The reason some Cybertronian’s visors are restractable and some aren’t is because that the one’s who never/rarely ever have their eyes showing actually have poor eyesight. So basically the visors work as stylish glasses.
And it’s something they usually have to be born with, unless their optic sensors are damaged beyond repair.
Jazz for instance has always been almost completely blind, and the visor does help him see a little bit but his eyesight is still pretty bad. It’s barely noticeable though, because he’s able to rely on his hearing so well, which is part of the reason why he enjoys music so much.
Self-indulgent headcanon of the day is that sparkbonded mechs can eventually learn to “ride along” each other’s sensory feed, even over long distances. It’s most likely to occur when one of them is in recharge (lack of other input), and the other one awake, so most don’t realise that’s what’s happening b/c at first the differences in sensory input parsing leads to an incoherent, dreamlike experience.
Over time, sparkbonding causes various subsystems to synch up, which will make the sensory experiences easier to parse, and may even lead to “phantom limb”-like sensations whle awake, especially between bonded pairs of different frame types and classes. The sensation source is rarely aware of the connection – for some people it can lead to feeling like they’re being watched, but even that is usually hard to distinguish from the general mutual “awareness” typical of a sparkbond.
Sensation transfer while awake is rarer, but it’s known to occur with sudden spikes in sensory or system activity, and the frequency at which they happen has a rough correlation with the percentage of system synch-up the bonded pair is experiencing. Data compression artefacting and junk data synch while in recharge (”dream sharing”) is considered a separate phenomenon from sensory transfer, and is a lot more common even among newly-bonded pairs.
Post-war, human companies manufacturing machinery specifically to appeal to Cybertronian tastes so they can charge a licensing fee for scanning the altmode
Cybertronian models on the runway at defense contractor’s conferences, “And here comes Sunstorm, looking stunning in the latest from Northrop-Grumman!”
Humans working tirelessly to figure out clothing and jewelry that won’t break or tangle through a transformation, because the Cybertronian civilization may be shattered, but they love this stuff and if you ask real nice they’ll haul an asteroid full of precious metals to the nearest Lagrange point for mining
So I was thinking about the differences between Autobots and Decepticons – besides the obvious philosophical ones. (My headcanon is different for Prime and the rest of the continuities; this is primarily just G1 here – cut because I freaking ramble.)
I wonder how Transformers handle the death penalty when it comes to spark-bonded individuals. A spark bond entwines the participating parties’ sparks. If one person was to die, there’s a high chance the other may as well from the trauma induced over their spark bond.
If a spark-bonded mech was sentenced to death, would the system legally allow it? If the other bot was innocent, not involved at all in the crime, can they honestly kill this mech and risk killing an innocent in the process?
It depends on what type of modifications the wings on said flier have. Some have built in mechanisms that will warm and properly regulate the wings. Most have this to some extent but this can’t always account for the various extreme conditions we can face with environmental factors.
Medics can conduct these procedures but to my knowledge most of the time any flier with half a processor could self prep for the proper conditions. Metal fatigue and sensor malfunction due from extreme conditions on the other hand is more of a medical need.
They might need a help reaching their wings occasionally though either way heh heh.
If I may, Knockout, I will explain. Cybertronian fliers almost never need to de-ice our wings, but when required in certain extreme cases, we have ways of doing so. We also prepare ahead of time so we don’t get iced up to begin with. Ice is pretty rare on Cybertron – it is a very dry world with hardly any water. Our precipitation is mainly hydrofluoric acid, which freezes at -118.4 degrees Fahrenheit, or -83.55 degrees Celsius. However, Seekers specifically encounter ice when most Cybertronians have never even seen it, and then we also must account for other planets’ climates as well. I’ll get to that.
First things first. Earth planes need regular de-icing because they sit outdoors in the elements and they are inanimate objects with cold, hollow wings. Seekers live indoors like civilized people, and our wings are also quite warm. Even in cold, wet places like Earth, our own body heat is normally sufficient to keep our wings clear of ice, at least for the amount of time we can comfortably be out in icy conditions.
