#addendum nexuses

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And here we have the cover for Chapter 13 of Addendum (an IDW1 Arcee novel fanfic): Gender Diaspora. This cover was super fun to work on with @VansZero (discord) love how it turned out and how they depicted the Everbright (that would be that blocky gray and blue ship in the upper right corner), and he made Road Rage's expression so memeable lmao we adore this piece. Here's the same cover in colors without the title, and in black and white:

Also yes, the symbols on the Delta Leaguer's torsos? That's the Delta Forge (not actually named in the fic) symbol, ie the symbol of the Delta League (also known as the Anti-Vocation League), a reclamation of Solus Prime's forge hammer. cyan=tears pink=blood. Here's a zoom in on Arcee's and our rough draft for it that we gave VansZero:

This symbol was first described in Chapter 2:

"Among the wreckage in the maintenance shed, I saw the agreed-on mark for the rendezvous: a cyan-pink infinity loop with two golden cylindrical hammer ends stylized after Solus Prime’s Forge hammer on each side of the loop.

The chosen transformations of spark and blood… Trans-Mutate sure is good with symbology. I rolled up around the tracks on my treads, stopped at the door, and laid out a tide of slow notes from my car horn."

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The End of Addendum Part One and the Era of Nova Prime

A while ago, we released Chapter 13 of Addendum: Gender Diaspora, but didn't have a chance to announce it here until now. Part One of Addendum reaches it's end, as does the era of Nova Prime's rule when he leaves with Galvatron, Jhiaxus, and the rest of the Ark-1's crew, leaving Cybertron scrambling to set up a new government, an Interregnum Senate headed by Delta Magnus, while Functionism reaches the beginning of it's peak, wielding significant influence in the constitutional convention of the new regime. In these desperate times, Arcee, Codexa, and Road Rage make one final play to change the course of things before having to consider what no one in the Anti-Vocation League wants to think: if they, knight errants of their peoples and aesthetics in all but name, will have to say goodbye.

This chapter contains characters giving speeches in favor of empire, bioessentialism, genocide, gatekeeping, trans tokenization and liminality, hierarchic ideologies, all of which are soundly refuted by the protagonists (as usual). Some excerpts below. This chapter caused us to add the Ao3 tag: Shockwave: "Hi Arcee I made a theory about how you're the best girlboss." Arcee: "I'll kill you."

Chapter 13 will likely interest people who want to read a (Cybertronian) Senate be incredibly incompetent, even if you haven't read the rest of Addendum or any of our fics, the chapter is fairly self-explanatory:

“Ah, right,” Road Rage nodded and pulled a metal slate out of her wing pack, while Codexa and I sought our own document slates.

We handed them to the guard, whose optics went wide, almost circular. “You three are living Progenitors? It’s an honor, sirs, ma’am.” 

“Actually um, ma’am is fine for all of us,” Road Rage smirked. “Best to ask that kind of thing even if it’s out of fashion to now, it’s the way of the Knights.”

I pressed my lips tight to hold in my cackle as the guard’s jaw dropped with a stammer: “Um right- er- go ahead in, here’s your docs back, la- ladies.” They handed them back hastily, and the four guards saluted us before opening the doors.

“This is really weird,” I leaned up to Codexa’s audial. 

“Yeah, absolutely bolts that Nova’s Constitution is set up to favor people even older than him as worthy of the attention of the Senate or deciding the composition of that body by lineage no less,” Codexa chuckled as we headed into the glyph walled hall, where tall bulky and winged blue white and red Dai Atlas waited for us alongside hulking boxy blue red Delta Magnus. 

“Elders, thank you for coming,” Delta Magnus bowed. “It’s about time these stale Senatorial hearings were lit up by the presence of people with different pronouns. I would have tried to bring trans members of the Primal Vanguard, but none besides me had Progenitor lineage. I may be able to get them in for testimony though.”

“Young man,” I extended my hands to clasp with his. “What can we actually expect from this meeting? Nova Prime leaving for the stars doesn’t mean he won’t come back, making the Senate regent government defunct once more. And there are certainly members of this body of lawmakers like Proteus who know enough of the past million years to want us dead.” 

