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reel-fear · 2 years ago

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While I won’t deny that misogyny definitely plays a role in it, I also feel like one of the reasons people tend to want to focus more on Blitzwing than on Blackarachnia in fanworks is the same reason people are so obsessed with the secret bosses in Deltarune: the overall mystery surrounding his character.

Blitzwing and Blackarachnia are both unique, one-of-a-kind models, so people are naturally going to have three questions running through their minds upon their debut: what happened to them, what led up to that point, and who they used to be beforehand.

However, despite Blitzwing making more appearances than her, there’s still so little we know about him in comparison with Blackarachnia, who basically has her entire backstory revealed to us in her first spotlight episode. Even the information we do get regarding his past raises more questions than it answers, and that information’s Schrödinger’s canon at best. Fans are naturally drawn towards mysteries, so of course they’re going to be more interested in making content exploring and trying to solve those mysteries rather than just restricting themselves to stuff they already know.

I feel like the writing team showed their cards too early with Blackarachnia and left people with much less of a mystery to play around with other than “is techno-organicness reversible” and “will she cure herself or accept herself for who she is”. I think that maybe if they had had her make more appearances and held off on revealing her backstory until much later, while maybe dropping subtle hints of her knowing Optimus and Sentinel from somewhere and having once been an Autobot, people would feel like they had much more to work with.

(Also, from what I’ve seen, most Blitzwing fans are well aware of the ableist portrayal of his character but are usually neurodivergent themselves and thus have reclaimed him in a sense, alongside portraying him in a much more accurate manner to real-life DID and OSDD in fan works while still acknowledging that he’s an alien robot whose processor is much different from a human brain and thus would logically not be a complete one-to-one regarding analogous disabilities and mental disorders.)

So, I have been admittedly sitting on this ask for while bc it's been hard to digest and fully think about the points being made here. I don't want to get defensive on an impulse so I wanted to kinda stew on it a bit and read it over and over to see how my thoughts change. But really my thoughts are the same as when I first saw it which is most of this? Really just reads as excuses for Blitzwing's popularity that distract from the real causes being sexism and fandom's bias towards conventally attractive characters.

I want to go through this point by point but the TDLR; almost everything said here is also true for other characters who are very much not as popular as Blitzwing usually bc of sexism or not being the kind of characters the fandom cares to pay attention to. Sure you could point out all the things Blitzwing has that BA doesnt and say 'those are the things that make him more popular' but that ignores all the things BA has that Blitzwing doesn't. [Motivation, a personality, complexities, story relevence, she's not a horrible potrayal of the mentally ill, narrative focus etc] That the fandom just pretends don't exist and barely awknowledge, you can't just shy away from the reality that Blitzwing massively benefits from the misogyny present in this fandom because he's ur fave and you like him. That's only being complicit in it and turning a blind eye to it. Sure you could project a lot onto a bland male character and say you like him but you should also keep in mind the female characters who are ACTUALLY complex and interesting characters you tossed to the side to focus on him. I get that you 'awknoledged' the misogny in the first bit of the ask, but when you follow that up with... That it really doesnt come accross as genuine.

Anyways I'm gonna disect this message and talk about why I simply do not buy it.

Firstly

"While I won’t deny that misogyny definitely plays a role in it, I also feel like one of the reasons people tend to want to focus more on Blitzwing than on Blackarachnia in fanworks is the same reason people are so obsessed with the secret bosses in Deltarune: the overall mystery surrounding his character.

I'm going to be blunt, this is something SO many characters in TFA have going on. Lugnut is a great example of a character who has way more screentime than Blitzwing [remember Blitzwing disappears by S3 and is replaced by Shockwave as an evil minion but Lugnut stays] but is still almost entirely a mystery in terms of backstory motivation etc. But Lugnut is almost NEVER the center of fan content unless being made to be the butt of the joke and when he does appear hes usually just used as a tool to progress Blitzwing's character, someone to pressure him abt being in the cons, someone to be mean to him, etc.

But Lugnut is an entirely unique design with a helm look no other character has and claws that resemble the ones given to empurata bots in IDW. We don't even know why he hates the autobots so intensely but seeing how fucked up the autobots are in TFA why isn't there more theorizing about what exactly they did to make him need to see their downfall so badly? To the point where Lugnut is constantly at the feet praising someone who he doesn't even know would throw him to the side and leave him for dead the INSTANT it was convient for him.

You could say people don't explore it bc its played as a joke but so is everything about Blitzwing's character, esp his DID which is in increadibly poor taste. No, it's because Lugnut is fat and 'ugly', the fandom has no interest in him, same way they have so little interest in Bulkhead compared to other characters. He's just not hot enough to become the little sexyboy of the fandom. So he's tossed the side same way Bulkhead is. Not to mention characters like Arcee also have a ton of mystery surrounding them but they're women so...

"However, despite Blitzwing making more appearances than her, there’s still so little we know about him in comparison with Blackarachnia, who basically has her entire backstory revealed to us in her first spotlight episode. Even the information we do get regarding his past raises more questions than it answers, and that information’s Schrödinger’s canon at best. Fans are naturally drawn towards mysteries, so of course they’re going to be more interested in making content exploring and trying to solve those mysteries rather than just restricting themselves to stuff they already know.

