Snake_King

Makes sense, though what’s the fate of the dissidents?

And I assume that the queen’s answer is yes?

Understandable. Any hint to give about what happens in the next Overlord? As for the Ben 10/Avatar chapter, I still haven’t gotten the main story part finished, so I went ahead and started to write the first lemon, but it’s not much at this point.

I see. I just thought I’d share that with you guys and see what you thought of it. Moving on then, how’re things going with you? Any progress your stories? I’ve only made a little to that Ben 10/Avatar fic.

I guess I threw you out with that one, didn’t I? Sorry.

Well, I suppose that’s true. Anyway, I’ll try and make this quick and easy to get. I understand that not a lot of you are Transformers fans, and thus aren’t overly familiar with it, but I am, so just bear with me for a little bit. As I said at the start of this thread, one thing that I really don’t care for is bashing on characters in stories. This form of villainizing in fanfiction is called “Ron The Death Eater” on the website TV Tropes due to its tendency of happening to Ron Weasely of the Harry Potter franchise. The website also lists the name for when it happens in officially licensed material, "Adaptational Villainy," where writers making their own reboot of something will, you guessed it, take a character from the previous versions and make them more antagonistic than they were before. One of the more infamous comic book companies to do this is, in my opinion, IDW Publishing, who are the ones currently licensed to make comic book adaptations of Hasbro properties, including Transformers, which is the main concern for me in this post. Admittedly, there are some things I like about their version of Transformers, but other times, it’s too angsty, and comes across as being dark for the sake of it, though it surprisingly has quite the fanbase. Some characters are like their previous versions, but others are not so much, and changed in ways that don’t make them recognizable or even a little likeable. For example: Star Saber (no relation to the sword of the same name) Japanese “Transformers Victory” cartoon: straight up hero who leads the Autobots and even adopted a human boy as his son. IDW Publishing: Religious fanatic Hell-bent on killing anyone who doesn’t conform to his beliefs and at one point called for an atheist holocaust Rattrap Beast Wars/Beast Machines cartoon: one of the good guys, and a short dude with a sassy personality who you could still count on to have your back when the chips were down IDW Publishing: Selfish, amoral backstabber of ambiguous affiliation who plays the Starscream (ambitious second-in-command) for STARSCREAM!! Spike Witwicky G1 80s cartoon: human ally and friend of the Autobots IDW Publishing: selfish prick who used his dad’s military standing to get whatever he wanted, and has a murder-boner for all Transformers as a whole, Autobot and Decepticon alike The Prime lineage (the line of leaders whom Optimus Prime is the latest of) Most versions: a line of wise leaders who carry the Matrix of leadership that connects them to their creator god, Primus IDW Publishing: Pretty much every Prime before Optimus was a corrupt and militant politician who used a fake Matrix to scheme their way into power, and it’s not clear if Primus exists in this universe The Autobots Most versions: a faction of good guys who want peace and freedom for all and fight against the Decepticons, and started out as freedom fighters against would-be tyrants IDW Publishing: While a good portion of the Autobots are still good, they often resort to questionable underhanded tactics to accomplish their goals, and started out as pretty much just a group of thugs for a corrupt Cybertronian senate. There’s like a million other changes IDW made to some characters, but I think you get the idea with this list, right? You can see why I’m not a big fan of it.

Oh I see. Well, the one in “The Gentry” was actually trying to point out how stupid that kind of thing is, and was essentially poking sadistic fun at fanfic authors who write “evil badass takes-no-shit harem master Naruto” stories. Although, I’m certain those types of stories can be found in the fanfics of other fandoms as well. Also, care to hear me gripe about something for a little bit?

Which premise are you referring to? I think I read a little of “Paying For His Pedestal” a while back, but never read it fully. Isn’t that one where Harry raped Cho Chang?

If you want an official version of where characters don’t act the way they did originally, I could tell you all sorts of stuff about IDW Publishing’s comic book version of Transformers, both good and bad.

