Authorial intent
From Transformers Wiki
Authorial intent is the meaning or interpretation of a fictional work that the author had in mind when they were creating it.
Frequently in the various Transformers fictions, the author's intent ends up being unclear or even contradicted by the finished work. In these cases, it is up to each fan to decide whether to accept the author's intent or the work as-released.
Sometimes the correct interpretation is obvious, but other times it ends up being a matter of debate. When the author's intent doesn't make it into the final product, can that intent still trump the "true" events as shown in the canon? This is an especially difficult question when one considers that the author's explanations, even if widely disseminated through the fandom, are still only known to a tiny portion of the fiction's full audience, which includes far more casual fans and children than it does devoted information-hounds.
Facts about the fiction that are stated or intended by the authors but never established in official fiction are often referred to as pseudocanon.
Examples
Optimus Prime's "spark holder" in Beast Wars
In the episode "Optimal Situation", Optimus Primal was shown removing what appeared to be the Matrix from Optimus Prime's chest. Instead of the Matrix's traditional crystal, this object contained a spark which Primal absorbed into his own body. According to Rhinox, Prime's spark "has the Matrix with it". After absorbing the spark, Primal grew in size and attained his "Optimal Optimus" body. A parallel can be drawn between this event and the upgrade from Hot Rod to Rodimus Prime when he received the Matrix in The Transformers: The Movie. On the other hand, the idea of the Matrix housing Prime's spark was somewhat contradictory with previous fiction.
After this episode aired, Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio informed fans that the script for this scene had simply called for Prime's spark to be contained in an elaborate "spark holder". The animators at Mainframe Entertainment, in looking for inspiration, came across images of the Matrix and adapted that design, seemingly not realizing that the object they had chosen held special significance. The writers had intended for Primal's upgrade to be a result of holding two sparks, not a result of contact with the Matrix. Further, they encouraged fans to take Rhinox's line as being metaphorical, with comparison to the Matrix simply being a Cybertronian idiom for something extremely important.
How, then, is a fan to take this scene? Is that really the Matrix, boasting different properties than before? Comments from writers are certainly helpful information, but they are not strictly canonical.
This particular conflict was eventually retconned in the "Primeval Dawn" comic. There, it was depicted (both visually and through dialogue) that Prime's body "hides" the real Matrix behind a lookalike. This explanation also works because the design of the spark case in Beast Wars was significantly different from the original Matrix design, in that the colors were different and it lacked the finger holes of the original (though the Matrix design shifted frequently in the Marvel comics).
Characters without official fiction
Some toys released by Hasbro and/or Takara constitute brand-new characters that are not based on established characters from previous continuities. If those characters appear in a cartoon or a comic, they usually receive some characterization there; if they don't, the main source of characterization is usually the toy's on-packaging bio. However, if the packaging doesn't have a bio, the character is basically a blank slate in terms of an official personality. This happened quite a bit with end-of-the-line Energon toys, since Hasbro published all bios exclusively through their official Transformers website at that time... and never actually bothered to put up bios for the last waves of the respective assortments. Thus, the exact nature of the Energon Combiners is a bit of a mystery: Are the individual limbs distinct characters, or are they merely drones for the torso robots? It also happened with toys from the original Universe line, where 3H had created bios to be used on Hasbro's website that were never officially published. One of these bios was intended to make Universe Inferno (a redeco of 2001 Robots in Disguise Prowl) the same character as Beast Wars Inferno.
The Alternators line, which was released concurrently with Energon and Universe, omitted any sort of characterization with its initial assortment, and only marginally improved on that with the addition of mottos for the semi-relaunch of the line in late 2005. However, most of the toys were based on established Generation 1 characters, and the Japanese Binaltech versions of those toys did come with bios and ongoing text-only fiction, so most of the characters still had well-established personalities.
However, problems arose with characters that were not rooted in Generation 1: Nemesis Prime, initially an Alternators-only character, actually had a bio written by Hasbro's Forest Lee. Since that bio was only made public through online retailers with access to Hasbro's promotional material library and Ben Yee's review of the Nemesis Prime toy, it's hard to say if the bio was ever actually "officially" released, even though release had been fully intended. Still, Binaltech story writer Hirofumi Ichikawa directly referred to Hasbro's bio for Nemesis Prime in the story chapter for Black Convoy, Nemesis Prime's Binaltech counterpart.
Even more problematic was Decepticharge, who never saw a Binaltech release (aside from a limited shipment of the Hasbro version as a contest prize), and never had a bio written for him by Hasbro. Hirofumi Ichikawa still wrote a bio for him as well as for the planned-but-never-released Binaltech toys "Blackwidow" and Ginrai which were eventually made public though an unofficial compilation, The Transformers Binaltech Stories: Profiles and Technical Specifications, making the never officially released bio for Decepticharge the only characterization the poor guy will probably ever see. Years later, Ichikawa got to canonize his bio information for Binaltech Decepticharge and Blackarachnia via the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime. But fortunate cases like Decepticharge's are the exception to the norm.
