Phil's Scrapbook - It rambles along without an end

[Taln]

*Nods* Yup Phil. Oh and please no unicorns rainbows.

[Gossamer]

I love you. If nothing more than for giving us this scrapbook. Im going to hold the image of you alone outside enjoying the play of light through your eyelids for a long time. im really glad youve found a bit of a home here.

[Tessa Poe]

*Nods* Yup Phil. Oh and please no unicorns rainbows.

Heh 'Yup' to which bit Lisa? There was rather a lot. And why no unicorns? Don't you want magical unicorn cupcakes?

I love you. If nothing more than for giving us this scrapbook. Im going to hold the image of you alone outside enjoying the play of light through your eyelids for a long time. im really glad youve found a bit of a home here.

Awww thanks Jen-Jen, love you too you know, in case you couldn't tell already after the slightly gushy PMs of gratitude

I'm glad someone read through the whole nightmarish mess at least Strangely enough I do feel quite at home here on Miza, it's gotten to the point where my morning routine has changed to: wake up, roll over and doze for five minutes, log into Miza on my phone to see if anyone's replied to any of my threads/sent me a PM and read through those replies/PMs, then get up and wander downstairs for a ciggie.

Also I have no idea why I've started calling you Jen-Jen, well other than I like the rhythm I give it in my head when I type it.

[Tessa Poe]

Again with a fair warning at the start of this. It may well be a long one with a fair few different topics, and there's a section that'll deal with things that may make people uncomfortable. I will signpost said section though so you can skip over it.

The following disclaimer also applies: I am not intending to be offensive with anything that I put in here, if anything I'm just presenting my views. I think people will realise which section this applies to without me signposting it.

To begin then, I've spent a little while looking over people's scrapbooks this morning and skimming threads at random, partly because I've got a quiet morning in the office (Yay!) and partly because I'm having trouble getting into a writing frame of mind for things that I need to post for. One of these things I'm feeling a little guilty about because I know there's a request sitting in my office that I have to get started today. I've really been trying to keep the turnaround on things that turn up in my office under a week and while it hasn't been that long yet I know if I don't do something about it soon it will end up taking that long.

Anyway, that's not what I was going to talk about. There's a bit of a discussion that's been going on regarding new people and the Lore and how much help is too much etc. etc. You might have noticed it or it might have passed you by. I've had little discussions with people about what I think in other scraps etc. but it's getting to the point where I want to talk about it all in a little more depth, which means it's story time.

Is everyone sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

"Once upon a time in a mythical land of imagination and wonder there were a group of people who dwelled in it having a happy fun shiny time. Whenever strangers came to visit them some of them they were ever so happy to see them that they did all they could for them. They'd take them by the hand and lead them through the rituals of their society, telling them what was in the Lore of the land and generally telling them everything they should do in order to join their community. This was understandable of course, they wanted to be welcoming and helpful to the strangers as they remembered how confused they were when they first arrived or they were generally just being nice, but in some ways they were cheating the stranger out of the experience of the new land. Others noticed this behaviour, and the problem of incorrect information being given during it and commented on it, which led to a second problem. Part of the community seemed to become practically Ultra-Darwinian in its approach to strangers, coming across as cold, unwelcoming and maybe even a little rude. This of course could offend the strangers and drive them away, and if that happened too often than surely the Land would suffer for a lack of newcomers. Which led to the question 'whatever was to be done now'?"

Alright so that's an entirely facetious way to put it, but the point has to be made, or at least I feel like I've got to say it for my own mental health. I'm not going to start pointing out the places that inspired me to write that pants little story and I'm not going to throw blame around about it, I just wanted to raise the issue. I don't agree with either of the approaches I described, either the too helpful or the curt, scary responses. As far as I'm concerned there has to be a balance here in how we treat new arrivals because let's face it, there's a lot to take in in this world that we play in and sometimes you might miss out on a few things, or need some clarification about them. Questions are going to be asked, we've got an entire forum for just such a thing, and sometimes the answers to these questions might be obvious to us but we've got to be sure that we don't sneer and possibly mock the person for asking the question. I know when I first turned up that I had a hell of a lot of questions, I still pretty much pester Jen-Jen every other day with questions even now and I've been here for a couple of months.

