Speaking of the comics though, I'm about to read Arcee's spotlight, and I see that she's gone crazy? Does it show what happened to her later on? Or was she always like that in the IDWverse?
Oh, uh, Arcee's spotlight is.... something. If you have issues wrt gender, it might be good to check out the wiki page first. They're doing much, MUCH better things with her these days, but they're not pretending this origin story never happened and sweeping it under the rug. (sorry, I'd explain, but I'm still on mobile and about to drive)
I mean tbh I'd be super upset if they were pretending the origin story never happened. It's not great how it's initially framed, but it is an important part of her trust and social issues and also the anger. Although I strongly suspect she was never LESS socially awkward, but that what happened to her made her socially awkward and constantly second-guessing her trust in people who reached out to her, so....
I don't have a gnederproblem but yea, I'll take a look. That's good, I liked Arcee in the G1 cartoon and I'd hate to see her be a bad person. dw! that's ok!
Yeah I wouldn't say she's a bad person she's just... very much a deconstruction of the "Pure Saint of Feminine Virtue" trope that's kiiiiiiind of attached to her in G1? And has a lot of genuine troubles with things but um. If you're expecting a wholesome cinnamon roll, I'm afraid they're fresh outta those, you're gonna get yours coated in blood.
Yes, if people were debating right now writing her backstory as a new part of canon, like what happened in way back whenever, I'd be like noooonononono no, maybe reconsider, or at least think REAL HARD if you want to go there. But given the backstory that exists, I ADORE what the more recent writers have done with her. She's starting from a very unusual.... psychological trauma place? I don't know how to phrase that exactly. But her damage is so severe, traumatic, and sets her apart and makes it even harder for her to connect with others (because I'm betting she struggled even before this). She's got some really rich characterization, and plays with some tropes that I usually don't have patience for, but I love love LOVE her. Gah, I'm not being as coherent as I wish. Spotlight: Arcee and Heart of Darkness are the main spots Arcee lives in phase one, and you've got this uncomfortably presented backstory hanging over it (and also Heart of Darkness is SO. HIDEOUS.), but afterwards she's a main player in the exrid ongoing and I'm pretty sure the writers who've handled her love her a lot too.
Spoiler: Okay so In the IDW comics, Arcee is a career soldier who has been around for... god, I don't even know. Significantly longer than the war between the decepticons and the autobots have been going on, but not so long that she was around before the feminine pronoun fell out of use on Cybertron. We know this second thing because a long time ago, the unethical and terrible scientist Jihaxus decided to try and reintroduce 'female Cybertronians' to the species and picked out Arcee for a test subject, befriending her and getting her to trust him before subjecting her to what is essentially forced gender reassignment surgery and rewriting her body down to the robot DNA level. Also now people instinctively call her 'she' without questioning it even though they don't call anyone else 'she'? And the thing is, the thing IS, what Jihaxus did genuinely did fuck up her own internal gender identification to the point that I do think she identifies as a woman but then has layers of trauma to that, with 'do I only do this because he-?' and not even really being able to go back to presenting masculine bc of the fact that other people instinctively gender her as a femme. GOING TO CONTINUE THIS IN THE NEXT POST, HOLD ON
Spoiler: continued Now, Arcee is an incredibly talented fighter, one of the best in the entire species, and given that this is a species where a significant chunk of the population has been at war for 4 million years although not necessarily on the front lines, that's really something. She's tough, she's terrifying, and she's got a reputation as a perfect killing machine without remorse or kindness. But the truth of that is a little more complicated. IDW doesn't do the thing where a female character is played up as the toughest ever and then immediately nerfed and made all about her vulnerabilities, thank god. But the trauma Arcee experienced with Jihaxus is unique, and that uniqueness means it's very difficult for her to explain it to others, even if she trusted them enough to. Because she trusted, looked up to, and befriended Jihaxus before he used her as a test subject, she has extreme problems trusting people and knowing how to act on friendship even when she wants to, and her anger issues probably don't entirely stem from what happened to her, but the lack of closure is pretty clearly something that eats at her and makes it hard for her to set her anger aside. What she's good at is fighting and killing, so