re_alignment_ooc | Ideas Welcome: Cybertronian Cultural Arts!

Ideas Welcome: Cybertronian Cultural Arts!

Soooooo of course this is Wing's fault. We are not shocked are we?

Since this topic is mostly going to be head canon, I thought we could get some idea sharing happening on what Cybertronian cultural arts might include.

There could be a wide range of things and not everything needs to apply universally. Some things could be region specific, limited to certain universes, or just something your character made up. This would explain why different characters may have never heard or seen certain things, allowing us as players to pick and choose. Likely the more popular ideas would be the most widespread arts/activities.

I thought it'd be cool to form a melting pot of ideas that players could then pull from in the game. I would love to see any and all suggestions! Let's Collaborate!

I also welcome any and all notable references to these things in canon so that we can use that as a basis. I'll try and gather them all together.

Cultural arts generally include: song, music, dance, theater, architecture, visual arts and literature, etc.

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I'm particularly interested in song and dance.

I like the idea of vocal harmonics being a big thing and lyrical singing being less common than it is here on Earth. The type of singing humans do Cybertronians might not very well suited for? They could still have choir and opera, but it'd sound different.

Dancing could go a whole lot of places. I think canon examples are all Earth parodies though? I don't know. I can see there being really structured forms of dance, with choreographed shows. But do they go clubbing too?

Narrative dance? A la~ Cirque Du soleil? But less schwoopy and swishy I imagine? With transformations!

Music in general has a huge range of potential. Mostly I see some Cybertronians having a fascination with human orchestral music because there's a certain tonal quality to a woodwind or woodbodied string instrument that they just can't reproduce electronically.

I personally have headcanon that Wing does aerial katas to music, which is rather like figure skating for fliers and differentiated from stunt flying because there's heavy choreography and musical cues.

/sits right here

I CAN'T SPEAK FOR THE OTHERS but I have strong headcanon that this guy, if nothing else, very much appreciates movement choreographed to a beat - aka, dancing. Other things, too, like katas and scripted combat, to a degree.

I like the idea of vocal harmonics being a big thing
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I'm sorry. I had to. It's musical bliss, a harmonic kiss.

Personally, in my headcanon, Cybertron definitely had brass, string, and percussive instruments, as well as probably a separate chiptune section of instruments mimicking early vocalisers. Their version of classical or folk music might resemble kraftwerk. Also the music would definitely differ by region, probably depending on what local instruments were easiest to produce.

It'd be remiss to ignore the use of cybertronian animal parts in the creation of instruments : shells, muscle cords, prepared animal vocalisers, even resonant spines. the animal vocalisers is especially intriguing to me because they wouldn't rot after death like organic organs, so you could preserve one to play as an instrument, possibly augmenting it with carapace for resonance.

Edited 2012-07-08 15:35 (UTC)

Lots of airshows! Fliers doing tricks. :3 I'd think they'd prefer to perform any kind of dance in the air.

/is lame

Oof, love all those ideas up there~

:|a "Painting" with electromagnetic energies/currents which are continually produced by some devices? Wouldn't be visible to us, but I'd think they could see it.

Song/music would probably have a greater range than we do, since they could probably produce sound in different wavelengths than we do... Maybe also different for various altmode-types, either by tradition or some other thing... Which could also vary by universe.

For canon examples, I remember distinctly somewhere in G1 Season Three there being a show where robots were dancing on a stage. I'll try and track that down, but also in Season 3 there were the 'Cybertronian Olympics,' which had a whole bunch of odd stuff going down.

Headcanon wise, I extrapolated on both those ideas at various points to come up with 'Seeker Trials' where jets performed various feats every decade to rank themselves in the world seeker ranks and find their most compatible trine-mates.

And then, I wrote a chapter of Signature about Cybertronian opera. No knowledge of the rest of the fic is really needed to read it, thankfully.

At least one of the events in the Seeker Trials was midair transformation, detailed in elaborate length in this fic here that I wrote concerning the subject. (I know, I know, it's Bayverse. Forgive me the indiscretions of my youth?)

It was a good fic though with cute believable bb!Starscream and intriguing old man Jetfire/Skyfire. Sorry, I'm kinda now interested in the idea of Jetfire/Skyfire being an elder.

You're the author of Signature? Wow, cool!

