Before we get into that, we want to note that, between Cybertronians, misgendering happens. Both instances shown are ones of gals getting called he by bots from Cybertron. For the first Anode (Arcee's missing trans lesbian blacksmith friend who helped Arcee with her health side effects stuff before she disappeared, Anode's disappearance in part the reason for Arcee's rampage in 1516 CE) is misgendered by her blacksmith pal Wipe-Out who didn't cross paths with her again before she took on a new shape (Lost Light #8). There is also the case of Nautica being misgendered by Krok when they first meet (Lost Light #18). In the case of the former, Anode explains some Cybertronian trans(femme) history to Wipe-Out to get across why she and her fellow adventurer partner and geologist Lug use she pronouns, which is a particularly important reveal in context with Arcee... ...that younger bots who did not live in the age of widely known gender variation Arcee did still tried to realize themselves, and did so from traveling the stars and meeting other peoples who did understand that, whether as part of the peacekeeper force known as the Primal Vanguard during the age of Nova Prime, or in the case of Anode (who didn't understand what the big deal was with "she" prior) and Lug, after fleeing Cybertron. (fun fact, Minimus Ambus, ie the Ultra Magnus who arrested Arcee, was part of the Primal Vanguard, which really shows how much of a rules stickler he was at the time when he arrested her). In the case of the latter, Decepticon deserter Krok already knew Nickel, a minibot Decepticon ex-secret police and Decepticon remnant commander gal from the genocidally destroyed colony of Prion, and didn't ask why Nautica used she pronouns, instead continuing on to be concerned about her possibly being an Autobot guard. Humans in IDW1 have also misgendered gal bots: a while back, just after Optimus's annexation of Earth, the President of the United States of America, a gal herself, assumed chubbily stout slope chested Camien spaceplane flyer Aileron was a "he" when she showed up at the White House demanding surrender terms, enraged over the death of Sterling by People's of Republic of China laser satellites (the USA and PRoC effectively teamed up against transformers after for a while), and didn't care when then Earth Defense Command commander Marissa Faireborn tries to say that Aileron might be a gal. (The Transformers #52)

When you started reading this article you probably didn't expect this to be the first speech bubble of Aileron's we showed given that she talks in several other issues we mentioned before this. EXRID is full of surprises, and there is so, so much story we are skipping for Arcee and everyone else by focusing on specific (not all) of the textual and blatant gender components. Two issues later Arcee argues with Aileron about this demand of surrender, their first talking to each other on panel interaction rather than just talking in a group.

The only funny thing about this rather heavy dose of mechanophobic (trans)misogyny Arcee is fighting is that Arcee's two, for the lack of a better or specific anatomical non-BBM term, back stacks, weren't drawn in this panel behind her back. The pair of them were quite literally part of the result of her first surgery, starting smaller and more angular, and they eventually became the blockiest while rounded parts of her body (save for their wheels) while she finds trust, euphoria, happiness, love, and eventually, peace. They are unironically part of her womanhood, and we love her for that.

To step aside from reading just the text again, we in part mention this because there has historically been contention around Arcee's various designs as being too stereotypically feminine (which is a whole other discussion that this article at large navigates indirectly and does not intend to answer in full), and we will note that some artistic interpretations aside her final shape and proportions we see in 2014-2018, when she really comes into her own regarding wisdom, love, and closure, is the most robust she had looked in that run since her first surgery and in other canonical media up to that point apart from the box art for Titans Return Arcee, who does take quite a few design and personality cues from IDW1 Arcee anyway (we'll get to that later). So the fact that an autocratic organic woman who is a repeat offender for abusing transformer women's autonomy in a rather vile fashion effectively called Arcee, who because of her transmedicalist surgery people or at the very least other transformers unconsciously think of her with she pronouns, something close to a transmisogynistic slur (we don't feel like stating it here) while threatening to hijack Arcee as a "fine upgrade", is just a level of head-reeling compounded nuance on gender and power dynamic issues we were not expecting to run into in First Strike. This is added on to by the fact that Shazraella likely does not know Arcee is trans unless she picked that up from Antagony's brain or torturing Windblade. To us this really leaves Shazraella as a love to hate kind of character, and the pyrrhic victory Arcee and her team have while death looms all the more satisfying (sadly, as previously mentioned, separating Shazraella from Antagony causes Antagony to die. Her funeral is shared with Sideswipe’s. Gosh Antagony has had it rough in Transformers). This just goes to show the somewhat intriguing truth that when with careful consideration the list of characters who aren't Jhiaxus or Shockwave who are transmisogynistic towards other characters in IDW1 is significantly larger than it may seem at first. On a lighter note...

Perchfriends. Is Aileron a first timer to this because she likes Arcee or does OP #17"The Falling Chapter: 3 Ground reveal amidst the political chaos of the arrival and machinations of Onyx Prime that Aileron back in the day on Caminus...

She was perching on her own long ago. This had to be intentional after Aileron started to have a bigger role, right? Right?

Really everything The Falling from OP #15 to OP #21, shows Arcee fully coming into her own and getting over her last stand alone behaviors and loving herself more, in part because someone who understands her deeply kept looking out for her, Aileron, - the two have their first kiss. This is not important in terms of it having a factor on her gender euphoria stuff directly, but rather since that is not everything and already has been working on the physical component, it is a reminder that she can share love with someone… …something she struggled to believe about herself, which was in fact a reflection on her own gender struggles, feeling that she would be alone in violence after her old violent world died. Victorion's internal monologue also notes in that issue that Arcee wants to stop being a warrior, all of which shows the wisdom in part of this issue being wisely chosen to be part of the multi-continuity anthology Transformers: Best of Arcee, specifically everything from her daring escape from the Maximals and Liege Maximo to the kiss with Aileron.

Aileron gives Arcee a life-saving wake-up call and waist-check while nearly title-dropping. Who kissed who first?

Optimus Prime literally is saying that Arcee’s general course of action to take down Jhiaxus’s schemes and Jhiaxus himself was “keeping power in check.” OP’s tendency to not do anything about torture aside including by his own hand, the message is pretty clear that she was in the right and her arrest was baseless. That, and Optimus basically has a “let’s go lesbians” moment imparted to Arcee shortly after.

Also for those looking for it since it doesn't appear much on the net at the time this article released this is the issue where Arcee and Aileron are making out with each other that we showed the panel of at the beginning of the article.

The nicest way for her to say that she liked the choices Optimus made surrounding his death more than what he did with the rest of his life.

