*robots having to spray silicone sealant on their joints so they don’t have to worry about anything important rusting over (if Ratch catches you skipping this crucial step he will weld you to a med bay and do it himself. It’s not pleasant)
*Robots pitching a fit when they get sand in their unmentionables and having to take a 45 minute shower just to get half of the damned grit out of their grilles.
*Robots playing in the water!! Dunking each other and having splash fights and all that cute shite!!
*“Hey guys the ocean is full of free dogs!!”, “SIDESWIPE, THAT IS NOT A DOG PUT IT BACK!”, *Great White: :D*
*“WHAAAAAAAAALES!!!”, “Wheeljack you cannot just rush up to them they are classified as endangered by the humans-Wheeljack? WHEELJACK NO!”
*“What is this nonsense?”, “I believe it’s called ‘seaweed’”, “…I don’t like it”
*Big ass beach umbrellas for taking nice long naps under.
*Could you imagine the sand castles though?!
“It’s a bit excessive don’t you think?”, “I don’t understand why you would say that. It looks perfectly fine to me!”, “…how many sand castles do you know have foyers, Hoist?”
*Sunhats!
*“Didn’t we have more people with us?”, “idk, man I’m still trying to get over that horde of jellyfish”, *back at the beach, Ratchet slumbers underneath six feet of sand only to awaken and emerge like some eldritch horror. People are screaming, he scratches himself at growls irritably at them before transforming and moving on.*
GOD I WISH I WAS A BETTER WRITER SO I CAN EXPAND ON THIS BUT YEAH,
ROBOTS ON THE BEACH!
FREE DOGS AND SUNHATS!!!
This is why I love this fandom.
Now I totally want the ‘Con version
Rumble and Frenzy: Hey Boss, this giant murder fish followed us home, can we keep it?
hey so the more i think about what the cybertronian government in tfa must have been like the more fucking terrifying it becomes
(this is from what i remember of the show itself, don’t quote me on the specifics of what was said/not said about cybertron’s wartime government)
– during the decepticon war, it’s likely the government was converted by the elita guard into something like a military state the same way the roman empire was under caesar, meaning the autobot army ruled the planet
– this would mean the ENTIRE PLANET was run by autobots – that’s not equivalent to anything we have on earth, that’s an entire population being comprised of one faction in a galactic civil war, that’s a planet made up entirely of one unified army
– whatever legislative body cybertron had was itself not made up of any decepticons during this time (obviously), so it’s power may have been extremely limited under the magnus, or disbanded altogether. there’s no evidence to my knowledge that ultra magnus just made decisions unilaterally, or was the final opinion in the wartime government
– from what we know about the decepticon army, most of their ranks came from laborers, construction/demolition, anything that required large frames, decepticons being buy in large an order of magnitude bigger than autobots – all of this to say, there must have been a MASSIVE energon shortage when the majority of the farming/mining/laboring population of cybertron joined the decepticons
— (this may have actually contributed to instilling the stereotype of small autobots and huge decepticons, because a cybertron with limited energon supply couldn’t have been able to produce and maintain massive war machine soldiers en masse the way the nomadic decepticon army could)
— further, this must have significant implications for autobots like bulkhead, who is not only a former laborer (an energon farmer), but incredibly large for an autobot – this may be why he was treated with more derision than other cadets at the academy, on top of being seen as a “hick”
– a military government on cybertron would most likely mean the judicial system would be almost entirely military tribunals instead of civil courts, or else civil courts run by members of the Elite Guard
— (further, it’s seems unlikely because of chronology, but conceptually there’s nothing stopping animated’s cybertron from having a system like idw’s aequitas, which was notoriously a moral pothole. a military-run cybertron, however, i have no doubts would pounce on the idea of a computer built to detect guilt, and combined with the types of experimentation shown to be done by autobots in tfa, that idea might be taken even further)
– a civilian population would be converted into autobots pretty much entirely in this case, with government being made up of higher and higher ranking members of the military, judicial courts converted to tribunals
– would democracy even function in this case? a world run by a single government system headed by a caesarian ruler with the entirety of what is now a population made exclusively of soldiers as subjects, any kind of power checks eradicated or made inert in favor of following a military chain of command? private industries most likely nationalized to aid the war effort, recruitment on a planet-wide scale, those who chose to remain neutral shunned, those born in the wrong FRAME TYPE stereotyped as decepticons/decepticon sympathizers. what is there to vote for when your planet is autobot controled, autobot run, and autobot populated?
