So just wondering but in transformers matrix what physical traits would make cybertronians think your a literal spawn of unicron just wondering (and giving you an excuse to worldbuild ;) )

agatharights:

In a human? Pretty much nothing. Organics barely register as “people” to most cybertronians, and since there’s no instinctive recognition of “normal human” vs “aberrant human” you could be sprouting horns and breathing fire and they’d be like nah, nah, that seems legit, that seems normal. Humans do that, right?

Humans who are, say, under control of certain malevolent or otherwise unusual forces that cybertronians can pick up on would have some features that other humans might actually not pick up on, conversely- or there are even energy-based beings that can effectively “hide” as humans- generating their own holomatter avatar in order to interact with them. Humans who give off a notable cybertronian EM field would unsettle a cybertronian, and ones with EM fields that fall into a sort of “uncanny valley” effect for them would do so even more, or ones who give off a dangerous-coded EM field.

Buster, for example, can startle or unsettle bots- even though he basically outputs an overwhelmingly positive/pleasant/caring EM field and when he uses his powers with visual effects, the register as more or less the equivalent of “angelic” or otherwise benign, wondrous things to Cybertronians. But it’s still a human doing that, and that can weird them out.

(Think of a bot’s EM field/sparkfield as a sort of additional layer of awareness or sensation- it’s part of how they express emotional state, as an extension of body language.)

Of course, as for cybertronians- they find aberrant or otherwise unusual EM fields to be one of the first signs, and this can also indicate that a bot is sick or otherwise suffering some sort of spark-based malfunction. Other signs that would make them unnerved or frightened; 

Unlit optics and unlit biolighting – A cybertronians optics almost always give off at least a dim light, unless they’re using shielded lenses, but a cybertronian with unlit or camera-like optics is considered very unsettling. Similar to entirely-black eyes would seem to humans. Sometimes referred to as ‘dead optics’ seeing as unlit optics often indicate when a bot has died completely.

A lack of a healthy paint layer –cybertronian ‘paint’ is continually refreshed by nanites- think of it as the outermost layer of their skin that helps to protect them. An unhealthy paint layer may be patchy, peeling, absent, or have a dusty, ashy gray color that leaves residue when touched- cybertronians who have died fade in coloration to varying degrees as a result of mass nanite death. Unicronians themselves have a ‘tarnished’ and ‘oily’ effect because their paint layer is maintained by unicron, as they have no more living nanite colonies.

Visibly exposed internals and damage would also be a strong sign that something was wrong- for the same reason it would be so in humans. While Cybertronians care capable of surviving with incredible amounts of damage, it’s still painful and uncomfortable and they’ll go out of their way to repair or at least cover exposed areas as soon as they can. Someone wandering around with a huge hole in their torso seemingly okay with it is…unsettling. Not necessarily bad, considering that they may be ignoring the pain in order to continue tasks or even unable to feel it at the moment, but still. That’s guts!

Actively ‘decaying’ metal goes with the one right above- not only does this mean rust or tarnish, but cybertronians contain nanites that help to upkeep them, but these nanites also are responsible for cleaning and removing waste material from the body- these nanites can turn on the body and begin consuming nonessential resources (such as armor) in order to repair or fuel systems, or as a result of tampering or illness. A cybertronian covered in small, oddly organic-looking holes and ragged edges is like seeing someone with chicken pox.

Unusual energon coloration or consistency might require someone to be injured, but a healthy cybertronian’s internal energon will generally be in a pink-to-violet range, or occasionally blue. A cybertronian with green, yellow, orange, etc etc energon is almost a sure sign that something is wrong, and that goes double if it seems to be leaking from them. Similarly, leaking coolant or oil (especially if they are also miscolored) is unsanitary and unsettling. Unicronians lack actual energon in their systems, and instead they tend to “bleed” a thick, black, oily-sheen sludge. And when they’re in particularly bad straits, this may also leak out the optics, intakes, basically everywhere. It’s vvvvvvv. gross.

