Uh-huh, bait all you want, just don't start stalking me again.

 

*pops into thread*

*is reminded why he never posts here anymore*

One day there'll be an MTMTE/LL conversation without the trolls.

 

Thank God MTMTE/LL was abolished when it was. The intent of the writer was clearly to plant the virtue-signal flag into a beloved toy franchise from the 80s. 5 minutes on his twitter feed is all it took to figure that out. That’s what everyone is missing. The intent of the writer.

So, all this jibber jabber about boobs on robots is a waste of time. I wanted to be entertained by Transformers comics and what I got was culture war propaganda from an activist.

 

What if I told you that not everyone who disagrees with you is a troll?  

 

"This thread is threatening to devolve into a genuine discussion of the virtues and flaws of the series. Let's all return to the only salient point, which is that I personally detest it, and the person who wrote it, and everyone who enjoyed it, and I won't be happy until everyone acknowledges that James Roberts murdered my childhood and should be banned from writing forever. And don't you dare try to tell me that makes me a sad obsessive wanker."

 

Look i know i have a bit of a bad rep for being a sass mouth here but i was genuinely trying here. Like, the response i wanted was “haha, woops, how about this analogy instead...?” Fun fact i dont think “representation” is a de facto good either (its complicated AMA!), but through an unwillingness to actually extricate yourself from a gaffe, you are doing a bad job of extricating that idea from some super cagey rhetoric. (Pssst Kairos is the heart of the rhetorical triangle)

Mind you, For all this modern jargon about representation and whatnot, femmes and romance and way weirder shit was in g1 from day dot. Did you know “matrix” is latin for “womb”? Think about that for a hot second.

G1 prime was mpreg all along its canon now

 

Hey, there are parts of my body that possess the potential to create life. Does that mean I’m pregnant?

 

Is it literally called a womb? Then maybe! But consult an irl doctor for goodness sake do not get medical advice from tfw.

 

Thanks for taking medical calls on here, Dr. Pluto! I had a similar question, but I was too embarrassed to ask. But, now I can rest easy knowing that my parts aren’t pregnant.

 

"Womb of Leadership". I guess that cinches it. Optimus really is the truest hero for all people, regardless of race, creed, gender, species, or sapience level.

Of course he was all before that, but you know.

"WOMB OF LEADERSHIP."

 

If it’s canon then “maybe” is not a sufficient answer. This is a semantical slight of hand. By you’re logic, Optimus is not considered pregnant in Poland because the Polish word for womb is Łonie.

 

Which was happening before you and the rest of the Disciples of the Tumblr Church of Roberts decided to try to redirect every valid point in an attempt to discredit legitimate critique as misogyny and homo/transphobia.

Wow. You DO realize that the genuine flaws of the book are WHY PEOPLE DETEST IT, don't you? I doubt it, it's easier to spam the rhetoric button when you feel threatened. Look up @kaijuguy19 and his posts engaging the nuclear option in defending TFP Arcee for an easy reference point.

So once again, spam the rhetoric button, dismiss dissenting opinion, and lob insults on the way out. I'll give you an A+ for consistency, at least.

 

I replied to your last post with a perfectly reasonable series of points and a question for you. I'll repeat the question, so we can get back to the discussion: since there's nothing particular unrealistic about there being proxies for different kinds of human beings in a fictional robot society, what exactly is the issue you have with writers doing this?

Not really sure why you think a book being flawed is a good rationalisation for people DETESTING IT all in caps. Most media is flawed. Heck, the original G1 cartoon is an absolute train wreck in many ways, but you're probably not going to find many people who are furious to the point of tears about it.

 

G1 fans don’t call critics of the show ists and phobes. I firmly believe mtmte/ll defenders wouldn’t care a bit if none of the characters transformed ever again. Because to them it’s about feeling good about themselves because they’re so “woke”. They don’t give two shits (shites) about Transformers. It’s extreme narcissism. Nothing more.

 

I think that’s a little harsh. I’ve seen plenty of MTMTE/LL fans who are highly invested in the fandom and characters. That’s like saying people who like the Bay movies only care about explosions and hot women and don’t care about Transformers.

