OOC: Things to remember about Ironhide, part 2
1. Ironhide uses the word 'born' for events that take place on a planetary or greater scale. Stars are born. Landmasses are born. Mountain ranges... well, maybe, I'm not sure about those. Living things, machine or otherwise, get the verb 'incepted'.
2. Ironhide is operating from the point of view of a being who has seen countless not-yet-activated protoforms built, thinkered with, reconstructed, or broken down and recycled before finally being incepted with a spark. He operates under the assumption that until it's capable of independent self-willed action beyond mere reflex, it's not yet incepted, just... being systems tested, really. Human infant-to-child development came as something of a shock to him. You're not supposed to activate a new mech until all its functions are tested and verified as being online. They don't have to be at full strength, but they need to work. Baby horses, he can accept. Newborn puppies or kittens with their eyes sealed, he doesn't understand. Baby humans, with the weak necks and the flailing and the inability to focus their eyes and the complete lack of exhaust port control? What the slag? He knows how the process works, it just doesn't come across as right.
It is probably best that he has yet to find out about altricial birds, or marsupial reproduction.
3. Ratchet has tried several times to get him to stop referring to the human reproductive process as one of internal parasitism. It hasn't worked.
4. His interest in humans tends to be sporadic, spotty, and more closely related to what he thinks of particular humans than anything else. Unlike Prime, he's not all that interested in studying them as a race in general; he'd rather understand the ones he knows and respects, or the ones who cause the most trouble. This means that where Prime has spent a good chunk of time observing humans in general, interacting with them, and asking questions, Ironhide has had more conversations with some of the humans at the base than anything else. Lennox, Epps, and the rest of that unit are eminently respectable- organics with guts, brains, and an awareness of their own situation that keeps them alive and acting? What's not to respect?- so Ironhide wants to know more about them, more than anything else. If it comes to having to learn something about humans at a societal level, Ironhide tends to do a couple of Internet searches and then start asking questions of the nearest available human, and by 'asking questions' I generally mean 'shouting'.
5. He hates fancy or flashy HTML. If he has to read what are incredibly primitive files by his people's standards he'd rather they be neat, clean, and easy to read. A few pages with blink or marquee tags will easily drive him up the wall. Also, he considers adware/spyware/etc. to be the approximate equivalent of athlete's foot or fingernail fungus. While he would not break the Autobot code by actively hurting an adware writer, he's got an elaborate speech prepared for Prime on why suspending such a human twenty feet in the air above a highway overpass by his/her garments doesn't constitute 'hurting'.
6. As much as he'd love to take Scorponok out himself, he's privately resolved that if he can do so without too much difficulty, he's gonna pin the Decepticon to the nearest rock and send for Lennox and company to do the final honors.
7. In the course of roaming the humans' Internet when he arrived at Earth he picked up a fondness for several forms of human entertainment. Pro wrestling, for one; he's fascinated by the elaborate combination of showmanship and combat, and the personas put forth by the fighters being as much a part of what they do as the actual combat itself. He's well aware of it being staged and scripted. That's the point. Watching that being played out is ... well, to him it's kind of the equivalent of discovering that the hamsters in the pet store down the road are putting on productions of Macbeth. He's also fond of human action movies, although some of that is a case of wondering just how far they can delude themselves about how their own combat systems work.
He's really fond of Sammo Hung movies and Chow Yun-Fat gunplay flicks. On the other hand, he avoids watching Jet Li; Jet's short, fast, and really, really good at hand to hand, which tends to remind him of Jazz in painful ways.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon just made him go '... what?'
2. Ironhide is operating from the point of view of a being who has seen countless not-yet-activated protoforms built, thinkered with, reconstructed, or broken down and recycled before finally being incepted with a spark. He operates under the assumption that until it's capable of independent self-willed action beyond mere reflex, it's not yet incepted, just... being systems tested, really. Human infant-to-child development came as something of a shock to him. You're not supposed to activate a new mech until all its functions are tested and verified as being online. They don't have to be at full strength, but they need to work. Baby horses, he can accept. Newborn puppies or kittens with their eyes sealed, he doesn't understand. Baby humans, with the weak necks and the flailing and the inability to focus their eyes and the complete lack of exhaust port control? What the slag? He knows how the process works, it just doesn't come across as right.
It is probably best that he has yet to find out about altricial birds, or marsupial reproduction.
3. Ratchet has tried several times to get him to stop referring to the human reproductive process as one of internal parasitism. It hasn't worked.
4. His interest in humans tends to be sporadic, spotty, and more closely related to what he thinks of particular humans than anything else. Unlike Prime, he's not all that interested in studying them as a race in general; he'd rather understand the ones he knows and respects, or the ones who cause the most trouble. This means that where Prime has spent a good chunk of time observing humans in general, interacting with them, and asking questions, Ironhide has had more conversations with some of the humans at the base than anything else. Lennox, Epps, and the rest of that unit are eminently respectable- organics with guts, brains, and an awareness of their own situation that keeps them alive and acting? What's not to respect?- so Ironhide wants to know more about them, more than anything else. If it comes to having to learn something about humans at a societal level, Ironhide tends to do a couple of Internet searches and then start asking questions of the nearest available human, and by 'asking questions' I generally mean 'shouting'.
5. He hates fancy or flashy HTML. If he has to read what are incredibly primitive files by his people's standards he'd rather they be neat, clean, and easy to read. A few pages with blink or marquee tags will easily drive him up the wall. Also, he considers adware/spyware/etc. to be the approximate equivalent of athlete's foot or fingernail fungus. While he would not break the Autobot code by actively hurting an adware writer, he's got an elaborate speech prepared for Prime on why suspending such a human twenty feet in the air above a highway overpass by his/her garments doesn't constitute 'hurting'.
6. As much as he'd love to take Scorponok out himself, he's privately resolved that if he can do so without too much difficulty, he's gonna pin the Decepticon to the nearest rock and send for Lennox and company to do the final honors.
7. In the course of roaming the humans' Internet when he arrived at Earth he picked up a fondness for several forms of human entertainment. Pro wrestling, for one; he's fascinated by the elaborate combination of showmanship and combat, and the personas put forth by the fighters being as much a part of what they do as the actual combat itself. He's well aware of it being staged and scripted. That's the point. Watching that being played out is ... well, to him it's kind of the equivalent of discovering that the hamsters in the pet store down the road are putting on productions of Macbeth. He's also fond of human action movies, although some of that is a case of wondering just how far they can delude themselves about how their own combat systems work.
He's really fond of Sammo Hung movies and Chow Yun-Fat gunplay flicks. On the other hand, he avoids watching Jet Li; Jet's short, fast, and really, really good at hand to hand, which tends to remind him of Jazz in painful ways.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon just made him go '... what?'