Glyph, that bio is her
movie bio, not a Marvelverse bio. She never apppears in the US Marvel run except in the
four issue movie adaption. Her UK Marvel appearances have no connection to her movie adaption appearance. and they also give her a completely Earth-based history. Secondly, you forget about this passage:
Arcee is attracted to the Autobot, Hot Rod, who reciprocates the affection. But neither of them is willing to admit it openly.
Romantic attraction. Think about it.
Tramp wrote: And yes, the DW comics do contradict Marvel's origin for Arcee She was not built on Earth. Based upon the DW story line, she appears to have been sent by the Quntessans as a mole. This story arc has not run its course yet.
I'll come back to you when I've had chance to go back and read through the issues in question. But again, I'll reiterate: you're basing this on the implication of a single unfinished and never-going-to-be-finished storyline from a no-longer-licensed company who had a reputation for fanwankery based on the most tenuous of potential canon links? Show me something that actually
says Arcee was created on Cybertron, as in your previous statement, and show me more than one because you have to outweigh the Marvel version!
(Side note: I don't actually care where Arcee was created. In my personal view, she's as much a Cybertronian as all the others. I just want you to actually support your claims and do what you claim to do in weighing
all the available evidence. Your Dreamwave bias is already self-evident, as is your willingness to take completely unrelated media like obscure Japanese manga and believe it supports some claim about the original cartoon.)
Actually, from what IDW told me in responce to an email I sent them, the only thing keeping them from completing thsat story arch is the DW bankrupcy litigation. Once that is resolved I do expect them to finish that story line, as do a lot of fans.
Tramp wrote:I'm not leaving anything out. The line about Vector Sigma is covered under the use of Protoforms. Vector Sigma, the Matrix,,these are necessary to bring a protoform to life. What I am talking about is reproduction without the use of protoforms, as stated as possible by MtMtE #8. That is not picking and choosing.
Page 15, about Cybertronians in general, spends 10 sentences (205 words) discussing the process of creating Transformer life. Of those, 9 sentences (179 words) discuss the use of protoforms, and explicitly state that protoforms are the
standard way of creating new Transformers. One sentence suggests (it does not explicitly state) that there may exist some other means of creating new Transformer life, and it may be inferred from the wording that this potential is resident within Transformers themselves. However, it also states that such potential is
not currently available and Transformers do not know how to make it available. There has been an in-canon description of such untapped potential: the G2 comics, and its depiction of
asexual cellular division.
Pages 6 (Cloning) and 50 (Sparks) are also based on the use of protoforms as the normal method of Transformer creation.
No, it isn't picking and choosing, secondly, I never denied that the
current standard is the use of protoforms, did I. Yes, the current standard method is the use of protoforms, no question, but the
untapped methods do exist, and have been hinted at in other sources. Yes, in the US Marvel G2 run they hint at the at asexual budding. In the Japanese runs and in the various US cartoons however, with the existance of females, romantic attachments and relationships, children and families, the evidence suggests the untapped potential is sexual reproduction.
You keep citing this passage from MTMTE #8 as evidence for your sexual reproduction theory, but it is nothing of the sort. It states categorically that the use of protoforms is the normal means of creating Transformer life (this is, of course, a Dreamwave retcon based on Beast Wars; the original G1 series required the use of the Matrix or Vector Sigma and did not include the concept of protoforms). 90% of the text and 100% of the supporting material talks about protoforms. You, instead, take the 10% of one article, infer something from it which is not stated, and declare that this must be the 'normal' way of reproducing for Transformers.
Yes, it is. as has been pointed out, the US Marvel run had not femmes in the regular arc the movie adaption was its own thing based on the cartoon, not part of the regular series. In that, particularly in G2, thye had the asexual rperoduction plot which resulted in the creation of the Swarm. The DW run and the other series differ from the Marvel runs in one key factor,
females. There are ahandful in
War Within, Arcee in the regular run, and the introduction of the original G1 femmes—Elita-1, Chromia, Moonracer, and Firestar. Marvel US did not have these characters. Marvel US did not have femmes at all in their regular run, and the UK run only had Arcee created on Earth as a publicity maneauver. You combiune that passage in MtMtE #8, with Arcee's bio discussing her romantoc entanglements with Hot Rod and Springer, as well as the cartoon inferrences in both the US and Japan, and the manga, the evidence adds up. No,
by itself, it doen't infer what the "other potential" might be. Howevr,
combined with other evidence from other sources it does.
If it were normal and simply repressed by scarcity of fembots, don't you think the guide would mention that? That would be a fairly fundamental thing to discuss, especially if it was going to be important to DW's ongoing series. Instead, it makes no mention of sexual reproduction whatsoever, despite being written for adult fans and therefore not having to skirt the issue as the cartoon might have if it talked about it, and supporting material such as Arcee's bio makes it clear that the Transformers don't even have a concept of male and female except by reference to offworld species.
