Good to see the female autobots getting their time in the spotlight, but I gotta ask - is Alita-1 being left out in the cold? What about Slipstream too?

 

Well Slipstream exists solely in the aligned continuity so you can expect to see her pop in the third novel. Or were you referring to why she hasn't made a comic debut as yet?

 

yeah. I'm starting to wonder if she ever will

 

I think we will receive more female Transformers in due time.

 

Well there are several problems with introducing female characters in the IDWverse. As you can tell by the derailment of numerous windblade / arcee threads, this matter is extremely controversial;

1. It has been an established fact that Transformers are a genderless race.
2. Arcee was created as a result of experimentation/torture carried out on her by Jhiaxus.
3. Windblade & co belong to a race of Cybertronians known to as Camiens. The only explanation for their existance is so far limited to a few panels describing how they left Cybertron and as a result adapted.

Unlike the other continuities, it is very difficult for a writer to bring in a female character without shitting all over the previous writer's explanations/story or incurring the wrath of the TF comic fans.

Therefore as a result, i dont think we should expect to see Slipstream making a debut anytime soon. The background story for her would also be difficult to manage as Camiens do not veiw themselves as autobots or decepticons. She would have to be written as a disgruntled Camien to give her cause to join the decepticons. Furthermore, even if Slipstream arrives on Cybertron, there are only Neutrals there so i'm not sure what purpose she would serve.

 

Only for right now. I expect in the years to come, female TFs will be commonplace and new fans will accept it as the status quo. The comics were the last holdout on the whole genderless issue. Because let's face it- the TFs most definitely have gender. Not sex. Gender.

Only by writers who interchange the concept of gender with sex, failing to grasp the difference.

And only Arcee. All other female TFs are exempt from her origin.

They liked the sound of "she" better than "he."  

The problem is, that Furman felt the need to explain them at all, and then chose the most convoluted, dead-ended way to do it. And as much as I feel Spotlight Arcee should be stricken from the record, the sidestep that they've pulled off with Windblade and co. has respectfully maintained Furman's work while allowing female TFs to enter the story. Finally.

Chromia showed up despite being an Autobot in G1. It wouldn't be as hard as you think to work in new characters.

 

Surely all it's going to take to introduce more femmes is for Windblade or Chromia to put the call out to Camnius, and boom, whole shipload of them arrives. All your favourites in one big hit. They'd all be neutral but that wouldn't stop Slipstream being a sarky cow, or Strika being the size of a house with the disposition of an angry pit bull, or Thunderblast being a ditzy gold digging clinger or anything at all.

 

The purpose of gender is procreation. Species that procreate asexually do not have genders, as far as I'm aware. Although I could be wrong or forgetting something.


I agree that the way they introduced gender into IDW comics is extremely problematic. But I like that they at least gave a thought to treating it seriously enough to attempt an explanation. Simply ignoring the problem and just having genders exist is fine for superficial storytelling of the past. I don't know how valid a solution it is today, though.

 

The matter's only controversial because some people have a weird pre-teen "eww girls" attitude and/or hold Furman's original explanation in bizarrely high reverance. It doesn't need to be controversial.

As for why Elita wasn't in the initial batch of new female characters? Well, Windblade and Chromia were necessitated by their having toys out in a Dark Cybertron wave, whilst Nautica was created by James Roberts specifically to be a new MTMTE character, so it was quite possibly just a case of not wanting to try and introduce 4 or more new characters at once. If (hopefully when) we see more female Transformers turn up in IDW, Elita's got a pretty good chance of being among them.

Asexual species won't have sexes, but they could have gender, which is more of a psychological concept. Star Wars, for instance, is full of gendered asexual droids. You could ask why asexual Cybertronians would develop binary gender, but you could also ask why they have two eyes and a nose and a mouth and five fingers on each hand. Transformers are always going to be human analogues, and if trying to explain that away leads to weird stuff like Furman's Arcee origin, I'm perfectly happy leaving it unexplained.

 

No doubt that is always a possibility. Don't get me wrong, i've never concerned myself with the direction new characters take. However right now we don't have an indepth explanation about Camiens and there origins. We have the word "adapt". Surely with the introduction of more female characters, fans will definitely demand an explanation. When that explanation will utimately come to light, BLAM, you will have a Furman Vs Marghread Vs Whatever the new reason is (if it is different from Marghread's vision) argument sprwaling out of control on the internet.

As Mako pointed out, Furman made female transformers a dead end and fans were extremely upset about a major change in the transformers continuity. Although i do admit its rather silly for people to have the whole pitchfork attitude, it can to a certain extent affect sales if such matters are not handled in a delicate manner. Furman and Marghread going at each other prior to the introduction of Windblade did not help matters.

 

Can't remember which issue of DC it was, but i think windblade even says something along the lines of "look to your sisters in arms".

 

Pretty sure she will show up at some point. Moonracer and Firestar would be sweet as well.

 

Windblade was hinting that something might be wrong with/on Caminus, something she hoped Cybertron might be able to help with. Could be a natural disaster or something else altogether, but it might be something serious to trigger a mass exodus. So, bring on the ladies!

Does anyone know if the Caminus bots heard Vector Sigma's call home? I don't think any of the current female characters have mentioned it yet.

 

Yep, pretty much my thoughts as well.

 

1. They have no concept of gender but it still exists.
2. Jhiaxus experimented on Arcee by convincing her she is female and different to everyone else, which tortures her.

 

Yep I remember that. Sorry I SOOO missed, or glossed over where they said they came from Camia(?). So were they cold casted or forged? So there not any feminie-looking TF on Cybertron eons ago?

 

They came from the hot spot inside Caminus, so they're forged.

And yeah, the female gender is something that developed specifically on Caminus. No Cybertronian has ever been born female that we know of.