GREAT TIMES!

Hi all!

First I want to say THANK YOU to everyone here for all your support to The Protoculture Times. I condsider the show's success a combined effort as the people here kept me level headed throughout the stormy waters in this journey.

As you guys probably know, Memo1Dominion and Maverick_LSC, the Fric and Frac of the Robotech fandom have have sought fit to "neutralize" the promotion of the podcast on Robotechx.com. Funny, as this happened just as soon as Maverick was installed as a moderator there. That means the "culture" of Robotech.com has filtered over to Robotechx.com and we've seen how that works. I know many of you had seen this coming for awhile. I should feel flattered that they consider me such a threat to their standing in the fandom, not they ever had one except that of ridicule.

This, along with the bannings of Seto Kaiba and HappyPenguins , Memo's relishing in all the "drama" while raising his "holy hands" in innocense and "other things" (and I STRESS THINGS...lol)!have led me to the decision of no longer advertising the show on Robotechx.com. It's sad as the environment there was ruined by one person's personal crusade to demonstrate that they were someone that others MUST listen to and take their gospel as a holy creed.

Ultimate fail....as in just a few days, Robotechx has turned into a ghost town with Memo posting to the dead air.

With all that has happened, how does this affect how I do the show?

Not in the least bit!

These are some great times for the show. With the interview with Michael Bradley coming up, we have really hit a high point. A special note of thanks and appreciation to Vivian Lanza, who has been such a sweetheart and a friend to The Protoculture Times and the catalyst who "worked the phones" to make it happen! She's a die hard Robotech fan and as ourselves has seen the spiral downturn of the franchise!

And I say WE have hit a high point because throughout this whole process, it was the members of this site and people outside the site who believed enough in this project when I wanted to quit, who encouraged me to take the higher road and keep going. A big part of the reason why the show has continued was because of you guys and girls! If I had quit for the wrong reasons, I'd be kicking myself this very moment. So, The Protoculture Times high points and victories are also yours.

I have some ideas for the near future and I wanted to share them with you.

I do realize, more than ever, that the future of the Robotech franchise is highly in question. I may be a fan of over 2 decades, but I am realistic. Harmony Gold puts forth no effort towards it and the standard answer has become tow things, "Oh we got The Shadow Chronicles and the PROPOSED Live Action Movie!" Tommy Yune and company have shown an utter incompetance and have promoted a culture of "If you don't follow us blindily, you're either stupid or a Macross Purist.

With the 25th anniversary next year, Tommy and his acolytes will visit conventions, show us some slides, and feed the fans the usual song and dance in an effort to keep conning the fans. Basically, wash rinse and repeat.

Being the current situation and the reality of it. I plan to move forward with the show and celebrate Robotech the best way possible without looking into its future because I'll tell ya....it ain't bright in my opinion.

Now about my idea. HappyPenguins has insisted that I consider this site as our community. I was thinking of all of us working together to turn this into a kick ass place where fans can come without all the politics and BS that Robotech.com and Robotechx.com have shown.

Sometimes, things need an upgrade to give it an improvement, even if it's small, but in the right places...

Robotech Fandom 2.0

Relevant discussion
BIG Promotion of Fan productions (art and fiction)
Interviews of the people making it happen...the FANS.
Live round table discussions (conference call type of thing I'm looking into)
Seto/Mike's idea, a TRUE fan based infopedia. (I've always loved his idea on this!)
PROMOTION PROMOTION PROMOTION!

The way I see it....ONE FINAL ROAR FOR THE 25th anniversary by people who don't drink the Kool-aid nor use hate and bigotry as their platform. But instead, by people who take it for what it is and enjoy it.

A possible slogan or motto for it could be "Ignoring the ignorance!" .......YOU GUYS taught me how to do that! LOL!

I think something like this would differentiate us in a very high positive way to the choices out there right now.....i correct myself, we ALREADY are different than those choices!

