And yet, it's not entirely off-topic for this particular thread, sadly enough. Our whole cultural idea of a robot is an expression if misanthropy, artificial humans designed to improve on supposed "flaws", and the premise of Transformers flipped this, making robots sentient aliens superior to humanity in so many ways that our species is just a few billion dumb bugs by comparison, but in a way that ultimately taught kids about empathy for those different from themselves in a lot of stories.Dr. Caelus wrote:Cyber Bishop wrote:Lore Keeper wrote:Cyber Bishop wrote:The whole planet and all the miserable sack of $hi7 people (which is everyone) on it need to be eliminated. Humanity needs a freaking reset.
Uh... that one right there, officer.
Bring it "officer". I live right to the west of the cesspool called New Orleans.
Locked and loaded with ZERO fu<&'s to give.Dr. Caelus wrote:
I thought you had kids???
I do, they and myself are included. This world is a cesspool and needs to be purged.
I had noticed your posts were getting weird a while back but I check in here so much less than I used to I didn't say anything. This is not a healthy attitude to have, and even if you're joking it's troubling that you think it's funny.
"Time on Earth help us look down, see what we trample on" -Grimlock
That makes Transformers a great lens through which to analyze the meaning of human attributes like gender and associated pronouns, which there've been traces of since the beginning, when Bob Budianski wanted to make a few characters female in his first pass at the bios, but Hasbro said that would create confusion in a toyline targeted at boys. (Gobots did just what Bob originally intended, and that will forever stand as the major one-up they had on TF from the get-go) This later led to the moment in issue #53 where Cloudburst had to shoot the First One of Femax down by telling her his species has no gender. My interpretation was that Marvel-continuity TFs only use male pronouns as a result of picking up on a tendency to project male-ness onto anything humanoid but neuter and "clunky-looking", like robots and golems, and that it must be something inherent in Earth languages, as they had to have learned it in the middle of issue #1 before they even understood what organic life was! Now I know a lot of fans won't agree with my conclusion, but it makes you think for a moment about what gender even means, and those old stories weren't even intended to address LGBTQ or gender identity issues.
Cloudburst's statement of TF non-gender-identity has to be what forced Furman to write "Prime's Rib" to explain Arcee's origin. And though many despise that story, I find it gets better the more you overthink it. Of course the Autobots didn't really understand what humans actually wanted to see in a female member of their race, because even the ones who'd been interacting with humans for a decade hadn't really processed what it meant that humans just perceived them as male by default. Well, Skids probably did while he was shacking up with Charlene...
But misanthropy is misanthropy, and hatred of my own species for treating me like an alien or monster because of my neurotype was part of the reason I identified with sentient robots more than humans in the cartoons I watched in childhood. We all need to vent a cry of, "Let's stomp these creatures until we're knee-deep in pink slime!" once in a while. Skullcruncher knew that, and so does Cyber Bishop.
And so did Raksha, damn I miss her site.
But it's more important now to show how that can lead to making a friend, as Nightshade did. It'd be nice to hear some pundit point out that Earthspark has a more mature attitude toward war and its aftermath than most cartoons targeted at kids; someone in Vladamir Putin's bubble should recommend it to fearless leader.
"I'm a train they call the Cesspool of New Orleans,
"I'll be gone 5000 miles wh--"