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Intro to An Essay: Trans History & Retcons Regarding IDW1 Arcee & Her Spotlight

Pluralsword

Pluralsword

Errant Circuit CPUs
Location
dreams of electric sheep
Pronouns
She/Xey/They
Thought we should share this here because we know some people will appreciate it, we were advised by other users to make a thread for this rather than just post in the Grand Transformers Thread, for which we are thankful because we weren't sure whether to do a thread for this or not at first:

As we've slowly learned more and deeply immersed into IDW1 Arcee's writing over the years, finding much more than just kinship to her, we felt this urge to dig further, to understand, feeling threads that were there regarding trans history, but not having much knowledge regarding historical traumas from transmedicalism, so we dug. We dug because we wanted to show that Arcee's writing from 2012-2018 not only is a beautiful trans story unique in science fiction, but that her personality there and in part in her Spotlight (which absolutely did not intend trans stuff and walked into a minefield in that regard that inadvertently opened up the opportunity for the writing and consulting team in Phase 2 and Phase 3 to figure out beautiful character arcs for her) are direct successors of the original personality frameworks for G1 Arcees, and to show the impact and legacy of both Sunbow/Marvel and IDW Arcees along with more Arcees combined on many versions of her thereafter. The intended formatting for this essay exists on our neocities site and isn't really doable in full here, so we will instead post a slightly amended intro paragraph and some content explanation before a link to it at the bottom:


Not exactly Arcee's Spotlight issue (in fact this is from Unicron #6), but there is a clear path from there to here and beyond...

In much of the last decade, a lot of people familiar with Transformers' trans stories appreciate Arcee being trans and her arcs in that regard from 2012 onwards. But during those six years from 2012-2018 where her narratives that firmly navigated her agency as a trans gal were being established by a number of writers, with consulting help in 2015 for Ask Vector Prime and 2018 for IDW1, there was and remains uncertainty over how exactly that works for her, specifically for her comic iteration where her transness was first hinted and then plainly stated. The variety of understandings in this regard in part originates from her introduction to the IDW1 run, Spotlight: Arcee, in 2008, which was received rather turbulently because of how it portrayed her gender and transformer gals at large. Writing years after would navigate resolving this rather beautifully as showing Arcee having struggled with transmedicalism, isolation, abandonment, loneliness, and alienation, the brutality of a violent (and androcentric) world, as many trans people across gender and parallel spectrums or lacks thereof have in real life. Her story is done in a wlw trans gal context in particular. She is shown getting closure on all this, finding her happiness by the end of that continuity that would along with her story at large as a sweet, ferocious, outspoken old warrior sage help set the tone for her portrayals afterwards. Much of this overlaps with how she was described in her The Transformers Universe bio all the way back in 1986. In these regards, we (the writer of this is plural, we'll have a note about that near the end) think it is pertinent to take another look at how her story played out, what was actually written and shown vs. what was intended, to navigate transmedicalist history that overlaps with her story, and to show that Arcee's trans iterations are directly part of the legacy of G1 Arcee overall.
_______

