Arcee as Car vs as a Motorcycle

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Best Alt Mode for Arcee

Poll ended at Tue Dec 04, 2018 5:18 am

Motorcycle
2
25%
Car
3
38%
Both
3
38%
Neither
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 8

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Arcee as Car vs as a Motorcycle

Post by Hot Rod Here »

Do you like her as a car, a motorcycle or both? Maybe neither. I like both.
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Post by Denyer »

Either works. I don't think there has to be a slavish limiting of alt-modes to types either, if Siege wanted to mix it up with some more military vehicles it'd be interesting -- eg Arcee as a tank.

Also, main TF forum for things like polls rather than the News forum please.
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Post by Hot Rod Here »

Denyer wrote:Either works. I don't think there has to be a slavish limiting of alt-modes to types either, if Siege wanted to mix it up with some more military vehicles it'd be interesting -- eg Arcee as a tank.

Also, main TF forum for things like polls rather than the News forum please.
I'll keep that in mind. Can it be move?
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Post by Warcry »

The only time Arcee was ever a decent character was when she was a motorcycle, so I'd tend to lean towards that. Plus they seem to do a much better job making female-looking robot modes out of a bike than they do a car, considering how kibbled-up Generations Arcee and the recent Moonracer and Firestar have been.
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Post by Denyer »

Moved it before I posted -- the redirect link will expire in a few days.

Prefer the emphasis on non-traditional, personally -- gender just being another thing to mimic, so you've got / would have things like Bumblebee with a female holo-avatar, or voices that are in ranges characters have picked because they felt an affinity for them. Of course some characters will trend towards robot modes that look more like females or males of human or human-like species, and basically enjoy the freedom that comes with being able to extensively reconfigure their forms, but TFs tend to mix aesthetic considerations with practical ones, so there's plenty of cyclopean or faceplate based designs, weapon arms, etc.

Shorn of considerations like Functionism or lack of resource due to war, they can be whatever the hell they want at any given point in time -- the things that are more ingrained are going to be personality and experience based, like preferring land/air/space alt modes or a combination thereof.
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Post by Warcry »

Denyer wrote:Prefer the emphasis on non-traditional, personally -- gender just being another thing to mimic, so you've got / would have things like Bumblebee with a female holo-avatar, or voices that are in ranges characters have picked because they felt an affinity for them. Of course some characters will trend towards robot modes that look more like females or males of human or human-like species, and basically enjoy the freedom that comes with being able to extensively reconfigure their forms, but TFs tend to mix aesthetic considerations with practical ones, so there's plenty of cyclopean or faceplate based designs, weapon arms, etc.
I'm not going to disagree with any of that, but realistically I can't imagine we'll get another "non-traditional" Arcee any time soon. The character's only real niche is being "the girly one", and as much as I admire what was done with the TF:Prime version of her, they still hedged their bets by making her look like a skinny human woman wearing motorcycle parts. It's just what the character is, at this point, and IDW's attempts to make her over into something different weren't exactly well-received. Personally I think hyper-feminized robot modes look pretty silly and I prefer more normal-robot-looking female designs like Slash or Strongarm or Strika. But if Hasbro's going to keep doing it, I'd prefer they at least get some good toys out of the effort.
Denyer wrote:Shorn of considerations like Functionism or lack of resource due to war, they can be whatever the hell they want at any given point in time -- the things that are more ingrained are going to be personality and experience based, like preferring land/air/space alt modes or a combination thereof.
I still think that this is the closest thing that Transformers should have to gender -- they're not boys or girls, they're airplanes or tanks or microscopes or panthers. That seems like a distinction that would be vastly more meaningful to them. In general, people call them "he" because "it" would be rude and the English language usually defaults towards male, and I don't think the Transformers themselves would give it much more thought than that. I'm really not fond of IDW's decision to heavily gender the characters in the later half of their run and throw them into human-like romantic relationships.
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Post by Tantrum »

