Mech Pregnancy and Protoform Development of Gestating Sparklings
Here is what I have compiled on Cybertronian "reproduction" from More Than Meets the Eye, specifically the Holiday Special and Volume 5:
Holiday Special:
So this would be the protoform development for a forged sparkling and it lends support to that, if Cybertronians gave birth to their own Sparklings, then they would likely be an egg-like form (yes, I know it's not actually a sparkling, but can we all agree that Swerve is strangely well-informed on protoform development for forged Cybertronians?)
So what would slide out from the gestation tank has no discernable features yet and still needs hours if not days before the protoform resembles an adult Cybertronian, but I still don't have an answer for the size of this thing - at what point does it reach its full size? Cybertronians before the war went to academies, so what point does the protoform receive an education instead of having relevant information jammed into its brain module right before deployment like a MTO cold construct?
(More under cut)
But, let's be honest, I am going out of order here. Let's go to Volume 5 where we encounter a hot spot of re-ignited sparks on the moon:
So this is being constructed cold.
And this is forged - as well as the official story for how cold constructed bots were made, which apparently differs from the truth. Here is the truth for how cold constructed sparks were actually formed:
So all cold constructs were made from the matrix - but what if they did come from igniting healthy sparks to make new ones?
What if you used the energy of two sparks to create an entirely new one and that sparkling attached itself to a parent spark for some time before it dropped to a gestation tank (this is common in fanfiction and I love it so much, it makes the most sense)? As these two orbs of immense power and life resonate with one another, creating waves of energy that can be interpreted as pleasurable for the interfacing bots, excess energy could gather itself into a separate orb that borrows the life code from both parents, becomes randomized, and this creates a new life code for a separate entity. It stays in the spark chamber for a period of time - I don't know, decoding or storing energy or something, I am very bad with electronics - before dropping down to an artificial gestation tank.
And this is where the valve/plug comes into play if you so desire because now we have the issue of, where is the spark going to go? It needs a protoform. It needs the materials to make a protoform. It also needs liquids.
Cybertronians seem to live off energon and anything you can make from energon, but there have been references and images in the comics of Cybertronians have oil as a waste product, so they need a separate compartment for oil away from their energon tank and they also are said to have (in fanfiction, at least): oral solvents, lubricant, transfluid, optic fluid, etc... All those will require their own compartments and they will all have either been diluted from the energon or will have an origin in a separate liquid that isn't mentioned. Let's keep in mind that they will also need some sort of oil for their hinges and their nanites for upkeep.
So I believe these gestation tanks are where the Sparklings develop their egg-like protoform with all these liquids that they themselves can't make yet, and I think they get what they need from nanite colonies as there is no umbilical cord (not unless you want the bots to have belly buttons). I like to think of them as nannyites - nanites that, once a protoform hits the gestation tank, have latent codes that becomes active and now have protoform-related tasks versus whatever tasks they did beforehand. The nannyites will likely take these resources from the carrying parent, everything from fluids to energon stores to living metal that the nannyites will adapt or make compatible for the sparkling.
So this carrying parent suddenly has fewer nanites colonies themselves, a thinner layer of living metal, and depleted storages of fluids.
Hear me out, hear me out: Valveplug interfacing helps the carrying parent because transfluid will contain necessary materials for the protoform.
I am going to take it a step further and say that it is that first shot of transfluid into the gestation tank during spark and valveplug interfacing creates input that electronically signals to the receiving parent to gather the excess energy from the spark play via centripetal force like a satellite and that force signals the excess energy to turn on life codes it recycled from both parents and create its own life code. That transfluid inside of the gestation tank also turns on those latent codes for the nannyites to get the compartment prepared. It's that first dose of necessary materials and every dose of transfluid after that is stored in the gestation tank for the protoform.
Which brings me to the idea that I have seen on AO3 where bots go into heat:
What if a mech goes into heat as a way to store transfluid from their partner?
I am largely talking out of my ass here because I don't know anything about how machines work, but I know there are a lot of hormones and signals and work that goes into human pregnancy.
The downside of this is that, if all bots were once forged and now they are, let's say, "birthed", then these constructs would be artificial: the gestation tank and the fertile centripetal force with its satellite sparkling and the interface array with its gestational passage and the nannyites and the transfluid. These would have to be constructed cold and surgically added, and you would have to create codes that turn on these cascading or stacking protocols (I don't know the correct computer term for when one event triggers another event triggers another event and so on) and you would have to manufacture filters and tanks and lines for the creation of gestational lubricant and transfluid.
This is just me rambling because I can't stop thinking about all this, but I am not ready to write a mechpreg story.
Please talk to me about Cybertronian reproduction, I am not normal about this.
I saw a post about how there are strip clubs on Cybertron because the Beast Wars TV show said so. The link to that post is below:
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
What had my attention was that one of the mechs says that they walk around without their chest plates, "if you know what I mean," which implies that walking around without chest plates might make you half-nude/indecent.
So I thought, is the spark chamber for Cybertronians (the thing protected by chest plates) like breasts for humans? You can let them out in certain cultures, but that's public indecency in a lot of places?
Then I thought about a carrier/foundry trying to breastfeed in a public park, their chest plates split open and a protoform pressed against their spark chamber. But they don't have breasts and protoforms don't need milk, so what's going on?
Then I thought about the incredible source of energy a spark is and how much energy a protoform needs to accomplish their final form.
So I am thinking that protoforms spark-feed by having their whole birth metal pressed against their creator's spark chamber, slurping up that good energy the same way we charge some of our devices: Induction charging. Just by pressing our device against some sort of charging surface.
The idea of full-grown Cybertronians spark-feeding their egg-shaped protoforms hit me so hard in my depraved brain that I sat down and made this post at work.
(Panel from Transformers: The Holiday Special)
Specifically, this egg-shaped protoform (yes, I know it's a group of scraplets pretending to be a protoform, but it fooled Swerve, so it has to be an accurate representation - let me have this).
