot twist.

Full disclosure: I mean defend the twist from legitimate criticism not defent it from "NOT MUH GEEWUUN ROBERTS MURDERED MAGNUS" type criticism Minimus gets.

 

Very well said!