I can’t believe that the first two parts of Transwarped have confirmed that of the entire bridge crew, including wartime field medic Ratchet, actual engineering genius Bulkhead, student of an incredibly illustrious school Optimus, and nearly-got-in-the-elite-guard Bumblebee…
Prowl is literally the only one who knows anything about babies. And I’m not talking human babies because Sari clearly gave Optimus the eight-year-old version of the talk, but like. their own species. He’s the only one who recognizes Isaac’s description as talking about a protoform and he reacts like that nigh instantaneously.
Because first, you just have this entire assembly of competent people boggling in total confusion over a protoform and Prowl is the one desperately shouldering his way in like “Bumblebee that is not how you hold a baby!”*
But see the other side of it is… where did Prowl get this knowledge? He’s not terribly old- seemingly he’s about Optimus’s age and I feel like both of them are either early twenties or late teens, even- given how cybertronians seem to be culturally considered adults as soon as they’re past “puberty” and settled into their mature body, it’s likely from a human perspective we’d overestimate the proportionate ages of them.
So that just gives me the image of like… Prowl as the equivalent of a thirteen-year-old who just for one reason or another was surrounded by babies. My friends with more Transformers savvy than me tells me that protoforms are generally depicted as just sorta autonomously bubbling out of pools of liquid metal so my present headcanon is wherever he grew up was close to one and sometimes the planet just, y’know, decided you were gonna have twenty babies whether or not you had twenty adults in a position to care for them so just, everybody who was capable of carrying a baby around was put on baby duty.
* admittedly he’d be a little off the hook since even newborn cybertronians would probably have about the motor dexterity of a toddler, but that’s another subject that I like to call “Isaac Sumdac probably had so much fun babyproofing his lab in response to his new completely unexpected alien hybrid bundle of joy”
Human Newborn: Helpless blob of flesh and nerves, mostly cries and eats, cannot do much.
Cybertronian “Newbown”: Immediately capable of hunting and scavenging for food, typically born with additional “teeth” and claws that are shed with growth to be used for defense and procurement of food. Will eat until incapable of taking any more food into system. Also cries and eats. Sometimes born with fully functional guns attached to body.
….why do you thirsty ass anons keep coming to me with them baby requests??? (⊙_⊙)
(also no, I’ll never make them babies. 😐 Making fan OC’s weird me out tbh. And use the search bar next time- this is like the 3rd or 4th time I’ve answered some variation of this request lol.)
Kindling is difficult and always comes with the risk that the growing newspark will overexert the host, killing them either through siphoning too much energy off their spark, overtaking them in their need for energon and raw materials, or simply endangering them by placing them in a more vulnerable state.
When multiple bots really wanna go through the arduous process of creating another Cybertronian in a taboo and dangerous fashion, they have to first figure out if one or two or any of them (a “typical” cybertronian relationship has 3-5 members rather than 2) are capable of kindling, and from there it’s a long process of repeatedly attempting to sparkmerge into creating a new spark- a rare and energy-heavy process. Frome there, the newspark has to be fed, sheltered, and will slowly grow a body bit by bit as the host’s own nanites and energon feeds it.
Eventually, it forms it’s own pre-shell, an “egg” or perhaps more appropriately a “seed” which is removed and implanted in a fertile environment- the surface of Cybertron is ideal for this, but failing that somewhere with sufficient metals and available energy can be created artificially. The seed grows for several weeks to several months, depending upon size and available resources, generally resulting in smaller and less developed individual in resource-poor conditions. This continues to grow until a young Cybertronian eventually emerges from their now-depleted pod!
The remains of the pod are generally consumed immediately after. “Newborn” Cybertronians are not like human infants nor human children, rather they’re closer to fully developed animals in most respects. While their processors are still developing and they’ll eagerly learn everything presented to them, they are ultimately creatures of instinct- they’ll eat just about anything and they are absolutely voracious. Typically they’ll be able to find sources of necessary metals and energon nearby, being provided by their creators/caretakers, but otherwise pods naturally develop in resource-rich areas or if there are other pods/younglings in the area it’s not uncommon for them to resort to cannibalism if left to their own devices.
