What if Cybertronians had an instinctive reaction to tentacles- an ancient and supposedly pointless line of code that, depending on the bit, either instills them with a phobia of them or a fetish or, in many cases, a passivity response.
So a bot wrapped up in tentacles relaxes and gets a lil heated at first and yepppp turns out its a gross ancient response built in by Quintessons to make them easier to handle and manipulate.
I need Quintessons in valveplug I’m fuckin gross but u know you’re all sinners with me and would groove on Quintessons seducing and fragging Bots into submission.
I am super down for this. Fuck yeah, ancestral Quintesson slave coding.
And also tentacles.
Someone said tentacles?
Sign me up for this.
I would read that…;)
I want to play with it so badly TuT
Like medberths having tentacle-like straps to restrain patients, playing on that passivity response. Mechs who can’t sleep properly discovering they CAN relax enough to sleep when rolled up in a few hundred meters of draughtstop. (Discovering THAT by being very very tired when doing maintenance, getting tangled up in loose tubes and dozing off while waiting for someone to come get them out)
… Bluestreak with a life-size plushie colossal squid deliberately tucking the tentacles around him before trying to recharge and if he falls asleep at movie night someone goes and gets the squid and drapes it over him so he doesn’t wake up from nightmares
WHEN THE FUCK DID THIS GET SO MANY NOTES I SAW TIS COME UP ON MY DASH AND ALMOST GOT ORANGE JUICE UP MY NOSE HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS YOU REALLY WANT SOME HOT QUINTESSON ACTION
Good thing, becuase so do I.
Bots watching videos of earthly cephalopods and being oddly entranced by the smooth, undulation motions of the tentacles. SOme bots feel a deep, unsettling pang of fear at the sight and don’t know why.
The worst is bots who have a passivity response and a fear response, so they panic…but can’t do anyting about it, becuase they relax and go slack while internally worrying.
That, or you’d have the ones that react severely negatively and these would be the ones that the Quintessons were trying to find and route out, but were unable so some of that aversion CNA made it through frame lines.
And they can’t understand why the others are so entranced while they’re repulsed.
This is a headcanon I could get behind. Pieces of that are really cute, others are appropriately disturbing.
(just a smol fic here, not edited or anything at all)
Jazz wished he took a better look at that codeing the one orn he came across it. It was just sitting their in his sub-core programming, connected to his motor relays not doing anything. And when he poked it, it lit up for a second and settled down back into it’s dormant state, completely harmless. So he went over it and forgot to look at it again. It was currently his biggest regret ever.
The tentacles
that were wrapped around him squeeze a little bit, like a hug, and his frame went lax again against his will from the tension that had built up from his thoughts. He was suspended in the air, not a part of him not supported by the many appendages the creatures around them had. The codeing had flared up when the creature had taken a hold of him from behind.
They had been fighting, there ship had landed not at all far from where there base was and started to outright attack them. They were at war, and so they knew what to do. But when the hatch opened to show the creatures, confusion broke out, and it wasn’t good at all. But most of the bots kept fighting anyways and, and… what again? One of the appendages had caressed his helm, gentle and smooth against his sensitive auido horns and warm. He leaned into the support, optics flickering off when the tentacle stayed where it was, the warmth of the appendage comforting in the cool air around him, all the tentacles
really, keeping him warm in the cool air.
Then they were moving, he was gliding through the air, not caring, but he did care, and he tried his best to reactivate his optics, seeing a glimpse of another creature, one with three faces, cradling Bluestreak like a new spark, wrapped much like himself in
tentacles. Beyond that he caught a glimpse of Prowl, being attended to by two of the creatures that had one face each, like the one that was carrying him, both of the ones at Prowl very attentive to how aroused he was looking with the tips of the appendages wiggling they way under his plating, holding his secure there. He tried to look more, at the sound of someone scared and frightened but he was tilted, going up the ramp of the ship, past some more creatures that had swiveling faces, and a oval looking frame, they to had plenty of
tentacle appendages.
The last one in line stopped the creature that was carrying him. It changes faces five times, he thinks, he couldn’t for the life of him keep his optics on longer than for a few short klicks at a time when the five face one began to caresses him also. He shifted hands, well,
tentacles when the five faced one took him from the one faced creature, a new set of appendages shifted around him and took him down a different hall than all the others were being taken. He to was cradled against this new five faced creature, but the codeing was held fast against all his prodding and probing. They enters a very brightly lit room, and despite being let go and and onto a medical like berth, his frame was still limp against his will, and when the creature pried away the cover of his medical port at the nape of his neck, and pluged in what ever wiring, it didn’t hurt a bit. He lost the battle, optics shuttering, and he entered recharge.
AAAAAAAA EVERYBODY READ THIS YOU WONT REGRET IT!!!!!!!!!
Speaking of Quintessons I’m rebogging this fic again because AAAAAAAA
Not in it’s IDW form, that’s for sure. However, open-processor surgery can have similar results, and there’s probably something similar to the cortical psychic patch from TFP as well. I think it’s far more…unexplored territory, so to speak. TFA seems to be well behind IDW/TFP continuities in terms of certain advancements- they’re younger as a species, I think. I mean, at most, Optimus Prime is maybe a thousand, two thousand years old. At most. He’s at least a few hundred. But he’s certainly not even in his millions, yet.
