I'm gonna need a Mayuko Iwasa Binaltech homage out of SS86 Jazz (opaque windows please) to go with this. With even more cassettes.
But first I need this.
Transformers Collaborative series
- Thread starter TriBlurr
- Start date
I'm gonna need a Mayuko Iwasa Binaltech homage out of SS86 Jazz (opaque windows please) to go with this. With even more cassettes.
But first I need this.
Looks great, but should have been its own character, especially since they were remolding the accessories, give us a new head. Or at least, maybe some big hair?
It's not really cool to use "KP" as we all know exactly what it is...
Unless they've retconned all the singers as Korean...
They should have remolded Blaster's bread into a female one, or used the Titans Return mold with Gem as the head and the body as her transtector...
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Most sheeple wouldn't agree, but I thought her work with the Kiss Players was better than her work with the Holograms.
...and?It's not really cool to use "KP" as we all know exactly what it is...
I know he can't see me and so I won't get an answer but like... it's not 2008 anymore we can acknowledge Kiss Players' ick without banishing EVERYTHING associated with it to the Shadow Realm.
They did give us a new head. At least I don't think any other version of Blaster has that goofy face? I don't know what the costs are of remoulding a face vs a new head... but I would have preferred a new head and had them call the figure "Synergy" to really drive home the Jem connection, as @Shadewing suggested
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All this drama about Kiss Players is so weird. Like yes, we know what it is. It's been 20 years. We don't have to clutch our pearls EVERY time it comes up.
Especially when using the three cassettes that were their own 3-pack, and just acknowledging the roots with the initialism and leaving it at that, is the perfect amount of nodding to it. There were nice decos and ideas that just happened to bear the logo and be in the fiction alongside sketchier things, but we can keep and bring forward some things while leaving others in the past. Because some things are better off being left in the past, like both the ick and the overblown drama about the ick existing.
Especially when using the three cassettes that were their own 3-pack, and just acknowledging the roots with the initialism and leaving it at that, is the perfect amount of nodding to it. There were nice decos and ideas that just happened to bear the logo and be in the fiction alongside sketchier things, but we can keep and bring forward some things while leaving others in the past. Because some things are better off being left in the past, like both the ick and the overblown drama about the ick existing.
Exactly. I was there when it was recent, it was nuts and crazy and yes, icky... but I'm so over a segment of the fandom going DEAR HEAVENS any time it's even remotely alluded to.
Full agreement.
I won't defend the ickier side of Kiss Players because there's no defending that... but the line did have some value.
The Cassettes, which this set references, are all great. I'll go a step further though, and say that the BT/Alternator moulds that KP used had their best decos in KP. If we just look at the robots... the line was gorgeous. The Autorooper may be an all time great Transformers release. And the cone gun and surfboard sword are S-tier accessories, as the kids say.
The line had its positives and those positives should be open to being referenced and appreciated without everyone freaking out.
Anybody who even knows what KP is probably buying it anyway.
I think the turning point for me on KP was coming across a guy on YouTube who bought a sealed in package KP Optimus- complete with the Marissa figurine and audio drama CD- and smashed it on camera after going on the type of WHAT WAS JAPAN THINKING? spiel we've all heard and read a million times before.
Now never mind that the audio drama is actually one of the least problematic elements of Kiss Players because it just refocused the story on whacky space band adventures, and therefore smashing the audio drama CD didn't even make sense for what the guy was saying...
A sealed complete Kiss Players Optimus goes for anywhere between $300 and $500. That's rent or a car payment for some people. You're going to essentially light that money on fire on camera for the world to see to try and gain some """cred""" on a joke that peaked in 2008? Really?
Just made me realize how nuts the whole thing was. Kiss Players gets icky, yeah. And that part is... well... icky.
Still... people need to chill out over it.
Some of it's the very present day social media thing of never having an unexpressed thought, and some of it's just the social pressure to visibly put yourself on the right/accepted side of things. There's no middle ground and silence is uncritically viewed as siding with the oppressor because someone read that on Twitter and decided to overapply it to everything.
It's not enough anymore to have known there are sketchy parts of this for 20 years but not feel like it needs to be said because the topic came up. You have to be seen saying so or you're part of the problem.
It's not enough anymore to have known there are sketchy parts of this for 20 years but not feel like it needs to be said because the topic came up. You have to be seen saying so or you're part of the problem.
I like how there's a Kiss Players display at a hobby store here.
That said, yeah, I think the vast majority of people reacting extremely never even read the Wiki story summaries and just make exaggerated reactions as an in-group signaling thing. Or are just poorly socialized enough to take the wiki captios seriously.
That said, yeah, I think the vast majority of people reacting extremely never even read the Wiki story summaries and just make exaggerated reactions as an in-group signaling thing. Or are just poorly socialized enough to take the wiki captios seriously.
We sure we listened to the same audio drama?
I mean the manga had stuff like Megatron clones with penis tongues, naked girls covered in white... stuff..., and the whole underwear thing...
