#g1 zarak

[churino]

Design for Black Zarak , Castle Scorponok, lord Zarak and the arachnid headmaster unit

an overgrown technorganic tick that lives on scorponok's head and sucks away the resources from the land around him, But thats enough about the man. The Arachnid controls Scorponok. Without it he's a mindless zombie

After the transformers discover the allspark is on earth the leadership of the six clan becomes more active, being forced to take matters into their own hands,

Lord Mortilus Zarak Masterson, is the six clan's representative and ever the opportunist, the decepticon's human ally hopping to stop them from joining with the autobots to search for the allspark together, because he knows if they were united for a single cause they would succeed in no time, and the allspark being found prematurely would spell disaster for everyone on the planet

Lord Zarak is a lab grown creature that passes for a human, the actual state of his biology is nebulous (heh), but he's compatible enough with humans to have spawned offspring, his favorite son Henry Masterson, who died recently after a drug deal gone wrong in the streets of são Paulo but left behind headmaster technology that his living family (and three little brats) use to fight alongside the transformers in battle, but Henry was not an only child, the firstborn, which mo named Olin Zarak he saw as an abomination, and has her locked up inside Scorponok's dungeon to feast on the inmates,

in the absence of his own children he has convinced his niece and nephew to abandon their mother, his sister mega, and live with him on his castle as human operatives for the six clan and maybe one day, his successors

Zarak was born here on earth, somewhere in england around 50 years ago, made alongside his sister with the explicit pourpose of doing what he does now, acting as a human hand for the six clan and infiltrate humanity which he has successfully done for many years, he's a politician and a landlord, his life has always been under someone else's thumb so he abuses whatever power he does have over people to give himself the illusion of control.

The true leader of the six clan, his creator, still lives within castle Scorponok and barks orders that he's supposed to follow, much to his own dismay

[arceespinkgun]

Scorponok's Dreamwave Bio

I don't know why this characterization has never been used again, IMO the fact that it was done well in the Marvel comics isn't a reason to not bring it back since there are plenty of things that weren't explored that could have been. Like, how did Scorponok even end up being a Decepticon commander in the first place if his secret values matched more closely to somebody like Optimus Prime's? I guess we'll never know....

[sophianightdreamer]

Things that happened in the Official Transformers RPG's lore.

So, I've got my hands on all three rulebooks of the official TF RPG. And also the G. I. Joe RPG, but that's irrelevant right now. My batch did not include the crossover rulebook, sadly.

Therefore, notes on the lore and other details in the "basic" canon, because TFWiki did not go into the details, that grew into this list of odd events mentioned.

First thing first, the general continuity is very close to Cyberverse or G1 Fanon, having the basic outline of G1 cartoon, but with details and chunks of backstory pulled from elsewhere - Optimus is a former archivist/data clerk, Bumblebee is a sportscar, et cetera.

To note, there's a somewhat short introductory "who-is-who" list and basic character sheets with profiles both.

Well, I've already got my whiplash, so it's your turn now.

There's something very funky going on with Devastator. Prowl's introduction blurb directly states that something Combiner Wars-esque/Prowlstator has happened, and reads as implying that Autobots hijacked Devastator. By all accounts, Scrapper is alive, making it a possible genuine canonical instance of Prowlastator with Scrapper alive, but the Constructions as whole are placed with the Decepticons. But, Tergamax mentions that among people that were at any moment replacement parts of Devastator there were five Autobots, Prowl included. What happened?

The "who is who" listing for Autobots includes declarations of jobs/roles/traits. Some of these are notable: 1) Ironhide is a chemist 2) Swerve is in Public Relations 3) Rung is Psy-Ops 4) Perceptor is specifically an engineer 5) Bumblebee is noted as "Hero of the People". Must be popular.

Speaking of roles, monochromatic SIC of the day is Jazz, who is also a strategist now.

All of the people in the introductory list are implied to be the Ark crew, and there are problems regarding space travel for Autobots right now. This means that Anode, Lug, those two kids from IDW2, Elita's team and Glyph are on the crew.

Rattrap is a Decepticon.

Optimus Prime has a thick Iaconian accent in Cybertronian. It turns "Teletraan" into "Teletron".

Character sheets include a list of languages that character speaks. Some of these past the standart English+Cybertronian are completely random. Optimus Prime speaks Dutch. Korean is surprisingly popular. In what could be a nice callback, Slingshot has Arabic. The only two people who know the language of newly-introduced alien species of Catharsians are Ratchet and Wildrider. But the crown is taken by First Aid, who has both ASL and Quileute. Yes, the basically extint language of a small tribe warring legally with Stephanie Meyer.

