#overworked alpha trion

[kairukitsuneo]

Overworked Alpha Trion is an unmoving rock

[bumblebeem]

Transformers One (mostly Bumblebee) things I can't stop thinking about.

During the film's opening when Orion Pax falls into a room and onto a table full of energon, he bundles a load of it into his arms and is eating as much as he can until he drops it all and has to keep fleeing.

He's starving. The miners are being underfed as well as overworked.

Additionally, we see Bumblebee has three rations on his person when he offers one up to wake Alpha Trion. This might suggest he's keeping these rations for when he'll need them rather than being able to comfortably feed himself. For the miners it's a scarce resource they have to be careful with, and yet the transformers on the higher levels are enjoying it in abundance.

Bumblebee urging D-16 to "stay down" during Sentinel's attack.

This is an interesting line - if it was a nothing line meant to reflect compassion/empathy, he could have urged Sentinel to stop, or implored the 'bots next to him to take notice and do something. There were other ways to demonstrate "Bumblebee is kind and doesn't want his friend to get hurt."

But he doesn't look to authority or anyone else around him for help on D-16's behalf.

He instead instructs D-16 on how to behave to get the abuse to stop.

Which suggests to me this is learned behaviour, and he's giving advice based on previous experience. He's learned that taking the punishment and letting it happen gets the perpetrator to eventually stop, but resisting and fighting against them keeps it going.

That he was reassigned continually right down into sub-level 50 would tell me he's had more than his fair share of annoying a bigger 'bot enough to get himself knocked around once or twice. And very likely, nobody witnessing the abuse helped him, and/or the authority in the room was the one perpetrating the abuse anyway, so of course they weren't going to step in and help.

The only way out for him has always been to just take it :( So he assumes this will be the quickest/least painful way out for D-16, too.

Bumblebee is as much of a nerd as Orion is.

He knows about the High Guard (and is very excited to recite what he knows about them), he recognises the Primes as soon as they come across them in the cave, he watches the broadcast Orion locates inside Steve's head with interest... It's very subtly done, but I think this is the main shared trait between Orion and Bee. I wish we had seen more of Bumblebee trying to talk to Orion about this shared interest, but I get the main relationship they wanted to portray was that between Orion and D-16 (and really enjoyed that regardless!)

Bumblebee knows how to leave sub-level 50, yet he still goes back to his post, and doesn't appear to be using this escape-time to socialise with anyone else on the other floors he can access since he is so very clearly starved of social contact.

I'm not crying, okay, I'm just imagining this poor little guy sitting out of view watching the other cogless 'bots come and go, knowing he could get into more trouble and be even more isolated if he announces his presence and gets himself caught.

Also his "limited access" to the waste management area, and that thing he says about the main one in charge there preferring that he stays on task and really not liking any distractions... Ugh.

Bumblebee is purposely isolated in that room and there's apparently enough of a deterrent to keep him in it that he is forced to make imaginary friends out of trash to talk to instead.

I'm gonna go insane with grief and rage.

[lets-try-some-writing]

Heya! Hope you're doing well <3

So I have a world building question that I've been curious about for a while now, and I hope you're interested in answering; what would Cybertronian literature be like? Would they have fictional stories, or would it mostly be history texts and such?

If they did have fictional stories, I doubt they would have many, if any, romance books since they're obviously not a romantic species like humans. Would superhero stories with outliers be a thing? (Can't remember if outliers are viewed as bad or not). Would fantasy stories with like, Predacons be popular or would they be frowned upon with some mechs because of their history with them? (Looking at you, Kup and Autoway)

Hm, I wonder if stories with organic aliens would be a hit or not...

Considering how well Cybertron was doing before the war, I'd imagine their fiction stories weren't at the level and/or had the amount that are on Earth. Or would it have nothing to do with the state of Cybertron and more with that it was scoffed at?

My brain is just going wild with all the ways that this could turn out, but what I really, really want to know if they have fanfiction. Wait, would Orion write fanfiction??!! Dammit, Orion fangirling over a character has taken root in my brain

That wraps that whirlwind of an ask. Don't forget to not overwork yourself and stay hydrated! ❤️

Lore time?!?! Fantastic. So sorry its been *counts fingers* three to four months??? The writing vibe has been very picky as of late. Doing my best over here to answer asks from months back o(￣┰￣*)ゞ

━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙ ━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙

Literature on Cybertron is a curious thing. Culture varies wildly from city to city, but due to governmental influence everywhere, a large portion of the consumable literature on the datanet follows a certain structure. Information is highly controlled, and thus, only literature that supports or otherwise agrees with the government is allowed to exist on any public platform. Things that do not conform with the regulations put down are deleted immediately. Thus the literature that is deemed "safe" is often bland, preachy, or straight up propaganda. While Cybertron's population may have tolerated the Council due to a lack of fighting capability at the time, they also weren't fools. Not a spark enjoyed the aft kissing works produced by those who couldn't be bothered to be original.

