The Energon Pub

i'm not digging Arcee's color scheme. i mean those are Decepticon colors...

Gender roles, sexism, bible thumping.... I want to facepalm and chew popcorn at the same time. Why isn't there a gif for that?

To address a concern, namely how Mary Sue-ish the IDW fembots are, the answer is that they aren't.
None of them are ever treated as particularly special for being female, other than the oddity of it on previously all-male Cybertron. None of them are strong, independent women who don't need no man, and they all have distinct personalities with different strengths and weaknesses. Arcee was a take-no-prisoners assassin for a while, Windblade is a youthful optimist who's still training in physical combat, and Chromia is an ace fighter who deeply mistrusts Cybertronian leadership and has driven a wedge between herself and former best friend Windblade because of some spoilery stuff. While Arcee did quickly bond with the other two because she was no longer the only female, she hasn't had much interaction with them since their first meeting because she went to Earth with Prime's crew while Windblade and Chromia stayed on Cybertron. So hopefully Combiner Hunters (the solo issue and the storyline) get into this more.
Also these toys are neat and you should buy them.

Mechastrike wrote:i'm not digging Arcee's color scheme. i mean those are Decepticon colors...

Black is EVERYBODY's color.

I leave for a couple hours and I'm three pages behind? What happened?

........

Oh.
*leaves*

shajaki wrote:I leave for a couple hours and I'm three pages behind? What happened?

........

Oh.
*leaves*

Second time in this topic I've had to use this.

That Bot wrote:Hey guys what's going on in this thr

Never mind.

MartianSpyGirl1996 wrote:

SillySpringer wrote:There is a difference between having tough girls that need to be tough to survive and get the job done, and having tough girls taking the roll of the guys and the guys being the wimps. In this picture for example:
It's not Elita one being tough for a good reason, it's to make optimus look like a wimpy girl.

But it's okay for the male TransFormers to be tough and the women be wimpy? You can't ever have a fembot wipe the floor with a man? Yeah, that's sexist.

Delta Magnus wrote:I never said THAT was good either. Although the comparison is a little off given the particular brand of stupidity I'm referring to is the combination of "UNKILLABLE MARY SUE BADASS LOL" with "ERMAHGERD MUH STRONK EMPOWERED WOMAN WHO DON'T NEED NO MAN".

So you're saying women need men? Again, that's sexist.

If y'all don't like kickass female characters, then don't read/watch/whatever it is that has them in it... but many people DO enjoy strong, killer women. Xena: Warrior Princess was popular for a reason.

To me it's a question of how the author does it a good writer will create a character that is tough and strong in of herself. Like Arcee. A bad author will have no idea how to do that unless he (and I mean he) takes down every other character to do it. In other words, he has no idea how a strong woman can be written so he creates a one dimensional tough girl who thrives at the expense of others. This is 85% of the tough girls out there.

A great example of how to write a tough female character? Don't worry about writing a female character. Just write a character and have her be female. Take Ripley from aliens. She was written to be a male and when Weaver was cast they didn't change a thing. They didn't have to. No one needed to put a lampshade on her head that said "gurrrl".

Delta Magnus wrote:As cool as this set is I'm not sure if it's cool enough to justify the inevitable insane secondary market prices...

Also, I REALLY hope the comics don't decide to go full Tumblr feminist "HURR LOOK AT US STRONG INDEPENDENT MARY SUE WOMEN KILLING ALL THE COMBINERS GURRRRRL POWAH". I mean, the concept of Arcee, Chromia and Windblade hunting Devastator is awesome, but...I dunno, it might be irrational but I have a forboding feeling of dread about the execution of the story. Call it intuition.

Given how PC the entertainment industry is, that feeling of dread is not groundless.