Speaking of languages, both Megatron and Shockwave are noted passable polyglots, and both lack the Universal Translator perk Soundwave, Blaster and Perceptor have. But while Megatron has vague but limited "languages from across Decepticon territory", Shockwave has "all common languages", implying he knows at least a bit of almost everything manually.

Tracks is a triple changer, apparently.

Decepticons' thing is mass-producing sparkless drone clones of their own members.

There's a general threat level system with lists included, where 0 is a random human civilian, 24 is Optimus and Megatron, and 25 is Omega Supreme and Scorponok. Chosen numbers for some characters are thought-provoking. Jazz is 14. Ratchet is 15. First Aid is 9. Wildrider is 6. Ironhide and Starscream are tied with 17. Lord Zarak by himself is 10.

Transformers The Movie sort-of happened, with no apparent notable casualties except for Megatron, who got Galvatroned, but there is a chance that Cyclonus, while a minion of Unicron, predates those events. He is also in an odd position of formally being a part of Decepticons and not the followers of Unicron, who are technically a separate faction.

Scorponok and Deathsaurus are member of Decepticon High Command/Conclave along with Shockwave and Soundwave. Nobody trusts Starscream, so he is not there, but he has the air force.

Mindwipe is, once again, a sorcerer.

Predacons, the combiner team, somehow adopted a sharkticon.

The evil plan du jour of, apparently, pre-Unicron era is converting Earth into the second Cybertron via several colony sites.

[blueikeproductions]

I’m very adamant EarthSpark needed embrace Transformers’ toyetic nature more, and one way was dabbling in Megatron’s evolution to Galvatron.

In this version of events, Megatron evolves into Galvatron during a critical battle against Megaplex, his Clone that he left in charge on Cybertron when he left for Earth. Endowed by the power of the Cyber Sleeves of the Maltobots and Witwiccans, Megatron inherits the power of Quintus Prime and becomes galvanized, laying the final blow on the major remnant of his darker legacy.

Enraged at Megatron getting the power, Starscream plots to steal the power of a Prime to best Megatron. He sends Chaos Terrans Clickbait and Aftermath to kidnap Mo Malto, Maddie Witwicky and Ethan Meridian as they exhibit the strongest affinity towards the Prime. Together with his team’s personal medic Scalpel, they manage to crack the Cyber Sleeves just enough for Starscream to upgrade into his Super form. It maybe a “sub Prime” compared to Megatron’s “Prime”, but Starscream is confident it’s more than enough to give the Autobots and Megatron a good thrashing. Toward the end of the Adventure, Starscream and his Chaos Terrans/Decepticons fall under the mysterious Dark Nova, but his and the Chaos Terrans’ Quintus energy is drained to power up the Prime of Anti-Life, reverting Starscream into his old shell.

Optimus Prime also is upgraded by the Cyber Sleeves into a Terran form, but I haven’t figured out what that looks like yet.

The final battle against Dark Nova, a former apprentice/Prime to Quintus Prime who fell into the Dead Universe and became the antithesis to Quintus’ life above all else, sees Optimus, Galvatron, Terratronus and Giga Zarak using the combined power of all Terrans (Earth and colony) to vanquish the evil entity.

In this upgraded state, Galvatron has the usual power his G1 self has, but also has advanced nano healing, and a weaker ability to create life similar to Quintus, with Galvatron using this power to raise a new generation of Terrans aboard Terratronus on Earth post Nova.

Galvatron and Starscream Transform into modified versions of G1 Quintesson ships shown above.

[theneptuneflytrap]

Imagining how the G1 comics would've been like if everybody had been drawn to scale is so funny. Picture Scorponok being like, "Prime, I see enemies all around me, I'm scared...!" and then you see Optimus way below him, maybe barely reaching his knee, saying, "Don't worry, my friend, I believe in you!" Or maybe Fortress Maximus crying to Spike about how he doesn't know what to do while Galvatron looks like a little animal biting him lol -arceespinkgun

LMAO, that would've been so funny. I totally understand why they can't really make them titans. The Headmasters cartoon got away with it because "Zarak" and "Cerebros" were just smaller Fortress and Scorponok, but if they wanted to make them two (or three) different people, it could cause trouble. I honestly want to see them as Titans so writers would actually be inspired to use Cog and Fasttrack.

I noticed a similar thing happened to Star Saber and Deathsaurus in IDW. They're supposed to be about as big as combiners! Star Saber can get smaller but poor Deathsaurus (and presumably Esmeral) is just that big.