The audio drama, by contrast is... well... it's very erratic. But it does sort of become a rather fan wanky (and not wanky in that way, you pervs) time travel plot by the second half that's far less concerned with the ick that the manga swam in.
Summed my feelings up perfectly, my friend!
I've noticed a lot of that recently. Not just in Transformers. The Star Wars fandom is awash with a very vocal type of fan raging at Disney for decanonizing the old Extended Universe stuff. Only 90% of these folks have never read an EU book or comic. They just watched grifters on YouTube reading Wookiepedia articles about this stuff and then they "claim" it because they assume watching a video of someone reading you a summary is the same as engaging with a work directly.
And that's taken root in Transformers, though it's arguably worse due to our fandom being smaller and our Wiki being more popular. It's just accepted that the Wiki is a valid replacement for actually reading or watching the fiction in question.
Like when AotP Nexus was released. You had swarms of fans who were angrily ranting about how Hasbro "betrayed" Nexus Prime because this toy was nothing like FunPub Nexus.
And I realized... one... a lot of these folks were too young to have engaged with most of the FunPub Nexus fiction when it was current and two... the FP Nexus fiction was in a niche publication only a small fraction of the fandom even had consistent access to, and a fraction of that ever regularly read. There was no way all of this outrage about Hasbro "betraying" Nexus with their AotP figure was from people who actually read and enjoyed the FP Nexus Prime fiction, because the numbers didn't make sense for that to be the case.
And yeah, turns out... most of those people never actually read the fiction they were accusing Hasbro of betraying. They read some TFWiki summaries, or they watched Chris McFeely's video (where he basically read the Wiki summary).
I'm not fully comfortable saying that people who latch onto and identify with fiction despite never having read or watched said fiction directly are invalid. We're at a cultural transition point right now where we have our first couple of generations coming of age where one has such easy access to this stuff via YouTubers and Wikis. Back when I was a kid, I had to find bad fan dubs of JG1 to watch that stuff. If I had been born fifteen years later I'd likely have just read the Wiki synopsis.
Still, it creates this weird group signaling effect, as you said, where people just say and echo things because that's what you do in the fandom, and the behaviour that should reinforce those choices with experience has been replaced with the sensation of getting second or third hand experience where you're effectively removed from the source of what you're passionately yelling about.
I wouldn't call an earthbound police drama about propaganda and fugitives from the law "wacky space band adventures".
That's fair, but I think the point is it's still a sizeable step away from Transformers Kiss Kiss Perv Perv.
This has been very useful over the last few years. But just in my head.
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I only have two remaining takes on Kiss Players:
1. Kiss Players is a product of another time, a time when it was still shocking for a comic Takara published to sell Transformers to be about doing sexual-looking things to young-looking girls.
2. I still think it's interesting that "humans have decided they hate all Cybertronians and are making their own Transformers now, which goes horribly wrong due to Galvatron's influence, but fortunately Optimus Prime and a few other Autobots were still in hiding on Earth" is a not-particularly-misleading description of the plots of both Kiss Players and Age of Extinction, and while neither of those things is really good, they're bad in almost entirely different ways. Actually, now that I think about it, I guess there was also an IDW1 arc along those lines, wasn't there?
1. Kiss Players is a product of another time, a time when it was still shocking for a comic Takara published to sell Transformers to be about doing sexual-looking things to young-looking girls.
2. I still think it's interesting that "humans have decided they hate all Cybertronians and are making their own Transformers now, which goes horribly wrong due to Galvatron's influence, but fortunately Optimus Prime and a few other Autobots were still in hiding on Earth" is a not-particularly-misleading description of the plots of both Kiss Players and Age of Extinction, and while neither of those things is really good, they're bad in almost entirely different ways. Actually, now that I think about it, I guess there was also an IDW1 arc along those lines, wasn't there?
Pretty much, yeah. And it's been a hot minute since I've listened to them. I just tend to default to "alien robots and time travel" as "space."
Ha! And the thing is that it may come off as gatekeep-y but like... if you don't engage with fiction directly you really can't know if your opinions on it are your own.
"I read the Wiki article."
So your opinion is coloured by the Wiki article author. Which is a bigger deal in Transformers given TFWiki's tendency for snark and humour.
"I watched a YouTube video on it."
So your opinion is filtered through a YouTuber's opinion, whose own opinion is influenced by the author of the Wiki article he probably copy and pasted for his video script.
And like... I don't wanna bash YouTubers. Chris McFeely's stuff serves a purpose in the fandom after all (yeah there are more TF lore channels but he's the go-to by a wide margin). Wikis are also serving very important purposes!
But "I let Chris McFeely read the TFWiki article at me" does strike me not quite the same as engaging with the fiction directly and forming your own opinions from that.
Funny enough, Age of Extinction also has a concerningly icky bit and the movie has been citationally reduced to being represented almost entirely BY that dumb idea. But, y'know, when you script and shoot and keep a whole-ass sequence about flexing a(n inaccurate understanding of, iirc) the Romeo and Juliet Law complete with corny-ass whipping out a laminated card of it... you've earned that.
