TF Views

One point I will concede from the "Windblade" thread is that TFs typically resemble male humans.

This has sensible reasons on and off page/screen. But, I have to wonder, how would it fly if Hasbro launched a media supported TF series that avoided gender-specifics. The robots would look vague enough to go either way (similar to BW Airrazor and some of the UT Minicons). If it were a cartoon, the voice actors would be filtered enough to make their genders vague (maybe using teens in some cases).

"Alien Nation" and "Enemy Mine" had gender-bent/distorted aliens. (It was just assumed that males played a significant and necessary role in child-bearing in both movies.) That gives precedent for this sort of thing in (semi-)popular US media.

Pronouns would be an issue, but could be written around.

Now, imagine if that series was written....without tackling gender issues. Just play it as "that is how these *alien* things work".



(I swear, I just popped in today to bash on that awful FCBD issue.)

Dominic wrote:Now, imagine if that series was written....without tackling gender issues. Just play it as "that is how these *alien* things work".

Spoiler

Jesus Shitchrist Windblade does not tackle gender issues holy fucking fuck will you actually respond to my points about that in the relevant thread shitting duckcunts I am so mad about that seriously

Anyway, you could make an argument for a large portion of Bayformers, though there was still definitely some gender differentiation (least of all from the existence of Arcee herself in that continuity), showing that even with TFs at their most alien (or perhaps because of it) biological differentiation was still a Thing (I mean, damn, we saw Cybertronian *larvae* in one of the movie spin-off comics. Man I love that continuity, if not much of its actual content).

Another point is that, on early Beast Wars techspec cards, many characters (all Predacons, I think) were described with gender-neutral 'it' pronouns. It presented an interesting take on at least *some* TFs as less-than-sapient 'creatures', and is one of the many things I'd love to see revisited about 'Toy-Universe' Beast Wars.

There's also Tigerhawk, though he's one-of-a-kind, and wasn't exactly ambiguous. Part of me wishes they'd gone with a more androgynous design and references for the character, but instead he just ended up being clearly a dude, despite technically being half-female. This does bring up the concept of what a theoretical combiner made up of equal male and female TF components would be, but I think the *only* female gestalt component in TF history is Scylla from BWII, and I don't know that they touched on the subject much there. Actually, there's now Runway from the Generations Mini-Con team, but those characters aren't even actually Cybertronian, so who knows?

Lastly, as a tangent, it would be interesting to see a TF comic (it would pretty much have to be a comic) play with readers' expectations of TFs for a 'Samus is a girl' type of reveal, following a character in a stereotypically 'male' altmode like a tank or bulldozer, only for them to transform towards the end and reveal themselves as distinctly feminine. (plus, hey, anything for more female TFs that aren't friggin' motorcycles)

Tigerhawk was androgenous in Japan.

Jesus Shitchrist Windblade does not tackle gender issues holy fucking fuck will you actually respond to my points about that in the relevant thread shitting duckcunts I am so mad about that seriously

Scott, the writer, made gender an issue.

And I think this is the perfect thread to ask a deeper question: How human does something have to be in order for us to automatically ascribe human characteristics to it? For example: You wouldn't call a refrigerator "he". But, if you put arms and legs on it, THEN would you call it "he"? Or, would this be carried more by programming/personality? HAL-9000 in 2001 was just a red eye but it often gets referred to as "he". So where's the dividing line? At what point does a man made thing start seeming human enough for us to anthropomorphize it?

Why have humanoid features at all, then? Just relatability?

Sci-fi has toyed with androgynous characters in the past, Babylon 5, Earth: Final Conflict, and TNG stand out for me, but those weren't the central characters.

Anyway, I think in theory this could work but probably would be buckled by the writers' inability to grasp a gender-neutral emotional core for characters. When you have actions like those taken by Optimus and Megatron, they are seen as male-centric actions, so their emotional cores are written as such. In order to be truly androgynous, I think the Transformers' war has to be a cold war, much more mysterious and quiet and subtle. Mysterious, quiet, and subtle don't lend well to cartoons about toys.