I voted motorcycle. I don't have any preference for what she should be, but so far, I've liked the motorcylcle toys more than the cars. T30 was too much of a shellformer, which not only looked bad, but results in a smaller bot since so much of the toy's mass wasn't incorporated into the bot. The TR Blurr retool might've been good, but was distributed so poorly that's more of a theoretical concept than an actual toy.
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Post by Denyer »

they're not boys or girls, they're airplanes or tanks or microscopes or panthers. That seems like a distinction that would be vastly more meaningful to them. [...] I'm really not fond of IDW's decision to heavily gender the characters in the later half of their run and throw them into human-like romantic relationships.
Some of it felt very forced -- eg Tailpipe is introduced as a liar, juvenile and fairly naive. Cyclonus is an ancient martial warrior who's spent an incalculable amount of time in another dimension, and was already set in that mould before MTMTE. As characterisations go, it's significantly less credible than the (fairly successful, discounting most other IDW material) rehabilitation of Megatron. Tailgate/Cyclonus is something I'd actively edit out.

Life friendships and partnerships... yeah, the use of pseudo-Latin and ritualisation were overwritten when it's fairly integral to the franchise that characters share minds, bodies and alt-modes without hang-ups except where under duress. Chromedome/Rewind felt genuine and a lot of the rest fell into now-everyone's-suddenly-at-it writing territory, "monogamy in space" writ large.

I can definitely see TFs finding organics fascinating, adopting all sorts of designs and behaviours on whim, and some characters building an identity around anthropology as much as others do on turning into things that facilitate their passions, like an alien version of a cement mixer (Mixmaster) or something with claws useful for performative sculpting (Slog). And also going through forms and alt-modes, maybe several times indecisively, until they work out what they prefer -- functional immortality does have its perks, ditto the ability to develop expertise in lots of things.
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Post by Paul053 »

Either is fine as long as they do it right. But I prefer a little bit more on car.
Warcry wrote:Plus they seem to do a much better job making female-looking robot modes out of a bike than they do a car
Animated Arcee? :D:p:swirly:;)
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Post by inflatable dalek »

I voted car because she had the DB5 cutter in the 86 film.
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Post by Hound »

I went car because in the IDW comics she's a car and I quite like IDW's version of Arcee. Although when I voted I hadn't thought of the Prime version and I did love that show and that version of Arcee so now I'm all conflicted inside...
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Post by Hot Rod Here »

Warcry wrote:I'm not going to disagree with any of that, but realistically I can't imagine we'll get another "non-traditional" Arcee any time soon. The character's only real niche is being "the girly one", and as much as I admire what was done with the TF:Prime version of her, they still hedged their bets by making her look like a skinny human woman wearing motorcycle parts. It's just what the character is, at this point, and IDW's attempts to make her over into something different weren't exactly well-received. Personally I think hyper-feminized robot modes look pretty silly and I prefer more normal-robot-looking female designs like Slash or Strongarm or Strika. But if Hasbro's going to keep doing it, I'd prefer they at least get some good toys out of the effort.


I still think that this is the closest thing that Transformers should have to gender -- they're not boys or girls, they're airplanes or tanks or microscopes or panthers. That seems like a distinction that would be vastly more meaningful to them. In general, people call them "he" because "it" would be rude and the English language usually defaults towards male, and I don't think the Transformers themselves would give it much more thought than that. I'm really not fond of IDW's decision to heavily gender the characters in the later half of their run and throw them into human-like romantic relationships.
In some TFU they're cybernetic organism, so gender doesn't really brother me. Yes they turn into planes and cars, but they were alien life forms first then planes and cars. In the universes were they're organism, they might be metallic aliens wearing car parts as clothing instead of being walking and talking cars.


