I do believe there is a balance. On the one hand, this is a series about humanoid alien robots with names like Bumblebee and Starscream who disguise themselves as our vehicles. This is more Douglas Adams than Isaac Asimov on the moh's scale of sci fi hardness and ill-suited for plots like Arrival where the aliens are so inscrutable that merely communicating with them is the primary conflict. On the other hand, even given the premise that Transformers is soft sci fi, you lose a lot of the charm imo if their interactions with humans aren't tinged with a 'fish out of water' feel. Further, I genuinely like robots and all things mechanical so go too far away from that and I believe you lose what makes the Transformers special by having robotic leads.

So where exactly is the line between human enough and not too human?

 

Simply put: just "human" enough to emotionally connect without feeling like the storytelling potential of shapeshifting alien robots is being neglected, and "alien" enough for cultural exchange between Transformers and humans to feel interesting.

 

I definitely like my Transformers skewing more soft sci-fi than space fantasy, but they've always been very humanized robots. Transformers is not a franchise where we grapple with whether or not the robots are truly alive, that's kinda just baked into the premise. They're human enough to be easily relatable to anyone; they have vibrant, colorful personalities and complex relationships with each other, but they're still giant alien robots. I think that human relationships derived from our biology are kinda weird and alien to them, like the Autobots always seem to have a hard time understanding what a "dad" is. That doesn't mean that they don't have similar relationships, though; like they definitely have mentors and parent figures, but they don't really think about it in the same context as we do because, well, that context simply doesn't exist to them.

To quote Bob Budiansky, "The Transformers are on Earth!" They're very human robots, but they shouldn't just be big metal robots because otherwise where's the story? The Transformers shouldn't really eat food, for example; like I think "picking a cyber-apple off the robo-tree and eating it" is maybe a bit too human, even if it is technically different. Transformer culture shouldn't just be human culture with some silver paint splashed across it, it should be its own thing built around the fact that these are transforming robots. There are a lot of times when a human is telling a Transformer about being hungry, and the Transformer just doesn't get it until they think "oh so you need to refuel at a fuelling station?" Like that's kinda where I think it should be, they don't have a 1-to-1 comparison for a lot of human things, but they sorta have something vaguely similar. Transformers kinda get what eating is, but not really. They don't get, like, taste or eating at the dinner table with the family, just the basic refueling idea. They need to be easily relatable on a personal level, but more complex and different on a cultural one, I guess.

I've been rewatching Beast Wars lately, and I'd kinda love to see the idea of the Transformers having onboard computers revisited. It's a great reminder that, even though they're very human, the Transformers are still robots. It's something that doesn't really have an exact human analog that, to be honest, would be really cool to see revisited. It lets them function more as robots than just as metal humans.

 

I definitely think there's a point where they veer into making them too human, because part of the really interesting / cool elements of them interacting with humans and other alien species is the cultural exchange that occurs.

One of the reasons I like characters like Jazz, Hound and Huffer so much is because it shows while some 'Bots become fascinated with Earth and its culture, some like Huffer are a lot more homesick and struggle to feel like this strange new place is a 'home'. I thought it was neat how in FoC they depict Shockwave as having an interest in Earth fauna in regards to his creation of the Dinobots and Insecticons, but that's a bit of an aside.

Because the writers are human naturally there will be bits of ourselves that will appear in these aliens, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to go overboard to the point where they are basically just metal humans... simply because I feel that's way less creative or interesting than how writers like Bob Budiansky, Furman or the Beast Wars showrunners treated their biology. If given a choice I'll always prefer soft / hard sci fi in regards to the storytelling and characters than the more fantasy-based stuff.

There's a lot of really distinct ideas and themes you can explore with a cast of machines that doesn't really naturally occur within organic life.

 

This actually kind of reminds me of the whole "more than mere machines" quotes from Beast Machines. Yes, they're robots, but they aren't just ANY robots, they're Transformers, they're more than meets the eye. They should be more than just mere machines because they're not necessarily mindless machines, they got personalities, but they should be alien enough that it comes off as they aren't humans wearing silver suits.

Speaking of Beast Machines, I feel like techno-organics come across as being close to human but not entirely, ie they may be eating cyber apples but they really don't need to. As for taste, if I remember correctly there was something that with Cybertronians liking certain grades of oil, or that whole thing with Animated where oil was simultaneously both blood and alcohol which is, kind of disturbing on a level. Then again, energon has been used in the same way, kind of.

Then again, I kind of see some analogues of Cybertronian biology as being almost 1 on 1 (ie Optics, audio-sensors), but I also like to think of them as using human terms for things simply because they don't have a useful term in Cybertronian. IE a Transformer talking about giving another their "heart" even though they don't really have one.

