Well, it’s not all bad. What is initially a confusing and jarring mass of meaningless information to Megatron quickly becomes actual sensory information, and by the end of the month he spends kickin’ back in Spike’s brain they’ve figured out how to work together. I mean, it’s not like they have a choice otherwise.
Fortunately, Megatron mostly gets to sit back and kind of just…observe, but the experience is still a shaking one for him (and while he and Spike still absolutely hate each other afterwards they do understand each other a lot better).
Food? Food is horrible and humans are bad at digesting things. Megatron, of course, can also like…eat and digest stuff like rocks and mineral deposits but Spike’s need for food and tendency to eat, well, like a teenager? He isn’t a fan. He does enjoy the experience a bit more after a while because he is experiencing it through Spike’s body- and humans usually enjoy eating. His worst experience with food is either when he endures Spike eating cheese pizza despite being lactose intolerant (”IT’S WORTH IT” “WE ARE IN SO MUCH PAIN YOU FOOL”) or when he’s in control of Spike’s body and in a desperate bid for “fuel” as Spike is growing exhausted he drinks most of a pot of coffee.
(And subsequently burns down a MECH warehouse it’s fine don’t worry about it)
Spike’s dysphoria is a source of great discomfort and curiosity to him in turn, and part of their mutual….not really respect but their mutually assuring boundaries between each other is that when Megatron complains about being in Spike’s body? Spike complains right back. Megatron might not understand sex/gender fully by any means, but bodily dysphoria isn’t unheard of among Cybertronians, and if nothing else Megatron’s insistence that one’s body is absolutely meant to be shaped to the form that makes it’s holder most comfortable is very reassuring to Spike.
And Spike’s social life?
Megatron’s pretty sure they’re being attacked or having some manner of heart failure when they see another student Spike has a crush on and his heartrate s o a r s. THERe’S a lOt of ADREnalINE GOING ON WhaT IS HapPENING?!
Honestly? Most of them wouldn’t even register it. In TF: Matrix particularly, they literally don’t have sexual organs in any way we’re recognize them, and vice versa. Gender and sex are functionally meaningless to a transformer who hasn’t been living on earth among humans extensively for some time, and they wouldn’t recognize any physical features by function. Not to mention, humans are like…always wearing pants. You wouldn’t ask a truck if they have five connection ports or three, would you? That’s rude af! It’s tucked away under your armor for a reason!
Not to mention that if you were to point at a Cybertronian’s crotch and be like “Okay, but what have you got there?” in most cases it’d be their T-cog (most frametypes have the T-cog stored in the pelvic cradle, where it’s heavily armored and at the base of the spinal chain. They probably assume humans have similarly vital organs in their own skeletal pelvis that need to be protected.
That is, assuming these cybertronians know enough about humans to realize that they’re wearing pants as opposed to just have naturally denium-clad legs.
Most cybertronians default to they/them when talking to humans because gender just isn’t a thing for them. Alternately, they may ask what a human’s pronouns are or if they’re feeling confident- they’ll make a guess based off what they know of social signals. It’s not a perfect science, but they can pick it up fairly quick- even though they often make the initial mistake of assuming that gendered pronouns are linked to profession rather than anything else (IE “All military individuals are He/Him” or “All caretakers of offspring are She/Her” to the chagrin of female soldiers and dads everywhere)
It’s worth noting that, as well, cybertronians interacting with humans will generally just adopt whatever pronouns humans first start using for them, save for a few rare instances- Starscream is initially referred to as “she” by Unit E before realizing that there’s a stigma to being seen as “female” by these particular humans, and only then do they insist that humans refer to them as male, versus Arcee who self-identifies as female in human terms, effectively adopting gender to include her, when otherwise she may be seen as genderless by others.
So, yeah. Cybertronians likely wouldn’t ask unless they were being polite, but 90% of the time they just straight up wouldn’t care or understand, or they’d just ask what to refer to you as. I mean, Cybertronian pronouns are a lot easier, you just gotta be like “yeah, the Red Truck over there.”
TF: Matrix doodles from the other day. Prowl likes to creep around in the dark and sometimes forgets that humans need so much sleep. it’s very inefficient. Seriously though waking up to eight feet of robot lit by glowing visor in the middle of the night would be terrifying.
MiB: Cybertronians are dangerous, hostile, and we must be extremely cautious in dealing wtih these mechanical aliens!
Witwickies: Optimus Prime saw a duckling and got so overwhelmed by how small they were he started crying.
I’m real bad at distinguishing voices, so I’ll probably leave selecting actual voice actors to others when I think about it. I generally don’t know a character’s voice, so much as a vague idea of what their voice might sound like.