What one can see from beginning to end in the text itself altogether is the story of an alien trans gal robot who rose up against assignment to imperial violence and refused the gender others initially told her she was. in An astute ancient warrior who, in an age when gender variety for her species became obscure knowledge among the people she knew, endured trauma after trauma to attempt to affirm herself and survive, and risked it all to avenge herself and friends she thought she had lost and to fight for what she thought was necessity, and had an ethically dubious and potent literary catharsis before seeking a new shape again, and again, and again, and again. She brought herself together to attach her lonely self to a hierarchy she didn't trust, the Autobots, out of the hope of being in a position to make a difference going her own way when she could, including to ensure a new threat did not arise from them.

(We'll note this is from Transformers #50 so you don't have to go looking for it wondering where it is like we did.)

Though she would once more face the quandary of being attached to an empire (The Transformers #50, Unicron #3), she counseled and took actions to keep power in check that helped lead to the end of the hegemonies that had mistreated her and many other people for so long (The Transformers #42, Combiner Hunters, The Transformers #44, The Transformers #56, Optimus Prime #13, Optimus Prime #14, Optimus Prime #21, Unicron #4, Unicron #6). In the process she made lasting friends and found love that made this go around not so lonely. Arcee finally felt she had something to lose when the last apocalyptic crucible of the colonialism of the Thirteen she was deployed for in her younger years in their armies (Unicron #3) came to bear (Optimus Prime #24), and found hope and closure in the aftermath, part of a society she could finally accept enough and that accepted her in turn. (Optimus Prime #25)

Of course, the entirety of IDW1 Arcee's story did not release simultaneously or in a vacuum, so when Spotlight: Arcee released the reception on gender was more than a little different, which of course is part of what informed how that text was revisited...

Part Two: The Mess, and the Beauty

Yes, these are the colors of the most commonly used trans flag from 1999 CE made by a trans woman veteran and activist, Monica Helms, a color scheme coincidentally similar to what Arcee and some the Seacons also frequently have, and Honk intentionally was illustrated with the colors of the trans flag. Causality and iteration sure is transformative… *badunch*

When Spotlight: Arcee came out and for years after it drew flak for, understandably, not handling the topic of (alien) robot gals and gender well. Unfortunately, back in 2008 very little did inside or outside Transformers, unless the robots weren’t alien and were supposed to be like humans, which gets into a different can of worms. More generally Spotlight: Arcee was something that hurt or angered trans people and (trans) gals (including people we know personally) at the time because of any of the following:

• because of her depiction cutting close to, or more accurately, interpreted as the deranged murderous transfemme stereotype that transmisogynistic media circulates (we’ll get to that later)
• and among other reasons of course the ‘no women except Arcee’ thing it sort of set up in the comics (ironically the Gorlam stuff in Spotlight Hardhead and other stuff including Heart of Darkness particularly #3 breaks away from this, what with gal Gorlamites and ancient transformers from one of the Headmaster Wars. Less ironic and simply occurences includesThe Transformers: Drift miniseries that we aren't going to unpack here but could go on about seems to have some bots in red among the Circle of Light with very clear lanky and slope chested shapes which by no means is what all gals look like but was typical signaling within Transformers at the time, also evident with the blue - lavender - beige - gold gal with back stacks in Sunstreaker's squad during the Great War on a distant world in All Hail Megatron #14 "Replay") at the same time while, well…
• Transformer gals weren’t exactly prominent for a couple of years in any other part of new Transformers media, and had already had a fraught hard-fought for existence prior.
• and/or did not have the knowledge or context from study or their lives (will address this further in the article) to deal with the minefield that was that comic issue and the discussion around it, which is not tremendously surprising because even within the trans population as of early 2024 transmedicalism is not widely discussed (if we had a nickel for every gender expansive person we’ve explained what this is to that would be a lot of nickels)
• It also hurt that some people took advantage of the situation and were very gross and (trans)misogynistic and transphobic about the issue and (autonomy of) gender variation in transformers as a whole (no, we will not be providing examples)

And on top of that, Furman’s writing here is far from the only kind that comes off as ‘made a woman against one’s will by an evil arsehat for kicks.’ (just as an aside he seems to have come around to the gal bots idea, if the end of Regeneration One with Botanica, a cameo in the fan-comic Retcons #3, and the non-Transformers original series Astrobots with a few gal main characters so far and more gal robots regularly part of the story is any indication besides his own words of late on the matter, we have read the first five issues of Astrobots so far and love the writing) This kind of story element in fact is something that happens in fiction at large beyond Transformers before and after in comics, film, and videogames. We don’t feel like naming them because none of those characters that we know of really get their due the way Arcee does in having a story that expands on the introduction the way IDW1 later does. It is even something that one can find as an involuntary transformation going as far back as ancient times, for example for the prophet Tiresias by the gods in some versions of ancient Greek stories for killing a female snake, though notably in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Tiresias freely changes his own anatomy twice rather than the affair being involuntary. (we’re not defending Ovid’s reputation by the way just stating something he wrote)

Not going to get too deep into the late 2000s here but suffice to say, this is a complex topic that we will answer simply:

As sapient beings, we all try to put words to our stories, who we are, how we feel, what we want to do with our lives, our bodies, our expression, our communities. Even if they did not have gender, for indeed, not all human individuals do, some humans and human-bodied people themselves are agender for example. There is no reason they could not have something like it, with their own words for such expression, even if they are just as the vocabulary for more than two genders. Specifically regarding human bodied people, there are thousands of years of vocabulary and precedent prior to the modern day both within and outside the West both in the past and today is more varied than is commonly known, as described in "Priests of the Goddess: Gender Transgression in Ancient Religion," "An Anthropology of Gender Variance and Trans Experience in Naples: Beauty in Transit," "Are Pre-Colonial Genders Inherently "Nonbinary" or "Transgender"?"^{1, 2, 3,} and much, much more research and community memories than need to be listed here to give an idea.

In a dramatic twist of irony, in attempting to rationalize away transformer gender (yet again, the previous time also getting retconned by appearances of the likes of Elita One in Classics) Furman instead created a situation unlike nearly any other in big fictional media for exploring androcentrism of maleness normalized as standard and genderless. This kind of normalization is in fact the modus operandi of the patriarchy in real life as defined by Julia Serano, since anyone who isn’t a cisgender man is treated as weird and unusual in part because of implications around their genders.⁴ In that same piece titled Transmisogny, Serano also touches on how transfemmes in the late 20th century were depicted as murderous threats in media with some frequency.⁵

Later comics by other writers subtly navigated surviving a Cybertronian androcentrism by making Arcee a central character with her own agency and narrative in contrast and going against the cybertronian equivalent of that rather than simply seeking to live within it, and then brought in transformer (gal) characters from many of the lost colony worlds (including same gender loving gals like Greenlight and Lancer) who diffused the status quo… And especially, Windblade. Windblade, the savvy Cityspeaker diplomat warrior-politician who managed to get support from the Council of World’s populace to challenge Cybertronian hierarchy and brutality and make something better, and played a critical part leading them in saving multiple species and peoples therein from Unicron and Shockwave. You know, Windblade, who has a reverence from the Camien Way of Flame spirituality for reforging and transforming of the self and all things, and who, as mentioned earlier, is always respectful towards Arcee’s experiences and who she is, the two usually having a special trust in practical idealism and encouraging each other to hope in what sadly few issues they talk to each other. (regarding Windblade's point of view, some issues of note among many: Combiner Hunters, Till All Are One #1, TAAO #12, TAAO Annual, Unicron #3, Unicron #4, Unicron #5, Unicron #6).

