#trying new stuff here again with my rendering to hopefully speed up my process

[liauditore]

.. secret life may have started but the lizzie brainrot has not subsided lmao (daily lizzies have done smth to me)

here's lizzie in that merc au ive been working on!! her home was destroyed in the war so she grew up amongst a pack of raiders, living off of what remains of their empire 👍 she eventually finds a place to call home and settles down a bit lol

cus she's a kid she's more or less just a nuisance. a very dangerous nuisance who has claimed many lives, but a nuisance.

jimmy stayed with her for awhile after evo fell apart but that's all for later~

[aion-rsa]

Jupiter’s Legacy: Who is Chloe Sampson?

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This article is presented by:

In less than a decade since her acting debut on a 2012 episode of the CW’s Gossip Girl, Elena Kampouris has shifted effortlessly from the small screen to the Broadway stage and on movie screens. She appeared in nine episodes of the television show American Odyssey and was a regular on Sacred Lies. 

She is heading to her biggest project to date in the form of Netflix’s Jupiter’s Legacy, playing the super-powered Chloe Sampson, daughter to The Union’s lead couple, The Utopian and Lady Liberty. Endowed with many of the powers of her famous parents, she rebels against the whole concept of capes and tights fighting for justice. She’s on a quest to find herself, and in this interview, Kampouris brings us along on the journey. 

Who is Chloe Sampson?

NAME: Chloe Sampson

POWERS AND ABILITIES: Super speed, strength, durability, stamina and senses; flight; telekinesis; sonic scream 

NEED TO KNOW: Daughter of Sheldon and Grace, sister of Brandon. She’s immensely powerful, but rejects everything her parents stand for. Chloe has forged her own path to fame; a path that threatens to go against everything her parents have sworn to protect.

Den of Geek: How tough was the casting process as far as you’re concerned?

Elena Kampouris: Going out for parts is a lot of auditioning and then there’s the waiting process. Sometimes the waiting can be really short. Most of the time, it’s a slow burn. So what you try to do amidst all of the nervousness and the excitement, is sometimes auditioning—and it’s all obviously virtual at the moment—but you just try and kind of forget about it. It was hard to do that with this one, because it had such a fan base behind it and such a legacy, no pun intended. 

And this is such a juicy character. I didn’t want to read the comic book yet. I had done whatever research I could online, but for me, I don’t like to read the books or whatever until I know I’ve got it, because you get even more attached to it. So after I auditioned, it was just waiting and waiting, and I’m, like, “Forget about it, don’t think about it.”

And then, you finally find out you got the part and then the relief and the excitement, the elation, is there. But then it comes to a point where it’s, like, “Okay, now you’ve got to actually shoot the thing and make sure you don’t blow it. You’ve got to live up to the expectation, especially being the fact that this is a character that many people have envisioned in their heads and she’s got a really distinct personality.” Chloe packs a lot of punch, so you go to set and try to shoot the thing. You hope that it comes out well and you do it justice. 

Now you’ve read the scripts and shot the episodes, what is your view of Chloe? Who is she as a person, as far as you’re concerned?

The thing I loved about her is that she has so many layers and a lot of depth. And there’s so much to unpack, because, on one end, she’s unfiltered, quite brash, and her powers are tethered to her emotions, which is fun, because it makes her quite unpredictable. 

Chloe’s emotions are pretty heightened…

Yes, but it comes from a place of just feeling deeply and being so sensitive. She’s very deep feeling and that’s why she’s so hurt. She’s in a major place of pain and navigating all of these feelings of guilt and dysfunction with her family dynamic at the moment. She’s got a lot of baggage, but that’s what made her so much fun to play, because it’s not the kind of character that you come across all the time. You never know what she’s going to say or what she’s going to do, but I love her fiery spirit and exploring the layers. 

You had the opportunity to pull back her layers?

Exactly! You get to see what makes her tick, what’s driving her to act out or rebel against the family code and family dynamic. We explore the dysfunction of the super beings and the idea of perfection versus imperfection. Order versus disorder. She embodies chaos and disorder versus The Utopian’s order and the code and perfection. He’s so caught up in trying to be the symbol and represent invincibility, and she’s so clearly “vincible” and so clearly imperfect.

