What do you guys prefer? Comically evil megs or sympathetic commietron?
Personally I feel IDW perfected the character since Megs is shown to be charismatic and deceptive, waiting for the perfect time for a dramatic entrance and such. Meanwhile Prime and G1 Megs is just a total goober who happens to be really strong
 Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
 DMT Has Friends For Me Shirt $21.68 |
Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
>perfected the character
Megs should never be an Autobot.
Yeah that was moronic. He was basically space Hitler at that point.
The frick is a hitler.
He was space Mao.
Should his origin be he started as a miner or started as a gladiator?
My favorite origin for him is the cartoon where he was literally constructed to be the leader of the Decepticons. Optimus as a blue collar worker who had power thrust upon him vs somebody who was created from scratch for greatness.
Poet?
Miner?
Gladiator?
Fricking bullshit.
Meg's was built for war by the Quintessons and fricked shit up.
Yeah, I just want them to do things the old Sunbow way. The Decepticons were war machines built by the Quintessons, and the descendants of those war machines, warriors without a war. Megatron has the right mix of leadership, vision, strength and charisma to organize and lead them, but they're more like a marauding biker gang that rampages through your town and steals everything worth stealing than an organized army. No more of the Communism allegory from IDW1 or the populist politician stuff from IDW2. I don't really care for the gladiator or miner backstories but they keep coming back so much it's hard to drop them now.
>I don't really care for the gladiator or miner backstories but they keep coming back so much it's hard to drop them now.
Make Straxus a gladiator that challenges Megatron and Megatron just fricks him up in front of everyone.
Frick sake I should be head writer for this franchise it really is this fricking easy!
>I don't really care for the gladiator or miner backstories but they keep coming back so much it's hard to drop them now.
Megatron being a gladiator is one of his original backstories. Both "gladiator" (comics) and "war product" (cartoon) backstories were released in September of 1986.
This is the same continuity that made Thunderwing important.
Which he isn't.
>Megatron being a gladiator is one of his original backstories.
I know, I just never cared for it.
I'm happy with the idea of there having been previous civil wars on Cybertron, everything from IDW to Bayformers have done things like that, just don't have any faction use the name 'Decepticons' before Megatron. I never cared for one of the Primes being named 'Megatronus' either.
I'd prefer the guys who become the Deceptions to just be bored and unfulfilled in pre-war Cybertron than be actively oppressed or abused, I don't want an "actually they're the real heroes" narrative, let them be bad, just charismatic, likeable bad guys you can enjoy.
You can't really do that origin without doing "someone else built the original Transformers", and if you're doing that origin it's usually going to be the Quintessons because that's what the G1 cartoon did.
Writers of comics and cartoons wanting to make villains into Magneto archetypes who meant well but just went too far, and then give them redemption arcs, it's a cancer on fiction. Even the actual Magneto shouldn't have ever become this.
I like the idea that the Decepticons were built for war, but by the time Megatron comes around The Autobot ruling class just has the Decepticons compete in gladiator pits and work menial/violent jobs to put their aggression/power to work. The majority of autobots work labor too, but not in as dangerous conditions and there's a chance for them to be politicians beyond the military/police circuit and work their equivalent of office jobs.
I also like the idea that Megatron wasn't the first Decepticon leader, but becomes the one to really wage war against the modern Autobot order.
Past Decepticon leaders were mostly like military heads and had to serve under the Autobot regime. After the quintessons were chased off the planet there was some warring between the service and military bots that ended up dividing the two factions, the service/Autobots being able to handle planetary logistics(and sheer numbers) managed to keep the Decepticons at bay and in their position
>Decepticons were built for war,
War with who/what though?
Can you maintain that without getting the Quintessons involved? I ask that as someone who thinks the Quintessons are incredibly lame.
>War with who/what though?
Pretty sure it was other alien races. The Autobots had colonies in that continuity and they supposedly used to have a bunch. Pretty sure they raped and pillaged across the galaxy at one point.
