I like this a lot - it does a lot to establish what they drink beyond straight Energon, and it's different enough from how organics do things that it emphasizes their differences from humanity.

The programming bit makes sense as well - since they're robotic beings, having them be affected by programs rather than chemicals is a good idea, and it naturally comes with more applications than what you can do to a human.

My own fancanon regarding programs and mental influencing runs similarly. You've got therapeutic programs that alleviate symptoms such as hyperawareness, insomnia, and nightmares, but they tend to make any veteran Autobot twitchy. Y'see, the Decepticons abused the living crap out of the darker applications of reprogramming: Shell programs, shadowplay, and thralldom all have the goal of undermining the victim's natural mental defense programs, which adapt to outside influence.

Shell programs work by essentially putting the subject into a coma and putting a new, stunted personality in. It's kind of like making a zombie, only the victim isn't going on about brains. They stand there until they get an order, then they go about fulfilling that order until told otherwise. The victim's natural programs tend to adapt to the shell program over time, growing around it and bypassing the "sleep" feature, essentially creating a conflict between the original and implanted personalities, which leads straight to insanityville. It's good for getting quick, temporary muscle, but its victims have an expiration date.

Shadowplay is much subtler than a shell program, going deep into the victim's root consciousness and memories and subtly twisting them, throwing a shroud over some impulses while highlighting others that the perpetrator wants. It uses mnemosurgery to twists memories slightly off-center, thereby indirectly altering the victim's thought processes. It's extremely low-key and hard to detect, but the drawback is that the victim's natural mental programs can easily wipe it away given time, so anybody committing shadowplay has to spend time with the victim, continually updating and reinforcing their changes.

The inverse of shadowplay is thralldom, which uses both shell programs and mnemosurgery to utterly eradicate the victim's originality, like taking a sandblaster to the victim's mind before implanting a tailor-made artificial personality that's dedicated to simple, singular tasks. The resultant trauma drives the victim irrevocably insane, and without memories of their own to combat the artificial personality, recovery is impossible. Thralls are generally used for simple tasks, or as berserkers and cannon fodder.

The Decepticons used all of these, and the Autobots got real paranoid and real ruthless in order to survive. To this day, any Autobot veteran is going to be real gunshy of any kind of programming.

As another headcanon: mnemosurgery may see some use in psychiatric therapy, but societies that are concerned with the rights of their citizens outright ban its use in law enforcement and evidence gathering, citing its long history of abuse.

 

I imagine the Matrix having a sort of personality lock that requires one of two personality types for a "leader": Confidence and Charisma. Ideally the bearer would have both, as someone such as Optimus does, but it can also function if the user has an abundance of one trait. Starscream, for example, could theoretically harness the power of the Matrix but because he's overconfident and a bit too charismatic the process is painful and ultimately unrefined for him. This is also why Hot Rod/Rodimus finds leadership so hard. Because he's essentially a teenager in an adult body he's headstrong and impulsive, which causes the Matrix to hurt him when used and thus causes him to doubt his abilities. This moping makes it work even less.

 

This is all super creepy and really, really good. *Shivers* It would also explain the preponderance of really unstable guys and total morons in the Decepticon ranks....if some of them were brainwashed in some fashion, and it drove them insane, that would help explain just why Megatron keeps on so many nutjobs and morons.

This would make sense; especially if you, for example, compare it to something like lobotomies....something that messes with the mind is likely to become frowned upon eventually, as it's really, REALLY creepy.

Interesting idea. This would explain Thunderwing's Matrix affinity, and why Screamer was able to use the Matrix in Generation 2.

Very neat ideas!

This is all perfect. I can just imagine Ratchet screaming at the twins after he has to save them from their latest attempt to get drunk/high.

 

I hadn't taken it that far, but yeah, the various lunatics in his ranks are a result of victims of these procedures living long enough, thralls more so than shell programmed Transformers. Shell programmed bots tend to crumble or snap and have short life expectancies unless the natural and artificial personalities integrate somehow. The thralls, if they live long enough, acquire new memories and develop new personalities, but it's all rooted around the implanted personality, essentially using that personality as the foundation stone of the victim's new psyche, completely erasing who they were. It's possible to heal from a shell program if you cut it out in time, but with thralldom, there's no going back.

What's also creepy is that there are certain nations in my fanverse that use these techniques as a form of social control, and there's a huge black market for it, for all kinds of horrible reasons.

 

Makes sense. It's one way to explain Wildrider and Blot, at least.

I'm sure there would be....brr. 

