Cool Robotech story!

[Alpha 11]

I'm sure some of you have heard of a guy on the net and on these forums called Basara. He is a huge Robotech fan and a great fanfiction writer. He has been writing a cool Robotech story for years. If that is not good enough, its got many other sci-fi series that come into play in the story, along with the origal Macross! And to make things even better, Rifts! So if you want to read this awesome story, just follow the link below!

http://www.fanfiction.net/u/4502179/

Please leave a review for him!

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm sure some of you have heard of a guy on the net and on these forums called Basara. He is a huge Robotech fan and a great fanfiction writer.

Eh... yeah, he's a huge Robotech fan, and no doubt of that. All the same, I wouldn't go so far as to call him "a great fan-fiction writer". The best I could possibly say is that he's "a fan-fiction writer". After reading all five of his stories from Fanfiction.net, my reaction is that his writing is unnecessarily sparse in many places. He's not really painting a picture, his writing just sort of says "This is what happened" in dry, disinterested terms, not unlike a police report or the minutes of an unpleasantly dull committee meeting. The transitions are abrupt, and the whole affair poorly laid out, which ultimately set the pace to something vaguely resembling the rushed excuses of a kid who's trying to dodge blame for something. It also has that typical fan-fiction problem where the treatment of the familiar characters is way off, leaving you feeling like they were replaced by a new actor who's not really familiar with the role.

I think the thing I found the most amusing was the great big, poorly-informed, anti-Harmony Gold rant on the index page.

[...] If that is not good enough, its got many other sci-fi series that come into play in the story, along with the origal Macross! [...]

I'm not sure that's a good thing, honestly...

[Alrik Vas]

Stuff

But tell us how you really feel

[ArmySGT.]

I got as far as maybe paragraph two in the first story......... dry, disjointed, and adjective sparse. I did not care for it myself.

[Alrik Vas]

Yeah...i guess so. Too much exposition at the beginning. Give us the hook!

[Seto Kaiba]

But tell us how you really feel

Heh, I've never been one to shrink from giving a candid opinion.

(Honestly, with a fair amount of polishing this stuff could be OK... but it desperately needs that polish.)

I got as far as maybe paragraph two in the first story......... dry, disjointed, and adjective sparse. I did not care for it myself.

Yeah, I was throwing up warning flags around that point, but it's always been my habit to try and get through the entire thing. Something about stopping in the middle just doesn't feel fair to the author IMO. There've been a couple cases in which I've read titles that've gotten off to a rocky start and turned out to be great.

[Alpha 11]

How is he poorly informed? That was just a brief outline. He has had MANY talks over the years with other big time Robotech fans and whatnot. HG hasn't really helped at all with Robotech, but after listing to his arguments I tend to think he is closer to Robotech then what most others have come up with. And as for the story, yes, it isn't perfect, I'll be the first to admint to that, but their isn't really a lot out there, and I think he's done a half way descent job. I was just really excited to promote his story, that's all.

[Seto Kaiba]

How is he poorly informed?

In most of the usual ways one expects from a "veteran" Robotech fan... the usual attitude that anything that comes from Tommy, no matter how well-precedented in the show itself, must be wrong for no reason other than the insane belief that Tommy can never replace Carl is right up there among them.

He has had MANY talks over the years with other big time Robotech fans and whatnot.

Just because someone holds many talks with other fans doesn't mean they actually know what they're talking about. If it did, then the Robotech fanbase wouldn't have earned its richly deserved reputation for being chronically misinformed about everything from the OSM to the origins of Robotech itself. You don't have to look far to find virtual mountains worth of evidence of "big name" Robotech fans stating things that are patently untrue. Just looking back at the old (and not so old) posts on these forums, I've found more examples than I can comfortably list of fans who very clearly are making it up as they go, or are badly misinformed. You can even find a few whoppers in the Carl Macek interview over on Robotech.com, easily disproven bald-faced lies about Robotech and Macross.

Though my interaction with him has been limited, I've caught Basara549 in at least one significant screw-up, in which he claimed that Robotech's bad dialogue was the result of a poor-quality translation that Macek and company received from Tatsunoko... he was misremembering, the poor-quality translation was supplied by Tatsunoko, but only for the subtitled release of the original shows in the Perfect Collection, years after Robotech was dubbed. Similarly, his claims that the Macross timeline Robotech inherited is a retcon that doesn't fit Macross is simply untrue... and there are a number of issues with the rest of his assertions, though it is true that there are some significant issues with Robotech on the timeline front.

