Latest Posts by axolartandfics - Page 2

So that’s why he’s such an underused character in G1 :0 It always made me sad that he appears so rarely and disappears for episodes and episodes at a time. “Only use when necessary” oof.

Anyways glad to see a straightforward explanation of this, I knew there was legal issues but I didn’t know exactly how it changed or why he went from Jetfire to Skyfire to Jetfire again. The toy lines always be messing with the show. Reminds me of Rumble and Frenzy’s mixed up colors thanks to confusion between the show and the toys lol

I’ve always been confused over the whole jetfire/sky fire name situation, and you seem like the kind of person who would know what’s going on with that. Love your art btw

Thank you ! And yes ! Let me explain the Skyfire Jetfire name situation !

So Jetfire’s original toy came from the Macross Super Valkyrie and he looked like this.

Hasbro licensed Jetfire (the toy) to be used in the Transformers line but did not license him to be used in media (the show). When Jetfire appeared in a commercial fighting Shockwave, Macross sued Hasbro over the use of Jetfire, as they had not licensed him to be used as a character in the show and continued to sue them over Jetfire which is why they had to redesign Jetfire and change his name to Skyfire in the Generation 1 Cartoon.

Hasbro avoided using Jetfire/Skyfire in the show too much so that Macross wouldn’t sue them, it’s even stated in the original pitch bible

Things were eventually sorted out legal wise and now Hasbro can use Jetfire’s name without being sued which is why his name is Jetfire and no longer Skyfire

When he’s got his armor on I think it’s a homage to his original Valkyrie design which i find very charming !

BUT YEAH— THATS BASICALLY THE GIST OF IT !

Originally named Jetfire -> name changed to Skyfire in the G1 Cartoon to avoid getting sued by Macross -> Legal issues sorted -> name changed back to Jetfire

His names are kind of used interchangeably now ! But it just depends on whoever you ask !

I recommend watching The Many Toys of Jetfire if you wanna learn some more about it, Ronbondujon goes over it better than I do and also goes over all of Jetfire’s toys !

THIS IS AMAZING LOL SO IN CHARACTER

Currently working on a band AU and this pretty much sums up Starscream lol

I drew the mosquito and the fish again because I love them

Messing with designs for Skywarp and Thundercracker in To Earth and Back Again, and this draft is “Skywarp is Starscream but stretched, and Thundercracker is Starscream but squished”

Does Breakdown live in your au?

No, since a lot of the story is going to revolve around Knockout coming to terms with Breakdown’s death, he doesn’t come back to life and he stays dead. At least that’s how I’ve currently planned it.

That being said, given that I’m writing a backstory for Knockout, I’m writing lots of flashback Breakdown stuff. I’m super excited to explore their past muahaha

Thanks for the ask! :D

The brain parasites strike again

they protecc

I'm loving that Skybound Thundercracker just wanted some progress and in comes Shockwave with the most comically diabolical dogma imaginable

Meanwhile Soundwave is going hard with the delusions

Here’s a scene I wanted to draw from To Earth and Back Again

(For context Ratchet’s upset because if they abandon Earth they abandon all humankind and Starscream’s upset because he is VERY opposed to working with the Quintessons for personal reasons)

Knockout kinda misread the room on that one

"She's hot enough to replace you whenever i choose!" - Megatron in the G1 "Enter the Nightbird" Ep

It would've been soo fun if Nightbird was part of the main deception cast in G1. Like, if they actually made her fully sentient y'know?

Like she would've just been vibin' the whole show. And the one sided beef starscream would have with her omg.

i think it would be funny if she actually liked starscream, like she would assume she was his friend because she like, rarely interacts casually with anyone else. (I know they're canon dynamic would've just been her ignoring him so she could work, but this is funnier to me)

he's seething whenever she gets close to him. "she's probably thinking about ways to usurp me as second in command!!" and she's just like "hanging out with the bestie :3"

I would like to sincerely thank this meme for being the funniest thing I have ever seen and making me laugh for a solid minute to the confusion of everyone else in the room

normal, traditional family i fight for

PFTHAHAH

"Why does Megatron have a lazy eye?"

