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.
Tag: ref
Im going to preface this with the fact that the only things i know ab transformers is from my friend who wad very into it in highschool. My question is though: im assuming that these robots are created. Does that mean there is a mold out there to punch faces into metal for these giant robot men?
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
As much as I like the trope of Ex-Decepticons making stuff up to scare their Autobot/Neutral friends I think I like “Ex-Decepticon tells 100% true stories that their friends think are fake until they find out for themselves that it’s real” better
man i sorta noticed an interesting thing abt tfa comlinks?? the autobots press their fingers against the side of their helmets in order to talk, while decepticons can apparently just speak into the air and it will register
which i mean! fits really well if we go with the whole “decepticons are military” thing, ‘cuz you might not have a free arm in battle to call someone
but it also means that decepticons are voice activity scrubs who don’t use push to talkDoes that imply that “callers” could listen in on a Decepticon? Is their comlink linked with their brain or is it all the time turbed on? This also can be very useful when captured. They could let their comlink line just open and other ‘Cons are able to hear where they might be captured or who is holding them somewhere. The fact, that Decepticons don’t need to push anything to just talk through their comlink is pretty cool and helpful. Though, if it is possible to be hacked, Autobots could use this to listen to any conversation the ‘Cons will have.
That’s a thing in TFP too! The Autobots always put their finger on the side of their helm, but in the scene where Starscream gets his arm shot off and calls for a bridge, he just yells into the air while holding his arm in his other hand. I always figured the ‘Cons had more advanced comms, since overall they seem to have more stuff, and Ratchet is always so impressed with their science.
They can probably just activate it by thinking about it.
man i sorta noticed an interesting thing abt tfa comlinks?? the autobots press their fingers against the side of their helmets in order to talk, while decepticons can apparently just speak into the air and it will register
which i mean! fits really well if we go with the whole “decepticons are military” thing, ‘cuz you might not have a free arm in battle to call someone
but it also means that decepticons are voice activity scrubs who don’t use push to talkDoes that imply that “callers” could listen in on a Decepticon? Is their comlink linked with their brain or is it all the time turbed on? This also can be very useful when captured. They could let their comlink line just open and other ‘Cons are able to hear where they might be captured or who is holding them somewhere. The fact, that Decepticons don’t need to push anything to just talk through their comlink is pretty cool and helpful. Though, if it is possible to be hacked, Autobots could use this to listen to any conversation the ‘Cons will have.
man i sorta noticed an interesting thing abt tfa comlinks?? the autobots press their fingers against the side of their helmets in order to talk, while decepticons can apparently just speak into the air and it will register
which i mean! fits really well if we go with the whole “decepticons are military” thing, ‘cuz you might not have a free arm in battle to call someone
but it also means that decepticons are voice activity scrubs who don’t use push to talk
Cybertronians are more different than we think
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!
more culture clashes please!!!!
anyways headcanon that human made viruses are almost cold/fever viruses for cybertronians. complete with their version of sneezing (rapidly expelling air through body vents), heating up, and excessive energon consumption. vehicons especially have problems with this as theyre not exactly “tech savvy” since theyre basically throwaway soldiers.
soundwave is in a constant state of exasperation at having to deal with the newest virus a vehicon caught because they attempted to torrent undertale or some dumb shit like that off the internet
knockout reaches a new level of “god why” when breakdown ends up in the medbay after attempting to torrent undertale so he could see the blue fish lesbian who punches things
Cybertronian Database 