Talk:Shining Armor issue 1
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In the MTMTE Annual, K'gard's species were shown to tower over Ultra Magnus, but here they're shown to be significantly shorter than Starscream/Astrotrain. Does that qualify as an error, or...? --Riptide (talk) 18:02, 19 July 2017 (EDT)
- I say note it as a potential error, and alternatively species variety. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 18:13, 19 July 2017 (EDT)
Stardrive's gender
[edit]Think we need to open some discussion here, because I don't agree with the recent edit's assessment. Stardrive would not have been "assigned male" on Cybertron, because she would never have been born there. Whatever term you want to use to describe her, be it that she has a "female bodyform," or that she's "cisgender," or your terminology of choice, Stardrive is a "type" of female Transformer - one who identifies as female, and whose bodyform is outwardly, naturally female - that does not exist naturally on Cybertron in the present day, only on colony worlds. - Chris McFeely (talk)
- I agree with Riptide and Chris. Stardrive naturally (insofar as social sentients can do) from an exceptionally young age developed a female identity, including a chassis, unopposed and in line with the society that raised her. In this timeframe that would not have happened on Cybertron. The note is therefore relevant for this issue to account for her somewhat jarring existence to Cybertron-born Cybertronians. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 21:05, 24 October 2017 (EDT)
- Yeah, Stardrive is from Caminus, so what she'd be assigned on Cybertron is immaterial. Plus the mention of "we see female cameos" doesn't potentially mean anything other than these are likely the people Anode was describing as having gotten chassis refits such as her own to match her self image. --ItsWalky (talk) 21:31, 24 October 2017 (EDT)
- Tossing in my vote here for, well, everyone above's take. --M Sipher (talk) 16:17, 25 October 2017 (EDT)
- Joining late (didn't even know this was here but thanks Chris!). The thing that continues to bother me is the focus on body shape, despite there being canon evidence that Cybertronians don't have similar distinctions (Firestar doesn't register as "female" to Skids, neither Nautica to Rewind). What appears to be "a female physical form" is an out-of-universe view, something that the audience sees. (The current edit is also wrong about the definition of cisgender, which means a gender identity that matches with the one assigned at birth, not a correlation between body shape and gender.) The transgender bots on Cybertron could have been born with the "female body shape", and still been assigned male due to the planet's current policies. Even if Anode changed her body, it doesn't mean everybody did, and it wouldn't make sense for Vector Sigma to suddenly stop producing certain shapes conveniently when the Golden Age began (female body shapes existed before, as we've seen in flashbacks). For Cybertronian Transformers, body doesn't dictate assigned gender. We don't know about the colonies, but this is what I'm basing my claims on. Using human essentialism on alien robots without physical sex nor uniform views of gender is silly. Egg (talk) 12:51, 28 November 2017 (EST)
- I don't deny that it's an out-of-universe view. But that doesn't make it not true. Indeed, it's defined very much by the out-of-universe attitudes and intentions of the writers and artists creating the story. I don't know how better to express my point that to say that Transformers designed and written by creators in the real world to look like Stardrive and identify as female do not naturally exist on Cybertron, only on the colonies - every contrary instance has an explanation (Arcee, Anode) or has been regarded as a long-term continuity error until the Anode explanation served to retcon the error away. The way the world is written is unambigious: there is a difference between the kind of female Transformer Stardrive or Windblade is (I will readily concede to "cisgender" not being an appropriate term in this context) and the kind of female Transformer Anode or Arcee is, and the whole point of that distinction even existing is because the kind of female Transformer Stardrive is does not exist on Cybertron. - Chris McFeely (talk) 13:58, 28 November 2017 (EST)
- For better and for worse, it is not "silly" to acknowledge the tropes and limitations within which this franchise has operated since our very first look at a female Transformer in 1985. It's very new for Roberts to proclaim that Earthen stereotypes of feminine body forms DON'T apply to the robots, and that Nautica would have been presumed male looking like she does. We don't pretend the white Optimus lookalike ISN'T Ultra Magnus, etc. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 16:02, 28 November 2017 (EST)
- I don't deny that it's an out-of-universe view. But that doesn't make it not true. Indeed, it's defined very much by the out-of-universe attitudes and intentions of the writers and artists creating the story. I don't know how better to express my point that to say that Transformers designed and written by creators in the real world to look like Stardrive and identify as female do not naturally exist on Cybertron, only on the colonies - every contrary instance has an explanation (Arcee, Anode) or has been regarded as a long-term continuity error until the Anode explanation served to retcon the error away. The way the world is written is unambigious: there is a difference between the kind of female Transformer Stardrive or Windblade is (I will readily concede to "cisgender" not being an appropriate term in this context) and the kind of female Transformer Anode or Arcee is, and the whole point of that distinction even existing is because the kind of female Transformer Stardrive is does not exist on Cybertron. - Chris McFeely (talk) 13:58, 28 November 2017 (EST)
- Joining late (didn't even know this was here but thanks Chris!). The thing that continues to bother me is the focus on body shape, despite there being canon evidence that Cybertronians don't have similar distinctions (Firestar doesn't register as "female" to Skids, neither Nautica to Rewind). What appears to be "a female physical form" is an out-of-universe view, something that the audience sees. (The current edit is also wrong about the definition of cisgender, which means a gender identity that matches with the one assigned at birth, not a correlation between body shape and gender.) The transgender bots on Cybertron could have been born with the "female body shape", and still been assigned male due to the planet's current policies. Even if Anode changed her body, it doesn't mean everybody did, and it wouldn't make sense for Vector Sigma to suddenly stop producing certain shapes conveniently when the Golden Age began (female body shapes existed before, as we've seen in flashbacks). For Cybertronian Transformers, body doesn't dictate assigned gender. We don't know about the colonies, but this is what I'm basing my claims on. Using human essentialism on alien robots without physical sex nor uniform views of gender is silly. Egg (talk) 12:51, 28 November 2017 (EST)
- Tossing in my vote here for, well, everyone above's take. --M Sipher (talk) 16:17, 25 October 2017 (EDT)
- Yeah, Stardrive is from Caminus, so what she'd be assigned on Cybertron is immaterial. Plus the mention of "we see female cameos" doesn't potentially mean anything other than these are likely the people Anode was describing as having gotten chassis refits such as her own to match her self image. --ItsWalky (talk) 21:31, 24 October 2017 (EDT)