And it wasn't even supposed to be taken so seriously, either. It was supposed to be someting akin to Star Trek technobabble, quantum gobbledygook that only the TransTechs cared about because they're so far above all other lifeforms, and to which lower lifeforms (like ourselves) don't give a darn. But then Hirofumi Ichikawa started using it in Alternity fiction, and the AllSpark Almanacs used it too. And sadly, fandoms gonna fandom. Even I'm guilty of having drunk the Kool-Aid back then.
On one hand I don't blame fans for doing what they did- it's in fandom's nature as a collective to latch onto stuff like this, even if the creators never intended it to be used that way.
I wouldn't even have an issue so much with it being used as
a categorizing system (alongside a more straightforward grouping of continuities) if you had someone maintaining it, but we don't. Even Sorensen, who seemed to delight in pulling these streams out of you know where doesn't touch the subject in official media he works on these days.
My initial concern, back in '22, was more that TFWiki and related not-official-but-with-clout groups were treating the system as an Old Shame, and I couldn't fathom why.
I think it's a confluence of factors. The fist is that it is a bit tricky to get a handle on if you're new. Imagine being a 14-15 year old fan today just getting into the online fandom and suddenly all of this pseudo Latin is being tossed at you.
Wikis are community driven projects, and communities thrive when they're replenished by new blood. Otherwise they stagnate and slowly die. And I think maybe the Wiki's over-reliance on the system for a while may have created an unnecessary barrier of entry to new fans who may have been interested in taking part.
That's why I said I don't mind the idea of the system continuing if someone were officially maintaining it, but only so long as it didn't totally overshadow standard stuff like just saying "G1" or "Animated" or "EarthSpark."
I'd guess the second issue is probably due to more than a few FP employees speaking out now that they no longer have the licence about how they never intended the system to be used like the fandom ended up using it. Word of G-d as the TV Tropes people say.
Related, I think AVP ended up annoying people. Between fans fishing to have their head canon be made "official" and the people behind it using it to make the Wiki categorize
their fanfiction as official. The stream system was some collateral damage with the general annoyance towards AVP.
Finally, I think it's what I've been saying. Whatever virtues or flaws it may have had, it's ultimately not about any of it. It's about the system having no active maintenance and no way to deal with stuff that cropped up after the FP licence expired.
I mean, the current Neo-G1 and Legacy pushes are sort of keeping it going, but then you have something like BotBots....
BotBots, Cyberverse, EarthSpark. The list will only keep growing. Time marches on and it waits for none of us. Every new continuity will be another mainstream iteration of the franchise the stream system can't categorize.
But if we can come up with something less contingent on the maintenance or approval of Hasbro Consumer Products Licensing (who will pretty much take the stance of "All Canon is Canon"), well, I'm interested. As a wise man put it: "I like to stick with what I know, unless I find something better."
The problem is the beast we know died and is lying in a ditch. It may have "rules" to allow for further categorizing stuff in continuities that were established when it was being maintained, but again. BotBots. Cyberverse. EarthSpark. And EarthSpark is ending. Something else will replace it. And then it will lead to something else...
There is no one maintaining the system to name these new universes, these new streams. And there likely never will be. It was a system that depended on constant updates, and that died when FP's licence ended.
My solution is a rather elegant one. We just use the terms we've always used.
G1. Beast Era. Unicron Trilogy. Movie. Animated. Aligned. etc...
It doesn't need to be maintained either. Something new comes up you just... refer to it.
Now I know. You said the stream system wasn't for these tentpole terms but more specific continuities. But even then... we had terms for those.
Marvel G1. Marvel G1 UK. Sunbow G1. Japanese G1. Armada anime. Armada comics. Dreamwave G1. IDW1. IDW2.
I suppose you could go deeper still... but I will posit a question.
Do we need to, as a collective fandom, waste time trying to
Weekend at Bernie's the stream system just so we have something technical to refer to the
Frito-Lay poster continuity?