#Alt modes

[mychlapci]

Been thinking about domesticated cybertronians lately. Knowing humans, I honestly could see us trying to domestic and breed these guys if given the chance. Especially if they never converted to speaking our languages.

Like the type of scenarios and stuff would be golden. No more war. Just people talking about their cybertronians, their diets, and if their friends want to breed theirs to make cool new hybrids to sell later on.

Or like with cats where someone's car goes missing for the night and a few weeks later there are eggs in the yard and it's like "now why the fuck would you go do that!?"

OOUh that’s so interesting, actually.... AU where cybertron is fully gone and cybertronians have to remain on earth, where they slowly integrate into the society by simply spending most of their time in alt-mode. humans take care of them like... prized horses, kind of.

of course, make sure to give your cybertronian plenty of entertaintment or a partner, otherwise they’ll come back and lay eggs all over the driveway. Or, you’ll have to pay someone’s damage costs because your beloved car went and pumped their non-sentient, regular car full of eggs. keep a leash on that thing!

[gillywillys]

I love how Starscream is trusted with so many people in alt mode, like most murderous and backstabbing bitch you know is also the one who holds and uses you during battle. if your alt mode needs to be hand held your going to him at some point.

[ask-uts-earthspark-au]

Hey Jawbreaker if you want to see something really funny about alt modes check out this *Shows him pictures of when Soundwave was a cassette player*

Alt Mode pix

Root Mode pix + gifs

«—-–-—»

Jawbreaker: 😧😮🤩

Megatron: Ah yes. My beloved third in command.

Jawbreaker: That was your third in command?

Megatron: yes, indeed, Soundwave is. I was quite fond of his cute little tape deck mode, but I hardly mind how he’s altered his frame a bit, so he can fly easier. Used to struggle with his anti-gravity, so he upgraded a little. It’s not a half bad look.

Jawbreaker: Oh, so he got it wrong the first time?

Megatron: Hardly, little spark.

Megatron: He was always a tape deck of sorts, and his Earth alt is still a form he uses. He just took on some flier parts to help him. There was never a sense of wrongness.

Jawbreaker: Oh.

Megatron: Though, admittedly, he’s a little more intimidating now. Back then he was cuter. Cuter yet still, in the earliest days I first met him.

Jawbreaker: So he changed, just because he felt like it?

Megatron: Yes, in a way.

Megatron: Regardless, Soundwave is my third in command, and my amica. And those shots there are what he originally looked like when we first came to Earth.

«—-–-—»

If anyone has that gif of Soundwave running really weird and running into a net from that one episode, please god reblog or send it, I am begging.

[thunderwetter]

TF Alt Mode Headcanon!

Been a while since I just put an HC out here hehe

Transformers have different sensitivities in their different modes. When they transform, their sensory systems get rerouted, so a part that might have been sensitive before will not be anymore and vice versa.

For example a mech with doorwings would usually have no issue moving them, like sure some parts are a bit sensitive to the touch, but generally if they hit them against a wall it's not gonna hurt much and be a very local sensation. Imagine hitting your shoulder on a door frame. However if they are in alt mode and someone slams their door shut, they will feel that through their whole body. Imagine someone punching your sternum, you'd feel that in your whole ribcage bc of the way your bones connect. Same for that bot.

I imagine their heads are less sensitive while they are tucked away inside their machinery to prevent the vibrations etc from maneuvering in their alt mode to be painful.

For triple changers like Blitzwing, I can imagine this to be really useful and crucial to their functionality, in jet mode he'd have to be sensitive to stuff like airflow, while as a tank he would have to be pretty resilient and pain-resistant.

[knight-says-rollout]

“Never get between a Tug and it’s tow” -the navigation safety video from the boating license course

New transformers lore: tug boat alts = protective (not clickbait)!?!???? 👀

[sepublic]

            For the Nizziverse, I want to incorporate that idea of alt-modes being digital and thus programmed, without necessarily having to make a physical equivalent. Because if you can just create a hypothetical model that’s never existed in real life until a Cybertronian downloads it, then that’s interesting. Because it does lend to a fluidity to alt-modes if Cybertronians can just program whatever they want, and a freedom to come up with looks, totally unrestricted by the physical costs that would come with in-person experimentation.

