Bot Aging

[SeekerWing]

We have hit a crossroads in our plotting, and would like individual aids in coming up with a full idea for our theory on the aging of a Cybertronian. The administrators, being Irobashi, JettaWindstar, and Maple, have agreed to an aging theory in which bots start small and grow to their full size over time. However, there has been no agreement as to how we will working out. As such, it may be best for us to include discussion from all peoples on the site, as it involves everybody here.

Please note that this is a place for us to calmly, seriously discuss this. All proposed ideas will be placed, with as much detail as possible, with explanations, in this first post. You may ask to remain anonymous, or put your name on it. If you only wish to modify somebody else's idea, or if we agree on one general idea given a couple of tweaks, it will be put up here with a date on it. Please, please read everybody's proposals before adding your own! That alone will hopefully clear any misunderstandings! Also, if I have mis-summarized something, please post here and help us all to understand better - often, it's more than one person who misunderstands!

Discussion

SeekerWing - (April 22^nd)

A cybertronian child should take a very, very long time to age relative to human life. Bumblebee is the given example in this instince - he is considered very young, and often thought to have lived for a very long time, whereas Optimus is considered to be about thirty years of age, but has lived in actuality for several thousands of years. Thousands of years of life should match with very long period of childhood.

Smaller bots should be able to finish growth faster than larger bots, simply because they don't have as much to grow and develop. If bots are to develop at the same rate, this should make logical sense.

My preferred time span for childhood would be in the hundreds of years, but I will propose a base minimum of fifty years for the smallest of bots.

[Jetta Windstar]

I agree that it should definitely be no less than 50 years to complete growth, and that's for small Cybertronians. I'm more supportive for it taking longer, possibly the equivalent of some thousands Earth years to match the full span of a childhood for a Bot around Bumblebee or Optimus's size - so mentality age could seldom be proportional to size. The smaller ones would stop growing sooner, just as short humans do. Definitely a minimum of 50 for smaller Cybertronians.

The process of developing from a Sparkling/Hatchling would be fairly quick, they would probably develop a form even smaller than Ricochet's at that 50 year mark or perhaps whatever the Cybertronian year is called, which is much longer. The process of changing from a child mindset around Maddie's age to their "late teens" would be a much longer, slower process once they develop a stronger frame (given that they are nurtured properly).

Those that stay small like Arcee should age at the same rate, just stop growing dimensionally. And then at some point, others do too, if that all makes sense. In Rico's situation, if she is called a Sparkling, I understood it as the following: she would remain this size in the timeline of this RP because it would take her many many years for her to become bigger. She'd be growing but the physical changes wouldn't be noticeable. Mentally though, the changes would be very obvious. It seems that many of the Bot's mentalities develop far quicker than their bodies do, and the same goes for the techno organics.

((April 22nd))[/font]

[blitzy]

I agree that a Cybertronian should age a lot slower than what a human does. Physically wise, I think that a smaller bot should take less time to grow out, whereas a larger one takes longer. I think it should be safe to assume those who've posted before me also agree on this. But what about mentally wise? Jetta touched on this, but I'm going to focus this post on that.

I think that mentally, all Cybertronians should age the same. It should take them less time than it would to grow physically. Personality wise, Bumblebee doesn't seem all too young in this sense. I'd say about twenty years is the mindset of a teenager, and fifty should be when they're in young stages of adulthood.

[Irobashi]

For future reference, I apologize that this post shall not be as big and detailed as yours for I'm currently in class. I like the idea that they age quicker when it comes to mentality. I'm not talking a mentally twenty year old person in a three year old body, nothing of the sort. Especially in war and how things are right now, people tend to mature a lot faster mentally to begin with, they have to or they'll die.

Something I'd like to add in because I do NOT agree with them infants for fifty years, that would.. It's very likely there wouldn't be Cybertronians due to horrible casualties and how long they would take to at least reach childhood from there.. This I do not agree with. I'd say infanthood, they'd get through that in decent time and then starting at toddlerhood, then it would start to slow into the normal rate.

I agree that mentally, just because one Bot is smaller than the other, it should not MENTALLY age quicker than another that might be the same age as them. It's not that they grow faster, as Jetta said, but they just stop growing sooner than others.

AND AS ALWAYS, JUST LIKE US, everyone is different. Whether aging/maturing mentally or physically, so we should always factor that in.