HG hasn't really helped at all with Robotech, but after listing to his arguments I tend to think he is closer to Robotech then what most others have come up with.

To be fair, Harmony Gold hasn't done a lot with Robotech... mostly because the Robotech franchise proved to be a failure in the 1980s, and they only started to redevelop the failed toy commercial they made at Revell's behest into their best imitation of a credible mecha anime franchise in the early 2000s. The fans have done more damage to the fanbase in the intervening years than Harmony Gold could ever hope to achieve. All their years of desperately over-analyzing the TV series, refusing to accept the existence of animation errors and trying to find deeper, hidden meanings in a series that was rewritten in far too much of a hurry for hidden meanings to exist, and all their bickering over the various contradictory, low quality licensed material not only drove many fans away from the franchise, it made it so that they actually HATE Harmony Gold for trying to make Robotech viable as a mecha anime title.

Entirely too many of the misconceptions and misinformation that have led Robotech fans so far astray over the years have come from those "big name" Robotech fans, and in some cases they're still at it.

And as for the story, yes, it isn't perfect, I'll be the first to admint to that, but their isn't really a lot out there, and I think he's done a half way descent job. I was just really excited to promote his story, that's all.

Oh well... I suppose promoting something low-quality simply because it has the Robotech name on it is consistent enough with the modern Robotech fan mindset that it shouldn't be surprising.

[taalismn]

I've followed his stuff for years now, and while I can't say it's the GREATEST writing, he is working from his original crossover campaign. It's true he's got a very definite idea of his own for Robotech continuity that parallels many of his favorite sci-fi writers(this becomes very much obvious as the story progresses into the Megaverse phase, where the Heinlein 'metaverse' is the basis).

To be honest? I've read, and even written, FAR worse.

[glitterboy2098]

Basara is a friend, and i've talked to him on some issues of robotech. we disagree on quite a bit of it actually (and probably will more now, since i rather like the direction HG is taking the franchise, minor quibbles over technicalities like the nature of reflex furnaces not withstanding), but his analysis of the show's content at least has the good trait of not being conformist to the fanon that had built up over the years. it's completely contradictory to the new HG stuff, but for the time he wrote it, was pretty insightful.

his fanfiction, while not particularly the most refined writing, has a certain drama to it, and some of the ideas he used in it are pretty creative.

[Alpha 11]

HG hasn't really helped at all with Robotech, but after listing to his arguments I tend to think he is closer to Robotech then what most others have come up with.

To be fair, Harmony Gold hasn't done a lot with Robotech... mostly because the Robotech franchise proved to be a failure in the 1980s, and they only started to redevelop the failed toy commercial they made at Revell's behest into their best imitation of a credible mecha anime franchise in the early 2000s. The fans have done more damage to the fanbase in the intervening years than Harmony Gold could ever hope to achieve. All their years of desperately over-analyzing the TV series, refusing to accept the existence of animation errors and trying to find deeper, hidden meanings in a series that was rewritten in far too much of a hurry for hidden meanings to exist, and all their bickering over the various contradictory, low quality licensed material not only drove many fans away from the franchise, it made it so that they actually HATE Harmony Gold for trying to make Robotech viable as a mecha anime title.

Entirely too many of the misconceptions and misinformation that have led Robotech fans so far astray over the years have come from those "big name" Robotech fans, and in some cases they're still at it.

And as for the story, yes, it isn't perfect, I'll be the first to admint to that, but their isn't really a lot out there, and I think he's done a half way descent job. I was just really excited to promote his story, that's all.

Oh well... I suppose promoting something low-quality simply because it has the Robotech name on it is consistent enough with the modern Robotech fan mindset that it shouldn't be surprising.

It's been that bad with the fans? I didn't know that. And I know things weren't perfect with the series, as it was written, and that there were mistakes in it. But over all, I thought things were somewhat consistent, even with some differences in the RPG, 1st ed. and book series, along with the series. And the story is that bad? I honestly think its better then Shadow Chronicles. If I have to rate them both, his stories, a 7 to 7.5 and SC a 6 to 6.5. Are your standeres that high or are mine just low? OR I'm easy to please? Which might be. I think I've said that in the past.