Windblade sure is good at reminding people that guilt complexes won't save the world or make them happy. Arcee just wants to make sure she didn't scare Windblade off by talking about how their lives are all built on the colonial exploitation of Antilla that Arcee was deployed for in the age of the Thirteen. What are friends for, at the end of the world?

Two of the characters introduced in The Transformers: Lost Light are Anode and Lug, plucky scavenging homeless adventurer bots in love (or in the Functionist Universe, Anode is second in command for the Anti-Vocationist League resistance) generated as trans lesbians (with the help of Rachel Stevens) who were in a similarly subaltern situation as Arcee, in their case the two had to resort to sketchy jobs and stealing to survive in the hopes of one day settling down. All three played a part in the destruction of Cybertronian empires and getting their happy ending, all of which mentioned in this paragraph are stories that give IDW1 a special vibrance that we struggle to find in most other media about (alien) robots. Stevens' own words on the development of Anode and Lug as trans lesbians in an interview with Kori Anders at Women Write About Comics is thus among others: "It helped that it was, in Lost Light’s case, about two trans lesbians, because I’m one myself, and I could consult directly based on my own experiences. Several of my suggestions as a consultant weren’t used, but that’s perfectly okay–either I’ll use them sometime down the road, or someone else will.”⁶

When Anode and Lug hear about what happened to Arcee that the Lost Light crew is aware of from 1516 to 2014, surely it would be Ultra Magnus’s turn to get an angry stern talking-to from Anode and Lug, and at this point in the story he might actually listen.

Jenevieve Frank in navigating her own journey and awareness of trans history was able to advise writing for OP#25. Part of Franks’ view and intent on all of it was that Arcee’s loss of contact with Anode, the last sense of community she had, caused immense rage while also making her realize she was not guilty for what Jhiaxus did to her, and that she had a score to settle against him, a backroom henchman scientist strategist behind the set-up of Nova Prime’s plans for conquest such as with Monstructor. If you want to read Jenevieve Frank’s thoughts yourselves on how "Post" attempted to embrace Arcee’s introductory spotlight issue, most of the thread is also discussed on the wiki.

To quote Jenevieve Frank on this:

"We had 3 goals in OP#25, which I *hope* we cleared. 1. Tie Arcee's transition to the REAL trans women who had their lives ruined over the years by arrogant transphobic doctors who blamed their ignorance and mutilation on their patients rather than confront their own culpability

2. Connect Arcee to the legacy of trans women helping each over when the world has let us down. Even today, transgender women turn to OTHER trans women when they need advice on medications or more practical concerns because the system we deal with is still largely ignorant.

After OP #25, I hope you can go back and read Spotlight: Arcee as the story of a woman who struggled her whole life, betrayed by her doctor, disowned by her brother, and FINALLY found peace & community only to have it literally snatched away from her (THANKS NECROBOT)."

As we discussed with tfwiki editor Star Spangled Sam once, while Furman was not responsible for all the intentional trans stuff that used his previous work really well, if he hadn’t tripped into the mess that is this Spotlight in this specific regard we probably would not have the kind of trans rep we do now, and maybe not from Arcee at all. Which at least for us would be sad because…

Real Life Transmedicalism

Arcee’s experiences touch on something real about trans and gender expansive history. Not just the loneliness, being hated and feared, struggling with brutality, societal patterns of violence, trying to find community, healing, and a way to keep fighting and hoping, but also the difficulty of some trans journeys, mistreatment by the medical community, including regarding surgeries.

This will touch on systemic medical homophobia, transphobia, also some racism and ableism, so bear that in mind. For those who don’t want to read further we will simply say it is enough of a concern and historical issue that one can find the following listed as kinds of gatekeeping, and provide a link afterwards for people who want to skip to Part 3. Part 3 is the conclusion regarding Arcee’s IDW1 iteration. We went ahead and bolded the kinds of transmedicalism which are relevant to Arcee:

• Refusing to take on trans or gender diverse patients and clients
• Requiring unnecessary steps in order to access gender affirmation, eg. Mandating a psychiatrist or endocrinologist for assessment for all patients
• Delaying gender affirming care without a clear health-based reason, or for reasons of “watchful waiting”, a well-established conversion practice
• Not providing all the information or answers as to why a particular decisions has been made
• Requiring trans and gender diverse people to adopt a binary identity, or refusing to accept or learn about non-binary identities
• Requiring invasive and unnecessary examinations or testing in order to access care
• Engaging in conversion or aversion therapy (or Gender Identity Change Efforts)
• Any discussion of ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’
• Over-inflation of regret rates

This is the link to skip to Part 3. 🧡

To provide some historic context regarding the real world history of trans medicine specifically regarding providers and patients- and the awful thing known as transmedicalism. That is, usually the medicalization of the trans experience as needing treatment to be ‘fixed’ or cured, which was a prominent idea in the 1950s and decades onwards. On top of that, the surgeries that were framed as such a ‘cure’ would come with additional prior benchmarks including a vetting process, followed by intensive psychotherapy, and requiring an HRT regimen prior to bottom surgery.* The follow up processes of the University of Minnesota, who accepted people free of charge during the research project they ran but rejected married people or AFAB folks or folks with criminal records not related to codes on cross dressing, were egregiously awful, grading patients post-op higher if they married (and heterosexually at that) and performed ‘traditional’ gender roles, ‘passed’ in society, abandoned queer and trans friends, didn’t do sex work, did not use welfare. Those who fit within ‘failing’ marks due to not meeting those expectations became “well-known to [the] morals squad of the local police.” as the secondary goal of the Minnesota project was to erase homosexuality and gender difference, to make trans gender expansive folk invisible.

*(HRT before surgery is not always required now but people need to be able to give a reason they can’t or won’t take them before a gonadectomy because of WPATH guidelines, such reasons being that HRT would be "inconsistent with the patient's desires, goals, or expressions of individual gender identity." The Standards of Care have been significantly updated, now in it's 8th Editione and much more about the autonomy of gender expansive people.)

