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Certainly the Decepticons are less evil than we humans are from that perspective. We imprison, eat and kill cows for food and clothing, and yet we are 80% genetically similar to them. It's understandable that Decepticons should have few qualms about doing the equivalent or less to humans.Originally Posted by Paulbot
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The Japanese series were explicitly intended to fit in the same continuity as the Canadian series in an "expanded universe" kind of way, much like the BotCon BW comics too. There's nothing in the Canadian series that contradicts Optimus Primal possessing a Matrix, so considering that the Japanese series are official canon and they are officially intended to be in the same continuity as the Canadian series, unless something from the Canadian series explicitly contradicts it then it can be accepted as canon.
Since Earth is strictly off limits during the Beast Era one would assume that any debts were either already repaid by the time the Beast era came in, or they just didn't bother (as often happens in war torn places)
The AllSpark. Rhinox explains it in Season 1.
Transformers are pretty much Maximal or Predacon by "birthright". Transformers that are descendant from Autobots are Maximals and those descendant from Decepticons are Predacons. Since the Autobots won the Great War, their Maximal descendants prosper while the Decepticons' Predacon descendants experience marginalisation.No one would choose to be a Predacon on Cybertron after the Great War, because they were treated as 2nd class citizens. They would have to be created as Preds right from the off. I've got nothing to back up my theory from canon, but I could theorise on the subject until the cows either come home or transform
This has been explained several times in the Canadian BW cartoon, and of course Megatron nearly made the Maximals unexist by attempting to kill Optimus Prime while he slumbered in the Ark. Tarantulas - who said that he and the Tripredacus Council were not descendant from Autobot or Decepticon (i.e. Unicron's Spawn) - once attempted to destroy the Ark and kill all of the Autobot and Decepticon ancestors lying in stasis within it. This would have ultimately cancelled out the existence of all of "Primus' children" (thus removing a potential threat for Unicron).
Hmm... this is debatable. There's some evidence in G1 that suggests that being an Autobot or Decepticon is a political choice. For example you have Mirage who's an Autobot who isn't fully convinced by the Autobot cause, and Thundercracker who's a Decepticon who isn't fully convinced by the Decepticon cause. You also have unaligned neutral Transformers, like Maccadam whose Old Oilhouse exists in neutral territory. Boltax (guardian of the Underbase) was also neutral, as was Spanner - who was forced to create the Decepticons' Space Bridge.
Then you have some noble Decepticons like Carnivac and later Scorponok/Zarak, as well as evil Autobots like Flame (the scientist, not the Motovator). Even Grimlock went bad when he became a self-imposed King after he was elected as the Autobot's leader... although later on he argued that being good and evil is something that's ingrained amongst Autobots and Decepticons -- that Primus had inadvertantly created two races of robots, not one as he'd intended. Bludgeon also seemed to share this belief. But the majority of evidence seems to indicate that it's a political choice and not something that's "in built".
Shockwave once stole the Matrix (or at least the Matrix's energies) by decapitating Optimus Prime's head and trying to force him to instill life into his new Decepticons. Optimus Prime secretly passed the Matrix energy onto Buster Witwicky to try to keep it out of Shockwave's hands. But the Matrix didn't seem to make Autobots or Decepticons per se, it just created Cybertronian life... whether they were aligned to be Autobots or Decepticons may be pre-determined by programming... or in some cases, choice (as with Jetfire, who was created by Shockwave to be a Decepticon but when he was finally given a "Spark" he became an Autobot).
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As for the whole good and evil thing -- morality is subjective. One person's idea of good can be someone else's idea of evil. As Sky Shadow pointed out, humans exploit "lesser" species for their own benefit... the book "Transformers and Philosophy" makes the analogy that if humans found a colony of intelligent and sentient ants that possessed a resource that humans desperately wanted, would we care about the welfare of those ants in obtaining that resource? What if it were intelligent microorganisms?
From a Cybertronian's POV humans are like insects... what does it matter if their race or planet is adversely affected for the benefit of the Transformers race and/or Cybertron? As Sentinel Prime said in DotM, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... so clearly enslaving a few billion "ants" is an acceptable consequence for saving a "godlike" species like Cybertronians. Optimus Prime's insistence on treating humans as equals may feel all warm and fuzzy, but it's a great disservice to his species and world...
Imagine if someone found an island populated by intelligent insects that built their village on top of a MASSIVE oil or gold deposit. At best we might displace these bugs and move them to another island (even if they refused) and then harvest the crap out of their island. At worst, we'd ignore their welfare and probably bug spray the island before moving in with mining/excavation stuff.
