Lugnut and Clobber being a Brother Sister duo would slap

Correction: It was Cartoon Network and the main showrunners who thought Override should be a girl. Hasbro nor Takara had the thought of flipping Nitro Convoy's gender.

I feel like gender swapping on transformers isn't as much of a problem as it is with other franchises, because other than the fact that most female transformers have more or of a curvy body, they are still robots, they don't really need a body type to be an specific gender, and there is so many characters that don't have a lot of personality and that you can easily just grab and say they are a woman and give them more of an important role.

In addition to girl/swoop, I seriously need a toy version of Cyberverse Volcanicus that's a proper combiner toy and uses that formation, ie. Sludge becomes both arms and swoop becomes the wings. I just really like that design and think it makes more sense than forcing Swoop to be the skinny arm or an oversized flyer.

Since the Rescue Bots Whirl had a picture in her locker of her and the normal Whirl; i've made the headcanon that her name is actually Whirlybird but she shortens it to match ol' One-Eye McPinchy cos she idolizes him. Alternately he's some form of family member, like a father, uncle or older brother.

I think the best words for problematic flipping of characters is to call it what it is; "hand-me-downs". It's like going "hey girl, the man did all the work for you setting up a beloved IP because we didn't think you could do it yourself"

Ngl I love the whole “gender-fluid acid-storm only existing cus of animation errors” thing, purely because an animation error or one-off moment being turned into a defining character trait is just exactly the reason why so much of modern transformers is how it is

I definitely agree. I really don’t mind it when it’s done right, i.e. Whirl & Swoop; but making a new character to build their own legacy like Strongarm, can be a good thing too. I especially liked how you brought up Jane Thor as an example of the double-edged sword in the topic. Your honesty really doing a good job with these types of videos.👍

I feel like Rescue Bots Whirl, while the naming does make sense, could've been given her own unique name, like Twirl. It sounds alot cuter while still feeling like it fits the character thanks to her alt-mode.

I think RB whirl is meant to be either a relative or just a big fan of the old whirl. guess in the future they could be exist and she'd be like "whirlie" or something. Could even have an arc around hero worship for someone who might not deserve it.

Whirl's holomatter avatar is female, so assigning the gender to the character doesn't have to preclude all the trauma they went through. Look at the Jhiaxus/Arcee IDW stories for another traumatized female. I like the idea that Whirl, as part of moving away from madness, might find a female warrior identity. And yes, let's glowup some of those rescue bots. I'd say let have Strongarm (Cyberverse), Perceptor, Safeguard (Jetfire/Jetstorm from Animated), and Bulkhead (animated/prime) could be the mentors to a group of newly graduated autobots. Naturally there'd be cameos and teamups with established characters. I could see the dinobots having different strengths in robot mode and then all revert a to the dulled down intelligence in alt mode. Strength - Slug Dexterity - Slash (female) Constitution - Sludge Intelligence - Swoop (female) Wisdom - Skar Charisma - Grimlock (based on Cyberverse) Luck - Snarl

I earnestly want to see something similar happen to Wheeljack, where instead of being a crackpot genius inventor, we have either a scatterbrained techno-witch, or essentially Ms. Frizzle if she WAS the Magic School Bus. Also my favorite thing about Rescue Bots Whirl is that she made a drawing for her locker that implies that a version of the "Watchmaker who is wound too tightly" MtMtE Whirl not only present in the universe, but has a direct relation to her. This is one of the few character concepts that is both the psychotic outgoing adventurer and the adorable little niece at the same time. As for the final issue raised at the end, in my mind a major line in the sand that needs to be drawn is the difference between "assigning the mantle of a character to a minority to add representation" and "further elaborating on a character's minority status in a way that was not given room to breathe." Like, as much as I hate Activision Blizzard, Tracer is the face of Overwatch and is out-and-out sapphic with no hint to the contrary anywhere before this revelation, and Soldier 76 talks about a guy that was his old flame in the same way. People harped on about it being retconned into them not because there was any retconning, but because they inherently assumed otherwise because that is what they've come to expect. There was earnestly no actual discussion on their sexualities before because, well, these happened in story-centric comics rather than a multiplayer-focused video game that wasn't built with story modes in mind. The characters had room to breathe there, and thus we got to learn more about them. And like, I feel a similar thing is actually applicable to Transformers in the sense that it's a firmly-established multiversal IP. Every major incarnation is literally a completely separate world separate from ours. A lot of new iterations aren't rewriting old concepts so much as they they are adding on new ones while mixing in the older ones. So it's not so much "Skywarp is a woman now", as it is "there's now a Skywarp that is a woman."

