#average Cybertronian life span is like..millions of years

[keferon]

Will Jazz pull an avatar move and get his soul transfered to be a real mech at the end of the au??👀

I. Hm.

Either that or Prowl will have to face the fact that humas..uh....don't live very long.

[primussavethesemechs]

I want the human/cybertronian life difference to be talked about more in canon

Cuz I mean. it’s RIGHT THERE.

Just a smidgen of true acknowledgment I BEG YOU HASBRO‼️

i mean come on all it takes is someone mentioning how long the wars been going for one of the humans to go “4 MILLION YEARS???? WHAT THE FUCK HOW OLD ARE YOU???”

And optimus or ratchet to be like “…5/7 million?” And all of the humans to have a break down CUZ WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUVE BEEN ALIVE SINCE BEFORE THE HUMAN SPECIES EXISTED??? WE WERE MONKEYS WHEN YOU WERE BORN???

And the (woefully uniformed) cybertronians to be like “??? What do YOU mean your species was still evolving when I onlined, how long do you guys live?? A thousand?? A few hundred??”

And the gobsmacked humans to be like “??? NO WE HARDLY LIVE OVER A HUNDRED ITS CONSIDERED AN ACCOMPLISHMENT?? AVERAGE OLD AGE DEATH IS LIKE MID 80s!! TECHNICALLY THE AVERAGE LIFE SPAN IS 72 OR SOMETHING???”

Cue the autobots being like “😨 72??? THATS A CHILD WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT⁉️”

the more attached/emotional bots looking at their charges and realizing that not only are they sparklings compared to them but they’ll die as sparklings too in just a few decades, causing them to straight up have a mini meltdown.

Yeah they’re in a war and they’ve lost plenty of friends, but never to anything as predictable and inescapable as old age.

It’s the seeing-it-coming part that gets to them, the slow dread of knowing that even if they do everything right and keep them out of danger and they stay healthy there’s nothing they can do to stop them from withering away in a couple of decades.

Most versions of bumblebee looking at their charge/friend and realizing his assumptions about the fact that since they’re both still young that they’ll have plenty of time to just. Live together and have fun- are wrong?? Immediately tears. Even if cybertronians can’t cry tears he’s doing whatever the equivalent is and running away to cry in his room. And then running back to snatch them and take them with him cuz HE CANT WASTE A SECOND IF THEIR LIFESPANS ARE REALLY THAT SHORT HES GONNA JUST HAVE TO SPEND 24/7 WITH THEM

This whole concept ESPECIALLY applies to TFP since all of them got their own little human buddy and there’s only like 5 autobots to begin with (of the main season 1 crew) they’ve lost so many of their own so recently, their numbers are already dwindling down to nothing, they’re losing the war and the kids are what’s given them a major morale boost. To continue fighting they need hope, and the kids have kind of become their hope for the future- to know they’ll die off in under a century despite how young they still are is a shot to the spark.

Look me in the eye and tell me bee wouldnt panic hearing that Raf only has 70-80 years to live. LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND TELL ME HE WOULDNT HAVE SOME KIND OF FIT OVER BEING TOLD THAT HIS LITTLE BUDDY (from a cybertronian perspective) HAS A LIFESPAN EQUIVALENT TO A LATE STAGE TERMINAL ILLNESS DIAGNOSIS. Bee would start treating Raf like a kid with stage 4 cancer 😭

I just KNOW bulkhead would have the worst reaction other than bee, maybe even worse cuz he looks at miko and realizes she’s used up basically a fifth of her entire lifespan already and she’s Still So Little and straight up starts weeping. That’s his DAUGHTER you can’t take her from him so soon it’s not FAIR! He might have to go destroy a canyon wall or something to let some of the anger and grief out

Arcee is Not taking it well either.

She JUST got attached to this one, just got used to a new partner and your telling her that no matter what she does he’s never going to last as long as tailgate of cliff jumper did?? Even if both he and she do everything they’re supposed to do to protect him and extended his life?? Depression time baby

Optimus and ratchet don’t react as much outwardly to the news as the others but inside they’re both 💔💥

These kids have brought optimus a level of contentment he hasn’t felt in vorns, and he sees how bright their spirits shine- Only to now know those precious spirits will burn out in less than a century- it gnaws at him inside, yet another strike from the cruelty of fate

Ratchet is devastated but refuses to acknowledge it, these kids- yes even miko- have become his pseudo grandkids and he’s not ready, nor will he ever be ready, to outlive them. Jacks reminds him too much of a younger optimus, still learning and still hopeful. Miko is… well she has a fire to her that ratchet can appreciate (when she’s not actively annoying him) she’s determined enough to make anything happen which he does begrudgingly respect even if he wishes she wouldn’t just throw herself into any and every situation just for fun.