At the same time you can't walk someone through the whole process of starting out on the site, particularly if you're inadvertently giving out the wrong information, because that means that people won't learn at all. Fact is if you're going to play in Mizahar you've got to spend some time learning the Lore, or at least getting to the point that you're familiar enough with it so that you can refresh yourself on it by reading the bits you need when you need to. So to come back to my original statement, what we need is a sort of balance here in how we as a community approach new people. Or maybe what we should have are Mods specifically tasked with helping new people. An evolution of the CS Liaisons or something, making them responsible for the Q&A Forum and the CS Forum. That way there's a dedicated source of information from people who definitely know what they're talking about (and if they don't they know who to ask to make sure they do know what they're talking about) and who know how much help to give in a way that won't scare/drive newcomers away. I don't know, t'is just a thought.

Moving away from that, now it's time for me to talk about my own little bits and pieces on Mizahar. Somehow I've ended up with three characters, all women (more on that later) and I'm an AS. I do worry that I'm going to end up stretching myself a little thin, but I figure as long as I'm careful about it all I'll be alright. If not... I'll think of something, maybe I'll just learn to live on four hours of sleep. I still have to do that character square/diamond/rhombus thing for each of them and I'll get to it, really, I might even try it this weekend if I have time in between the solo threads I'm planning on writing. Two for Tessa, 3 or 4 for Jumaymah and zombie jebus only knows how many for Annora. Heh it should be fun though, at least for Ju and Annora since I've actually got some fun ideas for them. Tessa's... going to have to think of some way to make them more than just "And then she did so and so" though. But it's the AS stuff that's really got me pleased at the moment. I'm only just starting out, but I'm rapidly becoming besotted with the Drykas. I've got a special notebook at home that I'm just adding ideas to, whether that's OoC things like a section detailing the Topaz's Watch and how it all works or a section for the Endrykas Wiki simply titled "Starting out in Endrykas" to help new people get into the place more easily or more IC stuff like the group threads Nexy and I have talked about or the general modded threads I'm putting together for people.

Jen-Jen said in another Scrapbook that Story Tellers are best when they work in partnership with players and their PCs, and that's exactly what I'm intending to do. I want people to fall in love with Endrykas and its people just as much as I have, and so if I can help them get their PCs moving in the direction that they want, if I can help make Endrykas a vibrant, fun and interesting place to play and one that people are excited to play in then… well I’d be delighted of course. It’s a fairly high bar to set I know, but what are we without goals to stretch for?




****WARNING – THIS PART MAY MAKE PEOPLE UNCOMFORTABLE****




So… I know the whole warning thing might be a little over the top but there are those out there who… how to put it politely? They aren’t particularly open-minded about certain things and there may be things that’ll come out about me in here that they’ll find objectionable. Fact is I’m not forcing anyone to read this, and if you’re the sort of person who’s likely to react poorly to it I’d rather you didn’t read it. It saves on drama and all and I’m too old to get bogged down in that sort of thing.

Anyway, on with what I actually wanted to talk about, that being: Why I tend to play female characters despite being male with the male parts to prove it and why I feel the need to tell people that I’m male, a lot. (It’s funny how big a role our genitalia plays in our identity isn’t it?) Firstly, why I play female characters. It’s not something I’ve ever really been able to explain. I suppose it started off when I got into MMOs while I was at Uni. I played a male avatar for a while, quested around, levelled up, bought the new gear and I realised something. Male avatars in games get crap clothes. Seriously, by the time I’d hit a decent level and gone through 3 sets of gear I was still wearing practically the same thing. Sure it had a different name, maybe some more spikes here and there but unless you were intimately acquainted with the various armour sets you’d probably not be able to tell the difference. So I genned up a girl, played through the starter zone, got my first set of armour and… alright the armour was impractical as hell given the “less armour is better” law for women in armour that surrounds most games but the thing was it actually looked different. There was suddenly an extra little detail to play with while going through the game, a visible marker that I’d done something within it.

Maybe that’s why I actually liked Final Fantasy X-2 and its Pretty Princess Dress Up System?