[taalismn]

Basara is a friend, and i've talked to him on some issues of robotech. we disagree on quite a bit of it actually (and probably will more now, since i rather like the direction HG is taking the franchise, minor quibbles over technicalities like the nature of reflex furnaces not withstanding), but his analysis of the show's content at least has the good trait of not being conformist to the fanon that had built up over the years. it's completely contradictory to the new HG stuff, but for the time he wrote it, was pretty insightful.

his fanfiction, while not particularly the most refined writing, has a certain drama to it, and some of the ideas he used in it are pretty creative.

I've certainly enjoyed his gaming material, and although the Freeman uber-lineage can sometimes be annoyingly close to Mary Sue territory(though not as bad as some of the other fanfiction that emerged from the same time period...I shudder at some the multi-xover self-inserts that I read while I was a newbie netscanner and fanfic reader), his development of a super-dimensional REF/UEEF has echoed into my own multi-dimensional societies and organizations.

[Seto Kaiba]

It's been that bad with the fans? I didn't know that.

If you were never active on Robotech.com, or older sites, you may have simply been lucky enough to miss seeing it. If you want some visceral examples, you can look back through many of the old threads here on the Palladium forums and find lots and lots of very obvious issues of BSing and such. I'll spoiler-tag a few examples for you, so anyone who doesn't wanna be reading that can skip it of their own accord.

Spoiler:

http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20243#p323831
The only SAP in Macross is the VF-2SS Valkyrie II's Super Armed Pack. There was never a SAP system for the VF-1.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20243#p323878
Same thread, different poster. Macross II is 80 years after Space War 1, not 50... and the Mardook (correct way to spell it) are not an ancient enemy of the Protoculture. By all available evidence (and the tacit admission of its director), they WERE the Protoculture.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20243#p324611
Same thread AGAIN, different poster. Pretty much everything this poster said is pure, weapons-grade BS. There's so much wrong with this post that correcting it would yield a post at least twice as long.

Spoiler:

http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=27076
Nobody seems to be able to get the name of South Ataria island correct, insisting it's everything from South Altair to South Italia.

Spoiler:

http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=22863
This thread has someone claiming, falsely, that the VF-1 Strike Pack is made from salvaged battle pod parts.

Spoiler:

http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=31664#p548566
Sooo much BS...

Spoiler:

http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=135246&p=2638289&hilit=antimatter#p2637942
A more recent example, and I don't mean to keep picking on glitterboy2098 like this, honest. Macross reaction power sources are not extracting energy from space.

Spoiler:

http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=127679&hilit=antimatter&start=50#p2473627
Same culprit, related subject... claiming Macross uses antimatter power plants, which it doesn't, and claiming that it came directly from Kawamori himself (which it didn't).

I could go on... and on... and on... but I won't, because that's boring.

And I know things weren't perfect with the series, as it was written, and that there were mistakes in it. But over all, I thought things were somewhat consistent, [...]

Not really, no... things were consistent thru the Macross Saga, because that'd been planned out ahead of time as a dub of Macross, but everything went to pot starting in episode 38 or so. The various licensed works were no better than an entirely random shot in the dark most of the time. Palladium was reduced to wild guesses when it came to the RPG, comic licensees frequently plagiarized whatever anime was popular, never mind if it was consistent with RT or not, the novels are so far off the mark that their fans argue (perhaps justifiably) that they should be considered an entirely separate universe altogether.

And the story is that bad? I honestly think its better then Shadow Chronicles.

There are degrees of bad, but honestly I'd put them on about the same level... Basara549's fan-fiction is bad, and Shadow Chronicles is, in the final analysis, some bad Sentinels fan-fiction that gained official status due to its author.

If I have to rate them both, his stories, a 7 to 7.5 and SC a 6 to 6.5. Are your standeres that high or are mine just low? And I'm easy to please.

I think you're probably, by your own admission, being pretty generous... I wouldn't give any of 'em higher than a 4.

[Deckard1973]

Will give him a quick read and add my $0.02, not that my cents matter.