Thus the underbelly of literature came into being, a hidden series of trade networks and secret websites created to keep the quality writing safe from the Council. Most of the hidden works consisted of data from all over the planet, the things that the Council kept hidden. Police reports, body cam videos, documents, records, trade reports, incident reports, historical documents struck from the records, information on mecha who "vanished", and so much more. Everything one could ever want information was was down there in the dark parts of the datanet. Such things always came with a price attached.

If one wanted data, it needed to be paid for. Shanix was too easy to track, and so instead information was traded. Data for data, knowledge for knowledge. It was in the darker parts of the datanet that the Archives collected much of their... more confidential information. Alpha Trion never tolerated the loss of critical information and there were whole groups under his control dedicated to collecting what he wanted from those who possessed the knowledge. There were entire wars online when it came to data, some that even resulted in doxing and death. The world was dangerous, and with the Council hunting for any and all information, literature was a prized resource reserved for those with the ability to trade for it. Orion and Soundwave both were very well oriented with the trading performed on the datanet. They were well known under their online tags and both maintained very active information broking circles up until the war began. Even then, both managed to keep weaseling data out of their sources up until Cybertron went dark.

Then of course there was the less professional corners of the darker parts of the datanet. Works of fiction were by no means unusual, but they were only produced by mecha with certain... tastes. Most were not lacking in imagination, but rather the ability to make their visions legible. The ability to properly produce a work of fiction was, more often than not, difficult for the average mech to do. Most works of fiction came from the middle castes or the upper lower castes. Higher caste bots were not allowed to write anything serious for fear of backlash, and the lower castes simply did not have the time more often than not. As such, only the highly biased middle castes had any ability to produce fiction at all.

Sci-fi did not exist as a genre, for quite obvious reasons. More often than not, what fiction came into being tended to fall into several categories which matched the desires of the middle castes. Courtly drama was a world renown and beloved genre. Every mech ran into a work in the genre at least once, and the themes usually revolved around the main character either climbing the social ladder to get into the higher castes or somehow evading their hold to achieve something. It was wish fulfillment at its finest, but the middle castes adored the genre as it satisfied the desires they had. Ratchet wrote one surprisingly well performing novel about climbing the ladder to become CMO. It was based off his own experiences, and while not exactly popular, medics everywhere all universally knew of his novel, although not a spark knew he wrote it.

The second biggest genre was rather specific, and it happened to be the caste change genre. Every bot wished they were something else for the most part. As such, there was a plethora of documents that focused around a mech from one caste either moving up or down the chain and having to adapt to the new way of life. The cultural differences around Cybertron played their part in the caste change genre as mecha from all over the planet learned from and wrote their novels. Many serious misconceptions came from the novels of that type, but it tended to create a sense of tolerance amongst the population more often than not. Even still, there were more than a few crimes committed due to rather ridiculous misunderstandings regarding local culture from individuals who only learned from novels. While not common knowledge, Starscream wrote an incredibly well received novel with completely made up cultural norms for Vos that were so widely accepted that grounders everywhere got arrested en mass until the government stepped in. Starscream has yet to stop finding it amusing.

The third most popular genre was the only one the lower castes could feasibly relate to, and it happened to be about police and murder mystery. The stories had no set formula, unlike the prior two popular genres. However they almost always involved the main character eliminating some scum of the Earth, uncovering a deep dark secret, or putting an end to a horrific criminal underworld. It was pure wish fulfillment from middle caste mecha who knew just enough to want to change things, but didn't have the guts to actually go out and take a stand. Jazz wrote his fair share of novels relating to the subject, one of which became so popular that he ended up changing his identity twice and faked his death once in order to escape any connection to it. He didn't learn until vorns later that his novel, which was based on a real mystery, had actually solved a well covered Council kept secret.

Lastly there was the religiously oriented works of fiction. The genre itself was incredibly niche due to the differing beliefs and delicate nature of faith on Cybertron. But the few who wrote for the subject were masters of their craft. Usually they were artist renditions of old tales, retellings of myth and legend, or even fictional takes on the lives of old Primes. Highly heretical in nature, very few stepped into the genre of Primacy related anything. The Council was always on the lookout for such novels, and thus those who wrote them were far more likely to vanish under mysterious circumstances. What novels were written often didn't last long. The only three novels that made it out alive amidst the harsh censoring happened to be a set of novels written by Orion Pax in collaboration with Senator Shockwave and a novel done by none other than D-16 himself. The three novels all showed urban legends and tales from all three castes and were beloved globally, even if every physical copy was destroyed on sight.