“On the contrary, the stars have aligned for your sakes,” Delta Magnus laughed before letting go of my hands. “Proteus seconded your presence on the floor on the grounds of your lineage and arguing you are a candidate for the Intellectual Class, primordial vanguard , as are your dear companions.”

I stiffened. Did this peacekeeper cop just compliment my entire military career as a predecessor and example to his unironically? And I don’t believe for a second that reactionaries would recognize wisdom from us without planning to mystify, demonize, obfuscate, appropriate, and destroy it. 

“That’s definitely suspicious,” Road Rage crossed her arms. “The three of us, last we knew, were last classified as gender redundant in dusty Functionist files, including the shapes of my friends here.” 

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“Excuse me,” Sturvius stared across the room at us. “As enthused as I am for this, isn’t gender something that has only been introduced to us by extrasolar contact with aliens, including by genetic surgical implementation upon our esteemed guest Arcee by Jhiaxus to show that we could have gender, though it is not in our typical nature? I-”

I growled loudly, rising to full height, crossing my arms, staring back, face scrunched up. Codexa and Road Rage got up to put arms around me.

“I’m sorry if I mispoke, Progenitors,” Sturvius looked away. “I know it is a sore point, a heavy thing. We have not been kind to trans folk, I think. I am just surprised you did not address rights to racial egalitarianism regarding alt modes and cold construction.”

I raised my hand, my circuits simmering. This gender deprived bot has no idea, does he?

“Arcee, you have a reply?” Delta Magnus extended his hand.

“I do,” I laughed. "It's not a race thing! This is clearly a gender and anatomy issue. Assignment to a body and function not their spark's own iteration, no choice in shape after either when a modular body could be provided, and the lack of research to make the bodies as articulated as forged ones, it shows an unconsensual disdain at creation!" 

I reached out open hands to the Senator, smiling. "But you've been denied knowledge of what gender is! I can't blame you for trying to piece this together, but I can blame those of you who don’t share Sturvius’s knowledge and opposition of our mistreatment for ignoring the cycle of gender based ostracization, harassment, and murder! You all have some idea something is wrong. Why else does the Primal Vanguard come home with different pronouns and aesthetics, even reformatted bodies in that sense? It is not contracted from fellow species.”

I clenched fists. “ It is because we are part of the sapient condition, because storytelling of realization and experience of variety is part of all of us. Sentient lifeforms all transform. I, Arcee of Protohex, still remember and understand myself through the linked gender systems from ancient times, still experience multiple genders and kinship to all of our planet in that way gender or no, as does my dear friend Road Rage of Crystal City, and Codexa of Tagan. Jhiaxus did not make me a woman, I sought his help to affirm myself and he abused me! My two friends here aren’t trans like me! I remind you today that among other genders, Solus Prime was primarily a woman who used she/her pronouns! That the Knights of Cybertron celebrated our variation and expansiveness, that the Matrix of Leadership knows all this to be true!” 

Gasps, shouting, and arguing broke out, largely over Solus’s pronouns. Functionists and statists shouted blatant lies at me, including: “Lies! Solus forged our path to our civilization’s pronoun of choice, he/him, devoid of gender!”

“How dare you bring such revisionist history before this august body!”

“You would push upon us non-Cybertronian ways as better than our freedom-”

“ENOUGH!” Delta Magnus slammed his staff down. “If you are going to disagree with the only three here old enough to remember it all, or support them, do so following the procedures we agreed to this morning! This raucousness is beneath you! ORDER!” 

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“They and she fight for love, for hope, they do not seek to force or oppress, and a version of their and her message forms even without contact, because that want is in all of us. That is the power of contextual transformation. Those two and the Circle of Light have been the main agents through which the Golden Age has remained a period of relative equals. For all she has gone through, all the empires she has survived, all the love she has grown, all the ferocity with compassion, I posited that Arcee is the greatest among us, the greatest woman of our time, of all time! She is a Prime without title, she has done what Nova could only dream of, and she knows she cannot do it alone! For this reason, I contest the appointment of the honorable Delta Magnus as the Matrix bearer, and propose that Arcee be appointed instead, as a full Prime! Jhiaxus foresaw this day, it is for that reason he installed a Matrix receptacle in her! And that is all I have to say, I am but a forged gender nonconforming man heralding a new age.”

