#protoforms

[cozzzynook]

So, I have a few questions about how Protoforms work in your head cannons.

Do they act like normal sparklings despite coming from a Hot Spot or The Well?

Do they age quicker or slower?

And are they super squishy?

Hi 👋🏽

So in my headcanons it varies but often protoforms age the exact same as emerged sparklings and they only appear when the right bot meant to be their creator is near.

Many protoforms are created that way and share the cna of the bot meant to be their creator but sometimes the creator abandons them or leaves them or gives them up much like in reality.

They age normal and have a low chance of receiving an outlier.

They are very squishy yes but some less squishy than others depending on the material they’re forged with.

Some have hard metal in their future and some soft.

As protoforms they haven’t grown the strengthened metallico necessary for survival on their own but some are not as soft as others. One protoform may be forged with lava resistant metal but still be softer than their adult counterparts while some are forged with water resistant metal and much softer than their adult counterparts.

Hope this makes sense

[de-vee-l]

Transformers mpreg ficwriters! I have a question! How does creating a protoform work in your fics? Are there any official materials to confirm that way of working?

I'm sure I've read a TFA ShockBlurr fanfic where Blurr got pregnant in a more human way. How canon is this?

If the protoform is created within an adult transformer's body can it be safely extracted?

Or is there no correct way and the canon itself is too chaotic to care about it?

[askvectorprime]

Hi vector prime! I have a question which I’ve been dying to know, how do transformers age? I’m asking this because some transformers look like old men, for example, revenge of the fallen jetfire has a cane and a beard and alpha trion also has a beard and some transformers look like kids too, for example, wheelie and those kids that were shown on the planet that unicron gobbled up. I hope there is an answer to this transformers age thing, thanks vector.

Dear Mature Matcher,

Well, I like to think I've aged gracefully, ha!

In truth, you ask a good question, though I think your lived experience as a human has colored your perspective. We do not age as humans do, but our bodies are still subject to wear and tear. Our fuel lines erode and leak, our gears grind and slip, our belts become brittle, our joints seize. We discolor, our paint scratches off, decals peel free, chrome flakes away. Stress marks line our faces and hinges. We rust. Our minds are prone to different kinds of degeneration, as newer memories overwrite older ones, or as unhealthy feedback loops develop into rampancy. But few of these processes are fatal, and fewer still are irreversible, so long as we take the occasional tune-up to replace parts as they fail.

The physical traits you observe aren't directly tied to the process of aging. With the usual caveat that not all Transformers are the same, even within the a single universe… it tends to be that, once we are protoformed or built, the only time our bodies naturally change is when we take on a new form. Now, you may not realize this, as we still must appear very alien to you—but on Earth, this might involve changing our appearance in robot form, too, mimicking physical traits that we identify with, the better to be understood by your kind; this is sometimes called "humanizer" technology. Don't be too quick to judge based on appearance, though, as sometimes what you perceive as a mustache might simply be a coincidental arrangement of kibble!

Otherwise, our bodies only change in the course of upgrades. After choosing our first alt-form, we may undergo procedures to bring us up to "full size", speaking either culturally or biologically. There are universes where our sparks grow continuously through our lifetimes, demanding periodic upgrades to match, with the bodies of the biggest and oldest Transformers practically being extensions of the planet—but those are extreme cases, and it's usually not a necessity. You mention Wheelie, who had something of an arrested development while marooned on Quintessa, and although there exist divergent timelines where he did get a larger body, he's usually comfortable with his stature; many Transformers take pride in being "Minibots" and may even make the conscious decision to downsize.

In the modern age, there is certainly an association between youth and a diminutive frame, as Micromasters, Mini-Cons and Protoformers join our society. The fact is that Transformers nowadays are smaller than they used to be, because fuel is more scarce. There have been many such paradigm shifts in the construction of Transformers: generations are usually demarcated by broad design trends, major technological advancements, and shared aesthetic sensibilities. When it comes to these fashions, there are some classics that anyone can recognise—facial adornments, oversized chins, and non-visible olfactory sensors are all characteristic of different points in history, and give a clue for how old we might be. You know, the oldest Transformers predate the introduction of the ball-and-socket joints which are so ubiquitous in Earth life; I myself have not one in my body!

The multiverse being as strange and wondrous as it is, there are plenty more esoteric reasons behind these physical changes. Famously, the Matrix of Leadership is known to induce a metamorphosis in its bearers to better accommodate the collective wisdom of Primes past. Exotic kinds of Energon have been known to possess transformative properties. For reasons yet unknown to my Transtech friends, exposure to negative-polarity particles correlates strongly with facial structures resembling human goatees.

Some believe that we once lived mortal lives, aging as most other species throughout the galaxy do, only for that mortality to have been taken from us in our race's infancy—through the interference of Quintessons, or the defeat of Mortilus, spoken of in myth as death incarnate.

[quibbs126]

For some reason, I now want to see the Transformers but like the Earthspark protoform Terrans. By which I mean, what their protoform stages looked like, with it looking similar to how it did for the Terrans

I mean I’ve considered drawing it, using the TF One quartet (but probably their Earthspark versions instead, it’s just that all four are also in Earthspark, so I can use them)

Main issue is just trying to figure out the differences between the protoform stage and their transformable stage, or whatever you call it. Which means having to find good references for that. And also, combating laziness

[transformers-unite]

Experimented Decepticon Protoforms

These group of Protoforms were heavily experimented on and tortured by the insane Shockwave during his attempts to strengthen the new Decepticon Army.

However, ever since three died and one was lost, he had to shut down this project.