Kindling is seen as taboo at best, always dangerous, and for most it’s seen as sacrilegious and as an offense both to the perceived “natural” order of things as well as being a legal offense across most of Cybertron. Kindling is perceived by the common public as an out-of-control potential for population growth, as an act of defiance in the light of Primus (After all, real Cybertronians come from Cybertron, not from other bots) and generally as just kinda icky.
It doesn’t help that most Cybertronians would have no ability to kindle newsparks without extensive modifications, save for a few select subtypes of Cybertronian- most notably the Insecticons (who not only kindle but tend to produce clones of themselves or drone units prodigiously), Predacons (who are seen as violent animals for the most part), and “Walkers” – a lower class of Cybertronians with native animal lifeforms as their altmodes.
Kindled Cybertronians commonly won’t admit to their heritage for means of survival, and are commonly using forged or stolen identities to pass as Forged or even Cold-Constructed mechanisms.
There are rumors that kindled and kindling-capable mechanisms disappear off the streets in some cities and are never seen again. That they wind up in Institutes, or are disassembled for experiments.
great question! the way Transformers are created/come into existence varies between continuities. the only continuity that i’m personally familiar with is the IDW G1 comics, in which there are three ways that Transformers come into existence:
forging, the “natural” way for a Transformer to be born. all Transformers have an organ called a “spark,” which is more or less the source of their life force? anyway, the general idea is that there are dormant sparks in the ground, surrounded by a base substance called sentio metallico, which forms their body.
a kind of energy wave generated from a structure within the planet called Vector Sigma comes through and ignites the spark, and the spark contains “genetic instructions” for how their body should take shape.
occasionally if something’s going wrong and the baby Transformer isn’t taking shape, a “blacksmith” can help the process (which is just another Transformer who has that particular job/role). but in theory, it’s a naturally occurring process.
cold construction, the “unnatural” way for a Transformer to be born. the energy waves produced by Vector Sigma slowed down, and thus the natural process of Transformer reproduction slowed down. that made The Powers That Be kind of nervous, since they needed new people to exploit to keep their empire running.
so the government abused a certain powerful artifact of considerable religious importance in order to artificially ignite sparks and create new Transformers. those sparks still contained the genetic instructions mentioned above, but they were put into prefabricated bodies instead of being allowed to naturally develop their own.
cold construction was kind of a controversial thing and served as the foundation for a system of apartheid between forged and cold constructed Transformers and it’s still kind of a touchy subject millions of years later
being brought into existence by an disturbingly horny spider furry who just wants to be a good dad. it only happened that one time, though
If you’re ever sad, just remember that in TFA that bots can take off their armor to expose the protoform bodies underneath and I think that’s beautiful.
So, here’s some naked Megatron! Warbuilds are still pretty stocky and well-armored, compared to a typical autobot, but tend to appear much slimmer as much of their mass comes from heavily reinforced and padded armor and weapons systems. Megatron appears much less top-heavy because his shoulders actually can expand when supported by armor, and retract when not to allow for less exposure. Some of the black areas on his body would actually have glowing circuitry and biolights but I was lazy.
He’s also got HEAD PETALS because I love them in IDW- although they’re actually not very sensitive- the underside of them is, but it’s more ticklish sensitive than anything else. What is very sensitive is what they protect- the exposed circuitry and sensors on the back of his head. I imagine they’d be fun to play with, tho…
He’s got those thick, deep ports on his shoulders/hips/back/some other places, where weapons and armor plug in for added support. Also oh my goodness you can see his modesty panels hahaha I was gonna add more details but I’ll wait until the kid’s in bed to do that.
Also look at his cute lil winglets. They get, like, lost when he’s armored fully, but like this they’re exposed and probably wiggle.
Cybertronian Database 