#just bc I'm used to working in the millions of years for paleontology

[transingthoseformers]

Early in the sixth episode of TFA Ratchet mentions that Cybertronians have been around for 10 billion years (in this universe at least) and you KNOW I've gotta run those numbers and use them to figure out how this mess (aka Cybertronians) happened. Maybe it's not a good idea to read the read more bc evolutionary science is CRAZY COMPLICATED

Bc the universe in the irl canon is what we consider around 13.7 billion years (it could be more for all we know but for now it looks like that) so that means in TFA Cybertronians developed when the universe was 3.7 billion years old-- pretty young. so you know as i am someone really into paleobiology and evolutionary science so little numbers like this make me very interested

bc other sources suggest the War was around 4 million years and one of my main HCs is that a Cybertronian lifespan is around 24 million years but if anybody has anything different please tell me. I'm going to take this line as when life began on Cybertron bc that's a smaller unit to deal with aaaand if it's referring to modern Cybertronians then idk what to say.

I particularly do not like the idea that Cybertronians were built by another species or created by one of their gods bc that means another being(s) had already hit pretty advanced levels before these guys. Also all the theistic debates and metaphysical ones. So for simplicity's sake I'm pretending they happened on their own on this case. It took humans 4.2 billion years from single celled organism to homo sapien sapien and around 50,000 to reach behavioral modernity.

Now since Cybertronians have much longer lifespans (not going to choose how new Cybertronians come about bc that's very different per universe not discussing fanon ideas either) but let's use our numbers from the world bank, bc mortality/birth rates varty wildly and we're gonna think very widescale here real quick so let's use the current data of 2.5 births per death because it's actually really hard to get a B:D ratio for an entire species's entire history. Generally, a number i found for rate of evolution was 4% per million years. Now we are gonna want to turn million to billion, bc a human lifespan is approximately 0.00041667% of a robot lifespan. So 4% per billion years for Cybertronians for now. I'm starting to really lose attention, but hang with me.(what counts as modernity honestly I don't even know at this point but around 45,000 is when Neanderthals went extinct but i do consider them fully sapient, but honestly it's the concept of self awareness and purposefully building culture that I'm going by rather than just pure instincts) so around what i got is 4 billion. Four billion years as a species.

Was this a waste of time likely very very likely. But i like that clear cut soft mini society that the fossil records and artifacts that they keep finding and the idea that the whole world seems like it's againat you yet you keep making music and sharing and taking care of each other. When you'd only need to fight each other if something serious happened rather than the petty rich ppl "survival of the fittest" nonsense of today. And I'd like to think of a time in Cybertronian history where it wasn't advanced enough to already be corrupt or at war. Where it was just surviving and building and learning for everyone. I'm in sociology this year, my last year of regular school and we just finished social classes and i feel like that's super useful when worldbuilding with these guys. and I've been coping badly with life so why not try to see how the rich culture of Cybertron built itself before the big crash of corruption and war and destruction. In every series we constantly see the Autobots learning more about human customs, but we rarely see the reverse. IDW is deep in that but i can't find the comics to read. So for now I'm trying to get timescales right to make the idea of living millions of years easier on my small human brain who can barely comprehend living through a whole day.

[muirmarie]

Okay, I'm going to need more info on the Ian/Alan/Ellie OT3 agenda because it never occurred to me before and that suddenly seems like a crime

This is a million years late, but. Some Facts:

1) Ian Malcolm is into Ellie Sattler the first time he sees her face. He /falls/ for her the first time he sees her Science.

2) Alan Grant yelling “Ian! Freeze!” is the exact moment that Alan realizes that he is doomed to want to protect this mega-annoying quasi-scientist forever and ever amen, and that eventually this is going to Backfire in Spectacular Ways.

3) "Kids get scared” / “What’s to be scared about? It’s just a little hiccup in the power” / “I didn’t say I was scared” / “I didn’t say you were scared” / “I know”

4) Ian’s “damn, girl” and Alan’s “that’s my girl” faces, respectively, at “women inherit the earth”

5) Ellie legitimately appreciating just how hot Ian Malcolm is, and Alan never acting even the slightest bit jealous until he pushes back a little when Ian checks to see if she’s ~~available~~

6) They all have TERRIBLE self-preservation instincts, but I will be truly and utterly damned before you can convince me that Alan is not, by the end of the movie, Fully Prepared to Risk Life and Limb to Save His Dumb Boyfriend and His Perfect Girlfriend (even tho his gf will def save him first)

7) Ellie refusing to go for the gun because she refuses to leave the door because she knows Alan can’t hold it on his own, and maybe she’ll be fast enough to kill the raptor but she knows she won’t be fast enough to save Alan

