Per a few little off-hand mentions in ex-RID and SOTW, Arcee became a follower of Jhiaxus and actually volunteered for his experiment, obviously because she'd realised that she was trans by then.

So the original, terrible "Jhiaxus experiments on hapless victim, who is driven mad by becoming a woman" story has been retconned into the more palatable "transgender woman volunteers for Jhiaxus's experiment, but is driven mad by side effects that he either didn't expect or didn't warn her about."

 

Really liked this issue!

Not all that surprised by the Arcee/Galvatron reveal, although it does explain why Galvatron was so chill with Arcee. Do you think she remembered? Or is that good ole info creep up to its old tricks.

I find it quite sweet Chela and Metrotitan were a thing.

Alchemists is great. More of him please.

The thing with Primus' face is really interesting. Him and Unicron have been shrouded in mystery forever, so to get some solid proof that one of them exsists (Or at least, has a face) is great. Especially since we know Unicron will be making a future appearance.

My one complaint is the Livio art but I think that's a given these days. IT'S a real shame because his style suits this sort of story. It's distinctive enough that it does really feel like we're hearing a story from another time and place. But IT'S his storyboarding that I really struggle with, figuring out how one panel leads into another can be a real headache sometimes.

 

Not to be a jerk... But I wish the entire issue was drawn by Zama.

 

So I went back and skimmed through season 2 of xRiD and I think both Galvatron and Arcee had suffered a bit of info creep when they first met tracking down Spike and Jimmy - however Galvatron was clearly drawn to Arcee in a curious way. By the time they meet again in the swamp, its clear that Galvatron has already remembered - and the brotherhood comment starts causing Arcee to remember. When we get to their meeting in the volcano - both clearly have fully recalled and know who each other are and their shared history. Then we have Arcee's regret post Galvatron's death expressed to Prowl and Sideswipe.

What I found more interesting through this skim though is the duty that Alpha Trion gave to Arcee - that she was to be responsible for keeping the Primes in line. It completely changes her decision to follow OP to Earth at the start of season 2. It's a running theme that other bots thought she would want to meet with the Camiens and find out more about female transformers, but she asks to join Prime and go to Earth instead claiming she "always wanted" to go there. At the time, I assumed she wanted to keep hitching her wagon to prowl, or maybe sideswipe, but now, is the true answer that she is keeping tabs on Optimus to make sure he doesn't slip into the same pattern of rule as other Primes - is she honoring her charge given to her by Alpha Trion?

 

A really great story, shame about the art. I love the Arcee/Galvatron relationship makes me wanna reread some older stuff. Kind of makes me sad he's deadzo right now.

 

I couldn't help but laugh at this statement.

 

So I had a thought re: the whole battle. Specifically, that it wasn't a battle, but a mass blood sacrifice to raise Titans.

What brings that to mind is how Onyx very specifically is NOT surprised by the Titans being raised. As if he knew it would happen.

 

Or perhaps Liege Maximo knew, and directed Onyx to take the actions he did. It struck me as odd A. that someone like Onyx would so willingly and openly side with Alpha Trion and his lot and B. That Liege Maximo was there, but kinda just chilling out the whole time.

 

Yeah, exactly. It seems really weird, and then when you slot in the notion of "what if they knew the Titans were there and could be raised via blood sacrifice", everything clicks into place.

 

I think Jhaixus most likely did not know about the side effects.

 

I agree. I personally believe that this is all a long con on Onyx's and Liege's ( and perhaps Megatronus) part so that A: The titans are raised.
and B: That both of their forces are now inside of Crystal City, so perhaps they secretly can lead their uprising. My only wonder is what happened to Onyx and Megatronus after the thirteen all leave Cybertron (Besides Alpha Trion). My fanon is that Onyx leaves during issue 34 of Ex-RID, just before Galvatron enters, and leaves his loyal follower Rhinox to ensure a safe departure, knowning that Galvatron would most likely kill him. For Megatronus, I believe that when he killed Solus Prime, and his name was struck from history, he was banished, much like Liege Maximo. But that's my 2 cents.

 

Well there is another thing that is odd. We see here that Onyx is the one that brings Leige into the fold. But we know that 4 million years later, Liege uses Megatronus to kill Solus - this leads to Onyx siding with Micronus and Nexus against Megatronus. They create the first headmasters where Onyx's beastformers become heads for for regular Cybertronians using the enigma - possibly inspired by knowledge of ancient titan masters such as Infinitus who was a follower of Nexus. Megatronus is defeated - but Galvatron, disgusted by the break in hierarchy of merging beast and standard cybertronian goes after Nexus. When Galvatron kills Nexus, the other Primes bail - but Infinitus pledges allegiance to Onyx before the latter leaves Cybertron... and then for some reason, Onyx forces lay seige on Prima's citadel where Nova and Galvatron hold them all off. Did Prima side with Liege and Megatronus - or perhaps, was Onyx upset that Prima didn't take a stand... that seems to be the part of the story that I don't understand.

