SDCC 2015 Women of Transformers Panel! New Comic Announced!

Discussion in 'Transformers News and Rumors' started by Mechafire, Jul 10, 2015.

  1. Rodimus Prime

    Rodimus Prime Sola Gratia, Sola Fide TFW2005 Supporter

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    Actually, we're responding to kaijuguy's defense of it. Anyhow, Computron is smart, but incredibly slow to act. If they can give Victorion something to balance it out, it's fine. Otherwise, it's another poorly written/developed character by IDW.
     
  2. femmebotfangirl

    femmebotfangirl Banned

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    Yeah and I'm saying there is an element of truth to it, they need to be careful how they represent her. I also made the point that IDW Hasbro weren't the ones talking about her being superior because this fandom has a fucking obnoxious tendency to start screaming mary sue whenever a female character is good at something.
     
  3. Murasame

    Murasame 村雨

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    What with Sarah Stone? :( 
     
  4. Rodimus Prime

    Rodimus Prime Sola Gratia, Sola Fide TFW2005 Supporter

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    Actually, the original IDW-sue is Drift, a male.
     
  5. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    I'm reminded of how Lil Formers had a comic about how Windblade was even more-so because she was a female jet.

    A lot of people really do like to jump the gun on female characters.


    Even if Victorion can speak and talk normally, heck, so can Optimus Maximus and Superion- the latter just likes third person speech but post enigma is pretty smart. Victorion would be all of the third smart combiner in IDW alone.
     
  6. SMOG

    SMOG Vocabchampion ArgueTitan

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    It's mainly just that they are introducing a new character, and they feel the need to justify Victorion beyond the obvious gimmick angle (being both a fan-created combiner AND pointedly a female team)... and the way to do so is to insist on what a great, multi-faceted character she's going to be. They're selling up, basically.

    Personally, from a writing standpoint, I think that's kind of a poor angle to take... first of all, because Combiners ARE dumb and dysfunctional and have fairly limited personalities, so trying to make Victorion NOT like the other combiners is "special-ing" her up unnecessarily. Secondly, they have 5 supposedly distinct new female characters they're introducing... instead of trying to sell Victorion to readers, they should be selling this TEAM as a bunch of characters we're actually going to want to read about, since Combiners generaly aren't great characters on their own. I think it's misdirected fluff.

    When it comes down to it, these new characters, especially the whole fan-created thing... it's a publicity exercise... a stunt. It's already a case of trying to wedge new toys into ongoing storylines, and give them the spotlight, even if they are distractions of a sort. This is the kind of toy-advertising logic that started hurting the old Marvel stuff, when the corporate interests become too prescriptive in the storytelling.

    I think it's entirely possible for the writers to take what's handed to them and spin gold out of it... when you're writing for a franchise like this, you have to roll with the punches a bit (and I'm thankful that these other titles probably take some of the marketing heat off Roberts). But they should be running with the 5 new female characters they're getting.

    I'm sure a lot of the Victorion hype is just that... the usual spin. The proof will be in the comics. I just think they should be focusing on the team (who doesn't seem to even have a group name... though considering how lame a lot of the names are, maybe it's better that way) rather than the combiner itself... because in that sense, all I hear is "Poochy is cool. Poochy is a deep character with many interesting qualities. You won't believe what we're doing with Poochy. Now that Poochy is here, nothing will ever be the same again!" :) 

    zmog
     
  7. Rakzo

    Rakzo Peruvian Transformers Fan

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    I always saw that as how being both a jet and a fembot was pretty damn cool but I can understand how people saw it as offensive.
     
  8. Haywired

    Haywired Hakunamatatacon

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    Yeah, it's not like Slipstream and Lyzack weren't both jets and femformers long before WB...
    I'd say that having a female TF turning into jet or bike is a kind of an obvious choice these days.

    And that's basically the only thing I'm really concerned with Victorion, especially when this team will be inserted into comic books and cartoons.
    There are like five new characters, every single one of them with a potential for her own quirks and personality, yet hype is about their combined battle mode.
    I suppose it is justified from the toy angle, it will be sold as a one set and likely displayed in their joint mode, but in comic books...
    Can't say I'm ever thrilled with combiners as characters. It was always individual team members who were more interesting to me. Swindle, Breakdown.
    I hope IDW writers will tune down the combiner and focus more on team characters.
    It's boring enough with First Aid promoted to being a faceless combiner limb.
     
  9. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    Smog, that strikes me as a poor complaint. Does any new character ever *not* get sold up?

    Yet people complain so much more when female characters are...
     
