The tag implication #56657 cybertronian -> robot is pending approval.

Reason: One of the main taglines of transformers is "Robots in Disguise"

"Robots in Disguise"

Meaning that they won't always be recognizable as robots. The most blatant example would be Beast Wars.

post #3357349
This don't look like a robot.

clawstripe said:
"Robots in Disguise"

Meaning that they won't always be recognizable as robots. The most blatant example would be Beast Wars.

lafcadio said:
post #3357349
This don't look like a robot.

Would cybertronian not apply either, then? If it can't be tagged robot because it looks like a normal car, would it also not be able to be tagged cybertronian since it looks like a normal car? They're both the same kind of tag, so it seems the same rules about what it does or doesn't look like should apply.

watsit said:
Would cybertronian not apply either, then? If it can't be tagged robot because it looks like a normal car, would it also not be able to be tagged cybertronian since it looks like a normal car? They're both the same kind of tag, so it seems the same rules about what it does or doesn't look like should apply.

That's a good point, and one I was considering earlier. After all, as a Transfan, I know that's supposed to be Red Alert from Generation One, but you probably won't. From a pure TWYS perspective, it just looks like a Fire Chief car (although what fire department could afford a Lamborghini Countach, much less an LP500S?).

I'm thinking something like that should be treated as we would cosplaying. If Sally Acorn dresses up like Felicia from Darkstalkers, we'd tag the latter character, but we would not tag Sally as a cat_humanoid. Therefore, in the above picture, we would tag red_alert_(transformer) but not cybertronian or robot because we can't tell if that is a Transformer or just a car that looks like one.

Now, if the car was doing something a car doesn't normally do, such as drive about without a driver or talk (what the text is saying is irrelevant but the fact that the text (or pictographics or an empty speech balloon) exists at all is relevant), then a case could be made that it could be tagged as Cybertronian but not robot. In other words, the Fire Chief car would now be an obvious character according to TWYS so could be tagged as Red Alert instead of a car painted to look like him.

clawstripe said:
That's a good point, and one I was considering earlier. After all, as a Transfan, I know that's supposed to be Red Alert from Generation One, but you probably won't. From a pure TWYS perspective, it just looks like a Fire Chief car (although what fire department could afford a Lamborghini Countach, much less an LP500S?).

I'm thinking something like that should be treated as we would cosplaying. If Sally Acorn dresses up like Felicia from Darkstalkers, we'd tag the latter character, but we would not tag Sally as a cat_humanoid. Therefore, in the above picture, we would tag red_alert_(transformer) but not cybertronian or robot because we can't tell if that is a Transformer or just a car that looks like one.

Now, if the car was doing something a car doesn't normally do, such as drive about without a driver or talk (what the text is saying is irrelevant but the fact that the text (or pictographics or an empty speech balloon) exists at all is relevant), then a case could be made that it could be tagged as Cybertronian but not robot. In other words, the Fire Chief car would now be an obvious character according to TWYS so could be tagged as Red Alert instead of a car painted to look like him.

I think this is a great point. I wasn't even taking altmodes into account considering most of the art on this site features characters in robot mode, but this is a very good way of handling them. I'll leave the thread open a bit longer to see if anyone else wants to chime in, but if nobody does I'll self reject and go by that rule set from now on.

(Also not to derail the conversation, but out of curiosity who's your favorite transformers character? Personally, mine is Shockwave, specifically his TF Prime incarnation.)

clawstripe said:
That's a good point, and one I was considering earlier. After all, as a Transfan, I know that's supposed to be Red Alert from Generation One, but you probably won't. From a pure TWYS perspective, it just looks like a Fire Chief car (although what fire department could afford a Lamborghini Countach, much less an LP500S?).

I'm thinking something like that should be treated as we would cosplaying. If Sally Acorn dresses up like Felicia from Darkstalkers, we'd tag the latter character, but we would not tag Sally as a cat_humanoid. Therefore, in the above picture, we would tag red_alert_(transformer) but not cybertronian or robot because we can't tell if that is a Transformer or just a car that looks like one.

Now, if the car was doing something a car doesn't normally do, such as drive about without a driver or talk (what the text is saying is irrelevant but the fact that the text (or pictographics or an empty speech balloon) exists at all is relevant), then a case could be made that it could be tagged as Cybertronian but not robot. In other words, the Fire Chief car would now be an obvious character according to TWYS so could be tagged as Red Alert instead of a car painted to look like him.

Wouldn't that be a good reason for the implication, then? Since the character would need to display something to indicate they aren't a normal vehicle or something, and are in fact a cybertronian, would robot not apply in those cases too?

watsit said:
Wouldn't that be a good reason for the implication, then? Since the character would need to display something to indicate they aren't a normal vehicle or something, and are in fact a cybertronian, would robot not apply in those cases too?

are dire_machines robots? I guess robots could be of any form. although-- I dunno, it seems odd to tag it on dire_vehicles.

looking at related wikis:

living_machine said:
Note that if the character isn't machinery given human traits and is just simply robotic, it should probably be tagged as robot instead.

I don't-- I don't know what this is even trying to say, honestly.

watsit said:
Wouldn't that be a good reason for the implication, then? Since the character would need to display something to indicate they aren't a normal vehicle or something, and are in fact a cybertronian, would robot not apply in those cases too?

Arguable. That was part of what I was thinking about, too, but I think Sipothac's point is valid. From a TWYS standpoint, do Herbie, Christine, and KITT qualify as robots? Yes, you could make a case for KITT being one if you'd like to lump an AI-computerized car with robots, but Christine is lore-wise a possessed car while what Herbie is exactly is unclear. So, dire_machine encompasses more than just robots in disguise. How would we tell from a TWYS standpoint that an obvious Transformer in car mode is a Cybertronian dire machine or a Cybertronian robot?

I referenced a more extreme example in my original post, that of Beast Wars in which Transformers disguised themselves as Earth animals. Not robotic versions of animals as is usually the case, but what appear to be bona fide organic lifeforms. Sometimes, they can betray their robot lifeform nature in some way without transforming into robots (such as damage or opening a hidden panel to reveal some sort of weapon or bit of equipment), but then would they count as robots (in disguise) or cyborgs even though you could probably get away with tagging them as Cybertronian?

There's also the original Robots in Disguise from 2001 (known as Car Robots in Japan) in which one of the Cybertronian characters is actually a hologram of a human (likely for integration purposes with the natives) and is never portrayed as a robot. TWYS would require tagging her (in her canon form) as human, possibly hologram, and arguably Cybertronian, but not robot.

So, in the case of Transformers, I think not implying Cybertronian to robot, tagging the latter on a case-by-case basis, would just save us a lot of arguing.

mothbean said:
(Also not to derail the conversation, but out of curiosity who's your favorite transformers character? Personally, mine is Shockwave, specifically his TF Prime incarnation.)

(It depends, but I usually prefer those in the overall Generation One/Beast Wars continuity family. I like the Car Robots continuity, am generally okay with the Armada/Energon/Cybertron trilogy, but the live action continuity is kind of below "meh" for me, especially since the characters usually look like walking piles of auto parts instead of restructured vehicles and the usual overall problems seen with trying to turn a well-established comic superhero mythos into a movie series (as frequently seen with the Marvel cinematic universe, for example). I haven't gotten into the various later series.

Favorite characters vary, but overall, I do quite a bit with Starscream, reconciling his canon portrayals with a better understanding of how a gifted and otherwise competent person might act after eons of abuse from a psychopath he admires and tries to emulate (but because he's not a true psychopath himself isn't very good at acting like one, hence his apparent incompetence).)