hey sauce, ☄️ here,
Seekers deserve to have a kinda small handle on their back, like just at the base of their neck wide enough to put a digit or two through. So they can be picked up like kittens. It can either fall off with age or stay there for their entire life (assuming they never receive any sort of injury). Just scoop them up and you're my friend now. No more runaway Seekerlings. Just nab you're coming with me now, do not resist.
The flock also deserve to kind of be like cats in the sense of they take turns with young, coparenting. Maybe one or both creators are worn out from one thing or another? Just need to get up and get a vent of fresh air? No problem, another jet will step in watch the little flappy bastard, whether it be the other creator, an available trinemate, or another flock member.
now for sads. It's inevitable at some point, there will be instances where the second creator has passed while a Seekerling is still young. Could be after the flappy bastard is born, could be just before, but at some point there will be an instance of a creator's partner not getting to be there to help raise said little flappy bastard. Another instance where either living creator's trine or dead creator's trine step in to fufill the primary purpose of the deceased creator. also could go the other way! Creator dies, maybe from complications or is taken out by some outside force, leaving just the second creator and flappy bastard Seekerling. Rest of the flock, especially the two creator's living trinemates will swoop in very quickly to fill that role (pun intended).
and for slightly less sads. It would also be some inevitable instance where both creators might perish in some way. Could be a flock extinction, orphaned Seekerling found in the wrecks of a bombing or after their creators were killed, could be an instance where one creator was already dead and the other perishes at some point, but either way if they don't perish and live long enough to be found (assuming one of the first three events), they're very likely to be adopted by either one of the creator's trinemates (if applicable) or potentially given to another creator who'd perhaps lost a Seekerling (maybe by defect and dispatched by the Winglord).
also give them glowsticks. please, let them have some glowsticks this can only end well.
These are all beautiful ideas, I love them so so so much buuuut I would like to add the idea of flock adopters, aka seekers that tend to take in orphaned or the rare abandoned seekerlets. For example, Wheezingarrow, who certainly picked up and raised a large amount of younglings despite never having any of his own, it’d be so fun to watch him wrangle like six seekerlets, snagging on their handles and holding them up to gently scold them. You could also consider altruistic behavior! Perhaps a seeker that lost their seekerling takes in a predacon bitlet, now wouldn’t that be chaos?
I have no doubt though that the living trinemates would eagerly scoop up the little seekerling(s), probably being extra doting given the circumstances as they don’t have the creator/sire bond the original creator did.
Also seekers working like a cat colony is 100% real in my mind, it’s where the cliques and flock ideas came to me from. They definitely take turns with their young, after all sometimes mom and dad need a fly without their little balls of chaos, who better to watch them than the rest of their trines, clique, or the flock? Love to imagine these little babysitting adventures are what got Thundercracker and Skywarp to meet as their creators and sires were apart of different cliques.
As for the glowsticks, bold of you to assume most seekerlets wouldn’t bite into them just to get a taste of those foul chemicals(<- has bitten into a few glowsticks as a child). Assuming they didn’t try to gobble on it, I can imagine some maybe snapping them open to cover themselves in the chemicals, why stick glow when you can glow? Probably would scare the life out of their parents but it would also be adorable in the sense a seekerlet might strap some glowsticks to themselves, parading around biolights they haven’t quite developed yet.
Also it’d be hilarious if someone like Thrust still had his handle and Ramjet just has to snag onto it every time he tries to start a fight.







