...man, I sort of hope that Prowl gets possessed by the ghost of Scrapper via merge-memories stored in the Constructicons and Prowl has this long slow mental breakdown where he loses his identity.
I did say that "the nicest bunch of guys so far is a pack of renegade Decepticons". I didn't say they were objectively nice, just relatively, compared to everyone else. Besides, they get to start with fewer "good expectations" because they're Decepticons. I expect atrocious behavior, and the fact that all they did was talk about continuing to cannibalize Fulcrum for spare parts (they actually stopped after he turned out to be alive), and then actually took him in as a comrade actually makes them pretty damn decent for Decepticons. Face it, even Fulcrum, the idealist who condemns the thugs and sadists, is a xenophobic racist.
I did except Cyclonus and Whirl, who are both nasty hardcases. Whirl is a sociopathic murder, and Cyclonus has serious issues that lead to violence. Everyone on Lost Light has issues, to put it mildly. They are an interesting bunch. Some of your examples are overly picky, I think--obnoxious or having poor judgment is not the same as evil.
You know what disturbs me? The number of fanfic authors who think having Autobots torture Decepticon prisoners for information in their stories is A-OK. WTF, over? Where and when I come from, "torturing prisoners" is a classic sign that the torturers are bad guys.
IMHO, torture in Transformers is a property of sadistic bad guys only--Transformers have memories that can be read. No torture necessary. (Canon example: TF:Prime's Shockwave disdained Starscream's attempts at torture and used his mind-reading patch cable to get information.)
So yeah, I agree that there's a bunch of morally dubious characters running around in IDW's G1. I tend to have problems with the choppy storytelling--I think I just have to sit down with all the series and read them in one go. I don't handle month-by-month storytelling very well any more; I lose track of the storylines. I have trouble distinguishing a lot of the characters visually, too, except for the most flamboyant ones. OTOH, I had issues with a lot of Marvel's storytelling, too--WTF, Grimlock?
To a certain extent, you may be preaching to the choir. I won't deny that Fulcrum is a xenophobic racist! I'm glad you clarified, though. I do see people who insist that the Scavengers are outright good, which... they aren't. They are still bad. Just less bad. Which is sort of head-bangery...
(I would really rather see the Autobots presented as mostly good, no arguments, with a few neutral and evil examples, and the Decepticons as mostly evil but functional with a few outliers, but IDW is not going to give me that, whine, whine, complain.)
Thing is, Whirl didn't have to be evil like that? Whirl was... actually a decent guy in Marvel. Stood up for a bullying victim. IDW is a different continuity, sure, so the characters are different, but in a lot of cases, the way that the characters are different is "more evil", which just feels more and more banal the more often it happens.
And yeah, fanfic authors normalizing torture is very disturbing, but you have to look at where they're getting it from. :| Chaos2112 will remember this! Someone asked barber if we'd get any female characters who aren't psychopaths. Barber insisted that Arcee isn't a psychopath and said she was a fully developed character instead. 1) That showed he doesn't understand what a psychopath is, that he cannot see that Arcee is one. 2) It showed that he does not understand that psychopaths and fully developed characters are not mutually exclusive.
When the canon writers, like Barber, don't understand that their characters are acting like psychopaths, how are the fanfic writers supposed to learn any better? :| It's bad.
It's totally fair for you to have problems with the storytelling. I have my share of them (such a recent realization that a lot of the characters in MTMTE do not exhibit normal decision making skills)... as for telling which character is who, that is what TFwiki is for. :v (Well, art failure.)
It's fair for you to have issues with Marvel. Not everything is going to be to everyone's liking!
Grimlock... is pretty clearly Furman's favourite, so Grimlock got to do a lot of consequences-free things, as a result.
BTW, your icon amuses me, because my Everquest necromancer...is also a master baker.
It was actually Budiansky's Grimlock, of the "King Grimlock of the Autobots" storyline that made me go "WTF?" For some reason, the Autobots totally ignored all the oaths made during Jetfire's Autobrand ceremony some issues previous (about Autobots being free people, including free to leave) and went along with Grimlock declaring everyone traitors that disagreed with him--or left. If the Autobots actually believed the oaths Jetfire made (and they all presumably made), they would have told Grimlock to stop being an idiot and ignored his rantings. They certainly wouldn't have acted as his enforcers.
