Is Transformers an emotionally-stunted franchise?

[Shockwave]

I am not conceptually against the writer assuming that aliens (including TFs) have some kind of social or even family structure. One of my favourite plot points in AHH is rooted in the assumption that the Decepticon planes share some kind of bond. Considering them "brothers" in the biological sense is kind of stupid. But, the term "brother" could be used in the Union sense of the word.

But, in the case of Rewind and Chromedome, we know that Roberts was not going for "close friends" or "robo-bromance". We know which segment of the fandom that MTMTE is aimed at. And, given the word choices used to describe the relationship between Rewind and Chromedome ("significant other") as well as the presentation of certain scenes between them, we know why Roberts is going this way with the characters. The whole thing stinks of fanfic and pandering to the shippers. And, that is a line that I am not willing to cross.

"Gay Space Robots" sounds like the kind of thing you would see in a stereotypically bad fanfic written by an emotionally unbalanced teenager with identity issues. Or, it sounds like a parody of that fanfic. It has no place in official content. espeically when it is there to appeal to the most backward parts of the fandom.

See, my whole thing against the "they're aliens and need to be realistically portrayed different than us" argument is that they're an analog for us. The robots are the characters we're supposed to identify with and care about and that are supposed to be carrying the story. Even in the best of writing where the author has something meaningful to say the robots are going to be ones to carry that story and those ideas and to do that they have to be humanly relatable.

It depends on the type of story being written. In the case of RiD, the TFs have some human traits. But, Barber is still playing up something of the alien nature of TFs. (People are happy to keep grudges going across generations, as evidenced by the sheer amount of human misery exported from the Balkans over the decades. But, in theory grudges can be forgotten over time due to natural attrition. But, for a species as long lived and hearty as Cybertronians, old grudges are even harder to bury.)

Generally though, if someobody is writing a soft sci-fi story, they have humans to be the people. The bumpy-headed gimmick alien cliche (which certainly applies to TFs) does have its place in terms of illustrating a given concept (putting behind a balkanizing war, the pros and cons of immortality, being wrongly considered the nuisance species, being rightly considered the nuisance species, whatever). If the writer wants to use aliens to illustrate humanity, then they may do better to use the aliens as a point of contrast rather than similarity.


Dom
-getting meta. What of it?

So what, the Seekers are Decepticon Freemasons? BZZZT!! Wrong. Some sort of genetic brotherhood is implied by virtue of similar body design. They share physical traits similar to each other and that's really where the similarity ends. So it basically IS the robotic equivalent of genetic brothers.

And this is where you lose me. With the whole "MTMTE is aimed at retarded fans" theory. At this point, I'm actually going to call you out on it. Prove to me that there is any sect of the fandom being pandered to. If you can link even one post anywhere that was rabid calling for Chromedome and Rewind to be romantically involved then I'll shut up. Otherwise, I still maintain that you're the one holding a grudge against a fandom from several years ago that doesn't exist anymore. From a pure writing standpoint, it's no worse than an episode of Family Guy. They make references to stuff all the time too. At least MTMTE has limited it to TF references.

And the problem with using humans as the analog for humans in an alien based fiction, at least in this case, is that it's actually the Transformers, the robots, not the humans that are the main characters telling and carrying the story. So they do have to be somewhat anthropromorphized. That means feeling the full range of human emotions and experience the full human experience. Especially now when in both series, they have no humans. It's an allegory an when using aliens in an allegory, you can't make them too alien or you lose the audience. This was the main problem with the movies, the made the robots too alien. But, they also weren't really using them to drive the "plot" either so.

[JediTricks]

It's a property based off a children's toyline. It should be chaste, or at the very least, all-ages appropriate. When you open the door to anything tangentially related to sexuality and relationships, or excessive violence for that matter, you potentially make it unsuitable for the target audience.

This opens a can of worms, not an unfair one, but it's a can of worms that sits over this hobby. We're talking about a line dedicated to endless war, hardcore violence, and that's been ok with parents for decades; yet the idea of hardcore emotions is seen as not age-appropriate, as if emotional intimacy is dirty and should be avoided by kids while violence and destruction and hatred are perfectly fine for them. I'm not trying to be a peacenik here, but just because emotional intimacy is often perverted by content publishers into immature, exploitative sex doesn't mean that they are one and the same, but the gut reaction from society is often to paint them as such.

If anything, it seems like Transformers could be a very good avenue to explore emotional intimacy content because it is so chaste, there's no risk of seeing robots kissing or having sex at all since they express emotional intimacy through alternate physical and non-physical means, and don't use sex or even gender to reproduce.

Just because we're adults reading the fiction doesn't mean we're the primary target demographic.

Even for the comics though?

If Transformers as a brand is to grow into a franchise that is more than just toys and 'toons,

Why does it need to do that? We're not talking deep, profound literature here, no matter the topics being explored. Transformers is escapist entertainment. There's no need for it to be anything else. There are plenty of other places to go for exploration and depiction of deep interpersonal relationships.

Because otherwise it's stagnate, it's just doomed to repeat the same shallow content over and over with little room to grow. Do you want Transformers to remain just a refuge of the manchild? Even the original cartoon at times tried to be more, tried to carry thoughtful ideas to its audience. To now shy away from interpersonal relationships as a natural part of the brand's narrative leaves it stunted and its viewers trapped in a broken Peter Pan message that eventually will self-destruct from being incapable of growth. I've always seen TF as more than something like Power Rangers, just there to sell toys to successive generations of violent, poorly-discriminating children.

Unrestricted blood and boobs is not a sign of narrative maturity. But, overly sanitized narrative (such as "Archie" and the "Marvel Adventures" comics) are not really worth reading for anybody but kids (or habitual readers). Similarly, the Comics Code Authority got more permissive over time, and is mostly ignored. Books that would pass muster for the CCA's original standards would likely not be worth reading, even for a kid. (I have heard accounts of little kids being offended when offered crap like "Tiny Titans" because even they can smell crap when it is right in front of them.)

The "overly sanitized" point is very good, I don't really have anything to add but I wanted to agree with it.
The CCA point though, that's actually quite an excellent avenue to explore because it's actually a symptom of this same problem, such as this example from Jim Shooter:
http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/12/sex-and-drugs.html
or the CCA requiring that violence basically cannot show consequences, what kind of message is that? Violence is fine, beat the shit out of your opponent, but the impact of that violence should be swept under the carpet so more violent fun can be had next week? Way to hamstring artistic expression, especially logical expressions at that.
Or that the hero cannot lose the day, cannot lose the battle or be captured at the end of a story, and that the villain cannot get away with their crime.

For the record, I was not avoiding it. It just happened to come up in text. (And, you partook there at length before making it here to the forums to post this. You are just as guilty there.)

I wasn't referring to you, although we'll get to the 'shipping stuff that started this off in a moment.

Yes and no.

From the beginning, the franchise has relied heavily on IP to sell itself. And, over the years, the content has covered a wide range of tone and quality.

The Sunbow G1 cartoon had episodes like "Auto-Berzerk", "The Burden Hardest to Bear", "Web World", "Sea Change" and others. Even "The Ultimate Doom" had its moments of real depth. These were of course aired alongside stuff like "BOT" and "Autobop", but you get the idea.

The comics had "Man of Iron", "Shooting Star", "Warrior School", "Crisis of Command" and the better points of Furman's run (both US and UK). But, it also had "Carwash of Doom", "Afterdeath" and the lower points of Furman's run (both US and UK_.

(I could do examples by era. But, most of us probably get the idea so lets move on.)

We don't have a thumbs-up icon and that's too bad in this case. But let me ask you, do you feel in the mass-media content that those are examples of the norm, or are they attempts to break with the norm?

In terms of sexless, well, yes. But, the title characters are from a species of alien robots where gender is....inconsistently portrayed at best.

The cartoon had some really disturbing implications about gender. The female Autobots seemed to be considered a different species (and were never shown to be biologically necessary) and were likely descended from a sub-line of the Quintesson "consumer goods" that eventually became the Autobots.

The comics were clear that gender was artificially introduced in "Prime's Rib".

IDW went so far as to say that gender was unnatural to the species with Arcee's origin.


Following from that, why not assume that TFs would handle social and emotional relationships differently? If anything, mandating that alien space robots be depicted as being as similar to people as possible roots "Transformers" even more firmly in the realm of soft sci-fi and thus stunts it even more.