Also I never understood why some fans complain about female transformers having an hourglass body, but don't complain about the boys having a masculine body shape. Why can mechs get away with pecs, but the femmes can't have curves. Is a female transformer having curves a bad thing? Primus sometimes the fandom makes me want to bang my head on something. :wall:
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Post by Warcry »

Tantrum wrote:T30 was too much of a shellformer, which not only looked bad, but results in a smaller bot since so much of the toy's mass wasn't incorporated into the bot.
T30 Arcee actually reminds me a lot of some of Takara's Beast Wars molds, or the RiD cars, with how her robot mode mostly just wears the car instead of actually turning into it. But that's pretty much what has to happen if you want a car to turn into her 80s character model, unless you make the figure incredibly complex.
Denyer wrote:Some of it felt very forced -- eg Tailpipe is introduced as a liar, juvenile and fairly naive. Cyclonus is an ancient martial warrior who's spent an incalculable amount of time in another dimension, and was already set in that mould before MTMTE. As characterisations go, it's significantly less credible than the (fairly successful, discounting most other IDW material) rehabilitation of Megatron. Tailgate/Cyclonus is something I'd actively edit out.
The Tailgate stuff in particular feels awfully pervy, to be honest, and in a way that it wouldn't if the writers weren't so keen on humanizing the characters so much. But when you write a character as a child and then throw him into an intimate relationship with someone who's been physically abusive...the result is more than a bit icky, IMO.
Denyer wrote:Life friendships and partnerships... yeah, the use of pseudo-Latin and ritualisation were overwritten when it's fairly integral to the franchise that characters share minds, bodies and alt-modes without hang-ups except where under duress. Chromedome/Rewind felt genuine and a lot of the rest fell into now-everyone's-suddenly-at-it writing territory, "monogamy in space" writ large.
Yeah, in retrospect they really learned the wrong thing from Chromedome/Rewind, and the explosion of relationships that followed kinda cheapens what made that so special at the time.

Monogamy certainly makes little sense for a non-sexual species that doesn't need mates to reproduce. Exploring the kind of relationships and bonds that Transformers would form with one another was a good idea, but boiling it down to romance, dating and marriage with different (pretentiously Latin) names really did the idea a disservice. I'd much rather have seen the sort of relationships we'd already been introduced to (“siblings” and clones, the mind-linking of combiner groups…) getting more exploration, and then building out from there.
Paul053 wrote:Animated Arcee? :D:p:swirly:;)
A better effort than most! She still seems to be wearing a lot of car on her back, though, when I look at pictures of the figure. She's also a lot less shapely than the G1 character, but I'd consider that a serious improvement.
Hot Rod Here wrote:Also I never understood why some fans complain about female transformers having an hourglass body, but don't complain about the boys having a masculine body shape. Why can mechs get away with pecs, but the femmes can't have curves. Is a female transformer having curves a bad thing? Primus sometimes the fandom makes me want to bang my head on something. :wall:
Do they really, though? Male Transformers, more often than not, look like a collection of vehicle parts, boxes and geometric shapes piled up into an approximation of the humanoid form. Arcee or Elita-One and her girls generally look like pinup models wearing sci-fi helmets. When it comes to sexualization, there's a huge gulf between their designs and someone like Blaster, or Omega Supreme, or Scorponok. I actually can't think of any characters that are the male equivalent of Arcee -- the franchise doesn't feature many designs that look like a Superman drawing (rippling muscles and all) with car parts overtop.

We have been seeing some less-sexualized female designs lately though, like Strongarm or Slash, which is nice.
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Post by Tantrum »