In the final years of the Minnesota project, high fees began to be charged as well, making attaining these gatekeeping services even more difficult, further damaging the U of M’s record with the trans community for decades afterwards.⁷

Even in decades after regarding the USA specifically, until the Affordable Care Act in 2010, coverage from health insurance for gender affirming care was few and far between. This left people either having to resort to traveling abroad to get surgeries as in decades before (not easy), paying a lot of of money to go to gender clinics (something the rich could do, and as we know, most gender expansive folk don’t fit that category) or turn to “sketchy” doctors who often mistreated them, issues including misgendering or unacceptable healthcare results. This left folks such as two trans women running an underground clinic to try and provide something else for people, and themselves.⁸ (and, interpretation of Section 1557 of ACA based on executive ruling and judicial precedent has gone back and forth on how it can cover trans health in what is largely tied to recognizing that gender discrimination is sex discrimination⁹)

This unfortunately tracks with Arcee’s story a lot. Given what has already been covered over Arcee’s anger at the assumptions and complete sidelining towards her and her narrative, the struggles with abandonment after transmedicalist experiences, with nearly no one for a long while to understand it when brought up, with no community to connect to, it would not be inaccurate to say that her story does indeed reflect realities about trans people whose lives have been messed with by transmedicalism and hierarchic society at large, and often having to turn to each other for what society won’t give us. Bear in mind that the rate of regret for gender affirming practices including surgeries is incredibly low¹⁰, 1 to 2% at best, which is lower or far lower than most surgeries including aesthetic surgeries sought by cisgender people. And the main reason for regret found by one study among others regarding trans surgeries generally was not surgeries themselves, but the difficulty/dissatisfaction/acceptance in life with the new or affirmed gender (IE, not being accepted by people), with less prevalent reasons being “failure” of surgery to achieve their surgical goals in an aesthetic level and psychological level.¹¹

It may seem overly obvious to some of you but there was a study (in which none reported outright regret and only a few expressed even occasional regret) that is probably needed to prove to people who don’t get it that “Most indicators of transsexual typology, such as age at surgery, previous marriage or parenthood, and sexual orientation, were not significantly associated with subjective outcomes. Compliance with minimum eligibility requirements for SRS specified by the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association was not associated with more favorable subjective outcomes. The physical results of SRS may be more important than preoperative factors such as transsexual typology or compliance with established treatment regimens in predicting postoperative satisfaction or regret.”¹²

Speaking of WPATH/the (Harry Benjamin) Gender Dysphoria Association and Harry Benjamin, the former outlined in its first standards of care stated that anyone ‘diagnosed with transexualism first needed to be treated by procedures commonly accepted as appropriate of such diagnoses.’ As the American Scientist article we’re linking here states: “This decision to gatekeep transition based on mental health was not supported by any research at the time; rather, it was based on cisgender doctors’ biases and perceptions of what was best for transgender people and for society at large. For them, the goal of early gender-affirming medical interventions was not merely to alleviate the patient’s suffering, but also to produce a “successful woman” in the eyes of the medical establishment and of society at large.” Harry Benjamin, a well-known endocrinologist and sexologist, created categories of five different types of transgender people, only one of which had the title “true transsexuals.” “A common criterion for differentiating between these types was one’s intelligence, as measured by racist and inaccurate metrics such as the IQ test, and one’s mental health.”¹³

This is besides the fact that gender expansive people of color and folks not on the binary often would be refused treatment anyway or as noted before, if not straight or holding to reactionary expectations. For example, “to identify with a gender positionality outside of the binary (and, especially, outside of the transnormative) has historically meant losing access to care, and as a result, non-binary patients may find themselves using different language to describe their experience than they would in other contexts, simply to gain access to the care that they need."¹⁴

There are still messy things all over the place around the world regarding transmedicalism at the time of this article's release (for a recent example facing a lawsuit starting December 2022 last year one can read about this). Things have gotten better but having to go out of state / out of country / jump through hoops for surgery is still common, and starting HRT with a hospital can still be difficult and more easily done through affordable repro or LGBTQ+ health clinics that can only provide minimal HRT options (e.g. personal experience of our own, people we’ve worked with are awesome but only so much they could do with the only other way being a referral to an endocronologist until we ran into primary docs specialized in trans healthcare who could prescribe what we needed). And then in e.g. the UK the NHS for years as of 2024 has made people wait years to get HRT. DIY HRT is something that is around even without bans in part because of this. In Japan for another example of long-time gatekeeping and unnecessary procedures, under the “Gender Identity Disorder (GID) Special Cases Act,” applicants who wanted to change their gender documentation have undergo a psychiatric evaluation and be surgically sterilized, they also must be single and without children younger than 20¹⁵, and the and the Japanese Supreme Court in October 2023 ruled in 2023 that this is unconstitutional, but that the government must amend the law, and did not actually strike down the requirements as of early 2024.

Part 3: 2008-2018 Iteration Conclusion

So, with all this in mind, we want to revisit Arcee’s words in her introductory issue:

Jetfire: “Perhaps someone can still intercept them.”

Fortress Maximus: “Who?”

Arcee: “Me.”

Fortress Maximus: “You? The only place you’re going is back to your alcove in F-Wing.”

Arcee: “I’m going after them. It’s that… …or kill me now. I can find find them. I can stop this. It’s what I do. Don’t ask me how or why, but it’s almost a homing instinct. Me, Jhiaxus, his “experiments”... …we’re linked.”

Jetfire: “Arcee, what is it between you and him? Help us understand.”

Fortress Maximus: “Jetfire…”

Jetfire: “It’s okay. I don’t think she’ll harm me.”

Arcee: “You don’t even know you’re doing it, do you?”

Jetfire: “Doing what?”

Arcee: “‘She.’ We use ‘he’ among ourselves and don’t even think about it. It’s just the pronoun of choice, right? Haven’t you ever wondered why it’s ‘she’ and ‘her’ with me? It’s because you unconsciously sense a difference. Jhiaxus arbitrarily decided to introduce gender into our species and I was his first test-subject. He tampered with my fundamental C.N.A., and you know why? Because he was curious. Because he could! Clearly I didn’t measure up to whatever ideal he’d hoped to achieve and so he discarded me without a second thought, left me to this maddening maelstrom of contradictory sensory input. Now I simply can’t rest until everything he’s touched is wiped clean.”

