TF Procreation

[Onslaught Six]

The male reproductive system consists of a tank which produces and contains the male's cyber-spermatozoa. These contain a randomized mix of half of the male's genes as well as a small amount of Spark energy—the Spark is suffused throughout every cell in a Cybertronian's body (see MtMtE #8). Leading from this reservoir are tubing and pipes which connect to the main reproductive interface. Also connected to this main line are lines from the liquid waste receptacle similar to mammalian males, but likely taking the form of a retractable line and cables capped with a nozzle-like jack, not a phallus (See Bumblebee from the 2007 movie when he "lubricated" on Agent Simmons). This is all protected by the male's retractible "cod plate". Males constantly produce cyber-spermatozoa over the course of their adult lives.

The female reproductive system consists of a rigid ovoid reproductive/gestation chamber located in the lower abdomen and pelvic girdle between the hip mechanisms thus necessitating proportionately wider hips than males. At the top of this chamber are two ovarian nodes in which maturing cyber-ova develop before being released (usually one at a time) into the chamber for fertilization. At the bottom of the chamber is the interface port which is embedded in the seam of the two retractable "birth plates". These are all protected by the female's pelvic armor, which also has a seam running along the center-line that opens to facilitate interfacing or birth. There is no "vagina" and the gestation chamber does not expand during pregnancy. It is of a fixed size. The female only has a limited number of cyber-ova, limiting the number of offspring she can bear over the course of her reproductive life. The exact length and frequency of her fertility cycle, and whether it is a menstrual cycle, estrus cycle, or something else entirely is up for debate, as is whether she ceases to be fertile in her advanced years (as with Humans) or not (as with many other animals).

Power leads in the tip of the male interface jack and female interface port are extremely sensitive erogenous zones.

And shit like this is where these theories tend to lose me. Once you write this much bullshit, and get into this many squicky technical details, it loses any appeal it ever had. (Also when you use such retarded terms as "cyber-spermazoa.")

If, and it's a big if, Transformers do sexually reproduce, I have no interest in the actual mechanics of how they go about it. At all. Much as he said, we do not need to know the nitty-gritty of Spike and Carly's sex life to know that Daniel was born, in the same way that we wouldn't need to know the specific details of Sideswipe and Sunstreaker's parents' hibbity-dibbitying.

In other words, I am far more interested with the idea of Transformers family relationships than I am watching robots fuck.

(Seriously! I like to imagine Mirage's hologram technology comes from his father's massive pre-war technology empire. Mirage would inherit the company but is far more interested in doing things like banging femmebots, killing turbofoxes and jacking up on technodrugs. All of which are mentioned but not really detailed very much. Kind of like a Tarantino movie. People do drugs. People fuck other people. But it's never very explicit or gratuitous. Tarantino prefers to save that for people shooting each other.)

[Dominic]

Okay, I read it (during what is normally Sudoku time).

Yeah, the guy put some thought in to it. But, the essay over-all has some problems. The biggest is that the he is taking examples from several different (and exclusive) iterations of TF. And, in some cases, he is taking examples from iterations of the franchise that are not internally consistent, mostly the G1 cartoon.

There is a common, though still childish, misuse of the term DNA. DNA is exclusively organic. The term "DNA" is an abbreviation for an organic compound, deoxy ribonucleic acid (sp?). Machines, even living machines are *not* going to have it. (Aside: It amazes me how commonly misused the term is in sci-fi.)

Of course, the biggest problem is that this whole excercise was an excuse for...

This is a diagram of the internal anatomy of male and female Cybertronians, detailing all of their major internal systems, including the reproductive systems, as I envision them.

Much as he said, we do not need to know the nitty-gritty of Spike and Carly's sex life to know that Daniel was born, in the same way that we wouldn't need to know the specific details of Sideswipe and Sunstreaker's parents' hibbity-dibbitying.

No, this is a question of studying cyber-anthropology and the culture of fictional species!

It is for science!

