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Rodimus Prime wrote:Well, as far as the overall concept goes, I don't care. Not when it comes to Transformers and not when it comes to real life. As for specific characters, I thought IDW did Arcee fairly well, even though the revelation of her being transgender didn't happen until close to the end of the series. Unless I missed something earlier on. I also couldn't care any less about same-gender relationships between characters, but it did irk me a bit that the concept was kinda forced into the story of the Lost Light when it came to Chromedone and Rewind. It was somewhat obnoxious. Cyclonus and Tailgate was quite organic and non-intrusive, though, and they became 2 of my favorite characters. I just hate what happened to Tailgate.

Evil Eye wrote:

snavej wrote:TFs are the ultimate gender benders. They can change in seconds. Since they travel around the universe, they probably know about extra alien genders.

We can't complain if TFs bend their genders but we can question their motives. Why do they need to do it? There should be some purpose, even if it's frivolous.

Pretty much this. I always quite liked the idea of the Transformers having started off as completely androgynous and inhuman in appearance, with more anthropomorphized elements (such as gender) being incorporated into them as they met alien races and thought "Hey, that's a cool idea", in effect through cultural osmosis. As the millennia crawled by and the race evolved, this perhaps manifested as actual spark-level differences between male and female Transformers.

I think the biggest no-no with gender bending shenanigans in TF fiction is trying to draw IRL parallels. A race of mechanical aliens with biology completely divorced from our own and the ability to completely rebuild or even outright replace their own bodies is just not going to work for allegories of human society, unless you make great efforts to humanize them (which has its own share of problems).

If you did want to give some actual tangible differences between male and female TFs for whatever reason, without wishing to repeat what I've already prattled on about a thousand times before, my headcanon for TF reproduction is entirely tied to the spark, with "male" and "female" sparks existing and one of each being required in order to reproduce. External gender is entirely cosmetic and mutable depending on the whims of the individual, whilst "true" gender is fixed. Whilst this has absolutely no impact on how a Transformer might be constructed or present themselves, most choose to have forms and voices that match their gender and some personality traits are more common to one gender over the other. That said, in the cases of TFs with entirely "functional" bodies, sexual characteristics will probably be borderline non-existent. For example, ROTF Demolishor would look more or less exactly the same if he was a girl, because his body is designed purely for function.

Rodimus Prime wrote:Is G1 Laserbeak a boy or a girl?

Starscream is lord wrote:I never saw Rewind and Chromedome relationship force.

-Kanrabat- wrote:Best example would be a new Transformers series but this time, Starscream is a fembot. Same personality, same ambitions.

Rodimus Prime wrote:

-Kanrabat- wrote:Best example would be a new Transformers series but this time, Starscream is a fembot. Same personality, same ambitions.

Bit then they would have to totally cut out Megatron abusing him/her. It just wouldn't be acceptable due to it being basically domestic abuse.