And now this is me in a corner blushing. #o.o#

Hee, blush away, it's good work!

Cybertronian opera must be a thing. It's a perfect harmony of music, dance, staging, and story into a gestalt greater than the sum of its parts. Opera isn't just about music. It's an entire performance, and it's no coincidence that many types of human "play" around the world incorporate music and dance as a vital part of the play alongside the story and words. /operafan

Doubtless there are different levels of Cybertronian performance, probably regional variants, as well as hoary culturally bound performance styles dragged out during festivals contrasting with more artistic works and hip and popular work that flourish in every day life.

Oh heavens yes. I imagine it translates into all sorts of theatrical works, all the way down to street performances. But at the highest end, its simply art.

Lightning tag is a Cybertronian "contact" sport that I... well, made up when I was playing IDW!Starscream in Axiom Nexus. XD But I'd like to think it could be localized to a specific canon?

It involves rigging the players in a system of capacitors, shields, and blasters that are capable of absorbing, deflecting, and firing off "lightning"-- in this case not actual bolts of electricity but instead positively or negatively charged plasma beams. Then you stick them in an arena full of lightning generators and let loose. The result is a spectacle of a game where the main purpose is to outsmart both the lightning and the players on the other team, avoiding strikes yourself (and protecting your teammates from them) while you endeavor to ground the other players through repeated contacts.

The sport was developed by Seekers for Seekers in AN, mostly as a way to show off how cool they were in the air. It was later adapted so grounders could play too, with or without the addition of jump jets to a grounder player's rig.

A lot of the appeal of lightning tag is in the danger of it. While the plasma lightning bolts are not as fast or as potently charged as real lightning, they can still cause burns, glitch systems, and fry circuitry. It's not as bad as, say, taking an energon bolt from an energy weapon, but you get hit enough and you ARE going to be down for the count.

Which is the whole point of the game, of course~.

In TFA here seems to be a loto f boggling over "art" (Since, well, Bulkhead is taught to paint and all) so... hey seem to have lost a lot of culture during the war? (Which is kind of a huge bummer).

But they definitely have music (since they seem to grasp that concept pretty damn fast)

Edited 2012-07-07 02:48 (UTC)

So. Cybertronian languages. I hope we can all agree that it'd be daft to have only one. In my headcanon, there are many languages on Cybertron, and they vary by state, social class, and age.

Most importantly, thanks to the appearance of the young beeping bumblebee in tfp, I believe there are "children's languages" that are based on beeps and whirrs without use of the vocaliser. The vocaliser and vocal tract connected to the mouth itself is related to energon processing. The mouth, vocaliser, and throat secure, vibration process, grind, filter, and otherwise turn raw energon crystals into the liquid form of energon. Transformers, of course, no longer use this primary processing, since they now have machines to process energy for them. But that leaves them with the old energon processing systems in their bodies, including mouth and vocaliser, which could now be used for language instead of autoclaving energon. However, young cybertronians would have immature energon processors and vocalisers! Thus, they rely on their young children's languages, which may be even more numerous than adult languages, just like the one Bumblebee uses in Prime.

For adult languages, I am terrible because in fanfic I use constructed languages for which I have already detailed grammar and made dictionaries. Ignoring me and my words.... I think there should at least be a threefold Iacon / Kaon / Vos split for languages. In many versions of canon, there have been many city states on Cybertron. Each probably has a home language or at least dialect, with the lower classes being most faithful to their local dialects. The upper classes and especially archivists would use common prestie language(s), probably Upper Iaconian. Lower Iaconian is probably also common.

Both dialects/languages of the Iacon family seem to be very close to Greek/Latin base on the names they give us in TF canon : Iacon, matrix, optimus, megatronus, vector sigma, prime, magnus, trion, pax, dion, maybe polyhex, and Kaon as an adapted word.

Kaon languages are different from Iaconian, but have a similar enough phonology at least to get loanwords in : kaon, kolkular, pyrovar, strika, Kup, maybe tarn, and other such untranslated but not latinate names.

The Vos language seems so utterly foreign to Iacon and Kaon that all of its terminology and names get directly translated to the other languages, instead of adopted as loanwords : seeker, starscream, crystal city, thundercracker, trine, etc.

I like to imagine Iaconian as the language of history, religion, philosophy, and diplomacy ; Vos the language of science and medicine, art, and certain pop culture ; and Kaon languages as those of the common people especially in trade, mechanics, and folklore.

