#megatron is misogynist coded

[yikesscibbles]

Megatron talks to Starscream like how sigma grindset males talk to women. He sounds like he would unironically say, "You're not a high value female. That's why you could never lead. Because my army KNOWS I'm a high value male and until you become a high value female, you will never succeed in your life."

[thanksjro]

Dark Cybertron Chapter 7: Simon Furman and His Lack of a Relationship with the Singular They

The Lost Light is still being attacked by Ammonites, like it has been for the last few issues. Hound’s taken over as acting field commander and is calling all the shots. Chromedome uses his stupid beefy arms to punch things. Trailcutter is screaming. Swerve’s got his My First Blaster™ strapped to the top of his alt, and saves Crosscut.

Crosscut is our toy tie-in character for this issue. He’s a senator, and drafts play scripts. Arguably one of the more interesting tie-in guys, at least in theory. In practice, all he’s doing is forgetting Swerve’s name, which isn’t going to help the guy with his through-the-floor self esteem.

Crosscut points out that Swerve’s communicator is flashing, and while he’s checking his voicemail, all the Ammonites seemingly vanish… at least, until the gang realizes that they’re instead heading for Metroplex.

Inside, it would appear that the Rod Pod Squad aren’t actually dead, though their ride is probably toast. Before everything went to hell, a wall slammed down from the ceiling, protecting everyone from being utterly destroyed. Skids has figured out what all the arrow graffiti is about, earning himself a BOMP from Getaway. Looks like the internal structure of Metroplex has been shifting, and that’s why they got the runaround last issue. Also, Whirl’s gone missing, but we don’t have time to worry about that, because Swerve just called back with some bad news: the admium flakes they saw earlier mean that Metroplex has an alchemical virus.

Don’t you look at me like that, I’m getting to the explanation.

Alchemical viruses turn the metal of the body into admium, a rare, incredibly soft metal that will break down very easily and also kill you. It’s pretty bad to have. Also, contagious. Fellas better get outta there, posthaste.

The Ammonites are also storming Metroplex, so that’s an additional issue. God, it just never stops, does it?

Over in the Dead Universe-

Is

Is that a fortress of evil in the shape of Nova Prime’s head?

Is that a goddamned fortress-

Anyway, the center of Nova Prime’s universe is Kup, who was the guy who got oh-so-dramatically revealed at the end of the last issue. Unfortunately, Orion Pax also considers Kup to be very near and dear to his heart, and the whole “being turned into a space bridge” thing is going to be an issue.

This is the weirdest love triangle I’ve ever seen.

How the hell did Kup even get here? Well, in order to know that, you’ve have to had read Infestation, the bullshit zombie crossover comic miniseries that ran in 2011.

But I’m not going to do that.

Because I don’t want to.

After a bit of showboating, Nova Prime orders Nightbeat to take Team -Imus to their cell.

Over on Cybertron, Shockwave is getting real sick of Galvatron’s shit, but Galvatron is too busy posing dramatically to notice. Waspinator, Metalhawk, and Dreadwing float in the air. I’m not sure what they’re up to, but I’m sure it’s important. Jhiaxus shows up with a gaggle of goons, one of which seems to have forgotten his face in the jar by the door.

Galvatron gets shamed for tearing Megatron in half, since that sort of broke the space bridge in his torso, but he’s too busy being classist to care. Waspinator floats in the background. What are you doing back there, pal?

Shockwave orders Waspinator to carry Megatron to his quarters, but Galvatron’s decided that he’s going to be an asshole about everything today, even when he’s being helpful.

…Okay, Boomer.

Waspinator still ends up hauling Megatron’s ass away, and Shockwave and Jhiaxus have a little chat.

Back in the dead universe, Team -Imus are in their cell, as Nightbeat double-checks the locks or some shit, I dunno. They’re gonna get their sparks ripped out later in the day, so that the space bridge Kup’s got running in his torso finally has enough juice to actually friggin’ work.

Then Rodimus flashes his mystery hand at Nightbeat and makes him fall down. In order for the whole brainwashing thing to work, Nightbeat’s true nature had to be suppressed; however, whenever Rodimus shows off his mystery hand, it makes his brain kickstart back on, messing up the brainwashing.

Well, you know what, Cyclonus? That’s not my fucking fault. Blame Roberts and Barber. I certainly do.

ORION PLEASE.

We finally get a look at what Rodimus’ hand mystery is, and if you read Eugenesis, you might know where this is going. It would seem Nightbeat has not- which is for the best, really, given what happens to him in it- but he’s still a pretty smart cookie and can suss it out through the power of deductive reasoning. Here’s what he’s working with:

After a moment’s deliberation, he asks Rodimus, who he knows to be the captain of a ship, how many folks are riding around in the space yacht. Rodimus tells him 190, and shows off that he’s got his lipgloss on, and it would seem that Nightbeat’s a free man again. He lets everyone out of the cell, and they gear up to go pick up Kup. Orion Pax is confused as to what the hell just happened here, and Rodimus promises to explain why he’s carved a division problem into his palm once they aren’t in immediate danger.

Back on Cybertron, Galvatron and Waspinator are dragging Megatron’s halves towards Shockwave’s quarters, when Bumblebee pops out of nowhere with a gun and a mouth full of swears. He’s here for Megatron, and he’s not taking “no” for an answer. Galvatron thinks that this is super fucking funny, and tosses Megatron like an empty soda can into the wall so he can squash a bug.

