[[Mun Musing: It occurs to me that the way Arcee’s head opens up seems very orderly- her helm splits along lines of color. Do other bots’ heads open up similarly easy? With the right medical codes, could you make Megatron’s helm open up? Or Optimus’?]]
Things to draw: Other TFA Bots with their helms open. Does Bumblebee’s helm open like this? We’ve seen him take his helmet off, wholesale- is that a feature of his framtype? Could Arcee do that, or is her helmet more attached? SO MANY THOUGHTS???? How many different helm styles are there, for bots?
Watching Transformers G1 was amazing, especially to see the subtle differences to mannerisms compared to then and now. The ‘oh wow’ moment for me was when I noticed that everyone were speaking to their wrists when using comms, which is reminiscent of Dick Tracy and early James Bond movies with the wrist watches. But in TFP/RID15 and probably TFA as well, we get the “fingers to the ear” gesture as technology has evolved and miniature radio equipment is now in our ears instead of small gadgets.
Do you think that mean you can identify how old a mech is by watching how he uses his comms? Like, older models like Ironhide or Ratchet talking to their wrists while newly build ones like the Aerialbots speak with the ‘fingers to the the air’ gesture?
I love it when we get a little more knowledge about the constructed cold process. So as we can see, Starscream was completely identical to who knows how many others. I think I see the arm blasters there on the left as well. And lastly…not a single splash of paint. Who wants to bet that if a constructed cold bot wanted ANY individuality they had to save up what little money they’d earn from a job they were forced into, just to afford a paint job. After cost of living and all that I’d be surprised if they had more than a couple of shanix to rub together. On a side note I wonder if there would be some body dysphoria from the knowledge that you aren’t in any way unique. That every single piece that comprises you could be tracked to an assembly line.
oh my god, planned obsolescence in cold constructed ‘bots.
every part of your frame comes from a template, all the parts are identical to the fifty other people in your batch…all of it built to some questionable standard and possibly built to eventually give out. they wind up constantly reliant on their manufacturers/the government/black market parts to replace important pieces that constantly break down. that’s just how they’re designed: to artificially break down, so their life span is limited on purpose unless they can find parts similar enough to make it work.
That’s my favorite thing too along with the fact that they literally chose them because Ultra Magnus didn’t give a shit if they lived or died through the experiment and they had virtually no say in being picked whatsoever.
Magnus literally said “find me someone expendable”. I s2g Mags goes from Optimus-level nice to asshole so fast…
That’s why I love TFA. The Autobot regime is so fucked up lol
//ACTUALLY, different colored optics were confirmed by Derrick Wyatt (art director for TFA) to be an indication of altered coding, which we know occurred when Starscream’s flight coding was incorporated. Jetstorm has a visor, so we have no idea what color his optics actually are post-rebuild. Minicons reflect this as well, as they don’t seem to have full Autobot coding. They’re an “artificial” construct.
TFA doesn’t have the problem of difficult to replicate parts, as every body type is pretty much handled like Vehicons. Protoforms are stuck into molds and brought online in batches. There are very, very few unique frames at the base level, but modifications are widely accepted. So yeah they’re definitely “frankensteined”, but the optic change runs a little deeper.
This phrase is hilariously wrong when taken to mean what it usually means. Birbs are hungry little things, since they have fast metabolisms and they burn a lot of calories when flying. Many birbs eat as much or more than their own weight each day. If humans ate like birds we would die.
The reason I was thinking about this is that was writing a headcanon about how Starscream can eat a hilariously large amount of Energon. I figure all Seekers carry and use more fuel than other frame types, because they burn it so fast and shoot it out the back of their engines when they fly. Military Seekers like Starscream fly a lot and refuel a lot.
So I looked up some numbers. Now the energy content of Energon seems like it would be higher than gas or jet fuel, so Cybertronians could carry less fuel than their Earthly equivalents, but lets just use these as ballpark figures for the sake of proportion. The results were hilarious.
An F16 weighs less than 10 tons, and carries 3.5 tons of fuel! By comparison a truck similar to Optimus’s style weighs over 17 tons without the trailer, and holds less than a ton of fuel. Their weight can more than double with a loaded trailer but at least in TFP, Optimus almost never pulls a trailer and it’s safe to assume most Cybertronian trucks don’t often do that.
