Til All Are One Cancelled

Comics, cartoons, movies and fan stuff.
Cliffjumper
Posts: 32206
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2001 5:00 am

Post by Cliffjumper »

Marvel tried to chase the movie buck in the very late nineties but it didn't go down well as normal people don't read comics and it was exactly what the existing readership didn't want. These days Marvel are in the same boat as Hasbro though in that they're probably making more through licencing films and non-specific merchandise. They'll keep the older stuff ticking over for when everyone gets bored of a superheroes (the Inhumans have always been chronically unpopular and sooner or later some idiot will try and do a Namor film) but they realise there's no crossover money.

As for Lost Light/MTMTE it's been vulnerable to sales loss since Roberts chose to chase the identity politics hipster audience, who were always going to desert at some point once the novelty wore off.
User avatar
Warcry
Posts: 13934
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2002 4:10 am
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Post by Warcry »

Denyer wrote:It's time-travel, alt-universe crap and event books that bother me rather than whether a title's perceived as a sop to SJWers.
I get what you're saying, but I think both in combination have been a drag on IDW's sales. When it comes down to it, if you want your book to be overtly political it also needs to be genuinely good (actually good, mind you, not "okay for a Transformers book" good), with strong characters and storylines that keep people coming back even if they don't always agree with or care about the message you're pushing. If your book is going to be a pile of bland comic book tropes (all the stuff you mentioned, plus characters that never really die and villains that pose no actual threat), and you offend people or bore them with your politics, they're out the door when otherwise they probably would have stuck around and read your mediocre story out of habit for years and years to come.
Denyer wrote:Most of that's random status quo flipping, but Emma being in charge of "good guy" teams has been a tradition for about twenty three years since Gen X.
I still can't fathom why anyone thought Emma would be a good fit as a good guy, let alone how it's stuck for so many years. She's never been a likeable or sympathetic character in anything I've read, whether the old stuff where she was a villain or the newer books where she's an X-Man.
inflatable dalek wrote:I suspect the departure of Milne has been a big factor, I don't think Hasbro quite realised the extent to which it was seen (rightly!) as a joint creative endeavour and that it wouldn't be seen as the same thing with only Roberts aboard. At least not with how the transition was handled anyway...
That probably plays a big role too, you're right. The new artist isn't awful, but the PR around the switch certainly was.
Cyberstrike nTo wrote:The people who are buying comics are 30-40+ year old hardcore life long time fans and any new fans that are coming into comics are those fans' kids.
You're not wrong, and that's a big problem that the comic industry seems to be totally incapable of addressing. All they ever seem to do is double down again and again on the practices that started the problem in the first place (like constant crossovers, replacing popular classic characters with "modern" stand-ins that no one cares about and derailing their entire industry to commit heart and soul to passing trends).

But all that said, there are still hundreds of thousands of people actively buying comics, and under ten thousand of those paying for your average Transformers book. There's a veritable army of people who are now reading Batman, X-Men, Spider-Man or the Flash right now who grew up watching Transformers on TV, playing with the toys and even reading the Marvel comics who don't pick up the IDW books, and that's something they can do something about. When people like Brend or Cliffy (and I guess me too, since I haven't even read scans of the TF books in months, let alone bought one) who read other comics, are lifelong Transformers fans and have spent the last decade and a half posting about them on a message board aren't reading your TF comic, there is absolutely room to grow.
Cliffjumper wrote:Marvel tried to chase the movie buck in the very late nineties but it didn't go down well as normal people don't read comics and it was exactly what the existing readership didn't want.
Normal people don't buy hundreds of dollars worth of toys for themselves as adults either, but the movies have still led to giant growth on that side of the fandom. Partly by making a generation of Chinese 20-somethings fall in love with the franchise, but also by bringing a lot of people who grew up with the brand in the 80s back into the fold. The exposure from the movies has led to all sorts of growth: far more lines and sublines from Hasbro and Takara, an exploding third-party scene, multiple TV series airing at the same time, several successful video games...IDW seem to be the only ones who can't figure out how to make an extra few bucks off of it.

