Okay, this might be a dumb question, but are the energon bots bleed and the energon they eat the same thing?
As far as the continuities I've seen, nobody seems to specify that they're different! And sometimes I see siphoning as a kink thing, where bots drink directly from each other's fuel lines, and it's all sexyromantic and junk.
Oh, actually! Cannibalism is totally canon. Dunno about healthy, but when Starscream yoinked the matrix and got stranded on a barren asteroid with a bunch of decepticons, they were short on fuel and the soldiers started cannibalizing each other. So yeah, they can legit eat each other to survive.
The shows, sure! But oh man, the comics. I have a favorite panel for that, spoilers for mtmte 18 or so Spoiler: LENGTHWAYS
The Transformers version of kuru would be hard-fucking-core. Yeah, it was actually the cannibalism just before Spotlight: Megatron that made me wonder if the two energons were the same. It's interesting that there's a cannibalism taboo at all if there's no prion disease. It's been a long war with decreasing amounts of food; cannibalism would have been super efficient. Also, thank you for the explanations!
It might be more of a resource ownership issue than a health issue. Someone stealing your rations is one thing, but once the energon is in your body you tend to think "hey, I was using that!" a bit more forcefully. So an interesting question is what do the Camiens think, considering how energy-constrained they've been.
Ok hi im back from the park and showered finally and let me tell you, I got to watch optimus and megatron beating the shit out of each other interactively in 3d. At one point Megs pinned Optimus down and then tugged his head back and it was like. dayum. also it was just a rly good ride in general, despite bleh bayverse designs. The car/transformer you're in gets like, tugged around by starscream for a little while and i was like. just take me, scream. keep goin. we're good. at the end optimus tells you that you've saved the world, good job, you were very brave, which is cute I bought a decepticon shot glass/espresso mug? not sure which, either way, it's small and has the decepticon logo and i love it i nerded out about transformers to my sister while in the queue, i was like 'no seriously tho the decepticon characters are super cool and lemme tell you about some of megs' backstory in some canons' and it was good
I'm not sure there's actually a taboo against cannibalizing dead people. Consider: Ratchet. He just totally took Pharma's hands. Just took them, like grizzly war trophies. I mean, yeah, he needed new hands. But do the people he operated on know that he was fixing them with stolen hands?
Hahaha, yeah, and when Megatron was trying to mobilize the decepticons and Needlenose was stuck without hands (because someone stole and ate them, apparently), nobody was like 'agh, that's horrifying!', they were like 'oh my godddd, so embarrassing'. (and jealousssss! I want Starscream to take me on a magic carpet ride!!)
There are Cybertronian diseases, and I'm sure you can pick up scraplets from eating someone infested with them, but apparently not prevalent enough that people care.
And Ratchet intended to will his hands to Whirl - I'd guess that 'who gets your body parts' is a significant part of people's wills, if their preferred funeral doesn't require a complete corpse.