But let’s look at conditions where we would need to de-ice. I said before that Seekers actually do encounter ice from time to time, and that is because we operate so high up, and also because Vos is so far south. Our winters are very dark and very cold, and the wind through the towers could bring the temperature down enough to form frost. For those cold days we had spray coatings we would apply to our wings so ice wouldn’t form on them as we flew. Some were simply an adhesive carrying nanites with a simple ice-breaking program, while other, more expensive, brands were made of fluorocarbons and other plastics, and could last all winter if properly applied. They were a more slippery version of the sprays people sometimes used in the rainy season to avoid irritation from the caustic humidity. I can still remember the odd smell of those sprays. People who had to be outside for extended periods, such as law enforcement, had thermal sleeves they could slip onto their wings when they were in root mode. Usually they had someone help them put those on, but they were designed to come off with either a strong wing flick or a magnetic release, so they could fly at a moment’s notice.
Winter flying conditions could be hazardous if you weren’t careful about ice. As Knockout mentioned, acidic frost forming on your wings can lead to deterioration, and trying to shake it off our your control surfaces can cause metal fatigue. Ice forming over your sensors for even a short time can be deadly. At very high altitudes, there are thin, iridescent clouds that indicate ice, and flying near them, especially under them, can quickly place a layer of ice on your wings. Losing air speed data and having your control surfaces freeze up is not something you want to experience. Fortunately all of that is very unusual on Cybertron and only high altitude Air Command soldiers really had to contend with it.
Not so on alien worlds. I knew it would be an issue once we got to space, since I had read a lot of stories about the Golden Age when people went to exotic planets with other kinds of precipitation. Our patrols were outfitted with thermal sleeves for their wings, and we formulated wing sprays for ices made from all manner of unusual substances, such as ammonia, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. We spent a lot of time on Earth, and had to get used to ice because of its wet conditions. I trained the Eradicons for what to do if they did find their wings icing up when they flew.
S/O to @deformed-car for helping me overthink this comic, b/c it let me work out for myself how resting works for Transformers.
So we’d both heard “defragging” – which refers to “defragmentation”, process of moving data around on a hard drive to better segment it – used in the context of sleep before, and they lined it up nicely with the theory of sleep that one function of it in humans is to analyse and structure memories. That kind of got me thinking that “recharge” probably has several phases to it, sort of how a sleep cycle has multiple parts to it.
Starting with just initiation, all the basic frame control systems start to shut off, all non-critical systems get depowered, and the self-repair system is initiated to run its own checks and start working on repairs that are too resource-intensive to do while awake. If the system is too backed up, there’s a chance the rest cycle initiation fails, which necessarily won’t stop the other systems from intiating, it just means that the processor never moves on from “awake” tasks, resulting in difficulties falling asleep or getting any actual rest.
The aim of initiating a rest cycle is to eventually run down all other system that needs management, leaving the core systems idle so that they also can undergo repairs and maintenance – such as memory defragmentation. “Deep repair” requires that the system run internal checks every now and again, which brings some of the subsystems back online to run those checks, resulting in periods of deeper and more shallow rest.
Powering down to “recharge” also means that there’s a maximum amount of fuel available, allowing even intense maintenance to be run – especially in continuities where recharging is done by tethering to an external power source. The need for rest might also just be a direct consequence of the system being unable to efficiently run self-checks while the processor is occupied by “awake” tasks. You can forego rest, but it’ll start causing slowdown after a while.
Wait so a Cybertronian’s consciousness can be separated from their spark? So their sparks aren’t indivisible souls that are numerically identical with their being and they are thus subject to the same existential angst that plagues us meek little fleshbags? Ha, suck it.
so there’s kind of a trope of non-fleshy beings like robots and idk glowy orb consciousnesses seeing fleshy beings as super gross because we’re made of meat and we poop and so forth
but
the very concept of ‘gross’ only makes sense if you are vulnerable to poison and contagion
if you don’t have flesh, there’s no real qualitative difference between blood and orange juice
robots shouldn’t even be able to be grossed out, or if they are, they should be grossed out by stuff like this
the wwires are just sticking out not even attached to anything ewwwwww
robots don’t really understand the intricate circumstances under which humans won’t touch dead things but god fucking help you if your passwords aren’t secure.
Cybertronian Database 