For everyone waiting on Chapter 18, we made a lot of headway on it recently, it is 2/3rds done currently :3 Hope and plan to release soon. Most of this chapter is a Rampage point of view (who we write as transmasc and his sister Trans-Mutate as transfemme, both part of the Anti-Functionist resistance known as the Delta League or the Anti-Vocationist League, back during the era of the autocracy of Nova Prime. the art we posted here is an edit of a larger piece from chapter 13), it's really amusing to us to write from his perspective how idw1 optimus early in the Great War has no way to conceive of a transmasculine cybertronian because that's the level of conceptual damage and societal harm the legacy of functionism has caused with it's pushing for an androcentric world of only cybertronian maleness as genderlessness assigned guys.
If you haven't heard of Addendum (an IDW1 Arcee novel fanfic) and are wondering what we're on about, you can check it out here and read the released chapters here, and here's a blurb over generalities of what the fic is:
It is a fanfic revolving around IDW1 Arcee, that seeks to add to her already detailed and beautiful arc of a trans woman errant warrior sage coming to terms with xemself (we're affirming her/xem in the text here since in this fic unlike canon xey eventually want to use xey pronouns too but face immense challenges to that as the story will show) and deciding to trust people and herself. We love her transformations very dearly, and wanted to further reconcile xeir appearance in Spotlight: Arcee with her later writing (canon did a rather fabulous job in this respect in Phase 2 and 3 that makes rereading her story from first issue in 2008 to last a real joy for us), drawing on wisdom gathered through study and experience, and imagination to connect the dots. As you can tell just from the appearance of Codexa and others in the story, 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. There are also a lot of trans / gender expansive headcanons tossed in here for bots across the gender spectrum. They're transformers. Emphasis on trans.
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.”
“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!”
“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.
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.
Chart sourced from the Evil Women post by @shittinggold. In Autosignet Cycle (you know the trans xeno aesthetic fic series with galactic society scale and paracausal stuff) is kinda like this for the she-pronoun bots. would try to stuff more people in the top right corner but only so many names fit. For those who don’t know GAAALL is our acronym for the Greenlight-Arcee-Aileron-Anode-Lug-Lancer ship.
Addendum on the other hand (the IDW1 fic in part dedicated to filling in for 7 million+ years of Arcee’s life) goes like this:
Listen IDW1 Arcee to us imo does cover all four bases at different points in her life. If you’re wondering about the ‘poor little meow meow’ we can only answer with Chapter 4: Our Pains (admittedly she only threatens to kill people/swear vengeance in that one and annihilates a door with her new grenade launcher hand she didn’t ask for but you know she was post-op from a terrible surgery what do you expect).
