Head Canons

fuzipenguin asked: any favorite headcanons about the twins?

Hmm! I think most of my headcanons come directly out of fanon and stories that I’ve read: Sunstreaker as an artist, Sideswipe as a prankster. Sideswipe often says/does things without thinking them completely through,while Sunstreaker is a bit more contemplative.

Something that has always been part of their character makeup in my head, though, is that Sunstreaker is almost painfully shy. That makes him seem standoffish to the other Autobots (especially when viewed next to Sideswipe’s exuberance), and other’s reaction to the standoffishness is a little unfriendly, which makes Sunstreaker feel even more shy/isolated… etc, until it evolves into the prickliness that he’s often portrayed with. I’ve written one story specifically about a really shy Sunstreaker, and it was a lot of fun playing with that.

The other thing that I’ve often thought (but that I haven’t worked into any story in a serious format… yet) is that the twins are literally the same person, just divided up into two bodies. So they’re basically an extreme example of nature vs nurture: their life experiences and how they interpreted what’s happened to them in their lives is what helped shape their personalities. At their cores, they are identical… They just react to things differently.

Like I said, I haven’t gotten around to working that into a story in any concrete fashion, but it’s something that’s been in the back of my mind every time I’ve written them. :)

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Anonymous asked: What are your thoughts on baby robots/robot reproduction?

Let me preface this answer by first establishing that I am not a baby person. 

I know that kinda horrifies some people (? “who doesn’t like BABIES??”) but I’ve just never been interested in them in any way. When people at work bring in baby pictures my reaction is generally “Yup, you sure made a miniature human, good work.” My mother bemoaned the fact that I never gave them grandkids… until she saw me holding my infant nephew and said that was the most uncomfortable she’d ever seen me look. (I was sure I was going to break him or something.) I don’t hate babies? … I just don’t find them interesting in the least.

That being said, the very first TF fanfic I ever read (which made me go find more TF fics) was a mechpreg fic, so make of that what you will. XD My interest in the story, though, was more about the characters and their reactions to the knocking up, rather than the wee baby robot that was eventually produced.

So. Baby robots. I don’t mind fics with them, and don’t actively avoid them… But I don’t seek out those fics. On the same vein, I can’t ever see myself writing a fic revolving around a baby robot. I’ll probably eventually delve into that at some point (especially in the Altmodes and Alchemy AU… I have plans for those stories that might involve baby robots at some point?) but it’ll probably be handled all “off-screen” or in a very glossed over way. 

(Robot kids, on the other hand, are cool. Because while I am supremely discomfited by actual babies, kids are fucking awesome.)

For the actual mechanics of reproduction, I generally ascribe to the notion of sticky interfacing plus spark merge being required for creating a newspark. (And I really liked how @ntldr-writes explained it in the Iacon Prophecy stories, where the barbarians “grow” the frame for the newspark ala pregnancy, while the city mechs had someone build a frame for it. The culture clash there was really interesting.)

On the other hand, I’ve had some Thoughts™ about the IDW/G1 versions of creating new mechs. There are Things That Could Be Said about a species that’s been at war for eons, knowing that all of the sparks that could ever be have already been created, and that everyone living now is the entirety of your species. It gives an interesting perspective on what it means to kill someone in cold blood when that is a fact.