#kaidashade

an explanation, before I lay out the evidence I can remember off the top of my head: hypersensitivity, or at the very least the variety that I and my headcanon Knock Out have, is when you can feel, taste, and/or smell everything in much more clarity than the average person.

this also comes with being constantly aware, at least half-consciously, of everything touching me at all times. and I do mean everything. I can’t even wear loose-fit pants because when I walk the legs flap around and drive me nuts, okay. I can’t tune that stuff out like most people do automatically because it just… feels so strongly. if that makes sense.

but like, paper cuts don’t get tuned out. the pressure of a band-aid doesn’t get tuned out. a lock of hair lying in the wrong direction doesn’t get tuned out. the faint pressure of the elastic at the bottom of my sports bra doesn’t get tuned out. my tights pulling my leg hair in weird directions is legitimately PAINFUL after about an hour or so of constant itching. you see where I’m going with this?

I also have pretty great color contrast vision in addition to all that, but as we don’t know how Cybertronians see, I don’t get into whether that applies or not for Knox. it very well might, but I doubt he’d even notice anyway because he’s not an artist in the way I am.

…anyway. that was a long aside. whoops ^^;

so anyway, my point is, the way Knock Out reacts to… pretty much everything… does not read to me as simply the reactions of a mech worried about getting his appearance scuffed. (bear in mind, though, it’s been a while since I last watched the series!)

the first point: the very first time we see KO, he walks in and he says,“It was a long drive, Starscream. I’m still picking bugs out of my grille.”never in the rest of the series can I recall any other mech even noticing something like this (except maybe when literally coated in dust—but this is a much slighter thing!). and bugs in the internals of your grille is not something that would be seen, so if it were just about appearance, it wouldn’t be a problem. and I mean, if it were normal for Cybertronians to feel this sort of thing, surely we would get it from prissy little Starscream (I love him, but it’s true). but no—we get it from Knock Out. on its own this could just be a gag, and I’m sure that’s what it was written as, but with everything else…

point two: Knock Out flinches away from possible punishment just as badly as the badly-abused Starscream does. one could hypothesize that it’s just a weak Decepticon thing—but even the lowly Eradicons don’t flinch like that. Starscream’s reason is his abuse. but the way Knock Out flinches isn’t so much the cowering Starscream does, but a jerking away like you would from a hot pan that’s burned you. he is anticipating pain, not because he’s conditioned to being beaten, but because it will h u r t. and no other Decepticon reacts like that, so it’s just them and their separate reasons.

point three: how he reacts when actually injured. something about having hypersensitivity seems to give a person higher pain tolerance (at least from my experience); it still sucks, even worse than it does for others, but I can get through a day like normal with a level 6/10 on the pain scale because… well, it’s not everything I’m feeling. I’m used to a lot of sensation.

and when Knock Out has been run over by a fragging train, and multiple times I might add, he’s suffering but keeps going. he gets up. when Optimus rips KO’s door off, he makes this broken sound, but later when he mentions this to other ’Cons, he’s… pretty blase about it, tbh. but there’s still that tone in his voice like “I am wounded”.

and that brings us to point four: weakness is something you have to conceal among Decepticons lest it be exploited. it is completely within reason that Knock Out would use his ego as a front to disguise when he’s in pain. buffing out those stinging scratches because you ‘want to be beautiful’ will get you mocked, sure, but people won’t target you and hurt you for their amusement like they would if they knew you were “weak”. so I mean, when he looks so panicked when Starscream makes it clear he means to dole out punishment by damaging KO’s finish… I mean, it’s pretty clear to me, anyway. Starscream’s talons are sharp. it would be like taking a knife to the outer layer of someone’s skin. (*shudders*)

point five: can you possibly imagine how cool the phase shifter would be when for once you’re not feeling E V E R Y T H I N G? no wonder he liked that thing.

point six: having something stuck to you, like paint, is the worst god damn feeling in the world. Knock Out is definitely the kind of bot to saw someone’s head off for being made so uncomfortable, I think. oh, and along that track, he checked a guy off the road for scratching him. that’s… a little out of line for just a scratch. hell, he risked causing a bunch more doing it. but it was deep, so I bet it fucking hurt.

point seven: his fighting style keeps him very out of harm’s way. quick, darting, a long staff meant to put your enemy down quickly and from a bit of a distance, but too close for the enemy to use a blaster? yeah, that seems to me something to be fighting like when pain is a bad bad thing. and when given the option to fight or drive? “Mm. Drive.” avoiding conflict = avoiding discomfort.

point eight: he has a very slow, smooth walk where none of his limbs touch. like me with loose pants. the on-and-off touching is a no. every touch he makes against his own body is very deliberate, too.