Of course, their total inability to capitalize on opportunities like this is a big part of why the comic book industry is sinking to begin with. But it says a lot that with the franchise rolling in cash and the fandom larger than it's ever been, the only growth strategy that IDW can come up with is to pander to the shippers and Tumblr trendsters that Roberts accidentally attracted attention from. What's their backup plan for once the new readers move on to the next hot thing? Are we going to be getting overtly fascist comics three years from now in a vain attempt to try and wring a few sales out of the 4chan demographic?
User avatar
Tetsuro
Protoform
Posts: 2520
Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:26 pm
Custom Title: Poe Dameron did nothing wrong
Location: Suomi Finland Perkele

Post by Tetsuro »

Warcry wrote:Are we going to be getting overtly fascist comics three years from now in a vain attempt to try and wring a few sales out of the 4chan demographic?
I honestly want to see this happen just for the reactions of all the parties involved. Especially if it actually works.

But at the same time, not really. Nevermind the fact that /pol/ still admires Trump (although I haven't the faintest idea what degree of irony is involved), there is a reason it's considered a containment board, yet much like /b/ people love to use them as a representative of the entire website, even when there are other, far less vitriolic boards there. Plus I doubt anyone there actually buys comic books anyway.
Cliffjumper
Posts: 32206
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2001 5:00 am

Post by Cliffjumper »

Warcry wrote:Normal people don't buy hundreds of dollars worth of toys for themselves as adults either, but the movies have still led to giant growth on that side of the fandom. Partly by making a generation of Chinese 20-somethings fall in love with the franchise, but also by bringing a lot of people who grew up with the brand in the 80s back into the fold. The exposure from the movies has led to all sorts of growth: far more lines and sublines from Hasbro and Takara, an exploding third-party scene, multiple TV series airing at the same time, several successful video games...IDW seem to be the only ones who can't figure out how to make an extra few bucks off of it.
Thing is after an initial boom from 07-09 it doesn't seem to have seriously helped the core business of selling actual Hasbro toys - the rising prices, dwindling quality, shrinking figures and desperate attempts to engage the kids with simplified toys are probably cause rather than affect. Honestly think the main reason we're getting something as fannish as Titan Masters is because HasTak are shoring up the baseline rather than trying to reach out and launch Chromedome to children.

The parallel to me is that Marvel also aren't selling a lot of their core 'old business' in terms of comics; they probably easily make more licencing Silver Age cover graphics to clothing chains than they do from comics. It is going to be very interesting to see what happens when the bottom inevitably falls out of the superhero movie market; naturally with Disney in charge they'll be alright in terms of not going under but yeah it could be interesting.
What's their backup plan for once the new readers move on to the next hot thing?
I think we're in the process of finding out. As I've mentioned ad nauseum I've got no further than the "send Whirl back in time because readers like him" issue (a recent re-read attempt ground to a halt after Dark Cybertron when I genuinely felt unable to open a file on the tablet which had Megatron with an Autobot logo on the front because I hated the comics ten times more second time around) so I've skimmed some of the threads here as I'm spoiler-proof and it sounds like things are getting seriously repetitive.

Like, even more repetitive than they were before when everyone had a Dark Mysterious Past and everyone did banter to hide Their Inner Secret Insecurity and everyone was pairing up and plot seeding consisted of some ambiguous frame or line six issues previously because Roberts crassly assumes none of his readers have anything to do other than cyclically re-read his work between issues (I mean, 75% of them don't but still).
User avatar
andersonh1
Protoform
Posts: 147
Joined: Wed Feb 21, 2007 1:35 am
Location: SC, USA

Post by andersonh1 »

Patapsco wrote:But why when it's not the worst selling TF book on the market? Oh yeah, got to get those sweet retweets and tumblr reblogs....