I have said that current politics is affecting comics and other storytelling ("24" for gawd's sake). I did not realize that fanfic writers were normalizing "enhanced interrogation" and such like. That scares me. I should have guess that they would, given crap like "24". After all, Hollywood taught my generation that respecting the constitutional rights of defendants was "letting crooks get away on a technicality". I had to read law blogs for a while to learn how horribly wrong that trope was.
Of course sociopaths can be fully developed characters! (c.f. Hannibal Lechter). I write my fanfic Starscream as a sociopath with a small, but larger than zero, monkeyspace (there was a useful "Cracked" article about that term and sociopaths that helped me get a handle on sociopath characters). IDW Arcee appears to be a sociopath with a larger-than-zerio monkeyspace.
Which one was the IDW writer who claimed it was hard to write stories about robot characters, because they have no feelings or relationships, thereby proving he didn't know a damn thing about the franchise he was supposed to be writing for?
I am enjoying our extended correspondence via LJ, btw.
Sweet! The baker in my icon is actually a seer, and his brother is the necromancer.
I haven't read it in a while, but with that story, if I remember it right... the whole point was that Grimlock had everyone *terrified*, and sometimes, people do some really bad things out of fear, when they are labouring under a bad leader. I recall some of the Autobots trying to subtly work against Grimlock. For example, I recall the Protectobots letting Blaster get away?
It's one thing to say that they could have just ignored Grimlock, but it's another thing to remember that... Grimlock's the leader of the Dinobots. Four other violent, angry guys answer to him and have answered to him for a very long time. (The Dinobots have been together for millions of years, in Marvel.)
It wasn't a case of, "Oh, I can just ignore this guy." It was a case of, "If I ignore this guy, Snarl might set me on fire."
If you look at the Stanford Prison Experiment... even normal people placed into a weird situation can start doing terrible things pretty quickly...
Also, I think Budiansky was pretty clear that what Grimlock was doing was wrong? It wasn't presented as normalized behaviour. It was presented as, "Okay, we established how Autobots usually act. Let's show how Autobots should never act, for contrast."
Anyway, yes, it is scary that fanfic writers are normalizing torture. I've seen fans argue that torturing Soundwave is okay because he's... different? Somehow? (And also that putting bombs in unwilling people is okay if it is cultural???)
Yeah, I know that you know that sociopaths can be fully developed characters. The head-bangy thing is that Barber apparently doesn't.
Mike Costa. http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Mike_Costa The quote is: "They don't have all of the basic things that humans have that motivate them and give them motivation for drama for a story. They don't really get hungry, they don't get tired, they don't have women or relationships like that [which] they value because they don’t have females that they can love; maybe brotherly love but how, they don’t have parents? They don't have religion or spirituality... you have to manufacture [these things] and that makes it very incoherent."
This is just a guy who doesn't understand how to write aliens or robots, in general? Sheesh. Or even how to write humans who lack sexual desire or adoption or Army guys who feel like a band of brothers... Seriously. Army guys manage to feel like brothers, all the time, despite not having the same parents. Also, the implicit homophobia... that quote is such a hot mess.
*snicker* I like the way the TFwiki article on Mike Costa has potholes leading to articles that contradict everything he said about writing Transformers. Dude does not only not know how to write aliens, he doesn't understand the franchise he's writing for.
You would be referring to when Soundwave was captured in TF:Prime? The Autobots made some terrifying threats, but they didn't actually torture him as I recall. Being a Decepticon, from a military where they do torture captives, he believed them. (My recollections may be incorrect). The writers are a little too on-board with the modern Hollywood and actual U.S. law enforcement attitude that it is okay (e.g., legal) to lie to and threaten a suspect as long as you don't actually physically torture them. Psychological torture is apparently A-OK. Me, I have these old-fashioned notions of honor and ethics, and don't think any of that crap is moral or ethical. 'Necessary evil' is a thing, and people forget that the 'necessary' part does not make the 'evil' part go away. And often, it's not even necessary... just evil. I thought that some of the Autobots were letting personal hatreds push them over the line in that episode.