In other words, I am far more interested with the idea of Transformers family relationships than I am watching robots fuck.

The fact that it is even a question...... Oi.

Seriously, this is a good example of "fans who are so disconnected from reality....."

but is far more interested in doing things like banging femmebots, killing turbofoxes and jacking up on technodrugs.

I recall the turbofoxes. But, where is he banging slutbots and snorting coke, (whick is the only drug I can see Mirage doing))



Point of information: All female mammal eventually run out of eggs. But, most species's natural life spans also happen to end at about this point. People are the only species that commonly outlast their reproductive lives, thus making it more apparent that a female of the species is out of ammo.

Not sure about birds/reptiles though....



Dom
-no, did not use it as toilet paper.

[Onslaught Six]

Hey, Futurama robots have RNA. The R stands for Robot. (Robonucleic acid?)

Here's a thing: Not all Transformers are consistent with one another. We have guys who can fly, guys who can't, guys who transform with hoods on their chests, guys with hoods as their feet, guys with arms that can't reach past their chest, guys with faceplates, guys with visors, guys with big knight-shaped holes in their heads, guys with missile launchers for arms, guys with treads for legs...

What makes anyone think all TFs are even capable of reproducing sexually? Maybe there's only a certain group of models who are specifically designed to create children. (I once read a theory that, within Decepticon society, females are in charge of "child rearing" and teaching "newborn" TFs the basics of life, function, and combat. This is why they aren't seen in most or all media--they're simply offscreen, training new recruits.) Or, even if they all can reproduce sexually somehow, what makes anyone think all the necessary components will match up? How do you account for size differences? Fortress Maximus can't mate with Arcee, he's the size of a city and she's a motorcycle (sometimes).

The fact is, TFs themselves all vary too much in size and general structure to make sexual reproduction reliably possible. Especially when you break it down into such terms.

I think stupid bullshit like this is why Budiansky created the Creation Matrix, the cartoon writers created Vector Sigma, and Orci/Kurtzman created the AllSpark.

[BWprowl]

I think my chief problem with this, um, ‘essay’ is how neatly everything just *happens* to line up with mammalian sexual reproduction, with lots of clean analogues and avenues to make x-rated fanfic as simple to write as possible. The fact that there’s a lot of assuming and imagining going on, and the guy employs the Santa-Claus-logic of ‘Just because we’ve never seen it doesn’t mean it’s not real!’ only exposes this wishful thinking as the unfortunate self-fantasy-driving that it is. This isn’t a guy looking at evidence across series to see what the most visible elements of TF reproduction are, this is a guy who *desperately* needed Transformers to fuck in his stories, so he put way too much effort into concocting technobabble to explain it. Young Transformers I can buy, because it ties into the Spark Reincarnation theory (that there’s ample evidence for) and we’ve seen plenty of examples of it. We have *not* seen examples of baby Transformers, or female Transformers giving birth, or nursing, or any of this crap.

In other news, I realized I don’t even want to get into the complications of stuff like Wheelie humping Mikaela’s leg…

Spoiler

Transformers did fuck in Panty & Stocking, but that was a parody.

[Mako Crab]

There is a common, though still childish, misuse of the term DNA. DNA is exclusively organic. The term "DNA" is an abbreviation for an organic compound, deoxy ribonucleic acid (sp?). Machines, even living machines are *not* going to have it. (Aside: It amazes me how commonly misused the term is in sci-fi.)

Not sure if he mentioned it in the original artists' comments section, but he does clarify in the replies that TFs have CNA.

Of course, the biggest problem is that this whole excercise was an excuse for...

But is it really? I don't know if the guy writes fanfic, but I saw his gallery on DA, and didn't see any robots fucking.

[Shockwave]

I hereby invoke internet rule 34.

I think I actually just prefer early season 1 Sunbow. When they just built them and that was it.

[BWprowl]

But is it really? I don't know if the guy writes fanfic, but I saw his gallery on DA, and didn't see any robots fucking.