Image
Those sales numbers are terrible. How is IDW still publishing anything Transformers related?
Image
User avatar
Warcry
Posts: 13934
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2002 4:10 am
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Post by Warcry »

Tetsuro wrote:I honestly want to see this happen just for the reactions of all the parties involved. Especially if it actually works.
It would be kind of hilarious, but even if they actually liked it I'm pretty sure they'd still just pirate it like their comics board already does for everything now.
Tetsuro wrote:But at the same time, not really. Nevermind the fact that /pol/ still admires Trump (although I haven't the faintest idea what degree of irony is involved)
I think it's less irony than spite. He makes liberals really, really angry, so the really hardcore right-wingers are still going to be cheering him on even if they recognize he's a total train wreck. Even though he's obviously not going to do anything to advance their goals, he's still hurting "the enemy" and I think they're quite happy with that consolation prize.
Cliffjumper wrote:Thing is after an initial boom from 07-09 it doesn't seem to have seriously helped the core business of selling actual Hasbro toys - the rising prices, dwindling quality, shrinking figures and desperate attempts to engage the kids with simplified toys are probably cause rather than affect. Honestly think the main reason we're getting something as fannish as Titan Masters is because HasTak are shoring up the baseline rather than trying to reach out and launch Chromedome to children.
I just don't think they'd be able to lean on their base like that if the movies hadn't expanded it so much. If the movies had never happened and the fandom had stayed at the (still considerable, but not nearly as large) size that it was in 2006, things like Titans Return or regular Masterpiece releases wouldn't have happened at all. The shelves would be filled with nothing but RiD product, and the Transformers section at stores would just be a lot smaller than it is today.
Cliffjumper wrote:The parallel to me is that Marvel also aren't selling a lot of their core 'old business' in terms of comics; they probably easily make more licencing Silver Age cover graphics to clothing chains than they do from comics.
That's probably the case, but honestly I think you could say the same thing going back to when we were kids. There's a reason why Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and the X-Men were everywhere in toy stores in the 90s, and it's not because kids were picking up the comics. It was because of the TV shows and, in some cases, movies. And the amount of merch those shows moved was pretty significant.

So you could make the argument that comics have been a secondary medium for their own characters for a generation now.
Cliffjumper wrote:It is going to be very interesting to see what happens when the bottom inevitably falls out of the superhero movie market; naturally with Disney in charge they'll be alright in terms of not going under but yeah it could be interesting.
I've been expecting to see the market start trending down for couple years now. It's actually pretty amazing how deep Marvel has been able to delve into their roster. People actually paying to go see a movie about Doctor Strange was the point where I finally admitted that the bubble wasn't going to burst any time soon, and I'm pretty sure there was a similar sentiment in the media when GOTG didn't tank. As long as the movies continue to be decent summer popcorn fare, I could see it going on for a very long time. I think the real test is going to be when the popular faces like RDJ, Evans, Hemsworth and co. decide they've had enough and the studio has to either recast the roles or replace the characters with less-popular Marvel heroes.
Cliffjumper wrote:...and plot seeding consisted of some ambiguous frame or line six issues previously because Roberts crassly assumes none of his readers have anything to do other than cyclically re-read his work between issues (I mean, 75% of them don't but still).
No, no, I've been told repeatedly that I'm not allowed to criticize that because that's just how comics work nowadays, and expecting them to try and be accessible like they were back when they were actually popular is completely unreasonable. If we don't remember the plot device that was mentioned once half a year ago, it's 100% our own fault and we don't deserve to understand what's going on. :glance:
andersonh1 wrote:Those sales numbers are terrible. How is IDW still publishing anything Transformers related?
Probably because none of their other books are doing much better. Even with those dismal numbers, it seems like there's usually a TF book in their top ten in sales each month.
Cliffjumper
Posts: 32206
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2001 5:00 am

Post by Cliffjumper »

