Twincast / Podcast Episode #75 "Lady Robots"

Well I found this episode very enjoyable

On the subject of my user name, razorclaw's right it's Soundwave's Silverhammer, and it is based on the Beatles song, it was just to long so I shortened to "SW's". Also it was funny as hell listening to you guys trying to figure out the pronunciation

I figure its only fair to voice my personal opinion on the subject of fembots, seeing as i put all you on the spot XD. Personally I prefer the idea of "lady bots" and "dude bots" over there being no gender. My thought on the way they should reflect their gender is that if there are two distinct "sexes" female and male, then it would go to reason that both would have traits that differentiate one sex from the other. However one can also reason, like real women, these fembots would have different body types as well, skinny, tall, short, athletic, curvy, boxy, whatever. Much like how their "male" counterparts also have different body types any where from a barrel chested prime to a willowy seeker. Personally i would like to see as much assorted body types in "fembots" as there are "malebots".

On the subject of Ratchets original characterization, as Counterpunch noted, Doctor Ratchet is the antithesis of his namesake, Nurse Ratched, from one flew over the cuckoo's nest. To me though Bob Budiansky's characterization of,(lady), Doc Ratchet is more akin to Doctor Chakwas from the Mass effect games, or alternatively Doc Cottle from Battlestar Galactica.

On the subject of Goradora, it isn't simply the colors that recall the larger toys, but the names of each component. Each one shares the same beginning syllable as the larger Predacon toy whom their colors evoke:

The Hun-Gurrr redeco is named "Dorara" (ドララ) and has orange as its main color. And Dragotron (ドラゴトロン) also has orange as his main color.

The Twinstrike redeco is named "Garara" (ガララ) and has green as its main color. And Gaidora (ガイドーラ) also has green as his main color.

The Blight redeco is named "Burara" (ブララ) and has red as its main color. And Budora (ブドーラ) also has red as his main color.

The Windrazor redeco is named "Barara" (バララ) and has blue for its main color. And Bakudora (バクドーラ) also has blue as his main color.

The Rippersnappr redeco is named "Jurara" (ジュララ) and has purple as its main color. And Judora (ジュドーラ) also has purple as his main color.


Granted, the shades of color shared between each don't perfectly match up (especially with Dorara having a yellowish-orange while Dragotron has a darker orange, and with Garara having an olive green while Gaidora has a teal green), but there is still the connection via the shared syllables of ド, ガ, ブ, バ, and ジュ between each small/large toy pair's members.

It's less that Goradora's components "homage" the larger figures, and more of their decos being "themed around" or "inspired by" the larger toys.



EDIT: Forgot something. They aren't the same guys as the larger Predacons, either. They are the minions/footsoldiers of the bigger Preds. No, I don't mean that as in "The little green one serves the big green one, the little red one serves the big red one, etc." I just mean that the five smaller guys are commanded by the bigger Predacons.

Thought-provoking as it was, the fembot discussion could've gone deeper, but right off the bat...

Am I seriously the only person who sees that Ripclaw's torso does have an intentionally feminine shape to it?!? The most masculine thing about her robot mode is the extremely wide hatchet-jaw, which indeed skews it from the head of a generic monster to a male monster at a glance; therefore Bakudora doesn't look any more masculine to me, just more SheZow-esque. (More on that below)

I'm still all for Transformers initially being neuter, but having to somehow adopt genders for the sake of human interaction, as it makes them more alien, and it's interesting to think of them adapting to deal with us in ways other than making their alt-modes disguises. That idea's also a reflection of how we project gender onto imaginary beings, and what that says about social norms. Are all Transformers neuter until the introduction of a fembot makes the rest male by default? We do tend to assume that animals without a visual tell (ex: lion, peacock, cardinal) are male until learning otherwise, right?

And I bring up SheZow again because there's a burning question that all the fury from the family-values crowd and religious nuts directed at that cartoon begs, but hasn't yet been asked AFAIK: Why is it supposedly natural for established male superheroes to have female variants of themselves (Supergirl, Batgirl, American Dream, She-Hulk), but some sort of assault on our children's sexual identity if a male version of a female hero comes up? (No, Wonder Man is not a male version of Wonder Woman, they're with different companies) Elita One, Chromia, and Firestar were clearly female counterparts to their boyfriends in terms of their functions, but has any male TF has ever been a functional counterpart to fembot? The answer's likely that the "function" of most female characters in boys' entertainment is tokenism, which you can only have a true reversal of by going all Shattered Glass...

