Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

There's a whole bunch of it in the IDW-verse.  There's Shapism - you are defined by your alt form, and you are in classes based on how useful your alt form is.   There is also the issue of being forged versus constructed cold, and this is a difference in how you were created.   

Here's the definition of forged/forging: "Forging was the natural way for Cybertronians to be created. An energy pulse from Vector Sigma would flash across the world, igniting a hot spot where new sparks would emerge from the planet. There would be great rejoicing and ceremony, and the sparks and base substance - the "sentio metallico" - would be sought out and harvested from the living metal of Cybertron or its moons."

And here's the definition of being constructed cold: "Cold Construction, aka Spark Splicing, was a method created later when Nova Prime learned natural spark creation was slowing. He created it as a way of bolstering the population. The general population was told that it functioned through splitting a Forged spark to create a new life.The Fecund Moon The Divided Self That's the official story. Actually, Nova realised that soon there would be no new pulsewaves and panicked: no new sparks means not enough Transformers to create a grand galactic empire. Under the "spark splicing" cover story, Nova's scientists (headed byTyrest) tapped into the Matrix itself and bled it to create new sparks. Thousands of sparks a day were created, with cold-constructed bodies to house them."

Both definitions can be found here: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Reproduction 

There is also a discussion of forged versus constructed cold in issue seventeen, and I think this line is very telling: "Were you constructed cold?   Don't worry, it's not a trick question.  I was anti-apartheid.   Went on the marches and everything: equal rights for the knock-offs."   Being constructed cold was seen as being less, and there was most definitely racism in a different form from Shapism.   

So Whirl, who was put through Empurata says this: "I was Forged - born under the stars in a field like this one.   Sown and harvested.   Nurtured.   Perfected."

Empurata seems to be worse for the Forged.   After all, they weren't 'knock-offs': they were born that way, not created, born.   And given the racism that went on while Empurata did, Empurata was a humiliation, particularly for a Forged Cybertronian.   To take that perfect, nurtured form and deprive it of everything that made it perfection, to take away the hands, the optics, and give them a useless form?   Oh, yes, it was meant to be a humiliation.   It was meant to show the public that this is a criminal, worthy of nothing more than their new - and I emphasize this - useless form.   Because that's what it was meant to be, and while, yes, they can live, taking away hands and giving them claws?   It means that Whirl couldn't be a watchmaker anymore.   And this is the purpose of his Empurata - he defied everyone, and became one, despite this not being what he was meant to do - in their optics.   He exercised free will, and they took everything from him for it.   Everything. 

It infuriates me on his behalf.   It makes me seethe.   He has every reason to go as fucking nuts as he did.   Because the thing is, he has no friends, he tried to do the right thing with Springer in The Last Stand of the Wreckers, and he was abandoned by the Wreckers - vetoed out.   (Any of the Wreckers can kick out any other member.)   He was humiliated and tossed aside once more, and this only adds to his psychosis.   

I look at him now and I just want to cry.   Because, and again, I almost discarded him, dismissed him as merely crazy and comic relief.   And he's not.   He's one of the more tragic characters in this series, this universe, and every time I start to forget that, he reminds me and just makes it worse.   I ache for him, I really, really do. 

I also have a kink for broken characters.   You don't get much more broken than Whirl.   He may be my new favorite.