... really? I didn't notice. At what point is this?

Single sentence as Optimus is about to meet Vector. Every bot present felt down to its spark....last thing it ever did.

All 'male' bots, you'd never use that with a group of humans.

Also, Vector. Meh. Could have been worse. Mostly just dull.

I like the idea of the 13 as enormous compared to other bots though.

I will continue to put my fingers in my ears and consider TFs genderless beings and that he/she are stylistic choices.

Vector is going to sit in his pocket dimension and listen to Linkin Park, and not even the plot shall pry him from his brooding.

Yes, style or 'best effort' translations of things. Though any kind of robot gender makes me twitch.

Oh, I meant on the part of the robots. "I like the three-letter pronoun better. I'll use that one."

I guess it would be awkward to refer to them all as "it" throughout the book.

I would, however, accept that gender = alt mode, but then you'd need a new pronoun for boats, jets, cars, cassettes...

I used to feel like that ref using 'it' then I read Iain M Banks' Culture novels

And all the machine charactets are 'it' in there. It works.

Alt mode pronouns, yes. That I could get behind.

Maybe? I guess I'd have to read them and get used to it.

Calling people 'it' is pretty insulting so that 'hey that's not nice' reaction is what first comes to mind.

Hard to describe really, perhaps he does a better job of not making them human? It's never used as an insult.

In fact, assigning gender where the machine hasn't specified is!

That, I could definitely see.

"You are male."
"Uh, excuse me, I'm a spaceship. Rude."