My main issue with the genderflipping in Cyberverse was mainly that the writers really didn't do much with the genderbent characters. The seekers were just background characters, and while Clobber appeared in the show and was involved in some prominent episodes, I barely remember her. She didn't have many standout moments beyond her turning Autobot

Maybe one day there will be a female Ratchet in the future like it was intended to from back in G1.

I actually would Adore a Proper Figure for RBs Whirl! The fact its implied she is related to, if not the Daughter of OG Whirl is all the Sweeter! Heck with its Esthetic Earth Spark might even be the perfect opportunity to do it too! I mean look at one of our main earth bots , a smaller slim bot that turns into a Helicopter like hovercraft, that practically Screams Whirl with some repainting and remolding!

with jane foster, i think it would’ve been interesting had she still been worthy to wield the hammer and kept the same costume, but used another name like thunderstrike. because thor’s name is his actual given name and not a code name, it feels weird having someone else use it regardless of their gender, like when eric masterson became thor before taking on the codename thunderstrike and thus becoming his own character

Correction: Rescue Bots Whirl is a separate character from IDW Whirl. She has a drawing in her locker with the two of them. Hasbro recycled the name, not the character. I get what you're saying about gender-flipping characters. But I think given how hard it is for female and minority characters to become well-known, I can understand the logic behind it. For every success is a dozen failures so I won't blame a bit of deck-stacking. One day I hope it won't be needed but until then I'm OK with it. One thing I'm surprised you didn't mention was how in IDW Transformers had holo-avatars and some like Bluestreak and Cyclonus were female. Call it gender-flipping or cross-dressing but it's something worth mentioning IMHO.

I agree with you on that. Gender-swapping and race-swapping characters is borrowing the clout of the original and not earning it. It also shows laziness on the creators part to not want to do the work to get the new character "over," as we say in the wrestling vernacular. And yes, lots of preexisting characters that could be used more.

It bugs me that to my knowledge no fiction has ever tackled the idea of a female version of Ratchet. You'd think one of the comics at least would have by now.

I think it work well with Transformers because each show is it own continuity.

I have a few friends in the comic book industry and they really wish it was as easy as "just make new characters". Static was (unfortunately) a fair bit of dumb luck. He debuted as part of the Milestone line and though he caught on, there aren't a lot of people clamoring for new material with Xombi, Brickhouse, or Iron Butterfly. Comic fans in particular tend to be resistant to new characters. Its one of the reasons the ones that do catch on tend to be associated with someone like Batman rather then being totally stand-alone. Transformers fans tend to be a bit more accepting of new characters, but its still not easy.

I would mind Windblade's massively reduced role in season three of Cyberverse way more if it weren't for other characters really filling the role that she had in seasons one and two. During both major arcs a different female character took up the role of being the leads closest ally. Clobber for Hot Rod in the Quintesson arc and Chromia during the search for Windblade.

While I don't mind gender swapping with minor characters, they really should keep the main characters the gender they always were unless they do something really interesting with them like Swoop. Besides that, there are still a plethora of underused female Transformers waiting for their time in the spotlight: RiD2015 Strongarm, Roulette, Road Rage, Victory Lizack, Victory Clipper, Cybertron Thunderblast/Galaxy Force Chromia, most of Elita-One's rebels in G1, etc.

It seems that original female characters like Elita-1, Arcee, Black Arachnia, Strongarm, and Windblade resonate more. Air Razor was really not ever male as I saw the character first on the show. Air Razor has always been a she.

I agree with you about having Prowl and Strongarm have a mentor/student relationship. If that did happen there could even be a story and about Prowl going after Barricade and leaving Strongarm out of it to protect her.

