There's likely to be manual class functionalists among the NAILS as well. They would have fled when both sides and everyone around them were rejecting their beliefs. In order for functionalism to take hold in the first place, the manual classes would have had to buy into it, at least at first. The righteous construction bot with a scoop, righteously obeying Primus by doing what he was designed to do. Some of them would have also embraced functionalism during their exile as a connection to the past. Hell, functionalism might be romanticized by some of the expats during the 4 millenia they were gone. It the dominate force before they were kicked off of cybertron, it would be easy to lump 'functionalism' together with the 'peace and normalcy' of their old lives.
Functionism began with Nova Prime, so the only people still alive who remember pre-Functionist Cybertron are Alpha Trion and Galvatron and maybe Cyclonus. Maybe Omega Supreme or one of the Titans.
OK yeah, that's going to be hard to shake off. Nova was the first to unite Cybertron after an undisclosed number of years of war. It's interesting that there's a bunch of Cybertronians who are 4 million years old, but almost no one from the earlier era survived unless they were stashed away somewhere. I wonder if that older generation were all murdered or banished because they clung to the functionalism of Nova?
Well, clarification that that's only people we know to be that old, and we do know or can easily infer that most of the characters we know about are much younger. Megatron and Optimus were definitely born during Functionism. Tyrest might also have been around; he was at least old enough to know Nova personally. He might not be so reliable now, though. Censere was born before the First Cybertronian Civil War, but he doesn't have much to say now. Also recall that the Golden Age, between First Cybertronian Civil War and the more recent Autobot-Decepticon war, lasted 6 million years. So anyone who remembers the pre-Nova days must be at least 10 million years old at this point.
I need to bone up on my immortal robots history. I didn't know the golden age was so long. Was nominus the one that started the expansionism, or was that Novas idea?
At least he didn't get his face eaten off by rats. Cosplay is Hella fun and you should definitely post in progress pics. It's hard to say if censere is dead for good, this is mtmte, after all. The story could bring hI'm back to life if it wants to. I loved his design and I hope we get more of him somehow!
i live in denial about censeres death even though we saw his body disintegrate precious spacecloak flower child
He's fine. Just resting. Let him sleep and try not to blow up the building on top of him until he's finished his nap
help i don't understand the calendar AT ALL "1st cycle 012" = 5 million years ago "4th cycle 499" is one year before "51st cycle 500" "1st cycle 502" = 4 million years ago "6th cycle 351" = 0.5 million years ago "2nd cycle 3819" = a few weeks after the launch of the Lost Light at first i thought cycle ### was like a year buuut then the cycle number is lower over time and then the cycle number jumps up to four digits. The 1st/4th/51st/1st/6th/2nd numbers are out of order, so it's not an era progression thing (maybe month equivalent?). are they just making this up as they go? ((most of these are from the Days of Deception arc (mtmte #35-38) and the last one's from mtmte #33))
Further consideration: either the placement of the First Cybertronian Civil War according to Alpha Trion is wrong, or Nova personally ruled Cybertron for four million years before fucking off on Ark 1 six million years ago.
It could be that the 0.5 million years ago date is a typo and should have another digit. I'd think that the first number is like a month and the second one a year, although the scaling is wonky. Maybe it's approximately 800 of whatever the second unit is to every million Earth years?
Quoting myself from CDCF because I saw some interesting meta the other day talking about the "bleeding the meat" and organic genocides being used as basically a somewhat hamfisted "remember the Decepticons are bad!!!" button whenever the grey morality of the war gets too grey. Which was interesting, because the premise of the meta is "Autobots are Good, Decepticons are Bad, so even in a work where this is examined, we have to think about where Hasbro is going to draw a line and make sure the writers reinforce that." Which is interesting! I want to see more interaction with the Black Box Consortium and the Galactic Council, not just the Cybertronian/Colony Council. I want to see the actual effects of the war on organics, not just offhand references to horrific genocides. exRID probably won't get into the galactic stage, but MTMTE is pretty ripe for it, and TAAO is probably going to have to reference it at least once. And I do kind of want to see the 'war crimes' thing addressed. Will Tarn get a trial? Overlord didn't. Starscream didn't. Soundwave didn't. None of the Dinobots did, and neither did Optimus Prime. Drift/Deadlock didn't, though he also flipped sides before the end of the war, so obviously he's going to be riding that for a bit. What about Grimlock? Does he still deserve a trial now that he's braindead? Fort Max was going to arrest him-- and there's a thing, where are the mechs Fort Max and Red Alert arrest going? Drift was dumping rogue Decepticons on the Galactic Council's doorstep, but what kind of authority does Cybertron have over its own anymore? (I know Tyrest makes a mention of using his guilt machine to tell if people committed crimes and how that led to him thinking cold constructed all needed to die, but I'm not sure if that's before or after the war?)
The Aequitas Trials were during wartime, specifically because someone had the """brilliant"" thought that hey, Autobots are gonna be inclined to let other Autobots off the hook in The Name Of The Cause when it came to war crimes. Tyrest eventually catches on to how Aequitas is judging "guilt," declares the machine unfit/broken/whatever, and as chief justiciar orders the records of the trials sealed until "after the war". And then ollies outtie, presumably to Do A Science as he do, and somewhere along the line goes bugfuck and decides to agree that Aequitas was right all along. We don't have an exact timeline on any of this (see also: what the hell is Cybertronian timekeeping??), but generally speaking it's Second Civil War Begins >> Exodus >> Tyrest Accord >> Ultra Magnus (the position) being invented >> Aequitas's construction, Aequitas Trials >> Tyrest leaves >> blah blah more war blah blah >> modern comics Aequitas's wiki page has all of two sentences, Tyrest's a bit more.
They built a brilliant machine that basically decided if you were cold-constructed or not. Either that, or only cold-constructed bots were making it to the trials for other factors.
Did the meta talk about what happened in Punishment? Sandstorm talks a bit about Autobot warcrimes that never made it to Aequitas.
Nah, it was mostly talking about general morality systems most big publishers are going to have (there may be singular issues/continuities where Superman is evil, but these are understood to be a Fake Superman, for instance) and how that effects the way Decepticons have to be written despite the thoughtful and serious nature of the oppression they faced. It was kind of bitter about it actually, because in the hands of a bad writer that means the fantasy-oppression (and the real oppressions it can model) gets dismissed, but didn't actually reference much happening in IDW current canon beyond how the organic genocides get mentioned.
Scrolling through random blogs and found a liveblog of 53 that I think pinpointed my exact issue with Megs. Spoiler: MTMTE 53 I DID NOT EVEN THINK OF IT THIS WAS BUT THIIIIIIS Not only is it unfair to make a grand speech about protecting organics that the DJD probably would not have any interest in anyways and then go back on the actualities of what this "protection" would mean, but it is completely hypocritical to go "well if I'm not picking up the gun, it doesn't count as violence." There is a reason why Censere assigns guilt not just on the people pulling the trigger. I wouldn't doubt that theres a large chunk of that field that died by Megatron's hand, but more important, a lot of them died by his will and that is the thing that's been bugging me but I haven't been able to articulate.