IDW1 Arcee’s story as it grew is far from a mixed bag, we would hazard it is some of the best trans representation in fiction not just for an alien robot or trans gal narrative but for transness in general, in part since the not widely understood real trans issues her story parallels are rarely told in fiction with such care and attention while also getting to be a radical central character. Her reframing by EXRID accompanied by other women both trans and not brings her introduction in Spotlight: Arcee as that of a beginning of a relentless vanguard knight errant, and a direct successor of the fierce compassion evoked in the 1986 bio and her Sunbow depiction (oh yes, we will be covering the bio a bit further down, one of our favorite pieces of her and Transformers' early writing). One of her facing a world that expected her to be one way or the other, rather than choosing for herself, something that getting to do without having to fight every inch for it every day would lead to her love having a chance to blossom in full glory.

Influences, Predecessors, Unintentional Parallels and Impact

G1, IDW1, and WFC stylized Arcees teaming up with pals against the Decepticon and/or cybertronian patriarchy or bioessentialism generally would be amazing.

• "merciless lethal warrior"
• "intelligence, quick wit, and coolness under fire making her invaluable to the Autobot cause"
• 'underestimated by Decepticons for being a gal’ is sort of what’s going on but not just Decepticons. A lot of men call her crazy for reasons inextricable from the view and liminality of her particular gender experience in IDW1 (though she's most often underestimated as not being capable of anything but killing but that does allow her to surprise people too), including: Jhiaxus (Heart of Darkness #2), Chromedome (The Transformers #28), Blurr (Robots in Disguise #13), ?Prowl? + Bombshell cerebroshelling him say it via implication (RID #4), Jetfire and Fortress Maximus or their predecessors who didn’t know how to help Arcee during her prisron term put her in iso (Spotlight: Arcee), Liege Maximo calls her a violent loner, which while accurate in the past is said in a way that mocks the idea of her (currently) having friends (Optimus Prime #21), among others (don't worry the Autobot guys do get better at this, Blurr for example is a crucial ally for Windblade's politic of hope and thus helps change things for the better)
• 'very protective of her friends.' That’s what her rampage kicked off from, and it’s part of why she keeps pulling last stand antics and goes so hard to fight for someone she trusts. the sweet and kind portion comes out later in EXRID with increased frequency over time and carries over with the rest of her into other stories she’s in as mentioned previously.
• an underestimating enemy’s "hydraulic hoses sliced to ribbons”… well, Arcee certainly has been using swords to cleave through enemies' bodies and guts therein…

Arcee so far is the kind of robot vehicle gal who usually fires holdable big weapons over the shoulder or two-handed rather than the side of her forearm or out of her palm, whereas Strika looves having integrated explosives all over herself. To each their own.

Sunbow G1 Arcee was introduced with flair, a valiant, stalwart, playful, and sweet bot in The Transformers The Movie that released in 1986. She held an important role as a gunner presiding over many of the gun batteries of Autobot City, proved a skillful firearms combatant, and had a savvy flirting while exchanging who was saving who routine with Rodimus, and showed a great deal of soft encouraging care for emotional, compassionate, and brave Daniel Witwicky. The same human who later in the show (several episodes after Arcee wields Galvatron’s fusion cannon to great effect) she forms a binary bond with to save Daniel's life, the two excelling together in combat and having a close familial trust.

At TFCon Chicago in 2022, the original English-language voice actor for Arcee, Sue Blu, who among other endeavours was later the voice director for many projects including Beast Wars, spoke on a panel (among several she spoke on) where someone asked her something along the lines of her view of Sunbow Arcee, and she replied to the effect of ‘she’s someone strong and brave, and compassionate, but also lonely.’ (we wish we had had the foresight to write down the person's question and her reply, haven’t been able to find a recording online, it was one of the one’s where she was speaking with Ron Friedman among others on Saturday 10/22/2022. We'll note here Friedman, who has written for a lot of shows and film, as a writer for Sunbow adamantly pushed for female transformers and Arcee to be in the show for years.)

Someone got promoted! Leader of her people came close to happening a second time too...

Energon Arcee’s helm is the first to have a tail crest that her IDW iterations are known for. She is presented as an idol and leader of her people, the Omnicons, and can do more than hold her own in a fight (such as in the episode where she is riding Omega Supreme into battle guns blazing), a ferocity we also see with 3h Arcee, a Wrecker spec ops variation of her character who struggles with the loss of her binary bond partner Daniel and takes on a spider alt mode after (she is very pretty in trans colors, gah), and in… Devil’s Due Press's G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers.

If we all had a nickel for each time Arcee has punched a Decepticon leader in the face, we'd all have two nickels by 2018, and it wouldn't be strange at all..

G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers: The Art of War (2006) Arcee is one who dives further into what people in the community and our friends have described as the tactile sensory vibe her Energon and IDW iterations present- she is quite ferocious in melee combat against Serpentor. Her general shape is similar to Spotlight: Arcee’s design in regards to the torso and lankiness- perhaps more than just inspiration, given that Alex Milne was the pencil artist for both Arcee in Art of War #4 and #5, and her Spotlight. [Sidenote: her flirting with Bumblebee is a parallel to sexual humor what with Arcee saying that if Bumblebee won the two’s race to the space bridge to Cybertron that rather than just kiss him she would 'rotate his tires.' (Art of War #3)]

In terms of impact- G1 stylized IDW Arcees have left quite a mark, including on each other, which we will get to further down. The first of Arcee to be affected perhaps was not an IDW Arcee though, but one from Fun Publication's Shattered Glass (whose toy representation is a repurpose of the 2007 movie continuity Elita One toy repaint of Energon Arcee). This Shattered Glass Arcee may have been derived from IDW1 Arcee’s introduction, but SG Arcee has an unfortunate characterization as merely battle and murder seeking along with influenced by “voices in her head” connected with her mind, effectively a Dissociative Identity Disorder stereotype, and then denied agency trapped in a bubble cut off from her “voices” without further navigation of her character at all after in that continuity. We feel obligated to note this would be far from the first time Arcee’s character was written with multiplicity nor the last- as mentioned before, Arcee in Sunbow bonded with Daniel, but there are some other examples... There’s Binaltech Arcee, who took a major role in the experimental project to create the Autobot gestalt Alternity of higher dimensional Autobots whose members were all gestalts unto themselves. In Armada/Legends of the Microns, the Mini-Con Sureshock, whose name in the Japanese and Korean versions of the show is Arcee, forms the combiner Perceptor with High Wire and Grindor. Years after this story in Transformers vs GIJOE Arcee is one of the Rescuebot component members of the combiner Defensor. Diving into this further is really something for another article, so we will simply say that Transformers is suffused with beautiful multiplicity narratives ranging from G1 Counterpunch to IDW1 Victorion to Cityspeaking between Cityspeakers and Titans to IDW2 Cyclonus and his dead partners and close friends in his mind (surprise there’s still gestalt stuff with this next entry after a brief related aside).

