#functionist

[lazyhomestay]

"You are the living embodiment of the Decepticon ideal and are merely a step away from completely embracing it."

[lord-squiggletits]

Ratchet expresses more Functionist beliefs on-screen than Pharma ever does send tweet

[sweet7simple]

More Than Meets the Eye: Volume 7, Issues #34-38 (Spoilers)

FOOD FOR THE RUNG AND WHIRL LOVERS (me). And also, Whirl has tiny digits in his claws?!? More below.

We get to see Whirl's face before empurata:

LOOK AT WHIRL'S FACE. AND HIS HANDS:

Finding out that the functionists did this to him (which surprises me because I thought that was obvious?) leads to another fascinating factoid about him.

(More under cut)

When Rewind kills Megatron in the past for the sake of the rest of the galaxy, it's actually Whirl who saves Megatron by giving him a new spark (where did he get a new spark from, you may ask? The answer is, Brainstorm was carrying it around) and therefore preserves history as everyone knows it (because apparently a world without Megatron is actually somehow far worse for Cybertronians than a war spanning millions of years. It was terrifying).

First of all, for the sake of chronological order, there was Rung being a badass when they found Brainstorm about to kill Megatron:

(Whirl is so proud of Rung, you can't convince me otherwise).

When Brainstorm can't follow through, it's Rewind that kills Megatron. And then Whirl drags Megatron's body away to a locked room to bring him back.

WHY IS THIS THE FIRST TIME I HAVE HEARD OR SEEN OF WHIRL'S TINY DIGITS? WAS NO ONE AWARE THAT TINY DIGITS COME OUT OF HIS CLAWS? All the fanfiction is like, "Whirl can't do anything with his claws in the berth" BUT HE HAS MOTHER FRICKING TINY DIGITS. THIS MECH WOULD BE SO GOOD WITH HIS TINY DIGITS. HE JUST DID MOTHERFRICKING SPARK TRANSPLANT WITH THEM.

LET WHIRL USE HIS TINY DIGITS DURING STICKY INTERFACE PLAY.

Oh, also, here is Rung in the postscript in that alternate reality where the functionists tale over because Megatron was essentially never born:

This mech is such an unexpected badass and he should be recognized for it.

I am obsessed with Rung and Whirl.

[transingthoseformers]

Shit most definitely went down while Tarantulas, and later on Shockwave, were captured by GHOST.

Like, GHOST absolutely fucked with Tarantulas's mental rhythm. Look at him, he's got trauma

And, I'm probably just filling in a plot hole here with some hc spackling but I feel like some of Shockwave's character development occured during while he was holes up in wherever GHOST was experimenting on him. Is it canon? Probably not. But does it make sense to me? Yes. Shit went down, and somehow Shockwave's pov on the terrans changed. It would be lovely if in season two we got some references to something like this, but I don't think that is going to happen.

[archie-sunshine]

omg i would LOVE to see the designs for the senators in ur kf au AGHH

I CANT FOR THE LIFE OF ME REMEMBER WHOM YOU ARE REFERRING TO AZHARMA OTL

i... misinterpreted this as theeee council members?? from the end of lost light, so i ended up designing them anyways, but if i got the wrong person PLEASE forgive me-

OH OKAY OKAY i actually went and read a wiki for once, i fucked up good god- anywayssssss uhhm!! COME BACK TO ME ON THAT I PROMISE

[decepti-thots]

literally if you look at it from a broad, canon-wide perspective, minimus' life fucking Sucks, the narrative just doesn't really linger on it. brother disappears presumed dead. the war happens. minimus screws himself up doing the Magnus thing. mentor betrays him, minimus kills him. has a breakdown post war. brother in law dies bc he couldn’t beat overlord. brother was alive the whole time and minimus didn't help him but also now he's ACTUALLY dead and minimus didn't help him again. ten dies. megatron dies. oh my fucking GOD. him and drift should make an All Our Loved Ones Are Dead club

[whatudottu]

I am endlessly entertained (perhaps that's the wrong word) by the concept that Knock Out was only ever doctor adjacent and just switched from a cosmetic surgeon to a full blown medic during the war, especially since apparently in human medicine you don't have to have a doctorate as a cosmetic surgeon, at minimum only needing their basic initial medical training.

But I've also been thinking of it shattered too, Shattered Glass specifically.