Are you talking about IDW, because the Deception movement was a very different deal from that in both continuities.
>War with who/what though?
Generally anything from defense or, as the Quintessons used them, as mercenaries/weapons of war. Ultimately them being made for war would stem from Primus needing both military and intuitive beings to defend Cybertron and confront Unicron as needed.
>Can you maintain that without getting the Quintessons involved?
I l would go with the general concept that Decepticons were sort of corrupted from their initial purpose as defense robots. This is why there's an innate feeling of Cybertronian supremacy in Decepticons- there's an instinct demanding that they use their power, but for whatever reason(Quintessons enslaving them and sending them off to war, Autobots keeping them under foot) they can't act on it and it manifests into a heavy expansionist/conquering attitude. They know they are made to fight, but don't know what they were meant to be fighting. You don't necessarily need Quintessons for this(I don't mind them myself), you can just have the Autobots refuse to let the Decepticons act as military without Autobot surveillance or consent.
I like the idea that both sides are part of an incomplete whole and both got some wrong ideas. The Autobots are dogmatic and bureaucratic and just want to maintain order to an unnatural degree.
I like you anons. Rarely do we get Quintesson origin fans around nowadays. It's far and away my favorite origin. I really love the idea of the creations of the Quintessons growing to surpass them.
They were products for war, just like the Autobots were products for domestic life. So the question is what happens so a society when all your F-35s stop having anybody to fight.
I seem to recall Decepticons needing more Energon too in some continuities, which makes the conflict even more pointed. "Why should these guys who only exist to bomb people get to hog all of our precious limited resources?"
I’m not fully onboard with the Quints Origin Retcon, but I think the Aligned Continuity had a decent way of doing both, if we ignore all the Creator God and 13 Primes that makes it overly complicated. Cybertron develops Robotic Life independently from influence but the Quintessons come along like their European Explorers and enslave them and refit the Cybertronians to be rebuilt into consumer goods or weaponry. Then the rebellion happens and when the Cybertronians finally drive the Quintessons off, they use the technology left behind to elevate/develop their society which eventually spirals into their civil war because, they didn’t create a lot of their technology only reverse engineered it, they create an energy crisis which now envelops their whole planet. Then you can say the divide of the Autobots and Decepticons is fighting in determining who to acquire energy, forcefully taking it or seeking it out through friendly relations. Plus you can add in a bit with the Decepticons viewing other weaker races as payment for their years of slavery while the Autobots wish to not enslave other races knowing how it felt and, you know, saying “that freedom is the right of all sentient beings” and all that.
I just really dislike atechnogenesis. I think it's weird and pointless.
Fair, I’m fine with Vector Sigma or even Protoforms personally, so I can understand where you’re coming from.
I was never a fan of the Quintessons origin honestly, those 5 faced b***hes looked like robots too.
Why can't robots build robots? G1 saw plenty of Transformers building other Transformers.
Because they didn't establish was a Transformer was yet.
It seems like missed opportunity that we never got an origin of the Quintessons.
If it were up to me, it would be a society that started out organic but eventually transferred their consciousness to these machine forms.
Before that, their elected officials wore masks supposedly so you didn't know who they were and thus "they couldn't be bribed or influenced" outside of the courts, but as time went it it became a way for them to better practice their duplicitous nature. Eventually it boiled down to only four different masks, and then they all wore the same masks with the addition of a fifth one that signified how fricked the general people were.
Japanese G1 had a story heavily implying Primacron created them, and since Prime the western side has implied Quintus Prime created them (though no story has actually examined this in any depth).
13 Primes shit is absolute cancer. I liked TF Prime but god damn the whole Aligned shit should never have happened.
I always just figured they were malevolent buttholes that went too far down the path of cybernetics.
I like the fact that Quintessons are robotic and non-humanoid implies that there's more to life in the universe than humanoid shaped beings.
