Something I’m trying to figure out in my own sparkling Au, how would Cybertron handle population if multiple generations are still kicking? I’m amused at the idea of a 100x great-grandpa but tbh it also kind of scares me because how am I supposed to write these dynamics it’s so alien. For population maybe I can limit how many times a carrier can spark? And fertility is tied to resources of the planet? Idk I’m spitballing
Oh, this is such a fun idea that I plan on tackling more eventually!
I thought about it more initially with Vos and Praxus since those societies rely on generational succession than most. My thought it, sometimes people just die (disease, accidents, stupidity, etc.), so they wouldn't have every single relative alive all at the same time. And I think some family members would feel divorced from descendants at some point and stop trying to keep track of them. In that way, you'd end up with an odd mix of relatives who may only meet up every century or so. I see it in the same vein as my family in that my grandmother's parents' siblings' descendants never interact with me save one cousin I happen to live nearby growing up, and my grandmother's many siblings all have families I don't see but once a year or two. In bigger families like this, you tend to only hang out with the family you congregate the most with. I see Cybertronians having similar dynamics. Like, Prowl has great-great-great-howevermanygreats-grandparents who are as close to him as some of my cousins are to me.
For population control, I have decided most Cybertronians have no desire to procreate. Sometime after people started popping up from hot spots and Vector Sigma, those planet-created bots possessed no reproduction drive, and some descendants of bot-made bots caught the same like of code. As in, most people in my universe are somewhere on the aroace spectrum. That, and most are not very fertile. Ratchet and Wheeljack are a good example of two bots having both romantic and sexual drives but lacking the ability to reproduce successfully. I'd say about 50-60% of the population is either aromatic or asexual and 60-70% have no desire to reproduce.
Places like Vos and Praxus are outliers and thus not included in this vague statistic. People who have the desire for relationships and kids tend to pass this down to their kids.
I would think of Cybertronians, too, as the elephants to a human's mousiness. Elephants live long and have few kids by desire and design, and likewise mice have many kids multiple times. K versus R strategists, and Cybertronians are definitely k-strategists.
Hope this helped!!!
