Ben 10 True Omniverse Message Reaction
Author: Power Master
Commentator: Iscuseri
Footnotes: Even though I'm siding with EmeraldKM despite their impulsive decision to have me publicly leak a counterargument (that was there to clarify parts of their review and discuss what happened after they left their review), I'm showing Power Master's side of the story. After all, one lesson that stuck with me in my journalism elective classes was that a good journalist takes all sides of the story into account, regardless of what biases they have. So, that's why we're exploring Power Master's side of the story. Also, this will be a bit different than any other fanfiction riffs due to the subject matter. I'm doing this so y'all can see my earnest reactions to Power Master's explanations.
A little heads up, I've included EmeraldKM's review and counterargument below my commentary if anyone wants more context on the whole shebang.
CONGRATULATION TO MY DEAR REVIEWERS! YOU HAVE WON THE BIGGEST PRIZE OF ALL TIME!
BEN 10 TRUE OMNIVERSE IS OFFICIALLY CANCELLED AND DISCONTINUED!
…That's definitely not what EmeraldKM wanted.
Apparently, the latest reviews were completely displeased with my stories because of not only my bad handwriting,
Emerald criticzing your story for having terrible grammar is a valid criticism because poor grammar makes stories more difficult to read. Poor grammar also affects the quality of the characters' dialogue, the story's pacing, the narration, etc. People want fanfictions they read to be cohesive, and poor grammar results in the story becoming less cohesive.
but also has the nerve to make comparison me to some bad directors,
Speaking as someone who's done fanfiction riffs for multiple of your stories (albeit on a different website), you're the one who loves Michael Bay's Transformers movies to the point where you went out of your way to constantly fucking plagiarize from them and incorporate characters that came from them into your stories, such as giving Quintessa a TFP counterpart in your stories; another, more damning example is ripping off of the forest fight scene from Revenge of the Fallen in chapter 13 of Transformers Prime IV. I see what game you're playing, Power Master. This sudden change of heart is because Emerald negatively compared your stories to his movies, so I guess he's a bad director now. You're being dishonest about disliking a director you like.
spill my story ideas to the world
Alright, since some context is in order, EmeraldKM caught onto True Omniverse Season 4's predictable plot and guessed that Megatron would attack the Secret Sanctuary during the climax and what Switchblade's ultimate fate would be, but unfortunately for Emerald, they guessed correctly since Power Master said that said guesses were "spoiling the story."
All Emerald did was point out that your story was predictable to the point where they knew how it would end and what you were planning to do with some characters, and criticizing a story for being formulaic to the point where every twist is telegraphed and obvious along with events that should be dramatic losing all impact due to said formulaic nature are valid criticisms. For example, Emerald pointing out that Megatron would attack the Secret Sanctuary in the climax was just them being aware of what direction the plot was headed in because you were telegraphing it from the very beginning. In truth, all they did was criticize you for making your story predictable to the point where there's just no stakes or tension in it. After all, the heroes winning in the end no matter how much death and destruction happens on their side makes Megatron and Quintessa's occasional victories irrelevant in the long run, which severely diminishes the story's stakes. The stuff with Switchblade was also them calling out how making him too similar to Dreadwing allowed them to figure out what Switchblade's fate was gonna be. After all, you gave Switchblade the same characterization and role in the narrative that Dreadwing had in Season 2, so really, Emerald picking up on his fate being an inevitable death spiral where he would've turned on Megatron was because you deliberately gave him the exact same role that Dreadwing had. Sure, Emerald could've been less blunt when making their points, but they weren't trying to spoil your story. They just made accurate guesses as to what would've happened because you have a tendency to have foreshadowing for future events be obvious and completely in-the-readers'-faces.
and the worst of all he and she gave this recommendation to everyone and even me - Go watch any piece of GOOD Transformers fiction because any of 'em that you pick are the exact opposite of this clusterfuck of a story. Never in my life, I have ever felt insulted, angered and hurt by this insult.
EmeraldKM apologized for that remark they literally said that it was "uncalled for" on their part
"Although, I'll admit that my 'go watch GOOD Transformers fiction' comment in my review was completely uncalled for and I regret saying it. It was brutal honesty on my part rather than outright maliciousness, but yeah, it was still uncalled for. I'll also admit that the whole 'Megatron and Quintessa making an alliance' comment in my review was also partially incorrect: I re-read that section of Ch. 17 and it turns out that she just gave him a proposal. It's not a proper alliance per se, but he still agrees to her deal. Finally, my review the first time around wasn't done with any hostile intentions because I kept it focused on the story; even now, this statement of what happened after my review has no malice behind it, I'm just giving a report."
Along with apologizing for their remark once they realized how hurtful their brutal honesty was, they also owned up to getting details of the story partially incorrect. To me, it just seems like their criticisms were done with good intentions considering that the one insensitive comment was an unintentionally insensitive one that they regretted saying once they realized that it was hurtful. I should also mention that Emerald was autistic, so them being brutally honest was a part of their disability. Autistic people have little to no social filter, so it's common for autistic people to say things they shouldn't without really realizing how hurtful their words are until after they've said them or unless someone points it out. Long story short, Emerald said something brutally honest without realizing that their words were hurtful, they apologized when they did see how hurtful it was, and they weren't trying to be malicious.
