Apparently there's a controversy now over Spotlight Arcee...

[andersonh1]

Stupid arguments are going on. So what do I do? Lay them out here.

So, the writer of the new Windblade comic is taking issue with Simon Furman's origin for Arcee. And gender politics are being dragged into Transformers. Nothing like spoiling a hobby by weighing it down with this type of argument, is there?

http://mscottwrites.tumblr.com

In a vacuum, Furman’s story is completely legitimate. The idea that someone is fundamentally changed against their will and struggles/rages against that is a really interesting idea. In fact, I wrote a very similar thing with the Dinobots. It taps into a deep human fear that God exists and is apathetic to/causes our pain.

Also dealing with characters that are literally alien naturally leads writers to play with/explore what aspects of humanity do and do not translate: are they alive? does Primus really equate to God if they have concrete knowledge of his existance? what does it mean to be male/female in a non-reproductive species?

The issues I have with Furman’s choice is that we don’t exist in a vacuum and the suggestion that 1. women only exist in aberration 2. being a women is inherently traumatic 3. being a women has any correlation to mental illness are extremely upsetting. Do I think Furman was trying to make a statement about human women with Arcee’s origins? No. In fact, the largest share of blame lies with the tokenization of women in the brand in general. If Arcee was one of many women transformers and she became female in this manner, it would not be an issue for women writ large (although still troubling for the transgender community). It is because she is the ONLY women (and that this story ensures that she will ALWAYS BE the only woman) that Arcee’s story becomes untenable.

Hopefully John, James and I have come up with a way around this Gordian Knot that will satisfy the fan-base, but satisfying-or-no, the most immediate imperative is to ENSURE this story does not continue to keep women readers, fans and characters at arm’s length from the brand. I’ve often said that everyone should feel that they are allowed to like Transformers and it is my complete and utter privilege to take this next step to make that happen.

TLDR version: Arcee’s origin is offensive because we don’t have any other female origins to balance it. We’re working on it, stay tuned.

PS To fans that still claim Transformers are asexual: Academically, you have legitimate standing, but practically, ask yourself this: Jazz has been voice by actors from three different races over the years. If, in the next video game, Jazz was voiced by a woman, would you feel the character had been changed at all? If so, you do not perceive Transformers to be asexual. If not, you are a rare, rare bird indeed.

Simon Furman responds here: http://simonfurman.wordpress.com/2013/1 ... /#comments

Generally, I stay out of Internet blurts, but when a fellow ‘professional’ chooses to air her views on my work quite so publicly I feel constrained to respond/defend myself (just as publicly) . Essentially, Mairghread Scott (whose work I’m only passingly familiar with, so I cannot and anyway would not comment on how qualified she is to sit in judgement of mine), has elected to retcon my take on the character Arcee (in Spotlight: Arcee, part of the IDW G1 continuity) in some fashion. Just for starters, I hate retconning. The idea of taking something firmly established as in-continuity (in the the issue itself and plentiful collections) and saying, ‘oh wait a minute – we didn’t mean that, we meant this’, is insulting both to the original creator(s) and the fans who shelled out the money to buy it in the first place. It’s almost like saying you wasted your money, sucker. But for Scott to (wrongly) accuse me of apparently setting out to be offensive to women is the kind of personal attack that really needs a response. Thankfully, I was spared having to break down the illogicality and blinkered assumption of Scott’s attack by a poster on the TFW2005 boards, who so eloquently redressed the balance. So thank you jenbot1980. I’ve reproduced your response below, in full. I don’t have your permission, so please contact me if you wish me to remove it and I will (same goes for TFW2005). But I really appreciated your distanced and measured (and well analysed) look at Spotlight: Arcee and my intentions behind it. Jenbot1980′s response follows, and you can look at Scott’s digressions in the TFW2005 thread here.

What do I think? I think this whole thing is stupid. And likely to suck any enjoyment I might have had right out of the new comic. In fact, at this point I'm likely to skip it entirely.

[Almighty Unicron]

God dammit, Tumblr is infecting everything.

[JediTricks]

Look, the reality is that Furman's twist with Arcee was insensitive and short-sighted, he's being called on it and the response is petulance. The issue of gender is officially raised in IDW already and it differs from the brand's previous models. So now we either deal with it or pretend it doesn't exist, but we cannot actually pretend it doesn't exist because we have Spotlight: Arcee as a jumping off point, Arcee claims to exist as a gendered freak and hates it, yet the rest of the Transformers use male pronouns continuously because the precedent is that they ARE male. As said, if a major character (who isn't a child-type character) in Transformers that was previously voiced by a male voice actor were to suddenly in new media be voiced by a clearly female voice actor, there would be riots in the streets of the internet that day. Whether Furman is conscious of his misogyny in what he's done with IDW Arcee is beyond the scope of my knowledge, but he seems to be ignorant to the truth that he created a gender problem.

