Glyph wrote:Tramp wrote:First off, Glyph, I don't consider the Transformers to be truely genderless because the evidence does not support that view. The cumulative evidence over the various series accumulated over the past 23 years, from the G1 cartoon, through the DW series, as well as evey incarnation that came after G1, be it US or Japanese, cleary points to Transformers having actual genders. [...] 23 years of accumulated canon clearly shows that Transformers do, indeed have real genders.
Nope, that's just your opinion on the available material. What's actually shown is a large number of robots with personality traits and body shapes that we humans consider characteristically 'masculine', and a much smaller number of robots with personality traits and body shapes that we humans consider characteristically 'feminine'. Do you see where I'm driving here? There is
nothing to suggest that these translate into actual genders in the biological sense. If you choose to interpret the outward characteristics as indicative of some internal analogue to XY / XX chromosome pairs, that's up to you, but - let's be clear about this - the canon material
does not show it.
The combined eveidence does show it. And that is what we are talking about. Secondly, these "masculine" and "feminine characteristics have to serve a purpose. Not only that, but not all of the femmes had obvious feminine secondary characteristics. Strika doesn't, Override doesn't, the minicons, sureshock, Spiral, Cliffjumper, and Ironhide from the
Armada comics don't. Yet they are all females. And, yes, the canon material does show this. It doesn't refer to them as "feminine" or "masculine". It refers to them as
male and
female. masculine and feminine are
traits. Male and female are
sexes. Big difference.
Let's make a veterinary analogy: in the complete absence of any canon depiction of mechanical genitalia, how do you 'sex' a Transformer? (I can't believe I just wrote that sentence.)
How would you sex them? that shouldn't be too hard, Just check under the front panel of their cod piece. They all have what looks as what could be a sliding panel. It would be no different than "sexing" a reptile or bird, which also have internal sex organs.
Tramp wrote:The very fact that they engage in romance at all is evidence of sexual reproduction... There is no other purpose for it.
I trust you've never heard of 'flirting', then, or consensual abstinence, or birth control. I also take it that you don't know any homosexual couples.
I'm not talking about modern societal roles. I am talking
purely biological roles. What purpose does courtship and romance serve in the function of
life? Why did it evolve? Why would an asexual life form need it? The answers are that romance serves the biological function of bringing a male and female together in order to mate and produce offspring. That is its
biological [urpose. It serves no other function to a life form.
Tramp wrote:The Japanese series stemmed directly from the G1 US series, particulary the cartoon. The manga as well. So, to say that they are incompatible just doesn't wash. It is fully compatible, and fully relevant, like it or not.
I think this has already been covered, but the Japanese series are
not easily compatible with the US material. While they may have started from a similar point, they very quickly developed in a completely different direction and their treatment of the characters is very unlike the Western material.
That still does not invalidate it. This discussion is not just about the US material. It is about
all TF material. All of it is valid and relevant to this discussion. Seondly, The japanes material does not diverge from the original G1 material all that much. The only thing they did is scrap the last three episodes of the US cartoon and replace them with a whole series. They continued where we left off. They also introduced a lot of elements whiche even we are bringing into our stories. IDW is using the
Beast Wars2 and
Beast Wars Neo material even now. Dreamwave also gave us Easter Egss of Japanese material in its G1 stories, including images of Deathsaurus and I believe Grand Atlas. So, don't be so quick to discount the Japanese material.
Tramp wrote:Secondly. Yes, there is canon examples of them moviing past the "romantic" stage. As Thunder Thruster pointed out, Wreckgar was married in the G1 cartoon. Secondly, Deathsaurus from Victory was also married. and, whether you like the Japanese stuff or not, it is pertanent and relavant to this discussion. Marriage is beyond just "romance".
I'll accept the depiction of Wreck-gar as 'married' (in one version of the continuity at least - a single particulary dodgy S3 story, IIRC); it should be clear from my previous posts that I don't consider the Japanese version of Transformers to be in the same continuity as the Western material. None of it negates my point, though: we have examples of long-term non-sexual relationships in the biological world, so why not continue the analogy?
Yes, we do, that isn't the point though, that is a matter of
choice by the couples involved. The issue is what does romance serve the
species as a whole. Whay purpose doe courtship serve the species as a whole. It serves to bring males and females together to produce offspring. That is its purpose. Asexual life does not engage in this. They have no need to.
In case you hadn't figured it out yet, by the way, that's what we're dealing with: analogy. Transformers isn't high-brow science fiction, it's low-end sci-fi. It's much easier to use analogues of human relationships and characteristics, often thinly masked in technobabble, than it is to depict and explain an entirely alien concept of personal interaction - to eight-year-olds. It doesn't logically follow that Transformers are human-like in other, unshown ways, or that the analogy should necessarily stand up to zealous over-analysis by twenty-something fanboys decades later. Most of the material is aimed at kids; suspend your disbelief and come have fun with the rest of us.