I have no issue about bad-mouthing of my grammar and writing, but insulting with my story or even spoiling the whole story is something I cannot overlook and forgive.
If I'm being honest, making your story predictable as fuck is basically just more your fault and not the reviewer's because the reviewer catching onto how predictable TOS4's story was is basically because you made it predictable in the first place. Furthermore, Emerald giving constructive criticism about your story's problems and how to fix them wasn't "insulting" your writing. In addition to that, Emerald criticizing your story for having terrible grammar is a valid criticism and that doesn't count as "badmouthing" it. You're making a big deal out of things by publically whining about it in your cancellation message, which only proves that you do actually have issues with what Emerald said about your grammar and writing.
I'm very bad at writing, fine. I don't expect to get some award-winning or TVTrope stuffs.
The reviewer was just trying to help you improve your writing and your stories' quality. They never said that they expected you to become an award-winning writer or get a TVTropes page. Stop twisting their words.
I write because I want to write connection to our shows and also giving my POV of the world, which will always happened, no matter what you do.
So do fanfiction authors who take the time to proofread their stuff and accept criticism. You do not get to use that explanation as an excuse for your stories' poor quality, Power Master.
Because of these two reviews of judgemental insults
The "judgmental insults" in question was one brutally honest, unintentionally insensitive comment about "GOOD Transformers fiction" that Emerald apologized for once they realized how hurtful those words really were, and also, it's a fanfic review. Reviews about anything—movies, books, TV shows, music, fanfictions, etc.—are based on judgments that the reviewer makes about the media in question. Aside from that one insensitive comment, Emerald's criticisms were legitimate ones: the grammar is horrid, the characters are too bland to care about, the story's pacing moves at a snail's pace due to filler chapters and an over-abundance of padding, the plot itself is too bloated because the 2 main plot lines are overshadowed by several subplots, there's too many characters, too much telling and not enough showing to the point where future story developments are completely telegraphed, and the stakes are severely undermined by a plot that's predictable to a fault. Emerald even explained their criticisms in-depth with actual examples, which is something that reviews are supposed to do.
with bias
Real talk: there's no such thing as a completely impartial review. Reviews will either be more positive towards the media in question or more negative to it, and even reviews that deem something "just average" will have reviewers be biased more favorably towards elements that they liked while being more critical of elements that they disliked. That's the harsh reality of media criticism, Power Master.
and self-righteous to think he is above them all, I forever hereby cancelled the story for good.
Wait, what? All Emerald was trying to do was actually give legitimate criticism, even if said reviewer was a bit too harsh. Here's proof:
"Last but not least, I actually did care enough about the Author's feelings to actually give him constructive criticism and deliberately avoid personally attacking him as a person. Criticizing the poor writing quality of this story as well as calling attention to his antagonistic treatment of me are different matters altogether. I actually feel bad for giving this story a negative review and finding so many problems with it because it's composed of a bunch of interesting ideas that would actually be fun to read about if their execution wasn't so sloppy, more polished writing, and if the story's formulaic nature didn't severely undermine its stakes. Isusceri, I decided to let you share my interview answers with people in the hopes that both current and future readers would be able to see my side of the story and not just the Author's when he inevitably rants at me in the Ch. 18 Author's notes. After all, there's two sides to every story. Thank you for sharing mine."
Also, Emerald never gave any indication of self-righteousness or thinking that they're above you. Them being a creative writing major only helped them criticize your story because having a lot of knowledge about creative writing allowed them to see TOS4's flaws on a technical level more easily. If anything, you're the self-righteous one since you're completely dismissive of Emerald's criticisms and think that your story was better off without their critiques.
For some stories I've read from the best and inexperience writers such as myself, I have never ever insult or even argue with the authors
Power Master, you were the one who tried to bully Emerald in private over them giving your story a less-than-stellar review. The only reason Emerald even called you out on that was because you chose to deliberately antagonize them, and even inexperienced writers know that antagonizing reviewers is something to avoid doing. Also, I know for a fact that Emerald actually tried to keep things civil by actually clarifying parts of their review and keeping a level head in their later counterargument. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, they apologized for the remark that you had a temper tantrum over. Don't worry, I have proof that you antagonized the reviewer in private since you omitted that part of the counterargument in your cancellation message:
"It turns out that the Author rather angrily PMed me over me giving constructive criticism. I couldn't even see the PMs the first time around he sent me because he blocked me over the ordeal, but the fact that he blocked me gave his anger away. I wasn't expecting such anger when all I did was give constructive criticism. About 3 ½ weeks later, he PMed me again, with the second series of PMs called 'All Talk, No Bites.' That's incredibly ironic coming from someone who blocked me over a well-intentioned review the first time and sent over a second series of PMs 3 ½ weeks later with the intent to antagonize me and rant at me (the title gave his intentions away along with it being a series of 3 comments), and he blocked me so I couldn't see his rant-y PMs the second time around too. Let me repeat that: the Author PMed me a second time when I did nothing to provoke him during those 3 ½ weeks, and he still went through with it just to antagonize me. I'm also doing this because I know he's gonna rant at me in the Ch. 18 Author's notes because 2 times in private isn't enough for him. It's really his actions that have 'no bite' to them. Additionally, him getting pissy at me for giving his story a negative review was his choice and his alone."