This is probably not useful to anyone at all, but lol SINCE WHEN HAS THAT STOPPED ME.

I wrote into BV headcanon, because of the way the first film used it, that Cybertronian had both a visual and sonic component, and the visual was much like Chinese characters--a radical or 'root' meaning with various additions to alter or add to the base meaning. Since they didn't have our technological limits, any books/texts they produced could be like that as well--a sort of 'ebook' that has a sonic component. One without the other would make it hard to understand, so, like, in IDW's Death of Optimus Prime, they struggle understanding the inscription in the Matrix (or in IDW bayverse stuff, they can't understand the ancient inscriptions they find) because they're ONLY getting the visual, without the sonic component, so they're not getting the 'whole' message.

I threw into more Bayverse that the visual component (again, all of this based on the fact that the Cybertronian in the 07 movie appeared as glyphs at the same time the characters were 'speaking') that color could be used in the glyphs to express mode or modality. So an order or command would be one color, a basic interrogative another, sarcasm another, etc.

ALso adding to your language-root thing: In IDW, in what has to be for me the most CRINGEWORTHY moment, in DoOP we're told that nope, Dai Atlas's name is really Dei Atlas. God Map. It's...halfassed bad Latin.

And MAN I WANT TO PICK YOUR BRAIN OFF THIS POST SOME TIME ABOUT HOW YOU'VE DONE LANGUAGES, plz?

Green is the colour of sarcasm. We all know this thanks to House. And red is the colour of truth. We know this thanks to Japanese video games. Anyway, yes that is a very cool headcannon for Bayverse!

As for glyphs in general, let me tell you about the calligraphic system I derived for the conlang that I also use as "Vos" derived from Heiratic...[no1curr]...and taking the past four paragraphs into account, this in sum presents a system of characters and alphabet for meaning and grammar respectively, which is FAR different from the mainstream phonetic alphabet probably used by Iacon and Kaon. I actually look forward to seeing if i can crack the glyphs being used in Prime right now. I'll just need to get HQ screencaps so I can see if they ever present an abecedary which will help crack it.

Milady, this genteman awaits you on AIM. You know how to get me. let's language together.

In IDW's MTMTE, Rodimus scribbles glyphs into his desk, and an alternate cover for one of the volumes has Ultra Magnus in a children's classroom where there are glyphs on the wall all in individual colours. Might validate that colour helps give nuance to the glyphs.

Or, you know. It's cuter to have coloured Alphabets on the ways vs. Black and white. hahah, I dunno.

/helps?

Curious, but what about the ability to instantly download languages? Would that have rendered a lot of dialects and languages functionally extinct since it would make sense to sort of gravitate toward a common usage one if everyone can just generally choose which one they want to work with. And over time, you sort of see a language evolution? Especially if you can archive language files.

I mean the languages themselves would probably certainly be preserved in art, and also in any archived format (kind of like google language for expiring threatened languages). And I wonder if the more modern the canons, the less common languages are available, and certainly in TFP verse, with there being so FEW robots left, they're probably down to one functional language.

Not sure if this makes much sense or how coherent this is, but I C/P'd it from something ta 5 Am. I can expand or explain if you need. Or you know. Disregard my comments.

I used to be on board with the "they can download languages!" thing, especially for human languages, where I thought they can download dictionaries, and then apply not always accurate grammar to that...

But recently, I've come to the conclusion that, in my headcanon at least, they might not be able to do that. After all, what else can they / do they download? Entire skillsets? History archives? Where does it end? MAAATRIIIX. So now, I'm personally edging toward the "they learn skills and languages through trial and error just like both humans and our primitve learning AI programs do." At least for my worldbuilding headcanon. So if a cyb wants to learn another language, just like if they want to learn the history of Polyhex, or how to double-tap on the shooting range, they have to actively learn it.

This doesn't apply to many canons, probably, where they DO have a whole host of JUST DOWNLOAD IT going on, but then for me that raises many, MANY logistical and personality problems. Because if every bot can download anything and instantly know it, it begs the question (oops fallacy) why everyone doesn't just learn everything. Is there a limited aboutn of storage space for this, and that's why the cybs can't learn everything? Does every language, program, skill, and hobby take up a certain amount of storage space in the processor, so that you have to fill out your robot like an rpg character sheet with limited points to spend? And if you download languages and skills, why doesn't everyone speak/act/fight the same? Do the programs mutate over time, or are they adaptive? But if they're adaptive, then they're taking up more memory as time goes on, and it would imply that the initial dataset was deemed incomplete or substandard.