It’s worth noting that Starscream is only about 60% the size of an F16, even in jet mode, so he’d weigh like 6 tons and carry 2.1 tons of fuel, fully fueled. Still, imagine him eating more than twice as much as a big bot like Optimus in one sitting.
Even an Abrams tank, which weighs a whopping 68 tons, carries a measly 2.1 tons of fuel, so Starscream could eat as much as Megatron in his old frame before he converted to a flyer. It’s probably safe to assume Megatron can carry a lot more fuel now, but he doesn’t have wings for auxiliary tanks and therefore probably has somewhere in between his old fuel capacity and that of an actual Seeker. Plus I doubt he weighs 68 tons anymore. If OP weighs around 17 tons, maybe Megs weighs somewhere in the mid 20s?
Anyway yeah, these numbers are only vague approximations when carried over into Cybertronian frames rather than Earth vehicles, and I’m sure the high energy content of Energon means they can all carry less weight in fuel, but it’s fun to think about. The gist of it is that Seekers are hungry little dudes XD Also big Seekers like Dreadwing and HUGE Seekers like Jetfire would be like bottomless pits and use so much fuel! I think even though they would eat a tremendous amount, it wouldn’t stand out as much somehow as a little wisp of the Seeker who’s all wings and legs sitting there and downing twice as much fuel as the giants sitting next to him. Somehow I think it also has to do with Starscream’s general shamelessness – bigger, more reserved Seekers like Jetfire might eat a similar amount to other people they’re eating with, and fuel themselves more throughout the rest of the day. Also, if they’re in a lab more and only fly a little, they could make their fuel last much longer than an active Air Command soldier or scout who flies all day, which is why Starscream would often be hungry and eat Jetfire’s food ^^ (The fact that he still did that even when he was working on science and not scouting or sparring is mighty suspicious though)
OKAY SO I HEAR A LOT OF PEOPLE GET CONFUSED ABOUT ALL THESE WORDS AND TERMS FOR TRANSFORMERS (because we, as a fandom, like to use fancy words for our robots, we have literally reached subculture status guys we have our own dialect congratulations) AND DON’T KNOW WHAT TO USE FOR WHAT SO BECAUSE I TOO SUFFER I WILL HELP YOU
IF YOU KNOW OTHERS THAT ARE NOT LISTED HERE FEEL FREE TO ADD THEM.
Imagine your Constructed Cold first Wave bots coming online.
And feeling off, but not being able to put a word on why. That’s because the deep-coding in their spark is different from what kind of frame they have been put in. Code says “no legs, a single wheel to roll on instead, no mouth, just an intake, twig-like arms and 3 fingers” and what they have is two legs, an altmode that flies, lips, and arms that feel bulkier bigger than they should be, five fingers. Asking old mechs about the mechs they refer to as “she”, and get odd, uncomfortable stares at. And deciding to stay quiet about that topic, even if there is a burning curiosity inside.
Feeling disoriented, having to deal with the pre-written information in them, and the first CC bots suffering due to having so much data to adjust to right away. And then the ratioists would adjust the ratio of installed and taught info, and cut as much as they can on the latter when it comes to people who are meant to die. A miner doesn’t need to know how to read, a microscope does not need to know how to fight.
Having trouble just moving, because the spark is in an adult body straight away. There is no growing up, only a young bot in a body too big for him, in a world that wants him to be useful the very moment he’s alive. Stumbling, and being looked at by the pre-natals thinking “this one is going to die quickly”. And that being true, because clumsiness is deadly in the mines. A Seeker unable to fly, because there is no instinct in his deep-coding to help him there. It takes practice to take to the skies, while so many others are naturals.
Constructed Cold bots. Knock-offs, cogs in the machine, substandard.
As ever, such things tend to vary by continuity. There’s plenty of examples of a bit of a Transformer being removed, and all that’s revealed beneath is a basic mechanical skeletal structure of struts and wires that’s you couldn’t believe is ever supposed to be “exposed” at any time.
In instances like these, human analogies aren’t perfect, but its probably best to think of a Transformer’s armor, or exoskeleton, as their “skin” which goes over their “skeleton” – not something, generally speaking, that they’re supposed to “take off.” Take a look at what’s going on inside Ironhide’s forearm, for instance:
Or these shots of a damaged Megatron from the Marvel comic – you can see there’s no “head” underneath his “helmet,” just internal robotic matter.