...I guess my only point is that this one discussion could've been the entire podcast. Glad to hear someone agreed that introducing entirely new genders could actually make sense for Transformers; the whole alien angle.

Bob. The King you say?

My thoughts on gender are as such, being as there really isn't a difference genetically or mechanically different than each other, what if stereotyping is exactly what transformers genders are about? A buncha robots set off into space and started noticing similarities between their armor constructs and general build and the culture "assimilated" gender because that's what the rest of the universe was doing.

"hey, I look like a girl!" From a bi-sexual standoint, it might sound sexist to us, but try to imagine it from a mechanical scientificpoint of view, and not a human one... No?

JRFitzpatrick7 wrote:Bob. The King you say?

One day!

JRFitzpatrick7 wrote:Bob. The King you say?

[pictures]

Mother of god...

i wish i couldve been a part of the comics conversation in this ep. the current IDW's are the first transformers comics i've bought since the dreamwave stuff and the first i've truly enjoyed since the marvel line. i went back and started collected RiD BECAUSE MTMTE was so good and i've bought so many of this years toys as well as plan on grabbing alot of next years because of these books. i've even started to grab the earlier idw books because these books actually make them shine better in relation to them.

i love that the current idw books are books MADE for the adult fans. theyre tackling issues that younger me wouldnt have cared about during the marvel series but older me is currently amazed with the angles they come at them with. Things like politics, religon, relationships, and reproduction of a race of transforming robot aliens making them even more well rounded as characters as well as taking 3rd tier bots like swerve and tailgate and making them the most important characters in the book are what it's like to have a transformers book done right. i'm an avid reader of many comics and even work part time at two different shops and the weeks idw transformers books come out they're the first thing i have to read when i get home.

What a great week! I download and listen to episode 74 only for a new one to appear in my RSS feed the next day. Great company guys! You made this week pass by faster than I thought it was going to be. Like ScottyP I too am a functioning Alcoholic,

Just a couple of quick comments on the comic discussion. I love the current comics regardless of whatever perceived issues I have with them. Yes, I think they drag on. Yes, I think James Roberts should tone down the wisecrack/witty/smart ass/under-the-breath/funny guy comments to a small handful of characters. However, more importantly, I love that all of you seem to really be enjoying these comics. This is the first time in IDW's 8 year run that I see so many fans rallying behind the comics. And the first time that whatever criticisms I have of the books don't seem to be widespread, which is a good thing.

On that note, I thought I'd share the screen captures I made of the first issue or two that shows all of the instances of the wisecrack/witty/smart ass/under-the-breath/funny guy comments that irk me. As stand alone comments, they don't bother me. Each comment alone might be purposeful or appropriate. It's the extreme amount of them and with no discrepancy between the characters that really waters it down for me personally. I feel like Roberts writing skills and stories would be better complemented if he reigned in these type of comments and only applied them to a select handful of characters. For example: Whirl the crazy Wrecker, Swerve the funny guy bartender, Ratchet the wisecracking medic, etc. The inability to reign these comments in undermines the purpose of the comments in the first place and it also undermines Roberts writing skills. It's overkill. I think Roberts is a good writer. I think his writing would be even better if he wasn't writing so many of the characters the same.

Some of the blurbs below don't come across as wisecrack/witty/smart ass/under-the-breath/funny guy comments when presented out of context. Some of it might be the combination of the artwork with the writing as well.

its fair enough that you get stuff wrong about comics in general, but Transformers comics? "the Marvel G1 comics never dealt with alternate realities!" except for Time Wars and the whole Galvatron mess.

craggy wrote:its fair enough that you get stuff wrong about comics in general, but Transformers comics? "the Marvel G1 comics never dealt with alternate realities!" except for Time Wars and the whole Galvatron mess.