So yeah, I became a MMORPGer (Many Men Online Role Playing Girls). Except I didn’t actually pretend to be a girl within the game, that would have been… odd, and to be honest the slavering attention that got heaped on me was more than a little creepy. The point of that little bit is that after that I started exclusively playing with female avatars/characters in most games because I liked the fact that the clothes were better, and it’s habit I’ve kept going ‘til today too. Any of the big RPGs I’ve played recently, whether that’s Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Never Winter Nights, Fallout etc. I always gen up a female character. That reminds me of one of my favourite moments from Fallout New Vegas. There’s an area you go to where there’s an arena that you can fight in, well you can fight in it so long as you’re male. On being informed of this in a very sexist way (the words ‘women are too weak/unworthy/are just slaves were involved) by the NPC I imagined my dear Elise (name I gave my purple haired desert cowgirl) saying something along the lines of:
“Oh, oh really? Right… you just wait right there and I’ll be back in just a minute.” before I headed back to where she’d been forced to leave her guns, beat the hell out of the guards, got said guns out of the box they’d been locked in and then proceeded to butcher the entire camp of the bastards. In her defence they really had it coming. If you’ve played New Vegas you know who I’m talking about, and if you haven’t… let’s just say they’re scum.

That’s off the point again. So anyway, at first I thought… well… alright, in addition to the previous thing about being bisexual it’s time for another confession. At one time or another I’ve found it fun to cross-dress, and yes I still do find it fun. Not because I’ve got a gender identity disorder or I want a sex change operation, it was just fun. Like Brian Molko says: “The more you dress up the more fun you have.” Though annoyingly, as much as I’d like to say that I look pretty in dresses, I realllly don’t. But in some ways that was part of the fun. Yes it’s weird, if you’re reading this section just go with it. So yeah, at first I wondered if it had something to do with me liking to dress up, and maybe there is a little bit of that involved, but it’s not like I play the Pretty Princess Dress Up type. I tend to play the character first, and while their gender does contribute to their identity I don’t think of them as being a girl first, and then everything else, I think of them as who they are and add in fact that they happen to be a woman. I have no idea how well that works, or hell if I even write a believable female character, but I’m having fun and that’s what matters.

I guess if I was really pushed as to why I tend to play female characters one of the reasons originally was that there weren’t all that many on the first RP site I joined. It was men, big macho manly men as far as the eye could see. So as well as creating a ludicrously bi-sexual girly man with a prehensile tail to mess with them all I genned up a couple of girls. (More on this in a minute) And the thing was, they were fun to play. A lot of fun, and while I did try and create a big macho manly man to join in with the rest of them he was just… two dimensional, and dull. I couldn’t get quite as involved with him as did with other three characters so again there’s habit born from that first RP site that drives me on in creating female characters, that and for some reason they’re easier to write for and I can be very lazy at times, you know, taking the easiest road forwards and all, so… yeah. After all that I’m still not closer to having a definite reason why I tend to play female characters beyond “I enjoy it more than playing male characters”, and maybe that’s enough. I mean we’re supposed to enjoy ourselves on here aren’t we?

Time for the second part of this methinks, I seem to have gone on for an awfully long time now, and that’s why I tell people that I’m male so that they don’t think otherwise. This again goes back to that first RP site, and a couple after that. The site was one of those where you have a single OoC user name and you just post for every character from that account. Apparently the name I’d picked was kind of androgynous and because I used smilies in my first post and I had a decent level of S.P.A.G. (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar) in it people assumed I was a girl. For some reason this amused me so I had a little fun messing with people (some got really obsessed with whether or not I was actually a girl which was a little creepy) but eventually the game got boring so I let them know that I wasn’t actually a girl. It did however sort of become a running joke, that I was entirely androgynous which meant that I got to make people squirm with the line “Ohhhh I can be whatever you want me to be baby” and that made me giggle and everyone else got a laugh.

The problem was though that there was one guy, someone who’d been there since I joined the site and we’d flirt back and forth and again I thought it was just a giggle. The problem was that he’d never gotten the memo that I was actually a guy… and he didn’t react well when he found out, at all. To sum up his comments, I should apparently be burning in hell, I’m evil, I’m the most loathsome thing in existence and… he had a lot to say about it all. Ahh to cut a long story short he left the site after posting quite a lot about me and PMing a lot of people to warn them about me and it was all… icky. To be fair I was partly to blame, I shouldn’t have assumed that he knew, but I don’t think I quite deserved the treatment I got from him… maybe he was taking the flirting more seriously than I was? I don’t really know, and it was a long time ago so it’s not important. But it did teach me the lesson that letting people assume certain things about you can lead to a massive herd of drama llamas, and honestly? I’m too old to be dealing with that sort of shite again, I don’t want the unpleasantness and I don’t want to bring that sort of shite to Mizahar. So yes, that’s why I tell people that I’m actually a guy, why I make sure they know. While it's true that there’s not all that much chance of something similar happening again, I still don’t want to take that chance.




