#cyberflora

as a matter of fact yes! it’s sort of difficult, because it’s a labor intensive process to mine, purify, distill, and store enough energon and other foodstuffs all by yourself unless your alt mode is like an energon refinery or something. so it isn’t a quick and easy solution for just anybody who has issues with the current regime. as it stands, it’s genuinely easier and safer for many junkers to hang around in the city than it is to rough it in the wilds, otherwise they’d be gone in a heartbeat.

but!

there’s certainly been folks who prefer roughing it to living in civilization. this has been true throughout history and isn’t specifically driven by the corruption of the Stratocracy. a popular counterculture in Kup’s youth was spelunkers/squatters who would specifically seek out old buried ruins and underground places to live in, like cavemen if you will, just because they could. there are antisocial folks and hermits and extreme introverts who would rather homestead than deal with anyone in their vicinity. there’s one crazy kook of a dedicated scientist in particular that i am still waffling about actually showing in SNAP’s storyline, but old gramma Glyph is definitely still kicking somewhere in the Forbidden Zone and has been since before size classes became a thing! she would absolutely fill the role this ask describes (not the same Glyph as the JAAT student, mind you, it’s just another common name)

there are still people who live in caves. no, not the folks i mentioned in the above answer, i mean like there are entire underground cities and everything. there’s a lot of stuff down there anyway! living underground is not unusual on Cybertron and a good percentage of infrastructure and industry isn’t even visible from the surface in some places

that said, there is archaeological evidence that the original Cybertronian civilizations actually developed below ground and migrated upward/outward! First City, a set of ruins swallowed by the Rust Sea, is the aptly named earliest appearance of a proper settlement aboveground, but it shows evidence of being a base camp before a proper city, and contains artifacts and materials thought to have been taken from belowground before being put in the city. the entire concept of Simfur was of a holy temple city that was already supposed to be underground before some great cataclysm sundered it so far beneath the surface that not even its original inhabitants could find it. so “cavepeople” were, in a way, the default from which mecha have branched out from to live on the surface

and re: eating mechanimals, that’s definitely a (relatively) recent cultural value, and it isn’t even universal. there’s been people eating mechanimals throughout history, and likewise there have been people squeamish and disapproving about it for just as long. the current social climate is disapproving, but that’s variable depending on when and where you look into history

fsdfhgljfsdghfk yknow what sure. on Carcer and Eukaris specifically because these are the cultures i think would be into that. the more widespread popular version of this is probably space travel survival instead of on-planet wilderness. like can you pilot a ship for a vorn with limited supplies out into the black and make it to your destination with minimal contact kind of challenge. not unlike those solo sailing challenges i suppose

okay so this was a joke ask from Jensen that has now fleshed out a piece of SNAP history thanks

Bloodron was a tyrant of Caminus during the Prime Wars who took over after the murder of the previous de facto Camien leaders, Solus Prime’s children Magnum and Pyra (the original Magnus and Mistress of Flame, respectively). he was successful where other conquerors had not been in part because of his ruthless execution of the original usurpers who murdered the twins, instead of trying to pander and please. while his methods were cruel, he was debatably the safest option for leadership at the time and was instrumental in putting down further unrest on the colony as even Cybertron was swallowed by chaos. he and his enemy/conjunx/??? Convoy (a name at this point, not yet a fancy title) worked together to thwart scheming insurrectionists vying for power amongst their familial and political blocs, which resulted in a mostly unified culture for Caminus many centuries later and gave them a legacy of being a very strong, put-together colony. the academic community remembers him and his period of history with mixed feelings. while what he did for Caminus was pretty good, all things considered, he was not exactly a good person himself

excellent questions!! i think the only plantformer i’ve got in my cast list atm is Botanica so i won’t have a lot of examples here. unlike beastformers looking like mechanimals, not a lot of plantformers actually take after a specific species of cyberflora. most seem to generate their own unique specimen, although in root mode many of them are quintoid frametypes

since cyberflora grow out of/need to be rooted to some kind of hotspots, plantformers often have very strong sparks, or at least a very high degree of energy cycling, and act as their own personalized hotspot. this gives them quicker and better than average healing, but it does mean they have a higher metabolism. some of them have alt modes that can process energon and/or package it. these are considered “fruit bearing” cyberflora alt modes, and are often given fuel processing functions much like vending machine, distillery, or refinery alt mode. this is really the only kind of food you’ll get from a plantformer, even though actual cyberflora are used for food in many many more ways than just energon fruit. most plantformer alt mode products won’t be eaten and are instead used in their function’s industry, or perhaps as a rare and expensive knick-knack in the same vein as some kind of handmade collector’s item

