I refuse to believe that Windblade was fairly voted in. I sincerely doubt that character represents anything close to what the community as whole would have wanted. More like some individual who voted numerous times just to piss everyone off. What a travesty.



...oh Merry Christmas!  

 

Fembot? Check.

Flight mode? Check

Samurai theme? Check.

I don't know, sounds like the fans I know.

 

Am I the only one that hates the 'Wingblade' design?

 

Windblade is bad and you should all feel bad. Screw this, I'm going home.

I WAS HOME THE WHOLE TIME

 

That's because she was created by choosing the most popular of all the options listed. Technically, no one voted for her as she is. There was no ready-made option for her for anyone to ballot stuff. Also, remember that the vote was open to everyone, kids and hardcore older fans alike.


Really, I have no idea where all this Windblade hatred comes from Just her design I guess? Sourgrapes over people's ideal designs not winning? I mean, the character has no fiction up till now.What is there to judge?

 

You mean Geisha, I've got no problems with samurai

Nope.

I voted Male, Tank, Heavy Weapon, Loner

Basically the opposite of what we got....

 

I'm never going to stop being amused by people complaining specifically about robots not needing boobs...when we have never had a fembot with bigger tits than, say, Shockwave or Prowl.

I'm just sayin'.

More directly on-topic, I am pretty excited to see where they go with Windblade. She's not what I voted for, that's for sure, and the Japanese motif made me roll my eyes pretty hard, but what I'm most interested in is seeing how she works as a character and a part of the universe so BRING IT ON. Either she'll be a good character or she won't, but there's no reason to dismiss her before we see which one she is. Mairgread Scott writing gives me a lot of hope that she won't be fumbled; Scott is great about handling fembots like 'just another character, no big deal'. I mean, you want to talk about gender neutrality? That's it, right there. Transformers are gender neutral when Scott has the reins. It's just a pronoun switch and a different design. There is no other bearing--it's labels for the (human) writers and the (human) audience to use. That's it. Isn't that what people want?
I mean the only difference in the end is that when my nieces cry for girl characters from a show they love, I have one more toy to buy them. It's about representation. The rest of us can be as grownup or childish about it as we want.


And I am inordinately excited for movie tie-in comics.

 

My question is... are they trying to take what has been a traditionally "boys" toy line and transform it into something genderless of feminine? This is a concerning issue considering males "boys" should be able to have things that are uniquely boy-ish to themselves. In no way am I opposed to female characters, but in a world where gender lines are blurred more and more, is it alright to have a toyline be "male-centric? Or have those days dissipated? Is this a sexist or gender-bias line of questioning?
or is this too intellectual a topic for this group?

 

the thing that irritates me, the fanbot was made female for the most part by a small core group of our fandom who just wants fembots for eye candy, and nothing more

I have nothing against female transformers, at all, but the way this character was voted in, and just how horrible the design was, it just irritates me

 

I think 'sexist' would be a little too harsh, but I definitely see gender bias in this thread and in this fandom in a general sense. I'm not too hung up about it, but I'm not going to pretend it isn't obvious. Not to go too far out there (and this is definitely an exaggeration to make a point), but look through this thread and replace all forms of 'female' with any type of race or ethnicity and all forms of 'male' with some other race or ethnicity. I think it would be quite possible that this thread would have come very close to having been shut down awhile ago. As far as uniquely boy-ish, I think its fairly clear that those type of constructs, are merely that, constructs. Having 'girl' stuff mixed in with boy stuff doesn't make boys any less boys or girls and less girls. Anyway, there is still, TMNT,WWF,most LEGO, Cars, Trucks, Guns,Star Wars, Power Rangers, Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Hulk, etc etc etc..... so I don't think we need to worry about having boy only stuff in the toy aisle.

But that's just my $0.02

 

How could it have been made female by a small core of fans?

There was a category: Male or Female
In order to win that category you had to get a bare minimum of 50% of the vote + 1 extra vote to decide if it was M or F. That could not have been a small core. You only got to vote once per category, so at least half plus one of the people voted Female. That is a majority of the voters in that category.

Personally I would like to see a breakdown of the votes by category just to get a clear picture of what people liked and didn't like, but of all the categories, the M or F would have been the only clear cut majority.

 

...You really think that? There were a bunch of female fans who actually had a PETITION going when the poll first came out and it looked like there wasn't going to be a 'female' voting option. There are a ton of ladies, and also a good number of guys, in this fandom who spend a ton of time making it known how very unhappy they are with the lack of representation/weird genderless=male thing going on in the franchise. This ranges from adult fans to kids like my nieces who want to know why there are so few cool robot girls for them to look up to when they watch the shows.

So I would guess that the core group of the fandom who 'just want eyecandy' isn't as big a part of Windblade's existence as you're thinking.

 

if i just want fembot for eye candy, i wont been looking for Strika... you know that legendary autobot general with "terrorize" as her catchphrase that look nothing like a female? being a botcon exclusive, she is out of my budget...

also if there is just a small group, they wont win the poll... obviously there is a huge number of TF fans that like fembot.

also apparently in IDW universe there is no such thing a fembot, other then a rule 64 experiment that created the most badass Arcee. I wonder who the "poor guy" that get to turn female, this time...

 

A fan made female jet transformer that apparently holds information that could affect the Transformers forever? I think they spelled Mary Sue wrong.

Well, it's a good thing I'm only interested in the design.

...Wow. That came across as much more negative than I intended. My point still stands  

 

I don't get why Windblade has to have her own comic. I would have been happier if they could find a way to tie her into one of the current series instead (without shoe-horning her in, of course). Oh well...

 

Well, there goes my interest. After how poorly Rage was I'm less than thrilled about Scott taking on the arc.

 

Yeah, who would actually guess Strika was female just from her apperence? I remember when she first showed up in Beast Machines. Until she spoke, there were no clues that she was female, except maybe for her color. And even then I wasn't sure until someone reffered to her as female.

Ripclaw from Beast Hunters is another case of a Fembot with no real physically feminine features. It's all in her profile.

 

Because Hasbro demanded that for her toy. She is a special snowflake after all being designed according to the most popular votes on that "fan-build" pool.

 

yup, Ripclaw is another awesome fembot, too bad she never appear in the show, i want to see her in action.