And if we are to believe that Onyx is Evil... why does he seem to be the one that took a stand against Liege - assisting the Titans in banishing him on Carcer, defeating Megatronus, and using the Enigma to combine beast and standard cybertronians. It almost feels like history is painting him as evil for wanting beastformers to be equal to other cybertronians and that the ones who wrote the history books like Nova and Galvatron were racist and totally against this - actually, knowing soundwaves love of beastformers, I can easily see him being swayed to Onyx side.

 

Or side procedures he did at the time or... well, whatever the case, I wanna see it ^^

 

I believe it's been stated that there were multiple sides in the war of the 13; it wasn't just Onyx and Nexus against Maximo, Megatronus, and whoever was allied with them. Prima was likely his own side, and therefore another enemy of Onyx's.

Likewise, I don't think going against Maximo and Megatronus necessarily makes Onyx good, particularly when he was the one who brought both of them into the fold in the first place and we saw him starting to make up his own legends and myths to manipulate people; even with the oppression of the beastformers, he's clearly been up to shady stuff. And, of course, there's the possibility he had been working with Megatronus's forces all along to bring out the Titans and make all of the tribes form an alliance.

 

I didn't read any of those off-hand mentions as Arcee identifying as transgender prior to falling in with Jhiaxus. I certainly agree that she volunteered, but neither had a clue what was going to happen. I do think you are partially right in that the Arcee's whole arc can read very well, if it is read as a story of her making peace with her present life, but not with her being transgender to begin with.

Additionally, IDW has this entire problem of failing to explain in any coherent way how a species without gender is able to have the concept of transgender. You can't have the second without the first. They would be far better off to say that "there have always been female Transformers, and these characters have always been female" or something else explaining how on Cybertron there are ONLY males while elsewhere there are females and males. Otherwise, it's a massive hole in the storyline because as far as we know, the populace of Cybertron - at any time - has no clue there is anything other than themselves. Until we reach the point in Cybertron's past where there are males and females on planet, the Cybertronian Transformers don't have anyway to explain gender concepts as there is only one "gender:" males.

Either way, Arcee's story is STILL screwed up and I don't know if any of the retconning that has been done thus far fixes that. Her story, though one largely of making peace with one's past, is STILL offensive from the get go to insinuate that being trans is ONLY about our bodies. Almost none of her journey is really about what it is to be trans, though she's somehow become the poster child for it in IDW. It is far more about her journey after being physically altered, without any standards of care, and the consequences of the crime done to her.

It is really hard to read Arcee's character because I feel her story, as it is told now, really devalues those of us who have looked in the mirror and fought spiritual and emotional and mental demons because what we see in the mirror does not match what our minds and hearts tell us, and those don't even match sometimes. There is SO much more to being trans than JUST what is between a person's legs, just like there is SO much more for every other human being. To say that being trans is just a body thing, as I perceive Arcee's story doing, devalues the person. Arcee doesn't show any of the signs of being trans (perhaps because until now we've only seen her as female and in this single glimpse she did and said NOTHING that indicated she was trans - not a single line of dialogue), and yet is presented as a trans character. We've seen her wrestle with being a male forced into being female, but not once has she ever even insinuated that the most secret desire of her heart was to be opposite of how she was born - again all of her dialogue come after she was changed. Because here is the real kicker: to be so completely female (for male transitioning to female, and vice versa for female to male), as Arcee is, is the goal of transitioning. You don't want to be what you were born as and it's detrimental to remain there. However, none of what was done to Arcee was good for her and saying the side effects of her treatment drove her mad doesn't make sense. You cannot MAKE a person trans, just as you can't make a person anything else. Either the writers trying to retcon this botched it so it is subtly worse than before or they really don't have a clue what they are talking about. Because by all accounts, Arcee was given an unimaginable gift and has nothing but sorrow from it, and that does NOT fit what we as humans know unless the recipient wasn't trans to begin with. Yes, Arcee has peace now, but she didn't for a loooooooong time. If anything, the way Arcee is presented is the antithesis of the most accepted treatment for gender dsyphoria in that her "surgery" does not actually treat the underlying condition of being transgendered, if it can be called that at all. Instead, Arcee finds peace in heart and mind through long, hard hours we never see and that begins what healing she's had (for the record, though surgery is last step in transitioning, the standards of care push for counseling for spiritual, emotional, and mental wellness often continue for years after).

So I have to ask, what side effects? Being singled out as different? Being psychotic? The first, sure, whatever. They second still doesn't fit.