8) Ian Malcolm’s laugh-growl is Enough To Turn Any “Straight” Man into a  Bisexual Man (and also for the record Alan Grant has never been straight hdu that kid had the biggest crush on Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones, WHERE DO YOU THINK THE HAT CAME FROM, that boy is a solid 3, he’s just a chill 3, Ian, NOT EVERYBODY HAS TO WEAR BLACK LEATHER IN 80 DEGREE WEATHER AND WEAR SHIRTS THAT TIGHT OKAY, he is a Paleontology Bisexual™ okay)

9) “the next ex-Mrs.-Malcolm” okay buddy we know you’re looking for the next ex-Mr-or-Mrs-Malcolm and literally at this point you are definitely curious about if anyone on this island wants to be next ex-Dr-Malcolm bc you are getting a definite thing for doctors, kiddo

10) Ftr there is not one point in the movie where Ian Malcolm is not looking at Ellie without either Severe Interest or Extreme Awe

11) Alan is the same except also add Long Suffering Fondness because lordy she gives that boy a run for his money and HER LAUGHING AT HIM WHEN SHE SENDS THE KIDS AT HIM IS JUST A THING OF TRUE AND UTTER BEAUTY (as are all the other times she laughs at him, she laughs at him a LOT, their love is Pure™)

12) Ian Malcolm would take True Offense if I say him being involved would make their love more pure, so let’s just say it would definitely make it more interesting

13) Real Talk: The thing about OT3s that are so great is how they bring out different sides in different people, and obviously canon only works in the scope of the movie, but there is enough in there to pull out so many threads of maybe-could-be-would-be’s.  Some of those are:

- Ellie canonically likes teasing Alan, and Alan is canonically grumpy but fond about it all.  Ian definitely likes pushing things off shelves to see what happens, so there is no way that he would not pull Alan dramatically out of his comfort zone, but I also believe, given Alan’s talk of adaption, the way that he is so protective of those he loves (and those he so quickly falls for like Lex and Timmy), and the dumb, dumb half smile he gets sometimes, that he wouldn’t not only enjoy Ian knocking him off-balance, but that he would also give as good as he gets

- Ian is a FLIRT, gosh he’s a flirt, but y’know what???? Ellie enjoys it. And Alan is like….actually real okay with it?? Like he’s not grumbling about her flirting back or whatever, he’s p confident in her, and also he’s dealing with her, y’know, throwing small children in his path. But what are the chances that Alan is a romantic??? Like, deep down he obviously is. He probably is planning on, like, making her a ring or something. But Ian is an outward romantic, and he’ll plan dinners and he’ll make Alan wear a tie and he’ll make dinner and he’ll be so great at seduction, you guys. He will be so great at that. Alan will likely be fairly grumpy about this, too, but you know what????? He will also probably do something devastatingly romantic to the both of them, because he’s more of a still-waters-run-deep kinda guy, and you know - you just know - he’s gonna fucking buy them a house or something. Something absurd. You just know it.

- Ellie is a girl that gets what she wants. You saw how she went after trying to convince Alan how great a baby would be???? You saw her staying with the sick Triceratops???  Tenacious is the word.  And “you have no idea” is the response of the man who is head over heels for her.  If she gets it into her head that they’d make a great OT3, you know she’d do a lot of the legwork.

- Speaking of which, Ellie is the one who is going to invite Ian out to dinner when they’re stuck in hotels being interviewed/interrogated/giving their statements to every possible government organization that can get away with getting involved. Because Ian’s finally out of the hospital, and Alan keeps jerking every time a bus drives by their window, and she can’t have the bathroom door shut because she’s sure there’ll be a raptor in there if she has to open it.  Ellie is the one that gets Ian’s phone number (just in case you ever get bored Ian says when he offers it up, but even then she’s sure that his eyes skimming the room are intending the words for more than just her).  Ellie is the one that let’s Ian sleep in their bed because he’s not used to the elevation their dig is currently at and got too drunk too fast, and when Alan complains she tells him their bed is plenty big enough for the two men (it’s not) and that she needs to finish her job applications anyway (turns out dark fields and decaying bones are holding less appeal to her these days when every sound carried in the night sounds like footsteps of creatures that shouldn’t be alive but are-are-are).  Ellie is the one that leans her shoulder in the doorway at three a.m. and looks at them lying there, close together and still, somehow, continents away.  But maybe that can change. Maybe distances can be breached. Sixty-five million years ago and today have, after all. 

Anything at all can and will happen.

.

The thing about them is this:

There are a hundred thousand ways for them to get together, but all of them are due to the fact that they make more sense together than apart.