But if executed properly... well, we can only cross our fingers and hope they don't fall into the trap of the 'strong independent womaaaaaaaaaaaan' meme. There's a logical reason why Devastator is so tough. He's made of construction vehicles. Construction vehicles are designed and engineered to take a pounding. They're incredibly heavy, amazingly strong and durable. These things are made to tear through earth and rock, knock down buildings, plow through anything that gets in their way. Only combat vehicles are close to being as tough (and by 'combat vehicles' that means military jets, tanks and such - not just cars with guns mounted on them).

It takes some believing that a motorcycle, an airplane and a sedan would stand a chance. They could make it believable if Devastator did so much damage to the hunters that even if they won, they would feel like they lost.

Optimizzy wrote:
A great example of how to write a tough female character? Don't worry about writing a female character. Just write a character and have her be female. Take Ripley from aliens. She was written to be a male and when Weaver was cast they didn't change a thing. They didn't have to. No one needed to put a lampshade on her head that said "gurrrl".

Thank you, that is an excellent way of putting it.

Especially when dealing with a race where the physical differences are by choice of the individual (err well, not so much choice in Arcee, but she wasn't created female), being badass has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with the individual.

And umm... keeping on topic so Va'al doesn’t send me a sternly worded note... umm... I wish they had kept Windblade's sword consistent with the art (both hers a d Chromia's look pretty wicked in the art)

Oh you know, I forgot to comment on the set. Windblade is a little obnoxious in how saturated the colors are, reminds me of Year of the Horse MP Prime. I like chromia minus the ULTIMATE WARRIOR DESTRUCITYface paint. I really love arcee. The pink and black is almost like gothy, it's cute I like it.

ctrlFrequency wrote:

Optimizzy wrote:
A great example of how to write a tough female character? Don't worry about writing a female character. Just write a character and have her be female. Take Ripley from aliens. She was written to be a male and when Weaver was cast they didn't change a thing. They didn't have to. No one needed to put a lampshade on her head that said "gurrrl".

Thank you, that is an excellent way of putting it.

Especially when dealing with a race where the physical differences are by choice of the individual (err well, not so much choice in Arcee, but she wasn't created female), being badass has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with the individual.

And umm... keeping on topic so Va'al doesn’t send me a sternly worded note... umm... I wish they had kept Windblade's sword consistent with the art (both hers a d Chromia's look pretty wicked in the art)

I so agree with this! I definitely think that female characters should be written the same as the male ones, their gender shouldn't define their character. Also do y'all think Arcee's guns will be included? I don't see them anywhere in the in box pictures.

Moosey wrote: Also do y'all think Arcee's guns will be included? I don't see them anywhere in the in box pictures.

Moosertron, I think they probably do. The other gals come with theirs. They are probably hidden behind that giant sword. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, her small blaster is integral to her transformation to alt mode.

Cobotron wrote:

Moosey wrote: Also do y'all think Arcee's guns will be included? I don't see them anywhere in the in box pictures.

Moosertron, I think they probably do. The other gals come with theirs. They are probably hidden behind that giant sword. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, her small blaster is integral to her transformation to alt mode.

Can someone please compile a list of all of Cobotron's nicknames for me? (I wonder if you can ever top MooseMaster)
Also, sorry for being a nimrod, I totally forgot the talk of how the gun is integral to the car mode earlier in this thread.

Moosey wrote:

Cobotron wrote:

Moosey wrote: Also do y'all think Arcee's guns will be included? I don't see them anywhere in the in box pictures.

Moosertron, I think they probably do. The other gals come with theirs. They are probably hidden behind that giant sword. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, her small blaster is integral to her transformation to alt mode.

Can someone please compile a list of all of Cobotron's nicknames for me? (I wonder if you can ever top MooseMaster)
Also, sorry for being a nimrod, I totally forgot the talk of how the gun is integral to the car mode earlier in this thread.

ChocolateMoose, I won't post it to save size, but I just remembered in one of those early out-of-box pics, her guns were laying on the ground behind her. Go have a lookylue.

So, how much do you think this set will sell for during and after the convention?

Delta Magnus wrote:Stop strawmanning.

Dora and Boots wrote:Swiper no swiping.

