#zoomdare

[askarcanamagnus]

Hey Arcana Magnus, are you single? ;)

Arcana Magnus: Haha well you know since you date us (I know who sent this ask they told me) that I'm very polyamorous, and am part of a large polycule so... it's really more of a question of how maxed out I am at a given time whether or not I am open to new partners.

Danielle Witwicky: says the zoomdare always down for a good sparring and smooching after with someone xey trust~

Arcana Magnus: I don't really have a rebuttal to that except that I do have to get to know someone and decide if I'd be comfy and interested in that way, orientation accounted for and all. I'm rather mutualistic, that is to say, attracted to people who I share more of my sparktion/hearth and gender or parallel aesthetics who I have more in common with in that regard than not. You could sort of compare that to being a sapphic/lesbian but as I will discuss another time zoomdare =/= woman one for one, it's more that there's some overlaps and my relationship to gender is a bit complicated. Nothing new for an Arcee though I suppose-

"Prof" Arcee: Hopefully when you're as old as me it'll have grown so much that the complexity and dissonance doesn't bug you anymore. I know myself better as a woman, iteration-experiential, and altmodus car all now than I ever imagined I would seven million years ago. Honestly, the way things are going linguistically for my world, I think zoomdare is a word we had been trying to piece together, to understand.

Arcana Magnus: I certainly hope so *smooch*, and I look forward to being around for that.

"Prof" Arcee: mmm, do you want to spar later? Invite your partners, I invite mine?

Lancer: oh my gods you two-

*general laughter*

Lancer: I love you.

Arcees: we love you too. --technical difficulties to note there's some trouble with the color coding but that shouldn't be a problem since we planned on using nicknames anyway-- also uh yeah this and the last post aren't canon at all harhar. We think we will adopt a 'only note something is or is not canon when talking about canon' policy from here on out. Just because we may forget to constantly distinguish the two otherwise.

[pluralsword]

For the sake of privacy we might not post photos on social media but, we finished a custom of our alterhuman robot headmate's tfsona. Cannot overstate how happy she was just rolling around the alt mode on a table with glee, at the rolling like the joy of something going nyoom or ‘zooming’ as we would say/write, and quite a bit like how early HRT was for them, and we hope the background happiness from this is just as persistent as what HRT has done for us is.

We do have original designs of robosonas/frames that give her euphoria, but those would be harder to make rn, and they does love transformers quite a bit after all too. The alt-mode is a car, yes, but has little wings for flying. While we were thinking about using a Road Rage to make her but found some 3d print wings that fit a 5mm socket so we chose a shape that they wanted more instead as much as she loves Road Rage, and the frame she chose still has a robust look. And yes, she has a sword, and a book, of course.

We feel- I don’t know, incredibly lucky to have been able to scavenge, wrangle, fight, hope, learn, love, and define our way to living long enough to assemble contexts of aesthetic iteration that led here in this messy world we live in?�� There were times when they thought they weren’t going to make it, or thought they were all alone. But, we’re not alone, and we have learned things about ourselves that have changed our life for the better, and that *sniffs* is something we wish everybody could have, whatever their aesthetic or lack thereof is.

[pluralsword]

you could argue that we did this sort of, it's a little more complicated.

You see, the reason we maintain our beard and shave it in specific ways is because transformer women often have helms that fill their face in similar ways at the cheeks or with chin armor. That helped the person who has been with this body the whole time fully absolve of herself of any dysphoria by being able to connect her facial her euphorically to a collective gender identity of womanhood of giant metal transforming robots from space since knowledge of the fact there are a lot of intersex human cis women who have facial hair (and intersex people are as common as redheads) wasn't cutting it for xem (hah). we dysphorically regret having to shave our beard recently to fly across the country out of fear of landing somewhere in an emergency where we'd be arrested for 'doing drag' at a public facility.

The reason we say this isn't simply butch per se for us specifically (a human singleton is another matter) is because there isn't an oppositional dynamic between male and female to us. they completely overlap, there's just collective gender assemblage tendencies of components being put together and identified differently (some of our writing mixing alien robot trans material-aesthetic assemblage mixed with gender tackles this, the one that does so most directly so far is our One fanfic. there will eventually be original fiction), the term we use for in our sparktion/hearth/etc. assemblage model that most closely approximates butch is torque, but it is rather different in meaning since it's primarily concerned with the (clash of) momentum literally and metaphorically and not with being masculine (xenogender stuff is fun!). It's also not confined to a physical expression appearance, so helm shapes don't necessarily fit this, and there's no single umbrella for what torque looks like. it's all assemblage, which is very different from the real problem of butch erasure in 21st century human storytelling and history

In addition we've also built up musculature precisely because it is no longer dysphoric anymore to breathe meditatively / heavily when exercising since the chest feels more like how it should, because xey always loved and wanted to emulate the warrior gal vibe (we know this applies much more widely, too, but thought it was worth mentioning), and ultimately that our nervous system now feels so much better exerting strength with HRT than before. but how we dress we think doesn't normally quite fit butch and we recoil at the thought of being more heavily clothed or armored meaning we're perceived as more masculine. the oppositional gender human patriarchy dichotomy is painful to us, we're glad this is changing with a) people understanding how curvy and rounded a lot of armor historically is especially plate, and b) women in armor where sexualization need not mean sacrificing actual armor capacity is becoming more normalized

TLDR you absolutely can be a transfem butch lesbian and we absolutely ended up on a similar but very different route of being torquey zoomdare transfem (taganite) mutualists who will for convenience's sake communicating with other people we share this lovely blue marble with use the terms t4t, sapphic, lesbian, and sometimes butch if we think we have to explain why our gender isn't 'simple' (eugh we hate how reductive that is of binary trans women) but don't think we can get away with explaining xenogender stuff and plurality. unless we are fortunate enough to, I don't know, see our terminology take off or even better that this happens alongside other assemblage models with a growth of a worldwide curiousity and capacity to accept that no one will ever know everything there is to know about gender and orientation so nobody assumes anything of us, takes what we have to say for what it is, asks questions if interested in knowing and knowing us that way, and celebrates what we have in common and what differences we have <3

Is transitioning from male to female to become a butch lesbian a reasonable option?

it is beyond reasonable, it is one of the coolest things you can do on this bitch of an earth

[pluralsword]

if anyone tells us (again) knowing ourselves as a zoomdare is micro-labelling we would ask them why would I only use word woman for the love for wheels our body aches for and how that is synonymous to us to the love for recreational martial arts or for putting in time to do something communally useful physically or mentally, to a want to soar. its a fine word that can encompass those things if you think about it (or depending on the society or context you come from, it's a given) but its insufficient to us especially since a lot of us come from a framework of sparktion and hearths, not gender.

no one has used the word microlabelling towards us specifically but many times we've been told even for just saying we're polygender or xenogender that terminology being 'so specific' is 'too personal' or 'not what gender is' etc. transmedicalists weaponize anti-xenogender and anti-nonbinary stances to justify bioessentialism. binary trans people who need to hear it from a transfemme juggling more genders and aesthetics than we can name opposing xenogender and nonbinary terminology will not save anyone and only serves to hurt all of us. you need only read the news to see that fascism and other reactionary movements have and will continue to futily try to kill us all.