What a refreshing take on this topic

👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 well done TJ

Couple things. First, I wasnt expecting you to say what you did in the 15 min mark, thank you for that. A lot of people have taken issue with gender/race/sexuality swaps as a shortcut to prominence for those groups (even members of those groups) and have been called bigots for speaking out. The truth is, its as you said, its done to borrow clout without putting the work in, and then used as a shield for when the writing isnt up to snuff. I fear the troupe of gender/race/sexuality swapping has also had a negative impact on those groups. Putting the work into building up new characters is a wiser course. When done well, people will be more accepting. Secondly, isnt Rescue Bots Whirl supposed to be the daughter of G1/IDW Whirl? Does that still count? Lastly, the Prime Universe Arcee mold was kinda botched to the point where Road Rocket is still male on my shelves. That cod piece is too small and combined with the black thighs, gives the figure a more masculine appearance

Quite fascinating and informative. :)

I would LOVE to see some Rescue Bots characters get represented in the mainstream toylines, in general I there are quite a few characters whose only toy representation is a gimmick toy like a 1-step changer, Shadow Striker is a good example too, she is just BEGGING for a more modern toy, it would even be relatively easy to remold her from a Prime Vehicon. Does it count as genderflipping if they used a male toy to make a female character, or vice-versa? Like how the original Minerva was just a Nightbeat repaint, or when they made a Strika out of Warpath?

Very enjoyable video

I really wish we got Red Alert as a toy for TFA, love her design. Botcon comic also had Hotspot (I believe) as a recolor of her mold wick would also be cool.

Years later they still can’t get their naming and characters together lmao

Ain't gonna lie, you had me at static shock.

Funny thing about RBA Whirl, there is a background easteregg of a drawing of RBA Whirl meeting G1 Whirl. Also I want Generations RBA Whirl and Medix as well as the original RB team with Salvage would be cool to get figures of in Generations. Also Lugnut and Clobber I want to be a duo, also its likely Lugnut wasn't allowed a flip the gender script because of the factor of his prominence unlike G1 Skywarp, yes a recongnizable name but Skywarp has very few stories where they take prominence, mostly in comics, like IDW 1.0 making Skywarp a lot more tragic and moving him to GI Joe or Cloud making Hellwarp, also the idea of the characterization aspect for Lugnut is also interesting. Femme Swoop is a need, Swoop being the most well put together Dinobot makes sense IMO, like if Skar is there, I can see Skar just be the most normal bot unlike the others just because Skar being just a guy with a dino mode is funny, although Paddles being the Manatee version of a Dinobot is interesting Also as Road Rocket is like a no one outside of being the ninja autobot, I am fine with her being a girl even if it wasn't a toy mold thing. And the critique of gender flipping, I feel can be heard but with transformers, its mostly nobodies who get flipped, or characters who have very few prominent roles and do have their cult following in the fandom but mostly for designs like in the case of Skywarp,I feel most of the cases we have, its fine. On the otherhand Earthspark is doing amazingly with Twitch and has promise with some of the characters hidden from the trailers

18:18 Oh I would ABSOLUTELY watch a show where world-weary, jaded detective Prowl takes Rookie Strongarm under his (door)wing. It could be pre, during, or post war depending on what they wanted to focus on. That sounds like so much fun!

There’s something I’ve always kinda liked about the idea of a female Red Alert;if it were to be a gender swapped version of g1 Red Alert I like to think about what kind of slight changes you to the character that could be made,because I like to imagine that they would be like Hawkeye from Fullmetal Alchemist with a dash of Olivier Armstrong.

Goku: I always keep the dinobots as their g1 cartoon depiction by making them as loud as a oozaru

Windblade did have a new deluxe figure in Cyberverse and it was recently released in new packaging too under the Cyberverse Dinobots packaging.

The Whirl on the thumbtag and rescue bot is Whirl The Wreckers daughter so that be whirl 2 she even looking at a pic of her and him in it.

I have no problems with genderswaps in this franchise. Come on, guys. If there can be a female Optimus Prime somewhere in the multiverse, then lady Skywarp should be small potatoes by comparison.