Makes you wonder about age ranges for everything else…
I’ve actually been thinking about the shadowplay thing a lot, too, because I’ve been considering Chromedome in this setting- I believe he is, or was, sort of a combined programmer-brain-surgeon. Which would certainly explain how he winds up on the Lost Light. His job was to fix people whose processors and sparks had been damaged- he might have worked, previously, on other crewmembers like Sunstreaker or Skids, as part of their treatments.
Once they started asking him if he’d be interested using his skillset on, say, Decepticon prisoners or dissidents, he knew he had to get off Cybertron.
Don’t get too comfortable. You can still ruin, erase, and rewrite a bot’s memories- it’s just…instead of doing it with some little slips of the needles into the back of the neck, like
you gotta
….you know. Except presumably you either need a hell of a computer hooked up to the other end. Or you need to hook yourself up to the other end. And it’s more likely you’ll just scramble their processors irreperably or damage their spark in the process, instead of getting the results you want. Of course…technology is improving every day!
Sentinel: Back in my day, there was no such thing as “feelings”.
I realize that Sentinel Prime was a heavy-handed parody of racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic bigots who may or may not be orange, and that’s why he says most of the things he says—but ever since his issues have come out, I’ve been dying with curiosity about the implications for Cybertron.
He complains that “Conjunx endurae swap fuel in public,” and above he accuses Cerebos of being “one of those,” “those” apparently being the “terminally sentimental” who had sparkmates instead of peers, colleagues, and associates. Okay, the real-world parallels are obvious, he’s supposed to be a homophobe complaining about how The Transformers Are Gay Now, yeah yeah alright, but what does that mean to them?
Obviously, from Sentinel’s perspective, inside this universe, he isn’t complaining about Transformers being “gay"—this is a society that, outside of ancient history and recently-discovered colonies, only has one gender. It’s really unlikely that what he’s bothered about is a bunch of male-coded bots falling for other male-coded bots, instead of holding out for non-existent female-coded bots (which by the way he also thinks don’t belong on Cybertron). As far as we can tell, the male-coded-ness has nothing to do with it. So it’s not that (within the comic universe) he’s a homophobe; it doesn’t seem to be the “homo” part that he’s objecting to. It seems more likely he’s a romance-phobe. If so, why??
Was romance taboo in pre-war Cybertron? Was it considered proper to not feel romantically toward anyone, ever? He said Cybertronians had “peers and colleagues” but he doesn’t list friends—was even friendship taboo? Was that because most Cybertronians are naturally aromantic (someone DOES say in MTMTE that it’s rare for most mechs to ever find a conjunx—that might be a reason why) and those that are even capable of romantic love are rare, making it easier to stigmatize and oppress the minority? Or are they pretty much universally capable of romantic love and the apparent taboo Sentinel is demonstrating was a societal, political thing?
Did they have conjunx endurae before the war? Sentinel Prime clearly knows the term, so obviously, they did at some time. How does that line up with Sentinel’s apparent belief that only “peers and colleagues” are acceptable? Was it in the pre-war time seen as only a long-term business arrangement, and during the war was adapted (or reverted) to something more like what we consider spouses? Or was it something that was banned during Sentinel’s time, and was seen as a disgusting pre-Golden Age practice from when sentiments ran high and frame types mixed and people followed their passions rather than their duties? Why did conjunx endurae become taboo, and/or sterilized into something non-romantic? Was it something the Functionists or the Senate did to control the population further—a 1984-esque sterilization of people’s emotions, forcing them to turn their love and passion toward the state rather than each other? Did amica endurae follow suit, since Sentinel’s ideal world doesn’t seem to include close friendships? Or were amica endurae still permitted, as a “next best thing” substitute when conjunx endurae weren’t allowed?
How well did these policies go over? It’s probable that Sentinel, being a Prime who before that worked for the Senate, is espousing the official governmentally-sanctioned POV on the subject. But how widespread was it? Did people pay lip service to the “no romance” laws in public but hold hands and stare into each other’s eyes in private? Did lovers call themselves “associates” or “work partners” in public to hide their relationships? Did the upper classes—the nobles, the intelligentsia—subscribe to the same rhetoric as the Senate? Did the middle classes? Did the workers and disposable classes? Or did some castes reject the taboo on love? Was it easier to love in the lower classes when you weren’t subjected to the scrutiny of your peers and the power games that called upon you to present yourself with decorum? Or was it easier to love in the higher classes where you had the power and wealth to get away with illicit or disreputable actions without a police officer confronting and beating you on the street for it? Was the taboo more prominent in some cities than others—prominent in cities where the Senate had a stranglehold like Iacon, but less common or even foreign and bizarre in places where they had a weaker hold like Kaon? Was it more or less common in Functionist cities?