she copes WITH fighting and killing, even though that distances her from other people at the same time as it makes her immensely valuable as a soldier. Loyalty is a tricky thing with Arcee, because she's innately intensely loyal but that plays hell with her trust issues. She will devote herself wholeheartedly to a CAUSE, in this case the Autobots, but she struggles with individual people. She's extremely lonely and knows she has trouble relating to others, which means when people show her kindness or consideration at ALL instead of cautious fear and alongside respect, she's very quick to latch onto them, but has a tendency to show this in troubling ways such as forcing her way into the medical center when you're getting treated for an injury bc you once fought alongside her in a battle and that makes you friends, right? That's what friendship is, right? She's not good at small talk or social nuance or joking around, so when she gets rejected she throws herself even more into fighting, which is sort of a vicious cycle. Unfortunately, this makes her prone to being used by manipulative people, which comes up again in her current arc with how stuff went down with Prowl. She's learning to cope with her issues better, ends up as a voice of reason in the latest stuff, and is pushing herself to show vulnerability and put herself out there for friendship, and I'm very proud of her. Also once she finally managed to hunt down Jihaxus it ended up being on a sort of... boundary between this universe and the Dead Universe, meaning she couldn't kill him bc it was in a weird space where people can't die, so she spent a significant period of time killing him over and over and over again, and now seems to think that's solved her anger issues bc closure. Like therapy!
Spoiler: Final note Also iirc more recent stuff with Arcee (aka, not written by Simon Furman, who gave her this origin bc he wanted to include Arcee but thinks Cybertronians ought to be genderless and not male or female by default and thus having a few prominent women transformers doesn't mesh with his headcanons) suggests that Cybertron might have lost the concept of the female gender without losing the gender itself, as Arcee claims her old (masculine) identity was a 'lie she told herself' and that this is who she's 'supposed to be'. Which I think indicates some underlying gender stuff going on, with what's messing her up being the lack of consent and respect in what Jihaxus did to her? Basically I think current writers are trying to write her as a trans woman with trauma in how she transitioned, rather then someone who had their gender identity forcibly rewritten, but there's going to be uncomfortable elements in that anyway bc of the base material they have to work with. All in all, I think it's handled really well esp recently, but there are elements that could definitely be triggering to people. She's my avenging angel and also my daughter and I'm proud of her.
SUPER SPOILERS FOR OPTIMUS PRIME AND TAAO: Spoiler So after some thought and a re-read, I've discovered that the overarching theme between both TAAO and Optimus Prime is the illusion of being locked into a choice, and breaking free of that illusion. With Optimus, the attack by the Junkions eventually causes him to realize that he's been locked in a vicious cycle of attack/response. Till now, his choices have been limited to A) attack, and B) allow Earth to be destroyed. (I realize these options are very skewed but Optimus is very skewed at this point.) He now realizes that he can break free of this cycle by choosing the Secret Third Option, C) Mercy/End the Cycle of Destruction. This is a difficult choice, and a complete turning point for his character, but Optimus does, in the end, choose C. In TAAO, in a similar vein, Starscream has been forced into another two-option choice by both circumstances and a well-meaning Bumblebee who wants to turn Starscream To The Light Side of the Force. His choices are presented as A) Lie about what really happened with Carcer and Liege Maximo to his people, leaving them open to retribution from Robot Satan but keeping his own power, or B) Tell the truth about Carcer and the re-appearance of Robot Satan, causing panic and confusion and losing control of Cybertron to Pink Dictator Elita One, but possibly saving his people. Bumblebee (pretty unrealistically imo) is in favor of Doing The Right Thing by telling the truth, which would also be political suicide for Starscream. Faced with this awful set of options, Starscream, like Optimus, instead selects Secret Third Option C, which in this case is "Lie to the public, keep my power but send operatives to go hunt down Robot Satan before he kills us all". Which is a very Starscream choice to make, regardless of its morality. I don't know if there is an actual lesson to take away from this, but I just really like how the Secret Third Option is a unifying theme here, and I hope it makes an appearance in the next Lost Light as well.
