Why are there so few girl cons?

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starlord
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Why are there so few girl cons?

Post by starlord »

Shouldn't there be more? After all, now they have Arcee has a remain character.
A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest of decepticons.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

And they have Airachnid as balance.
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Post by Thunderwave »

And the Predacons have Ripclaw.
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Denyer
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Post by Denyer »

Asides from the target audience being young boys, who traditionally take far less interest in the opposite sex as identification characters than vice versa...

Robots don't need sexes or analogues for most other biological traits. The downside of introducing that into the fiction is that people start trying to interpret everything else through the same lens.

On the other hand, it seems perfectly reasonable that as they mimic organics in terms of personality, they might adopt gender behaviours in the same way they might build an identity around transforming into a big metal cat.

With good writers it's possible to do the latter without much of the former.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Because girls are yucky.
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Post by Knightdramon »

Because they don't sell as toys. Probably because they CAN'T sell them as characters, most female toys we got aren't bad.

Hasbro only applies two female archetypes in their TF fiction, one introduced in 1986 and the other in 1996. Arcee is the good girl archetype. She's the good girl, almost always a background character before Prime, where they just made her angrier.

Blackarachnia is the other archetype. She's the femme fatale, the bad girl, the decepticon\predacon like all others; not loyal and with her own agendas. Too bad that's like 70 percent of all bad guys in TF fiction. She continued that way in BM, only infusing Arcee characteristics, then went on in Animated and Prime.

In Animated it's just that they kiddified the archetype a bit and then added drama to make up for it. In Prime they took THAT and added a sadistic angle to it, which failed badly, because both Blackarachnias were portrayed as the weakest bots in their team. How seriously can you take a sick psychopath of a female if even the weakest good guy can get her?

Unless hasbro decides to spread out their bad girl cons personality template, they'll almost always be the weaker backstabbing Starscream with boobs that's slowly written out of their show.
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Post by Jaynz »

Actually, as far as toys go, they're slightly more numerous than you think..

Crasher/Fracture (Classics Mirage Redeco)
Howlback (G1 Ravage Redeco)
Flipsides (G1 Eject Redeco)
Nightracer (G2 High Beam Redeco)
Flamewar (Energon Arcee Redeco, TPF Cyberverse Arcee Redeco)
Blackarachnia (BW, Universe, TFA)
Strika (BM, Universe)
Shadow Striker (RID Sideburn Redeco)
Thunderblast (Cybertron)
Slipstream (TFP Starscream Redeco)
Airachnid (TFP Deluxe, Cyberverse)
Ripclaw (BH)
Scylla (G1 Tentakill Redeco)
Lyzak (Energon Starscream Redeco, Repurposed)
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Knightdramon
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Post by Knightdramon »

Jaynz wrote:Actually, as far as toys go, they're slightly more numerous than you think..

Flamewar (Energon Arcee Redeco, TPF Cyberverse Arcee Redeco)
Blackarachnia (BW, Universe, TFA)
Thunderblast (Cybertron)
Airachnid (TFP Deluxe, Cyberverse)
Ripclaw (BH)
Narrowed it down to more or less the ones that were designed to be female rather than repurposing later on. Could add Transmetals Airrazor and BM Strika in that list.
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Post by Kungfu Dinobot »

Personally, I chalk it up to Decepticons having naziesque attitudes towards females.:lol:



But yeah, what everyone said.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Kungfu Dinobot wrote:Personally, I chalk it up to Decepticons having naziesque attitudes towards females.:lol:
The Nazis' views on (the 'right' kind of) women were progressive for their time.
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Post by Kungfu Dinobot »

Cliffjumper wrote:The Nazis' views on (the 'right' kind of) women were progressive for their time.

Really? That's fascinating! Care to elaborate please?
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Post by Jaynz »

Kungfu Dinobot wrote:Really? That's fascinating! Care to elaborate please?
We really don't want to have this discussion here, but what I would recommend to you if you're really curious is to read a lot of the New York Times articles from the early part of the 1930s, up to about late 1937 or so. For that period, most western "Progressives" were full of praise for the Nazi regieme and cited it as the most modern left-wing goverment mankind would come to know.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Yep, I would also concur that if you're interested in Nazi history read some stuff on Nazi history. Maybe before you start throwing the word 'naziesque' around. This also applies to any other words or terms you don't understand. Apparently there's some free online encylopedia that gives respectable entry-level explanations to this sort of thing.
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Post by Kungfu Dinobot »

Aw come on, it not my fault! I've been reading Hipster Hitler and they made fun of his sexism twice:(
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Kungfu Dinobot wrote:Aw come on, it not my fault!
Who else is responsible for your ignorance?
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Post by Kungfu Dinobot »

Cliffjumper wrote:Who else is responsible for your ignorance?
The National Library Board. They don't have good books on Nazism.


EDIT: also, the guy who did Hipster Hitler.
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Post by calvin_0 »

yeah, fembot in transformer is really rare, most likely its because robot are genderless... since cybertronian dont reproduce like other biological lifeform, having gender doesnt really make sense.

the writer try very hard to justified the existence of fembot and most of them are pretty lame, like G1 Arcee was build because a human blame Optimus Prime for being sexist or Energon Arcee evolved into a fembot to serve as a motivation to the rest of energon miner.

also i dont think there are many people out there who genuinely like fembot as a character. i mean how many people here like G1 Arcee because she is kind and motherly figure who capable of kicking butt?
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Post by Cliffjumper »

When does she "kick butt" again? The writers, being a bunch of sexist cigar-chomping cardigan-wearing old pricks went out of their way to make the character needless stupid and whiny. The Japanese just cut to the chase by re-employing her as Fortress' secretary.

Furman wasn't much better either - Arcee's role in "Space Pirates" attempts to make the character responsible for the death of nearly every Autobot on Earth simply because she has a poor attention span (the only reason it doesn't work is because the plot's full of holes big enough for Metroplex to climb through).

And then there's the IDW 'Changed Forever' machine: - 1/ feed in unpopular eighties character 2/ have them act the complete opposite to the way they did in the eighties 3/ watch the acclaim roll in because Michael Bay/Shane McCarthy/Bob Budiansky "suck" and any year now the comic might go somewhere.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Jaynz wrote:Actually, as far as toys go, they're slightly more numerous than you think..
I think he might've talked in terms of a single continuity.

And Crasher is actually a Go-Bot! How does this make you feel?
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Post by calvin_0 »

Cliffjumper wrote:When does she "kick butt" again?
the original movie there she made her debut...

she help defending the autobot city during the 1st waves attacks, she pawn the motorbike transformer after galvatorn pwn ultra magnus..

IIRC she also save Rodimus Prime in G1 cartoon..

Arcee always been seen as a capable soldier but it often get overshadowed by her motherly side.
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