Tf Swindle - Tumblr Posts

This is absolutely one of my favorite scenes from Earthspark 💀

The Elegant Bastards gang

This probably was the most complicated lineart I ever did

swindle tooth gap appreciation post

Swindle doodles that I find endlessly amusing

confession

Babygirl why u so shape??

More earthspark sketches

how long has it been since i've... drawn my boy....

🤯🔥

VIRUS ALERT!!

"Delete immediately, before someone gets hurt!!"

i see a couple of posts on here coming up with backgrounds for tfa swindle on his autobot days, but something i haven't seen anyone ask was how was swindle LIKE back in his youth.

was he always as greedy? as sleazy? was there once a time where swindle would opt to tell the truth?

did he have his charisma back then? his wits? or did his boundless energy and adventurous spirit make up for his blunders?

was swindle born with his silver tongue, or did he craft it once he realized what a deadly weapon his words were? if so, who taught him that? what taught him that?

today we see a bot who's well beyond his years, seasoned with experience and who's processor is unreadable to the average joe.

but who knows what the bots of swindle's past saw

maybe he was more open. more blunt. or maybe a little more reckless. the usual byproduct of youth

either way, something along the line made him realize that the bots around him were using the war for their own gain. and all the poor bastards who didn't realize that were the ones being sacrificed

but swindle, ever observant, catched onto that...

...and somewhere along the line (be it ambition, self-preservation, fear, disillusion...) swindle figured he might as well make something GOOD for himself in this blasted war

because Primus knows if swindle didn't help himself, no one would

actually now that i think about it does swindle even look the same anymore??

djw mentioned somewhere that swindle modded himself to appear taller. maybe autobot!swindle used to be around prowl's height??

and i wouldn't put it past that slippery fucker that he got himself an electronic paint job shortly after defecting to the decepticons

makes you think how much did swindle change. or if he even changed at all

i see a couple of posts on here coming up with backgrounds for tfa swindle on his autobot days, but something i haven't seen anyone ask was how was swindle LIKE back in his youth.

was he always as greedy? as sleazy? was there once a time where swindle would opt to tell the truth?

did he have his charisma back then? his wits? or did his boundless energy and adventurous spirit make up for his blunders?

was swindle born with his silver tongue, or did he craft it once he realized what a deadly weapon his words were? if so, who taught him that? what taught him that?

today we see a bot who's well beyond his years, seasoned with experience and who's processor is unreadable to the average joe.

but who knows what the bots of swindle's past saw

maybe he was more open. more blunt. or maybe a little more reckless. the usual byproduct of youth

either way, something along the line made him realize that the bots around him were using the war for their own gain. and all the poor bastards who didn't realize that were the ones being sacrificed

but swindle, ever observant, catched onto that...

...and somewhere along the line (be it ambition, self-preservation, fear, disillusion...) swindle figured he might as well make something GOOD for himself in this blasted war

because Primus knows if swindle didn't help himself, no one would

HEAR YEE HEAR YEE ITS SWINDLE HEADCANON TIME EVERYBODY

anyway decided to do the impossible today and made an autobot!swindle design :D back in the good ol' days when swindle's head actually looked proportional to his body

below the cut r some height comparisons, headcanons and some piss poor recolorings

yeah so swindle here had a major growth spurt, but it's mostly due to the fact of the myriad of mods he's installed onto himself for the past millenia. one assumes he did this in order to even the playing field with decepticons, seeing these bots r common clients of his.

and while that is partially true (swindle has had to fight many, many cons after they found out he scammed them) another reason for the mods is to intimidate fellow autobots. after this guy bailed on cybertron, he was a pretty wanted mech and swindle wanted to at least be armed to the teeth, should the elite guard come to send him to the stockade again

but other than the DRASTIC height change, there's other changes made, such as:

- his pupils used to be circles, now they're slits

- he doesn't have his bolo tie yet. he added this later in order to make him look more "professional"

- his original designation isn't swindle. he donned that name to himself. im still tossing ideas on WHAT his designation used to be but ideally, I want it to be something relating to that subspace of his

- he had his legs, forearms, torso, and and shoulder pads enlarged in order to make him look more taller and "imposing"

- doesn't own his fusion cannon and all the extra weapons yet. it's just him and his personal subspace against the world

and, my personal idea

- the gold and purple paintjob aren't his actual colors. swindle here got himself a fancy new electronic paint job shortly after defecting to the decepticons

below r some attempts at what his original paint job used to look like (spoiler! im most definitely going to be making more cause im not a huge fan on the one i made rn)

anyway. that's it. end of the post.

boy swindle changed a lot huh

ok so im doing some deep-diving on swindle's origins and....if we take djw's tweets into account...would this mean swindle is around 2 BILLION years old???