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I'm not disputing it being canon in regards to the japanese stuff, but it's not explicitly stated in the CGI cartoon as fact, and you can't simply recon it to fit. No way in hell is that logical.
He did no such thing. All he said was "When a Spark comes online there is great joy in the univers" or some such. How do Sparks physically enter this universe? In BW times I'm sure whoever has a Matrix simply doesn't visit the protoform factory every second Thursday of the month and imbibes life into blanks. And if Vector Sigma creates them, how is it monitored so that Preds don't steal all the sparks Nd build up an army? There has never been an answer to this question right from the start of Tfs.The AllSpark. Rhinox explains it in Season 1.
Bunt what does descendant mean in regards to a Transformer? How does Optimus Prime affect the programming of later generations of Transformers? Killing Prime in the Ark would have wiped them from existence, yes, no argument there, but how are Optimus Primal and Rhinox descendant from Optimus Prime?Transformers are pretty much Maximal or Predacon by "birthright". Transformers that are descendant from Autobots are Maximals and those descendant from Decepticons are Predacons. Since the Autobots won the Great War, their Maximal descendants prosper while the Decepticons' Predacon descendants experience marginalisation.
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G2-style budding.
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But the word descendant makes it sound as though there is some kind of lineage. that Optimus Prime is somehow directly related to them. Yet Tfs is devoid of parenting as far as I'm aware.
With budding, programming would be copied, sure, but the spark has to come from the all spark. And budding wouldn't still be used in BW times.
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1. The law of retroactive continuity works precisely by stating that the most recent canonical account is the most correct. For example it's now been retconned that Tigatron and Airazor were previously existing Transformers on Cybertron who were nearly killed and were later reborn on prehistoric Earth but with no conscious memories of their previous lives. Now some people may not like this retcon, but regardless of preference it remains a canonical fact. Likewise Midichlorians in Star Wars.
2. It would only create a logic problem if something from official canon later contradicted the existence of a Matrix in Optimus Primal. For example G1 Prowl's appearance in The Headmasters created an illogical continuity problem - hence why the Story of Binaltech sought to resolve this by retconning that character as Prowl II. Wheeljack's appearance in Victory has still yet to be officially explained though (Wheeljack II?)
Considering that (a) Optimus Primal's Matrix was seen in an official medium, and (b) there's nothing in the Canadian cartoon that explicitly contradicts this - I think it's logical to assume that it remains a canonical fact (and officially speaking - under the law of retcon - that would indeed be the case).
In Beast Machines the AllSpark is shown to be a kind of astral plane of existence - a kind of afterlife if you will. A place where all Sparks originate from then go on a life-long journey of learning and discovery, then returns to the AllSpark to add its knowledge to the collective. In that sense it's much like the Cosmic Mother Node believed by followers of Vedic religions like Hinduism, Buddhism etc. -- Optimus Primal rejoined the AllSpark when he achieved a kind of enlightened state (Nirvana) which apparently makes you glow white.Although the retention of a Spark's individual aspect is more like Zoroastrianism than Hinduism/Buddhism (and indeed many fans tend to compare Transformers theology with Zoroastrianism).
Now precisely how individual Sparks are extracted from the AllSpark plane/dimension... well, that's something that hasn't been explicitly shown or explained in canon AFAIK.
I've always worked under the assumption that post-war Transformers built by the Autobots were the Maximals and those built by the Decepticons were Predacons... or at least the first generation of Maximals and Predacons. You may have had subsequent generations of Maximals made by Maximals and Predacons made by Predacons.