[taalismn]

Well, he's one of the more PERSISTENT Robotech fan-authors. He seems determined to FINISH story arcs. All too often promising Robotech fanfiction fizzles out after hooking me...
Cyclone had a really good Stargate/Robotech fanfiction going that had great promise, had the Southern Cross play a major role in it, and promised to derail the Second Robotech War, but petered out on it to concentrate on Mass Effect/Robotech xovers(which was rather too bad, even though he seemed to be about to re-use a plot gimmick of 'let the female Zentraedi specialist get beaten up and hauled aboard the bad guys' spacecraft and she'll break her way out').

There was also 'HUmanity's Survivirs' by Arthur Hansen , which was a rockin' Robotech/nuBSG crossover that was worth reading, espeially in the extended cut version posted on SpaceBattles....However, just as it was getting really good, the author seems to have gotten bored with it...especially since he seemed to time-jump and introduce another xover into the mix. Still...Cylon Minmei was just plain EVIL...

There have been a number of completed stories "Love Looms in Wartime' was an amusing pre-SC take on Robotech, and the author did a good job of completing several Ariel/SCott romance stories.

There have also been a number of WRETCHED completed stories including one involving Lisa Hayes being stalked by a psychopath, in which the plot only worked because everybody was struck with idiot-flu(did these people never hear of SECURITY? Even the nascent GMP could have caught this guy within fifteen minutes of being informed by Gloval that somebody was menacing a flag officer!). THOSE stories hardly rate being called 'Robotech Fanfucs' because the universe seems defined by the characters' personal problems, to the exclusion of the world events and organizations around them that would have have affected them.

[Alpha 11]

Well, he's one of the more PERSISTENT Robotech fan-authors. He seems determined to FINISH story arcs. All too often promising Robotech fanfiction fizzles out after hooking me...
Cyclone had a really good Stargate/Robotech fanfiction going that had great promise, had the Southern Cross play a major role in it, and promised to derail the Second Robotech War, but petered out on it to concentrate on Mass Effect/Robotech xovers(which was rather too bad, even though he seemed to be about to re-use a plot gimmick of 'let the female Zentraedi specialist get beaten up and hauled aboard the bad guys' spacecraft and she'll break her way out').

There was also 'HUmanity's Survivirs' by Arthur Hansen , which was a rockin' Robotech/nuBSG crossover that was worth reading, espeially in the extended cut version posted on SpaceBattles....However, just as it was getting really good, the author seems to have gotten bored with it...especially since he seemed to time-jump and introduce another xover into the mix. Still...Cylon Minmei was just plain EVIL...

There have been a number of completed stories "Love Looms in Wartime' was an amusing pre-SC take on Robotech, and the author did a good job of completing several Ariel/SCott romance stories.

There have also been a number of WRETCHED completed stories including one involving Lisa Hayes being stalked by a psychopath, in which the plot only worked because everybody was struck with idiot-flu(did these people never hear of SECURITY? Even the nascent GMP could have caught this guy within fifteen minutes of being informed by Gloval that somebody was menacing a flag officer!). THOSE stories hardly rate being called 'Robotech Fanfucs' because the universe seems defined by the characters' personal problems, to the exclusion of the world events and organizations around them that would have have affected them.

Ah, Cyclone, got kind of a love hate thing going on with him. There are many a stories, some that you have named already, that he has stopped writing, and has not gone back to for a while. Some of them years. And yes, at least he keeps writing. That's one of the things I like about him.

[Seto Kaiba]

Ah, Cyclone, got kind of a love hate thing going on with him. [...]

Same here... but more for the reason that Cyc's well-intentioned attempt to get the MOSPEADA OSM out there was fatally undermined by trying to spackle over or amend various details with stuff from 1e, while still calling it the OSM. It's a golden example of the "big name fans" causing severe misconceptions that I alluded to earlier.

[Alpha 11]

Ah, Cyclone, got kind of a love hate thing going on with him. [...]

Same here... but more for the reason that Cyc's well-intentioned attempt to get the MOSPEADA OSM out there was fatally undermined by trying to spackle over or amend various details with stuff from 1e, while still calling it the OSM. It's a golden example of the "big name fans" causing severe misconceptions that I alluded to earlier.

