TRANSFORMERS and Sex

This essay may possibly be offensive to some people, but its objective is really to scrutinize a certain motivation very far removed from my own illustrative desires. There is now a growing trend on deviantART that I find both curious and, quite frankly, more of a saddening than shocking phenomenon. Very little retains the power to rattle me, but as a person who has always worn his heart in plain view of the daylight, cold or warm, I find myself affected by this occurrence that seems to be pervading TRANSFORMERS art with increasing frequency.

I speak of the strongly emerging preponderance of same-gender Transformers engaging in sexual acts or posing with little left to the imagination of their carnal intentions. I see terms related to these depictions like "smexy" ("smart and sexy," a term that needs no contraction) and "This character is teh smex!" (where incorrect grammar is perpetuated and what should have been an adjective -- "smexy" -- is no doubt replaced by a definite noun to be some kind of "cool"), "HAWT" (apparently, the proper spelling of "hot" no longer suffices), "slash" (more appropriate to war than "love"), "het" (short for "heterosexual," which is evidently too much to type these days and almost sounds like some kind of expletive), and "pron" (or even "pr0n," another misspelling that I guess is supposed to be cool or "leet"). These terms are employed as thinly veiled euphemisms so close to their real counterparts as to be redundant.

I find the issue of "gender" more or less irrelevant to the real appeal of these ancient robots from another galaxy, perhaps even from a completely other time (as Spike said, "I don't know if they're from the future or the past"). I think it is interesting to see romance in their world as well, and it is shown in a relatively mature form in THE SEARCH FOR ALPHA TRION cartoon episode. There is, I always thought, a touching old-love-that-never-rusted between Optimus Prime and Elita One there -- not quite the elderly couple still holding hands in a café, but closer to that than a hot and heavy sexual extravaganza. It has a dignity far more to do with caring, affection, and even protection than "knocking proton boots." Not especially sexy, but why does it need to be? Even if they were able to copulate rather than build new robots (a process we have actually beheld), would they put it on display any more than we humans do?

I imagine some will find me rather closed-minded and overly traditional about this, but look with me for a moment at what we see in various artwork described as "HAWT:" Fraternal sex, rape, group sex, and acts of "loving" between characters who shared even the slightest kind of partnership or even the ones who hardly ever as much as looked at each other. Apart from all of them having male characteristics, the pairings have the randomness of a slot machine. There are even numerous instances of inter-faction encounters of this sort. I ask again: Why?

The popular argument seems to be that the shortage of "women" necessitates these same-sex encounters, but what I looked for and could not find was any canonical evidence of a desire to have "sex." These robots (and the Decepticons in particular) are warriors, and even humans at war, with all of their urges and needs, will not put on any list of priority engagements of love or lust. At any rate, in lieu of much female presence in the mythos, the trend used to be that a female character would be created for a pairing with an official character, and I have to say I find that preferable. It is far less degrading to these personas we have come to know and love.

What happened to simple romance, caring, and affection? This has nothing to do with my stance on attraction and lovemaking between members of the same sex -- I think what we are, we are -- but why are there so few depictions of heterosexuality, and why do those that do see the light of day display such promiscuousness? Does anybody genuinely find sexual arousal in robot porn, in "crack pairings," and whatnot?

If anything, I think that this personal bond, if indeed Transformers share it, would be spiritual more than physical, would require no tangible connections, no "plug and play," and would be very unlikely to be analogous to human fumblings in the dark. The comfort of trust and companionship would remain the most important part.

I might be missing some point or other here, but some of the aspects I personally loved about THE TRANSFORMERS were its innocence, its mystique, and the wholesome fondness seen between characters (even the Cyclonus-Galvatron relationship was at times touching and I am not talking about foreplay). The storytelling was amazing without having to be suggestive.

In closing, I must volunteer that people may not be "wrong" to depict these characters as they wish, but I fear I will never understand the need to show them in the ways I have just described.