I'm not wrong about that. Up until that moment, the Marvel Transformers Universe had been entirely self contained. There was never a bigger multiverse. For example, the cartoon storyline was never rationalized by saying that it was a different universe. Any "alternate" realities of the original Marvel Transformers comic storyline were but splinters of the Marvel Transformers storyline itself.

but it was still an establishing of there being alternate realities, surely?

craggy wrote:but it was still an establishing of there being alternate realities, surely?

To each their own. That's my opinion of a storyline with which I am very familiar with. One which I grew up with. One which I followed every month as a child and have reread countless times as an adult. If you wish to have a different interpretation of how the stories unfolded and what exceptions can be made within the current interpretation of that storyline, then that's up to you and you are welcome to your opinions as well.

I gotta agree with Ryan in that the Marvel Comics felt isolated within their own little corner of the multiverse, not acknowledging any other TF worlds existing outside of those made specificially by Marvel Comics. Why, it didn't have energon as the main source of energy for its characters; "Transformer fuel" filled that role (though Energon Cubes did exist, they were far a few in appearance, and mostly served as energy storage materials than anything else that the cartoon used them for).

But, at the same time, the same was true for the cartoon. It also never acknowledged any worlds outside of the Sunbow/Toei/AKOM/etc.-made materials.

The reason being that there was no known mutliverse back then for them to acknowledge. The brand was still in its infancy, and the multiverse concept hadn't developed enough to a point that the contemporary fiction could make reference to it in a feasible manner. It took the Armada Dreamwave comics to make the first baby steps in doing so.

But, in this day and age, even though Marvel G1 never referenced the mutliverse, that doesn't mean it was excluded from it. Why, some of the Fun Pub multiverse fiction cite the Marvel G1 comics as having events that are some of the most important to multiverse of all. Like, when Octopunch accidentally shot Primus and woke him up in issue #61 ("The Primal Scream!"), that scream of Primus's that alerted Unicron was not only heard throughout the universe, but throughout the whole multiverse. And Unicron's destruction in issue #75 ("On the Edge of Extinction!") resulted in an anomaly that not only created the Classics splinter timeline but also destroyed both the "Another Time & Place" and "Challenge of the GoBots" realities.

Even though the Marvel Comics started off as their own individuated entity, the multiverse owes a great deal of respect to Marvel G1 for many of the things it established in its original 80-issue run.

Ok Mike, tell us how you really feel about TFCSS 2.0 Barricade

Also, Ryan. I agree that it is very unfortunate that almost anyone with a camera phone and some lights can be a toy reviewer without using any real professional equipment. It honestly takes away from the art of photography

Half way through the show and great as always guys!

fine.

Marvels wasn't an OGN though. It was single issues that were then collected.

Flashwave wrote:My thoughts on gender are as such, being as there really isn't a difference genetically or mechanically different than each other, what if stereotyping is exactly what transformers genders are about? A buncha robots set off into space and started noticing similarities between their armor constructs and general build and the culture "assimilated" gender because that's what the rest of the universe was doing.

"hey, I look like a girl!" From a bi-sexual standoint, it might sound sexist to us, but try to imagine it from a mechanical scientificpoint of view, and not a human one... No?

the gender between the transformers goes beyond the physical appearance there's the emotional part the need for companionship that only female can give a male and a male can give a female
keep in mind these are more than just machines they are biological too that think and feel and have strong emotions. its not like giving a pure mechanical android simulated feelings they are an alien race that has a biology that happens to be cybernetic and there males and females are physically and emotionally different

Flashwave wrote:My thoughts on gender are as such, being as there really isn't a difference genetically or mechanically different than each other, what if stereotyping is exactly what transformers genders are about? A buncha robots set off into space and started noticing similarities between their armor constructs and general build and the culture "assimilated" gender because that's what the rest of the universe was doing.

"hey, I look like a girl!" From a bi-sexual standoint, it might sound sexist to us, but try to imagine it from a mechanical scientificpoint of view, and not a human one... No?

the gender between the transformers goes beyond the physical appearance there's the emotional part the need for companionship that only female can give a male and a male can give a female
keep in mind these are more than just machines they are biological too that think and feel and have strong emotions. its not like giving a pure mechanical android simulated feelings they are an alien race that has a biology that happens to be cybernetic and there males and females are physically and emotionally different

Multiverse? We're talking 'bout Multiverse? Boo. There is no greater annoyance in TF fiction.

