A headcanon post by moi, and relevant for one of the fics currently on my poll.
When it comes to fanfiction, oftentimes the Spark is the most important aspect of a Transformer’s existence. Without it, they would die. It is insinuated to be the source of a Cybertronian’s sentience/sapience/intelligence, and it is often compared to the human Soul.
At the same time, there’s been instances of reprogramming ( in both fic and canon ) which forever altered the mech in question. The destruction of a brainmodule has been shown to be almost the same as death.
Rung, with his brainmodule having gone through some trauma, was completely unresponsive and near comatose. Nautica held onto Skids’ brain module, in the hopes that his spark could be rekindled in some way.So, even though the details are never explained in canon ( how wonderful, plenty of room for headcanoning!) we know that the brainmodule is at least equal to the spark in importance.
My personal headcanon, is that the spark is what generates emotion, attachments, and feelings. And that the Brainmodule is necessary to interpret the signals of the spark, and to translate outside events to signals that the spark can understand.
They work in tandem, and develop set patterns and ‘shortcuts’ so as to say, as the Cybertronian grows older and has more life experience.With that thought in mind, I wondered… What would happen if the sparks were swapped, but the brainmodules were not?
Say, perhaps, a Pre-War Jazz and Prowl?
Tag: ref
Follow-up to Acid rain headcanon
I imagine that, whenever there is a downpour and the nanites are taking shelter… there is also a mech in anti-corrosive gel trying to steal them away.
The nanites bunch and knot into a big ball of safety, where just a single good whack can land every single one of them into a bucket – much like how a beekeeper knocks a beehive from a branch.Mostly, it is done for bragging rights – stealing a bucket of nanites from an important building or memorial is not very profitable. Sometimes it is used by mecha in the dead end to create souvenirs and baubles made with authentic pieces of the memorial, but oftentimes it is cheaper to simply lie about that.
To steal all the paint of a building would require more buckets and anti-acid gel than any mech would want to spend on it!
A more grim take that occurred to me as I was thinking about Primehood, though:
Do you know the idea of the sacrificial king? Books like The Golden Bough by James Frazer explore this as a theme in different mythologies: the king who dies and is reborn/replaced every year, as a sacrifice to ensure the wellbeing of his people, and who’s often the consort of a queen who never dies, but remains unchanging and eternal. And while I don’t know whether it’s ever been proven that they existed in the real world, communities where a new king is chosen each year to be sacrificed at the end of it pop up a lot in fiction and folklore. If you were chosen to be king (so the stories go), you didn’t actually rule. That was left up to various other figures: the queen, the elders, the local priest or magic user. Instead, you got to just kick back and live like… well, like a king. For a time. And then, at harvest or winter solstice or whatever thematically appropriate season fit the setting, you would be killed – sacrificed on an altar, defeated in combat by your replacement, run to ground in a hunt – and your blood would ensure the sun rose in the morning.
(I highly recommend Mary Renault’s The King Must Die for its exploration of pre-Olympian gods and belief systems in Greece, and the many variations on king sacrifice. I also recommend it for sexy men in eyeliner, but mainly the first thing.)
Now think about this in the context of the Matrix and the lineage of Primes.
We know Primes (at least the most recent ones) tend to have an almost compulsive urge to sacrifice themselves for others. We know that Optimus, in so many continuities, has died and come back to life multiple times (and Rodimus at least once).
What if the Prime was originally supposed to be a sacrificial figure? What if what powers the Matrix – either for real, or at least according to ancient Cybertronian belief – is the life force of its bearer? Over the eons, time and info creep erased the memory that Primes used to be chosen to be sacrificed after they’d carried the Matrix long enough, and later Primes considered themselves rulers for life. But the Matrix didn’t forget, even if Cybertron did. And it still finds ways to push its bearers into danger or into acts of self-sacrifice.
The Prime is not only meant to be just a figurehead, while his advisors rule for him; he’s meant to be a martyr.
(And some of his advisors might wonder whether that’s a more sensible state of affairs…)
Capturing mini-universes in glass, by artist Satoshi Tomizu.
I need at least like ten of these immediately
An idea I had for the TFA universe is that the knowledge of Empurata and Shadowplay was lost millions of years before the War even started, with the descendants of the original victims becoming the Shifters. Shockwave is one of the few Shifters to have full knowledge of both techniques. He refuses to do either, though, as even he considers it excessive. (Megatron won’t do it either: he would lose Shockwave’s loyalty if he did, and Shockwave is far too valuable an ally for him to lose.)
*EYES EMOJI*
If you’re ever sad, just remember that in TFA that bots can take off their armor to expose the protoform bodies underneath and I think that’s beautiful.
So, here’s some naked Megatron! Warbuilds are still pretty stocky and well-armored, compared to a typical autobot, but tend to appear much slimmer as much of their mass comes from heavily reinforced and padded armor and weapons systems. Megatron appears much less top-heavy because his shoulders actually can expand when supported by armor, and retract when not to allow for less exposure. Some of the black areas on his body would actually have glowing circuitry and biolights but I was lazy.