It is when we see marriages and children. Simon Furman doesn't feel comfortable about gender issues among a robotic race, so he avoids the issue by not showing fembots at all. He admittedly does not like the concept in the least and that is where you get the scene from the Marvel run from. In the US Marvel run, there were
absolutely no femmes. There was no Arcee, no Elita-1, no Chromia, etc. Furman didn't like the concept so he refused to use them. And, that is where the idea that they are genderless comes from.
In all other continuities though, we
do have femmes; we do have actial genders. We have males and females.
Tramp wrote:You are also ignoring the evidence presented in the DW comics. If the use of protoforms were the only option for creating new Transformers, it would have said so, and it clearly states the opposite.
The Dreamwave material is just one of multiple possible G1 continuities - while it attempted (patchily) to produce the One True Unified Continuity from its predecessors, it is in itself still a reboot. Out of interest, which part are you referring to? I don't have all the DW comics, so it'd be helpful if you could show me exactly what it 'clearly states'.
Go back through. I have posted the entire passage before, but it is on page 15 of
TramnsFormers: More than Meets the Eye #8, the last in an 8 issue series of TF profiles and background information on the series' characters, technology, history, and biology written from a historical perspective.
Tramp wrote:The concept of "life as we know it" refers to extra-terrestrial life based on elements other than carbon, such as silicon, crystaline, mechanical, etc. The one thing that all scientists agree on is that to determine if these theoretcial "life forms" are life, they still need to follow strict criteria. [...snip...]
Did you actually read the lengthy post above where I explained why this argument is bunkum? They only need to conform to our strict criteria in order for us to categorise them as 'alive' or not. Our categorisation makes no difference to the entity itself. We may yet encounter an entity which forces us to redefine our criteria - it's happened before, and the scientific method explicitly anticipates that it should keep happening. How long had everyone 'known' that Pluto was the ninth planet of the Solar System, before the criteria were recently redefined? I'm pretty sure that Pluto hasn't changed in the intervening time. It stubbornly persists in being exactly what it was before; we've just changed our explanation of it.
No. it wouldn't. because these criteria are
essential to survival of a species. without any one of these, a species cannot survive amnd cannot flourish. Building copies doe not equate to reproduction. That is why Viruses are not classified as life. As for Pluto, It had only been granted "planet" status a few decades ago, and even then it was contested from the very beginning. For the longest time, there really was no set criteria. For determining life, there
is. It is a very strict set of criteria of seven things that are essential to life in order for it to survive and flourish. That ius why it allpies to all life regardless of its source.
Tramp wrote:You also have to look at what else canon says, which is that creating new Cybertronians from protoforms is not the only possible method; that there are other untapped methods available. Given the evidence, including a scarcity of females, probably as a result of the Quintessans, as hinted in the last few issueed of the DW G1 run, the untapped method implied is sexual reproduction.
Actually, it's probably a reference to the asexual process of cellular division shown in the G2 comics, which was explained there as a means used by Primus to initially get Cybertron's population up to a substantial level and then 'switched off' as it had served its purpose. It's also likely that it's a throwaway line intended to account for some cartoon oddities such as the creation of the Dinobots, since they are well-known pillars of debate within the fandom.
In Marvel's run, possibly, but as has been said before, Marvel's run b[]had no femmes in it at all[/b]. The UK run had Arcee built to act as a human relations measure. But they did not have any femmes at all in the US run. And that was because of Simon Furman. He doesn't like femmes so he won't use them.
That is why I am sure, that G2 is not the reference. Especially considering who wrote the main G1 continuing series, Brad Mick. In fact, the DW run completely ignored the G2 story arc, and pretty much the entire Marvel run. It was based nore on the cartoon and toy continuities including the Japanese material and [i]Beast Wars[/b] (MtMtE #1 begins with BW Megatron and Dinobot breaking into Vector Sigma). The only thing taken from Marvel, is Primus and Unicron being gods, Emirate Xarron, and Sentinel Prime.
By the way, your constant use of bold type to emphasise a phrase every sentence or two makes your posts quite difficult to read. Perhaps some restrained italics or more emphatic phrasing instead?
nope. Itallics are for titles. Bold is for emphasis.
ACStarscream wrote:While I can't believe that this conversation is still going on, I'll say a few things here.
Re: Transformers reproducing sexually. I have the two-part Mecannibal story in my (incomplete) Marvel comics collection. In it the subject of sexual reproduction was (indirectly) touched upon.