Very human. In fact, her love of “likes” is such a great reflection of today’s society with the whole thing about social media and being an influencer.

Yes, she has that whole model influencer thing going on… but being under the spotlight, the Hollywood glamor and then the ugly truth underneath. I like that this is a superhero story that looks at the “Kryptonite” of these super beings that have very human conditions. It’s fun that it’s through that lens and through that kind of world and we explore that even deeper in the show, which is cool.

What’s her journey like over the course of the season?

In the span of this season, there’s a lot of surprises coming. We maintain the DNA and the integrity of the genius that Mark Millar wrote in the books. She definitely has a journey. All the characters have a journey of discovery. She’ll have had some epiphanies, stuff is going to go down and you’ll feel that from the first episode.

These truly are strong characters, and their arcs of reacting and changing over the decades, as society goes through its own changes, is just fascinating.

What attracted me when I read the comic books initially was there’s a Shakespearean element here, familial discourse, you’ve got tragedy, you’ve got some King Lear, you’ve got some Romeo and Juliet. You can go on and on making the parallels here, but there’s a lot of political and moral perspectives. 

As we were saying, Chloe does not appear in a superhero costume…

But there are some other costumes, some crazy costumes. There’s one scene in particular, she’s wearing an interesting getup and it’s some hilarious, crazy stuff that goes down. You’ll see the odes to the book and then some new stuff they injected in there. I think they did a really great job with capturing the spirit of the story and I’m super excited to see what people think about it and the direction it took. 

The clothes were very fun. And again, Chloe is in the fashion model world. So it’s like crazy shoes and very exaggerated and cool pieces. They emulate that, which I think is really clever, too, because it is a different form of cape and costume and suit. Chloe resents that, because she’s about the soul… she sees beyond the cape and the mask and all of that, which in a way is a disguise and this kind of poser thing that people put up. That’s how she sees it. 

What has it been like working with all of that green screen?

I did a show in Vancouver, Sacred Lies, where I played a double amputee. It was a modernized Brothers Grimm fairy tale, The Handless Maiden, so that was my first experience with green screen, or at least green gloves, because I had to puppeteer these stubs—she has no hands. I did sometimes wear a glove and they would delete part of my arms. So that was my first foray. However, this is a whole other animal because of the skill of the stunts, flying, the this, the that, the action sequences. It takes more time, but we had so many wonderful experts dealing with all this stuff. I was blown away because it was like clockwork—they know what they’re doing. But it’s unlike anything I had ever encountered before and it’s a learning process.

How about flying around on wires? 

Do you like heights? Are you into things like rock climbing?

No, not particularly.

I am afraid of heights, too, so I was initially quite scared, but, again, we have a great stunt team and they make you feel so calm. They do the building blocks, they baby step you into the process and then once they get you in that harness… but, man, that thing is tight and it rides up in all the different places. You’ve got to have a lot of padding, but you’re in the harness and then you have to practice doing these flips. Everybody made it look really good, really quick. I felt so awkward, because you have to flip back a few times and you don’t look very elegant. But once you get the hang of it, you’re going to be okay.

Are you prepared for the response from the superhero fan community?

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Well, first of all, I hope that the fans are going to be happy with it. I am excited to just hear the feedback, because of the fact we shot this in 2019. It feels so long ago. Hopefully it will be embraced and enjoyed and people will feel we did it justice. I feel like what’s so special about Jupiter’s Legacy is that you’ve got the saga aspect that’s like a Game of Thrones scale kind of thing as far as the gravity of this and the span. Then you’ve got the moral aspects, the power struggles… the action, you have the humor that’s sprinkled in like The Incredibles. But it mashes all together into its own unique thing, and it explores the dysfunction of superheroes in a way that I don’t think anybody’s done before.

The post Jupiter’s Legacy: Who is Chloe Sampson? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[toddlazarski]

The Tlayuda Trail

Shepherd Express

There’s not a newly minted driver’s license-holder, gaggle of buddies in the backseat, nowhere to go in awkward underage-ness save suburban drive-thrus, nor a college-age stoner, worth his or her weight in Grateful Dead Dick’s Picks discs, or even an early adult barfly, in possession of the Grubhub app, who hasn't had a moment, maybe even something resembling a full blown affair—unseemly pant seat stains, GI stress, a burning of the heart—with the Taco Bell Mexican Pizza.    