MORE KOBD MERMAIDS AAAAAAAHHH

POV: You encounter KOBD merformers in the sea.

BD: Ugh! Human!

KO: Hello, little one. Do you wanna play with us?

I drew them againnn!!! 🧜‍♂️🪸🫧

KOBD MERMAIDS AAAAAAAAAH

One day, I tried turning KOBD into merformers! 🪸🫧

Knock Out gathers shiny treasures and keeps them as a collection in his secret cave just like Ariel, and Breakdown enjoys sinking a fishing boat every day! haha

They're living happily, singing a song in the sea 🐬🩷🩵

Reactions to getting in trouble with Ratchet (he is not paid enough for this)

Art for my wip TFP fic To Earth and Back Again

I animated Megatron and Starscream from my transformers fan continuity to How the World Works by Bo Burnham

Content warning for Starscream getting beat up

Sorry to contribute to more Starscream suffering in the world, I promise if I ever draw the full au that he’ll get a happy ending

Tumblr

Transformers: Sparksong [intro/master post]

This is the introduction post for my transformers fanverse, which I’ll be posting on this blog, bit by bit! Above is the first cover I’ve dr

Today (April 6th) is Asexuality Day so to celebrate myself and other people on the asexual spectrum I drew Barbie from the Barbie movie! She’s such an icon :D

Happy ace day!

Why must Hasbro always do my boy dirty...

Knockout is sending mixed messages

Guess who’s writing a new fic >:)

It’s called “To Earth and Back Again” and follows Knockout because he is *such* a fascinating character to write through the perspective of. The story’s a huge wip at the moment. While I’m writing it I’ll be posting art for it in the meantime.

I totally started this project on a whim but it’s grown so much as I’ve planned it and I am having so much fun writing all the angst, horror, and drama that it entails. So much Knockout and Starscream content because I love them. Writing is so fun. Anyway have this cover art to look at with your eyes

soundwave superior ai artists inferior

Sibling Dance - Lost Light Animatic

I was not thinking as I made this. I was certainly laughing though

KOBD is just M/M Aphrodite and Ares

GUESS WHO FINALLY FINISHED THAT SHORT STORY AHHHHHHHH

“Trials of Optimus Prime” was so fun to write and all the comments have really been awesome to read.

textless:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63399862/chapters/162437011

WE ARE FEELING SO YES

THIS IS AMAZING

THIS IS MY FAVORITE

HOW ARE WE FEELING ABOUT SEEKERS IN CARDIGANS.. ON CHILLI SPRING DAYS…. GETTING MATCHA.. FROM A CUTE BARISTA… IN AUTOBUCKS

I don't like ES season 2 and 3 but I can't stop thinking about this episode 😔

worship

Still very funny to me that Decepticon alt modes can just be like... Guns and Cassette players lol

Transformers and Female Body Types (Rant/Essay)

(I wanted more images in this, but tumblr has a limit and it was a lot of pictures anyway)

Anyone who complains about female transformers having “robot boobs” needs to shut up. Unless it’s a case of critiquing a design that’s genuinely caricatured, this complaint only serves to protest against robots looking too feminine, as if all robots by default should have broad, masculine shoulders and flat chests instead. The problem is that people look at a masculine transformer and say, “Ah yes, an anthropomorphised robot.” But the moment it’s one of the female transformers, it’s “why do robots need boobs?” as if a male-looking body type is anthropomorphizing, but a female-looking body time is suddenly “too human” or “too much.” As if all humanoid robot aliens should look male by default.

That being said, for a long time transformers did have a glaring issue of their female transformers having a generic, Barbie-doll like body type. This especially became problematic as male characters appeared with several different and varying heights and builds, while female characters all looked the same.

This eventually improved with newer media. I’m going to go through different transformers series, giving my opinions on various female Cybertronians designs.