(re that aside, hi yes we’re plural, which is why you've been reading we instead of I throughout this piece because we worked on this together and wanted to communicate that. The meaning of plural we are using is a rather new one for another very old part of the human sapient condition, multiplicity of selves in the brain. In our case we’ve always been kinda like that and its actually good for our health, and the composition of who is active has changed drastically over the years. Not really the article to get into how Transformers and multiplicity narratives in depth beyond Arcee(s) much although with all the gestalt stuff and IDW2 Cyclonus there is certainly something to be discussed regarding Transformers with multiplicity in the future, so we will simply leave links to the intro to some in real life understandings here)

IDW1 Arcee’s introduction would not be the sole G1 derived Arcee of the same year, she was actually preceded by many months by Animated Arcee who had a difficult story and did her best to face it, and whose own tale would end up affecting IDW Arcee variations. A witty high level intelligence agent, and originally intended to be the bonded commander of Omega Supreme and carrying his activation codes, Animated Arcee treaded some of the ground on more of the gestalt aspects Arcee had had in other continuities though she only ends up activating Omega Supreme, not commanding him. The part of her being a teacher would come back around to effect IDW1 Arcee’s story (as a teacher to children at the end of IDW1) and more Arcees thus derived thereafter... Though her toy came with swords, she herself wouldn’t mention or wield them until the unreleased season 4 of the cartoon and convention-performed script readings in 2014 (Prevenge) and 2015 (The Return of Blurr, in which she is actually teaching a class on a field trip), where the swords were given to her by Ratchet as laser pointers for teaching but he got carried away with the design as mentioned in The Return of Blurr. During the Animated show, she had a lot of time either under medical vivisection or storage by the Autobots or incarcerated by the Decepticons for much of the plot of Animated and her memory meddled with by Shockwave trying to find the codes to Omega Supreme in her mind and thus goes up against Arcee's resolve, and was in that respect a guilt foil for Ratchet’s character until she regains her agency. There is some sort of connection to IDW1 Arcee regarding the vivisection of her head specifically as some of the art therein bears a resemblance to the Spotlight: Arcee covers, but it is a more certain thing to say that Animated Arcee largely had an impact on IDW Arcees than the other way around. Given that she maintained the same spirit of a deep value for autonomy and fighting for it but would be the first to communicate it in a formal teaching environment, encouraging young bots to learn to think and decide for themselves, something IDW1 and Earthspark Arcee would draw on (Optimus Prime #25 "Post", EarthSpark ep 8 “Decoy”), and IDW2 Arcee instead a more parental figure as a mentor to the young bot she with her partner Greenlight cared for and raised in terms of socialization, Gauge.

Sidenote:

While we are not sure what specific connection if any early IDW1 Arcee or for that matter War for Cybertron (the videogame) Arcee (who was the basis for Arcee’s frame in 2012-2014 EXRID) and Energon Arcee had with Prime Arcee and Microns Arcee Blade (who literally turns into a sword), we will note Prime Arcee anyway because of the parallels which we very much think are likely coincidental. Parallel storytelling if you will, that has continued to add to the current contexts of how people imagine Arcee today. IDW1 Arcee and Prime Arcee are similar in that Prime Arcee is a deadly close quarters combatant, dual wielding blades that instead come out of her forearms. She is rather snarky with a firm sort of compassion, and struggled to be close to other people because of battle partners she lost, rather than struggles over her gender and body- IDW1 Arcee on the other hand after trying to trust would lose friends Hardhead, Sideswipe, and Kup to battle, and spent five centuries thinking she had lost Anode. Videogame War for Cybertron Arcee in player vs player and escalation game modes does have voice lines such as “that’s what you get for looking at me funny,” “who said girls can’t shoot? Oh yeah, that guy,” when killing an enemy or “you better believe I throw like a girl” when doing so with grenades and so on but that comes from a different place than IDW1, we think (and also frankly the ironic shopping lines for picking up equipment in-game are just an import from 21st century human gal tropes). In any case, onto the first case of an intentional trans derivative of IDW1 Arcee…

The first non-toy continuity (Generations toys have an internal production continuity that is hard to piece together from the outside) character to clearly draw heavily on IDW1 Arcee would be Ask Vector Prime Arcee. A postwar biologist who in realizing herself and writing about gender "transformations" sparked an aesthetic revolution on Cybertron, AVP Arcee would be the first iteration of Arcee’s character to have released definitive trans journey writing (which had been in the works for a year) after IDW1 Arcee finally got some blatant nonspecific writing in that regard in Sins of the Wreckers #3 that same year in 2015, with this AVP piece having been in the works prior. Jennifer Alexis-Verity Carlo with the help of Rachel Stevens wrote a Cybertron that did have male and female genders but had not yet grasped the idea of realizations and actuations of, or rather “transformations” of gender, which Arcee would happen upon while at a field study posting on an organic sapient populated world where some of the people there did navigate such transformations. With that context, she thus recognized her own dysphoria about having been assigned maleness. Her paper on the subject would lead to Cybertron embracing and navigating the idea, with some people merely changing pronouns and choosing genders, and others such as herself reformatting to more euphoric shapes with the help of CNA editing as part of the process, echoing both her original Spotlight writing and vaguely some journeys with hormone replacement therapy when accompanied by surgery (for those who don’t know HRT is not gene modification - it effects production of androgens and estrogens, however for some people it does effect genes which is currently deeply understudied. That aside epigenetics of gender journeys is something we are wholly unprepared to talk about). Out of this, Archadis was canonized as transmasc, Howlback got an additional trans gal canonization, and Overlord got gender expansive writing. (Ask Vector Prime/Facebook December 23rd, 2015)

Regarding Thrilling 30 Generations Arcee, she is described in her 2014 bio as a deadly and speedy ambushing warrior, and one of the most dangerous Autobots. Her early concept design stages was a partial basis for IDW1 Arcee’s look from “The Becoming” up until going to Earth, with Alex Milne working out her design for that issue years before it or her sword wielding toy that came with The Transformers: Robots in Disguise #27 Dark Cybertron Chapter 11 “Black Planet” released (the issue after “The Becoming”), bringing in more elements of her IDW designs and aesthetics of the universe earlier on, which is part of why the character and toy look so different. The toy would be the basis for 2015 Combiner Hunters Arcee, who was much of the basis for IDW1 Arcee’s look in the oneshot Combiner Hunters “Uneventful Night”, with the stealth armor deco featuring before and after in The Transformers #42 “Now On Earth” and in #44 "Transgressors,” the color scheme instead on the robust earth mode frame she acquired that Andrew Griffith introduced prior based on a Lotus Elise (we feel obligated to mention that he also designed Aileron, and Kei Zama would be the one to draw the two kissing for the first time, the colors for Aileron and the smooch by Josh Perez and Josh Burcham respectively). Effectively given that they are linked directly with IDW1 Arcee, this does make the T30 and Combiner Hunter toys possibly trans iterations at this point (although the toy designers were probably not thinking about this), though without knowing more about the Generations continuity it's hard to say. We’re going to have to hold off on talking about Arcee toys and toy designs at large in this article alone, save for the toy of her that does take body design cues from the comics...