To be fair, DA *technically* has a limit on that sort of thing. Off the site, and possibly on some of the freer fanfic sites (I used to post stuff to those places! I know what goes on in that world!) he may have whole galleries dedicated to the concept. May. Really, how much content he’s produced out of these mechanics he’s (let’s be honest here) made up whole cloth is irrelevant. The point is he clearly spent a lot of time and imagination coming up with all these systems and concepts that have never had a shadow of a mention in any TF media anywhere because he liked the idea of TF intercourse, and spawning families. It’s no different than people in, say, the Harry Potter fandom just making up spells that let their favorite homosexual pairings magic up babies together.

And to expand on what O6 said, there’s just so much it fails to account for in the big TF universe. How do characters with non-humanoid altmodes figure in?

Spoiler

You are now imagining Rosanna getting freaky with Steeljaw

What about guys that don’t even technically have robot modes? Is Raindance doomed to never get any action? How do Transtectors figure in? Gestalts?

[Shockwave]

Transtectors: Talk about giving head! Sorry, couldn't resist. And I Suppose Gestalts would be constantly doing it while merged. Like some sort of bizarre robot Caligula on crack.

[JediTricks]

Anyway, the issue we keep running into in the consideration of this is just what Sparks *are*. I’ve always been under the impression that they were, like, fragments of Primus’ essence or somesuch. This would imply that there’s a finite amount of the things, unless Sparks can split somehow, and the only case we ever saw of that was Rampage, and not only was that under pretty extreme circumstances, it didn’t result in two new beings until one half was pumped full of a dead guy’s datatrax (Dinobot II). So anyway, this kinda jibes with the ‘Spark dies and returns to circulate in the Matrix until it’s time for it to leave and enter a new body’ line of thinking. Kind of a reincarnation way of working, especially if you presume that sparks don’t fully carry memories from one ‘life’ to another (in fact, until his backstory was cocked up by Binaltech, TMII Prowl supported this pretty strongly, his bio heavily insinuating that he was such a reincarnation of G1 Prowl). Admittedly, this concept doesn’t fully explain how sparks *get* out of the Matrix and into new bodies (although Animated showed that those Autobots keep ‘newborn’ protoform bodies around to shovel fresh sparks from the Well of All Sparks into. And earlier in that series, regarding death, Ratchet referenced ‘joining’ said Well of All Sparks, another point for the reincarnation theory!), and even if we assume they’re coming out via an avenue such as Vector Sigma or the Well, that still doesn’t account for those gosh-durned off-world colonies.

Or does it? I think Sparky mentioned the Creation Matrix. As the Autobots’ Big Holy MacGuffin, it can be seen as and has practically been SHOWN to be one such ‘avenue’ for sparks to come from, regardless of where Prime was when using it. Now move sideways to Cybertron, the off-world-colony-est Transformers series, where each of its colonial worlds had a ‘Prime’ governing it. Now, in TF lore, what does a ‘Prime’ usually carry? A Matrix. Now, it may not be a ‘Matrix’ in the traditional MacGuffin-in-the-chest sense that we think of, but it’s not too far off to imagine that, when those bigass ships left Cybertron, their leaders would have *some* sort of device with them to ensure that last, most crucial connection to Cybertron- an avenue to the Matrix, and a place for fresh sparks to come out in the event that they were needed. Maybe it’s a well-type emplacement on the ships themselves, maybe it’s some sort of device the Prime of each planet safeguards. There’s a slim chance it could even have been the Cyber Planet Keys themselves, considering those were also said to be fragments of Primus’s essence (And crazily enough, remember that in Cybertron, Optimus Prime’s primary key was *shaped like the Matrix of Leadership*).

S’yeah, that’s my thinking on it. Sparks enter and leave the Matrix in a reincarnation-esque cycle, via some avenue like Vector Sigma or the Creation Matrix of Leadership. And any ships that leave Cybertron carrying potential colonies of robots are equipped with a link back to the Matrix, allowing their creator’s essence to birth new sparks to populations, even off-world.

