Let me preface this by saying, I understand. In a modern society, sites like twitter and blogger have a significant impact on our ability to report profound events and provide coverage of injustices, political debates, etc, that may otherwise not be possible given previous limitations. None the less, I find that there is something perhaps unprofessional and even almost
dirty about integrating Twitter and other social networking sites in to the high-profile club of the Standard MLA Format.
Social networking, separate from the old online office meeting tools, began as and is still often considered a gathering place for informal communication amongst peers and/or friends. The general demographic for these sites was hipsters and soon local small town businesses owned by said hipsters. When I say hipsters, I do not mean it in today's nearly derogatory sense but in a way of saying that these were mostly relatively young individuals who despite having grown up in the ideal "old fashioned" environments of their caretakers, had chosen to embrace the more mechanized and romanticized aspects of living: computers, the world wide web, the further indulgence of freeware which would take them far beyond just romanticizing, online social media, and so on. Note names like Josh Harris, Steve Jobs, and Linus Torvalds. Further down the road, as was to be expected, larger businesses and corporations would see in this a great marketing opportunity.
Let us skip ahead two decades. placed in an office building. Two men, each in different cubicles, are conversing with each other via Facebook, causally throwing ideas back and forth. Bare in mind, here is where my opinion on the subject really comes in, potentially blending any knowledge and ignorance I may have on the issue.
The two men decide to officially share this idea with the outside world. To then take the agreed upon idea and place in the same area as one might say, "John Doe likes GoatsplosionWorldTour2012. 5 others like this," seems to me highly inappropriate. It is unprofessional to place it on the same table. This would be much like instead of publishing a remarkable piece on the overpopulation of jellyfish in a respected journal, slipping it in to a pulp magazine between a reprinted short story by Clark Ashton Smith and a film review written in the style of H.P. Lovecraft because, "...well, these kids, you know? I figure it's the right demographic. I mean, Cthulhu has tentacles, jellyfish have tentacle, it's great exposure," and to then further encourage this by integrating the citation of such source(s) in to the standard MLA format. It seems a bit improper to cite something your read on twitter, a pulp magazine, or any otherwise aberrant or eccentric source.
Absolutely any and all opinions are welcome on the subject.
Here is the link in pertaining to Tweets in MLA: http://ht.ly/9qhqK
I'd like to pitch an idea to you; DLC, or
preferably stand-alone tie-in games made up of entire open world
campaigns for characters with potentially intriguing side stories within
the Transformers: WFC/FOC universe.
These side stories would not necessarily require the player to be overly
familiar with either of the fathering games as while they would add to
the world, their stories would be for the most part, self-contained.
Amongst many of the more obvious choices, a less appreciated character
I've given much thought to is Wheelie. The setting would be [The Sea of
Rust] Rust Sea. Thanks to two notable comic book story lines,
Wheelie has established himself as a post-apocalyptic
survivor of the sort. The Sea of Rust would prove a great map for a
survival
based campaign in which, as Wheelie, one takes on
various missions and whatever
threats may loom throughout the rust storms caverns, and the, by now,
mostly abandoned Hydrax Plateau while working towards
his main objective; collecting enough parts to build a
properly functioning ship to get him off of Cybertron.
There are so many possibilities here! Imagine test
piloting several
variations of vehicles you've built for space travel while scavenging for
resources and fuel, and then finally escaping to some other planet! Perhaps
"Jungle
Planet"
(which could use a better official name, in my opinion, unless it is left
unnamed) where perhaps he'll get help from the locals
after attempting to earn
their trust, thus getting them to help fix his crashed ship with whatever
limited resources he may not be aware exist on the planet,
and eventually land on what he believes to be the remains of Cybertron
but
turns out to be Quintessa! Honestly; Wheelie has a
necklace of Sharkticon teeth. He didn't buy that. He made it.
I say
let's give this bot the recognition he deserves. There is potential for a
large overall story here. In concept art for Transformers: Fall of
Cybertron, several larger ancient bots are seen protruding from the
ground. If the route is taken, it could be stated that while on
Quintessa, Wheelie discovers that the Quintessons, at some point
in Cybertron's early history invaded and built
the giant bots as guardians (see season 3 of G1) to watch over the
newly
birthed Cybertronians whom they have at this point in
history enslaved. Of course, the Quintessons would still lie and
insist that they created the transformers themselves,
when even the transformers (or just Wheelie, in this case) finds this
lie to be contradictory to what he knows, despite no
new bots having been spawned from the "Well of Allsparks" in the past
few hundred years. This idea can be extended, allowing any bot
his/her/it's own moment in the spotlight.