[SeekerWing]

Okay, so, from what I've gathered, it seems as though we are all willing to agree that they do age more slowly, but grow, for the most part, at the same rate - some just reaching full size sooner. They do not grow faster, they just finish sooner. I do believe that we should take Iro and Jetta's points in mind, seeing as infant hood for too long does not seem highly plausible, and that growth would slow down after that point. As such, an increased rate of growth through the sparkling stage would, in my view, be a plus.

I would also like to point out that Cybertronians before the war were very peaceful creatures. Fatality rates would not be very high, except for accidents - which I'm certain they would go out of their way to avoid as much as possible. The increased fatality rate from the war has been referenced in different series continuities, and I don't think changing the way things work in their race would accomplish much, because we would then have to explain why such long lived creatures haven't spread their population more than they have. Even if 'conception' is rare for them, a grown bot will likely want to start a family. As such, it makes sense that they not grow too fast. However, accelerated age through sparkling years does make sense, and I'll be willing to go down from fifty years on that era - sparkling to developing child alone.

I also take into point that mental aging should be slightly faster than physical aging, however, again, we have to remember that their brains work differently. I can't delve into this too much, as I don't have much evidence on this point to back me, but maybe children could have a young teenage mindset at times, or at least be able to understand and properly respond to events around them, which will be the survival factor that allows them to survive once they've finished the initial aging period from Sparkling onward.

If that makes sense to everybody please inform, but that seems like a basic summary and possible conclusion to one part of everything, if people agree.

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[Spinback]

One thing I would like to point out right away is that we shouldn't forget that canonically, the source of most life on Cybertron was the Well of All Sparks itself. Protoforms emerging from this were “new,” but still more or less fully grown. The books themselves (which are part of the Aligned continuity) does bring up the issue of non-Well reproduction in the Velocitronians and the Junkions. Optimus Prime notices that, even away from the Well, life has found a way, which suggests that reproduction on Cybertron was rare before the war. Also, any young produced would have had to have been robust enough to survive conditions as tough as the ones on Junkion.

I agree with those who are saying that mental development should come faster than physical development. For a race of advanced cybernetic creature, it really makes no evolutionary sense for them to have a limited, childlike brain capacity for so long. There are many things about which a Cybertronian might be naïve, but I don’t see why an eighteen-year-old creature with a highly-advanced technology-based brain capable of processing thought faster than most humans wouldn’t be as smart as, if not smarter than, a human of the same age.

I think that the treatment of Bumblebee is more of a social stigma coupled with his relative youth in regards to his teammates. For a species that measures their lifespan in eons, it would make sense for them relatively, to consider a fifty-year-old Cybertronian young, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a Cybertronian would have a stunted mentality that would make it the equivalent to a young human. Fifty years of experience is still fifty years of experience. Certain playful attributes lingering would make sense (Bumblebee’s willingness and enjoyment in his games with Raf), as well as physical developments (Ratchet referring to his “life cycles” being longer, which to me suggests that Bee is too young to, er, make little Bees for the moment), but not necessarily mentality.

As for growth itself, I think 50 years to reach an infant size is a little too long. It would make more sense for a Cybertronian to reach a frame at least big enough to fend for itself in the shortest amount of time possible, and then perhaps finish fleshing out its growth over the next few decades, simply as a matter of survival. Cybertron might have been a peaceful place before the war, but that peaceful empire was founded on galactic conquest, and the Cybertronian race would have had to have been robust enough to carve its place in the galaxy in the first place, so I would think that a shorter maturation rate would make sense.

So, in short, I think that the growth from infant to young adult would be rapid (as this is seen in nature to be the most logical form of development) maybe around twenty to thirty years, their development from young adulthood to full adulthood would be generally slower, their mental development would be considered at least equal to that of a human of comparable age, and that their youthfulness has more to do with social stigma, frame type, and reproductive readiness (I.e. you have to reach a certain age before you can make baby Cybertronians, simply because of developmental factors).

This is just my two cents, though, there seem to be a lot of different opinions on this!

In addition, there’s the matter of drones to bring up. I’ll just list off some of my ideas for them. These guys are clones, primarily because they look exactly alike, and that they have no life-cycles, but are closer in biology to Cybertronians who are Well-born, albeit with weaker, manufactured sparks. The drones have no life cycles, and probably cannot reproduce, except in extremely rare cases. Very few people other than me actually play drones here =P but I’d love any additional input!

[Irobashi]

I wouldn't know much of the drones, sorry Spinny. As for everything else, I do believe she's about summed it up.