Warcry wrote:I just don't think they'd be able to lean on their base like that if the movies hadn't expanded it so much. If the movies had never happened and the fandom had stayed at the (still considerable, but not nearly as large) size that it was in 2006, things like Titans Return or regular Masterpiece releases wouldn't have happened at all. The shelves would be filled with nothing but RiD product, and the Transformers section at stores would just be a lot smaller than it is today.
True; there surely has to be a sizeable adult fanbase to actually basically afford to collect Transformers now. While Legends/One Step Changers/Jumbo Machinders are all crap I do wish Hasbro would find some successful way of making the line more accessible to kids, though even Rescuebots are astonishingly expensive.
So you could make the argument that comics have been a secondary medium for their own characters for a generation now.
True, though I think things like the Timmverse and the Fox X-Men cartoons are to the current merch what Energon was to the live-action films - successful, yes, but not truly mainstream.
I've been expecting to see the market start trending down for couple years now. It's actually pretty amazing how deep Marvel has been able to delve into their roster. People actually paying to go see a movie about Doctor Strange was the point where I finally admitted that the bubble wasn't going to burst any time soon, and I'm pretty sure there was a similar sentiment in the media when GOTG didn't tank. As long as the movies continue to be decent summer popcorn fare, I could see it going on for a very long time. I think the real test is going to be when the popular faces like RDJ, Evans, Hemsworth and co. decide they've had enough and the studio has to either recast the roles or replace the characters with less-popular Marvel heroes.
They're being pretty smart in the genre-bending thus far and working the hype game nicely and the detail work is paying off nicely with the current "it's hip to be the right kind of geek" ethos - the low-key introductions of, say, T'Challa and Spider-Man have really worked well. They also have a possible shot in the arm if they can get the F4 and/or X-Men rights. But yeh, films on Strange and Lang going blockbuster is still incredible and they've even got people caring about Asgard.

I think for the cast they're at the right level to be sustainable; the actors seem happy enough that barring a big sea change they'd be happy to film the odd cameo every couple of years to keep their kid/teen cred up; I think so far they've picked nice established actors who are well-known but can't hold them hostage - using well-known guys means there's no chance of a situation where they stumble across the next big thing who does their contract and then refuses to return calls.

Whatever else you can say about the MCU, the PR has been absolutely spot-on as has the co-ordination - they know exactly who they're unlikely to be able to get back (e.g. Robert Redford) and thus kill them off and exactly who is always ready to work (e.g. Sam Jackson).
If we don't remember the plot device that was mentioned once half a year ago, it's 100% our own fault and we don't deserve to understand what's going on. :glance:
Heh; mind, anyone saying that seriously knows ****-all about how good comics work. I've read some ridiculously densely plotted stuff like Planetary, Locke & Key, Watchmen, New X-Men etc. where nuance, detail and density really work well and none of them treated their readership the way MTMTE and (presumably as Roberts is in his praise bunker) LL do. It's an elitism within elitism; God help the man/woman/genderfluid attack helicopter who doesn't realise the events of #26 weren't foreshadowed by a line in #11 or even suggesting the idea that simply mentioning something beforehand randomly and in no real context isn't actually foreshadowing if it's then effectively ignored until the writer needs it.

It's a difficult line to walk between seeding and sensationalism but to me it's one of Roberts' main weaknesses especially as MTMTE runs on sensational drama-bombs.

Take Magnus, for example - his apparent personality shift is a big enough thing to be brought up naturally several times without needing a sudden rush to revelations (the occasional "why are you getting so hung up on this stuff?" or "you used to be less of a pedant" followed by an evasive answer); instead there's (apparently) a throwaway line from Skids and that's it, with the result that it looks like the storyline's been made up last minute when some of the criticism leaked past the writer's normally watertight bubble of sycophancy and he had another one of his precious shit-fits. It's not like he's afraid to put endless go-nowhere water-treading dialogue in the book or anything.

Elsewhere some of it's handled really well like Chromedome and Eject V1; it doesn't quite unseat Midnighter/Apollo as the best reveal but it's not far off because they're built up nicely and organically.
User avatar
Tetsuro
Protoform
Posts: 2520
Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:26 pm
Custom Title: Poe Dameron did nothing wrong
Location: Suomi Finland Perkele

Post by Tetsuro »

Warcry wrote:It would be kind of hilarious, but even if they actually liked it I'm pretty sure they'd still just pirate it like their comics board already does for everything now.
And so does tumblr, and that's why Marvel shoving identity politics into every single comic they had was doomed to fail; the people who actually like that sort of thing are still not going to buy them, and the only people who will still buy them are the hardcore fans who I like to think know better than to accept hamfisted change in the name of "progress", and people who came from the movies expecting to see the same characters but instead got...I don't even know anymore, I lost track.

