First Things First, I'm Gonna Be Rewriting My Fic Due To New Ideas Flowing In.

First things first, I'm gonna be rewriting my fic due to new ideas flowing in.

Secondly, let me info dump some things about sparklings in my AU.

The Sparkling's name in this pic is Firefly. She's an Oplita kid.

A Sparkling's gender is in the optic color. Female Cybertronians will have cooler or lighter tones of the color they have. While males will have a more warm hue of said color. As an example of this, Starscream, who was originally forged as female, has a more pink color to the red of his optics. A Cybertronian born as a male with red optics will have more of a fiery orange tint to it, Grimlock and various Decepticons being prime examples. On the rare occasion that a Sparkling is born without an assigned gender, they will have the base color of optics and will be referred to as neutral pronouns. Nightshade is a great example of this. Gender can be changed in the future when and if they decide to.

On the topic of optic colors, the color of the child's optics will be based on the parents. If a Cybertronian with red optics is to forge a Sparkling with a Cybertronian with yellow optics, the chances of that child being born with orange optics is highly likely, with the rare cases of heterochromia occurring with both the eye colors of the parents. 'Pure color' optics, a rather derogatory term, is where a Sparkling has unmixed optics and has had parents with the same optic color, those two being typically red and yellow. Optic colors can also be slightly changed with a film over the optic, much like a colored contact lense, though, it is usually easy to tell.

Sparklings are born with only one base color, a white or light gray (debatable by cyber-parents) this color is the base color of the metal they are made of. A metal that grows with them and allows their bodies to change voluntarily into whatever mode they wish with some limitations based on heritage and age. Typically, they develop the ability to transform once they are six cycles (6 million human years) old.

Sparklings can change their paint jobs when they are old enough to transform. They also can change their colorings whenever they please as adults. The colorings that are typically chosen matter based on the colors of their parent(s)/guardian(s).

Much like human children, they develop to speak coherently at a toddler age. During their infant and newborn stages, they typically babble in unintelligible Cybertronian, which consists of cybernetic sounds and rumbles. Purring is not something only Sparklings possess. Adult Cybertronians also have the ability to purr and do it quite often to convey contentment or happiness to a situation or individual that makes them feel positive emotions. Cooing is something mostly maternal or paternal figures do in front of their offspring or anything they deem fit to be under their care. Typically, those who transform into avian vehicles coo to their young.

Female Cybertronians are typically more aggressive than males. Originally, in Cybertronian history, females were bigger than the males, dominating the planet until they were nearly all wiped out. Over time, and the lack of resources from hiding, they became smaller, some even becoming male to avoid scrutiny. Because of the shortage of females, homosexual relationships are quite common within the males of Cybertron. Some of the females who have managed to escape Cybertron have populated other planets where it is nearly all female.

Avian based infant Sparklings will likely learn how to run or move quickly with the thrusters built into their bodies, typically their backs or feet. While land based Sparklings will learn on their wheels or just like human children.

Here's the process of my latest Starscream drawing! There might be some flashing in the time-lapse, so please be careful!

PUTTING JORVIK ON THE MAP: SIZE AND LOCATION

WHERE IS JORVIK?

Finding Jorvik’s exact location is actually pretty easy.

”Jorvik, located somewhere between Norway, Iceland, and the British Isles, of which it was once part, is a nexus of worlds.” - Jorvik Calling, Prologue.

PUTTING JORVIK ON THE MAP: SIZE AND LOCATION

This is still a pretty large area, but one that’s significantly narrowed down by reading Four Stories from Jorvik. Anne’s segment Midnight Sun establishes that Jorvik is at the very least partly above the arctic circle, to the point where Anne can see it while riding by Jorvik Stables in the middle of the night. This also puts Jorvik pretty close to the tectonic rift between the European and American continental plates, which handily explains why Jorvik is a volcanic Island.

HOW BIG IS JORVIK?

Jorvik’s size requires a bit more speculation, and I’m relying on two book sources.

1: Jorvik stables is a bus trip from Jorvik city.

Anne lives in Jorvik City but goes to school with the other soul riders in Jarlaheim, and has her horse at Jorvik stables. We know that she goes there by bus, so the distance between Jarlaheim and Jorvik City shouldn’t be too large; I’m capping the max length of the bus ride to about an hour.

2: Valedale is less than a day’s ride from the wineyard.

In The Legend Awakens, Elizabeth and the soul riders are heading to Pi’s Swamp and sleep over at the Wineyard. The soul riders wake up late and leave after having eaten breakfast and lunch. The sun is ”at its highest point in the sky” when they leave, so probably around 1-2PM. It’s twilight when they arrive, and the Baroness comments that they showed up in time for the evening feeding of the horses. Since the days are shorter in late October/early November, which is when this chapter takes place, we can guess that they arrived at around 5-6 PM.

Mapping out the most likely routes for these two trips, the route to the Wineyard is about a third of the bus route from Jorvik City to Jarlaheim. Additionally, the bus would drive on average ~70 km/h because of Jorvik’s smaller roads. The average walking speed of a horse is 6 km/h.

Now, the Valedale-Wineyard trip could take anywhere between 3-5 hours, but I’m inclined to believe that it’s on the lower end of that scale to keep Anne’s commute as short as possible. That leaves us with a 18 km long ride, and a 54 km long bus tour that takes 46 minutes. Pretty reasonable!

RESULTS

With these new measurements, we can figure out the actual distance between different places on Jorvik. Most importantly, we can measure the absolute width from Jorviks westernmost to easternmost point: 92 km, or ~57 miles!

Having figured out an estimate of the island’s size and location, we can now put Jorvik on the map!

574 notes View Post

heavisintheditch

1 year ago

As he sits in his prison, he has nothing left to do but entertain himself with the old books that keep him company, trying to pretend he hasn’t already read each and every one several hundred times...

Some sad sparkle toot today.. happy to have finished off this monstrosity that was well out of my comfort zone. But I learn from all my mistakes. C:

Aaravos is too gorgeous for this world.. no wonder he is locked away within a mirror dimension inside a fictional environment xD

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heavisintheditch

4 months ago