The missing component: On being collectively Cybertronian.
Plain text: The missing component: on being collectively Cybertronian. PT ends.
This is a discussion submission for day one, A/suggested prompt; "alterhuman" for @dragonpride17's MOGAI ABCs event! Apologies if some wording is awkward, we have autism and only a handful of us are even adjacent to full verbality and thus capable of writing this.
We're collectively Cybertronian- Have been so for all of our life. It affects how we perceive the world, how we interact with it, how we understand ourselves. To be Cybertronian is a beautiful, beautiful thing to us. It's one of the most important aspects of our entire collective, influencing the other parts that make us the exact being we are strongly.
However, until this last we've not called ourselves such.
Simply, we just did not know. We were missing ourselves. In part, because we just were not into our "source" so to say yet- some side-systems were, but for survival we were made to forget. But being Cybertronian pre-dated even that.
All our life, alongside the other main collective identities, which are that of "organics", we've always been mechanical too. These things have existed both in contrast and compliment. A complex technorganic existence. But one of these things we understood, and the other was never clear- No matter what robots, androids, mechas, so on we looked at, nothing felt like it was a reflection of who we were. We hadn't crossed paths with what we consider now our second main culture yet. So we ignored it. We showed it aside time and time again, childhood trough teenagehood trough even earlier years of our adulthood.
An vague understanding of our true shape, but never quite full. There was a metaphorical missing component (although some interpret it more literally- of having been formerly cogless), and it ached, and ached, and ached.
Then, by wonderful coincidence when Transformers One first came out, fan-art would crop up on our radar, with us ending up getting curious about it for once- We watched the movie. And then again when a new co-host cropped up, and he, later all of us ended up watching and reading more and more Transformers media, and it all just started to slowly click as we got more and more familiar with what it means to be Cybertronian.
It all clicked and the dysphoria we've felt all our life began fading. The missing component was transformation- We weren't *just* a bot. We have the ability to morph our form. It made immediate sense in comparison to the organic parts of our identity too: Even as a fleshy creature, we are often shapeshifters.
Of course, that's not all that comes with being from Cybertron, and getting familiar with the lives and cultures of Cybertronians in the franchise has reshaped our own experiences. It does feel like rediscovering a culture that is our own. We are a part of this. It's a type of experience we'd not trade for anything else.
All of this is also why we made our TF terms/flags archive, @mogaiformers! Initially started as a personal collection of everything we could find, we'd quickly re-vamp it into an actual archive as we realized we might not be the only Cybertronian who seeks out labels and art to represent various aspects of their identities. Or just the only person in general, as some might not actually be a Cybertronian in any way. Or atleast yet. It is our hope that we can make more people realize they might be.