While energy is not destroyable, only transmutable, the "spark of life" is I think more about the sentience which is created when a machine (metal or meat) uses that energy to become something more than its programming. Thus it would seem to me that the use of the term "spark" to express the concept of the mechanical character's "soul" falls under that domain. That said, if you believe God breathes life into each person, then by proxy you would view the concept of the Spark as coming from Primus and returning to his domain when the Spark is freed from its mortal body, mechanical though it may be. I don't subscribe to that philosophy so it's easier for me to view the concept as being one created by the character rather than the TF God, plus that also makes it easier to explain why there are so many unique characters in the TF universe rather than all copy-pasted clones.

Each bot can live essentially forever unless they are fully destroyed, trapped in a societal limbo as factions battle for supremacy of philosophy, but as their numbers didn't diminish notably, they didn't need to make more.

I think it's worth noting here that Transformers have been shown to age, albeit very slowly over the course of millions of years. With out upgrading bodies or at least replacing parts over the years, potentially they could die of old age. IDW's Kup as an example of that, they say he lived for so long and refused to upgrade to the point he became obsolete technology, incompatible with modern Cybertronian technology. If they hadn't adapted Pretender technology to save him, he would have died. Also, in RotF, Jetfire makes it sound like without Energon a Transformer would eventually age and die as well, such as himself, although that would imply with a constant supply of Energon a movieverse Transformer could potentially live forever.

Aging slowly and refusing upgrades is the key though, they COULD choose to remain compatible physically, I suppose that would be a TF version of suicide and what that would mean to the view of the finite commodity of Sparks.

Jetfire was kinda full of crap in that movie though, and he was only dormant, not destroyed. His Spark remained even in stasis lock, and when reawakened by the shard, he didn't need to have a new program installed, his existing knowledge and personality, his Spark, were intact.

This is a lot of philosophy for what was a cobbled-together kids' toy line, but then again the writers behind the G1 comics and show were aiming for higher ground, they were coming from that sci-fi background to tell bigger, better stories no matter the material -- sadly, the same cannot be said for TF:P or the movies, they are only a cheap reflection, "learn to tell stories the moneymaking way".

that the AllSpark created when it zapped product-placement items were inherently evil because they had no true souls.

I put it down to them being newly created as members of an aggressive species. Given time, maybe Dispensor could have been a nice guy.

Orci & Kurtzman were asked specifically about that, I think about Dispensor, at Botcon 2009 and their answer was specifically because those beings didn't have souls, not because the species was aggressive.

I think so too! I'd like to hear what the writers' motivations for including female TFs into G1 in the first place was.

Focus groups and marketing. Gomess nailed it.

Hell, Furman tacitly admitted as much in "Prime's Rib".

I'm sorry, I didn't hear your answer, it was muffled by the sound of you talking out of your butt. Hasbro originally felt stories about boys' toys would only appeal to boys if they had male characters, so they specifically said "no girl characters". But I think after so many stories were told so quickly in both comics and the TV show, they finally had to put females in just to broaden the types of stories they could sell. If it were up to focus groups and marketing of the '80s, there wouldn't have been any girlbots, the proof is that until BW there were no toys of girlbots.

One point: Sexual reproduction results in genetic diversity, which is necessary for a species to evolve, adapt, and change as the world around them goes on. Transformers, being robots and seemingly lacking the ability to sexually reproduce, would lack the ability to diversify their genes and evolve over time, hence 4 million years and everyone's pretty much the same. This could account for why they remain so stuck in their (comparitively) primitive, perpetually warring state, which Costa based pretty much his whole run on IDW around. Though, it does not account for the Cybertronians that apparently *have* evolved, like Jhiaxus's group, or those nutty Alternity guys.