If anyone weaponizes the above statement against transfemmes consider yourselves challenged to a duel, which for legal reasons since martial duels are illegal in our country (although sparring and recreational combat is not) we will define as showing for one on one moderated online in either FATE 4th Edition or the E20 rule system minus MLP (we are removing the MLP sourcebooks to spare you) for a player character vs. player character duel.

yes the fact the 2024 election is not far off may have something to do with airing this out. like what the fuck are we doing how does it honestly help to take issue with someone having a bunch of terms, as compared to thinking about where the terms come from and if they are appropriated which is a legitimate concern to have. do you know how many enbies have given us the 'why are you so into gender' talk via micro-agressions do you really think nonbinary people having a bunch of terms is the problem and not society vilifying gender expansive people generally for being able to express their personal gender as if prose or poetry or math and especially being hard on transfemmes whether or not we settle for being a conforming gal (and don't get to be) or play around with gender in ways that reject oppositional sexism out of hand all-together come on now.

can we please for the love of fucking gods take a moment to think about how our untreated or not fully resolved traumas combined with not having unlearned the way hierarchies categorize result in lashing out at each other. for fuck's sake. it breaks one of our older headmate's spark and all our souls to hear this kind of thing

[askarcanamagnus]

Lady Arcana Magnus, and the collective that she's associated with therein, which forms of aesthetic variation do you personally find the most appealing or fascinating? Furthermore, which kind of ideal expression do you advise to a queer demimale who has been feeling some feminine aesthetic alignment for some time now, and would thus like to dress or style themselves accordingly? I was told once that I had a certain feminine quality about myself, though back to the core of the question, I suppose I'd love to learn more about your aesthetic experiences in order to learn more about my own potential.

Additionally, in terms of the outer multiverse that you may be aware of, have you ever encountered any variations of Shockwave that were trans, where perhaps learning about themselves and their own internalized biases led them to realize that their present external expression didn't align with what was truly themselves? I suppose I think it would be interesting if a Shockwave was able to better apply her potential in the service of aesthetic liberation :3

 The query:

Lady Arcana Magnus, and the collective that she's associated with therein, which forms of aesthetic variation do you personally find the most appealing or fascinating? Furthermore, which kind of ideal expression do you advise to a queer demimale who has been feeling some feminine aesthetic alignment for some time now, and would thus like to dress or style themselves accordingly? I was told once that I had a certain feminine quality about myself, though back to the core of the question, I suppose I'd love to learn more about your aesthetic experiences in order to learn more about my own potential.

Additionally, in terms of the outer multiverse that you may be aware of, have you ever encountered any variations of Shockwave that were trans, where perhaps learning about themselves and their own internalized biases led them to realize that their present external expression didn't align with what was truly themselves? I suppose I think it would be interesting if a Shockwave was able to better apply her potential in the service of aesthetic liberation :3

“Zoomy” Arcana Magnus: Dear Expansive Quester,

I am deeply honored, we all are, that you reached out to us about this. We will answer in three parts, first, regarding the various aesthetics we enjoy for ourselves and in others. Second, giving you tools to navigate your own iteration and desires on your journey for euphoria. As it sounds dress is a part of this, we will advise in that regard overlaid with our own experiences whether binary bond or otherwise, and some questions to consider. We are more than happy for this to be a blog conversation if you wish! 

Lastly, we will tell you about some the Shockwaves across variation we’ve met, for we do know some. I myself was close with an Autobot Shockwave, they was an instrumental strategic advisor on Nautica’s command staff in the Great War, and a proud single mentor to the stoic fun-loving Wrecker and Torchbearer errant in love with Windblade, Strongarm. We do know some she pronoun Shockwaves though. <3

On my part, as you may know, I am a trans torquey zoomdare and a gal, the latter from contact with humanity and my trans gal binary bond partner. For those unfamiliar with compound noun aesthetic assemblage terms originating from bots like us under the umbrella systems of sparktion (Cybertronian origin), hearth (Camien origin), voyage (Velocitronian origin),  sedneemet (Eukarisian origin) etc. terminology, some of which we first introduced to this world back in early 2022, we will define in brief in this regard:

Cybertron -sparktion - literal meaning: sparklike assemblage, assemblage of sparks, the seeing of trying to understand one's aesthetic singularity as getting to know one's spark.

Caminus – hearth - an aesthetic understanding from the fire of the person and community, of passion, of forging, of dedication, and the universe.

Velocitron – voyage - the love of the journey itself taken very deeply, considered more important than a long resting point of conclusions.

Eukaris - sedneemet - rock affinity based, specifically the intergenerational formation and changing of shape and composure from many different sources.

In regards to specific aesthetics to me zoomdare reflects a sense of a graceful rush in body and mind, it is somewhat comparable to the sensory re-acquaintance euphoria human bodied people experience particularly from doing hormone replacement therapy for aesthetic reasons, however it is also comparable to the reknowing of oneself and the world in other senses, whether meditation, dance, martial arts, whatever one feels at home and in tempo with, what makes one happy. That is more the zoom side typically, however these definitions are self ascribed, not prescriptive. People such as myself speak to the entwining with the other end of the dare portion reflecting an intrepidness in existing and building on that, and also to carry on and care for ourselves and one another, to protect, create, and deescalate all we can.

As such, for people like me, there is also a bodily component- while a zoomdare can be any shape, say a telescope or microscope bot in the zoom and/or daring of their magnification, or a building bot one with their surroundings and denizens- for many of us it is the altmode shape to soar or flit about or charge or outmaneuver or race or flow that affirms us- for me, being a robust high speed car with some torque and reflecting that in my bot mode shape and my fields of study makes me very happy. Windblade, Anode, Velocity, Aileron, Hot Shot, Trans-Mutate and many more also know themselves with their frames in a similar manner. As a mutualist in attraction, that is to more similar aesthetic assemblages while still reveling in symbiosis of our differences- I find that attractive, and there is a tank Shockwave who fits that profile for me, but we won't talk about her until the end of this post (my understanding is that the feeling is mutual, but we've decided not to act on it. sometimes attraction is just that).