Everything comes full circle from IDW1 to Sunbow when Arcee’s Titan Returns toy was released. Her bio states that her binary bond partner Leinad (or you know, Daniel inverted) has regenerative healing powers that affect the binary bond partner, allowing the two to be a self healing battle berserker duo. This Arcee comes with pistols (that strongly resemble the rifles she used early on in EXRID) and her car hood on her back doubles as a shield for herself or hoverboard for Leinad, and her design, a retool from TR Blurr, is a hover car with big ankles and bulky arms with large rounded shoulders with small shoulder stacks resembling G1 and early IDW1 back stacks (apparently these have an official name now for BBM Arcee at least, they’re called “boosters” in the instruction manual for Threezero DLX Arcee, which may be due to having engine/thruster exhausts in the back/bottom of them). Leinad forms a helm for the two that has chin armor, helm guards, a crest light, and pink audials reminiscent of IDW1 Arcee, and in robot mode resembles Daniel's exosuit.

This Arcee’s tie in marketing material that preceded her for the Power of the Primes poll to fans for who should be a Matrix-bearer Prime (and thus get a toy as one), had her position be one of honor, and that she would abandon her past as a warrior and focus on reparations for damage caused by the Autobot-Decepticon war.

Doing collages like this feels very 90s y’know

Thereafter- many of Arcee’s G1-esque characterizations increasingly draw on each other with more of the IDW Arcee aspects. For example, in the comic crossovers such as with Star Trek vs. Transformers, Transformers vs. GIJOE, An Arcee Sort of Day (Synergy) and the Transformers vs. Terminator, along with the non-comic Transformers Role-Playing Game (a tabletop rpg within Renegade Game Studios’s Essence 20 system), Arcee is shown across respective iterations as her astute questioning fiercely sweet self reminiscent of the near end of her IDW1 arc’s personality and often wielding swords. In IDW 2019 she is all that while often opting for a field/sniper rifle instead of the blades she also has (Transformers #35, #36, #38, #39, #40, Fate of Cybertron), and with a family: her romantic partner Greenlight, and the two’s mentee, Gauge. Though My Little Pony/Transformers Arcee is not shown with a blade, her sweet, thoughtful, and ferocious gusto is much the same, facing off against Starscream, Crasher, and in battle against King Sombra among others. She is shown dating Greenlight in this continuity as well, the two teaming up with the pony couple Lofty and Holiday against Killmaster in Magic of Cybertron #1 “A Real Mother.” (Lofty and Arcee were both first voiced by Sue Blu in 1986 in theatrical feature films for Transformers and My Little Pony respectively, which does make them working together particularly awesome) Last Bot’s Standing, representing the end of a licensee’s publishing era of Transformers comics, featured art of her on the cover of LBS #1 and one of her swords among other swords through Rodimus’s back on a variant cover, apart from participating in the Great War shown within a comic panel of #2, specifically facing off against Flamewar as part of a larger combat.

You might think that before 2022 only Energon, IDW, and SG Arcees have a large amount of battle thrill, but make no mistake, Cyberverse Arcee laughs a lot when she's shooting guns, frequently, and it's definitely genuine.

Cyberverse Arcee, an animal loving and occasionally relic hunting adventurer and fierce warrior problem solver, while not usually shown in melee combat save for in the Transformers: Battlegrounds videogame where she does use leg sweeps extensively, and training with a spear and using the stocks of guns during the war with the Quintessons in the show, she does fight with a large amount of audible enthusiasm, whether wielding large and very large firearms or firing pistols while riding Grimlock or Chromia in alt mode into battle against Decepticons. An enthusiasm traceable as a recurrence from IDW to Energon at the very least as something that is unintentionally revisited for her character, but given that some of the writers for Cyberverse such as Maasai Singleton and “I AM THE GAY AGENDA” Mae Catt (we’re so proud of you for saying that, Mae, if you happen to be reading this, wish we had been at the con where you said this and mentioned Arcee) also have a hand in EarthSpark, and on the matter of drawing from IDW at large Nick Roche who extensively wrote and did art as part of that era including for IDW1 Arcee is a character designer for EarthSpark…

Among others, EarthSpark Arcee is another convergence. She has an earth muscle car alt mode, the second Arcee to do so after Terminator Arcee, with wheel bearing backstacks in a similar position as IDW1 Arcee, but with more of a 1950s space car shape. She has a rather robust design, with a gray face like how she was colorized late in the Optimus Prime portion of IDW1 (colors in those issues by Josh Burcham, Priscilla Tramontano, John-Paul Bove, and Livio Ramondelli) with a G1 styled helm and pink and white frame color pattern with some additional gray, and like TR Arcee, is physically notable among other respects for being an Arcee with a rather flat chest, though hers is still rounded in a slope to the shoulders. This Arcee is presented as benevolent trickster sort of teacher and martial arts expert, who teaches the Malto kids to speak up for themselves when something is wrong: via getting them to get frustrated with busywork drills instead of learning how to fight, and she sure has a way with words on the conclusion for that: “this world will take advantage of you any way it can. If things don’t feel right, you gotta speak up.” She pulls action stunts unarmed such as leaping onto Soundwave in flight and punching him until falling out of the sky, dodging a blaze of incoming cannon fire while sprinting towards it, and makes use of frequent ax kicks, while having quite the benevolently prankstering sense of humor. She is certainly a new idea of Arcee- and we are certain you can spot echoes of previous iterations, and well, Robbie did ask if she’d teach the kids (himself and his sister Mo included), her “berserker battle rage.”

The Marvel Royal Stamp bio continuity's (yes really) Arcee is another full circle iteration like Titan Returns Arcee before her. James Roberts describes her as “fast, deadly, and utterly relentless,” renowned for her sword and sharpshooting skills, from the Darklands (which was also where IDW1 Arcee was from), with “a long and violent history that predates the war,”… but joining the Autobots, going to Earth, and befriending Daniel Witwicky helped her to trust people more and find peace and closure. In this case, the sources are directly stated: Sunbow Arcee and Daniel with the binary bond connection, and that “under IDW’s watch she became a much beloved central character,” and a “key supporting character,” in Robots in Disguise and Optimus Prime.

We didn’t touch on Skybound's Energon Universe Arcee because we didn’t want to put pressure on the new series but let’s just say that in regards to her personality and actions we are very happy with her depiction so far.