What I find funny is that DC has handled identity politics far better, they get pretty much ignored, and yet the last time I heard, 47 of the 50 top selling comic book titles were from DC. Only two were from Marvel.

Of course it would be naive to assume politics were the only reason for Marvel comics' unpopularity, the constant event spam definitely isn't helping. Somebody wants to follow, I dunno, Hulk or something, they pick up the book, and discover they have to read five other titles to figure out what's going on? That sort of thing turned me off from mainstream comics and that was back then they didn't do it every single goddamn year.
Warcry wrote:I think it's less irony than spite. He makes liberals really, really angry, so the really hardcore right-wingers are still going to be cheering him on even if they recognize he's a total train wreck. Even though he's obviously not going to do anything to advance their goals, he's still hurting "the enemy" and I think they're quite happy with that consolation prize.
I guess I should have figured that out really, considering how deep the divide between the American right and left have gotten in the past couple of years.

And by "couple of years", I should probably mean "since the 80's" since this whole situation started with Reagan coming into power, and I definitely blame his government repealing the fairness doctrine, too.
User avatar
inflatable dalek
Posts: 24000
Joined: Sat Apr 03, 2004 3:15 pm
Location: Kidderminster UK

Post by inflatable dalek »

Random thoughts on lots of posts:

I guess the indication of the importance of digital sales is that LL and TAAO are selling about the same physically but it's the latter that was ordered to be either relaunched or cancelled. That suggests digital is enough to keep LL above the waterline (if there was some sort of reboot coming there, we'd presumably know about it by now as it would be happening around the same time that TAAO will be wrapping up).

I honestly don't think the complicated nature of the ongoing plots is that much of a turn off for many people tbh. The book tootled along quite merrily for over four years with steady sales despite the backstory and LL launched very specifically with a storyarc where the A plot didn't need much more explanaition than "Mirror Universe", indeed, it seems to be delaying picking up on the big dangling plot from MTMTE as long as possible so as to bed in.

Plus, the book was always pretty good at doing the Babylon 5 thing of answering questions as it went along. Other than the central McGuffin of the quest for the Knights there's very few unresolved plot threads going back years and years (Scavengers and the mystery over Grimlock being the oldest I think, but that hasn't factored into the relaunch). Dying of the Light dealt with most of the outstanding old business that was left pretty well.

(It's all down to the the writing how things work of course, there was a callback in issue 6 of Lost Light to issue 5 a lot of people didn't get because it was a little clunkilly written. It's nothing to do with length of time)

plus, barber loves dealing with older plots that predate his own writing, something he's still cheerfully doing now (Hearts of Steel explained!), but OP has lost far less readers. That suggests this isn't the real issue.

Indeed, the complaints* from the so called hipsters and identity politics (or you know, young keen fans outside the traditional fanbase) on twitter hasn't been about any of the stuff we've been talking about, but about how much they disagreed with the end of issue 6.


*And anyone who think Twitter is an echo chamber isn't on there. People will happily tell you directly what you're doing wrong all the time and Roberts is clearly very aware this opening arc hasn't gone down great with many people.

I think we might be overcomplicating things a bit here, big sales drop across the board after a major relaunch suggests a badly done relaunch. Deciding to start with new issues 1s very late in the day (in that it seems when issue 57 of each book was written there was the assumption there'd be a 58 after Revolutions) certainly hasn't helped in terms of either author kicking things off smoothly, nor have the many dropped balls in promotion.

Personally I also think the shared Universe is a massive mistake in that it's aimed squarely at old fans. The aforementioned new readers probably weren't even born when MASK was a thing, let alone care about it or ROM or whatever. Suddenly having all these franchises they don't know and aren't interested in chucked in there with no attempt to get them onside as well is only going to alienate what has been the backbone of the comics for the last few years. And I don't think it's doing much to bring back tired old farts who might be interested in such things either.