 

The Matrix Flame is actually the equivalent to Vector Sigma in the Marvel universe. The reason it's so weak is that Prime Nova essentially spammed it into oblivion to wantonly create new Autobots in secret, not accepting the fact that the energon reserves created by Alchemist Prime had a limit to how much they could self-replenish. Seeing that he was on the verge of destroying Cybertron by overpopulation, the other four Matrix Templars, Flame Priest, Keeper, Emirate Xaaron, and Sentinel, made a pact to kill the mad Prime Nova and secret away the Matrix. The first murder in Autobot history, the second on Cybertron since Liege Maximo killed Prima.

Of course the public new none of this, to them Xaaron was a member of the High Council of Iacon, Sentinel the Overlord of Tarn, and the Flame Priest merely a religious leader. They didn't even know that the Keeper or Prime Nova or even the Matrix existed outside of legend, so all they saw were naturally-occurring hotspots being continually generated, until they weren't.

Unfortunately though it was too late. It was all they could do to mediate things between their city-states with duels and championships, the tensions were already critical and Sentinel himself was dying from wrongfully carrying the Matrix. This leads directly into State Games, immediately after the end of which Sentinel (there called Overlord) passed the Matrix to Optimus of Iacon.

 

Seen this before but it works for me, and I find it amusing, so it's my head canon; Frenzy and Rumble intentionally switch their color palettes to screw around with the other Decepticons like the Seekers. Soundwave is aware of this and since he can tell who's who, he humors them on it. While on mission though he has zero time for their bullshit and so when he calls one of them, whoever he called out is who it's supposed to be regardless of their current colors.

 

The Atlantians seen during G1 were met by Depth Charge off screen during Beast Wars. He equipped them with Cybertronian tech so they could defend themselves from Rampage, but he was too busy being a brooding edge lord to guard over them himself. The Atalantians were able to repel an onslaught by Rampage, but sustained heavy losses due to Depth Charge's reluctance to help. It is for this reason that the Atlatians have the technology to disable the autobots and decepticons when they meet them and why they are hostile toward both factions.

 

This is just beautiful. Head Canon accepted

 

Siege Megatron, specifically the G2 Amazon Repaint, is how he looked during the War for the Threefold Spark. His sword was a carryover from his gladiatorial days and when combined with his fusion cannon can be used as an even more powerful weapon. When he uses it he must attach it directly to his back-mounted energon reserves in order to power it, limiting it's overall use to dire situations from a combination of impracticality and lack of articulation and accuracy.

 

Another not entirely serious one I thought of is, in the same way the Imperial March has been made the in-universe anthem of the Empire in Star Wars, “Instruments of Destruction” is the anthem of the Decepticons.

 

VW Bumblebee was part of the Ark crew serving as a messenger and spy. After sustaining damage in battle he is rebuilt and upgraded into Goldbug, becoming the Autobots Espionage Director.
Mute, muscle car Bumblebee is a later addition to Prime's team. Other than sharing Goldbug's previous name and colour scheme, he is a very different character, serving as a scout and warrior.

This way I can have both versions of Bee in my head cannon G1 universe.

 

I had the same idea, and I also headcanon "The Touch" as the Autobot equivalent to "Hail to the Chief".

 

The reason why waspinator talks like the way he does is because while megatron’s crew was traveling something happened that shocked waspinator and fried his brain circuit

Maybe the reason why FoC and prime have so many continuity errors is that when unicron awoke it messed up the timeline between these two

 

I thought of that for the Autobots also. I thought it'd be fitting the two faction's anthems be inspired of 80s metal and rock.  

 

g1 Animated: Megatron's schemes of the week are low-level distractions designed to keep the Autobots busy. While he's building giant purple griffins, any Decepticons not involved is off at some secret, well-hidden energy production facility sending energon cubes up through the space bridge.

 

I've actually seen this idea used in a few fanfictions.

 

I like this a lot. It probably wouldn't take much to set aside a portion of supplies for the schemes - call it Autobot insurance.

And for good reason.

 

In Cybertron, Megatron is still somewhat under the possession of Unicron though more at a subconscious level than overt body stealing like what as going on at the end of Energon. Their personalities have essentially merged, I would say. His proclamations at the end of season of wiping out the universe with the black hole (aligns with Unicron's general goal) and creating a new one with him in charge (a grander version of Megatron's goals from before) is essentially him becoming a new Unicron to fill the void that Primus said was created when Unicron was destroyed and a merging of Unicron and Megatron's traditional goals.

 

I've been holding this one for a while, been debating on making it's own thread for it, but it's probably best here.

My explanation for why Raf from Prime can understand Bumblebee and pick up on Cybertronian coding is that he is similar to David Archer from the Mass Effect 2 DLC 'Project Overlord'.

Project Overlord (The geth, for those not familiar, were robotic servants of the Quarians that became self-aware and eventually turned against their creators. Sound familiar?)

Before any one says it: yes, Raf doesn't display obvious signs of autism or any other neurological disorder. However, at least when using the autism angle, he may be on the very high-functioning side of the scale.