You know what though, in the end, I think it's nice to have a few verietes of Robotech out there, that way we can pick and choice what we like best. Like me, I like to take the TV series, with the time line from the books, and add the Third Invid War to the end. I like it in all its shapes and colors.

[jaymz]

It's Robotech........which certainly not like Lord of the Rings with ONE to rule them all to be sure.....

[Seto Kaiba]

It's Robotech........which certainly not like Lord of the Rings with ONE to rule them all to be sure.....

's kind of ironic that you'd put it that way... as Harmony Gold's well-known position on the matter has been that the current official (animated) continuity IS that "one Robotech to rule them all" and everything else is just so much wasted paper.

EDIT: Does this mean Tommy Yune is Sauron?

[ArmySGT.]

EDIT: Does this mean Tommy Yune is Sauron?

More akin to Saruman......... Aspires to power but, it just isn't as capable as he dreamt.

[jaymz]

It's Robotech........which certainly not like Lord of the Rings with ONE to rule them all to be sure.....

's kind of ironic that you'd put it that way... as Harmony Gold's well-known position on the matter has been that the current official (animated) continuity IS that "one Robotech to rule them all" and everything else is just so much wasted paper.

EDIT: Does this mean Tommy Yune is Sauron?

I was referring more to how he fandom regards it not HG

[Seto Kaiba]

I was referring more to how he fandom regards it not HG

You say that like it's a good thing.

In what I can only describe as a stupidly ironic twist worthy of an M. Night movie, that is arguably one of the bigger factors behind Robotech's persistent failure to launch. The long-time fans are so fixated on their own personal Robotech fan-fiction that they got upset when Harmony Gold tried to reinvent Robotech with an official continuity in preparation for relaunching it as a credible mecha anime series, simply because it didn't jive with the assumptions and pet theories they spent so long cultivating. The resentment for the very idea of Robotech as a definable quantity only accelerated the franchise's slow implosion, ultimately strangling Robotech.com in the cradle and very probably killing the live action film and RTSC Part II.

More akin to Saruman......... Aspires to power but, it just isn't as capable as he dreamt.

Nah, I think he's more of a Sauron... he's fairly capable when he's given a free reign, but he's unable to act thanks to the interference of others.

[taalismn]

[

More akin to Saruman......... Aspires to power but, it just isn't as capable as he dreamt.

Nah, I think he's more of a Sauron... he's fairly capable when he's given a free reign, but he's unable to act thanks to the interference of others.

"I'd have succeeded if not for the meddling of those damn fans hobbits kids!"

[jaymz]

Seto - do you forget you're preaching the choir leader?

[Seto Kaiba]

Seto - do you forget you're preaching the choir leader?

Considering the amount of press I get from Robotech fans for pointing things like that out, if you're the choirmaster then doesn't that make me the bloody pope?

[taalismn]

Seto - do you forget you're preaching the choir leader?

Considering the amount of press I get from Robotech fans for pointing things like that out, if you're the choirmaster then doesn't that make me the bloody pope?

Only if you're using the papacy(fractious, aggressive, argumentative, often leading armies, just as often run into exile) of the Middle Ages as the standard model...

[Seto Kaiba]

Only if you're using the papacy(fractious, aggressive, argumentative, often leading armies, just as often run into exile) of the Middle Ages as the standard model...

Yeah, that was back when the papacy was like a mobster movie. Good times.

The fanfic front's kind of left Robotech in one of those metaphorical "a house divided cannot stand" situations, tho... and in a very real way it's killing Robotech by cultivating an adversarial attitude between the fans and the creators.

[taalismn]

Only if you're using the papacy(fractious, aggressive, argumentative, often leading armies, just as often run into exile) of the Middle Ages as the standard model...

Yeah, that was back when the papacy was like a mobster movie. Good times.

The fanfic front's kind of left Robotech in one of those metaphorical "a house divided cannot stand" situations, tho... and in a very real way it's killing Robotech by cultivating an adversarial attitude between the fans and the creators.

If Shadow Chronicles hadn't had a storyline that echoed of BSG....

[NMI]

Before this drops further into flatout insulting a writers work, let's just end this with, you dont like his work as it is and leave it at that.

With that said, I am locking this thread.