[transformers-villain-tournament]

The final bracket lineup has been decided! There are 64 Transformers villains on the list that'll be fighting for 1st place!

Actual Polls will be tagged with #polls so you can find them easier

Transcript and notes under the cut (as well as the versions of the characters– It's why there are multiple Galvatrons listed, for example)

Notes:

▪︎ This won't be about voting for who you think would win in a fight. It's about who your favorite villains are

▪︎ The specific versions of characters will be made clear in the actual polls (and on the transcript here). If it's not specified, they just represent all versions of them

▪︎ We also allowed some characters to be submitted as duos since there are few of them

Side 1

Match 1: Rampage (Beast Wars) VS. Obsidian & Strika (Beast Machines)

Match 2: Fangry (IDW 2005) VS. Vigilem (IDW 2005)

Match 3: Soundwave (TFP) VS. Lord Imperious Delirious (Beast Wars Uprising)

Match 4: Cryotek (Beast Era) VS. Shadow Striker

Match 5: King Sombra (MLP) VS. Jetstorm (Beast Machines)

Match 6: Tarantulas (Beast Wars) VS. Scorponok (IDW 2005)

Match 7: Vampire (Beast Wars Uprising) VS. Circuit Breaker

Match 8: Skold (Beast Wars) VS. Skywarp (IDW 2019)

Match 9: Thunderwing VS. Megaempress

Match 10: Flamewar VS. Trypticon

Match 11: Overlord VS. Ser-Ket

Match 12: Galvatron II (Marvel G1) VS. Slipstream

Match 13: Straxus VS. Megatron (Beast Machines)

Match 14: Nightbird VS. Lockdown (TFA)

Match 15: Airachnid VS. Goryū

Match 16: Heretech (IDW 2019) VS. Bludgeon (Marvel G1)

Side 2

Match 17: Antagony VS. Leozack

Match 18: Spinister (Marvel G1) VS. Exarchon

Match 19: Deathsaurus (Victory) VS. Shatter & Dropkick

Match 20: Scourge (ROTB) VS. Unicron

Match 21: Steeljaw (RID) VS. Bludgeon (IDW 2005)

Match 22: Galvatron II (Japanese G1) VS. Megatron (Cyberverse)

Match 23: Flame (Marvel G1) VS. Sunstorm

Match 24: Death's Head VS. Cyclonus

Match 25: Scorponok (Marvel G1) VS. Megastorm

Match 26: Clobber & Lockdown (Cyberverse) VS. Starscream & BB (Beast Wars II)

Match 27: Swindle VS. Trickdiamond

Match 28: Pharma VS. Galvatron

Match 29: Quintessons VS. Blackarachnia

Match 30: Soundblaster VS. Sky-Byte

Match 31: Tankor (Beast Machines) VS. Zarak

Match 32: Shockwave VS. Megatron (Beast Wars)

[puppybong]

i lowball people on the facebook marketplace for transformers figures. one guy wanted 50 for a mediocore figure missing all the accessories and most of it was made of clear translucent plastic and i could visibly see the street cracks on it. i told him i'd have it for 5 bucks he ships it

another person wanted 600 for a mint in box G1 black zarak, which is like, the holy grail for a lot of collectors due to how getting it out of the box may straight up disintegrate multiple parts of it including the feet and head due to the gold plastic

i told him i'd take it for 13 and i was on my way right now. he's from america i was in the UK

[titanomarchy]

I'm doing some research on modern Titan transformers:

Titans Return G1 Trypticon is 18in.

Titans Return G1/RiD Fortress Maximus is "Nearly two feet", which I think is 22in.

Titans Return G1 Metroplex is 24in.

Legacy Cybertron Metroplex is 22in.

Legacy Armada Tidal Wave is 19in.

War for Cybertron: Siege G1 Omega Supreme is 24in.

War for Cybertron: Earthrise G1 Scorponok (and Black Zarak) is 21in.

War for Cybertron: Kingdom G1 Ark is 19in.

Legacy G1 Nemesis is 23.5in.

For reference, the two Titans I have out of storage are:

Armada Tidal Wave, 12in. from foot to crest-top

Energon Omega Supreme, 14.5in.

And in storage, from online:

Unicron is about 15.5in.

Primus is about 11in.

Uhm

i want one but there's no way i have space

or is there?

[cherrytimemachine]

I will make you pay for what you’ve done.