I'm not trying to pick a fight. I'm just bringing up niggling questions here, alas!

Now ask me about the travesty that is cloning in TFP and let me capslock in "that's not physically possible" rage all over the place.

That all makes sense. And the latest issue of MTMTE will deal with Robots and language in the same vein you're talking about, and since I kind of pull from that series for headcanon roots, I can see where you're coming from.

And don't worry about the fight thing. It isn't a fight until the personal attacks come up. LEAVE MY MOTHER OUT OF THIS. etc etc.

AND I'M SORRY I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MY PLOT CONVENIENCE AND STARSCREAM'S RECHARGING, AUTO-EQUIPPING ARM ROCKETS.

Vos is my linguistic hero. Uguu.

YOU SEE INFORMATION TAKES UP PHYSICAL SPACE WHEN STORED ON ANY MEDIUM, EVEN JUST PHOTONS, AND THE SPACE NEEDED TO STORE THE INFORMATION FOR A MECH'S MEMORIES WOULD TAKE UP AT LEAST THE SIZE OF A COIN IF YOU WANT TO ASSUME THEY'RE USING QUANTUM STATES TO STORE INFORMATION. LARGER IF WE'RE STILL USING ELECTRON STORAGE. AND YOU CAN'T FIT THAT MUCH INFORMATION IN THE TINY MINUTE AMOUNT IN A DROP OF EBNERGON. YOU JUST CAN'T. AND FOR EVERY DROP OF ENERGON TO WORK, YOU'D NEED TO ASSUME THAT THE INFORMATION IS STORED REDUNDANTLY IN THE ENERGON AND WHY HOW WHY HOW WHY. I AM SAYING THAT BASED ON THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE THAT INFORMATION = STORAGE SPACE, THE CLONING IN TPF IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. It's also stupid.

However, there IS a workaround. If we assume that the energon does not contain the information. Rather, if we assume that the spark of every Cybertronian regularly sends its information and memories for backup in the Allspark during recharge, then the energon is just used as an identifier to pull up the requisite mech's stored data.

But the cloning in TFP is adorable, and that's all that matters. Haha, when Starscream gets a little uncomfortable around his clones I just, I laughed. A lot.

And I'm not sure how this will jive with your headcanon, but regardless if it is physically possible or not, because canon implies that energon stores the information, that's just how I'm going to play it. With all the supplementary TFP canon everywhere I have the luxury of picking and choosing what I want to use, but I do place canon above headcanon (even when it ends up being kind of ridiculous.) So no offense meant if you end up catching some of Starscream's BS technobable and there's nothing in there about Allsparks or backup.

No offence will ever be taken! Canon trumps headcanon, even when canon is kinda stupid and physically impossible. It won't be the first or last time that happens in TFP, though it's one of the more glaringly egregious instances of "nope that just can't work." But let's face it : energon is magic.

I'm lucky with my picking and choosing of supplementary canon, but given that it's stated Starscream was around back in the golden age before he later met the young Megatron, we probably shouldn't forget the cultural aspect gladiator matches held for this society since it was both at one point widely accepted, celebrated, and found as a legitimate and popular source of entertainment. It also probably supported a HUGE portion of the economy and a huge facet of their entertainment industry. Also, Megs in TFP does show pride in his skill and past, so it probably wasn't entirely a shaming spectacle. It could have been seen like really INTENSE pro-athletic tourneys.

So at least in TFP, we've got a cultural history stemming in violence and murder for sport. Also, possible fighting animals / insecticons for the show of it too.

It makes you wonder how else the caste system was abused, and how that fit into the entertainment industry as well.

herp derp /adds the less savoury portions of culture
/ruins this trend of all these nice things

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Ideas Welcome: Cybertronian Cultural Arts!

Adding my ideas in a separate post...

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LIGHTNING TAG

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LANGUAGE

Re: LANGUAGE with deer that are teal

Re: LANGUAGE with deer that are teal

More validation for your headcanon

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Late as a late thing, oh well