 

I don't hate fictional stories, hating requires too much effort, I just criticize and take apart bad fiction. :^)

I enjoy people getting mad at those honestly responding to the OP's question, like the gosh darn 'trolls' are invading the public thread on a public forum that anyone can join because it's public.

I'm starting to unironically miss the so-called "Geewunners" that people go on about (amusingly sometimes from people who didn't even exist when they would've been more active in the fandom), because these hardcore IDW fans, let me tell ya.

A special bunch indeed. Way more toxic than the Geewunners I've interacted with.

 

Funny how every person who seems to dislike MTMTE is suddenly a troll.

This is disturbingly true.

Just because something is not “unrealistic” does not make it adequate subject matter for any given story.

It also is unrealistic for certain proxies because they are robots. Transformers do not have human biology, to the point that they can radically reshape themselves literally on a whim. They are not human, will never be human, and cannot be victim to all or even most human problems. A human who loses a limb is hobbled for life, forced to adapt, change, and work hard to adjust to a traumatic and life-changing mutilation. A robot that loses a limb puts it back on, etc.

It is silly and misguided to ascribe any and every social minority or majority to Transformers, because they cannot be us, and it comes across as forced, trite and pandering to do so.

If you want to create human proxies in fiction, do it somewhere where it works. Toy robots are not the appropriate medium, and it makes those of us sane enough to realize that recoil in embarrassment.

“Geewunners,” for as staunch and obnoxious in their preference as they were, at least didn’t attempt to invalidate the opposition as morally “in the wrong.” Sure they put down everything that wasn’t G1, but they never called anyone racists, misogynists, etc.

 

This is 100% true, but man I've gotten some really nasty messages for saying stuff like this online.    

 

Aaaaand that's a full house, ladies and gents. Every one of them on the same thread on the same day. Achievement unlocked.

Agreed. That is why, several posts back, I said I don't particular want to read stories about lesbian orgies.

Somewhat true. It's within the power of a writer to concoct a believable reason for why a Cybertronian might not be able to get a limb replaced, if they felt there was good story material in it. If you're going to be consistent on this point, where's the objection to characters like Kup and Animated/Prime Ratchet being depicted as 'old'? Surely they can just get any deteriorated parts replaced?

Depends how it's done. I don't think it has come across as particularly forced at any point yet. Clumsy sometimes. But if it's pandering you want, you can't beat the fact that the whole original line were written as 'male' characters because Hasbro reckoned boys wouldn't be able to get along with females.

You're already invested in a fiction about robots who look and act like humans, who bleed glowing liquid and keep hitting each other with swords. It's a bit late in the day to recoil in embarrassment because some of the robots look more like ladies than lads, or have switched their pronouns or decided to date each other.

 

No, see, it actually isn’t.

This excuse that “we’ll, it’s stupid in other ways, so why not make it stupid in every way?” doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Humanization can only be taken so far before it ceases making the characters relatable and starts making them questionable. The robots having faces, speaking English, and having their (often I’ll-defined) mortality is what makes them enough like us to follow, but if you start making them basically metal people you start drifting into what I call the “uncanny valley of humanization.” Suddenly they’re so close to us they might as well be us, but they’re still not us. It begs the question of why they’re even robots at all if they are nearly 1:1 with humanity in every facet of their society.

We like the Transformers because of how similar they are to us, but we enjoy them because of how different they are. They’re superhuman beings, which implies some latent humanity, but the things that make them inhumane are what is interesting. Transformers should have their own problems, something that makes them alien. They’ve already got the humanization covered just by being humanoid talking robots with faces, but they have to still be compelling as robotic aliens, have aspects unique to them in order to pique curiosity and imagination. There’s nothing imaginative about making a non-gendered robot trans, or having 50% of the prominent characters pair up with their own version of marriage. These concepts feel out of place and a waste of time with characters who should have a developed and unique culture of their own.

I miss the cartoons where they took advantage of the robot concept. They had gimmicks and tools, limitations and strengths beyond what we could ever experience. The latent humanity of the characters kept them grounded and the audience invested, but it was their inhumanity that made them fascinating and timeless. Nobody is going to look back on these books with their over-the-top imagery and topical pandering and see it as anything but a dated political commentary. “Conjure Endura” won’t catch on as a classic TF concept like Sparks or the Matrix, because it’s not something that makes the Transformers unique.