Even if you haven’t, consider the guilty-pleasure little monster: two crisp pizza shells, mashy refrieds, seasoned ground beef, a creamy three cheese blend, BBQ-ish, Mexican-inspired pizza gravy, tomatoes. It covers the texture gamut, is crackly, saucy, sodium-packed, pleasantly messy but edible on-the-go. Processed running queso rivulets dangle seductively between bite edges. Then consider the weird fourth meal hours, the flexed schedule it finds itself plopped in the middle of, the mix of excitement segueing toward yawning regret. It’s all a bit like having a baby. 

Maybe the magic is in the joyous sum of the over-salted parts, or the conditions within which it is usually, hopefully always, consumed. Or possibly it’s just the fact that “Mexican Pizza” is as pleasant a term combo as might exist this side of “Open Bar.” 

But then ponder the sound Tlayuda—that rough consonant collision leveling off with a pleasant oooh of an old-timey car horn, coming back up with the ahh of satisfaction. This Oaxacan specialty is the spiritual inspiration behind the aforementioned corporate calorie conglomeration. Which, despite munchie merit, is a white-washed bastardization, one on par with the Doritos Locos taco, Charlton Heston’s portrayal of a Mexican DEA agent in “Touch of Evil,” or your drunk uncle’s Cinco de Mayo celebrations. When made with real ingredients though, a diner can expect a fresh, oily, shimmering, seared tortilla crust holding, or pocketing, some sort of earthy meat-and-bean band, half-melted cheese layers letting mouth warmth finish the cooking task. It’s usually topped off by clingy clumps of avocado, maybe a flourish of crema velvetiness, crowned with some sort of chile pepper pop.  

Often served closed-face, the tlayuda in this form can come across as the more successful, well-rounded cousin of the quesadilla. It’s maybe a bit fatter. But in the doing-alright-for-myself kind of way, as the ingredients melt and tumble and spill together like late night at a wine mixer. In the fold of protein, cheese, crusty carbs, some bites can resemble those of a smushed, airless calzone. Or there is the version that harkens closer to an actual pizza, with manageable wedges, a segregation of flavor proponents, proper ratios, never too much crust.     

Whichever iteration, there is a time in adulthood for refinement, for proper exploration and broadening horizons, for consciously eschewing Big Box pig-outs. At the very least, in the hopes of smoothing some rough primitive urges for sopping grease and base beef pleasure points, here’s a tour of Milwaukee’s finest Mexican “pizza.” Because there’s also a time to admit, in most all cases, Taco Bell is actually quite bad.     

Villas Restaurant

Of the multitude mistakes I’ve made in life, leaving Villas with a tlayuda hastily ordered “to go” ranks somewhere between studying journalism and beginning the previously hinted-at affair with Taco Bell. The foil-wrapped half-moon shaped monster was heavy enough on the passenger seat that the Honda thought it needed to turn on the airbag. I wondered if I should buckle the big guy in. By the time we got home though, it was all accident anyway: a mushy, soggy mess, impenetrable by fork, cooled and coalescing.      

Yet two indicators instinctively led me to the ridiculous conclusion that I would again be on my way west on Greenfield Avenue, in a matter of days really, for a return to the scene of the calorie crime. One, like any conscientious father concerned about poisoning and decent palate-making, I stole a monitoring bite of my daughter’s quesadilla. Then another. It was a bursting, beautifully-golden crisped tortilla, packed with oozing, overflowing cheese, bits of which had touched the flattop, become blackened with a delicious bit of caramelization. Then there is the salsa. Probably a front-of-classroom sort of MIAD student could name the color that is the orange-ish, yellow-ish, burnt grass-looking stuff in the squirt bottle, but it seems too abstract to try, like trying to describe a feeling in a dream. Singular in taste too, it is a sauce at once punchy and inviting, scorching and addictive.   

