Because it would be interesting to see her relationship with Megatron, because it would be nice to see a Go-Bot be something other than cannon fodder and really get incorporated into the Transformers universe, and I think she would just be an interesting character to see more of (She joined the arena before Megs and was part of Clench's inner circle, I imagine she was drawn to these things because she was already a pretty violent and perhaps twisted character, why not explore that?), lastly, if people really want to see more fembots/femicons, she (Technically, since Hasbro owns Go-Bots now) predates all other fembots in Transformers media, it's about time she got some time in the sun.

 

What 'relationship' with Megatron? Standing in a crowd whilst he kills her buddy does not constitute a relationship. And Hasbro did not acquire the rights to Go-Bots until 1991, there were plenty of fem-bots around before that, and if you really want the 'first' Fembot, that honour would probably go to the Diaclone red Tracks, who is now called Road Rage.

 

Crasher existed in the Go-Bots before Road Rage, Elita-1 or Arcee (Granted, that was before Hasbro acquired them, but, since Go-Bots are now technically part of Transformers, Crasher comes chronologically before the others).

Also, she was part of Clench's and (Subsequently) Megatron's inner circle in the arena, at a time when that basically consisted of the two of them, Frenzy, Rumble, Betabear, Skyquake and Stalker, I don't think it's too far of a stretch to assume there is some relationship (And I'm not necessarily saying a romantic relationship per se, just how they relate to one another, like Megs' interactions with Starscream or Overlord are clearly different than those with Needlenose, for example), between the two.

Is she a high ranking 'Con like Skyquake was? Does she command her own unit? Did she ever make a powerplay the likes of 'Screamer or Scorponok? What role did she play in the Decepticon uprising? What made the arena attractive to her in the first place? These are the kind of questions I would hope a spotlight would answer.

Edit: You may say that Diaclone red Tracks came first, and you might be right as far as toys (I don't know if Crasher had a toy either here in the U.S. or Japan before Diaclone existed, but I'm assuming Diaclone was around first), but that red what-would-become-Tracks had no characterization. As far as characters go, Crasher came first.

 

I refer you back to my original post on the matter, she's a nobody, who did nothing, and because of Spotlight Arcee, isn't even a she. She's no more deserving of a Spotlight than hundreds of other background characters, and certainly would be waaaaaaay down the list of just fembots. If you had suggested that she be resurrected and be given a small role in one of the ongoings, I would have been sympathetic, but a Spotlight? No way Jose.

 

It's not that hard

Jhiaxus Succeeded, HE introduced Gender into his race, Arcee was Merely the first and happened to go crazy from being a prototype, No other bots noticed the Femmes introduction into the population, Like Arcee instinctualy they are known to be different but at the same time are seen as seemingly natural

 

To be honest, we can't be sure of that, there are other fembots in Megatron Origin, and like I said earlier, we don't know if Jhiaxus made other female Cybertronians after Arcee or if he found a way of randomizing gender on all bots culled from the Matrix after he completed Arcee. There is an indeterminate amount of time between Arcee's creation and the Ark-1's departure.

Maybe, but, who are you including in this list? If you're not including the BW fembots (Although it certainly wouldn't be implausible considering Waspinator and Rattrap have become established, but I digress), that leaves you with:
Elita, Starfire, Chromia, Moonracer, Nightracer & Glyph (Rather unlikely since they're Collector's Club characters, Lyzack may also fall under this umbrella), Strika, Esmeral and maybe G1 versions of Airachnid, Flamewar, Slipstream, Thunderblast and Override.

Unless I've missed any (I just remembered Minerva, Lickety-Split, and Litebrite), I think that's it. But, only about seven have ever been established as actually existing in G1 without being in a Club exclusive story, and, of those six (Elita, Strika, Starfire, Minerva, Chromia, Moonracer and Esmeral) only one has been established as existing in the IDW continuity and only one of them is a 'Con.

The mere fact that Crasher is established in the continuity, is very likely a 'Con (All the surviving members of Clench/Megatron's inner circle in Megatron Origin became 'Cons, it would seem odd that she wouldn't be), which it seems are even more of a rarity than female Autobots, and hasn't gotten play makes her perfect for a Spotlight, as they have often been used for characters who might not otherwise/have not yet gotten play, like Trailbreaker, Hoist and Doubledealer.
Whether she is a more interesting character than the others depends on what you are looking for in a character, I suppose. But, I feel like if there is an established IDW fembot who deserves to be taken out of the shadows, she should be it. Who knows? They could establish a rivalry between her and Elita if they were to give her a spotlight, maybe even explain on what side of the fence fembots fell as the war started and why. Granted, they could do that with an Elita Spotlight, but I think it would more interesting to find out what made Crasher fall in with the arena crowd (And subsequently, the Decepticons) in the first place.

Meh. To each his own, whatever floats your boat. I'd probably feel the same way if some suggested Moonracer or something, to be honest.