Orion, and later Optimus Prime largely forgot about his written work. Unbeknownst to him, Megatron has kept a copy of his work and the two other novels. He has no clue Optimus and Shockwave wrote them, but he adores them and have lovingly gone into English teacher mode more times than one could count to find the deeper meaning behind everything. Humanity's love for 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Dante's Inferno is the level of adoration Megatron holds for the three novels on his shelf.

There were other stories of course. Fantasy novels set far into Cybertron's distant past made purely off imagination and globally mocked by those who lived long enough to see the early days of Cybertron. A genre akin to Romance that focused on companionship and starcrossed designs put in place by Primus. Strange tales made by those on Colony worlds going into depth on organics and their cultures. Heroic stories focusing around Primus's chosen and champions of the people. Underdog tales with Outliers coming out of hiding or breaking their bonds to be free and express themselves as they saw fit...

The stories were diverse, but all were hidden. Every mech read them, but none spoke of them aloud. Literature was the quiet universal culture of Cybertron prior to the war.

[flipping-the-coin]

Ratchet what did orion do to make u hate him so much? Wernt you freinds b4 the war?

𝔉𝔯𝔬𝔪 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔬𝔣𝔣𝔦𝔠𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔓𝔯𝔦𝔪𝔞𝔩 𝔖𝔱𝔢𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔡: ℜ𝔞𝔱𝔠𝔥𝔢𝔱

ℭ𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔩 ℑ𝔞𝔠𝔬𝔫 -

ℭ𝔶𝔟𝔢𝔯𝔱𝔯𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔞𝔫 ℭ𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔠𝔦𝔩 ℭ𝔥𝔞𝔪𝔟𝔢𝔯𝔰 -

𝔊𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔯𝔫𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔢 𝔇𝔦𝔳𝔦𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫 -

Orion did not do any one thing to make me despise him. It is a collection of all he has done and the consequences of those actions, regardless of whether they were intended or not. I... did not hate him before the war. We were friends, at least insomuch as fellow prisoners sharing the same cell can be. He made my life a living torment, but I did not blame him for it. Not in the beginning. He didn't know. I still don't think he knows.

It is not exactly public knowledge, but Alpha Trion had his digits in many more ventures than one might suspect. I don't know the full extent of it, but I do know for a fact that he had several other mecha higher up the ladder killed so that I could rise to the station of CMO. Even that promotion was more of a curse than a blessing. I could have made it to CMO on my own, but I rose far faster than I was prepared to handle... and all because Alpha Trion wanted to punish me for plotting. Everyone congratulated me when I was promoted. They all thought it meant my hard work was bearing fruit. Primus, they were all wrong.

I thought Alpha Trion was going to kill me when I attempted to get Orion away from him and failed. That foolish archivist... Orion didn't understand when I asked him to flee with me. He couldn't see that he was a puppet just like me. If he had just listened when I asked him to come with me, we could have vanished into the night and gotten away from Alpha Trion. Then we could have gone our separate ways if he wanted, but I was trying to be a good friend. I was trying to get us both out of the web Alpha Trion wove. By the Allspark, I tried so fragging hard.

When he didn't follow me, I knew I had to go back. I couldn't leave him there to suffer alone. We may not have gotten along all the time, but at least when we were together, we could think about other things aside from our absolutely slagged circumstances. So I came back to Iacon. I gave up on my plan to escape and came back. The Master Archivist must have known I would come crawling back. He didn't kill me, no, he forced a promotion on me and effectively ensured that I would be too overworked to think so deeply.

I wasn't always this cranky. No matter how strange it might sound, I used to party once upon a time. I was known for being somewhat wild in my youth. You can ask Soundwave. He will corroborate my story on that front.

That wildness died when Alpha Trion began to communicate directly with me. Up until I was promoted to the station of Head Doctor at the Trion Square clinic he had only pulled strings behind the scenes. But at that point, he started to reach out to me. At first I saw it as my work being noticed by a mech of high standing. I was excited at the prospect of possibly getting a sponsor to fund my research into cures for the plagues threatening the lower levels. I should have known better than to jump at the chance to accept Alpha Trion's sponsorship, but at the time I was desperate for funding and trusted Alpha Trion's reputation of a reasonable mech.

Fragging idiotic assumption.

That was the real start of it all. I had been caught in his web since the moment I stepped into Iacon, but it was only then that I found myself being tasked with things I first found insignificant. Studies into frame alternations on Alpha Trion's request. Additional scholarships to pay for my education in other fields of medicine. Research on the physiology of developing mecha. Not to mention the many various lectures and camps Alpha Trion paid for me to attend that were focused around studying the relics of old to see if they had medicinal use.