Ok, following that, I agree that the more humanized we insist the characters become, the softer it becomes - although I'm not ready to agree that it necessarily is stunted by that since we're talking about emotional-stunting, and I'm also not willing to concede that "soft sci-fi" is even a bad thing necessarily, a lot of '60s and '70s "hard sci-fi" is nigh-unapproachable. I'd argue that the emotional chastity is the problem, the physical chastity is a byproduct of that, that there are some truths we recognize as universal - many animals who find themselves in great battles also are the ones who seek out a mate or a pack to create a blended life with, and those which don't - like lizards - often are loners who don't go to war much, they isolate. Since the setup for Transformers is intelligence, community, and war, there are automatically similarities to other beings which have emotional intimacy.

Well, Hasbro let Rewind and Chromedome through, so I think that's a good sign.

Do not forget, there was also that cringe-worthy comment from a Hasbro rep about Knock-Out a few years ago. (From what I gather, the silence that followed was....impressive. Say what I might about the fandom as a whole, they are apparently free of any obvious prejudice on questions of gay rights.)

You mean this...? http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Knock_Out_%28Prime%29

When asked at BotCon 2011, the Prime writers said that there is no designation for gay (or straight, for that matter) on Cybertron, that Knock Out is a knock out, and that the Nemesis is a very "don't ask, don't tell" place. And they also "jokingly" deflected the matter by saying there was a "glitch" in the AllSpark the day Knock Out was created, which is unintentionally so insulting to homosexuals that it could create an awkward silence in the Void.

Ouch. Then again, Prime is a really horrible example to draw from because it is so overtly violent and angry and shallow. Prime is a sign not unlike the movies proving that the brand is actually worsening in its stunted attitudes.

And, this is where I get meta.

At the end of the day, part of getting what the writers is saying is probably going to involve *why* they said it.

Costa did not "get" TFs. And, his writing incorporated that. TFs and people were not the same. They would have trouble trusting each other, and often with good reason. Similarly, Marvel played up the alien nature of TFs on more than one occassion by showing how they viewed a fundamental like death differently from people. (Furman went so far as to say that TFs generally lacked a concept of death.) The cartoon played with this in "The Burden Hardest to Bear".)

My problem with Rewind and Chromedome as written by Roberts comes down as much to why Roberts is writing it as what he is writing. MTMTE is bascially fan-fodder. (I have no desire to re-list all my issues with this book.) The Rewind and Chromedome thing is just another plot point by Roberts that plays in to the things that "the fans" (often emotionally stunted and self-indulgent) want. And, lets be honest, robot shipping is a textbook case of the sort fo thing that used to be associated exclusively with bad fanfic.

The Rewind and Chromedome thing was that last straw for me. (There are members of the fandom who will unblinkingly and unashamedly call MTMTE "tumbler bait" by virtue of the fact that it plays in to over-blown emotion for the sake of over-blown emotion.)

To me, that seems entirely unfair. You are looking at meta-context well outside the content itself. The "why" shouldn't matter if the "what" is good. The idea that he's playing to the 'shippers is not only questionable at best, but is immaterial because there will always be 'shippers, there are people today analyzing the relationship between Abe Lincoln and his wife along the lines of Bella and Edward from Twilight. There will always be a subset of an audience who wants to fulfill their own emotional longings with the characters in their entertainment, that's on them - don't wear their burden for them. If you can't judge the material on its own merits, then you are just as emotionally stunted by the 'shipping as those 'shippers, you're simply going the opposite direction with it.

I don't even understand what "tumbler bait" means, but the content didn't strike me as overblown emotions at all, not only are these characters individuals with individual needs, but they're coming off of fighting a very long war and that plays havoc with emotional growth and healing. It seemed pretty nuanced for a comic book, I thought.

I agree. But, I would argue that the motivation behind the depiction matters.

Some of my favourite scenes in Bendis' "Avengers" involved Cage and Jones. They were funny and were clearly written to depict a mature relationship and (allowing for the setting) showed the kinds of decisions people make about relationships and careers. (Granted, I did not keep this book on my pull-list, but that is because it lacked any really good high-concept.)

I was fine with gay Green Lantern in "Earth 2". I agree with John Byrne's assertion (from many years ago) that if we assume gay people are real then we would have to assume that some of them would be superhuman in a comicbook setting.


But, with TF there is the opportunity to do other things. And, if people want emotion and a consideration of the human emotional condition, then maybe it would be better to do that by playing people (which a good chunk of the fandom arguably does not understand) off against something fundamentally different, like a race of alien space robots.

Doctor Sumdac (in TFA) used alien technology to give himself a daughter. He used alien tech to deliver on a common human demand. In contrast, I am not sure that I can think of any new TF shown to be created as something other than a weapon, a soldier, some other useful role or by accident. In "The Key to Vector Sigma", Prime wanted the Aerialbots to be able to learn and grow over time. But, the reason they were being built in the first place was to counter the Stunticons.

This is such a weird argument. Where's the concept of the motivation mattering? You give an alternate idea of how it could be expressed, but that's not actually fulfilling your argument "that the motivation behind the depiction matters", it's simply a DIFFERENT expression, not the ONLY one. Why would it be better to do it the way you're suggesting? What is wrong with Transformers, who already clearly have emotions - strong ones at times - having interpersonal emotions of an intimate nature, why should their emotions be limited to friendship, brotherhood, anger, fear, loyalty, distrust, and so forth without any emotionally-intimate interpersonal aspects that go with them?

TF has, for the most part, grown beyond the kiddie cartoon/comic/toy level. It arguably did that sometime in 1985. There are modern examples of shallow and stunted TF content, including the Bay movies. But, there are plenty of examples of TF content having depth that do not involve giving them relationships just like people have for the sake of delivering for fan-shippers.

To a degree there are examples of greater depth, but that doesn't fully address the fact that it's emotionally-stunted really, it shows it's not emotionally stunted in OTHER areas but it doesn't reflect interpersonal ones at all, so it's stalled at war, violence, treachery getting growth while loyalty, faith, friendship, loneliness, longing, and caring end up not getting carried along with.

And this has NOTHING to do with delivering anything to 'shippers, they obviously need no help whatsoever; it has everything to do with exploring deeper the ideas and characters and emotions which drive the franchise, to tell more stories than just the retreading the ones we've already seen, telling personal stories that give weight to the characters that live these enormous lives.

I agree with Dom that Rewind and Chromedome feels very much like something from bad fanfic. At least it was restrained and tastefully handled, for the most part.

I don't get this at all, "it's from bad fanfic yet it's restrained and tastefully handled", that seems like an extremely contradictory perspective. The whole brand smacks of fanfic, smashing toys into each other ad nauseum, but obviously we find it to be more than that.

See, my whole thing against the "they're aliens and need to be realistically portrayed different than us" argument is that they're an analog for us. The robots are the characters we're supposed to identify with and care about and that are supposed to be carrying the story. Even in the best of writing where the author has something meaningful to say the robots are going to be ones to carry that story and those ideas and to do that they have to be humanly relatable. Which in turn is going to require them to be anthropromorphized to some degree. And part of that is inevitably going to be to involve interpersonal relationships. The fact that it's taken this long to see one as a prominent plot point and used to communicate larger ideals is impressive but does indicate a somewhat stunted franchise. And, this is also the main problem with the movies. The robots are the characters that are supposed to carry the ideas and plots for the movies but they can't because they're too alien and the audience can't see the human analog in them. And really, that's important to any narrative. You're telling a story and your audience has to be able to have some basis to relate to the characters as human on some level.

Good argument. Perhaps it's not "humanly relatable" then, but just "universally true" or at least as close to that as we can tell stories which remain accessible. The irony of the movies is that they refuse to see the titular characters as people, so they have to rely on writing them via stereotypes and generic actions to drive their stories through the eyes of the humans around them, and then they make the humans around them as shallow and simple as possible. Surely the franchise can do better than these movies.

For the most part I agree with the entirety of JT's first post. And again, I'm not sure where the Line is, Dom. You seem to be against TFs experiencing human-analogous emotions like romantic love (which, by the way guys, is a completely separate thing to sex, and thus shouldn't be considered inappropriate for a kids' franchise), saying that this is a restricting "soft sci-fi" element, but... again, sorry about this... they have noses.

Or would you- like me- prefer TF to not all have traditionally humanoid modes? I *loved* Laserbeak et al as a kid because their "robot" modes were animals. Fantastic.