 

That could work. But, then...where's the controversy?  

 

The fact there is no Controversy IS the controversy  

 

Shock Horror Sound Effect - YouTube

WHAAAT?!?!?!?  

 

*walks into thread*

*looks around*

Okay Yggsdrasil... you got this.

*sits down and pours self a drink*

This isn't a half-bad idea, really. I mean, considering that the NAILS seem to have clearly brought a lot of diverse influences along with them, from the other alien cultures they were living alongside... why not a bunch of Cybertronians who adapted themselves specifically to an explicitly "feminine" cultural model (superficially mimicking both biological and behavioural distinctions)? It's a shortcut, but it could work.

The key of course would be in being very careful to retain the "genderless" qualities of the Autobots and Decepticons (rather than taking them as "males" by virtue of a spontaneous binary opposition). If it was played off with a bit of wit and intelligence, it might be alright.

This could also work... that Cybertronians do have some kind of ability to detect different "polarities" in a spark, that have within their culture, loosely analogous qualities to gender/sex. I think the problem with this idea would be that it would work best if built in from the ground up, rather than trying to plant it in IDW now. And even then, I think it would still have to carefully avoid falling into the most obvious cliches, steer away from purely "human" behaviours, and try to challenge some of our presumptions about gender, just to keep the sci-fi/mechanical metaphor alive.

Personally, I think the best thing to do would be to just RETCON ARCEE. Stick with the gender-neutral, asexual culture that Roberts seems to be building. Arcee "looks" female to us, the readers, but is functionally no different than any other Transformer. It's all a fluke of design, as random as having door-wings or not, and Cybertronians themselves make no distinctions on that basis. It's kind of the simplest way out.  

Not necessarily. Which end of the battery is the "normal" one... the positive or negative charge? Doesn't matter. Neither one is the "deviant".

But as I said above, shoe-horning the "spark polarity" thing into IDW's fiction at the moment would be bumpy. I don't think it's -necessary- but it wouldn't be a bad way to go if you were launching a new continuity.

I think most of your objection hinges on Ygg's suggestions on how to tie the "spark polarity" into the Jhiaxus affair. I agree on that count. It's ugly, and the less conflation of Jhiaxus with gender, the better. As much as possible, I think we should just try to pretend that Spotlight every happened. Bobby Ewing in the shower. Superboy punched reality. Brand New Day that shit.

As for the old "masculine/male" being the norm argument, let's remember that conventional femininity tends to be more heavily mediated as a construct/performance. I'm not saying that in the overall fiction, Transformers don't often show/perform "male" traits as well... but rather that often, a lot of what we tend to read as "male traits" are in fact just an absence of overt "femininity".

Or not "happen to be female" but happen to model themselves on traits that we view as female, right?

I mean, should we really be normalizing hyperfeminization... which is to say most of what we think of as "feminine"?

It's a fair point, but I'd also hasten to point out that NOBODY really knows anything about this stuff. A lot of what constitutes the field of gender studies at the moment, is a lot of cultural theory that is A) under heavy contention and revision, and B) has not actually trickled down to the mainstream culture. Without meaning to sound reactionary, I personally find a lot of it to be overintellectualized and incredibly prescriptive for a movement that is supposed to be about breaking apart social obstructions.

I'm familiar with (and mostly agree with) the concept of gender or sexuality existing on a continuum, rather than a strict and absolute binary... but even such a continuum is conceptualized around a binary (represented by its opposing poles). We are limited in our ability to supersede the discourse of the past, because all our critical tools are founded on that same discourse... to Foucault things a little.  

But I do agree that there is a tremendous variegation in human culturally and sexually-assigned identities, far beyond a simple male/female relationship... so why can't an alien race have gender concepts beyond +/- ... though it does say something about the paradigm we inevitably proceed from, when having a 3rd or 4th gender is as abstract (or moreso) than having none at all.

Ugh... but whatever.  

zmog

 

^ ID rather They Actually Be Female. Personally.

 

How about she just shows up and doesn't have her origins explained? At least not for a long time after her first appearance.

 

Yeah, but it's a bit unimaginative. "Real" boys and "real" girls? Just a short step to roboporn there. I like to maintain an alienating sense of distance/difference in Transformers. Not Bayformers "giant bug monsters" alien, but that uncanny difference, where something seems familiar, but then isn't. I think that's the beauty of the industrial-mechanical metaphor that Transformers was based on.

Plus Fembots were always a bit sexist to begin with, and certainly treated like a "deviation". I've said this a lot (so why not one more time?) but why do they need to be physically differentiated from the "males" (which need not really be male either)? Their physical design aesthetic is quite discordant... that's one of the reasons I didn't especially appreciate Fembots right from the beginning. They just didn't fit very well -aesthetically- and were far more heavily inflected with culturally-imposed markers of femininity that didn't make much sense in the robot setting (in so much as anything in Transformers "makes sense", I suppose...).