Anything to make it seem like the reviewer was the instigator and not you. In reality, deleting that part of the counterargument in your cancellation message is suspicious and ascertains that you were trying to hide that tidbit of information. To add to that, your cancellation message does ascertain Emerald's prediction that you'd publicly antagonize them correct too: calling them self-righteous just because they gave your story a critical review, lying about antagonizing them to pin most of the blame on them, the mocking "congratulations" for them winning the "prize" of getting your series cancelled when their intention was the opposite of that, and badmouthing them over said harsh review.
of how the story goes of what I wanted or believe because everyone has their own strength and weakness with writing the stories or even insulting the stories. And that is my main standard is if I hated the story, I'd just leave and not review how bad
OK, but what if someone wants to read a story they hate so they can have an informed opinion on it and so they know what to critique about it? Have you ever considered that Emerald read your story with a critical eye despite disliking it so they could identify the story's problems and critique them? What Emerald did was give a critical review, which is allowed according to FF. net guidelines: "Note that critical or harsh reviews are not considered abuses. It is the right of the reviewer to like or dislike this story." Also, you watched all of Ben 10: Omniverse despite hating it in order to create True Omniverse, so you have no right to criticize Emerald for doing something that you've also done. Ben 10: Omniverse isn't fanfiction, but the reason I brought it up is because you're guilty of doing the exact same thing Emerald did but with a cartoon, and you're very vocal about your criticisms of that show and why you hated it. You. Petty. Hypocritical. Nag.
it is because the author has their own style of writing. I would never simply review to prove my point or show off how good I am,
None of that was why Emerald reviewed your story. Stop twisting their words and lying.
unless he provoked me to do so. It will never be perfect but they write because of their passions and love for the shows.
You deliberately tried to provoke the reviewer because they had the confidence to give your story a less-than-stellar review and you couldn't handle that, so you deliberately sent over the "All Talk, No Bites" series of PMs even after Emerald left you alone for 3 1/2 weeks. The only reason that failed was because you immediately blocking Emerald after sending it prevented them from reading it. However, Emerald was still aware that you sent over the PMs to provoke them, and they called you out on your bad behavior in their counterargument. Additionally, there's plenty of people who write fanfics due to a love for any given franchise and to express their POVs about the world, but they still listen to criticism and don't whine about it in cancellation messages. They're also aware that writing something out of love isn't an excuse for their stories to have lackluster quality, so most of the time, writers will listen to feedback that reviewers give them.
Since everyone hated the story so much, considered this officially cancelled!
You cancelled your story over one critic. You could've just had thicker skin about Emerald's review, not let it aggravate you, and continue writing your story like nothing happened.
You will never find out what happened in this show. Adios. Jia Jian (Chinese Words for Goodbye)
It's spelled zài jiàn.
Forever! See ya!
It's your loss. You're thin-skinned about taking critcism, so really, most of your troubles were self-inflicted for taking a critical review too seriously. Also, it's not like Emerald was pressuring you to cancel your story because that was your own choice. They had their own screw-ups and mistakes, but this wasn't their intention. They genuinely wanted to help you improve your writing, not get your story cancelled for any sadistic or malicious reason.
To end this, I'm leaving Emerald's review and my leaked interview of them/their counterargument below so people can form their own opinions on the scenario.
EmeraldKM's Review
The tl;dr version of this long review can be summed up as this story having all the same problems as the Michael Bay Transformers movies—messy writing that makes what should be a straightforward plot more convoluted, fight scenes that drag on for way too long, glacial pacing, bloating the plot by cramming too many plot lines into it, lots of unnecessary retcons that make everything worse, boring villains and main characters, unfunny jokes, and offensive stereotypes (not just racial ones). As someone with autism, I'd especially like to mention Teresa, who is a poorly-written autistic stereotype, and she basically exists to get killed off to further progress the story. Back to the main characters, some of the bland main characters are also jackasses, so yeah, this story does emulate the Michael Bay movies. I'd even go so far as to say that this story also contains all of the same problems as Transformers: Superlink (aka Energon): constant abuse of padding, arcs dragging on for too long because of said padding, many dropped plot lines and character beats, it utterly fails to use whatever potential it has due to messy writing, the story's plot is all over the place, and the character development is just abysmal and lacking. Putting it simply: True Omniverse Season 4 takes the worst elements of the Bayformers movies and Transformers: Superlink/Energon and amplifies them up to 11, resulting in a bloated, monotonous mess of a story that spins its wheels and fails at understanding what it's actually trying to do.