Put it this way, in the G1 cartoon a group of Autobots led by Optimus Prime built the Aerialbots then got Vector Sigma to give them life. If one were to travel back in time and kill Optimus Prime before he could do this, then the Aerialbots would cease to exist as Optimus Prime would never live to build them. If you killed Ratchet in the Ark then you'd undo the appearance of the Dinobots as it was Ratchet who co-built the Dinobots in the G1 cartoon and also Ratchet who discovered and exacavated the Dinobots from the Savage Land in the G1 comics. It doesn't necessarily mean that the Maximals and Predacons have to have some kind of "genetic link" with the Autobots and Decepticons since the Transformers don't reproduce sexually. Unless you wanna go by the G1 TF Victory manga... <shudder> <facepalm>
But that's just the way I see it... official canon has never exactly specified how or why the Maximals are descendants of Autobots or why Preds are descendants of Decepticons... it's always just been agiven. No matter how it happens, what we do know is that the destruction of the Autobots cancels out the existence of the Maximals (as witnessed in The Agenda Part 3) and likewise destroying the Decepticons would also wipe out the Predacons (as mentioned by Blackarachnia and Tarantulas - it would also explain why BW Megatron went to all the trouble of breaking into the Ark and targeting Optimus Prime for assassination instead of just planting explosives throughout the Ark like Tarantulas did... that and Mainframe were hoping to get Peter Cullen to do a cameo appearance in Ep1 of Season 3 (but Cullen refused due to some voice actor industry thing between American and Canadian voice actors -- Cullen wanted to protect the US voice actor industry (despite Cullen's Canadian heritage))
So the exact nature of the AllSpark and precisely how the Maximals and Preds are descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons is still a fairly blank slate... so go nuts.
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1. That's what budding is. Mindset was a descendant of Onslaught. And Dinoforce had children and Rattrap had a great aunt.
2. There's no reason why it can't be the reason for Predacons being descended from Decepticons.
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I found this on TF Wiki:
Transformers Legends
This takes place after "Other Voices, Part 2", and also after "End of the Line".
Following the explosion of the Planet Buster, Optimus Primal found himself in Maccadam's Old Oil House, where he encountered Optimus Prime, an Optimus Prime from a different universe, and a future version of himself. The four of them were able to overcome the alternate Prime's doubts about his leadership, before they all returned to the time streams from whence they came. Optimus Primal repeated the whole thing again much later, after his destruction facing Megatron in the Council Citadel on Cybertron.
So, this directly contradicts BW II which seems to state that Primal got transported, after death, to help Lio Convoy defeat Zarak. So in this continuity, the subject of Primal's supposed Matrix never comes up, and therefore doesn't have one.
Basically I'm saying he doesn't have one and have no evidence to say that he doesn't, and you're saying he does but have no evidence to say that he does in the CGI cartoon continuity alone.
The Japanese stuff can go jump as far as I'm concerned. Gathering and Ascending make it defunct anyway.
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One of the big questions is: Who is still alive?
We see Prowl and Ironhide sitting as Maximal Elders, but they both lucked out in the first 10 minutes of TF:TM.
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I thought Optimus Primal's appearance in the Beast Wars movie occurs while he was abducted by that Vok probe thing ("Chain of Command"?). Even if it were to occur during his death between Seasons 1 and 2, what's to say that Primal didn't appear in Maccadam's Old Oil House and Gaea at two different points in time? It's apparent that Primal's traversed time and space -- so what might have been a few hours or days on pre-historic Earth may have been weeks, months or years in whatever astral plane Optimus Primal went off to (Inception'd!).
But IIRC Primal appeared on Gaea during his first Vok abduction. I'll recheck that when I get the opportunity later... btw the movie's just called Beast Wars, not Beast Wars Second (although it does involve principally BWII characters, the movie was never actually called BWII).
The Japanese cartoon continuity is officially tied to the Canadian cartoon continuity and it states that Primal has a Matrix. I mean, if you solely want to look at the Canadian cartoon continuity in isolation then just say so... if you're going to talk about Beast Wars in general, then it's reasonable to examine the entire continuity as a whole. But note that if you're going to look at the Canadian cartoon continuity in isolation, then we need to disregard a lot of other expanded universe stuff too, such as:
+ Exactly how the Golden Disk was stolen - this becomes a mystery
+ Tigatron and Airazor being pre-existent Maximals prior to arrival on Earth
+ The existence of any G1 Transformers in the Beast era other than Ravage (so Grimlock, Prowl, Prowl II, Silverbolt, Ironhide etc. are all out)
...etc.
How objective of you...
The IDW comics go off on a different continuity splinter as it ignores a lot more canonical material than just the Japanese animation (e.g. 3H's BotCon/OTFCC comic material).
So we're looking at different continuity streams here - you have the "core" continuity which is the Canadian cartoon. Then you have different streams branching from that core - one comprising of the Canadian cartoon + Japanese animation and BotCon/OTFCC comics... another comprising of the Canadian cartoon + IDW comics.
The former explicitly shows Maximal commanders with Matrices, and the latter doesn't confirm nor deny it, although under Occam's Razor one would presume that until they probably don't exist. So if you wanna go by this continuity stream, then fine, I would concede that probably none of the Maximal commanders have Matrices in that universe.
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