☼ Wing ☼ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winged_knight) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
re_alignment_ooc2012-07-05 03:09 pm
winged_knight) wrote in re_alignment_ooc2012-07-05 03:09 pm
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.
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.
LANGUAGE
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.
Re: LANGUAGE with deer that are teal
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?
Re: LANGUAGE with deer that are teal
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.
More validation for your headcanon
Or, you know. It's cuter to have coloured Alphabets on the ways vs. Black and white. hahah, I dunno.
/helps?
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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 subject