I'm gonna be honest, True Omniverse Season 4 has all the hallmarks of a bad story: shitty grammar, bad characterization, uninteresting main characters, atrocious pacing, and tonal inconsistency. Unfortunately, these are all problems that carry over from Transformers Prime III and Transformers Prime IV, the prequel stories, both of which I read for the sake of being able to accurately criticize this story and to see if the writing in this story was more polished. Answer: it was not, and in fact, the writing actually got worse. This story also claims to have character development happen, but that's blatantly false since these characters are mostly cardboard cut-outs that are boring. Any character development that happens has deplorable execution, so the characters remain bland from start to finish. That said, the only main characters who have mildly tolerable characterization are Rook, Starscream, and Megatron. And well, Megatron's undoubtedly the main villain in this story since Quintessa is very incompetent as a villain despite the narrative insisting otherwise. That's just one of many examples of the story's "tell, don't show" writing instead of "show, don't tell."
Speaking of "tell, don't show," that's the biggest problem this story has, with it having many repercussions on every aspect of the narrative. For starters, infodumping is commonplace in the story and descriptions are completely in-your-face. A lot of the characters' personalities are told to us, particularly with the adverb abuse with every line of dialogue. Don't tell us their personalities, demonstrate them to the readers through actions and sensory details. In regards to the adverb abuse, stop adding "firmly," "calmly," "happily," and every other overused adverb to dialogue; to prove it, I did ctrl+f to see how many times "firmly" comes up and each chapter has like 100+ uses of the word. Don't get me wrong, adverbs can still be used, but not to this level of overuse where it's in every line of dialogue. Just significantly tone down the adverb use and use more action tags to enhance the story's quality. And as mentioned earlier, the story is notorious for a lot of infodumping and describing pedantic details, which gets really annoying for fight scenes and when characters arrive in new locations. Readers don't need fight scenes where, to borrow and paraphrase Ellino's example that they quoted from Ch. 6, "they clashed swords 20 times." Literally every action in a fight scene is described in detail, which ironically has the effect of making the fight scenes drag for too long. As for how your overuse of "tell, don't show" affects the romance, all I'm going to say on it is that it sucks. Just like how the fight scenes feel repetitive and tedious, the romance does too. The first major component of that is because a lot of the characters are bland, while the second main component of that is that the dialogue is inorganic and stilted. It's sad that the story's characters are reduced to mere proverbial marionettes instead of being a cool cast of characters with good chemistry. In short, actions are rarely used to enhance characterization and are instead wasted on overly long fight scenes and transitions to new locations, and the overabundance of "tell, don't show" results in inorganic, stilted dialogue that further hinders attempts at characterization.
The "tell, don't show" writing and inorganic dialogue also affect the humor writing and comedy in the story, as a lot of the jokes simply don't land. A lot of the quippy dialogue isn't funny due to bad execution and because of how dull a majority of the characters are, and that's a problem that can be remedied if the characters have more distinct "voices" and personalities. And the "tell, don't show" writing also results in gags that work in visual mediums but not a text medium (what this story is), such as characters having exaggerated sweat drops or over-the-top expressions. To fix this, write humor within the confines of a text medium because visual gags honestly don't work in it, and use the humor to enhance characterization, have jokes contribute to the plot, or have the plot enhance the jokes. Humor writing is an often-overlooked component of writing, and this story is definitely lacking in it, so my advice is to make the story's comedy meaningfully funny and stop treating everything like a visual medium to make the humor work. Thirdly, there's instances where visual gags or sassy one-liners will be suddenly inserted into serious moments, which results in the jokes not landing because the timing is way off and creates tonal inconsistency. A lot of the serious moments in the story would benefit from no quippy one-liners or visual gags, so don't include them in the story's more serious moments; save them for before or after the serious moments to give the story levity.
In fact, the only scene in this story that doesn't have that god-awful "all tell, no show" writing style is Switchblade's final flashback scene in Ch. 13, where he and Megatron discuss what conquest is. Sadly, the writing quality of that scene is just mediocre instead of being outright well-written and good, so this story's "best" scene still has clumsy execution. A part of that is because Switchblade's own characterization is rather lacking because he's basically just Dreadwing 2.0 both personality-wise and in terms of what role he serves in the narrative (read: Megatron's honorable second-in-command who replaces Starscream). Another part of that is Megatron being a much less complex character in this story than he was in the show due to being robbed of his deeper, subtler characterization that he had. If the scene didn't have such bad execution, it would've been an interesting scene that added more depth to both Megatron and Switchblade as characters, especially Megatron because the flashback was a glimpse into what he was like during the beginning of the war before he became completely corrupt. In conclusion, the story's messy writing completely sabotaged the potential that this somewhat interesting scene had.
