#really did not expect to introduce my fanfic on tumblr with a kitbash

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[[Image description: A custom mostly deep pink and white Arcee kitbashed from a War for Cybertron Nightbird toy stands on a shelf in front of a wall, holding yellow flaming energy sabers that most closely resemble the ones of her IDW1 depiction. The rest of her though is largely of course inspired by her Synergy & IDW2 look - two blue biolights each on the lower and upper torso, the knee caps, her shoulders, and facing forward on her back stacks. Swords and head are 3D prints from shapeways by The Primeinator and Autobot Quaternion respectively.]]

Hiya folks! I’m not really prepared to do the first worldbuilding post for my fanfic yet here because I’m busy and the next big fic needs to be done before I feel prepared to discuss the trans existential stuff and imagined alien robot aesthetic system history I will dig into among many other things. I want to have the prose for y’all to read for what I’m talking about. I need to edit my first fanfic of the Autosignet Cycle series, Day of Multiflame to be a bit more readable. But I thought I’d share stuff folks who aren’t on twitter might not have seen regarding back stacks from a xenogender perspective that you could TLDR as back stacks are cute in an alien way and can be done a lot of different ways with different bodies, genders, and aesthetics, that Arcee’s IDW iterations are really special literarily, and that alt-mode stuff is really cool and could inform gender. You can read the original twitter thread and see the chosen images and related alt text here: https://twitter.com/Gestalt_Robot/status/1518252361017225216 If you want the full thoughts which is easier for me to personally to write on tumblr including alien gender stuff and an intro to stuff in my fic so far keep reading.

Some related background info - I have also kitbashed Sterling from Studio Series Blurr, Nightbeat and Velocity from Titan Returns Blurr, and done Nautica from WfC Chromia, and have a TR Brainstorm and Arcee (Blurr retools), and a WfC Chromia and Nightbird, they’re all in a photo together in the twitter thread. The Blurr retools and kitbashes all have backpacks of a sort that form the front of their vehicle mode.

I think it says something that I have such a liking for the TR/Studio Blurr and WfC Chromia/Nightbird mold. I definitely want more car gals who are like Combiner Wars Jumpstream and Dust-Up (Aileron spaceplane retool of Smokescreen pls) but also these molds can do cool things in terms of kitbashing and alien actuation aspects that I will get to.

Important sidenote I’ve kitbashed Gauge from a Bumblebee, IDW1 Lancer from CW Swindle, am going to kitbash Vibes from FoC Sideswipe, want to do backpack-less Arcee from Smokescreen and Hound. I am very lucky to actually have Jumpstream, Dust Up, and Cybertron Override. I’m sure some of you have seen the Crabcee by blurrito that I commissioned. The body shape variety stuff generally is a whole topic in itself people other than me have covered plenty, so back to backpack/back stack robots.

Counting TR Nautica the portion of the transformer toy gender iceberg Blurr is part of is exceedingly obvious even with just the official toys, unlike the deep lore of motorcycle retools. There is in fact a CW retool of Rust Dust as Wreck-Gar, Groove, and an Adventure Override (he/him canonically). There is even a Prime Cyberverse Legion Class Groove retool from Arcee as well, and there’s going to be a Legacy Road Rocket from Legacy Arcee.

Rather transformative, you could say. XD

So - why talk about back stacks? - one of my grail kitbashes is to make a bulky Arcee who has back stacks. Why? Name a woman or any physically human entity who actually wants to have big wheeled metal towers that wiggle behind their back & isn't a robot/cyborg alterhuman, furry, plural, or kinnie. Xeno pretty y'know. To quote myself on discord from November last year: “listen I'm demiromantic but I can't unsee back stacks now so, no.” This is coming from a trans person who thinks that any person’s chosen or expressed aesthetic that isn’t hateful is cute because it is what they want to actuate or can, it’s the body and experience they live in.

