ok, first of all, I'm not sure I'm even posting this in the proper forum...please forgive if not...

I'll begin by saying that as a kid growing up in the 70s-80s, TFs for me, begins and ends with G1...while I do enjoy the other continuities, they just don't really feel like the TFs I knew and loved.

That being said, and me being much older now, I'm trying to retcon/correct/understand some of the inconsistencies that the G1 cartoon and comics presented...for my own version of what's considered canon...

In my canon...the events of TF The Movie after the Autobot shuttle crashes mostly do not exist...and (shockingly, lol) most of the G1 cast survived.

In my canon...Autobots cannot fly without jet packs...mass shifting is ONLY used with characters like Soundwave, Blaster, Reflector, bugs, etc...bots cannot just scan an object and take on it's form.

So, now to the reason for this post...

I'm trying to wrap my brain around what makes a TF a TF...minus their physical bodies a TF needs; a spark, a transformation cog, sometimes a combination gizmo, a flight thingamabob, and WHAT ELSE?

How are new TFs lives/personalities created? (There shouldn't be any robot babies)...don't want to get religious about it either. (I do like the personality chip idea for the Combaticons)...but it shouldn't be that easy.

Sorry for the long winded post but I'm approaching this as if I were writing the TF G1 universe starting from scratch...trying to make the timeline more consistent...trying to fix the inconsistencies that the cartoon/comics threw at us...while trying to be as OCD as possible...for my personal canon.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts, suggestions or ideas.

 

First off, I love what you're doing here! Exploring bits of lore, like how TFs work just makes my day!

Starting with the question of birth, the G1 cartoon showcased Vector Sigma as the source of Cybertronic life, the "Spark Generator", if you will. Though the concept of a Spark (as we know it) didn't really exist in G1 media, the cartoon mentioned the Laser Core as a vital organ, while the comics (and early scripts for The Movie) mentioned the idea of a "Life Spark".
Given all this, you could say the Laser Core is the central apparatus where the Life Spark energy imbued by Vector Sigma resides/is processed. Meanwhile, the personality components, ignited by the Spark energy moderate sapience/sentience. Meanwhile, TF bodies could be forged by some less potent iterations of the original Plasma Energy Chamber.

This idea would pose certain difficulties though. The cartoon origin of the Dinobots for one and the recreation of the Combaticons with only their personality components are two prominent examples. I'd like to hear your take on these particular origins.

For anatomy, I'd recommend looking up some real world robotics stuff as a guideline. I'm no expert myself, but off the top of my head, there could be a fuel pump (as mentioned in the comics), a servomotor of some sort (to moderate motion), a brain-unit (to handle stuff besides personality), some sort of artificial muscles (actuators I think they're called?), a self-diagnostic system, and some sort of mechanism that maintains homeostasis within the body. For flight capable bots, perhaps a slightly different anatomy would be necessary (i.e. lighter joints, etc.)

 

So- if you're trying to avoid mysticism, then consider elements of Asimov's robotics- specifically, positronic brains. Suppose that the positronic pathways within these platinum-iridium brains are etched by an intense, very finely controlled series of electromagnetic fields- namely, the 'data as magnetically contained plasma' which is a spark, the energy delivered from Vector Sigma and controlled thereby.

So, a spark isn't a "soul", the whole concept of the 'soul' and the fallacious Cartesian dualism that post-G1 Transformers has embraced so readily can be discarded- and yet, at the same time, a Cybertronian pre-Matrixing (sorry, force of habit, I'm more used to comic continuity), pre-Vector Sigma is not just an empty lump of metal- it has a brain, but the brain is a 'blank', with no programmed personality pathways. That does not, however, mean that function, training, other data can't be stored in its memory circuits- hence how the Aerialbots and Stunticons for instance 'wake up' with formed personalities and opinions, knowing how to work their bodies, etc etc- they'd already been programmed for everything *but* consciousness.

As for the inconsistencies in cartoon character genesis, there's a line in "The Key to Vector Sigma" which everyone seems to overlook, but which I think seems to explain some of these problems- Alpha Trion refers to his special status of being the one who could successfully merge with the computer as being because he's a "first generation" product of it.

That could be taken several ways, of course- it might just imply a production line, but if that's the case, why would Alpha Trion be 'closer' to Vector Sigma than someone from a later production run? The other explanation would be to assume that all personalities come from Vector Sigma, but they don't all come directly. Rumble, notably, had no idea what Vector Sigma was, whilst Megatron did.

Cerebral laser cores may have been manufactured, imbued, and stored en masse in huge production runs throughout early Cybertronian history, before the energy crisis. Some Cybertronians may have woken for the first time under the benevolent glow of their Crystal Satsuma megacomputer god, but equally many others probably awoke in darkened workshops, centuries later, when those laser cores were taken out of storage and installed in a new Cybertronian body. Similarly, when bodies are destroyed, if these personality components are salvaged, they end up back in the metaphorical 'gene pool' of stored components for use- with or without the memory chips detailing their previous lives.

Perhaps the Ark originally had a secondary purpose- not just to look for energy, but to establish another Cybertronian colony, safely away from the war. There could have been a storehouse of those components on board, ready made personality components ready to begin new lives - or to resume old lives. This could explain where some of the sudden 'new arrivals' came from in the Season Two Autobot ranks- the comic continuity explicitly shows something similar. The Dinobots are another example- and show Ratchet and Wheeljack as not being, right out of the box, really all that skilled at setting in a new personality and brain.

 

It's really very, very difficult to say where consciousness in any species comes from, since we really have no idea how it arises in ourselves.

You could go the uber-sci-fi approach, where they're robots that have been imbued with insanely sophisticated programming by a master computer, you can go the uber-spiritual approach, where they're given a tangible life-force by a higher being or something more inscrutable like the AllSpark, or you could go a more mundane route, and make them silicon-based or lead-based life forms that evolved via natural selection to have their many traits.