         The art of forging an alt-mode to scan in-person is now a bit lost. I’m sure there are some old-school fans who do it that way for the novelty, or to avoid any possibility of a data malfunction. Some insist that if you scan in-person, it tends to be the purest, most accurate rendition, whereas copies of the data tend to be ‘watered down’. Others claim it’s the other way around, with physical scans corrupted by the weaknesses of existing in real-life, whereas data scans are pure and directly from the source, the sheer schematics alone. There is no scientific basis to support either take.

         You’ll often see scouts on other worlds scanning in-person, moreso than you do the locals back home. I imagine some workplaces, like say for the Constructicons, have an assortment of physical models on display, for them to scan and switch between as their job regularly demands. Though I bet the process of scanning and reformatting can be a bit laborious and Energon-intensive, too, and some good oil helps to literally smooth it over.

         The idea of programming an alt-mode, instead of making a physical model to scan in real life, has additional implications. Not only are the costs of making physical models totally averted, but there might be some concern about media preservation, because if it only exists in a digital format, it’s prone to destruction. And since Cybertronians DO care about physical records (such as with the cassettes), I could see there being dedicated museums filled with physical models of just the alt-modes, preserved in case anything should happen.

            (That gets me to a side note: Cybertronians would see NFTs and laugh. The fact that some humans are actually talking of such a manufactured liability as ‘the future’, when NFTs are so blatantly redundant that they function as archaic! Just a waste of valuable server space and Energon!)

         I also have to think about KSI, because in Age of Extinction, it’s a whole thing that they just program appearances, rather than having to physically build them a lot of the time. Which if we take the above into account as part of the Nizziverse, you can see where the humans got the idea from… But what’s interesting is that they also program the robot modes as well, as seen with Galvatron; And that lack of a physical basis in their work is what allows Megatron to hack into the systems and customize what is supposed to be an Optimus clone into a deadringer for himself, complete with a fully-functioning vortex grinder that evidently wasn’t included in the schematics (no doubt inspired by Devastator).

         I find that implication fascinating, that they build the vehicle first, and THEN program a robot mode. In hindsight, a lot of the Transformium idea in Age of Extinction seems less ludicrous now that I think of it, though to be fair, I’ll still have the KSI robots transform like regular Cybertronians, for Doylist reasons. But I think that programmable fluidity really is very interesting, and I have to wonder if in the Nizziverse, KSI explores that idea and/or it’s already been practiced by Cybertron in the past.

         Alt-mode first, then robot mode… Because again, is there really any meaningful distinction that assigns one as the other? Given what I said before about the ‘looseness’ of Cybertronian anatomy and classification? Obviously they have to start from somewhere when building the bot, there needs to be an actual physical thing to download the data to begin with to idealize it into real-life form.

         This idea of what is basically programmable fluid is making me think of Amalgamous Prime, who doesn’t even have a set robot or alt-mode, because they’re ALL different forms for Amalgamous (who is probably non-binary… yes yes, the stereotype of shapeshifts and inhuman beings as non-binary, but on the other hand they really do have an excuse to not be cis if they don’t ascribe to our gender conventions. The solution is to make non-binary humans, in the end). They just transform back and forth as they choose, with the closest thing to a ‘true form’ being the process and conversion you see them undergo between modes. Amalgamous ‘programs’ new alt-modes by simply imagining them.

         Hmm. Maybe I’ll take the visual concept of the ‘Transformium transformation’ that Age of Extinction came up with, and apply that exclusively to Amalgamous Prime. Sure, you could argue it makes for an impossible toy, but then so does a being who completely transcends physical limits to begin with. And their parts and pieces don’t HAVE to float away from each other, they can stay connected during transformation. It’s whatever Amalgamous is feeling up to in the moment.

         So maybe the ‘Transformium transformation’ is a thing in Nizziverse’s Age of Extinction, as part of KSI’s attempt to recreate the powers of Amalgamous, particularly the idea of programming your own body with your own mind, and the powerful Vector Sigma-level processor that would take. I imagine KSI is not purely human-comprised, since its motives and a lot of the conflict in AoE will be revised; In this case, it comes with the desire to arm humans so they can defend themselves, independently of any Cybertronian by having their own. And there are probably Autobots who agree with the idea that humans shouldn’t be dependent on any outsider for help (since even they count), so it’s a more nuanced and morally gray discussion than just “Robots bad”.