Purely organic life does not tend to last long in this universe and while the Transformers have (mostly)humanoid shapes to mimic other humanoids, it's not the single perfect body type in the universe.
The only reason I would think of an organic origin for the Quints is because they ARE the origin of the Transformers (in that continuity anyway). We know where organic creature come from, but when it came time to figure out how mechanical beings could come into existence, the idea here was that they were just built machines that gained sentience.
If the Quints were that too, it kinda takes away some of the explanation because, once again, we're left wondering how mechanical beings can just appear (plus the Quints should've seen the rebellion coming if they themselves were totally mechanical beings that were sentient)
iirc the guy the quintessons execute in the movie was originally supposed to be made of rock, like a rock lord.
I honestly think IDW did autobot megatron really well, because it’s not even really him becoming a “good guy”. Sure he feels guilt for some of his actions but it’s more about him trying to be pardoned for his crimes so he can atone for his sins and truly do something truly good.
It never exactly erases his actions. He’s still executed by the end and basically everyone apart from a select few lost light members will remember him as the evil bastard he was, and not the bot he tried to become at the last minute.
I am forever angry that Optimus died against unicron and never got to see what Megatron became
it baffles me they had a perfect ending with Optimus and Megatron finally being on the same side and taking down Unicron together and they don't just do that....
i will never NOT be mad that didn't happen, man frick the IDW continuity post 2016.
Their stories were being told in different books mostly.
I don't disagree, but you gotta remember they had to wrap things up faster than expected.
I didn't care for it. This was a guy committing universe wide genocide. He passed then point where he should get any kind of redemption arc.
Hell, they were harder on Shockwave and that was a guy they show literally getting brainwashed to become what he became. Megs was just a guy who was disillusioned with the system.
Don't worry about it. You had lots of different writers to the point it is like 5-6 different stories that only loosely have continuity.
>IDW
>Comically evil megs or sympathetic commietron?
Sympathetic commietron that becomes comically evil. The guy who starts off thinks the kulakcons need to be killed for the greater good, then realizes he's really in it for the killing and the kulakcons are just an easy target.
The only part that bothers me is Autobot Megatron never transformed.
I know that was more an IDW problem than a Megatron specific one, but I can't help but wonder what kind of alt mode a repetent Megatron would go with (Earthspark doesn't count).
>Megatron's post-"Dark Cybertron" body was never seen transformed into its alt mode, although Alex Milne tweeted concept art during the run of Lost Light that showed Megatron transformed into a heavy tank. As this tank design would have required Megatron's signature Fusion Cannon, which had been discarded prior, it would have been left largely unhelpful anyway.
I like IDW Megatron, but he is basically just Magneto.
Megatron should have entirely selfish aims that the propaganda arm frames as a fight against oppression. Then the Decepticons can have a wide variety between ones who genuinely believe Megatron will improve life on Cybertron, ones that joined up for their own selfish aims, and ones that are just mentally ill.
>Then the Decepticons can have a wide variety between ones who genuinely believe Megatron will improve life on Cybertron, ones that joined up for their own selfish aims, and ones that are just mentally ill.
That was already the case in IDW.
>Decepticons can have a wide variety between ones who genuinely believe Megatron will improve life on Cybertron, ones that joined up for their own selfish aims, and ones that are just mentally ill.
IDW already did that with Soundwave being the believer and Starscream being the selfish one. I guess you could also consider Galvatron to be the character you want Megatron to be.
>Best TF thread on Cinemaphile in ages
>Not one single mention of the shitty new comic full of gore
Makes the noggin get thinkin'
Megatron is a non-entity in terms of his views there so far. Can't be judged. You might be able to work something out from Starscream's being a bit different than usual.
>You might be able to work something out from Starscream's being a bit different than usual.
Energon Universe Decepticons keep talking like they genuinely think they're the good guys in the war, yet they also keep doing things that are obviously evil. It's weird yet also really intriguing, hopefully they've actually thought this through and there's an explanation that'll make sense, but you're right that we've not seen enough of Megatron himself to judge.
