TF Mercy Devcon and Cybertronian conversion therapy/involuntary medical intervention
(Devcon concept art is by @darija-morgan )
Devcon is a very aggressive, Decepticon-hating Aerialbot. He is also super bigoted and mean to beast-bots too. So he is very bothersome for the reader who is playing as Predaking! He attacks us for no reason or just insults us!
Devcon has trauma from Decepticons. I won't focus on that right now but because so many Seekers became Decepticons, he thinks that jet-bots are intrinsically evil. Jets and beasts are equally evil in his eyes. When he calls us bloodthirsty monsters, he actually thinks he is one too.
But in the pattern of Autobot Seekers, Devcon overcompensates to prove he is a good Autobot. To him, Autobots are the most moral, so the more Autobot he acts, the more moral he is.
We don't know he actually hates himself for being a jet until one chapter in Monstrous Heart:
The jets of Cybertron saved the world but he doesn't believe they deserve to be thanked. In fact, the world would be better without jets or beasts, he thinks.
However... Devcon is discovered to not just be a jet. He is a triple-changer: a jet and a beast.
He does not want anyone to know about his beast form because of how ashamed he was made to feel about it. Devcon reveals that when he was young, he had surgery to hide his beastly features. He was forced to conform "for his own good". Beasts were lower castes normally while Seekers were higher. Adults thought they were doing him a favour, letting him just be a Seeker. Other young Seekers would have made fun of him too or feared him.
Instead of anyone fighting discrimination, they buried what was different about Devcon deep inside him. He can still transform into beast-mode but he never does except in emergencies (it is a two-headed wingless beast with his legs becoming the heads and necks). He is so ashamed of that form. They really made him feel that it was so bad that society couldn't look at him for how he was made.
This could be related to in different ways. It can be a story about being intersex, about being transgender or queer in any way, about being biracial, about being neurodivergent... This is a story about difference being crushed, shamed, and hidden because society demanded conformity. They performed surgery on Devon, convincing him it was for his own good and that he would be safer and happier. It devastated his self-image. He was made to hate himself and anyone like himself.
He is now getting therapy with Froid though!