  10. femmebotfangirl

    femmebotfangirl Banned

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    The thing that really annoys me about the whole 'oh my god a jet fembot how stereotypical' is that there are hardly any and like a thousand fucking male jets. In fact of the current regularly appearing fembots (Windblade, Chromia, Nautica, Arcee, Strongarm) there is only one jet vs 2 cars. There are literally more Seekers than regularly appearing fembot characters.
    People say its because its a popular OC but its a popular OC BECAUSE THERE ARE SO FEW OFFICIAL ONES. It's just the stupidest logic.

    And yeah there are other smart Combiners already, and we've already had it established that intelligence is linked to how unified the team is so its not a stretch at all to have Victorion be more articulate than the average Combiner at present. If it were Computron or even a new male combiner we wouldn't even be having this conversation, but because its a fembot everyone is extra sensitive to anything she might actually be good at its insane.

    Dude we don't even have their introduction comic yet, you can't go saying they are introducing them wrong when you haven't seen their introduction. In the preview panels we see them separate so for all we know they will be introduced as a team as much as a Combiner. Like I said no one would even consider it an issue that it was a smarter Combiner if it were male, its the silliest complaint.
     
  11. Rodimus Prime

    Rodimus Prime Sola Gratia, Sola Fide TFW2005 Supporter

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    I don't know, as I don't read that comic. If anything, WB strikes me more as a purity-sue.

    Even Superion has his limits, and Optimus Maximus is just a bad idea all around, IMO. Like I said, it depends on if they can pull it off.

    There's so much wrong here. First of all, he's talking about how they have built her up since her introduction, and the introduction in general. It's perfectly valid for us to discuss the characters revelation and the information that they have provided us so far.

    Second of all, please cut out the whole "no one would say this if it were male" schtick. That is not true. In fact, I already pointed out proof of this, and the fact that IDW is responsible for both characters makes it a valid concern. Many of us here were lambasting Drift when they introduced him. You cannot make it out that it's all about the gender when we have been just as vocal about male original characters. If the combiners were male, I'd still voice concern because it just sounds bad.

    There is no need to demonize people as sexist just because they don't have the same reaction as you do.
     
  12. kaijuguy19

    kaijuguy19 Keyblade Wielder

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    While most people have different reasons for not liking certain fembot characters some do sadly bash on them for silly reasons. What makes Lil Formers funny was that it also had a comic featuring Rodimus telling Windblade about what kind of character he's famous for to which Windblade replied. "And they say I'm the Mary Su." It's like fembots have a lot to prove when maybe they don't have to prove anything huge in order to be accepted. Again I don't really care if Vicotrion's mart or not just as long as the comics do a good ob making her good and giving people a reason to like them.
     
  13. Murasame

    Murasame 村雨

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    Maybe most people just overthink everything. I don't think about it. I take it as it comes.
     
  14. Haywired

    Haywired Hakunamatatacon

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    Oh, also:
    Considering how much stuff from the Aligned continuity seems to be placed into IDWverse...

    I really hope this will NOT be Airachnid.

    There are soo many female Cons in canon to pick from, and pretty much everyone's better than her.

    /panicmode ON
     
  15. Rodimus Prime

    Rodimus Prime Sola Gratia, Sola Fide TFW2005 Supporter

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    Er... Rodimus isn't a Mary Sue. He's actually a deconstruction of the standard "young hero."

    Anyhow, some people will bash on fembots no matter what. I'd rather that they ignore those people than worry about proving them wrong.
     
  16. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    She wouldn't exactly be a new con, would she?

    Even if she shows up, I doubt it'll be this one.


    Hm, the female con ranks do need filling more than autobot or neutral.... Nickle and the ones from animated RiD are nice recent additions, but the autobots have sooo many new ones!
     
  17. SMOG

    SMOG Vocabchampion ArgueTitan

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    Which is not necessarily the case... but I think that one reason why there is more debate surrounding "female" characters is because there is a social politic involved, and that often complicates the way characters are presented. In this particular case, I suspect that, in introducing a new "male" combiner, the Hasbro/IDW party line wouldn't be trying to sell us on the idea of how deep and multi-faceted they are. There is a degree here of compensation, assuring us that this character is "worthwhile" and special based on different values.

    Like I said, a lot of that is still part of the hype, which I always sort of roll my eyes at. In the case of Victorion, there is just that additional wrinkle. I'm certainly not attacking her raison d'etre... rather I'm sort of noting cynically how she is presumed to NEED a raison d'etre, beyond what is normal for the character type.

    Obviously it gets awkward, because we are in the situation where female characters in TF is still exceptional, yet we are also trying to get away from that exceptionalism.