Oh, I see. You know, when it comes to bad fics that are only somewhat enjoyable, a common story formula I’ve seen in Naruto fics tends to involve trying to make Naruto seem more “badass” by turning him into what we would consider a douchebag. One example that comes to mind is this: "Naruto turns against the Leaf Village and gets revenge on everyone that abused him". Or, more accurately, "Naruto turns against the Leaf Village and kills the characters that the author doesn't like and spares the characters the author likes." Another type of common story that can fit in with the one above is this, “evil badass takes-no-shit harem master Naruto.” This I heard of this one shot that severely deconstructs this type of characterization called “The Gentry,” which can be found on fanfiction.net. In it, the author shows that that there is no way any of the characters would act the way most writers depict them in these types of stories. The Gentry, used somewhat as analogues of the writers of these kinds of stories, pretty much manipulated Naruto's entire life to suit their own needs and shift his life to their vision, corrupting his "pure" self. They manipulated Naruto's hearing so that he heard nothing but hate from his comrades, they manipulated the minds of all the adults so that they could have "hated Naruto all along" or as the "stereotypical evil council", and the harem? Manipulated their minds so that they would "love" Naruto and not even mean it to drown in physical pleasure without any true emotional meaning. And even worse, its not going to end with Naruto. They are manipulating other worlds described as the parodies of other fandom clichés.

Wow! That sounds pretty bad. I didn’t know you were a Sonic fan, or does it include characters from other franchises?

WHOA-WHOA-WHOA!! I didn’t say anything about him being a Satanist. If anything, I think he might be a left-wing atheist, one who didn’t do his research right and pretty much turned his story’s version of Jesus into the embodiment of every negative religious stereotype. I just meant that he made his own negative views on religion and conservatives very blatant and heavy-handed, which threw me out of his story since I don’t think that a fanfic that is available for anyone to read is an appropriate place for that kind of thing. However, yeah, I get what you’re saying about Sonic’s Ultimate Harem being bad. I’m guessing it’s not even in the “so bad, it’s good” territory?

I think it would’ve been nicer if he’d just said that your writing had room for improvement and offered ways of doing so. I think he said that he had autism, which I myself have, but that’s no excuse for anyone acting all jerky. After all, what is better? To just accept that you are the way you are and that you can never change, or to try and improve yourself and overcome your problems so that you can be better than what you are?

Heh, if you want to see an example of a harem fic that started off with good promise but turned bad, you should see “The Spectacular Spider-Harem” by Diablo Ex Machina on Fanfiction.net. The idea behind it was to take up where “The Spectacular Spider-Man” cartoon left off, and then have Spidey form a harem composed of just about every female hero that Marvel has ever created or written for, including some they no longer have the rights to such as Red Sonja. Despite the ridiculousness of that premise, it actually started out relatively enjoyable, but then quickly went downhill when the writer decided to LITERALLY turn Jesus Christ into a bad guy, and started bringing up his own far-left political beliefs, both of which completely threw me out of the story and managed to undo all the good will he’d earned from me up to that point. When I go to read fanfiction or just read or watch fiction in general, I wish to AVOID things that discuss current politics or who thinks which religion is right or wrong, as it just brings out the worst in people since they get so heavy-handed douchey about it. However, on the occasions where those types of things are integral to the story, and thus unavoidable, I prefer it to be done in a way that doesn’t beat the reader/viewer over the head with a message of which view is right or wrong, but rather shows the pros and cons of all sides and lets the audience decide for themselves. That’s the more mature way of doing it, which is sadly not done enough, know what I mean? Anyway, about Spectacular Spider-Harem, apparently it got to the point where even the writer just quit writing it because he’d lost all his steam for it, and just went on to writing something else.

Thanks.

It’s understandable. Or maybe he’s been so busy with other things in his life that he hasn’t been able to work on it. Just a thought, and it happens.

Mind providing a link? And I’m guessing that the Shura within the story is the one from the Soul Calibur series?

