insecuriosity

When it comes to fanfiction, oftentimes the Spark is the most important aspect of a Transformer’s existence. Without it, they would die. It is insinuated to be the source of a Cybertronian’s sentience/sapience/intelligence, and it is often compared to the human Soul.

At the same time, there’s been instances of reprogramming  ( in both fic and canon ) which forever altered the mech in question. The destruction of a brainmodule has been shown to be almost the same as death.
Rung, with his brainmodule having gone through some trauma, was completely unresponsive and near comatose.  Nautica held onto Skids’ brain module, in the hopes that his spark could be rekindled in some way.

So, even though the details are never explained in canon ( how wonderful, plenty of room for headcanoning!) we know that the brainmodule is at least equal to the spark in importance.

My personal headcanon, is that the spark is what generates emotion, attachments, and feelings. And that the Brainmodule is necessary to interpret the signals of the spark, and to translate outside events to signals that the spark can understand.
They work in tandem, and develop set patterns and ‘shortcuts’ so as to say, as the Cybertronian grows older and has more life experience. 

So, before we got more issues about the DJD. Before we learned their real names and watched as Megatron sent them to the afterlife, I felt inspired by Tesarus.

His grinder doesn’t make that much sense as a torture instrument once you think about it. Permanent harm does not mean as much to Cybertronians as it does to humans with how much of their frame can be repaired and rebuilt without a trace, and the shredding would be too damaging to keep up for long without the victim dying.

So Tesarus was probably not sparked as an executioner or a torturer. No. Tesarus was one of the many, many garbage disposal bots that lived on Cybertron.

You had janitors, the taller, more respectable cleaners that could be found in towers, offices, and habsuites. There were streetcleaners like Tailgate, minibots tasked with plumbing work and garbage distribution - ferrying smaller garbage to their proper drop-offs to be brought to the garbage plant. Those garbage mounts were picked up by garbage trucks, or unfortunate truckformers who had not found a contract for ferrying less disgusting cargo. And finally there are the smelters and shredders; confined to the garbage plant to shred and smelt larger parts of garbage into re-usable and refineable parts.
All of Cybertron’s lower class mecha were disposables, and just like the miners and construction workers, Tesarus was a monoformer disposable owned by his city. As such, he was subjected to certain rules and regulations.

He was only legible for repairs after he fulfilled a certain amount of work, and those repairs only extended to wear-and-tear or injuries that affected his ability to work. A pained leg or a rusted out hip joint was something you had to pay for out of your own pocket, even though the credits paid for the work were only enough to keep a fuel tank full.
By way of example, grinders and smelters with missing legs, arms, or mobility issues were simply kept lined up outside in a row, with only their grabber arms intact to process garbage.