The Energon Pub

shockblast2 wrote:

Va'al wrote:This thread does not discuss moderating practices, rules or staff decisions. Please revert to the topic at hand.

Those discussions can be continued via PM or directly to staff email. Thank you.

Va,al, you know I respect you and the work you all do here. But, this kind of thing has to stop. People should be allowed to have their opinion. There are two members on this site that I disagree with just about every thing they post, because they say hateful things indirectly about my personal beliefs. But, you all have never called them out and I don't care. Because it is their God given right to say whatever they want and feel whatever they want about any subject. If you guys just want mindless Hasbro praises OR ELSE, then why even have forums?

I know you want to discuss this privately, but I have nothing to hide. If I say something that is grossly out of line, then by all means say something. Have I made an unfair claim here or what?

I can prove this was unfair by asking any other member if they got a board warning in their mailbox? You said it was general, when i was personally reprimanded. Why is that?

As requested, multiple times, by me, I am discussing this with you via PM. Anyone else is free to join.



Any further messages that derail the thread will be removed. Thank you.

Va'al wrote:***MODERATOR ANNOUNCEMENT***

Given the current direction this thread is taking, I want to make sure we're all aware that words like 'tranny' are hurtful and hateful and will not be tolerated on the Seibertron.com boards. 'Cross-dressing', 'trans', etc are not insults, so please do not use them as such.

Anyone failing to adhere to these guidelines will be reminded by the moderating team, and in case of failure to comply, receive a board warning.

Thank you.

Yeah, no.

I'm not comparing these things to a poorly done sex-change operation because of some hatred you seem to think I have for people with gender identity disorder. I'm saying they look like that because that's what they look like, which I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to. They don't look like female Transformers, they look like badly-sculpted vaguely female heads tacked onto male bodies. That's not good or in any way defensible. It's a minimal effort job done to make themselves look like they care about diversity or something. The sheer lack of effort put into making these look even slightly different from the original mold-donors is downright insulting. It's like they're saying "Fembots? Does that mean we put lipstick on a male Transformer?"

Other female Transformers at least looked partially feminine. Strongarm has an overall gynoid build (even if she is armoured and bulky) and even Strika had a vaguely feminine look, despite being not only non-gynoid, but also downright inhuman in appearance. These though...not only do they look nothing like the (pretty awesome) art, but they just look like a bunch of dudes wearing lipstick (and not particularly well either). At least the likes of Roulette and Shadow Striker actually used fairly feminine base molds.

What makes it really sad is how momentous this was supposed to be. Finally! A female combiner! But no, we got a shoddy retool job that screams "token effort".

TL;DR: This paltry effort is an insult to all things female and robotic.

And seriously? Calling out Hasbro's incompetence is a "personal attack" now? Come on, dude, that's just stupid. Hasbro dun goofed here. Nobody is exempt from criticism.

Va'al wrote:This thread does not discuss moderating practices, rules or staff decisions. Please revert to the topic at hand.

Those discussions can be continued via PM or directly to staff email. Thank you.

The only (and final) thing I would say to that is, wouldn't a dedicated OPEN thread be better for this kind of discussion? PM's and staff e-mail limit who can say what on the topic, and could be construed as a type of said 'selective enforcement'. I can't comment on how you, Va'al, as a mod, or how shockblast, as a user, are being treated if it's all done behind a closed door. That is tailoring how the issue is handled, sadly in the favour of the mods.
You guys have to deal with a lot, and you deserve your ground to stand on. The people visiting this thread deserve to talk, pleasantly, about a toy. For this reason, PM's seem like the best idea. But something about that doesn't sit right with me, not if we (as a forum) want to enforce fairness. If it doesn't exist already, I humbly suggest a thread for such things.

On a seriously off-topic note-I do not believe in free speech, as in I do not advocate, nor do I base any argument on it. The free speech of one will always oppress another, so 'free' speech is a bit of a fallacy we like to indulge in when we want higher ground on a subject. If free speech were real, nobody in this thread would be arguing, now, would they?

ON TOPIC:

I like Victorion, but as previously said, the colour mapping on what we see here looks bad. If it's the final layout, I'm worried. Funds willing, I'll pick her up. I like customising, so disagreeable colours are not a problem for me as an individual. The molds look nice. We knew she would be re-molds, and I like what they have done. As also previously said, I don't need every woman to be the traditional female ideal, and I'm quite impressed by the amount of re-tooling they have just to make them new characters, regardless of trying to represent any gender. (I am however, getting worried at CW's lack of new molds as a whole...)
I do really wish they would drop having to give fem-bots lipstick. In this instance it looks noticeably bad...
Sword is cool. New hands and feet is unexpected. I hope CW doesn't drop the old hand/ foot/ weapon design....I liked the playability it gave...