My return was also hastened by the pleasantness of the place: the blue-on-blue floor and table motif, the warm orange walls, the Easter decorations, fake flowers and plants, the Packers ceiling fans. Mostly I enjoyed the tuba pop bumping from the kitchen, competing with the Mexican soap operas. It’s nice to remember that there are people back there, people working, rocking out at work too, just like me and you. Maybe working harder though, based on the mass of the 14-buck tlayuda. It is sized to emasculate, dropped at your table with a smirk like it’s a very big joke. It’s large enough for sustenance for somewhere between three meals and the time you just get sick of it or forget it’s in your refrigerator. 

The closed shell is crispy and oil-shimmering, fresh out of a bath it seems. And while takeout was a disaster, there is something within where it only keeps getting better as it sits in front of you, gathering itself as you eat, the chorizo settling, the queso warming, gooping, becoming happier, friendlier with the other ingredients, even with the subdued beans, which need some coaxing out from under their shell home. There’s actually almost enough lettuce to make you feel something approaching responsible life decision-making. But then you are cracking the chippy skin again, and there’s no turning from the fact it’s a plate of sheer fried bombast. 

Why does it need to be so big? It’s a question along the lines of “where do we go when we die?” Which, if you eat a whole one, you may find the answer to sooner than later. Or, if like me, you eat half with way too much of the salsa—unable to stop with the squirting—you have a more sure destination: A late afternoon siesta with just a brief stop in bathroom purgatory.   

Chicken Palace

There are few places in town where the gulf between expectation and execution is wider: the overly-bustling corner of 35th and National feels like a frenzy, what with the packed lot of Asian restaurants, beaters speeding too fast, trying to make the light, too loud without mufflers, and the bus stops so crowded, occasionally looking like the characters within could easily double as a police lineup. Inside there’s a grimy tile floor, Mexican soap operas at uncomfortable volumes, and a gaudy neon-centric color scheme that reeks of schmaltz and Breaking Bad’s Pollos Hermanos. But most importantly there’s a tiny counter with a smiling woman and a cash register, offering a chance to request happiness while yielding free whiffs of endlessly grilling chicken. 

It’s the specialty, if you couldn’t tell by the royal name. And it is best in whatever form allows the most usage of the deep, dank reservoir of a salsa bar. Within explore the neon verde, cool and pepper-y like a Mexican relish; the onion and habanero pickled mix of capsaicin angst; the bright tomato, with a sneaky spice finish; the dark rojo, both hellish and earthy; the thick, emulsified light green cream that I would like to request one day be splashed around my gravestone on a weekly basis. You have to ask for salsa cups, so, be reasonable, just get cinco.        

The tlayuda more than fits the order for framework in this case. Coming charred and burnt-smelling, it is folded into a form that is almost sandwich, almost panini, almost three-piece erector set. The bites are crackly, foundationally-threatening for those not paying attention, but there is still a doughy, chewy finish that renders it something like wood-fired Roman pizza. Creamy black beans are front and forward, mixing nearly half with the shredded, orange-hued chicken. Incredibly moist, it’s nice to be reminded how good poultry can be when it’s not a menu afterthought. It smacks of salt, time, care, a red hot grill. The lettuce and cheese are thusly overshadowed, wilty, the avocado is mostly buried. But that seems all the better, creating a blank pollo slate, one buttery with beans, crisp with a cracker corn crust, allowing the salsa to shine like your favorite ‘za toppings. All in rotation with every bite. 

Taqueria La Costena 

This rolling red doll house parked down 27th street from St. Luke’s Hospital—looming like both health warning and some security—offers probably Milwaukee’s finest take of the pizza form of tlayuda. The corn crust, acting as pure conveyance, is a bit floppy, lightly oiled and griddled, a consistency of an every-corner New York City slice, strong enough but needing some second hand assistance. There’s lettuce and tomato for body, a smidge of a smear of refried pintos, and svelty sour cream to smooth it all out. Queso warmly hugs the shell, cilantro flutters about like pleasantly unchecked flora sprouting between salty sidewalk cracks. It’s a beautiful, colorful site, sitting there in it’s styrofoam home on your passenger seat. It can also be aesthetically enhanced by the dark red, smoky salsa, everything enticing enough for me to risk listeria from a recent avocado recall, the hunks sitting on top so soft and green and fatty. 