***END OF POSSIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE SECTION***




You know, I should probably stop here. According to Word there’s an awful lot of words in this already and I think I’ve run out of things to say. As ever I’m not sure how much sense most of this made, but hey sometimes it’s nice to just type out your thoughts.

‘Til next time everyone,

Phil

[Scar]

So to come back to my original statement, what we need is a sort of balance here in how we as a community approach new people. Or maybe what we should have are Mods specifically tasked with helping new people. An evolution of the CS Liaisons or something, making them responsible for the Q&A Forum and the CS Forum. That way there's a dedicated source of information from people who definitely know what they're talking about (and if they don't they know who to ask to make sure they do know what they're talking about) and who know how much help to give in a way that won't scare/drive newcomers away. I don't know, t'is just a thought.

Personally I feel this is an awesome idea providing there were two of us. lol. The CS forum is a bit backed up, but if there were additional help this is an idea I would love to run by the founders and see what their thoughts were on it.

I don't agree with either of the approaches I described, either the too helpful or the curt, scary responses. As far as I'm concerned there has to be a balance here in how we treat new arrivals because let's face it, there's a lot to take in in this world that we play in and sometimes you might miss out on a few things, or need some clarification about them.

Great valid point. I tend to fall under the first category sadly. I always always post the links of what I am going over and insist they read them, but there is a lot of hand holding. It's a habit I have been breaking away from, trying to find the balance so to speak. I remember when I first started I threw myself into reading. I spent a good few weeks before I made my first post, which took me two hours to write. I just kept rechecking and rechecking to make sure I was within the lore haha. My posts for the few month were like that. Now i'm down to about 20 mins per decent post, sometimes they do get longer though.

But now that I do know the lore and the way the site works I do sometimes forget what it was like as a noob. Even as a noob though I buried myself in lore, which is why sometimes I do lose my patience with noobs who don't bother to read the lore of their area. I understand having questions, but to not bother to read is the greatest offence I can think of. I see it as disrespectful to the creators of the lore.

So I can understand the anger a little and the coddling. We do need balance between the two. I like to think I handle myself pretty well, but there is always room for improvement.

Jen-Jen said in another Scrapbook that Story Tellers are best when they work in partnership with players and their PCs, and that's exactly what I'm intending to do. I want people to fall in love with Endrykas and its people just as much as I have, and so if I can help them get their PCs moving in the direction that they want, if I can help make Endrykas a vibrant, fun and interesting place to play and one that people are excited to play in then… well I’d be delighted of course. It’s a fairly high bar to set I know, but what are we without goals to stretch for?

I feel the same way about Zeltiva. I want everyone to have fun above all else. I always keep it within the lore, but if I go to create a page or a location or an NPC I always consider what the players want. Like for instance, if no one wants to learn Busking then an NPC for the university for this purpose should be top priority no matter how great an idea I have. Granted some of those have been created anyway, despite lack of call for them lol. Sometimes an idea is too much fun to overlook.

I wont respond to anything below the warning so that is anyone skipped over it, they wont read it in my response.

My comment to it though is this: I am proud and awed by your complete honesty here. It takes a lot of courage to speak out like that and come clean with things that not everyone may like. *gives you a cookie* Makes me proud to be your friend.

-Liz

[Gossamer]

. Response: Sometimes Pictures Work Better Than Words. Aka.. I made a sign for you Phil! . .

[Bolden Denusk]

*blinks and offers gluten free cookies* I'll take honesty over flattery, any day. I'm more surprised about the close minded comment than I am about the cross dressing. We all have our quirks on and off miza. Reading your scrap made me realize three things: Phil needs gluten free! 2. I'm more close minded than I realized, but I'm so dogmatic, it's nearly impossible for me to think about it right now, and three: I play two guys on here and really enjoy them being the opposite gender! I feel like if i do something almost romantic while rping a guy, that's fine and imaginationy. But if I'm playing Silvy, my girl, I feel awfully self conscious about expressing any affection to a guy--because it feels like cheating. I love my James and saying those words in rp are (as a girl) making me feel guilty.

Too much about me. Phil, congrats, you've admitted your quirk to us. We all have quirks, but some of us aren't willing to confess them. Kudos to you for that. I won't say you're going to hell for it, nor call you insults. I'd in fact like to tip my hat and bow to you for being so open. Good on you mate.