The second-biggest problem with this story is the bad characterization. Similar to the "all tell, no show" style of writing, the bad characterization is connected to just about every other glaring flaw that this story has. The main characters are boring as shit, with almost all of the heroes being unlikable because they're either jerks (e.g. Ironhide, Ben) or really one-note (e.g. Optimus, Arcee). For the villains, their being unlikable comes from the fact that all of the ones NOT named Megatron or Starscream are robbed of any chance to be more than cardboard cutouts, and even those two are robbed of some of the deeper characterization that they had in the actual show. Granted, that's par the course for some of the villains because ones such as Airachnid were one-note in the show, but that's a low bar to clear. Any attempt at character development falls flat because of the messy writing, meaning that these characters remain bland. Next up, another reason why most of the heroes are boring is because of how reactive they are. They often have so little agency that they just react to whatever the villains are doing in every chapter. To be frank, the characters aren't developed enough to care about them during fight scenes or emotional moments like heart-to-heart talks; plus, the character dynamics aren't interesting because it's hard to care about any of them sans Rook, Megatron, and Starscream. I've been given absolutely no reasons whatsoever to care about any of those cardboard cutouts, so I will have no emotional reactions whatsoever whenever Megatron, Quintessa, or any other villain hurts the heroes. And the same applies for all of the villains except for the 2 mentioned earlier because attempts to make them sympathetic are largely unsuccessful. For example, I didn't care about Firebreaker and Julie when Teresa died because they're too one-note to care about on top of Teresa herself being a badly-written and outdated autistic stereotype whose purpose in the narrative was to die, so I also didn't care for her; after all, Teresa was was basically a plot device and not even an actual character. I don't care about Quintessa either since she's a poorly-written villain while I actually tolerate Megatron to an extent, so really, just have her die off already like she should have way back in TFP III. Somehow, this version of her has even worse writing than Bayformers!Quintessa, who's already detested by most of the Transformers fandom for being a terribly-written villain.
As for the fight scenes, all of them are so dull and repetitive that I skim them or skip them entirely. The fight scenes barely have any strategy in them and boil down to the heroes hitting harder than the villains and using brute force to win. Even people who like action stories do not want a fight scene that drags for too long. Hell, most of the fight scenes could be significantly cut down or in some cases, outright removed, and the story would still be the same. Furthermore, the fight scenes have a predictable formula of x Another reason why the fight scenes don't work is the aforementioned lack of emotional investment in the characters because they're dreadfully boring. In addition, there's little variety with who fights who, as each main character almost always gets stuck fighting their arch-enemies. My advice for remedying this problem would be to have some variety in who battles who, even if the matchup is horribly skewed in one character's favor. That's also where terrain use comes in because if the hero/villain learns how to use it to their advantage, they can even the playing field and possibly beat their opponents in spite of being outclassed. I saw some terrain usage throughout the story, but it's still a rare occurrence, meaning that it's not enough to fix the flaw of uncreative fight scenes.
Moving on, another large problem with this story is how strictly formulaic it is. No matter how far any of the villains get in their plan, the heroes will win because of course they will. The aforementioned "villains are about to win-plot bullshit happens-heroes win by sheer dumb luck" can easily be applied to the overall story structure and not just fight scenes. It's even more egregious since the heroes are dumb as bricks in this story and only succeed by sheer dumb luck. Therefore, because of the heroes' collective stupidity, there's so many contrivances that happen to ensure that the heroes win, and those contrivances are used to railroad the plot into happening exactly how the Author wants it to instead of trying to find more organic ways that would flow better with the narrative and allow the plot to unfold in a less forced manner. Apart from that, the "tell, don't show" writing leads to obvious foreshadowing of important events, which results in them being very telegraphed and losing impact. The purpose of foreshadowing is to subtly allude to future events, so my advice is to have the clues be less in-your-face and make them more hidden. If I'm being truthful, I already know how the story will end because of how formulaic it is: the villains will lose when they're seconds away from winning because the heroes have massive plot armor. That's what happened in TFP IV, where Megatron and Quintessa's schemes failed due to several asspulls, so why would things be any different in this story (the direct sequel)? Oh, and just like in this story, they also teamed up before deciding to betray each other in TFP IV, so that's definitely gonna happen in this one. All and all, no matter how bleak the situation gets, the heroes will win in the end. I already know that the Secret Sanctuary will get attacked and that and the heroes' trust in each other will be damaged right before the Sanctuary is attacked because they're very obviously telegraphed, but when those events happen, the stakes will be severely undercut by the fact that I already know that the heroes will win.
I'll touch upon the point that characters have to be dumbed down for the plot to work. For instance, the heroes don't figure out that Megatron's human disguise, "Mort Agne," is literally a basic anagram of his name that even a 5-year-old could figure out. Let's just say that if the actual show writers for TFP were writing this, Megatron's cover as "Mort Agne" would be blown really quickly because the actual show writers knew to not dumb down the characters to make their plot lines work (barring some notable exceptions). Another excellent example is how none of the characters aside from Rook (and later Bluestreak) pressed "Guam" or "Ayame" on their flimsy cover stories and accepted them into their ranks a little too quickly. Second, there's also Quintessa's scheme, where she only got as far as she did because the heroes were too fucking stupid to realize what's going on right under their noses instead of Quintessa being a master manipulator. Quintessa being a master manipulator is an attribute that's repeatedly told to the audience but never shown, and the "tell, don't show" writing results in her coming off as an incompetent villain whose plan relies more on the fact that the heroes are dumb. Megatron actually has a more effective plan than Quintessa that isn't built on contrivances (unlike Quintessa's), but again, his plan really only got as far as it did because unlike the heroes, he has more than 2 functioning brain cells.