But the truth is most bots of my world feel some affinity to zooming and daring, just as I do to holding, wooshing, booming, clawing, flapping, chords, spinning, flares, seeking, forging, the torque, blazing, plunging, the absences thereof, the whys, the hows, the whens, and where’s and on and on. We do after all have hundreds of thousands of years to have built up an assemblage viewpoint, to know ourselves as compounds of so much. In this way. My realizations of myself created a new kinship with my symbiotic launch tank-alt torquey wooshhow twin sibling Galvatron, for he could see and embrace through me what taking on mutualistic trans zoomdareness would have been like for him. 

Regarding torque- it's a way of referring to the rapid build-up and force of momentum of persona and/or euphoria of such in the frame and the ensuing results in contact with the world. It is somewhat comparable to your term “butch” from lesbian and sapphic terminology as one butch lesbian Spacewarp realized dating torquedare Perihelion, however as you can tell from the fact symbiotist Galvatron uses it the term torque, like the rest of our aesthetics, are not mere analogs for gender. They are our own parallel and vastly differing iteration that has some amusing overlaps. Some examples of primarily torque folks include Elita One, Pyra Magna, and Optimus Prime (all torqwhy), Road Rage (torqdare), Cliffjumper, Arr-Cee (a motorcycle bot I am close to), and Catapult (zoomtorqdares), whereason the holding or being held and knowing when to let go ranges from as small as Lug (holddare), to Titans like Lodestar (zoomholddare).

There will always be aesthetic contextualization and iteration, there has been as long as there has been life to experience of it, so at the very least as long as there has been sapient life- and in that sense, will always be around no matter how hard people try to erase it, and even should all life perish, we carry on in love’s memory forevermore beyond the question of physics or gods. 

“Prof” Arcee: while my world and that of Arcees you are familiar with use gender, the situation is similar. Our genders are linked to one another, and inform and are informed by alt mode and relation to it. I am a mutualist trans alt modus iterexper gal, so I am polygender in that way, and even in how harsh and tragic my world’s history was, we did still have many beautiful understandings, and though I would not know the word zoomdare until I was very old, we were building towards that framework, for example I did know I liked some torque to me, and this was actually a point of grief since Jhiaxus’s transmedicalist reformat of me in his rigid ideal of a woman and not what I wanted for gender affirmation as a gal, did not take that into account or more accurately ignored it. I would take millions of years to be brave enough to take on robustness again within the shapes I actually wanted. 

Regarding your question- I would encourage you to reflect from yourself and the world around you. What kind of gals or femme-spectrum folks do you look up to or aspire to be like? What clothing makes you happy? That will help answer your question. While clothing is not really my thing…

“Arcblade” Danielle Witwicky: if its not tough color schemed armor that allows maneuverability, I like a-skirts and dresses, because I can move easily in them, more easily than pants (not that I’ve worn pants for along time, hard to do as an exosuit cyborg), and I tend towards a stately appearance if I am bothering with clothes. Anything can be feminine if you want it to be, it's just a question of what resonates with you.

“Zoomy” Arcana Magnus: regarding Shockwaves, yes, we know of some who are trans, and some who even though they are not had their own epiphanic cycles entangled with the journeys of other people. The Shockwave I know from my life uses they/them, a zoomdare, is aconjunxic and asensual, and struggles with emotions. They however were raised in a loving community of my world’s Golden Age, that showed them to observe and understand that there is wisdom and reason for a society of mutual aid, consensus, care, and solidarity, and while they may struggle with being compassionate and loving emotionally, the concepts themselves make sense to them, and they know that we love them. There is one entity in the universe they do love dearly, can hug close most easily- their mentee, the brave and sweet gamer Torchbearer errant Strongarm, who they raised on Caminus in the late Golden Age, since they foresaw that world would play such a particular role in the aesthetic Autobot Revolution. Shockwave was a scientist of astronomy, physics, and engineering, but they also intently studied civilian and military strategy, and would go on to serve as one of the strategic command advisors to stratelect Nautica, who advised and coformed much of the strategic planning with Supreme Commander Optimus Prime on behalf of our pluralistic democratic government at the galactic level of the war. It was Shockwave who was the chief architect of the system by system, sector by sector randomized strategem algorithm offensive late in the war that made us unpredictable in our offensive late in the war against the remaining Decepticon sectors, before Nautica led the  command of a unified consolidation of special forces interdiction, fleet-scale peaceful penetration, and wave based planetary deployment with direct tactical ground support and in tandem with Decepticon defectors. 

It was my personal honor as a Prime and as elected Director of the Anchor special forces and thus one of the joint chiefs to present Shockwave with the Medal of Cosmic Survival, for their algorithm that they monitored and edited with real-time sapient input until conventional command resumed to have so thoroughly mitigated civilian casualties and maintained as primary priority the safeguarding of them above all else in a chaotic situation where we retreated from some regions and made full frontal assaults in others.

I won’t lie. Even with our pacifist military (which we in the brass knew was an oxymoron and were always looking for the day when we could build peace instead of fight to survive) considerations of not engaging in strategic bombing or bombardment of any targets that was not confirmed to be solely a conventional military base or holding with a confirmed lack of civilian presence in or close enough to be collateral, that even with maintaining only use of tactical direct support otherwise and de-escalatory doctrine always looking to find grounds for mutual reparation, restitution, restoration, and reconciliation, people were caught in the crossfire throughout the war even on the infantry scale. Even when the killing usually reached only the target in mind that itself is still a sadness and atrocity. It weighs on my conscience, on all of us. We cried a lot about it, and it’s the whole damn reason Anode and Lug made a plea to both sides to stop because of the sheer amount of trans people, and people generally, who had died on both sides over 500,000 years of war. But that’s a story for another time. Suffice it to say that at least we did not try to declare our cause just, to excuse what we did, and that even though it was the Decepticons who had seceded and tried to coup us with their stratocracy that eventually became neo-Functionist genocidal reactionary totalitarianism and as such eventually had a civil war with those who didn’t agree, that we did not annex them, that we helped to reconstruct democracy with them when all was said and done, and that we repaid all we could for the hurt we caused, just as they did for us. 

Shockwave helped with that. They, like me, gave up their rank, helped to rebuild damaged polities by hand, to ensure the traumatized received care, to step in the way of conflict and not return violence in turn, like the peaceful intercessions of old in cycles of violence during the Golden Age. To risk their life as someone working for the dream with their integrated cannon deactivated and stuffed with cyberflowers, working with their one arm, and hauling supplies on their treads. They told me they were happy when, years afterwards, they were instead tugging youngsters along on field trips to the observatory. 