But yes, if TFs are willing to speak with their mouths, shoot guns, have wars and live on a planet, they should be able to feel love. TF *is* "soft sci-fi", isn't it? And I'm wondering if it shouldn't stay that way, but at least grow and mature within those boundaries.

Admittedly, I'm not too familiar with the conventions of sci-fi.

Aw man, I'm so with you here... except the "noses" thing, because now we have a new expression that takes away their noses to prove something... and it doesn't even prove it! They have expressive rubbery mouths, they have eyes and eyebrows, they have voices and they express in a way we can understand through their actions - even TF Prime's mute, faceless Soundwave can express himself in recognizable ways, that doesn't automatically make it anthropomorphized bunk. And like your Laserbeak example there's also Ratbat, beloved character, a senator in one expression even, and he's certainly not humanoid.

Hard sci-fi started as a concept as sci-fi that had a heavy use of science as the core basis of its storytelling, as well as about science-based ideas beyond what we humans can understand and routinely conceive of - stories of physical-form-free minds coexisting through non-sensory interactions on other dimensions, tales of starships having to make moral choices about jettisoning passengers to ensure mission success, that sort of thing where the fiction is heavily driven by the careful consideration of the scientific basis of its universe.

Soft sci-fi basically falls back on "anything goes so long as it has a kind of sciency sounding reason behind it".

I was with you except for this, that's not really fair delineation. That's why there's "science fantasy" and "space opera" genre terms for something like Star Wars where the science ends up taking so much of a back seat to the fictional constructs. Star Trek tried to get its science right but was still expressed as soft sci-fi.

"Star Trek" (though one might debate that point regarding the recent Abrams movies)

I had been debating it, but now I'm going to jump in on that topic. The Abrams Trek movie is purely in the Star Wars level of space opera, there are starships being built on the surface of Earth, there are scenes of turbolifts traversing a thousand meters of starship in 3 seconds, there's the Red Matter macguffin, Sulu's switchblade sword, warp speeding from Earth to Vulcan in a matter of mere in-universe hours and on impulse speed past Delta Vega in a matter of minutes, transport across the galaxy to a ship at warp speed, and on and on like that.

Even as a kid, I never quite got Laserbeak or the other critter-tapes. Laserbeak did not look like a bird on Cybertron, but he did have a boxy "storage" mode. The comics explained the Dinobots as being the result of the Ark malfunctioning when it rebuilt them. But, Laserbeak's form made less sense. (The less humanoid forms in "Beast Machines" made more sense to me, especially considering that they were designed to work on Cybertron rather than Earth.)

Sky lynx?

Sorry, time to get meta again.

If you can't speak to it on its own merits, the problem is ultimately with you.

I am not conceptually against the writer assuming that aliens (including TFs) have some kind of social or even family structure. One of my favourite plot points in AHH is rooted in the assumption that the Decepticon planes share some kind of bond. Considering them "brothers" in the biological sense is kind of stupid. But, the term "brother" could be used in the Union sense of the word.

But, in the case of Rewind and Chromedome, we know that Roberts was not going for "close friends" or "robo-bromance". We know which segment of the fandom that MTMTE is aimed at. And, given the word choices used to describe the relationship between Rewind and Chromedome ("significant other") as well as the presentation of certain scenes between them, we know why Roberts is going this way with the characters. The whole thing stinks of fanfic and pandering to the shippers. And, that is a line that I am not willing to cross.

Sounds like you don't mind emotional intimacy in TF so long as it remains a punch in the arm and light conversation, shallow and vague and... emotionally stunted. And that you got to that position because you're afraid that some perverted fangirls and fanboys might get gushy in the trousers over the idea of anything more than that. So we should all avoid public ideas expressing emotional intimacy on a non-sexual level because a few people pervert it to fill their own emotional voids? That's not healthy either. When Optimus Prime and Megatron team up, so Prime is firing Megatron in gun mode, you know there are going to be a few fringe fans who viewed that as a gateway to slash fiction, there's simply nothing you can do to stop it in part because the very thing that drove them to the brand in the first place is also what drives them to the slash fiction, unfulfilled emotional satisfaction.

"Gay Space Robots" sounds like the kind of thing you would see in a stereotypically bad fanfic written by an emotionally unbalanced teenager with identity issues. Or, it sounds like a parody of that fanfic. It has no place in official content. espeically when it is there to appeal to the most backward parts of the fandom.

And yet you're the one who keeps harping on "gay space robots" aspect here. How can they be gay if they're asexual and not having physical intercourse? And how are emotionally unbalanced teenagers going to grow out of unhealthy 'shipping and slash-fic behaviors if the only emotional intimacy they see in their entertainment - healthy or otherwise - is a handshake and a pat on the back?

It depends on the type of story being written. In the case of RiD, the TFs have some human traits. But, Barber is still playing up something of the alien nature of TFs. (People are happy to keep grudges going across generations, as evidenced by the sheer amount of human misery exported from the Balkans over the decades. But, in theory grudges can be forgotten over time due to natural attrition. But, for a species as long lived and hearty as Cybertronians, old grudges are even harder to bury.)

So humanlike hate = fine; humanlike love = bad? Even in the Balkans, people still find love every day, they still crave emotional connections during and after war, war actually can be a significant driving factor in trying to find love before one gets their head blown off in a random event.

And this is where you lose me. With the whole "MTMTE is aimed at retarded fans" theory. At this point, I'm actually going to call you out on it. Prove to me that there is any sect of the fandom being pandered to. If you can link even one post anywhere that was rabid calling for Chromedome and Rewind to be romantically involved then I'll shut up. Otherwise, I still maintain that you're the one holding a grudge against a fandom from several years ago that doesn't exist anymore. From a pure writing standpoint, it's no worse than an episode of Family Guy. They make references to stuff all the time too. At least MTMTE has limited it to TF references.

This is probably going to get messy, it's easy to draw a backwards correlation from the 'shipper fans to the content rather than prove that the content creator's intending to pander and exploit. And there probably are still 'shippers and slash-fiction fans buried deep in Transfandom, that is the nature of most fandoms, there are fringe people and perverts in all of 'em. But none of that makes your point less true, that the problem presented isn't about the content bout about the potential perversion by some readers.

And the problem with using humans as the analog for humans in an alien based fiction, at least in this case, is that it's actually the Transformers, the robots, not the humans that are the main characters telling and carrying the story. So they do have to be somewhat anthropromorphized. That means feeling the full range of human emotions and experience the full human experience. Especially now when in both series, they have no humans. It's an allegory an when using aliens in an allegory, you can't make them too alien or you lose the audience. This was the main problem with the movies, the made the robots too alien. But, they also weren't really using them to drive the "plot" either so.

It doesn't even have to be perceived as "allegory", if there were no significant range of emotions why would Transformers keep fighting these wars? What is the benefit to Megatron to overthrow the Cybertronian government and spread the battle across the stars when he could have just stopped fighting and move away? What is the benefit of the universe as a whole when Optimus Prime saves a single species - or even a single life - in exchange for letting his enemies get away? What is mercy and anger and jealousy and loyalty without a reasonable range of emotions?

[Onslaught Six]

If you can link even one post anywhere that was rabid calling for Chromedome and Rewind to be romantically involved then I'll shut up.

http://tumblr.com

More realistically, you'd have to actually dig, but I'm making a joke, here.

Anyway, just because certain sects of people reading the book enjoy the interactions of two characters doesn't mean Roberts did what he did to please that section of the fandom--I would assume that most of the things that happen in MTMTE happen to amuse Roberts, and anyone else is a bonus.

[andersonh1]

It's a property based off a children's toyline. It should be chaste, or at the very least, all-ages appropriate. When you open the door to anything tangentially related to sexuality and relationships, or excessive violence for that matter, you potentially make it unsuitable for the target audience.

This opens a can of worms, not an unfair one, but it's a can of worms that sits over this hobby. We're talking about a line dedicated to endless war, hardcore violence, and that's been ok with parents for decades;

To some extent. Think back to the original Transformers cartoon. It wasn't a war cartoon, it was action and adventure. It was afterschool fun where no one died. The war was a pretext to allow all of that. The violence was not hardcore. That changed within a few years with the movie of course and characters did start dying. But then Beast Wars went right back to the "nobody dies" formula, with a few exceptions as the plot demanded. Characters could be blown to pieces and still live through it! I could run through all the other series that followed, but the point is this: Transformers in mass media is highly sanitized when it comes to violence and warfare. It's not realistic. It's not hardcore. My parents had no problem letting me watch Transformers at 13 years old, with my 11 and 9 year old brothers there with me, because it wasn't realistic, and it was nothing harmful.

