crazy customizing and creativity questions and discussion

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BWprowl
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Re: crazy customizing and creativity questions and discussio

Post by BWprowl »

Dominic wrote:The idea is that if somebody is writing something with the intent of getting it *legitimately* published, then it is not fanfic. It is an attempt at getting published.

I have a half dozen or so scripts for short TF stories that are never going anywhere because IDW killed "Mosaic". The whole point of that was for fans to get their work out there in a semi-official forum where it was all but guaranteed to be looked at by people who matter at Hasbro and IDW. But, that is not an option. And, IDW is not supporting that sort of thing at this point. So, those stories (inluding "Unicron v/s the Death Star") are never going to happen.

Yes, I have an idea for a "Mega-Man" story. But, I am not posting about it at large because if I actually write it, I want to use it to break in to comics through Archie some other other legitimate license holder.

And, even that game I am (sort of) working on is something that I would like to pitch to Hasbro.
Okay, putting aside that thinking your stories or game ideas might actually be picked up by official license holders makes you almost as delusional as the people who think their over-powered self-insert characters are legitimately good story concepts, this line of thinking still marginalizes the concept of writing for recreation, which I think is where a large portion of fan-created fiction, good or otherwise, comes out of.

You asked why anyone would take time to write their own story content when there was plenty of official content out there to be digested, but that ignores that fact that reading and writing are two separate activities. I imagine the thinking for a lot of people is "I enjoy writing, I enjoy Transformers, so I'll write about Transformers because I enjoy it". I know I've equated the writing of fanfiction with toy customization before, and indeed that's likely the reason you spun the discussion off into this particular thread, but I can't help but think that might be an incorrect way of thinking, particularly in your case. You customize figures because you want to 'have' figures in your collection/lineup that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get, because they don't yet exist. In that respect, I can see how you might see fanfic writers as writing any given story because they wanted to 'have' that story amongst their collection of TF media, and see it as a legitimate entry, but I don't think that's the case at all. Most of these people just want to experience writing in a particular fictional setting, crafting a story with elements that they already appreciate. It's more about the process itself and flexing their own creative muscles in the process than 'getting' something at the end. Not to mention that you have to write random, one-off stuff that you never intend to publish anyway just to begin to get 'practice' at writing and polish your skills, and if you put it out there on the internet for others to read and provide feedback on, that can only be good for your developing skills regardless of if you actually plan on profiting from them, right?

Granted, there obviously *are* fanfic writers who just want to end up with a story that completely retcons Beast Machines or whatever so they can sleep at night, but I wager there are also 'cutomizers' who just go at a toy with paints and dremels because they enjoy the act of painting and resculpting and so forth, and don't particularly care about ending up with a figure that serves a particular 'purpose' in their collection.
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Shockwave
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Re: crazy customizing and creativity questions and discussio

Post by Shockwave »

BWprowl wrote: I wager there are also 'cutomizers' who just go at a toy with paints and dremels because they enjoy the act of painting and resculpting and so forth, and don't particularly care about ending up with a figure that serves a particular 'purpose' in their collection.
I'm currently doing that with O6's Classics Grimlock. I'm going to repaint him into Transmetal Megatron even though I really don't have a BW collection (Blackarachnia is the only BW toy I have at the moment).
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Re: crazy customizing and creativity questions and discussio

Post by Shockwave »

I think one of the main problems with fanfic is that for so long it has just been a thing that fans use to either belittle each other or the other problem is that most of it is just fans writing their favorite characters (or worse, their own made up characters) to be the most awesome thing ever. And then there's the fact that not everyone can write and so a lot of it winds up with not even having basic story structure, much less an idea worth reading.
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andersonh1
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Re: crazy customizing and creativity questions and discussio

Post by andersonh1 »

Some of the things I associate with "bad" fanfic are convoluted theories to explain away continuity problems, or always having a character in one line somehow be the original G1 version. So somehow BW Inferno is a warped, twisted version of G1 Inferno. Things like that. There's having fun with continuity, and then there's just stretching things to the point I can't believe in them.

Cross-continuity storylines can be fun, if done properly. I'm a big fan of the "Worlds Collide" arc in Armada for example, but generally those are also done badly. With any of these examples, the problem is often, as Shockwave said, an inability to write coupled with convoluted leaps in logic to make the premise of a story work at all.
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Re: crazy customizing and creativity questions and discussio

Post by Shockwave »

andersonh1 wrote:Some of the things I associate with "bad" fanfic are convoluted theories to explain away continuity problems, or always having a character in one line somehow be the original G1 version. So somehow BW Inferno is a warped, twisted version of G1 Inferno. Things like that. There's having fun with continuity, and then there's just stretching things to the point I can't believe in them.

Cross-continuity storylines can be fun, if done properly. I'm a big fan of the "Worlds Collide" arc in Armada for example, but generally those are also done badly. With any of these examples, the problem is often, as Shockwave said, an inability to write coupled with convoluted leaps in logic to make the premise of a story work at all.
Yeah, there's that too. BW Prowl's (the toy, not our BWProwl) tech spec almost reads exactly like that.

Then there's things like what reminds me of the Star Trek episode of Futurama where Nelvar claims to have the crew read "the ultimate fan script" and Fry replies "Oh, you found my fan script" where basically every fan thinks their stories are the best thing ever written or worse, another example from that episode where fans are essentially writing themselves into the fiction while also making themselves the best thing ever. I think maybe this is why Dom says that some fans treat characters like they're their friends or something, like fanfic is the only way to boost their own self esteem is by being awesome in the eyes of the characters they like.

Now, I've done some toyfare style comic strips with my action figures but I'm not sure if that qualifies as "fanfic" or not.
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Re: crazy customizing and creativity questions and discussio

Post by Dominic »

Does anybody know of any sites that have custom tech-spec makers? I found a site that has a Joe filecard maker.

I fiddled on Google and found a few pages that have custom tech-specs for fan characters or "neo-G1" characters, but could not find a tool to make them. I want to make profiles for my custom figures and for characters that did not get proper profiles.
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