Arcee Spotlight Review (SPOILERS)

[Impactor returns 2.0]

got there then!

I also thought part of Primes Rib shows that Arcee highlights a human stero-type of what women are/like

Ie, Women like pink things, boys like blue etc...

Either way, a Transformer is asexual, it has no gender in a physical sense.
And in a psychological sense, TF are still aesxual because (as far as I know) they do not produce hormones, ie, testostorone etc... which alter thier moods. For Example, in a man, they might produce high ammounts of testostorone, that can make them seem more aggressive. Which is somthing we associate with being the opposite of a woman.

Of course, we do know that TF have emotions, and where as human emotions are partially controlled by our hormones, its hard to imagine (from what we have read) that TF dont have them?

Perhaps they have a robotic equivalant, some form of highly charged electron that surges through the body like adrenlin when they are worked up or somthing...

In all honesty tho, isnt more that Arcee was surely concived, by the developers of her character, to simply portray a woman?
The problem being that when this side of TF physiolagy is explored it doesnt really stand up to scruitiny.

[Sunyavadin]

got there then!

I also thought part of Primes Rib shows that Arcee highlights a human stero-type of what women are/like

Ie, Women like pink things, boys like blue etc...

Precisely. Which is why I'm wondering precisely what conditions the experiments on this continuity's Arcee were performed under.

We may be dealing with a situation like the images of elephants in pre-columbian american artwork, based most likely on accounts carried across the pacific. Jhiaxus had no doubt HEARD of the concept of gender differences in other races they had encountered, and acting upon all the various perceptions, made an image of what he BELIEVED a female should be. Not quite hitting the mark exactly, and missing the point in some areas, but giving something which is recognisable as being female, even if not exactly such.
Like the old story about telling someone who has never encountered a horse to make one, and giving them a library of references, so what they end up creating (without any way of distinguishing what reference material is accurate) is sort of like a horse, but bright pink, with a horn on its head, wings, and a rainbow logo on its rear end....

And in a psychological sense, TF are still aesxual because (as far as I know) they do not produce hormones, ie, testostorone etc... which alter thier moods. For Example, in a man, they might produce high ammounts of testostorone, that can make them seem more aggressive. Which is somthing we associate with being the opposite of a woman.

Of course, we do know that TF have emotions, and where as human emotions are partially controlled by our hormones, its hard to imagine (from what we have read) that TF dont have them?

Perhaps they have a robotic equivalant, some form of highly charged electron that surges through the body like adrenlin when they are worked up or somthing...

Yes, Transformers ARE capable of emotion. Whether this is a result of programming, or a result of chemical processes in their biology (I use the term biology as the closest english term to describe their life functions, much as they use "he" among themselves as the closest english term to their gender neutral pronoun.) - either way, Arcee has had this fundamental biology altered. She thinks and behaves differently to the others. Much as a human on HRT does, or an individual just beginning puberty.

Indeed, she could be like a Transformer version of Stephen King's Carrie. Suddenly overcome with all these new sexual drives and functions she cannot comprehend from her completely sexless upbringing, driving her quite mad.

In all honesty tho, isnt more that Arcee was surely concived, by the developers of her character, to simply portray a woman?
The problem being that when this side of TF physiolagy is explored it doesnt really stand up to scruitiny.

Well yes. The creators of the series decided to add a girl to increase ratings. That's it, simple as.
The trouble is, comics readership and fandom increasingly demand more adult, rational explanations of everything, in a more mature fashion as the medium becomes more mainstream and respectable.

However, the concepts of different hypothetical biological systems than those we are familiar with fascinate me and always have done. And the investigation of how one might perform changes within one of those systems particularly so, as it helps to form an idea of how sucha system would work. Understanding the altering of biological systems is, after all, why I'm a biotechnology student.

[Denyer]

I'm most curious how cybertronian abiogenesis is explained without Primus doing it

I consider it within the bounds of possibility that manufactured intelligences equaling or surpassing humans will appear within my lifetime, let alone on a tech timeline of millions of years.

