BW Media Spotlight’s Best Of Year 16

The year: 2008. After having been stuck home with inflammation from Crohn’s Disease I discovered blogging. People actually thinking about storytelling the same way I did, even if we had different views about it. I had only found that with newsgroups and Transformers previously. There were Transformers but also nostalgia, comics, cartoons, and other things nobody in my friend group or my family really discussed very often. After my second hospital stay I found myself replying in the comments and realizing I was almost writing articles. So in November of that year I started my own website. You’re reading it right now unless someone stole or reblogged this article.

Every year around this time I do a “best of” for the year. The anniversary officially was Sunday, but that’s when I do the comic and then the chapter by chapter book review on Monday. So for once I’m late due to scheduling instead of forgetting I should do one of these.

Somehow I managed to miss very few posts this year. I did have to keep an eye on my dad as he went through a milder version of the diverticulitis that ruined my 2016 and attempts at a week off coincided with me being unwell or otherwise distracted, but I managed to stick to the schedule this year. I even started a couple new article series and added a “BW Prose” section to link all my various storytelling attempts not in comic book form, to join the comic archives I already had. I also just finished a book I ended up spending the whole year plus going over, not usually a curse of reviewing a book a chapter a week, but there you go.

Now it’s time to look back at the articles that I still remember, ones I plan to reference a lot, or just ones that I felt necessary or just fun to make. What makes this year’s list of article links? I decided to break them down into categories after writing the whole list, so they may not all be in proper chronological order. Kind of like my comic collection.

BW Prose Additions or “How I’d…”

• How I’d Write The Transformers’ Origin Story & Transformers: How I’d Write Cybertronian Life: I wasn’t intending to make a series out of it. (I have part three planned; I just need time to write it) It just kind of happened that way. After a TJOmega video about the Primus and Quintesson origins I was inspired to create one that merged the comic and cartoon backstories. Finally tired of the current “forced caste system” history that has dominated Transformers continuities in the 2000s I started writing my take on Cybertronian culture, built on being shapeshifting, living robots and using elements of various continuities, with the focus on the toys. For the second one I’ve created a chronicler character to tell this Cybertron’s story. It’s also why I started the BW Prose archive after someone had trouble finding these articles after I told her about it.
• What If He-Man And She-Ra BOTH Grew Up On Eternia?: A little bit of fictional theorizing I forgot I did, so I just added it to the BW Prose archive. Let’s say Hordak didn’t escape to Etheria with Adora and she grew up with Adam? That means both siblings would be there to fulfill their destiny as She-Ra and He-Man respectively. What would their roles be in this new dynamic? (Hint: the swords’ names hold the key.)
• A Way To Fix The “Rose Doctor”: I’m not sure if I should put this in the prose archives or not. In practice it’s kind of the same as other “how I’d write” articles but it’s more me finding a way to use the final middle figure from Davies and Disney+’s last dance together on Doctor Who to fix what the show has been doing wrong the past few years and course correct.
• BW Late Nite: How I’d Make A Late Night Talk Show: After the whole Charlie Kirk incident (which I wrote about the rather horrid response to by certain factors of the entertainment industry) and the fallout of Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary vacation cancellation joined with Steven Colbert losing his show altogether once the contract runs out, further information that few people even watch late night TV anymore. It’s like soap operas, only being there out of some sense of tradition among a dwindling audience. It did get me thinking about how I would have run a talk show back when they mattered, if only to get something more fun to talk about in the late night debacle.

Writer’s Guide and Pitches

• Doctor Who: 1963 BBC Reports & Notes> Prologue: The start of a completed article series in my continuing look at writer’s guide, pitches, and early concepts of my favorite shows. The things I learned about what led to the show we know and used to love is quite fascinating. As the series went on I got into production notes, the BBC learning what science fiction is, and a far different concept for The Doctor and his first three Companions.
• CBS Transformers prologue: Many Years Ago: A currently running article series as of this writing. Once things calmed down in my life I was able to start going over the drafts attempting to bring the Transformers cartoon to CBS. Currently I’ve finished the first draft, gone over why it didn’t win, and now I’m going over the notes between the first and second draft before going over the second failed attempt. And while I’m pouring over these newly found backstage notations they dropped the huge binder of files for an intended unified media continuity, the so-called “Aligned Continuity” that I’m going to have to go over for that homebrew Transformers lore as well as the same reasons I do these articles.