I mean, I could hypothetically keep SG Knock Out as a cosmetic surgeon, but why would a cosmetic surgeon not practice what they preach and at least look a little nice. Going with a literally shattered Knock Out, would you trust a bot that looks like he walked out fresh from a car crash to make your finish shine? Probably not, but he'll do it...

Though, not in the same way one might as a cosmetic surgeon do (beautician?)

If SG!KO is so hellbent on keeping every scar and only really fixing anything if it reduces the integrity of armour (Knock Out may scoff at scuffed paint but he isn't an idiot), what if frankly he's unused to working on anyone that was ever remotely alive, especially himself who would need to be alive to do anything in the first place. A scar here, a scrape there, battle hardened warriors on their deathbed might want to look grand and imposing even in death, no wayward medic is gonna make that body look pristine and perfect just to erase the story of what had happened.

So instead of being a cosmetic surgeon, Shattered Glass Knock Out may have been a mortician, perfectly adept at making a corpse shine without erasing the features the dearly departed so diligently requested, though gussying up a comatose body is a lot more living than he's particularly used to.

Part of what makes this funny (in perhaps a horrifying way) is that Knock Out uh has no history with being a doctor OR as a licensed medical professional; you don't need a to worry about the hippocratic oath if the patient you're working on hasn't been alive for a whole month. What counts as an open wound fresh from stabbing versus an old wound one wears proudly is if there's any live wires or leaking fuel actively compromising the integrity of a bot's frame. Buffing and waxing a living mecha's armour is different when there are still active nanites working their way on and throughout the body giving their vibrant armour colours. Stemming the flow of actual liquid energon versus the congealed clots of cold dead fuel is an entirely different experience than what Knock Out had been doing over and over again before he had to be a medic.

Trial and error, where the errors lead back into KO's expertise, dealing with the dead and following the wishes of the deceased; a new term to agree upon came about with the war, to harvest what can be salvaged and be stored (for as long as they will live) for spare parts.

If baseverse Knock Out was a charming, outgoing, and sociable mech, SG Knock Out isn't used to bodies (patients, mecha) walking around and talking. One of the first time he was fixing a finish, first time using the stuff for the living, he nearly clawed off his own work when the mech made conversation; the ensuing joke of 'having a BREAKDOWN' didn't stop the groan and eye roll from being his next response. He doesn't so much as flinch at a dead looking finish, the kinda grey you look at an immediately associate with a corpse, but he can certainly tell the difference from a hue of nanites and the absence of their activity. At the cordial 'Doctor Knock Out' sent his way, he has to shut himself up correcting them, for as true as he may say he isn't a doctor it isn't particularly assuring for the bot in charge of your medical care states blandly he doesn't have a license; not many do, but saying it aloud doesn't help anyone.

Working during the war KO has accrued a few scars of his own, never makes it the end of the solar cycle with a pristine finish... and not just because he doesn't really care to start the day with a fresh coat. Armour often left dented though repaired when split, face and portions of protoform littered with nicks and cuts and sometimes gaping wounds, sealed shut not with welding but a mesh net he had once used as a mortician for those very same scars, whatever bleeding there long since healed. The missing optic is inconvenient, though not quite as terrible as losing a few parts from his fingers, their delicate work hampered with some missing tips, another near fully gone.

Some of them have stories, others a quick flash. There was a bomb in a body, that took his fingers. There was a welding torch, the light burned his optic. A wound on his side, that was from a lucky shot.

He is his own walking autopsy.

[solardrink]

My mind controlled optimus au …

[witchofthesouls]

In Chainsaw Man, Power lets Denji fondle and squeeze her breasts for helping her. She lets him squeeze them three times for the three things he has done for her.

The Lost Light Liasion lets the bots of your choice fondle her breasts and lets them squeeze a certain number of for three amount of times they’ve saved her ass/helped her.

Who are the bots and how do they react?

(If this happened, Ultra Magnus would be so on top of this since there would be mechs that would purposely create trouble to "save" the resident human. He's gonna nip that in the bud since the Lost Light already has too much chaotic energy. So nudity scenarios with Giant!Liaison because I love that concept a lot.)

Whirl eyes your chest in a manner that wouldn't feel off on a gemologist appraising someone's antique jewelry, optic narrowed in serious consideration as he pokes your left boob.

"I don't see the appeal." Whirl taps a claw on his own impressive chest. "My bazongas are bigger."