He’s also got HEAD PETALS because I love them in IDW- although they’re actually not very sensitive- the underside of them is, but it’s more ticklish sensitive than anything else. What is very sensitive is what they protect- the exposed circuitry and sensors on the back of his head. I imagine they’d be fun to play with, tho…
He’s got those thick, deep ports on his shoulders/hips/back/some other places, where weapons and armor plug in for added support.
Also oh my goodness you can see his modesty panels hahaha I was gonna add more details but I’ll wait until the kid’s in bed to do that.Also look at his cute lil winglets. They get, like, lost when he’s armored fully, but like this they’re exposed and probably wiggle.
World-building Cybertron: Functional beauty
One of the great things about world-building an entire alien species and their world is one gets to redefine concepts we take for granted. Here I’m taking a look at an aspect of Cybertronian culture, bouncing off the canon of Transformers Prime and the background novels, and my question is, what is beauty?
We can all probably agree that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; it is subjective, it varies, and many different cultures and communities have their own vision of beauty. But they all talk about beauty. Its form might vary, but it’s still a concept of its own. Beauty is something pleasant to look at, something good and desirable, and in everyday context usually talked about as a set of standards: these are the standards to reach for in order to obtain beauty.
So beauty can be defined as a set of desired features, and those features are all something that (most) people within a culture find appealing.
Considering how Cybertron used to be dominated by an ideology “form dictates function” and how all of Cybertronians were classified into different categories, in the novel Exodus into castes. In Transformers Prime there was talk about “increasing inequality among the masses”, and this notion fits the caste system lore. So Cybertronians were harshly divided, and this system of seperation was also regional: certain areas of the planet were focused on certain types of industries and thus populated mainly by certain frame types and castes. During the War for Cybertron we see this regional seperation becoming the lines between Autobots and Decepticons, and for example Kaon is called “the Decepticon capital”.
So if castes (and frame types and lifestyles) are this absolutely seperated, it would make sense that things like beauty standards that are so strongly subjective and bound to the culture would also vary. Thus, Cybertronian standards of beauty are based on function: beauty is fitting the assigned function admirably. What the function to reach for is varies by region, caste, and frame type.
There are areas focused on raw industries and mining, such as Kaon, Tarn and Blaster City, and those cities are populated by heavy frame types fit for that kind of work. Kaon also has the gladiator culture, so the region admires strong warrior types and most likely favors weapon mods.
Crystal City is the capital of arts and science, and thus home for intellectuals and innovators. It most likely houses several very different castes that are practically equal as far as social ladder is considered, but still very different. New things are favored, things like fashion and decorations and self-expression, and there are several subcultures with their own standards and norms.
Iacon is the capital, and usually capitals house the widest range of different people. There are the richest and the poorest. The high political power and the upper class, but also a lot of middle class workers, business owners and merchants, blue collar workers, and also the poor low caste people. In a society that’s founded on compartmentalization and functionality, different classes are most likely divided into different neighborhoods. This means that Iaconian beauty as one easily identified thing doesn’t exist, but instead several different classes focus on their own and try to seperate themselves from the others. The only real common thing is to try to look better than you are.
As for other regions, there are most likely cities built around certain industries like Kaon and Tarn are built around mining and factories. Each city has their own mix of people and their own focus, a regional identity of sorts, and they are more defined than Iacon that is a mixture of everything.
So Cybertron has several definitions of beauty, some of them so different from each other that a bot from one region wouldn’t even recognize another region’s beauty as such.
For example, a great beauty in Kaon is someone big and strong who flourishes in the harsh environment, someone tough, salt of the earth type, preferably dangerous. For some middle- or upper-class bot from Iacon that beauty would look crude and barbaric since those features have nothing to do with the life in Iacon. Iaconian would be practical, middle-sized city bot with clean and shiny paint and some neat upgrade or mod, because truly beautiful bots can afford that and they show that they care. A neat and clean bot is a sociable one, someone who fits the demanding capital social circles.
Other regions are like this as well, with their own sets of functions, standards and lifestyle ideals set by the local culture, and each definition of beauty is unrecognizable to someone who’s not part of that culture.To sum this half-meta, half-headcanon thing up, I could say that my approach to Cybertronian beauty is function. Function is in the core of the culture of each region, and whether they like it or not that affects everything and everyone. Also there’s something truly appealing in the idea that beauty is indeed in the eye of a beholder, so much so that one bot’s beauty is ugly to another.
An Exploration in Cultural Differences Between Autobots and Decepticons (OR: The one where the author didn’t have a plot, but did have fun)
My @secretsolenoid fill for @Darklordofcutlets! Kind of sub-par, but I had a lot of fun writing this, especially chapters 2 and 3. I hope you enjoy,
Cybertronian Database 