Cyclonus's holomatter avatar is apparently a victorian schoolmarm. Roberts may have said it in an interview, although the story I have from the interwebs it it was mentioned at a botcon, in a bar, also apparently he tweeted it. I'm posting from work which blocks a some sites, so I'm can't pull up the links I want to share. Meh.

 

English has genderless pronouns.

"One does not use genderless pronouns in Mordor"
"Its name is Optimus Prime"
"It's really a lovely 'bot, you'd like it if you got to know it"

Seriously dude if you're going to pull language as a defense at least do some basic research first.

 

Yeah... at the time, it probably would have been a bit too "radical". It probably still would be, in fact.

I agree with you... but I think (as above) this might be a little too politically radical for a Transformers comic. I guess we all draw our lines in different places, but I think that if they pushed the fluid gender concept too far (and make it too similar to the fluid gender debate in humanity) it would be perhaps more distracting, and encourage Hasbro to slap them down. Too much controversy in a toy line might not be what they're looking for... speaking realistically, rather than ideologically.

Which is one reason to A) keep working with a more vague, more mechanical metaphor so that these allusions are less blatant or unidimensional, and B) keep sight of the sci-fi angles, rather than making everything a direct corollary to human social discourses

I was actually very happy with the deftness of the handling of the Chromedome/Rewind story, but I can't help wondering what the reaction was to that on the corporate level from Hasbro.

Yeah, of course we have non-gendered pronouns. It's not prescribed by the English language, but it is true that non-gendered pronouns are a lot more awkward.

The English language does confer a lot of weight to pronouns, whereas other languages may actually have more common genderless options. On the other end of the spectrum, romance languages (like French) tend to gender EVERYTHING, including chairs, cars, trees, etc... which of course diffuses some of the absolutism of using a gendered pronoun.

zmog

 

Probably it got past the radar "because robots".
Level and amount of things that were allowed in TF franchise "cuz it's all about robots" always was amazing. Arcee's Spotlight included.  
Or the overall level of brutality always present in TF comic books, since Marvel until today.
Heck, TF Prime is one big dark nightmare fuel. A kids show.

 

Seriously remind me again why we don't have a more human sounding gender neutral word in English?

 

It is called It but I seen hir in Star Trek novel and it is not effective getting the meaning across.

 

It isn't that the word "it" doesn't sound human any more than "him" or "her" does. It's just because the word it is not used regularly and frequently to refer to people it sounds weird. If you were able to convince a group of people around you to use it to refer to each other in the 3rd person, after a period of time it would sound just fine.

"My friend Dave went to the supermarket. It needed to pick up some eggs," only sounds odd because it's not commonly used, not because of any objective oddness of the word it.

 

'It' is not generally considered a pronoun when referring to people, it's more commonly used to describe 'Things' and when it is used for a person it's generally as an insult, implying that person to be less than human. It wouldn't feel right to see characters constantly referring to each other as 'It'

You could of course do away with gendered pronouns all together simply by using the characters name (Who's she? The cat's mother? As Mum used to say.) but that would have needed to be set in stone right at the beginning.

'My friend, Dave, went to the supermarket to pick up some eggs.' sounds completely natural and avoids the need all together  

 

Just as long as they don't start referring to themselves in the third person too...

 

But it's fun.  

 

I'm sure they received a phone call or two. It was probably like: "That's nice, but we're done with cassettes for now so just kill him off or something, here's your list of future Generations toys, we'll need you to hurry up and figure out how to add some Beast Wars guys in your book. Oh, and this new fan toy. She'll be great in your book. Yes, I said "she", that's not a problem is it? Of course not. And oh yeah, Bumblebee will need a new head and Nightbeat needs to not be dead. Yeah, can you do that? That would be great. And don't worry, next week we'll have some more info from the designers on those Mini-cons. Thanks!"

 

Oh I agree, I'm really just trying to illustrate that 'gender in TFs' isn't some kind of lazy cop out but that it actually opens up a whole lot of themes and potential stories if IDW/Hasbro want to let them go down that path. It's not just fembots.

 

Implying Roberts didn't accept Nightbeat with open arms. I would think Barber got the short end of the stick in the forced character aspect.

 

Windblade is bearable, because at least she came with Nautica and Chromia.
And something tells me that Samurai Barbie Jet will not be around for very long, at least not in the spotlight.

 

Huh? What does that even mean, she won't be around very long in her spotlight? That makes no kind of sense and we know from September solicits she is still in control of Metroplex after her Spotlight arc finishes.

 

Not in the spotlight = not in the center of attention.

in the spotlight - Idioms - by the Free Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

Not "in her Spotlight".

I doubt if this character will ever get her own Spotlight book.
She's a product of the hype caused by fan voting over the toy design, otherwise she's very weak character with no personality.

I suppose she'll be a background character and not called very often.

Chromia and Nautica already are more fleshed an interesting, meanwhile Windblade, even when given the whole own miniseries, still has no real characterisation. Except "naive" - but that's the only side of her personality, otherwise she's nonexistent.

Looks like writers have no real idea, or incentive, to do anything more with her.

Also, she doesn't really control Metroplex, merely can understand him in his current state.

When Metroplex is finally healed and can communicate in a normal way, there will be no more need for city speaker.

Another good reason to move this boring character to the sidelines.

 

This is her Spotlight series.

You're also wrong about her characterisation, but whatever.

 

I quite like Windblade, but to each their own.

I've been following this discussion for some time now and I must say that it's rather refreshing to see that it has actually remained a discussion and hasn't (yet?) turned into a hate-spewing, ignorance fest as so many other threads regarding "fembots"/Windblade/Arcee/etc have. I think there are a lot of fine points being made and some interesting thoughts being brought up. I'm personally excited to see where they take Arcee, Windblade, Nautica, Chromia (and more? Love the ideas re: Slipstream and Strika).

 

No. We need a Transformer who refers to themselve in the third person. Kraken demands it.

 

We all accept him back, not every Hasbro mandate is bad, just to the point. To Sell More Toys.

Biggest critic of this past year about Dark Cybertron was obviously the comics being more half IDW's storyline and half Hasbro's toy commercial than ever, especially the early issues.

I like Windblade all right, and would not be receiving as much hate if she had been introduced properly, but there is only one reason she exists and was introduced exactly when she was in the middle of a big event, and that was Hasbro's Generations toys.