So now that I got the question of what do cybertronians think of when they hear unicronian out of my system now I’m curious about primus in transformers matrix what does the average cybertronian think when they hear the word primus and the such like

agatharights:

This one’s trickier because Unicronians are largely a myth, to Cybertronians. Unicron is a spooky boogeyman who couldn’t have possible existed, right? R-right?

But Primus! Primus is the ground upon which they walk, the wellspring from which all life comes! Primus is the sparks of those who have been, and those who are yet to come. Primus is the intelligence deep at the core of Cybertron. Sometimes it still ‘talks’ to it’s children. Primus is viscerally real to Cybertronians, as opposed to Unicron, and thus…all cybertronians are considered to be, in some respect, the avatars of Primus. 

An ideal Cybertronian would do as a proper avatar. They are brightly-colored with shiny metallic portions, their paint fresh and flawless, their optics and biolights bright and reactive. Their EM fields open and unshielded, welcoming.

And then we have Primes.

Primes are the living angels of Primus- Matrices are powerful and their wielders often more powerful than they ever know, or have the capability to unlock. The original 13 were equal parts physical and energy being in truth, and had abilities that would be considered downright magical or inexplicable by most- in fact, many of their abilities are assumed to be exaggeration, or the result of histories being written with a strong bias.

Primes may appear completely typical outwardly, but their EM fields may be unusually ‘loud’ to others around them- and when excess energy is being used the nanites that suffuse Cybertron’s atmosphere may alight around them, framing them in structures of light- halos, texts, a sort of living, surrounding shield of displays. This usually cues in a cybertronian as to the unworldly nature of something like a Prime, or something equally powerful.

Optimus is Belle, Megatron is Gaston AND the Beast!

lyresnake:

travellinglemonworkshop:

zombieheroine:

I see your funny idea, and YES, I like that! I also want to make it serious because that’s how I roll.

Because yeah, this is sort of true, the beauty and the beast motif fits them, and yes, in a sense that Megatron is both sides of the masculinity, the destructive side as well as the civilized side.

Let me elaborate more on the history of this motif and its variation, then I’ll move on Optimus and Megatron, mostly in the TF: Prime verse but also a bit in general.

The motif of the Beauty and the Beast is a popular one with a long history in fairy tales and folklore, and it kind of mixes with the animal spouse motif. ((If you’d like to read more on fairy tale troupes and types, I recommend reading here about 

Aarne–Thompson–Uther classification system, which is basically a neat list of troupes.)) There are many version and different takes, and also several thoughts upon what they really are about. The Disney one is actually something of an outlier, because in that it’s the Beast who goes through transformation, not the beauty. In many fairy tale versions that you can find the Beast is a kindhearted, civilized gentleman from the very beginning, and it’s the Beauty who has to learn to see through his monstrosity, accept him, and then he can transform into a human again.

Some have read this as a girl growing up and coming to terms with her sexuality and marriage by leaving her childhood home and learning to see a man through what at first seems like a monster to her. Your kid probably takes a lesson about inner beauty out of the story though, which is just as valid. 

You will also note that most of these version lack a Gaston. Disney made a dramatic movie and thus added an antagonist – a good call – and made their own version of the classic story altogether. Personally I think the Disney version is more of a reconstruction and critique of traditional masculinity, as Belle is already the kind and understanding Beauty her predecessors transform into at the end of their story arcs, and the Beast is the one learning about his feelings, learning to be gentle and selfless and earning his form as a man again. And of course there’s Gaston, the loud, self-obsessed man who wants to possess, and doesn’t take no for an answer.

Another the Beauty and the Beast version with comments more on masculinity than the female Beauty maturing is King Kong. Yes, I would argue this, the Peter Jackson version even makes textual references. The Beast is the untamed masculinity of Kong, and the Beauty the pure femininity who tames him. Also in King Kong movies (yes, I have seen four different ones, including the original) there’s often a human man acting as the “right” love interest, whether the Beauty gets with him in the end or not, and the important part is that the roles of a “beastly masculinity” and “civilized masculinity” are split into two characters, just like in the Disney movie. 

