Vanished off face of planet

[layla]

I realize that I haven't been around much lately. Here's the Cliff Notes of the Cliff Notes of the past couple of weeks:

Crawlspace heater died. Rigged up strange Goldbergian solution to get by until husband gets home. Weather got -30. Water froze up. Husband came home. Water thawed out. Sister came to visit. Husband got heater working again. Woke up this morning to find heater doesn't work again, boiler doesn't want to go, weather is -20, crawlspace is frigid and now I have to go to work. Sigh.

My sister brought with her the first season of Beast Wars. Like just about every child who grew up during the 80s, I had my Transformers fixation, so we watched about half of the first season last night. In spite of the overwhelming cheesiness, it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be ... not only is it nice to look at and genuinely funny in a lot of places, but it's actually surprisingly dark. I kept thinking, This was on kids' TV? One of the good guys shot out Megatron's KNEECAPS in one episode, f'r cryin out loud...

Comments

[neosquirrel.livejournal.com]

Call me a purist, but I really hate that later gens of TF use old Gen 1 names, like Inferno for example, or even worse, they switch the affinity of the 'bot! I mean, Laserbeak for one of the more recent gens is now an Autobot! It's great that he's still a bird in 'bot mode, and that they cleverly made him a camcorder, which, if you recall his original specialty was spying and recording...

But the bigger problem besides changing sides for me is when the names are used and have nothing to do with who they are. Using Inferno again, what does an ant have to do with Infernos? And don't say Fire ant. A fire ant and a roaring blaze have nothing to do with each other. I mean, Hound at least was a spy, Mirage could turn invisible, and Thundercracker would disorient audio receievers with a sonic boom! The originalInferno was in fact, a fire truck.

Sorry, I'm very fond of my sentient artificial lifeforms.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, a lot of the name reuse is due to trademark issues--Hasbro has lost the rights to a number of character names (Hot Rod, Shockwave, Bluestreak, Jazz) because another company now owns the trademark.

So, what bothers you more: name recycling, or losing the name alltogether? The way the laws are set up, it seems to be either one or the other....

Rob

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of that ... about the trademark issue.

[neosquirrel.livejournal.com]

Rodimus Major... what a stupid rethinking that is.

And Jazz is now Meister? How can you trademark a type of music?

Shockblast is an okay change for 'Wave...
and Silverstreak is a good changeover.

Okay, you're a purist ;P

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about writing a longer rebuttal, but I think what it comes down to is that I'm just NOT a purist ... about anything, really. I *like* seeing re-imaginings of popular stories. F'r example, a lot of XMEN fans don't like the way the movies mess with existing characters, relationships and continuity -- but, though I love XMEN, I really didn't care that they took and did something different with it. It was fun to see the story play out a different way. (Okay, I liked the tough, reformed-bad-girl Rogue a lot better than the waifish movie Rogue, but that was just a personal affinity for the character; I didn't hate movie Rogue, I just thought of her as a different character.)

It's also got something to do with my tastes changing as I change ... anymore, most of my love of Transformers is a nostalgia thing, and the few bits and pieces of the series I've seen recently didn't do more than trigger brief, warm flashes of those happy childhood days. The (for lack of a better word) grittier Beast Wars version, with its more complex characters and political situation, is more to my liking nowadays.

We are, after all, talking about cartoons that are designed to show off the capabilities of a line of toys in order to sell them. The fact that they're watchable AT ALL is kind of amazing.