– in the line of succession, sentinel prime would most likely take on the mantel of magnus next, meaning whatever government cybertron adopted/was converted into during the war, sentinel prime would be the one to continue that legacy. and with his xenophobic attitude, it stands to reason a post-war cybertron like the one hinted at by season 4 might be even worse than a wartime cybertron
Say you’re a bot on the Lost Light and you wanna tell your friend something. Lucky you, you’ve got a lot of options!
Hook up a brain-to-brain cable and share info directly from your brain to theirs
this is a cerebrostream of supercompressed visual data
Meet up in person and talk – in Neo-Cybex, Old
Cybertronian (if your friend is Rewind, Cyclonus or otherwise super
ancient) or Hand (if your friend is Drift, Getaway or otherwise speaks
Hand)
Engrave your message onto your body and stand in front of them (character limit fairly low)
Send info from your brain directly to theirs over the internet (what could possibly go wrong?)
This is called a remote upload, but you’re gonna need to get your friend’s neuro-coordinates first.
Put your information on a datastick. Give it to your friend and have them plug it into their head. Problem solved!
Alternatively, they can take the data stick home and look at your message on the console in their habsuite.
Write them a memo. Send it. (This is basically email)
May seem kinda stodgy unless you’re sending official ship’s business. Rodimus never reads these.
Write them a message and send it. (This is basically texting)
Comm them. (This is basically calling, I think)
now with extra bonus communication method: acquiring paper and writing that shit longhand!
Program a message into one of your datapads and have someone deliver it. (Great option if you’re shy!)
Inter-Autobot Radio
Only gonna work if you and your friends are autobots, though. I think that all autobots within range who are monitoring the frequency will be able to overhear. What is the range? who knows
Subspace Messages – a great option if your friend is on Cybertron whilst you’re in space.
Upside: you get to wear awesome headphones that make you look like you’re a podcaster/professional radio host. Downside: subspace communicator frequently broken, you need their personal hailing frequency.
Just get some paint and write them a friendly note on their door! Note – you may be cited for vandalism.
yeah, a nice, friendly, fun message between pals. Just like the example below.
Assemble a video for your friend, give it to Rewind and ask him to project it for your friend. (you may have to buy Rewind a drink, he’s a busy guy. But if you’re talking history or old cultural shit he’ll probably do it for free)
did I miss a thing? I probably missed a thing.
things I haven’t seen evidence for in mtmte but come up in fics: actual telepathy (that’s only soundwave, right?), empathic field reading, transmitting messages via visual glyphs telepathically
weirder options:
You and your buddy join The Big Conversation, AKA Decepticon Reddit and pretend to be Cons. Talk there while doing your best Decepticon impression.
Become a mnemosurgeon. Inject into your pal’s mind and have a conversation inside their mindscape, just like pals do.
Is your friend Drift? Tell him a story by modulating your optic colors.
Is your friend Rung? Make a new edition of his favorite book with the words of your message selectively removed.
Is your friend Red Alert? Whisper to yourself what you wanted to tell him. He’ll hear you.
Have you considered coded messages on digital clocks?
Time phone.
Become DJ at the next dance party and use the playlist to send a message to your pal.
Sabotage your life-support equipment such that the medical readouts display your message.
Bang a gong.
New banner up in Swerve’s
Submit your message to the Lost Light Insider. However, first you must discover who writes the Lost Light Insider.
Tell Swerve whatever you need to tell your friend, but inform him that it’s a secret.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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
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
imagin a Transformers animated based puzzles/ stealth horror game in with you make character and investigate an “abandoned” Decepticon lab under Cybertron.
The basic plot would be that resent energy has been pick up in a long abandoned Decepticon lab that appears dangerous and your character is sent to investigate but upon entering you find that it’s sole purpose was to make sparkeater’s for the war, only none seem to be there.
In it you can choose a class to be in and each would have it’s straights and weakest, as well as give slightly different stories.