Is that the comic where Megatron loses his eyes?
There's a certain subset of the fanbase that's into the new comics because "they're not IDW" but I'm increasingly seeing people getting disillusioned by them rapidly grinding through the extended cast.
IDW did that a little too. Bringing in name characters to just bump them off. was never really thrilled about that.
Say what you want about the commercial aspects of the early day but it did force the writers to spend SOME time on the characters just because they had toys on the selves.
and THEN give them epic deaths
Occasionally they'd kill people early on but the Furman era was pretty bad about it, then the late IDW era did it too. The Visionaries crossover was the lowest point of IDW for me because it butchered a very niche relatively well-liked brand by having the first introduction of the moronicly reimagined characters butcher a fan-favorite Transformers character in cold blood for shock value
>Say what you want about the commercial aspects of the early day but it did force the writers to spend SOME time on the characters just because they had toys on the selves.
>and THEN give them epic deaths
I think the Seacons were sadly the big exception in 80s Marvel. Furman gave them a bit more focus in the Marvel UK comics, but Budiansky just killed them shortly after their US debut.
Like in the '86 movie?
>the seacons
that was true, though the comics always had it tougher. the had twelve issues a year to shove everyone in before the next batch came along.
Still it was better than the later comics that would bring in say, Outback, as a corpse but spend fifty issues on a bunch of OC's
He murdered left and right like it was nothing in the cartoon too.
That perverse murder porn in the movie is not serious on any level.
No, his personality his theatrics his cartoon villainy treated seriously.
No basic b***h tired as frick I WUZ GUD BUT NOW STUF HAPPEN NOW UM BAD bullshit
No just morally evil "he gud now, fuk him being held responsible for his evil deeds he just guud" shit
He's just an butthole who's in it for power. Cackles loudly when shit is going lovely, tricks and lies, cheats constantly, his word is only good when it suits him. Stuff like that.
Yes violence oh boy murder shit tons of stuff for the hardcore boy points but you know.
Just an evil cartoonishly evil bastard.
I also want to bring in BW megatron as a megatron variant.
I wasn't a real fan of the IDW lore. To me, it was something that has the veneer of deeper grey area stuff but only to edgy teenagers. Instead of the Decepticons being evil guys who wanted to take over because they thought they were superior, you had a bunch of old Senators acting petty and evil because they thought they were superior. And then it was the Decepticons are just "fighting the man, man"
Some of the stuff just seemed stupid. This was a species that regularly changed their bodies. They could literally yank their brains out and stick them in a whole knew body, yet still has shit like racism for "lower forms of of their kind and whatnot" It was a totally alien race, yet all the writers could do was slap the same old political bellyaching on them.
>It was a totally alien race, yet all the writers could do was slap the same old political bellyaching on them.
This is like how a 2020 Iron Man comic had an AI revolt and uprising but all the writer could think of was to make it literally the 1960s black civil rights movement but with robots. They could think up something unique and interesting, but stuff like that is all they're capable of thinking of.
As Transformers comics go, anyone living under corrupt, useless governments of questionable legitimacy who seem to hate their own people (which is increasingly most of us on Earth...) can get some cathartic joy out of the Decepticons executing the Cybertronian Senate, but it shouldn't be like this, the Decepticons shouldn't be guys with a just cause who became worse than what they fought. It used to be Cybertron was enjoying a Golden Age until Megatron came along.
I like the Primus origin from the comics too, but they're both good in their own way, and the Quintesson version is underused and underappreciated.
I do like fan attempts to reconcile the two, like having the Quintessons discover and conquer Cybertron in it's infancy and turning it into their robot factory, with nobody there even remembering a time before the Quintessons.
No naturally-evolving gears and pulleys?
