Victorion team-members comic art

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Originally Posted by tinyJazz

What about androgynous women? Tomboys? Does Strika's toy "acknowledge" she's a female?

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No but she was a new character and female from the start. Not a recolour of a male robot. As I said, I have the Universe version of the toy and really like her. My main problem with my TFSS Slipstream is she really just looks like a recoloured TFPrime Starscream - a new headsculpt would have gone a long way to furthering my enjoyment of the figure (that I paid a LOT for) and made her look like at least a female clone of Starscream like she was portrayed in Animated.

I'm not saying it has to happen (female touches/headsculpts for female toys), just I think it's a nice touch and something I prefer with my toys. Not trying to argue that it should be a hard and fast rule. I guess it's just I have so few femmebot toys I like them to stand out as female a bit and it adds some diversity to the figures in my collection rather than them all looking the same. Thats all I'm saying really.

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Originally Posted by tinyJazz

If you don't need male identifiers for male robots, then you don't need female identifiers for female robots. Unless you think male is "default" and female is "other".

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No I don't think like that, and I'm not sure I like the implication. I don't think liking my femmebot toys to have at least a vaguely female face (sometimes - again - I love Strika) makes me sexist or something. It just means I like variety in the look of my toys and it's a personal proclivity. I'm not sure how we got here from me simply saying that I hope the headsculpts on the new toys resemble the artwork that the original link in this thread was about.

My two cents. Don't like the artwork very much, sure it's better then I could do but still don't like it, though I do understand they are a work in progress (I hope).
Also if we're going to have giant humanoid robots and they are to have humanoid genders why shouldn't they have humanoid bodies.
In other words masculine AND feminine bodies, not just a bunch of dudes that some of them happen to be women when they talk.
Pretty sure when people voted for a female combiner they weren't thinking of a bunch of male molds made female because of "girl" colours and heads :rolleyes:

Yep exactly. And if all robots with "girl" colours were female, then what of the Technobots and Seacons? On the topic of colour, I don't really see anything particularly feminine with green/red. Just seems like a silly colour combination, with the two being natural opposites on the colour wheel which makes it difficult to stare at for too long. It also potentially confuses the heck out of fans that are colourblind into thinking "why is this Autobot combiner painted in Decepticon blues/purples?!"

Their headsculpts (at least on the art), isn't exclusively female - just looks like a group of young Cybertronians to me. Whether male or female, Victorion's combiner head is as appealing as Beast Wars Neo Saberback's... don't really see the need to give him/her a native American Indian chief's headdress...

Since all the members are girls, does this make Victorion female as well? The combiner name sounds quite male - perhaps it should be changed to Victoria-ion.

Why don't we call the 'male' TFs bro-bots, or he-bots? Why is it only the 'female' ones that get lumped with 'femme-bots'? (which sounds like some kind of pleasure device)

Femme is also a lesbian identity. So it really should be fembot, unless the fembot you're talking about is also a femme-bot ;) or you're speaking French.

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Originally Posted by BigTransformerTrev

No but she was a new character and female from the start. Not a recolour of a male robot. As I said, I have the Universe version of the toy and really like her. My main problem with my TFSS Slipstream is she really just looks like a recoloured TFPrime Starscream - a new headsculpt would have gone a long way to furthering my enjoyment of the figure (that I paid a LOT for) and made her look like at least a female clone of Starscream like she was portrayed in Animated.

I'm not saying it has to happen (female touches/headsculpts for female toys), just I think it's a nice touch and something I prefer with my toys. Not trying to argue that it should be a hard and fast rule. I guess it's just I have so few femmebot toys I like them to stand out as female a bit and it adds some diversity to the figures in my collection rather than them all looking the same. Thats all I'm saying really.

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Uh, yes? I agree. I really think we're on the same page here. It's nice to have curvy, feminine female robots, but you can also have female robots that don't look stereotypically feminine. There are plenty of male tfs that can pass as female characters if repainted. I'm saying all varieties of ladybot are fine and good, and I'm not demanding privileging one over the other. And obviously, I'm not here to police your collection, buy whatever you like :p

Although I mustn't have been clear on the point I was trying to make about comparing Strika and Whirl. The toys don't appear immediately as "this is a girl character" or "this is a boy character", only because you're told by the accompanying fiction what their gender is.

I'm sorry you bought funpub's slipstream and I hope you can get Takara's Slipstream later. :o I have no real love for funpub.

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No I don't think like that, and I'm not sure I like the implication. I don't think liking my femmebot toys to have at least a vaguely female face (sometimes - again - I love Strika) makes me sexist or something. It just means I like variety in the look of my toys and it's a personal proclivity. I'm not sure how we got here from me simply saying that I hope the headsculpts on the new toys resemble the artwork that the original link in this thread was about.

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Whoa, Trev, I'm not accusing you of anything, sorry if it came across that way. Maybe you should re read my comment? :/ it's just an example of how some people think.

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Originally Posted by tinyJazz

Femme is also a lesbian identity. So it really should be fembot, unless the fembot you're talking about is also a femme-bot ;) or you're speaking French.



Uh, yes? I agree. I really think we're on the same page here. It's nice to have curvy, feminine female robots, but you can also have female robots that don't look stereotypically feminine. There are plenty of male tfs that can pass as female characters if repainted. I'm saying all varieties of ladybot are fine and good, and I'm not demanding privileging one over the other. And obviously, I'm not here to police your collection, buy whatever you like :p

Although I mustn't have been clear on the point I was trying to make about comparing Strika and Whirl. The toys don't appear immediately as "this is a girl character" or "this is a boy character", only because you're told by the accompanying fiction what their gender is.

I'm sorry you bought funpub's slipstream and I hope you can get Takara's Slipstream later. :o I have no real love for funpub.


Whoa, Trev, I'm not accusing you of anything, sorry if it came across that way. Maybe you should re read my comment? :/ it's just an example of how some people think.

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All good - glad we got is sorted and thank you for clarifying :). I thought we were on the same page too so was kinda at a loss to why the conversation seemed to be heading where it was.

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Although I mustn't have been clear on the point I was trying to make about comparing Strika and Whirl. The toys don't appear immediately as "this is a girl character" or "this is a boy character", only because you're told by the accompanying fiction what their gender is.

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I've seen quite a few new TF comic book readers call MTMTE Whirl a she - presumably primarily due to Whirl's holomatter avatar, yet very few do the same with Ultra Magnus. Maybe it's prexisting canon with Robert Stack's voice? Ambius' mo? That it's based on a friend and preexisting character? Or that Whirl's non standard body - all thin and angles and no hand or face make it easier to see Whirl as not-male?

Amazon.ca has stock photos of the newly toned-down Victorion (compared to the original colours in this gallery):

http://i.imgur.com/CU1fwT7.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/QKrtbLA.jpg

They've given her the same coloured reading glasses as masterpiece Hot Rod:
http://i.imgur.com/mT4hZXr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/BDDsiCQ.jpg

I actually liked the stronger colours better

I kind of agree. The green was the better of the two colours in the old bright/eye-burning colour scheme, so I would have preferred that the red was softened instead of the green. Now it looks (custom) faded.