As for the retcons, there's a metric fuckton of them that make the story worse than canon material. Pharma being the creator of the Cybonic Plague and not Megatron is one I'd especially like to mention because of how unnecessary it was. Personally, I feel like Firebreaker still staying loyal to Megatron even after learning that he created the Cybonic Plague because he was raised to be a Decepticon, and then later turning on him after some character development and questioning his indoctrination would've been a more interesting plot. But oh well, that far better plot line will never be realized because "oh no, Pharma created it because he was an immoral evil scientist worse than Shockwave, and I needed an easy way to justify Firebreaker still being loyal to the Decepticons." And that plot line would've worked better because Firebreaker having to break free of childhood indoctrination, which is a more subtle and realistic form of brainwashing, is a gradual process and him leaving could've spurred character development from Switchblade too. After all, Switchblade's his adoptive parent and also has questioned Megatron on many occasions. There's other ones I'd like to mention, particularly a lot of the Ben 10-related and Miraculous Ladybug-related retcons, but that one stood out to me as one of the more egregious ones, mainly because it illustrates how retconning things up the ass actively harms the writing. As for the Miraculous Ladybug-related retcons, just look at Chapter 17 in its entirety because it's somehow worse than anything Thomas Astruc wrote, and that says a lot about how messy this story's writing is because Miraculous Ladybug is a dumpster fire of wasted potential.
Now that I'm done breaking down the many, many, MANY problems with this story, I'll give some feedback on how this story and future ones can be improved. Make the fight scenes shorter and give them plot relevance since a lot of them are just there to fill an action scene quota. Some of them do have plot relevance, like the Moonracer and Nautica ones, but the bigger problem in general is that the characters aren't developed enough for me to care about what happens to them. Another piece of advice for the fight scenes is to have the characters utilize strategy and the terrain in fights to make them feel less repetitive. My next talking point is simple—don't dumb down the characters to force the plot to move forward and force conflict and tension since that leads to the story having no real, palpable conflict. Additionally, please, pretty please fix your grammar. Getting a proofreader is valid and having comprehensible dialogue and narrations would be a huge step in giving the characters distinct "voices" and personalities. Plus, it helps the story flow better. Go back and edit old chapters. Tone down the overly-long descriptions for new characters and settings because part of the fun of reading something is letting the readers visualize what the characters and locations look like. Readers don't need every detail spelled out to them. Speaking of that, the foreshadowing of important events and the found family theme can be less in-your-face too, and stop having characters narrate the obvious. Spoon-feeding readers with information is insulting to their intelligence.
Anyway, I've written a proper novel-length review and rambled on enough, so congrats to any future reader who made it to the bottom. Go watch any piece of GOOD Transformers fiction because any of 'em that you pick are the exact opposite of this clusterfuck of a story.
My Leaked Interview with EmeraldKM/Their Counterargument
Power Master omitted the part where Emerald called him out for having intentions to antagonize them over a negative review in private, I decided to include the full interview for everyone to see. Also, it does take a special kind of ineptitude on his part to sabotage his own bullying effort by making sure that his intended victim couldn't see it. Anyway, the reason Emerald had to take their counterargument public was because they couldn't resolve the issue privately, so they reached out to me for an interview and me leaking said interview was a last-resort attempt for them to solve the problem civilly. Finally, EmeraldKM was shooed off of FF. net by some of Power Master's more hardcore supporters, and that's another reason why I'm sharing the full interview.
I interviewed Emerald about what happened after they left their review, and here's their response to my questions. I'm bringing this up because in light of the Author's response, Emerald gave me the go ahead to share their side of the story. I'm just the messenger boy here, so here's Emerald's answers that also serve as a handy little counterargument:
"It turns out that the Author rather angrily PMed me over me giving constructive criticism. I couldn't even see the PMs the first time around he sent me because he blocked me over the ordeal, but the fact that he blocked me gave his anger away. I wasn't expecting such anger when all I did was give constructive criticism. About 3 ½ weeks later, he PMed me again, with the second series of PMs called 'All Talk, No Bites.' That's incredibly ironic coming from someone who blocked me over a well-intentioned review the first time and sent over a second series of PMs 3 ½ weeks later with the intent to antagonize me and rant at me (the title gave his intentions away along with it being a series of 3 comments), and he blocked me so I couldn't see his rant-y PMs the second time around too. Let me repeat that: the Author PMed me a second time when I did nothing to provoke him during those 3 ½ weeks, and he still went through with it just to antagonize me. I'm also doing this because I know he's gonna rant at me in the Ch. 18 Author's notes because 2 times in private isn't enough for him. It's really his actions that have 'no bite' to them. Additionally, him getting pissy at me for giving his story a negative review was his choice and his alone. Although, I'll admit that my 'go watch GOOD Transformers fiction' comment in my review was completely uncalled for and I regret saying it. It was brutal honesty on my part rather than outright maliciousness, but yeah, it was still uncalled for. I'll also admit that the whole 'Megatron and Quintessa making an alliance' comment in my review was also partially incorrect: I re-read that section of Ch. 17 and it turns out that she just gave him a proposal. It's not a proper alliance per se, but he still agrees to her deal. Finally, my review the first time around wasn't done with any hostile intentions because I kept it focused on the story; even now, this statement of what happened after my review has no malice behind it, I'm just giving a report.