[Tessa Poe]

@ Jen-Jen I love that sign! If it's a quick job d'you think you could make it into a sig for me for my mod account?

@Lisa Sorry... I wasn't intending to be offensive with the close minded bit, but it seemed more appropriate than some of the other phrases that spring to mind about some of the people I've had the misfortune to deal with.

Heh and I have to say that this isn't my only quirk, but it's a fairly big one and the others aren't anywhere near as interesting.

As for the being open thing... ahhh it's easier on here. I mean it's the internet, with people in RL I'm a lot more circumspect about some of my habits. But on the other hand I do prefer being more open about it all because I'm very much of the opinion that people can take me or leave me as I am, I'm not going to hide away bits of myself just to make people like me or anything. It's far too much effort.

And yes, being gluten free is rubbish.

@Liz Heh I wasn't going to suggest that you take it all on yourself, in fact now that I've had the idea I've been trying to figure out if I'd have the time to do the job... but I have to say I probably wouldn't. If these... let's call them Player Liasions... were going to work we'd need at least another person like you, someone who's around often enough and isn't going to disappear. I mean ideally you'd want three, for redundancy

That also reminds me, I'll have to go through a page or two of the CS forum again for you, might get time later today.

And lastly, about the honesty... like I said to Lisa it's easier on here, partly because I know there are people here like you three who aren't going to blink an eye, and partly because it's the internet and I can't get lynched online

Still I was a little nervous about putting this up here, but hey it all seems to have worked out

[Tessa Poe]

Today, rather than slightly worrying personal confessions, I'm going to talk about a subject that's very dear to my heart.

Yes, I'm going to talk about the wonder that is The Transformers. Not the Michael Bay horror show though, nope we're going all the way back to the 1980s to a little boy sitting in a small villa in Saudi Arabia watching the only programs in English that he got to see for two hours each day. Every day when he got home from school there were four programs that came on, a mixture of: episodes from the various Macross Sagas, Speed Racer, Transformers, GI Joe, Thundercats and a few Hanna Barbara cartoons, and every day you'd find him glued to the television for those two hours. Everything had to wait until after these programs and he had who knows how many blank betamax tapes to record his favourite program onto. (It was the Transformers in case you haven't realised by now.)

That little boy was fairly obviously me, and he was (and still is a bit, alright more than a bit) obsessed with the Transformers. I mean what's not to love? They're a race of giant alien robots fighting a war that had raged for millions of years who crash land on Earth and start turning into cars, jets, tanks and trucks. Beyond the inherent coolness of that though, there's something more. You see if you take the Autobots and the Decepticons at face value then the Autobots shouldn't stand a chance. The Decepticons are more powerful, more ruthless and generally should win in a straight fight. But, well aside from the Autobots having:

the wonder that is Optimus Prime, they're kind of screwed. Wait, before I go any further, I've got to talk about that scene a little. That was one of the crowning moments of my childhood, and I'll freely admit that I cried like a baby after the next scene when Optimus dies. Also, Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime can fuck off and die in a corner somewhere. God I hated him. He was just a whiney little bitch most of the time in the cartoons, and it's his fault Prime died in the first place! (No, no I'm not still bitter about it, honestly.) The funny thing is that the creators of the film had something far worse in mind than just Optimus dieing. There are storyboards for killing off essentially the entire cast that they never animated. There was supposed to be a gauntlet run scene where the Autobots make a desperate counter attack charge and get... well gunned down. All of them. Well all of them that are left after the first few scenes of the movie and its rather large death toll. It's why you don't see much of the original cast in the series after the Movie. The scene was never animated though because they thought it would have been too distressing for kids to watch... which is a shame in some ways, I mean it's not like they hadn't killed off a whole mess of the original cast already in a prior scene. I think all told you see the deaths or corpses of… around twenty or so of the Transformers throughout the film.

But this scene does show one of the reasons why I loved this series so much and makes the point I was going to before I got distracted by it. The Decepticons lost most of the time, well aside from them being stupid as all hell on occasion, because they were a bunch of selfish, evil bastards. Note Starscream kicking Megatron while he's down and realllllly enjoying doing it. The Autobots on the other hand worked together, and stood up for one another no matter what. Sure Prime could have shot Megatron through Hot Rod, but that's not the way the Autobots roll. (Yes, pun intended. Though still... I kind of wish he had done, but that's just because as I said, I hate Hot Rod.) That and the never say die attitude that epitomises the Autobots. They're fairly simple moral lesson true, but that doesn't stop them being good ones. It's not bad for a cartoon series that was made just to sell toys, (probably the biggest reason behind the rampant death in the Movie, kill off the old toys and introduce the new ones) because let's face it, that's what Transformers was and still is to a degree. It was a 25 minute commercial for some of the coolest toys ever created and weirdly enough it wouldn't have been possible were it not for Ronald Reagan reapplying the First Amendment to commercial speech. Because yes, prior to his election it was illegal to make a cartoon series about a toy line.