Transformers Animated and Transformers Prime are the cases where we see the very few female characters that there are being designed with this more Barbie doll look, especially in comparison to the male cast, who each have strikingly different silhouettes. I maintain that there’s nothing wrong with having this stereotypically feminine figure as long as it’s not caricatured or designed to sxualize the character (in TFA’s case, Black Airachnid was extremely sexualized, but Arcee wasn’t at least) it’s just the lack of variety that makes it painful. If all female characters were designed with a stocky, square body type, it would be just as bad; the problem is the lack of diversity in representing how each woman is different.

I think Arcee from Transformers Prime gets some of the most comments about how she has breasts and hips and is most often faced with the question “why should robots have boobs?” In response to this question, I propose: why shouldn’t they? The shape of their chassis really doesn’t matter in the end. I like Arcee’s design and acting like she’s inherently caricatured for looking like a woman is just a way of alienating femininity.

TFP Arcee is also unfortunately sexualized a lot by the fandom. Primus forbid a woman exist in peace.

The problem with these ‘Barbie doll’ designs isn’t that they are oversexualized— while this may have been a problem with Black Airachnia, the true problem, as seen especially with the treatment of TFP Arcee, is the concept that any female body traits are inherently sexual, which both creators and fandom spaces feed into.

It’s not as prominent, but I’ve also seen a trend of attempting to give female transformers more diverse body types by giving them… male body types.

In Transformers Cyberverse, the Seekers all have the same body type, whether they are male, female, or genderfluid, the only differences being that the female models have lips and the male ones have facial-hair like chin stubs (and Acid Storm switches back and forth). However I would hardly call this progress, because the body type is more male-leaning, not truly gender neutral.

Often to make something appear gender neutral, people will just remove anything too obviously feminine. This treats masculine traits as the “default” and female traits as a deviance from this. A truly gender-neutral design would incorporate both masculine and feminine traits at the same time.

(What if we just made all the Seekers look like women and gave the dudes chins. What if we did that. Huh.)

Shadowstriker from Cyberverse is a better example of this, having a female body type but a chin stub and generally gender neutral face.

I like the look of Alpha Strike as well, she feels actually gender neutral and isn’t too exaggerated like most muscular (and especially muscular female) characters are.

For example, Clobber’s design is good, but I do think her lips were strangely exaggerated.

Once the IDW run of the Transformers comics actually introduced female characters, they eventually gained a large cast with a variety of different body types. Take Windblade, Nautica, Pyra Magna, the Mistress of Flame, and Aileron.

These aren’t all examples, but IDW certainly had a unique design for each of their female characters, with different heights, width, mixing and matching the proportions of their bodies and displaying diverse body types. Aileron is also a stand-out character design for me, as one of the few heavy-set transformers to be designed in a way that looks more rounded than bulky, implying weight over muscle. We need more weighted transformers in general.

I have many positive feelings about Transformers Earthspark’s choice of character design for their female characters.

Earthspark has the most consistently diverse character design for its female characters.

And it shows that the key to designing actually good female Cybertronians isn’t necessarily to make them not feminine, but to show diverse depictions of femininity. All of the female characters in this show are pretty feminine, but they all look different. Twitch is small and slight, Hashtag is tall and boxy. Each one has different proportions and are easy to tell apart by body type alone. Even better, they each have drastically different facial structures. Twitch has large eyes, Hashtag has a strong chin, Elita-1 has a straight nose and pronounced lips, Arcee has small eyes and a very slight nose, et cetera. Earthspark is definitely a win in this department.

My point with all of this is to say that femininity isn’t a one-size fits all. Every woman is different and everyone should get to express their gender in whatever way they see fit. Transformers gradually diversifying the look of their female characters represents this, and I hope they continue improving as the franchise continues.

LITERALLY THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYINGGG

I see one more short character being treated like a baby by the fandom I may not survive

they probably are older than the main characters! Bumblebee was in Sublevel 50 for who knows how long and Tailgate was underground for like six million years

Justice for Bumblebee and Tailgate Fr

>_>