The thing to take away from all this is that I'm actually a ten-year-old boy.

[stunt_muppet]

You'd judge me if I told you I was taking study breaks by watching Transformers Animated, wouldn't you?

I knew you would. Good on you, I deserve judging for that.

I'll freely admit that I've been poking at Transformers fandom since the movies came out, mostly because the TF Wiki is inordinately amusing (they're the Trope Namers for Ruined FOREVER

Comments

[kayliemalinza]

1. You can be a ten-year-old boy all you want as a long as you promise not to make fun of my sparkly heart stickers and stage cattle stampedes with My Little Ponies.

2. I'd like to write military SF with soldiers and generals who are black, Hispanic, Asian, female, genderqueer, trans, gay, bi, people of every variety, and have it not be a big deal.
I WILL BE YOUR AUDIENCE FOR THIS. I'll write fic and everything.

3. a straight male will see dialogue between two women and read nothing but "shoes shoes makeup boys shoes babies cooking dresses shoes".
They are trained by society to do this. If you catch them young with your brainwashing, then there's no problem. In other words, cartoons are a great angle of attack.

p.s. here's the real reason I'm commenting. I'm watching some Xena tonight and GUESS WHAT. Aphrodite is Cupid's MOM. And she SUMMONS HIM to SCOLD HIM in her Valley girl voice and he's all sulky and like, "What do you want, Mom, God!"

[stunt_muppet]

1. I would never make fun of sparkly hearts and My Little Ponies! The reason nobody can tell I'm actually a ten-year-old boy is because I also harbor a love of sparkly things, most especially sparkly red things.

2. There are a lot of latent gender, race, sexuality, ablist etc problems in the genre that do deserve a thorough deconstruction, but honestly I also think it's a good idea to have characters of every metaphorical stripe and refuse to justify it or make it a Very Special Episode/Book. It normalizes what is otherwise the Other and, in the hands of a competent author, makes the character in question a person rather than a token.

3. ALL RIGHT. I've always wanted to brainwash children. :D Really, children haven't been fully molded by society and all its bizarre beliefs yet, so what better time to teach them to think different?

okay immediately after I read this I went and sought out clips on YouTube, Veoh, Dailymotion, everywhere, needing to see this in action. I only found fanvids of Aphrodite, but you know what? I think I

[sterling_sky]

I WILL BE YOUR AUDIENCE FOR THIS. I'll write fic and everything.

I second this x100000000000000.

[morgeil]

*pokes at TFA* Hum. (And You totally need to start Beast Wars after this. S2/3 Blackarachnia! XD XD)

Pro-strong, competent women in SF is one of the reasons I love Mainframe Entertainment like pie. Hooray for competent female military commanders! ILU DOT AND JADE.

[stunt_muppet]

I will soon! There's only three seasons of TFA to get through, so I should be finished soon and moving on (back?) to Beast Wars, maybe even Armada and G1 if I'm feeling really ambitious. I think the main reason I started out with TFA is it had characters I knew from pop-culture osmosis and/or the movies (Bumblebee, Jazz, Starscream, Soundwave, etc), whereas the Beast Wars cast is mostly new to me save Blackarachnia, Optimus, and Megatron.

Mainframe is really excellent at that. Granted, all I've seen of their work so far has been ReBott, but Dotand Mouse and Hex and even AndAIa (for all the fanservice she had once she grew up) were all dynamic, realized characters who never felt like tokens, and it's really refreshing when I look back and remember how rare that was and still is.

[morgeil]

The amusing thing is that I'm working on the Transformers-verse backwards from you. Started on Beast Wars, then plan to move on to TFA, etc. (How long are TFA's season, btw? It took me forever to get through Beast Wars season 1 because it was 26 eps. I'm too used to UK seasons nowadays, I think... :P)

The BW cast really grows on you, even before Blackarachnia's character development gets jump-started. Though you'll probably want to reach through the screen and smack Cheetor for his idiot!moments on occasion...

Mainframe is really excellent at that.

Very much. XD I've been wading around in Shadow Raiders fandom recently. It's not as well-known as ReBoot and Beast Wars, as it was made late in Mainframe's golden era and was much shorter lived. But it continues the same girl!power tradition, with three strong female characters also in its main ensemble cast.

