Hi i'm Junebug, the bug from online. I'm very cool and everyone who has ever met me loves me.
whether it's star wars or dr who or sonic the fuckin hedgehog we've all got Something we're obsessed about
so here's my question, about whatever fictional universe you love
what's the WORST thing anyone ever wrote into your lore? what's the episode of television, the random comic book issue, the tiny spin off game that made the Whole Fictional Universe objectively worse?
Simon Furman is a comic book writer who's done more Transformers comic issues than anyone else. He's also a raging misogynist and transphobe.
When the cartoon introduced the character Arcee back in 1986, the comic followed suit. The canon behind the character couldn't be anymore different. Where in the cartoon she is just there following a 21 year time skip, in the comic? She's created by the Autobots to shut up feminists complaining about how there are no girl Autobots. The entire issue is just shitting on feminism.
Over 20 years later, Simon Furman was writing the comics again, this time under a different continuity. This time, when he introduced Arcee, he decided to be transphobic instead. He had her be a male Autobot that was experimented on by a male Decepticon scientist who was curious about how organic beings have gender and wanted to see what would happen if this was introduced to the Cybertronian species. This process drives her insane and results in her becoming very murderhappy for quite a few years.
In the second to last or very last issue of that continuity, it was retconned as her specifically seeking him out to get Robot HRT and her murderhappy nature afterwards being described as the side effects of him not taking care of his patient properly/his methods being shit(I want to point out here that by this time, other writers in this continuity had shown there were different trans women Autobots running around. They were perfectly normal non-murderhappy people outside of being robots that can change into shit. They had transitioned and everything. Two of them were lesbians and dating).
Simon Furman would later go onto state that robots have no gender(Despite him writing all the dude Transformers like cishet men) and also denied he had been transmisogynistic.
I sincerely hope he is murdered someday.
It might not be my favourite and best one or whatever, but Doctor Who's "Binary, binary, non-binary" thing, straight into "You wouldn't understand this because you look like a man" set trans rights back by approximately fifty years. What an absolutely awful concept and execution of it.
Fictional universe I love: Scott Pilgrim
Worst thing in it: Scott Pilgrim
(I am semi-serious here, and yes I am aware of the work that is relevant to my preferences)
Marvel: I hate that Civil War (2006) made Mr Fantastic a guy ok with running a prison camp for superheroes.
DC: I hate that Identity Crisis (2004) made multiple Justice League members ok with brainwashing people including brainwashing Batman, who later finds out (of course), and it is used as a justification for him to create a global surveillance satellite to gather data on everyone, other heroes included.