The thing about the series was that at first it really didn't have much of a plot. A lot of the episodes were just "Decepticons need Energon, find some way to do it that'll harm people/destroy the planet, Autobots find out and go and stop them, credits roll." This did change as the series went on, partly I think so they could introduce new characters and sell more toys, but they were still damn good toys so I'm willing to forgive them for that. The characters themselves were fun too, well they had to be if it was going to be a successful advert didn’t they? Starscream was camp comedy gold half the time, Optimus was… hell he was Optimus Prime, if you cut him he bleeds awesome, Ironhide was the grouchy old one, Soundwave had no intonation at all but still got lines like:

Brawn was the plucky little one who was super strong, Powerglide was cocky and overconfident. And the thing is, once they started writing plots with these characters they actually ended up being damn good ones. The Constructions have an awesome back story, there’s an episode where Galvatron is too insane for a brain the size of a planet to cope with (which was hilarious), Skyfire’s introduction is done particularly well and that’s just off the top of my head. Did I mention that they all have special powers to? I didn’t? Well I should have done, because they did. Jazz had a funky disorientating light/sound show, Mirage could turn invisible, Skywarp could teleport, Starscream had a Null-Ray that deactivates electronics, Soundwave had his cassettes… the list goes on and the characters are all the cooler for it.

Beyond that there's the actual production of the series itself. I defy you to find a cooler noise than the one they use for the transformation sequences, and if you're like me you'd spend a while trying to imitate it while you transformed the toys themselves. Yeah the animation's a bit dated, there are a few colour pallete errors now and then and characters being in more than one place at the same, it's a little cheap in places too. But the voice actors were actually pretty damn good and as far as I recall they don't have much in the way of 'stock footage' like you see in some series. Gundam's the one that springs to mind mostly, they constantly reuse sequences for fights and just put them on a different background. Plus the quality of the animation did improve as time went on, and the movie itself (aside from one scene) is done really quite well, just like the episodes that come after it.

There were things that annoyed me about the cartoon though, and that’s mostly because I read the comics as well. Case in point, Ultra Magnus. In the cartoons he’s… ineffectual, a second string Optimus Prime. He’s well-meaning and does his best, but generally he’s just a bit rubbish. Without Optimus around he’s just… a bit pants. However in the comics he kicked arse and took names:

Sorry, the picture’s a little small but it’s the only scan I could find of the page I wanted. What you see there is a page from the UK comics, where essentially Galvatron travels twenty years back in time in an extremely convoluted but still pretty decent plot. Now to put it into context (for I imagine most of the people reading this who’ve never read the comic) Galvatron is Megatron reforged by Unicron, Unicron essentially being the Transformers version of Satan. But it gets better than that, oh yes it does. What’s cooler than robots that turn into cars, tanks, jets and trucks I hear you ask? Well how about a robot that turns into a planet, a planet that eats other planets!? But back to Galvatron. He’s the most powerful Decepticon pretty much ever and outmatches Ultra Magnus in just about every way possible. And yet, because it’s necessary to stop him, Ultra Magnus spends hours getting the hell beaten out of him, never giving up, never surrendering with no hope of winning all because it’s the right thing to do. Again, not a bad moral for a comic based on a toy line is it?

Funnily enough though Hot Rod’s still a whiney little bitch in the comics, his whining just has more context since mostly it’s “I’ll never be as good as you Optimus,” which is entirely true so kudos to him for realising it. (Yes I still hate him.)

Some characters did fare better in the cartoon than the comics though, Cyclonus and Scourge spring to mind straight away. In the comics they end up being a bumbling comic relief duo in a lot of ways, but in the cartoons? Cyclonus is one of the few Decepticons to actually have a strange sort of honour about him, and Scourge seems to be more of a cunning bastard than anything else a lot of the time.

