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.
Just sitting here thinking about the implications of it being G1 canon that red optics are a sign of starvation, which is brought up once and never mentioned again
For everyone going “what”, in S3 (The Dweller in the Depths, which is about the previous slave race the Quintessons made that didn’t quite work out… There’s a lot going on here, okay), there’s a monster that sucks all the energy out of tfs, leaving them as shambling zombielike empties and instantly turning their optics red. Apparently that’s what happens when you run out of fuel.
tbh it probably wasn’t intentional worldbuilding (most of G1 is a fever dream held together with paper clips and string), but since this is the season that keeps trying to convince us the Decepticons are a huge evil force when most of what they’re doing is hanging out on a crappy asteroid without anything to eat… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Okay one way to jury rig G1’s worldbuilding back into something sensible would be to say the Decepticons artificially give themselves red optics as a political statement about the cause
Yeah, it doesn’t make too much sense that all of the Decepticons are actively starving all the time, except for Swindle, Dirge, and the Stunticons. But I’d believe it as an aesthetic thing. “We are hungry and we are here for your fuel! (and then we will take over the universe!)” is pretty much the G1 Decepticon mission statement a lot of the time.
(It’s been a bit since I’ve seen the relevant scenes, but I believe the red optics go back to the original Quintesson military hardware line, though. Which, you know, G1. It does tie into my grand unified G1 theory that the ‘Cons overall have greater fuel needs than the ‘Bots, to power their flight and weapons systems and such. The Quints might have been underfueling them as well, deliberately or not.)
Semi-Related but I like the idea that optic color is determined by a lot of environmental factors when the Cybertronian is first being forged or is developing out of sparkling-dom.
This is pseudo-science but longer wavelengths have lower energy. So maybe, when being forged, if there’s less energy/resources available in the area red optics are developed to save energy.
So maybe it’s not so much that the cons are always starving, just that the majority of them underwent their short developmental years without access to surplus energon.
(Side note: I think the ‘symbolic red optics’ are totally metal, but I also can’t see the cons having the resources to switch everyone’s optic color just for that reason. I can see it being a mix of reasons, like if you’re a con and your optics aren’t red and yellow you get them switched to save energy, make a statement, and be better accepted by the troops)
Yeah, to be clear I don’t think the cons were actually starving all the time (except in season 3, when that was the plot, and they even joined up with their old masters the quintessons for a while because the quints showed up like “we’ve got fuel” and the Decepticons went “seems legit!”. wtf, season 3). It’s just a weird little implication along with the whole 80s energy crisis subtext. But! On the topic of fueling military hardware, let’s compare, say… Starscream and Powerglide.
We’ll ignore fiction and go for real-world measurements. G1 Starscream is an F-15 Eagle, and Powerglide’s an A-10 Thunderbolt II. Unfueled, an F-15 weighs 15.8 tons to an A-10′s 14.5. An A-10 can carry 5.5 tons of fuel, about a third of its own weight.
A fully-fueled F-15 weighs 40.5 tons.
That’s almost double its own weight in fuel, holy shit. Multiply that by the number of seekers in the armada and the energy costs must be insane. I can see the Decepticons being hungry all the time on rations that would feed an Autobot nicely, just because being ‘full’ is a wildly different thing.
Just sitting here thinking about the implications of it being G1 canon that red optics are a sign of starvation, which is brought up once and never mentioned again
For everyone going “what”, in S3 (The Dweller in the Depths, which is about the previous slave race the Quintessons made that didn’t quite work out… There’s a lot going on here, okay), there’s a monster that sucks all the energy out of tfs, leaving them as shambling zombielike empties and instantly turning their optics red. Apparently that’s what happens when you run out of fuel.
tbh it probably wasn’t intentional worldbuilding (most of G1 is a fever dream held together with paper clips and string), but since this is the season that keeps trying to convince us the Decepticons are a huge evil force when most of what they’re doing is hanging out on a crappy asteroid without anything to eat… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Okay one way to jury rig G1’s worldbuilding back into something sensible would be to say the Decepticons artificially give themselves red optics as a political statement about the cause
Yeah, it doesn’t make too much sense that all of the Decepticons are actively starving all the time, except for Swindle, Dirge, and the Stunticons. But I’d believe it as an aesthetic thing. “We are hungry and we are here for your fuel! (and then we will take over the universe!)” is pretty much the G1 Decepticon mission statement a lot of the time.
(It’s been a bit since I’ve seen the relevant scenes, but I believe the red optics go back to the original Quintesson military hardware line, though. Which, you know, G1. It does tie into my grand unified G1 theory that the ‘Cons overall have greater fuel needs than the ‘Bots, to power their flight and weapons systems and such. The Quints might have been underfueling them as well, deliberately or not.)
actually, looking at optics colours from the angle of most disruptive to least disruptive — blue – yellow – red — it would kind of make sense that the most disruptive, visible, piercing colour, blue, was used by those who are to be seen; meanwhile yellow, being less piercing than blue, but more piercing than red, would be common among those who are seen but not noticed (assistants etc.); and red among those who are not to be seen. those whose work is needed, but not valued, those who don’t work behind the scenes but under them.
obviously it’s not that absolute, you got sluicers and miners with blue optics, senators with yellow optics, blahblahblha. but the idea of it.
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.
I want to see transformers who have to struggle with glasses. Like maybe there’s a glitch in a huge batch of optics so they don’t work right -some bots are onlined with bad vison, others aquire it when their replacements begin to glitch. Or maybe individuals have injuries or coding bugs making any replacement optic have issues integrating properly so their vision is bad. Older bots whose vision isn’t nearly as high defenition as their newer counterparts.
Anyways, I want to see a bot hiding behind some structure in a battle, desperately scrounging through their subspace for a polishing cloth because their glasses are coated in grossness and they’re supposed to be providing cover fire for someone, but is hard to shoot accurately when you can’t even see your enemies.
A spy trying to be quiet because they’re hiding in an air vent in an enemy base, but their glasses are coated in dust because no one cleans the vents, and they left their cleaning kit so they could carry more surveillance equiptment so they’re trying to blow the dust off their lenses.
A bot cleaning and cleaning their glasses until they’re certain the lenses are perfectly spotless, only to slip them on and have a lense just pop out because they put so much force behind their polishing that they loosened a screw too much.
Bots squinting during surprise video calls because they were sleeping and didn’t have time to grab their glasses. And then when the one calling finishes talking, turning to whoever is next to them to confirm the identity 0f the caller.
Scientists having to attach their glasses to a lanyard or chain so that in their dangerous line of work they don’t lose their glasses and maintain their vision even if something explodes or gravity suddenly stops working. Again. Having to fit safety goggles over their glasses and bitching about how uncomfortable it is. Constantly taking them off and putting them back on when working with a microscope or magnifying lens.
A nerdy bot getting hyped about a movie but losing the hype when they can only watch it in 3D because that means sitting through it with twice the weight on their nose and having to constantly push the 3D glasses back up.
I have more I want to add to this but it’s late and I need to sleep and this is already kinda long.
Cybertronian Database 