their mobility isn’t usually very high, in keeping with how most cyberflora function. filling a niche in the ecosystem may look like sifting metal, crystallizing minerals, conducting and rerouting electricity, or another small but significant part of planetary upkeep. as such, the majority of plantformers have alt modes designed to slot into a given environment where they can participate in the ecosystem, often moving only at the whims of their environment. a heavily cabled transmission tower tree meant to fit in amongst buzzing mangroves will have flexible bases and strong grounding roots as it connects to other trees with its cables. a lone lightning rod pine out on the prairie will have similar grounding roots that go even deeper and broader, meant to conduct lightning all the way to a planetary leyline, and windmill sequoias have perhaps the sturdiest, broadest trunks to brace their height against the movement of their milling boughs. on the opposite end of the spectrum, tangled cable tumbleweeds can unplug at any moment and be set adrift to seek out any new crevice or cranny to worm its wires into. it really depends on the plantformer’s individual alt mode. Botanica has root cabling to keep her steady when in alt mode, but her leaves and boughs are still mobile

this actually has less to do with stuff like mold or sour milk and more to do with expiring chemicals, decaying materials, and loss of charge. the point of energon is how it inherently carries a charge instead of just being burnt for power, but if you leave energon or batteries or what have you for too long, it’ll lose that charge. maybe it can be recharged, but you’ve lost an important part of your fuel just from waiting too long. undercharged energon is better than nothing, but it won’t fix your lethargy. expired chemicals can either be inert and useless or highly flammable/explosive/dangerous in some way depending on what it is and what kind of reaction it had over time. you don’t really wanna raid the pantry and pick up something that explodes in your hand because it expired a month ago. and decay isn’t always bad, with stuff like steel woolies turning into rust bunnies, but if you’re need an iron meal and instead find just a hunk of corroded rusty junk, that’s not gonna meet your nutritional needs. proper food storage is about minimizing corrosion and decay, preserving or restoring charge, and preventing adverse chemical reactions when possible, as well as keeping out pests like scraplets

that said, i think edible-grade energon can retain its charge for... at least a good while? it’ll longer than a month and still be a full meal, i’d say, if it’s just straight liquid energon on a regular charge. that’s why it’s kept in glass despite its delicacy, since glass isn’t a good conductor. so community pantries, dead drops, hideyholes and such are all fairly effective as long as everyone remembers to keep the spaces pretty clean and make sure nothing gets left too long, which is never a problem

ummmm.... hm. this is an off the wall question. i guess i think it would be weird and difficult. like, could you eat underwater?? could you take a bite of like i dunno what’s something that doesn’t instantly fall apart in water..... a candy cane? could you safely eat a candy cane underwater? probably yes if you were very careful to keep your throat closed and also try to force out all the water in your mouth before chewing and swallowing, but it would be hard. mecha aren’t in danger of choking/drowning like humans, and it’s safe to assume that if they’re already underwater then they probably have the seals for it, but still consuming a lot of water isn’t great for a mechanical species, and it’s not easy to make sure you’re not swallowing that along with your food

oh sure, like they’re perfectly functional mouths and all, the issue is just the connection to the fuel systems. no throat, as it were. whereas the folks who can eat in beast modes essentially have two esophagi that rearrange depending on what mode they’re in. for folks like Strafe who have intact beast heads in root mode, it’s possible they can use their jaw? like she in particular uses them as a second set of unwieldy hands, but a pocket is a good idea too, or a can opener, etc etc. chewing food just to spit it back out is probably something only a very determined person with a specific food craving is going to do, because most folks who aren’t able to chew would just get silted shakes to sip with a straw

oh all the time. Rodimus’s whole THING is setting himself on fire and just throwing himself into the fray. like that one Denethor scene in LOTR but madly cackling. he only bothers showing some finesse when around Drift who he wants to impress clearly requires more careful application of skill to beat. Abominus can’t set himself on fire like Rodimus can, but he can shoot flames from his beast head and will fan them higher with his wings, which means he can essentially generate a firestorm to stand in if necessary that will drive everyone else away. Elita 5 has some immunity to flame too as a pyrokinetic hero, but is in fact still vulnerable to heat unlike the other two. she won’t get scorched, but she does need to watch her temperature

in general mecha aren’t like extremely flammable, they have much much higher heat contact tolerance than humans, but ironically have lower atmospheric heat tolerance, because the majority of them use air cycling for cooling systems and so hot weather makes them overheat easily. buncha pansy computers. but they’ll think nothing of holding an open flame, picking up embers right from a fire, ducking through a burning doorway, setting off firecrackers in their hands, etc. their caution is more about smoke and soot clogging vents, or discolored paint, or getting dents from small explosions than actually burning. they start endangering themselves when the heat gets high enough to overtake their cooling systems or melt their kibble, or has enough force to punch like in an explosion, but even then they can struggle through until actual vital internal components are compromised, at which point they’re in danger of catching fire themselves. energon isn’t super flammable when in a controlled environment like their insides, and a liquid trail can catch fire, but it’ll take a mortal wound to really get someone burning up inside