Question, why the frick did Ratbat hang around after the Decepticons shoved his brain into the smaller body? Why didn't he just defect to the Autobots first chance he got? He WAS a senator. He could've just said, "look what they did to me, can you help me out? put me back in a real body?"
If I was in control my origin would be
>Quintessons create Vector Sigma
>Vector Sigma basically Primus's consciousness
>Quints create the Autobots and Decepticons to sell to organics
>Autobots and Decepticons rise up
>Tenuous peace that breaks down into war for resources
>war for years, with generations of primes and decepticon leaders
>Within the last couple hundred years Orion becomes Optimus and Megatron is built to as a successor to the Decepticon leaders
No 13 Primes, no insane timeframes (Shockwave sitting on his ass on Cybertron for billions of years,) just generations of war
>no insane timeframes
you might find this essay interesting
https://www.tfarchive.com/fandom/features/thirtieth-anniversary/?s=countdown-12-four-million-years-later
>The Girl Who Loved Powerglide
Was this episode actually sexist? I only vaguely remember it as the one Powerglide has to guard a squishy he is annoyed by but warms up to from when I watched the entire G1 show about a decade ago, but two different articles written by different writers cite it as sexist. I'm going to rewatch it.
no it wasn't sexist. people love to call everything sexist.
it was silly but I don't know what was so sexist about it.
No. It was just awful
But some writer somewhere wanted more dames in the story so we got a bunch of awful transformers bang human women eps.
Then the infamous Nightbird ep where she was a mary sue with magic powers and Starscream acted like a jealous female the entire ep.
Was just awful
However it was the template for how I think Black Arachnia should replace Starscream as the the backstabbing cunning one.
One of the most literal examples of conservation of ninjutsu. Being the only one and ninja techniques are unknown to the Autobots means that Nightbird would be incredibly powerful.
>But some writer somewhere wanted more dames in the story so we got a bunch of awful transformers bang human women eps.
look at this homosexual.
I don't know. I guess it's more my personal tastes rather than a fault of the comic but I couldn't get into the IDW comics. It was too much all these little inter-political conflicts with various characters, while the other comic was just Star Trek/ Firefly with robots. It's like neither wanted to be a Transformers comic (Robots in Disguise fighting each other)
I mean I don't think that Transformers necessarily needs to be about the war between the autobots and the decepticons specifically. RiD dealing with "what happens after the war?" and MTMTE dealing with more of the far out space adventures was really refreshing take. It's not like Joe where the crux of the franchise is in conflict or military stuff - Transformers's hook is transforming alien robots, and that works in peacetime or in war.
It was an interesting take initially. then I lost interest when it kept going.
Like I said, They seemed like comics that didn't want to be about Transformers. I know IDW struggled for a while before that RID and MTMTE with their stories. Readership kept going down. They kept trying different approaches like All Hail Megatron. It's like they couldn't figure it out so they just abandoned it and dumped the characters into a different franchise. (two actually)
Batman after he stops all the crime and retires is an interesting idea, but to go on and on for 100 issues? it stops being about what Batman is.
>the other comic was just Star Trek/ Firefly with robots.
The Star Trek part, sure, but MTME was more Star Trek + Red Dwarf than Firefly.
I agree with this. "What happens after the war" is an interesting question to ask, and a new status quo to explore for a few years, but not something to spend something like six or seven years on. Eventually you've got to get back to telling normal Transformers war stories.
I understand that people complained about it because it completely cut short and derailed the earlier Furman run, but like Dreamwave before it and Energon Universe after it, All Hail Megatron was the closest IDW got to what I actually want from a Transformers comic. Something with a heavy Sunbow influence but aimed at readers who've grown up with Transformers instead of for kids.