Apologies to those who had to scroll through this mess to talk about toys. Because toys are fun.

*sigh*

Do I need to pull up the list of images of non-feminine-looking fembots again?

Delta Magnus wrote:I'm not comparing these things to a poorly done sex-change operation because of some hatred you seem to think I have for people with gender identity disorder. I'm saying they look like that because that's what they look like, which I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to. They don't look like female Transformers, they look like badly-sculpted vaguely female heads tacked onto male bodies. That's not good or in any way defensible. It's a minimal effort job done to make themselves look like they care about diversity or something. The sheer lack of effort put into making these look even slightly different from the original mold-donors is downright insulting. It's like they're saying "Fembots? Does that mean we put lipstick on a male Transformer?"

Other female Transformers at least looked partially feminine. Strongarm has an overall gynoid build (even if she is armoured and bulky) and even Strika had a vaguely feminine look, despite being not only non-gynoid, but also downright inhuman in appearance. These though...not only do they look nothing like the (pretty awesome) art, but they just look like a bunch of dudes wearing lipstick (and not particularly well either). At least the likes of Roulette and Shadow Striker actually used fairly feminine base molds.

What makes it really sad is how momentous this was supposed to be. Finally! A female combiner! But no, we got a shoddy retool job that screams "token effort".

TL;DR: This paltry effort is an insult to all things female and robotic.

Could you not have said all of that in your earlier comment?

Why are people so bothered by them "not looking feminine"? They're your toys, make them be whatever you want them to be.

I use GDO Swerve as Gobots Smallfoot. I also put AoE Slag, Scorn and Slash in with the female Transformers. I'm still debating on if I should put AoE voyager Grimlock with them. I have several other "male" Transformers in with the "females" as well.

It really doesn't matter what the toy is supposedly meant to be, all that matters is what you want it to be once you have it. Just play with your toys however you want and don't let any preconceived notions of gender, colors or assemblage stop you from doing what you want with your toys.

Theres a joke to be made about Fembots being caught dead all wearing the same paint scheme, but I digress...

Well... she looked good in the Combiners Wars Comic preview, but this? Yeesh. It just feels so lazy to me. They couldn't have one be white with teal stripes, and another be red/white two tone? They ALL had to be mostly red/teal?

Damn shame too, because I really dig the head mold and overall looks like it could have been a neat combiner. Guess a lot of people will be waiting/hoping for future repaints while maybe subbing in some of the protectobots in the meantime.

Va'al wrote:

Delta Magnus wrote:I'm not comparing these things to a poorly done sex-change operation because of some hatred you seem to think I have for people with gender identity disorder. I'm saying they look like that because that's what they look like, which I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to. They don't look like female Transformers, they look like badly-sculpted vaguely female heads tacked onto male bodies. That's not good or in any way defensible. It's a minimal effort job done to make themselves look like they care about diversity or something. The sheer lack of effort put into making these look even slightly different from the original mold-donors is downright insulting. It's like they're saying "Fembots? Does that mean we put lipstick on a male Transformer?"

Other female Transformers at least looked partially feminine. Strongarm has an overall gynoid build (even if she is armoured and bulky) and even Strika had a vaguely feminine look, despite being not only non-gynoid, but also downright inhuman in appearance. These though...not only do they look nothing like the (pretty awesome) art, but they just look like a bunch of dudes wearing lipstick (and not particularly well either). At least the likes of Roulette and Shadow Striker actually used fairly feminine base molds.

What makes it really sad is how momentous this was supposed to be. Finally! A female combiner! But no, we got a shoddy retool job that screams "token effort".

TL;DR: This paltry effort is an insult to all things female and robotic.

Could you not have said all of that in your earlier comment?

I was going to, but I didn't think it would be necessary because it all seemed obvious enough to me.

(Also this post took literally forever to write out, so it came kinda late.)

To be fair we all knew what was coming, as molds were selected before gender, to retool them all to make them look like what people expect would of meant far more work especially when there was no guarantee that female would be chosen.