Hearing an actual coherent discussion about this makes up for all the "autobot or deception" jokes I get telling people I'm trans-

jazz was gonna appear in cyberverse as a female but got cut, jazz was mentioned in wild wild whel and was a male in the cyberverse toyline clobber was called lugnut in the french dub

Let's not forget the fan made Victorion. Six fembots that merge into a super fembot. Sadly, the only character that really got any limelight was Pyra Magna. And was always written as a so-so character, a wannabe prime who never really challenged Optimus for leadership and just griped about how she could do a better job. Kind of a Starscream lite.

Cosmos made a cameo in Rescue Bots, only in vehicle mode, but still

8:28 Rescue bots has Jules Verne in it along with a few instances of time travel

I know this is a year and a half later, but Swoop was not the first Dinobot that change from male to female. Slash was a male in AOE and then change to female in POTP.

Lugnut and Clobber could not be more different in personality. Same with Whirl and RB!Whirl. Lugnut follows Megatron with all the devotion and level headedness of a zealous cultist. Clobber’s the nicest Con you’ll meet and was only part of the decepticons because she felt she had to and that doesn’t last forever. Whirl is an out of control wingnut with little respect for authority and a violent streak a mile wide. RB Whirl’s a complete genki girl who dreams of being an officer.

I don’t know how to feel having my favorite deception swapping genders. Skywarp

I say we need a cute female whirl that is also a complete psycho.

Watch Hasbro sexualize a deluxe Rescue Bots female Whirl and a generation of fans is scard for life 😅

The only reason I’m starting to understand why she hulk is a thing in the MCU, is because apparently she was a thing in the original comics.

We shouldn't be gender swapping existing characters in anything. Just pull a spider man and just make girl transformers that are close to the existing characters like giving skywarp a sister that he never really told starscream and thundercracker about or have sunstreaker fall in love with just a fembot that is similar to him.

Idw dumped a whole bunch of new girlbots on us. Would like to see more of them popping up in toys and new media. Nautica, Velocity, Rum-Maj, Anode, Strafe, Bayonet, And especially Stardrive

15:56 been saying the same thing, especially about comics. The defense i always hear is that there arent any POC/Emale heroes or if ther are the media is so set you cant just make a obscure character popular. Then i point ot Tony Stark. Iron man was at best, best B list. No one thought he could headline a movie, let alone a cinimatic universe, until RDJ knocked it out of the park. Miss Marvel Kama Kan was a stand out, Miles Moreles, Carol Danvers...you can totally take lower tier characters and make them popular, if you want to put in the work. Want a POC hero? Instead of making The Falcon Cap and taking away 2 heroes (Cap and Falcon) why not promote Night Thrasher or Deathlok? etc

Edit: I typed this all out before watching the video so just enjoy the engagement I guess lmao The gender swapping is always something that bothered me. At least with the bigger characters. Not because I don't like female transformers, I just think it's a lazy way to do it. I would much prefer new characters that happen to be female as opposed to gender swapped characters that are always in the shadows of their male counterpart. I know this is Hasbros way of adding much needed diversity while still using names they feel they can sell toys with, but I much prefer Shadow Striker over Skywarp and Swoop. Even if I like the personality of the female Swoop more than the male, it would have been nice to have a new character build their own legacy. Instead it just seems like Hasbro thinks women need to stand on the shoulders of men to be successful.

In comics, "Just Create a cool character and make them popular" 9 times out of ten is gonna result in the character not taking off because the reality is that it's nigh impossible to make any new concept get over in the comics space, regardless of there gender or ethnicity. They make new characters all the time, how many have you heard about? Static wasn't created as a one off, He was just one character in an entire universe. How many of them got their own show? As for Harley Quinn, I don't really think it's fair to count her as a "New character" like Static. She started off as a sidekick to one of the most famous villains in comics. That's just as much of a boost as taking on an existing character's moniker.

I would love Cyberverse Skywarp done in the Legacy line.

If I ever get to make my own Transformers series, I'm gonna try to balance stuff and make at least one member of all combiner teams female and if there's a mould that is used for different characters like the Seekers, some will be female. That and I think that the main issue with Windblade is that she was in multiple series as the exact same character, both personality AND design-wise, she looked the same while the others around her got properly adapted to each continuity

Where is the best place to get great Transformers t shirts? From one Transformers fan to another.

