#the most unhinged rant to ever grace my mind ngl

[sw4tch]

*you're sitting across from me at the bar and I'm 5 drinks in and rambling* OK BUT you know what has been haunting my brain? Just how fucking LESBIAN CODED cyclonus, tailgate, and whirl are.

First of all, ALL of their holoforms are WOMEN. I am fascinated by this. You see, these are giant robots that by all means are meant to be interpreted as men. AND YET. THE QUEER IDENTITY IS THERE IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE. Again, gender with these robots is so fun.

The holoforms are just a way to give the transformers human forms, and like, mostly they aren't super relevant/used seriously as a 1:1 human version of them- they're used here and there in clever ways but they are never the focus. And that's okay i don't mind. BUT I AM OBSESSED with the particular choice to give THIS trio their forms.

For starters, cyclonus and tailgate are gay for each other. Love wins, etc etc. But even though i could see why normie people could interpret tailgate as a girl (his "feminine traits" in heavy quotes just being how Sensitive and Nice he is), i would have never expected Cyclonus to be given the Lady Treatment in canon.

And yet it's such a strike of genius. I am obsessed with her. A goth victorian lady! Cyclonus being a goth victorian lady is so good in so many levels. Tailgate gets a new version of his holoform too and it's a petite girl. Cute enough but the only important detail here is that also she's a #Girl. Lesbian win! The goth victorian lady is in love with a cute femme.

ANYWAY- THEN THERE'S WHIRL. This loose cannon who's a mean bastard that takes incredible joy in being violent takes the form of a jinx from lol expy with an eyepatch. The first version is very cute and childish and the second version is just the grown up version of that (with great eyebrows i must add). And like. Hello? For some reason the "crazy mean badass" character being A Girl is a surprising choice to me.

Mostly because i am used to characters like Cyclonus and Whirl not being """emasculated""" in anyway by the narrative (they're Big Powerful Dangerous Men! Isn't that the Power Fantasy?)

But Cyclonus is gay, so maybe that gives him a Girl Free Pass (he gets removed from the Power Fantasy in the eyes of normies)

But WHIRL??? WHIRL is the most fascinating to me. He's an ASSHOLE. He tries very hard to come off as an ASSHOLE because that's his trauma response. HE'S GOOD AT BEING A KILLING MACHINE. And he's funny as hell!! My point is, Whirl is so fucking COOL. Male readers would loveeee to identify themselves with him. And yet, his human form is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl With Guns.

Like, sure, i get it, i guess the average male comic reader wouldn't mind if they could Waifu-fy their favorite guy. But would that in their minds be "emasculating"? Impossible to tell what the consensus is abour Re: Whirl being A Girl.

Anyway.

Now the important topic of how This makes this trio The Most Lesbian Coded Robots Of All Time.

With the information given, we already have Cyclonus and Tailgate being gay and in love. Since in general these robots have no real concept of Gender, you might as well claim they're He/Him Masc Lesbians and you'd be extremely right.

But also there's Cyclonus and Whirl and their extremely special friendship/relationship. Whirl inserts himself in Cyclonus life first as an enemy and later on as his STRONGEST emotional support. Incredibly fascinating to me. And like, we have established already that THEY'RE BOTH WOMEN in their holoforms so it's just really easy to picture them as Girl Besties Bonded By Trauma.

I keep trying to like, justify my view of these robots as Lesbians but like. I know it's just my interpretation but also I Am Right!

But the true meat of the Issue is that I am completely in love with this idea because by making these seemingly Male Presenting Robots into women, suddenly they're so so so endearing to me, more than anything.

Cyclonus is an extremely repressed and emotionally constipated character. He could NOTTTT confess his feelings directly to Tailgate at all EVEN THOUGH he was willing to die and kill the entire universe just to keep him safe. He loved that little bot with all of his heart and HE KNEW IT, TAILGATE KNEW IT, THE ENTIRE SHIP KNEW IT and yet he could not bring himself to say I Love You until it was too late.

You could not be surprised by me saying how this, too, is Yuri. It's the deep repression of feelings for me. Such a lesbian experience (which, yes, it is in general a queer experience, but remember we're talking about WOMEN here). Which Cyclonus as a man and being like this? Good, fantastic, i still love it. But Cyclonus as a woman and BEING like this??? Delicious, showstopping, spectacular- SUDDENLY SHE IS EVERYTHING TO ME.

Now, Tailgate, our favorite little guy of all time. There's so many things to be said about him. He starts off as the only guy in the entire world to have no trauma from the war because he just missed it entirely. So he starts off with the Sweetest Attitude because he is the only one that can still afford to be Sweet and Naive naturally. But ALSO. He is a straight up self aggrandizing LIAR. Tailgate is very insecure! He makes up these stories about him being a recognized hero, about being a certified bomb disposal expert, about being destined to be in the Ark and just missing it by a little chance- but truly he's just terrified of everyone knowing how he's not special at all. How he hasn't done anything with his life.

It is perhaps a shallow reading, but all of these traits make it so easy to picture him as a struggling fail woman. Naivete, kindness, Low Self Esteem, you got yourself a combo of how people usually write Nice Girls. Especially with how anxious tailgate can be sometimes! He was just born to be a Cute Moe Fail Girl for anyone to fall in love with.

And *drum roll* WHIRL. First of all, I think what truly does it for me about Whirl but as a Woman is just that he is a marvelous combination of traumas and HORRIBLE coping mechanisms. He is both victim and perpetrator of Violence. The system fucked him up and he went ahead and served the system to Start The Goddamn War by Abusing His Power. And he LOATHES himself for it. He believes himself a monster and then goes "well you better believe i am the best Monster there ever WAS" to take control of his life in the only way the War ever let him.

Ngl fam, if anything, the way Whirl's trauma is so intertwined with his Empurata aka His Body Issues- he's just a very Trans Character to Me. (And, COMING FROM AN ENBY PERSON MIND YOU, it is very hard not to enjoy making an Attack Helicopter joke about Whirl and his gender because. Well. He literally is one.)

It's about his bodily autonomy being stripped from him and then him deciding to have his rage about it fuel him. Whirl as a woman is genius truly. Whirl has made himself BY CHOICE a killing machine. It's hard not to also apply that to his gender. He also decided to embrace his female holoform, he even enjoys braiding her hair. She is a wolverine woman. A woman that bites and spits and has rabies. A woman with anger seated deep within her ribs and a sadness buried even deeper. (And as a bonus, she also seems to have a Maternal instinct.) She's also someone that saw Cyclonus and Tailgate being deeply in love and said "scoot over, i want me some of that" and made herself a third wheel in between two people that also grew to love her very much.

It's just.

Do you see where i am coming from!!! These 3 are women and lesbians and in love! They're in a fun complicated relationship with each other in which they all have their issues but one way or another they all gravitate towards each other because they CARE ABOUT ONE ANOTHER.

Just...!!! Ough!!!!! They're complex and interpreting them as women scratches such a good urge in my brain to have women i can relate to!!! That i can find Real in their complexity!!!!! It feels silly to me to be so passionate about The Robots Made To Sell Toys Being Lesbians but also... cmon!!!!! Cmon!!!!!!!!

It comes entirely from my nonbinary point of view of course, but this Gender Play of "very male presenting Robots that have no concept of gender and also are Gay being interpreted in canon as Women in their alternative form" is JUST CATNIP TO ME.

Like YES, YESSS gender is fake but these robots somehow found a way to be #Girls despite it all