At the end though, they're female despite their molds, BW Sonar is female as well. Does all this really matter?

ScottyP wrote:

Mindmaster wrote:Would rather have that Animated Ultra Magnus-esque palette that was also offered over the current encroaching-Generation 2 levels of eye-scorching safety-themed neon.

You kids get off my lawn with all this G2 hate today!

But really I wouldn't judge the color scheme too harshly until the not-hand-painted versions are seen. It looks like they use some super way too thick enamel on these, which when combined with show lighting in displays like these is not going to look nice and is likely coming through over-saturated. Think of your cell phone when it uses flash on a toy picture and you didn't want it to.

Red is still red though...and here there feels like there is too much of it

So, while everybody is prattling on, breaking the rules and so forth, I'm actually going to give a constructive opinion of Victorion and her components. Without insulting anybody.

They could be better, but they are not that bad. As for all the folks here acting all up in arms about these figures, I can understand where you're coming from, yes, they aren't terribly feminine looking, but was Strika ever feminine looking? Nope. Yet she's one of the most popular characters to come out of Beast Machines. I can agree that Hasbro should've done a lot more retooling and/or made brand new figures, but they aren't that horrible, not compared to what we've seen in the past. The colors are slavish, yes, but these are hand painted prototypes, often figures look sloppy and garish when first revealed. And I understand that the colors aren't great, she is awfully colorcentric, lots of red and turquoise. But it's better then the retail FOC Bruticus, with only, oh right, none of the figures being remotely accurate in color scheme. The Hot Spot moldmate ain't bad, more feminine looking then expected IMHO. The Alpha Bravo sisters, well, I wish they would've done more, but not too horrible. Breakdown's moldmate isn't too shabby, still has the big legs issue, but oh well. Groove's moldmate should've gotten a new head, but she's acceptable. Dead End's moldmate is probably the weak link of the limbs here, it's clear that it'll be redone as Nightbird at some point, but out of all of them, she feels the least feminine.

Not liking the color mapping is a reasonable opinion. Not liking how the molds look, well, given the choices in the poll used to determine what got used, I fail to comprehend what other reasonable expectation there was as opposed to what we're seeing. I don't think massive re-toolings were an expectation - but were they? This was never advertised, imo, as a 100% the same as Windblade type project, but as a fun way to vote on a "bonus" combiner of sorts. Maybe I'm wrong, and that's cool, but yes, toys are fun and I am going to get in trouble at work if I keep posting so much

Sabrblade wrote:*sigh*

Do I need to pull up the list of images of non-feminine-looking fembots again?

ZeroWolf wrote:
At the end though, they're female despite their molds, BW Sonar is female as well. Does all this really matter?

It really doesn't matter what has come before if people don't like these figures being repurposed into fembots. We can pull up any list that makes you happy, but the existence of some list or some previous figure doesn't mean that every subsequent figure will or should just automatically please everyone. I don't have any problem with these figures being fembots, but it's clear that other people don't feel that way. It's ok for people's opinions to differ, and really, as someone else already said, if you buy them, you can make them into who or whatever you please.
I still just think the colors are atrocious.

Delta Magnus wrote:

Va'al wrote:

Delta Magnus wrote:I'm not comparing these things to a poorly done sex-change operation because of some hatred you seem to think I have for people with gender identity disorder. I'm saying they look like that because that's what they look like, which I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to. They don't look like female Transformers, they look like badly-sculpted vaguely female heads tacked onto male bodies. That's not good or in any way defensible. It's a minimal effort job done to make themselves look like they care about diversity or something. The sheer lack of effort put into making these look even slightly different from the original mold-donors is downright insulting. It's like they're saying "Fembots? Does that mean we put lipstick on a male Transformer?"

Other female Transformers at least looked partially feminine. Strongarm has an overall gynoid build (even if she is armoured and bulky) and even Strika had a vaguely feminine look, despite being not only non-gynoid, but also downright inhuman in appearance. These though...not only do they look nothing like the (pretty awesome) art, but they just look like a bunch of dudes wearing lipstick (and not particularly well either). At least the likes of Roulette and Shadow Striker actually used fairly feminine base molds.

What makes it really sad is how momentous this was supposed to be. Finally! A female combiner! But no, we got a shoddy retool job that screams "token effort".

TL;DR: This paltry effort is an insult to all things female and robotic.

Could you not have said all of that in your earlier comment?

