#trans robots

but honestly I think its worth acknowledging Caine as being almost undeniably NB -> M trans? like this might just be my reading, but I can't imagine him being assigned a gender by his creators, and i don't think he really thought to hard about gender and societal norms as a concept- as an AI independent of most struggles of humanity, I think he likely chose male cuz he felt it naturally fit his role as ringmaster (historically ringmasters have generally been male, patriarchy and all probs)

I'm not so sure this really furthers the themes of the circus, I just think it's neat to think about, and the idea of robots/AIs/whatever type characters being (ironically) non-binary at birth and that being male or female is a concious choice they made at some point in their lives (unless they're like designed to be a person with an assigned gender by their creator- although)

the idea of a robot going against its assigned gender is also neat and i actually dont think i've really thought about it much before. It's an interesting way of "going against your programming", "rebelling the creator" and all

@lactaidsaveme made lovely art for us for chapter 27 of 200k+ word fanfic Addendum (an IDW1 Arcee Novel Fanfic) when Windblade is Cityspeaking with Arcee to help both of them get over losing Anode (& Lug), [not knowing the two adventurers were saved by Necrobot and brought forward in time!(albeit Lug of course did actually die and had to be resurrected by Anode and Velocity and Kaput during Transformers: Lost Light)] tysm! lactaidsaveme chose this particular moment of the Cityspeaking part of that chapter to do (which takes place after among other things Arcee's part in Megatron's trial... which she and Rodimus had planned to use to give Arcee a chance to speak on grievances of gender not just from the Decepticons, but the Autobots as well... which proved resoundingly effective and resulting in actual change. I won't spoil anything else heh).

Also yes this is a very windcee yuri chapter and like the tired and busy sapphics taganites they are they er do not realize feelings quite yet... we'll cover that more in chapter 40 (which is currently in the works) and have been building up to that across the chapters in between...

*checks notes (more like engraved into my memory forever by having worked on this book since 2021): so uh yeah uh if we're gonna fully use earth terminology for the sake of people who haven't read our writing and how we approach transformer assemblage and orientation when gender is in play rather than there just being a xeno parallel assemblage to it (other works we've written do this)... arcee in this is a butch (torque is a somewhat equivalent term)/trixic (altmodus and iterexper + taganite gender/orientation don't quite match 'enby lesbian' but we're just throwing this here as a way to show the loss in translation) transfem and roddy is a butch transfem who was in part inspired by her considering Roddy grew up in Nyon and, all she knew about her and her quests for justice and (gender) liberation read leading an antifunctionist resistance against Nova Prime in chapters 1 through 13 .... Chromia's a torque, Windblade's transfem (amusingly we were not the first writer to write Windblade this way by several years and we really admire the stories and writers that were among the first to tackle this), and Nautica's fluid though she/they doesn't quite have a handle on that yet (that will come up in chapter 35, following up on chekov's guns from chapters 27 and 30...)* yeah so uh if you want trans and sapphic reads of characters there's way more in this book just be prepared for the first 24 chapters to also involve the horrors of fighting eugenics and the equivalent of fascism, the phase ii chapters are 25 - 28, phase iii 29 - 33, and there's postcanon thereafter, the victory lap as history continues arc as it were starts in chapter 33. We note which canon comic issues are relevant to specific chapters, starting with Chapter 20.

Saw this meme on IG somewhere and it was absolutely RADIATING my OCs’ energy, so I redrew it w my guys lmao (specifically the image, not the text)

~

Also quick ✨OC Introduction Time!!✨

These are Guy (he/him) and Tobias (he/him), my main and favourite OCs! They started as joke characters for D&D years ago and have since evolved into silly guys of mine that I’m currently writing a book about! Guy (gold robot) is very much a himbo, loves playing guitar, and works as a bartender, and he has a bit of a provocative side. Tobias (silver robot) is a gentle soul who works as a music tutor and has a deep love for gardening, cooking, and painting. They’re also gay. Very gay. 😎 These guys are about 95% of what I draw and I will be posting about them—and the story they exist in—quite often (I hope)!

But it got me thinking of how much I love trans robots as a concept.

Bubs and FL4K are just so good to me. And like of course I'd really like if we had more rep of trans humans, and I understand the frustration of representation so often coming out of robots and generally non-human characters.

But trans robots are so good to me because I really parallel socialisation with the robot's programming.

I don't remember the details of FL4K's back story before they gained their whole sentience and how they were referred to prior to it, so I don't want to go in details with how relevant they are to this thought. I don't know how much they qualify as a "trans robot" since I don't know much about pre-sentience FL4K.

But Bubs.

Bubs seems to have been programmed to be a 'man' in the broadest sense of the word (minding that in the course of the movie, the subtitles indicate to me that she gets referred to as "he" or "it" before getting her new body and that it seems like when Kot-nim calls her "sis", it appears to be the first time someone indicates seeing her as a woman (mind I don't understand Korean enough to capture how it comes off in the original language, I only know a bit of basic vocab. I'm only talking about how it's subtitled and how it's visually conveyed)

Like I was raised with an assumption that I was a girl and would grow to be a woman. And I was raised to display as a woman and respond to woman/girl-hood and to being addressed as a woman/girl. I wasn't a girl when at 5 I was questioning if a mistake was made when assigning me my gender based on my external sex characteristic.

How different is this really to a robot programmed to be a "man" but clearly identifying with womanhood? How much does my socialisation into girlhood and my moving away from it when I could feel safe and capable to do it differ from Bubs being programmed as a "man" robot referred to with "him" when not "it" and moving away from that and getting her new body in line with how she wishes to be perceived when she could afford it.

Like I doubt this is a hugely widespread opinion, but my opinion/perception is that trans robots are a beacon of hope. It spits in the face of the idea that someone else can control who we are.

I love robots made of miscellaneous metal bits with wires showing. I've been known to complain about robots with human-like skin.

But Bubs...

Ok so this was the thing I've been MOST excited about for the Lovey Dovey drabble from Rest Stop realm.