User:Locoman/Sandbox/TFRomance

Conceptual origins

Like many boy's toy brands in the eighties, the early years of the Transformers franchise shied away from anything particularly intimate: when Marvel Comics brought on Bob Budiansky to help develop the brand beyond the toys, he was informed that Hasbro had no intent to introduce any female characters into the toyline (and at least one of his early drafts suggests Ratchet was going to be female). Thus, while penning the Marvel US comic, Budiansky instead introduced the Creation Matrix as an asexual mechanism by which new Transformers came into being—conviently, this also gave him an easy means by which to introduce new toys into his ongoing storylines. Before long, however, the concurrently-running Transformers cartoon did introduce female characters into its mythos by introducing Elita One and her band of Female Autobots. Dialogue between Elita and Optimus Prime made it abundantly clear that the two held each other in high esteem, and the flashback episode "War Dawn" would later explicitly confirm the nature of their relationship as a romantic one.

Following on from this, 1986's The Transformers: The Movie introduced Arcee as the franchise's first major female character and established up a quasi-romantic dynamic between film protagonist Hot Rod and Arcee, though season three of the cartoon saw Arcee transfer her affections to swashbuckling hero Springer instead. The Marvel comic, on the other hand, continued to shy away from anything approaching romance; indeed, issue #53 of the comic had a terrified Cloudburst narrowly avoid an intimate encounter with the organic First One—fooled by the outer appearance of his Pretender shell—by explaining that his race had "no men, no women, no mates". (He got decapitated for his troubles anyway.)

In the mid-1990s, Beast Wars cartoon had Tigatron and Airazor fall in love, and later Silverbolt and Blackarachnia... but the notorious Japanese dub of the cartoon chose to reinterpret Airazor as a young man and re-contextualized their relationship as a platonic friendship between a samurai warrior and his ward. This approached worked for the first season of the cartoon... however, when the events of "Other Visits (Part 1)" wrote the two out of the show, their final, unambiguously romantic declaration of their love led the Japanese dub to follow through on the original intent for the scene. <ref> Japanese magazine editors, responding to letters from confused young fans, gently explained that "some people are just like that". </ref>

For the next few years after the conclusion of Beast Machines, subsequent iterations of the Transformers franchise generally avoided any serious explorations of Cybertronian romance in favor of decidedly comedic (or occasionally downright uncomfortable) depictions of love, such as the zany love triangle between Scylla, Scuba, and Bighorn, Side Burn's obsession with red sports cars, or Thunderblast's antics. However, with the debut of IDW Publishing's acclaimed "Phase 2" run, older-skewing Transformers works have once again taken a more thoughtful, serious approach to the topic of love and romance within Cybertronian society, taking into account changing real-world values and an increasingly diverse selection of authors.

Orientation

Until recently, same-gender interests between Transformers were comparatively rare and not treated seriously. Of course, Transformers above all exists to sell toys to children and so has to play in on the wishes and expectations of the assumed general audience. Even if this attitude has greatly improved in the last few years, heterosexuality is still the default assumption and least controversial option in all-ages fiction. However, the IDW comics, which utilize a less stringently-monitored medium to entertain an older audience, has received more leeway to do as they please. Thus, in 2012, More than Meets the Eye made history by revealing that the male Transformers Chromedome and Rewind shared a committed, loving relationship, a marriage-like bond that the comic dubbed a "Conjunx Endura". Subsequent issues would reveal that the pair had previously romanced other Transformers, and that their romantic bond was a normal, accepted part of Cybertronian culture.

Author James Roberts has commented that, while Transformers don't have relationships in exactly the same way humans do, "Chromedome and Rewind each regard the other as the most important person in their life."<ref>James Roberts on Chromedome and Rewind on the IDW forums</ref> Hasbro proved "supportive and indeed encouraging" of IDW's efforts. <ref>Moonbase2's second interview with James Roberts - 01:40:47 to 01:41:24</ref> Other notable male romances from this period include Cyclonus and Tailgate, Needlenose and Horri-Bull, and Knock Out and Breakdown—this last pairing likely a wink to those fans of the Prime cartoon who interpreted the relationship between their counterparts as romantic.

As author Simon Furman initially spearheaded the development of the 2005 IDW continuity under the assumption that Transformers were a naturally "genderless" race who happened to use male pronouns, it took longer before future authors were able to find a way to introduce a sufficient number of female Transformers to balance things out. In 2016, Lost Light debuted Lug and Anode, a pair of transgender female Cybertronians who had fallen in love, and 2018's Optimus Prime comic had Arcee confess her feelings for Aileron with a passionate kiss after Aileron saved her from falling to her death.

Sex

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Permutations

Transformer-Transformer

Transformer-organic

Transformer-inanimate

References

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