I'm running into some of the same thought process creating my own Transformer culture, which is even more compounded by the fact that they're supposed to be slightly more "alien" than Cybertronians.

 

Much to my surprise, I'm finding a lot to agree with here -- historically I feel like I'm always beating the "Fish out of water! Alien culture on an industrial-technological metaphor! Deep rifts of understanding" drum, while other people are drawing Arcee cheesecake art.  

Obviously there's a lot of anthropomorphism in Transformers, but rather than leaning into that, I find it way more interesting when that is then turned on its head. Even an escapist science-fiction premise can be useful in breaking us out of received notions about humanity, and thinking about things from a different perspective -- rather than just being wish-fulfillment fantasy characters.

Which is not to say I don't enjoy it when some "industrial technological" analogy can be made between something human and something Cybertronian... but the line between "trite" and "clever" can be razor thin.

While the Marvel TF comics were hit-and-miss, I think they walked this particular line rather well. This is a race that didn't "get" organic life at all when they first arrived on Earth. There was always something charming about those fumbling, slightly confused encounters between Transformers and humans (like when Ratchet and Buster encountered the campers in Oregon, etc).

It also makes me appreciate the characters who have a genuine affinity for Earth that much more... as in Hound's fascination with the natural world, or Jazz's natural aptitude for picking up local ways.

On the other hand, whenever I see a bunch of Transformers sitting in a robo-bar, drinking robo-martinis, watching robo-girls dance to robo-disco, my inner child dies a little inside.

Of course, those aren't their "real" names, right? Funny how rarely any attention is devoted to how Transformers learn language and translate idioms in world-building... when even their names are obviously, what... transliterations? Approximations? Totally new? I mean, to say nothing of basic life cycles, etc.

Well put.  

zmog

 

People hate G1 being anywhere near the movies, people treat it like it has the plague and that we should constantly ignore it and get away from it as much as possible, but people conveniently do their level best to forget that it's the origin of everything and that it built multiple worlds and had a competent mix of humans and robots. While we don't need to constantly go back to that well for ideas, etc, we could at least go back and watch (closely) how they handled human scenes/TF interactions because the show did it better than anything that's come since. Sure, an episode or two was definitely off (B.O.T.) and the humans beyond Dr. Arkeville, Spike, Sparkplug, Carly, and Daniel aren't exactly compelling, but the balance was pretty darn good.

I get that CGI budgets are horrendous, especially on these movies, but man...make a shorter movie, then. Have less human drama altogether. I get that they feel we need the humans to help the audience connect, but here's an idea...make compelling Transformers for once. That's the one thing these movies have pretty much failed at, save for Bumblebee. I hear ROTB has gotten it figured out in that department, let's just hope the interactions are good, too.

 

There's an article on Tfwiki which purposed that the Maximals and Predacons are speaking Cybertronix in Beast Wars/Machines that has been translated to English for us. This has kind of made me think about a sort of fanfic idea where Cheetor and the rest of the Maximals are speaking Cybertronix in front of humans who don't speak it, and that there's tonal and accent differences: Rattrap's Brooklyn accent translates into a particular dialect of Cybertronix that blends two words together in some instances, Silverbolt speaking with a very formal version of Cybertronix, Blackarachinia's Cybertronix is effected by the fact that she started out as a Predacon and thus says certain words differently, and Nightscream having an informal version of Cybertronix.
I've even drawn that out to fan created planets, such as the one with techno-organics tend to give themselves names that when translated, sound more akin to Warrior Cat names than formal Transformer names.

I'd try my hand at creating a spoken Cybertronix, but I'm not Paul Frommer.

 

For language, I just consider them to be speaking the Cybertronian language except when they’re talking to humans.

 

This is the same answer that I'll give every time this query comes up.

Transformers aren't and never will be humans (not even Pretenders, hell, that one's in the name)

But they're still people. Giant metal people that turn into vehicles and animals and things.

They have their own beliefs, culture, scientific practices, biology, technology, etc.

They don't have to be 1 to 1 with humans; they're human "enough", but there should be enough of a disconnect that there's still some things that either species doesn't get at first or outright can't understand.

 

I'm good with it aslong as they don't start looking like this:

 

My head-canon for this has been that when the Ark first woke up and sent out probes and rebuilt the Bots and Cons to disguise as Earth vehicles, it also did a massive AI scan of all global television and radio media (these days, what would include the internet of course) and uploaded a complex language bundle that gives each TF not only a basic vocabulary in Earth languages, but which is also responsible for their particular "idioms" (Ironhide talks like a cowboy, Jazz a radio DJ, etc)... and their call-signs of course.

