MT, what the heck. You're slowly becoming the Eljay of the TTV Message Boards. I'M supposed to be the Eljay of this place. Gosh.
Next you're gonna make a Power Rangers comic with certain hand-made garments. You're toast as soon as that happens.
As far as this discussion goes, I want to throw in my own two cents. But I'm gonna clear two things out of the way first.
This train of logic is slightly flawed. I've heard this several times over the last few years, and my only response is that kids stories shouldn't immediately excuse themselves from proper story telling. My primary examples here would stand to be Avatar: The Last Airbender, Harry Potter, and the Percy Jackson series.
Avatar: TLA was a TV show aimed primarily 6 to 11 year old children. Despite this being the case, the show did remarkably well in older age brackets and has been praised highly for its story telling and writing. The show did not dumb itself down (for the most part) to appeal to those children. It was a cartoon, but a grounded one that children could get invested in.
Harry Potter (the books) did not initially have a set age range for its readers. As I have heard and understand however, the publishers initially targeted children aged nine to eleven. Personally, while I have seen the movies, I have not read the books. I do not know if this remains to be the case, and can not comment on it too much. On the chance that this held true and the books ended up being marketed toward that age range... That should speak for itself.
And then Percy Jackson. Now this is a series I have read fully. I do not currently know the targeted age range, but I am aware it's young. The books, however, do not always end up seeming young. I've heard they're praised (at least, the writer is) for their attention to detail and descriptions as far as surroundings go. As far as the books, they certainly aren't dumbed down. There are a lot of difficult names in there due to the Greek mythology involved. Despite that, you can certainly tell it's aimed for younger readers. At least, the first five are.
Now, I won't attempt to make any claims that these are master works of children literature or anything of the sort. They're merely examples that come to mind when this argument is brought up. They're all meant for children and younger individuals. However, despite that, they manage to hold a great deal of maturity about them, and are not often seen as simply childish. The reason I bring all these examples up is to try and explain and show that something aimed at being for children doesn't have to end up being poorly written or executed. That shouldn't be an excuse. If it's poorly written, then it's poorly written. If it's poorly handled, then it's poorly handled. There shouldn't be that much more to it after that.
I've only gotten the chance to scroll and skim through this topic, but I have gleamed a few things in this regard.
MT is doing something I like to do a lot during debates and discussions. He's being a snarky, sarcastic stick in the mud. This agitates people and generally makes for uncomfortable discussion.
But it also brings out a lot of what people are like during a debate.
I'm pretty sure we do it for very separate reasons. I certainly don't do it in order to figure out what makes people tick. I doubt MT does either. But the most telling thing about a debate is how people react and respond to sarcasm.
Responding calmly and patiently is the best way to go about it. Don't pay it any mind and you should be fine. If you focus on the debate and discussion in front of you, then eventually the sarcastic jabs will lessen and will prove useless to flustering you and rendering your ability to debate and discuss incapacitated. Maybe even go along with the joke, laugh a little bit. Laughing at ones self is the best way to handle critique and jabs.
Getting emotional and offended is the worst way to go about it. You get flustered, you get angry. You end up focusing more on attacking the person as opposed to debating their view point, and presenting your own. You then end up losing an onlooker siding with you, as you were the one that fell under pressure and ended up sounding distraught and ludicrous. Sometimes you even go on rants and start hate clubs directed toward that person on other websites. Not a very nice thing to do.
So just keep calm. Don't get offended. If you get offended during a debate or a discussion... Game over, you lose.
I'll likely be back to this topic to voice my fleshed out opinion on this topic. For the moment, I agree with MT and disagree with him at the same time. I think he's right that G2 needs to focus more on world building. But I disagree that Lego will be completely unable to develop these characters, or that the first 3 months will condemn the new line.
That and more on the Eljay Long Post Show!
TL;DR Hahah nope go read it.