General commentary

• Continuity Vs Anthology: I still maintain that continuity is important in a series whether or not it’s in a shared universe. Marvel Studios used to be good at that and now even the comics are struggling because writers are more interested in their stories than their characters’ stories, even the ones they create. That’s not a series, that’s an anthology.
• Defending The So-Called “Haters” Of The 2020s: Speaking of typos (it’s been a rough year and I have no editor), there’s a couple here, but even this far after I did the article, some commentators I like are still accusing other commentators I like of being “grifters” and not actually believing in what they say because they’re only after “hate clicks” and riling up the audience. I strongly disagree, at least among the people I follow.
• Did Losing Cel Animation Ruin Anime: Honestly, I’m only including this one because the discussion came up again that the tool is what has led to the “sterile” and “clean” look of modern Japanese animation. I instead show it was more of style choice, though this one I have no plans to revisit.
• Why We Need Santa Claus: As we prepare for the Christmas season, and as we prepared back then, a supposed Peanuts strip has the guy who believes in the Great Pumpkin asking why we need Santa Claus, while the “experts” also try to convince parents to drop it. I challenge all of them. I’m not afraid of that security blanket!
• Pet Character Syndrome Vs Hated Character Syndrome: A “pet character” is a character the writer loves so much that they can’t bring themselves to have anything bad happen to them even when they deserve it. “Hated character” is the exact opposite, and both lead to terrible characters and bad stories.
• The Fallacy Of “Media Literacy”: I debated with myself a bit on putting this one up. It’s not a strong article, it’s not timeless (I hope), and it isn’t the examination I prefer putting on this site. In the end it just felt like a discussion worth having as I really hate this term.
• The Third-Person Narrator: The Dying Art: There’s a huge pushback by writers who think they’re more “modern” by not using an external narrator in comics and other media. I think they’re wrong. Sometimes the outside narrator is important to good story flow.
• Disney’s “Man Problem” Isn’t DEI, It’s SEECA: I would have given this article a better name and set-up if I knew I’d be returning to this acronym so much after writing this article. The original emphasis was on Disney surprised that their boys brands weren’t attracting boys after given then to boy-hating women from the everything for meeeeeeeeeeeee crowd, but that’s only one of the reasons things are failing. This acronym goes over the five groups, only one of which involves the culture war, that is behind all the failings even before “woke” was a discussion topic and 2016 happened.
• Trope Shark> The Girlboss Versus The Heroine: Now that “girlboss feminist” is an official trope I get to dissect everything wrong with this trope, while trying to convince the haters that not every female protagonist is a girlboss because the current girlbosses have ruined the reputation of heroines.
• Examining The Terms “Science Fiction” And “Fantasy”: This one is more an interesting curiosity in how we use and combine the terms alongside other genres of fiction.

Comics

• Is Wonder Woman REALLY One Of DC’s Big Three Heroes?: They say that Wonder Woman is part of the “Trinity” of DC heroes with Superman and Batman, but when you really look at her standing you can’t tell. She had the one good show and a bunch of team-ups and questionable movies. Even in the comics can’t make the argument. Remember, I like Wonder Woman and she does deserve better, but I’m not convinced DC isn’t just putting her in there for the PR.
• Five DC/Marvel Crossovers I’d Like To See Now That They’re Getting Along Again: Why stop with Batman meeting Deadpool? If Disney and the current Warner Brothers Discovery are willing to play nice again with their comic companies after a falling out between the publisher’s head honchos a few years ago, why not more? Here’s my list, and advocating the return of Axel “Access” Asher.
• Garth Ennis And Why Hating Superheroes Is A Bad Way To Write Superheroes: When “hated character syndrome” spills over to an entire type of character, maybe you shouldn’t be writing it. This praise of The Boys gets confusing the more you read it so I have to comment on it.
• Shazam And Supergirl: How DC Broke Billy Batson & Kara Zor-El: When cynics get their hands on two heroes who managed to overcome their tragedies by not letting their losses change who they are and try to look to a better future, it proves my point that some people are wrong for certain jobs.
• Tempering Expectations About Public Domain Superman: Before you start putting together those “better” Superman stories for when he hits public domain, you may want to read this first. There are some stipulations you need to be aware of.
• Four Color Combat!> Gorilla With A Fist: I miss the old days of the Friday Night Fights, so I came up with an article series that allows me to show off cool comic book fights scenes again. Now I just need time to make more.

