Long post ↓

tailgate doesn't rlly uhhhh look before he speaks

A scandelous rumer is about on the Lost Light!

Strawpage request: "MegaStar or MegaOP" ---

so like for idw1, arcee, lug, and anode, theyre all trans women, but in this understanding, it would be like, theres the...lets pick an arbitrary number rn and say like. five. the five basic cybertronian genders right. so arcee appears comfortable with her land vehicle gender. but she was Not comfortable with the secondary classification, oooh actually it would be really interesting if for their cybertronian glyphs, lets say that theres like the unisex pronoun (which gets filtered through their translator as 'he' instead of 'they' to english-speaking humans for some reason, probably because its singular and the translator isnt amazing) but then theres the subglyph spoken beneath it at the same time that is associated with their alt mode. so with arcee, were it translated literally, someone referring to her pre-transition mightve ended up with a sentence like 'his [sport-land-vehicle] paint job is pink and white'. and her discomfort wouldve come with the unisex first pronoun, and not the secondary pronoun. the only reason the unisex first pronoun would come first/be spoken on top of the alt-mode pronoun in the vocabulary i think is for when they dont know the alt mode of a character, which has interesting implications for rung in this hc.

then for a character like starscream, who struggles with body dysmorphia in idw1 but doesnt seem to have gender qualms despite the storyline having the trans allegory, it would be because in-universe, his gender struggles are associated with his alt mode and not the unisex assigned pronoun! going by how sick with despair he gets at not being the huge shuttle-like flying vehicle that his 'true form' seemed to be (though im not sure if it was only huge because of the mindspace 🤔) then id definitely guess there would also be some sort of distinction from size. theres the argument that he isnt experiencing any gender dysphoria and its singularly body dysmorphia, which is probably whats Canonically happening in-universe, but i find the trans allegory interesting and i like this cybertronian gender hc too much to not weave it in. so starscream would be the opposite of arcee and lug and anode in this situation.

for the different frame structures, like the ones that look more humanly 'masculine' or humanly 'feminine' or the ones that dont really reflect human body types at all, i think that would depend on continuity, but generally id like to see it as just a random difference that isnt really associated with which bots would prefer to diverge from the unisex pronoun. both ways, too. since the unisex pronoun would really be more like how english speakers use 'they', it is kinda funny to imagine a transformer who is very specifically a trans man and to his human friends is like 'ive decided that i align more with the male gender, like you humans have!!' and theyre like 'well wed offer to use different pronouns for you, but you already use he...?' and thats how they find out that the translators kinda suck 💀