It's basically a much more sophisticated version of how Junkions learned english. The human "voice" each TF simulates is basically just sampled from media and selected to match a TF's corresponding personality or cultural equivalent -- in theory.

The thing is, it's basically just a software overlay that simultaneously translates, which means they may occasionally get things wrong. A character like Jazz, who is a big culture junkie, might actually try to learn earth languages cognitively, rather than just relying on the automated language algorithms

The thing is... maybe they're speaking both. Cybertronian as a language might not (probably wouldn't) sound like a language humans would (or could) use. It may just be a garbled high-density string of ping codes - but what if this content could be "simul-cast" as part of the human language carrier wave. Like, maybe that metallic buzz/distortion that most transformers have on their voices is actually just the parallel Cybertronian signal which TFs can hear and understand, but we could not?

I mean, we see big cultural differences between human races here on earth sometimes... I would hope that nigh-immortal aliens who operate on an entirely different biological model would have a bit of culture shock.  

zmog

 

Erm… “people” are by definition human beings. It’s a misuse of the term to apply it to anything else. Transformers are sentient and sapient, but they’re not people.

I basically agree with the rest of what you said, though.

 

In the context of some sci-fi stories, "people" is used to describe all sentient species with human-level intelligence.

 

Yeah, I think "people" is a flexible term that in reality just so happens to only apply to humans, but could certainly apply to other non-human types in a fantasy setting.

 

Hmm. I guess my love of science fiction doesn’t overrule my science education. Transformers characters are not people by any definition I’ve ever known.

 

I think on the human enough side, you have to make them psychologically human. You should give them biological/mechanical differences on account of the fact they are strictly speaking mechanical rather than biological and given the numerous cultures we as one species has, cultural differences are to be expected but in spite of how different they might be physically, it should be just assumed they are mentally basically human. They have friends and loved ones, joy and sorrow, a sense of humor and aesthetic, all that good stuff. There might be slight differences like not experiencing lust due to not reproducing the way we do and having a different sense of disability due to easily being able to reattach or replace parts but 90% human there.

In terms of how to humanize Cybertron without going too far, it's all about my conception of what Smog calls 'the industrial technological metaphor of life'. Like I said, they're basically human and have had millions of years to produce their own culture so if they're capable of enjoying music, art, sports and the like I imagine they would have produced their own. But you shouldn't just show them eating Tungsten Turkey legs, smoking Cy-gars as the band plays the techno guitar. You should think of the mechanical reality of their construction and their capabilities and see what would make sense in that lens.

I think a general concept for example is that transforming should be natural for them and not just a super power so they should do it in their sports, jobs, just traveling any further than from room to the next but instead it is often forgotten to the point IDW poked fun at itself with an 'alt mode party'.

 

Again, I don't think 'people' is actually a scientific definition - so much as a definition of convenience. Or perhaps less science-fictional, and simply philosophical.

I think the term 'people' is not so much a structural definition of humans, so much as a term that we afford things that have the important characteristics we associate with the condition of being 'human' - and which make them worthy of consideration as kindred beings. In the hypothetical, if we ever encountered another intelligent, civilized race, then we would doubtlessly extend the definition of 'people' to them, while retaining 'human" as a more exclusive category.

Moreover, if you've spent any time in the presence of great apes, I would argue that they are very much also 'people'... while not being human. Of course, that taxonomy is fairly arbitrary, as many early hominids that are rather different from what we think of as modern humans are still under the Homo genus, and therefore considered (nominally) "human".

But in any case, since we ARE discussing hypotheticals in a science-fictional context, I think it's fair to call Cybertronians a "people"... much like Goblins or Vulcans or Green Martians or Wookies would also be a "people".

zmog

 

I think we agree completely on the concept and simply disagree on the appropriate application of the term itself. Language isn’t static, and may evolve to the point that the term “people” is legitimately extended in the way you suggest. But as I understand it, apes aren’t people, and neither are Transformers or Wookiees. I think you and I would describe and categorize those life forms in very similar ways aside from the use of the word.

EDITED: changed the mistakenly typed word “human” to “people”, as was my intention.

 

And more to the point, I agree with you on the term "human" (although most people probably wouldn't consider species outside of Homo Sapiens to truly be "human") - the word "human" carries a great deal of specificity.

By comparison, I think that the word "people" doesn't have that same clinical specificity, and would (theoretically) apply to any beings we recognize as a sentient culture. In that sense, I think I just meant that "human" and "people" are not philosophical synonyms, even if they are in strictly practical terms (because we've never met such a culture - or at least recognized it as such).

zmog