Just want to say that back before the reveal, I was thinking the tfp verse would have spark interfacing only vs idw having sticky and that'd be the barrier between Soundwave and Rodimus interfacing, but the mix of like sticky and plug n play for Soundwave is very neat! I might've missed it if you said it anywhere but was there any inspiration for disks and slots?
I honestly don't remember if there was a direct inspiration. I wanted Soundwave to have equipment that was very different from Rodimus's in a way that meant that the things one generally finds sexy and exciting - bodies thrusting/moving/pushing against/into each other, fluids, moving in general, moaning aloud, etc - just straight up did not work at all. For SW, the sexiest thing Rodimus can do is lie there perfectly still. Which is hilarious. Which is a thing I like to inject into my writing- even if/especially if I'm the only one who finds it funny. I did want there to be a physical aspect to SW's junk (aka, not just spark interfacing), and I can't remember if I thought of the data pad/rounded corners joke first and then connected it to the junk, or the other way around. Chicken and egg, perhaps xD An ouroboros of junk, slotting in and out, among all the other zillions of details in my head for this story.
oh, I also remember that I didn't want it to be like anything else I had written before, and not like anything I had seen before. that's not to say someone else hasn't done this: they probably have. I just personally haven't seen it.
so yeah, the main inspirations (?? more like guidelines) were:
works the exact opposite from the way human/typical sticky works
isn't anything I've written or seen before
thank you for asking about SW's junk xD