That only works if they have a plan. Otherwise, it's going to get dicey, because whether or not you explain her "origin", you're still going to have to write the responses of other characters to her presence. Do the see her as "female"? Is she exceptional to them, or treated as any other Transformer? Does anybody ASK where she comes from? If you utterly ignore those elements, it'll just seem like a cop-out... an avoidance of the entire question.

Which to be fair, has served the Transformers fiction pretty well over the last 30 years... complicated, potentially unpopular detail in the fiction? Just ignore it and let the fans fight it out.  

zmog

 

This is what I always opted for however that creates a pure problem of communication because in a series with no humans how do they refer to themselves?

Since human have generally only two pronouns for living beings we usually try to lump every living creature in one of those two categories.

And before someone jumps on me no IT does not count as it is more applied to non-living things and would cause grammatically utter confusion script vise.

"Hey look that's Ultra Magnus! What is it doing?" Does IT here refer to Magnus or does it refer to some other thing on the panel and what that thing is doing? It can get real messy real fast.

You know how most people see a cat and a good number of people will instantly think that it's female because cats and cat like traits are usually associated with femininity in many cultures, even though said cat might actually be a male?

Same would pretty much happen if an alien race were to come to earth. We would try to categories them based on concepts that we are familiar with.

Like I always wanted a scene with a bunch of Autobots and Arcee with humans and the humans call every both a "he" but call Arcee a "she" and Arcee is like "Why are you referring to me differently than the rest?"

"But aren't you a girl?"

"What's a girl?"

However that creates a problem when there are no humans around because how would other bots refer to Arcee then? Would Arcee just suddenly go "Yeah I'm a girl now...whatever that is! Everyone refer to me as SHE now!"?

Because that's weird. it makes sense when they are on Earth as it is a way of blending in, but when they are on their own there is no point in continuing that. It gets even weirder because as Roberts said that he likes to imagine that he's translating their alien language to us and Transformers being asexual-nongendered aliens (in his mind) would have no gender specific pronouns, just how we as human don't have a pronoun for something that is both alive and genderless without sounding like broken English.

 

Yeah we need to find a gender neutral term in the english language that isn't inhuman like it.

 

I would say that size and the built of Windblade is due to her function as a master of Melkatto and close combat sword wielding specialist. That a large frame would be a hindrance since Windblade uses speed in her attack.

Also gender neutral term never seem to go well. Hir is a term I pick up from Star Trek novel. Damn Pronouns arggh

 

Except this is not really a problem. Are Transformers speaking english? Well, for the last year, we can say no, since they've been nowhere near an english-speaking human. Obviously, we can still understand them because their (no doubt extremely alien) language and all of its inscrutable details have been helpfully translated for our reading enjoyment, along with plenty of euphemisms and expressions that logically wouldn't exist for them. So what's the big deal if our human "bias" spills over into the translation, and some bots are given different pronouns? It's not like they are actually making the distinction... it's just a bit of transliterative license that makes it more intuitive for us to read (easier than ramming a bunch of unintuitive gender-neutral neologisms in there).

Hell, if you really wanted to have fun with it, you could just start referring to Hoist or Windcharger or Onslaught as "her" too, and see how many fans start squirming.  

Though interestingly, in French, the "gender" of the noun for 'cat' is masculine. Anglophones tend to forget that many languages DO assign gender to objects... somewhat arbitrarily. For example, a sombrero is masculine, while a peanut is feminine. Obviously.  

But the point is of course, that most of the limitations we are getting hung up on might not even be an issue in certain other languages.

I agree... I also always wanted to see something like that. A fundamental culture clash.

zmog

 

Really? Never heard of Hir but my RP buddies and I tend to use Xe and Xir alot.

 

It was failed book in Star Trek series....Where Selak CMO and her pon farr died during a ceremony. I read couple of the boos but it was not that good and pretty bland.

 

2 things

1. We are waaaay tooo late to stop that from happening.

2. Saying "they have no Gender" Or "There only boys" hasn't stopped Robo porn form happening quite the opposite, It's gonna happen no matter what,

. This is All well worded and thought out and i'd agree....IF this was hard Science fiction....Its not it's Transformers!

My Robots have Beards, They turn into dinosaurs and, Cars, and Planets, and Ursagryps, They have souls, not just good programming but actual souls that come from a Giant space God, They have names like Bumblebee and Hound Long before coming to Earth and ever seeing those animals. Star Saber is Full of Burning Justice . Jazz (another name he had before ever coming in contact with what he's name after) and Blaster Are Black, some how Despite being Alien robots

There are so Many things about this franchise that "Says Just go with it!" and Thats why i LOVE it!  

Why should that stop at the concept of gender, I mean More diversity in the franchise isn't a bad thing, even if it's just there in the "year Girl robot that's awesome run with it" kinda way.