I'm more disturbed now by what they did with Lazerbeak than I was then, since reading the TFWiki revealed that in the linked WFC games, Lazerbeak and the other "deployers" are actual Cybertronians with sparks. The TV series implied that Lazerbeak was just a dumb machine, a drone. It's possible that that is one of the many differences between TF:Prime and TF:WFC--maybe in the context of the cartoon, the deployer is just a UAV drone.
OTOH, nothing wrong (beyond the general wrongness of war) with sticking limpet mines on your enemy in the middle of battle, which both Dreadwing and Wheeljack were fond of. That's war--you're trying to kill people.
I did except Cyclonus and Whirl, who are both nasty hardcases. Whirl is a sociopathic murder, and Cyclonus has serious issues that lead to violence. Everyone on Lost Light has issues, to put it mildly. They are an interesting bunch. Some of your examples are overly picky, I think--obnoxious or having poor judgment is not the same as evil.
You know what disturbs me? The number of fanfic authors who think having Autobots torture Decepticon prisoners for information in their stories is A-OK. WTF, over? Where and when I come from, "torturing prisoners" is a classic sign that the torturers are bad guys.
IMHO, torture in Transformers is a property of sadistic bad guys only--Transformers have memories that can be read. No torture necessary. (Canon example: TF:Prime's Shockwave disdained Starscream's attempts at torture and used his mind-reading patch cable to get information.)
So yeah, I agree that there's a bunch of morally dubious characters running around in IDW's G1. I tend to have problems with the choppy storytelling--I think I just have to sit down with all the series and read them in one go. I don't handle month-by-month storytelling very well any more; I lose track of the storylines. I have trouble distinguishing a lot of the characters visually, too, except for the most flamboyant ones. OTOH, I had issues with a lot of Marvel's storytelling, too--WTF, Grimlock?
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(I would really rather see the Autobots presented as mostly good, no arguments, with a few neutral and evil examples, and the Decepticons as mostly evil but functional with a few outliers, but IDW is not going to give me that, whine, whine, complain.)
Thing is, Whirl didn't have to be evil like that? Whirl was... actually a decent guy in Marvel. Stood up for a bullying victim. IDW is a different continuity, sure, so the characters are different, but in a lot of cases, the way that the characters are different is "more evil", which just feels more and more banal the more often it happens.
And yeah, fanfic authors normalizing torture is very disturbing, but you have to look at where they're getting it from. :| Chaos2112 will remember this! Someone asked barber if we'd get any female characters who aren't psychopaths. Barber insisted that Arcee isn't a psychopath and said she was a fully developed character instead.
1) That showed he doesn't understand what a psychopath is, that he cannot see that Arcee is one.
2) It showed that he does not understand that psychopaths and fully developed characters are not mutually exclusive.
When the canon writers, like Barber, don't understand that their characters are acting like psychopaths, how are the fanfic writers supposed to learn any better? :| It's bad.
It's totally fair for you to have problems with the storytelling. I have my share of them (such a recent realization that a lot of the characters in MTMTE do not exhibit normal decision making skills)... as for telling which character is who, that is what TFwiki is for. :v (Well, art failure.)
It's fair for you to have issues with Marvel. Not everything is going to be to everyone's liking!
Grimlock... is pretty clearly Furman's favourite, so Grimlock got to do a lot of consequences-free things, as a result.
Reply
It was actually Budiansky's Grimlock, of the "King Grimlock of the Autobots" storyline that made me go "WTF?" For some reason, the Autobots totally ignored all the oaths made during Jetfire's Autobrand ceremony some issues previous (about Autobots being free people, including free to leave) and went along with Grimlock declaring everyone traitors that disagreed with him--or left. If the Autobots actually believed the oaths Jetfire made (and they all presumably made), they would have told Grimlock to stop being an idiot and ignored his rantings. They certainly wouldn't have acted as his enforcers.
I have said that current politics is affecting comics and other storytelling ("24" for gawd's sake). I did not realize that fanfic writers were normalizing "enhanced interrogation" and such like. That scares me. I should have guess that they would, given crap like "24". After all, Hollywood taught my generation that respecting the constitutional rights of defendants was "letting crooks get away on a technicality". I had to read law blogs for a while to learn how horribly wrong that trope was.