As an intell-bot, you get advantage on investigation and have more knowledge going into the lab then others, but you are not a fighter and have little defense or strength and have average stealth. The reason your there is you where sent by the ultra Magnus.
As a soldier/fighter, you of course have better self defense than the others as well as having better survival skills and have experience in Long rage fighting. But you are weaker in the intelligence and your stealth is below average and can only hide in certain places. You would be sent there to after the disappearance of an Intelligence agent.
As a cyber ninja you are better at sealth and survival the others and have average strength and intelligence as well as experience in close range weapons. But are weaker in puzzles solving and navigating. You are there for almost the same reason as the fighter.
As a repair bot you have an average in most things but are better at puzzles solving and fixing you can use both short and close range weapons. You are there on your own will after your friend went there on a mission and didn’t come back.
But all the classes have a fear bar as well as health and if the fear meter runs out you run away getting farther from the objective and depending on your class it’s higher or lower.
As a bonus you can have life lines for puzzles if you get stuck in the form of cannon characters and depending on your class, intells get Proceptor or Blurr, Fighters get Rodimus or kup, ninja bots get Springer or Dirft but as for the repair bot they get none do to not have any one on the inside and end up in which a date pad that is running low on power. Who you get on the line depends on the hardnes of the problem.
As well as a multi-player where you can each get a class and must work together to solve puzzles.
To understand where I’m going, you needs to know I’m currently buying an electric car. 100% electric, not an hybrid. And you would be surprised by the amount of “what??” I used while learning about EV (electric vehicle).
And to bring hear differences to Cybertronians wasn’t hard, because they certainly don’t use fossil fuel!
Are you aware EV don’t have a radiator? They don’t overheat! They produce so little heat, in fact, a heat pump or a resistor (like a toaster) is required to heat the passengers!
Which to bring to the second difference: no grill! No need of a radiator means no need for air to reach the inside of the hood.
The third one, they’re soooooo silent. All you hear is the small rocks being moved around by the tires. It’s a bit scary when they drive right by you and you don’t realize a car is coming before its right next to you. So silent, in fact, the car comes with a chime gently telling you the motor is on. Because there’s no starting noise, no “vroooom”, nothing. Noise-wise, there’s no difference between off and on.
I wouldn’t be surprised they don’t have breaks. No, that’s not a typo. It’s quite technical, but some EV have such efficient system, people had breaks problem… Because they never use them.
Oh, and if you’re a fan of the stick shift, well, sorry… There’s no transmission in an EV. From 0 km/h to cruising on the highway, no need to change a gear. EV comes only with D R N P.
As for the torque and the power, I tried the Hyundai Ionic. Oh my! There’s power in that one, something I wasn’t expecting at all! I’ve always think they were sluggish. They’re definitively not!
Knowing Cybertronians uses a fuel thousand times more efficient than gasoline, it it’s not hard to imagine they share a lot of those differences I just mentioned. In my mind, it makes them more aliens. Can you imagine Optimus moving around almost perfectly silent?
Doesn’t that mean that it’s possible that those who took Earth vehicle modes might only be REPLICATING the car noises? Not only that, those sorts of noises that come with a gas-fueled engine/transmission may in fact mean something entirely different to a mechanical species that does not generate them as a part of natural movement? For example, fanfiction talked about “engine reving” all the time in different contexts, but if your engine doesn’t need to make that sound in alt mode, what does it MEAN when you DO make that sound? O.o
@warlordenfilade, @cavalierconvoy, and whoever else knows more about cars and has thought more about Cybertronian anatomy: THOUGHTS? I don’t regularly put enough thought or research in to give really educated input.
Clearly the engine rev “raring to go” sound at the start of a race means something incredibly suggestive on Cybertron.
So what you’re telling me is that Cybertronians probably say “vroom vroom” out loud whenever they want to drive around undercover
i’m 100% here for dramatic cultural differences not just between cybertronians and colonists, but between autobots and decepticons, or even different units and geographical stations within each faction. you can’t tell me that a bunch of autobot scientists stranded on a distant research planet isn’t going to have different tastes, linguistic sets and culture than a unit of decepticon frontliners or a lost city of theocratic NAILs. there are millions of cybertronians and they’ve been so spread out for millions of years – just imagine how many weird subgroups and fringe cultures must have developed!
Cybertronian Database 