From the Alaskan Frontier

For those of you who are Transformers—more specifically Transformers Animated—inclined, I have a few questions for you.

First off, let me state one of my pairing affiliations—very pro Sentinel x Blackrachnia. VERY pro SP x BA. That being said, I picture this rough draft of a course of events, all completel AU since us Sentinel x Blackrachnia fans got the fuzzy end of the lollypop stick -->

1.) Sentinel handled Blakrachnia’s presence much better in “Rise of the Predacon.” [refer to my short story Lost and Found on fanfiction.net and / or DeviantArt]
2.) They started to grow closer again after that, albeit in secret because of the faction lines
3.) Somewhere along the way, they have a sparkling—femme, designation Topaz. Very cute and pretty like Elita, blue optics, gold armor plating with jade and navy details, a sort of mix of her parents’ coloring. [Sueness score = 10. Source: http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm]
4.) Sentinel has to take responsibility for Topaz because she would simply be safer with him—a sparkling in Decepticon territory is bad enough, but a sparkling whose parentage is clearly 50% Autobot in Decepticon territory is as good as dead.

So basically, Sentinel is playing the role of single father. Fair enough. (Sort of. I mean, not exactly to HIM, but y’know?)

Now a week or so ago, I was listening to some music, when I had this powerful, powerful visual: Sentinel, kneeling in front of Topaz (roughly seven or eight in human terms), signing to her. Signing as in ASL sign language. As in, I suddenly and randomly decided that Topaz was basically deaf.

My questions:
1.) Has anyone ever had this happen to them? Where they just randomly decide something about a character (canon, OC or otherwise) and just refused to believe anything else after that?

2.) Is this too much to ask of Sentinel? ^^; I mean, on top of having to care for a child by himself and juggle this careful backstory about her mother (for Topaz’s own safety) [backstory needs to be developed], but having to care for a special needs child on top of all that? Ehhhh... I do feel vaguely guilty for wanting this for Sentinel in this aspect, for the following reasons:

a. I do like his character—he’s severely misguided and very unhappy without Elita, but he still needs and deserves if not love then respect from the fanbase. I say that he’s misguided and unhappy because “Along Came a Spider” [season I] offers good, strong, canon evidence that he and Elita-One were dating. They stuck together throughout the episode, until Elita “died,” he had his arm around her shoulders, had each other’s backs when they were fighting off the spiders—he even told Optimus and Elita that he would cover their retreat, while Prime was trying to cover his own ass (excusable, but that’s another story)—and he was distraught when Elita was lost. Listen to his normal speaking voice in the episode. Then listen to the scene when Elita falls back into the cave, when he calls her name. His voice is several pitches higher than normal (and damn good acting on Townshend Coleman’s part. ^^) That and he was the only one who showed any kind of emotion—all-encompassing grief—when she was presumed dead. The incident with the spiders led him to believe that anything organic spelled trouble, so he became distrustful of anything that wasn’t Cybertronian. This parallels humans shying away from things that have hurt us before—“once bitten, twice shy,” anyone?

b. This might require I rethink my plans for his backstory, since he never received one, should I ever find cause to touch on it—his parents bonded (married) young, and he was their only child. They opted to live separately (there is no divorce on Cybertron: Marriage occurs by the fusing of sparks, and to attempt to sever that bond would kill one or both parties) on less than amicable terms. He spent most of his youth with his father, who was something of a working stiff. This would contribute to some of Sentinel’s high drive attitude and “need to succeed” attitude—wanting to rise above his current circumstances. In human terms, I would peg his socio-economic status as lower middle class: not poor by any means, but there would be definitely be some budget stretching with some living paycheck to paycheck in his household.

In this sense, I worry that having Topaz be deaf would be overkill for Sentinel.

c. It’s not like anyone Sentinel knows or works with could communicate with Topaz without his help because the odds of his teammates knowing ASL or anything like that are sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim—for all we know, Cybertron may not even have a sign language. Also, consider everyone with whom he works: Jazz is all about the music (borrowing a trait from his G1 namesake), the Jet twins are loud and spazzmuffin-y, and Ultra Magnus is probably not the kind of mech to go visit with his men and their children all that often, if ever. Someone who wanted to talk to Topaz would need to have Sentinel around to act as a translator, or a pen and paper handy—not so great when Topaz is like, 3 and can’t read or write.

It’s also not very fair to Topaz because she would spend all of her time in her room (probably a room she and her father share). She would be bored to tears and lonely as hell, and would lack sensory stimulation by being alone so much.

 

Now some of you may be asking how Topaz ended up being deaf. I managed to throw together an explanation.

Her mother was genetically altered to half Cybertronian half organic; her father is pure Cybertronian. Here’s the simple math for you:

Based on this, what I think would happen is that when Topaz was really young—probably about a year in human terms—the (bigger) techno portion of her body started to attack the organic portion, thinking it was a virus. The attack is swift, and by the time she's diagnosed and given anti-virus patches and other meds, the damage is done—her (organic) auditory systems are destroyed, thus total prelingual [before she learned to talk / comprehend language] deafness.

If you guys have input or questions, feel free to say something!

- TCA