Gonna be honest these paragraphs really piss me off LMAO, BA's mystery goes so much deeper than the two questions provided here such as the fact when trying to cure herself it's almost always potrayed as painful and life THREATENING! The mystery and tension of her character isn't' will she cure herself and can she?' its whether or not she will KILL HERSELF trying to cure her disability. Will she leave the cons? Will she grow to become a better person or keep spiralling down into evil? Fans are drawn to mystery sure but only when that mystery involves a sexy man, when it involved a woman character whose biggest mystery is whether or not her self loathing will kill her, its uninteresting and not worth their time, if they even bother to awknowledge it instead of just making her a scary villain/abuser for their male faves to be sad.

I also have to ask on this point too, fans tend to HEAVILY ignore any canon Blitzwing has either way, nobody awknowledges the bigotry towards organics/techno organics he displays, nor the levels of cruelty so why does canon even really matter in this discussion when as far as fanon is concerned it doesnt? It's excuses. It only matters now bc now people wanna justify the reason BA is a mean evil woman and Blitzwing is a sad puppy boy with so many complexities in fanon without facing the actual reason that is.

And while we're talking about things Blitzwing has that BA doesn't let's talk about all the things BA has that Blitzwing doesn't.

She's not a horrible potrayal of DID

She has complexities to her character beyond being an evil minon for the sake of being evil whose also 'the Crazy one'

She has narrative importance

She got told she should fucking die by one of her friends bc he hated her scarring so much.

She is shown to at least somewhat care for others when she spares Prowl and Bee despite not having gotten her part of the deal.

She has likely faced that sort of bigotry all the time and had to flee her home bc of it.

She has so much mystery behind how she joined the cons, why she joined the cons when they seem to show the same disgust to her as the autobots.

She's an interesting character.

I could go on but I'm not going to. F- on this point.

Now the last point which to me is the most BS

this is just not fucking true, 99% of content of Blitzwing I have seen either has people declaring him good rep [I have seen this several times] or is just talking about how sexy he is, its very very rare the horrible potrayal of his disability is awknowledged. Hell Blitzbee has such a deathgrip on the fandom and one of the nicknames Bee constantly uses in that content is BLITZBRAIN, literally making fun of his disability more. Not to mention how much of it is purposely making the scary disabled character scary on purpose. I'm not saying you cant enjoy or consume that content but you seriously have to be dumb to think the fandom is aware of or cares about this issue.

Also on the 'making him more accurate' I've never seen fanon do this truly and honestly. Where is the childhood truama? The awknowledgement that DID doesn't work the way Blitzwing shows it? I almost never see any fan content that wasn't just copying what TFA potrayed with him. Where are you finding this?

And lastly you can't just say youve 'Reclaimed' something and suddenly its okay, Hasbro knows how much this fandom loves TFA Blitzwing, you guys spend money on him you praise him you dont talk about how bad rep he is. If Hasbro rereleased TFA Blitzwing right now so many fans would flock to get him not even thinking about the fact THAT ENCOURAGES HASBRO TO THINK THAT THIS POTRAYAL OF THE MENTALLY ILL IS OKAY. This is just an excuse to consume content of Blitzwing uncritically to produce content of him uncritically! What about all the times DID swag polls esp ones involving good rep for them INCLUDED BLITZWING?? Did the runners of those who might not even know what TFA is say it was okay to send in a character who is clearly a mean spirited potrayal of them?? You can't just say Blitzwing is reclaimed and therefore its okay, you guys haven't even properly awknowledged all the things wrong with his character being a horrible potrayal of DID enough to get the sense to not fucking submit him into polls abt it. Let alone to produce half decent content of him.

Anyways thats it, I dont mean any of this aggression directly towards you anon, writing and posting a bad opinion on the internet does not justify harassment or hatred, but I dont feel a need to pull my punches when the fandom has been justifying this for so long, therefore. I didn't. I said what I thought of this message and if others agree then maybe I have a point.

Either way this is a discussion long Long overdue so Im putting this in the tags bc I think this fandom seriously needs a wake up call.

#tfa #tfa blitzwing #tfa blackarachnia #transformers animated #maccadam #maccadams #transformers #ramblez #note Im tired and working on a lot of school stuff rn #if you send me a mean message or ask or whatever Im prolly just gonna block u bc I do not have the time to get yelled at by strangers rn #another thing is this ask bugs me bc Ive said this before but #if you see my posts complaining that a female character deserves more content than her male peers #and ur first instinct is to defend the male characters you kinda missed the point-#I dont want more blitzwing hate in the world or whatever #I want more BA content so flocking to defend him kinda misses the point entirely and really shows the priorities lmao-#not to mention if the fandom really does like Blitzwing bc hes mysterious and therefore can be any kind of person they want #why is fanon Blitzwing just a worser written ver of BA-#they are such similar characters in fanon stuff but BA is almost always used as nothing more than #a mean scary woman to victimize the men around her #that or when they are together its for shipping which is worse in my opinion #the fandom almost constantly only uses BA as eye candy for the men #usually optimus but its usually jsut as bad whenever she paired with any other men #esp sentinel he basically told her to kill herself I-#I just want content of her that awknowledges her character arc and struggles is that so much to ask-

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