Obviously things have changed over time. There are some more brutal moments in more modern incarnations of the show (Starscream stabbing Cliffjumper to death comes to mind, or Airachnid killing Tailgate offscreen with his energon spattering the wall), but Transformers has not always been and still is not usually hardcore.

The comics are another story, even going back to Marvel. Generation 2 in particular gets violent and characters are slaughtered by the truckload. But the comics are a niche product, and so they can afford to go somewhat further. The Last Stand of the Wreckers is practically a horror comic in terms of the violence, death and torture, if it wasn't for the fact that we're seeing robots and energon, not humans and blood and mutilation. Hasbro still vetoed some of the language the writers wanted to use and some of the deaths. There are limits to what they will allow, even in Transformers products aimed at an older demographic that only sell in the tens of thousands.

yet the idea of hardcore emotions is seen as not age-appropriate, as if emotional intimacy is dirty and should be avoided by kids while violence and destruction and hatred are perfectly fine for them.

There are certain topics that aren't age appropriate. Some maturity is required to understand and handle them. I've got daughters that are 8 and 3, believe me when I tell you that this question of what they need to know and how much is constantly on my mind.

I'm not trying to be a peacenik here, but just because emotional intimacy is often perverted by content publishers into immature, exploitative sex doesn't mean that they are one and the same, but the gut reaction from society is often to paint them as such.

If anything, it seems like Transformers could be a very good avenue to explore emotional intimacy content because it is so chaste, there's no risk of seeing robots kissing or having sex at all since they express emotional intimacy through alternate physical and non-physical means, and don't use sex or even gender to reproduce.

We already get some of that. Just about any Transformers show I can think of depicts the characters as having strong bonds of friendship and cameraderie with each other. Look at Sparkplug working himself to exhaustion to repair Omega Supreme. Look at the way Optimus Primal goes out of his way to extend the hand of friendship and trust to Dinobot. Look at the loyalty that characters demonstrate for each other across the various Transformers shows. And of course, we do indeed get some romantic affection with Tigatron and Airrazor, or Silverbolt and Blackarachnia. It's not as thought the concept is non-existent.

Because otherwise it's stagnate, it's just doomed to repeat the same shallow content over and over with little room to grow. Do you want Transformers to remain just a refuge of the manchild? Even the original cartoon at times tried to be more, tried to carry thoughtful ideas to its audience. To now shy away from interpersonal relationships as a natural part of the brand's narrative leaves it stunted and its viewers trapped in a broken Peter Pan message that eventually will self-destruct from being incapable of growth. I've always seen TF as more than something like Power Rangers, just there to sell toys to successive generations of violent, poorly-discriminating children.

I would hope children aren't deriving life lessons primarily from their entertainment. Not that shows like Transformers aren't opportunities to point out expressions of loyalty, or the consequences of greed, or any number of other foibles and to discuss them, but Transformers is primarily entertainment and fun. As I said, I primarily view it as escapism, a way to just let reality go for half an hour and just relax and enjoy some action/adventure. I'm not looking to get the same thing out of it as you are, I guess.

[Gomess]

"Gay Space Robots" sounds like the kind of thing you would see in a stereotypically bad fanfic written by an emotionally unbalanced teenager with identity issues ... no place in official content ... most backward parts of the fandom ... lol tumblr

Ok, this is just venting spleen. Come on. You can't simultaneously criticise the "fannishness" of a fandom while sounding like the neckbeardin'est fanboy to ever crush a noob.

I think it's a stilting attitude to let your prejudices against a stereotype bias you against a story. Can't you forget, for a second, why you *think* writers bring in such "pandering" emotional qualities to TF, and analyse the stories solely on their own merit? That's problematic too, of course. Because then you'd have to start analysing *every* element which makes TFs relatable to humans. And I don't think we want to do that. Mostly because... sigh... it's a kids' franchise.

Now let me get something straight here: kids' fiction is my business. Discourse about it occupies most of my day. It's how I eat. I read more novels for children than I do for adults, and have actually come to the conclusion- at 27- that children's fiction is more useful and important than adult fiction.

But, as Anderson has alluded to, you also need to be more careful about what you present to kids. And I'm not sure, from Dom's posts, that he actually considers this. Dom, you seem more concerned about what the franchise can offer *you*, as a full-grown adult. And that ain't right. You're often the first one to bring up the capitalism issue when discussing Hasbro, so you have to admit that kids are a more profitable audience for them than you. They make it for kids. It's a kids' franchise!

So... we need to distinguish what constitutes "emotional depth" in a kids' franchise, not an adult one. Any examples of kids' franchises with emotional depth? Honestly, I think this might be a subjective issue for a bunch of adults, but those of us who've raised kids might have some interesting tidbits. How does TF compare with MLP on the emotional front?

I'd like to move for emotional *depth* being replaced with emotional *openness*. I mean, what does "depth" mean? Worthy of analysis? Isn't anything? At least "openness" means the creators *intended* the property to have emotional weight.

[BWprowl]

First off let me just say that I love that our board can have discussions about this sort of thing, as opposed to whether Dinobot could beat Armada Starscream in a swordfight or whatever it is places like the Allspark talk about.

As others have said, Transformers as a primarily sell-toys-to-kids franchise does limit it in terms of ‘growing’ with its audience, as its less focused on doing that growing and more on keeping things at the same ‘level’ for that audience so the target age group can continue to renew itself. Of course, there’s plenty of variation just in terms of the quality of the writing and what the individual creators are going for (the tone and concepts of things put forward by Animated vs. what we’re getting in Prime being an example that’ll last for some time, I think), but as a whole, the fiction, especially the television fiction which is usually squarely aimed at hawking whatever’s currently on shelves to the 5-12-year-old boys’ market, has a motivation to stay in the same ‘place’. Stories about emotional investment certainly aren’t a no-go, practically every story Tigatron starred in in Beast Wars was about that to some degree, but they aren’t going to be pushed ‘forward’ the way JT seems to be advocating for because that’s simply not something that ‘level’ of fiction does. Hell, we only got the first confirmed-gay character in an animated ‘kids’ film just last year, and that was as a quickie line at the end (no one else saw ParaNorman? Okay.) Not that I’m advocating that including gay characters equals the type of emotional-storyline progress I agree with JT would be nice to see, I’m simply illustrating how these different ‘levels’ of fiction separate themselves from each other.

Which brings us to the comics, which, since Dreamwave relaunched TF as a franchise now driven primarily by a nostalgic desire to see stories featuring the ‘original’ generation of TF characters, have swung towards a much older audience than the television side of TF fiction. Of course, this is facilitated by comics as a whole trending older, but there’s stuff like the MLP and Adventure Time comic adaptations that show that a ‘kids’ franchise in comic book form can appeal to that same audience and still find success, rather than being forced to ‘mature’ itself up to feel at home on the comic racks. But with the TF comics primarily appealing to now-older G1 fans (kids certainly aren’t going to care about a TF comic based on ‘it has Rodimus and Fortress Maximus in it’. They don’t even know who those guys are!), there’s both a pressure and a freedom to tackle things a bit more ‘maturely’. The freedom comes from not needing to ‘write down’ to the kids that would be the target audience of a straight cartoon adaptation (ignoring for now that said cartoons might not be writing down in the first place), but the pressure comes from feeling like you might need to swing a comic more ‘serious’ or ‘gritty’ to legitimize it to the dedicated older readership. A good example would be the ‘punched-up’ dialogue from the comics and novels of the Dreamwave era, trying seemingly too hard to emphasize that these were mature stories for mature readers such as yourselves. This of course ignores that much of the audience of those comics would happily watch the G1 cartoon with no worry about it being ‘legitimized’ as a adult entertainment, so why would they demand such validation from their comics?