Rant over, thank you for listening.

 

Can I say the shot of the celebration in the 'city' surrounded by three peeps who each utterly dwarf the city is pretty funny? ^^

Also I wonder if Chela is among the three in part to show off that awesome bird design... we saw so little of Chela at first, and I like that they're building him up more.

A couple things- transgender doesn't always comes with dysmorphia. Some people have sorta the opposite, where they're 'eh, this is ok,' and with transition go, 'and this is better!'.

As for side effects... we don't know what else was done but Arcee has literal Jhiaxus-sensing powers that lets her try and hunt him down. Odd sunrise? "Hey bots, that's Jhiaxus!". I have a hypothesis that Jhiaxus tried an artificial outlier treatment on her or something too.

It could be that Jhiaxus seriously messed up her nervous system and left all kinds of pain or something by accident- there was that line about sensory inputs.

In short, Jhiaxus is a mad scientist who maybe, upon finding one of the twins of Protohex on the operating table, went, "Ok, now, I know you're just here for a gender job, but how'd you like it if I messed with your core systems as part of my experiments on the cybertronian race? Continue to be unconscious if you don't object. Good." *Horrific machinery sounds begin*

 

Y'know, with Unicron's introduction on the horizon, I'm wondering if IDW are going a different route with his story now...

So, it looks like Liege Maximo appears from nowhere and gets brought into the fold by Onyx, which is something new - and establishes that all of the Primes in the story already knew one another, except for him.

It also seems like maybe Maximo knew the Titans would pop out of the ground and wasn't phased by seeing them; implying he may have already laid eyes on the 3 height-enthusiasts in the (even more ancient) past.

Then we also know Maximo manipulated Megatronus into doing his bidding down the line...sewing dissent and plunging Cybertron into chaos.

Aaaand traditionally, the Fallen only did the bidding of one entity....who brought chaos.....and happened to have a couple of big, curved horns on his head.

Could Maximo be the modern manifestation of Unicron, after his defeat by the Guiding Hand?

/Mad Speculation

 

Both Galvatron and Arcee normally go by 'of the Darklands,' but on the plaque of the Ark-1 Galvatron was 'of Protohex'.

I suggest during Nova's era, the Darklands and their association with Megatronus was a politically unpopular name so the 'official' version was he went by Protohex, but Protohex sucked so both twins prefer the Darklands moniker even after Megatronus became persona non grata as they actually knew people they liked in the tribe.

 

That's real good...

 

[QUOTE="ZeroiaSD, post: 14984399, member: 113075
A couple things- transgender doesn't always comes with dysmorphia. Some people have sorta the opposite, where they're 'eh, this is ok,' and with transition go, 'and this is better!'.

As for side effects... we don't know what else was done but Arcee has literal Jhiaxus-sensing powers that lets her try and hunt him down. Odd sunrise? "Hey bots, that's Jhiaxus!". I have a hypothesis that Jhiaxus tried an artificial outlier treatment on her or something too.

It could be that Jhiaxus seriously messed up her nervous system and left all kinds of pain or something by accident- there was that line about sensory inputs.

In short, Jhiaxus is a mad scientist who maybe, upon finding one of the twins of Protohex on the operating table, went, "Ok, now, I know you're just here for a gender job, but how'd you like it if I messed with your core systems as part of my experiments on the cybertronian race? Continue to be unconscious if you don't object. Good." *Horrific machinery sounds begin*[/QUOTE]

Ummmm.... not quite, I think. LOL I think you may be confusing a medical term with non-medical ones.

Gender dysphoria is the medical term for being transgender. To be medically transgendered, you have gender dysphoria. It is the medical diagnosis one gets to have the heavy lifting hormones or surgeries. One does not just show up to a endocrinologist and say "I want HRT" or to a surgeon and say "I want SRS." They ask for letters giving the diagnosis, and then they give treatment. To do things correctly, and legally, any doctor will ask you for the letter from your counselor, who also has to specialize in gender therapy or else they won't take it. Trust me on this one, or trust Google. LOL

Now, you are absolutely correct in saying there are different shades of personal acceptance by the individual patients for gender dsyphoria. That is absolutely correct. What works for one person may be X, while another person may have to go a step farther to Y, and still another to Z. However, the diagnosis - so long as it is actually diagnosed by a doc - remains the same. Yes, one can say "I am going to live full time as the opposite gender," and never actually get a diagnosis and still be trans, but they could also not be and be something else, like gender non-conforming or some other term (some of which could be considered offensive) because they don't feel they fit traditional norms. However, if a person is trans and transitioning, if they are doing it under a doctor's care, will have GD as their medical diagnosis.

And I pray there's never a doctor doing a "gender job" like you described. That's terrifying.