Woke up way to early with a thought about what robots are made of. I mean like, cybertronian alloy only would be boring, what if turbines and tailpipes are actually ceramic to withstand high temperature?? And ceramic brings in those translucent opaqueness UwU What if acrylic and resin based materials is used not only for the tires but like, for joints and tubing?? squishy energon lines, man. And dear god, interfacing equipment!! Polyurethane or acrylic foam as an expanding inner material covered for durability in woven metal mesh that’s actually got hexagon structure perfect for placing nodes under it!!
Just give me bots with all kinds of materials in their bodies, extra dense, elastic, opaque, transparent, dielectric and conductive gimme GIMME
Energy-absorbing energy vampires that ruled the planet long before Primus?
Transdimensional entities that conquer planets and integrate them to their own hellish world?
or my personal favorite…
Energy-based monstrosities that exist in a realm that can be best described as a “collective seizure?”
Honestly? After a long day of thinking about this and sketching ideas (which will be posted later) I’m thinking a lot about the all of those and a few more to boot, particularly what sort of visual representation they have. Whatever a Cybertronian “demon” looks like, in the setting of Matrix, they likely don’t look like what humans might consider demons to be- provided humans can see them at all. Cybertronians may have a much wider or different form of vision- where a human may feel a slight static tingle across their skin, a cybertronian may find horror.
Many minor malevolent energy beings might simply show up as a visual glitch to cybertronians- a living, moving glitch or error unable to be processed. A being of static and stray pixels and lines of code that won’t be parsed. Or perhaps a physical representation of such a thing- particularly while possessing a Cybertronian body;
The corruption in Horizon: Zero Dawn is a great example of this visually- writhing black-and-red tendrils of toxic nanotechnology and energy, lashing out and clinging to robotic life- slithering through them like worms. Of course, I do imagine a lot of the weirder stuff in Matrix starts off as straight-up just energy beings; similar to a holographic display that moves of it’s own accord, possibly unable to physically interact with things around it. Maybe through technology- after all, this is robot hell we’re talking about here.
Given enough energy, though, you might wind up with something like this (Hyper Light Drifter)
or this (Transistor)
But then, considering that “demon” tends to apply specifically to malevolent otherworldly beings who are here to do business, maybe something a little more dignified for dealing with Cybertronians would be necessary. (The following are from Destiny)
Something…almost Cybertronian yet still somehow organic in base might appeal to the innate fear many Cybertronians have of organics.
Or more mechanical, almost vehicle-like in itself.
or something a little more…abstract, but still distinctly technological?
I dunno, there’s a lot of really cool directions Cybertronian “demons” or any sort of otherworldly beings could go! And a lot of them are way stranger and (imo) more interesting than the classic western version of devils- after all, what might a species of robots be afraid of? What sort of monsters haunt their dreams? Disembodied circuitry, nothing more than a glimmer in the air, coiling wires ready to strike and thread their way into joints?
(Mukesh Singh- Grant Morrison’s 18 Days)
Or something a little more recognizable?
(That being said, the “Demons” in Matrix are less…demons in any sort of human term, so much as they are entities related to and unique from Cybertron. Humans would start referring to the translation of them as demons, though, since they serve a similar purpose.)
sometimes i feel like the tf fandom just collectively forgets that the disposable class was like, A Thing
it comes up so rarely (…basically just the once) that I could see people actually forgetting.
Super frustrating that we know so little about disposables
they existed
rewind was one of them
they were treated as property
they weren’t permitted normal energon
they weren’t considered sentient until the ambus test
possibly mostly small mechs or mechs that transform into objects that would be easy to manufacture? jk I don’t think there are any details on what classes of mechs were disposables
which is a ton less info than we got for cold constructed mechs/empurata & it was mostly all an infodump in one issue. There’s just less to work with. (WHICH COULD BE SOLVED IF JR WOULD ANSWER MY LIST OF 5 MILLION DISPOSABLES CULTURE QUESTIONS AND/OR WRITE A SPINOFF SERIES ABOUT PRE-WAR DISPOSABLES)