Protoforms from Beast Wars suggest something similar – a basic endoskeleton existed at the core of a protoform, but the substance of its outer body, well beyond simple armor, is formed from living liquid metal. The protoforms seen in Transformers: Prime also follow this course – they formatted from featureless mannequins into exact replicas of Starscream, armor and all, all formed from the same living metal as if they were one body.
But you’re quite correct in also recalling an un-armored Overlord in the IDW comics, whose external armor was removed so his endoskeleton could be fused with indestructible ununtrium:
And even Transformers: Animated showed us that certain external parts of a Transformers body were armor that could be harmlessly and painlessly removed like “clothing” – witness helmet-less Bumblebee:
We would later seen that, although protoforms can be brought to life and given form, as seen here with Yoketron:
…in order to be “complete,” rather than this minimalist look, a protoform would have to be placed in a pre-existing “mold” that included certain key parts of the armour, into which it would then grow, filling out the rest of the body (this, then, explains shared body types among robots).
You raise the subject of movie ‘bots, and per the details given in the Transformers: The Movie Guidebook, they seem to rather split the difference between these two ideas. For them, the protoform is the core body of the Transformer, but it generates the robot’s external armor (in accordance with the shape and colour, etc, of the alt mode) from both its own mass, and from any additional matter it can absorb and reformat into living metal.
Similar to that. the Transformers: Shattered Glass prose story “Blitzwing Bop” has noted that Cybertronian technomatter can accept replacement parts and repairs made using conventional metals, plastics, and circuits, because a Transformer’s biology is such that it will break down any such matter and convert it into living metal. It also feels like IDW concept of a spark’s “animating force" factors in here – that’s something that’s only come up in regards to Ultra Magnus, and his spark’s rare ability to animate the very large suit of armor that surrounds his body, but it makes it seems that we can’t think of it just as something that a Transformer “wears,” but something that is genuinely part of them, animated by their lifeforce.
When a new transformer comes to life, their Spark is created first. Then, their body is forged around the spark so that they can become a whole bot. ((You may suggest how the details should work because honestly I have no idea))
Sometimes their spark does not match with the frame they are built with. For example, a Race car’s spark might end up inside a frame of a Van. Or, a Bomber may get an Aerobat’s frame. If it happenes between grounder-grounder or aerial-aerial, then most cases it’s not really a big problem. They might feel ‘misplaced’ and sometimes have trouble with controlling their body at worst, but in general they adjust to what they are given and live a normal life.
However, if it happenes between grounder-aerial, then one of the folowings will happen as soon as the forging mechanism detects something is going south:
Newbuild dies. The mechanism decided to go “frag it” and aborted the project. The frame will cease forging altogether. If the newbuild does not get the help they need in time, then the spark will wither away.
Newbuild is born with deformed frame The mechanism decided to go “frag it” and built the frame anyway. The end result is a train wreck. Newbuild survives, but not without varying degree of bodily mutations. Sometimes the mutation only limits transformation ability. Sometimes the mutation is so severe that the Newbuild may not be able to walk at all.
Triple Changer The mechanism decided to go “frag it” and built the frame anyway. the end result is a miracle. Most common case is a Car or Tank & Shuttle or Bomber.
Do you think being a Triple Changer is a good thing? Ask Blitzwing, and he will tell you how suck it is. Cybertronian society in general requires you for one specific job that you are built for, so it is better to be really good at one thing than being okay-ish with several things. Blitzwing is a Tank Bomber. Until he figured out how to use his special build as an advantage, he used to be called by numerous harsh nicknames from both sides because he was too heavy & slow for a bomber and was too light & delicate for a tank.
For such reasons, Triple Changers usually prefer one alt mode and will rarely use the other. They tend to choose to be a grounder because cars with wings look less ridiculous than planes with wheels stickig out.
One of the Decepticon scientist the cyclopse one with huge boob tried to artificially create Triple Changers out of already existing bots. He scrapped the idea because he saw no point in creating a bunch of winged tanks or wheeled jets.
Triple Changers weight quite a lot more than other bots with similar size.
Seekers are hard to repair, but not as nearly as hard as a Triple Changer. At least Seekers look all the same, but these ones? How the heck do these wings work?? Where does this kibble go when they transform??? WHY THEY HAVE THESE AND THAT WHERE THEY SHOULD HAVE EXTRA SPACE??????
Cybertronian Database 