Weirdly, one idea I came up with when I was five and got my first Transformer (Thundercracker) without seeing any sort of fiction was the idea of interdimensional energy creatures getting into machines and reshaping them into bodies. Not too different from the later ideas of Sparks, or how the Combaticons rebuilt old junk into new forms by having their components put inside them.
Later on, I thought the Great War would end if someone invented a self-regenerating energy supply, so in my head, all my characters were at Toy Scale, no matter what the alt mode was, justified by making 'size change' incompatible with perpetual energy. So you can run forever, or grow and shrink, but not both. It's also why I have some Decepticons and Autobots together, as it ended a long time ago and no one cares. Megatron's Double Pretender shares a shell with Cerebros.
More modern times, in my own head I had Devestator, Frame Bruticus, Dinoking, and other 'fixed' combiners as much more intelligent, strong, and stable than the Scramble sorts, because they always have their components assemble the same way every time. Not remotely fiction accurate, I know, but I've always been much more toy-interested than fiction. I know about it, but for my own shelves, the stories never overwrote my own preferences, they just gave me extra material I took or left randomly at different times.
Besides, any and all fiction is Kup's war stories, probably after he was out of it on unfiltered tap water again. So any discrepancy in continuity, characters, animation errors, etc. are just an unreliable narrator with a shotgun, a drinking habit, and a robot pug dog with severe scoliosis politely called "The Tootinator".
