#we are used to seeing wavewave be cute on a screen but irl they are too terrifying for the public to get attached to and form a narrative 😅

[starscream-is-my-wife]

https://www.tumblr.com/starscream-is-my-wife/790162628073947136/if-soundwave-was-to-be-in-the-nature-documentary

So I had a thought-

If we’re saying that the humans would assign gender based mostly, though not solely, on the robots having big tits, would they think Shockwave is a girl?

Further more, Shockwave is purple -At least empurated Shovkwave is so I’m using that version of him for this- typically a ‘girly’ color, and paired with Soundwave is undeniably the more feminine shaped of the two.

Would the humans consider them like how sea horses work? Like obviously if they think Shockwave’s the ‘girl’ and Soundwave is the ‘boy’ with the cassettes as their children, then clearly the idea of the children robots popping out of the dad robots chest would be weird. So maybe the humans think of it like a sea horse situation, where the males carry the young.

Idk, just me having very tired thoughts. Sorry for the really long ask, your au and art just inspires odd (odd in the best way possible) thoughts in me.

Thanks! Also ur good, I like reading them! I think the way they assign gender to non human or animal things is less "are they male or female" and more like "this is male by default unless there is another one of the same species and if it's smaller and more feminine then it's female". We see this in characters like Donald duck (who is a duck) and daisy duck (duck who is pink and with a bow) especially since this is in the 90s I'm guessing it will be harder for a bot to be categorized as female?

Chest sizes aside, Ratchet is very expressive and has a face while not being perceived as dangerous. Like more of a really inteligent animal rather then a machine, and that opens up the potential for them to have different sexes? I think that wavewave will have a harder time garnering the same response of being more then a robot, plus they have vibes that are just off? Probably because they dont have faces. If they weren't so unsettling maybe the humans would speculate more, but Shockwave transforms into a gun! His gender? A threat.

I think I mentioned this more early on, but even Truck King is scary. He's a giant masked robot that just appeared one day. If it wasn't for Bee, tensions would have been a lot higher, and he was trying to be peaceful! As much as Pete and Zeke misconstrue things, they did contribute a lot to the bots images as a non threatening family, I don't think they would have done the same thing for wave wave and the cassettes.

Bee is around 9 feet tall? Frenzy and Rumble are 6 feet tall. Sure its smaller then Bee but that's just a tall human man. And theyre menaces. Imagine encountering them out in the woods or something and then they spot you. The ground starts to shake, you start to run but you keep tripping and falling, the other one is approaching. That's terrifying!

And then theres an even bigger robot that they go into? Are they controlling it? What is it thinking? Is it staring at you? Does it even have eyes? And then purple robot appears, it's the most non humanoid robot yet, and just as large if not larger then the blue one. Is there tinier robots controlling this robot too? But even without a face, you do know that this one is staring at you, with one bright, yellow, orb.

This is scarier then if they could talk! At least you have known what they were thinking!

Whoops, got a bit off topic there but I think that while some people may speculate about robot reproduction between those two, more would like to not think of them as a family, because that adds guilt for when they have to fight or kick them out. And with the way they act, they probably don't have feelings, it's better to get them out of here before they hurt someone!

I did do a sort of spin off with megatron and starscream as like a crack thing, but they put on a really good show and the humans really liked their drama to offset the potential threat, wavewave is reclusive and just threat 😭

Angel, Truck King, and Bee dont transform into a gun and act silly in a non harmful way, so people humanize them as a way to like them more, and a part of that is assigning them to human social structures, Ratchet just so happens to fit all of the criteria for the mom to their understanding: kind to kids, doesn't do hard physical labor (because he's a medic), rushes over whenever Truck King or Bee gets hurt (because hes a medic), kind of a bitch (hes just like that)

Also kinda spoilers but...

There's already a boom box with cassettes on the way to earth with two big boobed bots, and you read my mind cause I was also thinking about mentioning seahorses lol