by Dr. Caelus » Wed Aug 24, 2016 9:38 am
I want this a lot despite the fact that the paint job seems a lot less detailed, and despite the fact that they didn't carry the playing card theme over to the paint jobs (because, who wouldn't want a race car assassin with an Ace of Spades/Grim Reaper paint job on the hood?).
As far as Empress vs. Queen - The Empress is a tarot card, so it does break theme, but not entirely.
Also, I would consider myself a hardcore pro-social-justice feminist (enough so, at least, to earn me a fair bit of hostility from men and women), have spent most of my adult life working in environments dominated by women, have taken classes on power and privilege, etc. and I'm not seeing where the sexism would be at with these characters so far.
Yes, the leader is 'just a female version of Megatron.' But that's frankly, darkly hilarious - Megatron decides he wants a wife, but rather than go out and actually try to court another existing Transformer, he decides none of them are good enough for him, and goes off to make his *ideal* woman from scratch. In his attempt to create a perfect partner for himself, he ends up simply creating a female version of himself, who Shockwave locks away because she's TOO MUCH like Megatron. Whether intentional or not, it's a great metaphor for the pressure on women to defeminize themselves, to adopt traditionally masculine behaviors and attitudes, in order to earn the respect of men, only to then be slapped down by society when they act like men.
And her honor guard aren't female versions of any male characters, are they? One is Starscream's stalker (which, honestly, most people would consider funny because it inverts gender roles), one is a spy for Soundwave (a notable but not unusual distinction), and one is business partners with Swindle. They're just their own characters, who have exactly as much tie in with old characters as you'd expect for new characters that have to be embedded in an existing universe.
Obviously, there's not really enough content there to apply the different 'tests' of feminine presence in literature, but what's there looks encouraging so far. Clearly, none of the characters could be replaced by a "sexy lamp" (though that would have made for a hilarious repaint of Legends Shockwave) so it looks like it will pass that test. Except maybe for the Screamer fangirl, the characters don't appear to be female stereotypes, so it may pass the Sphinx test. The Empress's narrative arc is short and vague, but she's the main character in it, rather than a supporting character to Megatron, so it passes the Mako Mori test (as well as it can with, like, three sentences). And, of course, five women who conjoin physically and psychically into one entity without a man would have to be the literal embodiment (get it?) of the Bechdel test.
And what happened to the Rust Dust repaint? Obviously they burned her in the 70s.
Last edited by
Dr. Caelus on Wed Aug 24, 2016 9:57 am, edited 2 times in total.
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