BWprowl wrote:Anyway, you could make an argument for a large portion of Bayformers, though there was still definitely some gender differentiation (least of all from the existence of Arcee herself in that continuity), showing that even with TFs at their most alien (or perhaps because of it) biological differentiation was still a Thing (I mean, damn, we saw Cybertronian *larvae* in one of the movie spin-off comics. Man I love that continuity, if not much of its actual content).

Bayformers did it both ways, they had very alien-aliens such as whatever the fuck ROTF Demolishor was (a pair of wheels and arms with a head) and they had Bumblebee pissing on people from his robocrotch. Then you have the aforementioned larvae nonsense.

Dom wrote:Scott, the writer, made gender an issue.

No, Furman, the writer, made gender an issue. Scott, the writer, was hired by Hasbro to change that and Scott, the person, made a personal comment on that.

Shock wrote:And I think this is the perfect thread to ask a deeper question: How human does something have to be in order for us to automatically ascribe human characteristics to it? For example: You wouldn't call a refrigerator "he". But, if you put arms and legs on it, THEN would you call it "he"? Or, would this be carried more by programming/personality? HAL-9000 in 2001 was just a red eye but it often gets referred to as "he". So where's the dividing line? At what point does a man made thing start seeming human enough for us to anthropomorphize it?

KITT is a he because he has a male voice, just like HAL.

R2-D2 is a "he" however because our society equates his personality traits - heroic, mischievous, snarky, brave - as predominately male traits. R2 has no voice whatsoever, no humanoid features, and is entirely a machine, so he's a near-perfect template for us to draw conclusions from. Yet he's a "he", no matter how much I write in this paragraph attempting to use gender-neutral pronouns, I keep coming back to writing "he". This is because R2 is written from a male perspective, the male writing is inherent in the character, the character is imbued with the writer's humanity irrespective of the writer's intent. C-3PO was written to be a male personality, a used-car salesman is originally what Lucas had in mind for the character's voice; yet when Lucas tried to make TC-14 - an identical robot except silver - a female in The Phantom Menace, it didn't come through because voice isn't enough, there has to be writing behind it to match.

And that's why andro-formers isn't going to work easily, because a fictional construct is an offspring of its creator. No matter how alien, how technological a character is, as long as that character has some level of self-aware presence and relatability, gender projection will be there, anthropomorphizing will happen.

Andro-formers? I think is a bad idea,one that Hasbro would never do.

Genders in the Transformers robots in the fiction & toy line is needed. To make the robots seem more alive,relatable to kids buying/watching. allows the robots to appear less like mindless machines & appear more alive.

Having a non-gender or all-gender TF robot race is a bad idea. Hasbro goes out of their way to Put at least one female Transformer in the newer TF cartoon fiction to show the robots are a male race that likes females robots/humans.

Transformers with non-humanoid looking robot modes? No thanks,Most fans/kids,I know will hate this idea. Because the non-humanoid robots toys will look so ugly & look like epic garbage. Kids & parents who make up 95% of TF toy sales worldwide will not buy a entire TF toy line of freaky looking side show monters distorted looking robot modes.

I think your idea of Andro-formers art/sculpt in the fiction/toy line is more for a over 18+ adult buyer. Hasbro won't be interested because their TF toy lines/cartoons are aimed at the kiddies.

Transformers with non-humanoid looking robot modes? No thanks,Most fans/kids,I know will hate this idea. Because the non-humanoid robots toys will look so ugly & look like epic garbage. Kids & parents who make up 95% of TF toy sales worldwide will not buy a entire TF toy line of freaky looking side show monters distorted looking robot modes.

There was Beast Machines, but seeing as they ditched the sequel line to that, you probably have a point.

(It's worth noting that almost every single Maximal I bought was my new least favourite toy, while every new Vehicon was my new most favourite.)

So what I'm seeing here is that the anthropomorphizing is carried entirely on characterization. So if we had a TF series where the bots were non humanoid looking and sounded robotic, then pronouns would probably right out the window. But if they sound human, then we ascribe them as being either male or female.