I'm tossing around the idea of doing an awesome!women Mainframe tribute vid once I finish BW... no one's ever done with all three shows. It would be fun! XD

[stunt_muppet]

TFA has 13 episodes per season, I think. The first season has 16, but three of those are the pilot movie. About as long as a British season, come to think of it.

Do you plan to watch Beast Machines? I've heard mixed opinions on Beast Machines - well, mixed opinions from people other than the usual "Ruined FOREVER" crowd, so I'd look forward to hearing your opinion on it.

I know you posted about it at some point, but where might one acquire Shadow Raiders? PM me if it's all Fight-Club-y, but now that I'm settling into this particular genre of TV I'd like to investigate it further. Also, that sounds like an awesome vid idea and you should do it. :D

[happydalek]

Gendered Transformers? That never even occurred to me. I had this whole subconscious hypothesis that the Transformers only used male pronouns for themselves because of having to speak in English, and that on their home planet gender didn't exist because what purpose would it serve? No sexual reproduction going on as far as I know of*.

But now I'm envisioning an episode where the transformers on Earth are made aware of gender, and some of them decide that they are in fact female, while keeping their established personalities and male-ish voices completely intact. I think it'd be both funny and make an important point.

* Fanfiction notwithstanding, of course. Now I'm a little curious as to how Transformers pr0n would be accomplished, frankly.

*Did you ever see the Robot Chicken sketch where Optimus Prime gets prostate cancer? Hilarious.

[stunt_muppet]

I had this whole subconscious hypothesis that the Transformers only used male pronouns for themselves because of having to speak in English, and that on their home planet gender didn't exist because what purpose would it serve?I really like that theory*, but the trouble with it is that some of the Transformers are built with specifically female-modeled bodies before their ever come in contact with humans - there are female-bodied and voiced Transformers with no contact with humans in every continuity - so there's clearly some concept of gender there, which...doesn't make a great deal of sense, since none of the continuities has them sexually reproducing**, but this is in fact a series meant to sell toys and I am thinking about this far too hard

[happydalek]

I'm not laughing at your pain, but...

Daddy Robot Jesus. XD

After stumbling across Lion King pr0n (and reading it for the same reasons that compel one to watch a horrific accident unfold), my childhood is pretty much ruined already. I'm hoping the transformers fic is full of ironies and interesting twists on the notion of actual "robot sex," but doubtless I am expecting waaaay too much.

[stunt_muppet]

He is, though! A couple of my cousin's friends did grow up with the 80s series, and Optimus is their Robot Daddy. It's just sort of an accepted thing. And with all the times he dies and comes back (the TF Wiki has a whole page devoted to "The Many Deaths of Optimus Prime") the "Optimus died for your sins" jokes become a bit inevitable.

You see, that sort of thing is why I'm glad I didn't have much internet access back then. By the time I would have been able to access Disney pr0n, I knew how to avoid it and wasn't curious enough to go looking. I kind of feel like I should just hurry up and ruin my childhood already, just to get it overwith before something else ruins it for me, but...nnngh. *cringe*

doubtless I am expecting waaaay too much

After taking a quick browse through the main TFA fic comm...yeah, for the most part you are. (There also seems to be truly alarming amounts of babyfic, which I would not have expected in a show about robots. I'm not sure how to handle this revelation.)

[airie_fairy]

The Transformers cartoon? From like the early nineties or so? Omg that show was awesome, and the reason I can't watch a Transformers movie trailer without laughing for several minutes and scaring those around me. THIS is what they made a tense live-action movie out of? I mean, talking cars hitting each other is fine in cartoon form...and who are these people? Why do hot teenagers matter in this?

[stunt_muppet]

The Transformers cartoon? From like the early nineties or so?

Actually, this one's from a bit more recently; TFA was released in 2007 to cash in on new fans who might be tempted to the franchise but didn't want to deal with decades of continuity. And there are decades of continuity - after the original cartoon there was the Movie, and then the three Unicron series, and then a buttload of anime and manga that never saw US release, the Unicron trilogy, Beast Wars and Beat Machines, the live-action movies...and I'm forgetting a lot of them. It's been running more or less constantly since the 80s.

And they actually do get varying degrees of serious! They had a planet-eating monster and killed off almost all the G1 cast in the animated movie! That said, I still think the movies fail pretty hard because they're way too much about the humans and any bot that isn't Megatron, Optimus, Bee, or Starscream is indistinguishable, but there is some precedent for occasional seriousness. To varying degrees of success, of course.