I’m still waiting for potentially a female Optimus prime and a TV show version of female Megatron.

Every transformer should get a turn of being a girl, as a treat

TransFormers is one of those lines where a strong female character will actually appeal to kids. If Windblade had appeared in G1, I would have wanted the toy. Seekers are easy to gender-flip because Starscream is the only one who's had a developed character. The rest were all just kind of army builders.

I just had this come across my mind but what if they expanded the seekers with female b2 stealth bomber twin sisters that focus on stealth, recon and sabotage for the seeker division of the decepticons. Or what if they made the dinobots an 8 member team but made strafe and slash female since they are minor/ recent additions that haven't had much screen time to develop fully and can still be used in any way possible.

The thing about comic book characters is . . . the heyday of comic books (as in actual comic books, not Marvel movies) is over. It's incredibly hard to get a brand new superhero off the ground. So it makes more sense to use an old character's name and costume with a new character in order to diversify the cast. Personally I don't have an issue with it. Blue Beetle (Ted Kord), the Flash (Barry Allen), and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) were all replacements for older heroes. If a white guy can replace a white guy, why can't a black guy, an Asian woman, etc, also replace a white guy? With Transformers it matters even less because each show is a new continuity and there are always major changes. TFP Wheeljack was a badass ninja, not a goofy inventor. Armada Starscream was heroic and conflicted, not devious and ambitious. TFA Ratchet was a grumpy old man, which had never been part of his character before. Compared to those changes, a genderflip is pretty minor.

fun fact its hinted that rba whirl is related to classic whirl

For me personally, I saw a Transformers prime as my version of generation one. Even though, I did go back and watch all four seasons of G1 itself.

I can’t help but find it kinda funny cause when Legacy Arcee I was revealed I had a complain that it didn’t look female enough for the character and somebody told it was cause the mold was just a pretool for Road Rocket and yet RR came out as and looked more female than Arcee did to me.

Borrowing from popular characters to put the clout up for minorities/women does a disservice ot everyone. That's why Sari, Windblade, Override, and others work so well. They came into their own, did cool things and became popular on their own.

Transformers is a franchise where gender swapping doesn’t matter to me. Since the cybertronians as a species don’t really have gender.

I think someone like Red Alert or Gears could be gender swapped and not too many people would care like Acid Storm I think people will always get mad if it’s a big character

I think Starscream was female in the French version of the 86 movie despite being male in the show

Whirl (female) has a picture of male whirl in her locker. So I assume they just share a name. Like how BW Megatron & G1 Megatron are a thing.

Funny enough there are 2 whirls in rescuebot academy the adorable one and the original one show in a drawing in the adorable ones locker

Hey tj what characters would you like to see in earthspark?

Sometimes it's cool. Sometimes it's cringe. Really depends on the reason and execution.

see, a friend of mine loved the Jane Foster Thor run, but that story hit close to home for him, and it's a well told story, I don't mind the gender flip if the story is good, hell in Transformers, each show is its own continuity/universe for the most part, so some characters happen to be female in certain universes

i like it bc its in like with the fact that they are constantly changing and transforming :D

Lady Thor is an iffy example. They didn't take Thor and say "He's female now", it's an entirely different person being granted his powers. EDIT: Ah, you had a different point to make when bringing her up...

with lugnut and clobber i kind of wonder if they didnt want to gender swap or heavily mess with any of the characters that Derrick J Wyatt wrote

I would like to see the idea of clobber and lugnut being twins being used Clashing every now and then as they are on different sides Would lugnut try to kill his sister, would this provide a conflictof interest? I don't expect either to try and recruit the other to their side, but that could be an interesting side story

To be fair, no female transformer, no matter how big her bust is, will ever be able to compete with some of the racks that the guys are rocking. Jazz, Shockwave, Armada Red Alert, and OP himself are all stacked. Just to name A few.

A gender swap you forgot was Roadrage

Isn’t slipstream a female but in rid, he was a male mini on working for drift, anyone remember?