But really it is all in unintrusive service of the bountiful meat-of-choice. Chorizo, which often makes the best filling, almost always makes the best topping, as it also would and could on many Americanized sorts of pizza—say, the meat-lover’s special. It is crumbly, salty, satisfying in a crisped sausage way, but better, garlickier, more chile pepper-exotic. Here it comes perfectly charred, black but juicy, generously bountiful. 

“Seven minutes” was the quoted wait time from the happy man in the little window, a timekeeping call met, showing he knows how this all goes, that it is far from his first tlayuda rodeo. Back in the car, it becomes one of those dishes you look at, and even on an empty lunchtime stomach you think you’ll have at least half to save for later. But then, maybe barely longer than it took to finish your order, maybe emboldened by some clean test results at the hospital, or perhaps hungered from a foliage eye feast at the nearby Domes, there is nothing left but but meat-hued carnage, some debris almost forming a police chalk outline of a greasy front-seat crime. There’s also more than enough satisfaction to realize that taco trucks are the true, adult form of the drive-through window.       

[autobotministerofscience-blog]

Brains and Sparks and Percy

// Under a cut because I’m rambling and this is going to be long and messy. Basically: Things do not work like they do with humans (at least in tfa) and sparks are super important and brains are, well, pretty important, yeah, but not in the same way.

// So I’m trying to figure this out. The emotions thing with Percy is kinda weird because Cybertronians have both the spark and the brain, and supposedly the spark’s got something big to do with personality and memories and junk, and the brain,,, doesn’t???

If I remember correctly, when Yoketron died, Prowl just grabbed up his spark and stuck it in a fresh protoform, and he woke up. Same guy, no problem. Died right after, because he wanted to, but it can be assumed that that could have worked. 

And then you’ve got Starscream doing stuff with the clones and replacement bodies, but the Allspark bits were involved so that might be different. Also one may assume that Starscream would make clones with brains like his IF that is how it works, which it might NOT be. Unknown as of yet.

But then CNA, which is stored in the spark, is their sourcecode and determines pretty much everything that their being is based on, and it’s also what they use for clones. So????? How important is the brain (processor), really????

Humans are like this: The brain is the all-important thing that stores all of what makes a person that person (only not exactly because the body plays a role and the chemistry is important and there are hormones and stuff and basically if you lop off a limb or remove some organs you not only make the body work less well, but also screw up the balance of Stuff and the brain is affected and the person is actually Not exactly the same, but that’s just what I’ve heard and I don’t even remember where) and the heart is just the thing that makes the rest of the body go. More or less.

Replace the heart and person A is still person A. But the brain, move that thing around and the person goes with it. Mostly. Er, well, we actually don’t do that, for the most part. But basically that’s it. There’s a whole When Are We Not Alive/Not Human/Someone Else/Etc Etc Whatever debate in here but I’m not concerned with that now.

Cybertronians are different. (talking strictly TFA here) The spark holds the personality, memories, CNA, and??? We don’t know what else. Maybe information in general too, because why not, and because Yoketron and Starscream had zero trouble remembering things, despite having no transference of files from processor to processor.

This also kinda explains how Starsceam’s personality was able to take over the simulation in Rise of Safeguard (tfa comic) when they took his CNA and got his decepticon code from it. Soooo idk maybe they got excited and just stuck his CNA in there wholesale instead of splicing it up and taking the useful bits. Ergo, a fully formed Starscream personality within the simulation, wreaking havoc and strong-willed enough to take over the computer until it was weakened in-sim and then they got control over the comp and his program again out-of-sim. Nice going Percy. I wonder if they kept that sim. Probably did. Probably have a diced up version of Starscream’s personality in there, just conscious enough to exist as an entity within the computer, but not enough to resist. Cool. Yeah, or not, whatever--not important; getting off track.

So sparks have a ton of stuff in them. So then what about the brains.

The brains are the interface for the spark, they connect the spark to the body. Yyyeah. The spark in part powers the body, which in turn powers the spark... I guess? maybe not? The...brains...act as an emulator? Eh. The brains interpret the data in the spark and realize it. Yyes? The brains....

