You say it is awful, but don't give a reason? You're trying to define these alien robots with Human perimeters. What if transformers were a sexless, genderless biological species that reproduced through budding like a hydra? Would it still matter if half of the population had boobies, or had a slightly higher pitched voice? Come on. Your arguments are not as well thought as you think they are.

It isn't a real problem. If you went out right now and bought a comic with Arcee would you be able to tell me the story from Spot Light? Not at all. It was one issue. Essentially it HAS been swept under the rug. What I don't want to see happen is to ignore the incident with Jhiaxus, change the little details, but not the assault. That is what I'm worried about. Keep the interesting, character building, mental violation. Anything is better than saying it didn't happen. Ignoring it would relegate Arcee to a non entity. This is, ARGUABLY, the first time we've seen arcee not be the doting mother. I'm sick of only seeing that with her character.

 

...?

I believe I just said that the less physical difference between the Cybertronian genders, the better. I do not understand what you are protesting now.

 

How?

That is kind of the way I saw that. She was picking up on pronouns and bringing it up. The other bots weren't aware of what they were doing. She was obsessed with it.

 

What I said was, "It's entirely possible I'll hate it and IDW's official position on female Cybertronians will remain offensive or otherwise awful somehow"

I'm just vaguely blathering about worst-case scenarios that I don't expect. What could IDW possibly decide that would be awful? I don't know, how bout that fembots have to be curvy, or that only fembots can create new sparks, or that they are the fucking Kiss Players?

Good lord, if I qualify a statement from one side I get hit from the other side. Fabulous.

 

Fair enough. I don't think anyone wants that. That is my biggest fear too.

 

That would be the ideal. Given how long it took to get this far, it could be a while... but I'm optimistic. I can wait  

  Just let them exist. Diversity in character and designs is not a bad thing.

Just because they've started to fix the problem now doesn't mean that the problem didn't exist. But since you've declared the issue resolved that means the argument should be over doesn't it.  

 

Word.

"Gender isn't sex" is what people ought to keep straight on this issue. Scott seems to understand this really well. Also considering the usual Barber/Roberts approach, I think we are about to get some interesting sociology and a minimum of biology.

 

It doesn't relegate Arcee into that. I am saying SL Arcee is being a distraction to gender inequality and does not help the character that much. I like Arcee actually the way she been portray so far does it need back story no. I mean you could have Arcee had been Shadowplayed or tortured by Jhaixus but not a product of experiment in gender identification. Look at Prime Arcee she is strong without being to weak and is a competent warrior that not psychotic. If I didn't know better I would say IDW and Prime Arcee were two different characters with the same name.

If anything SL Arcee detracts from the character that Arcee is and she gets no real benefit from it.

The day of housewives and being motherly been gone for sometime.

 

That's true; it doesn't. It does have me worried, though. I do think she got some much needed characterization from it. Before what was she best known for? Springer's/Rodimus love interest, and nurse maid to Daniel. That's about it.

Honestly, I'd like Mechafire's opinion on the subject. He/she has thrown out how much he/she hates IDW/Furman's take on Arcee, but he/she hasn't really given out what he/she would like his/her IDEAL version of the character to be.

 

Yay! Smog's back!

I entirely agree with this. It's something that's baffled me with FP's Intimidator, a lot of people have been saying things like 'I hope someone brings out a kit to turn Down Force (FP's Drag Strip simulcrum) into a girl, since she was a girl in the Animated Bot Con set!' and I think to myself, why do you need some sort of add on kit to turn it into a girl? If you want that robot to be female, then just tell yourself that she is. Do you really need to give it boobs and high heels to mentally convince yourself that it's a girl?

The Gobots did exactly that without any fuss, Hasbro have done it a few times but mainly with non fiction repaints, and if they do ever appear in fiction they immediately get lipstick and curves, regardless of what the toy looks like.

 

So who was she nurse maiding or just being the squeeze of in "Only Human" or "The dweller in the Depths", "the Five faces of Darkness" and "Ghost in the Machine"?

Arcee appeared in 11 episodes of G1 season 3, of which only 4 ("Dark Awakening" and "Rebirth Parts 1-3")of them she's shown with Daniel. And that I'm aware, there's only 2 episodes where there is any sort of relationship between her and another bot: "Five Faces of Darkness (part 3 or 4?)" when Springer gets mangled by the recycler, and "Dark Awakening" where Springer shows his feelings when he thinks she is dead. So yeah she was really</sarcasm> typecasted in her G1 appearance.