I honestly think it would be cool to see at least the original 4 rescue bots in legacy and maybe expand from that but that might just be me

I'm reminded of a quote by Stan Lee when he was asked about the idea of Peter Parker having a male love interest. "I think the world has a place for gay superheroes, certainly, But again, I don’t see any reason to change the sexual proclivities of a character once they’ve already been established. I have no problem with creating new, homosexual superheroes. It has nothing to do with being anti-gay, or anti-black, or anti-Latino, or anything like that, Latino characters should stay Latino. The Black Panther should certainly not be Swiss. I just see no reason to change that which has already been established when it’s so easy to add new characters. I say create new characters the way you want to. Hell, I’ll do it myself." I won't say there's no room for gender-swapping. I like Override, I like girl-Swoop, hell, I'd like to see female Ratchet come back. But I definitely agree with TJ, and see merit to Stan Lee's philosophy. Don't feel like you need to borrow clout from male characters to legitimize your female characters.

I'm from the side "they are robot, the oes that doesn't transform in simil-fles&bone doesn't even have the pieces to justify being male or female". and that's why SS-arcee is a good mold IMO. it's not a "femminine female", it's a "bot that happens to be a girl in a battlezone". autodetermination and everything is good, they are individual, they define themselves, but I see no reason to have them foced to use standard bio-based separation lugnut never really was a thing before animated, and as one of the fan favourite having so him being changed so radically it probably felt too much of a departure for the higher up, so they went with a twin sister. it makes sense in a long-term plan

personally For my Au I've turned a couple of the lads into Gals just for fun, like soundwave, Rachet, Jazz, Swoop, bonecrusher, Dragstrip and the entirety of the breast Force (and yes because of boobs in the name)

Your argument is the same one Stan Lee gave when he was asked to make Peter Parker black. As I understand it, that's how we got Miles Morales.

I'm here for it, I'm bored of doing the same story over and over, something new with new version of the characters would be great. The only time I enjoyed reading Marvel in recent year was when they replaced their entire cast with new versions of the characters, it was refreshing.

I'm cool with diversity in TF but I would rather they push existing female characters more rather than swapping established characters or create new ones aswell slipstream in cyberverse was cool and shadow striker aswell also I just like having the 3 OG seekers look exactly the same besides color

First of all, great content as ever TJ. This is a subject particularly close to my heart. As a female Transformers fan, I truly hate characters I know and love being gender/sexuality flipped. I realise Hasbro need to keep trademarks alive but gender swapping existing characters feels very lazy and condescending. Here you go LGBT folks *pat on the head*, you can have Chromedome and Cyclonus... as opposed to a great new character like Knock Out (yeah I'm looking at you, IDW). Personally I do not feel represented seeing gender reassigned Skywarp, especially when they could easily have gone for Slipstream, a great new character in her own right. Female Swoop makes me wanna scream (great design though, why not make 'her' a new character?) yet Slash was a great addition to the team. The only new female character I disliked was Windblade but that was due to how over-important they made her (diminishing great legacy characters in the process) which in turn made her unlikeable (way to go there folks) so I'm with you 100% there, TJ. Hasbro, IDW or whoever... please stop giving us gender flipped second-hand characters and give us more in the vein of Strongarm, Blackarachnia, Crasher (now she's a canon Transformer) and Slipstream etc - who wouldn't kill for a Slipstream figure in Legacy? I can't be alone in that?

Personally I’m not the biggest fan of gender swaps for characters (mainly well known characters) that being said I unexpectedly really liked Female Swoop in Cyberverse.

I think it was neat when 3h/funpub made a bunch of nobodies without pronouns or had no bios at all into girls. It made some of those strange decos a little bit more interesting.

The thumbnail’s a bad example, as an in-universe drawing exists of both whirls side-by-side. So it’s not a genderswap as much as a shared name.

Windblade has become one of my favorite TF characters. I will never get sick of her. That said, let's see some other characters like Slipstream, Strongarm, or Flareup get some spotlight. Also, wasn't G1 Starscream female in the original French dub? Genderswaps and raceswaps can be good if done right, but it takes talent to pull it off and not just feel like laziness and "hand-me-downs." I'm don't mind the genderswaps often in Transformers because each new show is its own continuity. But putting in the work to make original female and characters of color is almost always preferable and works out better in the long run. Every character is someone's representation and taking someone's away to try and give it to someone else does both parties a disservice imho.

