i have some much bulkier posts cooking for blosctober, particularly a little something about hunger and appetites [ literal and metaphorical ] as well as NOS-4-A2's dynamic with zurg and what a big factor in his overall characterization + arc it is to me, something something daddy issues, but it got me thinking about vampirisms. i wrote something about nos' innerworkings and the like awhile back, but i figured it's been a full year now since i first started writing him, and it could definitely use some touching up.
so rambling aside, here's something less on the meta side of things and more into headcanon territory about what exactly it means to be an "energy vampire" to me —— and just a little bit about hunger too, because i can't help my self and am incapable of not reading waaay too much into kids' show characters apparently, it's always autism awareness day when you're following me. anyways, let's get into it.
¹ nos' body is built entirely out of a lightweight alloy, and other similarly light, more flexible materials. this was done in accommodation to his appetites ; with a frame that was constructed with flight and levitation in mind, having to support heavier plating would run the risk of eating through his energy reserves too fast —— he does have backups, which are basically my personal answer to how he came back from being staked in the slayer —— but still, he gets hungry fast and often, and a starving nos isn't the easiest nos to deal with. so, this was the compromise, though it comes at the expense of thinner metal that also happens to be far from heat resistant.
while he won't go bursting into flames in the sunlight, like your more traditional vampire, he does run the risk of overheating if he's exposed to it for too long. furthermore, it could potentially warp the metal itself, though this is a worst case scenario for him. at most, he'll simply become sluggish and use up a good chunk of energy cooling down, it's a never - ending cycle with him when it comes to eating. but tldr, can't think of a single scene with this fellow in broad daylight, so that's a win for me.
² much like how regular food does nothing for a traditional vamp, the charging stations you'd usually see in use for robots have little to none effect on him. he's designed for consumption, you hook him up to one and he's going to end up eating right through it's power or short - circuiting it. the matter of nos' batteries is ... tricky to me. he goes through energy fast, and requires far more than a robot of his make and size would usually need. the way i see it is he's high - tech, sleek, state of the art, so on and so forth. however, technology like that uses up a lot of wattage, which can get clunky fast, the simple solution ? a smaller power grid, shout out to that time sam my beloved friend said something about nos having small batteries without knowing this was in my head, love that for us. to quote that same convo ; nos burns the same amt of energy as XL but he's built with the same square footage as XR and that's why he's Like That.
but anyways, getting off track, my point is while that's a trait of his more on the strictly robotic end of the spectrum, it doubles back around to vampirism when it comes to the need to feed. no fancy way to word this i'm just going to be up and blunt about it, it's something he experiences like honest to god hunger. not low power, not the way a device might slow down as the battery dwindles, i mean hunger. literally no other way for me to put it, save for maybe a gaping hole, in fact that's what he is, a black hole, something that's never satiated. obviously, nothing is ever going to eat so much it's never hungry again, that's not how it works, but i feel like that perpetual nature is something you see pretty often in more contemporary vamp media, throat burning and all.
that said, even if he does power down from drained energy, he can still come back online if supplied with more. try coming up with a tech equivalent to garlic next time, maybe. [ side note i can't figure out where to put : his powers and temper also tend to use up energy pretty often, all of this combined basically makes him a revolving door of sorts for energy. use and eat and use and eat. ]
³ i have wracked my poor brain trying to come up with an equivalency to vampires being undead or the whole thing with reflections for this guy, and the best i've got is that his energy frequency is ... off. it's nothing you'd notice unless you were really looking for it, but due to his charge being entirely stolen from drained machines, it doesn't show up on a radar in the same way a normal robot's would. think of like a ghost frequency of sorts, a blip that isn't all there.
i'm not too sure how to end this post, and i feel like i'm forgetting something big time, but this is the most i've written in a hot minute and i'm glad to have it out there. and besides, we all already know how the old fashioned stuff like staking went in RoTM. but don't go inviting mysterious cargo into your base of operations, basically, might end up being a guest you can't exactly feed or host.
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