So happy to see all this discussion! As you may have heard in the episode, I'm going through paperwork and such, and this weekend I've been so lost in it I didn't come in here at all like I should have. Onward to lots of replying.
SillySpringer wrote:Do they only answer questions on some episodes?
Try to on as many as possible, this was one where we were able to give more attention to some very good ones, including yours, so thanks again for it! We're also making a move away from the amount of "current events" talk/reaction on the show, so you can certainly expect more question answering discussions as long as good questions are out there for us.
megatronus wrote:Sabrblade wrote:Haven't listened yet, but SG Unicron was only truly a thing after the concept of
Multiversal Singularities was formally done away with and disposed of. So now there's no longer only one of Unicron, Primus, and each of the Thirteen, in the multiverse. Now any universe can have their own unique versions of any of those guys (or have none of them, even, like how the U.S. G1 cartoon doesn't a Primus of its own).
Oh neat. We didn't know they had done away with that rule. Can you point us to where that happened or was announced?
Dude, that's... that's what prompted the discussion! Don't "we" that one
Seibertron wrote:Sabrblade wrote:This particular plot point was covered not in the magazine comic, but instead via the Facebook fiction pages for Rook, Andromeda, the Axiom Nexus News Editor, and Vector Prime.
Then it doesn't count. Fan fiction published by the Fan Club doesn't count, especially considering how low the readership for that content must be. I know you read that stuff, and like it, but it's basically just unofficial fan fiction released by the Club. I bet no one at Hasbro even reads that stuff to make sure it fits whatever criteria content must have to be considered "official".
That last sentence is what bugs me about a lot of that fiction. There's oversight, and yes, it's in the hands of capable and (generally) good stewards of the brand, but at the end of the day it's just a couple guys doing
whatever the hell they want to. Most of the official/canonical material out there has a lot of oversight and direction - the comics all go through Barber, the movies all go through Bay/Paramount, the cartoons all go through Executive Producers. In other words, the buck stops somewhere. With much of the prose and especially the "Facebook canon" being added, it's just stuff. Hell, look at the TF Wiki right now, the dudes had to put in a two week moratorium on adding that Facebook stuff because some of it is just purposely making confusing stuff up! If the Wiki guys are lost, god help the rest of us.
That's an interesting reading of his point. I don't think he insulted anyone this entire time :shrug:
Seibertron wrote:Basically, but I also lumped in the poorly written novels which have been written by people like Alex Irvine and Alan Dean Foster, both excellent sci-fi writers but poor Transformers fiction writers who don't strike me as actually caring about Transformers and are just collecting a paycheck, whereas there are people like Roberts, Barber, and Sorenson (and others) who are very passionate about Transformers. Would love to see some novelists come out of the woodwork who are passionate Transformers fans as well as having to adhere to a thought out road map like the writers at IDW.
I think it's unfair to guys like Irvine to say they're "collecting a paycheck". They're professionals, and they're not going to just throw stuff on a page aimlessly. I actually thought he did a great job of fleshing out some of the concepts in Chaos Theory with Optimus and Megatron's relationship while still doing what was being asked of him by the overseers at Hasbro. Exodus and Exiles were pretty good, imo. The third book, whatever that was, just no, but I still would wager that the author gave a damn.
Carnivius_Prime wrote:A multiverse is generally fine by me but all those Hot Rod's together in Regeneration One really did take me right out of the nostalgic feeling I was getting reading that series, seeing all those versions from Transformers lines that came from after I had grown into an adult (and some I really dislike). I could have done without that. It kinda soured the entire run for me.
Much more than that soured the book for me, but yes, I found that pretty pointless too. In principal, it's ok. In execution and in the context of the book, I wasn't crazy about it. Why not have the other fallen leaders help? There was so much to draw on to try and make some of that mess come together at the end, but nah, here's Energon Rodimus and pals to, uh, do... something. Man, I just can't even get started on Regen One, it's very close to my least favorite TF work of all time, with disappointment definitely playing a role there.
tl;dr version:
Seibertron wrote:Not everything needs to be connected. There's no need for it.
I agreed with this, mostly.