Now that I've gotten the sequence of events of what happened after my review out of the way, I'll clarify some things about my review since you asked for it, Isusceri. Aside from that, I'm clarifying things because I realize that certain parts of my review could've been explained better. Admittedly, the stuff about the Cybonic Plague retcon might be subjective, but just to be clear, my real point was not 'the Author should've done plot X instead of plot Y.' The realpoint I was trying to make by criticizing it was that there was a way to do Firebreaker's later development/subplot—the predictable nature of the story telegraphed it—and backstory without the poorly-written retcon, and it would've improved the storyline. Plus, if someone thinks about how that particular retcon meshes with 'Sick Mind,' it doesn't mesh well at all, despite the story's new explanation being one of many that the Author thought would be an improvement over the original episode's explanation. That's the problem with a lot of the retcons in this story: they're either poorly-executed to the point where it makes the already messy writing even worse, or they're unnecessary for plot progression if one actually thinks about all the other ways to execute said plot lines (like I did). As for the 'worse than Miraculous Ladybug' remark, I'm dead serious because the entire story, let alone Ch. 17, has all the same problems as the show, but they're exacerbated to ungodly annoying levels. It's ironic that a story that mercilessly bashed Miraculous Ladybug ended up having messier writing than that trainwreck. A better way to sum it up would be as I mentioned in the beginning of my review: this story takes the worst problems of Transformers: Superlink (aka Energon) and Michael Bay's movie series and amplifies them all the way up to 11.
Besides, I held myself back when I wrote my review because I didn't want to make it any longer than it already was. I could've also talked about the third-biggest problem in this story, which is that it has an over-bloated cast of characters and too many subplots. I did briefly mention those at the beginning of my review, but now, I'd actually like to explain why. The 2 main plotlines, Megatron's infiltration scheme and Quintessa's master plan, are severely hindered by having to compete with other subplots for focus time. That's something that hurts the story's pacing because that makes them drag for too long. Speaking of the subplots, they're either resolved far too quickly for any sort of satisfying payoff to happen or abruptly dropped with little explanation, which both result in anticlimaxes that are unsatisfying payoffs. As for the over-bloated cast of characters, the boring main protagonists and equally-generic main villains get a disproportionate amount of focus time while the supporting cast is largely underdeveloped, which results in a lose-lose situation where not only are the main characters and villains boring, but also the supporting characters. Secondly, that's a problem made worse by these characters remaining boring and bland because the character development has deplorable execution in this story. On top of underdeveloped characters, this story has no sense of cast economy because it doesn't know how to balance out the literal dozens of Autobots, the dozens of Decepticons, the dozens of Ben 10 characters, the Autobots' human friends, Eon and his crew, and on top of those several dozen characters, there's also Quintessa and her minions. Sadly, just like every other issue in this story, the over-bloated cast and too many subplots are problems that carry over from the 7 poorly-written prequels, with TFP III and TFP IV being the especially awful ones that I mentioned in my review. As for why I bothered to read all 7 of the prequels, it was for research purposes because I don't like doing anything unprepared, which included reading this story.
My review was pretty scathing, but despite the multitude of problems this story had, I did mention some positives—Switchblade's final flashback scene and 3 mildly tolerable characters out of literally dozens of boring ones—but unfortunately, even those had their drawbacks. The 3 mildly tolerable characters still didn't have good character writing and Switchblade's final flashback scene was held back from being completely good and well-written due to its clunky execution and the story's overall messy writing. Another positive I mentioned is that the story does have interesting ideas in it, but that positive has the drawback of them being held back by clumsy storytelling. I do feel bad that the positives I mentioned are ones held back by lackluster writing because this story had so much potential going for it. I also forgot to mention how the story's problems of bland characterization and the characters having so little agency can be solved: make them more proactive and decisive instead of having them endlessly react to the villains' schemes because giving them more agency allows for more opportunities to flesh out their relationships with other characters, to show their personalities and how they think, and it enables more opportunities to flesh out character flaws. Plus, that also solves the whole 'too underdeveloped for readers to care about' problem because giving them more characterization would make them more than two-dimensional cardboard cutouts.
Furthermore, I really was well-intentioned when I wrote my negative review because on top of finding things to praise despite those having drawbacks, I did mention ways that this story could be improved as well as future ones. However, as a creative writing major, this story actually has objectively poor writing, not just subjectively. On top of just about every problem I've already mentioned, but specifically the poor characterization and 'all tell, no show' writing where 'show, don't tell' (the golden rule of writing) is just completely fucking ignored, it's written like a TV show when TV and literature don't mix. Trying to translate the primarily visual medium of TV shows and movies does not easily translate into a text medium like literature (what fanfiction is), and there's no bigger proof of that than the overly long and trite fight scenes and descriptions. Another example is how the flashback scenes start with 'flashback' when that's a huge no-no in literature. The end of each chapter has a 'cast list' of voice actors and the characters they 'voice' (like a TV show), and each chapter is called an 'episode' (also like a TV show). Lastly, the grammar in this story is atrocious, so a beta reader that could refine it would actually help improve this story. Overall, this story would greatly benefit from having chapters re-edited so certain future plot points flow better, it'll get grammar that doesn't totally suck, removing filler like the Digimon chapter, and it gives old chapters more polished writing.