Warcry wrote:T30 Arcee actually reminds me a lot of some of Takara's Beast Wars molds, or the RiD cars, with how her robot mode mostly just wears the car instead of actually turning into it. But that's pretty much what has to happen if you want a car to turn into her 80s character model, unless you make the figure incredibly complex
This Arcee custom doesn't look too complicated, and the only car parts not incorporated into the bot are the things behind the shoulders, which match the character model. If this were a retail release, I'd buy it, and change my vote in the poll.
Warcry wrote:Do they really, though? Male Transformers, more often than not, look like a collection of vehicle parts, boxes and geometric shapes piled up into an approximation of the humanoid form. Arcee or Elita-One and her girls generally look like pinup models wearing sci-fi helmets. When it comes to sexualization, there's a huge gulf between their designs and someone like Blaster, or Omega Supreme, or Scorponok. I actually can't think of any characters that are the male equivalent of Arcee -- the franchise doesn't feature many designs that look like a Superman drawing (rippling muscles and all) with car parts overtop
The closest I can think of is Optimus Prime's windshield and grill resembling pecs and abs, but even that's more an allusion to muscles that may or may not be intentional. PotP Novastar and Moonracer, on the other hand, have sculpted detail in their torsos that is clearly meant to evoke 6-pack abs.
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Post by Hot Rod Here »

Warcry wrote:T30
Do they really, though? Male Transformers, more often than not, look like a collection of vehicle parts, boxes and geometric shapes piled up into an approximation of the humanoid form. Arcee or Elita-One and her girls generally look like pinup models wearing sci-fi helmets. When it comes to sexualization, there's a huge gulf between their designs and someone like Blaster, or Omega Supreme, or Scorponok. I actually can't think of any characters that are the male equivalent of Arcee -- the franchise doesn't feature many designs that look like a Superman drawing (rippling muscles and all) with car parts overtop.

We have been seeing some less-sexualized female designs lately though, like Strongarm or Slash, which is nice.
Yes in some TFU they look like men wearing armor. Prime is a good example. Also the first fembots weren't that sexualized. Even g1 Arcee wasn't overly sexualized. It's nice that not all fembots have a hourglass shape, but there's nothing wrong with them having them either. I don't understand why fans see it as a bad thing. Who cares what their bodies look like. Strongarm and Slash are great characters because of who they are and not what they look like. If they have curves or not doesn't and shouldn't matter. Imo if the males are geometeric shape then so should the females. Now some of them can be a bit curvey while still having that geo shape. However even they should not be overly sexualize. A little roundness and curviness is okay. However if males can have pecs, then females can have boobs and curves.
Ps. When I say male body shape, I was referring more then just abs and pecs. The ideal body shape for men and the V body shape. In some TFU, the mechs and a few femmes have this type of body shape.


I have a theory that they use to mate in the past, but no longer do so because they found other ways to reproduce. However the need to look for a mate and have kids still linger in them. Also I find it silly to depend on outside resources to keep you're species alive. Then again Transformers is a fictional show and in cartoons hardly anyone dies. Wheelie had parents and there's was a little blue bot holding his mom's hand in Flight or Flee, so that may prove sexually reproduction. However they could've been built.
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Post by Hot Rod Here »

I'm surprise Tramp isn't on here. I been lurking on here for a long time.
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Post by Hot Rod Here »

Tantrum wrote: The closest I can think of is Optimus Prime's windshield and grill resembling pecs and abs, but even that's more an allusion to muscles that may or may not be intentional. PotP Novastar and Moonracer, on the other hand, have sculpted detail in their torsos that is clearly meant to evoke 6-pack abs.
It's not just the pecs and abs, but also have that V body shape. However the male transformers having a V body shape is only see in some continuties where the bodies are more humanoid.
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Post by Denyer »

Tantrum wrote:This Arcee custom doesn't look too complicated, and the only car parts not incorporated into the bot are the things behind the shoulders, which match the character model. If this were a retail release, I'd buy it, and change my vote in the poll.
I think overall the iGear one is still my favourite (of those that are obtainable);

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/i ... or.334321/

Personally a fan of retro (and of boxy on eg Prime) given updated articulation though.
Warcry wrote:like Strongarm or Slash
Yeah, both picks out of their respective lines. Liked what TFN did with Rune/Glyph, and the reuse of an official mould into Nautica. Windblade was third time lucky. A head-sculpt is fine to differentiate a TF and nod back to a human audience IMO. I don't mind the Fansproject approach of Comera/Echara occasionally -- again, we're talking robots that can mimic whatever organics they feel like, and some might go there -- but am glad that as far as toys go it generally hasn't been a wankfest.
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Re:

Post by Hot Rod Here »

Warcry wrote: Thu Oct 25, 2018 9:02 pm
Denyer wrote:Prefer the emphasis on non-traditional, personally -- gender just being another thing to mimic, so you've got / would have things like Bumblebee with a female holo-avatar, or voices that are in ranges characters have picked because they felt an affinity for them. Of course some characters will trend towards robot modes that look more like females or males of human or human-like species, and basically enjoy the freedom that comes with being able to extensively reconfigure their forms, but TFs tend to mix aesthetic considerations with practical ones, so there's plenty of cyclopean or faceplate based designs, weapon arms, etc.
I'm not going to disagree with any of that, but realistically I can't imagine we'll get another "non-traditional" Arcee any time soon. The character's only real niche is being "the girly one", and as much as I admire what was done with the TF:Prime version of her, they still hedged their bets by making her look like a skinny human woman wearing motorcycle parts. It's just what the character is, at this point, and IDW's attempts to make her over into something different weren't exactly well-received. Personally I think hyper-feminized robot modes look pretty silly and I prefer more normal-robot-looking female designs like Slash or Strongarm or Strika. But if Hasbro's going to keep doing it, I'd prefer they at least get some good toys out of the effort.
Denyer wrote:Shorn of considerations like Functionism or lack of resource due to war, they can be whatever the hell they want at any given point in time -- the things that are more ingrained are going to be personality and experience based, like preferring land/air/space alt modes or a combination thereof.
I still think that this is the closest thing that Transformers should have to gender -- they're not boys or girls, they're airplanes or tanks or microscopes or panthers. That seems like a distinction that would be vastly more meaningful to them. In general, people call them "he" because "it" would be rude and the English language usually defaults towards male, and I don't think the Transformers themselves would give it much more thought than that. I'm really not fond of IDW's decision to heavily gender the characters in the later half of their run and throw them into human-like romantic relationships.
Also we are male and female. We're robots, but not Earth bots. We may not have reproductive organs, but we have genes which means we do have chromosomes. I believe our sex is defined by genes/chromosomes. And yes we do turn into cars, but we are still life forms/living organism. Our living metal is made out of celluar structures and so it make sense if our car parts are since they are a part of us. We're not earth robots that turn into cars, but living sentient alien metallic beings that transform into cars. Also I read the Idw comic books and the romance aren't that human like. There's no sex involved. Even some of you humans have a sexless romance. Also the word they can be use as a single pronoun and a gender netural one. Google it. That whole English doesn't have a gender netural pronoun for personal beings is bs. However the they single thing only make sense if you are saying or writing The person they went to the store. It doesn't sound right if you use Mike they went to the store. Maybe in writing, but not in speaking. Luckily there are personal gender netural pronouns. Google them.
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Re: Arcee as Car vs as a Motorcycle

Post by Denyer »

Posting "as" a Transformer didn't really come off any better before you were born, although it's the suggesting people JFGI that's unlikely to end well.
we have genes which means we do have chromosomes
There's a limited scattering of references to CNA in a few recent continuities, and some less by-the-numbers human-analogue examples of "genetic" material in G2 and Eugenesis.

Still not as interesting as older material that nods to characters being encoded as light/energy for the journey on the Ark as a standard technology. Aliens benefit more from the more awe and wonder of people not trying to crowbar them into organic roles.
the word they can be use as a single pronoun and a gender netural one
So can "it" and without the lack of clarity that's already attached to you/you. People are on the whole badly adapted to either it or they, and call cars, snails and lots of other things he/she based on their prejudices, habits and own comfort. By the same token they tend not to react favourably to voices that can't be pigeon-holed as male or female.

Aliens don't all speak English even outside of the range of the TARDIS either.
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