Which means that it’s time… I’ve talked about the comics, the cartoons, the original animated movie… so now it’s time to deal with Michael Bay. I’ll admit, I enjoyed the first movie. For all that the designs of the Transformers themselves are messy and confusing making it hard to tell what’s happening on the screen, they only feature in about 30% of the film, the humour’s kind of… crappy and immature and Optimus is a bit wrong with his rampant slaughtering of Decepticons, the lack of reaction to Jazz’s death… it worked for me. I think the fact that they got Peter Cullen to voice Optimus helped a lot, though I do still wish that they’d gotten Frank Weller to reprise his role as Megatron. Partly I think the reason I liked it was it was actually better than I was expecting, since I was expecting it to be awful… but sadly the same can’t be said of the sequel. I sat there watching it and... my inner fan boy cried, then raged, then finally crawled and died in the corner that Rodimus Prime should have been in.

I spent three hours afterwards listing every last thing in it that was wrong with it to a very patient friend, and when I say wrong I don’t mean just the things I objected to as a fan of the cartoons/comics but everything that was wrong with it. From the blacksploitation and generally offensive twins with their gold teeth, to the fact it was still about the stupid squishy humans more than the Transformers, Devestator being a pile of shite with his ridiculous robotesticles, The entire Matrix of Leadership screw up, the bad direction, the fact it was actually dull for an awful lot of it, the fact that Earth Technology can still harm giant alien robots that have millions of years’ headstart on us, Jetfire’s every single line and then the fact that his sacrifice goes pretty much uncommented on, the weird little remote control one that was pervy for some reason, the entire arriving at college scene, the “It was all covered up” bullshit so that no-one knows about the Transformers despite there being a major battle in the middle of a city, where you know, there were people, with camera phones… it was all just shite. So shite in fact that I’ve not seen and never will see the third in the trilogy, and this is me saying that. Me, who owns more than a few of the original G1 toys, who has the entire series and movie on DVD, who imported the Japanese run of the show, who can still quote just about every line from the 1980s movie, who… yeah you get the idea. People have told me it’s not as bad as the second one, but I refuse to see it. I am done supporting Michael Bay with these films. He’s hurt me once too often and I’m not going to let him do it again.

But I’m not ending on that note, nope, I refuse to. Instead I’m going to look back at my Transformers, the ones I fell madly in love with and remember them. It’s true that my comments on Michael Bay’s reinterpretation might come across as a whiney fanboy’s ranting and you know what? I’m fine with that because I am a self-confessed fanboy, willing to forgive the Transformers for an awful lot because of how much I love them. These cartoons and comics were fun, they were cool, the toys were awesome and there was even a bit of a moral message to them that didn’t beat you round the head repeatedly unlike a lot of the cartoons back then. In short they’re some of my favourite things from my childhood, and I’ll always think of them fondly. They did without a doubt start my love affair with giant robots of all kinds, and like many things your first is the one you'll remember most.

Oh, and before I finish, just remember this:

That’s right, that’s how awesome Optimus Prime is.

Heh anyway, t’il next time everyone,
Phil

[Tessa Poe]

I've been trying to start this post for what seems like forever, and this is a source of frustration that I've been trying to turn into an explanation and failing at it, miserably.

It's been what, six months since I was last on the site? Something like that at least, though I suppose I could just say 'too damn long' and leave it at that.

I know I've missed this place but for a variety of reasons I couldn't come back on. Reasons that at least for the moment I'd rather not go into since a) Writing a 'poor little me' post makes my skin crawl and b) there's something more important than those reasons, and that's that I should have said something, anything at the time. Especially considering I'd just been accepted as an AS.

Yay, guilt, and that's part of the problem... which now that I type it sounds a bit silly but I've started so I'll finish. It's almost like I'm stopping myself from doing something or saying something because I feel guilty for disappearing as I did. Wait, it's not almost like that, that's exactly what it is.

Sod, this is all far too fragmented.

New plan time, I'll just say this and then skedaddle 'til later. That's not a bad plan. So yes, I'm alive and I'd like to come back to the site. Probably not using Tessa though, much as I loved playing her that... wouldn't feel quite right. I've been reading over the news and such and she would've pretty much ideally placed to be a casualty of the storms so that might be what'll have to happen to her.

Now lastly, and possibly what I should've started this whole thing with, is an apology to the people I left in a lurch when I vanished, including Lariat in Endrykas and the people I was threading with.

Right, I'd better skitter off,

Phil