#trans arcee

@lactaidsaveme made lovely art for us for chapter 27 of 200k+ word fanfic Addendum (an IDW1 Arcee Novel Fanfic) when Windblade is Cityspeaking with Arcee to help both of them get over losing Anode (& Lug), [not knowing the two adventurers were saved by Necrobot and brought forward in time!(albeit Lug of course did actually die and had to be resurrected by Anode and Velocity and Kaput during Transformers: Lost Light)] tysm! lactaidsaveme chose this particular moment of the Cityspeaking part of that chapter to do (which takes place after among other things Arcee's part in Megatron's trial... which she and Rodimus had planned to use to give Arcee a chance to speak on grievances of gender not just from the Decepticons, but the Autobots as well... which proved resoundingly effective and resulting in actual change. I won't spoil anything else heh).

Also yes this is a very windcee yuri chapter and like the tired and busy sapphics taganites they are they er do not realize feelings quite yet... we'll cover that more in chapter 40 (which is currently in the works) and have been building up to that across the chapters in between...

*checks notes (more like engraved into my memory forever by having worked on this book since 2021): so uh yeah uh if we're gonna fully use earth terminology for the sake of people who haven't read our writing and how we approach transformer assemblage and orientation when gender is in play rather than there just being a xeno parallel assemblage to it (other works we've written do this)... arcee in this is a butch (torque is a somewhat equivalent term)/trixic (altmodus and iterexper + taganite gender/orientation don't quite match 'enby lesbian' but we're just throwing this here as a way to show the loss in translation) transfem and roddy is a butch transfem who was in part inspired by her considering Roddy grew up in Nyon and, all she knew about her and her quests for justice and (gender) liberation read leading an antifunctionist resistance against Nova Prime in chapters 1 through 13 .... Chromia's a torque, Windblade's transfem (amusingly we were not the first writer to write Windblade this way by several years and we really admire the stories and writers that were among the first to tackle this), and Nautica's fluid though she/they doesn't quite have a handle on that yet (that will come up in chapter 35, following up on chekov's guns from chapters 27 and 30...)* yeah so uh if you want trans and sapphic reads of characters there's way more in this book just be prepared for the first 24 chapters to also involve the horrors of fighting eugenics and the equivalent of fascism, the phase ii chapters are 25 - 28, phase iii 29 - 33, and there's postcanon thereafter, the victory lap as history continues arc as it were starts in chapter 33. We note which canon comic issues are relevant to specific chapters, starting with Chapter 20.

the arcee singularity is happening again & its happening in the fucking mainline

i can't believe idw1 arcee's first figure is a Blokees car!?!?!?!? I knew in my heart of hearts that someday she'd get a toy in toy form I'm just both amazed and surprised that Blokees did it first (after the g1/idw homage that was Titan Returns Arcee ofc, and as I've mentioned elsewhere she's gotten a bunch of homages including the newest blokees robot arcee having a helm stylized like hers)

the comic issue the Arcee car mode is from Robots in Disguise 2012 #4, I think it's the one of the only times we see her cybertronian car modes in Phase Two before she acquires her earth reformat

not in time for TDoV, but we finally finished the first chapter of Slay the Magnus, our Slay the Princess / Transformers fusion story featuring t4t lesbiab rodcee (different aspects of roddy's gestalt in this are the cybertronian equivalent of butch and some transfem and some both the story will get more into that later, arcee ofc is transfem there are zero ways i won't write that)!!!! do heed the warnings, the first chapter is just 1.7k words

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 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.

Here's the introductory paragraph:

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

also a brief fact check edit regarding HRT:

can't top coat arcee yet so will show alt mode later, but really had fun painting this arcee and sculpting the torso when we could, in the latter regard she will probably be one of a kind (green stuff was a lot of work) but in the former the reaper mini paints seem to be the right choice for replication, very proud of her. 💜 🏳️‍⚧️

hey y'all! we just finished a voice dub of one of our favorite issues of IDW1 especially for Arcee's (trans) narrative and arcs, and also it just has a really good plot of 'post-war' intrigue, and is the issue that introduced Aileron to the continuity, and Arcee's initial feelings towards her and newly arrived Camiens (after Windblade, Nautica, and Chromia, though her perspective probably applies to them too especially after the idealism she saw in Combiner Hunters), here you go :3 :

In this issue of Transformers' IDW1/IDW2005, "The Transgressors" (written by John Barber, edited by Carlos Guzman, Art by Andrew Griffith, colors by Josh Perez, letters by Tom B. Long), turmoil is afoot on Cybertron. The estranged brotherhood of Tracks & Needlenose is put to the test once more while Needlenose & the Decepticons allied with Galvatron vie for support from the ones in Iacon, tensely crossing paths with Way of Flame proselytizing Camiens Aileron, Sterling, & Swift who (currently) believe Optimus Prime to be a living god. Second in command of Autobots on Earth, Arcee, who provides the interior narration of this issue, continues her visit to Cybertron (after the Combiner Hunters one-shot) & is not particularly pleased with the current events, seeing the unrest & unhappiness of Decepticons whose dreams of conquest are easy to rekindle & the deification of her commander. She worries for the lost colony newcomers while struggling with taking a look back at her past from a tense exchange with Tracks, & the tumult that follows brings her to the governing halls of High Chancellor Starscream, elected leader of Cybertron who seems to be having a one-sided conversation with someone no one but he can see… & she pushes him to face the fact his authoritarianism will be his & Cybertron's undoing by bringing her conflict with one of the secret police to his doorstep. In the aftermath, wrangling wtih personal loss in the past & the bright hope she saw on the faces of the visiting Camiens, she resolves to make sure they never end up with the same pile of trouble & old wounds Cybertronians carry on average, much less herself…

Can't believe we're one of the first to voice dub Aileron! XD more than one of us definitely got a kick out of that.