We do actually go over the various forms of bioessentialist gatekeeping transmedicalism entails that gender expansive people have been put through in real life trying to seek gender affirmation including being expected to fit rigid ideals rather than the wants of the person(s) seeking affirmation, unnecessary and invasive procedures, incomplete explanation of why medical decisions are made, and abandonment, and do also talk about the history of trans people having to connect with each other to give each other the affirmation they wanted that other options would not. Much of the rest of the writing in this essay when it doesn't have a playful humored tone in the main prose is supported by such in smaller text beneath images. The other characters who get focused on a lot in this piece in their connection to IDW1 Arcee and a bit of their own stories are Aileron, Anode, Lug, and Windblade. The prior mentioned playful tone is included for the origin - parallel - legacy portion that goes over some media regarding Arcee not as well known by the fandom including:
-the particular variation of Decepticon misogyny described in Arcee's Transformers Universe #4 1986 bio and the mention of her cutting through enemies' roboguts. We think that IDW1 Arcee ending up matching up with that portion of the bio by facing off against cybertronian androcentrism and using blades is a coincidence... probably... but the sweet ferocity and compassion described in the bio is also present in her Sunbow and Marvel depictions and we do go over Sunbow as well
-Devil's Due Arcee who is drawn in #4 and #5 of the Transformers vs. GIJOE: The Art of War in a shape and pulling the kinds of acrobatic moves that are quite similar to IDW1 Arcee in her Spotlight, which is likely no accident given that Alex Milne drew for all three issues of the two different continuities
-talking about how Arcee in terms of media has converged multiple times between various G1 and IDW1 influences that are most apparent with Titan Returns Arcee & Leinad and their bios and the UK postage stamp continuity bio for her that JRO wrote (yes this is a real thing)
-along with how Ask Vector Prime Arcee is another openly declared trans narrative, who precedes IDW1 in blatant writing by 3 years while IDW1 Arcee's writing at the time (2015) very clearly and beautifully is dealing with the issue of autonomy and the brutality of violence itself at large, not just for her, but as a society thing, and with her unique point of view on that.
-which is all to say that we can look at sweet and firm Transformers/MLP Arcee dating Greenlight and trickster sage and pugilist Earthspark Arcee shown teaching with a strong sense of ethos and asked to teach her "berserker battle rage" and see how they both draw on (in MLP's case: other) IDW Arcees while doing their own thing and they have a direct conceptual lineage from G1 Arcees because of sharing that
So if you want to read this essay you can check it out here: Trans History and Retcons Regarding IDW1 Arcee and Her Spotlight. Feel free to share your thoughts if you like and if y'all have questions about trans history & theory stuff or stuff about the characters' stories we will do our best to answer. ❤️ ☺️
 
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Aw thanks so much!!! We're glad you like it and her so much! We were into Transformers on and off for years before we watched Cyberverse back in 2020 and decided we'd try to cobble together a ttrpg game using the FATE system (this was before the official Transformers TTRPG system existed and before we were aware of various indie robot ttrpgs some of which are rather gender expansive) and so to do so we went to read about transformer gender stuff to see if anything had changed since our lull in absorbing Transformers stories and art and well, that's how we learned about trans transformers, and the rest is history. When we finally sat down to read the action political opera EXRID along with related issues and parse the primary source material of IDW1 Arcee's 2012-2018 character arcs in that it was a sort of epiphanic high for the lot of us, to see how much of her life resonated with our experiences, and also with those a lot of gender expansive people can speak to to various degrees. r
Our first exposure to Transformers was Alternators Windcharger (who we no longer have unfortunately but we hope someone has and enjoys the one we had) and the Unicron Trilogy. So technically the first time we saw an iteration of Arcee was Sureshock in Armada, and then we read a bit of Energon Arcee in the DK Readers Transformers books, and the first time we saw Arcee on screen for anything (besides seeing her in War for Cybertron multiplayer videos with that) being her name in the english version of the show was Transformers Prime, a couple of years before we saw the 1986 Transformers The Movie.
 
While going through the video game The Hex, I laughed really hard when I got to the line "Carla's first order of business was to tell me I designed too many male characters. I tried to tell her Steambot Willy was genderless, but she insisted!". That was Furman's thinking in a nutshell. He's a great guy and I don't begrudge him anything, but he could never grok why people were argumentative about how a species of alien exclusively voiced by male voice actors and making exclusive use of he/him pronouns "for convenience" are not, in fact, lacking in gender.

His first objection back when Arcee was first introduced in the eighties is somewhat understandable, though, since society has long had a tendency to assume anything gender neutral is male unless specifically noted by stereotypically feminine attributes, which I believe scholars refer to as the Ms. Pac-Man Effect. And, of course, it's understandable that back then he'd have zeroed in on the lack of sex being the major determinative thing, although even if the 'coding' terminology didn't exist at the time(?) they were still very obviously all male-coded. I'm sure if Furman was the head writer for the franchise from the ground-up and had permission to do so he may have opted to have them all go by it or they and be played by anyone, but such were the limits of work-for-hire on an elaborate commercial for toys in the 1980s.