Gah, I don’t know. Maybe all brains are essentially the same, and it’s the spark that makes them different. So with a Cybertronian, you could do a brain transplant and be chill; the bodies still have the same personalities and stuff as before, like human with a heart transplant. But change the sparks and you take everything that makes a bot that bot and move it. So frame/body/shell changes aren’t too hard. Only the spark is essential. That would explain Yoketron, Starscream.. even the Jettwins-- Jetfire’s head was gone. Also the Stunticons, Drift maybe... hm. Yeah.

So there are places where we do know stuff about brains, so I might have to disagree with stuff I’ve said above now. Or not! Hopefully not. Arcee’s brain was damaged by the EMP, deleting her memories and rendering her comatose. But that changed. The Omega Sentinels were created with simpler processors. Derek J Wyatt’s wording on Percy was that he deleted his emotions to clear room in his hard drive for more science. I’m thinking this isn’t how computers work, and the wording and specifics were changed anyway so it’s.. mostly moot? It’s moot.

So I’m thinking brains are, for the most part, blanks. Generic. Pretty much all the same. The brains actually go with the body/shell/frame/whatever, and are primed to take care of that body, regardless of what spark it has in it. It’s kind of like the nerves and spinal cord and brain stem and such in that it is integrated into its body and meant to keep that functioning.

Crud, the whole headless thing though. Oh my goodness, how the heck does that work. Crap. Uhhh... A wireless connection? Sure why not. Ok so if the brain and body are in proximity they can still communicate... Spark to brain, brain to body, body to brain, brain to spark, etc. and the bot can still move around comically unless another brain unit hacks in and takes control of the body. Like in the show. Ok. That works.

Blast a bot’s head off, destroy the brain, and the spark can still survive. It might sustain trauma from the loss of the brain, but it’s still alive. For a while anyway. It could fade pretty soon after. Important point is that without the brain, the spark cannot control the body. The brain is what does that. The brain acts as a conduit between the spark and body. Destroy the brain (or completely sever the wireless connection, or block it) and the living spark cannot move the body. It can keep it powered for a time, but can do nothing.

But if you get a new brain in time, things are ok! Like a heart transplant! Connection restored, and things are working again! As long as the brain is compatible with the body type/size and spark size/power output, things are great. So like Arcee couldn’t be a brain donor for an Omega Sentinel, but an Omega Sentinel could be a brain donor for another Omega Sentinel. They’re compatible. They could also probably just. Build more brains. The spark’s the important bit, so there wouldn’t really be a moral issue.

So basically the spark can’t communicate directly with the brainless body. Doesn’t work. Spark is funky energy and data, and needs translation into stuff the body can do. The Brain does that. Spark can give power to body, keep it alive and “on,” but even base functions won’t run without a brain. (Why? because aliens. Because robots. Because whatever. Because if the spark acts like a brain, what point is there in having a brain. None. But they do. So I make up nonsense like this.)

It would be interesting if a bot had multiple processors throughout the body. Backups. Blow their head off and chest brain 2 powers on. Headless but not hopeless indeed. There’s probably a drawback to this, or at least a taboo, but I imagine it could be made to work. Sweet.

Mm and I guess another thing on brains, they are interchangeable to a degree, but CPU speed is another difference that would have to be taken into account, in addition to size and such. The spark-compatible speed may or may not be determined by CNA--so a bot with lower CPU speed wouldn’t do well with a transplant of a higher-speed brain. Probably. I don’t know computers.

Oh, and of course the brain takes in data from the body and processes it and sends it to the spark. When a bot sees something the optics send the data to the brain which sends it to the spark where it becomes part of a memory and other stuff happens too, and the spark sends its reaction to the brain which sends it to the body. ....Sure.

Okay, Now Arcee and the Omega Sentinels. Arcee got blasted with EMP and as a result lost her memory (but it came back later) and went into a coma (but she woke up later). Percy told Ratchet that the damage to her processor was irreparable. Evidently he was wrong or lying. So if we take that at face value, the EMP fried her brain. If I’m right, this means that her spark was fine, and her memories and all were intact there, but that the damage to her processor prevented her from accessing them. And further, the damage incapacitated her--she was still alive, but her brain didn’t work well enough for her to get up and walk around and talk. She was in a coma. 