"Yeah, but can yours bounce?"

"Touché, Fleshlight." Whirl hums, optic following your chest's jiggling motions as you cup and squeeze the soft flesh. "Touché."

_________

Ambulon brushes his servos over the uncovered skin. It's soft and warm and strangely like a really supple protoform. The specialized sensors in his digits and palms pick up your biochemistry, and it buzzes pleasantly to his neural-net.

He filters the temperature readings, hydration levels, and other basic information from the passive scans to just concentrate on the sensation of the innate elasticity, how his digits can press into your protoform, and how it contorts and flexes.

You can't manually shut off your nerves, nor can you inwardly self-manipulate how you perceive sensation. Apparently, in your species a dimmed or lacking pain response is attributed to a sensory-perception defect.

Ambulon is curious how you function on the paltry information from the medical books in your bookcase is very limiting. Theory doesn't always match to application. In general, organics are messy and squishy and so full of so many liquids, but he had traced over the skeleton and muscle tissue within the diagrams, and can't help the heretical thoughts of the familiarity of the structures.

You can't show him the innards of your frame under your guidance; self-surgery is a wonderment to humans but it's common amongst Cybertronian medics. At least well-trained ones or the very experienced ones that survived their ventures.

(Pharma was many, many things, but he had ensured that his staff was well-equipped and well-trained under his perfectionist ways. Even the ex-Decepticon.

Ambulon, to this day, can't tell what was real or falsified by the surgeon. How much was simmering beneath his old CMO...)

He chases away the thought by exploring other areas. Humans are just softer than Cybertronians by design. Some parts are more so than others as he traces your abdomen and your chest area, thumbing over a teat.

"Does your species have something like this?" You ask, voice hitches.

"Yes."

"Oh?"

"Under the old regime," his voice takes on a teaching cadence, "supplementary refineries were deemed obsolete and phased out. Very few frames, think of older schematics off Cybertron or cohorts too far away from public refineries and production, were... allowed to keep such things." Ambulon remembers one of his old gestaltmates, his refineries kept them alive in the combiner process. "It helps refine lower-grades of Energon, even near-usable ones, to something consumable."

Based on the emotion on your face, you're interested in the strange similarities as well.

_________

Swerve's vents sputter as he coughs out a weak cheer and is overwhelmed by Tailgate's complete enthusiasm. Getaway also claps, but Swerve could feel the heat from the mech's plating, despite how unruffled the escapologist appeared.

You twirl around as Swerve sends a quick prayer to the Guiding Hand at the expanse of your back and your bare legs as the fabric floats and takes its sweet time to settle back down.

Tailgate immediately makes a beeline to fuss over the dress and attaches the rest of the accessories.

"You're okay if I adjust the front?" Tailgate asks.

"Go for it, short stack." You admire the glinting gems and subtle, beautiful swirls in the mirror.

And without any sense of shame or embarrassment, Tailgate does it. The minibot pulls it and you up. Swerve takes a large gulp of the complementary cocktail when it turns skin-tight, pressing into your flesh.

"Short stack," you wheeze and your chest heaves. "You're squeezing me here."

Getaway crosses his arms, fingers digging into his plates. He isn't as nonchalant as he tries to be.

"Give me a moment." Tailgate clips on the thin, glossy strands of jewelry over all your body. "I have to get this on before I fix it completely."

When the mech finishes, you look far more stunning and Swerve's vocalizer simply clicks, so he makes it up by whistling and clapping. It isn't missed that Tailgate is used to casual touch as he gives an arm to help you down the podium. Plus, the mech has quite an eye for 'off-world' fashion.

One of the attendants admires Tailgate's handiwork, clicking at a rapid pace as feathers ruffle and soothe, and Swerve hopes that the rest of the team is almost done with whatever they're doing.

"What do you guys think?" You ask, calm with even talons near your face, painting your lips and applying geometric patterns down your cheeks and neck. Whatever the attendant had done to your eyes had made them larger, brighter.

You look something out of old folktales from the outer rings of city-states as the metal strands clink pleasantly as you move, the fabric languidly shifts in a strange, fluid way, defying gravity, rippling across your bare skin like a living covering.

"You look good, Y/N," Getaway says, quite casually. "But I think that set there would look even better."

The burnt gold body jewelry in the case behind you is a dead ringer for Getaway's faceplate. The escapologist gives no other reaction to the flat fields and stares from Swerve and Tailgate, just a happy curve of brightened optics.