im gonna be honest. idk how to feel about that

that quite possibly puts him in the "old fart territory" with ratchet and megatron

is...is swindle OLDER than those two??? or is he younger?? and by how much???

im so conflicted rn

hello tfa nation

i bring u a gift

more swindle headcanons because he won't leave my brain and i'm tired of him

crazy good at math. he's able to calculate the price/cost of something within seconds. the only reason he's not a mathematician/accountant or anything like that is because swindle wouldn't do well with those jobs. swindle likes moving on his pedes, not sitting behind a desk

extremely well-versed in politics. but not because he's very political or anything; swindle just likes knowing where and when the next intergalactic war is raging so he can profit off it. it helps to keep up with the news

workaholic. though this trait is less notable to see in him than say, someone like optimus (mostly because swindle takes great care not to let his exhaustion be shown. his image MUST be perserved, after all)

used to keep a diary in which he noted anything interesting he found on the planets he traded with. he was actually semi-organized with it, and even included some crude doodles of the organics he ran into. he stopped journaling once the war broke out, though, and hasn't journaled since due to fear of his diary being used as blackmail

answers questions like a politician. if u want a straight answer from swindle then good fucking luck LMAO. he doesn't like to go into detail about his past. it's all old news, anyway

he's a Beyonce fan. i feel it in my bones

puts effort into his image. granted his image got fucked over ever since he defected to the decepticons LMAO but the point is that swindle tries to make himself look better than he actually is.

surprisingly open-minded. he has to be. if he were to be openly xenophobic to the multitude of alien races he trades with, then his business would tank. besides, he's actually pretty curious about other worlds besides his own (ex; how he mentioned he spied on the human villains in the SUV episode, and thought their whole get-up was "exciting")

he hates hates HATES the cold. if he HAS to do business in a cold planet, he will bitch and complain about it the entire time except when he's in the negotiating room

when he was a young bot, swindle was pretty open book. that's not to say he didn't LIE back then, it just so happened that swindle was created with a super expressive faceplate, and you could always tell what swindle thought based on whatever look he was giving you. this got him into some...issues (dw he learned how to keep a poker face later on)

not the jealous type (how can he be jealous when he's the most wanted bachelor on cybertron?) but on the rare occasion that he IS, he gets real quiet. probably sulks to himself in a corner while sipping on some energon. if confronted, he'll brush it off but don't you doubt it for one second; he is PISSED

says he doesn't have any regrets or moral dilemmas about his job, but that's only half of the truth. swindle takes care not to give himself enough time to think about the past. it makes living easier that way. and swindle is a creature who seeks comfort, even if it inconveniences everybody else around him. don't try to call him out on this bad habit of his; he will huff and excuse himself by claiming you'd do the same thing too if you were in his shoes (or pedes?)

he does not like keeping living things in his subspace. he's made the mistake of storing a organic he thought was cute when he was younger, and it ended up with a trip to med-bay (surprisingly, organics don't like being in strange voids filled with nothing but weapons)

fantastic at detecting scams. he doesn't have a mod for it or anything, he just KNOWS

has a """"healthy"""" amount of paranoia. he claims he's just looking out for himself, given the kind of business he's in, but there's times where the paranoia really fucks with his health

really likes sprinkling those "infomercial phrases" into his daily speech. he thinks it makes him sound suave. thought he sometimes fucks up with the delivery and he just gives up mid-way lmao ("guard the prisoners...orrr loot the ship? it's a no process-...or? er? err..." - a direct quote from decepticon air)

he's mostly self-aware. the only thing he isn't honest about to himself is his own emotions

whenever he feels stupid stuff like "fear" or "stress" or (shudder) "remorse" he takes a look at his bank account. it helps him, in a weird way. because yes, he's an outlaw, and yes, he's technically gambling his and everyone else's life, and YES, there's days where he winds up battered and broken, barely an inch away from death, but...at least his efforts aren't for nought. they're adding up to something; with every corpse, swindle's wallet gets fatter. and with all that money in his servos, swindle might be able to buy himself the one thing cybertron can't offer him: peace

^ swindle thinks he deserves this. he delusionally believes he deserves peace and riches more than anybot

say congrats to the new couple, everyone

(see alt text for translation)

BAD ARMS DEALER. BAD BAD BAD ARMS DEALER.

GO TO YOUR SWINDLE HOUSE AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE.

huuUOOoLRgGghh fiinnne I can't stay away from you all

i bring more autobot!swindle. plus my attempt at writing his backstory

disclaimer : most of the stuff below isn't canon i just wrote this for fun. if u guys wanna make ur own swindle backstories i invite yall to do so :D we will make our own swindle content

swindle came online during cybertron's early years of the age of expansion. the autobots (with their goal to expand cybertron's empire) engineered a set of bots who would serve cybertron as its intergalactic merchants, programmed to be ambitious bots who sought profit. they also came with bigger processors (for storing transactions and whatnot) and versatile frames (so they could withstand organic climates)

shortly after coming online, swindle was assigned a teacher (another merchant) who'd pass down the knowledge of the trade. swindle did his best to keep up with his lessons

as a student, swindle was determined and clever. as a bot, though...eughh...