And of course, such superficial maturity certainly doesn’t translate to actually pushing off from the emotional stuntiness that JT’s accusing the franchise as a whole of being. Look at TF’s ‘brother’ series, GI Joe. Remember Resolute? A dedicated ‘mature, adult’ GI Joe series, but arguably far more emotionally stunted than other interpretations of the franchise; a violent playground where you see your favorite heroes cut loose and start stabbing and shooting bunches of dudes with abandon, but with none of the emotional challenge of ‘real’ war that you should expect from such release. How Resolute’s portrayal of characters and their emotional journeys compares to what they go through in ‘Sigma 6’, often argued to be one of the more ‘kiddy’ interpretations of the series, begs to be analyzed. And again, the parallels between those series and TFPrime vs Animated should be noted as well. A cartoon can have a mature tone, but still be severely lacking in terms of emotional intensity and moving concepts. The live-action films are an even more perfect example of this. ‘Fans’ don’t consider those films to have ‘raped their childhood’ because it degrades the concept of Transformers to senseless alien invasion violence and glorifies the shallow nature of a factional war, they hate it primarily because Ironhide is black and not red. Had those movies remained exactly the same in terms of plot, style, and story substance, but used fully G1-based designs, I would argue that most fans would eat them up the way the GI Joe faithful embraced Resolute. Which I think does say something about how ‘stunted’ the franchise and a lot of its fans may be.

Moving onto the specific subject of Rewind and Chromedome in MTMTE, and whether it constitutes pandering, franchise-concept-advancement, or something else entirely: I disagree with Dom’s notion that Roberts included the relationship purely to pander to the tumblr-fangirls. As many problems as I do have with MTMTE, they mostly go back to Roberts indulging himself, rather than any marginal fans online. You get a real sense that he’s trying to play with this big spaceship full of toys in any way he can think of, and exploring an honest-to-Primus real ‘relationship’ between characters is something that isn’t done often enough in TF (stuff like Silverbolt/Blackarachnia in BW was much more of a stock, obligatory ‘romantic subplot’ that existed simply as a facet of the cartoon’s era of storytelling) and making the relationship happen to be between two male characters (besides fitting in pointedly with IDW’s expressedly-genderless interpretation of TFs) calls attention to the fact that the writer is doing something different with this analysis of interpersonal relationships in TF. As mediocre as I personally think he’s turned out to be at it, Roberts wants to do *different* things with how his TFs interact, such as in ‘Chaos Theory’ when he had Optimus Prime and Megatron sit down and talk about their conflict, rather than exchanging one-liners while bashing each other with maces or whatever. I may not think his execution is the best, but Roberts is clearly trying to push TFs past the stock emotional spectrums JT has accused it of being rooted in here, though he’s not the only one. Costa had the TFs, who have previously been shown to generally get along famously with humans, actually lose their faith in the race and abandon the planet for their betrayal. Even Barber seemed to show elements of TFs functioning in a more political spectrum as opposed to open warfare (granted, that all turned out to be bunk, but that’s an argument for the other thread, and the demonstration was there, at least).

Would some of the forward-moving emotional concepts in these comics fly over the heads of the kids who are the target audience of every other facet of Transformers? Maybe, especially since they haven’t had a quarter of a century like us to become accustomed to how TFs previously ‘worked’ to appreciate the subversions these comics are foisting on the concept. But they could still benefit from reading them in general, I think, and it’s worth pointing out here that the IDW logo appears on the back of all of Hasbro’s TF toy boxes these days, so they do consider those elements a worthwhile contribution to the franchise. As a result, I wonder if there are kids who both read IDW’s output and watch the current cartoon, and notice the divide in how a show like TFPrime presents the conflict versus how comics like RID and MTMTE portray it. Not to mention relationships in TFPrime mostly being limited to squicky innuendo between Jack and Arcee compared to the more earnest, genuine connection exhibited by Rewind and Chromedome in MTMTE. I at least wonder which of those that audience would connect or identify with more. I know I have a few friends who, while I don’t want to make out with them or anything, I would trust on a personal level to the same degree Rewind is shown to with Chromedome, for instance with things like medical decisions. There’s mutual care there, a bond, and I agree that TF, and ‘kids’ fiction in general could always benefit from exploring that dynamic in characters more.

As a blocked-out footnote to this voluminous post, it’s worth noting that this concept of ‘romantic friendship’, which may very well be what Roberts was going for with Chromedome and Rewind, apart from any full-blown boyfriend/boyfriend stuff, has a tendency to pop up in Japanese ‘kids’ entertainment more than in Western equivalents, where the line between friendship and love tries to be much more clear-cut. Stuff like Kamen Rider can show a very strong emotional bond between characters like Shotaro and Philip in Kamen Rider W, to Gentaro and Kengo or Ryuusei in Fourze, with strong caring emotions and heavy pain when they’re separated and put under duress, without insinuating that the guys want to sleep together or anything. Hell, the latest episode of Pretty Cure had Rikka’s worries about Mana befriending Makoto directly compared to the concerns of a jealous lover, though it was still left in the context of strong friendship. As mentioned by JT, you still have fringe elements of the fandom (particularly outside the target audience) that will use such feelings as justification for romantic shipping of the characters and emotional imprinting of their own lofty interpretations, but the rigid intention of what the writers actually want the characters to express is still clear, and they can’t be held responsible for what some viewers simply think, that’s just the nature of fandom and audiences. It’s worth noting that such ‘romantic friendships’ are a staple of Japanese culture and storytelling, particularly between young girls, but even then it’s still a strong contrast between kids’ shows from another country that can demonstrate these deep interpersonal relationships between characters, while today’s TF cartoons in America leave it at light flirting between a boy and his motorcycle.

[Gomess]

Good point about the hypocrisy of "This is a universe where TFs are genderless... BUT THIS IS GAY FANGIRL PANDERING"

And the very idea of ChromedomeXRewind being a "thing" is hilarious. Has anyone even checked Tumblr for the sort of thing Dom is talking about? All those closeted Chromedome fangirls from back in the 80s who are finally validated in their desire for him to make out with a cassette?

And hey, even if I concede that they're meant to be gay- 'cos let's face it, they are boys, no matter how hard IDW pretends otherwise- there's still way too much conflating of "homosexual" with "sexual" going on in here. Having *any* pair of TFs exhibiting feelings for one another beyond.. like.. vague camaraderie or faction-based hatred is a huge emotional step forward for the franchise, and should be welcomed.

No one seems to be retroactively complaining about the G1 cartoon's Optimus Prime and Elita One being "in love" (and what a deep and compelling relationship that was).

To bring things back to the general a bit more, I honestly think the franchise will remain emotionally stunted so long as it sees a poorly defined backdrop of "WAAAARRRRR" as a prerequisite to the story. It's lazy. It's boring. It's clichéd. It makes character relationships too easy. If I really wanted to see TFs with emotional depth, I'd insist on a series that was set in peacetime, or at least *around* a conflict rather than right in the middle of it. But let's face it, it doesn't look like a story like that will constitute Hasbro's mainline for sometime.

Why?

Because actions figures need to come with weapons

[JediTricks]

To some extent. Think back to the original Transformers cartoon. It wasn't a war cartoon, it was action and adventure. It was afterschool fun where no one died. The war was a pretext to allow all of that. The violence was not hardcore. That changed within a few years with the movie of course and characters did start dying. But then Beast Wars went right back to the "nobody dies" formula, with a few exceptions as the plot demanded. Characters could be blown to pieces and still live through it! I could run through all the other series that followed, but the point is this: Transformers in mass media is highly sanitized when it comes to violence and warfare. It's not realistic. It's not hardcore. My parents had no problem letting me watch Transformers at 13 years old, with my 11 and 9 year old brothers there with me, because it wasn't realistic, and it was nothing harmful.

Obviously things have changed over time. There are some more brutal moments in more modern incarnations of the show (Starscream stabbing Cliffjumper to death comes to mind, or Airachnid killing Tailgate offscreen with his energon spattering the wall), but Transformers has not always been and still is not usually hardcore.

Your examples confuse me, you cite the G1 series and then point out that TFTM changed that dynamic considerably. You cite Beast Wars but mention it had a few deaths, and what about in BM? You point out that times have changed, citing TFP's heightened violence, then undermine the very point. "Still not usually hardcore"? What about the 3 awful movies that sold toys to kids by the boatload? Those are some of the most disgustingly violent things ever, and yeah they're PG-13 but they're marketed to kids. I dunno, the days of the "fun adventure in a quiet little war" aren't really what Hasbro seems to want to push, even Animated had some surprising violence for a show that was very kiddified. And what about War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron? All mainstream expressions that take the violence to mature levels but emotionally aren't keeping pace.

The comics are another story, even going back to Marvel. Generation 2 in particular gets violent and characters are slaughtered by the truckload. But the comics are a niche product, and so they can afford to go somewhat further. The Last Stand of the Wreckers is practically a horror comic in terms of the violence, death and torture, if it wasn't for the fact that we're seeing robots and energon, not humans and blood and mutilation. Hasbro still vetoed some of the language the writers wanted to use and some of the deaths. There are limits to what they will allow, even in Transformers products aimed at an older demographic that only sell in the tens of thousands.