[lord-squiggletits]

Fanfic Pharma: "I'm so proud of my hands, forged doctors are the best of the best and everyone knows it, and honestly Functionism isn't that bad--"

Me:

(Image description: The "Don't make me tap the sign" meme from the Simpsons. The bus driver is pointing at a panel from the MTMTE comics in which Pharma says "At first I wanted to hurt you for ruining things at Delphi, but when you crashed I saw that you'd stolen my hands. That took things to a whole new level. You declared war on my body, Ratchet. I'm retaliating.")

[pluralsword]

Hot take joke bit- Arcee's helm vaguely resembles a transformation cog, which the Functionist Council emulate. The twelve of them arguably overcompensating for not being (trans) women unlike 'Cee, and get angry about the capacity for change. Huh wait- why is this familiar.

Of course Arcee’s helm only takes up this look in EXRID (her helm also looks like this in G1 and Cyberverse), not the look she had from her initial reformatting surgery from Jhiaxus. So we rewrote this joke:

Arcee: hey Jhiaxus do you think you could code in some audial buns with grooves for the CNA surgery? Like a transformation cog, since I'm trans. Doesn't have to be 1 for 1, just reminiscent.

Jhiaxus: of course my lady (proceeds to not do that because it doesn’t fit his idea of a woman)

Arcee, later: Jhiaxus is such a transmedicalist scraphead

Later, the Functionist Council: we are the pinnacle cog of alt mode and police body shape

EXRID Arcee after her surgery from Ratchet: Fragging finally I have my helm-shape that loudly declares my transness. It’s so lovely <3

All we're saying is this is good fanfic material stuff (of something that clearly wasn't intentional) with real parallels of how hateful cis folks will appropriate transformational/realization symbology/aesthetic and deny anyone seeking a better fit for themselves, trans or no. We might throw this into the next chapter of Addendum to have this comment in there when she looks in the mirror

the responses we got from servers we’re on include:

the council making their heads into t-cogs and whatnot is the equivalent of chuds online being like "my gender is stupid asshole and my pronouns are fuck/you" 

Arcee is so cool

[transingthoseformers]

Considering Earthspark’s approach to making the Decepticons not that evil, it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce some awful Autobots as antagonists.

I know it would be fucked but- Sunder and Froid were the first to come to mind 👁👁

(Also considering that some of the inspiration for Tarantulas came from Sins Of The Wreckers, Impactor 👀)

Iicr, there were definitely a few on my "what would be the most fucked up thing to add into earthspark" poll(s) with earthspark Sunder being what inspired me to make the poll and who i voted for (yes i voted on my own poll sue me, earthspark Tarn still won)

I also considered earthspark Pharma and earthspark Getaway, which a tfe Getaway would be ~interesting~ because it gives us the idea of some of the autobots splitting off in protest of Megatron defecting and teaming up against our protagonists

I've in general been thinking a lot about mnemosurgery / mnemosurgeons in relation to Earthspark, and I admit I too have thought about Sunder and Froid dropping in on earth (i imagine that Froid lures mecha to Sunder, kinda like what we saw in the series)

Pharma would be a crunchy situation because not only did he flip shit but his design is so interesting especially with the saws especially with the saws.

I've also been considering Trepan or a character like him... for reasons...

I had not even considered Impactor he's a lovely lovely choice to choose here, especially giving him deep history with Megatron.

[decepti-thots]

one of my favourite bits in my BB fic is when i have prowl point out that mesothulas forged his altmode exemption kind of badly. it didn’t make it into the fic because prowl has no way of knowing but in my head when mesothulas is like 'never gave me any problems!', prowl assumes this means noone looking did their job correctly and noticed, because this reinforces his belief everyone else is an incompetent idiot. but in reality mesothulas has just straight up killed like four separate government inspectors and been like 'eh, this is fine, they always send unarmed dweebs'.

[sparkmender]

Who am I to you? From Optimus.

Rung falls still at the question, carefully balancing all the empty cubes he’d been gathering up to run through the refresher in his arms.

“That is a… tricky question, I will admit. Do you want a straightforward answer? A religious one? The… questionably legal answer? Because you are many things to me, Optimus Prime, some of which I don’t think either of us would have chosen for ourselves.”

Thinking better of continuing on with his chores for the moment, the odd little mech stacks the empty containers neatly on the table and turns to face Optimus directly, servos clasped behind his back.

