I've been doing a rewatch of Star Trek DS9 and was thinking about the similarities between humans and other alien races. It got me thinking about whether or not they had the same biological processes and whether they reproduced the same. That crossed over to my thoughts on TF. So I had a few questions. 1. If Transformers reproduced like organics(humans) what would that look like (not the act of conception but births) 2. How would that change the culture of cybertron or TF in general. 3. Would that change how you view the TF's?
It would make their culture highly similar to human culture I would think-- probably more so than I think is preferable imo. I think making transformers "born" rather than "built" takes away a key creative sci-fi element that makes them interesting. But yeah, with sexual reproduction it would create the subsequent cultural focus on monogamous relationships and patriarchy, as well as paternal and maternal relationships, and the concept of "blood being thicker than water" and all these things that we see as norms in our society that wouldn't exist in a robotic civilization. I actually quite like the concept of families in Transformers, just because the absence of them removes a layer of complexity to the Transformers universe that is extant in ours, but the process of how families are formed should be its own unique entity in the mythos instead of a copy-paste of human biology imo
Yeah, I'm gonna have to strongly disagree with this idea. We already have problems with writers making these mechanical aliens too much like us, to suddenly give them human methods of reproduction is going way too far in regards to anthropomorphism. Parthenogenesis is the closest we should go for that sort of thing. Budding was a perfectly fine concept, it even had a built-in mechanism to prevent overpopulation. DS9 is awesome btw.
I did but I didn't think I had to respond to each point. 1. It'd look like bizarre / creepy / unnatural / wrong to see an alien robot women with (I assume) a vagina pooting out a naked, wet and crying robaby. 2. It'd possibly make them more like our culture, ergo not like their own distinct culture. Sort of defeating the point of them being aliens from a separate planet to begin with. 3. I'd probably just lose interest because I came to read / learn about alien robot characters, not so much humans, I already consume plenty of media focusing on homo sapiens.
Star Trek humanoid aliens had in-universe explanation of being related to humans dating back as far as TOS and TNG. There's no need for any of that with TFs.
Literally that hasn't stopped them. Trust me, a few misclicks and I found out the hard way that they don't care about canon. If someone is degenerate enough to draw or write it, they're going to draw or write it.
For the record I love DS9 too, that is the perfect place for these kind of discussions, Transformers is best as mindless fun for me.