I completely glossed over the word that was ringing in my ears the whole time I was typing the earlier posts, but it's perfect to pair with this anyway.
This behavior is performative. It's engagement bait. "Wow what an idiot for clinging to drama over Kiss Players" + "you dumbass, why'd you waste such a valuable figure" + "congratulations, genius, I guess that totally erased and undid the icky crap the line did, oh wait, it didnt" = LIKE SHARE COMMENT SUBSCRIBE, BRAH). Is this a true believer in any of that crap? Can't know. Don't care. The whole thing having to be on camera and posted in public renders it all but meaningless.
Then again, I don't think gatekeeping even really applies to this. The simple matter is, if you're going to preach (and let's face it, that's what so much of this behavior amounts to) so fiercely about it and hold yourself (right) and other people (more likely) to some standard so fiercely, on pain of social pressure for failing to live up to that, that should be anchored on AND INFORMED BY (and I really cannot stress the word INFORMED enough) firsthand experience and firsthand formed opinion. If what you're holding on to is shaped by other secondary sources, then that's not something you get to wave around in a discussion. That demands the caveat and disclaimer that this isn't actually what YOU think. Cite your sources and, yeah, admit that you had to outsource forming an opinion. You don't own that.
Obviously, this doesn't apply to everything. I have never seen "Morbius", because reviews have made it clear that this would be a terrible idea. Reviews are there for that purpose. But I don't know that I'm going to pop up in a discussion about Spider-Man media and drop the flaws of a movie I have not seen.
How can you so vocally and so stridently believe in a conviction -- to the point of volunteering it when the topic pops up -- that you didn't form for yourself? Even learning, and religion, and cults, operate on developing a personal knowledge and opinion and connection through a personal encounter. But way too often, and more in recent years, it's just someone touting a position they know to be The Right One and if a debate comes up they also just trot out the talking points they've seen trotted out (which tend to play cards like whataboutism and deflection and Here's this Meme That Conveniently Depicts You As Wrong, No I Will Not Explain). No shortage of performed passion, masking a shortage of actually having a defense rooted in your own interpretation of it.
It's not functionally very different from parroting (which is another word I feel tends to be apt) the standard "this movie is a classic" line AND judging people for not having seen or liked or understood it without seeing it yourself and developing that affinity for it yourself. NOW, if it's only a classic to you because someone told you it was, and maybe even explained why THEY thought it was? Fine, but SAY THAT. Admit that. Don't BS the conversation by claiming high ground you've never actually STEPPED on.
I completely glossed over the word that was ringing in my ears the whole time I was typing the earlier posts, but it's perfect to pair with this anyway.
This behavior is performative. It's engagement bait. "Wow what an idiot for clinging to drama over Kiss Players" + "you dumbass, why'd you waste such a valuable figure" + "congratulations, genius, I guess that totally erased and undid the icky crap the line did, oh wait, it didnt" = LIKE SHARE COMMENT SUBSCRIBE, BRAH). Is this a true believer in any of that crap? Can't know. Don't care. The whole thing having to be on camera and posted in public renders it all but meaningless.
Some gates are there for a reason. Pandora's Box wasn't meant to be democratized.
Then again, I don't think gatekeeping even really applies to this. The simple matter is, if you're going to preach (and let's face it, that's what so much of this behavior amounts to) so fiercely about it and hold yourself (right) and other people (more likely) to some standard so fiercely, on pain of social pressure for failing to live up to that, that should be anchored on AND INFORMED BY (and I really cannot stress the word INFORMED enough) firsthand experience and firsthand formed opinion. If what you're holding on to is shaped by other secondary sources, then that's not something you get to wave around in a discussion. That demands the caveat and disclaimer that this isn't actually what YOU think. Cite your sources and, yeah, admit that you had to outsource forming an opinion. You don't own that.
Obviously, this doesn't apply to everything. I have never seen "Morbius", because reviews have made it clear that this would be a terrible idea. Reviews are there for that purpose. But I don't know that I'm going to pop up in a discussion about Spider-Man media and drop the flaws of a movie I have not seen.
How can you so vocally and so stridently believe in a conviction -- to the point of volunteering it when the topic pops up -- that you didn't form for yourself? Even learning, and religion, and cults, operate on developing a personal knowledge and opinion and connection through a personal encounter. But way too often, and more in recent years, it's just someone touting a position they know to be The Right One and if a debate comes up they also just trot out the talking points they've seen trotted out (which tend to play cards like whataboutism and deflection and Here's this Meme That Conveniently Depicts You As Wrong, No I Will Not Explain). No shortage of performed passion, masking a shortage of actually having a defense rooted in your own interpretation of it.
It's not functionally very different from parroting (which is another word I feel tends to be apt) the standard "this movie is a classic" line AND judging people for not having seen or liked or understood it without seeing it yourself and developing that affinity for it yourself. NOW, if it's only a classic to you because someone told you it was, and maybe even explained why THEY thought it was? Fine, but SAY THAT. Admit that. Don't BS the conversation by claiming high ground you've never actually STEPPED on.