         A part of it DOES boil down to the point that, after all, the Cybertronians are already planning to make a new generation that’s a lot more economical and capable of co-existing with humans, so collaborating with humans on the Maximal project is only sensible. But then, humans in KSI want to create mindless Cybertronians, designed only to be servants to humanity, and ideally defenders, instead of attackers. But is the production of MORE weapons ever a good idea? Obviously you just have to fight sometimes, violent revolution and resistance can and has been a necessity. But aren’t we supposed to be transitioning into an era of peace, hence the pardons, hence the idea of moving on?

         Anyhow, I digress. I’ll do another post dedicated to Age of Extinction’s conflict and the new status quo it presents as the start of a new ‘post-war’ trilogy. I’ve kind of gotten into that idea beforehand in a previous post where I brought up the Nizziverse idea of Maximals, but a focused look is necessary at some point. 

[slutwheels]

GUYS!

DON'T FORGET THESE GOLDIES! I mean, a mini tank that is the size of a car or even smaller?? This could be cuteness potential :D my self insert is a triple changer minicon that has it as his alt mode, aswell as machine gun. But seriously, I love these baby tanks. I fell in love when I first learned of their existence 💝

Also:

I hope the quality is good enough- but here's what I also found. Might be stuff that's been already posted and I hope I didn't mess up the original post's intent but I thought I could be helpful 👉🏼👈🏼 I love tanks

Trying to find the oddest possible alt forms for my new ocs here are some favourites I’ve come across:

And some cars too:

I found so many more but alas, 10 photo limit

[peculiar-potato]

I can't be the only one thinking it

[ryuki-draws]

You know the autonomous train to the surface in TF One? What if they only wanted you to think it was autonomous...

[yuukirita]

Depends which generation.

[keferon]

…..I should be working rn but one of the songs in my playlist hit harder than usual so

[mychlapci]

Imagine if you will that transformers communicate sexual desires by the sounds of horns and alarms that we humans use for our vehicles.

So like let's use my favorite at the moment Ratchet. He's in disguise for the time being and stuck in traffic for whatever reason. And next thing he knows is someone starts honking their horn in frustration and he's also growing frustrated for a different reason.

He has to find a way to get out of this before he loses his cool and starts presenting himself to whomever else is honking their car horns.

ouhh I love that actually. A little bit of honking, a little bit of engine revving, some sirens get a mech all hot and bothered. Those are the sounds mecha usually make uncontrollably during interfacing, so when you want to flirt you make some sound to assure the other bot you're all ready to get frisky. 

Ratchet getting stuck in traffic and getting so horny he can barely think is so funny and hot. All around him, it's just cars going Fuck Me! Fuck me! Fuck me! and he's tempted to give into the call… Maybe he starts running his sirens, not even to make the cars make way for him, his frame is just automatically making mating calls right back…

[fourphoenixfeathers]

My disappointment was immeasurable when i realized there was a canon humanformers TF:Animated episode, and the human designs were just this:

THIS WAS SUCH A MISSED OPPORTUNITY! THEY ARE SO BORING! So i took it upon myself to redraw it. 😌

I know Prowl wasn’t in this scene, but i wanted an excuse to draw him anyway. He’s silly and i love him.

I tried to push the scale a little bit too, because i imagine the team would be feeling pretty small in a medbay built for cybertronians. Imagine Ratchet is standing on something out of the shot.

[ask-uts-earthspark-au]

Hashtag's t-cog has enough memory to store another vehicle, What other vehicle would she scan to become a triple changer?. Maltobot's discuss this like a discord voice chat

Twitch: What??

Thrash: What is a triple changer?

Jawbreaker: um, maybe we should ask Bumblebee…?

Hashtag: …

Nightshade: With all due respect, I believe Hashtag is quite satisfied with just her one, even if she could, which last I recall none of us can, due to a lack of the appropriate components, or at least according to Tarantulas.

Hashtag: yeah, I am.

Nightshade: for the sake of humoring you, I would guess if she really wanted - and was possible - she’d probably pick another GHOST vehicle. Correct?

Hashtag: yeah, I guess. Probably like, uh… I don’t know, maybe that big truck from earlier, or um, that fancy GHOST car? *shrug*

Jawbreaker: Don’t worry, Hashtag. We like you just as you are. *nuzzle*

Nightshade: Indeed. If it turns out true, then it is what it is, and we simply didn’t know. We will still love you regardless.

Hashtag: love you guys, too. <3 <:)

[koumori-1999]

doodles of a dumb self-indulgent AU where ratchet has TFA blackarachnia's backstory, purely because i love both characters and i thought it'd be fun to draw a roleswap (and because i like making optimus suffer)

[rmtzcoconut]

Slight redesign