Cloudburst and Landmine journeyed to Femax on a mission to acquire some sort of of item needed to make them "gourmet"-level meals, where they encountered the First One, who put Cloudburst through a bunch of physical tests to prove himself to her.
Afterwards she and Cloudburst got to talking, and the subject turned towards the idea of a "Second One" or whatever the First One called it.
Cloudburst asked what she meant, and the First One stated that the "Second One" was the First One's mate, to which Cloudburst became very uncomfortable with.
She asked him if he didn't see her as "desirable" and he said that he wasn't the person to judge that, where he came from there were no males or females and thus, no mates.
I don't have Marvel UK to look at, or the manga or whatever (I do have the DW comics but I haven't read them), so I don't have any contradictory statements made by a Cybertronian re: sexual reproduction, but I think Cloudburst's statement of "no males or females and therefore no mates" to be pretty clear that, however Transformers make more of themselves, it's not achieved via sexual reproduction.
Whatever the role played by the Decepticon Wife (it could be a term the Decepticons used to describe their partnership that humans would accept), or how the Dinoforce gained children (they could have been adopted and labeled as "children"), I go by what's explicitly stated re: transformers sexuality.
If Cloudburst says "no mates" (and I believe Budiansky was still writing at the time of the Mecannibals story), and no new-and-contradictory material comes forth saying "we take mates for reproductive purposes, and that those we call 'children' have biological parents", then it's clear that Transformers are not producing new life via a sexual method.
This may not fit our definition of what it means to be "alive", but then again our definitions of "alive" are based on what we know about one planet and one planet only (Earth). The qualifier(s) for being granted "life" status could change as we explore space and discover worlds that have life inhabiting them, which means that our definitions are (for now) valid.
But valid or not, if a Transformer says they don't "take mates" (and they've had enough contact and observation of humans and other alien species to know what a "mate" is by now), then they don't.
If Transformers reproduce in factories and are bestowed true life by Primus or the Allspark or whatever, then that's how they reproduce, and whether or not it sounds "cold" or smacks of "cloning" or whatever to us, to them that's how it's done, and to a Cybertronian that's what counts.
And that, I think, is really all I want to say about that.
The difference there is that you are referring to Sumon Furman's work from the Marvel run, which
did not have any female Transformers in it. There was no Arcee, no Elita-1, no Chromia, no Firestar, no Moonracer. None of them existed as far as Simon Furman was concerned.
In the Marvel runs, TFs didn't engage in romance or courtship at all. They didn't have girlfriends, or wives, and there were no children. Simon Furman purposely avoided the issue.
However, when you look at
all the other continuities, it is a
completely different matter. You have multiple examples of male and female Transformers, romantic relationships, marriages, children, etc. That same scenerio from Marvel, if put into the TV show or the DW comic would have been very different because there
is romance and courtship between Cybertronians. In the other continuities TFs do take interset in the opposite sex. Cloudburst might still be uncomfortable, but not because of a lack of gender on his part, but
because she is a different species.[b]
In the majority of continuities, Transformers [b]do take interest in members of the opposite sex. They do have gneders, have romantic relationships between males and females, marry and have children. The Japanese runs clearly show this and the US cartoon and later runs in the US also strongly suggest this. In this instance it is the
Marvel run, both US and UK, which is the anomoly, and that is the key. What does the
majority of TF canon show. The Majority of canon, from
all continuities, shows that Cybertroninas have actual genders. They have sexes, they have romantic relationships, courtship, marriage, and are capable of having children. One continuity does not fit that because of the personal preferences of one writer.
Would Thunderblast have the "hots" for Megatron if they were not sexual beings? No. Would Optimus Prime and Elita-1 court or be involve if they were not sexual beings? How about Ironhide and Chromia? No on both. Would Black Arachina and Silverbolt have a forbidden affair if they were not sexual beings? No. Would Wreckgar and Deathsaurus have wives, and the Dino Force have offspring if they were not sexual beings? NO. These are all implications of sexual reproduction. Is it explicitely shown? No, but it is
implicite.
Hermaphrodites such as gastropods are sexual creatures, even though they don't have a individual genders. Each is
both male and female. They still engage in courtship and mating to produce offspring. They are still sexual creatures.
An ameboa, on the other hand is an
asexual creature, It does not mate. It does not engage in courtship. When it is time, it simply splits in two. The same with a Hydra. It simply buds, a fungus simply releases spores. None of these have genders. None take on gender roles. None engage in courtship.
Courtship, genders, romance, these are all indicators of sexual reproduction. Only sexually reproducing life forms have them because their only purpose in terms of survival of the species is for reproduction. They serve no other function.
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