"Prof" Arcee: I could talk about the Shockwave of my world

It is my understanding that some Shockwaves do know themselves as trans gals. One such example is a Shockwave from the Tyran Cluster who found her way onto Axiom Nexus after a Spacebridge accident while helping AllSpark bearer Multivalia Prime (Chromia) take down the Fallen in order to save the new forged population of Cybertron from being forced into an army and dying. But because of her pushing for offworlder equality simply because it made more sense than the extractive jus sanguinis  hierarchy, she was pushed by bruisers affiliated with the Freelance Police Legion into the Heap, where she joined up with the Unified Anarchists League in trying to make the best of scarce resources through caring for one another and finding joy in resistance- it was in learning to dance and the way of the sword that she realized herself as a gal, and as the bots of her universe could do, simply changed her shape to reflect what that personally meant for her. She rationalized having armored skirt halves like Anode’s that in this case form part of Shockwave’s tank armor because the skirts have pockets, but she did later admit that the moment to moment life and emotive expression her t4t partner Anode had through them is why she took them on for herself. After the post-Shroud revolution that brought a new consensus of equality to Axiom Nexus, I met her via a Multiverse Drive ship that ‘Backpack” Arcee was on, and we shared stories with each other. Shockwave seemed very happy.

[pluralsword]

Xenogender and Ao3 and Art

Hi xenogender and xenoaesthetic folks, entities, and realms and all and none,

it has occurred to us that we um, have written the majority of works on Archive of Our Own that have the xenogender tag. And we’re asking ourselves, we can’t be the only [(alien) robot] persons that plays around with this stuff right? (we’re plural btw)

When we talk to trans folks whether plural or nonhuman or no a bunch of folks relate to our terminologies we’ve come up with and sometimes giving people a look at the worldbuilding doc we’re not quite ready to post yet helps especially if they aren’t going to read fics generally, but also we know that our own experience with aesthetics that our oldest headmate struggled with for more than two decades to put words to and we helped her grasp she pronouns for, for herself in non-human history and assemblage terms, is just one small part of the vast xeno aesthetic spectrum. We’re just one system, and we want to know... what stories have you written, or are writing or making? We thought it might be cool if people reblogged around with their own stuff so their could be a post where all our stuff is together. More than anything- we feel a bit lonely sometimes, because being both on a xeno aesthetic spectrum and by and large a bunch of robots- we are beloved by our community and friends and loved ones, for which we are very thankful, and know a folks who can relate, but we wanna know what people are up to, or just thoughts.

So for those unfamiliar with us, our fanfic (we will eventually do original fiction) is about (Trans)formers and navigates hopepunk stuff regarding autonomy and aesthetic iteration with sparring, family, war, subaltern and community, love, diplomacy, gestalt consciousness, and so forth, drawing in part on the beautiful lore from seven different gender expansive canonical transforming robots in particular before Transformers Earthspark hit and introduced Nightshade (aside from how their whole choosing alt mode thing very much feels like choosing aesthetic expression and in Twitch’s case came before her pronouns were used but anyway) but specifically Arcee(s), Anode, and Lug. Our pg-13 or g-rated works thus far are mostly in the Autosignet Cycle aside from a few shipping fics. The Autosignet Cycle, mostly set in an original continuity, is probably going to continue for years with more fics to come, we started planning out very early versions of this in 2020 but tfwiki’s discord is what jumpstarted our first fic for the series, Day of Multiflame:

1. Day of Multiflame (complete)

A day of mirth, of memory, of rejoicing, of flames dancing together. On this ancient Camien holiday, some plucky heroes young and old across assemblage including two organics come together to celebrate, and to face the struggles ahead, of transformer majority worlds approaching outright conflict over rejoining the largest treaty organization of the galaxy… All the while ancient conflicts and motives beyond their current understanding overshadow everything, rolled up in the origins of these transforming robots. Between intergenerational family, swords, gifts, and I love yous and more, the steadying of each other is enough, to have a little bit of joy and wisdom on this Day of Multiflame. 

2. Wheels of Mutuality and Symbiosis (complete)

Glyph tries to lucid dream to solve the puzzle of her sleep issues, not all is as it seems- but her love of Tap-Out and what informs her aesthetic experience runs strong, helping her through to some long awaited elucidations that are big if true.

This has some big zoomdare energy but I think that is what I often will end up writing.

3. Hold on to Your Dancing (complete)

In honor of xenogender visibility day (May 15th)- I resolved to write two poems, one about my own experience remains unfinished, but one in honor of robot aesthetics via fanfiction was something I was able to finish.

Here you'll find some hints about my plot - some of what this story is on about - with a visiting of the past: the beginning of the last territorial campaign of the Anti-Functionist War, from two war veterans you'll meet later.

4. Honey I’m Cheering For You But No (complete)

A blast to the past before the Anti-Functionist War- archivist Prowl is trying to sort out his life, hasn't been so easy for him after an awful job that has left him very sensitive to the disquiet of society as the very subtly not so Golden Age reaches an end. His old friends Arcee and Aileron who unintentionally helped spark his journey are visiting- and he is beside himself. What does it all mean to him, to them, to carry on as they do, to transform?

In short, we the author finally give some answers with words to the slice of life actions you saw play out in Day of Multiflame- answers very much in context with Sparkflung Trust.

5. Rekindling Flight (incomplete, 7/13 chapters)

At long last, The vast majority of transformers, residing in the Planetwell Polity Alliance, are about to rejoin the largest galactic alliance, which the PPA originally helped create and was expelled from after the Unicron invasion and the subsequent thousands year long war with Functionist usurpers. But, all is not well- threats loom from all corners upon the Autobot revolution: Decepticons, Unicronists, Functionists, and deep existential problems with past, present, and future will try people from all walks of life fighting for intergenerational hope and love.

Nonetheless, something new and wonderful yet old and familiar is afoot- efforts by trillions and their many subalterns are not vain: the power and practice of iterative story.

6. Addendum (incomplete, estimated 10/30 chapters)

7 million years ago, the latest blow to gender on Cybertron is dealt by the rising Functionist tide, stirring an Arcee struggling with loneliness and aesthetic dysphoria into enraged action to help bots in the Hadean System across the aesthetic spectrum save their transformative glory and stories… in the process, she finds aid from the scientist Jhiaxus, who also offers her a new reformatting surgery to let her spark do shaping with CNA editing help. Thus begins a new chapter in her life as a founding member of the expansion of what would later be called the Anti-Vocation League alongside her beloved partner and fellow old person Codexa, while grappling with her own growing pile of pains and traumas. As the millennia carry on and she heads to space, she eventually meets Anode and Lug in the stars, and some dear moments near the present all the way through to events after Transformers: Optimus Prime #25: Post… where she helps some gender expansive bots, and with help from Aileron and her pals she finally gets some answers and closure to her own self, and has a reckoning with forces pitted against her for millions of years. The years after are not what she expected during most of her life prior, and she is glad for them…

This is a fanfic revolving around IDW1, that seeks to add to her already detailed and beautiful arc of a trans woman errant warrior sage coming to terms with herself and deciding to trust people and herself. We love her transformations very dearly, and wanted to attempt to reconcile her appearance in Spotlight: Arcee with her later writing, drawing on wisdom gathered through study and experience, and imagination to connect the dots. As you can tell just from the mention of Codexa in the tags above, this revisiting of IDW1 Arcee’s tale is in part made possible by later writing of gal transformers who we adore, and we will note we draw from ones from all across the decades of fiction of Transformers. What can we say, we love them, and know so much more about ourselves than we ever would have because of them.