A lot of people (humans, funnily enough) would like to think there's something special about humans having been 'grown from seed' rather than someone building a neural net or other framework and populating it with a selection of data to start it off.

"If [birth] were a miracle then not every nine months any yin yang in the world could drop a litter of these mewling cabbages on the planet."

[Sunyavadin]

I'm most curious how cybertronian abiogenesis is explained without Primus doing it

I consider it within the bounds of possibility that manufactured intelligences equaling or surpassing humans will appear within my lifetime, let alone on a tech timeline of millions of years.

A lot of people (humans, funnily enough) would like to think there's something special about humans having been 'grown from seed' rather than someone building a neural net or other framework and populating it with a selection of data to start it off.

"If [birth] were a miracle then not every nine months any yin yang in the world could drop a litter of these mewling cabbages on the planet."

My point being, I'd love to see how they're going to explain the formation of the first life on Cybertron without the cop-out of "Robot God did it" (Sorry, as a biologist I can't help but have disdain for that idea, no matter how spectacularly well it was done in Legacy of Unicron/The Void - I still love those stories). Are they going down a "Biological origins" route, as in Beast Machines/hinted at in Spotlight:Nightbeat, or are they going with a 100% mechanical abiogenesis?

We know that mineral structures can over time develop very complex systems. We have naturally formed nuclear reactors on earth to testify to this. Of course this alone would take far longer than biochemical processes for evolution to begin. The description by Furman of them having "CNA" which functions like DNA/RNA and having nanomachines which fulfil the functions our own cells do, (Processes first hinted early in the new run when the wording of certain scenes hinted at how they regenerate from injuries, rather than simply "being repaired") I'm considering how exactly such things could develop naturally. It's not outside the realms of possibility. Perhaps they did have a period when biological life as we know it developed on Cybertron, but the presence of substances not in existence on earth (Energon, not introduced to Earth until extremely complex life had evolved already), and a greater concentration of metals, allowed for early single celled organisms or colonies to become microscopic cyborgs at that stage in the planet's development, eventually evolving into the nanomachines which developed into complex life like transformers.

[Best First]

aren't you essentially filling in a lot of gaps to state that things are how you would like them to be?

Like your interpritation of CNA, or your ascribation of transexual?

You seem to be starting with an end point and trying to retrorengineer the comics to fit them saying they 'prove' stuff that they evidently do not.

[Impactor returns 2.0]

Whats wrong with Robot God Did it? - at least Primus and Unicron are actually around to back thier claims up.
Unlike thier human counterparts...

[Sunyavadin]

aren't you essentially filling in a lot of gaps to state that things are how you would like them to be?

Like your interpritation of CNA, or your ascribation of transexual?

You seem to be starting with an end point and trying to retrorengineer the comics to fit them saying they 'prove' stuff that they evidently do not.

Well, saying CNA is their version of DNA is straight from Furman's blog, same goes for the claim that they have little nanomachine cells which fulfil the functions biological cells do.

SF: the Transformers are machines, yes, but they have elements that resemble or mimic organic lifeforms. So, yeah, nano-cells and CNA (my cyber-equivalent of DNA) and Cydraulics, etc.

And yes, I have no problem with a god who actually is physically there to say "Look, this is what happened" doing it. That story was well thought out. Overall in fact, the entire Transformers G1 run is about as large as, but far better written than, and with a lot more moral and ethical lessons than the bible. I just don't like the "god did it" concept in the real world. However it's been stated there is no Primus in this continuity, so we're going to be given an alternate origin.

SF: I shall restate categorically what I’ve said before. No Primus. No Unicron. I’m just not going there

Whether that is the BM style "Cybertron evolved from organic to mechanical" that Spotlight:Nightbeat suggested was a possibility, or some form of mechanical abiogenesis, or indeed a G1 cartoon style manufacturing (Quintessons are always amusing. I hope they at least get a passing nod in one story sometime), remains to be seen.
The matrix's part, if any, in it will not be explained till the matrix actually shows up (maybe in Revelation) when Nova Prime shows up again.
TF reproduction too will hopefully get at least a passing mention as Furman stated he plans on exploring precisely how transformers are related, in the combiners, sunstreaker/sideswipe, and Prime storylines.