TV/Streaming & Movies

• The Modern Horrification Of Childhood & Can We Stop Making Kids Stories Into Slasher Flicks?:  I probably should have done more groupings by topic but this is a long list to rush out and I only had so much time to proofread before this came out. expect a few team-ups in this article. These two are an example of the need to revisit topics because it comes up again and sets me off again. In this case it’s watching childhood innocence being turned into horror movies. It gets worse when something goes into public domain and the first thought is “let’s make a slasher movie out of it”. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. The fact that ALL the movies have to be slashers or slasher variants also irks me because it lacks creativity.
• How Christopher Nolan Altered How We See Batman…For The Worse: I’m not trashing the (first two) Nolan Batman movies. What I’m saying is that Nolan got so much of Batman wrong that he started the same trend I noticed that year with Spider-Man. That article isn’t on this list because I had too many typos and I’m embarrassed by it. Consider that one an honorable mention.
• Should The Marvel Cinematic Universe Be Rebooted Or Destroyed? & A Reboot Will Not Save The Marvel Cinematic Universe: Another same year revisit. I think you can guess the discussion for this one from the titles.
• Why I Say Batwheels Is The Most Accurate Current Batman Adaptation: Not the best, but of all the versions of Batman currently outside the comics, the little kids show about Batman’s secretly talking car seems to understand the assignment better than any of the movies put out recently or anything that Amazon Prime has hit us with. I even used it later as one of the kids Batman shows that proves kids shows don’t have to be crap.
• BW Vs Bleeding Fool> Superheroes STILL Don’t Need A Break & BW Vs Bleeding Fool> You’re Burying The Coma Patient: Even the sites and commentators I follow are now saying that we need a break from superheroes entirely. A slow down? Maybe, at least until we can find people who know how to make superhero stories. However, the genre’s been with us so long it just needs better treatment. The follow-up a tweet about letting the genre and the decades old characters die and go away was not pushed back against enough so I had to speak up.
• Existing IP Alone Will Not Save Hollywood: Trying to save your studio by pushing stuff already proven to be a fan favorite and get butts in seats doesn’t work if you hand those IP over to people more interested in their own projects than in the things that made those intellectual properties successful in the first place. I even ended up with an unintentional follow-up about the slow death of long-running franchises.
• Writing Clips Versus Writing Movies & A YouTube Clip Does Not A Movie Make: YouTube and Tiktok have made clips popular, but writing just to have a scene in a long form story format rather than a short story also makes for bad storytelling. Guess what some writers are doing in comics and movies right now. I didn’t even realize I came back to this one in the second article, which is a shorter and more fun version of the same commentary. That’s how badly Hollywood is screwing up. I don’t even remember the things I called them out on because I repeat myself so much I don’t know what I missed.
• Henry Cavill Cannot Save Superman: Look, I know Cavill really wanted to play Superman, and I wish he could have gotten the chance instead of the Snyder version, but for the many, many, MANY sins james Gunn did to the Man Of Steel, not bringing back the guy from Man Of Steel wasn’t one of them. It would still have been James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn, just without David Corenswet joining Cavill in not getting to play in a proper Superman movie.
• Iron Man, Ironheart, And That “Box Of Scraps”: In the Ironheart series, Riri complains that she can’t build a better armor than Tony Stark because she doesn’t have his money when he made it. Using the line of Obadiah Stane noting that Tony built his first armor “in a cave with a box of scraps” was used by critics to show how dumb she is. They didn’t go far enough. If anything, Riri had more advantaged with her first armor than Tony Stark did without a penny to her name. And he didn’t need thievery and Mephisto to do it.
• No, James Gunn, Superman Is NOT An Immigrant! (but I’ll tell you who is): Despite what you’ve been told, Clark Kent’s story isn’t one of an immigrant because he came to Earth as a baby and adopted, and in some versions he arrived in an artificial womb so he was born on Earth. No, you really should be looking at Supergirl. I should a follow-up on this some day.
• Sorry, RTD, But Doctor Who’s Failure IS Part Of Your Legacy: So Russell T. Davies thinks only the shows he created and not the ones he brought back, left, and returned to totally ruin will be part of his legacy as a showrunner and creator. Yeah, it doesn’t work that way, man.
• What’s Happening With Doctor Who Villains?: The last one on this list and quite recent so I might be biased, but while we balk at changes to the Doctor, his enemies are not the same ones I grew up with either lately.

Hey, I’m actually proud of quite a bit there. Having three of my articles picked up and promoted by Instapundit this year was also really cool. But that was year 16. We’re on to the 17th year. I have article series to finish, new ones in mind, and I wouldn’t mind bringing back the videos at some point. That all depends on how things go and if I can figure out how to get some financial gain from this stuff because I really need the money. I just really enjoy discussing this stuff, even if at times I feel like I’m talking to myself. Hopefully you found something interesting, thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll enjoy more of my ramblings as I try to improve my own storytelling skills. Next year I’ll try to categorize them as I write the list, so sorry if something didn’t make sense. Deadlines and the original list being worked on past midnight will do that to me.