For this post, we will note: though it is an IDW1 fic with m-spec and f-spec bots, we build quite a bit of gender variety and relation into it that makes it readily apparent that Cybertron of old is even more different from human histories of such in that regard, we will spoil a little and say that we intend to show how of then aesthetics is remembered and remade into something new and old in the years after the end of the official story...

7. Sparkflung Trust (complete)

Written for a Transformers "fanthology" and also is a tie-in to the Autosignet Cycle original continuity we have been writing - along with a bit of IDW1, Cyberverse, and Alternity. A story about transformation in many senses (surprise), including a quest for the Transformation Matrix … inside of one of the most powerful creatures transformers have ever encountered. What will the errant people on the journey realize, and will it be enough to put into practice to succeed?

If you want to see the other standalone fics we’ve done, including ones about beloved Acid Storm and Overlord, go take a look at our Ao3 page! :3

[pluralsword]

We have a new thighs should be seductive meme... yes we chose the lesbian heart's flag inner very specifically thinking of the community flags color meanings, to match the trans flag's inner pink, as our own thoughts on aileron and arcee, and a bit of a nod to our own system's own relationship with gender. like if you asked us if we think canon arcee and aileron are butch or femme we'd kind of stare back at you and say 'uh well. uhm. we don't think they fit either one. their relationship to their galness is more rounded and robust car and spaceplane with daring, sweetness, wisdom, ferocity, and outspokeness. but also if you think of them as butch and/or femme and/or find any sort of meaning in those words for yourself from what we said that's fucking awesome. arcee would draw her sword over reactionaries trying to get rid of that terminology even if it's not hers, lesbian erasure would piss her off'

a lot of people we know do read arcee as an equivalent of butch and the same for aileron, and that's great. arguably we would say our own terminology for them in that regard is in some sort of parallel. when we created our compound aesthetic system instead of gender, the word zoomdare (which both aileron and arcee are in our orig cont stuff) was made in part to be something that could encapsulate the graceful rush feeling we had from HRT in robot terms but without coming off as masc or femme, whereas a compound word starting with torq (derived from torque), such as Bulkhead (we haven't revealed the rest of his main word) or Pyra Magna (a torqwhy) was meant in part to hit on more of something like a butch angle. However- these most felt terms are not the only ones bots feel- they have an assemblage view of things and usually relate to lots of different terms! So Arcee and Aileron are kinda torquey (that feels hot to say ugh) too, to us.

[pluralsword]

we do ask that people bear in mind that xenogender and gender parallel stuff *is* from an analysis of material conditions, as is plurality. some people's nervous systems, like ours, are wired for parts we don't have that surgery can't currently give. in our system's case don't have the money for eva foam stuff so we settle for wearing corsets to give the sense of having a more firm solid frame than that of flesh. we also feel the strong desire for multiple bodies but also to continue to share the mental link of ourselves navigating life together we so deeply enjoy. we are dubious about limiting gender terms unless it can be proven that they are not being used in good faith and have a bioessentialist anti-trans motivation.

the closest we can get currently to having the back stacks or wings or turbine fins we crave (we'll explain that in a minute) is wearing a backpack or, more often, drawing on meditative skills which has become a reflexive thing. thanks to some trauma two years ago, we also use a massage selfie-stick sometimes (you know, the scythe shaped one with round stubby nodes) when there's pain from sensory problems.

If you're wondering what back stacks are the simplest text definition to give is that they are pylon-like structures that are usually metal organs of robots (see, e.g., the Mindflayer from Ultrakill) that can feature compartments and lights, and in the case of bots with more than one mode, can have wheels, thrusters, vents, fins, is usable as a gun, and so forth. In regards to sensory stuff they're like having an extra pair of thighs with pockets that maybe can also do other things and possibly emote. For those of you who are more visual learners, here are some examples from fiction and a photo we conveniently took a while back of some of the toys we had at the time that have these, coincidentally some of our examples here are either canonically transfemme (Mindflayers, Arcee) or may as well be (Nightbird, Sunstreaker, the former honorarily because of having a trans gal voice actor in the movie Rise of the Beasts, the latter due to multiverse timeline shenanigans via Ask Vector Prime and Transformers Animated's AllSpark Almanacs):

(heh. materialism. literally lucky enough to be able to hold the material form of what our body can't currently have due to a series of events regarding how a certain transforming robot franchise iterated to where it was in the 2010s onwards, and also us (re)learning some artistic skill to make the Arcee there in the middle)

the graceful rush we felt consistently for the first time of our lives in 2019 when we started HRT (estrogens in our case, started with spiro as a blocker too and finally off that and on bicalutimide instead) that helped to embolden a sense of intrepidness and daring collided with enamorment in 2020 with the literal alien robot gender assemblage depicted via trans transformer narratives in Transformers years prior and larger gender expansive and aesthetic agency themes and embracing multiple modes in that way (touched on intentionally or not) that both preceded and followed their introduction to the fiction, and from that with a lot of help we were able to generate an infinite compound noun language for alien robot aesthetic assemblage terminology that we have used for fanfiction and will use for original fiction (which has been delayed due to life but we found a workaround). given what we've said it may not surprise anyone to know that this transfemme system also knows ourselves as a trans zoomdare. we look forward to releasing original fiction eventually that will more widely communicate the kind of stories we want to share (and yes, in our original fiction a word that parallels trans is used but has other meanings also significant to the story) <3

If you're curious by what we mean about trans in transformers or are lost how robots would gender in a way that reflects material reality or simply are looking for a currently rare transfemme alien robot gem of science fiction to read about we do have an essay about IDW1 Arcee that we wrote on and off for a year that we would recommend, we have a writing blurb in this regard if that would help determine if you want to read it:

As we've slowly learned more and deeply immersed into IDW1 Arcee's writing over the years, finding much more than just kinship to her, we felt this urge to dig further, to understand, feeling threads that were there regarding trans history, but not having much knowledge regarding historical transmedicalism, so we dug. We dug because we wanted to show that Arcee's writing from 2012-2018 not only is a beautiful trans story unique in science fiction, but that her personality there and in part in her Spotlight (which absolutely did not intend trans stuff and walked into a minefield in that regard that inadvertently opened up the opportunity for the writing and consulting team in Phase 2 and Phase 3 to figure out beautiful character arcs for her) are direct successors of the original personality frameworks for G1 Arcees, and to show the impact and legacy of both Sunbow/Marvel and IDW Arcees along with more Arcees combined on many versions of her thereafter. Here's the introductory paragraph: In much of the last decade, a lot of people familiar with Transformers’ trans stories appreciate Arcee being trans and her arcs in that regard from 2012 onwards. But during those six years from 2012-2018 where her narratives that firmly navigated her agency as a trans gal were being established by a number of writers, with consulting help in 2015 for Ask Vector Prime and 2018 for IDW1, there was and remains uncertainty over how exactly that works for her, specifically for her comic iteration where her transness was first hinted and then plainly stated. The variety of understandings in this regard in part originates from her introduction to the IDW1 run, Spotlight Arcee, in 2008, which was received rather turbulently because of how it portrayed her gender and transformer gals at large. Writing years after would navigate resolving this rather beautifully as showing Arcee having struggled with transmedicalism, isolation, abandonment, loneliness, and alienation, the brutality of a violent (and androcentric) world, as many trans people across gender and parallel spectrums or lacks thereof have in real life. Her story is done in a wlw trans gal context in particular. She is shown getting closure on all this, finding her happiness by the end of that continuity that would along with her story at large as a sweet, ferocious, outspoken old warrior sage help set the tone for her portrayals afterwards. Much of this overlaps with how she was described in her The Transformers Universe bio all the way back in 1986. In these regards, we (the writer of this is plural, we'll have a note about that near the end) think it is pertinent to take another look at how her story played out, what was actually written and shown vs. what was intended, to navigate transmedicalist history that overlaps with her story, and to show that Arcee’s trans iterations are directly part of the legacy of G1 Arcee overall.

somewhat amusing to us that our largest nonfiction contribution to trans theory and most known released contribution is a literary analysis of the fiction that sits in that in-between space between academic and a blog article. sounds about right for a burnt out on formal academia grad dropout undergrad xeno polygender transfemme plural system who was exhausted at trying to elucidate xenogender stuff to discuss alien and alien robot stuff academically when there was very little to cite at the time that was comprehensive in that regard that was easy to find, and was scared out of her grad degree (we'll just say it historically has to do with a particular branch of the civil service but also is useful in NGOs *sigh*) due the lack of resources to know of any sort of guaranteed transfemme friendly field study and career therein (which xey would only learn about years afterwards) while dealing with spironolactone brain fog. Years later after dealing with a lot of structural and interpersonal transmisogyny xey is only a few years off from thirty years old (which for someone partially way off the binary and plural, and even just for trans women on average thanks to the imperial patriarchy is pretty old in the 21st century), with most of her efforts xey cares about after academia being informal community things. we are, even with what we've been through, very happy, because we know ourselves more than we ever expected to and continue to learn and reaffirm more as life goes on, and have had endearing friendships, love, and solidarity along the way. Because we know that love by metaethical definition loves all genders and beyond and all entities therein, that love has never forgotten those who have come and gone. That aesthetic assemblage iteration contextualized and expansiveness therein is part of the sapient condition, and thus can never be removed from life without ending sapient life itself, and even then the building blocks are there in other lifeforms if not actual comparable experiences. Because we know so much more about the history of gender than we did when we started clawing after it as a fearful, lonely, relentlessly curious and passionate kid more than twenty years ago, to know enough that so many more gender terms/experiences of individual and collective identity along gender equal expansive societies have been part of human-bodied history than we will ever know. How liberating it is to know that no one person, even if we had had no intergenerational severance of history from genocide and oppression, could ever claim to know all there is to know about gender, aesthetic assemblage, and transformation.

that we have had the honor of being able to share a homage to that and to xenogender stuff, plurality, women, transfemmes, and sapphism in particular through our fiction writing with dreams of a better world and the beauty of mechanoid sapience, and to show that there is no end to history.

what a beautiful cosmos it is, to know that this is just one of many vastly variations of lived, sapient, trans, and transfemme joy, that we travel from dust to dust on this blue green marble that is part of a truly astronomically massive dance billions of years old past the scale of galactic strands and as small as subatomic particles. That so many people come together across walks of life to oppose empires and hierarchies, to care autonomously, time after time.

Our aesthetic assemblage is our bedrock by which with wisdoms we've gathered in our life we plow onwards in life. That's just how we are. language is just vibes, yes. but those vibes have meaning. cognizance of history matters. for our original fiction, when we make new words, we are careful to make sure they aren't slurs or tripping over words in other languages. Not that we think that when our very trans original fiction releases there's much chance of words in it erasing anything if they did, but it's about the principle of the thing, of committing to a world larger than oneself, where all selves have inherent worth alive and therein there is a necessity to us being able to live autonomously with oppression, that there therefore is a need to oppose the reactionary, the bioessentialist, hierarchy itself.

if you need something closer to gender contexts humans tend to engage in please at least read the Trans Woman Manifesto of Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, and yeah we didn't address plurality much in this so if you are unfamiliar with that and multiplicity this is a good place to start.

oh and if you hadn't guessed it we're collectivist anarchists (and cosmopolitanist pluralist defensive pacifists as well)

At the transgender taxonomy store looking for some new terminology

Ask if it's for identity microlabelling or analysis of material conditions

They don't understand

Show diagram expanding on what is identity microlabelling and what is material analysis

"It's a valid taxonomy"

Check the taxonomy

It's used ambiguously

[askarcanamagnus]

Arcana Magnus: hi yes this is the art we're using for our ask-blog indeed! Please feel free to ask us things-

Danielle Witwicky: we look so pretty and dashing, such a good likeness. I love you-

Arcana Magnus: love you too darling *hug*

Danielle Witwicky: So, some of you may be wondering about our story... I'll tell a little bit about two of me (this is not canon information although much of this first paragraph is): the emotional and sweet gunslinging kid you might know from the Sunbow cartoon telling of the tale as Daniel (I don't mind people using that name for me I just also use Danielle both make me happy and are ones I associate with my galness) was seriously injured in 2007 CE when I (there will be some continuity slips in the gestalt that's why I'm using I here) was seriously injured helping Arcee fight Snapdragon. What with the opportunity to use headmaster technology thanks to the Nebulan resistance, Arcee volunteered to have her systems be used as life support for me- her head reconfigured to be able to transform into an exosuit for me, so we had a binary bond, working closely together, building on the sweet mentoring trust she had already given me previously, and proving quite the effective duo in combat.