I was going to, but I didn't think it would be necessary because it all seemed obvious enough to me.

(Also this post took literally forever to write out, so it came kinda late.)

It's actually pretty easy and fast to say you don't like something while at the same time not offending anybody.

Example:

I don't like the colors on these. They look like crossdressers! - BAD

vs.

I don't like the colors on these. - GOOD

I love the idea off a fembot combiner. This one is decent, dont like the color scheme that much but it is still pretty cool. I like the idea of bulkier fembots but i do wish the gave them just a little more curve, round the hips, maby some slight waist remolding (they dont have to have hour glass figures or anything I just think a slightly more curvy shape would help pass them off as fembots better. I hope Hasbro has plans to do a new Elita One figure (not a remold) and maby some of the more obscure fembots like Nightbird. Hopefully some day we'll be able to put her whole teem together on our shelves.

The moderator has already done the moderating thing, please let's get back on track!


I'm still grinning like an idiot at the existence of Alpha Bravo twins.

I'm actually liking the color scheme. And that combined sword looks awesome.

Jones wrote:

Delta Magnus wrote:

Va'al wrote:

Delta Magnus wrote:I'm not comparing these things to a poorly done sex-change operation because of some hatred you seem to think I have for people with gender identity disorder. I'm saying they look like that because that's what they look like, which I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to. They don't look like female Transformers, they look like badly-sculpted vaguely female heads tacked onto male bodies. That's not good or in any way defensible. It's a minimal effort job done to make themselves look like they care about diversity or something. The sheer lack of effort put into making these look even slightly different from the original mold-donors is downright insulting. It's like they're saying "Fembots? Does that mean we put lipstick on a male Transformer?"

Other female Transformers at least looked partially feminine. Strongarm has an overall gynoid build (even if she is armoured and bulky) and even Strika had a vaguely feminine look, despite being not only non-gynoid, but also downright inhuman in appearance. These though...not only do they look nothing like the (pretty awesome) art, but they just look like a bunch of dudes wearing lipstick (and not particularly well either). At least the likes of Roulette and Shadow Striker actually used fairly feminine base molds.

What makes it really sad is how momentous this was supposed to be. Finally! A female combiner! But no, we got a shoddy retool job that screams "token effort".

TL;DR: This paltry effort is an insult to all things female and robotic.

Could you not have said all of that in your earlier comment?

I was going to, but I didn't think it would be necessary because it all seemed obvious enough to me.

(Also this post took literally forever to write out, so it came kinda late.)

It's actually pretty easy and fast to say you don't like something while at the same time not offending anybody.

Example:

I don't like the colors on these. They look like crossdressers! - BAD

vs.

I don't like the colors on these. - GOOD

Yeah, except my problem with them isn't just the awful colours. It's the fact they look like hideous caricatures of femininity made by someone who has never seen a real woman.

Va'al wrote:The moderator has already done the moderating thing, please let's get back on track!


I'm still grinning like an idiot at the existence of Alpha Bravo twins.

My inner Alpha Bravo fanboy is pleased at that I will admit.

Does anyone have or remember seeing any very early prototype images of either Superion or Menasor with colors? I'm wondering if their first-look colors were as 'off' and unfinished as these seem to be.

I have got to believe that the final product will look way more refined than this in terms of accents, color mapping, and detailing.

Delta Magnus wrote:Yeah, except my problem with them isn't just the awful colours. It's the fact they look like hideous caricatures of femininity made by someone who has never seen a real woman.

In case you didn't notice, conversations with this level of prejudice and brutal honesty aren't going so well

My goodness, all this arguing over genders is ridiculous.

They're freaking robots! The can be whatever gender they want lol.

Also, it's a shame they didn't have the new arm molding on the twins earlier; it would have worked great with Blades!

This thread is moving faster then I can keep up with!

I'm also happy to see more a/bs. My intent is to get them all then take a picture of them at a mold family bbq

Have to say I'm disappointed with this. The colours just don't work for me. Nice to see some more fembots but I don't think I'll be adding these to my collecion.

Madeus Prime wrote:

Delta Magnus wrote:Yeah, except my problem with them isn't just the awful colours. It's the fact they look like hideous caricatures of femininity made by someone who has never seen a real woman.

In case you didn't notice, conversations with this level of prejudice and brutal honesty aren't going so well

I am always brutally honest. And I don't care much for people trying to dictate to me that my opinions are ungood thoughtcrime.