#we wanna see transmasc and trans gal and enby arcee shaking hands

[pluralsword]

Yeah it's understandable to have conflicting feelings, we know people got hurt by that issue when it came out and the first time we read it before reading EXRID it gave us a headache, reading it after EXRID and reading Jenevieve Frank's thoughts on Arcee though we were able to reclaim it (not excusing the writing, just saying that as a trans xenogender/trans gal system we were able to find a way to take it in part because of trauma processing) and her fearsomeness in melee that came out of her IDW1 iteration is really beautiful and sensory, like a tangible vibe.

It's interesting that you say that about the transmasc stuff because Jenevieve Frank did comment after advising Optimus Prime #25: "Post"'s writng re Arcee, that, had there been time, genuine transmasc or nonbinary framework could have been used but the way Arcee no longer had dysphoria in Phase 2 signified that she was a trans woman. Nonetheless, the way she said that, these interpretations of the character can coexist, so we appreciate you being normal about this, like so much <3. We write IDW1 Arcee as polygender in Addendum and also being part of the old pre-Nova era linked gender system (which survives in the colonies and among people who carry the memory), so she relates to/has kinship with many different genders, but primarily understands herself as an trans iterexper altmodus gal, and feeling more distant from agenderness and maleness overall, in part because of her experiences with Functionism's appropriation of those terms for androcentric ends (though her struggles with dysphoria and agenderness due to a guilt/shame complex and self-doubt are a whole thing in the second third of the story that we haven't released yet- somehow we were very on the ball for this because like, Frank notes that Spotlight Arcee is reframed by later trans writing to be very much about how Arcee realized the transmedicalist stuff that happened to her wasn't actually her fault- an idea she finally abandoned that only surfaces again under torture by Tarantulas during Sins of the Wreckers). Iterexper and altmodus were terms we coined for the fic, the former meaning a gender about/of iterative experience, the journey itself, whereas altmodus has to do with connecting to an alt mode aesthetic including having it inform the robot mode... and we write Jhiaxus as having tried to deliberately frame and reconstruct her as a woman as he understood the idea He has this whole weird thing of looking up to Solus while also being an imperialist who used her surgery for research for the Monstructor project which was part of Nova Prime's whole wanting to eliminate free will thing, Arcee was thus a target because he saw her as a very strong willed person.

Conversely, we have Arcee figure out her galness not from him... but her own journal writing, and from connecting with Road Rage, her lover Codexa, and her doctor/therapist Road Rage (also trans), resistance leader Trans-Mutate (also trans), Vibes (same), Twirl (look we got a lot of trans gals in this) for example, and general support and love from the gender expansive community that's part of the Anti-Functionist resistance including Lickety-Split (whose altmodus is motowheel), and Rampage (transmasc) and more... until she loses that community (we can't spoil how but some people do survive some people don't), but does get help from Anode and Lug later...

But yeah. Thank you to the person who comment and for your reblog and to the people who liked and reblogged, and it helped to look at all the art/writing other people have done with what spoons we had to look and to remember conversations we've had with people... trans Arcee does have a lot of love, which makes us happy.

Oh also! In our writing xey wanted to try out xey/xem/xeir pronouns but she struggles with the whole unconscious she pronoun usage thing that happens to xem (which is Jhiaxus's fault but we won't explain how until the end of the story it's a major plot point, but in the crossover fanfic Sparkflung Trust her/xeir pronouns are used by people without issue).

We dunno how to fully express how important trans Arcee and Anode and Lug's stories are to us. Besides what we've said they also helped imagine a whole alien robot aesthetic assemblage system using compound nouns, and among other terms we coined from that that appear in say, Day of Multiflame that give us euphoria zoomdare is the most prominent, which we write Arcee and Anode as using, whereas Lug is more of a holddare. :3 We'll explain all this more sometime, the fics do when it comes up in the story.

And yeah we really treasure the Sideswipe-Arcee friendship arc it's very beautiful. Sideswipe doesn't understand her fully until the end but he tries to respect her and is willing to die for her and live for her, just as she does for him. We cry about it sometimes

could people reblog or comment or dm stuff they like about trans arcee or content they wanna share. please. we're low on money and tired and trying to hold ourselves together after an onslaught of trauma for the last 6-9 months (depending on what we want to count as having reached a point of mental health getting really unstable) and we're struggling to get a job and we are also just so fucking tired of also seeing/dealing with people who don't know her well lambasting her entire story (and that's the least of it) if they aren't being outright intentionally hateful which we've seen before and been harassed by elsewhere. so. if people want to show some love. that would be nice