point nine: I’m sure he could have gotten anyone to fill in for Breakdown buffing him, but no, only a Trusted Person gets to touch your more sensitive places. this could be a fragile fleshy mental health thing for me and a distrustful Decepticon thing for him but anyway. he’s still very careful to buff away every scratch. even Starscream, who KO outright says has a “lustrous finish”, has visible scratches all over his character model. KO has no such scratches on the glossy parts of his frame. he does on the black parts around his collar, but they still don’t look as bad as, say, Wheeljack’s plating.

and the white at Knox’s face and neck? absolutely pristine.

okay that’s enough about that. another headcanon. I’m sure everyone and their dog has seen the one where

KNOCK OUT WAS CREATED A SEEKER. (he’s a trans-alt.)

he struts. he’s light on his pedes. his hand motions are delicate and flitty in the same way Starscream’s and Airachnid’s are. and then he loses his wings (I touch on one possibly reason I play for that further down) and it’s just like I miss flying because I’m coded for it so I’ll just go fast fast fast on the ground anyway yes racing is good high-speed air feels so nice.

the ego, pride, and independence he has seems to be a very Seeker set of traits, no? and he bristles under Shockwave’s command just like Starscream does under Megatron’s. (which could also relate to the next point.)

and Starscream implies, whilst he’s being a dick, Knox could have flight. it’s pretty much established that mechs created as grounders cannot, except in extreme circumstances (otherwise I don’t know if the ’Cons would even bother keeping any grounder Eradicons around tbh. flyers are more useful). Starscream’s speech there came across as “why would you give that up?” more than “why not upgrade?”

in line with that,

KNOCK OUT IS FROM VOS.

specifically the slums of Vos; the bottom of the hierarchy. the bottom of the city. he’s a guttermech. he never had formal medical training—he’s better at breaking things than fixing them; he says so himself. but at the same time, he could keep Megatron alive. he could set up a cortical psychic patch in an episode before Shockwave ever came back into the series and could have done it; he’s not stupid, just not necessarily educated. I think he picked things up to save himself more than anything, then took it further as the skill he could make work for him among the Decepticons, likely with a mentor (ahem Flatline) helping him along for a while.

and now that he’s out of the slums he’s desperate not to be thrown back into that kind of life; he values his freedom and drops the Decepticons like a hot potato to join the “winning team”. his ego comes in part from his appearance being the only thing he had to his name, once upon a time.

if you listen to his voice, there’s a musicality to it. the other grounders in the series don’t really have that. it could just be part of the implied “KO is gay” thing the writers were pushing, but all Cybertronians are gay fuck you I like to think that it’s also a Seeker thing. Starscream speaks with a very tonally fluctuating voice as well.

anyway, Knock Out may have at one point worked as a buymech because what else was there for a young Seeker with a beautiful frame and not a Shanix to his name? the way I see it, he wouldn’t have thought it as something degrading as I’ve seen some people interpret that possible backstory for him. he helped people down there, took some clients other buymechs wouldn’t (empurata mechs, for instance, if that’s a thing in the story I’m playing out at the time) and made them feel less like trash for a while, which may have been part of put him on the track to becoming a medic. helping people. (anyway he would have definitely focused his attention on them, not himself, because… hypersensitivity. and that made them feel special, so they came back, so he could stay alive because repeat business.)

sometimes, I run with the story that KO’s a transalt because he lost his wings when a trick (or several), or someone who just doesn’t approve of buymechs, got nasty and ripped them off. he couldn’t be properly repaired down there in the slums. what Seeker willingly gives up their wings, right? so I mean, in drama-heavy stories and roleplays it’s a slightly more realistic take, I think.

my next two headcanons are equally possible and I can flip between either one depending on which suits the story better:

KNOCK OUT AND BREAKDOWN WERE GOING TO BOND BUT NEVER GOT A CHANCE TO BEFORE AIRACHNID HAPPENED

or

KNOCK OUT AND BREAKDOWN HADN’T EVEN ADMITTED THEIR FEELINGS FOR EACH OTHER YET WHEN BREAKDOWN DIED

just because I like breaking hearts :)))))

oh, and as I nodded to above,

FLATLINE WAS KNOCK OUT’S MENTOR.

I completely blame the same friend as the hypersensitivity thing for that, by the way. it just… works. KO’s just so gleeful about tormenting people, y’know? so where could he have gotten that? yeah.

and finally:

KNOCK OUT LIKES BIG MECHS BECAUSE THEY CAN PROTECT HIM AND THAT IS A+

no explanation needed on that one. :’) and I guess that makes him ““gay”” because like zero femmes in the Aligned universe are big. (which is a shame; Strika is a gift. but I digress.)

anyway sHIT DUDE I’M SORRY I RAMBLE SO MUCH AAAAAAAA

I just really love KO and I’ve been playing him in an on-and-off roleplay with The Aforementioned Friend and it’s just been the most fun thing holy fuck

I’m sorry if parts of this didn’t make sense I’m not good at getting my thoughts out in words ._.

EDIT: ADDENDUM RE “SENSITIVE MEDIC HANDS”