It’s just that also - Arcee’s IDW1 story in Phase 2 and Phase 3, IDW2, and frankly the MLP crossover has been really powerful both in big and small ways and touched on a lot of notes that struck a chord with me so her chosen shapes are just - a good vibe to me. I’ll talk more about what I think of her in a literature sense sometime. Do not be misled by Spotlight: Arcee and how people reduce her IDW1 iteration to that to think that she doesn’t have a unique place in trans literature as a hierarchy-hating errant warrior-teacher trans woman who doesn’t want redemption for the hurt she’s caused, knows and speaks to love and understanding being one of the strongest things in the world, and deep down wants to raise kids with a similar gender partner- whoops I’m crying a little- (AVP Arcee was also wholesome).

So- you have the why I’m on this topic. Did you know that Cyberverse Dead End has back stacks too? They're cute. I can't help thinking about it because of Arcee. Back stacks for all the genders/many aesthetics and across the spectrum of body shapes would be a power move.

Because they are transforming robots, this dips into alt-mode more than a bit too. Gender/aesthetic and alt-form probably inform each other. Bots have talked A LOT about their alt-form over the decades. You have Smokescreen in Aligned trying to choose an Earth mode, Lightspeed really wants to be a spaceship in the old Sunbow G1 cartoon, Shadow Striker’s guards in Cyberverse talked about Megatron’s new guards spoilers and one said they were too flashy for their own taste, in IDW2 it’s an experiential thing in part for what work people want to do and they choose their alt-mode as part of growing up assuming they weren’t assigned warplane at forging by Nominus Prime for the War of the Threefold Spark or are a clone, and in the same series during the Transformers 2021 Annual the Lodestar-Lightbright Cityspeaker-Titan gestalt speak to what amounts to weapon retrofit dysphoria. IIRC Lodestar was equipped with a bunch of weapon systems to fight Vigilem who sided with the reactionary imperialist coup by the Decepticons.

To talk about the most prominent back-stack user again - Arcee in IDW1 took on five different shapes first reformat onwards of two stacks instead of the singular one she had in her forged form - and she well - wasn’t concerned with infiltrating on Earth for most of those. We have nothing to go on as to whether her IDW2 variation in shape is merely artistic or signifies bodily change - but it is noticeable in #38 onwards that she has gotten chonkier and her alt-form went from a convertible to an armored buggy sort of car.

I dunno when canon will address this and outright say there is a link between gender actuation and alt-mode. Be brave enough to show e.g. Smokescreen and Aileron connecting over having a ‘monoboob’ (they’d probably say rounded chest or something) shape but are different genders and not trans OR actuated/accepted that for their transness. But I do know we can talk about it and write it ourselves. Among the many comparable but not the same as woman specific named aesthetics I want to touch on in my own writing, there is one I introduced which is zoomdare - I’m saving the explanation for a full post on it, but suffice to say that the experiential component of this sparktion or hearth (what Cybertronians and Camiens call their aesthetic system respectively) is concerned with the euphoria of focus/movement - part of why ‘zoom’ is part of the word, as Greenlight puts it in her own internal thoughts in Chapter 1 of Day of Multiflame regarding herself and the three zoomdares she is in a relationship with Arcee’s back stacks wiggled, and watching her love express itself through her mighty wheel and light bearing shapes reminded me of the graceful rush the four of us narrated our lives through, exhibited, shared, and loved.

So yeah, part of why back stacks are very cool to me so I will just say I think it is based that Combiner Wars Brawl’s back stacks form his tank turret because that is a totally different take on the stacks (I even kitbashed one into Greenlight!). If we step away from the To Sell Toys motivation (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/To_sell_toys) to just - think about the robots on aesthetic journeys of accepting and realizing themselves, I think we are left with one of my favorite Optimus Prime quotes (from Cyberverse Battle for Cybertron Part I and Part IV) "Everything in the universe transforms.” And yeah, trans or gender expansive or not, everything and everyone does.