I was hoping to find fodder for my own headcanons, and instead found this tacked onto Solus Prime’s entry in the book:
’I note at this point for those of you who may be curious: the Primes, and later the Transformers, do not have gender in the same way that humans and certain other biological species do Here Solus Prime, and those who were later formed in her lineage, are referred to as ‘she’ in order to comply with your human gender reference terms and to show a distinction that Cybertronians recognize among themselves (though other races do not).
To Cybertronians, there are two distinctive ‘kinds’ that we easily divide yourselves into, recognizing key feature differences in the manner in which information is processed. It is widely supposed among the remaining Primes that this difference was necessary for Solus herself to operate the Creation Lathe, which required a vast capacity for wide-ranging and parallel thought processing.
After becoming part of a wider galactic community, we adopted the habit of using a gender reference protocol when interacting with gendered alien species in order to demonstrate that we are not unfamiliar with the notions of difference and equality; we recognize our difference; we celebrate our equality.
In early, pre-contact Cybertronian notation, however, all Primes and others are referred to by a single symbol. I note that in human terms there is a rough 1:1 ratio of male to female that does not correspond to our 1:12 distinction, and I apologize to any females of the species who may feel slighted at having had their pronoun applied to the less-numerous type of Cybertronian.’
Not sure how I feel about this yet and I really have to run for work, so I guess I have time to think about it.
There’s fuel here and also some disappointing things…if nothing else comes out of this Covenant, though, I have come to terms with Solus’ Robot Ponytail.
Posted on
There is no official art of Dr. Cogwheel and that’s a real shame.
He felt his ego try to stand up and reassert itself, but he had fallen out of love with it now; the romance was broken. It had lead him to this state— Unicron’s ex-puppet. He would not have more of that. He was capable of better.
From the ‘Covenant of Primus’ book; Solus’ main entry (note transcribed with some errors here) and image.
I find it interesting that even though they try so very hard to stress that it’s just a processing difference you guys, it doesn’t really mean gender there are no genders they still made Solus so very distinctly female, and feminine, in appearance in so many ways…while none of the others are at all. Especially the more ‘form fluid’ individuals, who you would think would have room for that without making anyone uncomfortable, are all big and burly and either emphatically masculine in design or emphatically alien-beyond-identification (cough Amalgamous and his ‘explosion of parts’ portrait cough). I mean goddamn.
Similarly, I’m not thrilled that her story in The Covenant terminates in such a typically ‘token female, token romance’ kind of way.
What I ALSO find interesting though–and in a much more positive way–is the way she isn’t just ‘a’ creator or a part of the creation process but she is THE CREATOR, and she and her tools make for the totality of that process, both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. Seed and womb and all the other gendered imagery that tends to make its way into creation entities is neatly tied off in her little blurb up there and it pleases me. And let no one ever forget that Solus was the one who took point charging into battle against Unicron. Because yeah, we revisited that.
She builds shit! She breaks shit! She does not take shit. Her MYTHOLOGY, her place in the mythology, is so much better than the ‘after the legend’ bits she got it’s kind of staggering.
On which note, though,
I think we’re allowed to declare The Wreckers a Girl’s Club now.
How's it hummin'? 