The comics are what were really driving this thread in my mind since the bulk of the mature storytelling is done in that medium, and it seems to be the medium the fans draw the most from. In any case, there are limits, but they're pretty far out there.

yet the idea of hardcore emotions is seen as not age-appropriate, as if emotional intimacy is dirty and should be avoided by kids while violence and destruction and hatred are perfectly fine for them.

There are certain topics that aren't age appropriate. Some maturity is required to understand and handle them. I've got daughters that are 8 and 3, believe me when I tell you that this question of what they need to know and how much is constantly on my mind.

I agree that some topics aren't age-appropriate, but why violence and war and hate aren't on society's list of taboo topics while emotional intimacy is on that list, that seems unhealthy. It should be on your mind, with my niece when she was those ages it was on my sister's and my minds even when it didn't seem like it. But at the same time, it's really easy to just "go with the flow" that society puts out there where mature images of violence are the norm for kids entertainment at 8 years old while people's feelings are still taboo.

We already get some of that. Just about any Transformers show I can think of depicts the characters as having strong bonds of friendship and cameraderie with each other. Look at Sparkplug working himself to exhaustion to repair Omega Supreme. Look at the way Optimus Primal goes out of his way to extend the hand of friendship and trust to Dinobot. Look at the loyalty that characters demonstrate for each other across the various Transformers shows. And of course, we do indeed get some romantic affection with Tigatron and Airrazor, or Silverbolt and Blackarachnia. It's not as thought the concept is non-existent.

Those examples are expressing the response to those feelings without actually talking about why those feelings exist. We rarely get an answer to why 2 characters have a strong bond of loyalty beyond just SAYING that they're "brothers in arms" and "friends forged in fire".

Citing BW is not really apt IMO, BW's content is the exception rather than the rule and even there only hinted at it in a traditional "girl meets boy" sort of way, and BW is the zenith of thoughtful TF television, and that zenith is over 15 years old now, since then it hasn't attempted much of anything remotely similar. To me, that's an anomaly, not an example.

Because otherwise it's stagnate, it's just doomed to repeat the same shallow content over and over with little room to grow. Do you want Transformers to remain just a refuge of the manchild? Even the original cartoon at times tried to be more, tried to carry thoughtful ideas to its audience. To now shy away from interpersonal relationships as a natural part of the brand's narrative leaves it stunted and its viewers trapped in a broken Peter Pan message that eventually will self-destruct from being incapable of growth. I've always seen TF as more than something like Power Rangers, just there to sell toys to successive generations of violent, poorly-discriminating children.

I would hope children aren't deriving life lessons primarily from their entertainment. Not that shows like Transformers aren't opportunities to point out expressions of loyalty, or the consequences of greed, or any number of other foibles and to discuss them, but Transformers is primarily entertainment and fun. As I said, I primarily view it as escapism, a way to just let reality go for half an hour and just relax and enjoy some action/adventure. I'm not looking to get the same thing out of it as you are, I guess.

Entertainment has always taught children a lot about their worlds. The reason fairy tales are often scary is because it was a medium that reached children and prepared them for the horrors of living with the black death on a daily basis. If one views children's entertainment as nothing more than mindlessness, one is blind to the ways that children's minds work - children take in EVERYTHING as life lessons, from coloring books to ads on the bus to garbage television. My point was more about the way older kids through adults view the franchise, but this actually makes an interesting point because where your fully-formed brain views Transformers as just "escapism", a child's developing brain doesn't have such a concept, everything is education whether they know it or not because they're constantly growing. Kids may seem like they're "vegging out" in front of the tube, but they are making emotional connections from the content they're viewing, so they should at least be getting some level of quality in the message they're getting. G1 bothered to tackle some issues, and every time I see a panel for the show at a convention I see guys and gals my age thanking the writers and voice talent for getting them through those early years when things were tough at home, for being "role models" when there were't any around their lives (that was the essence of a comment from a Marine at Botcon to Peter Cullen) - if there wasn't emotional content for kids to connect to, the franchise wouldn't have continued on to where it is now. So you may not be looking to find that level of depth in the franchise, but the franchise is going to impact its audience either way.

"Gay Space Robots" sounds like the kind of thing you would see in a stereotypically bad fanfic written by an emotionally unbalanced teenager with identity issues ... no place in official content ... most backward parts of the fandom ... lol tumblr

Ok, this is just venting spleen. Come on. You can't simultaneously criticise the "fannishness" of a fandom while sounding like the neckbeardin'est fanboy to ever crush a noob.

This is how Dom thinks, he texts me this sort of thing all the time. Remember for years how he was constantly going on in serious fashion about the "try me" packaging being a glory hole? Why would anybody want to put their penis in a toy package? Wouldn't the plastic window cut said penis? Didn't matter to him, he was sure that's how it was to his perspective. He believes what he believes, period.

I think it's a stilting attitude to let your prejudices against a stereotype bias you against a story. Can't you forget, for a second, why you *think* writers bring in such "pandering" emotional qualities to TF, and analyse the stories solely on their own merit? That's problematic too, of course. Because then you'd have to start analysing *every* element which makes TFs relatable to humans. And I don't think we want to do that. Mostly because... sigh... it's a kids' franchise.

Now let me get something straight here: kids' fiction is my business. Discourse about it occupies most of my day. It's how I eat. I read more novels for children than I do for adults, and have actually come to the conclusion- at 27- that children's fiction is more useful and important than adult fiction.

But, as Anderson has alluded to, you also need to be more careful about what you present to kids. And I'm not sure, from Dom's posts, that he actually considers this. Dom, you seem more concerned about what the franchise can offer *you*, as a full-grown adult. And that ain't right. You're often the first one to bring up the capitalism issue when discussing Hasbro, so you have to admit that kids are a more profitable audience for them than you. They make it for kids. It's a kids' franchise!

So... we need to distinguish what constitutes "emotional depth" in a kids' franchise, not an adult one. Any examples of kids' franchises with emotional depth? Honestly, I think this might be a subjective issue for a bunch of adults, but those of us who've raised kids might have some interesting tidbits. How does TF compare with MLP on the emotional front?

I'd like to move for emotional *depth* being replaced with emotional *openness*. I mean, what does "depth" mean? Worthy of analysis? Isn't anything? At least "openness" means the creators *intended* the property to have emotional weight.

Good post. You did however also open another can of worms with the MLP thing, but that's not my domain. I would argue that the comics are more the realm of the teens and adults than the kid set though.

First off let me just say that I love that our board can have discussions about this sort of thing, as opposed to whether Dinobot could beat Armada Starscream in a swordfight or whatever it is places like the Allspark talk about.

That's why we're here for all views from the community. Our group is awesome enough to have that range.

As others have said, Transformers as a primarily sell-toys-to-kids franchise does limit it in terms of ‘growing’ with its audience, as its less focused on doing that growing and more on keeping things at the same ‘level’ for that audience so the target age group can continue to renew itself. Of course, there’s plenty of variation just in terms of the quality of the writing and what the individual creators are going for (the tone and concepts of things put forward by Animated vs. what we’re getting in Prime being an example that’ll last for some time, I think), but as a whole, the fiction, especially the television fiction which is usually squarely aimed at hawking whatever’s currently on shelves to the 5-12-year-old boys’ market, has a motivation to stay in the same ‘place’. Stories about emotional investment certainly aren’t a no-go, practically every story Tigatron starred in in Beast Wars was about that to some degree, but they aren’t going to be pushed ‘forward’ the way JT seems to be advocating for because that’s simply not something that ‘level’ of fiction does. Hell, we only got the first confirmed-gay character in an animated ‘kids’ film just last year, and that was as a quickie line at the end (no one else saw ParaNorman? Okay.) Not that I’m advocating that including gay characters equals the type of emotional-storyline progress I agree with JT would be nice to see, I’m simply illustrating how these different ‘levels’ of fiction separate themselves from each other.

I haven't seen ParaNorman, didn't know that. Your point is apt, but it also shows the flaw of allowing kids programming to be dominated by shows with ulterior motives of selling products. Even TFPrime wants to tell bigger stories, they are aiming higher than something like Armada, they're just... not that good at it. Animated hinted at depth and growth, but had few episodes to do so in. And there's the extremely repressed, reactionary parental groups who rail against any content they "heard" it might be dangerous, like Tinky Winky on Teletubbies, rather than just experiencing it themselves and making personal parenting decisions. It's a very limited format fraught with having to do a lot of things at once while avoiding angering people. Still, our world is changing and people's views of the messages they send their kids changing with it, just not in a way that is immediately and obviously profitable to the companies driving the content.