An interesting point, although being technological creatures, their evolution can be tied much more closely to the development of mental progress instead of genetic - all it takes is creating better materials to make one's self physically better, as long as one's self is techno more than organic (which makes me wonder, does being a techno-organic TF limit one's ability to evolve, or can they eventually gain power to alter their organic matter as well? And if the latter, is evolution passing up those who are plant-based techno-organic beings living on a meat-based techno-organic world? Yeah, I brought that Botanica shit up, WHAT?!?). But there was I think G1 mention that females were a rarity that was disappearing in their society, and I must admit that the idea of amalgamating the genders sounds apt.


Hey, all this talk just gave me a thought: energy can't be destroyed, only transmuted, so if the Transformers have been fighting a war for millions of years run on Energon, which they consume both to keep their bodies fueled AND to power their weapons... where the hell has all that energy gone? Is it super hot on Cybertron, it's just radiating waste-heat from every bot's action? Or are they farting it out a la ROTF Jetfire and it's being contained in a gas atmosphere around the planet? Or are all those lasers just getting blasted into space after they hit their target and glance off?

We already had this discussion. In fact, we've taken it further--all Sparks are fragments of Primus, right? Primus is effectively dead. (Even when awakened in G1 Marvel, he had to use Xaaron as an avatar.) When a Transformer dies, the Spark returns to the AllSpark and thus Primus' collective conciousness.

In other words, Primus has no idea what's going on in the outside world until someone dies. The TFs are perpetually killing each other so Primus can stay updated on what's going on with the universe. Because Unicron is coming.

Would that not mean that a majority of TFs would have to die for Primus to return to "life"? Would that mean Unicron killing all the bots is actually fueling his enemy, or is Unicron HOARDING all those Sparks so Primus cannot awaken? I love the philosophy-chain that has arisen in this thread!

I think my chief problem with this, um, ‘essay’ is how neatly everything just *happens* to line up with mammalian sexual reproduction, with lots of clean analogues and avenues to make x-rated fanfic as simple to write as possible. The fact that there’s a lot of assuming and imagining going on, and the guy employs the Santa-Claus-logic of ‘Just because we’ve never seen it doesn’t mean it’s not real!’ only exposes this wishful thinking as the unfortunate self-fantasy-driving that it is. This isn’t a guy looking at evidence across series to see what the most visible elements of TF reproduction are, this is a guy who *desperately* needed Transformers to fuck in his stories, so he put way too much effort into concocting technobabble to explain it. Young Transformers I can buy, because it ties into the Spark Reincarnation theory (that there’s ample evidence for) and we’ve seen plenty of examples of it. We have *not* seen examples of baby Transformers, or female Transformers giving birth, or nursing, or any of this crap.

In other news, I realized I don’t even want to get into the complications of stuff like Wheelie humping Mikaela’s leg…

Yeah, you nailed it, WAY too mammalian intentions to make slashfic possible.

Wheelie also commented on how sexy she was, that whole thing was just more frosting on the ROTF shitcake.

[Sparky Prime]

Aging slowly and refusing upgrades is the key though, they COULD choose to remain compatible physically, I suppose that would be a TF version of suicide and what that would mean to the view of the finite commodity of Sparks.

I don't see how it'd be like TF suicide. Just for a basis of comparison, I think it'd be more like someone who could live another 3 years refusing an organ transplant that would let them live another 6 instead. Only in the case of a Transformer, they could potentially live forever keeping up with maintenance and replacement parts. Otherwise, they'd eventually wear out, which I think would be the equivalent of a Transformer dieing of old age.

Jetfire was kinda full of crap in that movie though, and he was only dormant, not destroyed. His Spark remained even in stasis lock, and when reawakened by the shard, he didn't need to have a new program installed, his existing knowledge and personality, his Spark, were intact.

Jetfire's body was intact, but we have no idea what condition his Spark was in at the time. And given it took a fragment of the Allspark to revive him, that would suggest he was more than simply dormant. They mentioned in Dark of the Moon that Sentinel Prime was out of Energon and needed the Matrix to re-power his Spark. Jetfire was in a similar condition, needing the Allspark to re-power him.

And we've seen Transformers that have been killed restored with their knowledge and personalities intact so it's not like that makes any difference here.