decepticonsensual:

scraplette:

After learning of
Rung’s function, I can’t help but wonder about this exchange.

It’s heavily implied
that Rung, rather than the factories, was the source of the photonic
crystals used in the CC process. If that’s the case, it makes Rung
serving on the Ark 1 quite significant. Was he, as he claimed, going
to serve as a psychiatrist? Or was Nova going to use him to create
more troops for his conquest of the galaxy.

The Senate “couldn’t
do without him”. I always thought it was weird that the Senate, of
all things, wanted to keep one psychiatrist on Cybertron? Like, they
actually intervened, presumably against Nova’s wishes, just to ensure
he didn’t’ leave. Is that just a nice way of saying they didn’t want
to lose their potential crystal maker? Even with Rung, the Matrix is
needed to imbue the crystals with spark energy. The Matrix was still
on Cybertron, so it doesn’t make much sense to split the two up.

I also think it’s weird
that the trigger for creating new life is pain or trauma. Maybe it
ties into Rung’s memory loss? Rather than it being Info Creep, maybe
he’s repressing past trauma. It could even be the result of
Shadowplay- although, I’ll admit, I don’t think Shadowplay was around
at that point. Not just yet –

Just another thought,
the Matrix itself is a photonic crystal. Did Rung create it? Was
Solomus also a crystal maker, and Rung is his replacement? Something
to mull over.

OOOOH I love these Rung thoughts!

I think you’re probably right that the Senate intervened to keep Rung on Cybertron because of his crystal-making abilities – and that could very well be why Nova wanted to bring him along.  Either to make crystals for new troops en route, or just to keep a valuable asset with him, maybe as part of a power play with the Senate.  (Which, to my mind, also opens up an interesting question – why did Nova Prime not take the Matrix with him on his journey?  Might the Senate have intervened there, as well, and Nova wanting Rung was a counter-move – like, well, if you’re keeping the Matrix I’m keeping the crystals, and neither party can make a move without the other?)

The trigger being pain is interesting.  I guess you could argue that it makes sense in-universe, like, if the crystal-maker is feeling pain and loss, Cybertron might be in a state of crisis that requires soldiers to fend off a threat – more soldiers more quickly than you’d get by waiting for the next hotspot to ignite.  I find it kind of pleasing in a symbolic way, in any case.  Because there’s a darker implication – we’ve seen how destructive Cybertronians are to everything around them, hell, they’re even created in pain.  (That might have even contributed to the sense Tyrest had that there was something intrinsically bad and sacrilegious about cold construction; instead of a hotspot lighting up magically, you have this poor bot going through immense pain to generate the crystals.)  But there’s also a more heartwarming side:  a lot of people do respond to trauma by feeling an impulse to create something, and making a new life out of the pain of losing someone has a nice symmetry to it.

And I hadn’t thought of the repressed trauma aspect, but that makes a LOT of sense.  It might even have been part of Rung’s decision to become a psychiatrist, seeing the same pain (even if it’s pain he doesn’t consciously remember) in other people.  (I wouldn’t necessarily rule out Shadowplay being involved; to be fair, we don’t know when Rung stopped being able to remember that part of his past, just that he can’t do it now.)  And repressed pain and the effects of Shadowplay are things Rung is the expert on spotting and ameliorating in others.  Who would spot them in him?

(If Rung has been shadowplayed, it adds a new and rather awful layer to his objecting to the government using it on Megatron.  Also, I would put money on Froid and Trepan being the ones who carried it out on Rung, if it happened.)