Additional Answers
Alright, this section is for stuff I didn't cover in the reaction itself. Aside from Emerald allowing me to leak my interview with them so they could use it as a counterargument, there was another reason I made this commentary and decided to make Emerald's full review and counterargument public knowledge. The other reason was because Power Master lied to his own fans by omitting the part in Emerald's counterargument/my interview where they called Power Master out for trying to antagonize them in private over a negative review. You see, I despise treachery, and him lying to fans who trusted him to tell the truth is a treasonous act. I can understand the logic in him stabbing Emerald in the back and dismissing their criticisms and legitimate apology for the one (unintentionally on Emerald's part) insensitive comment that he blew a fuse over because he straight-up didn't like or trust them, but his own fans? Lying to them about his own role in his story's cancellation is just low.
For starters, I'm aware that EmeraldKM also compared True Omniverse Season 4's take on Miraculous Ladybug unfavorably to the actual show, even after they admitted that Miraculous Ladybug is a dumpster fire that had lots of wasted potential and that Thomas Astruc is a bad writer/director himself. In general, reviewers are allowed to do that because in fanfiction criticism, people are gonna say "X is better than canon" or "Y is worse than canon." Why? Because they can, honestly. Also, if a story's worse than canon material, then reviewers have every right to explain why they think that. The bigger issue with Power Master being appalled at Emerald comparing him to bad directors was that Power Master lied about disliking Michael Bay to try and discredit Emerald, not that he was upset about Emerald saying that his Miraculous Ladybug rewrite chapter was a worse product than the actual show.
The stuff about the Cybonic Plague retcon: Emerald said it honestly wasn't necessary and criticized it for that. I agree with Emerald's stance, but for a different reason. Power Master could've had Pharma create the Red Rust virus or a different one while Megatron created the Cybonic Plague, and still kept Firebreaker's backstory intact. Like, you honestly could just swap out Cybonic Plague for Red Rust virus and still get the same result of "Firebreaker's parents and everyone aboard the refugee shuttle he was on minus him got killed off by Pharma experimenting on them with the Red Rust virus." Also, Megatron creating the Cybonic Plague despite killing off Pharma for creating the Red Rust virus or a different one also helps underscore the first point Power Master was trying to convey without the stupid retcon: war erodes peoples' morals to the point where they resort to the exact same unethical tactics that they were opposed to. Sentinel Zeta Prime giving Pharma the go-ahead to make said Red Rust virus and test it on refugees so he could use it against the Decepticons still keeps the secondary point of governments condoning unethical things during wartime intact too. In summary, the retcon wasn't necessary to convey the two points even though Power Master had the retcon happen to do so. Similarly to Emerald, my main criticism here isn't "do this plot instead of that plot," but rather that there was a way for Power Master to do the stuff he wanted to without the retcon, which made it unnecessary.
This fourth point is the last one on the addendum because I covered most of them in my reaction. Emerald being annoyed about how the only autistic character was written in a stereotypical fashion due to being autistic themselves is something that they're allowed to be annoyed at. Teresa is written in a weirdly infantilizing way despite her being 17-years-old, with there being several moments where she acts more like a toddler than a teenager, and as Emerald mentioned in their review, she's a plot device and not an actual character. She revolves around other characters the same way a satellite orbits around a planet: she's Julie's long-lost twin sister, she's Firebreaker's love interest, she's someone whose lie detector powers exposed Chloé and Lila as frauds, she's someone for the Decepticons to torture and for Gabriel/Shadowmoth to akumatize, and finally, she's someone who existed just to die in the end so Quintessa and Megatron could further their schemes. Power Master could've done more research on autism and what it actually was because how it's depicted in TOS4 is that it's a disability where people "need to be treated with kiddie gloves in social situations and will have panic attacks when they're overwhelmed" along with Teresa being a savant who's good at art, which is a very limited view of what autism actually is. Teresa's also called mentally unstable multiple times throughout chapter 17 just because she's autistic, which is honestly just really fucking ableist. Speaking of Teresa being Firebreaker's love interest, he's an alien robot who's millions of years old while she's 17. Not only is that relationship skeevy for that huge age gap, but as it turns out, someone being older than 18 being in love with a 17-year-old is a sexual paraphilia called ephebophilia, where someone over 18 has a primary sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents (minors who are 15-19 years of age). There's also the matter of another issue that Pokémon fans refer to as "Hot-Skitty-On-Wailord-Action" because he's a tall alien robot who towers over a 17-year-old girl who's in the 5-foot range. So yeah, Firebreaker being in love with Teresa was all kinds of wrong, but mostly because he was romantically attracted to a minor. What a sympathetic character. Bravo, Power Master. Bravo.
Power Master's Version of My Leaked Interview/Emerald's Counterargument
You know how I pointed out how Power Master deliberately hid information about his intentions to antagonize Emerald over a negative review and acting on them in the previous chapter? Here's his version of Emerald's counterargument featured in his Ben 10 True Omniverse Message, which as you'll notice, looks different compared to the full version of said counterargument that I also included in the previous chapter. This is just me providing more evidence of said omission of information because the previous chapter was already pretty long as it was.
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.