- he had less of a filter, and didn't know how to keep a poker face

- his little new England accent used to be a lot thicker (think earthspark swindle)

- very friendly, had a lot of amicas back in the day (he was definitely the "I know a bot" guy). it was a struggle for him to keep quiet

- loved hands on activities, hated sitting still

- kept a journal detailing his intergalactic trips. tried to doodle any organics he found interesting

- LOVED shiny stuff. he was like a crow lmao

- his sharp glossa would sometimes get his aft beat

- despite being a chatterbox, he wasn't as suave back then. he'd often get himself in awkward situations, which he'd try to talk himself out of the embarrassment but he'd end up digging a deeper hole for himself

- petty king. also kinda nosy and had a thing for gossip

- loved pranking, and teased the bots he liked

once he was ready, swindle was given a ship and assigned a trading post (as a starting point). from that point, swindle was a rootin tootin merchant and nothing bad ever happened to him again :D...

...

until the quintessa skirmishes

the age of expansion ended with border disputes between cybertron and quintessa. multiple skirmishes sproutted along the border, and while swindle didn't fight in them, he was certainly caught in the crossfire. swindle ended up with a broken ship, a looted inventory, and a bungled up frame. he had to return to cybertron for repairs

back on cybertron, swindle finds a planet wildly different from the one he knows. tensions between autobots and decepticons are rising, and the banks aren't holding up that great. swindle finds himself in a tight spot (financially speaking) since he still has to deal with his losses from quintessa. unable to go back to his actual merchant job, swindle resorts to taking odd jobs to keep himself afloat (yes, even stealing)

when the war breaks out, swindle gets drafted into the front lines (a decision that still baffles him to this day). since he's not much of a fighter, the autobots have swindle work as a spy, ordering him to smuggle weapons out of decepticon servos...

in future hindsight, that was a poor decision

---

wrapping it up here because i don't want this post to get too long LMAO but I still have more ideas for him if yall are interested. just know that this is not the end of swindle lore

ALSO I finally came up with autobot!swindle designations :D I've narrowed it down to 3 and I need help deciding. it's either between

quickdime - cuz. you know. he's always looking to make a quick buck

treasury - his subspace acts like a treasury if you kinda think about it

fortune - idk it sounds cute. besides fortune tends to "favor the bold and clever"

if u made it this far then congrats. thank u for listening to me yap. have a bonus doodle

Swindle Bakery AU!

Massachusetts, May 13th, 2155.

Swindle finds himself on Earth, nearly inches away from offlining. His entire frame aches, and his processor rings inside his helm. His data tracks can only replay a couple of memories before he slips into stasis mode. Bots chasing him, a shoot-out in an alien bar, him scanning a new alt mode, a ship crashing into the ground...

From there, it all goes black. Swindle didn't come back online until he found a little old lady seated behind the wheel, desperately trying to start the engine.

Swindle paused for a moment. When did this organic find him? What was she trying to do with him?

And when Swindle looked around and saw he was now parked at a car dealership, he wondered how he had managed to get himself there in the first place.

And he was horrified to find out that he didn't remember.

Summary

due to unfortunate circumstances involving a crash-landing and persecution from the Elite Guard, swindle finds himself back on Earth without any memory of how he got there. he's fortunate enough to find a sweet old lady, mabel, who offers him shelter while swindle tries to recollect his memories

during his stay, they both discover the other's talent. swindle nibbles on one of mabel's cookies (because he was damn near starving and couldn't find any energon or oil (and also he has a mod which allows him to digest some organic food, in case he's stranded without fuel)) and quickly becomes obsessed with mabel's baking

mabel, on the other hand, admires swindle for his knack for business. she laments how useful that skill must be and how she doesnt have it; maybe if she was more like swindle, she could save her dying bakery (which is like. 5 dollars away from bankruptcy lol)

the two then decide to strike a deal; swindle shares his expertise in exchange for a roof over his head (and an unlimited supply of treats). from there begins their alliance and they both start to reap the benefits from it in the form of profit.

what they both didn't expect to gain from this partnership, though, is a friendship

---

Notes

anyway that's the intro to this silly au !! if u guys wanna know more lemme know. i will be glad to share more of my silly lil ideas with you all

(and before anyone asks, there's a reason why I gave swindle a new form. he scanned a new alt form before slipping into stasis mode)

as always, the ppl who r still here reading this get a extra doodle. this doodle was made very early on, when I planned on making this au as a fic

anyway. that's it. bye bye