>All Hail Megatron was the closest IDW got to what I actually want from a Transformers comic.
phew really? All Hail Megatron was.... not good
Compared with some of the stuff IDW did, it's not really objectionable anymore. And my point is the general idea and tone of it is closer to what I'd want from a Transformers comic than any of the other things IDW tried. The earlier Furman run was reinventing things that didn't need to be reinvented, probably because the guy had been writing Transformers for decades and wanted to try different ideas. Costa just didn't seem to get Transformers, and the post-war stuff was an interesting experiment that went on far too long and was getting obnoxiously self-indulgent by the third year.
Man I just cannot agree. AHM and the Furman IDW runs are probably the worst Transformers comics we've ever had and I just don't believe that you inherently need to retell the Autobots vs Decepticons war in every story.
>AHM and the Furman IDW
>and the Furman IDW
woah, will not agree there, large part of the reason AHM is bad is that it dismantles everything Furman was setting up.
>just don't believe that you inherently need to retell the Autobots vs Decepticons war in every story.
not that anon but that's kinda what Transformers is. that's why it has such a large cast (armies fighting each other) the more you drift away from that the more you kinda lose the point. A lot of those later stories felt like the characters inserted into a different series at the last minute.
Lost at the reboot IDW tried which told about the lead up before the war. All they did was bore the shit out of everyone because it was like the star wars prequels. a lot of little piddling shit that the first movies knew enough to skip and get to the interesting part
>AHM and the Furman IDW runs are probably the worst Transformers comics we've ever had
I just don't know how you can even argue that after the later years of IDW1, or even parts of the Costa run.
>I just don't believe that you inherently need to retell the Autobots vs Decepticons war in every story.
Not every single story, but it is at the core of what Transformers has always been all about, it's not something you should be putting a permanent end to and then carrying on the story for seven years.
It was a soft reboot, it probably should've just been a full reboot. That would also have meant later writers wouldn't have had their hands tied by Furman-era stuff they obviously didn't want, or have to reconcile the stories they wanted to tell about the start of the war with the existing Megatron origin story.
I just meant that More than Meets the Eye was more like a Space Ship series (star trek/firefly/Andromeda) than a transformers series: a crew of characters having adventures on a traveling ship.
A lot of the appeal of Sunbrow cartoon is the sense of wonder.
The Golden Age was simply a lull period between the constant civil wars.
I've always been fond of a Megatron that had some noble aims, but has been fighting for so long he's completely lost sight and is now purely driven by his own need for violence. The war utterly ruined him and turned him into a monster, and that same risk always haunts Optimus and keeps him fearful and vigilant of slipping into that same pit.
I don't mind the concept. I just don't like when the fiction kinda "forgives" him. After a certain point, where you're murdering innocent people by the truckload, you can't just go back to "aw I've mad some bad choices, sowwwy"
I have the same problem with Darth Vader. This sis a guy who is blowing up whole planets, then at the very end feels bad and is now chilling with the Jedi ghosts like it was all just a big misunderstanding.
At least in this case you can argue the Force doesn't give a frick what you were but how you are in the here and now. If he repents in death then he is on the light side, it's not fair, but it is what it is, as long as his feelings are genuine the force will accommodate them as they are.
To be fair, that's also to do with the "afterlife" Vader got being about peace with himself, and not the judgment of anyone else. Anakin realizes the immense harm he's done, and knows he won't and shouldn't be forgiven, but he's made peace with his guilt and shame, because his son showed him he didn't have to sink into his own darkness. He could be himself again and not Vader.
And then Leia's life fell apart because people found out she was Vader's daughter.
"Fell apart" in that she had to run everything indirectly instead of as Chancellor
G1 Megatron but serious.
Like OG Megatron but done seriously.
Can you imagine how insane and fun that would be?
I just like the 80s shit, never cared about the rest.
If you post a pic of pic related homie i'm saving it though, he's cool as frick and doesn't afraid of nuclear reactors.
Ideal Megatron origin would be a hybrid of the Dreamwave and Marvel comics origin.