And of course, such superficial maturity certainly doesn’t translate to actually pushing off from the emotional stuntiness that JT’s accusing the franchise as a whole of being. Look at TF’s ‘brother’ series, GI Joe. Remember Resolute? A dedicated ‘mature, adult’ GI Joe series, but arguably far more emotionally stunted than other interpretations of the franchise; a violent playground where you see your favorite heroes cut loose and start stabbing and shooting bunches of dudes with abandon, but with none of the emotional challenge of ‘real’ war that you should expect from such release. How Resolute’s portrayal of characters and their emotional journeys compares to what they go through in ‘Sigma 6’, often argued to be one of the more ‘kiddy’ interpretations of the series, begs to be analyzed. And again, the parallels between those series and TFPrime vs Animated should be noted as well. A cartoon can have a mature tone, but still be severely lacking in terms of emotional intensity and moving concepts. The live-action films are an even more perfect example of this. ‘Fans’ don’t consider those films to have ‘raped their childhood’ because it degrades the concept of Transformers to senseless alien invasion violence and glorifies the shallow nature of a factional war, they hate it primarily because Ironhide is black and not red. Had those movies remained exactly the same in terms of plot, style, and story substance, but used fully G1-based designs, I would argue that most fans would eat them up the way the GI Joe faithful embraced Resolute. Which I think does say something about how ‘stunted’ the franchise and a lot of its fans may be.

Great post overall, but this bit really struck a chord with me. Resolute really bothered me for those very reasons and thinking back, that's when I stopped being into GI Joe completely but I never connected it that way before.

The rest of your post, all I can say is "thumbs up all the way", no reason to quote so many good points when I cannot even add to them.

[andersonh1]

Your examples confuse me, you cite the G1 series and then point out that TFTM changed that dynamic considerably. You cite Beast Wars but mention it had a few deaths, and what about in BM? You point out that times have changed, citing TFP's heightened violence, then undermine the very point. "Still not usually hardcore"? What about the 3 awful movies that sold toys to kids by the boatload? Those are some of the most disgustingly violent things ever, and yeah they're PG-13 but they're marketed to kids. I dunno, the days of the "fun adventure in a quiet little war" aren't really what Hasbro seems to want to push, even Animated had some surprising violence for a show that was very kiddified. And what about War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron? All mainstream expressions that take the violence to mature levels but emotionally aren't keeping pace.

Maybe the problem here is twofold: mixing the media and equating the violence level with the exploration of emotional depth.

I think it's fair to say that the afternoon/Saturday morning cartoon version of Transformers has always been friendlier to kids than series which aired on cable, and certainly more than theatrical releases. You've got to include the 86 movie with the Bay movies. I should sort each category out rather than trying to use them all as one continuous succession of media.

And when it comes to violence, the whole premise of Transformers is "two factions at war". You can handle that by treating it as action adventure, or go to the opposite end of the spectrum and grace the page with buckets of internal fluid, dismemberment and torture. But the point is, physical conflict is at the heart of the franchise. Kids buy the toys so they can fight, and the fiction reflects that. Transformers is not a series built around love or romance or deep personal feelings. Yes, those emotions are relevant to the characters, obviously. But they don't have to be there for the Transformers concept to work for the target demographic, whereas conflict does. True, the fiction is far more shallow without emotional depth, but does the 8 year old who wants to see Prime and Megatron fight really care about that? We do, but they don't.

Conflict is a core requirement of the brand. Emotional exploration is not. I think each has to be discussed on its own, not lumped together by the idea that if one is acceptable, so is the other.

The comics are what were really driving this thread in my mind since the bulk of the mature storytelling is done in that medium, and it seems to be the medium the fans draw the most from. In any case, there are limits, but they're pretty far out there.

Agreed, and as I said above, I shouldn't be throwing all transformers fiction together into one group and evaluating it as such. My mistake.

I agree that some topics aren't age-appropriate, but why violence and war and hate aren't on society's list of taboo topics while emotional intimacy is on that list, that seems unhealthy. It should be on your mind, with my niece when she was those ages it was on my sister's and my minds even when it didn't seem like it. But at the same time, it's really easy to just "go with the flow" that society puts out there where mature images of violence are the norm for kids entertainment at 8 years old while people's feelings are still taboo.

I don't know. If you look at the stages of life, conflict comes a lot earlier than you might think, whereas relationships are largely parent/child and friends. Deeper expressions of friendship or romantic love appear later with maturity, and even then it takes years to learn and grow with understanding.

You're making me think.

[Dominic]

We're talking about a line dedicated to endless war, hardcore violence, and that's been ok with parents for decades; yet the idea of hardcore emotions is seen as not age-appropriate, as if emotional intimacy is dirty and should be avoided by kids while violence and destruction and hatred are perfectly fine for them. I'm not trying to be a peacenik here, but just because emotional intimacy is often perverted by content publishers into immature, exploitative sex doesn't mean that they are one and the same, but the gut reaction from society is often to paint them as such.

and

agree that some topics aren't age-appropriate, but why violence and war and hate aren't on society's list of taboo topics while emotional intimacy is on that list, that seems unhealthy. It should be on your mind, with my niece when she was those ages it was on my sister's and my minds even when it didn't seem like it. But at the same time, it's really easy to just "go with the flow" that society puts out there where mature images of violence are the norm for kids entertainment at 8 years old while people's feelings are still taboo.

One thing to keep in mind is how rooted to the reptile brain the violence or intimacy is, or how much it is pitched to our reptile brains.

There are studies showing that the more pitched to the reptile brain soemthing is, the more likely it is to affect (and often offend) people. (This applies to drama, comedy, whatever.)

If the violence is relatively sanitized, (having few consequences as you mentioned in the comics thread), it is less likely to raise people's ire. To use the famous example, the nekkid blade is not going to trigger most people's reptile brains. But, the nekkid woman is going to get an involuntary reaction from most people. We seem to be biologically (or strongly socially) programmed to react to large stretches of bare flesh, even if there is nothing inherently lewd about the particular part being shown. (I have noticed that a "bare back" dress or shirt can be more likely to get my attention than cleavage in many cases.)

Even for the comics though?

Awe c'mon, showing people reacting in terror right before being crushed in tunnels during AHM? That is perfectly kid friendly.

Spike the womanizing thug? C'mon, kids can handle that!

(Aside: The annoted "Last Stand of the Wreckers" assumes that a significant number of Transfans would not recognize Noam Chomsky. Just sayin'.....)

I've always seen TF as more than something like Power Rangers, just there to sell toys to successive generations of violent, poorly-discriminating children.

That is a bit unfair. A kid watching MMPR is not necessarily a violent philistine, nor are they likely to grow up in to such a person. The violence in MMPR was cartoony, and I would imagine it still is. Generally, it was about killing mean and scary monsters, and sometimes dealing with inner demons (such as it was depicted on MMPR with HS students dealing with little kid fears). But, you get the idea.

We don't have a thumbs-up icon and that's too bad in this case. But let me ask you, do you feel in the mass-media content that those are examples of the norm, or are they attempts to break with the norm?

I would say they are neither.

The original cartoon was written by how many different writers? Episodes varies so much that I would be hard pressed to say which episodes were representative of the series as a whole. (A "best to worst" sample would work. But, that would yield more or a numeric average than any truly representative episodes.)

The comic started and ended relatively high. But, there was a serious slump in the middle when Budiansky stopped caring. (That is a thing for him. He is a good idea guy. But, long term execution is not his thing.) Based on interviews, Budiansky wanted to do well but did not always muster the enthusiasm. I know for a fact (based on having talked to the guy directly) that Rob Tokar (Furman's editor) want his run on the book to be the best possible run.


Generally, I would say the newer content by younger/unknown writers and artists is intended to be better, because those guys have something to prove. Similarly, Furman has learned from recent drubbings and is now trying to rebuild his brand. But, guys like Dixon will just phone it in because they have no real or moral incentive to try.

I'm also not willing to concede that "soft sci-fi" is even a bad thing necessarily, a lot of '60s and '70s "hard sci-fi" is nigh-unapproachable.

Most of the sci-fi I read is on the softer-side. (Like I said, Trek is "relatively hard".)

