Mods, I don't know if anyone else made this or type of thread like this before. iDW did a lot of good from transformers characters but other time made the biggest fumbles (Star Saber, Chromia, phase 3 opitmus) but what is your opinions and thoughts on two of characters of arcee and Megatron. In my opinion I think idw arcee is just bad character with horrible origins comic and autobot Megatron is really cool idea but understandable mixed on how it was treated and showed but what is your opinions on this.
There is some good. There is some omgoddess fucking amazing and I’m in love. Then there is trash that makes me want to tear my eyes out. Overall I’m happy with her and rather she exist as she is then not exist. Not all of it was great, but you know what it wasn’t? Turning Arcee into a 9 year olds Mom/Aunt/Nany/GF, so not nearly the worst in franchise history.
IDW Arcee is probably one of the worst takes on the character, and it has nothing to do at all with how she was conceived in this particular continuity.
She's got some good things. But she easily has the second worst origin for her character in the franchise. (THE worst goes to Prime's Rib, which was also written by Simon Furman.) Like. We don't need an explanation for a girl bot. Just make girl bots. If you're going to try to come up with a reason, please come up with something better than "built to appease belligerent feminists" or "forcibly transitioned by a mad scientist." Those are terrible explanations for female bots and are easily the worst origin stories for Arcee in any TF media.
Arcee was okay... up until the various retcons that established OTHER female transformers. At that point everything about her went straight down the drain, and that's just before they established she was Galvatron's sibling. Megatron I could not care less about up until the MTMTE series... but only for MTMTE, once it switch over to Lost Light I hardcore checked out.
Nah bro Prime's Rib was hilariously on point for its time. You can still find people in the modern day fandom bitching and whining about Arcee's design for it being pink and looking like a woman.
In general the fembots had a nasty habit of coming off less like strong and more like incredibly insecure and bitchy. John Barber sucks at writing fembots something FIERCE. One scene I always jump back to is when Alpha Trion referred to uhhh.... one of the Victorion OC's as 'milady' and she got like, genuinely mad at him. This is something a lot of writers in the west stumble this when writing 'strong women', they just make them abrasive, unlikable and bitchy.
WOW, a lot of response here and I agree on most of them but like fembots should be like any other transformers as other characters not a gimmick like the dinobots or headmasters. Just other normal transformers who are beyond being just the girl ones but bots with ideas, personality, role etc and have them all be the same thing.
I agree this so much for arcee. It you want badass, edgy, tough fembots, just use Chromia or Firestar
BOTH versions of IDW arcee were pretty bad, It's always the "i'm a total badass with a sad retconned backstory" and it was so horrible it always felt so forced.
Pretty much poisoned at the well with Furman's Spotlight: Arcee issue and rest of her existence was spent by writers trying their best to work with it. Thought Roche wrote her pretty well in SoTW.
To me the how and why wasn't the problem as much as all the story and lore changes that followed it. Cybertronians are a mechanical species, it stands to reason they would not have the same IF ANY perception of the concept of gender, and Arcee ending up the way she was given Jhiaxus did his thing and just abandoned her like that is completely understandable... however the retcon that fembots always existed, the means of justifying it, and the stupid fan-voted character that was brought in that required said justification in the first place just makes the whole transition thing that much more icky in hindsight. In short I like the idea in a standalone self-contained world created by Furman... the problem was he wasn't the only one working on it.