I know it's idealistic...I know it may be crazy...but let me know your thoughts...because since this is OUR community...let's take it to the max!

Other than that, I look forward to the upcoming interview and future episodes of the show!

Talk to you all later!

Zen72-JT

yeah it seems RTX is just another bastard clone of Robotech.com
and like Rt.com, there will be censorship. No one will be able to have their own opinion or discuss anything negative about the franchise. It's just going to become another HG ass kissing forum

We do need to make this the place to be, and with a little effort of all of us working together, we can do it.
Since viper and mage are also admins they can add sections to the forum and what not
I'm also thinking about making you an admin too, that is if you think you can handle all the work =]

I'll second the motion for Zen's promotion. After all, he's claimed this as his original home, so it works for me.

It was inevitable that RobotechX would die a slow, horrible death from admin-induced stupidity with Captain CapsLock and the Hero of the Apathetic running the show. Now that they've gone and made their dynamic duo a trio by adding Captain Censorship to the mix. In allowing idiots like Doug Bendo and Pizza the Hutt to carry on attacking everyone who doesn't agree with their fascist view of the fandom, those in charge of RobotechX sealed its fate forever by making it a singularly unfriendly place for the few decent Robotech fans left on the internet.

For a while now I've been pondering our options for a more permanent version of the Lost Universe site, one which could incorporate not only the existing fanworks projects, but also support the proposed fan-made Infopedia and provide an independent fan community free of the censorship imposed by Harmony Gold and their blind faithful. In short... a site that would be everything RobotechX was SUPPOSED to be. I'm seriously considering using Joomla! and Kunena for the site, to allow the few decent people on RobotechX and other sites to make a smooth transition and allow for most of the features we want without me having to spent a lot of time and effort customizing multiple software suites to interact with each other.

I'll be speaking with all of you at length about it over the next few weeks, and we may be able to open the full-featured site on a subdomain as early as January 2010. If it becomes a big community, I may spring for a separate domain name for the site. I will also be contacting a few people on RT.com and elsewhere to ask for contributions to the Infopedia project... my aim is to tap the best, most knowledgeable fans I can for the project, though I will need someone who is extremely knowledgeable about the novels, and someone with Robotech Remastered for the project... and I don't know where to find either one.

Well here goes my thoughts on the issue, though I'm by no means an expert on it.
First a little back ground, I watched RT back in the 80's, I read the books in the 90's, and I model decent Masters mecha in Lightwave 3D. Out side of this site, I've been on two others, what use to be Robotech HQ, and the infamous Robotech.com.

On Robotech.com I witnessed enough garbage and forced gospel, that I feared for the right of free speech and individual opinion. Needless to say, I don't really visit that site any more.

On Robotech HQ, I met some good people, but then due to family and life, stepped away for awhile. When I came back, the site was on life support!

Now, I'm on this site. The people here certainly seem to be free thinkers, and open minded to hearing others thoughts on Robotech. Agree or disagree, no one censors any one, and a little chop busting aside, every one plays nice. Every one here brings a positive to the RT fandom, some thing that is opposite of some other sites.

Ok, I've droned on enough, so here is my opinion on the issues. For any site to become better, or more then it is, that site must evolve, change. As long as those changes are inline with the original guide lines of the site, then the change is good. Stray from those original guide lines, like RT.com, and the site becomes corrupt, and eventually will die.

Happy, this site was started by you, due to your disgust of what RT.com has become.
JT, you started Protoculture times to share your passion and love of RT with other fans.
Seto, I don't know your robotech back ground, but your ideas for the site are solid.
Viper, I just know you like to bang pans, lol!

If the four of you can keep the same level of passion, and freedom to discuss robotech with out fear of retribution, while evolving this site, than the future of this site looks good! Of cause this is all my opinion on the issue and if I posted on some other site, my chair might be smoking right now. That said, I look forward to the future that the fandom here can bring to the universe of Robotech.