No, it wouldn't necessarily. secondly, Arcee's bio doesn't say that they have no concept of male and female, so much that that there are so few that none of them had ever seen a female except for Kup. That is why he uses the other species reference. If there are so few females of your own species that you have never seen one in your life, then suddenly you meet one, you wouldn't know what to make of her either. You would need a reference of something you are more familiar with. That is what Kup did. He gave the others, who had never seen a femme, a point of reference. The only problem with that part of Arcee's bio, is that it is not entirely true, because
there are femmes in War Within, I've counted at least three unnamed femmes, and many of the characters from the G1 regular series have been alive at least that long. Only a handful might not. Regardless, some time between
War Within and the G1 regular series, possibly during the "Great Shutdown", something happened to the femmes.
Secondly, the comics are still written for kids. They are also targeting the fans, but kids are still the primary target.
Totality of evidence? Don't make me laugh.
Yes, totality of evidence. The combined evidence of DW, the US and Japanese cartons and manga, the later series such as
Beats Wars and
Beast Machines, and AEC. the children, romantic relationships, mariages, families, That totallity of evidence.
Tramp wrote:Biological does not mean organic... Transformers are life forms, they have a mechanical based biology.
As described above, I dispute the use of the modern scientific criteria for 'life form' in application to a 20-year-old kids' franchise which internally uses sapience as the criterion for life. I'm not going to give your blinkered insistence on it any further discussion.
You can "dispute it all you want. it still does not make it any less fact. The franchise, as exampled in the statement by Hi-Q, shows that they did follow at least one of the seven criteria, the ability to repsond to stimuli. Sentience is a part of that, though not all life ois sentient, Sapinece is a step up, but once again, by itself not an indicator if lofe becasue, theoretically, we may some day be able to create sentient, sapient robots given time.
That would not make them alive however.Tramp wrote:What I gave you was not scientific, it was the dictionary common useage.
Bub, don't argue languages with a qualified linguist, unless you're one too.
If you were a linguist, then you would have known your "definition" was wrong based on the dictionary. It is the
Webster's Dictionary that disputes your definition, and that
was written by Linguists.
Tramp wrote:your table is completrly in error. The inferences are there.
My table enumerated the inferences - look again. But I'm not about to take 'possible inference' as more weighty than 'explicit statement'. You apparently are.
Your table inumerated them wrong because it
ignores the very purpose of gender and romance and courtship
entirely. The evidence of genders, of males and females, the evidence of romantic relationships and courtship, the evidence of marriage is
all evidence of seuxal reproductive capability. That is not "possible inferrence" That is
solid evidence. Genders only serve one purpose in a species.
reproduction Courtship serves only one purpose in a species,
reproduction. The taking on of a life-mate, (marriage) serves only one purpose in a species
reproduction. This is all solid evidence of sexual reproductive capability in Cybertronians.
Tramp wrote:Wheelie is treated as a child
You've never heard of the word 'metaphor'? 'Allegory'? Or even 'anthropomorphisation'?
While it is anthropopmorphism, it isn't a mtaphor or allegory. Wheelie is a child. His bio states he is young, his actions are that of a child—a wildboy— to be precise, he has been refered to as a child ("Why
boy hit my nose?"), and treated like a child. He is a child. He is the equivalent of a 12-year-old. He is physically, and mentally a child.
Tramp wrote:[List of various romantic pairings in Transformer series, and mention of familial relationships in Japaneses series]
That is the comaprison. Which holds more weight? The possibility of TF sexual reproduction.
At this point, I think you've demonstrated conclusively that you have no concept of an objective weighing of evidence. I'm therefore entirely prepared to discount your opinion outright.
Everything I have posted has been completely
objective. I have looked at
every source, and discounted
none. It is you and the other "nay sayers" who wish to eliminate any sources that contradict your narrow view because they fall outside of narrow realm of what you consider "Canon", when it is all part of the canon TF multiverse. To be truely objective, you lok at every shred of evidence,
regardless of the source, be it US, UK, Japanese, cortoon, comic, manga. If it comes from an official source, it is
vital to look at it. In that regard, the US, UK and Japanese material is all canon, and all
relevant. That is being objective. Thrying to throw out a particular series or set of series because they are from the Japanese run is not being objective. That is truely picking and choosing.
Tramp wrote:Bertrand Russell wrote:The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
But, in this case there
is good evidnece both ways, but the evicdence in favor outweighs the evidence against.
I'd tried to provide a graceful way to end the argument with an agreement to disagree, but now...
... I am honestly lost for words.
You aren't going to end the debate because there will always be people who don't want the debate to end. And, there is nothing wrong with an on-going debate as long as it remains civil.