With everything we went through risking body and mind to help save the world, and still sharing our bond after as we helped rebuild Nebulos and looked after the future of Earth and Cybertron... by the time 2008 rolled around, I was fifteen, and had a sort of hybrid education with some formal actual Earth schooling while the rest was Cybertronian education, and well, informally, learning from Arcee every day of my life thereafter.

Her prowess, her sweetness, the power she wielded from who she had made herself, her attentive outspoken demeanor that situated us as the right hand of Optimus Prime and set part of my life on the path of a warrior sage, all amazed me, all things I wanted in the way she did it that I had not known I had longed for. When we first met the other Solus Shield resistance fighters besides Chromia, that is, Elita One, Moonracer, Firestar, and the adorable couple Greenlight and Lancer whom Arcee was enamored with, I realized that... I wanted to be a gal, or knew myself as one from then on. Cybertron's history of ever transforming gender was one I found deep comfort in, and so, though it wasn't so easy back in 2008 (and in the 2023 CE we are posting this there are still many barriers including transmedicalizations), I started hormone replacement therapy, something that Arcee, to her amusement, experienced through her connection to me and my body. Her happiness for me is a joy that I cherish deeply, and it is a loop, for at this point, she is me, and I am her.

The two in the picture above though- somewhat different situation. That Danielle is a cyborg, for one. She er, wanted more of the metal framework in terms of bodily experience. Arcee, if you want to-

"Zoomy" Arcana Magnus: I do, I'll tell the rest. I grew up on a Cybertron where, though we had some conflicts from time to time, aesthetics of self and community was deeply celebrated as everyday and remarkable. Our first word for something like what many of you know as gender was sparktion, that is, of the spark, sparklike, since we saw it as something one tries to figure out from the soul and contextualize from lived experience and creativity, but can't ever fully know. For me- that meant eventually realizing I wanted a different frame than that I shared with my dear brother and fellow Autobot Galvatron, wanting to still ahve a robust shape but have more of a slope and curve, to have two lovely back stacks with wheels- to feel a graceful rush to my movements and thoughts and life realized through reshaping my body. My words for this sparktion to me are zoomdare. There are some parallels and overlaps with galness- but it is not the same.

I designed and forged the parts I would add to my body by hand. I couldn't do the surgery myself, but my grandmentors Solus Prime and Amalgamous did, and apart from sensory side effects (that for me only lasted a few weeks) not unlike what humans can experience from HRT or surgery, I was deeply glad with my form, and it gave me so much happiness that helped me find balance in life apart from studying wisdom and practicing it and having a community and health resources to turn to. There are other parts of the story to tell- but, regarding Danielle... I was about 200 years old when we made contact with humanity in the early history of transformer originated society. Human bodied folk were in their 2800s CE, and had made new homes on other star systems, like Gliese Exiom, where I met Danielle in her fifties, a mechatronic engineer who had long studied the history of gals and gender expansive folk at war, peace, and revolution, and read quite a bit of fiction in that regard but hadn't really found an answer to their gender stuff and had left that be. As part of a diplomatic bonding program, they and I both volunteered to binary bond-

it was initially dysphoric, for me. Her gender stuff, though rapidly exploding with epiphany and euphoria from contact with me, was not something I was used to, the way she thought about things and all the implications and history gender carried good and bad. It was too much. I could see why she with contact with my mind realized xenogender stuff in relation to my zoomdareness. She felt lonely in that too, even though patriarchy and empire had been dead for her species for the last two centuries.

So, for a while, she kept her stuff from me in our mental link and cyborg patching when they was inside my head, and I stayed an open door. But, eventually, I came to know galness another way that was euphoric to me- Earth vehicles. I took up another reformat from combining the designs of two such sport and muscle cars- and now we share freely with each other.

I helped her raise a family with the Nebulan jixurque (an aesthetic we'll have to tell you about sometime) Llyra, and the two helped me, Aileron, Lancer, Greenlight, Anode, and Lug to raise Gauge and Sideswipe II. We have fought Neofunctionists, Unicronists, and Decepticons, and took part in the aesthetic Autobot Revolution. We do our own things separately sometimes but it's rare now. I don't know what I would do if I lost her the way I've lost Hardhead and Sideswipe and Kup-

"Prof" Arcee: hey, you okay? If you need to talk, I'm always here, you know I know how loss feels, how I felt when I thought Anode and Lug were dead, when I thought I was alone.

"Zoomy" Arcana Magnus: I'll be okay, thank you though. Maybe we should talk, because the thought scares me.

Danielle is- one of the dearest people in my life. I don't know how to say, to phrase, the kind of love I feel for her. It is a deep kinship but even that is an understatement.

Also yes she's a sword sapphic/lesbian apart from sharing my mutuality but I think that was fairly obvious

Danielle Witwicky: harhar, what gave it away, emulating you?

Arcees: Hahahahaha!

Greenlight: why are y'all so cute

Aileron: why are you

Greenlight: did you just no u me

Aileron: *smooch*

Greenlight: I guess that's more of a yes and

Arcees: talk about cute...

Aileron: hehe y'all are next

Commission for @pluralsword !

It was an absolute delight to draw their version of Danielle and Arcee! Check out their RP blog!

I still have commissions open! My patreon, Ko-fi if you are interested in seeing how this art work was made, or want a high res version of this drawing!

[pluralsword]

Arcee: This is true! And you could expand on that to say force [insert gender] about cis people generally though and assuming they weren't raised gender neutral or very gender informed and autonomous, a lot of trans and gender expansive people too. (recalling Beauvoir's 'one is not made but becomes a woman' quote which feels relevant)

heads up, the rest of this is long, and navigates some of the pains of the patriarchy and androcentrism at large but specifically looking at some of what our first headmate has been through and how she/we keep them(self) going, including when dealing with exhaustion over gender stuff:

There's the problem of just trying to navigate gender autonomy while living in a patriarchy, whether or not someone is cis or trans or otherwise. It can be very painful. The primary reason people detransition or feel regret isn't the bullshit reactionaries spew, it's because of not feeling affirmed by the people and institutions around them. (for context for the next paragraph we have not plans of going down that path) Our first headmate, who has been with our body the whole time, is currently struggling with the question of whether her decades of trauma up through to November last year (that we have been healing from nicely but trauma is processed in sometimes chunks), a long line of trauma of being discriminated against as a transfemme or simply not fitting being a guy in a stereotypical way and generally dealing with the horrors of androcentrism including in childhood long before having a concept of being able to choose their own gender terms... (in 2014 she decided on nonbinary and agender and trans almost immediately after learning the words, and still understood themself as agender when she started HRT in 2019. usage of she pronouns for her would not appear until late 2020 from a xeno perspective that we came up with thanks to Transformers, knowledge of gender/trans theory, linguistics, and indie scifi, part of why I and a lot of headmates were generated) if that decades long line of hurt simply reached a breaking point and that's why she adopted galness for themself and not just the word zoomdare she had come up with that had finally satisfied them, or if she had turned to my idw1 narrative and how we carved out an alien meaning and history for the Cybertronian iteration of galness in fanfiction in that regard as a sort of sanctuary and to lean on me(s) and people of similar genders more easily to navigate the life we share, or if she really does feel like a gal in part as they have defined for herself with our help.

