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.
@ tfa please explain to me how the autobot high council works & whether or not it’s equal parts civilian & military
the magnus is the chairman & obviously ultimately holds the highest authority but alpha trion chairs the civilian guilds and also has a seat, seeming to hold a lot of (unofficial? official?) power, stating that the military ultimately answers to the guilds and not the other way around. preceptor, head of the science guild (ministry of science) ALSO has a seat & so does the head of intelligence and stuff so. what’s the constitution of the council. does alpha trion possess more fucking… votes then perceptor and cliffjumper as the symbolic and literal representative of the civilian heads of cybertron or what.
the handclamp (otherwise known as the surgeon’s gloves, catcher’s mitt or crab claw) is an ingenious and brutal form of torture, originally devised by the Decepticons. it’s designed to take advantage of a medic’s naturally sensitive hands, inflicting increasing amounts of damage and pain over a long period of time.
specific designs vary, but constants tend to be:
one to three shackles around the forearm, making it difficult if not impossible to transform out weapons or tools
narrow bars that fit inbetween the fingers, forming a painful and constant friction as the hand is bound tightly against them
a Y or W-brace against the wrist, keeping it bent backwards towards the chest at an extreme angle
adjustable joints allowing for graduating degrees of binding
long-term use of a hand binder can lead to joint stress and snapping, nervous wire damage, numbness, hand paralysis, and ruptured energon lines, just to name a few.
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.
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.
When I am low on fuel, sensors in my primary storage tank activate, manifesting first as an orange warning tag in the lower right corner of my HUD. If I am not able to top up at this point, I will generally be able to squeeze another couple of hundred leagues of heavy haulage, or perhaps three months of minimal function before my primary fuel tanks are fully depleted. At that point the warning tags turn red, and my engine begins to cannibalise the energon supplying other systems within my frame.
This is what is colloquially called ‘running dry’. The symptoms of fuel starvation are fatigue, severe pain, and potentially severe internal damage to multiple systems. A Cybertronian can survive for a potentially indefinite time even when his tanks are completely dry, as the electrical systems which harbour our consciousness and memories run entirely on spark-drawn energy, but it is an excruciating experience, and likely to cause irreparable damage. Once one has reached that point, stasis lock is often the only choice.
The majority of Cybertronians therefore simply do not experience the transient state known as ‘hunger’, at least as I understand it from listening to our human allies. We do not derive all or even half of our energy needs from consumables–the balance is closer to 65/35. There is no evolutionary advantage to a biological imperative to consume, therefore.
If you would like to witness ‘hunger’ in a Cybertronian lifeform, please observe a flock of scraplets on a carcass.
Cybertronian Database 