Of course sociopaths can be fully developed characters! (c.f. Hannibal Lechter). I write my fanfic Starscream as a sociopath with a small, but larger than zero, monkeyspace (there was a useful "Cracked" article about that term and sociopaths that helped me get a handle on sociopath characters). IDW Arcee appears to be a sociopath with a larger-than-zerio monkeyspace.
Which one was the IDW writer who claimed it was hard to write stories about robot characters, because they have no feelings or relationships, thereby proving he didn't know a damn thing about the franchise he was supposed to be writing for?
I am enjoying our extended correspondence via LJ, btw.
Reply
I haven't read it in a while, but with that story, if I remember it right... the whole point was that Grimlock had everyone *terrified*, and sometimes, people do some really bad things out of fear, when they are labouring under a bad leader. I recall some of the Autobots trying to subtly work against Grimlock. For example, I recall the Protectobots letting Blaster get away?
It's one thing to say that they could have just ignored Grimlock, but it's another thing to remember that... Grimlock's the leader of the Dinobots. Four other violent, angry guys answer to him and have answered to him for a very long time. (The Dinobots have been together for millions of years, in Marvel.)
It wasn't a case of, "Oh, I can just ignore this guy." It was a case of, "If I ignore this guy, Snarl might set me on fire."
If you look at the Stanford Prison Experiment... even normal people placed into a weird situation can start doing terrible things pretty quickly...
Also, I think Budiansky was pretty clear that what Grimlock was doing was wrong? It wasn't presented as normalized behaviour. It was presented as, "Okay, we established how Autobots usually act. Let's show how Autobots should never act, for contrast."
Anyway, yes, it is scary that fanfic writers are normalizing torture. I've seen fans argue that torturing Soundwave is okay because he's... different? Somehow? (And also that putting bombs in unwilling people is okay if it is cultural???)
Yeah, I know that you know that sociopaths can be fully developed characters. The head-bangy thing is that Barber apparently doesn't.
Mike Costa. http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Mike_Costa The quote is: "They don't have all of the basic things that humans have that motivate them and give them motivation for drama for a story. They don't really get hungry, they don't get tired, they don't have women or relationships like that [which] they value because they don’t have females that they can love; maybe brotherly love but how, they don’t have parents? They don't have religion or spirituality... you have to manufacture [these things] and that makes it very incoherent."
This is just a guy who doesn't understand how to write aliens or robots, in general? Sheesh. Or even how to write humans who lack sexual desire or adoption or Army guys who feel like a band of brothers... Seriously. Army guys manage to feel like brothers, all the time, despite not having the same parents. Also, the implicit homophobia... that quote is such a hot mess.
I am glad that you are having fun! :)
Reply
You would be referring to when Soundwave was captured in TF:Prime? The Autobots made some terrifying threats, but they didn't actually torture him as I recall. Being a Decepticon, from a military where they do torture captives, he believed them. (My recollections may be incorrect). The writers are a little too on-board with the modern Hollywood and actual U.S. law enforcement attitude that it is okay (e.g., legal) to lie to and threaten a suspect as long as you don't actually physically torture them. Psychological torture is apparently A-OK. Me, I have these old-fashioned notions of honor and ethics, and don't think any of that crap is moral or ethical. 'Necessary evil' is a thing, and people forget that the 'necessary' part does not make the 'evil' part go away. And often, it's not even necessary... just evil. I thought that some of the Autobots were letting personal hatreds push them over the line in that episode.
I'm more disturbed now by what they did with Lazerbeak than I was then, since reading the TFWiki revealed that in the linked WFC games, Lazerbeak and the other "deployers" are actual Cybertronians with sparks. The TV series implied that Lazerbeak was just a dumb machine, a drone. It's possible that that is one of the many differences between TF:Prime and TF:WFC--maybe in the context of the cartoon, the deployer is just a UAV drone.
OTOH, nothing wrong (beyond the general wrongness of war) with sticking limpet mines on your enemy in the middle of battle, which both Dreadwing and Wheeljack were fond of. That's war--you're trying to kill people.
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