Okay then. I just got a little confused there for a minute. Sorry. And yeah, it is done quite a bit. I’ve seen it done with lots of Naruto crossover fanfics. So, would this be multiple one shots or a collection of one shots?

We still talking about the anime reboot you mentioned, or more fanfics?

Yeah, it is sad that a lot of networks only see cartoons and movies as a means of advertising toys. So, you’d basically turn the Omnitrix itself into another harem girl for Ben? It could work if done right. Yeah, drama can become a bit much, but it’s not totally bad. I’ve heard this in the Nicholas Cage movie “Adaptation,” “If you write a script without conflict or crisis, you’ll bore your audience to tears.” However, I don’t want what I’m watching or reading to become too extreme in terms of tone. What I want is middle ground; not too light, not too dark, just in the middle with a sense of hope throughout.

Oh, and to add to that, I know what people say, “IT’S CALLED DRAMA!! YOU CAN’T HAVE A GOOD STORY WITHOUT IT!!” There’s plenty of ways to make a story good and interesting WITHOUT being overly dramatic.

Yeah, that would be cool if the did a reboot in the style you mentioned. Although, about the Thundercats reboot, yeah, it is sad that we never got a proper conclusion to that show and that it got canceled the way it did. From what I’ve heard, the reason it got canceled was due to multiple reasons, including low ratings and a mixed reaction from people to the things that happened in the show. Personally, while I admit that the Thundercats had plenty of ideas and concepts that brought a fresh new take on things, I do feel that it got a little too angsty for my taste at times, as well as some questionable story and character choices. Among them being: The Cheetara and Tygra romance comes out of nowhere Tygra was a big prick, and even the actor who played him, Matthew Mercer, called the character a dick. Lion-O suffering from the “Informed Wrongness” trope, where the audience is pretty much TOLD that a character is in the wrong about something, but not really SHOWN why. Basic but important rule of storytelling; SHOW DON’T TELL!! From what I’ve heard, had the show continued, Lion-O would’ve ended up alone. There’s plenty of other things, but you get what I mean, right?

Not sure how they would do it on Adult Swim, to be honest. Although, there would probably be a strong presence of blood, swearing and 1 or 2 shots of near or full nudity involved at some point or another, given Adult Swim's track record.

Well, the common assumption in America is that “animation is only for kids,” and since kids are commonly assumed to be stupid and in need of sheltering, the animation shows reflect that. And yes, Japan does admittedly offer more mature storytelling and complexity in their anime shows, but even anime is not without its flaws. Like the Tsundere and Perceived Pervert tropes we were talking about. There’s also some double standard tropes we see both in anime and in western animation, such as one of my least favorite: The Unfair Sex – When a woman does something wrong, it's okay. When a man does something wrong, it's just plain wrong. The website TV Tropes lists how it tends to play out in anime, particularly in the harem genre: “In general, this happens way too often on most harem series, where the guy will get treated as a pervert even when he's completely innocent (or simply get mistreated for anything period), but girls doing the same thing or worse results in... nothing at best, the guy being punished anyway at worst. A notable exception is the Tenchi Muyo! multiverse, where the guy is usually a genuine nice guy and the girls are less temperamental towards him (though the same can't be said towards each other at times).” Sadly, I’ve seen evidence of this kind of thing in real life as well. In one psychology class I took in college, the teacher showed us a video where these actors took part in a public experiment to see how people react to an arguing couple in a park. They went back and forth between who was more aggressive in the argument. People only seemed to intervene when it was the guy being aggressive towards the girl, whereas when it was the girl being all shouty and violent, she was pretty much allowed to be as aggressive as she wanted. When the people who saw it asked why they didn’t intervene, they said that they just assumed that the must’ve cheated on the girl or done something to deserve it simply because he’s a guy. It’s sad, really.

Because I’ve been burned by those experiences, I didn’t feel like giving the Ben 10 reboot a chance. And yes, a reboot where Ben finds the watch while as a teenager would’ve been interesting. Certainly changed things up a bit.