Mayhem Transformers Discussion: United We Shelfwarm

unluckiness

Somehow still sane
Citizen
I don't even know what that is. An exceeding unhelpful google search just mentions it's some kind of fandom thing.
 

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
I don't even know what that is.
Pie? Thankfully, I've got an article for that....

Oh. Wow. Guess the prophecy once sneeringly foretold has come to pass....

So, there were two people who wrote Beast Wars fanfics and put them online: William Rendfeld and MG-Dinobot. The latter was clearly doing word-for-word machine translations into English (leading to the infamous "TALK FOR YOU!" and "Rhinox is death"), while the former was a decent kid who thought Usenet would make a good home for self-insert Marty Stu fanfiction in which his character "improved" the Beast Wars by preventing certain character deaths and finding all the stasis pods so we could get the full toy cast and some BWII guys as well. (Also, Echowarrior and Optimus Primal found the Captain's Table bar, which was an outside-time-and-space thing in Star Trek tie-in fiction at the time.)

So, online fandom being what it was, a small cadre that included David Willis started writing their own deliberately bad Beast Wars fics. Then they turned their attention to G1 and started writing a cohesive if wacky take on that starting with "Atlantis Arise, Revised". And the rest, as the late Douglas Adams might say, is bunk.

It was a sort of Golden Funny Age, before Beast Machines and all that wrought.
 

Dekafox

Fabulously Foxy Dragon
Citizen
Wonder how many still remember the Ravage 3 Bodies Evolution thing then too... was telling some kids about Usenet(in regards to it being THE first Social Media) and ATT (via Google Groups as a newsreader) a few days back and found the thread again there.
 

unluckiness

Somehow still sane
Citizen
It's like when I learned that My Immortal wasn't a sincere attempt at fanfic, or that movie based on the making of The Room. The magic isn't there when you do this stuff on purpose
 

Tuxedo Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
It's like when I learned that My Immortal wasn't a sincere attempt at fanfic, or that movie based on the making of The Room. The magic isn't there when you do this stuff on purpose
"Beast Wars: Corpsemasters" was probably our example in the time frame. Sure, it leaned hard into 1980s/1990s children's action TV tropes, hanging lampshades left and right -- but one couldn't shake the nagging feeling that the author was right there saying, "See how clever I am to have shown this trope off to you, and explained how silly it is? I am very clever. Here, have another trope." And cutting through that got to be a chore after a while.....
 

Copper Bezel

Revenge against God for the crime of Being.
Citizen
Wow, there's mold release, and there's mold release.

Wonder how many still remember the Ravage 3 Bodies Evolution thing then too...
Hard to believe that hasn't been a Pulse box set by now. Unless that was always the joke behind those "Evolution" 2- and 3-packs.
 

unluckiness

Somehow still sane
Citizen
I bought a knockoff of Perfect Effect's Optimal Optimus. I sold off the original but you know what, for $60, various merchant coupons, a tiny ape minion and in black, I'll bite.
 

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
A lot of third party redesigns aren't great, but this one completely fixed Op Op's proportions. This is what the design needed to be.
 

unluckiness

Somehow still sane
Citizen
It does improve on all four modes aesthetically. Transformation didn't need to be particularly complex but eh.

Also a nitpick but while OpOp always had a truck mode that was the robot mode using an exercise wheel, this one's hands don't peg in anywhere and just float in the approximate area to achieve the look.
 

unluckiness

Somehow still sane
Citizen
Given how they engineered a flight mode that isn’t just Optimus playing Superman, tabs on the sides of the wheel to go into the slots in his palms he uses to hold his gun would have been quick enough to do.
 


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