Megatron was a gladiator bot with fascist tendencies and a passion for history and exploration. One day, he went off on holiday to an ancient ruin where he discovered the remains of Desauraus and Victory Sabre and learned how, through Desaruaus's computer files, that Cybertron keeps having civil wars to overturn the corrupt leadership caste refusing to let Cybertronians explore the greater universe and erase everyone's memories when the expansionists lose. And only the highest ups know about this, as it's been kept secret even from the Primes that are the spiritual leaders of the planet (see space pope, not President).
Megatron starts building up the Decepticons: Ratbat represents the animal cybertronians, Soundwave is a spymaster who hates the Primes because they won't help the people, Shockwave is a mad scientist who lost his face and hands due to him being caught working on portal tech, Starscream is a scientist who got gangpressed into the Decepticons, Scorponok a disaffected general, Straxus a renegade warlord, etc.
Meanwhile Optimus is Dreamwave Optimus; a lowly clerk/data entry guy who becomes gangpressed into becoming the new Prime when Sentinel is killed. No connection to Megatron, just a random joe which is why Megatron hates him since he's a nobody and yet able to best him in combat.
>that Cybertron keeps having civil wars to overturn the corrupt leadership caste
kind of related but even its just a few sentences i found the historical wars the Animated continuity had pretty intriguing.
i had the idea of combining several origins in one.
Megatron begins as a miner from Tarn, a poor guy that fought in gladitoral combat in order to raise himself out of poverity eventually becoming a champion and a Cybertronian celebrity. Optimus/Orion and Ironhide would've been his bodyguards during his celebrity tenure and Megatron strikes up an unlikely friendship with his bodyguards, opens up about his ambitions and goals and also noticing even at the top of the world there's a discontentment like there's a need for more seeing how Cybertronian society is starting to decay socially, it is the near end of the golden age after all. Eventually the corrupt cybertronian government decides to wage war against the Quintessons which Optimus, Megatron, Ironhide and the rest of Megatron's entourage are drafted in, Optimus and Megatron are brothers in arms eventually as the war ends Optimus comes into contact with the Allspark which gives him a spiritual awakening of the true purpose of the Primes and Primus while Megatron having come into contact with Dark Energon gives him visions of Unicron destroying Cybertron which essentially end up radically changing these friends. Optimus wants to reform Cybertron into a peaceful democracy while Megatron terrified of Unicron essentially realizes Cybertron is unprepared and gets paranoid and unhinged and believes only he could save them with a saviour's complex. While Optimus ends up becoming a Prime by the selection of Alpha Trion for the council Megatron in his rage and anger plots to wage war on the planet hoping to enlist the downtrodden and physically powerful to join his Decepticon faction and they succeed in taking over Iacon, killing the other Primes in the council thanks to the help of combiners like Devastator and with Optimus being the last Prime, he rallies his comrades, friends and aqquaintences and forms the Autobots to counteract the Decepticons.
In the autistic Transformers story I have within my own head, Megatron would have been a gladiator turned revolutionary, but the key difference is that when he founds the Decepticon movement, Orion Pax actually joins him. I'd have made them brothers in arms against the corrupt Primetic Party that had ruled Cybertron for longer than anyone could remember. The difference is that the war changes them both - while Orion grows sick and weary of the fighting, Megatron thrives in it and comes to crave it - so when the time comes to lay down arms, and Orion seeks to parley with the Primetics to negotiate, Megatron crashes the negotiations and slaughters their leadership, demanding that the fighting is not over until every oppressor is dismantled.
Orion is horrified by Megatron's actions and breaks ties with the Decepticons, leaving with a handful of his closest friends to form a new group, the Autobots. And it's only then, when Orion is helpless yet defiant standing against both the injustice of the Primetics and the bloodlust of Megatron, that the Matrix of Leadership appears to him, and he's granted the power of a Prime to turn the tide.
spiky
TRANSFORMERS: THE BASICS on ROADBUSTER
I love roadbuster but he's pretty much not a character other than that time they killed him in the bad LSOTW sequel