Steven Universe is funny to me for having somewhat balanced that scale, complete with it's own gender discourse that has at times riven the fandom apart.

All that is to say the exact chain of circumstances that led to Arcee being one of the best and most stunning depictions of a trans woman in fiction were long and complicated, but boy did the franchise accidentally stumble into a social shift at exactly the right time.
 
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It is a very, very old problem that, within patriarchic societies, the socialized assumption that what/who is perceived as gender neutral means male. You're absolutely right about that, and it is two-fold. That has to do with androcentrism where whatever doesn't fall within what is viewed as femininity while not seen as incongruous to maleness is treated as strange and unusual, which is why (trans)misogyny as described by Julia Serano, whose definition we mentioned, effects everyone, not just trans women, since there is repression against being out of line with gender norms and if you aren't perceived as a (heterosexual) cis man then automatically there's a treatment as lesser within the various iterations of the patriarchy. Second- it is often a humanocentrism and at large an organocentrism both of which ultimately playing into androcentrism as a kind of bioessentialism, where it is conceptualized that in order for aesthetic expression and variation to exist whether within gender systems or their own understanding one either must be human or, as science fiction depicted more often, a sapient organic or robots whose socialization was shaped by organics.

Interlaced with this is the patriarchic capitalist production problem, guys and gals in corporate at the time conceptualized Transformers with a male target audience (which at the time meant to many as to not have much gender representation parity or variety), contrary to how Bob Budiansky and Ron Friedman among others understood in their own ways that more than just he/him alien robots was something to have in the stories. Handwritten notes regarding ideas for Ratchet use she pronouns and describe her as the "got to gal" for repairs, this was not the direction Ratchet would canonically have in the Marvel comics, amusingly in the French Diaclone comics by Joustra the same toy is named Ambulance is referred to as female. (for those who don't know, Transformers was basically built out of the Japanese diaclone toys when Takara and Hasbro started working together). Of course, the whole concept of alien transforming robots appealed to more than just (cis) boys and men, and many of those people want(ed) to see more variation than that. As Friedman himself said his daughter was a fan of the show, that they should "put in a female Autobot!"

That's a very interesting idea regarding he/him bots be voiced by anybody, we think you could be right about that. It's a tragedy that we're still trying to figure out who some of the voice actors were for the Female Autobots team (who have more recently had the names Elita One's Squadron or Shield of Solus) in the episode most of them were introduced in G1 Season 2 in 1985, such as Chromia, whose english actor wasn't credited.

Haha yeah we have seen the statement "Steven Universe is the best Transformers show" circulated which we find very amusing for the parallels and overlaps the two media series have.

Yeah Spotlight: Arcee certainly came out at a particular time and retconned Megatron Origins, which did have gal bots in it besides unnamed generics of various textual social strata including Crasher, Chromia, and Elita, and Megatron Origins would again be retconned by Phase 2 and 3 of IDW1 in regards to gender and characters in a way that means Crasher and the generics either are most likely an equivalent of trans gals or forged gals older than seven million years, and the Chromia and Elita lookalikes couldn't possibly be them since Chromia is from Caminus and Elita is from Carcer (Megatron Origins is probably the most retconned miniseries of IDW1 by far not just in this respect but the political structure and the events that occurred). The roil of figuring out what to do with Spotlight: Arcee definitely had a result we don't think anyone at the time expected. We didn't cover it in the essay but some of Aligned has a similar problem where all of the gals after Solus are descended from Solus Prime in the sense that their neural circuitry for processing information is descended from her, and only 1/13th of Transformers are gals, and the only reason they 'acquired more pronouns to celebrate their differences and show equality (that idea itself is nice, we personally think different pronouns arising for aesthetic euphoria on their own is the way we would take it and we wouldn't have for the sake of writing in english he be the first pronoun)' as an entire species after so much history is from organic contact.