[clevercrumbish]

Terfism is targeted at radicalising older-middle-aged women in order to sever the otherwise naturally-forming bond that makes trans women and older-middle-aged cis women the strongest of comrades via our shared interests and experiences.

[yuukirita]

I am a HIGH believer of Bumblebee being the Sparkling of Optimus and Megatron. How I think Optimus was the one who ended up taking care of Bumblebee is because Megatron KNEW he couldn't take care of him while being the leader of the Decepticons so he gave the baby to Optimus before the war officially started.

[fourphoenixfeathers]

I already touched on some of this before but i wanna have my stuff in one place so. What if Transformers Animated but Shattered Glass?

TFA has so many moments where the decepticons are being deceptive and manipulative, but I really wanted to see a world where it wasn't an act (🥺), and the Decepticons were fighting for their freedom against the autobot regime without the whole. War crimes thing.

Soundwave gets to be a big brother for Sari, bc Megatron is actually a sweet guy and helping Sumdac with his daughter's birthday is a good distraction from Megatron's grief over his own lost sparkling :') just wait until he finds out

The space bridge crew plus Prowl the draft dodger are technically civilians, and hanging out on Earth is a good opportunity for them to finally be out from under the thumb of the government and actually start to think for themselves. They've got a long traitor arc coming for them.

[nerdfins]

I love seeing canon and non-canon ideas on how we get new Cybertronians.

[sweet7simple]

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.

[thewiglesswonder]

Boogie woogie woogie—

[askvectorprime]

So, did Isaac have any issues keeping Sari's technoorganic nature hidden when she was growing up? Like, did she ever do anything that threw people off?

Dear Technorganic Trickster,

Most newly-activated Autobots boot up with a limited sense of self and a small number of basic locomotion and elocution subroutines. Ambitious Autobots, those willing to embrace a greater sense of self, might enroll in institutions such as Autobot boot camp, in which they learn to hone their built-in tools and skillsets, but the process of becoming a “full-fledged” Autobot might take many stellar cycles.

Sari’s protoform, by contrast, contained an enlarged personality component, a densely interlinked positronic brain with a higher-than-average number of potential synaptic connections, seemingly mimicking the cranial structure of a newborn organic sentient. It seems as though Sari’s protoform was specifically designed to integrate itself into a population of carbon-based lifeforms and convincingly imprint on their behavior, allowing the newborn Cybertronian to move among alien populations unnoticed.

[quibbs126]

Okay, I think I’m FINALLY done with these designs. Well okay, I said Megatron might need some reworking, but shush, I’ll do that another time

I was not expecting this to take as long as it did. Apparently I started making this at 9 in the morning, and it is now 9:30 at night. Optimus, I am almost certain this is your fault

Anyways, as mentioned prior, the idea here was to give the Earthspark Cybertronians protoform designs like the Terrans, what they might look like when they were in this stage, because I haven’t seen anything to claim Cybertronians in this series don’t also have this stage, unless I’m wrong

I mean theoretically, Cybertronian protoforms could look entirely different from Terran protoforms, but we don’t know at this juncture, so I used the Terrans as my main references

Pretty much the main thing was trying to turn their blocky features smooth, while also taking out a bunch of their little details, like their antenna and horns

Honestly I still think Elita turned out the best, which is maybe a bit sad considering she was the first one I finished, but oh well. I don’t think everyone else was horrible, but I think she just looks best

I think Bee’s design is fine, and it was honestly refreshing after struggling so much with Optimus, but I can’t help but feel like his eyes are still wonky

Like I’ve said, by the end of things I think Megatron came out the worst. He was the second one I did, so I wasn’t sure, but by now I think he is. The real struggle with him is that his entire helmet is comprised of angles, when I need curves. And then there’s his side things, which I still do not know how to translate here. The idea I was trying to go for here is the top half goes around his head, while the bottom half is attached at the ends, but it’s the bottom half that looks weird. But ah well, hopefully I can fix it later

And then there’s Optimus. The majority of the time I’ve spent on this was him. It was mostly the struggle of his vents and trying to make them un-blocky. It was getting really frustrating particularly because I couldn’t think of anything new to do with them to change them, drawing the same thing over and over

But then I remembered, this Optimus was once Orion Pax, a fact I was planning to omit. But that meant I had something else to draw on

And it’s what finally got my brain to make his side things into the curves you see now. It’s also why his middle thing is solid black, like how it seems to be in the picture above

But yeah, I wouldn’t rate his design as the absolute best, but it’s serviceable and I’ll take what I can get

But aside from trying to change their designs, I think I had fun. I noticed by the end of it that they all have different face and eye shapes, and that’s pretty fun

Speaking of which, I notice with this how small Optimus’ eyes are here. They may not look it in my drawing but they’re a lot smaller than the others in the show. Is that one of the reasons his design looks so off? Like I know it looks weird, I just can’t place how exactly

But yeah, take these designs, the culmination of my drawing abilities for the day. I’d like to do more with them, I just don’t know what. Best I can think of is like, a fic premise where the Cybertronians somehow get reverted back to these protoform stages, and the Terrans now have to help them out

[xarology]

POV: you’re their sparkling waiting to emerge…

[fruitful-gummies]

Cybertronian protoforms from one of my specbio fan continuities :]

[mrpowerglide]

the fact that dreadwing and skyquake are twins also has some implications for how transformers are created in this continuity. we know that protoforms exist because of starscream’s clones, but these guys are twins, not clones. so how did this happen? did some transformer out there (presumably their parents) decide to make two of the same bot for shits and giggles? do female transformers give birth and protocols are a separate thing? not only that, but being twins means that they are siblings, which implies that other familial ties exist in cybertronian culture

hasbro release a detailed report documenting the transformer reproduction process in excruciating detail i fucking dare you