But how does this motif fit Megatron and Optimus, and especially into Megatron/Optimus with a slash?    

Interestingly, I’d say. Well, Optimus is obviously the Beauty, the kind and brave one, but I think he’s already done plenty of maturing, being a seasoned warrior and Commander and all. Also being technically a man he also represents a type of masculinity, a type I find very interesting since he’s depicted as an almost maternal figure: Someone who preserves, protects, resolves and watches over other younger ones. He obviously has the powerful warrior side of him and it comes first, he is Megatron’s match and not only a skilled soldier but the leader of the entire Autobot army too, but a key factor to his warrior side is preserving and obtaining peace, with as little force as possible. 

As for Megatron, he is an evil and destructive person, but in TFP I find him to be a masculine ideal in a strangely positive sense: Everything from his design and voice to his character and actions is just so grand, strong and dominating, he’s always in control and super confident in himself, yet he doesn’t have the aspects of toxic masculinity such as fragile ego, secretly insecure or needing to put down others in order to build his own ego. He is genuinely confident, not a secretly weak bully. Yes, he is emotionally unavailable but this is more of an ideal since he doesn’t seem to be suffering from it, and we’re not touching the special abusive thing he has going on with Starscream here since it’s way too serious on singular to go under a bully category. He is violent, ruthless and sometimes even cruel, but he’s also kind of cool while at it.

Where I’m going with this is that in some ways Optimus and Megatron have the beauty and the beast thing going on, if not anything else then at least as a caricature-like, aesthetic thing. But it’s more in the subtext: a kind and protective one meeting an evil destructive one, and the shipping is the part that makes the motif actually fit. 

It’s the shipper who decides how this conflict, this meeting of these two beings very at odds, goes and what it amounts to. 

Personally I’d like to take this troupe and twist it a little. I take the route of transforming together and accepting the other. I like to think that through their conflict they transform together and ultimately meet in the middle, accepting each other as they are. For example Angela Carter’s The Tiger’s Bride is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast, and features a beast wearing a human mask, and in the end the heroine transforms into a tiger in order to be with him. She leaves behind the traditional female role and the oppression that comes with it, sends a dolls back home to her father in her place and assumes her true form as a beast to join her love who accepts her, accepting him too in return. This version really speaks to me. 

Um. Yeah. It’s an interesting troupe, and your insight prompted me to write this. You could also write your fun Beauty and the Beast AU, complete with the ballroom dance scene with pretty paintjobs if you’d like. It might be more what you, my dear Anon, were going for, but I’m the most boring and serious of all the shippers and thus had to take this troupe along with your insight and set it against the canon. 

I don’t really know what this adds up to. I love Megatron/Optimus? I love Megatron/Optimus. 

This is a really interesting perspective on both Beauty and the Beast and on Megatron/Optimus; I actually had never thought of the original transformation being Beauty’s, not so much because of Disney’s version (ubiquitous though it is) but because all the other versions I’d read had Beauty’s sisters as models of vanity and pettiness while Beauty herself was The Good One, and the only change she evidenced was becoming less afraid as the Beast became less monstrous.  Are there versions in which Beauty is vain and needs to learn humility?  Because frankly that sounds a lot more interesting than the trope “love of a good woman saves a dude of questionable past decisions.”

(Also, searching for “the Tiger’s Bride” on Amazon turns up a wide variety of bodice-rippers, but no Angela Carter.  Looks like that story is in her collection, “The Bloody Chamber,“ the arrival of which I am now eagerly anticipating.)

… also, I refuse to pick up any more story ideas until I’ve at least finished the damn cave fic.  I mean it.

Okay, I’m going to take a little bit of a left turn here, but I wanted to comment since one of my longest TFP MegOp fics is in fact at Beauty and the Beast AU and I have a number of Thoughts on the matter (Read: yes I am going to take a few minutes to bang on about how I think TFP Optimus = the Lady of Shalott some more, sue me).