 

Indeed! That was pretty much the point of my post: CNA isn't actually that absurd of a concept, since its literary inspiration, DNA, is itself poorly named.

Now, it's certainly arguable that CNA is a lazy concept, but that heads into authorial motivation, and a different argument.

 

Seriously? So you’re perfectly happy using pseudoscience and fantasy logic to discuss fictional toy lore ad nauseum, but when someone starts to insert basic information about biology, physics, and engineering, you tell people to just stop analyzing? Sometimes I think you’re just being contrary for the sake of it.

This whole discussion arose from some fundamental disagreements surrounding sex, gender, and anthropomorphism, so it should (at least I damn well hope) make sense to analyze each argument down to its basic underpinnings, rather than just keep going around in circles of opinion and conjecture.

You seem to have a fair foundation in the structure and craft of fiction, so is it fair of me to tell you to stop arguing from the basis of those literary techniques? Of course not. You bring your knowledge to the table, I bring mine. It’s a cheap shot to attack a perspective and body of work as "silly" simply because you choose not to view problems from outside your own area of expertise.

 

But isn't that what the fandom does for everything? We accept nonsense like sparks, t-cogs, space bridges, mass shifting -- heck, even the foundational concept of a robot instantly transforming into a functional replica of a vehicle is total absurdity. CNA is no less lazy or implausible than any of the other crap Hasbro has written to sell toys.

I've made several points, in fact, as to why it's not implausible at all in the context of the fiction, with the only response to date being "science is silly so stop it".

 

You site examples, then say those examples aren't enough to show that the character was typecast? OK.

I don't have a problem when one is using broad brush strokes when discussing science (when related to science fiction), but I definitely have a problem when people start going into intimate detail as a way to define science fiction. You say DNA. When related to sci-fi. I think Junk in the body that makes me human. You say CNA. I think stuff inside transformer that makes them a transformer. Anything more specific than that is UNNECESSARY. I could also argue that you're using a cheap shot because you're using very intimate knowledge of science that a layperson wouldn't necessarily know, or want to read about in an 8 page comic. I would argue that most people don't even recognize that your name relates to gravity.

 

I am neither defining science fiction, nor am I "using" knowledge as a "shot" of any kind. I'm just adding information to the discussion, in the hopes that everyone gets a bit of new data they didn't have before, and thus hopefully assisting the value of the discussion as a whole. If you're a layperson, then all the better, since I certainly don't want to waste my time explaining this stuff to someone who already knows it. I should hope that when you make your arguments, you expect to be providing your audience with a perspective they had not previously considered, either. That's not "silly" at all.

I made my posts because the argument had stagnated to this: "Something is implausible!" "No it's not!" In adding information, I expect to change no one's opinions, but I do hope to encourage some additional thought. That is, in the course of any mature discussion, absolutely necessary.

However, why is any of this "necessary"? It's a discussion about adults telling fairy tales about plastic toys for ages five and up. If you're looking to define commonly acceptable limits on the scope of debate, that ship sailed long, long ago.

P.S. - As for my name, it's literally what the other kids called me at school (and yes, while taking my lunch money). It's a play on my real name, which is unusual and awkward to Midwestern American ears. I hated that name as a kid; now I like it. Doesn't matter to me at all whether anyone knows what it means or not.

Edit: P.P.S. - This "very intimate knowledge" is all stuff from freshman bio; it's actually of a less advanced level than the literary-criticism language commonly used in these threads. I don't see why basic science is "silly" but professional-grade analyses of sociology and fictional craft are given a pass.

 

Other than some very basic stuff related to chi squares I don't remember most of the college level science I took. I'm not saying the stuff you're talking about isn't valid and doesn't have merit. I'm saying it is silly to try to apply that real world reasoning to transformers. You can do it, but you're only going to give yourself a headache.

It reminds me of a comic shop I used to visit that had a couple of well meaning guys try to come up with an explanation, using physics, for superman's flight. I was fascinated by it for all of 2 minutes. Could you imagine perceptor explaining CNA in the pages of a comic book?

 

Exactly my point. We accept the nonsense because it's so ill-defined. So when they try to explain it with fake science, it just seems stupid. It draws attention to the problem, rather than disguising it or make it work.

 

You could extend that, with very few exceptions, to the majority of sci-fi.
We've all been doing it for YEARS.

 

It is funny though I could add this explanation to Star Trek and some of the more recent Sci Fic franchise.