This becomes another of those "can this brand grow and mature" questions, can the brand and its fans handle dealing with this in a healthy manner, or will it become a sign of the brand's inability to grow out of being merely a vessel for selling toys?

[Almighty Unicron]

Look, the reality is that Furman's twist with Arcee was insensitive and short-sighted, he's being called on it and the response is petulance. The issue of gender is officially raised in IDW already and it differs from the brand's previous models. So now we either deal with it or pretend it doesn't exist, but we cannot actually pretend it doesn't exist because we have Spotlight: Arcee as a jumping off point, Arcee claims to exist as a gendered freak and hates it, yet the rest of the Transformers use male pronouns continuously because the precedent is that they ARE male. As said, if a major character (who isn't a child-type character) in Transformers that was previously voiced by a male voice actor were to suddenly in new media be voiced by a clearly female voice actor, there would be riots in the streets of the internet that day. Whether Furman is conscious of his misogyny in what he's done with IDW Arcee is beyond the scope of my knowledge, but he seems to be ignorant to the truth that he created a gender problem.

This becomes another of those "can this brand grow and mature" questions, can the brand and its fans handle dealing with this in a healthy manner, or will it become a sign of the brand's inability to grow out of being merely a vessel for selling toys?

Here's the thing: Transformers, in ever continuity, are created beings with a purpose in mind. Almost always,that purpose is "combat", except for the G1 cartoon where some were developed for "heavy labor". In either case, a robust, dense build is the best suited for those jobs, assuming you have to stick to a humanoid configuration. Transformers resemble human males for the same reason that human males are more robust than females, because physiologically they are more suited to physical tasks.

Arcee resembling a human female is an aberration from an engineering perspective. Given the Cybertronian culture we know of in the IDW series, her sub-optimal configuration is something to grieve over. Through translating Cybertronian to English we map "resembles human females" to "being female", and thus see her angst as relating to the solely human construct of gender rather than the problem of engineering it is on Cybertron. Frankly, it makes no sense that a transformer should have identifiably feminine characteristics, and Arcee being a freak is well justified in my view.


Furthermore, I don't remember there being a brouhaha when TFA Red Alert was female. Or Override/Nitro Convoy in Cybertron.

[Shockwave]

Where's that Picard facepalm meme? That would be perfect right now.

[Tigermegatron]

If Furman hates retcons,Then why did he create "Regeneration"? Regeneration erases the G-2 comic events.

The reason,I stopped buying the IDW TF comics. Is due to all the retcons brought on by new writers.

Botcon wrote a far more offensive sexist bio story for TMII Arcee than simon Furman did for IDW.

[Shockwave]

If Furman hates retcons,Then why did he create "Regeneration"? Regeneration erases the G-2 comic events.

Furman actually did address that in one of the responses to his post, it was because IDW wanted to do Re-G1 from issue 80 rather than G2 #12. Otherwise it would have been picked up from G2 #12.

[JediTricks]

Here's the thing: Transformers, in ever continuity, are created beings with a purpose in mind. Almost always,that purpose is "combat", except for the G1 cartoon where some were developed for "heavy labor". In either case, a robust, dense build is the best suited for those jobs, assuming you have to stick to a humanoid configuration. Transformers resemble human males for the same reason that human males are more robust than females, because physiologically they are more suited to physical tasks.

Arcee resembling a human female is an aberration from an engineering perspective. Given the Cybertronian culture we know of in the IDW series, her sub-optimal configuration is something to grieve over. Through translating Cybertronian to English we map "resembles human females" to "being female", and thus see her angst as relating to the solely human construct of gender rather than the problem of engineering it is on Cybertron. Frankly, it makes no sense that a transformer should have identifiably feminine characteristics, and Arcee being a freak is well justified in my view.


Furthermore, I don't remember there being a brouhaha when TFA Red Alert was female. Or Override/Nitro Convoy in Cybertron.

I hear what you are saying, but if we really look into that idea that they're all combat and labor bots, the idea that a masculine build is the only build is nonsense, the best build would be purpose-built and there would be no need for altmodes, or at best there would be botmodes more heavily tied to altmodes such as the Constructicons in Revenge of the Fallen. The viewpoint also ignores the fact that not every combat job requires brute strength, some require stealth or speed such as a scout or an assassin.

