Need a lift? Yeah, go ahead, climb in. I’m going all the way to the hospital, so if you need to get dropped off along the way…sure, I can stop there. No problem. The flowers? They’re why I’m going to the hospital. A guy I know had a couple heart attacks, and I thought I’d bring him flowers. Well, okay, so I don’t really KNOW him, but I’ve seen him around. I feel kind of responsible. It’s a long story. What? No, I’d rather not get into it again.

You sure are full of questions. No, no, I don’t really mind. It is kind of funny, though…huh? Oh, it’s just that you haven’t asked why I’m not on medication yet. That’s the most frequently asked question I get. That, and why I always write Bob Skir how I do in my fanfics.

What? Well, I don’t really think that NEED medication—oh! Sorry. I thought you meant—heheh. Nah, I don’t mind explaining. To be honest, it’s probably about time that I said something about it. I mean, the e-mails I get that don’t wonder why I haven’t been sedated yet are all about Bob Skir, and I haven’t really answered them very well. The strange thing is, I get two responses to my fanfics: 1) Yeah! Bob Skir sucks! 2) Why are you picking on poor Bob? *insert name here* was the one responsible!

The thing is, they hardly ever give me the same name. Everybody picks a different person to blame, and I think it has to do with how we were raised. No, I don’t mean raised as in “My family moved to Bobville when I was three, and—“ I mean how we were raised in the Beast Wars community.

Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Let me tell you about how I entered the Beast Wars community.

I showed up on Beast Wars Anonymous after watching a few episodes of a show I would soon become happily enslaved to. I was a latecomer, but that just gave me all the more fanfics to read through. Three days later, drunk on great fanfics and dazzled by the presence of authors, I staggered onto the message board, where my mind was warped by the people I met there. Now, that may sound dramatic, but I go to classes every day where the teachers warp my mind. Don’t assume that I didn’t absorb everything I learned unwillingly. I posted and read and posted and read, and somewhere along the line somebody said something about Bob Skir.

I don’t remember who it was, or why it was posted, but Bob Skir became Enemy #1. He was the writer who had screwed up Beast Wars. He had caused this, he had caused that, and if I ever got my hands on him…well, I didn’t know what I’d do. I’m betting that other fans blame people other than Bob Skir because of simple instances like this one. At some point, all the blame for what’s gone wrong in the series gets blamed on one person, and we end up hating one faceless guy named, in my case, Bob. Don’t like Rattrap’s lines? It’s Bob’s fault. Think that Season Three sucked? It’s Bob’s fault. Bob did it. Blame Bob. Bob gets blamed a lot in my fanfics.

Why is that, exactly?

Well, it went something like this: I needed a villain. I needed someone who the Beast Warriors would fear. I needed someone whose name people would recognize. I needed…Bob Skir. Thinking about it from the viewpoint of a written character, who’s scarier than the person who’s writing you? This guy controls everything in your world, up to and including you. Fear him, for he writes you. And he is…one of the team who wrote the series. Pick an author, LD. Whose name is recognizable? Gee, whose name has LD seen recently? And, as a bonus, his name is easy to type.

And so, Bob Skir became the villain.

I have no idea who Bob Skir is! He’s just some writer on the team who wrote Beast Wars! I don’t hate him; I don’t even dislike him. I don’t KNOW him. For all I know he has a wife he’s divorced to, a dog, and 2 ½ kids. He might lend me 50 cents for some French fries if we were standing in line at McDonalds, but I wouldn’t recognize him. Yet somehow he gets all the crap from me.

Him, and Hasbro. I bash on Hasbro a lot, too, and for much the same reason. The stuff that went wrong went wrong because of the evil, villainous Bob and Hasbro.

But…did anything really go wrong? I love Beast Wars. I think it’s the greatest show ever. The biggest complaint I have is that I think the third Season was rushed, but you know what? I wouldn’t change a thing about it. That’s right—not a thing. If Bob hadn’t written things exactly how they turned out, the show would have been changed, and what would I have missed? Sure there are some corny things, and maybe Hasbro stuck some characters in just for toy sales, but I can’t imagine the series without those things. How many fanfics were written just to fill in the holes? How much fun is it to mock some of the characters? With everything that’s evolved around the Beast Wars, I can’t stand the thought of my villains not bending the series to their so-called “evil” will.

So what’s left of my poor victims, Bob and Hasbro? I needed villains, and they were there. I never meant for them to be taken seriously. I really am sorry if anyone took my villains to be real; I’ve never meant for them to be anything but the bad guys in a comedy. The only reason I picked Bob Skir was because that’s who was pointed out to me first, so I knew his name. I guess all he really represents is what a writer could be if his characters were real. He’s not really Bob, nor is he any other writer on the Beast Wars team. As for Hasbro…it’s a big company. I’m sure it can handle being laughed at a little. If either of them asked me to stop or change anything, I’d be rather sorry that they couldn’t laugh along.

Actually, if either Hasbro or Bob Skir came after me, I’d feel flattered. It’d be like they came off their pedestals to single out one petty fanfic author.

WHOA! I think I just missed your exit! Hold on…heh, maybe I need that medication after all!

…that was a joke.

Stop looking at me like that. I don’t want to have to bring you flowers, too.

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