Related to this we want to mention the indie game Phoning Home which has the premise of two genderless he/him robots, one a ship with an autonomous small robot named ION get stranded on an organic planet and are trying to figure out how to get home. It's revealed over the course of the game that the bots are actually descended from organics who abandoned many aspects of organic life including gender and ended up (as we recall) mass extracting the resources of their planet, which is what the he/him ship wants to do with the world they find by alerting homeworld of how resource rich it is... they run into another stranded pair, another bot - ship duo who both use she/her, the smaller one is called ANI, and the two are part of a small dissident faction who wan to preserve nature as much as possible, reintroduce gender, and (iirc) at least some of them want to reacquire organic qualities. It's always made us wonder if the game was a response to robot androcentrism in media and/or inspired by Ask Vector Prime / IDW1 media at the time? (the game came out in 2017).

Another notable series of non-ttrpg robot stories and gender issues is the Steamworlds games which have had characters with he, she, or they pronouns so far, has same gender love themes that come up once in a while, and a paragraph of dialogue between Wonky and Piper Faraday early on in Steamworlds Heist in the first map region of the game that the bots are all effectively trans/non-cis coded in the sense that they try out and choose different body parts to find what fits for themselves (they are in fact fully assemblable thats the conceit regarding characters being defeated is that they can be put back together at the cost of water as a game mechanic since the protagonist team need water for their boilers, or because water is also currency among many of the bots), and the zombie bots of the Scrappers Gang who are the antagonists at that stage of the game are so violent because the necromancer Chop Sue put them back together in a haphazard fashion of mixing up their parts, leaving them in an equivalent of deep dysphoria (we think the explanation was something like sensory issues) so yeah thats a thing that happened (and there are some Scrappers met later in the game who aren't going on raids, they're simply voluntarily taking part in a gladiatorial fight). Despite the expansive context the bots have, they have inherited some aspects of virtually extinct human society whose origins they don't know well (for example they think of toasters as valiant ancestors), Bogdan Ivanski is a big buff he/him bot who eventually brings up that he wanted to be a ballerina but was mocked for that because of the shape he had, and when the game reaches its finale he says he hopes to finally be able to pursue that. Ace in Space does have the alien robots who make contact have pronoun variety - from human contact, and the therapist bot both took on a more sloped and rounded shape because they thought it would make her more approachable but also because she liked it so... unfortunately the pc Enby
romancing her (which violates medical ethics yes) or anyone but the doctor bot
results and ends
in the character dying
, and Sero, who iirc has an anxiety disorder, is depicted alive and the visceral image of
being buried with the player character, holding them and having some emotional flux
, which we don't know how to feel about the only transfemme alien robot date route ending like that, so when we replayed the game we went with the not dating anybody route. The only other game we know of where dating a transfemme robot in space is a thing would be Robogirls Get Together.

We do have a genuine interest as mentioned in the essay in the idea of alien robots formulating their own aesthetic iteration that has coincidental overlaps with human gender assemblage in terms of shapes and a vast variety, both our fanfiction and wip original fiction is in part about this, and we think we've seen some wip and not-public things out there playing around with that similar umbrella idea. To be honest, even if we meet organic aliens we are doubtful with how much alien life can vary and human life and life on earth has that they will have a gender system based around a male-female oppositional binary (which is certainly not the only way human historical gender systems have been set up), and yet because aesthetic iteration is inherent to the sapient condition, the storytelling contextualization of ourselves and the world, we think they would have their own way of talking about something similar to gender at large. In that sense, we see no reason that someone like Arcee wouldn't iterate at some point with all her compassion, ferocity, and wisdom and a parallel assemblage of shapes and terms and expression and orientation, simply from the contexts of her own world, as was the case for Arcee in IDW1 as a wlw trans gal.
 
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