And Raf…

Raf is his apprentice, the only one of the kids to understand him and listen intently to his stories of cybertron. To show appreciation for his work and his ideas, to Listen and Learn and Improve his inventions. He harbors the most fondness for Raf since he sees so much potential in him, and has taken him under his wing in teaching him cybertronian language and biology.

He feels almost like he’s training a student to take his place- only for the ground to be ripped out from under him to know that Raf will never have the chance to succeed him, will never even outlive him.

A parent should never have to bury their child, and ratchet already feels that he has.

-

TLDR the autobots find out humans have fruit fly lifespans next to them and become one big soggy mess of tears, optimus and ratchet included although they try to have a stiff upper lip about it (and fail to varying extents)

I swear this was supposed to be about any and all continuities but TFP took over completely😭 idk it just fits the best since they focus so much on how attached the bots get to the kids

Edit: btw this was inspired from the fact I found out that the cybertronian equivalent to a year (yes I know technically they have solar cycles which are roughly a human year but what they consider a year vs their lifespan/time perception is different) is a vorn. A vorn is 80 HUMAN YEARS. I saw that and went “oh wow a vorn is like a whole human lifespan!😃” and then I went “OH A VORN IS A WHOLE HUMAN LIFESPAN 😀“

[flarunie]

Everytime I try to comprehend the cybertronian perspectives of time all ways cause me headache

Even though Transformer was written by human, I just can't help but felt like something was off somehow.

Average cybertronian could live up for millions of years, so one solar cycle on Earth would feel like a day or weeks to them.

In a blink then their human companion is gone. But we need to take in other factor into consideration like the physiology.

As we human get older, our brains process new information more slowly due to the degradation of neural pathways. This slower processing means we perceive fewer mental images in the same amount of clock time, making days and years feel like they pass more quickly.

Cybertronian are different arn't they ?

How much could they remember in the span of centuries ? How do time flow from their point of view ?

I also read about other stories that include immortals, characters with long life but cybertronian doesn't feel exactly like them in term of writing .

And most of the vibe I felt between human and transformer is like between me and my goldfish , not even comparable to relationship between an owner with their dog or cat.

Sure my fish death did make me sad but not for long.

So the human felt more like an exotic pet in some case

Idk

[lord-squiggletits]

Honestly another one of those worldbuilding things unique to an alien robot race is I wonder how Cybertronians' long, nearly immortal (at least in the context of organic lifespans) lives would affect their views on punitive versus restorative justice?

Ignoring the inconsistencies for a moment (and the fact that this lore is almost never acknowledged), in IDW1 it's written that Cybertronians can live basically as long as their sparks keep burning PLUS it's apparently so hard to kill a Cybertronian for good that suicidal people have to go to specialized euthanasia clinics to be thoroughly executed. (This also helps explain how a war lasted 4 million years and didn't make them as a species go extinct.) So given their near immortality, it does kinda bring to mind some questions like

Is imprisoning someone for a certain number of years even a meaningful punishment for a species with life spans in the millions of years? Does it just mean that average prison sentences are somewhere in the tens or hundreds of thousands of years? In other words, do Cybertronians just do "human prison sentences, but to a Cybertronian scale" or would they even view a time based imprisonment/other punishment as meaningful at all?

Does the fact that Cybertronians are so hard to kill affect their views towards the death penalty? As an example, do they view their near immortality as something that would be cruel to end via execution because it deprives someone of possibly millions of years to reform? Or is the death penalty strongly supported BECAUSE their immortality makes them see ending someone's life as a fitting punishment for crimes?

What about how often crimes like murder happen? If it's really hard for Cybertronians to kill each other/themselves, then a lot of crimes would end merely as assaults and not murders, aka the people involved would all survive, aka restorative justice might be more necessary in this society when "coexisting with that guy who's attempted to kill you at least once" is a common scenario to have happen. And even if there is punitive justice, well, the guy just goes to prison for a few thousand years and comes out virtually unchanged bc he and you and everyone are basically immortal.

I know "the writers are human" and all, but sometimes it feels like worldbuilding around Cybertronian age ranges is really underutilized. Like, in pretty much every series except maybe IDW2 Cybertronians don't seem to differ on their views of time/lifespans compared to humans. Like the fact that the plots of many shows/comics (at least in certain series/seasons) take place in the space of weeks, months, or maybe a couple years is rarely commented on by these beings who live for millions of years, and it doesn't seem to affect their society much. Not even with a Tolkien ent-esque style of moving very slowly and pondering things deeply before moving. If anything Cybertronians tend to be very...reckless? Prone to fickleness of the heart and mind?