ScottyP wrote:Multiverse? We're talking 'bout Multiverse? Boo. There is no greater annoyance in TF fiction.

I think Rumble and Frenzy would beg to differ, if they what colour each other was.

Anyway guys, I quite enjoyed this week's podcast, a ton of interesting points raised, even if the discussion about Minicons did leave me a little confused.

ScottyP wrote:Multiverse? We're talking 'bout Multiverse? Boo. There is no greater annoyance in TF fiction.

(*Speaking with a scholarly accent*) Blasphemy! How else are we to chart the magnificent vastness of space-time transcending the many layers of reality? There is no greater value to dwell upon than such, ye Scott of P.

(*Back to normal speech*) In all seriosuness, though, I get that it can seem complicated and tricky to follow for the Average Joe, but we're stuck with it thanks to everything after 2000 not being G1-related.

Then again, we kinda first got it when the Marvel comics and Sunbow cartoon both decided to ignore each other and grow into their own things.

craggy wrote:

ScottyP wrote:Multiverse? We're talking 'bout Multiverse? Boo. There is no greater annoyance in TF fiction.

I think Rumble and Frenzy would beg to differ, if they what colour each other was.

They know which color each is.

said it before, will no doubt have to say it again, One of them is Purple, the other is Black. There's not even a blue/red divide.

craggy wrote:said it before, will no doubt have to say it again, One of them is Purple, the other is Black. There's not even a blue/red divide.

I as well shall keep repeating this until some official TF fiction actually does it:

The only way to mute this argument is to give Rumble and Frenzy the ability to switch back and forth between the two color schemes for the purpose of confusing the Autobots as to who's carrying what data, then eventually have them suffer some accident that gets them stuck on identical shades of solid Yomotov blue, leaving them completely indistinguishable from each other. Problem solved!

Am I seriously the only one here watching Shezow? (S)he's interacted with aligned Optimus Prime in HUB bumpers, though no philosophical discussions on interplanetary gender functions just yet. If you just watch a few Youtube videos about how it's part of a plot by the Illuminati to send our children to Hell, then watch the actual show to see how rushed and poorly thought out it is, the total effect is genuinely entertaining.

I'm cool with Transformers having genders. It's natural (within the history of the franchise) for alien cybernetic organisms to eventually evolve and adapt. Perhaps being so closely acquainted with Earth, they eventually "transformed" their CDNA to be male/female? In fact, I would assume within the science of the franchise that they could switch between genders if they so chose technically speaking! All I wanna see is Transformer-bewbs. Just kidding.

I guess I'm too old school when it comes to the comics. I like Regeneration best because it's what I liked then and it's nostalgic for me to read now... but the story has come so far from the one I grew up with, I'm not even a big fan of Regeneration like I was with the Marvel comics. It was more Earth-based and had some recurring human characters and now everything's changed. Buster's a cyborg, Spike's dead GB Blackrock is Professor X or something. It's all so far-fetched now (as if it wasn't back then, haha!).

Bottom line is I will have to "transform" my own preferences to continue enjoying the franchise as a whole because it will have to constantly evolve and re-invent itself in order to continue being popular. I'm not a big fan of the Beast Hunters toys as I was never a fan of brightly-colored animal-bots but my kids like them so I have to compromise and find things about them I do like. There has always been things about the franchise that I liked and didn't like but it's like they always say "can't please all of the people all of the time" so I'm just glad there are still parts of Transformers that I do still like and hope to continue to like it.

Vile MK III wrote:Ok Mike, tell us how you really feel about TFCSS 2.0 Barricade

I has feeling and emotions too! I gets to say them sometimes! /Toki

on the subject of MTMTE comics, i still disagree with Ryan and Jon about the excessive humor. i DID go back and reread the old issues, and i DID think the dialogue sometimes seemed a little too lighthearted, but not to the degree that you say. i think James Roberts makes the conversationalist side work well. And some of those moments that you posted i agree are blatantly wisecracking, but some i can't think for the life of me why they're there. Although, i absolutely agree with you with regards to RID. There have been times where humor has been attempted in that storyline that falls completely on its face. 80% of RID seems like "The war is over, but look at what we all had to stoop to to keep Cybertron together"