One could make the argument that the Lady actually parallels Disney’s version of the Beast (she’s shut away in a castle with a mirror as her only window to the outside world, flowers are a recurring motif, doomed love is an idea that’s floated around). And while I’ve not discussed it in that much detail, TFP Orion/Optimus’s character arc parallels the Lady’s in a number of pertinent ways [he’s introduced as part of a cloistered caste (archivist), his given task is to search the DataNet to “weave” a picture of Megatronus, and it’s Megatronus’s voice (not just his words, hearing his voice) that draws him out of his stagnation and frustration and pushes him to step outside his constraints (just as Lancelot’s song sets the events of the poem in motion)]. And don’t even get me started on that whole bit in the Covenant about Megatron “waking him with the movement of his own heart” and the recurring “journey’s end in lover’s meeting” line. So they’ve got the “potentially or entirely doomed love” bit down pat. And if we operate under the assumption introduced by the Covenant, that Optimus has actually been hanging around almost alone for thousands of years, it starts to look more like Megatron is the weird singing village girl who shows up in Optimus’s house and starts making the cutlery dance.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is, as weird as it sounds, I do see TFP Megop as already an inverted Beauty and the Beast trope rather than one played straight. Not in the sense that the character types are flipped, Megatron still has the aggressive, bestial streak and Optimus is still kind and brave, but more that their roles in the story are inverted. It’s the “Beauty” character who undergoes the most profound transformation. Hell if you broaden your thinking, it’s Optimus who takes on the burden (or curse) of the Matrix in order to match Megatron in battle. And while he never loses his nobility, this is an Optimus who is repeatedly remade into a more efficient weapon, an Optimus who kills, and the blood on his hands weighs on him. And Megatron would just as soon see them be beasts together.

But perhaps most interestingly, Optimus’s final moments in the movie do involve him shedding that curse of war and opening himself up for a new transformation via transcendence of his physical body (just as the Beast does). While it’s Megatron’s perspective (as the Beauty character’s) which is altered. So I suppose you could argue that they’re both transformed by the end of things, and well, if they didn’t get an exactly happy ending, that’s what fanfic is for.

This is a lot of words and I’m not sure I made a point at all but basically yes I also love Megatron/Optimus, in all its strange and beautiful iterations.

Im going to preface this with the fact that the only things i know ab transformers is from my friend who wad very into it in highschool. My question is though: im assuming that these robots are created. Does that mean there is a mold out there to punch faces into metal for these giant robot men?

surprisedentistry:

great question! the way Transformers are created/come into existence varies between continuities. the only continuity that i’m personally familiar with is the IDW G1 comics, in which there are three ways that Transformers come into existence: 

  1. forging, the “natural” way for a Transformer to be born. all Transformers have an organ called a “spark,” which is more or less the source of their life force? anyway, the general idea is that there are dormant sparks in the ground, surrounded by a base substance called sentio metallico, which forms their body.

    a kind of energy wave generated from a structure within the planet called Vector Sigma comes through and ignites the spark, and the spark contains “genetic instructions” for how their body should take shape.

    occasionally if something’s going wrong and the baby Transformer isn’t taking shape, a “blacksmith” can help the process (which is just another Transformer who has that particular job/role). but in theory, it’s a naturally occurring process. 

  2. cold construction, the “unnatural” way for a Transformer to be born. the energy waves produced by Vector Sigma slowed down, and thus the natural process of Transformer reproduction slowed down. that made The Powers That Be kind of nervous, since they needed new people to exploit to keep their empire running. 

    so the government abused a certain powerful artifact of considerable religious importance in order to artificially ignite sparks and create new Transformers. those sparks still contained the genetic instructions mentioned above, but they were put into prefabricated bodies instead of being allowed to naturally develop their own.

    cold construction was kind of a controversial thing and served as the foundation for a system of apartheid between forged and cold constructed Transformers and it’s still kind of a touchy subject millions of years later 

  3. being brought into existence by an disturbingly horny spider furry who just wants to be a good dad. it only happened that one time, though