Swiper wrote:Oh man.

Cobotron wrote:Plus, as I mentioned earlier, her small blaster is integral to her transformation to alt mode.

I don't know if I would call it integral. Does it make things nice and tidy? yes. However her arms stay pretty well underneath without the gun. Hell, I didn't know that's where the gun stored until everybody started talking about it recently and I was just happy.

Delta Magnus wrote:the series descending into SJW circlejerk territory.

IDW has promised a large increase in the amount of SJW content in Transformers.

BlueBefore wrote:

Delta Magnus wrote:the series descending into SJW circlejerk territory.

IDW has promised a large increase in the amount of SJW content in Transformers.

I can't say that I've seen anything to really indicate that yet...but I hope not. honestly I think the influx of new approaches to comics is good...if it's authentic and important to the story. If it serves only to satisfy loud people or the authors sense of egotistical smugness then it's probably not going to be good.

I'm actually really surprised at the positive reaction to spider Gwen. If there was ever a what if that I never asked it was that. The spider-girl series was a great "Spider-Man as a girl" I thought.

Anyway, I have faith in my transformer writers that they are here to tell good stories first, and change the world second.

mooncake623 wrote:Did you know this off the top of your head? or did you have to look it up? just wondering

I knew about Arcee's cleaver, but the other two were told to someone else who asked about them before I did and I happened upon the post that explained the two weapons.

Shockwave7 wrote:It takes some believing that a motorcycle, an airplane and a sedan would stand a chance. They could make it believable if Devastator did so much damage to the hunters that even if they won, they would feel like they lost.

Construction vehicles aren't known for their speed, so hit-and-run tactics might be a good idea.

Plus Victorion is supposed to show up in Combiner Hunters IIRC, so that could even things up a bit.

Gearslide wrote:Those weapons are comically oversized, especially Arcee's. Like, you could scale Arcee's sword down by 50% and it would still be too gigantic.

Maybe the combiner she's hunting is Grand Scourge?

Mechastrike wrote:i'm not digging Arcee's color scheme. i mean those are Decepticon colors...

That Bot wrote:Black is EVERYBODY's color.

must be me. too much black

MartianSpyGirl1996 wrote:

SillySpringer wrote:So you're saying women need men? Again, that's sexist.

Saying women don't need men is also sexist. As much as it is sexist to say that men need women or that men don't need women.

Any statement, whether positive or negative, relating to a gender is sexist. Just the same as it would be racist relating to race.

POINTING OUT sexism incorrectly is sexist and making presumptions about sexism and sexist statements is sexist.

On topic - we're talking about robots here that DO NOT breed. These are "female" bots in humanly sexist depiction only. They serve no genderly purpose (genders only exist for one thing - sex) so both of you get over it.

mcfmullen wrote:

MartianSpyGirl1996 wrote:

SillySpringer wrote:So you're saying women need men? Again, that's sexist.

Saying women don't need men is also sexist. As much as it is sexist to say that men need women or that men don't need women.

Any statement, whether positive or negative, relating to a gender is sexist. Just the same as it would be racist relating to race.

POINTING OUT sexism incorrectly is sexist and making presumptions about sexism and sexist statements is sexist.

On topic - we're talking about robots here that DO NOT breed. These are "female" bots in humanly sexist depiction only. They serve no genderly purpose (genders only exist for one thing - sex) so both of you get over it.

Perhaps we need a new thread to talk about this? I have some thoughts id share but I don't want to derail the topic and honestly, it's not a big enough deal to me.

Mechastrike wrote:

Mechastrike wrote:i'm not digging Arcee's color scheme. i mean those are Decepticon colors...

That Bot wrote:Black is EVERYBODY's color.

must be me. too much black

Trailbreaker and Rewind are black Autobots. As is Air Raid in altmode.

So Arcee is one of those weirdos that has a face tattoo that nobody wants to get caught staring at because you don't know how mentally stable they are and you can't believe how stupid they are for getting a face tattoo.