Was it law, or merely social convention? Could two mechs be arrested for “swapping fuel” in public? Could being caught with love letters send you to jail? Could you lose your job for being known to fall in love? Was it perfectly legal to be romantic or to take a conjunx for reasons of love, but it would get you ostracized from society and dirty looks on the street? Or would people admit to you under their breath that they really see nothing wrong with it, they just assume everyone else does, but more power to you for your courage?
When did it start to change? Did the change come more slowly in the Autobots than in the Decepticons, since the Autobots carried far more of the ruling parties’ legacy than the Decepticons did? Did the Decepticons consider romance a rebellious act, a political act—did some of them rush into really ill-advised conjunx ceremonies to prove a point? With the changing of times, were the Autobots happy to embrace the downfall of the romance taboo, or did they cling to it and the arguments in favor of No Sentimentality for half the war? Do war-built MTOs think the whole thing is stupid—were they the ones who pushed the shift from taboo to acceptance? Are there still mechs who think romance is disgusting, but they’re now in the minority and keep their mouths shut around mechs who are courting or dating? Is this lingering legacy why we never saw Rewind say “I love you” until he was about to die—is the reluctance a societal thing?
I have so many questions. And so many thoughts. I’d be very interested to see this explored in the comic, and to see if the authors thought it through as anything deeper than a one-time shallow homophobia metaphor.
If they didn’t, though, I’m pretty content to speculate on the potential implications myself.
Just an added thought to why it might not have been allowed, especially in Functionist Era, which if I remember, began under Sentinel:
Love is dangerous. Love doesn’t respect boundries, like class and caste and function and supposed ‘worthiness’. Look at Rewind and Dominus Ambus. Rewind was classed disposable. He wasn’t even allowed energon. Dominus literally hooked up to him, and fed him from his own systems. Keeping his ‘disposable’ conjunx alive. Now, think about that when Sentinel says they ‘shared fuel in public’.
Also, think about how hard Dominus and others fought against the classifications, for the poor mechs who were considered disposable or, stars forbid, obsolete. How hard would you fight the system to save someone you love? I mean, there will always be those good people who fight just because it is the right thing to do, like Orion Pax, but most fight for the ones they know and love. You aren’t going to let a friend or loved one just be walked into a smelter because they are ‘obsolete’ or ‘disposable’, no matter the difference in your class or caste.
Affection means those mechs are now, at least by Sentinel and the government’s point of view, compromised. Affection means breaking the rules, hiding affairs, secret liaisons between mechs in different castes, smuggling mechs and energon, defying the government- all for the sake of feelings.
@ckret2 makes a lot of wonderful points, and I would love to see them explored more. But this is what I thought of when Sentinel said that.
I think that close relationships were discouraged in functionalist society, from romantic partners to friendships. I’m gonna add a couple more possibilities that haven’t been mentioned so far:
1.) Loyalty: A good cybertronian’s first loyalty should be to the system instead of to each other (which is admittedly 1984esque). You can see this mentality get shifted from loyalty to the system to loyalty to the cause. This might be a reason why Cybertronians are so prone to war, they value ideology over personal relationships by default.
2.) Class: In human society, the higher classes tend to be the more reserved with each other. It could be that interpersonal relationships were considered ‘beneath’ anyone that Sentinel was expected to take seriously back in his day. Friendship/Romance could have been a marker of the common rabble or lower castes.
I really hope they go into this more. I think that this notion of ‘personal relationships are undesirable’ might be one of the reasons why Cybertronians are prone to these fierce, long wars.
Idea time: what if on Cybertron “hot wheels” is like this mega compliment like for a bot you find attractive but on Earth they are these dinky tiny toy cars and? Idk, I feel like there’s potential there?
Imagine driving around with Smokescreen and saying something like “take it easy there, hot wheels,” and he nearly veers off the side of the road! XD
There are a range of domesticated Cybertronian animals (‘mechanimals’) that are kept as pets, from certain types of crystalline insects to photovoltaicats. Most of these species are native, but some of them are not.
The most common pets prewar were insects, metallifish (fish), turbohounds (dogs) and photovoltaicats (house cats). These were popular for a variety of reasons, but mostly due to owners not having to be licensed. Other pets, including turbofoxes, cybercats (think Ravage), arachnedroids and ramdroids (sheep), required licensing for owners due to the potential danger they posed and the knowledge required in owning them.
However, most common as ‘pets’ in the work-centred culture of prewar Cybertron were crystal plants, some ‘intelligent’ and reactive to stimuli, similar to venus flytraps and succulents, as they did not require as much attention as another creature being dependent on a bot for their care and company.
Houseplants may not love you back, but at least they won’t make a mess of your living room in anxiety if you’re not back from work at the usual time.
This is a commission I did for du365 over on DA who wanted a screencap of the original Transformers 1986 movie done with TFA Character models! It’s a scene when the group enters the body of Unicron and are just about to be attacked from these claw tentacle things. Had to do a bit of design work as well for Daniel’s exo suit and part of Springer although thankfully elements of both their designs were already present in the show. Really had a lot of fun making this one and really happy with how 80s the BG ended up looking. XD
Anyways this will probably be my last pic of the year to upload, although I still have a year in art meme to upload!
Cybertronian Database 