Just a note- if one wants to get an introduction to Arcee in IDW and Marvel series but want to read a lot of comics, we highly recommend the Best of Arcee comic collection that comes with comics from IDW1, IDW2, and an issue of Marvel where her values of pacifist autonomy are spoken to by her to help Rodimus from falling too far into violence as Galvatron wanted, foiling his plan. There’s also a lovely art gallery in this anthology.

Transformers is an inherently iterative franchise. Its characters are reimagined over and over, different aspects emerging and departing and reemerging over the decades.

You could jokingly say Transformers is inherently trans and it would be redundant in one respect, but also Transformers definitively and irrevocably is trans within the text now beyond accidental parallels of (gender) aesthetic journeys or intentional ones outside of a trans framework in canon at large, or talking about the gender retools of toys that would require another entire article to do justice to and would be inaccurate to merely call trans. Such a thing in te former case would start with talking about G1 Lightspeed wanting to be a spaceship, carried on through other things to IDW2 to where young bots choose alt modes based on what they want to do with their life and/or what resonates with them (Transformers #3, #5), and at this point in time, addressing how two of the the Terrans in EarthSpark, Twitch and Thrash, excitingly navigated choosing an alt-mode before pronouns or gender terms were used for Twitch onscreen (maybe happy coincidence, maybe not), and in Thrash’s case and that of his siblings Jawbreaker and Hashtag they figured out some gender stuff revealed to be in part through their gestalt with Robby and Mo (as shown in Season 1 Episode 10) before choosing an alt-mode. Nightshade Malto had a journey of pronoun (they/them) -> concept of altmode as self and expression -> altmode -> gender term (nonbinary), at first not wanting an alt-mode at all until Tarantulas explained to them that an alt mode is not just about protection or utility, it is part of who you are and is a way to express yourself. So at least you can say that textually the Maltobots are not cisgender as long as one keeps in mind that does not in itself signify transness, which really raises questions about the rest of the bots too.

Where canon is now with gender and alt-modes has come a very long way (and Arcee getting to shine more of late is certainly related to the navigation of the transformer aesthetic self and variation since she no longer is one of the few gals on the team/in a story), and it does touch on IDW1 Arcee’s life too- the shape she got when she was forged was the same as her twin Galvatron, who in his IDW1 iterations turns into a tank or a cannon- not a car, as Arcee does after her first surgery. Her growth in happiness long term in the comics parallels her moving from two hovercar alt-modes and thus entwined robot mode shapes towards ones with wheels at EXRID’s start in The Transformers: Robots in Disguise, finding a balance between angular, rounded, sloping, and robust curving shape in the form she takes up in “The Becoming,” (which of course also in part happened for toy tie-in reasons if not mainly because of that) and especially, the Earth mode she adopts that shapes her robot mode in a similar manner. While the text does not actually say what Arcee’s precise feelings about her altmode are or the shape of her body on any level of detail, we see it in every shape her body takes thereafter- since all the reformats were of her choice, and given how (trans-)scanning works, her last one working with the provision of earth modes she scanned on the way to Earth, to use Optimus’s exact words for the team at large: “It’s time to go. We’ll scan new alt-modes on the way.” We can fairly infer she reformatted fully by herself either by trans-scan (as Jazz did in a flashback in Optimus Prime #23 when Jazz first arrived on Earth) or with some help. A full inversion of how she was introduced that embraces that part of her journey in context with the other writing going on.

There’s always more than meets the eye. IDW1 Arcee, a trans iteration building on a nexus of different imaginings of Arcee iterations including, likely unintentionally, in part as she was originally introduced decades before in contrast with a society where her gender experience faced discrimination (while we’re referring to The Transformers Universe #4 bio for Arcee, we’re not currently prepared to talk about how the first draft of TFTM written by Ron Friedman touches on this in its own way, and think others already have), and became the author of her own body as part of her own story, and helped others to tell their own… …and outside of the text, at least one of those people in turn was able to help Arcee doing so to be firmly established in canon. Arcee has, alongside her fellow gender expansive bots, some her friends, through the efforts of many writers and artists, created a deep textual tapestry of canon that on its own is a sparkful gem in trans (science) fiction and irrevocably a crucial part combined with the rest of Transformers, regarding, to quote Cyberverse Optimus Prime how; “everything in the universe transforms.” Further, her story navigates what it means to seek and have autonomy to transform oneself, as individuals, as communities, as worlds, as the cosmos. The prior quote of Optimus thus pairs quite well in terms with the final in-panel words of the IDW1 run, said by Arcee: “I heard what he said when he was alive… …and that was enough. He had his failings, yes. We all do. But believing in the future means believing we can change. The story of that change, the story of becoming what we are-what we were meant to be... ...that is the true history of the world. And this, children, is our future. this is our world.” Happy 40th anniversary to Transformers and happy 38th to Arcee, and if we're counting when the first draft of TFTM was put in (we are), happy 40th to her as well!

-With love and appreciation, and a big, massive thank you to all the people in the Transformers community we connected with for this along with online trans plurality spaces, entities including but not limited to loved ones and friends who have helped us with digging around and remembering canon, figuring out how to search for records of a not often discussed portion of trans and gender expansive history, giving writing feedback, looking over portions, discussing Arcee literarily, and generally keeping us company and encouraging us and all the incredible patience and kindness as we put together this piece over the course of a year at a difficult point in our life. In particular, for the many months of cheering on and supporting us in many ways including sometimes simply by being there when they could be whhile we labored on this, and regarding advising help on the discussion, writing, and research process of this piece we want to give a special shout-out to wiki editor Broadside and for this and for hosting the comic book club that led to us wanting to write out our knowledge at the time of trans history in relation to IDW1 Arcee when Spotlight Arcee was coming up on the reading list, to Prime Radiant, and who along with gladiatrix helped us with figuring out some basic and nuanced html coding,

Pluralsword (she/xey/they)

P.S. here’s the thing about BBM Arcee’s stacks’ having an official name that is more specific than the colloquial ‘backpack’ that encompasses many Transformers toys which doesn’t really aptly describe what this part of her anatomy is or in the case of say, Animated Arcee, those parts of her are wholly separate from the small pack she has. Them being called boosters is probably an alt mode related thing to BBM Arcee since she literally has her exhaust/thrusters in there which combined with the default head coming with yellow optics and a more pronounced chin does make us wonder a little bit if someone was thinking of Phase 1 IDW1 Arcee for making this non-transforming figure although we’re doubtful it’s more than a coincidence… the boosters can be moved around a lot which is fun! We very lucky to receive a DLX Arcee as a gift she is a delight.

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