Before anyone jumps on me and decided to kill me THIS IS NOT ABOUT HER ORIGIN IN THE COMIC. THIS IS ABOUT HOW HER ORIGIN AND SPECIALTY (DOESN'T) CONNECT TO THE CHOICES IN THE BUILD A BOT FAN-POLL


Ok so as we all know we had the options for the name and physical look and we all know which options won (Windblade, Autobot, jet, sword as weapon, red&black colour scheme, female)

But there were other options:

1.personality: valiant, sneaky, hotshot, secretive, wild man,grumpy

2. Origin: from Kaon, Iacon, Altihex, Kalis, and Praxus

3. Specialty: combat medic, bodyguard, recon, telepath, close combat specialist

And these options are kinda completely ignored and forgotten. So why's that? Why even put them in if you're going to ignore them anyway?

 

Probably didn't work in the long run. By saying females frame types are descended from another planet IDW was trying put the controversy to sleep.

 

The illusion of choice can be a funny thing. Personally, I think they were always going to make Windblade, and skewed the options in a way to make it happen.

But more to your point, one could say that she's valiant, she lives in Iacon now, and most fighters who use swords are close combat specialists. You could even make the case that, given how only she can understand Metroplex, she might be a kind of telepath.

 

She's a valiant telepath from............who is a red female jet with swords

Yeah the city is a stretch, but the rest works

 

.....Aaaand
/thread

 

Aw. I was hoping for a huge flame war about her comic origin. I'm sure one of those will pop up at some point though.

Yeah this makes sense. The city might be a stretch but that's only because it's Iacon where everything is happening.

 

But it's not happening in Iacon, Iacon is destroyed to shit by the NecroTitan it's all happening on Metroplex.

 

Metroplex is the centre/part of 'new' Iacon, so that kind of counts.

If we're going to get technical none of the city options make sense as Cybertron was reformatted and other than Crystal City and the new Iacon settles built, none of the cities even exists anymore!  

 

Did they ever tell us what actually won in those options?

 

thankgod, i'm not the only one thinking about what you just said.

 

^This.

Perhaps Windblade's character options were meant for the Alligned continuity should she had ever appeared?

 

Don't forget - the poll wasn't "Create an IDW character" - it was create a Generations figure.

IDW takes liberty with G1 characters (and recently added fan-made G1 characters). Unless you can point me to the Marvel comic or G1 episode where Prowl became the head of Devastator or where Swerve was slinging drinks.

We created a g1-esq character that IDW adapted. You have to expect some issues in transition.

 

I hate the idea some people have that there was some kind of plot to force Windblade on us. At a very basic level it assumes the fandom would never vote for a fembot which is offensive to the fandom and to women and it assumes Hasbro would go to such effort to lie for no really compelling reason.

 

No kidding. Windblade is every typical fan character in spades. I absolutely buy that her characteristics were fan-voted. To imply that she was somehow contrived from Hasbro against the leading fan results is laughable. Half the OCs ever are her in a nutshell.

She could only be more fan-character-y if she had dragon wings and was related to either Sideswiped/Sunstreaker, Starscream or another Fembot. She's the omega fan-character.

 

Careful Yggdrasil, that thread title almost made me do things...

Really when she was first announced I was positive she was going to be an Aligned character. It's possible that it was decided that she would be an IDW character after the fact.

Good lord, please don't tell me people think this. I don't think I saw anyone else bring this up this thread, but in case I missed it I'm afraid to go back...

Even if it was a "plot" so to speak, would the outcome really be that different? The masses would have voted Jet + Femme anyway, it's far from unfathomable.

 

Well I missed that completely.

Still, the poll options were probably left open in the off-chance she turned out to be male. It was JimBob JonBarb and Scott who decided how she would be inserted, I take it Hasbro decided to leave all options open in case it could be relevant to what the writers wanted to do with her.

 

yes, we know you love fembots... your name says it all.  

 

Even if there were a plot- so what? Say it was all a big marketing ploy to convince the fans that *they* wanted this character. So what? It's not like she's a bad character. If Hasbro really had some agenda to broaden the appeal of the brand by very loudly welcoming fembots & female fans into the brand, then more power them. I think it's a good thing.

But really, I don't think there's a plot.

 

What?

It does not at a very basic level assume 'the fandom would never vote for a fembot', at all. :-/

If the poll was indeed rigged, it implies, and only implies, Hasbro (and possibly IDW) already had plans for their toy/character, and spun it into a fake interactive marketing campaign.

It says nothing about the fandom and whether or not they would vote for fembots - in fact, I'm positive at least a big portion of the more hardcore, adult fanbase* would have and have voted for the fembot choice, as it's another option to pick that would make this new character different from the sea of male-coded red car characters.
Most fans are not opposed to fembots - in fact most fans have fond memories of characters like Arcee, Chromia, Blackarachnia, Strika, and so on. People want them.


Why would a company lie and rig a poll? Simple. They're ultimately doing the Fan Vote thing because it's good for business. Allowing your customer to have a say in the next product is great marketing!
What's better than a new comic and toy coming out of a character people voted for? The comic and toy lining up with a much bigger event: the return of all fembots in the comic and toys. Had the Fan Vote resulted in Optimagnus Megaprime, time-traveling hero from the future, it would still have been exposure, but not the one-two punch Winblade currently is, tying neatly into IDW's return of fembots. Or would IDW have drastically altered their current plans to fit that other character?

I don't want to believe the poll is rigged, because I prefer to live in a world where I don't have to literally doubt every single motive by a person or company - as naive as that might make me.
I also don't really care - I like Windblade's design and I like her comic so far..all is good for me. But I can easily see why people are in doubt about the poll.
Hell, we don't even know the amount of votes and how the end result was calculated. Did they rake in all votes on all different options and looked at what was at the top of each option? - Or did they look at all the different combinations of votes and did 'female Autobot jet with sword' actually receive the most votes?
There's that layer of secrecy which logically leads to doubt in some people - I don't agree with them, but I don't find it strange to think that way.



*in contrast to the less hardcore, younger fanbase who might visit sites like Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network, or whatever.

  All very true. Luckily she's currently being handled with a bit more care than that, but most of the stuff that was voted on definitely smell like fan OCs - as in, not subtle at all.