And Disolution has been one of the weaker MTMTE arcs, which is a shame for such a key storyline even if the occasional miss is an inevitable side effect of anyone long running serialised fiction. But its issues are entirely structural and to do with the pacing of the FU and Necroworld plots. It reads much better in one hit but month by month it is unbalanced. But none of that is to do with continuity or banter or politics.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
User avatar
Brendocon 2.0
Posts: 1545
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 9:06 pm
Location: UK

Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

inflatable dalek wrote:*And anyone who think Twitter is an echo chamber isn't on there.
Anyone who's on Twitter and doesn't think it's an echo chamber hasn't been on there long enough / doesn't follow enough people / is lying to themself.

Sorry.
User avatar
inflatable dalek
Posts: 24000
Joined: Sat Apr 03, 2004 3:15 pm
Location: Kidderminster UK

Post by inflatable dalek »

Brendocon 2.0 wrote:Anyone who's on Twitter and doesn't think it's an echo chamber hasn't been on there long enough / doesn't follow enough people / is lying to themself.

Sorry.
Then I'd love to see the setting that only lets you see stuff that you agree with as I've clearly been doing it wrong all these years. Even amongst just the Transformers fans I follow there's a massive disparity in opinions on everything from comics to politics. And I don't have the dis/advantage of people cheerfully @ing me to tell me exactly what they didn't like as Roberts (and pretty much anyone with any sort of creative following as far as I can see) does.

tbh, you're probably going to get more varied and useful feedback from things like twitter these days than increasingly creaky forums.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
User avatar
Brendocon 2.0
Posts: 1545
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 9:06 pm
Location: UK

Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

inflatable dalek wrote:Then I'd love to see the setting that only lets you see stuff that you agree with as I've clearly been doing it wrong all these years.
Unfollow people. Block them. Mute them. There are lots of ways to insulate yourself from opposing views on Twitter. It's easy to get on without doing any of that when you follow under 200 people, but as the number goes up so does the wide range of absolute bullshit, and the only way to deal with it is by the previously mentioned methods.

At which point you realise a) all the stuff that was going on that you were completely oblivious to and b) that you're actively opting in to ignoring the things you don't like.

I'm not trying to frame this as a criticism of your approach or anything, it's just that, a lot of the time, part of being in an echo chamber is not realising that's what it is.

There are almost certainly people out there who tweet about how they hated this issue of TF, but they just don't feel the need to @ the creators in or use the official hashtag. And because they're not following/followed by the usual mob, nobody notices it. I never @ a comic creator unless I'm telling them I thought something was great, as I wouldn't want some random dickhead accosting me in the online street just to tell me I'm shit, so I try to afford them the same courtesy. And when people are part of "the crowd" sometimes they feel that voicing a dissenting view isn't worth the time as there'll just be a pile-on.

People on Twitter tend to follow people they agree with. And opposing views only tend to cross the feed when framed with "lol look at what this idiot said". Hey, maybe I'm wrong and 50% of the people you follow are random strangers from Twitter subcultures I've never even encountered, filling your feed with right wing neo nazi anime gamergate porn straight from Ecuador.

It's the same as how only associating with people in real life who you only think aren't dickheads is an echo chamber. Sure you know that the Daily Mail's a thing, but you isolate yourself from how many people really truly take it all to heart and think that you're the crazy one for not doing similar.
User avatar
inflatable dalek
Posts: 24000
Joined: Sat Apr 03, 2004 3:15 pm
Location: Kidderminster UK

Post by inflatable dalek »

Been meaning ton reply to this for a week. Still, I'm sure the length of time will in no way make this seem an even more underwhelming response that it might otherwise have been...
Brendocon 2.0 wrote:
There are almost certainly people out there who tweet about how they hated this issue of TF, but they just don't feel the need to @ the creators in or use the official hashtag. And because they're not following/followed by the usual mob, nobody notices it. I never @ a comic creator unless I'm telling them I thought something was great, as I wouldn't want some random dickhead accosting me in the online street just to tell me I'm shit, so I try to afford them the same courtesy. And when people are part of "the crowd" sometimes they feel that voicing a dissenting view isn't worth the time as there'll just be a pile-on.
But that's a different point (I think! Apologies if I got this wrong!) to what Cliffy was making with the echo camber comment isn't it? He think Roberts is only hearing sycophants, not that he's not hearing the the right sort of criticism.