The story also has completely glacial pacing. I've already mentioned how the story has too many subplots that take away focus time from the main plot, but this story also contains filler. Case in point: the Digimon chapter is basically equivalent to an anime filler arc. It grinds the forward momentum of the 2 main plots to a screeching halt, and it's largely extraneous because only 4 important events happen towards the end of it: Blackout's death, Nautica learning about Moonracer trying to save her, Ben getting a Digimon form, and Professor Paradox does some infodump foreshadowing of future events. Annoyingly, the chapter can't be completely skipped over due to these 4 events keeping it from being entirely irrelevant, but those 4 events should've happened in other chapters because they're so out-of-place in a chapter that's mostly filler. To use an actual anime comparison to illustrate my point, there's this 12-episode anime called Ai Yori Aoshi where episodes 2-9 invariably throw in a scene or two of story or character development just to keep them from being entirely irrelevant, even when they were 95% of the filler. The Digimon chapter is just like those episodes: largely unnecessary because it's 95% filler, but 4 important events were invariably thrown in to make it so the chapter can't be skipped.
In regards to strictly formulaic plot, I saw the Secret Sanctuary's attack and the heroes losing trust in each other coming from a mile away ever since the beginning of the story because the foreshadowing for it is completely in-your-face rather than being subtle, and the same applies every plot development and twist in this story. The reason I called it out in my review was to illustrate just how predictable the story is because I know they'll inevitably happen now that the story's in its third act, even if those events won't happen for another few chapters. I could've gone further by tipping my hand about other heavily-telegraphed future plot developments. Although, there are some other allusions to those in my review and in this interview. Plus, the plot twists lose their impact and shock value because they're blatantly telegraphed. Plot contrivances are also pretty abundant in this story, with one notable instance being Switchblade and the other Decepticons using outdated military strategies that wouldn't realistically work (because said strategies are several centuries old) to beat the heroes and Quintessa's forces despite being at a massive numerical and strategic disadvantage, all so Megsy's little scheme wouldn't be derailed too early. The heroes just flounder around and are all like 'oh shit, Switchblade's beating our afts' instead of trying to adapt to Switchbalde's strategies after they realized he was outsmarting them. The Author dumbed the heroes down so they wouldn't beat Switchblade and the Decepticons in order to railroad the plot into happening exactly how he wanted it to happen instead of finding a more organic way that would've flowed with the narrative better. After all, the story's gotta keep the plot predictable and not have the heroes thwart the main villains' schemes until the climax of the story. The story being railroaded into happening in exact ways in order to accommodate a three-act structure rather than in more organic ways that'd flow better with the narrative actively harms the writing since it just makes the writing even more stagnant. The 7 prequels also had the same problem of being too formulaic to the point where it hurts the writing, which is why it's such a noticeable problem in this one.
As for Quintessa being incompetent, that's also not hyperbole and she's been ineffectual since TFP III. She's one of those villains like Clifford DeVoe from Season 4 of The Flash or Kronika from Mortal Kombat 11 where their strategic skills are lacking, but they'll still advance their evil schemes because the heroes are dumbed down so they can't thwart it until the story's climax, plot contrivances, and they're overpowered. All 3 villains are ones where being overpowered and the heroes having the collective intelligence of pond scum are what really compensates for their overall incompetence, as their strategic prowess is more 'tell, don't show' rather than the other way around. Megatron really is the only smart main villain in the story, but that's because his scheme could actually reasonably work even if every hero sans Rook and Bluestreak weren't fucking idiots in this story. If TOS4 had better writing where the characters aren't dumbed down for the plot to even start and later progress, Megatron's plan could still conceivably work even if the heroes were smart by him finding ways to outsmart them. Really, there should've been more than 2 heroes that caught onto the fact that there were infiltrators in their ranks. Then, there's Megatron choosing 'Mort Agne,' an obvious anagram, as a disguise, and the heroes not catching onto it until it's too late even when they really should've noticed that it was Megatron far, far quicker. In Ch. 17, Gabriel even yells the 'Mega' part of his name within earshot of the heroes and they still don't catch on. The plot only happening and progressing because the characters are dumbed down into idiots isn't the biggest problem in this story, but it's certainly the most annoying one.
Last but not least, I actually did care enough about the Author's feelings to actually give him constructive criticism and deliberately avoid personally attacking him as a person. Criticizing the poor writing quality of this story as well as calling attention to his antagonistic treatment of me are different matters altogether. I actually feel bad for giving this story a negative review and finding so many problems with it because it's composed of a bunch of interesting ideas that would actually be fun to read about if their execution wasn't so sloppy, more polished writing, and if the story's formulaic nature didn't severely undermine its stakes. Isusceri, I decided to let you share my interview answers with people in the hopes that both current and future readers would be able to see my side of the story and not just the Author's when he inevitably rants at me in the Ch. 18 Author's notes. After all, there's two sides to every story. Thank you for sharing mine."
