For all the plebs who don't even subscribe, or for those who simply want to easily browse through back issues, here's the fifty-fifth issue of The CaT Gazette. Remember, subscribers get the newsletter early!
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I apologize for putting the Gazette out a day late. I've sort of lost my energy to do much of anything lately. I'll elaborate more in the Editorial section if anyone wants to read it.
I haven't been making much progress on my series lately either for the same reason. I've really lost my mojo.
On the more uplifting side of things, I figured out that messages sent by bots will not clog up Recent Activity; as such, all new issues of the Gazette will be delivered by your friendly neighborhood BotBot Bot.
Signups for Summer Fanon Con are ending this week, so make sure you get in there and enroll while you still can!
Wikia has made the new header mandatory across all wikis, and while we've done what we can with it, it's still pretty ugly.
To be honest, I kinda feel like the wiki is dying. Not because of all the terrible changes Wikia has made, (though heaven knows that doesn't help), but because of our own community.
Now don't get me wrong, people still interact with each other; the wiki's Discord servers are both a lot more active than Chaturn was in its twilight years, but as for content on the wiki itself? Yeah, that's kind of dying out.
At the end of the day, there's no one thing to blame for it; it's just how things work. People get older and busier, and Ben 10 just isn't the smash hit success it was seven and a half years ago. The reboot is good (fight me you neckbeards), but there's nothing that particularly stands out about it to make it worth writing about in most people's eyes.
When the wiki first started, Alien Force was already airing, expanding the Ben 10 universe way beyond the basic "kid on summer vacation" concept and thus giving people a lot more to work with. Since the reboot has looped the franchise back to that plot, there's not nearly as much people can do with it, and fics based on the old continuity don't grab people's attention like they used to.
As for the rare new fics that are being made, good luck getting much feedback on them. The wiki's gotten a tad better about this lately, but for the majority of the content someone puts out, they may as well still be screaming into the uncaring void for how much good it does them.
As for why I've lost my mojo, everything I mentioned above contributes to it pretty significantly. I started my art and writing careers on this wiki, and with it dying, I'm sort of floundering around for a source of motivation. I still have a lot of stuff to do on the wiki, but does any of it matter? I am so close to finishing Tech 10 and being done with it forever (three episodes and a movie), but I don't know if I can even bring myself to do that.
People seem to be looking forward to Ben 10: Milky Way Race, but as the old Ben 10 continuity keeps fading into irrelevancy, so does my motivation to write the damn thing. It doesn't help that my only other popular series that people actually engage with are Mack 10, which was made around shitting on people and created out of bitterness, and CaT Reviews, which is entirely dependent on other people's work.
The first BTFF RPG seemed to be popular (46+ downloads!), but I never got wind of that until I actually checked the numbers for myself because of how little people mentioned it to me. The Spooktober RPG was barely played by anyone, and if The Next Evolution or Not Applicable RPG ever actually get finished, I'm sure the general reaction will just be some people saying "oh it's cool that you did that" and then nothing coming of it.
The only thing I'm actually kind of invested in working on right now is my post-Tech 10 project (not Reform; I cancelled that because it ultimately didn't seem like a good idea), and that's only because I plan on adapting it into something original I can put out as its own book somewhere down the line (granted the more solid foundation and setting for it compared to some of my other works helps, but still).
I'm probably coming off like I'm complaining about people not paying attention to me, and I don't mean for that to be the message here; I'm just explaining why I don't have the same motivation I used to. Hell, putting my own stuff aside, I don't even have the motivation to help people any more; every person I've ever tried to help has ended up screwing me somehow (except Mig; thanks bro), and goddammit I try to stay positive but it's hard to unironically say I want to help anyone out these days.
Honestly, I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore. I'd be surprised if more than a couple people actually took the time to read through this boring-ass wall of text.
See you next week, I guess.
So imagine you're watching one of the best, most tense and dramatic movies you've ever seen. The climax is almost over, the protagonists are screwed, the antagonists have pretty much won, and you're wondering how the hell they're going to turn all this around.
Then Jesus comes out and uses holy lasers to make the villains blow up.
Excuse me, what?
The source of the disappointment and frustration you'd be feeling at this random-ass plot point is called a Deus Ex Machina, translated as "god out of the machine". The phrase originates from ancient Greek theater, where actors playing Gods would literally be lowered down by a crane (the "machine") at the end of a play to fix everything without any prior buildup.
Note that even if a plot point is unexpected or unsatisfying, it is not necessarily a Deus Ex Machina; TV Tropes helpfully lists the four qualifying factors for a plot point to be considered one.
- Deus ex Machina are solutions to a problem. They are never unexpected developments that make things worse, nor sudden twists that only change the understanding of a story.
- Deus ex Machina are sudden or unexpected. This means that even if they are featured, referenced or set-up earlier in the story, they do not change the course of nor appear as a natural or a viable solution to the plotline they eventually "solve".
- Deus ex Machina are used to resolve a situation portrayed as unsolvable or hopeless. If the problem could be solved with a bit of common sense or other type of simple intervention, the solution is not a Deus ex Machina no matter how unexpected it may seem.
- Deus Ex Machina are external to the characters and their choices throughout the story. The solution comes from a character with small or non-existent influence on the plot until that point or random chance from nature or karma.
The reason discussing this is so important is because there are so many stories on this damn wiki that end in "EVERYONE IS SCREWED BUT THIS NEW ALIEN I PULLED OUT OF MY ASS IS GOING TO SAVE THE DAY BECAUSE REASONS" that Category:Aliens might as well be renamed Category:Bullshit Endings.
This is a fairly simple concept to understand, so this is just more of a heads-up telling you to not pull shit out of your ass at the last moment. Yes, this trope can technically be used well, but most of the time it isn't, so I would recommend taking the four qualifications of the Deus Ex Machina to heart and blatantly defying them whenever possible.
Ultimate All Star Redesign
By ChromastoneandTabby
I wasn't really satisfied with this thing's first design (and neither was anyone else really) so I decided to redo it. I was a bit iffy on the white markings at first, but the people on the Discord seemed to like it.
Nothing to report for this issue.