Ouch. Then again, Prime is a really horrible example to draw from because it is so overtly violent and angry and shallow. Prime is a sign not unlike the movies proving that the brand is actually worsening in its stunted attitudes.

Yeah. That moment is up there with the entirety of BotCon '04 in terms of "moments I wish I was there for". (It is especially funny given that TF and manga fandoms have some overlap and that there are significant numbers of gay/bi members of that fandom, to say nothing of fans with gay/bi friends.)

I am not sure that the movies or Prime are wholly representative of the brand though. (Hasbro has approved some pretty heavy content, especially in recent years.)

To me, that seems entirely unfair. You are looking at meta-context well outside the content itself. The "why" shouldn't matter if the "what" is good. The idea that he's playing to the 'shippers is not only questionable at best, but is immaterial because there will always be 'shippers, there are people today analyzing the relationship between Abe Lincoln and his wife along the lines of Bella and Edward from Twilight. There will always be a subset of an audience who wants to fulfill their own emotional longings with the characters in their entertainment, that's on them - don't wear their burden for them. If you can't judge the material on its own merits, then you are just as emotionally stunted by the 'shipping as those 'shippers, you're simply going the opposite direction with it.

Roberts has his hand on the pulse of the vocal parts of the fandom. And, so much of what he writes seems designed to "reward" them, that I cannot shake the impression of "gay space robot shipping" when reading MTMTE. The content is unavoidably influenced by the intent of the writer, which is why I consider the writer when reading the content.

This is such a weird argument. Where's the concept of the motivation mattering? You give an alternate idea of how it could be expressed, but that's not actually fulfilling your argument "that the motivation behind the depiction matters", it's simply a DIFFERENT expression, not the ONLY one.

If the motivation is to reward the worst groups of fans, I am not in favour of it.

while loyalty, faith, friendship, loneliness, longing, and caring end up not getting carried along with.

Not necessarily. Much of that was addressed during G1. (Again, I am not ignoring later iterations of the fanchise. But, it is easier to argue about stunting by going back to first principles.)

Mirage has always been portrayed as conflicted, to the point where Prime and the other Autobots were openly suprised that Mirage gave up a ride home to Cybertron in order to stop the Decepticons. Similarly, in the UK, Divebomb stayed with the Predacons out of a sense of professional obligation, despite not enjoying the job.

Blastoff's and Cosmos' file cards both make isolation a defining element of their characterization. Omega Supreme's emotional deadness (resulting from being betrayed by the Constructicons) was the focus of an episode of the cartoon.

Huffer is one of many characters depicted as "just wanting to go home".

Ratchet and other Autobots were shown worrying over severely damaged comrades. Wheeljack was shown as being tempted to work with Decepticons in order to get needed supplies in the UK. Grimlock's quest to bring back damaged Autobots plays in to this. Even Budiansky, towards the end of his "not giving a fuck" phase (not long before handing the book off to Tokar) showed two Autobots weighing the morals of using black-market components to repair damaged friends.

So we should all avoid public ideas expressing emotional intimacy on a non-sexual level because a few people pervert it to fill their own emotional voids?

No. When I see emotionally voided trying to twist affection to their perversions, I either call them out or ignore them. (It really depends on where I am and what my energy levels are.)

But, when a depiction of emotional closeness is seemingly designed to reward those backwards fanboys and fangirls (as I believe is the case with MTMTE), then my ire is raised.

To some extent. Think back to the original Transformers cartoon. It wasn't a war cartoon, it was action and adventure. It was afterschool fun where no one died.

Plenty of death is strongly implied, including the death's of humans in episodes like "Megatron's Master Plan".

There are certain topics that aren't age appropriate. Some maturity is required to understand and handle them. I've got daughters that are 8 and 3, believe me when I tell you that this question of what they need to know and how much is constantly on my mind.

My childhood babysitter now has a daughter (about 7 years old). This kid is allowed to read just about everything because she *can* filter. I was shocked to find out that she had already ready the seventh Harry Potter book (before the movie came out). This kid has an excellent fact/fiction filter, and can handle all manner of things in fiction that some adults have trouble with.

Ironically, the mother is arguably divorced from reality in terms of thinking that this is at all normal and takes her daughter's maturity for granted. (Good for the kid and all. But, lets not pretend she is normal.)

Now let me get something straight here: kids' fiction is my business. Discourse about it occupies most of my day. It's how I eat. I read more novels for children than I do for adults, and have actually come to the conclusion- at 27- that children's fiction is more useful and important than adult fiction.

Wow. You must drink copious amounts of booze. (Seriously, "children's literature" nearly killed my love of reading as a kid.)

Explain your conclusion though. I would tend to say that adults should be reading more non-fiction. But, fiction still has a place on adult reading lists/book shelves. (And, kids should be exposed to non-fiction early on.)

And I'm not sure, from Dom's posts, that he actually considers this. Dom, you seem more concerned about what the franchise can offer *you*, as a full-grown adult. And that ain't right. You're often the first one to bring up the capitalism issue when discussing Hasbro, so you have to admit that kids are a more profitable audience for them than you. They make it for kids. It's a kids' franchise!

I am buying the comics for me. So, you are damned right that I want to read them. And, while IDW has its share of non-kid friendly moments, there are still plenty of well written comics (TF and otherwise) that a kid could read. (I would see no problem with a kid reading "ReGeneration One" "Team 7" or "Earth 2" for example.)

We also know that kids are less likely to read comics than adults are. And, (given that you work in publishing), you probably know that there is a sort of limit to how low printed matter can be pitched. Printed matter logically requires literacy. Literacy generally implies a certain level of intellectual development. There is a point where simply being literate implies that somebody is not going to bother reading something that is pitched too low. ("The Boston Herald" is a local newspaper that has been struggling more and more with this.) The same applies with kids.


But, my main arguement is "I am buying the comics for me, screw the kids."

Look at TF’s ‘brother’ series, GI Joe. Remember Resolute? A dedicated ‘mature, adult’ GI Joe series, but arguably far more emotionally stunted than other interpretations of the franchise; a violent playground where you see your favorite heroes cut loose and start stabbing and shooting bunches of dudes with abandon, but with none of the emotional challenge of ‘real’ war that you should expect from such release. How Resolute’s portrayal of characters and their emotional journeys compares to what they go through in ‘Sigma 6’, often argued to be one of the more ‘kiddy’ interpretations of the series, begs to be analyzed.

"Resolute" was basically a direct to video/disk release. It was comparable to most action movies.

"ReLoaded" would be a better example. That was explicitly billed as being hard-core and realistic and mature. And, it sucked. Oh, how it sucked.

Good point about the hypocrisy of "This is a universe where TFs are genderless... BUT THIS IS GAY FANGIRL PANDERING"

In context, gender is not a constant for TFs. But, when trying to appeal to fans, there is a reason to assign gender. (Hey, meta matters.)

No one seems to be retroactively complaining about the G1 cartoon's Optimus Prime and Elita One being "in love" (and what a deep and compelling relationship that was).

I recall that was pretty well paint by numbers, the definition of "stunted" in this thread.

If I really wanted to see TFs with emotional depth, I'd insist on a series that was set in peacetime, or at least *around* a conflict rather than right in the middle of it. But let's face it, it doesn't look like a story like that will constitute Hasbro's mainline for sometime.

I know that you guys get screwed in terms of comics distribution. But, you really need to read the current "Robots in Disguise" series.

G1 bothered to tackle some issues, and every time I see a panel for the show at a convention I see guys and gals my age thanking the writers and voice talent for getting them through those early years when things were tough at home, for being "role models" when there were't any around their lives (that was the essence of a comment from a Marine at Botcon to Peter Cullen) - if there wasn't emotional content for kids to connect to, the franchise wouldn't have continued on to where it is now. So you may not be looking to find that level of depth in the franchise, but the franchise is going to impact its audience either way.

And, again, if it is just disposable escapism, why the hell have we pissed away so much time talking about the comics and such? (And, if you are going to dismiss it as escapism, time spent discussing and thinking about it is pissed away.)

This is how Dom thinks, he texts me this sort of thing all the time. Remember for years how he was constantly going on in serious fashion about the "try me" packaging being a glory hole?

My germophobia is a thing. (It grows at least partially out of a need to regularly wash my hands for blood tests and such.) "Glory hole" was me using a deliberately depraved way to describe it. Honestly, kids sticking their fingers up their noses before trying the toys also pretty well horrified me.


Dom
-has no issue playing with strange dogs though.....