He paid for everything. He made it look like I was just a lucky mech chosen from amongst thousands for my talent. A reward program in a sense. But I learned. Primus below I learned. He was involved in many aspects of my life. I have my suspicions, but I believe he singled me out long before I began interacting with Orion. I can't tell you exactly why he chose me, but he did. He gave me my Iaconian citizenship through an anonymous sponsorship program that Jazz informed me of vorns later. He got me my position serving under Doctor Burnout, and he made... unfortunate things happen whenever I deviated from the role he set me in. For a long time I thought that I just had the worse luck on Cybertron when after looking too deeply into family registers I would find myself overwhelmed with work for deca-cycles at a time.

When I looked too closely, I was punished. When I stayed in my station and studied harder, I was rewarded. For many long vorns it was not made obvious aside from the occasional comms from Alpha Trion requesting specific research or offering me the chance to attend a new seminar. However at some point perhaps a few hundred vorns after the death of Sentinel Prime, Alpha Trion outright ordered me to come to the Archives and speak with his apprentice. He wanted me to be tutor of a sort and to educate Orion on matters of the frame. I suppose the old cogger wasn't exactly fond of the idea of teaching interfacing Ed on his own.

I spent a few deca-cycles doing that, and I came to tolerate Orion. We didn't really get along, but we could at least be around one another. But then it got worse. Alpha Trion pushed me to keep coming back to the Archives even when my work was done. When I attempted to decline for one reason or another, my schedule would miraculously clear to make time for my visits to see Orion. Whenever I pulled a sick day to be by myself, Alpha Trion caught the lie the moment it escaped my derma, and that's when things got... rough for me.

He outright threatened me. I remember it clearly. He came to my office and he towered over me as he laid out all he'd done for me. He gestured to all I had and he threatened to take it all away. At first I laughed, but when my apprentice at the time was found dead a few cycles later, I took Alpha Trion FAR more seriously. It wasn't an innocent sponsorship anymore. I was caught in his web and I couldn't escape even if I wanted to... not without losing everything. It only became more obvious from there, that with the fragger then ordering me to keep Orion in line. I was given strict orders to ensure he remained in perfect health and that his mental state remained stable. Orion was not to deviate from his current behavioral patterns, and the moment he did, I was to inform Alpha Trion without hesitation.

That's when I knew we were both pawns. I saw Orion in that moment and I knew that he was just like me. I still had no clue WHY Alpha Trion cared so much for him or even why Orion was kept the way he was. But I know that it was a few vorns into our forced friendship that I decided to try and take Orion and run. That plan failed, as I have already stated.

From that point onward, whenever Orion did something out of line, it was not him who was punished. It was me. Do you have any idea how terrified I was whenever Alpha Trion called? My tendency to smoke didn't emerge from nowhere after Optimus's death. I was stressed to the pits and back with work and the ever looming threat of death. I thought that by keeping Orion busy, I could save my plating. I thought that by giving him that blasted ticket to Kaon that he would get it out of his system and things could return to a status quo.

It didn't. Every time he talked about Kaon and how much fun he had there, I thought I was going to go to my hab and promptly be killed. Nowhere was safe. I only felt somewhat secure when I was with Jazz and Orion since I knew for a fact that Alpha Trion wouldn't kill me when I was with them. That would be detrimental to Orion's mental state, and since the fragger cared for Orion so much, he probably wouldn't do that to him. I spent every single cycle fearing for my life. It only got worse when nothing happened. Orion was good at hiding his activities. And every single spark merging injury I fixed in Orion only made me fear for my life more.

I couldn't help but snap at Orion from time to time. He didn't understand when I told him to be careful. How could he? He didn't know he was a puppet until he talked to Megatron. By then he didn't see how tied up I was. I was just his old friend Ratchet. His best friend always there to take care of him.

Slagger didn't see how much I was hurting to protect him.

I was putting my life on the line by not telling Alpha Trion. I had everything hanging by a thread while Orion was off fragging his gladiator lover. Do you understand where the bitterness stems from? I didn't blame Orion in the beginning, but with everything that happened during the war? That foolish archivist, he made it so much worse. I wish he remained docile and calm. I wish he still had reason in his processors. Maybe then... maybe then things would have been better.

It wasn't his fault we were both subject to Alpha Trion. But he made it SO much worse. Him hurting my beloved and dragging out our war was only fuel on the fire.

𝔓𝔯𝔦𝔪𝔞𝔩 𝔖𝔱𝔢𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔡 - ℜ𝔞𝔱𝔠𝔥𝔢𝔱