I cackled. “That’s very sweet in intent, in your own way, young man, but your teacher who harmed me so deeply did no such thing! There’s no Matrix receptacle in my frame, if I must be elected to something executive councilor suffices-��� 

I felt my midriff plating open up, and the searing pain of a Matrix sized accumulation of solid superstructure, cables, energon ducts beneath plop out in a bleeding mess at my feet before the wounds around the hole sealed. 

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And that's as much as we are willing to tease, if it caught your interest, you can check it out here! While Addendum is part of the Autosignet Cycle you don't have to read the prior works besides Resolving Hope perhaps if you want to follow along, the rest are orig cont or multiverse crossovers.

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A Contrast of Prowls

The nice thing about writing Prowl (we do have more plans for her) in our orig cont Autosignet Cycle stuff is that we get to reclaim and enjoy the Prowl/Arcee dynamic as a t4t aesthetic crush thing in Honey I'm Cheering for You But No (might do more with that and have at least Aileron involved) with prowl being a sweetspark (who went from librarian to shipping logistics specialist and the last we saw of her she was unemployed trying to figure out her life and aesthetics with the help of Arcee, Aileron, Greenlight, Wheeljack, and Jazz) rather than a cop. Cops aren't really a thing that prewar Cybertron and the Autobots have in our orig cont stuff, instead they have collectivist public/community services and goods (and thus no poverty or ultra wealthy), deescalation and mental health specialists (helping with the mental health component), and at most bodyguards, intelligence analysts, and as a last resort the armed pacifist military (who really only get involved with fighting hegemonic militia/military threats). Seeing more gal Prowl content has led us to wanting to give her a bigger role later in the Autosignet Cycle during the Great War, specifically as a commando/espionage agent, who of course by this point is dating Jazz. :3

We say all this because after reading EXRID, Prowl comes off as having been absolutely awful to Arcee and we just can't enjoy the ship people have of the two because of the way they trust/don't trust each other and the tension there. Not saying people can't ship them ofc but it just really feels like a situation where Arcee had to find her way out of a toxic situation while rebuilding and redefining herself. Whereas Prowl only cared about her to the extent that she was able to perform a use to his dirty work and idea of what the Autobots should be, and did not want her breaking away from that, which she of course did. It just... reminds us of how trans women get tokenized by a violent hierarchic society that doesn't actually care about us when we're seen as useful to the military industrial complex, while still actively hurting us. We think that read is very much intentional by Barber even if he wasn't familiar with the history, he meant it for Arcee's story (see: OP #21 where Victorion astutely observes that Arcee wants to stop being a warrior, and Arcee says earlier during the Titans Return one-shot to Prowl that she doesn't really feel as into fighting to kill/battle as she used to be, while the OP series shows she still clearly enjoys sparring since she does that to honor Sideswipe's life and death) because of how opposed to her Cybertronian societal structures were. Spoilers but we're actually going to write Prowl as a bit of an antagonist at the end of Addendum because of all this and other things and will have a later Addendum Nexuses story that involves Arcee and her loved ones and friends taking down what's left of the New Institute in the Autobot fold under Prowl's command (still figuring out how that would look after the end of IDW1).

(As an aside, separate from this a dear trans gal friend of ours exposed us to a read of IDW1 Prowl and Tarantulas as trans gals who are deeply buried in the androcentrism they grew up with to the point of not really having words for their trans contexts during the canon run of the story. We might have that be something that is navigated later at least regarding Prowl, who btw is kinda remorseful about how she treated Arcee by the time we reach the not yet released end of Addendum, but she hasn't figured out fully how to treat her better.)

So yeah, stay tuned for that. :3 Actually have spoons to work more on Rekindling Flight because of this. BTW for those who don't know Prowl in our orig cont is primarily green and is chubby.