[churino]

Design for nightstick (g1 cyclonus' targetmaster real name terry masterson)

Headmaster's underappreciated cousin, terry got the short end of the stick genetically, and got bad eyesight, bad posture and ages really poorly but he's a complete genius when it comes to alien tech even accessing the extranet using earth tech and making a friend.

Terry masterson is the son of a previous relationship mega (of overlord fame) had with a full human before she met giga and is seen as something of a brown spot in his parent's history, inexperienced with raising children at the time, mega was unable to raise him properly even though she always wanted kids. So in addition to terry's own health issues he developed an inferiority complex and loose morals, which led him to fall in with his criminal uncle for support and cut his mother out of his life,

Under lord Zarak's roof he continued being neglected in favor of Zarak's own son henry until Henry's untimely death. Then the attention started going towards his step sister, making her sever whatever care she had for him before and leaving Terry to work on his projects alone in the dark, eventually he created a signal booster that gave him access to the greater internet-esque superstructure outside of earth that he called the extranet, using it to learn more about alien technology and communicate with other users, he eventually made a friend in the decepticon catfish cyberwarp, never one of her targets, just coincidentally frequenting the same online spaces she did outside of work the two became each other's closest friends (and maybe more) out of shared interests

With the information terry uncovered within the extranet he began developing weapons that greatly overpowered anything on earth, his most notable creation and the source of his nickname the nightstick was a gun that can snuff out light and radiation, mostly harmless for humans but deadly against transformers as their sparks are made out of light and radiation.

The nightstick can be inserted into a larger superstructure called the nebulon that not only empowers it's beam but also stores the stolen light and radiation within itself, functionally it is a crude spark extractor, and it's use in warfare for the transformers elicits the same reaction mustard gas would to a human which earns him if not direct enemies at least fear and distrust within the sixclan but unbeknownst to him Tarantulas, Ida, and Navi-ko have a certain fondness for him but because of their secretive ways he never benefits from it,

Terry has become a very depressive person, with cyberwarp and a few other online friends inadvertently being the only things keeping him in the path of vilany as his signal booster does take more energy than available on the electric grid, making him dependent on the six clan to be able to talk to his friends. If the autobots could provide him with enough power for his signal booster he'd hop ship immediately. As he doesn't really buy the six clan's mission or decepticon ideology, he just wants to survive

[arceespinkgun]

TF Marvel Ladies Tierlist

Because the Marvel comics are so infamous for Simon Furman's historically awful portrayal of women, I feel like the women in this continuity rarely get discussed. So I decided to make a tierlist of them. Note though that for this I only included recurring characters, I'll talk more about that in a bit. Here's my subjective breakdown:

Great: Jesse and Joy Meadows have clear motivations and are really likable and badass characters! Jesse has a leg up here for appearing more often and having more of her emotions shown, whereas Joy is more of a cool guest star. Watching Jesse always chasing Buster was hilarious lol

Good: Cindy Newell is well-characterized and I liked her relationship with Ultra Magnus. The only reason she is above Arcee is because of Arcee's infamously terrible start in these comics... if Arcee's first appearance had been in the Time Wars arc, she'd be in the Great tier above Joy (also I prefer characters who have bad intros but good later stories over the reverse). Cecilia's good, but she didn't do as much in her second appearance as I would have liked.

Mid: Rapture has a dry personality I enjoy and her powers could have been a great storytelling tool and I liked seeing them, but she's really hampered by being part of the Neo-Knights which sucks. Susan Hoffman didn't have a great introduction and I didn't really like the colonialist bent to her third appearance, even though I liked her second appearance a lot.

Bad: Poor Llyra Zarak. She should be an important leader, but her story is all about the awful men in her life. Good thing Galen ditched her, she's better off! Charlene just isn't really a character, she only appears on this tierlist because she did appear twice.

A WHOLE WORLD OF PAIN AND HURT: Circuit Breaker is just a character who is really, really frustrating to follow. She should be badass and in a way I guess that's true, but her story makes me feel gross. Terrifyingly, I kind of think Furman managed to write her slightly better given that only right at the end of the series did she actually attack Shockwave!!! Until this point, she would basically solely attack the robots who meant no harm. But stupid villains can be enjoyable, it's actually largely G. B. Blackrock (also Walter a bit) to blame for the elements of her arc that feel repulsive to me. In a way, her rage and decisions are still made subordinate to men.

Characters who didn't qualify: Lisa and Ethel (AKA Carissa Carr, the movie star who befriends Skullgrin) would go in Good or Great if they'd have appeared more than once each, I liked both of them a lot. Charlene might be in Good. The First One I think would go in the bottom of Mid, probably, that whole story was just one giant sci-fi trope.