The scientists and medics did what they could (or did they) and still she didn’t recover. They kept her for some reason; guess they don’t kill/let die coma patients? I image they’re easier to keep alive than human ones. So after she was captured by the Cons she woke up and remembered Ratchet and was able to function a bit.., Shockwave digging around in her head didn’t help--or maybe it did? Maybe the events of her capture jostled something in her brain into the right place and from there she just had to reboot and restore stuff back into her brain from her spark. Took a while, hence the kinda slow recovery of her mind. I think Sari helped? Maybe? Or Bee? I don’t remember.

The Omega Sentinels. Created with, according to Percy, very simple processors, so that they comprehend the repercussions of their actions in the war less, and question orders less. Yeah pretty sure that was it. So okay! A few possibilities. 

Their sparks are normal sparks and the brain is normal, but has (potentially removable) blocks and mental barriers coded into it so that they question orders less.

The sparks are normal but the brains have been directly (and slightly more permanently?) altered so that a bit less communication happens between the spark and brain on specific data channels, resulting in less questioning orders.

The brain is actually pretty normal, entirely normal even, but the spark was messed with so that they question orders less. Percy just said that it was the processor that was altered because... reasons.... I don’t know.

Both brain and spark were altered. Spark was messed with as in 3, and the brain was messed with as in 1 or 2.

I don’t see Percy or the Autobots having much of a problem with any of these tbh. So I’m going to pick the one I like best and say they did that until I get info that supports one over the other. I think for now I’ll go with 1, until I psychoanalyze everyone involved in the decision and figure out that I’m totally wrong. Hey idk maybe I’m right, 1 is the easiest and they are kind of trying to get things done quickly.

Anyway, so that takes care of Arcee and the Omega Sentinels. Aaand it seems like my idea of sparks and brains holds up! Mostly! If you tilt your head and close one eye! Now for smaller and less plot-relevant details that could still unravel my theory.

The Jet twins. Jetfire’s head was blown clean off. Both bodies were reformatted into ones capable of flight. Both had flyer code taken from Starscream added in so that they could fly. It was taken from Starscream’s CNA, so it stands to reason that it was integrated into their CNA--put into their sparks. Jetfire got a new brain, and both bots were fine after everything. Same personalities and memories; the only difference was that they could fly. This goes fine with my theory.

Perceptor. “Deleted personality subroutines” is the canon take on it, though this is in Shockwave’s words, which is maybe relevant. There are a few possibilities:

He deleted standard brain programs that dealt with parts of emotion and personality; his spark was the same, but the personality data that was sent to the brain was not processed, or at least wasn’t processed the same way. Thus freeing brain space for other data and possibly speeding up processing. I have no idea if computers actually work like this and will have to ask someone to confirm or debunk this.

He left the brain alone and messed directly with his spark and CNA so that the coding for personality bits was erased, freeing up spark data space for science. I don’t think sparks work like this.

He created blocks or paths in his brain that redirected emotional/personality data to other parts, away from the CPU, so that he would be less biased when doing science. This one makes sense??

Number 3 but he can turn it on and off. He does science a lot and likes to be unbiased, so the block/redirection is mostly on, but he turns it off when he can’t otherwise come to a decision, or when he knows that he needs emotions to plug into a certain situation. Or when he realizes that it would make an experience or social situation work better. Or when I want him to have emotions. After so long without emotions, they can be terrible and fantastic.

Something else.

I really like 4. Even when redirection is on, his spark would still feel things in reaction, and his em field might even do stuff to show how he feels, depending on how those fields work exactly--emitted by spark and dampened by brain?--and he could even store the emotions he’s not actively feeling alongside memory, so he’d have copies with and without. Yeeah I like this but idk if I’ll actually use it..... .....Yeah I probably will tbh.

Eh, and whatever he did, he messed something up and his voice became flatter. That’s right, it was just a mistake. Ha. Yeah this isn’t certain either I could still change my mind on this or change it

Wow. This is a mess. If anyone actually reads this, I’d love to hear any thoughts you might have!