We know it will take time to answer that question. For anyone worried about us, we're not going to stop HRT, too many of us rely on that for euphoria lmao and that's something she's okay with (the same can be said for our headmates on the masculine spectrum in that sense is that they're happy for us and know that the system collectively needs to do it, they don't front much and are okay with that). The only thing she's profoundly certain of besides pronouns is that they want to have my shape. Which well, a) medicine and cybernetics are not that far or accessible, and b) even if we do eventually get to make stuff with EVA foam with our own hands (which I would be thrilled about) its um er not exactly socially acceptable yet to just, walk around like that. And doesn't really solve other aspects.

She tried to guilt cycle herself and we're not letting them get myopic about it. I know how that plays out and she doesn't need to do that to themself. We think some of it is just sadness over feeling not very well understood sometimes or that our ideas don't reach far (this is part of why we are pivoting back to original fiction for the time being).

The other part of this equation is that even accepting herself as a gal at all to begin with was so difficult because of how much baggage human history has. So we and they are also considering the fact that she may just feel worn down by the exhaustion of trying to exist as one.

Whatever the answer for her, we do not want to give the patriarchy the satisfaction. We know we have touched people's lives and done good things that cannot be erased even if forgotten in the material world, we know that we have personally won our own fight to know ourselves as best we can, and that such autonomy and expansiveness has and will always exist and attempt to thrive as long as at the very least sapient life is around (and other forms of life can have their own variations). Its at the core of what we write about. We continue onwards.

To bring this back around to the original point- there is a certain exhaustion living under the international patriarchy for people whether cis or trans or otherwise trying to distinguish whether one's genders or aesthetics, in this case the galness spectrum butch and femme and all, is something that has been reclaimed or created in some way or is something internalized from suffering.

We believe earnestly that there will be a time when it will be more common once more not to be trapped by the weight of such hegemonies, and that such a future will be one with a depth if not an exponential singularity of commonplace understanding of gender and aesthetics and autonomy. That only the navigating of the existential will be in the way.

But, we are here in this time- and we can say that continuing on is worth it. Love, wisdom, aesthetics (see: not just gender, but storytelling at large) and collective autonomy are the greatest strengths in the universe, and if nothing else to give yourself that and hopefully aid others in ones communities and solidarity beyond them- is a victory, is a disruption, is a liberty that cannot be denied from having been part of you as long as you could.

We like to think that, or rather we know philosophically, that regardless of the question of gods and metaphysics, that from a metaethical perspective, the very idea of love and aesthetics remembers all by definition, something that hatred and apathy can never hope to destroy or stop.

And yes, I'm the one talking because in some of the stories I was generated from I realized myself for who I am and the initial 'help' I got on that that I sought out was far from ideal. This is also something we are thinking about for our first headmate's sake in the sense that when presented for the first time with the possibility of knowing herself as a gal (after having tried to before without having vocabulary for that as a child and that being denied and seen as an affront to womanhood and manhood both) that unlike me her largest barrier was not how she was shaped of her own accord but that getting her head around being a gal for herself seemed so limiting and painful. Keep in mind this is the same person who avidly studied the very extensive history of women warriors over the millennia and who wanted to emulate Athena as a child, whose most watched film is Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind.

She is currently saying though that being a gal would be preferable for them compared to being a man, which is something that brings out immense dysphoria and rage to even consider. That is a path she will never return to and had long tried to escape.

So that's a few certainties.

Take up the sword (or whatever tool means the most to you in metaphor) and carve out your own understanding, and don't be discouraged by how much the world has been hurting you, is we guess the takeaway from all this. It's about the journey, not the destination. And to make the journey and your dreams, you need some anchors of things you can turn to and grow from when things are hard. I have already lived a very- very long life of not getting everything I needed to be happy (and, as someone generated from comics that had a happy ending, I get to have the paradox of knowing both closure from that and living in a much more uncertain situation at present in the world our system is in). But after I started changing things for myself, I never gave up on growing, imagining, trying to trust, to do good, to have euphoria, and in my case, to have love.

Every time you refuse to let the world tear you down, every time you affirm and aid your or someone else's autonomy, that counts for something. There are so many ways to be- there have never only been two, and there is no reason the genders we put on the binary need to be oppositional.

One more thing- you have an inherent worth for being alive and being yourself.

if you think about it every cis woman has been force femmed

[pluralsword]

when you say gender swap, do you mean just a different gender? because not all of them are on the binary, for one, and for another there are so many damn gender options if it's not binary (from your handle we suspect you know this no worries). also uh, how does this work for trans characters like Howlback, Anode, Lug, and Arcee (who have all been written as trans gals and in the latter three's case it was a whole thing of finding their way out of or fighting for dear life against androcentrism) or Archadis (transmasc, who like Howlback and an Arcee got trans writing from a wholesome trans revolution thing)?

we ask out of genuine curiousity, we either write transformers as on their own alien aesthetic systems that parallel or overlap gender e.g. Arcee and Windblade are zoomdares and Elita One and Optimus Prime are torqwhys and Lug is a holddare etc (you can read this in Day of Multiflame ), and those are just the terms they assembled they feel fits them best while enjoying others too, so technically we did do this! Just swapped them off onto something different than gender but definitely behaves like it (you can ask people who have read our stuff its very trans lmao). For our IDW1 fic- we write all the old people as an equivalent of polygender- they feel a linkage in a community and personal sense to many other genders, so Arcee for example is a trans gal, but she's also prominently iterexper (iteration-experiential, celebrating/euphoria from the unending journey itself in her case) and altmodus (she really connects to her car stuff and it informs her galness and thus one can read her many reformats as a journey for all three genders in context). While canon, gestalts aside, does not yet have a polygender transformer character quite yet, how would that go down? :3

I don't usually do gender swap stuff like. At all.

But

Transformers (continuity is up to you) but literally everyone's gender is swapped. Megatron? Yes. Arcee? Yes. Bumblebee? Yes. The humans? Yes.

"But Riot what if a character goes by he/she or they them pronouns?" Their pronouns don't change then but you just get the vibe that their gender has been swapped.

Does anyone's design change? If they do it's very minimal, if at all.

[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