[uncle-louie]

Out of its nearly 40 years of existence I am pretty I’m the only TF fan who ships Zarak and Fortress 😐

[artlikesrobots]

Cybertron and Destron

[blueikeproductions]

I’ve been seeing debates on whether Hasbro should do a remake/continuation of G1’s cartoon. While most have said no for one reason or another, citing the poor reception to MOTU: R and the mixed reception to X-Men in particular, I’m more curious on the matter. While I agree we don’t need it, part of me really wants Hasbro to do it just to see what they’d do with it.

I’ve seen some point out there wouldn’t be toys to sell for it, but my rebuttal is that’s what Legacy/Prime Generations is for. Basically just have this hypothetical show be the WFC/PW equivalent. One MAJOR stipulation: it must be tonally in line with the original cartoon and Transformers Devastation. Make this an all ages, but especially kid friendly show. None of that nonsense PW/WFC did. In fact keep those writers away from it, bring in Simon Furman, Flint Dille & Bob Budiansky to throw in some sexy adjectives and be script supervisors/editors to the new staff.

As for the plot, it depends on what they’d do: full remake-AU or continuation. The later would be simpler I think, just following up on what Galvatron and Zarak have been up to and the Autobots’/humanity’s reaction to it.

No matter what they’d do I feel like Hasbro would insist on lite retcons that include the 13 Primes and their Relics, which in turn fuel Galvatron and Zarak’s ambitions, while Optimus and Hot Rod have shared premonitions about the history of the Prime lineage, revealing in the cartoon universe, the thirteen primes were the prototypes the Quintessons developed after the Trans-Organics, with the Prime relics being Quintesson tools the Primes inherited after the Quints were driven off Cybertron. The Quints aren’t particularly happy their own tools are being uncovered, let alone seeing Galvatron using the Forge to upgrade his troops into Micromasters, Action Masters, & Pretenders. It becomes a race to see who collects the relics, with the Autobots determined to stop the Quintessons and Decepticons from abusing this ancient power. All the while, Solus Prime, Alchemist Prime and Quintus Prime are watching from the sidelines, the last survivors of the ancient Primes. And because Furman, there’d be a bit in here about Grimlock being a vessel for Onyx Prime temporarily, lol.

A clean slate AU could be done any number of ways, though my stipulation would absolutely no Allspark plot, but instead maybe combine elements of Dark of the Moon and Devastation where the factions are looking for the Ferotaxxis, which possess the data necessary to restore Cybertron by producing Synthetic Energon to whoever finds it first. The Ferotaxxis is unearthed by humans meanwhile, who study it and the unearthed Nova Prime, seeing a technological boom as far as the 80’s/90’s are concerned (similar to the Bay films and Sumac Systems in Animated). Nova isn’t particularly pleased at being poked and prodded by what he deems a lazy inferior species, and like Bay Sentinel concocts a scheme to screw over humanity, Optimus’ Autobots and secure the Ferotaxxis to gift Cybertron Earth’s energy. Because Cybertron is all that matters, the devil with anything that gets in the way of it.

The Autobots human friends would be Spike, Carly and Chip, the children of scientists and engineers working on Project O-Part; the O-Part, the Ferotaxxis, reacting to the Autobots and Decepticons presence on Earth.

The plot would then extend to the lineage of the 13 Primes and their relics, as they were things Nova and the Ferotaxxis were privy to, leading to the Autobots and the kids from stopping the Decepticons from getting their hands on the relics, with another wrinkle being added that some countries already found some like Carbomya, and won’t surrender them easily…

Like I said this concept can go any direction, but for a pivoted AU, this is just how I’d do it, going by what I assume Hasbro would still want with the 13 Primes being a component. Elements of Skybound would probably be here too, like Spike and Carly being those designs in particular.

But I think continuing where The Rebirth left off would be the better option, being the easiest to work with and with the already admittedly shoddy continuity of the G1 cartoon, you could pretty effortlessly add aspects of Skybound, IDW (and by that I mean characters like Nova, Rung, Rubble, Termagax, Three Fold Spark, etc) and the modern 13 lore.

Will do they do it? If they’re desperate enough, absolutely, but I don’t know if we’re entirely there yet. It’s getting closer and closer though.

[bentbliley]

you wanna know what i love about transformers?

i can find the perfect version of an obscure character yet semi popular repaint but i can’t find a fucking chubby green spaceman.

[ndverse]

Cool-looking upcoming toys that I might get, and cool-looking upcoming toys that I won’t.