“As I am a priest of the Guiding Hand in active service, you are the voice of authority and law, my Prime. Should conflict arise in regards to halachic interpretation, I am supposed to defer to your judgement,” Rung explains, helm tilted just so, chin raised so that his oculars are transparent for Optimus. He knows they go opaque with the overhead lighting sometimes, and that it obscures his expressions. “In practice, however, my congregation is small and my work tends more towards preservation and research with sporadic crèchekeeping duties than liturgy. You have quite enough on your plate already without an old fuddy-duddy nursemaid bothering you about traditions so outdated they fell out of practice before the Basilica was built.”

His lips purse briefly, thin crinkles forming at the bow of his mouth. “According to the Senate and the late Functionist Council via a complex set of property rights laws put in place by Nova Prime and then later reestablished by Six of Twelve, I am legally considered your Ornament, singular and personal. A more generous interpretation would have me as a ward of the Primacy, I suppose. You could have me punished for dereliction and disobedience, if you really wanted to, but— forgive me, I don’t think you want a personal slave. Sort of goes against that whole ‘freedom is the right of all sentient beings’ ideology.”

It was not something to joke about, but Rung can’t help but see the irony of it. Poor Optimus. There was such bloody history tied to his crown, even before he took up the responsibility of command.

He reaches out to tap a little hand against the mech’s wrist. “I’d rather be here of my own will than caged. I think you’ve got a good spark and a generally reasonable processor. If you need my help or experience, by all means, I am at your disposal. You need only ask me. …I admit I do feel some measure of responsibility of care for you, if only because it seems like no one else has ever bothered to simply ask you how you are or if you need anything beyond the most surface-level pleasantries. But, please, do not mistake my affection for obligation.”

[wonderwomanpleasesteponme]

Welcome welcome, here I am about to post none stop about my aus like I used to do before becoming somewhat of a lurker.

So recently I've been thinking about what would the functiontist universe be like in tfa. Post war tfa is already a toned down version of the functionist universe, so what if I make it worse in a world without Megatron. Please note I am currently doing my first read through of the idw1 series and have now reached issue #4 of MTMTE so i am nowhere near the functionist universe stuff, i just know about it by being in the fandom for a while now. And the first post about it to come back to when writing the actual goddamn fic is comparing the different mentors between my main post canon tfa au, that I'll probably never end up writing, and the functionist universe ones, for all my found family and domestic fluff writing needs. Or angst if I'm feeling a way on a day.

So first up we got Drift/Deadlock. In tfa it is implied that Drift is around the same age as Optimus' crew being a young adult. So who stepped in to be a mentor / parental figure for him in the main tfa world? Why, Dia Atlas and Wing of course, mostly Wing though. In the functionist universe Drift well Deadlock actually, mentors are Shadowstriker and Flamewar. Unlike Wing and Dia Atlas who met Drift as an adult and are more like teachers to him, Shadowstriker and Flamewar met Deadlock when he was still a youngling and took him in, so they have a more parent child reactionship rather than a teacher student one.

Unlike in the main tfa timeline Prowl and Tarantulas never met but in the functionist universe they did. And of course like in every other au of different continuities with these two they have their weird sciene baby aka Ostaros / Springer.

Another child who goes not exist in the main universe is Whirl Jr. who is actually a sentient scraplet colony. Whirl is the sole caretaker of Junoir but they have to leave her with all the other younglings that the rebellion takes care of in the school house most of the time because they act as a spy for the rebellion within the elite guard.

Next up we have Hot Shot who in the main timeline had your everyday run of the mill Autobot creators but in the functionist universe he's cursed with having Astrotrain as a creator, making him more like his aligned continuity counterpart being a triplechanger.

Well that's all the differences that would be mentioned and taken note of but there will be a scene in the school house where other kids who have different parents between worlds would be mentioned off handedly.

[rxng]

"Hugs don't always help. Wanna go break shit and let out some anger with me? I've got a box full of glass and old things I wanna get rid of anyways." @forged-through-flames

A Rung left alone would smile at that and decline. He likes to crush glass too but he's found others don't care for his rages.

This Rung smiles and promptly slams the manacle around his wrist into a rock, a crack going up the width. And into him. Ow.

"I think that sounds delightful, dear." He says, all power and certainty. He exudes confidence and love. Always love.