The IDW universe, moreover, has made it clear that there is significant debate about following the role that one was built for vs finding one's own path. You have Ambulon, you have Rung, etc. And what benefit would Ratchet being a big burly guy-shape be for his role? And it's not like Arcee is in any way diminished as a fighter, so that idea doesn't hold either.

TFA Red Alert wasn't a major character, and TFA had already changed a lot of stuff. Nobody gave a fuck about Cybertron and Nitro Convoy because TF:C was a trainwreck... actually, I do remember some of our gang making a fuss about it.

[Mako Crab]

If Furman hates retcons,Then why did he create "Regeneration"? Regeneration erases the G-2 comic events.

Quite true.
Maybe it doesn't bother him since he's retconning his own work, but the principle still holds true- he's in effect invalidating all those stories he wrote and telling us "suckers" that we wasted our money.

Also, I find it distasteful that he singled out Mairghread Scott for this argument, when she made it clear that both John Barber and James Roberts are working with her to tackle the issue of female robots in their universe. Further, Scott clarified in her statement, that she didn't think Furman was trying to make a statement about human women and that it is the tokenism of women in the brand itself that is to blame- not Furman specifically (though he didn't help with the two awful origins he's written for Arcee).

And on that topic- Arcee's origin in the Marvel UK comic showed a complete lack of understanding about what feminism is. It's like watching a show about pacifists, where they're all portrayed as cowards and weaklings that would prefer to avoid a fight at any cost instead of stand up for themselves. It mocks pacifism (or feminism) while failing to understand what those viewpoints are even about.

I did notice that Furman refrained from addressing Scott's comment, that the story she's working on with Barber and Roberts will ensure that fans and fictional characters of the female gender will no longer be kept at arm's length. Even he must admit that his two separate Arcee origin stories did their best to kill the possibility that we'd ever see another female TF in comics again.

I always did find his reasoning, that female robots don't make any sense, to be flimsy at best, when considering all the psuedo science, mysto babble, and demons and gods, that he crams into his stories about robots. All that other stuff is fine, but girl robots somehow are too far-fetched.

[Shockwave]

If Furman hates retcons,Then why did he create "Regeneration"? Regeneration erases the G-2 comic events.

Quite true.
Maybe it doesn't bother him since he's retconning his own work, but the principle still holds true- he's in effect invalidating all those stories he wrote and telling us "suckers" that we wasted our money.

Also, I find it distasteful that he singled out Mairghread Scott for this argument, when she made it clear that both John Barber and James Roberts are working with her to tackle the issue of female robots in their universe. Further, Scott clarified in her statement, that she didn't think Furman was trying to make a statement about human women and that it is the tokenism of women in the brand itself that is to blame- not Furman specifically (though he didn't help with the two awful origins he's written for Arcee).

And on that topic- Arcee's origin in the Marvel UK comic showed a complete lack of understanding about what feminism is. It's like watching a show about pacifists, where they're all portrayed as cowards and weaklings that would prefer to avoid a fight at any cost instead of stand up for themselves. It mocks pacifism (or feminism) while failing to understand what those viewpoints are even about.

I did notice that Furman refrained from addressing Scott's comment, that the story she's working on with Barber and Roberts will ensure that fans and fictional characters of the female gender will no longer be kept at arm's length. Even he must admit that his two separate Arcee origin stories did their best to kill the possibility that we'd ever see another female TF in comics again.

I always did find his reasoning, that female robots don't make any sense, to be flimsy at best, when considering all the psuedo science, mysto babble, and demons and gods, that he crams into his stories about robots. All that other stuff is fine, but girl robots somehow are too far-fetched.

Uhhh... did you actually read his response? He addressed all of that. Or, more accurately, the TFW poster he quoted addressed all of that. But it is right there in his response. He target Mairghread Scott because she targeted him first by calling his work misogynistic to begin with. If she didn't like the story or didn't feel up to the challenge of writing around it then she shouldn't have taken the job, or if she still wanted to do it, then she should have just done it and shut the hell up. It's very unprofessional of her to call out another writer's work like that so publicly. And he clarified the G2 thing in the comments section which I reitterated above, but since you apparently missed it, here it is again: That wasn't Furman's decision. IDW mandated that they pick up after issue 80 rather than G2 #12. Furman wanted it the other way.