    That's a pretty dumb reason to complain about Victorion obviously, since there are no jets in her team at all. In fact, what I like about the choice of molds was that it sidestepped the tired old "agile/aerodynamic" argument for fembots designs. So far, her design seems to hold fairly consistently to a toyetic and conventional Cybertronian physicality... rather than being designed solely around looking "feminine" (according to a mostly false social measure). It is the one silver lining to this figure being all remolds of existing CW figures.

    In that sense, I think Victorion is a triumph against prescribed gender norms (so far)... far more than Windblade's design ever was. I hope that continues forward.

    It's just too bad that she has a hideously ugly deco, and most of the names they chose are super-lame. I guess you can't have everything. :) 

    Well, actually IDW has been rather inconsistent at depicting Combiner intelligence or social interactivity. I think that historically, Combiners are almost ALL dumb and slow, or at the very least suffering from some critical dysfunction (Superion has zero personality, Computron has no control over assigning priorities, Defensor spaces out, Bruticus has no personal initiative). The only real exception is Predaking, who is basically just a giant bug zapper, lashing out at anything that moves. But he's good at it, at least.

    So yeah, I'd like it if they held to that for the sake of tradition, rather than exceptionalizing Victorion. And while we're on the subject, I like the little bits of personality that have been hinted at in the Combiners, but I'm really not liking the way the combined form has asserted itself over the individual characters. If I had to choose between Devastator and the Constructicons as individual characters, or Bruticus and the Combaticons, etc... I will choose the individuals every damn time. Combining is a toyetic gimmick, and it's cool... but it doesn't necessarily make for better stories, which is why the Combiner Wars event was kind of lame to begin with.

    Nope... that's just not true. If they introduce a Computron who isn't horribly hobbled by his particular neurotic issues, I will complain. We've already seen how Drift took a very long road to peoples' hearts. Similarly, many fans were ambivalent about Rung for similar reasons. And I've certainly been a critic of Turmoil, and how Barber at one point tried to frame him as a "fan favourite" villain, when in fact, he was a literally worthless throwaway baddie.

    But yes... as I said earlier, there is an extra dynamic at work with Victorion... and I hope it doesn't lapse into pandering. I was rather worried that Windblade would go that way, but IDW managed to handle her mostly alright (even if she is a bit dull as a protagonist)... so maybe it'll be fine.

    I think the best route though, is to push the team as characters, rather than push the combiner as a character. If they'd given us a 2-parter or something that introduced them to us as central characters... gave us an insight into who they are... then maybe they'd have charmed us like the Scavengers, and we'd remember their names.

    Maybe that'll still happen though...

    DUDE... again, I think this is a fallacy. I don't know why you are so convinced that this disparity lurks in everyone, but it's a bit preposterous that you are saying these things with any degree of confidence.

    When something is introduced as a toy tie-in, honestly I don't feel that we get the best writing out of it. I have no particular reason to be excited about Victorion... no more than if it was a new "male" combiner that was being dropped on us with similar rhetoric. My cynicism would be equal-opportunity, I assure you. :p 

    But I also feel that the assurances that she will be a "smart" or "deep" character seem to proceed out of a well-meaning but patronizing female exceptionalism. It's simply my wry observation on how the gender politic still plays a role here. I don't know if it will carry forward into the writing... but as publicity I feel it's a lame throwaway bit of fluff, and I'd rather that we don't get any super-duper-Poochy combiners of any gender, really.

    But if the "female" combiner ends up being the one combiner who is a well-adjusted smartie-pants, then I think that would just drop us back into old stereotype territory, where female characters are defined by their gender-typed differences and expectations (ie: she is a 'female' Combiner, therefore she must somehow exhibit her inherent 'difference' along accepted tropes). I think that, should that become the case, it would make for some valid criticism.

    zmog
     
  18. SMOG

    SMOG Vocabchampion ArgueTitan

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    Or at least, in MTMTE he is (a deconstruction).

    In most other forms of the fiction, he pretty much IS the "young hero/future king/chosen one" archetype. There's room for that kind of stereotype, because it does have a long history... but I'm glad we're getting Roberts doing a sort of deconstruction of Rodimus, rather than just running with his schtick earnestly. :) 

    zmog
     
  19. Rakzo

    Rakzo Peruvian Transformers Fan

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    I'm betting that it will be Slipstream.
     
  20. Haywired

    Haywired Hakunamatatacon

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    Also, it's worth remembering that Predaking's working personality comes mostly from all Predacons being a very likeminded individuals. So he's relatively "sane" for a combiner not because of having a complicated and multi-faceted components to his personality, but because of something quite the opposite. ;) 

    Hmm, I think this is why IDW Dinobots could work as a combiner one day. Provided the rest of them can get past their disagreements with Grimlock.

    Yeah, I do hope this time "to sell toys" will prevail.