It looks pretty grim for ol’ Bumblebee, but suddenly Galvatron realizes he left the oven on that Megatron’s gone missing.

Oh, there he is!

Megatron blasts Galvatron in the torso, then- in a surprisingly polite manner, at least for him- tells Bumblebee to grab his legs so they can get out of here. As the two of them traverse the burned-out husk that is Cybertron, Megatron decides to be a complete bastard, as he smiles at the idea of Starscream suffering. Like, dude, I know he kept you in weird hamster ball jail and spouted soliloquies in your general direction every single day you were there, but folks are dying right now.

Speaking of Starscream, he’s having a moment, as he sits on his knees and stares at the sky in abject horror while the world burns around him. Scoop comes by to yell at him for being a harbinger of death, and generally being a less than stellar leader, and Starscream halfway calls himself a dumpster fire.

Back inside Metroplex, the Rod Pod Squad are fortifying their defenses against the Ammonites, even though they really need to be getting the hell out of there before they get turned into talcum powder through the power of alchemy. Whirl shows back up, the Ammonite hanger-on in his grasp, and we get the skinny on why the hell the Ammonites are involved with this whole debacle anyway.

The answer is Shockwave.

The answer is always Shockwave.

Then the little dude explodes. It’s fine, they do that sometimes.

Before he went kablooey, little dude uttered the phrase, “if the dead are not enough.” We’ll get to what all that’s about later. Right now there are far more important things going on.

LIKE MOTHERFUCKING LADY ROBOTS.

But why is this such a big deal? Why is it that non-male coded robots who aren’t Arcee haven’t been seen up until this point? What’s up with that, huh?

Well, in order to understand IDW’s complicated relationship with gender, we’re going to have to do some digging into the history of Transformers as a franchise.

We’re going to have to talk about Simon Furman.

We're going to have to talk about Prime's Rib.

And we’re going to have to talk about Spotlight: Arcee.

Simon Furman wrote a lot of Transformers. You cannot get away from Simon Furman, because the man is so ingrained in the franchise. He was there for Marvel UK, he was there for the back half of Marvel US, he wrote for several other publication runs of Transformers, he worked on the Earth Wars mobile game-

-and, of course, IDW publishing.

Because Furman is so very well established and known in the industry, he gets the benefit of not being questioned on a lot of the calls he makes.

Which is a problem, because the man is a massive misogynist.

In 1989, Marvel UK #234 came out, containing the story entitled “Prime’s Rib!” in which the Autobots built Arcee in order to appease a group of strawmen feminists. Of course, one female Transformer isn’t enough for them, and they yell at poor Optimus Prime for trying his best. This is the point where Hot Rod is used as a writer avatar to try to smooth things over with the reader, because you see, the Transformers don’t even know what sexual dimorphism and gender identity even is, so of course they wouldn’t have female members of their race! Jazz is used for a breast joke. Arcee acts like a massive, stereotypical bitch the whole time, despite not having been written like that at all in the other issues. It’s a bad comic with hideous ideology leaking out of it, and I'm halfway sorry I read it, so I’ll just give you the essence of this nightmare.

Oh, those big, mean, scary feminists are bullying the robots for living their lives, huh Furman? Life is just so goddamned unfair when a woman exists in your fucking line of sight.

Furman has gone on record saying that he doesn’t see the point in including the concept of gender in a race of non-sexually reproducing robots. He sees them as “genderless.” Which, if that statement existed in a vacuum, I could perhaps see where he’s coming from.

But Simon Furman does not exist in a vacuum. He exists in a world where sexism exists, something that he’s willingly participated in.

Let me back up that little tidbit with a bit of a disclaimer: I’m not in any way an expert on gender. I didn’t study it in school, I’ve not read an obscene amount of pieces on the topic. I’m not even sure about it on a personal level.

Maybe some of y’all have noticed the whole other set of pronouns I slapped into the bio in the last month or so. It doesn’t really matter, 90% of people don’t read the FAQ/About, I know that, and then 95% of those people only read it once, and this has been a relatively new self-revelation.

BUT ANYWAY.

Let’s be… fair about this. 1989 was a while ago, a lot of research on the concept of gender has taken place, maybe he’s ch-

Oh, what’s that?

Misogyny?

Transphobia?

Transmisogyny?

Treating women as an aberration being forced on Transformers as a whole?

And the writing is clunky and overstuffed?

Well, that’s just fucking fantastic, Furman, thanks so much.

This was in 2008. Because Furman established that female Transformers weren’t something natural, but rather made, and forcibly at that, and nobody fucking smacked his little hands away from this terrible idea, AND nobody tried to fix it for years, there was a lack of gender diversity within IDW until 2014, with the release of Dark Cybertron Chapter 7. Because we waited six years to fix this nightmare, things couldn’t be done quite the way that Roberts had been hoping, in that he intended for our female robots to not have the whole… fembot build happening. IDW wanted them immediately clockable, because this was very clearly a problem that needed rectifying.

So, in short: because of boys’ club mentality and a lack of understanding of what gender means or why it’s important for roughly 50% of the world’s population to have representation in media, Nautica and Chromia are here now.

And despite the convoluted road they had to take, I love them very much.