SF: What defines a ‘brother’ is going to feed into and be explored in two ’08 storylines. In the ‘ongoing.’ Sideswipe is about to step up and make his presence felt, most notably when he meets Sunstreaker again and realises he’s no longer just Sunstreaker! There is a bond between lots of characters, it’s just that in some cases it’s more pronounced, and the pair (or more) of characters in question are aware of it (even if it’s purely subliminal). Then, in a kind of standalone (but, of course, very connected) series, we’ll start to understand exactly where that link/bond came from. It’s connected to the lineage idea introduced in Spotlight Optimus Prime and to the eventual concept/realization of Combiners.

I'm just sticking with what is presented to us and offering possibilities. Like attempting to get some discussion going on how exactly CNA is made up - Is it something in the spark? Is it an energy field, or something solid? Is it contained in all the nano-cells of a transformer? And most importantly, where did it come from? Was it engineered or did it naturally come about?

I've always had an open mind to how forms of life NOT built upon the same organic bases as we are might come about, and I like discussion about it. Let's face it, the moment we can identify another type of environment which could support life than the sort of planet we inhabit - suddenly the the chances of finding alien life increase quite markedly.

[Best First]

aren't you essentially filling in a lot of gaps to state that things are how you would like them to be?

Like your interpritation of CNA, or your ascribation of transexual?

You seem to be starting with an end point and trying to retrorengineer the comics to fit them saying they 'prove' stuff that they evidently do not.

Well, saying CNA is their version of DNA is straight from Furman's blog, same goes for the claim that they have little nanomachine cells which fulfil the functions biological cells do.

i think its fair to say you are taking fairly discrete statements and extrapolating quite significantly though. Taking snippits of blog commenst and saying they definitely prove x, y and z just inclines me to switch off.

[Impactor returns 2.0]

I think its a bit of a leap to say that because TF have nanomachines, they work like biological structures do.

I can understand that they might have small nanomachines that are used for automated repair but that doesnt mean they work like our biological systems.

The genetic makeup of out human cells does far more than help cell reproduction, do TF nanomachines perform the more complex tasts of what our, for example, stem cells do?

As TF dont reproduce in the way humans do I suppose alot of this information is required at the Nanomachine level.

Also, do TF have the ability to controll them? - for example, if a TF gets damaged, can he tell the nanomachines to repair certain funtcions more than others, or are they completely automated like human cells?

Moving on from that, and for the sake of argument. Lets suppose these nanomachines do replicate human cell systems, it still wouldnt make a TF transexual, as TF lack an important part of that word, sex.

heh, are transformers just 'tranual' then?

[Sunyavadin]

I think its a bit of a leap to say that because TF have nanomachines, they work like biological structures do.

I can understand that they might have small nanomachines that are used for automated repair but that doesnt mean they work like our biological systems.

The genetic makeup of out human cells does far more than help cell reproduction, do TF nanomachines perform the more complex tasts of what our, for example, stem cells do?

As TF dont reproduce in the way humans do I suppose alot of this information is required at the Nanomachine level.

Also, do TF have the ability to controll them? - for example, if a TF gets damaged, can he tell the nanomachines to repair certain funtcions more than others, or are they completely automated like human cells?

Good question, just how much is just the nanobots following simple programming and how much is a transformer able to control them? I'd guess they can be reprogrammed easily enough, since otherwise every time a TF changes their alt-mode the bots wouldn't know what was supposed to be fixed where.

I'm looking forward to finding out exactly how transformers reproduce in this continuity, which would help answer your question there about how much those cells do within a transformer body - do they simply maintain, or are they involved in assembly of the body from the outset?