TF Views

How did Furman ruin Arcee?


Back in '86, Furman was given a shitty concept and told to use it. In '06, he took the same concept and expounded further on how out of place it was.

The only reason that Arcee got a push in '86 was because Hasbro wanted to make clumsy effort to reach girls with an obvious token character. The more that anybody thinks about the internal logic of "Transformers", the less a female robot makes sense.

The only way to find evidence of misogyny in "Spotlight: Arcee" is to decide it is there *before* reading it and actively seeking evidence for that view with no regard to logic or truth.

So maybe she could've tip-toed around the topic a little more carefully. I'm not going to say she was 100% right in how she discussed her problems with SL:Arcee. But I still feel that he's overreacting to a perceived attack where there was none intended.

Or more ironically- he misunderstood the intent of something Scott wrote and took offense.

Scott's comments followed on a consistent stream of complaints over the years about "Spotlight: Arcee".

The way I see it, Scott is just pandering to the Tumblr crowd to prop up her notoriety, causing false controversy where there is none, to get the Jezebel readers and the SRS groupies to buy her comic. I should know, as a literary agent I've had a few clients pull this same tactic. It's viral marketing 101.

Most likely.

Her approach is making me want to skip the series entirely, whereas normally I'd read it and then make the call.

I have to disagree with Shockwave. "Beast Hunters" is actually not bad. (It is good enough that I plan to pick up the second volume despite Scott being the writer.) But, yeah, this incident has not raised my opinion of her as a writer.

Dominic wrote:The only reason that Arcee got a push in '86 was because Hasbro wanted to make clumsy effort to reach girls with an obvious token character. The more that anybody thinks about the internal logic of "Transformers", the less a female robot makes sense.

Then what happened with Elita-1, Chromia, Firestar and Moonracer about a year before that? Sure, they were only in one episode, but "female robots" was already established before Arcee came around.

Elita et al were one of characters in a throw-away episode. Arcee was pushed and given defined as a main character. There is a difference.

True, but their presence still established precedent. Arcee didn't need to be explained because it had already been established that "female" TFs exist. The approach in IDW is completely different because they've been established as being a more or less nongendered species.

Dominic wrote:How did Furman ruin Arcee?
Back in '86, Furman was given a shitty concept and told to use it. In '06, he took the same concept and expounded further on how out of place it was.

Well that's a great attitude to have. Why not take a shitty concept and make something awesome out of it? Oh, and I'm pretty sure no one was forcing him to include Arcee in the IDW comics. He chose to take that topic on again, even though there was no push to include her.

Some ideas are not worth salvaging.

Furman's use of Arcee in '06 was probably the best possible use of the character and concept.

Dominic wrote:Some ideas are not worth salvaging.

I'm wasn't talking about salvaging, I was talking about executing.

Say you're Bob or Larry working on Beast Wars. Hasbro comes over and says to you, "Hey, you have to include a couple of crazy, mixed up animals. We're calling them Fuzors. Have fun."

On paper it sounds ridiculous, but some decent writing made the concept plausible. Malfunctioning beast mode scanner. Perfect. No muss, no fuss. They could've approached it with a shitty attitude and said, "This is stupid. Fuck it, they scanned some mythical animals that were walking around."

It's all about the attitude they take, when being given stuff to work with from a parent company.

Furman's use of Arcee in '06 was probably the best possible use of the character and concept.

Not even.