This gets especially complicated in TF: Matrix because when Cybertronians are speaking to each other, they don’t use english or any human languages, they use Cybertronian.
So half the time the actual voice actor is going to be buried under, well, this:
And then there’s a lot of different kinds of sounds they make, too, so half the time Starscream’s also like- whistling, or very literally screeching and making like…teakettle noises.
They make a lot of grumbly rumbly sounds and screeching and roars, too. Cybertronians are noisy!
Listen, Optimus Prime yelling is scary.
Optimus Prime’s natural, default state of electronic dinosaur roar is a million times scarier.
Yes hello I’ve made a mistake Optimus Prime is too beefy and I’ve made a poor decision deciding he should be a Heavy Boom Truck but it’s too late I love this beefcake boy. Gotta figure out how his boom fits on his back, but I think his boom crane is actually detachable?
What’s that? It’s time to start posting TF: Matrix designs again? INCREDIBLE!
Bumblebee voice: Squishy bags, squishy bags two; this time with huge brains, stinky dogs, tiny round insecticons, dogs with people hands, screamy dogs with lots of babies, and big dogs!!!!!
Danielle isn’t a huge fan, but she enjoys it while it lasts. Probably has fun tasting different types of fuel and realizing she can better understand them now- and she realizes she can actually open herself up and tinker and poke around and, being a mechanic by nature, she gets Ratchet to help her understand her new cybertronian body. Arcee makes her and Optimus go on a Cybertronian-style date. She’s happy to go back to her human body, though there are certain elements of being Cybertronian that were very pleasant.
Spike, for the first time in a long time, ceases to feel physical dysphoria. Perhaps it’s the nature of being nonhuman that settles his mind, for a brief while, but it’s…relaxing. And he actually really enjoys it- he likes being able to wrassle with Bumblebee and do things that would otherwise get him hurt or tire him out, but he’d feel a longing to be organic again after a time. There are certain things that he misses, that have no equivalent.
Buster takes to being cybertronian easily, like a fish to water so to speak, and an excellent cybertronian he makes! His behavior is already decidedly more akin to that of cybertronians in certain ways already, and being able to not worry about things like clothes or certain sensory stimulation basically make it easy for him. If he could, he’d go freely between cybertronian and human form on a regular basis.
CARLY IS A MONSTER TRUCK AND SHE’S GOING TO FLATTEN HER PROBLEMS NOW AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
More accurately, to Cybertronians, earth is just kinda gross. Stuff is growing???? everywhere??? and you can’t escape it! There is like, nowhere on earth you can go where something won’t crawl inside you or stick to you or start growing on you.
Megatron briefly relaxes in the middle of a burning desert because he thinks he’s finally free or organics, for like ten minutes, and twenty scorpions climb inside him.
Don’t let them see what happens to shipwrecks in coral reefs and abandoned cars in jungles.
Also, don’t introduce them to kudzu. Or army ants. Or locusts.
Do you ever just think about how Minimus is so small they can put human clothes on him?
And those clothes are often too big?
Rumble and Frenzy can just straight-up wear sweaters. Like. They can pretend to be humans. “Hurr durr I’m a human!” Rumble says, tugging down a wide-brimmed straw hat. “I have a job and I eat leaves!” Frenzy laughs himself sick.
Agatha im crying I love this so much I need the bots in ill fitting sweaters so much I might draw it myself
Soundwave gets very concerned when winter rolls in and needs to make sure his small buddies don’t freeze. It’s not even the cold, really, Cybertronians can manage that- but the freezing condensation isn’t good for them and also there’s road salt everywhere and it causes rust so he just starts. Putting sweaters and legwarmers on them.
Ravage gets lil booties put on him and does that rlly awkward high-step walk.
….smol bots trying to navigate snow that’s almost as deep as them, having to be fished out before too much moisture gets into them and freezes.
Minimus in over-large sweaters, sulking but putting up with it because it’s better than being cold.
Soundwave making all his lil ones wear booties so they don’t cimb all over him with their freezing cold pedes. Rumble and Frenzy wearing obnoxiously colored pants.
Do you ever just think about how Minimus is so small they can put human clothes on him?
And those clothes are often too big?
Rumble and Frenzy can just straight-up wear sweaters. Like. They can pretend to be humans. “Hurr durr I’m a human!” Rumble says, tugging down a wide-brimmed straw hat. “I have a job and I eat leaves!” Frenzy laughs himself sick.
Smol bots in long scarves? Or in human jewelry because it’s nice and sparkly.
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