Talk: The Return of the Transformers

I had forgotten how much I loved this story. It's quite possibly the most adult Transformers fiction ever published - it's on a whole different level from basically everything else. -LV 03:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh yes. And it's subtle too, it affects you when you're reading it (I found it disquieting) but the reasons why are hard to pin down-- at least until you're writing a summary and you realize that everything is tying together so beautifully. Optimus Prime is at his absolute asshoiliest here (and in the UK, that's saying a lot) to the point that Jetfire ALMOST calls him on it. The failings of almost every character involved it what makes the story works. We never have the anagnorisis moment- because it's about the characters reaching for the possibility of learning, change and growth... and failing to achieve it- and mostly knowing they've failed-- except when not knowing makes it worse. Like Prime, big an ass as he was here, if he's learned of the Aerialbots problems, he probably would have done something to force them to grow, instead his ignorance leaves them struggling together in the dark, bumping into things and wondering why it hurts.

It's a great story. Bleak though. -Derik 04:58, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Is this story online?

Breaking only partially from our emo-kid lovefest-- is this story online anywhere? As it's unlikely to ever be collected, I'd like to link to it. -Derik 05:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Keywords

Okay, interrobang has deleted the keywords section. I think is serves a useful purpose- it tells you what articles on the wiki have material directly relating to this story. In this case that quite different from the 'major characters' list. In some cases (though not this one) this section has included links to terms from the story to inconsequential to stop the synopses to mention. (Cybertronian units et al.) Is such a section useful, or should it go? -Derik 21:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

It seemed like a pointless section to me. What is an example of a keyword section that you think is valuable? --Steve-o 00:46, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I would call a keyword any article which has content directly derived from this story.

So while Optimus Prime may be mentioned and linked to by several hundred stories, he'd only be a keyword if this story did something significant enough with him to merit a sentence or three and a storylink in the Optimus Prime article. Characters aside-- terms, locations etc that come from this story are keywords. Hic, Jour etc don't have a place to be linked to in The Magnificent Six! summary- but they surely come from that story, and ought to be linked to.

I see Interrobang removed the keyword section from Mag6 too, with profanity, turning several articles whose only link came from that keyword section into Orphans— articles which it is impossible to find without searching for them. And since the terms defined there clearly dont' show up in the text of any article-- or they'd be linked to-- you'd never run into the term to prompt such a search.

So for Interrobang, I will explain; the point of the "fucking stupid the 'Keywords' section" is to not orphan fucking stupid pages.

I'm restoring it now on both articles. -Derik 18:15, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The obvious solution seems to be linking to them in the plot summary in the first place, creating the appropriate prose to include the links in, instead of creating a pointless and ugly section. But, NO! We must make everything pointlessly complicated cuz' Derik likes it! (Are you actually getting upset over "fucking"?) Interrobang 21:56, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

And not finding articles without searching? There are things called categories. Interrobang 22:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Categories or not, they're considered a non-optimal way of finding articles. (Translation: a way not to find articles.)

I believe using Cybertronian terms like "vun" is inherently antiethical to the 'summary' format. Specialized terminology should not be part of an easy-to-understand event summary.

I don't insist that things be pointlessly complicated- but I do think that it'd be nice for story pages to have a section saying 'what came from here!'

Couched in less friendly terms- I think it's not nice to orphan ages by deleting sections for 'style considerations' without putting it up for consensus. -Derik 00:29, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Vun? "The shockwave blows the Autobots enough vuns beyond Yuss's limits." Whoo, there. If the reader doesn't know what a "vun" is, they're more than free to click the link. Interrobang 03:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

So, your answer to my "Summaries should be pain English to they're easy-to-understand" is- "Things you have to click to other articles tog et the definition of are easy to understand!"

Christ, at least argue 'I don't feel summaries have to be immediately accessible.' It's not like we've ever had a discussion about. Sayigng that the use of a specialized argot doesn't impair readers' ability to understand the events described is... a notably weak argument. -Derik 03:46, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Oy. I agree with Derik that injecting something like "vun" into a summary -- especially if it's for no reason other than to provide the vun page with a link from its source story -- is not a great idea. As he says, the summaries should be accessible. On the other hand, I am only now starting to understand why he created the keywords sections in the first place. It is, seemingly, just to make sure that articles which storylink to episode X have a reciprocal link from X. Is that right, Derik? I can see the value of something like that... but I think "keywords" is not an appropriate name for something like that. Especially since "Optimus Prime" is one of his examples. That isn't what I think of as a "keyword". And even though I see the value of it, I'm a little reluctant to say we should institute it as a new section to our fiction pages, especially since the wiki software already provides the "what links here" tool which accomplishes basically the same thing. (Although admittedly that will be missed by most readers and the results are not sorted in any sort of rational way.) Even if we came up with a suitable name for that section, I don't think it would be possible to maintain it faithfully unless we didn't even *try* to make it a complete linkback list, and only included things that otherwise don't have "many" links to them, whatever that means. In the case of something like Vun, I think a sentence in the trivia section would serve perfectly well, providing the link Derik wants and not messing up the summary with jargon. --Steve-o 04:14, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Optimus Prime would be an example of something that would not go on here. Jetfire would... if his article had a section abotu the time he was assigned to play Asshole to the Aerialbots in order to stress-test them. (It doesn't, it maybe should.) The Keywords section is supposed to list articles which have content directly derived from this story. 9 out of 10 stories which Optimus Prime appears in will not do anything with him meriting even a sentence in the Optimus Prime article itself. The 1 in 10 that do... Optimus would be in their Keywords section.

Since stories underly (almost) all character and universe entries, it's a list of of which articles the events in this story has directly fed content into. As a side benefit that acts as a catchment for articles like Vun.

I wouldn't want to apply this in a draconian fashion.... but I think a list saying "Quite aside from who had minor appearances, these are the fellows for whom this story did anything worth noting" is useful. We argued for a long time over how to define minor vs. major appearaances in episodes and comics- this sidesteps the issues by making worth-noting-on-their-own-article the standard.

It's kinda like how a single node on a tag cloud provides a glimpse of the underlying interconnectedness of a complex archive... if that means anything. -Derik 04:34, 19 September 2007 (UTC)