No need for caution characters update and change with every iteration. Fuck em if they have a problem.

If I made my own fan comics I would depict the dinobots well firstly their appearance would be similar to that of the live action with toned down g1 colors to make the colors not seem explosive vibrant for their design also I can't remember all of their names so those that I do remember I will call them by name otherwise it will be by alt mode grimlock would obviously be the leader he would be honorbound he will be one of many with the speech thing but if he met his animated counterpart he would say something along the line of "me grimlock primal but grimlock not that primal right?" He would have a sword The spino dinobot would be relentless and enjoys killing despite knowing that killing goes against his morals ha also has the speech thing he has two large maces that can turn into flails and combine into a heavy machine gun on his back swoop would be incredibly intelligent and wouldn't have the speech thing he/she idk what gender to go for would basically geek out over almost anything well not almost but yaknow what I mean a very energetic bot but swoop has issues with the other dinobots because of their methods while on the field swoop would use a slash based sword because on the tip is the end of the barrel for it's use as a sniper rifle the stego dinobot would be all about using her head both figuratively and literally she's got the speech thing going like most dinobots but she has it because of medical reasons like I said she likes using her head when in robot mode you can tell she's literally got some loose screws because of how she moves alone she moves like she's drunk on a good day but that's why she mostly sticks to her alt mode the Ankylosaurus dinobot would be rebellious former deception that swapped sides do to the decepticons no longer being a all for one and one for all rebellion and is now a group of terrorist on a good day he doesn't have the speech thing and he just doesn't care about how much pain his opponent feels as long as his opponent is an evil person/bot like he respects thundercracker for his morals and actively goes against orders to help thundercracker that's why he's not only a dinobot but he's also a wrecker then there's the brontosaurus he's just sluggish by definition he has the speech thing but he's also a pacifist but my lord when he joins the fight he can solo the djd that's how they are able to protect the previously mentioned ex con is because rather then shoot on sight the djd run on sight and then you've got paddles the nautical expert that acts more animalistic and her alt mode is actually an aquatic research station her robot mode is the dino and despite being animalistic she's actually pretty good at her job and when it comes to her research she loves bouncing ideas with swoop of course she can only do this in her research station mode on one of her screens then there's her best bud the megalodon the best way to describe him is jaws we've all seen the movie yaknow what I mean and then there's the titanoboa the dinobot that is kinda like starscream but he's better at it and he's a double agent doing it to both Megatron and Optimus prime then you have the titanosaur the dinobots dedicated omega supreme ok jokes aside he's a gentle giant with a temper but just like paddles his alt mode isn't the dino but unlike paddles his alt mode is a apocalypse class cruiser a giant space ship but he's also normally not big enough to transform into that it's a good thing he's a hive mind bot 7 bodies one alt mode he has 6 more alt modes but he can only use them if he's down enough bodies so not even he knows what they are he just knows that if he finds out that one of his modes is a robot he'll actually start genociding his own bodies until he gets it then there's slash a sarcastic and remorseful bot that's also the one that holds the dinobots together she's an ex deception assassin but she swapped sides because Megatron noticed that she was doing all that killing all that blood covered work beating herself up because of her morals the only reason she kept going is because she was afraid of tarn but this was before Megatron lost respect in and care for his men so he let her go while ordering tarn to never target her under any circumstance even if orders change

Funnily enough, Thor is one who makes sense in universe with the whole Mjolnir enchantment. I get your point thought. Kamala Khan Ms Marvel is a case of a legacy hero who has very much made the name her own as while she has the name and basic colours of one of Carol Danvers' former identity, her power set is completely different - especially in the comics - and she quickly grew beyond Danver's shadow. Back on TFs: I want Windblade back, she's my fave :( I hope she puts in an appearance in Earthspark at some point. Doesn't have to be a main character, just a guest star or something. Also I want Nautica in a cartoon. Also WRT female Seekers, they should create some new characters and give Slipstream a team! More generally though, I'm a fan of gender flipping 😁

Idk I kinda like the idea of the Seekers being females because it makes them kinda like a mean girls club which feels right for them