Roberts (at least at the time we interviewed him last least) does keep an eye on Twitter searches (and a quick double check just now suggests when you search words or an acronym like MTMTE results come up even if they haven't been hashtagged) and seems to be very aware of what people are thinking and saying. Sometimes he agrees (that this arc wasn't a great launching point), sometimes he doesn't (he seems a bit baffled by the reaction to the ambiguity of aspects of the end of 6), but he takes it on board at least.

I'm not actually sure what would be a better way for a creator to get general feedback and critiscm at this point even if it the system is flawed.

By the by, the last time I glanced at the TFW thread for LL 6 (because I was really curious about what it was that had annoyed folk so much about the ending) the big and most discussed problem on what is roughly speaking the biggest message board was the characters all talking like they were British when clearly alien robots who probably aren't speaking English in-fiction anyway should sound like Americans.

I'm not sure that's much more helpful than twitter.
Hey, maybe I'm wrong and 50% of the people you follow are random strangers from Twitter subcultures I've never even encountered, filling your feed with right wing neo nazi anime gamergate porn straight from Ecuador.
Well, if we're defining not being in a echo chamber as being exposed to every single thing ever then yeah, I'm in one. But I do think think I get a good broad spectrum of stuff on there. From left wing anarchists to a guy who happily poses for pictures with Boris Johnson whilst canvassing on his behalf.

A lot of the franchises I follow (especially, unsurprisingly considering it's John Wayne in SPACE, Transformers and perhaps more unexpectedly Star Trek) tend to skewer more to the right amongst the older fanbase anyway.
It's the same as how only associating with people in real life who you only think aren't dickheads is an echo chamber. Sure you know that the Daily Mail's a thing, but you isolate yourself from how many people really truly take it all to heart and think that you're the crazy one for not doing similar.
That's actually pretty much always been my thinking, if social media is an echo chamber then so is life generally.

For the record, going by real life people I know, the overwhelming majority viewpoint is that the best thing ever about Transformers is Megan Fox's tits, and the thing that has been wrong with Transformers recently is the absence of Megan Fox's tits.

Not related to Transformers, but what has really excited me about the recent UK election is that it was finally the tipping point where social media trumped the right wing press in reflecting what people were actually thinking.

Someone sooner or later is going to work out how to be the Rupert Murdoch of twitter (or whatever succeeds it) and we'll back where we started, but for now there's a real window of opportunity there that could change the world (or at least firmly get Labour in at the inevitable next election).
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
User avatar
Brendocon 2.0
Posts: 1545
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2014 9:06 pm
Location: UK

Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

inflatable dalek wrote:But that's a different point (I think! Apologies if I got this wrong!) to what Cliffy was making
I don't read Cliffy's posts and neither should you.
That's actually pretty much always been my thinking, if social media is an echo chamber then so is life generally.
Is the macro version of the point I was making, yes. Everyone's in an echo chamber to varying degrees, all of their own construction.
User avatar
Selkadoom
Posts: 617
Joined: Wed Aug 05, 2009 1:53 am
Location: California and indifferent about it

Post by Selkadoom »

I can't say I'm not disappointed in the cancellation of TAAO due to it personally being my favorite of the three (Yes I'm a filthy Starscream Mark and I adore political intrigue) but I do hope it goes out on a strong note and its stories fold into Optimus Prime and Lost Light for the sake of keeping tabs on Cybertron.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

PSN ID: Selkadoom13
Steam: Scruffy.j2
User avatar
Cyberstrike nTo
Protoform
Posts: 4186
Joined: Sat Mar 16, 2002 5:48 pm
Location: In the Dead Universe known as Indianapolis
Contact:

Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

Cliffjumper wrote:Elsewhere some of it's handled really well like Chromedome and Eject V1; it doesn't quite unseat Midnighter/Apollo as the best reveal but it's not far off because they're built up nicely and organically.
To be fair I don't know if you can call the Midnighter/Apollo relationship a reveal it was more of debut. :p :D
Please visit Outlaw Colony my new message board it's a fun site for fun people.
Post Reply