#gestalt

I love the combaticon dynamic so much since they’re like a bunch of dysfunctional coworkers forced together and poor onslaught has to wrangle the whole group together.

For years the pitch around AI companions was about appearance. Make her look how you want, and that was the headline. Talk to anyone serious about it now, though, and the conversation has shifted toward something less obvious: who she actually is. On sweetdream.ai that shift is built into the workflow, where personality and a detailed life story sit right alongside the visual design.

The reason becomes clear in use. A backstory gives an AI girlfriend something to react from. Give her a stubborn streak or an old ambition she never finished, and SweetDream's chat, which is unusually natural and keeps track of what you have told it, will let those traits surface across days of conversation. She remembers, she circles back, she has opinions that fit the person you designed.

Mag Agent: Gestalt is probably the closest thing to a kaiju we'll get in Madness

Like I feel that common consensus is that a Cohort bond is largely artificial, and moreso something entirely utilitarian that Praxus forced onto their constructs for improved synergy during combat. It also ties into the sterile and functionist ideals of the city-state—that you are simply apart of the collective— another cog in the great Cybertronian machine. Other popular ideas include that Cohorts are simply intrinsic to the animal hindbrain of the Praxian frame, and is a direct response to danger as there is safety in numbers.

Either way, in both iterations, you're usually not born with a Cohort—you might be born into one, but there's no innate calling you to be drawn to specific groups of individuals besides the base desire to "survive". And perhaps an attraction you develop later on in life based on your own preferences.

Gestalts, however, in canon are pretty rudimentary, it's just when up to two to six individuals combine body and mind to form into a giant robot. Pretty simple. But I really love how people are using this idea to explore concepts like biological determinism, and the damning impacts that could potentially have on one's psyche. That regardless of whether you want to or not, you're forever bonded to this other individual or groups of individuals simply because of your biological make-up (i.e., Sparkmates). And I like how in different fics, the idea is romanticised in-universe, particularly by the Constructicons who've found their "seventh". In contrast to Prowl, who fears for his bodily autonomy and agency against the forces of fate.

Of course, this concepts implies that Prowl was ALWAYS meant to their "seventh", but what if he wasn't? (Like he is in canon lmao).

Like in Gestalts, I like to think of each member as a fraction making up a larger whole. Meanwhile, I like to think of Cohorts as more of a string of connected whole individuals in order to create a larger sum. That a major difference between the two comes in the fact that companionship in a Gestalt isn't just an addition to an one's already complete existence, but rather a needed extension of one's mind and body. That in order to gain something, you have to lose something in return. That in becoming "whole", you, yourself as an individual begin to lose more and more space within the confines of your own mind.

And to further emphasise the differences between the two concepts, is that maybe in Gestalts it actually takes more effort and exertion to close off the bond (i.e., to stop the transferring of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and etc). Meanwhile, like every other bond (e.g., Conjunx-, Amica Endurae), what actually takes effort in a Cohort is establishing that connection in the first place. That silence is the natural state of a Cohort, while in a Gestalt there is never silence.

Anyways, this relates to the idea of that if Prowl was never meant to be Gestalt member, basically removing the romance and fate aspect of the pairing. It would be basically akin to adding a whole onto a fraction, assuming Scrapper died and Prowl was forcefully made into his replacement. Therefore, the laws of normal Gestalt wouldn't follow, because the nature of their bond is purely artificial.

And assuming the bond itself functions as its own independent system outside of the Constructicons, not dissimilar to the immune system. This has horrifying ramification for both parties involved, because on one hand it may try to force these pieces together, with the risk of only opening the chasm of the bond further and further, akin to some sort of spiritual cancer. In which the remaining Constructicons would be the most affected, as in this scenario they quite literally need Prowl to supplement their damaged psyches.

And if somehow the bond succeeds, and somehow jerry-rigs itself together. There's bound to be pieces of Prowl left behind, which it determined as "non-essential" in making up the Scrapper-sized hole within itself.

Moreover, with this definition of Gestalts, there's a deep irony considering that even though the Constructicons by their lonesomes would only be considered as a "fraction" of a person. They're all infinitely more self-actualised as individuals compared to Prowl, the "whole" person in this scenario.